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Microsoft Ponders Windows Successor
InfoWorldMike writes "Before Vista is even out of the gates, a Microsoft exec was talking Wednesday about Windows' replacement at a VC conference. Speaking at The Venture Forum conference, Microsoft's Bryan Barnett, a program manager for external research programs in the Microsoft Research group, said multicore architectures are of particular interest when weighing what to put in future operating systems at the company. "Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today," Barnett said. Well, with Vista in the pipeline as long as it has been, you must admit it is not surprising Microsoft is taking the long-term view. And it won't be built overnight: There is no timetable for a Windows successor right now. But early work on this effort has not yet been organized, with five or six small projects afoot in various places throughout the company, Barnett said."
Shouldn't this article instead be from the "twenty-years-too-late" department?
Nice! I bet it's going to ship with Duke Nukem Forever Part Deux
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
The three states of matter are solid, liquid, and this announcement ;-)
But seriously, does anybody think this announcement was intended to dissuade businesses and government agencies from trying the alternatives to Microsoft Windows that exist now? And will it work?
Yeah, you know what would be *funny*? If Microsoft licensed OS X.......
:-)
No, seriously..... OS X runs on Intel now, and Apple is working hard on compatibility layers for multiple OSs and it is the slickest, most stable, most beautiful mainstream OS out there right now. It would be especially funny as back some years under Gil Amelio, Apple actually looked at licensing Win NT for the new OS when Copeland was in horrible shape. Thank gawd that never happened or Apple would be where SGI is now (or worse).
Hey, you know that Microsoft has used Apple as their R&D arm for years now, right? Why not just formalize it?
In all fairness, I am not saying that Microsoft can't do it themselves, I'd just like to see a return to the good 'ol days when Microsoft made good, solid applications and were not trying to be all things to all people. They used to you know...... I am thinking of the early versions of Excel (Multiplan) and Word on the first Macintoshes along with Microsoft MacEnhancer, Chart and Basic.
Although one has to wonder what is going on when Microsoft's programmer team for Windows is in the several-thousands and Apple's development team for OS X is around 300.
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Lets not forget all of the "useful" features that they have cut out of it along the way. If Vista fails, it won't be just because of delays.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
What I think is odd about this is that the NT architecture has never really even been fully utilized, at least on the consumer side of Windows. In a lot of respects, NT is a pretty clever system, including highly individualizable security for files, processes, etc. It also supports multiprocessing well, contrary to the implication of the article. Point being, I'm not so sure the solution for Microsoft is to throw out NT and move on to something else (Singularity, or whatever it may be). I would suggest they instead look at the features already in place with NT and look at ways to actually enable and present them in a reasonable way in their consumer OSes. I guess this is the plan in Vista, but we'll see. The other thing I'd like to see Microsoft do is separate out the kernel-level framework (NT system, drivers, etc) from the UI framework, so that it would then be possible to treat those two elements separately, in the same way that Linux has the kernel and X/Window Manager stuff totally separated out. But, I guess that would make it harder for them to make money, so it's unlikely.
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"Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today," Barnett said.
Maybe MS should pay attention to the fact that they have never taken full advantage of any processor's power. Most products they have put out these days just hog system resources, forcing systems to have more powerful processors, more RAM, etc. without ever really harnessing their power. The increase in power is just to make it seem like the bloat-ware is running better than it actually is.
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"Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today," Barnett said.
Operating systems are suppose to use all our processing power?
I think Microsoft already knows what to do as a successor to Windows...
Just wait for Google to show us what a Google OS would look like... then do that.
I actually find this really interesting. Not that Microsoft is talking about a new OS after Vista, but that they're talking about it being a successor to Windows, not a new version of Windows.
.Net runtime whatchamajigger, so new .Net apps will run seamlessly on either Windows XP, Windows Vista, or the new OS. Then they'll hack VirtualPC to make a stripped-down XP or Vista run transparently in the background, and run old applications inside of that (and new hardware will be fast enough that performance won't be a problem). It's basically the same idea that Apple did five years ago with Classic, the Mac OS 9 emulator that runs on Mac OS X. Chances are, just like Apple modified the Mac OS Toolbox, named it Carbon, implemented Carbon in the new OS and added the CarbonLib library to the old OS so Carbon apps could (sort of, in theory) run on both platforms with no modifications (it didn't actually work that well, but it did make it possible to port existing apps without rewriting the whole thing), Microsoft will probably come up with a derivative of Win32 that apps can be ported to that will run on the new OS. Meanwhile, they'll move as much as they can over to .Net.
.Net and emulate Windows, then they'll have the flexibility to move to a different processor architecture if they want, without the compatibility problems that Apple is going through with that.
Microsoft has been trying to dig themselves out of the hole that they dug themselves into for several years now, and they can't do it (i.e. fix Windows) without breaking backwards compatibility with old applications, and as long as they keep releasing new versions of Windows, they have to maintain that backwards compatibility, or word will spread quickly and people won't buy it. Besides, if you have to buy new applications when you buy your new PC with the new OS, why not buy the Mac version of those apps instead, and switch?
But then Microsoft bought VirtualPC, and a solution began to unfold. If they release a new OS, and don't call it Windows, then they don't have to maintain backwards compatibility with existing Win32 applications in the OS. They'll port the
And hey, if they move what they can to
Flame on!
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today,"
ahem... a*hem*
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
They've been pondering Linux for a long time now.
just get rid of drive letters and use forwardslashes instead of backslashes and get rid of the \r\n linefeed crap and voila you have windows +1
Part of me feels like that even at this early stage the idea at MS is to add even more whiz bang bloat to Windows Next by "taking advantage of dual-core chips." Let the applications take advantage of them and the OS be a translator.
No sig for you!!
Vista won't fail, it doesn't really matter if it's far better than XP or not. Will Vista be more stable or secure than XP? Probably not. Will that matter? Probably not. It will look different and all the PC manufactures will preinstall it on their machines, everyone that buys a new PC will get and use it, and within several years after it's release it will be used by the majority of PC users (since the majority will have bought a new PC by then). Meanwhile the Mac lovers will call it a cheap ripoff of Mac OS X (which it probably is) and the Linux users will say you can get that stuff for free (watch the demo of Novell Linux 10 with xgl, it demonstrates all the cool windows effects MS is saying will be in Vista, and then some). But the majority of PC users won't know or care. To them it's a new feature when it shows up in MS Windows. The only thing that will break the cycle of everyone adapting MS's newest OS is the ability to effortlessly run Windows apps on Linux, or Mac. It's sad but true.
