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Hostile ta Vista, Baby
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton adds his experience to the litany of woes with Microsoft Vista. Unlike most commentators who have a beef with the operating system, Bennett does a bit of surveying to bolster his points. Read his account by clicking on the magic link.
My brand-new-out-of-the-box Windows Vista machine could not access www.facebook.com. A nearby XP machine could, but the Vista machine couldn't. I went back to Circuit City to try out the other Vista demo machines, and they could access other sites but not Facebook, either. And that honeymoon feeling that you get when you buy a new computer and expect it to solve all your problems, was over for me. Having built my latest career on helping people access Facebook where they were blocked from it, by some cosmic joke was Vista now blocking me from getting to Facebook on my own machine?
I know, another article bashing Vista, what could be more banal. (Kids! That word, meaning "trite" or "unoriginal", is pronounced "ba-NAHL". If you say it the wrong way like I did in an interview, it sounds naughty and you sound stupid.) But in my own random survey of 30 Vista users on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service (a handy way to check these things), three quarters (23) said the only reason they were using Vista was that the PC store they went to didn't sell XP machines any more, and about half of all respondents (14) said that they would go back to Windows XP if they could. So I don't want to get a bunch of e-mails with Ron Paul links in the signature saying "Nobody has to use Vista if they don't want to!" (I'm aware that a survey of 30 people is too small to be scientific, but it's enough to get a ballpark figure for about $5 on Mechanical Turk.) Besides, the more people write testimonials to what they found frustrating about Vista, the more likely it is that some future version will keep what is good about the new OS, while providing a less frustrating interface (suggested name: "Vista 98").
It turns out the Facebook issue was not really Microsoft's fault -- www.facebook.com had a broken IPv6 record, and Vista defaults to using IPv6 where XP used IPv4, so that's why the host wasn't working. (In case you run into this with any other Web sites on Vista, I fixed the problem by disabling IPv6 in network settings and rebooting.) But it was one more example of something that used to work pre-Vista and then stopped working, and every case like that adds up to the overall frustration of switching to a new system, regardless of whose fault it is.
I hasten to add that I am not some partisan Microsoft basher. I like XP just fine, never more than when I went back to it after a few days on Vista, and I still think for that matter that Vista would be easier to switch to than Linux. Having been involved for years with free speech activism, I run into a lot of people in the same circles who are strong Linux advocates, apparently because the concept of "freedom of speech" is closely aligned with "making every file search as simple and stress-free as a Hamas hostage negotiation". So every year or two I'll try out the latest version of some Linux distro to see how long it would take to get used to it. In 2005, full of optimism, I cheerfully booted up the latest version of Shrike, then tried to find a directory and discovered I could not right-click on the hard drive root dir and specify the name of a directory I wanted to search for (that only worked for files, not directories). I posted a query to a Linux newsgroup, and a respondent told me that the solution was to open a command prompt and type "man find", which I am aware is a polite way of saying "screw you, newbie", but which I dutifully followed anyway and got an output screen of which the first paragraph was:
find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name.
and that was all my Linux for that year. Maybe I'm overdue to try it again. (Microsoft gives away their Virtual PC program that makes it easy to try other operating systems; I think it's a ploy to make us appreciate Windows more.) Now, I love the concept of a freely-distributable, freely-modifiable operating system, and I've recommended Linux to people when you need it to do something cool that Windows can't do, like bypassing Windows security by booting a PC from a CD. And it's done a lot of good for organizations like the One Laptop Per Child program, which can keep their costs down by using a free operating system. But to this day I've never heard an answer to one question: Since even Linux advocates admit that it's harder to use, what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to? If I was nervous about Vista because some of the interface had changed and some of my old programs no longer worked, it wasn't helpful to tell me to switch to a system where all of the interface would change and none of my old programs would work.
So, I wanted to like Vista. I knew that eventually everyone would have to upgrade anyway, so, not wanting to be left behind, I wanted to switch to Vista because of the same factor that spammers use to get your attention: "Other guys are improving themselves, why aren't you?" But there were some things I ran into almost immediately:
That was as far as I got before I stopped trying to get used to Vista and started taking notes for this article (working title: "Vist Vucked"). From the Mechanical Turk users who responded to my survey, the other most common reported problems were: software compatibility, hardware compatibility, difficulty with the UI, and running too slowly. Presumably the first two problems will improve over time, but the UI will always be hard to switch to as long as users can't find functions that were easy locatable in the old interface, and if it runs slower than XP, that will always be a factor no matter how fast your computer is. (However fast it runs Vista, you'd always be able to make it run even faster with XP instead!)
The best things I've heard about Vista have been that (a) it is the most secure Windows ever (which Dave Barry says is like calling asparagus the "most articulate vegetable ever"), and (b) it features better multimedia integration. To which my responses were: (a) the number of incomprehensible warnings that Vista flashes at a user whenever they look at the computer funny, does not make it more secure, because users will condition themselves to just ignore those warnings, and (b) I hate watching TV on my computer anyway.
Since TV/PC integration is a major selling point for Vista, I thought this last issue was worth looking harder at: Do people really want to use their computers to watch TV? My computer monitor is in an office where I sit up close when I'm working; but TV feels more comfortable to watch from several feet away, and in my office I can't even scoot my chair back that far. (And if I lived with family, I doubt they'd want to crowd into my office to watch a movie.) In fact, I like the psychological separation of the TV set in the living room from the distractions of the computer in the office: I go in there when I'm done with everything in here. The only way I'd regularly download and watch movies would be if I had a way to send them wirelessly to my TV, but a wireless PC-to-TV converter and the corresponding receiver together cost about $200.
Seeking more validation of my opinions from strangers, I did another survey of 30 Mechanical Turk users, asking if they would rather drive to a movie rental store or download a movie online for the same price. Almost half (14) said they'd rather drive to the movie store, citing the comfort of watching the movie on their TV as opposed to on the computer. Another fourth of the respondents (8) said they'd download the movie but only if they could send the content to their TV to watch, and only the last fourth (8) said they'd actually watch it on their computer monitor. So the future of convergence between PC and TV will probably be not in all-in-one systems but in devices that link the PC in your study with the TV in your living room, and since there's no household name yet for PC-to-TV linkage, the field is wide open for some lucky company to make a product that becomes synonymous with the concept, the way "TiVo" is easier to say than "Digital Video Recorder". Maybe that will be a boost for systems like Vista. If that happens at about the same time that a Vista successor is released that makes the interface easier to switch to from XP, I'll bet that will be the tipping point that gets people switching voluntarily. (Of course many people will switch by then just because they need a new computer and they couldn't find one with anything but Vista on it.)
Anyway, I was only trying a new Vista machine because the hard drive on my old computer died, but after all the data had been recovered, I just installed a new drive in the old machine and went back to XP, while my Vista machine was returned to its perch, gargoyle-like, on the shelves at Circuit City, waiting to pounce on the next unsuspecting wretch with dreams of self-improvement through newer computer purchases. The only remnant of Vista that I have left is IE7, which was installed by my Windows XP restore disk and can't be removed, and which is incompatible with some sites and programs that I need, so I've been using Firefox more and getting to like it. That's lucky, since I've already offended the loyal software-logo-wearing constituencies of Vista and Linux, and wouldn't want to deal with the Firefox crowd too. As my friend Anne Mitchell says, "Admitting you hate Firefox is almost as bad as admitting to being Republican." (Except that when Firefox screws with a page, the chat logs don't end up on national television. Ba-dump-bump!)
My brand-new-out-of-the-box Windows Vista machine could not access www.facebook.com. A nearby XP machine could, but the Vista machine couldn't. I went back to Circuit City to try out the other Vista demo machines, and they could access other sites but not Facebook, either. And that honeymoon feeling that you get when you buy a new computer and expect it to solve all your problems, was over for me. Having built my latest career on helping people access Facebook where they were blocked from it, by some cosmic joke was Vista now blocking me from getting to Facebook on my own machine?
I know, another article bashing Vista, what could be more banal. (Kids! That word, meaning "trite" or "unoriginal", is pronounced "ba-NAHL". If you say it the wrong way like I did in an interview, it sounds naughty and you sound stupid.) But in my own random survey of 30 Vista users on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service (a handy way to check these things), three quarters (23) said the only reason they were using Vista was that the PC store they went to didn't sell XP machines any more, and about half of all respondents (14) said that they would go back to Windows XP if they could. So I don't want to get a bunch of e-mails with Ron Paul links in the signature saying "Nobody has to use Vista if they don't want to!" (I'm aware that a survey of 30 people is too small to be scientific, but it's enough to get a ballpark figure for about $5 on Mechanical Turk.) Besides, the more people write testimonials to what they found frustrating about Vista, the more likely it is that some future version will keep what is good about the new OS, while providing a less frustrating interface (suggested name: "Vista 98").
It turns out the Facebook issue was not really Microsoft's fault -- www.facebook.com had a broken IPv6 record, and Vista defaults to using IPv6 where XP used IPv4, so that's why the host wasn't working. (In case you run into this with any other Web sites on Vista, I fixed the problem by disabling IPv6 in network settings and rebooting.) But it was one more example of something that used to work pre-Vista and then stopped working, and every case like that adds up to the overall frustration of switching to a new system, regardless of whose fault it is.
I hasten to add that I am not some partisan Microsoft basher. I like XP just fine, never more than when I went back to it after a few days on Vista, and I still think for that matter that Vista would be easier to switch to than Linux. Having been involved for years with free speech activism, I run into a lot of people in the same circles who are strong Linux advocates, apparently because the concept of "freedom of speech" is closely aligned with "making every file search as simple and stress-free as a Hamas hostage negotiation". So every year or two I'll try out the latest version of some Linux distro to see how long it would take to get used to it. In 2005, full of optimism, I cheerfully booted up the latest version of Shrike, then tried to find a directory and discovered I could not right-click on the hard drive root dir and specify the name of a directory I wanted to search for (that only worked for files, not directories). I posted a query to a Linux newsgroup, and a respondent told me that the solution was to open a command prompt and type "man find", which I am aware is a polite way of saying "screw you, newbie", but which I dutifully followed anyway and got an output screen of which the first paragraph was:
find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name.
and that was all my Linux for that year. Maybe I'm overdue to try it again. (Microsoft gives away their Virtual PC program that makes it easy to try other operating systems; I think it's a ploy to make us appreciate Windows more.) Now, I love the concept of a freely-distributable, freely-modifiable operating system, and I've recommended Linux to people when you need it to do something cool that Windows can't do, like bypassing Windows security by booting a PC from a CD. And it's done a lot of good for organizations like the One Laptop Per Child program, which can keep their costs down by using a free operating system. But to this day I've never heard an answer to one question: Since even Linux advocates admit that it's harder to use, what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to? If I was nervous about Vista because some of the interface had changed and some of my old programs no longer worked, it wasn't helpful to tell me to switch to a system where all of the interface would change and none of my old programs would work.
So, I wanted to like Vista. I knew that eventually everyone would have to upgrade anyway, so, not wanting to be left behind, I wanted to switch to Vista because of the same factor that spammers use to get your attention: "Other guys are improving themselves, why aren't you?" But there were some things I ran into almost immediately:
-
Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer no longer have the "File / Edit / View" menu bars across the top of the window. Was this a big problem under XP? When the menus gave quick, two-click access to most actions that you could take within the application, was there a grassroots movement to have them removed? I did eventually find that you can hit the "Alt" key to bring the menus back, but why put people through that frustration? The most annoying feeling while using a computer is being yanked out of thinking about what you're doing with the computer to having to concentrate on how to use it.
Perhaps the idea was to steer users towards using the buttons on the toolbar, but there aren't enough buttons to cover all the options located under the menus. If the UI designers wanted to steer users gently towards using the buttons, my suggestion would have been: Whenever the user picks something under a menu that corresponds to something accessible from the toolbar, display a dialog box which says for example, "In the future, you can print faster by clicking the printer button on the toolbar", along with a picture (and a "Do not show this message again" checkbox -- important!).
- Windows Explorer also did away with the "Up" button that lets you browse from the current directory to the higher-level directory. Again, probably not in response to a groundswell of users demanding for that button to be removed, when it took up about one square centimeter of screen space. Supposedly Windows Explorer makes up for this by displaying the entire path to the current directory in the address bar, so that if the path is "C:\Financial Records\Chris Pirillo\ Pectoral Real Estate\", you can click on "Chris Pirillo" to go one directory higher. The trouble is that I frequently give my directories extremely long and descriptive names like (this is a real example) "Flash-Player-8.5.0.246-beta2.downloaded-2006-03-20-from-labs.macromedia.com" so that I can keep track of where and when I got each piece of downloaded software, in case I ever need to go back to a previous version that the software maker no longer makes available because they're trying to steer me away from it (ironically, "Vista syndrome"). With a directory that has a long name like that, the higher-level directories aren't visible in the address bar, so I had to locate it manually in the left-hand tree view panel. OK, knock off the violins, the point is that I didn't have to do that in XP.
- I have an older monitor, so I wanted to turn ClearType off. The IE7 help file describes how to do this in IE, but that didn't work for me no matter how many times I tried, and my eyes were aching by the time I found out that in Vista it's a default system-wide setting that overrides IE's setting until you change the system-wide one. I would have suggested putting one line in the IE7 help file: "Note: if your operating system such as Windows Vista is set to use ClearType system-wide, you must disable this as well to disable ClearType in IE."
- Virtual PC, which worked on all versions of Windows XP, is not supported on Vista Home Premium. I need Virtual PC (for reasons other than Linux-bashing), so this was a deal-breaker.
- Telnet no longer installed by default. Even though I use a different telnet program for regular use, telnet.exe was handy to test whether a remote machine was reachable on a given port. (For example, in a command prompt, type "telnet www.yahoo.com 80" and when the command prompt screen goes blank, that means the machine www.yahoo.com is accepting responses on port 80, the standard port for Web traffic. Try connecting to port 81 instead, and you get no response on that port. This can be useful when diagnosing problems with Web servers and other programs.) Even though it's not hard to get telnet back, why would they go to the trouble of removing it?
-
The aforementioned Facebook problem. This seemed so startling at the time that I almost stopped everything to write an article just about that, musing on Microsoft having so much power that all PC stores were now exclusively stocking computers running an OS that, at the time anyway, couldn't access Facebook. But then I asked another bunch of users on Mechanical Turk, and all respondents using Vista said they could access Facebook after all. Of course, this wasn't a random sample, since users who bought Vista and couldn't access Facebook, probably would have returned their machines a long time ago, but I'm still not sure what caused it to work on some machines and not others -- all I know is that Facebook was inaccessible until I disabled IPv6.
I know Facebook is reading these articles, since in November I wrote about how you could circumvent Facebook's system of verifying that users were real high school students, by doing the following: "(1) create a profile of a non-overweight girl and sign up as a member of a high school network, pending confirmation; (2) search for several boys in that network and send them friend requests; and (3) wait for at least one of them to confirm you back". Shortly afterwards, Facebook changed the verification system, so that now, if you're confirming someone who is a pending member of a high school network but no one else has confirmed them yet, Facebook warns you, "Only check this box if you're absolutely sure that you know this person." So, whichever of Mark Zuckerberg's friends is reading my articles: Clever idea, and, keep the IPv6 records working.
