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FSF Launches "BadVista" Campaign

Posted by kdawson on from the restricted-computing dept.

FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."

15 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. Would've been nice if... by thre5her · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...they included some of these shortcomings. I was expecting a good read, which RMS is usually keen to offer.

    1. Re:Would've been nice if... by tonycheese · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, they just launched the site yesterday, so I guess it's a work in progress. I guess they'll be posting things as they think of them.

    2. Re:Would've been nice if... by Rhabarber · · Score: 5, Informative

      How about the third link on the right side: 25 Shortcomings Of Vista

    3. Re:Would've been nice if... by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 5, Informative

      The complete change in how Video works in Vista should be a primary reason for people to upgrade, but you don't see many tech people out here that get it.

      Vista's new graphics system is not about eye candy, although that is a good side effect. Here are just a few things that the new Vista graphic system has that you can't do on earlier versions of Windows.

      - It can multi-task GPU RAM with system RAM intelligently. Meaning if your Video card only has 128mb or RAM, and you want to run all the extra High Quality Textures in a game that would normally want more GPU RAM, Vista will let the game do this, seamlessly with existing games.

      The multi-tasking of GPU RAM also extends to GPU multi-tasking as well, which is a new concept and works even marginally already with current generation boards from ATI and NVidia. So you get GPU RAM and GPU multi-tasking that also extends beyond a single game or application or even the interface itself.

      On Vista for example, you can load WoW, SWG, CoH, and pick a good FPS, put them all in a Window and they will run side by side with VERY little FPS drop in any of the applications. Now take into consideration they all want the GPU to themselves, and they all want all the GPU RAM. However, it just freaking works in Vista, and works well. This example I give is one demonstration one of our techs uses. He will set the characters to auto-run in the applications and he will then hit Flip 3D, angling all the applications in perspective on their side with all the Aero effects, and point out to people how the FPS didn't change in any of the applications. And this is with a 256MB NVidia 6800 card that is almost two years old.

      - Accelerated drawing. Everyone should know Vista adds 3D technology to the basic desktop and desktop applications, but another fact missed is that even the old 2D drawing of applications uses the 3D GPU functions to accelerate rendering. And this happens on even old DirectX 7 cards from 1998 that couldn't dream of running Aero/Glass.

      How does this affect everyone? Well the display, rendering and movement of bitmaps and vector images is significantly faster than on WindowsXP, or any other OS. Take an application like CorelDraw or AI, they will draw very complex vector images and are are pre-Vista made applications, yet on Vista they will display and redraw their graphics 10x faster or more. I have one layered image that on WindowsXP and OSX takes close to 30 secs to redraw fully, yet on Vista it will redraw in less than 2 secs fully.

      So if you work in the graphics world, Vista will impact your life tremendously. So existing and old applications get a tremedous speed boost when they are very graphically heavy applications.

      - 3D composer. Vista like OSX sports a full Composer, so images never tear. Again this is a performance improvement over WindowsXP. It also features a full vector based composer, meaning that newer applications using the WPF side of Vista get even more of a performance increase, as it can talk to the composer in pure vector and redraws and changes can be communicated in vector instead of full bitmap redraw changes being shoved to the composer. This again not only adds more performance for applications that haven't even been released yet, but adds interface quality as Vista can properly anti-alias the vector images, etc without any work from the application.

      Another nice 'visual' side effect of the graphics composer in Vista, is that is can scale 'old' application on high resolution displays. So if you want to get all the use out of the pixel on your 17" 1920x1200 display and don't have perfect eye sight, you can still run your desktop at 1920x1200 and Vista will scale things up to a level that you can see and look like a printed page.

      - User Mode Video Drivers - Video in Vista has been put back in the user mode. This means more stability if a video drivers crashes. However, one clever side effect of how Vista has implemented the WDDM

  2. FUD??!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!! After all, the FSF already hates Microsoft with a passion, and this is just another axe to grind here. I doubt they actually have even seen Vista or used it to know what exactly it is.

    Slashdot and its minions seems to hate Microsoft FUD, but shouldn't you people have a problem with FUD on the other side? This site has gone full throttle on the anti-Vista campaign already and it isn't even on store shelves yet. Sheesh.

  3. Bad Vista, starring Billy Bob Thornton? by hattig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate negative marketing.

    All the effort should be spent on advocating your advantages in a positive manner - and then you can compare yourself to the competition, you have a solution to the problem, you're not merely pointing out the bad stuff.

    Negative marketing has been shown time and time again to annoy the people that catch the brunt of it - political campaigns through to Apple adverts. Maybe it will stop a few people upgrading, but it won't make them think of switching another solution unless you present that alternative solution in a wondrous halo of wonder fixing all of their issues.

