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Windows Vista RC1 Complete
alienfluid writes to mention that RC1 of Windows Vista is now complete. This 'nearly complete' version of the operating system is already available to beta testers, and will be available to everyone else soon. From the article: "You'll notice a lot of improvements since Beta 2. We've made some UI adjustments, added more device drivers, and enhanced performance. We're not done yet, however -- quality will continue to improve. We'll keep plugging away on application compatibility, as well as fit and finish, until RTM. If you are an ISV, RC1 is the build you should use for certifying your application."
DOOOoooooo DEEEEeeeee DAAAAaaaa Ting
Oh Crap, sorry forgot to turn the volume down.
liqbase
Is this pre-RC1 that just came out earlier this week or is there another version coming out?
"Bad touch! Bad touch!"
If Microsoft knows that there is more work to do, why call it a release candidate?
This 'nearly complete' version of the operating system is already available to beta testers, and will be available to everyone else soon.
They're making a release candidate available to everyone, or was this just the submitter being imprecise?
I don't care how many more enhancements they make to Vista, I still won't use it.
I moved to Linux a few years ago and via Vmware I had XP installed so I could still use Photoshop/Illustrator. But since then I have found Inkscape and Xara to be great replacements.
Good luck with that Vista monstrosity, though.
How can something "nearly complete" be a candidate for release? Unless they are considering releasing THAT BUILD, it's not a true RC.
Every one of us was a former Windows user, and had a copy of Windows 2000 or XP which they planned to run under Parallels for connectivity to our company system, but not one of them cared a fig for Vista, and nobody intended to run any kind of Windows natively with BootCamp.
I predict this will be Microsoft's biggest flop ever. You heard it here first.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
It's been nearly two weeks since a security patch has been released for Vista Beta. I think we have a winner. A few weeks of clear sailing and this sucker's ready for Gold. I predict all will be quiet on the security front until the Holiday season, when all our high-end fancy new computers come online with nice, shiny new Vistas.
And when I say "our" computers I trust you know exactly what I mean.
On several occasions at Atari, a producer would try to slip in an Alpha-Beta-GoldRelease-Omega build candidate to get their performance bonus even though the title was four months behind schedule. Go figure.
One soul saved, 4999999999 to go.
factor 966971: 966971
And it still has the ridiculus mandatory driver signing, forcing freeware/open source developers to shell out $500 for a certificate if they want to make drivers that work on x64. All for their precious trusted computing. Wouldn't want those evil x64 criminals installing drivers to rip hd-dvds would they?
"This 'nearly complete' version of the operating system...will be available to everyone else soon."
At Microsoft, this can only mean one thing:
"Ship it!!!!"
I'm excited to get my hands on the almost complete version of Windows Vista. Aside from all the negative publicity this OS has received I'm really looking forward to a new interface for my computer.
Trackhead, point out on the doll where Vista touched you. . .
In the wallet, of course. M$ is going to waste $6.2 billion promoting what's looking more and more like XP SP3, super digital restriction. While I won't directly pay for that, many will. Schools, government and everyone not bright enough to use free software will pay. They will pass that cost along as taxes and higher prices. As Steve Baller likes to say, the upfront cost of software are just the beginning and all of the tremendous inefficiencies of Windoze will also be passed along in higher prices and poorer service. I don't even want to think of the costs to the economy that comes from Microsoft's inability to design a network safe OS are. All of the above easily adds up to multiples of M$'s annual net revenue.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I can't imagine why anyone would use thier stuff if they actually had to pay for it themselves, though.
Direct X 10 will make a lot of gamers make the jump.
I'll be interested in trying out RC1. The beta2 build had a lot of problems with the install process. (I had to disable parts of my nforce4 mobo to get it to install fex.)
Hopefully they've got it working a lot better because (like it or not) a lot of people are going to be using it.
