Re:VMWare (Score 1)

It lets Ctrl+Alt+Del through because on Windows PCs, this key sequence is known as a Non-Maskable Interrupt. This means that, short of hijacking the keyboard driver and changing the mapping from actual to virtual key or other very low level actions, the key sequence cannot be overridden. As a single interface across all versions of the product makes the upgrade treadmill less difficult and OS switching simpler (sit down at any computer with any version of the software and you don't have to be concerned with the underlying OS or other details) and as VMWare's goal is to make money and that means pleasing the largest market and not pissing off the lesser markets as much as the competitors, the interface was likely designed mainly with Windows in mind, with linux support added on where it did not interfere with the Windows capabilities. That said, VMWare very well could have fairly simply modified the interface so the linux version of the software could have reflected the difference in host OS, but this of course would have taken time, and time is money, and any additional money spent gets passed on to the consumer, which results in a decrease in consumers, so they followed the simple rule "You can't please everyone all the time, so be nice to the bear because unless it's a very vicious beast and you lack a holy hand grenade, the cuddly bunny isn't going to be much of a threat". That being said, what would be truly ideal would be for VMWare to adopt a plugin system with platform-independent modules (or at least as platform-independent as possible, if the SDK supported lower-level operations they would obviously e less cross-platform) that would allow you to modify the VMWare behavior, interface, display, and addditional details, but that would require relinquishing some modicum of control of their software and most big software companies are against that. Live and let live.