Every year is the year of Linux on the desktop, as more and more people use it.
If I had a working peecee now, I'd run Ubuntu on it. Why? I'm just way too used to Not Windows. I like Mac, but I also like Gnome. I like KDE. I do not like Windows. Using Windows, I am constantly reminded of doing something in 1995, why? Because a dialog box hasn't been re-designed since then, or some shitty UI convention has remained. Inconsistent, stupid, and downright BAD human interface is all over Windows. Vista will be the same way. MS forgot what UI means, taking it to be "appearance theme" rather than "the way the user interacts with the software." Vista still has the same archaic dialog boxes, unchanged since Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4. The same shit-tastic concept of "drivers", which is actually a carry-on from the days of DOS/Windows when you had to install these shitty little drivers to make your SoundBlaster Pro work, or whatever. Instead of modernizing their device driver methods, they just tacked on a Plug and Pray system and kept using the same shitty drivers.
Next, there's the obsession with awful graphic design. MS makes the ugliest themes. THE UGLIEST. The worst, the ugliest, the shittiest. And people who make software for Windows? They make the worst. Everybody I know uses Winblows and I see their screens and it HURTS me... it's so fucking ugly. From AOL IM to Yahoo, even Firefox on Windows is shiteater ugly. I can run MS Office XP with its crappy bulbous molded plastic look, and then run OpenOffice on KDE or Gnome, with OO using the Office XP lookalike theme, and guess what? IT'S NOT AS UGLY.
The big thing is that MS goes for garish. Not flashy, just gaudy and garish. They don't have translucent plastic with glass elements, or opaque plastic gradients, no... it has to be bulbous, curvy plastic, with shitty translucency effects, awful gradient effects, et cetera. SHITTY SHITTY SHITTY SHITTY. There's no thought or reason, it's just a bunch of guys who took graphic arts classes at the Redmond Community College pushing the same pixels around. Now they work with ARGB rather than 16-bit color or 8-bit color, or 4-bit. Now icons look like 3D rendered junk rather than shitty cartoons. It doesn't change the fact that it's not actually attractive or elegant. It's garish and ugly.
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