Difference is that you are not even supposed to use metro on your workstation and that you still have the best window manager on the market alongside metro.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Gnome 3 or Unity. They seriously believe that you'd want that for everything.
There's one feature that keeps windows out of the running for me that almost every X Windows manager has in some form or another. Multiple desktops (not multiple monitors). I know there was an XP powertoy that sort of did it for windows but it ran slower than dirt on any hardware I had available. Without that, I can't help but see the Windows WM as hobbled.
Maybe this should be addressed elsewhere, but I wonder what you see as the benefit of multiple desktops. I've dabbled with them on occasion, and could never really see the point. Maybe my workstyle just doesn't fit well with it, and maybe I need to be more organized and/or disciplined. Obviously many, many people do like the capability, and I wonder what I'm missing.
If you're multitasking on a single monitor, all you have to switch between tasks is the taskbar, or alt+tab. Alt+tab switches between windows, but most tasks require a collection of different windows. Eg right now I'm stuffing about on HN and some other sites (1) while waiting for my code to compile (2) after which I'll be executing my app and testing it (3) while checking my mail and real-time IM (4)
Ideally I'd have four dedicated monitors - but on my one work monitor I'd settle for four virtual desktops that I can cycle through similar to alt+tab.
I find virtual desktops to be most useful on small screens. So on my laptop which has limited screen real estate I have a text editor on one desktop and by moving my mouse to the top left I switch to my browser desktop - v.useful
Only problem is that this has become so ingrained that I keep doing it on computers without this setup!
My best use case for multiple desktops is to have my fun stuff on one desktop and my work stuff on another. When the desktop flips, so does my mind. Also, when the boss walks by it's easy to hide HN and move to work stuff.
Hide away your email and other interruptions until you're explicitly ready to go look at them. Out of sight, out of mind.
Multiple projects. I have a legacy app I support and a new-development project I spend most of my time on. I can spread the work for each of these out across multiple windows on multiple desktops, and switch between them when I'm ready to context-switch. When I do, everything is laid out exactly the way I want it.
I'm back on Windows for now, but great multiple desktop support is the thing I miss most from a Linux desktop.
I use dexpot for virtual desktops. Very customizable. You can bind hotkeys, or screen hotspots (mine is top left pixel) for switching between desktops. I use it on an underpowered laptop with no performance issues.
OS X handles multiple monitors well enough, or did you mean Gnome? Windows UI is polished and has some good conventions, except that I keep trying to do things in terminal that aren't there...
If you full screen a video on one monitor in os x the other one blanks out. It doesn't stretch the video or anything, it just blanks it. I think vlc can prevent that, but it's still annoying.
It isn't just fullscreen video, it's fullscreen anything. Anything that doesn't exhibit that behavior is using a fullscreen "hack," i.e. the way they did it before Lion.
First of all, direct multi monitor support is handled in a different layer than the window manager. At best, maybe you meant the overall desktop environment, but again, I don't know how you can make such absurd, outlandish claims.
Please, name something you can do in Windows or Mac and I'll tell you how easy it is to accomplish with my setup in Linux.
And also, how is Windows better than Mac in this regard? You have a massive problem with "my opinion is obviously objectively right".
One thing that I hated about Windows pre-7 and Linux until Ubuntu was taskbar objects. Why do they need to take up so darn much space? I worked for hours laboring over Gnome 2 to get it to work like Windows 7, with icon based taskbar objects, trying every program and customization I could find. I finally got it just as Unity was announced. I was ecstatic that I could get rid of Gnome 2 and have a desktop that looked how I wanted right out of the box.
But let's not get into how slow Unity is on hardware that blazes with Gnome 2 or Windows... if I could easily get the same thing but much, much faster and something that lets me put that taskbar anywhere I want on the screen, I'd be happier.
If you wanted a dock aka icon based taskbar on Gnome, there were plenty of options before Unity came around. Out of the box they all work pretty much the same. They remain good alternatives if you want to customise. I used to use AWN, worked fine, but I'm fairly happy with Unity. It works very well for window management, and that's really all I want from a dock.
I think the old-school task bar is potentially more useful because it lets you see the window titles at one glance. But it just doesn't scale well beyond a dozen or so windows, either all the text is elided or you end up grouping windows by program at which point you might as well use a dock.
