Making the Switch To Windows "Workstation" 2008

snydeq writes "Disenchanted with Vista? Why not convert Windows Server 2008 into the lean, efficient, reliable 'power user' OS that Windows should be? InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy, who has been using a converted 'Workstation' 2008 as his primary OS since hitting a wall using Vista as a Visual Studio development platform four months ago, says the guerrilla OS has turned his Dell notebook into a well-oiled machine that never gets sluggish and rarely needs to reboot. Those interested in making the switch should check out win2008workstation.com, a clearinghouse for 'Workstation' 2008 tips and techniques. Kennedy also offers a link to a Windows 2008 Workstation Converter utility for those looking to quickly convert a fresh Server 2008 install without hacking the registry or manually installing/enabling lots of services and features."

Comments

Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[gbulmash]

A Windows install without all the needless bells and whistles runs nicely. Who'd have thunk it. Well, many consumers thunk it, but Microsoft's marketing demagogues didn't.

IMO, Vista is Microsoft's version of New Coke or the Arch Deluxe (if any of you are old enough to remember them). Although the same could have been said about Windows ME.

Maybe Windows is like Star Trek movies... only every other release is good.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Baricom]

IMO, Vista is Microsoft's version of New Coke...Although the same could have been said about Windows ME.

Perhaps Windows ME was New Coke and Vista is just Pepsi.

Maybe Windows is like Star Trek movies... only every other release is good.

Would it be more accurate to say, "every other release is less bad?"

Arch Deluxe

Now you've crossed the line. The Arch Deluxe was the best McDonald's sandwich ever. It made Big Macs look like they came out of a vending machine.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Jurily]

It's nice, but why are these necessary to use it as a "workstation"?

2. New User, Auto Logon and Strong Passwords Enforcement: How to create a new user, how to configure a user to logon automatically and how to disable enforcement of a minimum complexity for passwords.

8. Internet Explorer Enhanced Security: Disable Enhanced Security in Internet Explorer.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

A Windows install without all the needless bells and whistles runs nicely. Who'd have thunk it. Well, many consumers thunk it, but Microsoft's marketing demagogues didn't.

Not to mention a few developers.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

It's nice, but why are these necessary to use it as a "workstation"?

2. New User, Auto Logon and Strong Passwords Enforcement: How to create a new user, how to configure a user to logon automatically and how to disable enforcement of a minimum complexity for passwords.

8. Internet Explorer Enhanced Security: Disable Enhanced Security in Internet Explorer.

2. Not sure about the auto logon. New user makes sense, right? Microsoft has gone crazy with some of the password requirements-- I'm fine with complexity, but IIRC the default domain settings on 2003 are something like, "Force users to change their password every 30 days, and don't let them re-use any of their last 14 passwords." And that's stupid.

8. Again, some of the security enhancements on Microsoft's servers are absurd. I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

Some of my details may be off, but the general idea is there. You can either jump through insane hoops to get things working, or you can disable their security.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Weaselmancer]

WFW 3.11 fixed Windows 3.1.
Windows 98 SE fixed Windows 95.
Windows XP saved the world from Windows ME.
Something will save us from Vista.

If you number Windows 3.1 as the first release, Microsoft releases follow the same pattern that Star Trek movies do. The odd ones suck, and the even ones are ok.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[maglor_83]

The Arch Deluxe was the best McDonald's sandwich ever.

Is that meant to sound impressive?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

The odd ones suck, and the even ones are ok.

Yea, but, Vista is NT6.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[MsGeek]

Windows2000 Professional saved the world from Windows ME.

There, fixed that for you.

Something will save us from Vista.

Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather buy and eat an Arch Deluxe than watch their ghetto television ads that target hungover minorities the morning after a party.

But it's okay, I had Subway today and stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Well I'm off to In-N-Out.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[SL Baur]

8. Again, some of the security enhancements on Microsoft's servers are absurd. I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

Except for the "download anything from the Internet" (non-executable stuff is always safe to download) those are exactly the sanest things to do. Wow, maybe Microsoft really has learned something.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dosius]

I actually preferred Coke II (its name in the early 90s).

-uso.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[catmistake]

Bad analogy... because Coke is undeniably great.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[MrCreosote]

"The Arch Deluxe was the best McDonald's sandwich ever" - baricom

"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and that's not saying much for you" - groucho marx

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[ozmanjusri]

Perhaps Windows ME was New Coke and Vista is just Pepsi.

