"Dan Purgert" wrote

| I explored it a fair amount but ended up feeling that
| it was a big time sucker. Everything changes. Everything
| requires tweaking.

| So, your basic progression of "new stuff changes". I mean, it's not like
| Windows behaves the same as XP (or 7) these days.
|
Big difference. Microsoft is religious about backward
compatibility. They provide support for 10 years and
lots of docs. (Though the end-user docs are pretty bad.)
I'm writing this on XP with OE6. Most software still works
on XP. OE was just a half-baked afterthough. A default
email program. Yet OE6 is arguably better than current
products despite being 18 years old. The program folder
is 4 MB. TBird is 90 MB, stuffed with dotnet crap, but no
help file in sight. Even the Mozilla people don't seem to
have full docs for things like prefs.

It's not difficult to write software that runs on
all Windows versions -- backward and forward. That's
like being able to write a program for current Linux and
have it work on RedHat 4 seamlessly, with no additional
support files or adjustments needed.

So, yes, stuff changes in Windows. Especially going
from XP to Vista. That was a big jump. But the API
didn't change. It was just added to. MS have to offer
that kind of support because business requires it.
Meanwhile, WINE took 20 years to get to v. 1, with
updates every 10 days. It was a training camp for
college students, not a professional piece of software.
GIMP is similar. And that pretty much covers Linux
software for people who are not programmers or scientists.

Linux support is typically 18 months. When I want
to install anything it needs numerous updates of system
files. Ridiculous stuff like 6.143.213.77 isn't good enough.
It has to be 6.143.213.88.

Docs? If you're lucky it's a man page. Ask the programmer
why there are no docs. The answer will probably be something
like, "I don't like to write." They say that with diffident pride:
"I'm a programmer, not a lackey!"

The programmer is a 35
year old teenager who's anxious to get back to his video
game where he's killed 1,723 bad guys since last Tuesday
and he's hoping to break his own record of 1,947 killed by
tomorrow. He's going to have to stay up all night eating
candybars and ramen to pull it off. And you want docs?!
Where's your sense of priorities, man?!

I actually came across something in WINE at one point
suggesting that programmers should put comments into
their code in a particular format. Those could later be
auto-converted to a help file without having to actually
write a help file. Any software sold for money has to be
far more dependable and complete than that.

| Nothing is simple because the people who use it like to feel like
| coding commandos.
|
| I haven't run into that myself ... maybe I got lucky.
|

And you don't use console windows? Or end up digging
down into /etc to change a program setting? Or maybe you
just regard that as simple? In Windows it's been almost
completely unnecessary to open console windows since
about 1995. The last time I did it was to swap out the HAL
file from single core to multi-core version.

| So everyone brags about using a "shell", by which they mean a console
| window where they run DOS-esque commands.
|
| Which can be the "easier" approach (in terms of less effort on your
| part) than using a GUI.

Yes. Exactly the answer I'd expect from a Linux fan.
It can be highly efficient as a scripting system, to do
batch operations, but for normal computer use -- to
copy a file, find system info, read help, list directory
contents, and so on -- it makes no sense.

| Even the OS itself gets very limited support.
|
| This certainly depends on the distro you choose. Some are better than
| others -- although if you're looking for "professional" support, that's
| pretty much limited to Red Hat.
|
I don't mean personal support. I mean supporting
their own product, so that necessary patches are
available and software will run on it for many years,
as with Windows. Many programmers use end of OS
support as an excuse to end their support, so if a
Linux version is only supported officially for 18 months
then whatever you set up initially is "all she wrote".
Once it no longer serves you'll have to start all over.

| | Didn't desktop publishing get it's start with Macs?

| Probably. And graphics. But that was way back when Apple
|
| "Desktop Publishing" being a graphical environment? I think Xerox or
| Sun was "first" in that regard. Apple just took it away from them
| pretty quick (and the whole "IBM (clone) with MS Windows" thing didn't
| really help anyone out).
|
He means being able to create your own printed
documents without having to paste-up photostat copy.
As you may know, not so long ago the only way to
print other than a typewriter was to order the text in
the desired font as a photostat. The people doing that
would set the lead characters, print it, and take a picture.
They'd send you the picture. You would then cut that
up with a razor blade and stick the words down on a
backing with rubber cement. Once done, you'd send
the whole thing to the printer. (I know this because I did
a bit of paste-up when I was young.)

Desktop publishing was the new ability to actually
print a finished product yourself. With high end
equipment people could print a professional, finished
product and cut the photostat people, the typesetters,
and the printers out of the picture. Remember those early
fliers stapled to telephone poles, in futuristic,
blocky fonts in the 80s? That was people with computers
showing off that they could print on a piece of paper:

"Cat missing. Black and white. Very cute. Answers to Frisky."
Below that would be a "picture" of a cat, composed of
printed squares, like an image from an early video game.

Since Mac had GUI first I suspect they also had
desktop publishing first. But I didn't have a computer back
then. If they hadn't developed an easy GUI I probably
still wouldn't have a computer. I've never needed to do
word processing for work so I never had a use for DOS.

| was ahead of Windows with graphics. They ended up having
| a reputation for being superior for a long time. Long after
|
| IIRC, the reputation was well earned -- the M68k and later PPC chips had
| better pipelines when it came to graphics processing than the Intel x86
| processors of the day.
|
Yes. But their reputation lasted far beyond that
time, for no reason. Some years ago a graphics shop
sued Apple after they bought Macs and found the
display's top setting was only 18-bit color/ 260K
colors, yet the menu selection for that setting was
marked "millions of colors". Leave it to Apple to
use cute slang to hide sleaze. But if they'd said
"tons of colors" they might have protected themselves
from a lawsuit.