Mandelbear, you and I have probably used, heck - *made* computers since the days of discrete logic. I still have a working 6502 system with hand etched double-sided PC boards and a wire wrapped video card made out of 74xx TTL chips. I've been part of the big-iron mainframe companies, Apple, and Microsoft.
Like yours, my litany of OSes is also long, and along the way I must say my favorite was AmigaDOS. Though I use WinXP (and Vista) pretty much exclusively, I still have my OS 9 based Macs around. I can't stand OS X, I actually like Win XP, and I'd never ever use Windows 1-98/ME. I never liked unix as a client system and linux is not much better, though I like how well linux works in embedded spaces. I loath X-windows, find the damage done by OS X to Apple's once nice UI (well, the top-menu model was a major mistake) makes it ugly to me.
I outgrew 80-column real or virtual displays long ago.
On mice/mouses, I'd like to see 5-buttons, one per digit, but that's venturing into hand gesture systems.
I have gotten to the point where I see the use of computers as ease-of-use devices and that anything that expedites data interchange is often more important than other features. That speaks to marketplace ubiquity, so generally Windows wins hands down.
Now eventually or sooner, WEB services will begin to address data interchange ubiquity and I think the distinction between linux based or Windows based end-clients may become irrelevent. Indeed the WEB services model (or what some people call 'cloud-OS') will commoditize what we think of today as OSes to the point where all that code base will be effectively free. So, this Windows vs. linux debate will just slide into the commodity black hole. When was the last time anyone argued about their wired telephones and their features? Even cellphones are no longer compared - the offered services, however, are considered worthy of comparison becasue that's where the value lies.
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Date: 2006-09-14 07:58 pm (UTC)Like yours, my litany of OSes is also long, and along the way I must say my favorite was AmigaDOS. Though I use WinXP (and Vista) pretty much exclusively, I still have my OS 9 based Macs around. I can't stand OS X, I actually like Win XP, and I'd never ever use Windows 1-98/ME. I never liked unix as a client system and linux is not much better, though I like how well linux works in embedded spaces. I loath X-windows, find the damage done by OS X to Apple's once nice UI (well, the top-menu model was a major mistake) makes it ugly to me.
I outgrew 80-column real or virtual displays long ago.
On mice/mouses, I'd like to see 5-buttons, one per digit, but that's venturing into hand gesture systems.
I have gotten to the point where I see the use of computers as ease-of-use devices and that anything that expedites data interchange is often more important than other features. That speaks to marketplace ubiquity, so generally Windows wins hands down.
Now eventually or sooner, WEB services will begin to address data interchange ubiquity and I think the distinction between linux based or Windows based end-clients may become irrelevent. Indeed the WEB services model (or what some people call 'cloud-OS') will commoditize what we think of today as OSes to the point where all that code base will be effectively free. So, this Windows vs. linux debate will just slide into the commodity black hole. When was the last time anyone argued about their wired telephones and their features? Even cellphones are no longer compared - the offered services, however, are considered worthy of comparison becasue that's where the value lies.