No, Vista is definitely a Ford Edsel

That's why we're all here, right? To celebrate V Day, the date 2 years ago when Microsoft took one of the computer industry's most hilarious pratfalls. But why? It really wasn't that bad an operating system. True, the OS was kind of homely, resource hungry and too expensive, particularly at the outset of the late '00s recession. But what else? It was the first victim of Redmond hyper-hype. Microsoft's marketing mavens had led the public to expect some plutonium-powered, pancake-making wonderOS; what they got was a XP in drag. Cultural critics speculated that the software was a flop because the CEO behaved like a cunt.

Paraphrased from Time's 50 Worst Cars.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Creepy Crawler]

---(non-executable stuff is always safe to download)

Hardly. I can think of quite a few examples of non-executable files that can house nasties. Essentially, one finds a buffer overflow in a parser. MP3 stacks and video codecs are favorites to find holes and stupid stuff in. Also, exe's can be put in WMV's and other MS codecs too.

Once the overflow is ran by the unsuspecting user/admin, code is then ran as permission of that program. Better hope it's not an admin

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Nimey]

If you like McDonald's, I suppose. I worked at a McD's ($DEITY forbid ever again) in the Arch Deluxe days, and that was one of their better sandwiches at the time.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[ScreamingCactus]

It made Big Macs look like they came out of a vending machine.

They don't?!?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

"It made Big Macs look like they came out of a vending machine."

but... they already look like they came out of a vending machine

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[bandersnatch]

Windows2000 Professional saved the world from Windows ME.

There, fixed that for you.

Something will save us from Vista.

Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu.

Cthulhu?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

Arch Deluxe. Why did you remind me? Commercials with a little kid saying "nasty nasty nasty." Bun that looked like a butt.

I think whoevever came up with that thing is now working for GM.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Fri13]

Linux saves us from Windows NT!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

Or DEBIAN LINUX. Or XANDROS LINUX. Or MANDRIVA LINUX. Or SUSE LINUX. Or PCLINUXOS. There's more to linux than UBUNTU, you know.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Tim C]

I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

Not true. I'm currently running Windows Server 2008 on my desktop, and while by default IE makes downloading stuff a little trickier than say XP, it most certainly will let you do it. It just throws up a warning or two, forcing you to click to say that yes, you really do mean to download it (and thus no, you're not being hit by a drive-by download). It's a nuisance (but certainly not "insane"), but then so are most security measures and this is a *server* OS, in the vast majority of deployments once you've set it up and installed the app(s), you shouldn't be surfing on it at all...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[KGIII]

Or you just don't run them on an OS that isn't designed for that. Man! I love car analogies tonight. I can take my wife's (really, she won't let me replace it) 1988 Honda Accord off the road and go into the woods of Maine with it. Or, instead, I can take my SUV out and actually enjoy myself and do so safely. (Sorry but, well, it seemed fitting.) The idea is that you don't use a server or workstation platform as a general home OS. Err, I do tend to like Microsoft products but I'm afraid your alternative is Ubuntu or sticking with XP if you can't stomach Vista. Those rules? As a retired (sort of) admin? I likes 'em. Not allowing people to install random stuff they found online and "needed?" I like that too.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[pimpimpim]

I bet you never laid your eyes on the DLT

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[kiddygrinder]

I think you mean Debian Ubuntu, Xandros Ubuntu, Mandriva Ubuntu etc...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[cheater512]

So what are you saying? Secure Windows is nearly unusable?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Dersaidin]

Cthulhuntu*

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[FishWithAHammer]

Err...Windows 2008 is entirely capable as a home OS. Just because it has "Server" in the name doesn't mean that it isn't. Windows 2000 was a "server" OS for a long time. Windows 2003 was too. (And 2003 was way nicer as a desktop than XP ever was, if not for its embarrassing failures with DirectX.)

My other machine is running 2008 now, with a local work-copy of IIS 7 running. Occasionally I use it for playing old emulated games (because that way I don't have to mess with plugging in controllers to my main machine), and my brother uses it for surfing the web.

Saying that your "only alternatives" to Vista are Ubuntu and XP is completely idiotic. 2008 is Vista without the suck, and it takes about half an hour to twiddle the settings for desktop use.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice, but why are these necessary to use it as a "workstation"?

