Happy birthday Windows 3.1

A little retrospective from The Register.

Windows 3.1 was overall pretty good, and it's interesting how OSs have developed in the light of this. OSX shares a weakness still with 3.1 (no task bar keyboard commands for program switching is inefficient) and windows 8 metro is about to revert to this state.

Would I go back?

Probably not, but if OS interface development had been halted at Windows 98 I would not have been too upset, though XP was significantly better. I've used Vista a little and 7 a little less and neither bring the user any benefits, other than security, which is no benefit at all in terms of usefulness or productivity, while making unhelpful changes to the interface. OSX is somewhere between windows 3.1 and windows 95 in terms of helpfulness of interface, even if it runs with much more security.

I'm realising more and more than one of the reasons I have moved across to Linux running KDE desktop is that it has continued Windows XP *classical* interface development (i.e. not the toys-R-us mess appearing as default that any sensible user immediately switched off). KDE is very XP classic-like in use, even though deep down there are quite fundamental differences. Certainly it won't suit everyone, but as a system to simply sit down and work on, provided everything works (a 'charming' characteristic of Linux) then it's highly efficient.

I have a spare hard drive for the Macbook. It is SO tempting to risk mangling a few more screwheads, swap drives and attempt a Linux install running MS Office under Wine or Play On Linux, maybe under openSUSE or even Pear/Comice 4.