Chris and I have been having an offline, private email chat today -- all of it good discussion -- I'll leave it up to him to share what he wishes from that exchange of thoughts. Truly, thanks for engaging, Chris, both publicly and privately -- and pushing us on these issues. Chris has also been posting comments both here and here. He still can't bring himself to accept the challenge (yet). Rather, he wants to claim the following...

"We're comparing apples and oranges, discussing different qualities of each, and you're wanting me to put an orange up against your apple."

Nice subtle inflection point, by the way, comparing your Linux orange with my Windows apple. (I caught the 'wink', so perhaps not too subtle.) If I buy into this statement I would be de facto conceding Mac OS X is better than Windows Vista (or even Windows XP) -- which it isn't (in my opinion). But I digress.

Right before that statement Chris compares and contrasts the features quite boldly:

"When I rave about XGL, it's because of what it's doing - and how it does what it does. Nothing even comes close to that in Windows Vista - in pure features or implementation. If there's a challenge (in my mind), it's already been settled. Vista's new Win+Tab feature vs. the XGL shortcuts in a Linux DE."

In my way of thinking, you can't have it both ways. Either we can compare these things, or we can't. If we can't, then don't.

So, while he is deciding on whether to accept the challenge: I installed SUSE 10.1 tonight. I have *only* installed (accepting all defaults except for prompts such as user name and password stuff) and booted to the desktop -- then turned off the machine. I learned some things (you can't help but learn if you choose to install) which I will share at a later date.

Chris, you better accept (or decline) fast -- while I'm still relatively ignorant.

P.S. Hurry -- I'm downloading the Mandriva ISO now...!