Forget all about binary people joke! The truth is not two, but three kinds.
Yesterday, I was talking a colleague about what desktop environments I use. For those who may not know it, there are: Gnome(Linux) in my desktop computer and KDE 4.1(Linux) and Windows XP in my laptop computer.
And why on earth would someone work with such different environments? It is hard to learn in depth just one (read: keyboard shorcuts, clicking style (double vs. simple), orientation, etc.) Why bother at all?
I am very interested in HCI and tasting each flavor of different desktop concepts helps building a better opinion and find and common patterns across each one. For instance, one choice selections (radio buttons). Nowadays we take radio buttons for granted in every framework, however, I still can see people using check boxes and a bunch of extra code to get the same result and making the user to feel utterly clueless. I can’t see what is good with that. Using common patterns produce better experiences.
That is why I bother using different desktops. There are three kinds of people in computer science: those who don’t know at all, those who only know one opinion and take that for the real and immutable truth and, finally, those who are like me and try every different option in order to find their own opinion.
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You forgot the 4th option: those who try different options and already made a decision.
I’m one of these; I used KDE, Gnome, Windows (XP & Vista) and XCFE too! Windows Vista has the better UX that I have found in an OS, Gnome is the best FS desktop experience in my opinion and I usually get back to Gnome to check it.
BTW: http://nymphs.org/Random/ ;)