I just discovered that Windows 10 (which, like most people, I'm regrettably required to use at work) offers multiple desktops a la Linux--the first Windows OS to do so. Well, well, look who's late to the party.

Well, to be perfectly fair, Windows since day-one used a fundamentally different strategy to provide windowing. Linux uses a client-server strategy, even when both the "client" and the "server" are running on the same machine. Windows, on the other hand, uses bitmaps. Which is why Windows' "remote access" clients are considerably more cumbersome and less efficient. (Just look at the source code of the various Linux clients to see what I'm talking about.)

And, to be even more "perfectly fair," the strategy chosen by the Windows engineers at that time was actually defensible. But Microsoft has been obliged to live with it ever since.

Yes, I had a chuckle at that too when it was introduced.

But Microsoft ripping off features is nothing new. They do it all the time. Remember how Zune was going to be the next iPod?

Steve Jobs (RIP ...) said it best about the very earliest version of Windows: "all they did was to rip off the Macintosh."

But nevertheless, here we are. At the present end-point of several very different technology strategies. (And, let the record show that Apple completely abandoned(!) its original "Macintosh" platform and successfully(!!) rebuilt the whole thing around Unix.®) Miraculously, all of them are still making paying customers happy and thus paying our bills.

("Sssshhhh!!" Please don't tell them how we actually do it!)

Legally it is ok to copy the look and feel of another program as long as the actual code is different.

Apple did the same thing since the first real actual consumer product with a GUI was developed by Xerox. Jobs also hired away some of the engineers that worked on the project at Xerox which probably helped some too.

And the first idea of a GUI was dreamed up by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960's...

The irony considering that Windows 10 was released 6 years ago with this and you just found out is hilarious to me.

Multiple desktops is useless feature anyway. Learn to use minimize all, etc. I tried it for a while under linux but it doesn't make things easier, and very few people actually use it. (or am I wrong?)

I disagree with enigma9o7. I find multiple desktops very useful to my workflow. I can have one set of applications for a particular task on one desktop, etc., and switch between tasks without having hunt for the relevant application(s) in a taskbar.

Choice is good.

Yet, that's why there were and are differences between Windows and Macintosh. During Steve Jobs' time Apple invested heavily in usability research and put the results into their design. Bill Gates just copied and as Steve Jobs' added, poorly and slowly. Eventually M$ got sued over it and although Apple lost, M$ made all kinds of arbitrary changes to the graphical user interface to prevent it from looking and behaving like MacOS. The result was something which is a lot harder to use and less efficient. It also crashed every few minutes, more frequently if multiple applications were running at the same time.

Now a lot of time has gone by since Steve Jobs' death and Apple has long since dropped any effort in usability and efficiency. Instead they are chasing "engagement" which measures success by how long a person has to dork around with the interface, regardless of whether anything gets done or not. In fact, efficiency runs counter to engagement. If one is done in a click or two and can move on, less time is spent.

As for the multiple desktops now being part of legacy operating systems, the annoying part is that what's left of the trade press are all acting like it is a new feature rather than pointing out that M$ is late to the game again and has always sucked. Given the current trajectory, it will always continue to suck.

IMO you are correct.
Edit: Not necessarily 'useless' but a novelty for most users.

I have always found it very useful. Whatever gui I use (I like fluxbox best) I always set up the first desktop for general purpose use, the second for the internet, the third for system and administrative work and the fourth for reading documents and manuals.

I almost always use at least two these days, though since I am usually working with multiple monitors these days, the number of virtual desktops stays low. In the old days, during a busy week, I could often keep 7 or 8 out of 9 occupied with various key projects and their subtasks.

I think that the desktops might be one of those things that people are no longer shown and thus don't know about and therefore don't use so much, mostly because of the mind rot which early M$ Windows exposure causes and the resulting limited expectations for the software and its usability.

Englebart also created the computer mouse and pwas the first person to patent it in the US 1967. He was an engineer and had numerous patent before and after the mouse patents.

https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/90/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...user_interface

The thread title needs some work. Laughing at an OS is every bit as futile laughing at your toaster - or going outside and laughing at some brick walls or lamp posts...

"Linux" doesn't have that feature, as Linux is a kernel - it doesn't implement features such as multiple desktops. Some window managers or desktop environments may have that feature.

I just managed to find the feature in Windows 10 - I don't have a use for it and never have had a use for it in KDE, gnome, XFCE, etc, etc, either.

With gnome being a dodgy Apple rip off, originally developed by a self confessed Apple fanboi (who now works for MS), and KDE and a few others, essentially aping the Windows desktop paradigm, focusing on MS adopting a feature which is arguably little used, seems a bit of a misfire....

Incorrect for me. I've always used this capability since it's been supported.