That was as far as I got before I stopped trying to get used to Vista and started taking notes for this article (working title: "Vist Vucked"). From the Mechanical Turk users who responded to my survey, the other most common reported problems were: software compatibility, hardware compatibility, difficulty with the UI, and running too slowly. Presumably the first two problems will improve over time, but the UI will always be hard to switch to as long as users can't find functions that were easy locatable in the old interface, and if it runs slower than XP, that will always be a factor no matter how fast your computer is. (However fast it runs Vista, you'd always be able to make it run even faster with XP instead!)
The best things I've heard about Vista have been that (a) it is the most secure Windows ever (which Dave Barry says is like calling asparagus the "most articulate vegetable ever"), and (b) it features better multimedia integration. To which my responses were: (a) the number of incomprehensible warnings that Vista flashes at a user whenever they look at the computer funny, does not make it more secure, because users will condition themselves to just ignore those warnings, and (b) I hate watching TV on my computer anyway.
Since TV/PC integration is a major selling point for Vista, I thought this last issue was worth looking harder at: Do people really want to use their computers to watch TV? My computer monitor is in an office where I sit up close when I'm working; but TV feels more comfortable to watch from several feet away, and in my office I can't even scoot my chair back that far. (And if I lived with family, I doubt they'd want to crowd into my office to watch a movie.) In fact, I like the psychological separation of the TV set in the living room from the distractions of the computer in the office: I go in there when I'm done with everything in here. The only way I'd regularly download and watch movies would be if I had a way to send them wirelessly to my TV, but a wireless PC-to-TV converter and the corresponding receiver together cost about $200.
Seeking more validation of my opinions from strangers, I did another survey of 30 Mechanical Turk users, asking if they would rather drive to a movie rental store or download a movie online for the same price. Almost half (14) said they'd rather drive to the movie store, citing the comfort of watching the movie on their TV as opposed to on the computer. Another fourth of the respondents (8) said they'd download the movie but only if they could send the content to their TV to watch, and only the last fourth (8) said they'd actually watch it on their computer monitor. So the future of convergence between PC and TV will probably be not in all-in-one systems but in devices that link the PC in your study with the TV in your living room, and since there's no household name yet for PC-to-TV linkage, the field is wide open for some lucky company to make a product that becomes synonymous with the concept, the way "TiVo" is easier to say than "Digital Video Recorder". Maybe that will be a boost for systems like Vista. If that happens at about the same time that a Vista successor is released that makes the interface easier to switch to from XP, I'll bet that will be the tipping point that gets people switching voluntarily. (Of course many people will switch by then just because they need a new computer and they couldn't find one with anything but Vista on it.)
Anyway, I was only trying a new Vista machine because the hard drive on my old computer died, but after all the data had been recovered, I just installed a new drive in the old machine and went back to XP, while my Vista machine was returned to its perch, gargoyle-like, on the shelves at Circuit City, waiting to pounce on the next unsuspecting wretch with dreams of self-improvement through newer computer purchases. The only remnant of Vista that I have left is IE7, which was installed by my Windows XP restore disk and can't be removed, and which is incompatible with some sites and programs that I need, so I've been using Firefox more and getting to like it. That's lucky, since I've already offended the loyal software-logo-wearing constituencies of Vista and Linux, and wouldn't want to deal with the Firefox crowd too. As my friend Anne Mitchell says, "Admitting you hate Firefox is almost as bad as admitting to being Republican." (Except that when Firefox screws with a page, the chat logs don't end up on national television. Ba-dump-bump!)
Frequent Slashdotter hates Vista
anyone have a summary
>My brand-new-out-of-the-box Windows Vista machine could not access www.facebook.com.
"Where do you want to go today?"
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I'm not. Vista is the Edsel of the computer world.
You can dress it up all you like, but it's still only good for comic relief.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
There is no single correct way to pronounce it. You're just being anal.
I know there had to be SOMETHING good about Vista.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Try using it in a corporate environment. It's a nightmare to get the hardware independent image working right and let's not even get started on home brew apps.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
Probably won't change anyone's minds, but it's nice to read something with enjoyable, halfway unbiased prose. That's better than most articles I read that are linked from Slashdot.
Let's see if consumers decide that the Apple TV (take 2) is the lucky device to connect the internet and TV.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I know, another article bashing Vista, what could be more banal. (Kids! That word, meaning "trite" or "unoriginal", is pronounced "ba-NAHL". If you say it the wrong way like I did in an interview, it sounds naughty and you sound stupid.)
And yet Merriam-Webster's lists FOUR different pronunciations for it. Methinks it was a little more than his pronunciation that made him sound stupid.
This article is ridiculous. Some noob spouting about anecdotal problems he had with a Circuit City computer does not inspire respect. His biggest issue? Facebook doesnt work because facebook's website is broken. But its Vista's fault. Is this some sort of joke?
Has the slashdot demographic decayed this much?
It's French.
I've never heard this word used in English before, but he's correct that in French it's pronounced like canal with a B.
Is more accurately described as an elaborate blame shifting mechanism.
From Microsoft's perspective it's worth every man-hour that went into it because they can plausibly say, "But Vista is sooo great, it warned you and YOU ignored it. Sucks to be you." Which papers over the geek-fact that UAC is a permeable barrier to root-ish priviledge, so really nothing technically like sudo despite what Microsoft marketing will tell you.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
1) If you press "ALT" the File / Edit / View menus show up in IE and Windows Explorer. It actually works well, hiding the bars when they aren't used gives you more screen space.
2) Up button is gone, but if you have a side button on your mouse that will take you up one level in Windows Explorer.
3) Telnet is dead, long live SSH. Like he said, it's easy to install telnet if you need it.
I run Vista Business x64 and it's far more stable than XP. The biggest improvements for me are the new Windows Update, the new wireless networking connection tool and indexed searching. I have no complaints about speed but I have 2GB of memory. I think those with 1GB or less probably have legitimate complaints.
I think this particular vista bashing is very poorly done. I didn't read past "It turns out the Facebook issue was not really Microsoft's fault -- facebook had a broken IPv6 record, and Vista defaults to using IPv6". perhaps a better title would have been "facebook sucks". happy linux user and all those other /. stereotypes, I just think if we are mocking vista we should talk about its weaknesses not blame other mistakes on it. I know if someone posted an article claiming it was firefox's fault it didn't correctly render poorly coded web pages it would be received as blasphemy in this community.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Regarding the coment about giving files long names to make it clear where they were downloaded from...
AmigaOS used to do something similar, anything you downloaded had a "filenote" that contained the full URL. A filenote is a smal text string associated with the file, a file comment.
I believe OSX Leopard can do something similar, because when you try to run something you downloaded it tells you where you downloaded it from... But i'm not sure how to query this information manually.
The Amiga implementation was incredibly useful tho, and i terribly miss this feature from more modern systems, perhaps something like this should be implemented into linux.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So where does Microsoft even go to find programmers this stupid? Elbonia? How do you screw up an operating system this badly and still make money with it?
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
So every year or two I'll try out the latest version of some Linux distro to see how long it would take to get used to it. In 2005, full of optimism, I cheerfully booted up the latest version of Shrike
Shrike? Shrike? I've used linux for around 4 years and I have never heard of Shrike, and I play around with all the unkown versions too. If you don't want to like linux, why don't you just try and use a distro that isn't mainstream and won't be nearly as easy/good/fun as something like Fendora or Ubuntu. Oh, wait; he did.
"It turns out the Facebook issue was not really Microsoft's fault -- www.facebook.com had a broken IPv6 record, and Vista defaults to using IPv6 where XP used IPv4, so that's why the host wasn't working. (In case you run into this with any other Web sites on Vista, I fixed the problem by disabling IPv6 in network settings and rebooting.)"
I wouldn't be as nice as you were. Because Microsoft bought/brought all this responsibility on themselves over the past 30+ years, the solution I would give the Vista-hurt user is switch to Linux, and I help them get their computer working again by reloading their system with Linux, and running Windows XP in a virtual machine using VirtualBox with seamless desktop integration. (http://www.virtualbox.org)
I would switch the user to Linux even if the fix was a simply as a different setting. All the more to derail Microsoft from their monopoly. (If the DOJ can't do it, I guess I have to do it myself.)
Microsoft would have to pay me RICHLY to fix Vista issues and/or reload PCs with XP.
On second thought, they could never pay me enough to push their crap. I give my friends and customers the best on a PC - LINUX!
He couldn't access Facebook on his computer he bought at Circuit City? *sigh*
Grrr... darn Slashdot editors always screwing up TFA
Here's a link to the Article: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=08/02/08/1627201
Make sure you mod me up for this link!
I always had a rough time with find too. If the author happens to be reading the comments, try:
find . -type f -name "file_name_here" -print
It's a complicated command that can do a lot, but that basic example will work for the majority of your simple file searches. From there it might be easier to branch out and fuss with other options (such as -mtime 1 would search for a file modified in the last day) but this should hopefully get you started.
Peace.
Vista contains a number of quality enhancements, but most of them are under the hood. For a comprehensive list, see:
Windows Vista
The GUI, some of its information architecture (specifically, screen transitions in widgets) need work. So do some of the internals.
Vista is released now to see how the world reacts to it, so it will be tried and true tested in 2010. As another article here pointed out, the codebase is now standardized with Server 2008 and Windows 7 will be built on a modified version of it.
Windows XP was released in 2001, and it took a couple years to be usable, also.
To use a historical metaphor, Windows Vista is Windows 95 for the millennial generation. It will be replaced by Windows 7, which is the equivalent of Windows 98: same idea, much more refined implementation.
Bennett's article is consumer research gold for Microsoft, if they choose to use it. It's the small daily frustrations that make users go mad, because as weird as it sounds, gigantic fundamental problems are obvious and all planning starts with workarounds.
2009 will be the year of Vista, and almost immediately, Windows 7 will be out, and we can go through this battle again!
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
His main complaint is really an IPv6 conversion problem. Facebook probably works on Vista from network connections that can't get an IPv6 connection at all, because the client presumably tries IPv4. But he was apparently testing from some connection that could pass IPv6 packets to Facebook, and Vista properly tried to use IPv6. It's a legitimate complaint if this problem isn't properly reported to the user.
We're going to be seeing more of this. Rollout of IPv6 to consumers only started a few weeks ago.
I have not used it, nor do I know anyone that has done more than preliminary testing of it, but it just seems as though Vista is another ME, although ME tried to do more new things than Vista tried to do, to the end user, they both seem to be less than desireable experiences than other versions of Windows.
I don't get that excited over new Linux releases or OS X releases either. Its more like, "Hmm, thats new/different", or "neet, I've been waiting for that to finally work like it should".
Windows has one big thing against it in that it does not really have a target audience, its a jack of all trades and a master of none. Linux fits well with developers, geeks, researchers, and is nice in the server room. OS X has general users, some developers and geeks and researchers as a desktop environment and the multimedia crowd to boot.
Windows is "targeted" for joe sixpack, corporate desktops, gamers, its just what comes with a computer through OEM deals. Windows is very complicated, intrusive, is becoming more fragmented in its "look and feel". I mean, I wouldn't even know which of the 5 or so versions of Vista I would pick if I was tasked with suck a thing.
I have no real point, besides that the daily to semi-daily
Whenever someone gets a new Vista laptop for home, they bring it to me the next day complaining that it can't connect to their home wireless. I disable IP6 and send them home. Now, they can at least access the web at home, and hopefully they can download drivers to upgrade to XP.
The article makes 3 points:
Point 1
Facebook (not microsoft) screwed up and as a result, any computer configured to use IPv6 wouldn't be able to access it. If you set up your Mac or Linux box to use IPv6, you wouldn't be able to access facebook.
Somehow, this is evidence of Vista's suckiness.
Point 2
I am proud of myself for knowing the word banal and wish to let you know.
Point 3
Three years ago I found an obscure feature that I happen to like, but since it's obscure my linux distro didn't implement it *exactly* the same way that Microsoft implements it. Mac's don't implement it that way either, but no matter, this is somehow proof of linux's suckiness.
A linux user tried to help me, but he stopped short of driving out to my house and typing the command for me, so I take this as evidence of linux's suckiness.
...who can help you break the law. Hate to say it, but your idea that "helping" people access facebook and myspace where they can't and shouldn't be accessing it, is not supporting freedom of speech and anti-censorship. You should try petitioning lawmakers to change the laws instead of providing the tools for others to break them.
I agree. This guy is a douche bag
...that a regular contributor on SLASHDOT would have to be pretty stupid to go and buy a PC with Vista on it?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Much of this article is a perfect example of the "Vista sux lol" mentality that seems to linger here at Slashdot.
Explorer menus - It's very simple to re-enable them. Also, the only time I find myself using them in the first place is when I need to show hidden files. Sure I could just leave them hidden, but seeing all of the little desktop.ini files gets annoying.
ClearType conundrum - There has been a systemwide option for ClearType since XP was released. The only difference here is that it now defaults to on. Why would you even bother changing the IE7 setting if your entire OS has it enabled? Granted, this doesn't explain the stupidity of IE7 having its own option in the first place.
Facebook failure - This shouldn't have even been mentioned. Ok so Vista defaults to IPv6 where available. It's still Facebook's fault for having a broken IPv6 record. Personally, I'd like to know what ISP these mentioned people actually use. I haven't seen one yet that uses IPv6 without tunneling, including the one I work for.
Sure I can appreciate some of the points in this article as I run Vista Ultimate x64 at home (by choice, no less), but this is getting ridiculous.
...they say it doesn't but it does - I've been using it for weeks to test web sites in IE6.
This article says absolutely zilch that's new or interesting.
I've always pronounced this one as, roughly, /beinl/. So I just looked it up in a few dictionaries, and they agree with both of us. I wonder if it's a UK/US distinction.
Frequent Digg contributor
There. I fixed it for you.
I mean is xp really better. I have been using Vista for 6 months now and I love it. For one thing I could get on Facebook as soon as I installed vista so you are obviously wrong about that. Secondly the messages are quite nice to let you know what is actually going on on your computer. They actually let you know what is being installed and let you know what programs are actually trying to access the registry. OS X has been asking you for your admin name and password for years so I know they can't be talking bad about Vista. Vista in my opinion is a great OS with a good security level. It has all the good things that XP had and looks better with a few added features. They fixed the folder locations. Gave you a better home directory and gave you roaming profiles. I am a Systems Admin and use XP, OS X, and Vista at work and on my home computer I run Vista.
You what makes you sound stupid - it's throwing random sophomoric crap non-sequitirs like this into your harangue (BTW that's pronounced as if it rhymes with "meringue", which is a type of dessert).
I'm a Mac user, and I like puppies.
