Tidying up after Linux 16782

snips

This is why I dislike working in Windows. I'm sure there are, indeed, multi-desktop tools out there. I'm sure there's at least one mail app that minimizes to the tray. Thing is, when I install my Linux distro, those things are there, already, ready to be used, I don't have to go hunting for them, and I don't have to worry about whether they're resource hogs, or stable, or supported, or whatever; they're bog standard items.

There's loads of little things like that. I use the CLI a lot, for various purposes, and I tend to have several sessions open at any given time. Nice thing is, at least with Konsole (the KDE CLI), I can have one, two, or even ten sessions open - in a single window. Lots of flexibility, minimal clutter. If there's too many to keep track of, I can name them, so getting the right one is just a matter of clicking the correct tab: "music" or "copying" or whatever.

Long and short is, Linux allows me to do things the way *I* want them to be done. Yeah, I'm sure, with enough time and effort, I could find Windows tools that'd let me do most of the same things... but why spend the time and effort finding them, when they come bundled with my Linux distro?

What *really* chesses me about Windows, though, is the limits it imposes.

Simple example. I do a lot of web coding. This also means a lot of web testing. This, in turn, means wanting - nay, needing - to run my own servers. With Linux, most such servers are bundled. With Windows, a few - IIS, for example - are. Not DNS. Not a decent mail server. Forget DB servers. Etc, etc, etc. However, even there, you can't actually do much with the servers unless you migrate to the bigger brother versions of Windows... at which point you find a lot of your other tools - AV tools, for example - refuse to work, insisting you buy the corporate version.

Net result? You're forced to either give up the flexibility of your server tools, violate your license by using servers which ignore the connection limits, etc, give up your security tools, or fork over greap heaping gobs of cash... all to get what I get, bundled with my distro, which, even if I buy the boxed set, costs maybe a tenth what the Windows OS *alone* costs, never mind factoring in the costs of the additional servers and other tools.

As a user, if I'm paying to use something, let me *use* it. The way I need to. Maybe that means using it as a server today, a games machine tomorrow and a media station the next day, maybe it means something else. Thing is, that's my choice, not some system vendor's.

Linux lets me do all this. I have the server tools, I have the development tools, I have the testing and debugging and security tools, and none of them have any concept at all of a "desktop" versus a "server" version of the OS. There is no such thing; it's just "the system". How I use it is up to me.

Give me a version of Windows that has even half the functionality, out of the box, that any typical Linux boxed set does and I'll consider it a reasonable product. Bundle the security tools, the office tools, the servers. Take off all the connection limits and other artificial crap. Lose the "exchange license" idiocy. Same with the "server version" idiocy. Then, maybe, it'll be worth the cost.

Hell, Windows doesn't even have an updating tool. Oh, sure, there's "Windows Update", but it doesn't even update all of MS's own products. Where's the unified tool that lets me easily update all my installed software to include all the latest bug fixes, enhancements and the like? Every Linux distro I've ever used includes at least two ways to do this task... why can't Windows include just one?

Nah. The care and feeding of Windows - tracking down the tools that let me work most efficiently, keeping everything updated, staying on top of AV and other tools, trying to hack around pointless artificially-imposed limits - takes too much time and effort to be worth it... especially on a system which is supposed to be so easy to use.