


Windows Users: Have you upgraded to Windows 8?

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RE: Not until major changes
By maugrimtr on 11/15/2012 7:38:29 AM , Rating: 2
For Linux, the desktop environment can be anything you want. Most will standardise. Ubuntu standardised on its custom Unity shell. The other standards commonly used are Gnome and KDE. None of the three are particularly hard to pick up if coming from Windows.

People forget that since Linux is open sourced, it has a myriad of desktop options. There is literally no way to enforce a single desktop option short of refusing to distribute it (which is merely an inconvenience since someone will just stick up the needed packages for download).

If anything, Linux has fallen into a similar trap to Windows 8. Ubuntu's Unity was designed for tablets. They've had to spent time polishing, changing and tweaking it to make it tolerable for desktop users and, even then, it remains a divisive feature with people migrating to Mint (which has something closer to the neat and simple Gnome 2.0 experience).

RE: Not until major changes
By drycrust3 on 11/15/2012 9:58:51 AM , Rating: 2
I would put the range of desktop options down to the GPL2 licence, not that the software is open source, although being open source does help.
You are right, most distributions do use one of the mainstream desktops.
The question, though, is why Master Kenobi (and others) consider this a sign of a bad OS?

RE: Not until major changes