#DeleteChrome
It is easy way to gain more desktop realestate, more handy these days with the wide aspect ratio. One doesn't actually "need" the file bar on screen at all times, and getting a bigger monitor costs money as isn't an option on a portable. I disagree with the choice that it's hidden by default, and would think it would be nice for it to behave like the start bar, if not always at least in maximize mode.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
'Shrike' is the development name for Red Hat 9. Scroll down the distrowatch page to see the columns with release names.
Kind of like calling a Windows release 'Joliet', 'Chicago' or 'Cairo'.
Why all the cities in Illinois?
The fact that Facebook has broken IPv6 records is noteworthy all by itself. That sort of problem is going to come up a lot, as more and more users make the move to IPv6.
And can we skip all the crap about whose fault it is? Yes, Facebook screwed up. But if a leading OS can't access a leading web site, people need to know about it, and don't really care whose fucking fault it is.
I'm sure a lot of people are tired of hearing about How Vista Sucks. But the issue isn't going to go away. It's getting harder and harder to buy new machines that run XP, and Microsoft wants to make it impossible. This is stuff I want to hear about, especially when the writer covers problems I hadn't heard about before, like this guy did. As it happens, these issues are key for me, because I desperately want to get Vista's improved handwriting engine for my tablet; that makes Vista problems of extreme interest to me.
If you don't share that interest, well, nobody's forcing you to read TFA.
Sounds like this guy is just the worst kind of user. Knows just enough to be dangerous.
However fast it runs XP, you'd always be able to make it run even faster with windows 95 instead!
Facebook works in XP. It works in Linux. It works in Mac OS X. It doesn't work in Vista.
How is that NOT Vista's fault?! If it works in every other OS other than Vista, that would indicate that something is wrong with Vista, case closed.
You've never worked in tech support, have you?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I agree the Facebook bit isn't a big deal, but he's spot on about the random changes they've made to the interface. "Hey, we've had File, Edit, and View menus for a couple decades now, let's shake things up and get rid of them! Why, you ask? Because we can!"
Seriously, do these guys do any usability testing? Focus groups? Windows has an installed base of what, billions of people, and most of them aren't IT professionals, they're Circuit City shoppers. And they don't want to spend time relearning in Vista what they already know how to do in XP. Yeah, we'll all get there eventually, but it seems like MS has gone out of their way to make the transition difficult.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I can't believe this poorly written post was posted to the front page. C'mon, this is a journal entry at best!
- The writer spends majority of his 'review' on the fact that he couldn't access Facebook, despite the fact that he admits this was an issue with Facebook's website itself, not Vista.
- And an embedded link to rentmychest.com? C'mon kdawson, did you even read this submission?
- He gives his directories names like "Flash-Player-8.5.0.246-beta2.downloaded-2006-03-20-from-labs.macromedia.com"? Is this a joke?
- He complains about telnet.exe not being available, despite the fact that he doesn't use it normally in the first place?
- Is this a review of Vista, or an ad for Mechanical Turk?
So, I wanted to like Vista. I knew that eventually everyone would have to upgrade anyway, so, not wanting to be left behind, I wanted to switch to Vista because of the same factor that spammers use to get your attention: "Other guys are improving themselves, why aren't you?" But there were some things I ran into almost immediately:
Using Vista I get the feeling I've been left ahead and that isn't a good feeling in my case.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Is everyone just really lazy?
Do people not ENJOY learning new things?
I use Vista. I'm not stupid. I'm not lazy either, especially when it comes to my PC.
I really enjoy figuring things out, and Vista has a lot.
Sure that's not good for the average I-don't-know-what-the-hell-I'm-doing user, but that's not me. And that's all I care about.
Vista provides possible ways to turn off EVERY single annoying thing, as well as running ANY program in XP compatability mode, and it works. UAC? Turned off. ReadyBoost? Turned off. All that junk no one needs? Turned off.
And now, with a little work and adjustment, Vista has completely replaced XP for me. I am hindered in no possible ways, and my overall usability of my PC has increased.
It's not even slow. Vista runs much more processes than XP, but if you get them down to a controlled necessary number, it does a good job. I can't remember the last time I had to wait for any of my programs to open. The only slow thing is file transfers, which isn't a big deal. If you need to move 1gb files around your hard drive all the time, you have problems. And if it's a flashdrive you're moving it to, then stop storing your porn on your keychain.
And a big bonus? Through downloaded Dock programs, the sidebar, and other things I've added, my Vista literally feels like I'm running a computer from the future, but it's sweet because It's definitely happening today.
-Kevin Stanislawski.
Why the heck does anyone want to use the mouse that much? I understand that the desktop is dying.. so that means most people are using their laptops.. I would think that the backspace key would be much of an easier choice then running to the toolbar to hit the [up] button.. granted, this is just a back button and not an actucal up button.. run - yes it's not there in vista, but, windows R - brings up run, as D shows desktop, E for explorer, and there are more than that.. why would someone want to click on print, or file print, when they can alt-f, p or save alt-f, s -- i'm running 2gig ram on my vista.. 64 bit - one problem i have.. which anyone with 64, is no flash.. thats not vista fault, plus i can use a 32 bit browser and that is solved -- some menus changed, office 2007 has such a crazy interface, well, i'm using openoffice anyways... unless I need to do some mailmerge or some text to columns in excel -- my streets and trips gps didn't work when i got my machine, but now it does.. my one complaint - file copying is slow.. my one complaint running ubuntu on my slower computer, that I use my other laptop for work, and can't run our imaging software on ubuntu, and don't want to lose time trying to setup and make sure everything works right with wine... otherwise I would have ubuntu on here (i've had ubuntu installed for over a month now on a dell laptop, because one day it died, and the orignal drivers wouldn't work for the video card or my internal wireless) my solution - linux.. and after reading the ease of instalation - was surprised how easy to update, use..does everything i need to and runs some programs as fast as vista machine (and the dell laptop has 768 mb of ram) i'm loosing sight of my original post
Sorry to nitpick, but Facebook's website isn't the problem. It's their IPv6 DNS . They are not the same, and I'd hope that most Slashdotters know the difference.
And it certainly is a failing of Vista's, if it does not gracefully fall back to IPv4 when IPv6 fails. You'd think after this long of "not getting the internet", they'd have at least figured out networking. ;)
That was one system he knew had to die a quick death. That machine was ahead of it's time. The Intellectual property for the Amiga is so separated into various pieces, it will NEVER come to market again. Bill Gates could never compete with the Amiga if he didn't own it, and he knew it. Since he couldn't buy it outright, he fostered it's death into computer history.
His problems are (a)they moved some stuff about and (b)Facebook has a broken IPv6 record.
Hardly the end of the world.
While I'm not planning to move to Vista in the near future, the daily "Vista is a failure!!!!" posts are getting just a little tiresome.
My Journal
I hate Vista too, but some of this review's points need a bit of correction (in Vista's favor, even) although I also have some things to say too.
> Facebook doesnt work because facebook's website is broken.
No, sounds like their DNS was broken. But anyway.....
This guy sounds like a typical above average end user. What is typically referred to as a 'power user' in that he knows the basics and is probably the go to guy for everyone else in his peer group. And all of his complaints about capricious changes in the Vista interface vs XP are valid for bith his group and the induhviduals at the bottom of the user pyramid. Change == bad pretty much sums it up.
Which is why the penguin ain't ever going to capture that set of users through conversions. The only way is through new product niches like the eee pc, handhelds, etc. Get enough penguins out that folks like him slowly become used to linux conventions and thus won't be afraid of them on a desktop anymore.
Oh, and for the guy's complaint about being told to use find... bad advice. That is using a sledgehammer to drive a nail. Locate is what ya need for that. Except because linux distributers (I'm looking at you Fedora/RH) keep wanting to appeal to Windows n00bs who don't want Linux instead of Unix folk who DO.... so they disable locate out of the box requiring new users to become root and edit scary text files to reenable it.
Democrat delenda est
The whole thing was very satisfying and I can type "find . -type f -exec grep some-string {} \; -print" whenever I want and it'll work.
(I'm not trying to bash Windows here--I just like Linux better. I bought the computer as a Linux machine and wanted to see what all the fuss was about and if it was worth keeping a small Vista partition around for a bit. Vista showed me it wasn't pretty quickly but I still have the install CD and license sticker in case I change my mind.)
Vista has an IPV6 problem, you're sticking with XP and you don't like Linux.
I got 20 lines into your boring monologue and lost the will to live.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Definitely agree. This wasn't about why Vista is such a let-down of an OS as much as a single user's complaints about why it's different from XP. I'm really tired of hearing all these complaints about how Vista sucks because of a bunch of personal dislikes about what they changed/took out/moved since XP. Don't like Microsoft's new OS, then put your money behind something else. Don't buy from Circuit City, go online to Dell/HP/Lenovo, etc. where you can still buy an XP machine. Buy a Mac and go that direction, or switch to Linux and donate some cash to your favorite distro and tell them what you want in upcoming releases. I've been using Vista since the Beta/RC days, and would never go back to XP after, but that's my personal opinion, it's not that XP sucks comparatively. I really wish we'd stop seeing all this kind of press, and maybe see some real arguments for/against Vista.
-=Curtis=-
Vista includes IPv6 support. And so what? True, it should default to IPv4 if v6 doesn't work, but at least it supports IPv6!
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
My brand-new-out-of-the-box-install Firefox 2.0 could not access www.hotmail.com. A nearby Firefox 1.5 could, but the Firefox 2.0 couldn't. I went back to getfirefox.com to try and download it again, and they could access other sites but not Hotmail, either. And that honeymoon feeling that you get when you install a new browser and expect it to solve all your problems, was over for me. Having built my latest career on helping people access Hotmail where they were blocked from it, by some cosmic joke was Firefox 2.0 now blocking me from getting to Hotmail on my own machine?
Long . . . winded . . . douche . . . bag.
c.t.f.o
Please, please, people! Can't we all just agree that *both* Vista and Facebook suck?
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Please add the "troll" mod to this spammer troll and remove the mod points from the moron who gave him insightful, thanks.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Plus: I do like how Vista added the "no to all", which goes nicely with "yes to all". This cuts down on a lot of same-question asking when doing file operations. Yay for that.
Minus: They totally botched up the column resizing method on the "details" view of Explorer. In XP, it's very cut & dry. YOu hover your mouse between the bars to resize them. Why is this now such a pain in Vista? I swear you have to go to the right a bit to it. It doesn't seem synced up with the mouse pointer "hot spot" end. It was never something that was broken to begin with, but they decided to "improve it". Even switching back to the classic Windows theme(I always do this to make remote desktop faster) still gives you the problem.
I do wonder if Vista fixed the annoying "searching for items" problem. You go into explorer, and you might have a few network drives. You quickly see a flash of your whole file tree, then it blanks it out for your convienence while it "searches for items". This might take a while.
Did they also fix the irritating "my network places"? It's tricky to remove the months-old entries in there(which pile up after a while), since if you directly click on one of the locations that might not be there anymore, it takes a 2 minute wait to say no. Then it's a bit annoying to delete.
The latest IE took TOO MUCH out of the freakin' gui. Bring back the basic buttons. I don't care if it takes up more real estate. I've gotten too used to the firefox button set.
> Telnet is dead, long live SSH. Like he said, it's easy to install telnet if you need it.
Said the n00b who doesn't do IT for a living in the real world. When all of the equipment vendors support ssh AND all of the old stuff is retired telnet will be dead. But I'm not expecting that to happen for at least another decade. And the article itself pointed out the use of telnet to connect to other ports, like port 80 to manually investigate http servers.
Democrat delenda est
I grok the general push to IPv6 and all, but you'd think they would have at least tried to follow the (what I thought to be) common 'check first then fail gracefully' behavior...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Windows (any version not just Vista):
- Includes everything Microsoft thinks you need (whether you want/need it or not) and makes sure that it's difficult for you to vary from that configuration.
- You, the user, are assumed to have no technical competence or common sense so features are enabled to make it difficult to change (break) something. (see #1)
Linux:- Includes absolutely nothing but the bare bones system. You must add things to it to suit your personal needs.
- Requires you to become a somewhat competent operator if you want to configure or customize anything beyond the gui control panels a particular distro or app provides you.
The OP seems to fall about halfway between those two extremes and will not be happy with either choice.P.S. The changes in the Vista desktop, IE7, and the latest Office apps are confusing at first but get easier with use. Kind of reminds me of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth when IE4 was released (talking end-user experience, not the whole anti-trust and web standards part
Trouble is that in my professional life (where I do encourage a Linux desktop) this is exactly the sort of attitude that I see: people do not like a single iota of change. This means that anything where a Linux desktop is different it is thus, by definition, wrong and broken. It takes a lot of things that the Linux desktop CAN do that MS Windows can't to make it seem about equal in many people's minds.
Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that everyone things like this, just that many do. The big problem is that us techies (who love new things) just can't get our heads round this. Until we do: pushing a Linux desktop will be difficult.
So guys: learn from what he says.
You don't get it do you? If enough people have enough personal complaints about Vista that they'd rather use anything but Vista, it doesn't make any difference at all how big or legitimate those complaints are. And frankly, the type of people that use Facebook make up the majority of the Windows customer base. Power users and people in the Slashdot crowd are a minority. And the complaints the author had are exactly the types of things that will frustrate John and Jane Doe and turn them off of Vista.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
[throws a dart]
Give me 20 something-worses.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I have yet to experience Vista (probably very soon, when I buy my next computer), but I for the last days I was curious about any real reason against Vista.
So far arguments against it seem to be:
1. Vista moved my cheese (mostly changes in the GUI)
2. Vista has some minor bugs (sure, which new system doesn't?)
3. Someone did something stupid, and this won't work with Vista (Facebook problem, bad software not working anymore...)
Usually people don't even argue that the changes are bad by themselves - they just oppose them because it doesn't work the way they are used to. But for someone who is willing to accept changes, and knows that there will be some minor problems, is there any real reason against Vista?
"Yes, but other than being useful, usable, reliable, extensible, free, and unencumbered, what does Linux have going for it?" - Hamilcar Barca
No, really, I get it. Linux needs a "killer app" and all that. For me, it's general media munging on the cheap. I can back up DVDs, transcode movies to other formats (like storing some cartoons and such on my Treo to keep kids entertained) and so forth. I can play practically any media format on Earth without having to install little background processes from various companies on my machine (Quicktime, Real, etc.) (Linux also ran most of my Windows games better than Vista did.)
That's not enough to make a bunch of people switch en masse, I totally agree. But the 'barrier to switching' has dropped enormously just in the last couple of years. There are a lot fewer dealbreakers, Linux is getting good at a lot of these little niche areas too, and more and more of the real action is moving to the web anyway. There won't be a "Year of the Linux Destkop" any more than there was a "Year of the Linux Server" - people will just switch over, a few here, a few there, and eventually it'll be a solid and respected option among many on the desktop, the same way it now is on the server. (Linux is effectively immortal, so it's got all the time in the world to wait.)
Vista sucking is a nice short-term bonus for Linux, but the long-term trends are what counts here.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The killer app could very well be VirtualBox if it would only make the networking seamless (i.e., bridging or sharing). In my experience, it runs Windows 2000/XP FASTER than those OS flavors run natively on the same hardware (I figure this is due to better memory management on Linux).
