Re: What Window Manager/Desktop Environment do you use, and why?

On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 22:27:07 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:
 

Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed
with each new model year.  One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console.  The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick.  The
third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered
brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.

>
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
>
Greetings Marc

 
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles worldwide.
So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic
transmissions were an unusual sight?

It's been coming for a long time. My father did not like ATs and even in
the '60s it was difficult to find a manual transmission outside of sport
cars. After he died my mother went shopping for a new car. This was a
woman who had taught her father to drive back in the '20s and I had to
convince her she could drive an automatic. She caught on fast and also
appreciated power steering and power brakes.

I prefer manuals and my first Toyota Yaris was MT. when it was totaled by
a snowplow I found I would have to order on to get a manual. I placed the
order but had second thoughts that night. Japan was in the middle of their
nuclear meltdown and it wasn't clear if they would ever build another car
so I took what was on the lot.

I like 2-door hatchbacks, another thing that doesn't sell in the USA. In
2020 when I brought the car in for an airbag recall I saw a leftover 2018.
since Toyota no longer sells the Yaris in the US I bought it but it's AT
too.

My '86 F150 is a manual but pickups were pickups back then, not SUVs with
a mostly unused cargo bed. I don't know if they are all ATs now.

Of course ATs are different animals now than the 2 speed PowerSlides from
the '50s.

Then there was the Presto-Matic in my '49 Chrysler New Yorker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presto-Matic