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Vista SP1 Is Even Less Compatible
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Microsoft is now saying that Vista SP1 disables some 3rd party applications. The KB article on SP1 incompatibility states: 'For reliability reasons, Microsoft blocks these programs from starting after you install Windows Vista SP1.' It does link to several vendor support pages with updates or workarounds. Unfortunately, at least one of the suggestions consists of merely disabling part of the program, which could leave you with half an anti-virus solution."
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, nice. New OS, same old Microsoft.
Does anybody need Vista anyway?
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People are quick to slam Microsoft again here. For those reading TFKBA, most of the apps are either:
In conclusion, move along, nothing to see here.
For me, XP is gonna be the last Windows I ever use, at least for personal stuff. If my employer will switch to Vista, that's their problem. But my next computer will be a Mac, and if I were not that lazy, I would have switched to Linux my home desktop long time ago (those huge amounts of data on ntfs partitions are one of the reasons - and no, ntfs3g is not perfect). The one Windows-only app I really need is IE (stupid internet-banking site...) which can run perfectly inside a VM.
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You know, I'm honestly really tired of seeing this same lame ass rant over and over again in every single MS article. Kudos to you at least for keeping it relatively short. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME Microsoft releases an new OS. They can't win, even if they DID write the best software known to man, and you know why? Legacy compatibility. You guys bitch when it doesn't work with your old shit and if it DOES work with your old shit, you bitch because the OS is bloated and runs like shit. There's a price for compatibility and if you think you have the easy and simple solution, you're probably wrong.
Every time one of these comes out there's someone ranting about the downfall of Microsoft and Windows and blah blah blah, and it never happens. They usually get Insightful mod points and everyone has a circle jerk over it. You've been doing it since Slashdot came into existence. It's ridiculous and it makes me laugh to see it keep happening over and over again and people don't even realize that they ARE doing it over and over again. Is Vista perfect? God no, not by any means. Is it a step down from XP? For the time being, perhaps. It has it's merits...I use it on a daily basis so I've got a pretty good leverage on the subject, unlike 90% of the people bitching who are using Linux at the moment and have spent all of 5 minutes on Vista. Shit changes from release to release...it happens. It sucks...it's annoying. It frustrates the hell out of me when they arbitrarily move things around just because they think it looks pretty. Was there a point in renaming "Add/Remove Programs" to "Program and Features" really? No...is the world going to come crashing down because of it? No probably not.
Also I keep seeing you guys whine about RAM usage...have none of you even read what the features of Vista are? It uses lots of RAM and caches your most frequently launched programs there...no matter what you are doing, you will always have high RAM usage...why are we even debating that? Furthermore, again, this happens every time they release an OS. It always requires better hardware. Trying to run it on an old piece of shit computer probably causes at least half of the problems we see. They can't forsee every conceivable hardware configuration...they just can't. It's impossible. I mean for christ's sake...Apple has problems too and they've got an EXTREMELY limited amount of hardware to accomodate for. What does that tell you? It tells you that it's REALLY hard to account for these things and if you think Linux does it so much better, I'd have to laugh at you. Linux still supports a laughable amount of hardware compared to Windows. Not necessarily Linux's fault, but it's still not there and people still have problems with it.
What I'm really trying to say here is that I really wish people would take a realistic and logical look at this kind of stuff. The rampant fanboyism disgusts me sometimes. If you like Linux, good for you. That's awesome. I like it too. I like Windows as well...for different reasons. They both have their merits...so does MacOSX (it's quite sexy I'll admit). Just because you like one thing though...does that mean you have to have fangasm and go apeshit about every competing product's flaws while completely ignoring the flaws of your favorite? Furthermore honestly...who even gives a shit? I'm sure most people here that aren't rabid fanboys are really getting sick of seeing the same shit like this over and over again, you know?
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
I think it's frustrating that a lot of people ignore what Vista gets right and simply say XP is always better. For example, in Vista, if a video driver crashes, the system reinitializes it like nothing happened. To my knowledge, XP didn't do that. I've been hit with that one a few times a week, since NVIDIA and ATI put out such crappy, perpetual-beta drivers that probably haven't been tested with my motherboard/GPU combination.
