Slashdot Mirror

Linux will lose most of its security advantages if it ever runs Windows software off the shelf (especially those viruses, trojans and ransomeware).

Those emulation layers are PROTECTION from the scourge of Win32. If I ever need Windows, I'll do it in VirtualBox with a fresh dev VM from http://modern.ie/ then nuke the image the minute I'm done.

Dunno, I do have some thoughts I'm pretty happy going BSG style with my computers. Only one needs to be connected to internet. Behind a NAT running only Virtualbox under Linux; Virtualbox is running only a single VM configured with immutable harddrive - MS appcompat IE 11 on Win 7 (directly from MS http://modern.ie./ Every web page I visit is in separate vm. I kill the VM after I am done with the web page, and nothing remains on its disk. Other services that make sense to use are IRC and some usenet. the Web is place I no longer want to be, especially AJAX, WebRTC, WEBGL, and such. You simply don't need those. All the content is crap, the valuable resource are people interactions, and a ham radio will do better than facebook these days.

You can download Virtual Machine images of Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 from http://modern.ie./ I use them for their intended purposes (testing websites in different flavours of Windows & IE), but they work just as well for anything else.

I hate the ongoing assumption that "media" just mean "internet TV".

Anyway, this appears to be specifically about developing a legally-free video codec. Anyone who's skeptical that it can be done should be pointed to the previous similar project to develop an audio codec: opus, which has been done, successfully, for a couple of years now and was developed in a similar fashion by a similar coalition of companies (and driven largely by Xiph/Mozilla's work as looks like this video codec will probably be, with input from other relevant tech). Opus is extremely successful technically (I don't think there is any other general-purpose lossy audio codec - free or proprietary - that opus doesn't handily beat), and has been moderately successful in the market (uptake by forward-looking developers was fast, Google supports it, Cisco supports it, and even friggin' MICROSOFT has committed to it now...)

My only complaint about opus so far is that Google's webm-only video fixation keeps them from remembering to support .opus audio files often. Android "Lollipop" and later has native opus codec support but still doesn't recognize .opus files as media. (VLC for Android does, though...) Chrome had a long delay in getting opus audio enabled for the same reason. Jerks. (Chrome does support .opus now, though, and has for a while).

If work on the video codec goes anywhere near as well for this coalition as it did for Opus audio, it ought to be very successful. Maybe more so, given that much of this coalition was also involved with opus and perhaps have learned some useful lessons on how to run projects like this.

(Admittedly, that's still an "if", but I'm actually optimistic here.)

Is everyone going to ship it? Are Apple and Microsoft? Presently, neither support WebRTC, which requires VP8 as well as H.264 (Apple never comment on future releases of Safari, and Microsoft do "not currently plan" to implement the WebRTC API, yet alone the other requirements). It doesn't help establish a new baseline for HTML5 video unless all browsers with any notable marketshare support it --- and there's nothing indicating that NetVC is going to get universal adoption, as far as I'm aware.

I guess we should have seen this coming..

Agreed, but did you know that MS give away free VMs* for testing IE?

I'm not suggesting that running IE in a VM means it's not locked-in but it's pretty handy, even for Windows based web devs I'd imagine.

* Free as in beer, not free as in liberty, obviously.

Looks like the year 2015 will mark the revenge of the web.
With an all-round browser support of asm.js, the road is paved for all kinds of heavy duty apps running in your favorite browser.
Hopefully MS is not just considering asm.js for Chakra https://status.modern.ie/asmjs

No, because all they're doing is supporting the W3C GamePad API (which the IE status page at http://status.modern.ie/gamepa... says is available in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera already) which supports all gamepads, including the Xbox controller (with Xbox controller drivers, which for the Xbox One controller Microsoft has officially released).

LOL, and you believe that site is real? The images there are not maintained and are already expired. Microsoft doesn't allow you to run them. It is a complete scam from Microsoft. Thanks for wasting our time fanboi.

Expired and not maintained? New images were posted here just earlier this month, the ones I've tried work fine. http://www.modern.ie/en-us/vir...

Also, I know it is the go-to Slashdot argument, but you don't have to be a fanboi to find this useful. You could for instance be a web developer. But I guess people see what they want to see.

Microsoft would help themselves if they released free VM images of the latest Windows that's limited to running their browsers.

They do.

http://modern.ie/en-gb/virtual...

Also this tool: http://modern.ie/en-us/tools

btw.. OP including Safari in this argument against IE is pretty ironic, since it requires developers to buy a Mac..

Microsoft would help themselves if they released free VM images of the latest Windows that's limited to running their browsers.

They do.

http://modern.ie/en-gb/virtual...

Also this tool: http://modern.ie/en-us/tools

btw.. OP including Safari in this argument against IE is pretty ironic, since it requires developers to buy a Mac..

Microsoft would help themselves if they released free VM images of the latest Windows that's limited to running their browsers.

They do.

http://modern.ie/en-gb/virtual...

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/vir...

Get the vista VM with IE 7. There is no excuse for still using XP.

Guess I will have to hire someone else then.

It is not like there are free VM's to use nor are there free virtualizers available.

To say no to the world's most popular browser and letting your customers give a leg up to the competition whose site works just fine for their customers is inexcusably. It is not like IE 9+ is not standards compliant or anything.