"We'll keep plugging away on application compatibility"
Read: We're constructing dirty hacks into our newly written clean code so we don't upset our partners. This of course will cause the same side effects as with our previous versions, but hey... it looks better !!!!
From the summary:
We'll keep plugging away on application compatibility
Isn't it touching how loyal the Vista Dev Team is to Duke Nukem Forever? Real Soon Now, Vista will be ready for release! I mean, they even have a Release Candidate out!
Dude, just buy a trackball instead of a mouse, it's less painful a new interface.
How is the parent off-topic? He was making an on-topic reply to the grandparent, who was making an on-topic reply to the great-grandparent.
"You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean."
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
...Here, here is our best hope for Microsoft. They are combining the strengths of Windows CE from their impressive mobile line, Windows ME, and of course, the reliability of the Windows NT kernel...
GIF Product Brochure
Where I've worked, what Microsoft is calling a "beta" or "release candidate" would be considered an alpha release. Beta releases are supposed to be feature complete, but in need of testing and debugging.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
As a Microsoft partner for IPv6 Jumpstart, we installed Vista RC1 on multiple machines this morning. Vista is Microsoft's "IPv6 Optimized" desktop system while XP is "IPv6 Capable" of limited operations. We immediately noticed one important change. IE doesn't crash every 2 minutes! Previously, we had to install Firefox administer to run our IP surveillance cameras, security system, and building automation sensor system because the java web interface constantly crashed the browser in Vista Beta 1 and 2.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The subscription model is in tatters.
If you recall, it was around this time a couple of years ago that we started hearing about the subscription model and Software Assurance. This was supposed to make life easier for everyone by giving Microsoft a continuous stream of money and receiving from them a continuous stream of the latest and greatest. But Vista, which was promised within the contract period of software assurance, is still months away, and corporations have basically thrown away money for no upgrade. From what I've read, Software Assurance was a bit of a flop because people didn't like the idea of paying money and not necessarily receiving anything in return.
I've started to get a little curious about your other question. Who on earth is going to buy the upgrade when it's painfully expensive (looks like $200-300), and there are darn few computers for sale today that can run it?
if you visit Dell's web site (and if you do you're a major masochist, sadly - it's terrible), the cheapest notebook computer(*) that's "vista capable" is $969 after discounts. They are still selling $499 notebooks, which are obviously badly underspecified for Vista.
What happens when Vista is introduced? Is this the death of the $499 notebook?
Okay, notebooks are expensive. They are selling sub-$300 desktops. What's the cheapest desktop that can run Vista? If you take the 1GB ram requirement seriously, it's the high-end Dimension E310, at $748. They are clearly doing their best to cheap out this system; it includes a 15" flat panel monitor, a species that I thought was virtually obsolete. And yet it's still more than double what their cheapest system costs.
Now, I guess you can run "Vista Basic" on low-end systems, but Microsoft has given me the impression that this is the option for wimps and masochists (those that have not yet been suitably satisfied by Dell's web site).
I remember that when Windows95 came out, all systems available in the stores on introduction night(**) were more or less capable of running it, and had been for some time. this seems to be the first version of Windows that truly requires all-new hardware just to function at a minimal level.
So what's going on here? Does anyone know the reason they decided on a system with such ghastly requirements?
D
(*) If I were a REAL masochist, I would have gone to all the sites (home & home office, small and mid-sized business and large business, and priced every one of them. However, sadly I am not that mean to myself just to make a point on Slashdot. I stuck to Home & Home Office. You know, it's almost worth the extra $100 a Macbook costs to see a clear web page that shows you their only price and makes it dead simple to buy stuff.
(**) Ah, the days when we felt something like enthusiasm for Microsoft's products!
Software isnt 'complete' until its retired i guess. Until then, its hit with patches, bug fixes, etc.. so 'production' really isnt 'complete', its just not in beta anymore.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I put Vista beta 2 on two systems - one at work and my home system. It's gone from both now.
