Windows wish list

[Scott Baker]

Ok, before anyone screams that I need to be flogged, we need to face the facts here. Almost all of us have used Windows (ok, or Mac) in the past. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has said (or still says) I really wish that ***Linux*** (choose your own distro) had better support for, or offered ###. So what is the thing you'd like to see better support for, or support for, period. For me, it's voice recognition, ala Dragon naturally speaking. My wife used this when she was in college, and she still used Windows. Unfortunately, I have not had much luck finding a comparable program for our Ubuntu/Edubuntu installations. (One other thought here. With M/S now handling Skype, I wonder how much longer we'll get support for that voip package??) :-k

[Basher101]

i wish microsoft would respect the customers more..

[Iowan]

Moved to Cafe.

[tkod]

Hmm it sounds like fun to list those things. Although it's a bit like "what would you do if you won the lottery" - just daydreaming, nah it's fine.

First thing that comes to mind is probably hardware but it's more like I wish some specific hardware had better support for linux. Although quite often with time all the hardware you have gets some support.

Skype is tricky. I've already disliked it a lot before microsoft acquired it, but if they make it stop working on linux, I'll probably make the 5 people I actually need to connect to using skype, use some xmpp based mesenger(xmpp seems really great).

Gaming seems to be a bit of an issue, but here microsoft definitely have the edge with directx. I'm not into FPS games but I think they are a no-no in linux(besides openarena and nexuiz which are not that bad to be honest). I've noticed that blizzard have most of their games support d3d and opengl, and I've played World of warcraft and warcraft 3 in wine with 90% of the windows performance :) What I really would like is need for speed in linux (most wanted preferably) - I like playing it for 10-15 minutes a day. But as much as I know they are completely unplayable in wine plus I'd preffer native.

Here comes the most important part for me - namely office solution and cad/cam applications.

Don't get me wrong openoffice/libreoffice is quite good. But I'd really like to see it java-free, I think it will be a great performance boost + I'm a huge java hater (MS Office 2007 in wine runs noticably faster). I'm not quite impressed with MS Office either (it took them I don't know how many years to add simple save as pdf, and a 30 page document with some pictures is completely unscrollable on a quadcore with very nice other specs as well - wtf), but first of all it's the standart - when you work with other people you just have to use MS Office, plus I must admit it makes it really easy to format a document and make it look professional. Excell I think is of great quality but LibreOffice Calc is catching up in my opinion(except for the java thing - really annoying). As for powerpoint and impress, although I've heard MS wins big time here, I don't really use them so I can't say for myself.

So on the office front I think my wish would be better working, open sourced MS Office, but that's not really realistic. A somewhat realistic would be java-free LibreOffice, which looks better and more polished and has extremely good compatibility with MS Office (maybe in the sense of full opendocument support in MS Office).

The cad/cam thing is the biggest daydreaming probably. I'd really like to see some of the engineering software out there ported on linux - SolidWorks mainly, CATIA or Creo Elements could do the job as well. But it's a lost cause. And it's a pitty, since all this software is in opengl(therefore actually portable without rewriting from the ground up), and from what I've read as benchmarks and heard about Autodesk Maya (which seems to be maybe the only professional 3d software with linux port) for some reason such applications perform considerably better on linux.

And for what it's worth, for both win and linux - I'd like even after some years to have a non-tablet, non-MacOS interface.

Hope you enjoy reading, all the best.

[Lucradia]

My windows wishlist?

# Bundle a python interpreter natively.

That's it. Why? Because then we could port all our linux stuff easy peasy. Windows already has a C interpreter however, if I recall.

[Simian Man]

# Bundle a python interpreter natively.

That's it. Why? Because then we could port all our linux stuff easy peasy.
That is not at all an obstacle in porting Linux software to Windows. Python can be installed easily on Windows unlike the majority of Linux libraries that most Python programs depend on.


Windows already has a C interpreter however, if I recall.
I don't know if any C interpreters even exist. In any case they are not commonly used and certainly aren't pre-installed with Windows.

[del_diablo]

Lets see:
-Fixing how searching works in general
-Booting shouldn't take any more time than 30 seconds regardless when on a HDD
-Enable window grabbing via hotkey, a bit like winkey/alt+left mouse does in a lot of WMs
-Buildt inn Roseta be alike for running older apps
-Something to override fullscreen applications and run them in windowed mode
-Set sane defaults for all popups, file dir paths, and a lot more(C:\Applications should NEVER require admin privilegies to write to, and its a default install dir).

[errrn]

a batch uninstaller, to get ride of all the bloatware my relative's computer have when they do a recovery.

with something like ninite I can install silently a lots of programs with one clic. It'd be great being able to do the opposite: uninstall them.

[Lucradia]

a batch uninstaller, to get ride of all the bloatware my relative's computer have when they do a recovery

Buy an OEM, and do a ghost image to a flash drive right after drivers, and before installing applications.

[TheNessus]

The ability to scroll un-focused windows. That is THE best advantage linux has over windows I can think of.

[IWantFroyo]

Better app unification. I didn't realize how incredibly bulky and useless downloading apps with a browser or from a disk was until I tried Linux.

Aah, those good old first few days of Linux when I was trying to install libraries from their websites... :D

[Primefalcon]

An integrated repository of software with a ppa system, looking around to make sure your running the current version of x is very annoying and usualy you dont look around...

Also have 50 billion aps running indepent check for updates is heavy on resources.....

So a proper package managment system like linux has for sure! and being able to add ppa's like buntu!

and support for more non-microsoft filesystems, windows on ext4 would get rid of the need for defragging! even on windows

[errrn]

Buy an OEM, and do a ghost image to a flash drive right after drivers, and before installing applications.

even OEM have lots of brand-specific (useless) software installed. I even saw an e-bay app, which I'm sure my mother didn't opt in.

[CharlesA]

even OEM have lots of brand-specific (useless) software installed. I even saw an e-bay app, which I'm sure my mother didn't opt in.
They meant this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116992

There is a PCdecrapifier (http://pcdecrapifier.com/), but I don't know how well it works since I just do clean installs on any new PC.

[Lucradia]

even OEM have lots of brand-specific (useless) software installed. I even saw an e-bay app, which I'm sure my mother didn't opt in.

As said above, I meant OEM Windows, not OEM Machines.