...download windows xp, uninstall windows vista or win 7 from the very same machine running my program, delete all remnants of such atrocities (except for my program and the downloaded win xp, obviously), install windows xp, then make copies of itself to distribute to email contacts, irc users, hide in memory and copy to removeable storage?
Very much agreed. I've been using Windows 7 for a while now (with Aero off) and haven't had any problems (except for having to tell DirectX not to use hardware acceleration for DirectDraw when I'm playing Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, which surely doesn't matter to most (nearly all) users).
I hate the way they redesigned things. I'd like to be able to do things in the same way as before, if I wanted to a menu option to be in a different window than before, they should ask me, not shove it down my throat.
Redesign is change, change is inevitable and necessary for evolution. If they kept absolute backwards compatibility (including in the UI) it would be bloated, and a terrible programming philosophy.
F/OSS means Free/Open-Source Software and OS means Operating System. I'm commenting on the way everything in desktop environments that work on F/OSS OSes is completely customizable. Admittedly that's a flawed argument since the OS being F/OSS is irrelevant to how customizable the DE is but there does seem to be a correlation.
great. its still not the same though. the tabs at the top of internet explorer are more reminiscent of windows 3.1 than xp. I'm switching back. Oh wait I can't. I can only change to windows vista. great.