a tempest in a teapot

It seems that every six months or so, Linus Torvalds stirs up some kind of trouble in various geek communities. The most well-known incident was the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate way back when. He's mellowed some in later years, although I wouldn't say that he's any less opinionated.

The can of worms that Torvalds opened this time was a post to the gnome-usability mailing list, in which he railed against GNOME and said that he simply recommends that people use KDE instead. I like the clean interface that GNOME provides, and I like its consistency. I agree that KDE has more options, but that doesn't say 'more powerful' to me.

Maybe it's that I've mellowed myself over the years, but I've come to see any of these X versus Y debates as artificial, whether it be GNOME versus KDE or Windows versus OS X or peanut butter versus chocolate. So long as you're making an informed decision, just run with it. If you like Windows, use it to your little heart's content. If you like KDE, have at it. But don't tell me that I'm somehow misinformed or less of a geek because I haven't made the decisions that you have.

I'd probably have more to say on this subject if I weren't battling off a case of the Redmond Snow Flu (brought about by being up in Redmond when it snowed last week).