I know it was a beta release, yadda yadda, but I can't even consider using at work since I need a Novell Client - Novell said they would release a client for Vista about 90 days after the official release to OEM's - sorry - need to work. ZAP! Back to XP SP2.
At home, an obviously aging P4 2.26 Ghz with 1 gig of Ram rates a 1, according to Vista. Can yous say makes a zippy system slow? ZAP! Back to XP SP2.
I checked the lotto, I didn't win, and so can't afford to buy what MS considers to be minimum HW just to run Aero.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
Call now and we will throw in a matching pair of endless loops free of charge! Mmmm ... multi-threading
I get through the install but right after the screen where it says Welcome, 1st boot yadda yadda my screen goes black and stays that way. Then i tried booting into safe mode and im told install cant be completed in safe mode. So i install again and same thing happens over and over...makes me sad.
Isn't a release candidate supposed to be the hey, this is what we plan to release, tell us how it works, not we're not done yet, we are still adding features.
Actually, if you read the pages while you're going to download the ISO, it's not quite RC yet. They specifically call it pre RC, which is just a way of saying "This is still beta, but we don't want to say that, we need to restore some faith, so this is the almost RC version. Thank you."
The sadness does not hide the truth.
PS: That is what part of the alphabet would look like if the letters "Q" and "R" were removed.
It'll be a close horse race, but I predict that vista will edge out blueray and HD-DVD as the biggest yawners in recent tech history. All of them are solutions to problems that don't exist and MAN do they want a lot of money for the privelege of "rent to never own" stuff.
I REALLY want to go rent a couch that has nails sticking up through it, has a lock bar across the front and I have to prove every time I want to sit down that I am authorized to sit before it gets unlocked, and for that expensive and onerous set of priveleges, I can then sit down and stare across the room at the perfectly good couch I already have.
Who cares? I have been beta testing versions of Windows since Chicago (later came to be known as Windows 95). I have been using Vista for quite some time now and even though some things seem better such as the new start menu and the way that 3D rendering is handled, I am not blown away. I would much rather run Ubuntu Linux with Compiz and OpenGL. Vista is still bloatware and it will be really interesting to see how quick the OS is ridden with worms, spyware, and viruses. I for one don't plan on giving Microsoft more money for their software until they release an OS that is totally useful and original.
Conversely, I'm running the pre-RC1 build (5536), and it seems pretty quick here - in some respects it seems faster than XP.
This box is:
3.6GHz P4 (560J), nV 6600/256Mb, i915, 1Gb PC3200, 200Gb 7200rpm SATA.
Obviously an older machine isn't going to get big scores on the hardware rating tool - but remember the rating has to be somewhat futureproof, so you can't expect even the fastest current machine to get the top scores.
I think on balance I can live with Vista - in some respects it's definitely better than XP, in others it isn't. It seems quite different though, much more so than say NT4 > 2000 or particularly 2000 > XP.
That reminds me of when I was working at Actiontec and I'd be working on authoring a hybrid "Gold Master" release to go off to the duplicator for 100,000 copies, and then marketing would come down the hall and have some text changes and image changes 5 minutes before the FedEx guy was going to show up, 60 minutes before FedEx closed. I'd then have to manually insert these files (then rework CVS from the changes they had me put into the tree I had checked out), and this was "Golden Master R2". So, somebody would literally be waiting with a car ready to speed off to the nearest FedEx center to hand-deliver the CD to them for shipping. Then Marketing would come back and say "SHIT! We forgot something blatantly obvious that was decided 30 minutes ago between me and another clueless top-dog suits!! I'd have to author hybrid CD Golden Master R3 and upload the ISO to them, and they'd be finished downloading it before they even received Golden Master R2 from over-night FedEx. But an ISO wasn't enough, they also needed 5 copies of Golden Master R3 over-nighted too. Then the project would be put on hold for 2 months because of a hardware issue, which would give everybody time to slip in more fixes for the "New Golden Master", and the cycle would repeat. I tried to explain the principle of the release canidate, but they wouldn't hear it. Snafu, I tell you. I sure don't miss those days.
