Gartner Analysts Warn That Windows Is Collapsing 868
spacefiddle writes "Computerworld has an article about a presentation from Gartner analysts in Las Vegas claiming that Windows is 'collapsing', and that Microsoft 'must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been.' Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald provided an analysis of what went wrong with Vista, and what they feel Microsoft can and must do to correct its problems. Larry Dignan of ZDNet has his own take, and while he agrees, he suggests that the downfall of Windows will be slow and drawn-out. As an interesting tangent to this, there's also a story from a few days prior about Ubuntu replacing Windows for a school's library kiosks, getting good performance out of older hardware. '[Network administrator Daniel] Stefyn said he was "pleasantly surprised" to discover that the Kubuntu desktops ran some applications faster with Linux than when they ran on Windows. An additional benefit of Windows' departure from student library terminals saw the students cease 'hacking the setup to install and play games or trash the operating system.'"
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, Apple didn't have to customize OS X to run on the iPhone, it was perfect the way it was?
Wait, it's easier for people to develop and distrubte applications for the iPhone, even though the ability isn't avaiable yet?
Are these guys supposed to be taken seriously?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You could always trim your own XP/Vista down with http://www.vlite.net/about.html [vlite.net] vLite (okay, got bored of trying to get the link formatted in the new inline editor.)
Re: (Score:3)
Aero, UAC, DirectX 10, etc... all goes out the Window (pun intended).
You simply cannot have that stuff on a small device.
Anyway my P3 laptop running Linux will boot to GUI (KDE 4) faster than any Vista box no matter how much you chop out.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
DirectX 9.0c is 218MB.
Does that explain why you cannot have it on a embedded device?
OpenGL is tiny for reference. The core of it is 0.7MB on my computer.
And locking the iPhone in that manner isnt difficult.
But its impossible with Windows. Need to be Admin to install stuff.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Such installs, when automated, tend to take, in my experience, around ten minutes off a disk image in a VM, compared to an hour and a half for installation (not counting the time wasted when you don't know it's asking you a question because you're off being productive elsewhere), plus the hours and hours of installing drivers for networking and video, rebooting, updating Windows Update, rebooting, running Windows Update, rebooting, running Windows Update again, rebooting, and so on.
You can trim a Windows Vista installation (between 2GB-4GB, according to TPB) down to around 600M, trimming out all the crap that I personally couldn't afford to lose. The result was so absurd that I just wiped it out without bothering to test it.
So, if Windows Vista is really just 'XP with prettyness and UAC' why is it an extra 450M? It's not drivers (I wiped out everything that Vista comes with). It's not useful apps or productivity tools (everything Windows comes with, I replace). So where's it all going?
I know there are a lot of under-the-hood changes, but certainly for the loss of performance, ballooning of requirements, complexity and frustration, certainly it can't be justified... can it?
You've been here long enough to know (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You've been here long enough to know (Score:5, Funny)
As a 5 digit, Sancho just can't understand the humor because he hasn't been around long enough.
As a 6 digit, I have no clue what both of you are even talking about and I'm surprised at myself for being cheeky enough to post at all.
Re:You've been here long enough to know (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not aware of the detailed structure of Vista's kernel, but my guess would be it is unlikely to be easily scaled down - it is an OS that requires higher specifications than XP to do mundane tasks like file copying. That doesn't suggest efficiency and portability.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Creating a lean palm version would be a million miles away.
Hardly. They could just do this on their source code to make it smaller
s/.*linux is the devil.*\n//gi
That should drop about 50% of their code size
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. That's why Microsoft is fighting a class-action suit against customers who disagree withe your assessment.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. Vista was designed to run on high end machines, however Vista was marketed to be able to run on not-so high end machines.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that current products are fast enough to cover their poor design is another matter.
Since we tested it on dozens of machines with higher spec and it wasn't acceptable, I am dubious of your claim that it will run on that machine with all the features in an acceptable way.
That aside, what exactly does Vista bring to the table? Nothing. All the features that would have made this OS an actual improved new OS were stripped out. SO know we have a bloated OS that has no value add and can't justify the expense of a roll out.
Failure.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
You must not do anything interesting in IT.
Those are just toys, I am talking about the real good stuff that was scrapped. I mean really, calling stuff that other systems have had for years, or was available through other programs in windows 'new features' is a bit rich.
I am talking about the three pillars.
Normally I don't like waving the 'I've been doing X for this long' dick waving, but since you bring it up.
I wrote my first Program in 81. I have been following what is not called Vista pre-longhorn. I remember in 99 when they where talking about it's development progress in the Microsoft paper. I worked at a company that had a MS partnership agreement for pre-beta Vista and pre-beta office. I have been up to my elbows in the bits of vista for a while.
"Suckered by Intel"? no, they weren't they knew what they where doing and they knew they where being deceitful.
Not being able to run all the features of a product means the product doesn't work.
Shit, I could write an OS, Again, that won't be able to use all it's capabilities for 4 years from release and I would not call it ready or done. Creating something that can't be used in a practicable manner is bad, and stupid, and deceitful.
SO you enjoy your toys, Microsoft's lies, and the nice blinders you have bolted onto your brain, but Vista was not ready, and brings nothing new or useful to the corporate world. In fact it introduces a risk, as would any new OS.
Good OS's mature, bad ones age. Interesting that about the time a MS OS begins to hit the mature stage it's phased out. Yes, it takes years for an OS to mature.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
No.
