Day 17, I <3 the end-user

People say that they use Windows over Linux because Linux is a hell of configuration files and grief. But after using Windows for the past 17 days I’ve come to realise it is the other way around.

The facade of Linux requiring any sort of programming experience is set to be lifted, everything has a GUI tool, albeit slower and less in depth than their command line counterpart. Gone are the days of endless, unintuitive dependencies with the advent of package managers*. One click is all it takes to install a fully configured, fully functional application. Whereas in Windows you have to use an installer, which requires at least 5 times as many mouse clicks to install some software, which more often that not, doesn’t work in Vista because of the awful virtualisation of XP.

Just a few minutes ago on IRC, someone gave the example of printing two photos resized to 5×7 with the least amount of fuss. In Linux all you have to do is open up f-spot and select 5×7. Whereas in Windows you open it up in the printing wizard, and supposing network printing actually worked, and just supposing you can traverse the contextual menus to find A4 paper, you still can’t select the size you want. There is no option for changing centimetres into inches. I think the people at Microsoft see being ‘end-user friendly’ as removing as many useful features as possible.