Windows Nearly Ready For Desktop Use

wallykeyster writes "NewsForge (ed: a Slashdot sister site) has an interesting review of Windows XP Home, written from the perspective of a longtime Linux user (ed: Editor roblimo). The article clearly is intended to be somewhat humorous while making a point to the 'Linux isn't ready for the desktop' crowd. The reviewer does a fair job of pointing out the strengths of Windows along with the weaknesses that would be apparent to someone trying to make the switch from Linux." From the article: "Windows XP can't be considered consumer-ready until it has driver support for common LCD monitors during its installation and bootup procedure, especially if those monitors are easily and routinely recognized by popular Linux distributions. It's possible that the monitor manufacturers aren't willing to give Microsoft and other proprietary operating system companies the information they need to create appropriate drivers and that the manufacturers, not Microsoft, deserve the blame for this problem."

Comments

Longtooth will solve these problems...

[rice_burners_suck]

Windows is nearly ready for the desktop, and that includes security as well as LCD driver technology that actually works. This will all happen in the next major revision of Windows, Longtooth.

Sources whom I consider accurate have told me that despite Microsoft's claims that Longtooth will be released by 2006 or 2007, the planned release date is actually late in 2019. Microsoft's secret goals for this version are:

• To reduce the user's perception of the complexity of Windows.
• To gain increased security from emerging threats, such as viruses, worms, spam, spyware, adware, malware, hackers, and phreakers, among others.

Microsoft will accomplish these goals through a variety of changes. First, Longtooth will no longer be based on the Windows NT design philosophy, as were Windows 2000 and XP. Instead, Microsoft will release MS-DOS 9.0 2003, a 64-bit multithreaded DOS written in VisualBASIC.Net, and Windows Longtooth will run on top of that. Also, Longtooth will contain more code changes than any previous version of Windows, both in the number of changed source lines of code (SLOCs) and in the percentage of the total Windows codebase changed. Tremendous numbers of new features are being implemented in completely new code.

More importantly, Microsoft employees are combing through the codebase, in a relentless search for code that is mature, stabilized, and proven. This search has proved difficult, but when found, such code will be marked for reimplementation. I'm told that most of this code will be reimplemented in VisualBASIC.NET, even if the prior version was written in another language, such as C or C++. Programmers making the new VisualBasic.NET code are not allowed to look at the code that already exists, so that fixes to known issues will not be known until well after the software is deployed to millions of users.

The reason for these changes is simple: Study after study conducted by Microsoft has proven that security through obscurity is the only way to go, especially in an operating system deployed to millions of users, with many instances running mission critical applications in finance, industry, government, and other sectors. Microsoft has identified that viruses, worms, spam, spyware, adware, malware, hackers, and phreakers are able to compromise Windows security because vulnerabilities in the code are known. By changing much of the codebase, especially the stablest and most proven parts, Microsoft will thwart the efforts of malicious programmers, as it will take time for them to find the new vulnerabilities in the unknown code.

To meet Microsoft's first goal of reducing the user's perception of the complexity of Windows, Microsoft will integrate a new technology, dubbed Microsoft Windows User Simplicity And Security Manager 2003, into Longtooth. This technology will hide all configuration settings from the user. All settings will be completely automatic, and the user will have no need to know or care what is under the hood. In reality, Longtooth will be the most complex version of Windows yet, with thousands of configuration settings controlling nearly every function of the operating system. The settings will be produced by discovery algorithms designed to automatically set a "sane" configuration. Since there will be no interface to modify any setting, the user will have no choice in his configuration, thus simplifying the user's perception of the system's complexity.

To meet the second goal of increased security, these settings will be scattered throughout the OS, its components, and in other areas of the file system. For example, Microsoft knows that viruses, worms, spam, spyware, adware, malware, hackers, and phreakers are interested in moving the icons on user desktops without the user's permission, so settings controlling the number and size of icons appearing on the desktop will be scattered throughout parts of the registry, batch files, .ini files, web bookmarks, in the Windows kernel, in the file allocation table, in th

Re:Longtooth will solve these problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I love Linux (and the uNix-y underpinnings of the Powerbook I'm typing on at the very moment), I have to say that most of us geeks just don't get it - nearly all users in the world are technophobes who appreciate and need computers but have neither the desire, knowledge or need to access/tweak/control every last flippin' setting.

In many ways this post was really good, really funny and spot on... but I keep wondering when we'll will grok the fact that the things we find important (fine control, infinitely flexible features, elegant abstraction, cool frameworks) are astonishingly unimportant and even intimidating to the most of the world's technology users.

I really have no love for MS but at the same time, from a techno-secularist perspective, can you fault them for at least trying to give *the people* what they want and need? Is Linux giving the people what they really want and need? Is Apple? Are you?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... no one except geeks gives two sh*ts about what language any software is written in. But they do want it to be safe. And they defintely need it to work.

Frankly, I wish we'd stop being so damn smug about all this. And I wish we'd stop deluding oursleves into believeing that somehow the cool, geeky-tweeky OSs are the same ones that users want to buy and, subsequently, actually use.

Microsoft replies

[lecithin]

Microsoft:

Linux nearly ready for server use.

Re:Hmmmm

[RealAlaskan]

Parody is funny when it's based on the truth. As much as a piece of garbage that XP Home is, arguing (tongue in cheek or otherwise) that it's not ready for the desk top is a bit silly.

I wonder if that was the point? By the standards that the ``Linux isn't ready for the desktop'' crowd apply to Linux, Windows isn't ready for the desktop, either.

I haven't tried to install OSX, so I can say that no OS that I am familiar with is ``ready for the desktop'' by those standards.

Roblimo just took the standard ``Linux isn't ready for the desktop'' article, replaced Linux with Windows and visa versa, and threw in a couple of very accurate slams at Windows weak points.

Good parody, based on truth. That's why it was funny.

Re:oh, and another thing before XP's ready

[DrSkwid]

simple, it is time to start stopping