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This tired, false Microsoft / Linux dichotomy completely misses the point. Microsoft's customers are computer users. Linux doesn't really have "customers" in any normal sense of the word, but if it did, they would be developers, and the product that Linux provides is a platform that can be molded. Whether or not the unruly horde of Linux developers will ever produce something as polished as Microsoft remains to be seen, but your argument against Linux is a bit like saying Wikipedia will never overtake Britannica because people want to _read_ an encyclopedia, they don't want to _write_ one (duh!)

Microsoft treats their consumers like their consumers don't know anything about computers. Most of them don't.

In the same sense that Delta provides plane flights for people who don't know anything about basic preventative aircraft maintenance, the lazy ignorant bastards.

The computer is not an end goal. The software is not an end goal. Knowing arcane trivia about the difference between the kernel and userspace is not the end goal. The end goal is get your work done better and faster so you can turn off the machine and punch out for the day. Microsoft gets that in a way that few OSS writers do.

Perhaps you could explain, then, why MS Windows gets in my way so much that if I have to work there it takes me at least three times as long to get most tasks finished as it takes to get the same tasks done on FreeBSD.

This is to be expected. I think the explanation is because you have a large memory and a great understanding of the technology. The limits microsoft places on the technology to keep it simple for others to use are actually obstacles for you.

Compare hot keys and menus. Menus are slower and take several layers of navigation. Experts of any kind of software though, learn the hot keys. Novices use the menus.

There are actually a lot of things you can do with Microsoft from the command prompt or power shell. Microsoft systems are quite flexible in this way, similar to *nix. You can do scripting and batch files and all that too. It's just not as popular to hack on microsoft like that.

PowerShell isn't too bad, but the standard Windows cmd application+language is just horrible

The PowerShell language is pretty good -- but it's a bit like "teats on a boarhound" in MS Windows.

s/boarhound/boarhog/

I think my girlfriend would disagree with you about the "great memory". In any case, patio11 said that the end goal was to make it possible to get work done better and faster, and I pointed out that, if that's the case, MS Windows failed -- because it really is an obstacle to getting work done better and faster. Whether it's an obstacle to getting work done at all for certain limited classes of people (even if they're numerous), how those classes of people differ meaningfully from others, and whether they're self-selecting doesn't change that, and is a separate argument (or perhaps several separate arguments).

> Compare hot keys and menus.

I agree with your entire point about hotkeys. On the other hand, compare systems that allow both (to any desired, configurable degree) with those that focus on menus (and other "user friendly" stuff) to the extent that good and/or configurable hotkey capabilities suffer (e.g., MS Windows or KDE 4).

> There are actually a lot of things you can do with Microsoft from the command prompt or power shell. Microsoft systems are quite flexible in this way, similar to *nix. You can do scripting and batch files and all that too. It's just not as popular to hack on microsoft like that.

It's also more of a pain in the fourth point of contact to do that kind of thing on MS Windows, though, and it really is recognizably less flexible than on Unix -- in part because so little of the software on a given system is reasonably scriptable in that manner.

Apple has made an easy to use Unix, in part by making the important decision not to use X.

Apple also overhauled most of the *NIX kernel and made proprietary graphical tools and closed off the supported hardware. All of which contribute to the ease of use and keep the solidity.

Microsoft on the other hand writes an OS for any PC and any user. Any hardware combination and an almost infinite set of software installed and perhaps running simultaneously.

Strictly speaking, that's not true. Microsoft doesn't generally write an OS that is compatible with hardware; hardware manufacturers make hardware that is compatible with Microsoft. Microsoft may do what it can to make their job easier, but so does X.org.

So, while it may be true that this is a blocker for Linux in the consumer pc market, and it may be true that Linux won't ever become a major player in the desktop market, It's not the X.org or Linux developers' fault that that is the case; it's the market's, and statements like "X.org has a lot to learn fro Vista and Windows 7," are really unfair.

I'm at peace with the notion that non-technical users aren't interested in and shouldn't have to learn what's under the hood.

However, the author of this article is not a non-technical computer user, despite his claim to be one; if you're aware that VLC has "output modules", one of which is "XVideo", by the standards of the masses you're a geek, period. Claiming to be "just a user", and at the same time spouting various kinds of technicalities that "just a user" would have no idea about is actually another symptom of the web forum pseudo-technicalism that has infected "IT website" articles in this vein.

*nix is a technological paradigm that allows certain possibilities, the most prominent of which has historically been building "by geeks, for geeks" operating systems. In years of reading through discussions similar to this one, I have yet to see a convincing argument for why it can't possibly be used to build systems for non-geeks to use as well. And along those years, Apple provided very strong argument, if not solid proof, for the opposite, in the form of OSX.