2. New User, Auto Logon and Strong Passwords Enforcement: How to create a new user, how to configure a user to logon automatically and how to disable enforcement of a minimum complexity for passwords.

8. Internet Explorer Enhanced Security: Disable Enhanced Security in Internet Explorer.

Because it is meant for Windows users mate.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[BrainInAJar]

Cthulubuntu , linux for planet eating beings

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[KGIII]

*sighs* Server 2k3 was also viable as a home OS just as the wife's car is perfectly capable of taking the Kimbal Pond Road... A steak knife is perfectly capable of being a screwdriver but a tool that fits the job description is better suited and just because you can use super glue instead of solder doesn't mean that it is the best solution in the real world. In other words, sorry but no... The OS isn't designed to be a home based OS for the masses. Using it as such is okay by me and most anyone else but, really, ... Oh wait... You have a nickname of "fishwithahammer" and I'm telling you that you can fish with a fishing pole and have easier (maybe not better) results and you find that offensive? Please go read what I wrote (unless I was mistaken in my typing and in that case keep fishing with your hammer) and come back with something more informed than "idiotic." If one isn't going to go to Vista then the alternatives (to remain on common hardware) are XP and Ubuntu for the masses. Anyone fishing with a fucking hammer is too stupid for words but at least I tried to make it simple for you.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[FishWithAHammer]

Your whining is tiresome and the only point of even the most remote value is in this sentence:

The OS isn't designed to be a home based OS for the masses.

And this article isn't talking about a home-based OS for the masses. It's talking about a home-based OS for the technically savvy. The big hint that this is the case is that they're talking about a "workstation," which has a fairly clearly defined role that doesn't include "the masses."

So yes, your bitching is idiotic.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[jacquesm]

I personally love the 'rarely needs to reboot' line.

The only time the machine I'm working on goes down is if the power fails :)

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Again, some of the security enhancements on Microsoft's servers are absurd. I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

Enhanced security mode -- you can turn it off from the server manager. But then again -- this is supposed to be a server OS so it makes sense to disallow such risky behavior (by default) on a server OS.

You can either jump through insane hoops to get things working, or you can disable their security.

Not true, but it's possible that most people will effectively do just that. The reason it isn't true: go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level. IE's security options are actually extremely fine-grained -- it's pretty far from an all-or-nothing approach. Even with Enhanced security mode on, you can explicitly add sites to the various zones (intranet, trusted, etc.) so you end up with a white-list approach.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this: Have someone who has the vaguest idea of what their doing configure policies. I know radical thinking. But sometimes the craziest ideas are the ones that work.

I know GPO's are so complimacated, what with being written in english, but just maybe a well thought out plan, which is carefully excecuted is worth wild.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have nothing new to say, but the reply confirm image word was "condom" so I felt obligated to use it.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[orangesquid]

No, you mean slackware. My 386/33MHz still has just 4MiB of RAM and a Hercules card for video, not VGA, you insensitive clod! I hope I get the 387 chip for Christmas this year, though.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found XFCE over Ubuntu makes the best desktop. Xubuntu lacks a lot of useful tools, and GNOME is bloated, unstable and lacks lots of functionality. Also XFCE with the Redmond theme, whatever the windows decorations has the power to make your desktop look less like it was designed by a hyperactive kid.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

The AD password security requirements are a joke.

Everyone I know uses the same password and just adds an incrementing number to the end until it rolls around and then starts from 1 again.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[somersault]

Couple of things. You forgot Mac OS. That's a pretty good choice for the masses and the technically minded alike. Secondly, you're being dumb. So what if it isn't designed for home use? Cars can be modified. You could modify your wife's accord with monster truck suspension and tyres, bigger engine, whatever, to suit specific tasks. Who cares if it wasn't designed for that if, in the end, it works. If there is no way of getting DirectX working properly on this then it isn't suited for use by the masses, but otherwise I can see it being a perfectly usable workstation OS. I've used Windows NT Server, Windows 2000 and 2003 Server, and they do have some useful features.

'Server' just means it has more features built in for administrative tasks and doing stuff like DNS/DHCP/web hosting. Look at something like Ubuntu. The only difference between 'home' type and 'server' type installs is some extra server-y packages, and perhaps a lack of X for some server installs. That doesn't mean that X and games can't be installed on the server, or that apache can't be installed on your home machine.