Excerpt from running "dict vista":
In the groves of their academy, at the end of every
vista, you see nothing but the gallows. --Burke.
[1913 Webster]
The shattered tower which now forms a vista from his
window. --Sir W. Scott.
[1913 Webster]
Rather fitting images for something screwing its users with WGA, DRM, etc.
Pull your heads out of your asses and sell OS-X for generic PCs. You could clean up at $300/copy. Virtually no marginal cost. It'll replace the iPod revenues you're losing because everyone who wants one, has one. But nooOOOooo. You're so hell bent on emulating the losing business model followed by Sun. Oh, please... what do we have to do? Fly out there, slap you in the face and put smelling salts under your noses? The gorilla has eaten a bad bannanna. He's down. He won't stay down forever. You'll look back on this, and you'll never forgive yourselves for not having kicked him while he's down, cuz you know he's gonna get back up.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Who is Trackhead? [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The last time I installed Ubuntsu on my Vaio Type U, suspend to RAM did not work at all. Furthermore, I found out that in order to use hibernation, I have to download the source code of Software Suspend 2, apply patches to the kernel source and recompile the kernel, which is quite ridiculous to demand from a user of a desktop OS. After the installation of the software, I found out that the performance of it is not as good as the hibernation function of Windows XP. Suspend to ram/disk is such a basic functionality, and I just could not believe that nobody figured out how to make it work without problems. Moreover, I had to struggle with configuration files for two days to make my Bluetooth adapter work. I was sick of XP and almost ready to switch to Linux, but these experiences really turned me off.
Linux seems to be an excellent server OS and the dedication of volunteers working on it is quite admirable, but, as a desktop OS, it is simply not in the same league as Windows XP and Mac OS X.
When Vista releases I'll be putting it on my computer at work. Might even stick the RC on there, we'll see. After I've validated all our apps, and had sufficient time I feel it's ready (month or two probably) I'll roll it out to the first of our labs. The rest will follow in a couple months. I expect to have Vista on 200 or so lab machines fairly soon after it's release.
I realise that you may think you and 6 friends are a statistically significant sample, but you actually aren't.
My prediction on Vista is let's wait and see. Seems ot me most of those predicting it'll flop are doing so because they WANT it to flop, not because they've any real valid reason to believe it will.
Despite your perception, it does have many things going for it. One is simply that OEMs are going to switch and start shipping it. However these is legit reasons for people to be excited. Game devs are just going bonkers over DX10. Epic has already declared that while UT2007 will run just fine on DX9, you'll need 10 for all the features to work.
So ask yourself: Are your predicting failure because you have a real reason, or because you hate MS?
Don't forget that Apple ate the bad banana a couple of years ago, and who was it that helped them get over it? Microsoft.
When they're done improving Vista, will it be an OSX or a Linux clone?
Care to point out to me where the DMCA says that OS'es have to incorporate DRM?
The last time I installed Ubuntsu on my Vaio Type U, suspend to RAM did not work at all. ... Suspend to ram/disk is such a basic functionality, and I just could not believe that nobody figured out how to make it work without problems. Moreover, I had to struggle with configuration files for two days to make my Bluetooth adapter work.
Those are not Linux problems, they are Sony problems. Sony, obviously, knows how to make their hardware work which is why those things sort of work under Windoze. I say sort of because XP is neither stable nor network safe, so nothing Sony does for it will last long. It would be nice of Sony to put their effort where the market is moving or at least to give out the information needed for others to make drivers. What you really should ask is why it's possible to buy that computer with Windoze but not with any of the much less expensive alternatives. That's right, the anti-trust violations M$ was busted for years ago.
The best way to move the market and please yourself is to buy stuff that works. It takes research effort up front but you will recoup that many times over the life of the machine. More importantly, you send the only message markets understand: money. I'll research the specific model before I buy. The easiest research is to take a live CD to the store. If it runs and things work, I might buy the machine. Anything else is a gamble.
