[anonymoushn]

All of the desktop OSes I use suck.

On Linux, I can't even use X + Awesome + <terminal emulator> without huge amounts of tearing and nearly 1 second delays while the WM redraws my terminal emulators while switching virtual desktops. A more experienced friend of mine suggested that this could be due to using nvidia binary graphics drivers, so I tried out the open source ones, but the tearing and delays got worse, and occasionally an entire window would be mangled for no apparent reason. He also suggested that it could be due to XRandR, but I noticed no change when I stopped using it (other than that my displays were no longer vertical), so now I'm using the binary drivers and XRandR again.

After upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.04, I was unable to use my onboard NIC at all. I thought that it had been bricked, so I put another in, but eventually someone I knew experienced the same problem and was able to fix it by temporarily removing the battery from his motherboard. Apparently the drivers that ship with 11.04 like to put your network card into an unusable state until you physically mess with the machine. You could just be careful not use them and download the working drivers, but you might need a NIC for that...

On OSX, Spaces has a bug that causes windows to randomly rearrange themselves on the Z-axis when switching spaces. It also has a bug that causes your keyboard to stop working completely. The first time I encountered the second bug I had to reboot my computer because I couldn't kill Spaces without using my keyboard, but I have since put Activity Monitor in my dock just in case I need to do that. Fullscreen games on OSX (Starcraft II or Heroes of Newerth, for example) run a reasonably high chance of never giving up exclusive mode, even after dying, so your machine will become mostly inoperable after playing the game a lot of the time. There's also no reasonable way to run these games in fullscreen non-exclusive mode (the most useful configuration on other OSes), so you can't quickly switch between the game and Skype/screencasting software/IRC.

...And I hardly think I need to tell anyone here what sucks about Windows.

[Luyt]

"I have since put Activity Monitor in my dock just in case"

Alternatively, you could right click on the Finder icon in the dock, choose 'New Finder Window' from the menu. From there you can go to the Applications / Utilities folder, and launch Activity Monitor from there.

[drivebyacct2]

Wait. You're using the nvidia driver, but are you using an accelerated window manager. Are you using mutter? Are you using compiz?

Ubuntu's 11.04 compiz is unstable, don't let me deceive you. BUT, it is far superior to plain old metacity with nvidia. Ugh, that shit tears and is awful.

[anonymoushn]

I'm using Awesome. http://awesome.naquadah.org/

[drivebyacct2]

The thing is, the composited window managers? They're actually smoother than without due to the graphics cards. Even with minimal features (for more stability, since ahem, shipping versions of compiz aren't always crazy stable, despite how much I admire where compiz is going).

Take the time to try a composited window manager. While you're at it, install vlc, and make sure you manually tell it to "Use Hardware Acceleration". It's amazing how small things can really show you the ability of Linux.

[jrockway]

Most people that use window managers like Awesome have no need for a composited window manager. Yes, they make window moving smoother, but you don't move windows in Awesome, so it's just a waste of resources.

Similarly, I use VDPAU output for mplayer and full-screen it, taking the window manager and compositing manager out of the equation entirely.

Not everyone wants OS-X-style eye candy.

[drivebyacct2]

>Not everyone wants OS-X-style eye candy.

I think I pretty well acknowledged that even. I didn't know that you don't move windows in Awesome, especially since the comment was about tearing, and I merely mentioned that using a compositor helps with tearing...

[vault_]

Awesome is composited (well, has support for compositing). You just have to use an external compositor. xcompmgr and cairo-compmgr are two that I know of.