OSNews

OSNews IS a tech blog. Get over it.

I have understood it this way:

OSNews.com: operating system (and tech) news
OSNews.com/staff: OSNews blogs
jobs.OSNews.com: Jobs Database
etc.

btw. your "Media Kit" even speaks about OSNews = "[...] Open Source enterprise computing [...]"
http://netshelter.net/products/branded_network/osnews.com/

... normally it's this way:
OS = operating system
OSS = open source software


Maybe someone from the OSNews.com staff can clarifying what's the main motivation behind OSNews.com.
I though it was operating systems news and incidental tech news.

If you don't want to read something written by him, its simple, just below the title it reads, "Written by ...". Check for his name and ignore.

Secondly its Christmas time, or the festive season, which ever you prefer, not exactly a lot of "OSNews" at the moment so this is an appropriate time for filler material.

Thirdly. You can count 11 articles not by Thom in between his last two.

Articles are meant to be personal opinions of some kind. So if you don't like them you don't have to read them.

Big kudos to Thom. It is very nice to see what other people have came up with their desktops.

He's the managing editor of this site, he can write whatever he wants. Sure beats Thurrott or Dvorak (or anything written by Gartner).

I'm not going to stop visiting this site just because someone decides that they want to publish more articles on it. That's the purpose of this site anyway isn't it? If you don't like it, then you don't have to read his articles.

Its a good article, and it touches a bunch of things of general interest that people have been talking about lately - customizability, ease of use, difference in desktop look and feel between Linux, Vista, XP. OSX. Its only 'personal' in the sense that it is one particular set of preferences, but the approach and the choices and the reasons for them are of general interest, they are all basically about usability.

The empty desktop was interesting. Where do people keep current files and why? In Home?

Teaching a class last year, all the students reported they found the same problem with XP which they were all using, they would often save their files and not know where they had gone, and they had problems with My Documents too. It never occurred to them to save them on the desktop. which they thought was the place you put the icons for your applications. It was made worse because most of them turned out not to know how to make new folders....!

Whereas people who have been migrated from Mac to Linux seem automatically to use the desktop as their top level file location. How do you feel about that?

The desktop is pretty usable in OS X. OS X relies heavily on drag and drop, to the extent of being able to drag images right out of Safari to your desktop; you can even highlight text and drag it and it'll create a text document. Safari also defaults to save files to your desktop. In my opinion, this makes sense as you will most likely be wanting/needed instant access to these files once they're done downloading or once you've successfully copied them.

On the other hand, ost applications automatically default to the specified "media type" folder. If you're working in iMovie or iDVD/Applications like that, the default save location will be the Movies folder. If you're in iPhoto, the folder will be the Pictures folder. Microsoft Word, Documents. Most applications, besides instances like Safari where it makes sense, won't just dump files onto the desktop.

The empty desktop was interesting. Where do people keep current files and why? In Home?

I absolutely hate a cluttered desktop. This is my default:

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8006/desktopjl4.png

In my opinion, the desktop is purely a canvas, it's not a file repository. Everything I work with is saved to an appropriate sub-directory in my home directory.

I'll admit I'm old school, but I only use drag and drop between windows when it's appropriate, otherwise I prefer to save files to a directory. I rarely use the desktop as a dumping ground. I cringe when I use my corporate XP laptop with it's plethora of desktop launchers etc.

Just my personal preference, though.

"The empty desktop was interesting. Where do people keep current files and why? In Home?"

Yes, that's what your home directory is for. I too do not have ANY icons or files whatsoever on the Desktop since I find that utterly pointless and cumbersome. I tend do have most windows maximized (or close to maximized) so I hardly ever see the desktop. This is also why I don't have a wallpaper. Frankly, I see no point in that either. What am I gonna do, sit around all day with an empty screen and look at how awesome my wallpaper is? Pointless.

The empty desktop was interesting. Where do people keep current files and why? In Home?

The files I'm working on are kept on my desktop; you can see the "KDE article" folder in the screenshot. I do this on any OS.

In fact, I don't really care for what operating system I am using when doing day-to-day tasks (mailing, browsing), it's when you need to do specific stuff that the OS becomes relevant; i.e. writing a report for university where you have 15 different scientific articles open, 10 websites, 3 word processor documents, and a spreadsheet.

You really do have too much time on your hands.

The article made it clear in the blurb that it is not strictly a news article, but you read it anyway, and then criticised it.

I for one, like these kinds of articles, they are OS related and interesting. Good work Thom.