If you don't like this idea, just forget about it, and stop trying to tell people what they can't do, just because they aren't "meant" to. Maybe try watching a bit of amateur rally driving too. Lo, I see front wheel drive family cars driving down dirt tracks that they weren't ever "meant" to drive on!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[SL Baur]

I wrote:

non-executable stuff is always safe to download

Essentially, one finds a buffer overflow in a parser. MP3 stacks and video codecs are favorites to find holes and stupid stuff in. Also, exe's can be put in WMV's and other MS codecs too.

That sounds suspiciously like executable stuff to me and terrible, terrible design.

Note for the usoft 'turfers: I presume QuickTime does the same thing, so I'm not singling anyone out in particular.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[grajzor]

Why on earth would you sit and play MP3s on a productionserver as administrator? Sounds possibly the most retarded thing to do I can possible imagine.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[X3J11]

No, you mean slackware. My 386/33MHz still has just 4MiB of RAM and a Hercules card for video, not VGA, you insensitive clod! I hope I get the 387 chip for Christmas this year, though.

As entertaining as that is, I actually prefer Slackware over any other distribution. It was the first I ever tried over a decade ago (!), and in my occasionally humble opinion believe it beats the tar out of all the buntus and everything else.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Chutulu]

me?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[peragrin]

since I lack mod points I have to agree with you. The dejon mustard sauce was great.

I actually got in trouble at MCD while working there for making an arch but using the grilled chicken instead of meat. now that was a tasty sandwich.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[k_187]

using the grilled chicken instead of meat

That says something about the chicken at McDonalds I think.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[ifrag]

Your examples are completely wrong. It's not about a tool that can't do the task. It's about a much more serious tool that performs far better.

A real example would be something like a Pistol and an RPG. Sure, the pistol (Vista) is perfectly capable of killing things. But the RPG (Server 2008) is far more capable. It's not that the tool is wrong in any sense, and you can obviously use the smaller tool and do far less with it.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[CastrTroy]

Haven't met a lot of windows admins, have you? That isn't to say that there aren't a lot of really good Windows Admins, but the lucrative market attracts all kinds of people. Lots of good people, and lots of really bad people.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Zashi]

Unless you're using windows server 2008 as a workstation. But who the hell would do that, right?

right?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Bright Apollo]

2. Not sure about the auto logon. New user makes sense, right? Microsoft has gone crazy with some of the password requirements-- I'm fine with complexity, but IIRC the default domain settings on 2003 are something like, "Force users to change their password every 30 days, and don't let them re-use any of their last 14 passwords." And that's stupid.

Stupid is not changing it. Pointedly stupid is *enhancing* it by required a change every 90 days (oh, two more months, so far so good), saving the last 20 passwords (ohhh.... kay) and requiring at least one number, one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and one special character.

And you can't write them down... unenforceable, but whatever.

I know of at least one place where they mandate which special characters you can use, and where the first digit must be in the password. Talk about cutting down the permutations in your rainbow tables.

-BA

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[redxxx]

Bah, it's terrible. The non-euclidean window manager gives me the worst headaches.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Koda]

"Looking round room,
I can tell that you
Are the most beautiful girl in the...room.
In the whole wide room
Oooh.

And when you're on the street
Depending on the street
I bet you are definitely in the top three
Good looking girls on the street
Depending on the street..."

-Flight of the Conchords

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[apparently]

"Why on earth would you sit and play MP3s on a productionserver as administrator? Sounds possibly the most retarded thing to do I can possible imagine."

This is your reply? On an article about running a Server OS as a "Workstation"?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's a perceptual thing.
By releasing a total effing DOG,
they make the next release SEEM better.
Plus then, they get to hose all the 'early adopters' twice, after all...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[MistrBlank]

I miss the Arch Deluxe to this day. It was the best sandwich ever. I don't eat McDonalds and haven't for at least the last 4 years now (6 if you consider I stopped eating dinner menu items well before that), but I still get cravings for that sandwich and Big Macs.
I'm still convinced there's crack in the burgers.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[LuNa7ic]

Cthulhuntu*

Don't you mean GNU/Cthulhuntu?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Except (again, IIRC), Microsoft's own update service, for example, uses an ActiveX control. So if, for some reason, you want to visit Windows Update to update your OS, or install drivers, etc. you're in trouble.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Maybe they've fixed it in 2008. I've only used 2003, which doesn't just throw up warnings, but actually won't allow you to do things without changing the security settings.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Real1tyCzech]

So Microsoft should have thought of that and lowered the security of Windows Server 2008?

