New Windows Vista

[phantasus]

hello, i post this whit 2 reasons. the first one cuz im fairly new and what to say hi.
so Hi everyone!

also, to try to start a conversation about new windows vista. i realy dont like it and prefer XP .Vista does looks cooler, but i have readed it is not so funtional. its principal problems are of compativilyti.
so what do you think?

[Gwyn]

I haven't used vista yet. the only OSes I use on a regular basis right now is XP and OSX. I assume that the PC labs at school will convert over next year or something.

[Databits]

Vista uses a technology that more or less tells you what you can and can not run on your computer. I dislike that intensely and have been against it ever since the concept of it. Granted, if done right it give extremely great security, but I feel they are abusing it for more than the trouble it's worth. It's based on licensing, which is a terrible thing for anyone in the open source community because... who controls the licensing? Microsoft? If so what's to stop them from telling you that you cant' run great open source and free software on their OS like Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, GAIM, etc...

[Xepher]

I'm with Data, in that I have more philosophical/moral issues with Vista than with the actual technology. As far as the tech goes, it's a new product, so  there's still a lot of rough edges and things to tune before judging it as a final product. Of course, that's a little sad considering you pay full product price for it already. Some of the new infrastructure and kernel-level stuff has some interesting designs to it, and if it works like it should, will definitely be better than XP. On the other hand, they've thrown a lot of useless garbage in on top of it, and I don't just mean the eye candy. The DRM system, and the "trust chain" it requires in all drivers and software, should die in a fire. Good portions of the UI design (like the continuing reduction in options) should DIAF too. The license terms are also abysmal, preventing you from running it in a virtual machine (AKA, as a second OS under Mac or Linux) unless you buy the super-expensive premium editions.

All in all, I'd say it's a perfect example of Microsoft's schizophrenic nature. They start with a bunch of extremely talented and well paid software engineers, who go "We work for the biggest and best software company on the planet, let's make a product that proves it." They build this great OS design, rock solid as can be expected, and get most of it to a testable phase. Then the other half of MS steps up. Corporate says "The movie and music studios want protection in there, so break everything in your elegant driver system, and crush it to death beneath all this ludicrously complex DRM." Then marketing goes "All those Mac ads make us look dumb, so go make everything shiny, and easy to use..." "But we've only got a few months left before release!" "Then just get rid of all the options, then it will at least LOOK easy to use."

Microsoft is one of those weird companies where beta software has a habit of working better than the final release, because they haven't tacked on all the garbage yet. I'll give Vista another year before I really judge it though, and I'll wait to get my hands on a copy of server edition (or whatever they call it now) to do so.

[Databits]

You know, just because they have this "no use on VM's without our special package" doesn't mean people will care. People will still emulate it, and for all intensive purposes, it's still in the software only layer, so people will break their special DRM shit within a month tops. Look at things like iTunes, where their encoding algorithm is broken within a week of release. I wouldn't expect less for Vista either.

I just wish the higher ups in things like the government would go "ok guys, this is bullshit, remove that garbage now!". But in that case MS would do what it always does and throw money at the problem till it quites down. Sometimes I hate the way our government runs. :-/

[Xepher]

Of course I know it will be broken quickly and whatnot... in fact, it already has been, but that's not a valid thing to consider when actually discussing a product as shipped. Just because other people will eventually fix it, doesn't remove the fact that it's a bad idea/product on it's own. And yes, people will ignore the "No VM" clause too, but once you break the contract, violate the DMCA, and hack around all the bad stuff, are we still discussing the same "Vista" that consumers paid money for?

I have an mp3 player that's nearly 6 years old, from the days before iPods. It was a pretty horribly designed product, with an abysmal UI, poor battery life, and "only" 20GB storage. So why did I buy it, and why am I still using it? Three things, first I replaced the harddrive with a 60GB one, and secondly, I replaced the batteries with 2000mah ones, and http://www.rockbox.org/ lives up to it's name. Between the two, I've taken a rather mediocre product, and loved using it for years. By replacing all the software (and the main parts of the hardware) it finally doesn't suck. The only reason I bought the hardware itself is simply that it's the one piece you can't download or create yourself. Vista, on the other hand, is nothing BUT software. There's nothing that stops you from running a purely free OS on your PC, and instantly "fixing" all the problems with Vista. But to actually judge Vista, we have to ignore the fact that Linux, Mac, or lots of other software/hacks/etc exist, and just review what MS is providing in the box, not what a bunch of additional software/fixes/hacks/contract-violations will let it be. Sorry if that ran a bit long, or if it comes across as snapping at you... not intentional.