Not without using a tool such as vLite to essentially strip Vista down to bare bones. And even then it runs like a dog. 8 year old hardware would be hardware from 2000. We are talking MAYBE a 1Ghz processor, (more likely 800Mgz) and probably either 128 or 256 Mb of RAM. That setup runs XP slowly. Vista, with all the extra overhead the larger kernel is running BARELY FUNCTIONS on a machine such as that.
How do I know? I'VE TRIED IT. Used an old 1Ghz Pentium laptop with 256 MB of RAM, and a vLite'd version of Vista Business with basically NOTHING left in it. Stripped down to basic functionality. It booted, but only JUST. It took no less than 15 minutes to get to the logon screen, and another 5 minutes after that to get to the desktop. Using it was like running an RDP session over a phone line with a large download going at the same time. Slloooooooooooow.
Now, with some extra RAM, that might have been sped up a bit. But in no way would it ever be able to run Vista in a manner that anyone would consider usable. Vista is too big, too bloated, and too damn slow for older hardware. Thankfully, it is on older hardware that Linux really shines. And with fantastic distros like Ubuntu and it's derivatives, there isn't any more reason to fight with Windows if you don't have the cash to upgrade your hardware.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
8 years ago was still P3 time. The original P4 wasn't released until late 2000.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Dear god! If you are going to lie at least make it somewhat within the boundaries of reality. The processor you have in your machine was released by Intel in August 2002, yet you claim to have in a EIGHT YEAR OLD computer. I am sure that Intel would love to find out how you got a machine with a processor from 2 years in to the future. That has to be some amazing feat to reach across the barriers of time to grab yourself a hot new processor. Does Stephen Hawking regularly show up at your house to see what other amazing feats you can accomplish?
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
But isn't the GUI built-in to the kernel in Windows?
For what it's worth, Vista ran like utter crap on my friends brand-new laptop until we upgraded the memory from 500MB (stock) to 2GB. This despite having turned off all of the eye-candy, making it look just like Windows 2000. Windows 2000 would have run all snappy-like on much less memory.
It's not a bad OS once your system is beefed up to run it, though it has been quite the re-training experience. A few things still annoy me about it, but it's not the steaming pile of crap that the slashdotters would lead you to believe. I think that you are a bit loopy trying to run it on 8-year-old hardware though!
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually quite pleased to see the reported direction that Windows 7 is taking. As I have stated earlier, I don't plan to run to Windows 7 and leave Linux behind. Linux is home now and I'm comfortable in it. Apple's MacOSX is interesting and I can make good use of it as well, but it's not home either... I have pondered the idea of moving to a Macbook pro or the like but so far it's hard to imagine leaving home where I'm quite comfortable and I'm sure you can identify with the sentiment if you're a Windows user.
But that said, I also recognize that Windows is what's used in business and here at work. Windows is also used by just about everyone on the planet... a planet that, incidentally, is connected by this internet thing which I have to coexist in... this same internet that is over-run with Windows computers that have been compromised and are hosting bot services for people to do all manner of terrible things. If Windows 7 represents the "clean slate" that I hope it does, we might see a serious reduction in the amount of that sort of trouble which will make my life better. What I'm saying is that even non-Windows users will benefit from a new Windows OS on every desktop if only because it may serve to clear away a lot of the crap that is polluting the public internet.
I disapprove of your attempt to disassociate the "bloated GUI" from OS. While it's technically correct, it's practically incorrect. In just the same way that most users think "The Web" is the internet, most people see the GUI as the OS. And since the GUI and the kernel are always together as a virtually inseparable set, they are pretty much one in the same. If you're trying to say that Microsoft could write a new, more simple, GUI for the "Vista kernel" and make it run on lower-end hardware? You're probably right, but not without also modifying the kernel to pull out ALL that backward compatibility stuff. It's really hard to know if they can actually do that or not. Microsoft has testified in court that the GUI, and more specifically, Microsoft Internet Explorer, cannot be removed from the OS because it would break too many things. We know that Microsoft wouldn't lie in court, so it must be true... and so Microsoft would probably also disapprove of your attempt the disassociate the "bloated GUI" from the OS.
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
I think you misspelled "DRM".
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Not [auckland.ac.nz] at [windowsvistablog.com] all [theinquirer.net]. You are assuming that the design of Windows makes sense, or that it is designed with the end user in mind. Stop making that mistake.
For one thing, the DRM code is still there in many (loaded) DLL's, thus using memory (even if it may not be actively in use in the absence of DRM-encumbered media). The increased costs for hardware and driver development to make all this stuff even work, are paid for by you, the end user. Decreased driver stability due to the entirely new driver model (necessary to support DRM)? Guess who can deal with the problems it causes...yup...that would be you. Laptop battery draining faster because drivers are checking all the time whether protected media is present and whether the system is uncompromised [auckland.ac.nz] (also happening while no DRM'ed media is actually present)?
I guess you can spot the trend by now.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
These three computers now run beautifully and I thoroughly enjoy noticing that after upgrades sometimes things run faster not slower.
One thing that bothers me, both as a consumer and as someone who tries to be environmentally conscious, is that the continual trend towards more bloat in Windows results in the premature obsolescence of perfectly good hardware. I can foresee getting a total of 8-10 years of good use out of these computers (even more if I do things like reuse them as NAS devices or routers). I save money, do a bit to reduce waste in landfills, and don't have to deal with the frustration of working with an operating system that prevents me from fully utilizing the potential of hardware I bought.