Or take the fact that Internet Explorer now runs as a different user. It's not the perfect solution to the problem of buggy browsers (there could still be a privilege escalation somewhere, or a bogus ActiveX control that wants to be escalated), but you have to admit, it does mitigate the problem in a way that Firefox on Linux certainly doesn't today. (And yes, Firefox does have security holes every now and then.)
Or the fact that you now have to click-through a menu to do an Administrator task. Yes, this conditions users into clicking "Accept" all the time without thinking about it (undeniably bad), but for users that are careful about it, it can be an improvement. (By the way, Mac OS X and several Linux distros have this feature too, although they prompt for your password. But nobody complains about this feature in these other systems, do they?)
But, since it takes a long time to copy a file, or since they've had small difficulties deploying the service pack, or since they've changed the UI so it's no longer what people are used to, all of a sudden it's a complete failure, and its merits get ignored. Yeah, the situation with Vista is far from perfect, but when has Windows ever been so? I'm personally curious on how Windows 7 can improve upon the situation.
My point was that various security products (including firewalls) are affected, and we all know how quick an unprotected windows box can get p0wned.
As for "switching to linux", I can't switch. I'm already there - been there off and on since slackware 3.x, My last Windows purchase was Windows 95.
When XP came out, I said, "I'm sticking to Win2K as long as a I can and never going to XP. Bah, the only thing that keeps me on Windows is games." Then I got a new PC with XP installed and realized it was pretty decent. Then I said, "I'm sticking with XP as long as I can and never going to Vista. Bah, the only thing that keeps me on Windows is games." Then, I got a PS3 and that was good enough to satisfy my mild gaming interests. Finally, I had no reason to stick with Windows. Then, I got a new laptop with Vista installed and realized, "Hey, this isn't as bad as the hype."
In my college days and for a while after, fiddling with hardware and building a working box with linux really interested me. Now, I'm tired of dealing with drivers and all the b.s. I just want an OS that lets me do what I need to do. I don't have unusual needs for hardware so I don't give a shit if Vista won't support this or that. I whipped up an order from Dell and it showed up and it works and that's that.
Vista isn't perfect and never will be. But neither is any OS from any vendor. And certainly, Vista needs some work in the short term. But, when some linux distro is robust enough to unseat Windows, it will. That's the way markets work. Until then, I just don't have the time to pretend anymore that Windows is soooooo inferior for the vast majority of users that just surf the web, read e-mail, play DVDs and other typical stuff.
There's a price for compatibility and if you think you have the easy and simple solution, you're probably wrong.
No, the price of compatibility is closed-source software. To recognize how little value both of these conditions have, consider that I can still compile current versions of tcpdump or fvwm or openoffice on RedHat 6, FreeBSD 5 and Solaris 8. While you ably demonstrate that a reasonable argument can be made for Windows improving over the years, your point boils down to the fact that Windows used to be worse than it is now. This is not a glowing endorsement and speaks little of the standards that they should be held up to. Microsoft's problems are due only to their own policies, and "compatibility" is only an indicator that they've built a fence that they have trouble climbing.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Even if ReactOS is capable of running 100% of windows software, it would be nearly impossible for them to reach the level of market saturation that microsoft enjoys. And it would be very difficult to describe a product with such high presence as being so easily made irrelevant.
With that said, I'll also say that I would be first to celebrate any such falling of windows. I run any OS I can in the place of windows, anywhere I can. But saying that ReactOS has the potential to make windows "irrelevant" is unfortunately a bit silly.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Sorry but this is slashdot. Sticking it to Microsoft NEVER gets old.
I'm about as anti-MS as they come, but even I'll stop sticking it to Microsoft the day they start making good products and start using quality as their primary market differentiator instead of strategy, deception and lock-in. It is as simple as that and the bashing will stop.
To Eddy: Vista may be a joke but it's huge and is selling by the million because most people get it with their new computers and don't know better, and crap as it is, it's the platform of the future that will run the majority of computers sold for quite some time to come ... also, ISVs (of which many of us develop for) HAVE TO use it to make sure our apps run on Vista for our customers --- so yes, here in the real world, all these Vista messes ARE news on a tech site where many of us will have to deal with the fall-out in one way or another (whether it's on the corporate side or just helping grandma with her computer etc.).