Is that what you think?

Really?

Because doing that to make a few enthusiasts happy at the expense of server security would be just about the *dumbest* thing they could do?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

Yeah, I had some fun with this one. Somebody at MS really wasn't thinking ahead. When clicking on a link in IE to download a file (or any action which violates their super-tight security policy), you're given either the option to cancel, or to add the site to the "trusted sites" list. So, inevitably, users end up with a huge list of "trusted" sites. (SCARY!)

Perhaps the most annoying thing with this is that the "Locked Down" setting is controlled outside IE, makes it a big headache when your first reaction is to "check the IE settings".

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Enhanced security mode -- you can turn it off from the server manager. But then again -- this is supposed to be a server OS so it makes sense to disallow such risky behavior (by default) on a server OS.

What "risky behavior"? Allowing the administrator of the machine to install the software that they want? My frustration comes about because, if I've just installed Windows Server fresh, I can't go to the Internet and download drivers that I might need. I can't go download my backup software and install it. I basically can't do much of anything without reconfiguring the security settings first, even if I'm the administrator. And it doesn't just prompt, "This might be bad, do you really want to do this?" I doesn't allow it.

The reason it isn't true: go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level. IE's security options are actually extremely fine-grained -- it's pretty far from an all-or-nothing approach.

Great, so i should go mucking around in list of random poorly-labelled security settings in order to do things I should be able to do by default, and hope that I'm disabling the right things, and not doing something even dumber? Why not just have reasonable security settings from the outset?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Dragonslicer]

I believe there have been buffer overflow exploits in things like JPEG renderers.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[jsight]

Or you just don't run them on an OS that isn't designed for that. Man! I love car analogies tonight. I can take my wife's (really, she won't let me replace it) 1988 Honda Accord off the road and go into the woods of Maine with it. Or, instead, I can take my SUV out and actually enjoy myself and do so safely. (Sorry but, well, it seemed fitting.) The idea is that you don't use a server or workstation platform as a general home OS. Err, I do tend to like Microsoft products but I'm afraid your alternative is Ubuntu or sticking with XP if you can't stomach Vista. Those rules? As a retired (sort of) admin? I likes 'em. Not allowing people to install random stuff they found online and "needed?" I like that too.

A better analogy would be hummer vs. humvee. Which would you rather take into the woods? The humvee may not be as refined (pretty) for your everyday desktop (or woods excursion), but depending on the type of workload you are throwing at it, it may be the best tool for the job. And he's right... Win2003 is a better desktop than XP.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[HAKdragon]

Well, Win3.1 wasn't even part of the NT line. Not to mention that NT3.1 was technically NT1.0

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[boyko.at.netqos]

I -liked- the Arch Deluxe.

Then again, I was a really fat kid.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

I wouldn't necessarily say that. If you know what you're doing, you can set up Windows in a way that's both secure and useable.

However, I would say that Microsoft's notion of "increasing security" (at least in regard to some of their default settings) seems to be to throw up incessant roadblocks and warnings in front of users that prevent them from doing what they intend to do, encouraging them to disable those default security settings in order to be able to work efficiently.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Gilmoure]

And Acrobat Reader.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[pbhj]

IMO, Vista is Microsoft's version of New Coke or the Arch Deluxe (if any of you are old enough to remember them). Although the same could have been said about Windows ME.

I looked up the Arch Deluxe thinking it most be some strange, monstrous franken-burger. It's a bacon cheeseburger with tomato, lettuce, onions, mayo-mustard and ketchup ... what's deluxe about that?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Gilmoure]

Um, this whole article/post is about adapting a server os to use as a workstation os, so yeah, there's comments about how to make things a little more workstation friendly.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[eclectic4]

"Parts is parts.".

