Windows 8 bashing

[NickStone]

Just read another article (rant) about the forth coming Windows 8 OS.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-...ling-windows-8

As a cruel trick on myself, about a month ago I installed Windows 8 on my main PC to see what it was like.

The answer is: abysmal.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Windows 8 is the worst computing experience I’ve ever had. As a desktop operating system, it’s annoying, frustrating, irritating, and baffling to use. I’ve tried on many occasions to explain exactly why it’s so awful to use day-to-day, and most of the time, smoke starts pouring out of my ears. I thought it would be better to get down exactly what the issues are and why you should avoid it.

And some people think Unity and Gnome-Shell is ****

[sealbhach]

Possibly, somebody who has never used a PC before might find it easy and intuitive? I don't know anything about Win 8 but from pictures I've seen it looks like it's designed for a kiosk touchscreen device.

[HalationEffect]

My pet hypothesis is that Microsoft is envious of the success Apple has had with iOS devices... which are essentially (IMO) online content consumption / internet appliances, that aren't capable (intentionally so) of being much more than that.

It's part of a trend towards "dumbing down" personal computing, and I can't really say that I'm a fan of the direction the "post-PC" trend is taking. Thank the FSM that Linux still offers real choices.

[Shimapan]

Just read another article (rant) about the forth coming Windows 8 OS.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-...ling-windows-8

As a cruel trick on myself, about a month ago I installed Windows 8 on my main PC to see what it was like.

The answer is: abysmal.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Windows 8 is the worst computing experience I’ve ever had. As a desktop operating system, it’s annoying, frustrating, irritating, and baffling to use. I’ve tried on many occasions to explain exactly why it’s so awful to use day-to-day, and most of the time, smoke starts pouring out of my ears. I thought it would be better to get down exactly what the issues are and why you should avoid it.

Fully agree with the man
Microsuck has put out quite a lot of failure, most notably stuff like Windows ME, ME 2.0 (a.k.a. Vista)... But Windows 8 exceeds even that by a good margin, it's the biggest Epic Fail that Microsuck ever released. Forcing a mobile phone OS on the desktop, a butt-ugly one on top of that, was by far the dumbest idea they ever had.

And some people think Unity and Gnome-Shell is ****

Yes, they do indeed
Just because there's stuff that's a lot worse still, that doesn't make Gnome any better. Gnome 2 sucked, but nowhere near as much as Gnome 3 does. That "Dash" thingie was clearly the most stupid idea they ever that. Especially that fullscreen list is extremely displaced on a desktop. Gnome 3 is just plain awful and a pain to use. Unity is just Canonical's attempt to make Gnome 3 suck less. Interesting tidbit: Unity is programmed using Qt. Apparently Canonical didn't want to touch that awful Gtk

[Robtygart]

I am not a big fan of Unity, I can't find anything about it I like, and I think its a very bad idea for new Linux users, but I would still take it over Microsoft any day. The last Microsoft OS I had was Vista on my 2006 HP laptop, it was always slow and very hot, I could have cooked a pizza. I am still using the computer with Kubuntu 12.10 and it runs great.

I don't understand their thinking about Windows 8, lots of weird changes, the last good MS was XP.

[GreyGeek]

....
Interesting tidbit: Unity is programmed using Qt. Apparently Canonical didn't want to touch that awful Gtk

Ten years before I retired our dev crew was forced to switch from MS Visual FoxPro to another GUI RAD tool. I spent a year trying out several cross-platform tools and reporting back to the crew and management. I decided against GTK because it required, at the time, six separate tools to build the coding stack, not counting the db connections. Python had some serious TYPE and isolation issues and Boa-Constructor was in glacial development mode, and also required a pot full of additonal components that had to be in version synchronization. Java's GUI RAD tools had the annoying habit of placing "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE" notices in the exact files I needed modify to add the functionality I wanted.

When I first tried Qt3 I was intrigued by its completeness and polish, but using the Qt-Designer tool to write apps was madness because everything had to be added as properties of text boxes or linked through combo boxes. And the result was XML code that the meta object compiler (moc) converted to C++ code. I almost gave it up but then 4.0 came on the scene. They had abandon the Rude Goldberg method of project design and made the Qt-Designer just a form design tool, as it should be, and returned to the classic C++ programming paradigm. Qt4.0 was and IS a total joy to program in. Under Nokia, it only got better, at least until Qt 5. I haven't tried Qt5 so I am not qualified to compare it to 4.0.

Developing apps using Qt4 under Linux was 2X to 3X faster than developing the same source under XP using MS VC 6.0. I used compiler defines to switch between PosgreSQL code under Linux and Oracle code under Windows.

My only complaint was that Qt4 wasn't around 40 years ago when I began programming.