However, it is a real PITA to either (a) by default only use select ports like 80 and 21 on the guest OS or (b) to go through the trouble of working to set up a promiscuous network bridge only to have it render the Host OS unconnected. There is also the issue of not having bridge connections work with many wireless cards period. I am sure that there are technical reasons for all this, but the bottom line is Internet Connection sharing is quite straightforward in the Windows environment and not in Linux.
Some people have complained that this is a security hole; while that may be valid, to the end user, security is not nearly as important if the system becomes unusable.
Answer: A Bennet Haselton article still SUCKS!!!
So the future of convergence between PC and TV will probably be not in all-in-one systems but in devices that link the PC in your study with the TV in your living room, and since there's no household name yet for PC-to-TV linkage,
Oh, if only there were a device that let you watch content from your PC on your TV from some brand name! Like, say, an Apple TV - or even some kind of "media extender" which would run on a platform like the Microsoft 360 or the Sony PS3!
That segment of the review however shows just how hard a task all the companies making media extender boxes have in even getting people to understand what they are offering, in addition to letting them know it exists.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps the idea was to steer users towards using the buttons on the toolbar, but there aren't enough buttons to cover all the options located under the menus. If the UI designers wanted to steer users gently towards using the buttons, my suggestion would have been: Whenever the user picks something under a menu that corresponds to something accessible from the toolbar, display a dialog box which says for example, "In the future, you can print faster by clicking the printer button on the toolbar", along with a picture (and a "Do not show this message again" checkbox -- important!).
How to fix:
1. Read In The Beginning Was The Command Line http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
2. Realize that you once again traded in the crappy station wagon that broke down the day you drove it off the lot for another crappy station wagon, although newer, that broke down as soon as you drove it off the lot - same make, same dealer.
3. Come to the realization that as long as you think it's your job to excuse why your station wagon broke down - after all, everyone seems to drives one and everyone seems to give those excuses and suggestions - then you are doomed to keep buying broken down station wagons and you become part of the encouragement to dealer and maker to just keep up what they do - and some day, you'll be part of the mass of station wagon buyers that influenced someone else to follow this behavior.
4. Once this realization is established, the problem is solved, and it elegantly leaves you two options.
Option A - Rationalize away what you've just realized, and now your problem is solved: this pretty much includes not having any further questions on the subject and whenever you hear someone else complain about the idiocy of driving a broken down station wagon at new car prices, roll your eyes with the knowing, "he's just a Microsoft basher!" explanation.
Option B - Vow to never repeat this mistake. This pretty much includes going across the intersection to another corner, and picking up one of the free tanks - yes, I mean as in big, mean Army tank! - and drive it or the other corner and pay about the same as you did or will over your use-time for a sleeker, fun car that breaks down about as often as the Army tank - ie, virtually never. If you have something that can only be done using a broken down station wagon, you'll find your tank has a thing called WINE that will let you drive parts of the little station wagon around inside your tank or you'll find your sleek car lets you play broken down station wagon inside a couple of videogames called Parallels or VMWare.
Once you have followed this path, you will have magically answered this question, too:
But to this day I've never heard an answer to one question: Since even Linux advocates admit that it's harder to use, what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?
If you solved your problem by going with Option B, you've realized that the question isn't going to be ever answered. Because you just asked, "Why don't I get a simple answer to one question: Ever since I saw that a tank might be harder to drive, why would I want a free tank that never breaks down when I can keep paying for the privilege of driving a crappy station wagon guaranteed to be broken down by design?"
If you solved your problem by going with Option A, you've realized that broken down station wagon drivers throwing good money after bad are much more clever than free tank drivers or sleek car drivers. (Don't forget to gloat, even if done ever so humbly.)
Hope it's not to late for the author in question - best luck, compadre.
PS - I have never recommended the online version of "In The Beginning..." - ever. I always insist people buy the book. It seems to help those preconditioned to buy what they can get for free to actually get
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Actually, he himself says that's not Vista's fault.
Nope, people who skim an article and post "rebuttals" that completely mischaracterize what was said have been with us all along. You are part of a tradition that goes back to the beginning of Slashdot itself. (Trust me, I've been reading that long -- my user number is as high as it is because I read for quite a while before finally spotting something I felt like responding to and signed up for an account.) Some things never change...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Under WinXP, holding down shift while clicking "no" equals "no to all".
How intuitive..
(If I recall correctly, some early versions of XP had "n" as a keyboard shortcut for "no", and "N" for "no to all". Maybe they still work?)
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
So every year or two I'll try out the latest version of some Linux distro to see how long it would take to get used to it. In 2005, full of optimism, I cheerfully booted up the latest version of Shrike, then tried to find a directory and discovered I could not right-click on the hard drive root dir and specify the name of a directory I wanted to search for (that only worked for files, not directories).
I did a Google on Shrike Linux. Its RedHat Linux 9, released back in 2003, since discontinued.
I think Bennett Haselton needs to try out a newer Linux ISO ([K|U|X]buntu/SuSE,Mandrake) before complaining about man find.
what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?
Under Linux IPV6 socket timeouts default back to using IPV4 automatically.
Other than drivers for Lexmark and a few wireless chipsets I haven't had any problems.
Under Linux I do miss not having to defrag, resolve MDAC/.Net conflicts with the HP pinter drivers, remove arcane spyware/registry entries from Explorer. I miss not having to call Microsoft every time I do a new installation. I miss the comfort that the Windows Genuine Advantage gave me.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
RTFA. He makes very valid points about changes for the worse which have happened in the UI and their psychological effect on users that switch over. Also, he makes important points about Virtual PC, overall system performance and confusing user interface settings (e.g. ClearType).
http://www.apple.com/appletv/ It works beautifully, though mostly if you fill it with ripped content. Still ...
Apparently you haven't gotten out much, or even taken history classes. Ever hear of Standard Oil?
I just OWNED your ass.
It really is maddening that they removed the Up button in Explorer. ... it was because they thought it was too confusing for the typical user. "How can they go up when there is no down button..." At the very least they should have kept it as an option for "experts"!
I think it wasn't because they wanted space
This is a perfect example of what Linus described in a previous article about why Linux on the Desktop is failing. "better is worse if it's different." Just reading through this article it's very clear how stuck in his ways Bennett really is. By his own admission, nothing was fundamentally wrong with Vista in his experience, just that things were different from what he was used to.
Virtual PC runs just fine on Vista Home Premium edition. You just get nag boxes coming up telling you that it's unsupported, but it works just fine.
This article was so boring I was snoring halfway thru it.
I think this is an example of the main question with Vista (i.e. how thought-out were its changes): IPv4 is absolutely everywhere. Why would anyone make a browser that defaults to IPv6, forcing you to then disable the new technology altogether in order to get the IPv4 sites that always showed up, to show up again?
stuff |
Just wow. I had to read it twice for I realized he just doesn't get it.
TV on a computer. A lot of people will be doing that, but they may not be outputting it to the computer screen.
Shrike? WTH is Shrike? Does he even understand that the GUI isn't Linux? Did he try a mainstream Linux version? Does he understand that it gets the user a cheaper computer?
I don't like Vista, but this was weak.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So 1) it was Facebook's fault and 2) it was an easy fix. But yet somehow that still leads an article on Vista bashing.
Makes you wonder.
Ubuntu, opensuse and debian also ship with ipv6 enabled by default. http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/ is unresolvable until ipv6 is disabled on my GNU/Linux PCs. I'm just waiting for some unexpected ui changes in updated applications or the DE to make me reel back in fright and I'll be ready to be a big league slashdot journo. I don't use Vista, am sure it stinks worse than all the other rubbish MS inflict on the world but this article is really unimpressive. To sum it up "they put some buttons in a different place and now I don't know what to do." If someone changed this guy's zipper for buttons he'd probably piss his pants before he figured out how to get the little fellow out.
I seriously thought that's where he was going with that. I need to get some sleep.
Sure, Vista sucks because Facebook misconfigured their IPv6 stuff.
Nope - Vista sucks because they set IPv6 to be the default DNS lookup instead of IPv4, which is the default for Windows XP.
Microsoft has had a VERY LONG history of taking arbitrary decisions without consulting their users about what they think is the best.
- Is C:\Program{insert nasty space here}Files where you want to install your programs? How about C:\PROGRAMS (which complies with the 8.3 convention used in DOS programs, and the lack of space does not confuse GNU utils) ? No. It must be a new name, incompatible with previous versions of the OS.
- Would you like to install your programs in a separate partition, and leave C: for Windows alone? Nope. Always drive C:, since you can't run the partitioner (a non-destructive partitioner would have to be purchased separately at another software company).
- How about if you want to install on a separate partition that you made beforehand? Fine, but it screws up your MBR anyway. Beware Linux users. Oh, also make sure it's a primary partition where you boot up.
- How about the Common Files? They're in C: by default, and there's no other way than editing the registry where users can change that.
- And the swap file, would you like it on C: or another partition? By default it's at C:.
Once upon a time, I had tried to manage my HD by making multiple partitions so I wouldn't have to reinstall everything if my windows screwed up, and Windows kept installing DirectX and all the bloatware on C: even after I had hacked registry stuff etc. to make sure everything worked on F:. Eventually my Drive C: partition ran out of space. Finally I had to give up and concede Microsoft to install all the program files on C: . Guess what happened when my C: partition got screwed up last year.
Anyway... this is just an example of Microsoft taking the decisions FOR YOU. It is not you, but they who decide what's best for you. And that's just the beginning...
Hey, Steve! Should we make IPv6 as default for host name lookup? Yeah, we know what's better for the users. Wham, Facebook can't load and we don't even know why.
How about unnecessary services that could be used for taking over machines in case of buffer overflows? No problem! Your computer has the Storm bot installed now.
My friend wanted to send me an MP3 via MSN Messenger. Click... oh, no, it was deleted because it could be an evil virus!
Speaking of viruses, many of them are using old formats. Instead of changing the access code, Microsoft decides to remove their support.
So instead of Microsoft "Windows", you actually have Microsoft Nanny, which also decides that you could be a pirate and therefore impose a limit on the number of registrations you can make (I've upgraded my PC's hardware more than 6 times).
This is not a sudden change in behavior. It's part of the Microsoft philosophy. It's their software, not yours, so it is they who decide how you may use it.
I miss the MS-DOS times, where you could install DOS in C:\DOS, or C:\MYDOS, or C:\DOS50 and nothing would break up. Well, I really don't care anymore, because since last year I have Linux installed in my PC and all these problems have gone away.
I flame against +1 Funny, and get modded up as +1 Funny! The horror! The horror!
You're correct for complex applications and operations, but the bulk of people out there only use the following in their OS:
1) Web browser
2) Music/Video player
3) Office software/PDF Viewer
4) Email
5) File sharing/organizing
6) Photo editing/organizing
7) Plug into IPods or similar music devices
8) Tax software (at least those that don't use spread sheets)
That's about it. What Linux provides in each of these areas (except for (8)) is virtually identical to how things are done on Windows XP, especially if you're using an operating system like Ubuntu. The key difference between Ubuntu and Windows XP is that Windows XP has a lot of knobs and complexity which get in the way if all you're interested in is 1-8, while Ubuntu gets rid of most of that cruft and lets you actually focus on 1-8.
I've had zero difficulty moving my wife from Windows XP to Ubuntu on a Dell 1520 laptop. Things just work as she expects and she doesn't need more than 1-7 (plus some bio-informatics software). While it is true that I had add "Nautilus menu actions" to give her the ability to rotate and resize pictures from Nautilus the way she could in Windows XP, and add VMWare with Windows 2000 so she could access some special features on one of her social networking site, she quickly got up to speed and manages her own system without my involvement.
BTW, I did look at Vista too in VirtualBox. Most of the things people complain about like "Confirm"/"Deny" badgering and slowness just weren't there (even under virtualization). The main problem with Vista is that it seems like Microsoft tried to remake the OS as a web application and things are a lot more bulky and confusing than they need to be. Things are gratuitously moved around from XP, there are more layers of menus to find things, and many parts of the OS are half baked. For instance, to turn off least user privileges, I needed to go to the "tools" section of the control panel (it took a while to find) and click on turn off least user privileges link. That popped up a DOS box for a second which actually performed the action on the command line. Why on earth did I need to *see* the DOS box in a production OS? The only reason I needed to turn off least user privileges was because I couldn't share files with my virtual machine. Windows XP worked like a charm. Granted it's more secure to turn off the file sharing service in Vista by default the same way Ubuntu does. But in Ubuntu, if you try to share files for the first time you get a dialog box that explains the default and asks you if you want to install Samba and open the port. With Vista all you get is silence and you don't have a clue what's gone wrong or how to find out how to fix it. I would have *loved* to keep least user privileges but I'm not a Vista guru and I couldn't figure out how to share files and keep least user privileges on.
I honestly don't see many people switching over Windows XP (which works for most people) to Vista (which wouldn't). If Microsoft forces users to go to Vista before it's fully baked, Linux has an enormous opportunity.
And I can't run KDE on Windows. News flash: Native apps for $OS_A don't work on $OS_B.
Had this in 2003.
Out of the box, on this Toshiba laptop. Automatically scans, builds a list of wireless networks. I can join an open one in two clicks, if it doesn't do that already. And unlike Windows, it won't bug me about wireless when I'm plugged in to Ethernet.
And h.264, and vc1, and wmv9, and flv, and ac3, and... Hell, even codecs I've never heard of, like cinepack.
Added Medibuntu to my Linux. Took maybe two minutes. And I'm on a 64-bit distro, which means I can't easily fall back on win32codecs, but I haven't needed to.
In other words, it works. What's this "barely"?
For me, it's been mostly hardware support, but even here, the worst I've got now is my laptop's built-in sound refusing to work. Oh well, I was looking for an excuse to get a nice USB-audio device. Of course, YMMV, I realize buying hardware is not a fair thing to ask of everyone.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yes I watch TV on my PC because:
- it has a DVB-S card
- the satellite dish is usually pointing at the BBC / ITV so I can watch UK TV from France while the rest of the family watches French TV (not a good idea most nights)
- I can time shift so I watch the show I want to see when I want to watch it
- I can record films and then write them to DVD (so everyone gets to watch them in English on the TV)
- my computer screen is better than our TV - 19" 16:10, this will change soon, I will then plug my computer into the TV 40" FullHD
- I don't have to pay a subscription, the channels are FTA
-...
six good reasons
Oh yes it (my computer) runs Linux (FC8) and VDR and xine
realkiwi
Suspend/Hibernate - you haven't configured it
Scanning - never had an issue. In fact Ubuntu worked with my HP all in one out of the box. On windows I had to download nearly a hundred megabytes of drivers and assorted crapps that I didn't want.
Photoshop CS2 has platinum rating with WINE.
I use WINE to play portal, it's ace.
Media support is far better than you claim - try VLC. It has yet to choke on anything. Compared to the joke that is windows media player... Well, I use VLC on windows too as it just works.