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

> 8. Again, some of the security enhancements on Microsoft's servers are absurd. I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

Yet if they left IE wide open you wouldn't be happy either. Microsoft can do no right on Slashdot.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[PawNtheSandman]

I too miss the Arch Deluxe, but it was no McBacon Deluxe.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dpilot]

Oh, for mod points.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[b0bby]

Why wouldn't you download all that stuff on your desktop machine & have it ready on a thumb drive once your server was installed? A server generally implies the presence of other machines. Why not keep the server locked down tight & use less important machines for the "risky" stuff? Sure, if you're using the OS as a desktop you'll need to fiddle with those settings, but if not, why not keep it as locked down as possible? If I'm setting up a Linux server, I don't toss Firefox on there just so I can download things. I'm not saying I haven't popped into IE on a Windows server to grab something, but every time I do I think that it's not really a great idea.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[MBGMorden]

I'll be the first to admit that a good burger is a mighty fine thing . . . but McDonalds? They don't even taste like "real" hamburgers. They're thin, have no spices on the meat, use crappy American cheese, and have kiddie buns. In all fairness, most of the other fast-food places aren't really any better (even Hardees, despite their whole "angus beef" kick that they went on).

Before I go there I'll just make a burger at home. OR, if you do want to eat out, just go to just about any casual dining/steakhouse chain in the country (Applebee's, Chili's, Texas Roadhouse, etc) and they'll serve up some damned good burgers.

Almost comically, the BEST hamburgers I've found anywhere is at a little store in the middle of no where called "Ms. Peggy's". It's a gas station/convenience store/pool hall/bar/restaurant. Absolutely delicious burgers. And not far up the road "The Handy Mart", another little country gas station/restaurant combo, serves about the best chicken sandwich I've found. They debone a whole breast, and batter/fry it for the sandwich. Try out some of those places sometime. A lot of them have very good kitchens (though some don't - at one similar place I ordered a chicken sandwich and was given a fried thigh - bone still in place - between two pieces of white bread).

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Misch]

Perhaps Windows ME was New Coke and Vista is just Pepsi.

So, which OS is Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Rude Turnip]

DOS was "NT" 1.0; OS/2 was "NT" 2.0 and NT 3 was NT 3.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[ivan256]

You got in trouble for that? Man, you manager must have been a total ass...

I also worked at McDonalds in the Arch Deluxe days, and I put that arch sauce on *everything* when I made lunch for myself...

I miss the Deluxe line though... The buns were better... The bacon was better... The sauce was excellent... I don't eat at McDonalds very much since they got rid of them...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dotancohen]

IMO, Vista is Microsoft's version of New Coke or the Arch Deluxe (if any of you are old enough to remember them).

Remember them?!? I was serving them at the time...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[TapeCutter]

"Great, so i should go mucking around in list of random poorly-labelled security settings in order to do things I should be able to do by default, and hope that I'm disabling the right things, and not doing something even dumber?"

Yes, as a geek it's your duty to fiddle but not with my machine ok. Windows is still king of the SOE workstations due mainly to it's distribution and control tools, the people who buy the corporate licenses don't see the problem as thousands of machines that need tweeking, they see a system called "SOE desktops" that needs maintaining. Millions of non-technical people use windows at work so will naturally look for it when they buy a 'family' PC.

"Why not just have reasonable security settings from the outset?"

They obviously use a different definition of reasonable, so counting mine we now have three.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Lord Apathy]

Turn the crap off then. I've been running server 2003 as my workstation OS for several years. I just made the jump to 2008 in the last few months. I have yet to see anything annoying that couldn't simply turned off. Sounds like issues with IE enhanced security. Just turn it off and be done with it.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[initdeep]

if you think a place like applebee's, chili'c, or texas roadhouse make ANY good food, then you don't know what good food is.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[MBGMorden]

I've ate at a lot of nice places, and in my opinion you're only kidding yourself if you think those places can't make a good burger. 90% of making a good burger is simply using a nice thick patty and not rushing the cooking process. IE, most places where you're going to have to wait for the food will produce a decent burger. That's why they can be made easily at home, but turn out crappy from fast food places.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[tehcyder]

I actually got in trouble at MCD while working there for making an arch but using the grilled chicken instead of meat. now that was a tasty sandwich.

