Follow-up to: "I don't want it to be intuitive, I want it to be useful."
I just read I don’t want it to be intuitive, I want it to be useful, and felt that it needed a reply:
The major fall of Windows is the lack of a development environment by default. Under (almost)every Linux distribution...
Besides the fact that the (vast) majority will never need or want to compile anything, the top four linux distros (according to DistroWatch), as far as I know, don't come with a compiler in the default install. That's hardly "(almost) every".
I have to goto the website of each of the libraries I need...
Not for any of the libraries that are included with Visual Studio, such as the list of them in the Platform SDK (all 198 of them), and the optional library packs such as the DirectX SDK. What you mean here is that the maintainers of many libraries that are freely avaliable on the internet are not catering fully for those of us developing on platforms that aren't UNIX-like, and aren't using gcc and bash?
perhaps Microsoft should take the time to actually make the system useful
Windows ships with many productivity tools, most of which cause incredible levels of complaint from people from a UNIX background, and/or work so well that they aren't noticed. The whole network configuration system (including dhcp/ppp/firewall/auto-time-sync/wireless/SNMP/UPNP/SMB/WNB/..), for instance. Do any linux distributions have this level of utility in the base install? I'd guess that, for a binary system (which those 4 linux distros mentioned were), networking is slightly more important than a compiler?
so I don’t have to use the menus..
Windows has this wonderful thing known as a standard (unless, say, the application was built against something vile such as QT or Mozilla's engine) with respect to the menu being drawn, such that you know that all of the menu items should be accessible through a "chord" of alt+a series of other characters. Applications tend to follow sequences, too, like Alt->f->s for File-Save. Does that count as using the menu, or as hotkey? I'd vote for hotkey.
configuring appropriate shortcuts..
I'd recommended TextPad, it's really great once you switch it to Windows-compatiable hotkeys mode. ;)
Windows is already intuative enough.. [sic]
So, Windows is both intuitive and "more useful" for 95% of the computer-using population (ie. the non-developers)? I wonder if this explains some its market share?
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