Tweaking - is it a male thing?

[stwschool]

Just having a debate with my girlfriend about tweaking. Now I've been using Ubuntu since about October judging by my sign-up date here, though I recall starting on 8.04 so maybe September. Anyway, even despite being a relative newbie, I've turned into a tweakaholic. My gnome has gone a bit minimal, with gnome-do providing my dock, auto-hiding to get out the way when I don't need it. My top bar has been stripped to the bare essentials and auto-hides (I even tweaked the speed it does so). I've configured keyboard shortcuts to my favourite apps and now just added swiftfox as firefox is too slow. I've set Expo to come up when I mouse to the bottom right corner. My girlfriend on the other hand, she's happy with a stock ubuntu install with a changed wallpaper. This seems a common thing with most women I know, they'll download a pretty wallpaper or a mouse cursor or free smilies (with free virus) for their (usually windows) machines but beyond that they don't tweak. So is it a male thing?

[Mr-Biscuit]

Being a bit foolish to think that optimizing an operating system is based on a pairing of chromosomes, aren't you?

[Sef]

Some people like to tweak and some don't. Gender does not matter.

[monsterstack]

Logic tells me otherwise, but experience tells me as much as what you suggest. That is, till recently. My girlfriend hardly tweaked her settings at all. But then I showed her KDE for the first time a few weeks ago. She was bamboozled with the range of different tweaking options available. She spent literally hours making everything just perfect for her. She decided she didn't much like KDE after a few days, though, and went back to Gnome. Her laptop has been very much more customised since.

[AlesUbu123]

Being a bit foolish to think that optimizing an operating system is based on a pairing of chromosomes, aren't you?

But there is so much affected by those pairing of chromosomes. X chromosome is a significant part of our genome and having an extra one expectedly has major consequences. Sex chromosome can have a effect on how you comprehend, interpret and react to the world around you. In my experience, I have also noticed that (significantly more, but not all) girls generally like to see computers as a working tool, and not somthing you would tinker with.

[Sand & Mercury]

But there is so much affected by those pairing of chromosomes. X chromosome is a significant part of our genome and having an extra one expectedly has major consequences. Sex chromosome can have a effect on how you comprehend, interpret and react to the world around you. In my experience, I have also noticed that (significantly more, but not all) girls generally like to see computers as a working tool, and not somthing you would tinker with.

I think you hit the nail on the head there.

Is playing with engines a male thing? From what I've seen, generally, it is. Extends to computers and whatnot too. Many stereotypes are based to some degree of truth, though you'll always have exceptions.

My gf runs Ubuntu on her netbook and while she said she's not a fan of how it looks, she's never bothered to change it.

[Ms_Angel_D]

I'm a chick and I'm always tweaking my system. So the answer to your questions in a word is NO.

[Stefanie]

I'm a woman and a tweaker. My openbox is fully customized with shortcuts for every possible action, I have my custom vim keybindings and plugins, I tweak the config files for most apps, I have a nice Conky setup and I wrote a couple of scripts to speed a few things up, most of which run automatically through cron.

[stwschool]

I'm a woman and a tweaker. My openbox is fully customized with shortcuts for every possible action, I have my custom vim keybindings and plugins, I tweak the config files for most apps, I have nice Conky setup and I wrote a couple of scripts to speed a few things up, most of which run automatically through cron.

I think I may have just found my perfect woman!

[wirepuller134]

Our 13 year old daughter takes tweaking to a new level. She has been working with me on control systems so fourth since she was about 5. Every time I look at her computer she has it doing something new. I'm not sure if this is a blessing or a curse....she has already been in trouble with the school IT department (a few times) for trying to fix a few of their computers.