Both at work and at home I run pretty much two desktop OSs: Linux (generally Ubuntu & CentOS) and Windows (currently XP). While I much prefer the ethics and cost of Linux over those of Microsoft Windows or even Apple OS X, my pragmatic side unfortunately prevents me from being able to utterly ditch the Wintel (I 'enjoy' running Ubuntu PowerPC boxes at home) hegemony. I'd like to explain my perspective on why Windows hasn't just gone away in the world, and why I am part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Given that you are a reader of OSTG, you might be thinking ahead with answers to whatever arguments I put forward for using Windows. "Get OpenOffice!" "Use Wine!" "Check out TransGaming!" They are all somewhat valid responses except for the fact that my time on this Earth is finite, and when I want to get something done I really don't enjoy sidetracking for, possibly, days. An awful lot of regular folks do not want to spend the time "getting to know" their computing system, they just want to get a task done. Fortunately, some groups do seem to realize it and want to ease the pain somewhat. Maybe even before 2010 Linux will work super smoothly, but you have to realize that Windows will (maybe, ha ha) have changed to Vista thus breaking all those tools which finally got working really quite well thank you very much with XP. The choices are, and I strongly suspect always will be: Use nothing even related to Windows; use something to help handle Windows related data and suffer the associated pains; or just include Windows in your OS buffet.

Furthermore, usability is subjective, by which I mean to nip in the bud the stereotypical Linux drum-beater who says - with good reason, mind you - "well, I wouldn't use a proprietary format, but if I did I could just 'sudo apt-get install something-or-other-package' after editing my repository list to allow 'universe'." First off, just speaking in terms of low-level UI widget functionality, I personally think the Linux desktop suffers greatly in comparison to any version of Windows or Mac OS. Permit me two small examples: copy & paste, and printing. Sure, X Windows might have been around before the Mac, but I think Linux needs to get with the times and realize that having a single, working copy & paste mechanism is crucial to wider adoption. And, getting printing to work should be as close to a no-brainer as possible. Nobody should ever have to hear terms like 'lpd' or 'CUPS'. On top of such basic usability issues, I think the upper GUI layers of GNOME and KDE are less than ideal. In my experience, buttons qua buttons in Windows 'just work' whereas often under Linux I find strange alien behaviours have been invented and given to even the most rudimentary of controls. Of course, when Windows UIs put buttons together they often end up with convoluted crap - all UI systems demonstrate horrific usability offenses as it is the nature of usability to be exceedingly difficult to get entirely right.

Another take on this is that migration is gated by familiarity and expectation. I believe that when somebody sees Windows fail in some manner they chalk it up to, "Gee, I guess it sucks but that's just how things are in the computing world." However, when they encounter Linux (or any Mac OS X) doing something unexpected they think, "Boy this system is behind the times and just broken!" Windows, being the hegemony, brings with it a sense of being the target at which everybody is aiming. If that is not the case, why are there so many tools for Linux (or Mac OS, or whatever) trying to give users Windows-related functionality? People thus see Windows as being the state-of-the-art. In some respects that is true (copy & paste, printing) yet in other respects we all strongly believe it is not, otherwise we wouldn't be using OS OSs. Personally, it turns my stomach to see OSS prostrating itself before the grail of Windows compatibility all the way up to slavishly copying Excel, Outlook, etc.: if you want to eat chocolate or smoke crack, just do it rather than trying to do something which is sort of the same but somehow theoretically less bad for you, yet includes a dire warning against 'anal leakage'. Better yet, in the computing world, come up with an actually innovative paradigm, as opposed to convoluted weirdness. But I digress and the point is that even if I could be pure enough to ditch Windows for Linux (Apple's EULAs are just as bad as Windows'), I happen to work and live with people who aren't going to get into that particular kind of self-flagellation.

It is perhaps interesting to explicitly mention the tasks keeping Windows around for me. When it comes to work, I have to deal with MS Excel, Word, and (possibly worst of all) Project files. I also find that when I need a tool (random e.g. diagramming large XML documents) it is easier to find serious products for Windows - although Java has helped to blunt that truism. When it comes to not-work, I like to use Photoshop over the GIMP, and I download FPS game demos and play them to while away some time now and then. Additionally, other computer users in my family like to be able to use various media types for audio and video; while I loathe the use of proprietary formats, and have managed to abstain almost completely from some (i.e. Flash, ActiveX), regular life as we know it requires being able to watch things like .wmv files. Most, if not all, of these tasks are in some way possibly supported via Linux, but in my experience it takes real effort to get even one of them really working.

Last, but not least, I'd like to unearth the issue of cost underlying everything I've talked about. Really, the only reason I can use Microsoft formats via Windows is because I haven't ever had to pay full price myself! I've always obtained either 'free' (work) or legally discounted (home) copies which means I do not suffer the large Windows cost pain, a pain which Microsoft has to some extent tried to hide (not really reduce or remove) from end users over the years. If there ever comes a time for me to move from XP to Vista at home, I bet the price will prevent me from doing so; I'll move entirely to Linux. If the day comes that I run my own company I would avoid Windows when possible (which means sinking in the time required to get Araxis Merge working under Wine) since I think a company should do more than simply make a quick buck. Finally regarding cost, it is important to note that the idea can encompass ethical prices: anything related to trusted computing will be met with my vitriol, and I hate software patents - even though I make spineless compromises today which could arguably be said to only further such distasteful goals.

In the end, I think the subjectivity of usability and likewise of ethics are at the core of the lack of Windows death. Ditto the trade-off any given person or institution is willing to make between them. Actually, it makes me sad that the human race is so ethically wimpy and prone to manipulation through marketing and weasel business tactics, but that is the real world I live in, and I'd like to do more hiking instead of fighting with media formats on any given weekend. (To be honest, in the end I do neither and instead spend my time learning how to virtualize for fun, if not profit. So I'm a geek, big deal.)