As for the government... it's not MS that's trying to put DRM into your computer. MS wants a piece of the media pie. They've been trying for years with things like WebTV, data subchannels in broadcast TV, Windows "Media Center," the Zune, X-Box etc. They've got a one-trick pony with their OS, and they're trying desperately to leverage that into a big stake in content/media distribution. But in order to play the game, they have to keep hollywood and the music industry happy, and the MAFIAA insist on DRM in everything, so MS gives it to them. It's not MS lobbying the government to let them keep/put DRM in everything, it's the MAFIAA insisting on it to MS, in order to make any deals with the industry. The only DRM microsoft wants is windows genuine advantage. As long as you pay for Vista and Office, they couldn't care less what else you pirate. Sure, consumers don't want DRM, but they don't have a say. Who actually BUYS a copy of windows anyway? It either comes pre-installed on your computer if you're an end user, or you're a large business, and in that case, you don't get affected by the DRM anyway (since you're running servers, not watching movies), so what do you care?

I know I said it before, but "DRM, DIAF!"

[Aetre]

i'm still clinging to windows 2000 here, and waiting for linux to fix its problems.

if possible, i would like never to own a vista computer for all the above reasons.

[Databits]

Linux won't fix its problems. See there are two versions of suck in an OS. On one side, you've got Windows, which has the issue of trying to be backwards compatible. Then on the flip side you've got Linux in which, for most cases, good luck getting your old software to work without a lot of extra work. In addition, actually, the vista security framework is, admittedly, a better setup than even that of Linux now, which is one of Linux's biggest strong points.

[Xepher]

I could argue with you on security, as there are many ACL schemes that are a lot better than Vista, but they aren't usually the default in most distros, and it's certainly more difficult to set up.

As for fixing the problems with linux. I don't think old software not running really is one for most people. The reason being, most software you use in linux is compiled new from source all the time. The main exceptions are a few commercial packages which release only binary executables, but very few home users would ever need those.

Most of the complaints I hear about linux from people who are new to it, or just trying it can be summarized in one picture: http://macrochan.org/get.py?sha1=YIQ63VGCKXNGWQT6IXIGUXNB555P5OGC

Aetre, what problems were you talking about? Not that I'm trying to evangelize you to the Cult of Tux or anything, but... :-)

[Databits]

There's a reason that most companies plain flat out don't even bother writing Linux ports of their software. A few of the big ones being that there are far too many flavors of Linux out there, so you'd need to stick to a small popular subset if you wanna stay sane. Now with open source stuff, that's not an issue, because you can generally recompile the software for your system. However, in terms of a commercial project, that's not an option unless you wanna open source your stuff, which completely defeats the purpose of it being commercial software in the first place.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for open source, and I love Linux, but when it comes to writing things like games, I'd avoid it.

[Xepher]

That is the real conundrum left for linux... games. Though it's not really too difficult for the most part it seems. UT2003, with it's binary executables, still runs on my bleeding edge gentoo install, and gentoo didn't even exist as a distro when that game came out, so it sure wasn't made specifically for it or anything. I do agree though, from a developer's standpoint, it's a royal pain, and often not worth the effort.

[Databits]

I hate to admit it, but DirectX is loads more powerful than OpenGL at this point. They have a lot to catch up on.

[Aetre]

Aetre, what problems were you talking about? Not that I'm trying to evangelize you to the Cult of Tux or anything, but... :-)

1. hardware setup. scanners, webcams, printers...
we live in the world of plug and play, and for many models of these and other hardware items, linux has yet to make it so.

2. while linux itself has never crashed on me, several programs on linux have. i get the impression that two thirds of all programs designed for linux are perpetually in beta; i've even had firefox crash about three times a week, on multiple linux distros.

3. linux still does not have a good media player solution. it does if you're good at hacking. but i'm not good at hacking. and yes, i've tried mplayer; still doesn't work on a lot of stuff where it should. and, of course, it crashes too often (see #2 above).

4. it has been three years since i first noticed this problem, and linux still hasn't fixed it: it is impossible to send a file to someone over an instant messenger program. one can receive just fine, but one cannot send. this is an example of a "small annoyance" that just plain irks me. there are others like it, and they all amount to a category of "basic things that linux just can't do but windows can."

5. i have yet to see a linux distro that did not at some point require me to access the command line to run something or fix something. usually fix something. this is not good.