My TV card also works perfectly under Kaffeine. If your online tv merchant doesn't work with Linux, that's their fault.
Wireless on my laptop worked out of the box. YMMV.
"The point I'm making is, if you use Linux as your desktop, it's cause you only use a very limited subset of the functions, or because you're trying to prove a political or philosophical point."
Nope, my choice was Vista (which came with the laptop) or Ubuntu. I wasn't going to pay for or pirate XP.
Ubuntu is easier and more functional.
"But for regular use by a regular human being, a Linux desktop is a mediocre substitute that provides you with a bare minimum of services"
That's an outright lie.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/banal?view=uk
It's used among slightly more educated English speakers.
Deleted
I could write a site that doesn't work on any browser and/or OS you care to mention. It's my fault if I can't make sure it works on *everything*. It's called cross-platform compatibility, it's a bit of a "thing" in web design.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good giggle at Vista, but this wasn't entirely MS's fault for once.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
which fool /. editor greenlighted that?
I've been a happy user of various linux/unix machines for years, but out of what gripes I do have with them, the biggest is the varying quality of man pages. Some are great, but too many important commands are sticking end-user-unfriendly details up at the front -- under-the-hood workings, programmerspeak, or excessively technical/verbose summaries. These are important details, yes, but I rarely need to know any of them when first learning how to use the thing.
The front sections of a man page should contain no more than "what is it," "what's it for," and "how to use it." Examples are especially helpful, but far too uncommon. Details about operator precedence or which argument the program feels is the beginning of your search expression can wait till after you've explained how to use it to find a file.
I want to thank you - your title made me aware of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese - very good. In any case your title cracked me up.
May I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning...was_the_Command_Line or my later submission in thread for valid arguments against Vista?
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I have several Vista machines. My primary home desktop is running Windows Vista Ultimate and it's smooth as silk:
Pentium D 840+
4GB ECC PC6400 DDR2
Radeon HD 3870
Granted this is an excessive amount of hardware for most users (I'm a gamer), it is what I am used to and it runs great. Another Vista box I have is my Vista development box at work running Windows Vista Business. It's a Dell Optiplex 755:
Core 2 Duo E6750
4GB PC6400 DDR2
Radeon X1300
Again, this system runs smooth as silk. If Vista is running sluggish, throw more RAM at it. It's cheap as dirt and it will really help Vista's performance.
Turn off UAC, enable the the run box on the start menu, set your page file to static min and max size, turn off any unnecessary services, and your system will be singing. The same was true when XP came out. The OS was more than most peoples' hardware could handle. It's the nature of Windows. I am surprised so many people are crying about it. Last time I checked it was status quo.
4GB of RAM for $130 at Newegg --> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145176
Now you don't have an excuse.
"what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?" Package managers make it worth it on their own. I love my apt-get.
Facebook works in XP because XP uses IPv4 (IPv6 is possible, but not at the check of a checkbox or anything)
This may be the same for your ambiguous "Linux" depending on what Distro/Kernel/KDE/Gnome/Browser you are using.
OSX has IPv6 support, but it has only been enabled by-default since 10.3 (Panther) and also depends on what Browser you are using.
Vista, has IPv6 support, enabled by default, IE7 has IPv6 enabled by default, its actually the only (mainstream) OS to-date thats completely IPv6 "By Default"...
Although I dont recall having any problem accessing Facebook with Vista (using Avant though - based on IE), its possible they changed their configuration since then (about 2 months ago)
If I had to venture a guess, its that maybe unlike OSX or possibly Linux, that when a server identifies itself as using IPv6, that Vista doesnt try and switch back to IPv4 if IPv6 fails, instead it demands IPv6...(or something)
Although in this case with this guy, I would be equally as likely to bet that it had nothing to due with IPv4/6 and probably just his security settings given that Facebook uses an encrypted connection (for Login, non-encrypted once logged in though)
Let's do this one point-by-point:
1. Who gives a fuck about Facebook's DNS problems? Vista is doing the right thing, here, by doing exactly as the DNS server instructs, with a preference toward IPV6 addresses. Any other behavior (including a preference toward IPV4) would be decried as horrifically broken and against progress.
2. News flash: Internet Explorer blows chunks. It's just as atrocious, in somewhat different ways, as any previous version of IE. And it behaves just as badly on XP (which tried mighty hard to get the user updated to version 7). This is is therefore not Vista issue. (Ok, ok. It's deliberately hard to install IE 6 on Vista. But Firefox and Opera seem to work Just Fucking Fine on any modern OS as well as his beloved Facebook, so what's the problem?)
3. News flash: The new Windows Explorer works different from old; lacks "Up" button. Just click on the directory name in the address bar, and you'll go there. For instance, if you're in C:\Windows, the address bar will show "Computer > Local Disc (C:) > Windows". Simply clicking on any portion of this will go up one or more levels in exactly one step. This is different from XP, sure, but it's no worse, and I personally prefer it.
4. Cleartype. I can't imagine how this dude managed to get lost turning off Cleartype. I just opened IE 7, pressed F1 for help, typed Cleartype into the box, and pressed enter. The very first link goes to a help section detailing what Cleartype is, and how to turn it on and off system-wide. (It's been my experience that Vista's help system is actually capable of being useful, in start contrast to previous versions of Windows.)
5. News flash: Virtual PC doesn't run on Vista Home. It also doesn't run on home editions of any other Microsoft OS, including XP Home.
6. Telnet is gone by default. Good. The security folks have been trying to get rid of it for years. Those who need it still have it available, and those who don't know better won't stumble onto it by accident.
I'll ignore the rest of the inane (i-NEYN) diatribe about Facebook, and the irrelevant OS-independent part about watching videos on TV, and just say this: Geez, man. You sure picked some insignificant things to hate. Vista's got some real issues and you've skillfully noticed absolutely none of them.
Kid-proof tablet..
After the break...
Slashdotter discovers after years of XP bashing that he in fact is an avid XP supporter.
Prisoner discovers that after years of complaining about lousy prison food, and suddenly finds that now that his food comes with insects and filth added into it, that is former food was actually quite good in comparison.
My brand-new-out-of-the-box Windows Vista machine could not access www.facebook.com
That's the new productivity-enhancing feature of Vista - it breaks all the fun wasteful things people love to do, so all that's left is boring boring work!
That's a FEATURE!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
No more UP button in Windows Explorer:
For those rare occasions when you have a wildly long folder name, hitting ALT-UpArrow will take you up to the parent folder. I have to say that the breadcrumb/drop-down path is a real timesaver for me. I would not want to go back to the classic XP address style.
telnet not installed by default:
People complain that Vista is bloatware, then they complain when a rarely used feature is not installed by default.
Virtual PC:
According to the page your own article linked to: Apparently VHP isn't "officially" supported by VPC 2007, but it still lets you install it anyway. I'm now happily running XP Pro under Vista without any problems.
Delete button: ... try the delete button when you write something, say about Vista not working with Facebook, when you discover that the problem had nothing to do with Vista at all. If you want an audience then respect them enough to not waste their time.
Yes, that's right
I'm fine with Vista - it is much more secure and handles multitasking better - and would not want to go back to XP, but I certainly do have some gripes with it. I realize the need for the UAC warnings, and I'm glad that unlike Gnome I don't have to actually type the root password in each time, but I wish that 1) sometimes it didn't pop up two consecutive dialog boxes, and 2) didn't make the screen go dim and do all that beeping stuff.
And desktop search is completely and utterly broken. It was nearly worthless in XP but it's even worse in Vista.
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
> No, really, I get it. Linux needs a "killer app" and all that.
It'll never happen. That is, Linux will never have a killer app that is not also available on window$.
Reason: Any killer app produced by the open source crew will be ported to window$ in the blink of an eye after(perhaps even before) said app becomes "killer".
Any closed source killer app that runs on Linux will be poorly supported(compared to FOSS apps) as all are now and the prime source of revenue will be the window$ version which will always be bugfixed and otherwise updated more often/before the Linux version.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Ubuntu clearly has better looking spokes persons http://picasaweb.google.com/odomsbar/ShillBuntu
Yes, Vista sucks bad in every way. Did anybody find out anything good about the kernal upgrade with SP1? But my main (off topic) point is, according to this big dictionary site banal can be pronounced 3 ways in English: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banal
You're missing File/Edit/View in Windows Explorer??
I don't think I've used anything in those menus that required accessing that menu item explicitly in years.
People that need to use Edit > Copy/Paste from a menu don't deserve new operating systems.
Some of these arguments are rather weak... in both directions.
Facebook posts a broken IPv6 DNS record, and it's Vista's fault that you can't connect to the site? If people break their websites like that, it doesn't matter what OS you use.
You had trouble using the find command in Linux? So what? If you don't know what you're doing at the terminal, do something SENSIBLE and click on "Places->Search for Files" (or your distro's equivalent) in the desktop GUI. That's why things like the GNOME desktop are provided.
Maybe I'm new here (and my number proves it) but Shrike? First, I had to metacrawler it (yeah, I know) and Shrike is the name for Red Hat 9. This was released in 2003! For the love of everything good and holy, he couldn't pick something in 2005 that was, ya know, current?!?
And as for the author's question "But to this day I've never heard an answer to one question: Since even Linux advocates admit that it's harder to use, what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?" The answer: Keep money in my pocket (Don't have to pay for Windows) and get free updates forever.
Frankly, I think Kubuntu 7.10 is every bit as good as XP is right now. And with KDE 4 getting better everyday I expect the real Vista experience in the fall this year - Kubuntu 8.10
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
MS cannot morally use the standards argument after IE.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
No need for a fancy new device.
:-)
/. from the sofa...
:-(
My laptop is connected to the vga-input of my 40" flat-screen TV.
So I see (downloaded) movies on the TV, and play WOW in 1920 x 1080 pixels. Impressive
Wireless keyboard and mouse, then I can also
Btw, a reason I connected the laptop to the TV is that the cat jumped on the laptop, so it fell to the floor and broke the screen
Is C:\Program{insert nasty space here}Files where you want to install your programs
Make a sym link or whatever you linux folk call 'em. Or try c:\progra~1. Or just have the installer put your program somewhere else.
Would you like to install your programs in a separate partition, and leave C: for Windows alone? Nope. Always drive C:, since you can't run the partitioner (a non-destructive partitioner would have to be purchased separately at another software company).
Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. Right click on your disk and "shrink volume" to get free space for a new partition. Right click on the free space, and I'm sure you can figure it out from there.
- How about the Common Files? They're in C: by default, and there's no other way than editing the registry where users can change that.
- And the swap file, would you like it on C: or another partition? By default it's at C:.
How terrible they have defaults. Most people don't care about where their swap file is; those that do can figure out right-click "My Computer" -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced, or whatever it is.
Never mind ye that most people don't have two partitions on their hard disk, and those that are smart enough to set up another partition can probably figure out how to move the swap file.
Once upon a time, I had tried to manage my HD by making multiple partitions so I wouldn't have to reinstall everything if my windows screwed up, and Windows kept installing DirectX and all the bloatware on C: even after I had hacked registry stuff etc. to make sure everything worked on F:
F for fail. DirectX updates system libraries - if you still have those in C:\WINDOWS (guess you shouldn't have taken the default when you installed Windows, eh?), DirectX will have to update those files. And how'd you manage to screw up your C partition?
Besides, you can't install programs on the "F" partition and then wipe and reinstall Windows on the "C" partition, expecting your progs will be there. Your registry is probably still on C.
My computer is set up with C, D, and E partitions right now. "C" is the Windows install. It has a 24GB swap file because, hey, why not. "D" is my "Userland" partition - my Documents redirect there, and all my homework, music, and media stay on that partition. I can wipe C without losing any documents, though I'll still have to reinstall any programs. E is a Linux partition I was screwing around with.
Remember, kids! There's only one MBR on your hard disk! If you can't figure out Linux's boot loader, make sure you install it beforeXP or Vista or whatever.
Also remember that this isn't "Microsoft Nanny" making decisions for you, or whatever you called them. You only get a "registration limit" if you bought OEM copies of Windows - they're for "new PCs only" and your stinginess means you're not allowed to move them. I've bounced XP from a number of computers without a problem - even after I upgraded one machine to the point that it thought it was a new machine.
Remember, IPv6 is a good thing. More public IP addresses for everyone, and Microsoft's knows they have to support it. Best to work the kinks out now before we run out of IP addresses. Facebook screwed up here - and if you use their site anyway, you have bigger problems than IPv6.
Good luck with your Linux endeavor. Maybe their network stack will support IPv6 sometime soon?
DATABASE WOW WOW
...for making it too easy for everybody to still have broken IPv6 records as Vista will just fall back to IPv4 anyway thereby slowing the adoption of IPv6 and new standards in general.
( if that type of argument doesn't sound familiar, you must be new here. )
In the immortal words of Kirk Douglas.... "I'm Republican!!"
"We're gonna need a bigger boat"
> Has the slashdot demographic decayed this much?
I'd be interested in some sort of technical test, or tests, on Slashdot, where your score was accessible by other users, such that I could filter away anyone who didn't know what the hell they were talking about.
I purchased an HP DV6327CL laptop last year and it came installed with Windows Vista Home Premium. Now, my problems with Vista are not all about Microsoft. Hewlett Packard has a big hand in why I hate it as well. Come on, I get a Turion X2 machine and it comes with 32 bit Vista? So, I give it a try anyway. Vista is a pig, plain and simple, and there is no way to butter this pig to make it palletable. I was moving a 50KB file from one directory to another, something XP does in a flash because all it is really doing is updating the NTFS record of what directory the file is in. In Vista, it spent a good 30 seconds CALCULATING how long it would take to move the file.
I'm a gamer. I love Team Fortress 2 (DeathByUngaBuna is my name...). Did I mention yet that Vista is a PIG? Now, I don't play on my laptop as a general rule but if I'm travelling, I gotta have my fix. The game under Vista played like crap. Now, I know the Go6150 from Nvidia isn't a power house card, but with Vista, it is a pig as well.
So, I decided to UPGRADE my machine to Windows XP SP2. Having a dual core, 64 bit machine, I decided to install an XP 64 disk I had laying around (MSDNAA is a great program for college students and faculty). Here is where HP comes into the pig fest. After installing XP 64, I go to HP's web site to get the video, mobo, and network drivers for XP 64. Good luck with that. After a day of searching the web and finding many other people searching as well, I gave up and installed XP 32 bit.
XP 32 worked fine and I found all the drivers. Team Fortress 2 came to life and all was right in the world. BUT, I still had this nagging about using a 32 bit operating system on a 64 bit machine (Yeah, my OCD on this was like Monk in a mosh pit).
Since my laptop is primarily a work machine and the only things I REALLY need are Eclipse, basic web editing software, a graphics program, an SFTP program, and Firefox, I bit the bullet and installed Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 (sorry folks, KDE is much more like the windows interface). I gave in on the whole Team Fortress 2 fix while travelling since I really don't travel that much anyway.