Frankly, I'm seeing less and less valid reasons for the continued use of Windows other than 'it works' or 'that's what I'm familiar with.' And even those arguments are becoming less and less valid themselves.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
iPhone runs on a down-clocked 112mghz processor. (before the 1.1.2 firmware, it ran at 100mghz). Yes, the processor is capable of 620mghz but the battery would last something like 1 hour so it's been down-clocked.
Plus the iPhone doesn't have to carry the bazillion drivers that the regular Mac OS X carries, nor the bazillion software in embarks. It is, otherwise, the same Mach kernel.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple made it easy (If you were using their compiler) to release for 4 different platforms. It's just a check box to make a 32/64bit X86/PPC program where as, from what I've heard, everything for XP/Vista 64 bit is a 'different program'. You have to make sure you download the right one, etc. When Microsoft bought Virtual PC they had an easy out. They could have made Vista scratch up (like OS X sort of was) and left all the old XP bits behind. Instead they decided to kludge it together and screw that up.
OS X is pretty modular, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a different ".config" when they compiled the iPhone. And why was OS X 'not suited to run on ARM'? Heck 3 years ago it wasn't suited to run on X86 and EVERYONE knew that apple going to Intel would kill them. Turns out they've had it the whole time. I wouldn't be surpised if in some vault somewhere Apple has OS X running on an Power6, Iridium, and SUN.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft bellyaches how "hard" software is to make, and constantly delays (and they don't make computers or phones and sell them) Apple makes it look very easy and investors are starting to see Microsoft isn't really that good at their CORE job.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple just "does" it, they don't pre-announce years in advance.
That's very true. The reasons are more to do with where each company is in the market though. Apple doesn't have much to lose if some applications don't maintain backward compatibility. Microsoft has a hell of a lot to lose. Shit, Apple just announced they were ditching Carbon for the fully 64 bit version of OSX. That means a lot of re-development, and incompatibility of apps. For Microsoft when you're at the front of the race you've got a LOT more to lose than anyone else.
The other major difference is Apple doesn't have this horrid codebase that Microsoft does. They went through their transition pretty recently having ditched all their legacy code long ago. Essentially OSX and Linux are light on their feet, modular, and can turn on a dime. Windows is the hulking giant dinosaur that takes years to realize it-ain't-gonna-work.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this argument is incorrect. MS doesn't spend a lot of time making their OS work on every hardware combination, rather because of their monopoly position they can just release whatever they have knowing that hardware makers will write their own drivers and do whatever else is needed to make it work with Windows, since otherwise they aren't going to make any sales. Heck, Vista has removed hardware support for some motherboards and even things like TCP/IP over Firewire. MS isn't the one doing the work to make Vista work on all hardware and hardware makers will even change their hardware designs in order to make them work with Windows.
Apple, on the other hand, targets a subset of hardware themselves and works with the hardware vendors to make it work, and deals with extremely large problems getting drivers for and third-party add on hardware like video card upgrades, web cams, external drives, etc. A lot more of that work does require Apple to intervene and make things really easy for hardware makers, because they usually can afford to walk away from providing mac support if it is problematic.
Apple makes whole computers and won't license their OS to OEMs (who do most of the work making hardware run with an OS) because the market is destroyed at this point. They even tried going that route back in the 90s and had to cancel it not because of hardware support problems, but because they were damaging their brand because a lot of the OEMs were using really cheap and crappy hardware that often failed and at the same time had the same bullet points as Apple's hardware but at a lower price. Basically, when the desktop OS market is monopolized, try to compete therr is a doomed venture and Apple and several other vendors discovered.
Apple ties their hardware and OS because it allows them to sell systems based upon the features of the OS, while at the same time competing in the computer system market which is still relatively healthy (against Dell, Sony, etc.) instead of trying to compete against MS in the desktop OS market, which has been completely undermined by MS's monopoly.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
This is probably true for the server market, but not so much for the desktop/laptop market. At my last job Lenovo and Apple were our two pre-approved vendors for laptops and desktops. It's not like we wait to purchase a new laptop until we know a system with some given specs is coming out. We just bought whatever they had on the market at the time we needed a new machine. Hire a new employee... put in an order for a machine for them. Your system reaches a certain age... you get an upgrade to whatever they have out at that time. I mean who pre-plans desktop and laptop purchases based upon roadmaps that may or may not be accurate? The only time this matters if there is a major architecture change, and in such a case businesses usually wait for the software and third party hardware industry to stabilize on the new platform for a year or two.
Also, an amusing addendum, going to Apple.com right now will show you a giant graphic with a huge font that reads "iPhone Software Roadmap".
I disagree. Apple works to support a subset of hardware they will sell and then tries to convince third party hardware makers to write drivers and support OS X. Microsoft, on the other hand, can release whatever the hell they want and OEMs and hardware manufacturers will do whatever it takes, including changing hardware design, to make it work with Windows. What choice do they have? They will make it work no matter how hard it is or they won't sell anything because it doesn't work with the only OS people use.
There is plenty wrong with Vista, but I agree that those problems are sometimes overblown by users and the media. Vista has problems, but so does everything else. In another year it will be as stable as XP for normal uses.
