And Because I'll Be at a Linux Expo in Ten Days...

[howardtayler]

So.. I just confessed to replacing XP with a drive-scrubbing clean install of Windows 7. Why didn't I move to Linux instead?

Three things, really:

1) Text boxes in Microsoft Word 2003: These things have defined my process for creating scripts, and are now so integral that I can't imagine life without them. I tried Open Office, and the boxes didn't

Comments

[selenite]

I'm glad to see this post. The OS types keep forgetting their product has to be usable by someone other than the programmers, so we have to constantly remind them in hopes of getting something useful from them.

[kazriko]

Makes sense. And Gimp has quite a way to go before it is as usable as Photoshop, for sure. There's still a shortage of good publishing software for Linux. I'd love to find a way to create a good comic scripting package for linux, but it's probably too much effort. (My plans have been to make a setup that can automatically overlay the text into rendered comics, but it continually gets back-burnered because I have so many other things to finish

[mrmeval]

gimp developers go out of their way to make it 'not like photoshop' to the point it's unusable. I have yet to figure out why the UI cannot mimic Photoshop.

[lionsphil]

2.8, or whatever the new version is, is a travesty.

I like the separate tool/document windows. It is a good model, and I hate the continual "buuut it's not like this other tool I know!" whining. The one-window/MDI design is deeply, deeply flawed because it ties together the visible editing area and the space available for control panels---and I want my control panels down the screen edges so I can take advantage of Fitts' law.

But what they've done now is some kind of hideous compromise where there's a fat wadge of space wasted on the tool window for a drop target, and document-context operations (like "save") are no longer on the menu of the document window. I rolled back pretty damn fast.

[amunthri]

What I find interesting is the number of OS fans that've shown up to tell you how awesome (their OS) is and terrible Windows is. That they'd be here was pretty much a given... but what is interesting is that the arguments presented are all years out of date. An out of date argument is tantamount to saying, "I haven't actually checked on this in the past decade

out of date how?

[bitobear]

Not four months ago everyone who used the "IRM" feature of Word for Windows 2003 were barred from accessing their own data files for like three days because Microsoft let the core certificate for the IRM feature expire.

I spoke not of OS boosterism but of the ability to access your own work in the future.

How much more will you suffer when you have to pay monthy rent to Microsoft for them to keep renewing the individual key to your documents?

Yea, microsoft "fixed that" pretty fast, but once it is their business model to charge that rent (where moving to a rental-ware model is a _stated_ goal in their SEC filings and business plans) "or else" what will you do with your entire personal and corporate legacy.

With open source, there is no vendor who can come in and hold your work hostage.

This is a real, and _future_ problem. Nothing out of date about it.

Reference...

[bitobear]

Okay it was "not five months ago"... my bad...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/dec/18/microsoft-drm-office-problems

Interesting how you cite the 2002 writeup about DRM and here is the 2003 product misfiring. Plus Windows Vista (8 years later) was killed by its onw DRM-enforcing driver requirements for video and sound (which is why it needed different drivers for the same hardware etc).

So your derisiveness is a little misplaced or just plain wrong, given the news of the day...

[lionsphil]

People still make Windows BSoD and Mac single-mouse-button jokes. Welcome to the Internet.

I'd almost bet money that, until a pretty solid reason for a panic came up (see how well any other OS handles its root filesystem being unmountable), Howard hadn't seen one in years.