Bleh I'm gonna get modded down for this but oh well. If they want to do long term work, work on the stability and security of an operating system. Let's face it. Microsoft is here. Linux coming to a desktop may happen but as of now it's in pre-natal care. Microsoft does need to take some hints from *nix. Be secure. Be quick. Be able to be to customized. They need to work with the community (by that I mean other software companies like gaming companies) and make strict guidelines how it should be written to work with Windows correctly. But they also need to take input. Software companies well say, "well hey we need to do this because..." and instead of MS saying "nope" they should say "well we built the OS and know it so this won't work becasue.....but if you do this...". I started my experience using MS, I'm a linux user looking for a linux job, but at least in linux developer comminicate and things are implimated correctly. Windows is easy to use, windows is easy to fuck up, windows is hard to repair. Usually the best repair is a re-install. This need not be. Eye candy is great, but we need stability and security.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
"Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today,"
In other words:
The more resources that are available on a system, the more resources Windows will consume.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Then maybe a clever student, frustrated because the license won't allow him or her to modify it, will re-impliment a new OS out of Singularity. If they allow a lot of other people to contribute, it could get big really fast...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
HURD of cooperating multiprocessors?
Windows "Eventually"
I bet there is going to be a WinFs ... again
The next generation of windows, I think, will erase some of our antiquated notions about what an operating system "must" have (a boot sequence, a file system, etc.) To me, and I'm sure many other slashdotters who can remember MS-DOS, Windows XP seems like a very souped-up version of MS DOS. OS X (while it has a boot sequence, file system, etc.) just some how does not seem like MS-DOS. Every iteration of Windows so far seems to pile on more and more disguises for an elaborately dressed MS DOS. This pattern needs to stop.
it's called Linux. ;)
Does anyone else see a future code merge revealing that the protoypes work off horribly incompatible file systems?
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Translation: "We'll have to work extra hard to take the snap out of quad 100GHz processors."
1. Blinds.
2. Gates.
3. Sunscreens.
4. Smokescreens.
5. Chairs.... or rather, Chairs! Chairs! Chairs!!!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Personally, I think it would really r0x0r if the new OS shipped with an object-relational file system that had metadata, and a SQL-esque query syntax, and automated fall-over network distribution and...
um... how 'bout Linux. Worked for me at least.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
In other words:
Microsoft will one day release an operating system that is compatible with the hardware that is available at the time.
Seriously, how do you get a job like his? Does he get a parking space?
I vote Linux! If not that then any posix system is ok......thanks!
Before Vista is even out of the gates, a Microsoft exec was talking Wednesday about Windows' replacement at a VC conference.
.. this dual core thing has got us stumped... we're figuring out how to slow things down with dual core.
Gates looked at Vista, and left, holding his nose! Before we let this beast loose on gullible folks, we want to pacify them, saying we're working on a better alternative...
Speaking at The Venture Forum conference, Microsoft's Bryan Barnett, a program manager for external research programs in the Microsoft Research group, said multicore architectures are of particular interest when weighing what to put in future operating systems at the company. "Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today,"
Our policy has always been "Whatever Intel giveth (in speed), Microsoft taketh away!"
Barnett said. Well, with Vista in the pipeline as long as it has been, you must admit it is not surprising Microsoft is taking the long-term view.
Well... we've taken a long while to build some junk, we've thrown out all useful stuff we promised.. don't worry, we'll keep working harder and longer in similar fashion.
And it won't be built overnight: There is no timetable for a Windows successor right now.
WE WON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF ANNOUNCING TIME TABLES AGAIN... NEVER, EVER!!! The successor to Windows could come in the next centruy... we won't be there, we won't care, but there's nothing wrong living in hope... We'll announce this non-event, non-timetabled non-initiative in Slashdot though!
But early work on this effort has not yet been organized
We are proud to declare that we have NOT YET started this NON-INITIATIVE
With five or six small projects afoot in various places throughout the company, Barnett said.
Some five or six groups of disgruntled employees have given up on Vista.... and now, they're talking about joining Google to Build The Successor To Windows...
Actually, we should've posted this in Ask Slashdot... but we aren't part of the OSDL, and we have our pride.. so we announce it as News for Nerds... Thanks for your suggestions!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Operating systems exist to schedule time on the hardware and provide support for the apps being run. Does anyone in Microsoft see faster hardware for the applications to use and not for the OS to waste? The schedulers in modern systems can already take advantage of several processors/cores. Gate's law counteracts Moore's so well Windows Apps run at a constant speed over time.
The only thing that will break the cycle of everyone adapting MS's newest OS is the ability to effortlessly run Windows apps on Linux, or Mac.
I agree with everything you said except for that last one. Trying to adapt to run Windows programs is what killed OS/2, which at the time was a much better OS than Win3.1 (what wasn't?). A true object oriented, multi-tasking, 32-bit operating system that ran circles around Windows, except of course in running Windows apps. Why should anyone even bother to develop for another OS if any new one will just try to run Windows apps as well as Windows? If that's what you want well, then just get Windows!
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
There already is a successor. You know that Linux thing that everybody's been talking about? I hear that's a pretty good operating system.
This sig no verb.
Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today
Marketing is one thing, lying is another. Oh, wait, this is MS.
I so hate them when they speak about SW and OSes like there would exist nothing nowhere besides Windows. So, no wonder I don't ever like what they say.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
IBM had to totally re-invent itself. It had been the major player in the computer industry and was in danger of fading away to nothing.
Microsoft is, or will be soon, in the same boat. There are fewer and fewer reasons that one needs Microsoft. FOSS is becoming more and more viable. At some point ATI and NVIDIA will have to start playing nice with the open source community. Microsoft will be faced with the choice of evolving or fading away into obscurity. Usually companies fade away when thwacked upside the head by a disruptive technology (like Linux).
Talking about a successor to Windows just shows that they haven't realized the magnitude of the problem yet. (Or maybe Bill has and he's bailing out.)