These aren't even aimed at the same market, and as someone who uses both, Keynote blows away Powerpoint, Pages wins for users looking to do some home publishing (not just word processing) especially on price, and Numbers is fine for home spreadsheet uses. None of them are ideal for corporate use, which is MS Office's primary target market.
Wow, I'm not even going near that turd.
Apple is behind in the server space, although your enthusiasm for all things Microsoft is, well nuts. Linux still crushes Windows as a server, especially if you remove all the antitrust abuses that artificially broken compatibility with Windows desktops. As for some small business use, OS X server is nearly free in comparison to Windows server, if you're trying to support 100 people or so. OS X runs you $1000 while Windows Server 2008 costs $16,000. The OS X version has unlimited users while you'll still have to pay MS another $3000 for each additional 20 users. So at 1/16th the price for a small business, I'm willing to forgive a lot in OS X server. Is Windows server 16 times as awesome as OS X server?
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
There could have been some problems with ARM-incompatible stuff, but those problems did not prevent the product launch.
As for developing, doing it for the iPhone OS is very close to developing for MacOS. Not everything is present, but it is a lot easier than to transition from desktop Windows to Windows CE.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple did shrink it even further for smaller devices. The iPhone/iPod Touch have proven it can be done and getting rid of OpenGL ES, CoreAnimation and Cocoa Touch would end up in a very, very small OS.
Yes. Microsoft painted itself into a corner. They will, eventually, figure a way to get out, but I am not sure they will do it in time.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know whether OSX on the desktop and OSX on an iPhone are the same, because I don't like Apple and have never written anything for either. However, I've written lots of software for BSD, including on embedded devices, and lots of software for Linux, including on phones; and I can verify that BSD on embedded devices is just the same as BSD on the desktop, and that Linux on phones is the same - the codebase with the same libraries and many of the same applications - on phones as it is on the desktop. So there's nothing 'absurd' about the idea that MacOS on an iPhone could be just the same as MacOS on a desktop.
And, again, having written software for it: Windows CE is not - not even remotely - the same as either Windows95/98/Me or Windows NT/XP/Vista. It's completely different.
Vista's failure is down to poor engineering and poor management. Vista could have been brought out on time with all its features as promised by half a dozen of the companies out there - but not by Microsoft.
Important lines from TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the almost-constant nag screens?
or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP...
Making them smarter than the lying marketroids selling it...
to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile.
Translation: People are smarter than they think, and an OS that takes twice the hardware to be twice as slow AND even more incompatible with previous software isn't worth my money.
Of course, they still get sales - from the same idiots at my work who want to be upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2007 because it's a bigger number, and then complain that they are confused by Office 2007 and want the tech support guys to "fix" it.
Re:Important lines from TFA (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the almost-constant nag screens?
Are you sure you wish to mod parent up? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Important lines from TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Allow or Deny?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The UAE "nag" screens are not, in principle, any different from Ubuntu's sudo pop-ups. They're more ubiquitous because of the Windows software ecosystem's DOS pedigree. DOS was not an OS, it was more like a library of system access routines. Any process could access any resource on the system and do as it please
Re:Important lines from TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Important lines from TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Slackware 12.0 boots up in 47 s and once you login, KDE grinds the HD for about 30 s more. Now, the response times I'm getting are better than my 7 year old desktop
An OS shouldn't limit your hardware performance. This, more than the nagging, is what turned me of of Vista.
Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
For how many years have slashdot 'experts' been predicting the 'downfall' of windows? For 23 years they have not just controlled, the word is 'dominated' the desktop environment. For the majority of computer users, the words 'Windows' and 'Computer' are borderline synonymous.
And you're proof? Because some users believe that 'Vista sucks' blah blah blah. How many people started ringing the bells for Microsoft after Windows ME? We saw how that worked out...
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, when did this happen?
You are right about one thing... the morons still equate "windows" with "computer". But thanks to the 'tubes, TV, and Apple's marketing, that _is_ changing.
Death knell? Windows will not die with a bang, but with a whimper... but what do I know... I'm posting on Gartner, er Slashdot.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah.
Windows will die like a big ole dinosaur, and its death throes are gonna mess up its local ecosystem real bad.
Stay well clear of that tail. There's no mind controlling it any more.
And... well... there's no pleasant way to say this, but it needs to be said. So WARNING: NEXT PARAGRAPH MAY EVOKE UGLY GRAPHIC IMAGERY!
When a dinosaur dies like Windows is dying, it not only thrashes around a lot, but all its sphincter muscles relax and contents of its bowels and bladder spew forth, driven by the pressures of the terminal seizure. You want to be on high ground and up wind when that happens.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately for MS, virtually the entire world's population now has Windows experience. It was not a great experience.
Some are cretins, and could not interface with a 4x2, but enjoy blaming windows
Some are experienced IT people who have seen Linux/Unix and know how it could be.
Most are now in a position to ask the professionals "Is this as good as it gets?" and being told - no, there IS another way.
Some are migrating to Vista, and realising that if it can get worse, sure as hell it could get better somehow. They know who to ask for advice, and its not the guy in PC world.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Was this a pro-linux/unix comment or a pro-windows comment? Its much too ambiguous.
Getting linux running smoothly can be just as trying as windows if not more trying.
Most are now in a position to ask the professionals "Is this as good as it gets?" and being told - no, there IS another way.
