Windows vs Linux [was: p2exe using wine/cxoffice]

[Tim Golden]

[Sybren Stuvel]

Tim Golden enlightened us with:
> > Well, I'm with you. I'm sure a lot of people will chime in to point
> > out just how flexible and useful and productive Linux is as a
> > workstation, but every time I try to use it -- and I make an honest
> > effort -- I end up back in Windows

> I'm curious, what do you mean with "it" in the part "every time I try
> to use it"?

Fair question. I have, over the years, installed and used Gentoo,
Vector, RH, Ubuntu Breezy (my current choice) and various other 
flavours and distros. When I "use it" I mean typically that I use 
whatever desktop-type thing presents itself to me -- Gnome or XFCE 
or Fluxbox, say -- one or more editors (I tend to try things out to
see if they suit), and one or more command shells.

Aside from using Firefox & Thunderbird I'm usually only doing 
small-scale development things under Linux: perhaps reworking
Python code for my web sites which are hosted on Cornerhost's
Linux servers, or playing around with up-and-coming tools for
Python, a (very) few of which only work easily -- or at all --
under Linux.

> There are different distributions of Linux, and putting them all on
> one big pile is like saying "I've tried Windows, and I really don't
> like it's user interface" and referring to the interface of Windows
> 3.1.

Not quite fair. Not only would I avoid saying something with a
redundant apostrophe ;) but the Windows user interface, at least
for my purposes, didn't change such a huge amount between Win9x and
Win2K,
and if you turn off the bells and whistles in XP (which I do!) isn't
so terribly different there. Which, I imagine, is by design. People
like familiarity. Linux distros (and the appearance they choose) seem
to vary far more widely than versions of Windows.

As it happens, (and I suspect I'll have to don my flameproof suit here),
I prefer the Windows command line to bash/readline for day-to-day use, 
including in Python. Why? Because it does what I can't for the life of 
me get readline to do: you can type the first few letters of a 
previously-entered command and press F8. This brings up (going backwards

with further presses) the last command which starts like that. And
*then* 
you can just down-arrow to retrieve the commands which followed it. 
If someone can tell me how to do this with bash/readline I will be 
indebted to them and it will increase my chances of switching to Linux 
a bit! (Although not at work where I have no choice!)

It's obvious that everyone has a different way of working, and that I'm
more comfortable in Windows because all sorts of small familiarities I
can hardly articulate: the way the focus works; the shortcuts I've
developed;
the ability to drag files over things and have them respond. I'm very 
happy with many things in Linux, and I do use it from time to time, 
but it's never quite been enough to pull me away from Windows. Of
course,
I'm lucky enough to have a legal version of Windows to use; if someone
wants to avoid shelling out then of course Linux is even more
attractive.

TJG

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