Not only that but there are plenty of options that are still better than Unity. Well, the newest Unity is even good enough for me to leave as default on my non-main machine. Cairo-dock, Docky and Plank (Docky's less functional successor) are all more configurable than Unity and more similar to what people expect from Windows 7 and OS X.
>One thing that I hated about Windows pre-7 and Linux until Ubuntu was taskbar objects. Why do they need to take up so darn much space? I worked for hours laboring over Gnome 2 to get it to work like Windows 7, with icon based taskbar objects, trying every program and customization I could find. I finally got it just as Unity was announced. I was ecstatic that I could get rid of Gnome 2 and have a desktop that looked how I wanted right out of the box.
Indeed.
And actually, after installing 12.10 on, to be fair, new hardware, Unity was just as fast as anything else.
I do despise GNOME 2 and especially its taskbar window list. I'm glad I've found someone else as pained by it as I.
On my laptop (windows or PC), I can walk into a new office with a monitor or projector that my computer has never seen before, plug it in and it just works. No configuration changes, no command line changes, my desktop pops up on the new device. I've tried to do this with Linux and failed - is there a guide to get it to work? And btw, if you have to muddle around with the command line or download a driver for the new display five minutes before a presentation, that doesn't suffice.
The best GUI is the one that works best for you, not me. That is the only true answear upon anying with even a hint of artistic creativity ( colours, shapes, movement of those shapes ) as there is no one answear. Some people like to use window layout and features in different ways for different tasks. For some Metro may be perfect and for others it is an offence to the pixels upon there monitors. Those are mostly going to be the ones that as long as they can pull up Terminal windows, or just plays open source games, or many other variations of how we use the tool we call a computer.
So in short for him he is not kidding, for you he is and your both right, lets not go down this path.
As a matter of fact, nothing even comes close to the balance of stability, backwards compatibility, consistency, robustness and flexibility that Windows offers.
What do you think is better and why? Perhaps "better" should be defined. I certainly don't think that shiny is better. I prefer utilitarian and flexible interfaces. Windows fits that bill swimmingly and I think most businesses would agree because I don't see many of them using anything else outside of Google.
I realize this isn't exactly what you asked for, but my personal opinion in terms of straight up window management is a solid tiling window manager like dwm or xmonad.
The Windows WM adds a bit to much shine to windows (for me) and doesn't have the efficiency that I love with tiling window managers. Mostly the ability to have everything I want viewable at once, along with keyboard commands to manage everything, is what makes tiling window managers so awesome for me.
Having said that, I do recognize that it's only this way for me. For many people, the default Windows WM provides plenty of power and flexibility to be awesome.
I'll ask you the same thing, how? How is it "better"? It has a feature? Waving your hands around and laundry listing things without any explanation is wildly unconvincing.
You like utilitarian and flexible and you're really sitting there telling me Windows is the sweet spot for that? Are you being intentionally ironic? That's the posterboy slogan for Linux if I've ever heard it. I guarantee there's no way that the Windows WM is "more flexible" than any linux WM. And utilitarian? I assume you have workspaces in Windows? You can activate/deactivate stick edges easily? You can do any dimensional grid system you like? You can have floating windows?
Those are features I use every single day. I feel like I've at least offered why I don't see how Windows's WM could possibly be "better" but then again I'm not the one making that claim. So far it's just you and other guy acting like it should be obvious why Windows' is superior.
> I'll ask you the same thing, how? How is it "better"?
It's consistent. It's been consistent for 7 iterations. 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8.
It's stable. Everything shows up exactly where it's supposed to and works like it's supposed to. I have 4 high-resolution monitors set up and Windows handles it like no other operating system could.
Consistent + Stable = Win
However, what keeps me using Windows isn't the GUI. It's the driver availability, quality, and support. And that, of course, comes from market dominance.
Again, what are you talking about. Be specific. What is consistent? The behavior? The display of open windows? The performance? The appearance? Literally NONE of those are identical from version-to-version in Windows. I can tell you how it changed in almost every version in one way or another.
And besides, again, nothing to show how it's any better. You want <title> <minimize> <maximize> <close>? Guess what? You just described almost every window manager in existence, save for them having those switched around. They're all drag-and-dropable, they're all resizeable.
I don't think you guys have anything to hold onto other than lofty words and what you're used to.