I see many who claim NO IE EVER!!! .. also make websites that only work with -webkit CSS extensions and viewed best with Chrome, yet bash IE 6?!

Even Windows 7 is showing its age as it takes forever with updates on a fresh install and workarounds if you need to test older IE browsers.

Just get VM's for free from Microsoft for your desired IE version and OS.
http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

I just run top and sorted by memory usage. I see firefox (with 10 tabs open), thunderbird, emacs, skype, nautilus, dropbox, Xorg followed by many other system applications. I have mysql and postgresql running by the don't make it into the top 50 or something. If I had a ruby on rails application running, or cassandra, they'd be in the top 10. I can run all of these quite comfortably together on my 4 GB laptop, unless something gets unexpectedly too big and I have to kill it. But I'm always a little on swap. I know that if I start Eclipse I have to close something else. IntelliJ is much more RAM friendly but luckily my job doesn't involve stuff for which I need an IDE. emacs is really enough. Even vim would do.

What I can't run in 4 GB is all of the above plus more than one VM. Actually if the VM is not a headless Linux server or a WinXP client I can't run it unless I close some of the applications I keep open all the time. The free Win7 and Win8 VMs from http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads tend to use a lot of RAM and if one does web development it nice to have a couple of them open for testing on IE. That's less and less important because all of my customers moved to Firefox or Chrome over the years but some of *their* customers are still on IE, which is getting more standard. (BTW, I used to run this laptop with Windows and a virtualized Linux development server, but as my job is to develop for Linux servers and web browsers I decided to go the other way round and I'm perfectly happy with that.)

Furthermore there are occasional memory hogs. A sample program from a Coursera big data course (don't remember which one) required 2 GB of RAM to process some sample csv file for an assignment. Those were program and data provided by the teacher and there was nothing I could do about it. Plus I do occasional video editing. Extra RAM is always handy.

Because of those memory constraints (and end of support) I'm looking for a new laptop and I'm not considering anything that can't be upgraded at 16 GB minimum. I like the internals of HP's new Zbook 15 (fully user serviceable parts, up to 32 GB RAM, up to two disks, etc). I don't like some of its exteriors: the keyboard with small arrow keys and the number pad which turns it into an interface for left handed people (the touchpad is placed to the very left, which is common but inappropriate for 90% of the population). I definitely prefer the keyboard arrangement of their Elitebook 850 g1 (about the same width and no numberpad), which stops at 16 GB and is a weaker machine in many other ways. Actually I prefer the case of my current nc8430, which has a better keyboard (more key travel) and a 16:10 screen (the zbook has to be wider to raise to the same screen height). My Core 2 Duo is still good enough for my job, disk speed (or lack of, compared to SSDs) is not a problem but obviously everybody welcomes a faster machine, me too. However the limited memory is definitely becoming a problem.

It seems pretty obvious (to me, anyway; I'm a home user rather than an IT worker) that in Windows 8, Microsoft wanted to try to appeal to both tablet users with Metro, and to desktop users with the traditional desktop, all in one release. So they bolted a tablet interface to a desktop interface. It's sort of an odd combination, especially if you're new to Metro. Since the OS boots into Metro, it also seems pretty obvious that Microsoft's design choices wouldn't please business users or home users with large, non-touchscreen monitors who aren't interested in their computers looking like a tablet.

As part of its marketing campaign for IE 11, Microsoft's made Windows 8.1 Pro Preview virtual machine images available, so it's easy to try it out for yourself. The Start button takes you back to the Metro start screen, unless you right-click on it, in which case it brings up a context menu allowing you access to some of the more technical aspects of the OS (i.e. control panel; power shell; etc.).

I haven't played with it enough yet to find the setting that allows you to boot straight into the desktop rather than Metro, but even so, it's just one click to go to the desktop. But what they really to make desktop users happy is a Start menu button application launcher, and if you want that, AFAIK, you still have to install a 3rd-party utility.

A web developer can browse in Firefox but still needs to test in IE, and in practice, this means testing in multiple versions of IE. Microsoft's solution has been to make each IE version available in the form of a multi-gigabyte VHD of Windows to run in VirtualBox. Good luck fitting those into your satellite or microwave plan's monthly cap or keeping a restaurant Wi-Fi connection going long enough to download those.

Here you go: http://www.modern.ie/en-US/virtualization-tools

I'll just leave this here:

IE Tester

And:

A Whole Collection of Windows VMs

"These images are specifically designed to run on Microsoft Virtual PC, and may or may not work in other hosting environments." I'd assume that Microsoft Virtual PC is available only for Windows. Users will need to buy a copy of Windows.

ievms has automatically handled setting these images up under the cross-platform VirtualBox for years. Nevertheless, you were pointed at outdated tools. You should be looking at modern.ie, where Microsoft offer virtual images for multiple virtualisation systems running on Windows, Mac and Linux.

So in order to test on every browser without having to own multiple computers, one would have to replace one's current computer with a Mac (to be able to run Safari for Mac)

Doing a decent job of testing for web developers is expensive. Buying a Mac isn't a big deal. second-hand Mac Minis are cheap. It's the mobile devices you need to worry about - and no, something running on your computer is not an adequate substitute.