I've been happy with used thinkpads. I've gotten them from Certified Used and Local Stores. Power management works well with all of them with nothing more than Debian right out of the box. The machine I'm writing this on has a good 66 days of uptime under Etch and I booted it last only because I wanted to use it's optical drive to install to another hard drive. Sarge just never goes down. Anything from a PII with 256 MB and better is usable for normal everyday use, though I've migrated to 1 GHz class processors. All I miss are software related to video editing and accelerated graphics which are all patented and NDA'd to hell.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Frankly, I too am dissapointed with notebook manufacturers. Which of course has nothing to do with Linux. Making a crappy bios and not implementing standards is really not the OS's fault. This has nothing to do with the OS other then the hardware is inferior and windows works well on it because 1: they has the spec and implemented around it, and 2: windows is pretty sloppy with how it deals with bios functions. This is a flaw, as you wouldnt want your OS to behave in unexpected ways, and a standard should be maintained.
I would counter with: I plugged a USB device into a windows XP system today. After the drives attached the next letter would be G. I have several drive letters mapped to shares, but windows doesnt pay attention to the fact that I am using G so it assigns G to the USB device, making it invisible and unusable. You have to be an admin, right click my computer, select manage, select the usb device, and change the letter to an available one. Not an easy task for a normal user, and not even available if you are not an admin.
Windows has wizards and dialogs that act inconsistantly, are hidden, or require pure knowledge without any sort of cohesiveness or logic.
Quick rundown of my peaves: defrag, what the hell: linux doesnt do that, why does windows need it? Where are all my options for getting work done such as KDE's KIO slaves? Why does windows insist on making windows that must be responded to in order to go on? How come there isnt a system wide implementation of a spell checker so I can just use it with any program I want? In linux all files are just strings that be manipulated in hundreds of ways. I could go on and on.
The Edsel was an attempt to make the best American Large Car with all the features and all the new technology that could possibly be bolted on. While it had many novel and useful features, some of which are still used, it was unwanted by the public. It was late, was overdecorated and ugly, was overweight, was overhyped and was unreliable.
But mainly it failed because its launch coincided with the customers moving to compacts and small foreign imports.
Microsoft is building an Edsel when Linux is the Volkswagen, Datsun and Toyota and Apple has the Falcon.
Anyone who wants to run Windows AND/OR Mac OS X can already just buy a Mac. Apple has a good lineup now, and it will only get better in the coming weeks as they switch MacBook Pros and the iMac from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo. People whine about having to buy a new computer to run Mac OS X, but they are going to have to buy a new computer to run Vista anyways... Get a Core 2 Duo Mac and kill two birds with one stone. Easy.
And watch Apple's profit go through the floor. Apple is a hardware company. They want to sell you software that locks you into their hardware. They're big margins are all the hardware they sell, the shiny MacBooks and iMacs. They're already losing money on software.
Thats fine, except that the intel version of OSX only supports a limited amount of PC hardware. OSX does not have drivers for motherboard chipsets on which apple does not currently bundle their OS with. If they released it now, it's likely they'd get a whole lot of pissed off customers, especially ones running AMD systems where it would likely crash during setup. To develop their OS to work on the vast amount of hardware that is out there, or convince IHV's to develop drivers, would cost Apple a hell of a lot of money and force them to make changes to their development cycle.
It's not just motherboard chipsets but also support for things such as sound cards, network cards, IDE controllers, etc that would need to be developed.
Don't get me wrong, OSX is a fantastic OS! But, it has a long ways to go in terms of hardware support and Windows is way ahead on that front. To catch up with Microsoft, would cost Apple a LOT of money and as a matter of fact, the OS would suffer from similar instability issues that have plagued windows for a very long time.
