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Declawing Windows: Impossible?
hyrdra writes: "This story on CNN seems to indicate the intentions of the nine remaining states in the ongoing anti-trust case against Microsoft: to produce a stripped down version of Windows that will allow 3rd party vendors to insert components such as browsers, media players, and IM clients. While this may not be news, Microsoft's defense is. Microsoft defends the solution by remarking Windows was not designed to be a modular system, and the current operating system is highly dependant on core technologies like IE and Windows Media Player. Removing them would result in a slower, much-less user friendly Windows that would be a support nightmare."
It is possible to remove a whole lot of the default crap that ships with Windows.
Before I switched to Linux full-time, I tamed my Windows box with 98lite. To quote from the specs page, the current version allows removal of:
* Internet Explorer
* Media Player7 (Me)
* MovieMaker (Me)
* PC Health (Me)
* Media Player2
* DirectX
* Direct Media
* Task Scheduler
* MS Cryptography
* Web Folders
* Internet Control Panel
* Internet Search
* Telephony
* ISDN Configuration Wizard
* Disk Defragmenter
* Scandisk
* ICM Color Profiles
* Imaging Support
* System Information
* CleanUp Manager
* Tune-up Wizard
* Active Movie
* Dr. Watson
* Data Access Components
* Connection Manager
* Email Stationery
* Windows Help Files
* Legacy Windows 3.1 files
* DOS command Files
* Desktop Color Schemes
* Desktop Tiles
98lite allows the removal of the entire MSHTML engine and all the other Windows Media crap. So, if "the current operating system is highly dependant on core technologies like IE and Windows Media Player", I sure didn't notice it after I ran 98lite.
--jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
(NOTE: I'm not debating the issue IF tying IE's core libs to win32 was a WISE decision or not)
:).
The fact that IE's core libs are part of a greater lib-set (the shell extension libraries, part of win32) is discussed a zillion times and can't be denied the tying is there and there to stay. Removing 'IE' from windows by the tools available do not remove the core libraries because these are also used by the shell and a lot of 3rd party tools. Removing also these core libraries is not a solution, especially because 3rd party tool users on windows NEED the libraries to use the 3rd party tools anyway. These tools will break OR these users have to install IE anyway to use these tools, so the removal of these core libs is IMHO not that useful.
Although I'm a sole win32 developer and like some of the Microsoft technologies a lot, I simply can't understand why they say 'Windows is not designed to be modular'. It IS setup and designed to be modular. The problem is: the modules designed are not designed in a way that they are usable
Also: windows media player is a technology which uses codec's in the form of COM components. I simply can't see why windows media player can't be removed from windows: it's a shell around COM components.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Yes, let's take a loot at the OEM's.
Microsoft has reduced them to mere box pushers. Over the years, MS has removed every option that the OEM's have had to customize their offerings. When OEM's tried to go their own way MS threatened to remove their licenses for "dilluting the Windows trademark". Compaq wanted to offer Netscape. IBM wanted to offer SmartSuite and OS/2 dual boots. Other companies created their own custom GUI overlays. MS deliberately and systematically shut them all down.
So, Microsoft removed customization, they welded IE into Windows in an attempt to make it irremovable. Maybe they even succeeded.
The problem is that all of these actions were done solely to maintain or increase their monopoly. These actions weren't undertaken to make a better product. Since these actions have been deemed illegal and anticompetitive, then too bad if it's difficult to undo them.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
It's non-trivial only because MS made it so. And that was one of the points of the trial, that there was no necessity for MS to integrate IE in the manner it did -- mixed haphazardly with all sorts of non-browser functionality such that removal of IE-related DLLs also broke other OS components. MS could just as easily have isolated the browser and HTML-rendering in separate DLLs without adverse effect on the OS; that it chose not to was for monopolistic, not technical, reasons. I hope the courts grant the states' request and order MS to modularize the OS. MS made its bed, maybe the courts will make Gates sleep in it.
There is no technical reason why MS couldn't have designed its OSes with greater modularity -- and in fact for maintenance and upgrade purposes it would have been better had it done so. MS's purpose seems to be to make IE unremovable simply so that it can claim IE is unremovable. If Microsoft can get away with bolting the browser to the OS, then Media Player is next (goodbye RealPlayer; nice knowin' ya Quicktime), followed by text-to-speech renderers (so sorry ViaVoice), online financial transacting functionality (adios, Quicken, hello MS tax), MS-TCP/IP (good riddance, Internet), ad nauseum.
if I was writing a media player application for Windows, I'd expect the Media Player components to be there
But does it have to be Microsoft's DLLs? Modularity, couple with a published API, would assure developers of the presence of standardized multimedia functionality, but would give end-users free choice.
Netscape would, essentially, like to make life difficult for developers by making them develop and test with multiple HTML renderers/browser components
Assuming all renderers complied with an industry standard (say, W3C), what does the developer care whose renderer is being invoked? There is a lot MS could do to play nice with the rest of the industry, unless Redmond is admitting its programmers are incapable of solving whatever technical hurdles might lie in the way of such a goal.