A different way, with its own slew of canyon-wide pitfalls. Like... nearly all your software won't work, including your accounting software won't run on it at all, period. Or the minefield of setting up dual screens or wifi, or getting your shiny new blackberry or iphone to sync contacts with outlook... oh wait... no outlook...
Sure ubuntu etc have reached the point where you can build a basic web&email machine very quickly and its pretty simple, but go much beyond that and Linux throws plenty of obstacles into your path. Some can be overcome, some can't.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Same how the Roman empire was invincible, really. And the British empire. And let's not even get started on the American empire, which is crumbling before our very eyes.
Where is IBM? Where is Word Perfect? Both ruled supreme in their days, but those days are long gone. And just like IBM, Microsoft will still be around - but not as the powerhouse it once was. It will just be another big player instead.
One day soon the stockholders will ask why Microsoft is sinking so much money into XBox 360 or any of those other loss-making projects that Microsoft enjoys so much. And once they pull the plug on such projects, they will start to wonder if profits wouldn't be higher if Office were in a separate company, not fettered to any particular operating system.
Windows will survive that, as will Microsoft. But it will gradually become a niche product, one of many choices available for the operating system. Hardware will be controlled more and more through hypervisors. Applications will more and more be in virtualized environments of their own (beit virtual machines like Java or
And one day, someone will ask "what operating system are you running that on?", and despite being a card-carrying geek with a 4-digit slashdot ID, you will be forced to admit "Uhm, I'm not actually sure." Because it won't matter anymore.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft had the entire Windows NT branch practically ready and waiting in the wings to replace it with.
With XP coming to the end of its life for desktop machines, what can they move to this time?
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it--every self-respecting business decided to hold off on Vista until at least after SP1. Well, SP1 has only just arrived, but before those businesses even have a chance to think about migrating, M$ is talking about releasing a completely new OS. It's speculation, sure, but it looks like Redmond believes it too, if they're willing to make a move like this...
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Photoshop CS1, CS2 both work in Wine. CS3 is installable.
^_^ Google is paying Wine to works specifically on Photoshop, so yeah!
Yes, your $25 Generic webcam will work on Linux thanks to that one guy who added all those drivers in one go ( http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/30/209201 [slashdot.org] )
Desktop Media creation is kind of vague, but you can edit audio, make movies, etc. It is also REALLY easy to turn almost all video into a format that plays in dvd players (Try devede, it works great)
Yes you can connect your 360 to linux, and you can use the controler in linux, and you can stream to the PS3 in linux, and you can use the ps3 controller in linux, and you can use the wii controller in linux.
Google is a better resource than Comcast. Comcast can't trouble shoot WINDOWS much less linux. 'Restart' does not count as troubleshooting.
Crysis can be played on Linux at the bronze level, which is better than it can run on my computer anywho: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=5880 [winehq.org] , but this seems like an unfair requirement.
Sims City 4 runs like a champ: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=4088 [winehq.org] But Sims in general is a huge category of games...
Let me ask you a question.
Can you run Windows for a year without restarting, slowing down, or crashing? How about 3 months?
Can you install 50 programs while uninstalling 32, while also installing/uninstalling all dependencies at the same time?
Can you (^_^ With pulse audio) plug in as many sound cards as you want, have them auto detected and added, and stream your audio to all computers in the house with indivdual volume controls for each item using it (Browser plugins, vlc, etc)
Can you quickly and easily change your wallpaper, window edges, icons, mouse, and all animations with little effort, in such a way that all applications reflect those changes?
Can you backup all your settings by copying one folder?
Can you share it legally with your friends/family?
Come back with "Yes" and I will reconsider Windows. And if you keep using windows, try out PowerMenu ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/PowerMenu_d87.html [majorgeeks.com] ), which allows window's to minimize to try, keep always on top, and other stuff.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
None of these questions matter to someone who just wants to surf the Internet, write papers, etc. There are huge numbers of people who never need to do any of those things above.
Why would a non-tech-savvy user call Comcast due to a technical problem? Most likely the first person they call will be their tech-savvy friend, probably the same one who hooked them up with Ubuntu.
There are lots of programmers out there who use Linux at home. They are the ones putting pressure at work on the bosses to give serious thought to Linux support. The base of Linux users is growing every day. As more people use it, it looks more viable every day to port applications to it.
It's only a matter of time.
Why I'm still with Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Apple is even more expensive and just as proprietary as Windows, won't let me build my own system, and is poorly supported by software developers. If Apple dominated the market, there is every reason to believe they would be just as heavy-handed as MS, if not much worse.
Because doing anything in Linux ends up with me banging my head against my computer screen. Even Ubuntu, the most user-friendly distro so far, is an endless series of frustrations. "Why can't I just download a piece of software and double-click on it to install?!?!" "What is the difference between KDE and Gnome and why should it matter?!?!" "Why do I have to go to the command line interface to do even basic stuff?" Hell, until the latest release, Ubuntu wouldn't even let me attach a projector without a complicated edit to the Xorg config file. ARGHHHHH!!!
Windows may die one day, but it's going to take a *lot* more work before anyone else is going to slay that dragon.
Why I'm still with Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Linux user I have the opposite frustrations when I come to use Windows. "Why do I have to search the web to find a piece of software to download? Why can't I just go to 'Add/Remove Programs', type in the name (or a keyword) and click install?", "Why can't I chose a different desktop environment when I log in?", "Why can't I use the command line to do even basic stuff?"