Well actually, I *do* care about computers. I just don't want to have to mess around with a bunch of headaches to finally get to the point where I can do whatever I'm there to do in the first place.
Have you ever tried to build a MythTV box from scratch? That's the biggest pain in the balls I've ever experienced. Sure, I obviously didn't hand pick the correct hardware. But that's the point. I don't want to. Same thing for virtually every linux box I've ever built. Some went better than others. Things that have caused me headaches over the years include getting modems to work, getting video card drivers to work, getting lirc to work, and a host of other things. On the flip side, Windows boxes I've built went a lot more smoothly.
Of course, Windows isn't the answer to everything and it certainly has problems.
I write software for a living. Where I work, we don't use Vista. At work, I deal with XP, RH EL4, and Solaris 8/9. When I get home, I'm doing the simple shit. I don't care if Ubuntu gives me my e-mail in a snappier fashion, I only care that it's fast *enough*. I don't schedule my day down to the same granularity as you, I guess. I can spare a few milliseconds to wait for Thunderbird to give me my mail while it's being handicapped by Vista.
Sorry if I'm not geeky enough for this place, but if you'd step out of your mom's basement for a few minutes, you'd realize that the general public feels mostly like I do. Please spare me the "but but but but but we love computeeeeeeeeers!" routine.
OS X 10.4 (Tiger), released in April 2005, will stop being supported when OS X 10.6 is released if Apple continues their support lifecycle "pattern" (Apple has no official support lifecycle policy). The current Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu desktop (released in June 2006) will stop being supported in June 2009 (the next LTS is coming this April).
And every Microsoft customer needs official support because of the huge, huge number of vulnerabilities that are found in Microsoft products. Your link also mentioned that Windows XP will receive "Extended Support" until April 2014, which includes paid support, free security updates, and updated Knowledge Base articles. Operating systems don't naturally have so many vulnerabilities. Users of Mac computers don't even bother to run anti-spyware and anti-virus software because they don't have problems. Large numbers of vulnerabilities are a built-in shortcoming of Microsoft products; apparently Microsoft doesn't let its programmers finish their work. Huge numbers of vulnerabilities force an unnatural connection with the supplier; the user is dependent on the supplier for patches; that creates opportunities for control. Vulnerabilities make more money for Microsoft because people are forced to "upgrade". More inane gibberish. Operating systems don't naturally have Microsoft's installed base. The vast majority of XP's vulnerabilities take advantage of users always running in Administrator mode, which Microsoft was forced to allow because incompetent developers of popular applications (e.g. Intuit) never got their apps working in standard user modes (and never got certified for XP). For every crappy application that doesn't work with Vista SP1, there are several (in some cases dozens) of competing (and better) apps that work just fine.People buy computers for the applications. If Vista gets in the way of AutoCAD or whatever they will use WinXP, 2000, 98 or whatever else will run it.
Hey kids, remember way back when Windows XP was released and ZoneAlarm had compatibility problems? That certainly doomed Windows XP.
Lets just all go read that thread instead of posting all the same things again:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/04/1159203.shtml
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
Whilst it might be the case that less stuff on Windows now runs with highest level permissions, the fact is that if a virus runs at a user permission level then it can still affect that user's files and propogate across a network.
And I don't believe virus writers have yet fully discovered what holes they can exploit in Vista. In proportion to the whole computer-using world, hardly anyone is running Vista yet so they've not really given it much attention.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You guys have been whining about windows security for years.
Now that ms is actually trying to do something about it, you're whining and giggling with glee even more.
Half the problem is that the software *relies* on the inherent insecurities of previous incarnations of the OS. Many of these problems are coming to light because programs that EXPECT to run with admin rights and do what the hell they please, can't.
What, Vista hasn't been around long enough for the software authors to make sure their software runs on it?
I, for one, won't be running any software that gives me a hard time installing or running it on Vista. And I won't be blaming MS.