Meadows wrote:To top it off, you're wrong. The UI changed dramatically compared to current Windows versions, and this is causing the outrage. Nobody has any problem with how W8 runs behind the scenes; indeed, it's better than ever. But users are sitting in front of the scenes, and the curtains no longer match the paint.
Yup. And this alone may actually get more people to try Linux (though a fair number of those people will probably end up switching back for various reasons). It's really too bad that Ubuntu also chose this point in time to ditch the classic desktop metaphor for their own weird desktop/tablet compromise UI. Yes you can install alternate desktop managers (and it isn't even that difficult); but Linux newbies are probably going to go with whatever Ubuntu supplies as the default and be put off by the fact that it feels almost as alien as Windows 8.
I suspect (but have absolutely no proof) that Office 2007 indirectly helped get more people to try OpenOffice/LibreOffice. If you've gotta re-learn the UI anyway, the barrier to switching to something else is lower; and OpenOffice/LibreOffice looks more like Office 2003 than Office 2007 did.
Glorious wrote:JBI wrote:And I've still got a Windows VM for the obligatory Outlook e-mail client and IE (for our idiotic IE-specific corporate Intranet apps).
Those two things are pretty much only things (except it's lotus notes) I use windows for at work too. Well, except when I end up fixing other people's stupid windows crap. Grr.
Yes, "fixing other people's crap" is the reason I have THREE Windows VMs (32-bit WinXP, 64-bit WinXP, and 64-bit Win7) set up on my workstation, even though only one of them is normally left running. Those are the three versions of Windows currently in use in our office, and since I'm one of the people that gets called when "other people's crap" breaks, having environments that are similar to all the other workstations is useful (and I'd really rather not have a big pile of workstations at my desk).