    How about a GoodLinux or something campaign as well?

    (I didn't read the article)

  4. "Treacherous Computing" "Genuine upgrade promlems" by GodWasAnAlien · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to the article, They mention the Treacherous Computing nature of the OS and that the Genuine checks cause problems with upgrades. Though more details would be helpful.

    Eventually MS and others pushing [Un]Trusted Computing and Digital Restrictions Management will find out that the strangle grip is not the best way to hold and attract costumers.

  5. Re:Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software. by pchan- · · Score: 5, Funny

    Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software.

    Forget Linux, I'm waiting for GNU/HURD. Any day now...

  6. More detail (Re:"Treacherous Computing" "Genuine by quentin_quayle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This page says something about the nature of Vista. It shows the six privilege levels:

    • Trusted Installer
    • System
    • High
    • Medium
    • Low
    • Untrusted

    The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.

    Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control? If you prefer to own your own copy of an OS, you will have to choose free software over Vista.

  7. Speculations and guesswork by Taagehornet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:

    1. SMB2: Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux.

    Purely speculative.

    7. Five Versions: The array of Vista editions could prove to be three too many, and upgrades between versions remain an unknown.
    8. Activation: The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.

    More guesswork.

    9. Storage Space: With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.

    Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.

    10. Backup: See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.

    No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.

    11. Urgency: Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.

    That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.

    12. Learning Curve: Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
    13. Cost: Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.

    These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).

    And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.

    1. Re:Speculations and guesswork by Fred_A · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And not a word on all the DRM goodness. :-/
      Most of the shortcomings picked are fairly irrelevant. The few that could be are not very well addressed. Very lacking paper and poor reporting IMO.

      --

      May contain traces of nut.
      Made from the freshest electrons.
    2. Re:Speculations and guesswork by Kenshin · · Score: 5, Informative

      Let me add to that from the second page:

      14. Hardware Vendor Support
      Tier-one and tier-two hardware vendors seem to be taking a slow approach to offering "Windows Vista Capable" systems.

      If it was built in the last two years, it's probably "Vista Capable". A sticker does not enable some magic compatibility.

      19. Installation
      Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.

      It took half an hour on my system. My system that is over 3 years old. (Which is a long time, by computer standards.)

      20. HHD
      Hybrid Hard Drives. These are potentially a huge performance booster, but there's little information and support is available (even though should be available).

      Uhh... an emerging technology that will boost performance is a shortcoming?

      --

      Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    3. Re:Speculations and guesswork by jweller · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.

      ample resources are no excuse to waste them.

    4. Re:Speculations and guesswork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not using hard drive space is a much bigger waste than putting stuff in it. What did you buy it for? Using it for the OS is a waste. I bought it for porn.
  8. Clarification of SMB support/FUD by Laebshade · · Score: 5, Informative
    The "25 Shortcomings of Vista" reeks of misconceptions or even just plain outright lies. I'm just going to pick out one that is, as you said, purely speculative. I have a samba server setup at home on Gentoo and I can access it just fine from linux. WinXP can access my Vista PC fine, as can my samba server mount and use a share I setup on Vista.

    Also, #18:

    Buried Controls
    Many options and controls are further buried, requiring a half-dozen mouse clicks or more to get to. Network settings and display settings are offenders here.


    Funny, some might have said the same thing in WinXP, until they realized there is a classic view. Vista also has this classic view.

    And, #25:

    WordPad
    Ability to open .doc files has been removed.

    Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open .doc files? I can't even believe they would list this as a shortcoming. When people want to open .doc files, they use the obvious program: Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. Besides, even when you could open .doc files in WordPad, it never opened them correctly - if the document contains images of any kind, don't count on viewing them, and it never got table data aligned correctly.

    #8:
    Activation
    The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.


    I suppose the author of the article missed the article on their own website about key management servers, and also on the Microsoft support website, which states:

    Key Management Service
    Your organization can host the Key Management Service (KMS) internally to automatically activate computers running Windows Vista. To use the KMS, you must have a minimum of 25 computers running Windows Vista that are connected together. Computers that have been activated through KMS will be required to reactivate by connecting to your organization's network at least every six months.

    Currently the KMS software runs on a local computer running Windows Vista or the Microsoft Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" operating system. In the future, it will run on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system.


    Last but not least, #6:

    Memory
    Vista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.


    No... just, no. Vista does use more RAM than WinXP, but why do you think that is? That's right, Aero and the Windows Sidebar. Between those two, I'm using a whopping 48 megs of RAM. You can always turn them off if your system is strapped for RAM. Right now my system is sitting at 696MB usage, which might seem like a lot, until you read that 452MB of that is for cache. So, I'm really only using 244MB.