I don't normally like to jump into flame wars, but this one is just too juicy to resist.
You are simply more familiar with XP.
No I'm not. I migrated from Win98 since I refuse to accept XP's EULA. My experience with XP is limited to watching co-workers who migrated from Win98 to XP use it.
Your statement about your frustration with the clipboard system just proves his point. It's not that one is inherently more user friendly than the other, they are just different. Not better or worse, different. After getting used to how it works I find it faster to just select text and middle click than to have to do all of the intermediary pointing and clicking. As a budding programmer the ability to store multiple items in the clipboard and paste them at will is invaluable.
Had you chosen XP as your first windows OS after being familiar with Linux for several years you be shakeing your head in disgust.
Again, you are trying to change the subject to one of which OS is better, not which OS has the better user experience. I don't disagree at all that my Linux distro is technically superior, safer, more secure, and even more powerful. But that's not what the article we are discussing was about. Stick to the subject.
The point he is making is that your perspective on "user friendly" is that of someone who has used windows conciderably more than competing products. It's funny that when I install Linux almost all if not all of the hardware is picked up and installed with relatively little user interaction or extra software to be installed. Granted the hardware that doesn't install in this fashion can be a bit tough, especially on someone new to linux, but I've had my share of problems with windows not playing fair with my hardware. The difference as I see it, is at least linux gives you the tools/logs/config files to see what the problem is and attempt to fix it. Windows gives you an arcane error code or memory stack dump with little information to help the end user....
You have an agenda you want to push, and its obvious.
Actually, if I have an agenda (and I don't think I do, I have an opinion on this subject, but that's it), it's simply to make sure that the user point of view isn't lost in all the ranting that various pro-Linux and pro-windows folks do, and, in this particular case, to state my point of view that the author's article is correct and doesn't deserve to be ripped apart.
I myself experienced some of the flustrations he wrote about. The cut and paste example resonates strongly with me, I _still_ haven't figured out what obscure scheme klipper uses to decide what is current on the klipboard for pasting. Whatever that scheme is it is NOT intuitive and IMHO there is no excuse, no user should have to go read a manual to figure out how to cut and paste between applications.
Again, this all points to your lack of experience with the system. My mother didn't even know what copy and paste was on her Windows computer until somebody showed her. I've been using computers for a better portion of my life, but if you sat me behind a Mac I doubt that I would be able to use it to it's fullest. Not because the aren't user friendly, there is a general concensus that Macs are among the most user friendly machines out there, but because I haven't had time to figure out the ins and the outs of how the stuff works... How do you copy and paste stuff with one mouse button.
Anyways, I don't have the disposition to start engaging in a rant over which OS is best, my point is simply that the author of the article did a good job of describing some of the faults with current Linux distros that are holding those distros back from being a good choice for home user workstations.
There are plenty of people who feel that Stick shift automobiles aren't user friendly... but most people who drive one would point out that it isn't difficult, it just requires practice. To those who are frustrated by the "quirks" that linux presents I reccomend holding your ground and giving it the chance it deserves. Why attempt to drive a stick shift if you quit the first time it stalls. A little practice will lead to a very satisfying experience.