Vista will be more sure because the design is more secure. The difference between security of Vista to XP will be like XP to Windows 95. Two features that just up front are,
* 100% encrypted partition. Boot manager needs a key (from USB + password) to read the OS
* Default user is non-admin. There is no Administrator account.
Business / Face value
Ozzie the wizard
Jun 22nd 2006
From The Economist print edition
Bill Gates replaces himself as Microsoft’s software boss with Ray Ozzie, his top choice but one
IMAGE (AP)
THE co-founder, chairman and “chief software architect” of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, would deny it on his life, but the one person Bill Gates admires most for his geeky prowess—and might have chosen to succeed him as software architect—is almost certainly Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, Mr Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer and victim of Mr Gates’s predatory business instincts during the 1980s and 1990s, cannot be considered available, since he is busy leading Apple’s renaissance as a builder of gadgets and software that, in the opinion of his fans, put Microsoft to shame. So Mr Gates spent years courting the geek he admires second most, a software pioneer named Ray Ozzie.
After many overtures, Microsoft last year bought Mr Ozzie’s company, Groove Networks, and thus brought Mr Ozzie and his brother Jack inside the Microsoft tent. Mr Gates then groomed Mr Ozzie to take the lead in defining Microsoft’s direction at the highest (ie, software) level, alongside Steve Ballmer, the chief executive, who will continue to use his prodigious energies to bash heads together in the name of implementation, and Craig Mundie, who will oversee Microsoft’s research efforts and policy lobbying. On June 15th Mr Gates made the transition official, announcing that he would hand over his role as chief software architect to Mr Ozzie in two years’ time, in order to concentrate on becoming the world’s greatest philanthropist.
Mr Ozzie, at 50, is one month younger than Mr Gates and nine months younger than Mr Jobs. Like the other two, he has been admitted to the Computer History Museum’s “hall of fame” for his role in bringing about the PC era. As a kid in suburban Chicago, Mr Ozzie was already soldering all sorts of dangerous circuits together in a guest bedroom, but it was at college in the 1970s that he discovered his passion, which was, as he once put it, “to augment relationships” among human beings through technology. The catalyst was his encounter with PLATO, a cluster of a thousand dumb terminals that were connected to a mainframe and that Mr Ozzie and his friends playfully used to communicate, by exchanging what would today be called e-mails and instant messages. This experience so captured his imagination that he devoted his next three decades to writing software that enables “collaboration”.
His single biggest breakthrough came in the 1980s, when Mr Ozzie personally wrote a million of the first 3.5m lines of code for the first successful collaboration software, Lotus Notes. At a time when nobody had heard of the world wide web, Lotus Notes already offered “workspaces” not unlike today’s wikis. Mr Gates watched with his usual mixture of emotions towards innovations by others—envy and grudging admiration. These probably gave way to anxiety when IBM, Microsoft’s partner-turned-enemy, bought Lotus in 1995 for $3.5 billion.
Mr Ozzie soon parted with IBM and again set out to take collaboration to the next level, this time by using new ideas about decentralised networks between people and their computers. This approach would subsequently be called “peer-to-peer” and has since been made famous by Napster, a method for “sharing” music, and Skype, a service for free internet telephony. Mr Ozzie’s company, Groove, was not a commercial success this time, but Mr Gates and others in the industry nonetheless saw the idea and recognised its potential. Last April Messrs Gates and Ozzie joined forces.
One reason why Mr Gat
The extreme centre is the paper's historical position. --Geoffrey Crowther
afaiac, Windows died out years ago. Linux is the king of the hill now.
Long live Linux!
First they discovered the PC, then they found the internet, now low and behold they have found multicore procesors! What's next, an operating system that doesn't need to be re-booted? Nah, no one has discovered one of those yet, have they?
Sheeze, why does everything that everyone else has been doing for years suddenly become a revelation when M$ discover it?
Meanwhile the Mac lovers will call it a cheap ripoff of Mac OS X (which it probably is) and the Linux users will say you can get that stuff for free (watch the demo of Novell Linux 10 with xgl, it demonstrates all the cool windows effects MS is saying will be in Vista, and then some). The difference between Xgl and Avalon in Vista is not its performance, or rollerdex Windows or transparent Windows. The difference is in how easily these are accessible to application developers. Avalon apps run all that graphics goodness with a simple XML derivative called XAML, and well supported by a Photoshop like designer (Called Expression) to actually design the UI. This tool again generates XAML layouts and eye-candy, which is fully compatible with the Visual Studio IDE. Conveniently forget this difference, and there lies one reason why Windows is so popular.
Life is a conviction.
In 1983, Apple's latest and greatest was the Apple IIe. Although Lisa/Lisa II tanked, Apple did OK with a new machine it rolled out in 1984.
As numerous books and articles have detailed, the Macintosh development unit was given preferential treatment, many resources, and an impossible mandate. The result was a computer that radically altered the personal computer industry. The hardware was new, the OS was new, the applications were new - everything about it was new. Nothing like the Mac had been seen in the computer market.
Microsoft already has competitors, in the form of Apple, Linux, Google, and web app vendors who want to kill the desktop altogether. One more competitor, loaded with cash, unencumbered by a requirement to maintain backward compatibility with Windows, and given a well-articulated mission might be able to come up with something radically new and better than anything currently available.
If MS doesn't recognize that their golden goose is fast becoming a lead albatross, they're going to continue to lose their ability to shape the market. Getting by on marketing and control of PC OEMs isn't going to cut it any more. They need to put some of that massive stockpile of money into something truly bold. The question is, are they organizationally equipped to do so? Is it in their DNA, or have they become too atrophied?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There is no timetable for a Windows successor right now.
:D :D :D
:))
This is the best joke I've heard in a long while
They kept pushing and postponing Vista's dates and continuously dropping features for how long now ? Right. Now what can you read above: no timetable for the one following Vista. Ok.
I can of course understand that for a company it is very important to show that they have long term plans. And they need to tell that convincingly. Right now, I'm not convinced about neither.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The next Microsoft OS is quite likely to be based entirely on interpreted/dynamically compiled languages, obviously the CLR. The actions over the last 2 or so years seem to indicate that Microsoft wishes to deprecate native code. They would probably run existing x86 Windows programs in a sandbox so that untrusted code (aka all native code) cannot damage the system. The OS would deny even the computer owner the right to run native code with any authority unless it's signed by Microsoft. We can already see this coming with Vista: unsigned code cannot run in the kernel at all in x64, and in all versions unsigned code cannot request that dialog box to ask the user permission for admin access. (This last one was never announced by Microsoft and was slipped into a build. Developers filed it as a bug; Microsoft declared "as design" with no comment whatsoever.)