Both of my processor cores are running full-tilt-boogie at 64 bits. My video card is screaming (well, it isn't crying any more) with 256 megs of system memory where Vista and XP were only giving it 128. I'm running 64 bit Java and 64 bit Firefox. All is right with the world.
My laptop came to life, Eclipse runs much faster than it ever has, which is good since I'm a Plug-in developer and there are many restarts through the day. My only complaint isn't Linux's fault but rather Adobe's.
PLEASE, ADOBE, GET 64 BIT FLASH WORKING ON LINUX! I hate having to go to my XP machine to watch YouTube!
My XP machine is now dedicated to YouTube, Kontraband, CollegHumor, and Team Fortress 2. Other than that, it sits behind me and acts more as a file server and Bit Torrent box than anything else.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
"Banal" can be pronounced with two unstressed syllables, as you do, or it can rhyme with *giggle* *giggle* anal. Notice that in Merriam-Webster's online, banal has THREE possible pronunciations. One of them is BANE-all. The Oxford English that comes with OS X seems to agree. In an interview, I'd probably pronounce it with unstressed syllables, but in casual conversation you should pronounce it however you want.
On a tangent, Language Log often cites examples of hyper-(in)correctness like yours.
Well, maybe he hasn't heard the answer because his question makes zero sense? Of course you can do ANYTHING on ANY operating system, the only difference is how much pain you go through to do it. If he doesn't understand that all systems are capable of performing anything that other systems do then he has no business writing articles for geeks.
On the other hand, if you ask the same question he is trying to ask, but formulated correctly, it becomes: are there things you can do on Linux that cause you less pain than the same things do on Windows? And the answer is a firm yes, and the list of things is long and impressive. Here are some examples:
- trying to reinstall your OS after FUBARed it or upgraded some hardware (good luck with online activation)
- if you are a web developer or programmer, Linux makes it painless and quick to play with programming languages / IDEs / CMS. Many are preinstalled, most are one apt-get away.
- I spend 100% less time managing my anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-whatever applications on Linux.
- typing in some random (pr0n?) web site name into your browser doesn't make you think twice on Linux; most Windows users browse from IE as admins and then ask me why their machine has become so slow and unresponsive lately.
- if you just suddenly need to perform some relatively advanced task that you do very rarely, you can find or install the app on Linux in seconds. Example: I almost never do advanced photo editing, but if I needed to do it on Linux I would surely find gimp or similarly powerful editor preinstalled on my distro. I would certainly NOT have to buy the whole Photoshop and I would NOT have to download some unknown and possibly infected cool_free_editor.exe that I just googled for.
- if you still want to be able to use your old 333 MHz machine that you love because you grew up with it (or because it has really low power consumption and is quiet!) you will have huge pains to go through if you want to use Windows. None on Linux.
And the list goes on.
I use vista 64 because it has better 64-bit driver support than XP 64. I haven't run into any software compatibility issues that I wouldn't have run into on XP/2000, even though we all know 64 bit breaks everything and so does vista.
the UI has its annoyances, but if they REALLY bother you in most cases they can be set back to classic behavior.
I can't really comment on performance since I've never run anything else on this box, but CPU usage idles at 0-2% and doesn't spike too high when doing normal explorer stuff. It does use about a gig of RAM, but that's the only thing I think is unreasonable. It still runs games more than well enough with a 2GB system, though 4GB doesn't hurt.
I still use ubuntu on my older machines that I don't game on, but for a new system I don't think vista is a huge problem.
It isn't out to fuck you. Linux does not have a single line of code -- not even one -- that is intended to make the computer harder to use. Not a single driver in the mainline kernel, intentionally degrades video if it's unable to make a HDMI handshake. Not a single multimedia app in the Debian repository, refuses to run if a kernel driver doesn't have a valid signature. Nothing in the kernel refuses to work if it's missing the correct registration code.
The same can't be said about Vista.
Good luck with that DVI monitor "just working" on Vista.
It sounds like you've never met a Windows user. Most of them don't rebel when the platform fails.
As a technical user, with a lot of family and friends not so computer literate, I tell them simple. If you buy Vista don't call me.
Why? Over the last year I have had to help setup every one of them because the vendor support sucks. I have had to set back each one to IP-V4 because on install it sets up IV-V6 or PPPoE on a non-PPPoE interface. Then there are the countless hours of where is this? And oh yea, why does my camera, printer, PVR, video cam... not work...
So, I choose NOT to support Vista. And suggest they take it back, go back to their old PC until Microsoft and the vendors get this thing sorted out.
"...since there's no household name yet for PC-to-TV linkage, the field is wide open for some lucky company to make a product that becomes synonymous with the concept, the way "TiVo" is easier to say than 'Digital Video Recorder'."
There is (or will be soon) such a product. It's called AppleTV. Not only will it link to your PC (or Mac), but it will access the internet independent of the PC. So you can rent HD (yep, HD!) movies or browse YouTube, Flikr, etc. completely independent of the PC, using a VERY uncomplicated UI. Yay!
That's not the same as saying that Facebook has (or hasn't) misconfigured their IPv6. You could argue that Vista's misconfigured its, or that IE-on-Vista's misconfigured its, and that the right choice should be "if you know an IPv6 address for the destination and are running IPv6, try an HTTP probe to the site, see if it opens, and try again with IPv4 if it fails." That's an annoying break-the-protocol-stack-layering approach - forcing the application layer to deal with routing issues that should otherwise be handled at Layer 3. But that's somewhat endemic to having multiple protocol stacks to pick from, and a more flexible operating system would just mean you had a choice of things to do wrong and tools to do them wrong with.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Switch to OSX and use Parallels to load your various OS's :-)
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
No... it's worse
Would it be too much to ask to add a "Vista Bashing" section so I can filter this crap but still see other Windows stories?
This Vista bashing article only has two valid points (see below). The rest is just whining because some things in Vista (and Linux) are different than they were in XP. 1. Vista runs too slow--Probably true because it seems to be full of bloat. All of the other complaints about the UI stuff are crap. Just because some of the Vista UI's are different, doesn't mean they won't do the same things. 2. Linux is harder to use than Windows--again probably true for 90% of the people out there. However, I like the challenge of figuring out how to use Linux, plus all the other good things about it, so I use it as my main OS. The author's main gripe about Linux--that he won't use it because he couldn't find a directory using the same procedure he used in Windows, is crap. It is possible to search for directories, you just have to learn a different procedure--just like you have to learn different procedures for the Vista UI's! Just because something is different doesn't make it worse!
"... have to upgrade anyway ... "
Or buy a Mac. With BootCamp.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
I posted a query to a Linux newsgroup, and a respondent told me that the solution was to open a command prompt and type "man find", which I am aware is a polite way of saying "screw you, newbie", but which I dutifully followed anyway and got an output screen of which the first paragraph was:
Just thought I might help him out. Sounds like he needs it.
Any how...I don't really see something like that taking off unless a projector is used instead of a monitor or TV. I plan on doing just that in my own house at some point in the future. But the system(s) that drive it will be primarily dedicated to performing a movie theater experience for movies instead of just normal TV, though a tuner card will likely be there for the air/cable channels too. It's more about the BIG screen and movie theater experience than anything else - and I'd rather drop $2k on a projector than on an LCD/plasma TV - especially since I get a lot bigger picture out of it in the end (and it stays needly tucked away [out of sight, out-of-mind] when not in use).
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I can see on the one hand why you call the article author an ass, but to play the devil's advocate, he has a valid point -- if something doesn't work on Vista but *does* on XP, from the user's perspective it logically must be Vista that's the problem. Frankly, the internal whys and wherefores don't enter into it for any but the geekishly inclined.
Facebook not resolving via IPv6 does seem to have been Facebook's fault. But Facebook not showing up on Vista while it does on XP is indeed MS's fault. Facebook hasn't changed at all just because an individual user has a different OS; it's the OS that's different.
And no, avoiding this particular Facebook issue would not require MS to check the full IPv6 spectrum, as you suggest, but rather to gracefully fall back to IPv4 if IPv6 resolution fails. This should be the default setup anyway given that IPv6 still hasn't been fully implemented, while even those sites that already use IPv6 might not have the bugs worked out (case in point). And since the browser timing out might take a while, once IPv6 lookup times out, show the user some message to placate them and let them know that something at least is happening while the browser tries to resolve via IPv4.
Have you set up IPv6 for any sites? Is it easy at first try? I'm very much a noob when it comes to DNS, but after setting up my own IPv4 DNS intranet server this weekend, I can certainly say that it isn't intuitively obvious. IPv6 looks even less so. And given the relative novelty of the standard as well, I somehow doubt there's as much easily gained expertise floating around the net, as compared to IPv4.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Not that I would buy one, but that whole PC-to-TV thing the author is talking about: isn't that what the Apple iTV is for?
Of course, you could always buy that kit that connects your iPod or iPhone to your TV to watch movies you downloaded from the Internet. (And, no, you don't have to buy them from iTMS)
Maybe you should have asked Mechanical Turk about what Linux can do.
Mostly, of course, the question isn't "can" vs. "can't". It's all about efficiency. It took me at least half an hour to learn to use find, and I found it just as confusing as you did. That first time. Back in 1989 or so.
Since then, I have performed thousands upon thousands of searches, and I can search twenty gigabytes of disk before the helpful little search puppy is done asking you if you'd like to search for a file. I can perform searches which are simply impossible using the standard Windows search tool, and I can perform them fast. Return on investment? Hundreds to one, easily.
I think this comes down to the dispute about the respective merits of bumper cars and more conventional gasoline engines. Yes, bumper cars are much easier to use, they're much faster to learn, and they're much safer. And really, there's nothing a gasoline engine car can do that a bumper car can't; I mean, they both go forwards and backwards, and they both turn. So pretty much they're the same thing, right?
People do not like Unix because it is easy to start with, but because, if you're willing to invest time in learning how to use a computer effectively, you end up being able to get your work done much faster. I don't know why the concept of investing time to learn to do something well seems so odious when it comes to computers, even though we're used to it in every other field of human endeavor. And no, you can't just "make it easier". The way you make it easier is to remove options, and replace fast interfaces with slower ones.
Bennett, when you write, do you touch-type at all? Do you type words, using an elaborate array of probably a hundred labeled "keys", or do you use a brilliantly simple interface which simply presents you with a pop-up menu of words? Wouldn't it be easier to use a pop-up menu, instead of memorizing literally tens of thousands of words, learning to spell them all, and then training yourself to type?
Imagine, if you will, that all of us Unix users are people who view computer processes, such as finding files, or manipulating their contents, as being just as important to our work as emitting sequences of English words is to yours. And imagine that we, like you, have been willing to put in serious time -- not ten or twenty minutes, but days or months or years -- to learn to do this faster, more efficiently, and with less wasted effort.
And you'll note that we're pretty much all using Unix. Maybe I use more NetBSD and OS X, and someone else here mostly uses desktop Linux, but we've all found that, compared to XP or Vista, the Unix systems offer us dramatically better efficiency and power, if we are willing to put in the time to learn to use it.
Just a thought.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Same problems - different solutions: My first step now on a brand new Vista machine is to use my current XP SP2 DVD (fully patch slipstreamed up to aug 07) install disk with all the BTS driver paks (http://www.driverpacks.net) installed via nlite (http://www.nliteos.com). After I delete the Vista partition and reformat, I end up with a sweet XP installation with 98% of the drivers installed with no issues (be sure to have the correct SATA drivers on the install DVD).
This procedure has worked just fine on the last 14 computers I've installed XP on over the last 3 months -- I use the legitimate user's XP license on the installs as the original machine is dead or dismembered and they did pay for a legitimate license on one machine.
XP is not dead
Mule
Even though it's not hard to get telnet back, why would they go to the trouble of removing it?
Well, not many people use it. So they trimmed it out, to keep Vista from being all bloated with useless stuff.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I unfortunately got Vista when I bought an HP laptop at FutureShop and it came installed. Its been nothing but grief for me. The main issues are to do with networking it seems.
1.) Vista permanently hangs when trying to install drivers for my network shared HP printer (also from FutureShop) that my XP machine has no problem with. Basically if I need to print something I have to send the file to my XP machine. Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for #2:
2.) I had to enable some god-forsaken setting on MY computer to allow me to be able to SEE shared content on my network. XP just showed me the damned files on the network that were being shared by default. Although they'd initially screwed that up in XP too, giving people on the network default write access to anything shared through XP Home. That was fun to deal with in my residence when everyone moved in with their new XP virus-laden machines.
3.) Finally, why the heck are multimedia files treated differently than any other stupid format? Enabling sharing on my network shouldn't then require me to say, oh and also enable sharing for movies and music.
I'd like 5 minutes alone with the idiot child(ren?) of married cousins who wrote these three Vista annoyances.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Yes, but that's AFTER you have already installed windows.
Yes, but then again, that's AFTER installing Windows. My point is that Windows doesn't let you do things beyond their established defaults. This means that If I want to reserve more space for other partitions, I'd have to move a lot of data and do a partition shrinking, which always poses risk, specially when we're dealing with the partition where Windows is installed.
If I wanted to move the swap space to another partition, I have to deal with the filesystem fragmentation that results of that - and have a lot of reboots.
I can backup the registry (an approach which has its own problems and consequences), but at least I won't have to download everything - five years ago, I didn't have broadband access, and this meant huge overnight downloads. My experience has taught me to keep separate partitions for downloaded programs so I can reinstall them without having to download them again.
But why can't they be installed in another partition and have them symlinked? Oh, right. Windows doesn't support symlinks. Have you noticed how huge the DirectX installs are? DirectX9 is 216MB, *JUST* for the download. Whenever a game needs a newer version of DirectX, wham, everything goes to drive C:. Right now it may not be such a problem with the newer ever-increasing HD capacity, but a few years ago this wasn't the case.
.
Which was my case. Do you want the user to purchase an ADDITIONAL copy of Microsoft Windows? What am I, rich?
But all of this discussion is because you're somehow trying to defend Windows by bashing my bad user practices.
Well, that's my whole point. Windows limits the ways I can do things because Microsoft has designed things without giving me CHOICES. It's their way, or the high way. A good user practice may work on one version of the OS, but if the OS limits you and gives you hardwired choices, then what was before a good practice becomes a bad practice. You end up having to edit the registry BY HAND.
And that's another mistake of Microsoft Nanny. Who asked Microsoft to put the configuration in a frigging BINARY FILE? And one which keeps growing and growing and ends up screwing your whole configuration because a virus messed up your install? And to maintain the registry (and Windows), you need to download or purchase additional programs. Antiviruses, registry cleaners, etc. If I was any more paranoid I'd say it's a freaking corporate conspiracy. But I disgress.
