why does microsoft windows look better than X?

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Request for Question Clarification by readersguide-ga on 28 Jul 2002 23:31 PDT

By X do you mean any other GUI? or do you mean Mac OS/X?

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Request for Question Clarification by secret901-ga on 29 Jul 2002 01:19 PDT

This appears to be a matter of opinion.  Would you like a subjective answer?

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Request for Question Clarification by lot-ga on 29 Jul 2002 02:20 PDT

Do you want to prove 
1. Windows 98 looks better than 'X' P?
2. Or windows 98 is better than Mac OS X?
3. or maybe Windows XP is better than Mac OS X.
Quite difficult in all cases, except perhaps in the case 3 where they
are the same generation, but even then, Mac OS X has the edge as it
has always traditionally been 'design' orientated.

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Request for Question Clarification by edusbains-ga on 29 Jul 2002 05:07 PDT

Are you referring to X Window, which provides a graphical user
interface for Unix systems?
See:
http://www.x.org/about.htm

If so, you might be interested this paper, which suggests that one
flaw of X is that fonts aren't antialiased (which smooths out the
jagged appearance by shading pixels at the borders of images):
Christopher Browne, My Overall View Of X
http://cbbrowne.com/info/xpersonal.html

It's also worth noting that the X Window system is highly
configurable, meaning that you can do a lot to change the look and
feel:
Hal Moroff, The X Window System, Linux Magazine, July 99
http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-07/newbies_01.html

There's more information available, if it's X Window that you're
interested in.

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Clarification of Question by gnahz99-ga on 29 Jul 2002 22:37 PDT

I didn't expect the large amount of inputs. otherwise 
I should've phrased the question in more details. 
thanks for all the response. and here are the follow-ups:

> By X do you mean any other GUI? or do you mean Mac OS/X? 
By X I meant the X windows system. Specifically, I
am using KDE on a REDHAT 7.2.


> This appears to be a matter of opinion.  Would you like a subjective answer? 
Well, I am expecting more of  a technical answer.

>>>>> ---------------
Are you referring to X Window, which provides a graphical user
interface for Unix systems?
See: 
http://www.x.org/about.htm 
 
If so, you might be interested this paper, which suggests that one
flaw of X is that fonts aren't antialiased (which smooths out the
jagged appearance by shading pixels at the borders of images):
Christopher Browne, My Overall View Of X 
http://cbbrowne.com/info/xpersonal.html 
 
It's also worth noting that the X Window system is highly
configurable, meaning that you can do a lot to change the look and
feel:
Hal Moroff, The X Window System, Linux Magazine, July 99 
http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-07/newbies_01.html 
 
There's more information available, if it's X Window that you're
interested in. 
-------------

Right, I am also troubled by the "jagged" font display in KDE.
I vaguely recall that windows has it fixed since win98 (?) I looked
a bit around for "anti-aliased" font for KDE but it 
involves massive amount of compiling. Still, is aliasing
the only defect? .. I wonder where the gap is between X and windows.
Will X be able to emulate windows, maybe?

Hello gnahz99,

I think I can give you a few of the technical reasons behind the
differences between the look and feel of X and Windows.

First - the basic X protocols and methods were designed a LONG time
ago. Many of the decisions were made to efficiently operate the
display(s), operate transparently over a network, and not require a
lot of CPU resources. Many of those decisions still affect the way
programs run under X today.

Second - there is little or no standardization of the look and feel of
applications in X. For a comparison of styles, try the following:
 - view a normal KDE application
 - view a GNOME application
 - from a terminal window, enter xman &
 - from a terminal window, enter xterm &
 - from a terminal window, enter xeyes &
(the last three run older X programs - xeyes is so simple you may have
to "kill" the application to remove it from the screen)

Third - as you have noted, anti-aliased fonts are not the default. In
the KDE control panel, the "look and feel" section has options to
enable anti-aliasing. (I don't have my linux machine in front of me to
tell you the exact steps)

Fourth - the maturity of the products running under KDE is far less
most applications running under Windows. This is becoming less and
less a difference - Red Hat 7.3 uses KDE 3 which looks even nicer than
KDE 2.x. I expect the updated GNOME in the next Red Hat release as
well.

Fifth - part of the difference is subjective. One or two things being
different will color your perception of the rest of the system
(usually negatively).

Those are a few of the reasons for the differences in the look and
feel between X and Windows. Don't hesitate to ask for clarification on
this answer.
  --Maniac

Just passing through - it seems obvious to me that gnahz99-ga is
referring to the X window system, as no other is referred to simply as
X.

Why does it look better? As edusbains-ga mentioned the look and feel
can be greatly modified configured in many different ways. As a whole
perhaps it looks better just because its user base is more in need of
nice GUIs due to the great number of moronic users. Where as those
that develop for *nix systems are generally more concerned with
program usability and practicallity and add a GUI to progs almost as a
second thought.

Hi gnahz99!

I'm just answering this for fun, so don't consider it a complete
answer (which would require detailed information about the internal
structure and design philosophy behind X11 and the the Windows GUI, as
well as a discussion about the user base of each product etc. etc. ...
and that would probably require adding two zeros to your current price
tag).

X11 was developed to give users a GUI which they could use in a
networked environment. For that purpose a lot of things needed to be
abstracted and they needed to find ways of communicating any action
happening on either the user or the program side with a minimum in
transferred data.
X11 is also a child of the emerging *NIX world, which is characterized
by powerful command line programms with many configurable options and
source code usually available.

Windows was created to give users a nice looking filemanager.
Windows was originally running as a GUI on top of DOS - a *very*
limited command line environment.

Now both of these systems are of course more than what they were
originally intended to be, but you have to keep their origins in mind
when looking at them today.

The second major point is the user base. 

I won't go into that now because it usually only creates flamewars.
Generally speaking, I'd classify Windows as a "user" system and
X11/*NIX as a "creator" system. The one promotes ease of use, the
other one flexibility and power.

The third difference is that Windows - despite all the newly added
configurability basically is one monolithic block with few options.

X11 allows you to add a Window Manager which basically allows you to
make your GUI into anything you want. There are a few Window Managers
which for example just aim at providing a Windows-like appearance.
Other's try to make it look like other OSes. Some Window Managers are
geared towards special target groups like programmers, or people who
have to work remotely through low bandwidth connections, etc.

The fourth difference is that X is done by a consortium of different
interest groups and Windows by a single company.

Add to all this the subjective way we all look at everything
(especially valid for things we got used to over the years) and you
have your answer, why Windows looks better than X. For you.

I hope this helps.

voyager

Additional Resources:

The X Protocol
http://www.x.org/about_x.htm