.NET programs could run unsigned. (They'd probably require signing to do anything interesting like write files to disk.)
It works great for DRM, because sandboxed code cannot manipulate other code. If implemented correctly, something that Microsoft has shown to be possible with the 360 (though with native code), it would be unbreakable other than at the hardware level. Microsoft would make it so that only Microsoft-signed programs are allowed to run natively, whereas
This is terrible and I hope Microsoft meets a lot of resistance.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
The only thing that will break the cycle of everyone adapting MS's newest OS is the ability to effortlessly run Windows apps on Linux, or Mac.
Already here, bubba. Next theory?
It's sad but true.
No, it's sad and your opinion.
It also has the goal of being a fully managed operating system, so it should be possible to host it on a variety of devices.
When it comes to a point where they have to abandon the windows code-base or sink under the weight of it, I wonder if they will turn to Singularity?
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
"They like to keep their windows maximized and their ligatures uncombined. They think gray is a color. Hell, most of them are perfect little squares in perfectly square holes and if you go to PC strongholds like Staten Island..."
So true. So true.
What else were they promising recently that is never going to be delivered? Must keep hyping something.
Vista may not end up being the best thing since sliced bread, but let's act as introduced geeks on the subject and not compare Vista to xgl.
xgl is a layer for the window manager, Vista is an operating system. Graphics subsystem. Operating system. Apples. Oranges.
I mean, does xgl come with the BitLocker technology? Does it let Linux make use of USB memory sticks as virtual RAM? See also its new features. I know, many features are already shared by Linux distros, but that still doesn't make an xgl <-> Vista comparison any less idiotic. Compare with Aero as you like, but not Vista. You don't compare KDE with e.g a full distro often, now do you?
I don't understand how such major flaws in an argument can give a +5 Insightful.
No wait, it was defending Linux.
Nevermind.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Vista is what XP used to be when it released...everyone call it (XP) an OS with Fisher Price interface. well...is Linux anywhere near XP's desktop marketshare?
It is astonishing that a company such as Microsoft has to constantly play catch-up in operating system technology; it is simply incomprehensible that they apparently are not doing any planning for future OSes.
Didn't Vista start out pretty much the same way? "Total rewrite from the ground up", everything shiny and new, new paradigms for file system handling and coffee making?
Look what we ended up with.
History repeats itself, repeats itself, itself...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Hasn't anyone ever seen an Adam Sandler movie ?!
It's going to be the biggest slack-assed OS out there that eventually gets a fire lit under its' ass & saves the OS day.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
The only thing that will break the cycle of everyone adapting MS's newest OS
is what you yourself wrote a few sentences before: Breaking MS stranglehold on the OEMs. If windos were something that you had to buy extra, people would start looking for alternatives.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Given the issues of supporting SMP in multicore architectures, security, stability etc , I should have thought the answer was obvious - the successor to Windows is *BSD.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You call buying a $50 product that would run Windows much, much slower than native hardware a good solution?
Le français vous intéresse?
/me puzzled.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
PC: $550
With Suse Linux: $550
With Windows Vista: $650
Only then will the majority of people realise that the operating system is a choice.
Hey, the defining app for Windows for the average user is QUICKBOOKS, and the stupid thing doesn't run except in ADMIN. And when you run Win as admin you dead meat.
I can run QB as a user, but it ain't easy or fun. The nice side effect is WinUpdate won't run as user.
Vista will be admin only. Suckah.
Quickbooks and most business apps -Sage50 and Sage100- are .Net apps designed for XP and Vista.
Take away these apps and you may as well by Macs.
What is the purpose of using a USB stick as Virtual RAM?
And anyway, you can do this if you make the USB stick partially/wholly a swap partition and use "swapon". Using DBUS I could, with a little digging ('cos I haven't used DBUS for anything except mounting an iRiver as a directory called ~/Desktop/music) produce a script that will automount and use swapon if a swap partition is discovered.
What is BitLocker? A replacement for the encrypted loopback filesystem? Or is it like AppArmour? Both are available on Linux right now.
PS given that the trupmeted features for home users is now pared down to Aero, it isn't *too* off-base to compare xgl with Vista. Especially since the GP talked about Novel Linux 10, also an OS with the features described.
Microsoft has just invested a lot in created a new breed of online services around live (www.live.com).
A point to note is that all of these services are branded as 'Windows live *'. Like Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Mail.
These new services will eventually replace MSN and its services.
I think Microsoft intends to strengthen the 'Windows' brand by marketing it and introducing more services under the same umbrella.
Why would they now wanna find a replacement for the next 20 years?
My 2c.
Microsoft has spent so much time and money drumming into people that Windows is the only way to do computing, that any hint of a "successor or alternative to Windows" is heresy to its userbase.
When an organization changes strategy drastically (which is what a switch by Microsoft to any-other-OS would entail), many of its hangers-on become disillusioned and jump ship without looking at the merits of its new direction (case in point: DEC ditching PDP-10 and its associated OSes for VAX/VMS, at which point many former TOPS-20 users switched to UNIX); so, if and when any system succeeds Windows, I predict that: (a) it will not be from Microsoft; and (b) Linux has saturated the non-Microsoft market to such an extent that (given the enormous difficulty in cloning Windows compared to cloning UNIX) Windows' successor will either be Linux or another system that looks a lot like UNIX, probably one that either hasn't even been invented yet or that people just haven't heard of.
With Suse Linux, Office software, Photo-editing software, 3D animation package, etc, etc: $550
With Windows Vista: $650
Fixed that for you.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
All the more reason we really need XUL.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Microsoft should buy OS/2 from IBM.
I've already been using the successor to Windows for over 10 years now... its called Linux!
Ubuntu
Look we can see the horrible difficulties that they have in rolling out a .5 release of Windows, which is more or less what Vista will be. And we're lead to believe that the way out is to start over, completely from scratch? This is magical thinking. They seem to believe that the problems inherent in Windows are so complex and so overwhelming at this point the only way to fix them is to abandon the whole thing.