Did they force you to have your tastebuds removed when you signed up, or something?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[DocWat232]

Find a Five Guys. Best burgers I've found. http://www.fiveguys.com/

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[BlackSnake112]

I have a server 2003 setup at home for a gaming system. XP ran slower than server 2003 on the same exact machine. And server didn't use the 10k raptor drive. All the benchmarks I ran server got 20-25% better scores (same hardware) with a slower RPM hard drive. Server 2003 looks like microsoft's best gaming os they released (I haven't gotten my hands on 2008 to try it yet).

Going back to the NT days, if you ran server vs the workstation, server ran batter with less overhead then the workstation versions. It got closer with the 2000 versions, but I still liked server over pro. It seemed a little bit faster when installed on the same box.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[SOTEC]

Oh, how impressed we must be with ourselves to resort once again to the dying Vista horse. Have you worn out your whipping rod yet? Would you like another? Or are you finally done restating the restated restated insult?

I understand it was 12:35am when you posted that rotten beef stew of redundancies, but it's inexcusable and unacceptable. Comments like those, and people like you are the reason evolution is an amateur unicyclist; there's no real forward progress because people like yourself sir find it necessary to pound inane facts and/or opinions until they're an unrecognizable pile of baby puke.

Do yourself a favor and cancel your internet service.

Do us a favor and set fire to your pc(or mac).

You know what, I'm not going to hold back any longer my attitude towards idiots like this. Screw internet etiquette, screw censorship, and screw people's fragile ego. I'm sick and tired of watching this world tumble ass over tea kettle into the downward spiral so that people can have their 5 seconds of regurgitated fame. It sickens me.

What, were you expecting everyone to amass and rally with you because you're so f-ing clever? Please; get over yourself.

*hands over the gas can and matches*


...Am I the only person on Slashdot that isn't a brand slave, a fan-boy or a spokesman for a company I don't work for? Am I the only person that could give a shit less whose image I have to defend to justify the price tag on my new system?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

It made Big Macs look like they came out of a vending machine.

They don't?!?

I live in Japan, you insensitive clod!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

funny you should say that Ubuntu saved my 65 year old father from Vista, he just couldn't grasp it. But Ubuntu was easy as pie for him.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[JoeZeppy]

I don't think you can call a Big Mac a "hamburger" - it's more like a meat-filled savory-flavored Krispy Kreme donut.

I'm with the previous poster, I think they make them with crack.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[FreonTrip]

Perhaps Windows ME was New Coke and Vista is just Pepsi.

So, which OS is Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper?

Plan 9. Duh. :P

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Chemicalscum]

Well if you ever start a project you know what to call it.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[jdschulteis]

I looked up the Arch Deluxe thinking it most be some strange, monstrous franken-burger. It's a bacon cheeseburger with tomato, lettuce, onions, mayo-mustard and ketchup ... what's deluxe about that?

In the fine print on the wrapper was the disclaimer: "Deluxe relative to a regular McDonald's hamburger"

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Doghouse Riley]

Still better than Vista. Do you have ANY IDEA how many UAC's I have to click through to open up the @!@_(*!#!@ Necronomicon??

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Creepy Crawler]

Heck, even in Linux, if a attacker wanted to root a machine, they could seed the logs with bad queries. Those queries were ANSI control codes for telnet, which could branch sessions and run separate programs. It could also blank the screen and other nasties.

No system is secure when there's errors in the parser, whether it be text or movie. They can at least get your user's rights to the system. Then it's just an elevation away.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[the_arrow]

Oh my god, I didn't recognize Jason Alexander with hair!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

It made Big Macs look like they came out of a vending machine.

They don't?!?

No, haven't you seen the 4 inch pipe running from the restroom to the kitchen?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Locutus]

a well trained McD's employee for sure. he/she said "meat" and not beef. Remember, it is "100% McDonalds beef" and not 100% beef. There's no telling how much cow is really in there when it's labeled like that.

but as a kid, I chowed on their burgers and fries and actually liked it. Today, I tried their chicken nuggets once on a long drive home and almost threw them away. It was as if they somehow formed the nuggets from some mixed slurry, prettied it up with a coating, and then cooked the outside to make it appear appetizing. Hmmm, mixed slurry, prettied up, made to appear appetizing? Remind you of anyone?

