Easy rule for Windows 7, never install updates except those listed as "security", though they have lied about that at least once trying to get that piece of shit Windows 10 spyware installed.

I have 67 uninstalled Windows 7 updates on one computer. 

Except for when it BSOD'd at boot and was unrecoverable and I had to reinstall from scratch. 

I'd love to try Windows 10 but with my business being as hectic as it is, I can't afford to have a single app stop working. I just can't risk it... 

The Microsoft Paint that came with Windows 3.1 is a lot easier to use than Gimp.

Linux desktop software is hopeless. There are no decent development tools for Linux and there isn't even a "desktop" API. I mean, we are talking "no file open dialog" barren wasteland.

Linux can do non-gui things just fine.

No one ever gave proper attention to a decent Windows manager, so even 1980s DOS GUI applications have more sophistication than what is available on Linux.

Likely the reason is that you would have 2 types of college age kids:

1) The kind that won't touch trying to make something from sticks and stones and instead will make something for Windows or a mobile platform.

2) The hardcore "C programmer" that uses terminal apps, that will make something against the grain but gets withered by the overhead of building with "sticks and stones".

Short version: Why is there, for example, SDL or GTK or Qt or WxWidgets? Each one is an attempt to pave over this deficiency. Arguably SDL's expanded horizons give it unusually wide appeal, while the others are attempts of "wrong-way" ports of Linux ideas to a platform that isn't in need of those solutions.

/One perspective. Probably wrong ... 

Most likely the Windows update cache is gone corrupt and just needs to be reset. It's rare but it happens.

net stop wuauserv
cd \
cd %Windir%
cd SoftwareDistribution
del /f /s /q Download
net start wuauserv 

wat 

> Linux can do non-gui things just fine.

I'm starting to think many OSS are a refuge for kiddy programmers who can't near any software-design in their real job.

But they *can* code. So, presto, ten million technically decent free apps - all with horrible GUIs - that generally break after a few revisions because of their no-design or aimlessness. 

But better than having your arse owned by win10 and microsoft. OS X is still the way for anyone without an IT degree imho.

And the Gimp *is* decent software. That's why this hideous trivial thing hurts. 

Thanks mh, I will try that.

Horrible GUI design you say? How about Windows requiring you to select files before you can right-click them? Resizing windows requires you to find the few pixels of the border instead of allowing ALT+left/right-drag. Can you even pin windows to the front?

Oh, and MacOS? It's always fun trying to figure out which file you pick when Finder just displays like 20 characters of its name. Not to mention that the yellow and green window control buttons never do what I expect them to do, super unintuitive.

Now someone make a user-friendly GUI for Quake engines please. 

carmack actually wanted to ship quake with just the console and no menu at all 

carmack actually wanted to ship quake with just the console and no menu at all

I imagine the facepalming that was going on at the publisher's office after that was probably measurable on the Richter scale. 

Very much like the recent posts in this thread :-P 

 

"carmack actually wanted to ship quake with just the console and no menu at all"

Really? Where'd you read that, I've never come across that before. 

(industry sources) 

So .. yeah. 

You are probably right.

Most Windows free applications are at least partially commercial.

For instance, WinRAR.

I don't agree about OS X.

The only decent text editor that I know of for OS X is written in Java (which means they aren't "into" OS X, but rather Java runs on everything so ...)

Keep in mind, there are probably 30 killer GUI text editors for Windows.

Apple knows how to software engineer. And they have vastly improved on documentation, but it pales compared to Windows.

And although Windows 8 and Windows 10 are muddying up the water away from historically what Microsoft is strong at, ignoring security as a factor, Windows 10 is still light years ahead of OS X.

/Again, one opinion. Probably wrong. 

OSX has Sublime, TextWrangler, BBEdit - and that's just off the top of my head not having used a Mac in several years. Text editing is something that's well handled. 

How about Windows requiring you to select files before you can right-click them?

Unless you mean something else than I think you do that has worked as long as I can remember?

Can you even pin windows to the front?

Seems to be up to the app or use of external software. 

on Linux - i can edit my fstab with Libre Office, cough.

Actually, i did try out Libre Office for the first time. Straight away i noticed nasty, stupid bugs i'd never seen on Open Office. So it smells like shitware to me. ??

I tried out a few old boxes this week. Win95/Cyrix laptop - shutdown to an "illegal instruction" message.

And found a copy of my Fedora 7 (on my backup tower with an overclocked E5200) with it's super snappy kde-3.5. Yay <3 

I like it better than OpenOffice on OS X, at least. But it doesn't really matter, since they're all shit. 

Never had a problem the bit I need to use it. What are these, "bugs"? No worse than of the other free office suites. 

..on Linux then you would ever need. I usually just use geany. 

Yeah - on linux the IDEs are just as crappy as most other stuff - everyone has to use vim/etc and man pages. IDEs are so complicated - a serious investment in resources on both sides.

Had to take my Yamaha sound card out cause QS wouldnt work on Mint17/drive-me-crazy-F-ing-Pulse-Audio. But no diff anyway since my TCL amplifier blew up and i'm using $20 logitech speakers now. 

Geany looks ok