6. the whole system of "mounting" and "unmounting" drives in linux confuses the heck out of me. why is this not always automatic and behind the scenes, out of the user's view? i've had linux media players (see #2 and #3) play a cd that i insert into the cd-rom drive, only to find out later that i cannot open the cd-rom drive to get the cd out again. the program was apparently still taking control over the drive and wouldn't let go of it. hitting "eject" on the program was as useless as hitting "eject" on the drive itself. a linux user told me there's a fix for it if i want to go to the command line (see #5), and i might have done so, had this been an isolated issue and not one of several similar issues i'd encountered over the past month. also, while i know floppies are outdated, i have yet to find a good reason why ejecting a floppy disk is a two-step process in linux (unmount, and THEN you can eject). this should be automatic as well.

yes, i can go into the command line, and yes i can click two things to make a floppy disk eject, and yes i can probably do an hour's worth of internet searching, downloading, compiling, and command-line configuring to get some of the "simplest" linux programs to work.

but i don't wanna.

so there. *raspberry*

[/rant]

[Xepher]

1. Yes, definitely depends on the hardware. Most of the external stuff (usb drives, scanners, cell phones) I use today "just work" when I plug it in, but then there's a lot of obscure stuff that I've spent ages trying to make work before I got it right. Tablets (in pressure-sensing tablet mode, not just mouse control) always get me annoyed. Printers that don't support postscript are also quite annoying.

2. Hmm, that's actually pretty poor performance, even by my crash-happy distro standards. If firefox crashes on me, it's usually because I've done something incredibly stupid, like open 137 tabs at once when I'm already low on memory. I'd say there's got to be something causing that kind of failure that's not normal, but I don't know what it is.

3. Not sure what distro you're using. Many distros don't include legal-grey-area codecs, like the MS windows or realplayer ones, and so mplayer isn't able to play a lot of things. Heck, for a while, some didn't even include mp3 support because of legal issues. When I've got it configured with a full set of codecs, it plays everything I've found. The one problem I had for a while was .asx or other streaming files. Turns out you have to use the "-playlist" option for most of those to work correctly. But yeah, annoying to setup initially, but it seems solved to my satisfaction.

4. I send and receive files with gAIM all the time. You have to setup forwarding in your router for it to work is the catch. I had to do the same on windows, but that was three years ago, maybe they automated since then?

5. Not gonna deny that one. Personally, I'd rather type in a command as shown in a tutorial or tech doc, than try and navigate through 57 levels of menus to get at the settings I need though. I actually troubleshoot on the command line in windows most of the time too though, and I know it's not for everyone.

6. There's a big, long-winded explanation for why it's that way, but I'll skip it. Suffice to say, macs make you do it to, by dragging the disk to the trashcan, and if you use a USB disk on windows you have to do the same thing... unmounting is what you're doing when you go to that little systray icon that lets you stop the device. With CDs in windows (since you can't corrupt them) it lets you eject it whenever. If you do it when something is using the disk though, you get a big blue screen asking for the disk back, and there's no way to get back to your desktop without putting the disk back in. Linux and Macs just act overly cautious about that. As for mounting, modern linux setups allow you to automatically mount a drive when it's inserted, and to unmount/eject the disk from one click on the disk icon on the desktop. Windows has a setting to not buffer writes to disks like that, which makes them run slower, but if the light's not blinking, then you can pull it "safely." You can do the exact same thing in linux. Floppy disks are really the only thing that requires a two stage unmount and then eject process still.

As for "but i don't wanna" well, there's nothing wrong with that. For all I can argue about most of those problems being "fixed" it still requires more initial setup than a windows install, and that's not for everyone. Use whatever works best for you. If you ever want to try and solve some of the problems you had though, feel free to ask for help. :-)

[reinder]

In SuSE 10.0, all my devices work as plug and play except my new optical mouse, which acts strangely. I ought to spend some time figuring that one out as it is a bit of a nuisance. The scanner worked without additional configuration. As for drives, all my external drives automount when I plug them in. Well, I have to hit a confirmation dialogue, but that's fine by me. Since the latest reinstall, automounting drives actually works better than it does on my studio's Windows machine, which sometimes fails to recognise the portable drive. Since my last upgrade, CDs also eject when I hit the eject button on the front, unless something's using them (and in some cases, as when I'm ripping a CD, even when something is using them).

I'm quite happy with Xine as a media player, though it's a bit crash-prone when playing DVDs. However, as documented in another thread, media playback in an SuSE installation out of the box is badly crippled, and I had to recompile and reinstall a lot of software to get it to work properly, including playing DVDs at all. This was a big waste of time and is a major weakness in SuSE.

I've decided I don't like MPlayer as a media player. However, it's been very useful to me as a DVD ripping tool, thanks to Xepher's help. Xine's my thing, though to a large extent that's a result of SuSE's builtin Xine/Kaffeine bias.