Bubble Bursting Beautified Desktop

A few days ago a friend of a friend was chatting to me about the “new” desktop environment and effects in the forthcoming release of Windows Vista. He was so enthused and excited by what he had seen in the beta release that I sat and listened.

Not wanting to burst his bubble I waited, during which my internal dialouge was impatiently running amock, and slowly a smug grin was gradually creeping across my face Once he’d finished, and with no immediate response from myself I booted up my Ubuntu Dapper installation running XGL & Beryl.

Needless to say he was blown away with what he saw and one could clearly hear his bubble burst, and then some! My silence was broken with the response “It’s all very well an having a beautified desktop, the question is does the underlying operating system have any substance to it?”.

Despite my efforts to explain the ethos, ethics and benefits of using Open Source he wasn’t prepared to deviate from his Microsoft centric life. More fool him and the other millions of hoards prepared to believe the marketing hype spun to line the corporate pockets, just to keep their operating systems up to date.