Different strokes for different folks.
Re:Here we go again, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Check your numbers. Windows 1.0 may have come out in 1985, but it was pretty much a joke, a slightly prettier version of DOSSHELL.EXE. Windows 2.x was hardly any better.
It wasn't until 1992, with version 3.1, that the Windows monoculture really began to take hold, and not until Win95 that 'domination' could be rightly claimed.
students will hack *anything* (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that'll last. I'll give it a week before someone finds a manual and migrates their "expertise" to their new operating system.
Re:students will hack *anything* (Score:4, Interesting)
Not easy. First, they use Idesk for their desktop (on Windowmaker), so all you can open is Firefox. I used the local browser code execution trick to get a shell, and took the home directory back for myself, but had no root. I eventually had to look up an old, old, old overflow in ping, compile it on another box (since there's no local compiler), and copy it to the terminal, and then I had a root shell. Total time: 5 hours. That's roughly 60 times what it took for me to break an XP kiosk.
The moral is either "don't admit to fucking with kiosks online," or "Ubuntu is, despite its friendliness, surprisingly more secure than Windows."
Re:students will hack *anything* (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, it's about raising barriers. Sure, if you're a determined hacker, you can probably break the system. But we're talking about a friggin' library, here, not the NSA.
I'll never believe it... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'll never believe it... (Score:5, Funny)
It is official. Gartner now confirms: Windows is collapsing.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Windows community
when Gartner confirmed that Windows is collapsing in complete disarray and
risks becoming a has-been. Coming on the heels of a recent survey which
plainly states that by the end of 2007 only 6.3 percent of the 50,000
enterprise computer users it surveyed were working with Vista.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Windows' future. The
hand writing is on the wall: Windows faces a bleak future. In fact there
won't be any future at all for Windows because Windows is collapsing.
Things are looking very bad for Windows. As many of us are already aware,
Windows continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of
blood.
Fact: Windows is collapsing
At home perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see this happening rather quickly at home. It hasn't been hard to convince my family members to get away from Windows. While my wife is probably more computer savvy than most, she hasn't had any problems switching from Windows to Linux, and actually likes it more. It's been more difficult for others I've gotten to switch, but in general the result has been positive.
The corporate world is a completely different story, though. Many large, medium, and small companies have committed vast resources to development in .Net. And while a good chunk of that can be run on Mono in a non-Windows environment, it's not entirely the same, and transitioning to something else, from a OS or software perspective, is going to take even more time and money in an economy where money isn't readily available.
Additionally, while you can probably count on your IT staff to have a reasonably easy transition to something other than Windows, your non-tech employee base is almost certainly going to have a great deal of difficulty. Add in the fact that lots of small and mid-size businesses use "friendly" accounting software that runs solely on Windows, and I think Microsoft has a much larger buffer for error than most people think.
Will it happen? God I hope so... but I'm not optimistic it will happen even in the next 5-10 years.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You've alluded to the biggest issue.
Businesses depend on a whole bunch of software which isn't fun to write, requires enormous amounts of maintenance (you try telling your local taxman that your tax return is innaccurate because nobody's bothered to update your software for the recent changes in legislation!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He's not all anti-Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.gartner.com/Search?op=16&f=2&keywords=&bop=0&op=16&sort=73&archived=0&simple1=0&n=8332&authorId=8332&resultsPerSearch=0&dir=70&sort=73&dir=70 [gartner.com]
The problem, as I see it, is not Vista itself. Rather, it is the slow but steady migration from PCs being central to computing tasks to reliance on servers for processing power and storage. Although Outlook client may run on your PC, the real work managing your company's mail is handled in the backrooms on server hardware. They aren't running client Windows back there.
So on the front end, as McNealy and Ellison have been saying for a decade, computers require less and less individual computing power, and backend servers need more and more. This is the problem for Windows because the growing requirements of the OS to do all the cool things that users like is outstripping the pace at which the needs of the users are growing. Translation: Vista does too much unnecessary stuff (however cool and flashy it might be.)
Apple does this too, but their hardware requirements are automatically met by virtue of them selling the hardware themselves. Linux, OTOH, is both a low-end client and a high-end server. It fills the roles needed by users without bringing with it a hefty cost per unit.
The upshot is that the PC as a computing platform is ailing. It will always have its place, and it will hang on for quite a while longer. However, the general trend towards less necessary functionality on the client end and more stability and power on the server side means that alternative systems now have a lower hurdle to gain a foothold in the upcoming paradigm shift.
We have already seen a huge shift away from laptops as the mobile computer towards dedicated devices like the Blackberry and smartphone. As we progress, many of the roles that the PC plays now will move closer to the user so that the usage scenario no longer is sitting in front of a glowing monitor but rather sitting back and doing the same job faster and more easily than currently performed. I, for one, welcome our new embedded overlords.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
no (Score:3, Insightful)
If you infer any more from that statement than that the kids stopped hacking to install games or trash the os, that's about you and whatever you're bringing to your reading of the article.
Part of technology life cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
When a technology service becomes ubiquitous and homogenous and - importantly - ceases being innovative, it runs the risk of becoming a candidate for conversion into a public utility. To stave this off, either ongoing innovation is required or the illusion of innovation and change is required. Microsoft has done a bit of both with Windows. But it's a thin veneer. As a result, poopulist efforts to 'socialize' this technology into a public utility are surging; hence, Ubuntu et al.
