OSS Ping
I’ll take Fedora7/KDE any day
Sucking up to Stallman, I see, using that term so Stallman will grant him interviews. Given what's in a standard distro, we really need to call it Sun/Mozilla/.../Gnu/Linux if we follow Stallman's logic.
By contrast, the Vista menu remains resolutely down in the bottom left corner
You can move it in XP, you can't move it in Vista?
By default, it lists nine recently used programs. If you want more
If you want more, you can just increase the number of programs it shows. I've found that it's better to use Spotlight on a Mac for programs I don't use often. Command-shift, "dis" gives me the rarely-used disk utility, enter and I'm running. Better than having it take up valuable front-row space. Vista has the equivalent. But Fedora is doing well if they didn't copy personalized menus.
Vista also features a side panel for applets, which was likely borrowed from GNU/Linux desktops
Ah, the hubris. "Desk Accessories" really started on the original Mac, had a modern incarnation in Konfabulator, then was released for Windows, copied for Linux, then copied/brought back by Apple as Dashboard. IMHO, Microsoft copied Apple, as is their habit.
Nor can the side panel be installed at the top or bottom of the screen, the way that GNOME's general purpose panels can.
Here Gnome makes the mistake of copying Microsoft again. Why dock them anywhere, taking up space? Just have them all fly in full-size with a keystroke or middle mouse button click.
Vista's desktop seems a step backwards from early Windows desktops, and many of its innovations seem either timid or else made for their own sake rather than to empower users.
No disagreement there.
The only drawback to Fedora's offerings is that some programs that are not released under a free software license, such as software to use a LightScribe drive, have to be hunted down and installed separately.
There's the BIG problem.
Vista does users no service by declaring that their system is unsafe if automatic updating is turned off.
Not quite true in the context. It pesters you if it's turned off, but you can set it so that updates will not install automatically and still remove the pestering. At least in XP -- haven't tried that in Vista. Anyone care to contribute/correct?
Windows Marketplace seems to offer some discounts, but the fact that only proprietary software is available makes it less desirable than Fedora's
That is absolutely false. Open source software, such as Firefox, is available at the Windows Marketplace. And "less desirable"? Microsoft doesn't exclude an entire category of software on philosophical grounds, thus giving a wider variety of possible quality software to choose from.
I have to stop here. It's obvious the guy hasn't seriously used both platforms and their services, nor done his research, in order to be able to write a fully-informed article.
But I would like to leave the Gnome guys with some advice: Quit trying to copy usability from Microsoft. It's like copying off the dumb kid during a test. Don't take a Microsoft concept that is faulty in its basic conception and do it better. Instead, do it right.
"In my next column, we'll see which makes a better sports sedan, the Lexus or the GMC Truck."
Fedora is RedHat's sandbox. It's not a desktop-centric OS. It's a testing ground.
That doesn't mean that you can't use Fedora as a desktop. As long as you don't mind things breaking occasionally and it being rather slow.
If you want to compare desktop operating systems you should compare operating systems that are used to run on the desktop.
Ubuntu or Mandriva would have been a better choice.
The conclusion:
“Fedora and its default GNOME desktop may still have a few lessons to learn from Vista, particularly in the selection of administration tools. Yet in terms of almost everything that’s important to users, Fedora and GNOME have overtaken Vista and are rapidly pulling away from it.
As the addition of the side panel shows, it is Windows that is starting to learn from GNU/Linux. The days when the situation was the other way around are over.”
I understand why he uses Fedora GNOME, as it’s the default, but a comparison with Fedora in KDE would probably be more comparable to Windows. Still, it’s a good comparison overall.
Security is supposedly Vista's strong suit over earlier versions of Windows. Yet this claim is hard to take seriously when the default permissions for files are still wide open access to all users. Similarly, although Vista includes warnings against doing daily work in an administrative account, the first boot wizard creates only an administrative account -- and does not insist on a password. Meanwhile, password hints continue to be visible to everyone at the login screen.
This alone shows that Microsoft continues to just give lip-service to security.