Give your Raspberry Pi a retro Windows makeover with Linux RaspbianXP Professional and Linux Raspbian95

Correct Linux is a kernel used to support a number of OSs including Android, Arch, CentOS, Debian, DSL, RedHat, Ubuntu ...

-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. |

Nope, I work best with the environment that I have spent a few decades tuning to suit me.

I've had a useful unix desktop for a lot longer than that, in fact it's hardly changed in that time.

-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. |

I find it sad that despite all evidence to the contrary, you claim that.

My desktop never crashes

You simply have preconceived ideas.

Well I have had a useful Linux desktop in that time, but similar.

So egotism rather than fashion.

Same here, and for me the least annoying setup is a Redhat Fedora install using XFCE as the desktop. This desktop is fine for simple GUI tasks (email, web browsing, NNTP) and I use a fairly heavily customised command- line environment for more technical stuff.

The environments that seriously annoy me are those where both mouse and keyboard have to be combined to get something done: switching from mouse to keyboard and back every few seconds is a serious work impediment no matter whose OS and GUI you're using.

Looked at that way, MS Word for DOS was an infinitely better word processor than any version of Word For Windows or Libre Office, all current spreadsheets are crap, and microemacs or vi are better programming text editors than gedit or any of the GUI-based IDEs.

But, those happen to be my preferences: ymmv.

Given a choice between those two, I think I'd take egotism.

Well its not a choice between those two is it? I did some of my best work on a Vt100/Wyse50 in 'vi'

Or wordstar on DOS.

I didn't HAVE a 'desktop'.

I have never found a 'desktop' an aid to any sort of productivity. And GUIS are pointless unless you are manipulating graphic objects - its a pain to switch from mouse to keyboard and back again.

It was just a gimmick for flattering computer illiterate monkeys.

A 'desktop' is just a fancy start menu. That's all, And a bit of a quick link to commonly used files.

To get all prissy about it is just vanity.

Said the caveman and was shot by an arrow :)

Whats the problem with using a terminal in a Desktop. You are speaking as a relict from the last century.

The complexity of software is much higher as even 10y ago, so now even switches have GUI or WebUI.

I appreciate your opinion but it is just your own.

I still don't understand why someone would try putting windows XP or so on the RPi.

Reading this thread I see my assumptions partly confirmed, why linux still does not have usable GUI. This is why I admire KDE3 now TDE. It is so stable and gives theoretically no errors. IMO it is the best in terms of usability. However on the RPi the audio mixer does not cope nicely and when I try installing pusleaudio firefox does not play any sound.

Just take as an example the document editor OpenOffice. There was a lot of effort to replace Microsofts Office in the public sector at least in Europe at least in few countries around 2004 or 2005. Nothing happened! All the projects were killed.

Another example 2008 KDE promissed that just in few years KDE4 or KDE5 will be as stable as KDE3 and will "just work" - nothing happend until today (though KDE5 is much better - still buggy and unusable). I would not discuss the perverse Gnome. I did not bother to take a look at LXDE or similar. I use occasionally IceWM to run a VMWare but it feels like windows

So let me know where is the evidence and also let me know why the desktop share is so small, that you can even ignore it.

I was hoping that the MeeGo project will bring some light in the dark, but it was killed right after birth (you remember Nokia sold out all the mobile branch to Microsoft - actually Nokia missed the train, so not really to blame for selling it, but still it is partially responsibility of the community for that failure). Now the follow up or spin off of Meego - the Mer project is promising, but not in the west. The game is at a totally different level and it does not help here arguing. The facts are that there is nothing appealing to the public.

I see it as very tragic development.

regards

Not quite. Look at the Norton Commander, one of whose clones is still indispensable to me in my daily work. Having to type all those file names, you can't quite remember, in full is a total pain. Being able to just look at what's there without it scrolling up and having to be invoked time and time again is an absolute boon.

The problem is that no one writes code for that any more

And usually far more functionality accessible via telnet or ssh...

No, it is a fact. In almost all cases a GUI represents a drop in functionalisty and a rise in cost - especially support cost.

Niether do I.

But it does, I appreciate your opinion, but it is just your own. As far as useless GUIS go, Linux has less useless ones than Macs or windows

All these things work perfectly well on this computer. But then I dont have KDE.

OpenOffice is not a desktop.

Because the majority of desktop users are computer illiterate numpties.

They want to by machines just like everyone else's with everything pre installed. They will buy whatever advertisers tell them they should buy.

That is a parameter that is orthogonal to the actual usability, or otherwise, of the desktop.

history in the shell sorts that.

No. It just makes it a tad easier.

I remember installing a modem on a SCO unix computer in an lawyers office to enable it to send and receive email.

One 386 served a whole office of 70 people, running into Wyse50s. It was managed part time at no cost by one lawyer (it was a legal firm).

me he was frankly scared of the cost of putting a windows PC on everyone's desk: He was right, as at that time the average O & M cost of

IME giving the users more options and a mouse is just giving ever more and creative ways to totally f*ck things up.

An MD phoned to ask 'why his email had stopped' He was the proud possessor of a 64kbps leased line. Mail was vectored into our server and then downloaded from there..

I looked. "There is a 65Mbyte file being transferred." ""Well what is it?" "It appears to be an email entitled "video of my new baby": Do you want to know who sent it? " "No, I can guess: Can you delete it?" "yes".

Give a user an option and they will find a way to abuse it. Usually at your expense.

At leasts 10% of the time managing an office full of windows users was spent finding files they had 'saved somewhere' and couldn't find, undoing mis configuration, clearing print queues with multi megabyte print jobs on shared printers, where a single mouse click could bring an office to a standstill for an afternoon...

I just did the accounting in kmymoney (I use it since 2006). I wounder how I would have done it without GUI :/