Now let's review: MS still owns 90% of the desktop. So they still are slaves to their own success. Unless they can find another 500 million users out there who don't have MS desktops today......No clearly they'll have to drag them along. And guess what? They're part of the problem in the first place. What will MS do to support them other than bringing all their legacy problems into this Bright and Shining City on the Hill?
I can only suggest that they call the smart people at IBM and get them to create a new VM/ESA or z/OS that runs on the desktop and supports the Vista Aero UI and all of the apps. In other words finally create an operating system that handles the operation of the system and not everything instead of that.
So THATS why its taking so long! For goodness sakes, just cut him open and release the damn thing already.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Maybe I'm missing something in the implementation details, but . . ..
What's the big difference between managing multiple cores (possibly with multiple chips) and managing multiple processors in mainframes from the 1960's?
In other words, what drugs have these Microsoft Researchers been taking to even pretend this is a new problem set and not something that literally generations of systems-level programmers have solved?
As long as every old problem is packaged as a new one, they can keep telling us that their solutions are innovative, instead of simply being unimaginative implementations of stock solutions?
I thought the research guys did NOT work for the marketing department.
You can mount swap on usb stick, you can use NOW Trucrypt to get some privacy protection, XGL is BETTER than aero..
Search ? beagle, locate | grep.
Sidebar ? stupid widgets, you can get thoses crap with superkaramba too.
WMP, photo gallery, windows mail ? amarok/kaffeine, digikam, kmail. Explorer 7 ? Konqueror that got the improvements of the Apple Webcore.
Mini games ? does microsoft include something as good as, freeciv ?
windows update improvements ? nothing to compare to apt-get or pkgsrc.
New audio stack ? we got alsa and jack, i don't care.
There's nothing interesting in Vista. Move along.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
by this does he mean that it doesnt exist in the most common operating system available (ie theirs) and only in the minority (ie everyone else's?
way to look to the future...
and besides, i don't particularly want my operating system taking full advantage of the processing power i have available, i purcase said processing power to run applications.
agree with you so far
Yep - agree here too.
Now this is where I disagree. You made good arguments that the reason Vista won't fail is because the PC builders will all pre-install it and then ignored that fact when making your closing statement.
What will break the cycle is when people can walk into/browse the website of a PC vendor and purchase a PC with whatever OS they want on it. As long as the vendors/manufacturers are locked into agreements with MS then the average PC buyer has no choice and the dominance of MS on the desktop continues. Many PC users are too lazy to install a new browser or patch their existing OS let alone install a whole new OS. Until they can buy a PC without Windows installed they simply won't bother to change. Trouble is few manufacturers are prepared to take the risk (to their profit margin) of challenging their MS agreement and we end up in a cause-effect loop.
Yes I agree shouldn't this release have gone out like 20 years ago? (Microsoft)I know lets build a piece of crap and try to pass it off as an operating system! Umm, hello Microsoft's software is completely faulty, don't get me started on the file system or the way they access devices, please Microsoft Just give up. Microsoft Windows is a dinosaur they need to completely replace the system which is what they're planning to do but not just for that but because they don't want to crash c-5 galaxy loaded with lead. They are taking a big risk but if they keep their bologna up with trying to please the user instead of making the program and even the whole system itself stable first then they're already doomed. If you use windows then well i'm sorry for you and if you use only because it came with the computer, then shame on you. Why wait for windows new "system" to come out when there are much more stable systems like OSX and Linux? I don't know about some of you but did you really think that Apple adopting the Intel processor really betrayed the company or opened doors for the company and other people to take advantage of Microsoft's shortcomings?
You think this is a bit overstated? A bit over the top? A call out for medication? Maybe we should build camps for PC users...
so now they are saying they feel obliged to make an even more bloated OS just to make sure there are none of those CPU cycles that might be loitering around capable of getting into mischief....
Windows can't be everything to everybody. We've already seen a fractionalization between XP and 2003 server. In 2000, these actually were the same OS, with differently tuned kernels. XP is actually different from 2003 server.
Why not have a trend where Windows fractionalizes further so that some are optimized for game playing, some for office work, some for light server/office applications, and some for dedicated secure services.
The only obstacle I see to the latter is that despite very nice security granularity, the security policies that come boxed with windows leave a lot to be desired. They're difficult to manage, and some have holes you could drive a truck through.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
I know Linux is a preemptive kernel, but does this mean it can schedule itself on multiple processors? Also is Windows XP and Vista preemptive?
Is that a joke or are you really that much of an assbag? The difference between mac users and windows users isn't taste or age or train of thought its application. Mac's do somethings easier than Windows based PC's and visa versa. There's no philisophical distinction. When I want to game I will get a window's based pc Im not going to try to run something like that out of the enviornment it was created for (I'm aware of cedega but no similar effort for OSX). When Im working with multimedia I'll get a mac and when I want something thats a rock solid machine for doing something I actually need I will boot a Linux machine.
What will break the cycle is when people can walk into/browse the website of a PC vendor and purchase a PC with whatever OS they want on it. As long as the vendors/manufacturers are locked into agreements with MS then the average PC buyer has no choice and the dominance of MS on the desktop continues. Many PC users are too lazy to install a new browser or patch their existing OS let alone install a whole new OS. Until they can buy a PC without Windows installed they simply won't bother to change. Trouble is few manufacturers are prepared to take the risk (to their profit margin) of challenging their MS agreement and we end up in a cause-effect loop.
.. "Linux is getting popular." I've been hearing that for 15 years.
OEMs don't make money by not selling what customers want. If they could make money selling machines with Linux on them, they would - wild conspiracy theories notwithstanding. These aren't stupid people. The reason OEMs put Windows on the machines they sell is because the people who buy their computers want every piece of hardware and software at the store to work . That means the webcams, the mp3 players, the toddler games for their kids with the USB playset attachments, and all of the other games, applications, and utilities that they buy at the store. Sorry, but the computer dork demographic is simply not what Dell is aiming for.