There never was a Windows OS! (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft implemented the Windowing API on top of that operating system.
The fact is that Microsoft has never developed a commercial operating system from scratch!!!
They have only incremented the original Windows NT (a.k.a. OS/2 v3.0) code base, for example by:
- replacing the OS/2 file system delivered in Windows NT with the more modern NTFS
- re-writing the OS/2 deveice driver layer of Windows NT with a new, 32-bit and C-based API [the original NT device driver model was 16-bit and assembler-based]
- moving the implementation of the graphics API into the ring-0 kernel [big mistake!]
- replacing the OS/2 multitaskin DOS compatibility (i.e. the text window of Windows) with a less DOS-compatible one, which was supposed to run on multiple processor architectures.
The effort to create a new operating system core for Vista failed because of lack of in-house knowlege.
The task of writing a new core OS (under the Windows API) seems to be too difficult for a company run by marketing people and lawyers.
legacy code (Score:5, Interesting)
Over time more competitors showed up in the marketplace, and as the economy shifted IBM stopped tossing money in our laps. Our engineers (of which I was one) spent most of their time trying to figure out how to shoehorn new features and entire new parallel products on top of the existing legacy codebase. The inevitable result was that we struggled while our competitors came out with newer, more modern & more powerful software. I eventually left that company to go to a startup where 7 others from this company had already gone to. That company was acquired a couple years later, and the application pretty much no longer exists.
If the engineers, who had requested the ability to create a new product from the ground up, had been listened to, then perhaps that company would still be around and competitive. It was mainly because of the business decisions to retain backward compatibility, like MS has done with Windows, that they eventually disappeared. As long as MS maintains their own demand for backward compatibility they'll be waging a slow & prolonged war that they have no chance of winning.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No arguments there.
achieving backward compatibility != keeping legacy code
That depends entirely on the software. Ours was a high level client/server programming language. It was an English-like language, along the lines of BASIC. Since there were no statement separators (like semicolons in C, java, etc) it meant the language parser (built via YACC) had to be extended significantly. YACC is, by default, a look-ahead 1 parser. Thanks to our language not using statement sep
Seriously folks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Statements like "Users want a smaller Windows that can run on low-priced -- and low-powered -- hardware..." make me wonder if these guys graduated at the top of their class at Captain Obvious University.
Additionally they state "...increasingly, users work with "OS-agnostic applications..." - is there a reason for them to not just say "web apps"? And how about the fact that most large organizations have so much legacy code that even if Windows development stopped entirely today, you wouldn't get rid of all of that desktop apps for many, many, many years.
""Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X," no, it's a variant, which is a code-word for sub-set.
Learn from history, no it's not dying (Score:3, Insightful)
And the IMF says we're in recession ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course Windows is going to decline.
The International Monetary Fund [telegraph.co.uk] just announced that the sub-prime crisis has tipped the USA into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During recessions, the first thing to get cut back on is unnecessary infrastructure replacement -- and PCs have been marketed on the basis of planned obsolescence [wikipedia.org] for around a decade now. So the PC replacement cycle will be hit, hard.
Vista is a resource hog, Ubuntu is just about coming up to mass market usability, and a lot of places are going to stop replacing their PCs annually or bi-annually in the next couple of years. Unless Windows 7 is as comparatively lightweight as XP, it's going to crash in the "upgrade your OS" market -- only new PCs will ship with it. So Microsoft will have two poor sellers in a row -- which is enough, in the mind of the fickle public, to establish a trend, and with Apple chowing down on 25% of the high-end laptop market already, they're in danger of being squeezed between a high-end competitor and a low-end one.
But.
Windows is so big, with such a huge established base, that its decline will resemble that of the old IBM mainframe environment -- which is still doing fine, decades after the death of the mainframe was predicted. This ain't going to happen overnight.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you read on, you realize this is just a bit of journalistic bluster since the WEO is predicting the US economy to grow this year (just grow slowly). Growing slowly isn't a recession at all - I b
The biggest problem stays Balmer (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft forgot their customer (Score:3, Informative)
They seemed to get it in their head their customers were the people asking for DRM throughout the OS.
They seemed to believe the end users (the ones who have to pay for, and use their product) don't matter. They thought people just wanted some fancy need interface tweaks, and they'll accept whatever is forced on them.
It turned out they were wrong.
Microsoft need to strip it down, make the next version wicked fast, make it open to people who want to use their platform and media the way they want, and encourage developers. Backward compatibility? Only to the extent of running the top 500 well-behaved applications.
Give the next version away. Use the slogan "We're showing Windows the door".
Gartner is the Jeane Dixon of Computers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's what you guys need to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow, there needs to be some form of interface consistency across the board that is logical, useful and attractive to even the least intelligent of users.
Take the 3D application "Blender" for example. Most of us know that Blender itself is fairly powerful when used correctly by the right person. Yet despite the fact that Blender is both power and free, your typical consumer level user is far more likely to gravitate toward products like Carrara Studio, based almost entirely on it's presentation and interface design. People don't like it when their software intimidates them and they are more than willing to pay good money to avoid it whenever possible.
You also have to consider that time is a major factor as well. While anyone could "learn" to use Blender effectively and efficiently, the time invested in overcoming the learning curve is too much for many of us. If you were to compare Blender's interface directly against Carrara Studio's interface. Most users would again gravitate toward Carrara since they perceive a much lower investment of time involved in trying to "get it". The reality though, is that the core learning curve on either of these apps for most functions is probably identical.
