A good point, well made. I agree that making Linux more mainstream should not be a goal at the expense of quality. However, making Linux 'better' is a very subjective thing. My point was essentially that if you have a quality product, it's worth making it attractive. Attractiveness is secondary to the actual functionality, but it's still important.

Quality, at this point, can't be an issue. The reason is that Windows and Linux are fundamentally different - different from their basic design criteria, and the difference extends all the way to the GUI. Monolithic vs modular. Windows is monolithic; GNU/Linux is modular.

With that realization, "quality" means "easy to use", "pretty", and "relatively bug free". Windows will never catch Linux in terms of security; it can't. It also won't catch it in terms of kernel robustness; the monolighic Windows design makes that impossible.

Thus, Linux will be perceived to be as good as or better than Windows when it is as pretty as Windows, and as easy to set up/use as Windows. Since all of these decisions occur at the user interface level, then so long as that software works reliably the perception will be there. The reality is that, where it really matters (down deep in the system, at kernel level and just above) it is pretty close to impossible for Linux to ever become as bad as Windows, regardless of what decisions are made from this point forward, because the inevitable interactions in the monolithic Windows environment can't be duplicted in the modular GNU/Linux environment.

how much will windows Vista cost then as I think it will cost alot of money

alot more than before

I'm guessing the price will vary between the different versions. My guess is the cheapest it will be is between $50-70 american dollars, with the most expensive being several hundred.

i didnt test vista but from what i heard everywhere makes me think of it as closed-source copy of linux, but i think it will turnup as xp cause its compatible with xp apps so it will get its viruses? i dont know
i am windows free about 7 months now
i now use suse10.1rc2 great looking with XGL, beagle and the KDE port of it and a great collection of apps.
i cant ask for anything more! i just find it already
i play windows games with cedega so i dont need windows anymore

what vista can offer for me i dont have in linux/suse?
i dont think i will move from linux to vista its just downgrade why would i do that!

and sorry about my terrible english

A couple of weeks ago I went to my parents house. My youngest sister still living at home saw me using Knoppix on their computer. Later I was working on my laptop with FC4. The next day my dad was looking at pictures of Vista and my sister who had not seen gnu/linux until about two days previous said "Hey, it looks like they are copying linux." I thought that was funny. (I believe she was talking about the clock on the desktop, the tabs in Internet Explorer, the "start" was taken off of the application menu and replaced with an icon, and also how the menu was translucent).

As for me, I will not pay for Vista, everyhting I need I can use WINE. But if work buys it for me, I will take a look at it for a while.

I have seen other people comment on that one. but I dont think microsoft realy ment to do that [and if they did it's not going to win any linux users], at lest we know translucent is prity useless and anoning [I think so], I mean how many distros come as defult with translucent panels?

Tranlucency is pretty at first, but after a while to much of it gives me a headache. I keep 99% of my panels solid for a reason... so i can see them!!

It truly is a waste of time for any software developer to spend all of that time on such silly features. Hey, instead of having them focus their energy on reliability, stability, and performance, let's have General Motors spend billions of dollars and months on end devloping pure gold steering wheels for the mass market...

I still use my TI34, it's unbreakable.


Ontopic though, I have to wonder at the majority of users out there who are willing to pay money for a product that doesn't work. I have argued this with many people. Windows is buggy, has been, still is, and I imagine will forever be. But, the argument I hear is that Linux has bugs too. And sure it does, it also has security issues etc etc etc. But, and this is a big but, No one in the linux community will try and sell you a product with bugs in it.

This generally kills the argument but they still go out and pay moeny for a buggy product. The reality is that M$ is aimedd at these people. They believe what they hear and see on TV. They believe what they read in newspapers and unfortunately M$ is in a position to influence what gets put into those papers, magazines and comercials. They have an incredible budget for advertising, if the linux community had even half their advertising budget you would see a very different distribution of os users.

My humble opinion of course.

You know what guys, after looking up some recent screenshots of vista off of this site, I must admit that is the most tasteful rendition of translucent windows i've ever seen. Its downright gorgeous. I guess thats not enough to switch, but I would like to see one of the opensource DM or WM come out with transparency like that.

You're joking right?

KDE has had the ability to show translucent windows & menus since... umm... well, it's been so long that I can't remember. At a guess, I'd say since KDE 3.0 came out (2002?? My memory is shocking lately ).

Yes, you really haven't been paying attention to Linux development if you really think we don't have transparent windows. Such a basic feature it took the KDE community six weeks to develop dozens of stable transparency themes. Somehow it takes Microsoft six years to develop one.

I've gotta say that while it looks nice, it's the little touches like that blur on the transparency that are gonna tax your processor. They all add up and when you've got several windows oopen all requiring a calculation for blur when they are resized or moved, what chance do the applications have. I mean XP is fairly stable for windows but how many times have you had to wait minutes for task manager to open, then even longer to ask it to kill something and for it to actually die. Can you imagine how much longer that will take with the resources being taxed constantly by all of these little bits and pieces. I just hope if I'm forced to use vista, that 128 bit processors are around and RAM costs less than air.
I always though of an OS as allowing an application to do its job not competing with it for resources

No. I'm not. I've seen translucent windows in KDE, GNOME, and other wm's. But I've never seen them look like that.