As for drivers, that's a sad joke that just goes to show that you don't know what you're talking about. Go buy a Samsung Series 9. Works out of the box in Arch, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora. The: wired, wireless, display driver, chipset driver, memory card reader and touchpad were ALL broken in Windows 7 and Windows 8.
> As for drivers, that's a sad joke that just goes to show that you don't know what you're talking about. Go buy a Samsung Series 9.
You are restricted to hardware that works on your operating system of choice. You read forums and check to make sure everything will work the way you want to. Even then, you have to constantly worry that whatever solution you hacked together won't give you degraded performance.
I buy any hardware I want, with the full knowledge that it will work properly on Windows the way the manufacturer intended. Even Apple, the only major manufacturer out there that doesn't make hardware targeted at Windows, puts out drivers for Windows.
Oh, and I wasn't even talking about vanilla laptop/desktop hardware. I was talking about fingerprint readers, high-end or esoteric NICs, FM/AM radio receivers, brand-spankin-new motherboards, etc.
That doesn't apply to the majority of people, but it applies to me.
> I don't think you guys have anything to hold onto other than lofty words and what you're used to.
If we're used to something, then it must be consistent? Otherwise, how can you get used to it?
> Again, what are you talking about. Be specific. What is consistent?
The experience. Somebody who knows how to use 95, can use 98, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 with ease.
That's why everybody's going nuts about 8. With 8, you have to click on a tile before you get that consistent experience.
So Linux doesn't run on specific hardware that require hand crafted drivers from the manufacturer. Off topic much? We were talking about consistency of window mangers.
Again, you've listed NOTHING about the Windows WM that you are "used to" or is "particularly consistent". Because, you and I both know what those things will be and that most Linux DEs have the exact same configuration.
You've yet to be specific about a single thing and spent most of this last post on a fool's errand about Linux drivers????
I really liked this comment war, even if you guys don't seem to like each other :P I'ma throw in my two cents because I like throwing myself amongst the lions. But I'm starting with comments from the top of tree though.
> I guarantee there's no way that the Windows WM is "more flexible" than any linux WM.
The new version of Nautilus is competitive for being less flexible!
> I assume you have workspaces in Windows?
I personally never used workspaces, I prefer alt-tab. When I have 2+ monitors workspaces seem clunky and just another layer of tab switching with different buttons. Monitors have gotten big, cheap, and plentiful enough that the original use case of workspaces is falling by the wayside. Not saying the option to use them is bad, just that I have no use for them personally, for the reasons above.
> It's consistent. It's been consistent for 7 iterations. 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8.
The original explorer.exe was a wrapper on the DOS terminal and would regularly crash when trying to open something because the kernel wasn't preemptive. Wasn't really consistent UX at all. The old Windows 9X everything was always buggy, blue screen prone, and crash happy. The introduction of Aero in Vista also significantly changed a lot of the WM UX (start menu search, layout, composting, etc). The changing the of the start bar to a pinnable dock in 7 was also a pretty radical shift.
> Consistent + Stable = Win
I'd argue consistency doesn't matter as much in Linux world, because you can just use an old WM if you like it more than a new one. And if you like it more, it is probably stable. If it starts breaking, someone will probably fork it.
> It's the driver availability, quality, and support. And that, of course, comes from market dominance.
I haven't found many devices in recent memory that don't have some Linux support without the manufacturer going out of their way to obfuscate the implementation. A lot of people put in a ton of effort to make hardware work under Linux that the manufacturers don't care to properly document.
> They're all drag-and-dropable, they're all resizeable.
I get really annoyed in a lot of Linux WMs / DEs because of how they don't support drag and drop on the panel / launcher. XFCE requires writing obfuscated launchers, for example. I could get into why I'm not implementing that feature myself, but the intricacies of X drag and drop are something I don't have the patience or intelligence to dig into.
> You are restricted to hardware that works on your operating system of choice.
Windows won't run on a raspberry pi, anything based on powerPC, ARM (at least in a functional version, Windows RT is a trainwreck in my book by branding alongside Win8 without x86 emulation). If you are arguing that traditional laptop / desktop manufacturers are making sure their devices work with the pre-installed OS, color me shocked.
I never got on board with the crusade to make Linux run on every piece of hardware ever, because I think that is giving hardware manufacturers too much credit. Trying to reverse engineer everything is basically giving them a pass on making devices that don't work the way they are intended. If they don't want to give the kernel devs even the crumbs to replicate functionality, just telling people that company is an asshole is plenty in my book. There is nothing beholden to an OS to support everything you can plug into a usb port, even though it is neat when a wiimote works.
