Like Mookie, i also recently installed Ubuntu 7.10 onto my garage server (seriously, you need to have a dedicated system partition, but that's another story). As part of that, i goofed up and grabbed the wrong distro package (desktop instead of server since every geek on the planet was grabbing a copy).
After installing, it brought up the default window manager, Gnome. It's certainly brown, all-right, but more importantly, i realized something else. You see, i normally run KDE as my window manager, which allows me to do quite a bit. Gnome, doesn't. Gnome limits the options you can adjust, applications you can add, and even the way that things look and feel. i find it horribly limiting and frustrating to use. Mookie is the opposite. For him, everything just works. There's no need to twiddle and flitch things about. It's simple and lets him focus on just using the box.
That's when we realized why those two window managers have such different fan bases. Gnome is for Mac users, KDE is for Windows users.
Seriously, think about it. KDE gives you as many options and fiddly-bits as you want. You're free to optimize or break things however you like. Gnome isolates you from that. You're using their environment, but gnome feels you don't need to worry about breaking things by having the ability to do so. Same's pretty much true in the Mac/Win realm. You've got a tremendous amount of flexibility in Windows do completely screw things up (that's why folks continually bitch and moan about it). With Mac, less so since there are bits you simply cannot change.
i think the absolute icing on the cake, though, was the fact that Gnome's default menu bar location is at the top of the screeen, where KDE's is at the bottom. If that's not telling enough, i don't know what is.
And now, the flames:
somehow i knew our discussion would be turned into a posting :)
here's more fuel for the whole "gnome is like mac" argument. i was thinking about some of the improvements they made to gnome for the 2.20.0 version. interesting stuff like the Deskbar Applet for search (just like MacOS X Spotlight). Fast User Switching in the top menubar (done up exactly like MacOS X). Default printer? PDF printer (ahem, just like MacOS X).
Anyhoo, some fuel for the flames.
btw, i mentioned to jr that when i was playing with pclinuxos (kde-based distro), in the matter of two days i was able to "customize" my kde into something not even remotely usable.
That Mac/Win dynamic is why, even though I work in graphic design, I prefer Windows. You can take the argument that Macs work right out of the box so you can avoid the hassle of fiddling and get right to work, but there's also the counter-argument that some people want to know what's actually happening in every nook and cranny of their computer.
I understand the out-of-the-box argument. It's how I prefer cars, because I have little interest in messing with their mechanics and even less interest in fixing something I've carelessly broken. But I like computer innards, and want to make sure I'm using the right ones for the job.
Save This Page
Bring back BeOS!
After thinking about what you're saying for a few minutes, rather than come up with a flame, I pose: "What the heck is going on that we (as a computing society) haven't come up with a standardized framework and interface for computer/program/document/(possibly smaller items) settings?"
It's freakin' criminal.
Well, back to despising society for me.