What is the software that locks you to their platform? iTunes with its mp3s? iPhoto with its jpegs? iMovie with its mpegs or avi's? It must be mail that locks you to OSX? Nope. Is it one of the pro apps or is it iWeb. Please tell me, I run OSX and I don't want to be locked to OSX, I really want to go on linux and be free, tell me what I need to do!
Jonathanjk.com
Will it annoy me out of the box, too?
Hey! Using a Hp Pavillion Zv5000 here and having also a lot of problems. I recently installed Ubuntu 6.06 and unfortunately the broadcom wireless didnt work. I went to the forum and wasted something like 4 hours trying to get the firmware copy it to the /var/firmware folder and doing other dozen tricks to *try* to make it work. Of coruse without success.
Then I proceeded to download the brand new Ati drivers and after installing them and wandering trou the forums I wasted another 5 hours trying to make my Ati IGP Radeon 9100 3D acceleration work. Of course again without success (I also tried with the open source x.org drivers). After all this time I saw x.org log and I learnt that the IGP 9100 is not supported for 3D acceleration on linux (only 2D).
Oh, and while Ubuntu did have suspend and hibernate when I installed Kubuntu (ubuntu crashed randomly when login in on my laptop... just after a fresh install), and Kubuntu did not showed any place to hibernate or suspend. Oh and when you connect/disconnect the AC the tray icion is not updated accordingly, and in Ubuntu if you change the time (say from 9:00 to 8:00) double clicking the clock, the change is NOT reflected until after some time passes.
So, no, there are several problems with Ubuntu. I will try Linsipire after I can download the free live cd and I will try with it. I use a FC4 PC at work and I am happy to run Linux but, for my home (my laptop), I just want things to WORK so I can get home and rest.
Although, It does not mean I will buy Vista for my laptop, until I see something really cool that makes me want it (I havent see nothing so far). 4 years ago I got really exited by the SQL based file managing but unfortunatley it got wiped trough the development.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Try another distro. I tried a few, and SUSE was the only one that detected and worked with the wireless (using WPA-PSK right "out of the box", compared to the horror that is Ubuntu) and audio on my laptop. It also uses KDE, which I prefer, and suspend/hibernate works fine.
Maybe I've had unusually bad experiences with it, and maybe my dislike of Gnome makes me biased, but I don't understand the popularity of Ubuntu. I certainly wouldn't introduce anyone to Linux using it. Besides SUSE, I've also used MEPIS on some systems...its LiveCD works well, though it doesn't boot with WPA-PSK ready.
We're not done yet, however -- quality will continue to improve.
Then by definition, they don't have a "RC" product. RC = Release Candidate. If they know things are hosed, by definition, this isn't an RC release! Sure wish Microsoft could learn to do simple things like count, use common sense, use industry standard terminiology...and stop pushing alpha releases to the public...because that's what this is!
Dolts!
I want slashdot users to think about something for a second: Windows is not that bad. Here's why.
./configure && make && make install doesn't work and dependencies forget it. I like the way PC-BSD is shifting towards (PBI's) but that is not unfortunately the way the rest of Linux or BSD world works. A note on respositories, no not everything works within them either (unlike many like to think). Ever run debian-stable because it actually installs, then need something that is only available in unstable? Even the dev's tell u it's not wise, and it's true. It can break ur system, sometimes very badly (I remember one time I lost the ability to use USB devices).
I would argue that Windows is insecure because of PC manufacturers. If you setup a firewall prior to connecing to the internet, then install updates, then make a limited user account and run programs within it and think before u install some random program or click on a file, u won't get trojans or spyware. But the default setup of all PC manufactures is for the user to run as an admin account and not instruct the user to setup the firewall prior to connecting to the net and when done install updates. PC manufacturers are to blame as well as uneducated or lazy users. XYZ trojan can't install itself in the registry or in Windows/system if NTFS doesn't give it permissions.
