@vincent hippie

Uh, maybe he does't DO CAD work.

I know, just a wild "shot in the dark" because y'know, almost everyone and their dog has to use CAD software, but maybe this is one of those rare "not using CAD" users you hear about in the dark corners of the internet...

@vincent

Umm, I have absolutely no interest in gaming and I mostly use vi, command shells, or a browser. What would I need to do CAD work for? I'd reckon the majority of the computer users in the world are not CAD people. They mostly type in boxes on their screens. It's a tad bit more efficient to type with a kb than a mouse. I guess you could hunt and peck letters on a touch screen if that gets your rocks off but it sounds inefficient to me. The fact that it's really hard to set up windows to not be annoying will keep me in *NIX for forever, probably.

Mouse was somewhat forced on average computer users because it's really hard to use a Win or Mac environment without one and really hard for most people to buy any other sort of computer, because of lack of their interest in learning much beyond excel, outlook, ie, their favorite game, and word.

For MY purposes, clicky sysadmin tools suck arse. Maybe MCSE type people will never go away but I never wanted to be one of them. The most hateful job I ever had was co-admin for a company with loads of win boxes and some DEC stuff. Had job security because I was the only person there that understood their VMS apps, but it sure sucked to have to do the win bit.

If I feel like playing a game I shoot clay pigeons and billiards outside of an office with non-virtual real tools. Computers aren't much recreational to me. For that reason, shell scripts and code are way better than clicking on things. Try and reconfigure file naming conventions in a large database, because your boss wants you to, in ten minutes on a Vista box. You will go mad clicking on "are you sure?" boxes.

So we're back to my initial statement of "use the tool that suits your purposes".

@ AC 12.08.08. 14:18 GMT, "I thought we were consumers..."

"Ow yeah...the great idea of adding wine emulation onto majority of Linux distribution so users can run Windows apps....which requires a Windows OS license anyway....smart"

http://www.winehq.org/ claims that Wine does not require Windows. Where did you get your data from?

@ When will OSS types finally realise the truth of this....

""But it's free as in beer" is just a hopeless message, a laudable one, but hopeless as a tool to win hearts and minds from the windows world.""

If you're going to quote something it helps if you know what you're talking about. The quote you were looking for is:

"Free as in freedom, not free as in free beer" -RMS

I stopped reading your post at that point because I figured if you were that far off on your quote the rest of your post would most likely be garbage too.