[Ubuntu-be] vista - ubuntu (usability)

[Jan Claeys]

On zo, 2007-02-04 at 01:38 +0100, Kristoff Bonne wrote:
> Now, without wanting to go into a "vista sucks, linux rules" kind of
> logic would I be interested to have a good comparison between linux
> (ubuntu in this case) and vista; in the view of the general usability of
> the system.
> (just to have an idea of what would be the best to say when people as this).
> 
> Now, I have never seen vista (but I do have a mac so based on what I
> hear, I should have a pretty good idea of what vista looks like. :-)),
> so -as you know both vista and linux- I would be interested in your
> opinion about it.
> 
> So,
> - the "search engine" in the start (i.e. mac's spotlight). What do we
> have on linux that matches this? Beagle?

There is also Tracker (which is more resource-friendly than Beagle) and
Strigi (from the KDE project).  There is also a Freedesktop.org project
to define a common d-bus based API, so that every frontend will be able
to query any backend.

> - the "gadgets/widgets". This is something that does not exist in itself
> on linux.
> 
> Anybody any idea of exactly what widgets are standard on the vista sold
> in Belgium? Weather? (we have that on linux inside the panel)
> Stock-exchange tracker (euronext?) calculator? currency convertor, ...
> 
> Are there central websites for these kind of tools on linux?

There have always been the panel applets, gdesklets, ...

And since recently there is Jackfield:
<http://kryogenix.org/code/jackfield/>


> - The "windows reorganisor" (what's it called on vista, on mac it is the
> when you go to the left-top corner of your screen).
> Perhaps we can put the virtual desktops as an alternative to this.

Beryl (and probably Compiz too?) have this.

> Do somebody know if the sun "project looking glass" GUI is getting
> ported to ubuntu?

Looking Glass's system requirements are about double those of Vista...

> - Other stuff?
> (e.g. the 3D desktop xgl?; how does it compair to vista's user interface).

Beryl makes Vista & Mac OS X look very plain when it comes to special
effects, they just need to polish it some more and integrate it better
into GNOME and maybe KDE, etc.  (I think Novell did some of the latter
with their latest Suse Desktop & Compiz?)


> I know some time ago; there was some discussion that vista was going to
> have all kind of limitations incorperated into it; like it would not
> play mp3 above a certain bitrate or you would not be able to run hacked
> or copied software on it.
> Is this now correct or not?

Considering that MP3 has no DRM, it will play fine; the problems are
with file formats that incorporate DRM (e.g. WMA).


-- 
Jan Claeys