ZebraOtoko
There's no shortage of people today who still believe in various religions.
It does? In America at least, the dominant religion seems to be teaching a really terrible and harmful ethos. I don't see how Von Däniken's ideas could possibly be worse.
However, GNOME is completely the opposite; doing anything differently requires installing special extensions, which break every time an update happens. The devs do not want you changing it from their One True Vision for how a desktop should work (which, apparently, is almost identical to a tablet).
People who aren't Linux experts or long-time users may not even know about KDE, Xfce, etc., and just think that GNOME is the only way to use Linux. Most distros push it very strongly, and even in corporate environments it's pushed hard. My company uses Linux, but the IT department only supports GNOME; luckily I'm able to install KDE but I'm basically a reneage by doing so.
So if we're comparing Windows (which has only one DE, the Windows one), to GNOME (which for many users is synonymous with Linux), I'd say he's right: Windows is much more configurable and easy to customize.
Why the Linux world has gone this way, I honestly have no idea. It almost seems like a conspiracy.
I wish I could agree, but I just can't: the OP may be correct, depending on which Linux desktop environment he's talking about.
*My* Linux is indeed much more configurable than Windows, but I'm using KDE. However, that's only promoted by a few distros like openSUSE. Most users are going to get GNOME shoved in their faces whether they like it or not, and no, GNOME is *NOT* more configurable than Windows. GNOME needs to be used exactly as the GNOME devs want you to use it, because otherwise it'll just break on the next update. For many users who are not Linux experts, and perhaps use Linux at work where their IT departments only allow them to use GNOME, they think GNOME==Linux because that's what most distros push so strongly, so I can see why OP would make such a claim.
Exactly: it's like that pit bull that everything thinks is so cute, until one day it goes berzerk and rips your child's face off, and then its owners say "It's your kid's fault for looking at him wrong!"
Are you required to make it sleep (perhaps due to a security directive)? If so, then why are you doing this? You should simply refuse, and tell IT it doesn't work. Then let them fix the problem, since it's a security issue. It's not your job to come up with workarounds for the IT department's failures.