Former Compiz Developer: Free Software Desktop Might Enter A Dark Age [editorial]

Yes that was a typo... and that wasn't on propose I swear. Yes 17% of computers ship with GPUs... and I am sure a good 10% of them are being used for at least some amount of gaming. Perhaps higher... although that is hard to quantify of course, Nvidia sells the majority of those cards lately and their cards are getting used in a lot of comput cases. I know I have seen them going into graphics workstations more and more ect.

Well of course there are uses for GPUs besides gaming but gaming is how they are marketed. And right now you buy a GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 or 1080 Ti and you get to chose one of two modern games. Not that I imagine too many people buy these kinds of cards for a free game, I got both the games with my recent 1080 Ti purchase, installed them just for benchmarking purposes but not my kind of games.
 
The point being that not that many people care about myriads of DE environments, they simply need ONE that's easy enough and efficient enough to use to get the job done.

Gnome is exactly that. It is more efficient then the windows UI... more easily tricked out with cool things like https://extensions.gnome.org/
In the commercial world it is simple, easy to use resource light (compared to windows and macos.. if not the super light linux options)... and purely custom extensions for very specific purposes can be done by junior level inexpensive programmers.

Arguing that windows 10s UI is in anyway better the Gnome doesn't ring true to me at all.
 
The point being that not that many people care about myriads of DE environments, they simply need ONE that's easy enough and efficient enough to use to get the job done.

Well they do, because a grand proportion of Windows users don't like the look of Windows 10 and they've been quite vocal about it. Not too sure where you dragged that assumption from?
 
Well they do, because a grand proportion of Windows users don't like the look of Windows 10 and they've been quite vocal about it. Not too sure where you dragged that assumption from?

A "grand proportion" of Windows users have long complained about the UI and there have been tools forever to modify it. I'll grant that the size of that a "grand proportion" was very large with Windows 8.x but a lot of that was related to old UI elements changing too drastically for desktop users. That "grand proportion' mainly just wanted 7's UI back.
 
A "grand proportion" of Windows users have long complained about the UI and there have been tools forever to modify it. I'll grant that the size of that a "grand proportion" was very large with Windows 8.x but a lot of that was related to old UI elements changing too drastically for desktop users. That "grand proportion' mainly just wanted 7's UI back.

So flexibility when choosing desktop managers is a good thing that people could make use of in Windows and you are, in fact, making the forced implementation of one desktop manager to rule all under Linux out to be an issue when the fact is it's obvious that it's not.

Allowing freedom of choice does not, in fact, make one's PC a science experiment. That's just yourself generalising again.
 
A huge portion of the windows software ecosystem is shovelware. Everyone knows its true, no I'm not going to pull numbers out for you cause yes I would be guessing... but come on we hardly need to argue that point if we do your simply don't want to accept reality.

Shovelware is what most of Linux Games seem to be when people make claims about high numbers of Linux games.

The only reason there would be more shovelware on Windows, is that there is more software in all categories on windows.

So lets say there is 100 Times as much shovelware for Windows, then there is 100 times as much Quality software.

So your argument is moot.

The truth is if you need more than web browser, you are probably better off on Windows.
 
So flexibility when choosing desktop managers is a good thing that people could make use of in Windows and you are, in fact, making the forced implementation of one desktop manager to rule all under Linux out to be an issue when the fact is it's obvious that it's not.

Allowing freedom of choice does not, in fact, make one's PC a science experiment. That's just yourself generalising again.

I'm saying is that most PC just don't care. Just with free tools it's easy to drastically change the Windows desktop. For some money on tools like Windowsblinds or DisplayFusion there's a lot of power there to radically alter the default Windows DE. Sure there's a market for it. With a population as diverse as PCs there's markets for lots of things. Microsoft has never really been into tons of desktop UI configurability though I do see why people say that Windows 10 is the less configurable than prior versions, at least of the box. Honestly I think their focus on high DPI displays has much more utility especially into the future than tons of DE configuration.
 
I'm saying is that most PC just don't care. Just with free tools it's easy to drastically change the Windows desktop. For some money on tools like Windowsblinds or DisplayFusion there's a lot of power there to radically alter the default Windows DE. Sure there's a market for it. With a population as diverse as PCs there's markets for lots of things. Microsoft has never really been into tons of desktop UI configurability though I do see why people say that Windows 10 is the less configurable than prior versions, at least of the box. Honestly I think their focus on high DPI displays has much more utility especially into the future than tons of DE configuration.

The fact that so many people complain of the Windows 8 and Windows 10 UI's highlights that people do care about the appearance and associated functionality of their desktop - Users on the [H] forums alone aren't overly happy with the changes in appearance/functionality over Windows 7, I can assure you the less tech savvy masses are up in arms over it.

However, I do agree that DPI scaling is an issue that is being effectively addressed in Windows 10 as opposed to Windows 7. However it's going to take developers jumping onboard the high DPI bandwagon before the issues surrounding HiDPI are fully resolved.
 
The fact that so many people complain of the Windows 8 and Windows 10 UI's highlights that people do care about the appearance and associated functionality of their desktop - Users on the [H] forums alone aren't overly happy with the changes in appearance/functionality over Windows 7, I can assure you the less tech savvy masses are up in arms over it.

A lot of less technical savvy folks probably don't even appreciate what's really available to them, either in the box or through free and low cost tools. For instance, one thing a lot of folks never pick up on is window snapping. ChadD has made the point about people pinning everything to the desktop when really the Start Menu is a much better place for that, at least it's a lot easier to reach. It's something that can be debated, I'm not saying that Microsoft has made all of the right decisions but a lot of what we think about UIs is learned and often not because of some inherent superiority.
 
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