> I buy any hardware I want, with the full knowledge that it will work properly on Windows the way the manufacturer intended. Even Apple, the only major manufacturer out there that doesn't make hardware targeted at Windows, puts out drivers for Windows.
I have had plenty of printer / NIC / sound card driver issues under Windows, even in 7. Software doesn't suddenly become bug free, especially complex software like an OS, just because it has profit motive behind it.
> So Linux doesn't run on specific hardware that require hand crafted drivers from the manufacturer. Off topic much? We were talking about consistency of window mangers.
The argument devolved into Windows vs Linux when it is apples and oranges. Microsoft is a for profit company that incentivises you buying their OS (either prebundled or in a box) and Linux could care less, even though Ubuntu / Red Hat like supporting you for money when you use it. But Linux is developed because OSS developers want a desktop they like (or a server, or a seismometer, or a robot..) and Windows is developed to be sold to you. Different use cases.
> Again, you've listed NOTHING about the Windows WM that you are "used to" or is "particularly consistent". Because, you and I both know what those things will be and that most Linux DEs have the exact same configuration.
Some things I like about the Windows desktop:
Windows don't randomly open in strange places (a lot of gtk apps have a habit of launching half off screen depending on prevous resizing, Evince does it a lot). Windows has GUI based kernel hooks to recover from a bad process (if I want to do the equivalent of ctrl-alt-del in Linux, I need to switch off X to a TTY and try fixing it from the terminal, because there is no Gnome based (to my knowledge, at least) way to override a fullscreen openGL application that crashes, ex: Space Pirates and Zombies, recently).
The system tray in Windows is a lot easier to work with since you can select options right from it, rather than through system settings in some Gnome desktops, and I still don't know how to configure it under Cairo Dock, Docky, Cinnamon, or XFCE.
Windows had a really nice out of the box behavior where I could just stick the taskbar on the left side of the screen and have the entire screens worth of vertical space available. In something like Firefox, that would mean the maximized app would have tabs in the title bar, so I had an entire 1080 pixels of Firefox, and on a 16:9 monitor that is really useful. I still can't find a WM that lets Firefox (I think Chrome can do it in some) do the tabs in the title bar thing. I figure it wouldn't even be hard - I could imagine a WM just giving the application whatever space the title bar occupies to work with, with some statistics about where the navigation buttons are, so it can control the transparency and draw in the title bar as well, and just avoid those buttons. That was a tangent. Also not going to try to get that implemented in Muffin / Mutter or whatever, because it sounds hard.
Anywho, only KDE seems to allow the same UX (vertical panel on left with system tray, time, etc, built in, letting applications have the entire vertical pixels for the rest of the screen, with a panel like pinnable launcher bar, and they don't have neat mouseovers like Windows has previews of open windows or system controls).
Alt tab is nicer in Windows (even though some Compiz active corner effects are neat in Unity / Cinnamon with whatever they replaced Mendacity with I don't even remember now) since it shows the open Windows. Cinnamon has a smart corner that intelligently fills the screen with active windows though, which is also really cool. But alt-tab in Unity / Gnome (by default at least, I have even tried reading a bunch of manuals on these desktops and I still don't know 5% of potential configurations) just shows icons.
Another thing is the super-key behavior, Windows does it really well with the ability to just type and enter commands, or have a dynamic search that is intelligent by remembering your history, recent files, etc. Unity is similar, Gnome 3 is close, and KDE is close too, but respectively, Unity and Gnome have terrible / almost no configuration and dumb top bars as a result and KDE is slow as hell (at least on startup, but it even lags my i7 920 on some of its composting).
I do use Linux almost full time now - I have been transitioning off Windows for the last ~6 months, since Steam was announced on Ubuntu. I got SC2 / TF2 / League running under Wine since then, so I don't have any real reason to restart in Windows (except Darksiders 2 for a fwe weeks, that game was amazing and I'm too dumb to create custom Wine environments and find all the DLLs it needs without a playonlinux script).
Thank you for this comment. Instead of taking a doctrinaire position in the tired Windows vs. Linux holy war, you have articulated arguments for and against features of each system on a case-by-case basis, making for a fair critique and a refreshing read.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Gnome 3 or Unity. They seriously believe that you'd want that for everything.