Like it or not, every godamn thing at CompUSA is going to work on a Windows PC. As far as Vista failing against Linux, even if someone tries to bring something like say, vendor supported hardware support, to Linux (ala Linspire), the Linux fan club gets mad because "oooohhhhh they're using binary only drivers." Windows Vista may or may not fail, but if it fails, it's certainly not going to be against any variation of Linux on the desktop. Linux wants to fail there. The only OS developers who know what customers actually want are Apple and Microsoft.
--
Yeah, I know
Wouldn't it be nice if (and I emphasize "if") we had a substantial open source alternative to Windows (UNIX/Linux doesn't count) that were to meet or exceed or grow with mainstream Windows in it's own territory.
Thanks for the laugh.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Notice that the article says "Windows successor" and not "Windows Vista successor". This isn't about the next version of Windows after Vista. This is about the next operating system from Microsoft after Windows. And I can understand them not having a timetable for it.
Seriously, that's how all the good Microsoft technologies of the last decade have come to be... And there certainly isn't any shortage of small companies with great OSs out there. Why play catch up?
I say they should buy QNX and run with it.
"Steve, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Bill, but where will we find a new operating system at this time of night?"
I like the cut of your jib, wanna start a business?
I got nuthin
Doubtful. Just because there are options doesn't mean that people will go out of their way to investigate them. Or do you really think that, when an average new computer buyer is given the option between Windows, something that they've heard of and have probably used before, or one of the various flavors of Linux, something that they probably haven't heard of and more than likely haven't used, that they won't choose Windows? More likely it'll just be just another additional cost that they'll grumble about and pay anyway - like USB cables with printers or HDMI cables with new DVD players.
I'm not saying that these people are stupid - it's just that there are things more important things to them than the operating system that their computer uses. They care about what it can do, not what it runs. Which is as it should be.
you know it's easy to put down microsoft because of all thier short commings, but if you ran microsoft would it be that much better? i mean think about all the grandmas and grandpas and the little boys and girls that have to use a computer. thier not as technically smart as most of us. microsoft has a large task on thier hands everyday that they work on building a new OS. they have to take every single person in the world into consideration. i enjoy the comments "oh windows should be linux, lets all bow to linux and have sex with linux and let's all have linux's babys" and such but you know what... can your grandma use linux straight out the box? would your uncle who buys a new computer call you to tell you about it and say "man i just got a brand new intel duo computer with a terabye of drive space and 2 gigs of ram" i know mine wouldn't. my family calls me and says "i want to talk to you about my new computer, it's got 2.5 'gee-ach-zee' something and 100gb of memory and some ram in it. and it has one of those cd players. is that good because i want to be able to look at my emails" of course I want to slap them, and I sure as hell don't want to tell them how to use linux.
not to mention how everyone puts down microsoft so baddly for windows (i'll give you internet explorer it's a peice of crap) but i mean look at all the jobs windows has created for people. Look at all the programmers that make money on making application that make windows better. Look at the families that don't go hungery because daddy is a geek and can fix windows for other people. yeah open source is great but when you get right down to it, you need windows, like it or not you need it.
They would probably run existing x86 Windows programs in a sandbox so that untrusted code (aka all native code) cannot damage the system.
This statement is so vague as to be meaningless, and tells me that you fancy yourself a hacker but have not written much (if any) systems level code. This could mean anything from running in a user process (in other words, how any OS has done for the last few decades), to what Vista is trying to do (a hideous balancing act between running securely and providing compatibility with poorly written apps), to running everything in a VM.
The OS would deny even the computer owner the right to run native code with any authority unless it's signed by Microsoft.
This would be Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot. As much as Microsoft would love to do this, noone would buy such an operating system. Every corporation with any non-Microsoft application would hold up their nose and tell Microsoft to fuck off.
This is actually a good thing, and something that would ideally have been done from the very beginning if they could. Crappy device drivers is an enormous problem in the PC experience.
If implemented correctly, something that Microsoft has shown to be possible with the 360
None of this stuff has ever been that difficult. The part that is hard is while maintaining compatibility with crappy applications that feel the need to engage in crappy behavior, like spewing crap all over the Windows and Program Files directory. Of course, if you seriously believe your conspiracy theory, then all of this should be straight forward.
This is terrible and I hope Microsoft meets a lot of resistance.
Yup, you are right; they will receive a lot of resistance. Their market share will tank and they would get nailed by shareholder lawsuits for such a suicidal business decision.
I started watching the XGL videos. The first one was transparency. Funny: MS has had this capability since W2K--you just need Vitrite to activate it. Since I've never, ever, ever seen a really useful use of transparency* I'm glad they left this off by default.
* OS X's early use of semi-transparent title bars sucked when you had a bunch of windows in the same general area. Note that this is gone now. (On the other hand, they also got rid of tabs, and that totally sucks, so they're not exactly batting a thousand.) I've seen lots of people with semi-transparent terminal windows, but they're more in the "looks cool and doesn't hurt productivity much" camp, rather than being truly useful. Ditto for the transparent unused pallets in MS Office on OS X--I can't stand them, but they don't actually seem to hurt most people.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Uh, get back to me when they have 3d support, so I can run Maya, Lightwave, Blender, et cetera. That is, without them running like a total dog. (Some or all of those programs are or have been on Mac, but if you already have the windows versions, and don't want to buy them again...)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Go out of their way? Whatever. If the choice is between spending a hundred plus bucks on windows, or getting linux for free... well, I'm pretty sure I know what they're going to choose. Not all of them of course, but some of them.
Ubuntu has taken a big step in the right direction making it easier to install the most important software through the install manager in the gnome menu or whatever that thing is called, but what is really needed is a more comprehensive catalog with screenshots and user-friendly descriptions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But....Will the word "Windows" end up like Java, misunderstood and misused from the original meaning ala "Java Desktop?" The monster that was Sun Micro obfuscated their products in the hopes that a word people recognize would be able to be used as almost a synonym for their company. They failed. Will Microsoft do the same?
Well, they _do_ only show you screenshots of the programmes installed by default in an distribution in most 'reviews' I've read so far.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Of course, XAML has been pretty gutted in the past 12 months. Vista's APIs could easily have been made available for download on XP. In fact, I wonder if Microsoft is still planning to do that as they originally promised.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I get frustrated by the sheer level of cruft that's built up in existing OSs, and fantasize about somebody starting the whole thing over. New file system, new command system that looks more like a text adventure (ie. plain English) than Linux arcana, basic security fixes like prevention of buffer overflows, etc.. No worries about somebody buying ancient UNIX copyrights out from under you, no outdated abbrvns, and no code so old people are afraid to touch it.
