In a burst of caffeine-fueled energy, inspired by this article I wrote the below piece on how operating systems would be if they were cafés. I didn’t like the original article and here’s my take on the same concept. Of course it’s filled with my own opinions, caveat lector.

Microsoft Café: To enter you first have to agree to a EULA stating that Microsoft cannot be held responsible for anything that you do while inside café, nor can they in any way be expected to provide service or any kind of warranty. Also, simply to enter the café you have to pay various fees depending on where in the café you want to be seated. If you pay the most expensive price to be seated in the “Ultimate” room you’re promised to be pampered and receive free gifts, however none of these ever materialize, usually with some hollow excuses to the effect of claiming that shipping has been delayed. They recently redecorated and now heavily style the café with smoked and frosted glass, while previously it looked as if the interior was designed by Fisher-Price. When you ask what they serve the reply is “nothing” since you’re expected to purchase any beverages or snacks from other vendors and bring with you into the café. When you ask how the café is funded, or how it’s run you get the reply that the source of that information is only available to the management of the café. Every so often the chair randomly explodes under a customer for no apparent reason, and everyone simply accepts this as normal procedure.

Apple Café: The café is nice and shiny. Lots of metal and glass, and there’s neat little tricks that the chairs and tables can do. However, the entire café is run by one person, and is heavily decorated with pictures of him. The coffee and snacks are horribly expensive, even though the ingredients are virtually the same as any of the other cafés albeit a little prettier to look at. Most of the patrons are dressed in identical blue jeans and black turtlenecks, and will viciously attack any other newcomer who voices even the slightest criticism of the café. The chairs don’t explode quite as much as at the Microsoft Café but they will do so occasionally. A much more frequent occurrence is inexplicably being hit in the face by a vividly colored beach-ball. There’s also a very limited menu, and when you ask for something that isn’t on the menu the rude staff will look strangely at you and ask “why would you want that when we have everything you need right here”.

Linux Café: It isn’t so much one café as a bunch of different cafés working together with similar menus and similar furnishings but with many minor differences. Everything inside the café is free of charge, and you can bring the coffee with you home or give it to friends. The staff is regular people just like you who all take turns working at the various cafés, and you notice that many of them seem to work simultaneously at many of the different cafés within this franchise of sorts. You inquire as to how the café is run and without question you’re furnished with copies of every invoice, every order, every business deal the café (and others) has ever done. The interior of the cafés are easily re-arranged to your taste, and if you want to start your own café you are promptly provided with the necessary tools to do so. Also, the café is capable of not only traveling through time and space, but it can also convert into a church, a stable, a farmhouse or a dormitory if the need for such should arise. The menu in this café is incredibly vast and they serve approximately 20.000 different varieties of coffee, have about 30.000 types of biscuits, cookies and other delicacies as well as serving multiple types of food from all over the world. Everything free of charge, of course. You’re also encouraged to contribute your own type of coffee-drink or snack, either from scratch or adapting an already existing type of food.

A lot of hoopla surrounds the fact that Microsoft unleashes Windows 7 on the world this month. Personally I am less than interested in this fact, since October to me this year is Karmic-month.

I have followed the hype surrounding 7 with both a lack of interest and a slight amusement. Lack of interest because Microsoft lost my interest years ago, and lost me as a user three years ago. I have no particular interest in going back, and this makes all the marketing seem even more hollow to me.

The most amusing aspect of this whole thing is that Microsoft is trying to promote release-parties. Surely you’ve seen the commercial that’s being spread around the globe. I think it’s a laugh-riot. Microsoft trying to promote release-parties for their OS is as artificial as astroturf. It’s like IBM back in the fifties, where they forced employees to sing company-songs and have company-parties. It’s just artificial, and promotes only artificial loyalty.

Karmic is also going to have release-parties around the world, but since Linux (and in many ways Ubuntu as well) is a community-driven effort, the parties are not enforced by some corporate entity, but rather an outburst from the community in pride and happiness. In other words, not artificial.

I admit that I haven’t plumbed the depths of 7, but to me it just seems as Vista, but with less Suck. Admittedly, it’s not particularly difficult to make an operating system that sucks less than Vista. I believe that if I handed out laptops to a bunch of angry monkeys at the zoo, they could produce a better operating system simply by beating each other senseless with said laptops. Now, in many ways I’d say Windows Me was a worse operating system – and this would be true if you only counted the technical merits. But Vista promised so much and delivered so little nothing at all which makes it a much bigger letdown.

Plus, it’s still Windows. Even Windows 7 is at the core the very same Windows codebase that Microsoft has been pushing for years. Windows 7 is a reaction to all the hostility that Vista received. They took the same old tired codebase, fixed the major issues and released it as a “new” operating system. It’s Windows, with some features added to make it look shiny, and other less appealing features removed. It’s the same old dog with a new coat of paint and some new tricks.

Ah yes, the tricks. I’m amused at the level of pseudo-technobabble that Microsoft has to apply to everything it does now. When they invent steal something new to put in their OS, they instantly have to apply some hyperbolic label to it. It has to be called SuperSomething, AdvancedSomething, PreSomething.

No, Microsoft. You lost my interest somewhere between Windows 95 and 98, and you lost me as a user three years ago. Windows 7 will not get me back, since I don’t feel any passion for Windows, since Windows is a passionless operating system, and since the culture you promote is a rusty and more clunky version of the same monosphere that Apple promotes.

Me, I prefer the freedom to tinker.

Oh, and here’s a hilarious picture of Linus Torvalds outside one of your Windows 7-kiosks that you in your blundering stupidity decided to put outside a Linux-con in Japan.

(Source)

I’m writing this from my refurbished laptop. Why am I not writing it from my nice desktop machine? Because I’m a fool and booted into Vista for some gaming.

So far it then spent 45 minutes first installing updates accompanied by symphony of reboots, then spent another half-hour uninstalling the same updates due to some unknown error, again accompanied by aforementioned symphony of reboots.

Now, after the 6th reboot it apparently is attempting to install the previous updates again… We’ll see if it works.

*sigh*

I’m wondering when Microsoft is going to release an OS that doesn’t treat the user like some last-minute afterthought. All I wanted was to play some games, but even in this regard (which in my opinion is the only thing Windows is even remotely capable of) it fails yet again.

So, let’s see… So far Vista has wasted more than an hour of my time because it sucks. In any other situation this would be intolerable, but whenever Microsoft is involved everyone just accepts it.