Overall though, it's likely going to be a lot more difficult than it sounds to put a new face on Linux to make it pretty, useful and non-threatening to the average user. Hell, Apple's been trying for nearly 10 years with Mac OS X, and they've only just barely got it right. (Despite the numerous flaws...) It can be done, but it'll take a lot of effort to really pull it off.
Re:Here's what you guys need to do... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's bad. Really really bad. It's bad because they won't be able to afford to develop their way out of their problems if the cashflow into the OS division becomes a serious drag on the bottom line. The current Windows system is so large that it requires armies of programmers to develop it's many little pieces, and any sort of "global project" is simply impossible -- as Vista demonstrated.
The situation is extremely similar to Apple in the mid-90s with the Copland project (go read the wiki article). As the project grew it got to the point where they needed an infinite number of people to develop it (see "Mythical Man Month"). Combined with rapidly dwindling sales, and thus revenue, they couldn't even afford a finite number of developers, and the entire project imploded.
As Copeland demonstrated, the solution is to start over with a new plan. Let's not forget that Apple has switched platforms _four_times_ (68k -> PPC -> OS X -> Intel). If they can do it, so can MS. But if MS is going to do it, they are going to have to pull the trigger, and every release of the existing code base makes that decision harder and harder.
Working against MS is the fact that they are *not* near death. Apple's brush with extinction meant there was very few people to piss off when the inevitable happened and the old systems were semi-abandoned into the "penalty box" (Blue Box). MS has hundreds of millions of users, it's going to make their life extremely difficult. VMs may indeed work, given recent advances, and if they can isolate applications in different VMs then they might make the system more secure as a free offshoot.
Maury
The REAL reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing but shamless pandering (Score:4, Insightful)
Any software developer knows that 'radical changes' to working (however imperfectly) code is a bad idea. The only thing really wrong with Vista (other than the necessity of all those graphics in the first place, which boils down to a matter of opinion) is the video drivers, which can be blamed on Nvidia and ATI, not Microsoft. I get similar problems using the proprietary binary drivers on Linux from time to time as well though. It usually only crashes Xwindows rather than requiring a reboot, but you probably shouldn't be running a 3d graphics on a machine with uptime requirements in the first place.
Mr. Silver and Mr. MacDonald are either:
a) Complete morons
b) Covert Linux enthusiasts frustrated by Linux's slow advances in the desktop space
c) Very knowledgeable about the direct relationship between sensationalism and ratings and lack thereof between intelligent analysis and ratings
Try this quick-fix (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Read Meat For A Friday.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
After all these years saying Gartner "analysts" doesn't know their as from their elbow, I am *so* conflicted ...
Re:Gartner analysts? (Score:4, Interesting)
And really, there are a lot of people who don't have a clue, who need "analysts" to help them form opinions: they're called "customers" or in some circles "clients".
what are you talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
Presumably the first two options are disallowed by policy and machine setup. The latter is a hazard of running computers. That's not security through obscurity, that's security through proper setup and patching the OS to make sure exploits are eliminated as they're discovered.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I guess Xubuntu and Fluxbuntu should develop a similar Kiosk admin tool.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I know people who were used to Windows XP and managed to use a Macintosh running Leopard without any assistance (including figuring out how to use the touchpad with two fingers), but had real problems using Vista.
Given the UI differences between Vista and Windows _95_ (let alone XP) are almost all cosmetic, whereas the UI differences between any version of Windows and any version of MacOS [X] are most fundamental, I'm going to have to call bullshit.
Anyone having trouble going XP to Vista is going to have
Re:Hacking the setup (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is they can't trash Linux since they only have write access to /home/user. Neither can they install games except to /home/user. It's trivial to simply reset /home/user to a default state with every login. Like most changes on Linux, this does not require a reboot.
Rights are properly configured on Linux by default. Your hypothetical kids in the library won't be able to touch anything system related, or anything not owned by the user. There is no configuration required to enforce this.
That is not how it works in Windows. Yes, you can enforce user levels in XP but some apps will not work, and it is pretty easy to bypass anyway. Maybe Vista is better, but I certainly don't expect to see Vista on a public terminal anytime soon.
Re:Hacking the setup (Score:5, Informative)
2) Many apps don't run well or at all on a properly secured Windows. Ubuntu's Unix like base means apps are designed to expect a rights restricted environment so it's much less painful.
#2 Is actually Vista's largest problem. Vista is trying to force good application software design that runs against years of experience in the Windows world and it's going to take a long time for app makers to adjust to the new reality.
Re:Hacking the setup (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never seen a well-run Windows lab that didn't have Norton Ghost (or equivalent) installed to re-image the machines on a regular basis. While the newer versions of Windows are much better than the previous ones in this regard, it's much easier to secure a system that was designed from the ground-up for multi-user functionality. The NT code-base was designed that way, but a lot of bad habits migrated over from the DOS-based Windows's.
I prefer to have a platform with less features but a stable design at its base (*nix) than a platform with lots of features but an unstable and unsecure foundation (Win32).
To use a real-world analogy (I've been involved in a lot of construction stuff recently): adding new trim, or even remodeling a room, is much easier than replacing the foundation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows vs Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)