Slashdot Mirror
Software Missing From Vista's "Official Apps"
PetManimal writes "Microsoft has just released a list of 800 applications it says are 'officially supported' on Windows Vista. What's special about this list, however, are the programs that are not included: 'Popular Windows software that is conspicuously missing from Microsoft's list includes Adobe Systems Inc.'s entire line of graphics and multimedia software, Symantec Corp.'s security products, as well as the Mozilla Foundation's open-source Firefox Web browser, Skype Ltd.'s free voice-over-IP software and the OpenOffice.org alternative to Microsoft Office.' Another area in which Vista has found to be lacking is gaming, as discussed earlier on Slashdot."
Another area in which Vista has found to be lacking is gaming...
And people still claim Vista's not an OS X ripoff. What more proof do you need?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm going to have to correct myself here. I have once seen it cost this much, however it must have been reduced recently as it now only costs $1,000. And for the "first 1,000 to apply, Microsoft will pay the testing fees" so you get free certification (did that sound like an infomercial?)
Still, the time requirements are quite high, and even $1000 is a quite high cost for what is an infinitesmal (if even that) perceived benefit.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I sat down with a Vista machine for the first time the other day. Nice slick interface - looks promising.
...
.. and discover that there is NO sendmail. Have to use outlook, but thats a PITA to setup, so I just telnet to port 25 on the development server and do it manually. Primitive !!
.. its no easy task finding the missing parts and installing them. Looks like manual searches of the net + manual installation via setup.exe is required all the way. Oh - tar and gzip/bzip2 have been forgotten as well, so that will be an interesting exersize. No wget either, so its manual operation of IE all the way. Point point click click.
.. WTF ?
I then went to check out some of the more critical functions of this new operating system, and was shocked by what I found (or what I DIDNT find actually)
Firstly, I check how up to date the compiler is, and check out the distributed compilation features. gcc - Not there. Someone at Microsoft mucked up bigtime - they FORGOT to include the compiler. OOPS ! Looks like distcc will have to wait.
Maybe they misplaced it, and forgot to include it in the PATH ? So I fire up a command window to search for the compiler.
C:\ find / -name gcc
FIND: Invalid switch
Huh ? After some investigation, it looks like FIND is some sort of messed up version of grep. And talking about grep - WHERE IS IT ? Its not to be found anywhere.
Undetterred, I push forward to install some missing components. I want to ssh to my master repository to see whats up. You guessed it - NO SSH. Completely overlooked by the Microsoft QA department!! Looks like Ill have to telnet in and do it that way.
By the way - whilst looking at the network configuration, I found another QA error - they mucked up the spelling of 'ifconfig' - they accidentally let it slip out as 'ipconfig'. No big deal, but you cant expect to just make up new names for commonly used standard utilities like that.
Anyway, cant find anything useful in the repositories. An 'emerge --sync' doesnt get me any closer either - In fact the emerge command itself, and the entire portage tree are also missing in this Beta release of an operating system.
I might just email something off to tech support
Lacking a compiler, I try out some scripting instead. bash, python, php, perl, tcl - ALL MISSING, zip, zada, zilch, not there ! Vista (in this early version) is going to be a pain to administer in any sort of automated way. Basic filters such as cut, sed, awk etc - not yet implemented. Sort appears to be implemented, but the parameters are all fucked up - again, you cant just redefine standard utilities to suit yourself - naughty naughty Microsoft !
I need not mention that vi and emacs are not implemented, nor are lightweight editors such as nano/pico/jed. Looks like you are stuck with notepad, or even 'edit' - which is all well and good, but how on earth are you going to do remote maintenance on one of these boxes without huge bandwidth usage ? vncserver is not installed by default, and there does not appear to be anything on port 6000 to allow for such remote connections.
ps and kill - not there either.
cvs and svn clients - MISSING. Without a portage tree (and without any sort of implementation of apt or rpm)
Another surprise - cron is completely missing in this release. No job scheduling for Vista ! There does not appear to be any concept of runlevels implemented in this 'operating system' either, no scriptable init engine, no simple mgetty style implementation, and no configurable boot loader
Having said all that - the GUI does look OK, you can move the mouse around and drag windows and things. Cool. The Windows in Vista are resizable, and there is some indication of which window has the current focus. There is a start button type thing in the corner, and you can make a menu popup. Cool. WOW even.
Conclusion: Virtually all of the critically important functions of the operating system seem t
these poor third-party vendors would be ready.
Debian comes with nearly 20000 applications. 800 is absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I especially love xcwcp and uutraf! libf2c2 is a great application also, and let's not forget about k7fftwgel-dev, it's just SO much better than k6fftwgel-dev!
My other account has a 3-digit UID.