My point is that NOBODY asked Microsoft to keep the configuration in a
i agree with you with the man thing i been using linux since 15 when i finally got the cds shipped because my internet sucked. and i could never use it because every tutorial told me to cd and i never had any file on my cd drive so i was piss off and my internet didnt worked neither so i took a year vacation of it. then i finally figure out that cd means change directory. point is that you have to do stuff in a more advance way why not finish unifying the installers so people dont have to touch the terminal to install something. or better yet make the man pages easier to read more user friendly and not system admin with 10 years of experience friendly. that way i dont have to quess what does the instructions are saying. point. makes linux easier for normal people i already do more advance stuff on linux i have 2 pcs as servers and i use them on terminals not even gui but still it has some stuff that i dont like :'(
I must admit, I'm a Linux user myself, but no matter what you say, I've always found finding files a simple matter! The easiest and most simple method of all is for newbies to go and grab a copy of KFind! It does the whole job for you, and while not as fast as Windows, looks and acts a bit like the find tool from windows 98!
I can't understand the problems you have with the find command itself though, everybody knows that the simplest way of finding out how to use a command under Linux is generally by following the command with the --help option! Doing this with find is probably the most unclear documentation you'll ever get from a command, but it's still enough to learn how to use it! man documentation is only there as a last resort or for developers really!
As for switching to Linux, I personally started to use Linux because it was free, and didn't come with any cumbersome 'utilities' that instructed you to go and get info from your 'software vendor' when anything went wrong! I also like the way the system is organized in general, and that means you generally don't need a 'find tool' to find anything, which is why the many of the tools designed for this purpose are so hard to use!
Obviously, if you have a nice little Windows system already installed by your computer manufacturer, this doesn't weigh in quite as heavily. But it's still nice not to be locked into any of the Microsoft formats or ways of thinking that prevail so much on all versions of Windows!
But the ones cited here are whiny. I use Vista at home, XP at work, Linux on my servers and Vista isn't horrible. Windows Update takes too long, disk performance is mediocre, and you need a horse and a half to get fast gaming out of it.
Facebook f'd up it's IP6 record? That's a reason to disdain Facebook, not Vista.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Has the slashdot demographic decayed this much? :s/decayed/evolved
There, fixed it for ya.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
"The trouble is that I frequently give my directories extremely long and descriptive names like (this is a real example) "Flash-Player-8.5.0.246-beta2.downloaded-2006-03-20-from-labs.macromedia.com" so that I can keep track of where and when I got each piece of downloaded software, in case I ever need to go back to a previous version that the software maker no longer makes available because they're trying to steer me away from it (ironically, "Vista syndrome")."
/. filter link.....
Who is this idiot and why is he ever allowed out in public? I'd say impersonating a high school student is the most challenging thing he should be allowed to attempt, and that would seem to be a stretch of his skills.
Now, where is that
Who uses spreadsheets for taxes that is just asking for an audit. The rules for even a normal 1040 are so complicated that to program them into a spreadsheet would take hours. Why do all that when you can electronically file from a 40 dollar package. I don't know how much your time is worth, but is is a helluva lot more than 20 dollars an hour.
Or because the machine you're using is technology from 1999 (with the exception of hard drives) and the only Windows install you have is an upgrade version of 98, with an upgrade version of '95, with a Windows For Workgroups 3.11 starting OS to upgrade from, that requires MS-DOS 6.22 (which I still do have all the floppies for, even if they are numbered wrong by Redmond).
I figured, rather than spend a weekend installing '98 with my current disks, that I'd give this Ubuntu thing a shot. The only thing I haven't been able to do is to get my Voodoo 2 3D daughter card to work, and that's because I'm choosing not to use the on-board 3-D. If I were to upgrade to any graphics card with 3D built in, I'm sure that would be solved.
From what I can tell you can do almost anything in Linux/Unix that you can do in Windows with the exception of specific apps, (but that's the nature of living in a reality where there's more than one OS). The only other exception I can think of is for niche areas. I've heard people complain that there's no video editing software, or maybe nothing of any practicality. However, I've met maybe one or two people in the last few years that had any desire to do video editing; it's not currently a mainstream desire.
Now, just because I stated that you can do nearly all the same stuff as in Windows doesn't mean it's going to be easy. This is my last complaint about Linux. There are still too many things that require a geek hat, or access to a geek. When the answer to changing some fairly trivial settings in Linux is no longer "open a shell and type 'sudo -txpaois -ASD }{|}*^%$ ', see it's easy!"... then Linux will have made a quantum leap.
Compiling several utilities to compile an app because it's not in apt-get can be lame when there's an error during
I've been using MS OSs all my life, and still do, almost every day, but I prefer Ubuntu. I started using it around June 2006, but only started using it as my main system in the summer of 2007. Even though, I find myself far more comfortable with Ubuntu than either Vista or XP. My main gripes with Ubuntu on this machine: it won't record audio, and won't write to single-layer DVDs. My main gripes with Vista (same machine): problems with how it handles audio output devices that could make listening to my audio a royal pain. Can't Write to CDs. Rare random almost-freezes.
both systems have problems with applications as well, usually with the same applications, where applicable. Notice I haven't mentioned XP, because I haven't used it on my own machine for a rather long time time, and currently don't have it installed anywhere.
as to the advantages of Ubuntu:
Easy management of software.
More secure by design (XP doesn't really have anything, and Vista has an "action verification" system, rather than a "user authentication" system).
No "change for the sake of change".
there a lot of small things it seems to do better (like audio devices, that at least work properly, or the ability to edit the address line in the file manager, or having an Up button)
A lot of software installed be default.
The amount of data it installs on the HD is similar to XP, even though it gives you more.
The system is put together very well (but not perfectly, I'm afraid)
Only reboot in order for changes to the kernel to take effect. (this means that you almost never have to reboot).
the advantages of Ubuntu aren't many, but altogether they are significant and make me feel more at home with Ubuntu than I ever did with any version of MS Windows.
I believe that the ultimate "killer app" for Linux would be native support for Windows applications
No, this is exactly what Linux doesn't need, at least not if you want it to be successful on the desktop.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE LINUX BE WINDOWS!!! People already have Windows, they don't need a replacement. That's why they don't switch. The "replacement Windows" idea was already tried: it was called OS/2 Warp for Windows, and we know what happened there. (Never heard of it? Bingo.)
Look at where Linux's successes are: Servers and mobile devices - places where Linux doesn't try to emulate Windows. Places where developers actually innovated instead of just copying. The robustness, versatility, and stability of a Linux server - that's the killer app for servers. The portability and the ability to do unique interfaces like those on the XO or the Eee - that's the killer app for devices.
It doesn't just work for Linux. Apple too sees the most success where it has tried to take the lead: the iPod, iPhone, MacBook, etc. In this case it's the simplicity and/or distinct function-meets-form interfaces that provide the edge. If they made the iPod be like every other MP3 player, and the MacBook like every other laptop, Apple might not even exist now.
Don't try to beat Microsoft at its own game. You can't. The way to beat them is to change the game entirely. I've been saying this for years, but sadly developers still waste tons of time and effort trying to make Linux be Windows. If only they instead put this into making the next big breakthrough in user interface or computer design using Linux as the platform. Something that 15 years for now will make us say "I can't believe we used to use a desktop window interface" in much the same way we now talk about dumb terminals and typewriters. It's gonna happen anyhow, so why not do it on Linux?
I don't know what this something is yet but I do know nobody's going to find it if all they are looking at is Windows.
I'm surprised that Direct X 10 wasn't mentioned at all. The only reason I use Vista is so that I can play games that use Direct X 10. I've basically feel the same way as the author though about everything else. So it sucks to feel separated from the OS, and that I just have to get by with using it as it is for now.
That *wooshing* sound you hear above you is the joke going over your head. Here, read this and try again.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Doing something different from what you are used to is ALWAYS more difficult. Get over it.
That's a commonly propagated misconception. For anyone that has a basic understanding of what they are trying to do, good interface design should make things simple, regardless of what you are used to.
I have worked through various versions of DOS, Windows, Solaris, Linux and other Unices, and Mac OS, as well as various Commodore products in the last 30 some years.
There is always a learning curve when switching to a new UI, but there are some well accepted principals of good interface design that will determine how steep that curve is.
About once every two years (for that past 15) I have taken a look at the latest Linux distro to see how far it has come(I think I stall have my original Slackware1.0 release around somewhere). It's come a long way, but there are still lots of things that are awkward or nonsensical, and I certainly wouldn't try and give it to my mom. But I can say the same thing about Windows Vista---in fact Vista probably looses that debate by a far stretch, it just has more momentum behind it.
The "get over it" attitude is really the problem. About a year ago I switched to OSX with no small amount of trepidation. Within hours I was comfortably maneuvering and within a couple of days, I was able to use the interface more efficiently that anything else I had ever worked with.
Good user interface design is sadly lacking in most sectors of the computer industry (and most sectors of the electronics industry in general.)
Get over that.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
I finally broke down and installed ubuntu a little over a week ago and I love it. I've barely had a reason to boot back into Windows for most of the stuff I do, certainly not for browsing, email or word processing. I was a longtime Mac user, added a Windows XP laptop and desktop about 2 years ago and had a smattering of IRIX experience working with a friend on animation projects over a decade ago so the command line stuff doesn't intimidate me.
/just saying...
I have to say without having ubuntuforums to browse for tutorials a lot of things might have been tricky, but the only thing I can't figure out yet is how to get my webcam to work, though I haven't really tried hard.
I still have my Macs, and a dedicated XP desktop machine for Adobe apps and sundry and can boot the old laptop here back into XP if I need it, But having played with Vista on my brother's laptop I have to say while it isn't horrible, I'm loving ubuntu despite the stuff I haven't figured out yet. My brother saw me switching workspaces with Compiz last night and went "Holy shit what is that? Can I get my machine to do that?"
I say if you're fed up with Windows, not able to pay the Macintax for insanely expensive hardware you should give ubuntu a spin. There is no be-all operating system, but I don't find the learning curve any steeper than most people seem to have with Windows boxes and lord knows how many times I've stayed on the phone with some friend on Windows or Mac who had tied their OS in a knot, can't set up their printer, internet, etc...
The solution to the telnet problem is keeping PuTTY in your USB memory. There. Many problems solved.
Also, regarding TV on your PC: You're not supposed to watch TV with your family on your PC monitor in your office. You're supposed to place a dedicated PC next to your living room TV (preferably HD). Considering that there are DVR+VHS+DVD combos that easily exceed $1,000 with manufacturer's crummy custom software, I'd say Microsoft is in the right market.
It's a pity you can't filter Slashdot posts by words and phrases. But at least you don't have to read beyond the dollar sign.
Microsoft has thirty years experience in providing development tools for the PC.
Is it really easier and cheaper to develop for the platform with a 0.8% share of the desktop?
How much money - including any initial contribution from AOL - has gone into the development of Firefox?
How many of the marquee "cross platform" apps like OpenOffice.org are dependent on massive corporate support - money and manpower - from Sun, IBM, etc?
"...educated speakers of American English...."
Er..Houston, we have a contradiction in terms....
No, I don't want Linux. Not because I can't use it (I definitely can, and am using it for over 10 years now, daily). But because for most of the things I do at home, the command line is simply not a good solution. And Linux does not have the apps that I want.
Substitute "Linux" for "Vista" and what do you get?
"Since even Vista advocates admit that there are problems, what can you do with Vista that you can't do with XP".
Sums up my feelings perfectly.
No sig today...
I agree with you. I'm going to go out and say that the firehose here on slashdot is being misused. People are probably voting !newsworthy news up causing it to eventually show up on the main page? Of course I can be dead wrong.
... I stopped caring what the author said after he complained he can't go onto facebook. If you can't get whatever broswer to open facebook, please go off /.
Fine.
But In The Beginning... doesn't suggest that you do use command lines. It suggest a certain irrationality in the defense of Windows. No need to tell you though, all of the longtime Linux users I've met read the book years ago, otherwise, I'd wonder if you were judging a book by its title.
I guess you raise a chicken and egg question: Did those apps rise to prominence because Windows was ubiquitous and they made the right choice to support Windows, or did Windows become ubiquitous because its apps were so great and only Windows made those apps possible (technically)?
It's all moot. No one in their right mind will vote with their wallets away from Microsoft - because Windows has the apps everybody wants, Windows upgrade after Windows upgrade after Windows upgrade.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Wait a sec. I thought Slashdot was supposed to be *news*. This is opinion. As is most if the rest of the crap on this website. Hey guys, remember when, back in the day, Slashdot had real news?
Well, I don't either.
Anyway. Most of what I see on Slashdot is stuff like this: OLD-Vista-is-Garbage Garbage (And Outright Lies thanks to Badvista Trolls), Oh So Horrifying Patent Troll Shenanigans, articles asking why Linux still sucks, and finally, what you see me doing here: Nerd Rage against the Article Submitter. I'm sick of it, so I'm off to get some REAL news. Heck, the local newspaper here in WYOMING does a better job reporting on technology than the people here at Slashdot! You people should be ashamed! I've never seen so many articles and synopses of articles that were so out of touch. Quit smoking so much dope and get a grip (The Inquirer folks need to do the same, although Slashdot is even more tabloidic). Untill then, I'll see you at Tom's Hardware or Tech Report.
You'd think they could check the major sites.
No sig today...
I think you disregard the fact that Microsoft, unlike whatever it's PR machine and spokespeople say, does NOT care much for it's customers, as unlogical as it sounds. The company is too big and has grown to include too many influential facets in commercial investors of all important sorts, lobbyists, and just people wanting to make a fortune off the software giant. At this point, Microsoft is ruled and directed by those who have power, consumers come second. Vista is a good display of that. In the beginning a lot of features were promised for the consumer, that indeed made sense, like WinFS. This was done to attact attention of users, and keep their interest while Vista was under development all those years. It was like a concept car at a car show. It felt real, but not really available, as the manufacturer was still in the process of making it. When the promised release date, after promising too much and too long, started to hang above our heads, Microsoft had to unveil the real Vista - that which left out the more important features, left in all that is eye candy, and all the features that were lobbyied in by various power players in the industry. Money had been invested, hands were shaken at meetings, and all this time the people who Vista depended on for survival and prosperity - users - were watching a show where the star turned out to be quite a different person they thought it to be. IPv6, regardless of it's non commercial nature as a protocol and idea (survival of the Internet as we know it), relates to a whole lot of industry sectors, with considerable sums of money invested by Cisco for example. Routers have to be manufactures, and those who manufacture them deliver the Internet backbone, and all the money they sit on - it has to flow. 96 or so percent of OS market means that money, properly invested in Vista, is money VERY WELL spent, and router manufacturers wanting to sell new hardware know that. If Microsoft wanted (with 1500 or so good software engineers, albeit at a wrong job IMO, i am more than sure it could) with about 15-50 lines of code make IPv6 connection timeout fallback to IPv4 lookup, it would. But it does not really want to does it? After all, if all hosts that answer to Vista connection requests of those 96 percent of users, can do away with IPv4, when will IPv6 come ? According to ISP's and Internet hardware manufacturers, not soon enough. Unfortunately, it's only geeks like us who tend to see the world in 1 and 0s. Most people do not really care, they just want to make money to put food on the table. And IPv6, as far fetched as it sounds, is very closely related to food at this point.
- Original poster doesn't like that some details of the UI have changed and he now has to find new ways to do things.
- Facebook's DNS record was screwed up.
