No. It’s wonderful that you think that would get rid of morons though, keep the dream.

Ever wish Bill Gates hadn't been born?

I thought the original poster was wishing DOS on everyone so that the average user would be more skillful. A flawed premise.

My perception is that PCs were already very common (in the USA at least) before the rise of Windows and you didn't need to be very computer literate to use one.

I don't think Windows drove greater PC adoption. People bought PCs to run Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect. The killer apps. Macs were available long before Windows became popular and had a superior GUI for many years.

Sometimes I dream about resurrection of Amiga as an alternative platform.
And I'm very excited of A-Eon X1000. Even if it's not something that will blow up the IT world, it sure will be very spectacular thing.

If only commodore didn't push the amiga as a console originally, windows would have been history and this threads title would say: "Ever wish that AmigaOS had never caught on?"
But alas, bad decisions are made all the time and this is what doomed Commodore.

If you have a powerpc though, you can still run AmigaOS4 if you want (linky), but even though it seems pretty good, the support isn't all that.

Also, even though Apple has made a booming comeback, the price of the pc's will still drive people to regular windows pc's. That and I miss the freedom to do what I want on a Mac. I constantly feel like there's someone babysitting me if I use one. I like Windows 7 with UAC off much more and Ubuntu (because I'm a noob @ linux) is better as will imho, but in the end the gaming support and ease of use of Windows is what brings me back.

So... it's hard to say if I'd wish Windows had never caught on, there are too many variables to take into account. We don't know what would've happened with the other operating systems to make a sound judgement.

That my 2 cents (or maybe an entire euro)

Not really. I like Windows 7 and XP was a revelation compared to 98.

I'd would've like to see an option to shutdown into MS DOS though, would've been awesome.

Fanbois much?

The main reason for most of those compatibilities was Apple and MS not playing nice. Prior to them getting into things pretty much everything was either CPM or UNIX, there were other options, but none of them were particularly significant at the time.

MS itself is the main reason why the web has been such a mess for the last decade or so as they tried to force that odious web browser on the rest of the world.

As far as the OSes go themselves, they're subpar. Windows 7 is the first halfway decent OS that they've ever released, and it's clearly not as good as the competition. Had they released it a decade ago, I would have given them credit on a job well done, but as it stands there are plenty of free choices which do at least as well.

OTOH, without Windows, we'd likely be doomed to be dealing exclusively with the power hungry psychopath Steve Jobs instead of the power hungry psychopath Steve Ballmer, so I'm not sure we'd be any better off.

Calling another a fanboy smacks of double standards by what you just posted.

Mind you, I'm just trying to imagine the aero interface on decade old hardware lol

its not "perfect" like the apple fanboys want to believe, but it is alot less buggy and better designed then windows.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)]Logo[/url].
:P

No, reason being it was my first job working at the Microsoft campus running reception work.

Biting the hand that feeds you isn't what I would call a smart move.

still fighting over which license is the best? Vegastrike & wesnoth still the pinnacle of gaming on linux?

The intended purpose of this topic doesn't so much seem like Windows vs alternatives as it does gui vs cli. Not too difficult a mistake to make, most people don't even know there are alternatives to Windows, only that we've gone from command lines to Windows. I make liberal use of command lines in both Windows and Linux, but a lot of things would be a bitch and a half without a gui.

You can do a lot of things faster, easier, and better with a cli if you know what you're doing, especially in Linux where it's much more powerful, but there are also things, multitasking, for instance, that are much better left to, or impossible without, a gui. There is a place for both, and I don't think either of them are going anywhere too soon.

Unfortunately, most people are afraid of command line interfaces. I personally love the minimal simplicity of it. No windows, no buttons, no distractions. You tell the computer what to do and it does it. Every possible option you can do with the machine is at the tips of your fingers and depends only on your knowledge and typing speed.

My dad was afraid of the MS-DOS prompt and would freak out and get angry any time he saw me use a prompt or shut down into DOS to play a game. He had no idea what Linux was, and nobody I've met knows anything about command lines or Linux. I don't know a lot of computer savvy people, most people only seem interested to the extend that they need for gaming.

I don't know as much as I'd know if somebody could have taught me, but I've been able to teach myself a lot over the years through books, websites, practice, and so forth. There's really nothing to be afraid of when it comes to cli, and no reason to hate on gui.

I appreciate that, with old computers, it didn't take too much to know all the ins and outs. The C64 came with a manual covering all of the commands you could use, and you could learn pretty much everything from the programmer's reference and other books. I loved this, and it played a significant role in genius game designers learning all about their machines down to the hardware level and write very efficient code without the benefit of libraries and other modern conveniences such as wildly varying hardware that has power and memory to spare.

Today, nobody uses WIndows help, and it's pretty useless besides, with troubleshooting no better than your average tech support and minimal information. In Linux, you have man pages and whatnot, but those aren't helpful for absolute beginners, and for both, it can be hard to figure out where to even start learning everything you might want to learn.

Computers have become more complex. They've also become tools that are useful to every one of us. This was inevitable, and neither Windows nor gui's are to blame. Unfortunately, becoming computer literate has become more difficult than ever, it's difficult to get a foothold. There are plenty of websites to learn things, but knowing what it is you're even looking for, and finding a place that can actually teach you well, can be more than half of the struggle.

Depends on what you consider 'basic' computer literacy. Most people just need to know how to turn on the computer, fire up their e-mail and web browser, and turn off the machine. I don't see the reason the majority of people need to know more than that. People - and plenty of 'morons' - drive cars and have no idea how to repair them or how they run. So no, I don't see why it would be better if Windows hadn't caught on when considering that. Would it be better if people did learn more about how to use their machines? Yes, but certainly not necessary.