(Of course you then start with no software or drivers.)
How do you get at a computer's assembly language without an OS? You'd have to write something in assembly that gets loaded on boot to even start doing higher-level stuff, right?
Revive the Constitution.
An operating system doesn't NEED to take advantage of powerful hardware. An operating system doesn't REQUIRE heavy duty CPU's, craploads of RAM and more hard drive space than was actually in my entire computer not more than 6 years ago. The applications should be the ones taking advantage of dual-core CPU's, taking up the RAM and disk space and generating the data required to get the job done.
An operating system should facilitate this, make it easy and consistent for the applications to access the advanced hardware, not take all the system resources and give the apps what's left. Windows 2000 did this right, Windows XP/2003 do a pretty decent job. Vista sucks at it (though it's still an early beta... but I see no reason why this is going to change).
I run Linux on many of my home systems (some Fedora, recent machines are getting Gentoo) because I can pare it down to an operating system that fulfills my needs. It allows me to launch the apps I need, and then gets the hell out of the way unless it's actually needed by the application or by me. Especially my Gentoo install on my PIII-700 does all I need it to on a regular basis. I check email, I surf the web and I write articles on OpenOffice (source-compiled over the course of a day, but it runs better than the same app on my Fedora box that has an Athlon 64). It gets out of my way, it doesn't "take advantage of the hardware" for eye candy... it just is, and just does.
At work we use Windows extensively. We've tested Vista as a server... and it sucks. Our investment in hardware needs to last longer than that, so right now Windows 2003 is our OS of choice simply because it does what it needs to. Sure, there are some sucky elements that need to be fixed (stripping out unnecessary chaff), but once done we create a "gold image" build and we're off and running.
Sorry for the rant, I just find comments about leveraging future hardware to make the OS somehow magically "better" to be incongruous and misleading. The apps should get better, the OS should enable that.
Ummmm.... FreeBSD? Solaris? Linux? Hello?
Copland was a technology failure -- the old MacOS just couldn't be "modernized"
Well, it looks like Microsoft has had a great deal of difficulty modernising "old Windows NT" as well. It isn't optimised for multi-core processors as TFA mentions. It is the evolution of Windows NT 3.1 (Windows Server 2003R2 is just a marketing name for WinNT 5.2.3790, and Vista is simply NT 6.0.x). While the very basic underpinnings of the system are inspired by a solid foundation (VMS), development started in the late 1980s and internet connectivity really wasn't on the MS radar even by the time of its release in 1993 (yes, it could do TCP/IP, but MS was really focusing on knocking out Netware--smaller UNIX servers were a secondary target). UNIX-style OSes were quite ahead of the curve on that front, so while MS was still maturing as a REAL network OS they could focus on security.
Windows is suffering technological shortcomings now just like Classic MacOS did with Copeland--unlike UNIX-like architectures, the OS is monolithic, growing in size and complexity at a geometric pace and is nearly impossible to adapt to changing demands. In fact MS is in a far deeper hole with Windows than Apple was with MacOS--it's just that Apple had a much smaller organisation to manage their house of cards.
Vista is a management failure. Rather than shorter release cycles with incremental improvments, MS put it on themselves to do it all in one big release.
Copeland was just as much of a "management failure" as Vista has been (if not more so). Different parts of the development team were working towards conflicting goals. There was no coherent vision for what the end product was going to be, and like Vista it was going to be "one big release". Apple was touting all sorts of whiz-bang things like GUI "skins", multimedia goodies, etc and what users really wanted were things like multitasking that worked like Amiga and memory management that didn't fragment RAM like MSDOS fragmented hard drives. Thing is ALL of it was being promised, and really Apple should've focused on the underpinnings to make MacOS run smoother. When it became apparent that between the problems with the software and the lack of resources made it impossible to deliver (and with the return of Jobs to give everyone focus) they pushed reset and built an OS based on proven, already-developed code from Mach, BSD, NeXT...
If there was an XP2004 and an XP2006 released, you wouldn't see the bitching. XP's biggest problem at this point is just that it's old and clunky.
Actually I'd say there would be a LOT of bitching. There certainly was when Microsoft pushed out too many releases of DOS. That bit them in the butt more than once--people were not impressed when DOS 4.0 came out and it had so little to offer over 3.3 in comparison to the lack of stability that most people stayed with 3.3 until 5.0 came out. A few years later users were losing patience when Microsoft pushed out so many versions of MSDOS 7.x/8.0 (AKA Windows 95/95B/98/98SE/Me...) that contained so little useful innovations (and sometimes so many bugs). A LOT of people thought that by releasing what were basically the same old OS with service packs integrated into them as something new Microsoft was blatantly trying to screw people out of more money.
No, if MS released XP, XP/sp1 and XP/sp2 with a bit of eye candy tacked on as "new versions" as they did with their MSDOS line I think Gates and Ballmer would've been lynched.
So, different problems, different solutions.
I think that they have the SAME problems and Microsoft could benefit from the SAME solution if they wated to. The differences basically lie in the scale of the problems (Microsoft has to deal with a much bigger pile of crap than Apple did) and the corporate culture (Apple wants to change the world, Microsoft wants to take it over). It is those differences that will have an impact on the details of how MS proceeds.
Yeah, you know what would be *funny*? If Microsoft licensed OS X
/etc or a user's home directory--they'll be the XML-based .config files you can emply in VS2005 now and will be stored in some verbosely-named directory (%system%\Global Application Settings or whatever). There'll be a powerful shell but it won't be based on bash or perl, it'll be Monad. Under the hood it'll be a BSD-derivative but the view it presents to the world will be made by Microsoft.
That would be hilarious because it would mean that hell had forzen over. That will never happen. However, I *do* think that MS will realise that they'll die if they try to re-invent the wheel from scratch.
OS X runs on Intel now, and Apple is working hard on compatibility layers for multiple OSs and it is the slickest, most stable, most beautiful mainstream OS out there right now.