How does this lead to the conclusion that Vista is terrible? There were certainly some changes that I'm not crazy about (I disabled UAC prompts on my own machine), but I'm not seeing where any real flaws were mentioned in the article. It sounds a lot like the logic of the underwear gnomes:- Collect underpants
- ?
- Profit
If the worst thing about Vista is that Microsoft changed the UI a little in Windows Explorer, that would make it a pretty good product.You mean, nobody you know. I use it (both, Esperanto and GNU/Linux). I can travel to any country, and stay at peoples place in most major cities for like free, get a quite good impression on the place without the whole travel business crap, because we like to communicate with each other and stuff and I think it is like kind of fun, but you may be right, that's worth nothing. I can visit conventions, where I can talk to thousands of people with different backgrounds from all over the world, or maybe even do business with them. There are millions of people using this language in different forms, but you may be right, it's all useless. So what on earth you expect? Most people speaking Esperanto don't really give a damn about it, and just have fun using it. At least I'm doin' it.
I actually like to get work done with my system, and I find it quite useful there. I like to use the command line, because it is powerful, but nobody forces me to it. The folks over at Ubuntu mostly don't even know how to spell that anymore. It's not like anybody is force to that anymore nowadays. Can't help people buying crappy hardware too. Most of the better stuff is supported by Linux, but if you want to buy the cheapest, monopolized crap with buggy drivers, then nobody will stop you. But ok, you have a point, I have a hard time playing the most recent games.. Heck, as if I wouldn't have better things to do.. If I really wanted to spend all my time playing games, I would probably buy a game console, but that is another issue..
Sure. I will tell that to the next guy, who cries about loosing a days work, because some app got random bug no. 4532.
You mean some office folks? Many people I know really like to poke in their systems, no matter which one (yea, windows people too). It's the new generation. They use technology all over the place. They play games all day. And the also like to play around with their systems. The only deference probably is, that with a Linux system this is actually fun instead of frustrating.
So getting a system with no OS is more expensive? Let me guess, you buy your computers at the next supermarket? Well, on the planet I know, a computer with no OS is cheaper, but then again, maybe I'm wrong here.. who knows..
Ok, you got me there, most people really give up a lot of freedom because they are lazy. They don't care about security, or freedom of choices, because they would actually need to spend time realizing, that they can have their own choices, and that it is kind of fun. I just really wonder why this guys later come back depressed, when they realize, that they lost personal data and feel ripped off, or must pay a lot of money for recovery of data and time.
If you really want to get stuff effectively done with
Virtual PC is not configured to run linux. It's possible options are for 16 bit and 36 bit color. Linux defaults to 24 bit color so it is rather a pain to run linux on virtual pc. Just letting everybody now. You have to alter the disp.conf file in your linux distro and then burn your self another cd.
copyright the app, and license it to linux, not ms
why won't someone at least tell me why this is wrong ?
firefox proves that people will migrate
Krita supports it right out of the box, as does Xara Extreme. No guarantee on whether or not the packages have other features you need, but I like either a lot more than I like GIMP.
Tech Public Policy stuff
has the same kind of USB support VMware Server does, I'll look at switching. And since VMware Server 2 is going to a Web UI with inferior performance, I hope that's very soon.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Linux has a resolv.conf file .
I've been using Linux for over 3 years. I had to change ISPs so I could get broadband over a year ago. I can go anywhere on the Web I feel like going that isn't IE-only. I've never had any previous occasion to open the file, and when I did a minute ago, all I found was a single entry for the network LAN.
The documentation says "On a normally configured system this file should not be necessary."
Tech Public Policy stuff
the concept of "freedom of speech" is closely aligned with "making every file search as simple and stress-free as a Hamas hostage negotiation"
Well, does he value the simplicity of searching so much? He should have tried Spotlight in MacOS. ComparingVista to Linux re search is like comparing Hamas to Fatah re hostages.
Good article, and with enough comment maybe MS will reform the OS. You should compare XP to Win2K - its super fast! Win1.01 loads ... but I digress!
The main point that I wanted to seed into peoples minds was that Slashdot articles on technology are usually chided for being one sided (pro Linux, anti-that, narrow minded something) but what is never mentioned is they are also often culturally one-sided.
As I no longer live in the US, having lived all over, and for quite some time in Asia I see that technology is often developed and marketed as if it would work globally. Thats not always the case...
I pick particularly on your comment about TV on the PC. In Japan, for example, most average young things have an apartment only slightly bigger than the bed. So PC + TV is quite a space saving attraction here, although I don't think that's why its in Vista.
The other oddity you could add to your Windows woes, although not specifically Vista related, is that often Asian Windows maintain the ALT+Alpha key strokes from English versions despite having no connection to the action it performs. (Alt+A is save-All normally, but in Chinese there is no A in "save all"). So big bouncy GUIs help those that don't have a memory as large as the national library of congress to store all those key strokes.
There are other subtle things when comparing a product in another country - but these two strike a powerful example of how designers and critics alike should consider a product in its surroundings.
A while back I posted the problems we had as a developer of VoIP software on Vista. You can check it at http://turngeek.blogspot.com/2008/01/vista-sound-quality-issues-with-voip.html. Vista breaks 90% of the multimedia and gaming software out there without providing any alternative ways for these apps to work with existing sound cards. It has left the rest of the industry in a state of limbo. We all know we have to support Vista at the end, but I am just amazed at the audacity of a company to release software without any consideration for users. I guess that is what a monopoly does and a bad one. I for one am happy that little Billy is formally out of MS and I hope MS merges with an internet company like Yahoo! Maybe MS will learn as much from Yahoo! as Yahoo! does from MS and we all will benefit. I eagerly await Vista SP1, not because I am going to use it (I have decided to go buy an Apple when my XP machine fails me - which is going pretty solid at this point) but my customers are probably stuck with Vista and I care about them...
Only problem with linux is new distros have no shredder. As far as search is concerned, SuSE linux has had good search programs since distro 9.0, kernel 2.4 KDE 3.1. Use that one if you can get it. Maybe problematical now though. SuSE search is comprehensive and does not try to steer users to the internet or microsoft's site like microsoft's crap does. The internet is far overblown and too full of
fraudsters for my liking, so cut it off from windows in my house. Less problems now, although win2000pro reports many I/O requests to browser programs in everyday operation. Could be the system trying and failing to 'call mommy bill'
on how to upgrade to XP from Vista on mainstream computer sites, I'd say that what's wrong with Vista for most users is a lot more than fud.
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He's slagging Linux based on his experiences with a 5 year old version of a Linux desktop distribution which was out of date when he tested it?
The distro he was using was Red Hat 9. . . the predecessor to Fedora Core 1. The current version of Fedora is Fedora Core 8.
This is analogous to slagging Vista based on a recent install of Windows 3.1.
I've been writing how-to pieces on Linux starting with Fedora Core 3. (I use Debian stable/testing now) The majority of how-to pieces I wrote back then can not be updated for publication for a current version of Linux. When "how to use a Palm PDA with Linux" changes from manual installation, manual configuration of config files using a text editor, and a number of other things I'd rather not remember (it took me a month to make it work) to "find the menu entry for KPilot if it isn't installed by default, and if it isn't, type in: # aptitude install kpilot (of course there's a GUI installer, in fact, there are at least two. . . my not using either is personal idiosyncracy) what's left to write about?
Setting up scanners and printers used to be a pain. Xsane now handles the scanner that cost me a lot of pain to get running on FC3 without hassles, for printing, I simply got a copy of Turboprint. No more problems.
Linux has improved pretty drastically in the last few years in ease of use and of installation in both hardware and software. The problems I've seen described with Vista in terms of drivers and simply getting it to work remind me of what Linux was like years ago. It's not perfect (getting a UPS to work with Linux or configuring suspend is still fairly painful) but from the reviews I've seen, it's superior in usability to Vista. And a lot easier to install from scratch than XP.
The editors of slashdot would have done Haselton a favor if they hadn't run this article. While the apparent fact that the Vista IPv6 implementation doesn't degrade gracefully to IPv4 is new to me, this is probably a matter of my not bothering to pay much attention to Yet Another Bad Vista Review. When mainstream computer publications are writing detailed how-tos on upgrading Vista to XP, how much attention do I need to pay?
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You get a warning that it is not supported but you can still install and run it.
I must admit ( eventhough I like using Linux ) that my encounter with the local Linux User ( SSLUG.dk )was about the same as your encounter with the Linux community.
I visited a lecture on Linux at Niels Bohr Institutet in Copenhagen in order to get to learn Linux. When this guy talked about System Administration I asked a simple question regarding the GUI tool he was showing: "Is it possible to filter out / remove older events from the log using that tool?" Damn! A barrage of "use fucking 'tail'" from him and the surounding nerds later I decided: "Fuck SSLUG". So when I got home I sat down and wrote an entry on their forum describing the experience and claimed that if they wanted to bring Linux to everyone they had to be a little bit more friendly with the newbies. Replying to the responses I even got censored! "Freedom to choose" and "Freedom of speech" SUCKS!
Now, I still use XP on my desktop ( servers are running Linux ( SuSe off course ) ) and when I upgrade my PC it's gonna get another XP - no Vista nor Linux.
Never buy Sony CDs - they will open up your computer to anyone..
But this one is simply foolish.
Let's look at your complaints in turn:
Vista defaulting to IPv6 is a good thing. IPv4 is broken - it doesn't scale to the size we need. So like it or not we all have to switch to v6. Your inability to access facebook is not Vista's fault - it's Facebook's fault. And you let them get away with it...
If you go out in the street in Paris (that's in France; in Europe, you know, you may have heard of it) and ask questions in Xhosa (that's a language, you know, from a place called Africa; you may have heard of it) you won't get a sensible answer. Linux is not (and doesn't pretend to be) a slavish copy of Windows. On the contrary, it's an organic outgrowth of UNIX. That things which work in Windows don't work the same way in Linux isn't surprising, it's inevitable. But to suggest that search and finding things is more difficult on Linux than on Windows is ludicrous. To find anything on Windows is a real, total, piece of shit pain, involving watching ludicrous animations for ten minutes. On Linux it's a two-word command and returns almost instantly.
I, too, am of the opinion that Vista is a mess. But that isn't to say that I agree with you. For me to agree with you you'd need to understand what you're talking about, and you don't. You think the 'operating system' is the skin on the top - the pictures on the screen. It isn't. On Linux and, to a lesser extent, Windows, that skin can be taken off and replaced by something else entirely without any change to the underlying operating system. Vista is, indeed, broken; but your rant did not address a single one of the ways it's broken.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Mod parent up - funny when read in voice of Simpsons Comicbook Guy.
No, you see, the real question is: Is there any real reason for Vista? Most people are fine with XP and are only upgrading because they are being pressured to. They don't necessarily care about new features (and bug fixes are for service packs) -- they just want to continue using their computer the way they were before and not be interrupted by having to piss about with little things. How hard is that to understand?
qwerty
I would, by the way, not lay that specifically on the testing department at Microsoft, or any other company's testing department, though, because I don't know that much about how the project lead divided up responsibilities. It's a subtle enough point, and I've seen QA done close enough to a helpdesk-type script, that I would put that on the person in charge, somebody whose title is probably more like 'principal architect' than 'software testing.' The guy with the "last word" obviously did not put that on the to-do list, or did not put it on the right people's to-do lists, including both dev and testing teams. That said, I would probably fault Microsoft more and Facebook's admin less than you did, because IPv4 has been in use for some time, and IPv6 is still the relatively new method, which I would consider optional as Facebook or their host seemingly does. If Microsoft wants to be on the forefront of obsoleting the previous version and switch over as quickly as possible to the next big thing, fine, but when that makes using the current standard a hassle to the end user, it makes Microsoft look bad. To the end-user, "it works in Linux and MacOS," so Microsoft is the one that looks stupid. That's all. It's not a "tin foil" thing, it's simply an observation of something that many people will expect to work easily, but doesn't. And I'm adding to that, a top-down priority problem that places newness for its own sake too high, and abandons support for current standards as soon as they're planned for obsolescence, instead of when they are actually out of use. I guess in the average slashdotter's mind, it went something like 'Hey Steve, put that chair down and listen for a moment... you know how we just spent a huge pile of cash buying shares in facebook? You know what would be a great idea? If we set vista up so that it can't connect to facebook! Wouldn't that be great for our investment?' Your version is much funnier, but I don't see any reason to posit sabotage; incompetence explains these observations much more succinctly, and without contradicting existing Theory.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer no longer have the "File / Edit / View" menu bars across the top of the window.
Translation: "The UI is different, I can't handle changes, or I am unwilling to learn to do things in a new and possibly more efficient manner."
Windows Explorer also did away with the "Up" button that lets you browse from the current directory to the higher-level directory.
Translation: "The UI is different, I can't handle changes, or I am unwilling to learn to do things in a new and possibly more efficient manner."
I have an older monitor, so I wanted to turn ClearType off.
Translation: "My PC isn't really modern enough to be running Vista, Vista was not intended for very old hardware, but I am doing it anyway, and expect Microsoft to bow to my wishes as a minority."
Virtual PC, which worked on all versions of Windows XP, is not supported on Vista Home Premium.
Translation: "I wanted to save some money so didn't buy Ultimate, and didn't bother finding out that Microsoft, as a business, likes to charge more for additional functionality. I thought 'Home' obviously meant buy this O/S if you want to install Virtual Machines, typically a business function or enthusiast function, not a home user function. Also, I'm writing for an I/T website but I haven't heard about VMWare. Please continue to take me seriously anyway."
Telnet no longer installed by default.
Translation: "I'm savvy enough to know what Telnet is, but I don't know how to install it. I don't know what PuTTY is. I'll blame that on Microsoft too."
The aforementioned Facebook problem.
Translation: "I know and I've even mentioned that it was Facebook's IPv6 gear that was busted, but I'm going to try really hard to make it look like Microsoft's fault by including it in this article as a Vista gripe, because Vista had gone far enough to actually push IPv6 a little."
Can we get some unbiased journalism around here? Please?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Okay, okay. I'm tired of going rounds with people that don't understand how UAC actually works.
Furthermore, it's likely you are a faith-based user/admin. That is, you take Microsoft's security claims as fact rather than the hyperbole they are. The sieve that is UAC is very well known and documented on the Microsoft developer side. You have been sold the PHB/consumer pablum that UAC == sudo. I will not reply again, so read the following carefully.
it's a very necessary privilege barrier.
You clearly don't understand the CF that Microsoft calls privilege and their other CF integrity levels.
If they didn't display something, things would be silently elevating
1. If they didn't display something, they can't shift the blame to you. Sucks to be you.
2. The OS is already silently elevating. "Vista makes tradeoffs between security and convenience, and both UAC and Protected Mode IE have design choices that required paths to be opened in the Integrity Levels wall for application compatibility and ease of use. " Bolding for emphasis. Sucks to be you again.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
... what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to? Drive. That 200-and-odd quid saved by using Linux went towards driving lessons. Linux literally gave me freedom of movement, which Vista stopped me having. IIRC that's Article 13. Vista generally might also come under Article 5...