Is Windows 8’s Lack of Windows a Mistake?

I would say it is safe to say that Windows is just a mistake.

A very big one but yes :-)

Or at least about the major Linux GUIs/Desktop Environments (Gnome, Unity, KDE and Cinnamon/Mate).

Put his comments side by side with his reviews of the Windows and Mac -- perhaps that might be an interesting exercise -- and more likely to spur some action (at least in some quarters).

This segment should summaries his reasoning why Win 8 is a big mistake, which also applies to any other OS that tries to do the same thing.

Nothing new since many or us here on Lxer were saying the same thing but in their own different ways.

Quoting:It also stems from their big mistake, which is to try to have to do a single design for everything because a single window works perfectly on a phone—I mean, you have to have just one window when you just have that small a screen. On a tablet, I would say most of the time a single window is good on a tablet as well; you want that kind of full-screen environment and focusing and doing one thing at a time. Now, we scale up to the desktop computer, and that falls apart completely because you want to do multiple things. I mean, the reason the entire system is called Windows with an s, with a plural, is that it comes from the realization that the older approach of using computers with a full-screen design didn’t really work for the modern office environment: for the knowledge worker, for the power user. You know, we did user testing on Windows 8, and people had a very hard time doing tasks that involved doing more than one thing.

This was my slashdot sig for a short time:

"Canonical...turning $1000.00 computers into $100.00 smartphones since 2011."

Looks like Windows took the bait. Now can we change back to a sane desktop since Microsoft ska-rooo'ed the pooch?

Oh wait....you mean Canonical was serious about Unity? Oh, well that changes everything. I think my stomach hurts now.

Ken, it's not just Canonical. Red Hat and SUSE (both "community" and enterprise distros) seem very serious about GNOME 3.

Here is where I have a different view from most of y'all. No, I don't like the touch interface for a desktop. From a business perspective it's the right way for these companies to go. It's what the young are used to and prefer.

Don't know about the young but this old timer rather enjoys the ability to print using the stylus on her Galaxy Note 2 instead of typing on a virtual keyboard

@tracyanne: No doubt these interfaces work well for tablets. The issue seems to be one-size-fits-all. That's certainly easier for developers and for *some* ordinary users who pretty much started out on these interfaces. For us oldtimers thereare those who sing the praise of GNOME and Unity but a whole lot of people who complain loudly. I don't believe the complainers and writers accurately reflect the user community as a whole.

The thing is when I look at GNOME 3 (Shell), I don't see a good tablet/touch interface, in fact I don't see much of anything very useful in it.

I think the Windows 8 one is better, even unity is better, and I think it has way too many desktop compromises, KDE's Plasma Touch is excellent, and would be a far better choice for those wanting touch, but it gets no attention either Kudos or brick bats, and of course KDE gives you the choice with a interface that can change to suit the use case, yet GNOME 3 gets all the attention love and hate.