Windows also offers one, stable platform. You can make a product and actually test it before releasing it and be almost sure it works on someone else's computer. And it offers ease of adding things. Yes, for example, SuSe (which I like btw) offers everything out of the box. But that one thing that is missing, u'll spend days or months figuring out how to get to work, if u can get it to work at all. I remember from day 1 of using linux back in 95, and the problem exists today, everything will work but 1 thing that is imperative or very annoying to not have. u switch to another distro because u just can't seem to get it to work, and the next distro fixes that, but misses something else. Windows may not come with the kitchen sink, but u can at least add anything u want and know it will work. Also, windows has better ease of installation. double-click and a few next click's later, ANYTHING is installed (software or hardware drivers). Back in the day I didn't mind, but now I don't care: I dont wanna have to figure out for days how to install hardware (not everything in linux is autodetected) and for software, yea apt-get it great, but what occurs when the program isn't in the repository. half the time
Can anyone explain how Vista will flop given such low computer literacy? To those not yet opposed to DRM consider the following quote:
Help oppose DRM by signing up at http://defectivebydesign.org/.
There are still many /.ers not opposed to DRM and yet who are unfairly flamed when in fact they need further education. In particular, learn more about ethics. Reflect on the long struggles to gain your freedoms and rights and how easily they are being snatched away from you (think of a boiling frog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog).
The astroturfing on blogs like /. is worse than ever. So many corporate shills appear that an "Astroturf" moderation category for /. is long overdue.
So it has perl, python, ruby, compilers, multiple shells and tons of command line utilities for every task imaginable?
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
It's not Ubuntu's fault that Broadcom refuses to let Linux developers work with their hardware. There are a large numbers of wireless chips whose vendors are not hostile, and they work very well (indeed, right out of the box with Ubuntu). I personally recommend Intel chips, or else Atheros-based or Prism-based cards.
It's not Ubuntu's fault that ATI's drivers don't work with your card, and it's not Ubuntu's fault that ATI refuses to let Linux developers support your card. For the "Just Works" factor, highly recommend either an ATI 9200 or below (where ATI provided the devs specs) or Intel video.
It sounds to me like your laptop's ACPI implementation is broken. Broken hardware is not Ubuntu's fault. With the proper information, the developers work around the various broken pieces of hwardare, just like the vendors do for their Windows drivers. Again, there's nothing Ubuntu can do to make the hardware vendor play nice with them, and there is little they can do to make random broken pieces of hardware work.
I've not seen this. It's worked well for me.
No, there are several problems with the hardware and the vendors' support for Linux and precious little Ubuntu can do to change it.
Seriously. A darned lot of hardware is broken, but because they only have to support Windows, they work around it in drivers. And then, to boot, Linux gets blamed because they "don't work with it", implying that somehow, Linux should magically know how to make random pieces of hostile hardware work with it. The world doesn't work that way. And additionally, there are some notable vendors who refuse to either produce Linux drivers or to give the Linux devs information to support their hardware (iirc, the broadcomm drivers are very slowly and painstakingly reverse-engineered). Again, if the OS market were among a couple of equal vendors, hardware vendors would support standards, and things would truly work out of the box (because the OSes would follow the standards too), and on any OS. Given the market situation, there are two things you can do to use Linux: 1) Buy hardware that supports Linux and 2) Stop using Windows. 1) ensures that your hardware will work with Linux now and 2) ensures that general hardware will work with Linux later.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
It's not Ubuntu's fault that Broadcom refuses to let Linux developers work with their hardware
Ever read about the Linux Fault Threshold? "The Linux Fault Threshold is the point in any conversation about Linux at which your interlocutor stops talking about how your problem might be solved under Linux and starts talking about how it isn't Linux's fault that your problem cannot be solved under Linux."
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Explain to me how it's linux's fault, please.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
More effort needs to be put in to reverse engineering, that or making a stable driver ABI so that Broadcom can release their own drivers.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
All of a billion pieces of hardware, sure. It's also a very very very slow, painstaking process. Especially when the hardware is very complex (e.g. video cards). It's not the panacaea you seem to think it is, nor is it very robust (things could break in the next minor revision of the card, particularly with wireless vendors jumping chip *vendors* within the same product line!)
