RR in Wine

[Scott Rossi]

> Linux users rapidly become aware when they give these sorts of explanations
> to sophisticated people who just don't happen to have used it, and haven't
> used it as a sole system, that it produces a common reaction of impatient
> disbelief.  This simply cannot work.  It cannot possibly work to have a
> choice of 4 or 5 login managers, which can each be combined with any of 6 or
> 8 Window Managers, which can each then be combined with each of half a dozen
> desktop environments, all of which can be used with any of a dozen or so
> terminals and file managers and editors and development environments and
> toolkits...!
> 
> Yes, but it does work, its just a different model.  Just like a choice
> between a few hundred different wineries can work.  Similarly, we are often
> wedded to the view that the look and feel of the desktop characterizes the
> OS.  You find this in discussions of Aqua, or Vista versus XP.  So it is
> very difficult to explain to people that Linux has no standard desktop
> manager, it has a choice of 10-20, and within that, each desktop manager has
> multiple themes, icon shapes, and is also configurable in terms of menu
> placement, items, single click versus double click, menus that work like
> Apple's or like Windows',...and so on.   Similarly with uniformity of look
> and feel across applications.  It doesn't exist, isn't expected or even
> noticed for the most part.

You know, I can't help but think of comparing Web development to this
analogy.  Over the last year or so of building sites, I've been using (what
I believe are) current practices of CSS and other construction techniques.
These aren't new technologies, they've been around for years.  But after
spending hours getting a layout to work, I test it in another browser on
another platform, and boom, everything is out place and misaligned.  So I
have to go to the Web, spend a few hours looking up "bug in XYZ browser"
(which is often Internet Explorer) and spend more time trying to isolate and
fix the problem.  I wind up doing this again,and again, and again.  It's
quite clear from the articles and responses that this is happening daily for
thousands of developers around the world.  And with maybe 1/2 a dozen
browsers.

This is not a good thing.  I believe there is something to be said for some
degree of standards.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design