On the Win 8 subject - needing 3rd party downloads to fix the borked desktop is very much screwing the pooch, especially when the vast majority of your users are entry level and have no idea what a desktop extension even is. The 8.1 climbdown is further evidence of cockup. Not to mention the serious analysis in the mainstream press suggesting that win 8 has actually depressed the pc market. So yeah.
The point is there is no single linux desktop and the OP seemed only to be talking about gnome.
On the Win 8 subject - needing 3rd party downloads to fix the borked desktop is very much screwing the pooch
Sure, but who cares? Apparently not enough people, because nobody is leaving. While their position is certainly precarious in other areas, Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is pretty hard to excuse away; it seems to me that they could have another three or four missteps of this magnitude and few people would consider leaving even then. Their primary competition is their own operating system, and that's a great place to be.
The point is there is no single linux desktop and the OP seemed only to be talking about gnome.
There's no "single Windows desktop", either; stuff like LiteStep has existed forever. But when people say "Windows", they don't mean LiteStep. Which isn't to say the usage numbers for non-GNOME/Unity DEs are that dire--from what I can see, they're fairly dire but not that dire--but for a majority of Linux users, GNOME and GNOME-y things are the Linux desktop.
Or, put another way: You knew what he meant. He knew what he meant. Does being That Guy help anything?
>> Sure, but who cares? Apparently not enough people, because nobody is leaving.
Did you read the part where the whole PC market is being depressed by Win 8?
Either way this conversation was not about numbers - linux people probably aren't leaving because gnome's changing either.
>> While their position is certainly precarious in other areas, Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is pretty hard to excuse away; it seems to me that they could have another three or four missteps of this magnitude and few people would consider leaving even then.
This is absolutely nothing to do with the conversation at hand or the point I was trying to make! Of course they're not going to lose dominance anytime soon, you'd have to be a moron to think otherwise! The fact is that they've made missteps that negatively affect the desktop experience compared to previous iterations, that's the beginning and end of it!
>> There's no "single Windows desktop", either
Umm, yeah, there's the one Microsoft ship and don't really allow you to change very much, or. That is the windows desktop. That you can over-install third party bits and pieces is not really the same thing as the myriad of different desktop environments in Linux.
>> for a majority of Linux users, GNOME and GNOME-y things are the Linux desktop.
And I'd be surprised if that continues, and it still doesn't mean there's a single linux desktop, nor that talking about 'the ui' and then referencing Gnome icons is particularly useful.
>> Or, put another way: You knew what he meant. He knew what he meant.
Yeah, I know he meant Gnome, because that's all he talks about. If he did mean the umbrella term then it's not meaningful to talk about whether a highly disparate set of projects have got worse.
>> Does being That Guy help anything?
I don't know, why do you feel the need to be that guy and argue against a whole bunch of stuff I didn't even say?
The point is there is no single linux desktop and the OP seemed only to be talking about gnome.