I would tend to agree that a stable ABI would work better for proprietary device driver development, although stable usespace APIs exist for some systems (e.g. USB, though that would be of no help here). Dell has a stable framework for proprietary device drivers, and Novell (I think, unless it was Red Hat) recently broke ground on a binary driver support system.
And even then, you are still assuming that Broadcom will want to support Linux. They may have other interests, and they may have external pressures preventing them from doing that.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
It'll be a real close horse race, but I predict that vista will edge out blueray and HD-DVD as the biggest yawners in recent tech history. All of them are solutions to problems that don't exist and MAN do they want a lot of money for the privelege of "rent to never own" stuff.
I REALLY want to go rent a couch that has nails sticking up through it, has a lock bar across the front and I have to prove every time I want to sit down that I am authorized to sit before it gets unlocked, and for that expensive and onerous set of priveleges, I can then sit down and stare across the room at the perfectly good couch I already have.
You see, this is the part that really torques me off about the hardcore Linux user. They assume the average user is willing to put up with the quirks, the kernel re-compiles, the beta (or alpha!) drivers, and the hacked-support-for-my-Sony-special-widget issues. You just don't get it, do you?
I see why you are angry. Quirks - see any windoze GUI. Compiles? leave that for people who enjoy that kind of thing. If those are your only options you might be angry.
It's easier to take the live CD to the store and have it work forever than it is to try to use and keep up a windoze box. If you have already invested in difficult hardware, you are screwed until the free software world envelops it, a process that takes between one and five years.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1. Why should we have to ask VeriSign permission to develop applications for our own computers? You know, there do exist drivers for legitimate purposes you know. I know of a driver that grants user mode direct access to administrator-chosen I/O ports. It's designed for when the OS's parallel/serial port drivers are not sufficient. This doesn't break security, and in fact its authors were very careful about that. They wrote it as open-source, so why should they have to pay VeriSign $500 for people to be able to use it? This isn't Xbox 360.
2. There are many free development tools. Vista costs money, but most people will already have paid for it.
3a. It does not prevent rootkits. NtCreateFile on \Device\Harddisk0\Partition0, NtWriteFile 512 bytes, NtShutdownSystem to reboot. Rootkit ahoy.
3b. PatchGuard, which is not related to forced driver signing, makes the "wannabe" rootkits much harder. PatchGuard can be cracked, but not robustly, because your crack will only work until the next second Tuesday.
3c. It does NOT protect against bad copy protections. In fact, it makes them stronger. SafeDisc will have a signed driver, but an anonymous cracker cannot.
4. I think the Windows NT kernel is the best general-purpose operating system kernel there is. I think Linux, especially the kernel, is a pile of crap. That's why I like the ReactOS project even though they'll be sued by Microsoft the day they become useful.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
"everyone not bright enough to use free software will pay."
I'm sorry, but I've used Linux... I've tried to get a nice, usable desktop environment that does what I WANT with linux... but you know what?
* I like to play games
* I like/use Office
* I like/use Photoshop (business and pleasure)
* I tend to like to be able to just plug in my printer/camera/phone and have it work.
And you know what? Linux can't give me that... it just can't.
MacOS, pretty damn close, other than the games thing.
XP, well, it does all those things, and does them well... hence I use XP.
Does that make me not bright? No, that makes me unwilling to either a) Give up on the functionality that I want/need of a paid operating system or b) Unwilling to spend frigging ages trying to get the most simple of things to work on Linux, and having to dive into command line commands just to get things to do as they should.
You may like Linux and other free software, but don't DARE just call people stupid or not bright because they don't want to fuck around with software that isn't quite there yet. That's juvenile and quite frankly damaging to the Open Source movement.