Did you know that MS had a Windows build that ran on Alpha and Power CPUs before OS X was ever released? This is why Amelio tried to float that lead balloon about using the NT kernel (and perhaps more of NT) for MacOS--it wouldn't have taken much effort to make it run on contemporary PowerMacs. Though NT was (still is) ugly, MacOS was really straining and the NT kernel was markedly more stable. Apple would've taken care of the "beautiful" part itself. In this case things are different--back then it was the pipsqueak looking for some sort of protection from the behemouth. Now the behemouth needs help and it has the resources to pick whatever pipsqueak it wants. MS wants to keep Apple at bay not help it grow.
I am not saying that Microsoft can't do it themselves, I'd just like to see a return to the good 'ol days when Microsoft made good, solid applications and were not trying to be all things to all people.
I'm really doubting they CAN do it themselves. I think there is such a thing as TOO big to be useful from an organisational standpoint. And as for the "good ol' days", yes MS made solid apps but as to whether they were "good"--that's debatable. Perhaps they didn't eat gobs of memory and CPU cycles, or lock up and crash, but they were far from elegant or innovative from a usability standpoint. Multiplan was a poor cousin to Lotus 123 and VisiCalc was the innovative one. Jobs is known to have hated Microsoft's offerings--they were unoriginal ("The thing about Microsoft is that they have no taste" and "they just don't get it" are well know Jobs quotes) and did not properly showcase the MacOS GUI. Those who follow Mac history know that there was an amazing BASIC in development for MacOS (I think initially started in-house but then developed under contract--but not involving Microsoft at all). Microsoft used its weight (it held near monopoly on the BASIC programming language) and influence (being that MS gave Apple license and assistance in releasing Applesoft BASIC) to block the original MacBASIC (Apple II line was still popular and MS could've terminated its cooperation and left that line without a BASIC language to inclued with the system). The Microsoft-developed BASIC originally released for the Mac is widely regarded as a big pile of crap--it had no extensions (or even the meand through PEEKS and POKES to exploit the power of the windowing environment. It wasn't a precursor to VB, it was GWBASIC trapped in a single little window.
Although one has to wonder what is going on when Microsoft's programmer team for Windows is in the several-thousands and Apple's development team for OS X is around 300.
This is why I think they wouldn't ever license MacOS X. Though they need help they don't need THAT much help. They need a new foundation but are still capable of building the house. Given that, and past behaviour, I think MS will instead opt to copy Apple's strategy and make thorough use of BSD-licensed code: I think Post-Vista Windows could be built around a hybrid MACH/BSD kernel but with their own mods rather than Apple's. They'll then follow the UNIX philosophy in building on top of that foundation, but with a Microsoft spin: No more registry--they'll go back to text config files, but not stored in
No Apple involvement, but same pattern of behaviour: Ballmer-monkey see, Ballmer-monkey do.
I used OS/2 Warp until I was assimilated, my recollection is that it was on the level of XP, except five years earlier.
Kinda like .NET several years ago. Things were tagged with the .NET in the name when it had nothing to do with .NET framework.
www.joshferguson.org
but that still requires a copy of Windows
They already exist. For the common user, it's called Mac OS X. For the geek user, it's called Linux.
Just my $0.03 (inflation) worth.
...and plasma, representing either the total software short which MS-Windows so often represents, or the brightness of one's accompanying virus collection.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
True, droves of users would still choose and buy Windos. Soon after, they'll have a head-on collision with the myth that Windos is so much easier to install than Linux (it hasn't been for years, everyone just believes that because they've never actually installed it, but got it pre-installed all the time) and a frustrating week or so later, they'll have it running and a whole new perspective on things.
But, I don't care about them. I care about the other 20% or so. The ones who'll ask "what else is there?". At first, they'll get blank stares from the Walmart guys. Then someone at Walmart realizes they can download Ubuntu for free, press some CDs for $0.10 each and sell them at $10 or $19.95 or even $29.99 each. At that moment, Walmart will become the #1 Linux distributor.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
(Forgive me if someone has already said this)
Personally, I don't want my OS to "...[take] full advantage of the processing power..." my computer has to offer. I want my OS to take as little processor power as absolutely necessary to run, and leave the rest for my applications.
I can only say this seems typical of Microsoft mentality.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, "compar[ing] Vista to xgl".
I don't understand how such a major flaw in a post can give a +4 Insightful.
No wait, it pretended to be a rebuttal to a defense of Linux.
Nevermind.
I wasn't comparing xgl to Vista, I was comparing Novell Linux 10 with xgl to Vista, graphically. I don't know how Novell Linux does USB support and all that other stuff you said, I just watched a demo of the UI features. And I wasn't really defending Linux so much as saying that everyone will adapt Vista within a few years after it's release while the Mac lovers will call it a ripoff of Mac OS X. I'm not sure why you got so caught up on the xgl mention. Apparantly MS lovers get so sick of Windows bashing that they see it even where it's not. I'll save my Windows bashing for the securtiy topics and not go off about it's UI.
"Trying to adapt to run Windows programs is what killed OS/2"
Not to say there isn't some validity to your statement, but I believe that inept marketing, poor hardware vendor ie: driver development support and finally a reassignment of basic business objectives by IBM are the primary forces that killed OS/2. I used it for years, it ran most Windows 16bit applications with more far greater stability and flexibility, vastly easier configuration and usually with very little extra overhead. Even if there were no OS/2 apps available it was well worth the money ($80.00-$120.00US)for that one purpose for most serious users that tried it. The lack of drivers for cheap hardware was a problem for marketing it to the masses just as it is still an issue for Linux today.
I still miss the flexibility of the Workplace Shell and a few really awesome native OS/2 apps like Object Desktop, Deskman/2, PMView, Impos/2 and ProNews/2. I wish these developers would consider porting some of those apps to Linux. The end for me was when IBM simply decided to kill it off by making updates horrendously expensive via a subscription service. Simple USB support was going to cost me several hundred dollars for the subscription services or a move to eCS for about $250.00. With no reassurance of future development, in fact just the opposite. The fact that they never provided serious WIN32 support did not help. My move to Linux has been interesting though, the variety of distro,s is for me a healthly sign of continued future life, the rapid constant development with new technology support is a refreshing change and the price is great!
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
I said disabling .net would not affect Vista itself, because Vista doesn't rely on .net for anything.
Its true a lot of applications now rely on it, but that was never at issue.