LoB

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[ocirs]

The IE security feature can be disabled with about two mouse clicks under server manager. It's also very easy to add a trusted site by just clicking add when the error message pops up telling you it has blocked a download. There's really no reason you should be downloading from sites in the first place on a production server since server 2008 has it's own built in windows updater and most patches are tested first and redistributed through WUS. IE ES isn't new either, it was even stricter on server 2003 and it prevented some of my idiotic colleges from downloading random crap on the servers.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[FatdogHaiku]

Now you've crossed the line. The Arch Deluxe was the best McDonald's sandwich ever.

That's kind of like being the best ice hockey player in all of Ecuador...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

If I'm setting up a Linux server, I don't toss Firefox on there just so I can download things. I'm not saying I haven't popped into IE on a Windows server to grab something, but every time I do I think that it's not really a great idea.

Then why have IE on their servers at all? I mean, when I'm installing Linux servers, I don't even install a GUI. But still, it lets me fetch and install updates and additional software packages from the Internet.

The problem is that Microsoft expressly makes it so you're supposed to use the GUI and IE in order to get things done, and then proceed to make them a PITA to use. If I could manage the get my Windows system running as easily as "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade; apt-get install [whatever]", I'd be happy.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[hexhacker]

Here: I fixed it for you. You're welcome.

Or you just run them on an OS that is wholly capable for that. Man! I love car analogies tonight. I can take my wife's (really, she won't let me replace it) 1988 Honda Accord off the road and go into the woods of Maine with it. Or, instead, I can take A BADASS TANK AND THE LEMMIWINKS ARMY! (Sorry but, well, it seemed fitting.) The idea is that you CAN use a server or workstation platform as a general home OS, after some tinkering AND IT WILL BE BADASS. Err, I do tend to like Microsoft products but I'm afraid your alternative is Ubuntu or sticking with XP if you can't stomach Vista..... or running Workstation 2008, WHICH IS AWESOME. Those rules? As a retired (sort of) admin? I likes 'em. Allowing TECHNICALLY CAPABLE people to install random stuff they found online and "needed?" I like that too. BUT I HATE WHEN YOU DAMN KIDS TRAMPLE MY GRASS! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[fuzzlost]

It would be better if the media player let me play anything but "The King In Yellow." I think I'm going mad, I can't stop watching it...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[secPM_MS]

The high security settings are there to protect the system if some fool of an administrator browses to a malware site from a domain controller. While this is clearly a terminal offense, Microsoft doesn't want the organization to go down. Hence the protective settings.

I have been using server 2K8 on all my work systems (including my notebook) ever since Vista Beta 1. It has always been stable. On one of the systems I have installed the desktop experience pack because I need it to access the internal video feeds that are used for meetings. Otherwise, I run server without the experience pack.

Since I have IE locked down so that it doesn't run jscript and it won't download pdf's from my journals, I use firefox with NoScript installed to download them. With IE locked down as my default browser, hitting a link inadvertently will bring up my safe browser.

I run as a normal user and use the local machine administrator account for system management. I have to do a full elevation to do a management function, not a simple UAC prompt.

I have been told that a number of customers under enterprise licensing use Server 2K8 as secure managed desktops.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Yes, as a geek it's your duty to fiddle but not with my machine ok.

It depends-- i'm fine with fiddling a bit in abstract. The problem is that (a) Microsoft is designing their software so that you have to fiddle with it before it will work; and (b) their settings are poorly labelled and poorly laid out, so if you're looking to do something in particular, it's hard to know where it will be located, and if you're looking at a particular setting, it's difficult to know quite what it will do.

Put those two things together, and you have some god-awful design. I'm a bit careful and generally do my research, so the results are generally ok. But it's still bad design.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

The point was that he was saying that the even numbered ones were the better ones. I was only pointing out that theory doesn't hold any water since Vista is NT6.

And with your example (no matter how incorrect it is - but I understand you are just trying to illustrate your point), OS/2 being "NT2", it would indeed be a better release than the others. I can't say that I have had much experience with Microsoft's OWN OS/2 (I've only come across one instance of it), but IBM's was pretty damn stable (for an OS of it's type at the time).

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[peragrin]

MCD grilled chicken was really grilled chicken. top it off with a tangy mustard sauce(ie dejon mustard from the arch), and real lettuce and tomato and it wasn't bad.

it did take years however before I could eat one of their burgers again with out becoming ill.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Enhanced security mode -- you can turn it off from the server manager. But then again -- this is supposed to be a server OS so it makes sense to disallow such risky behavior (by default) on a server OS.

What "risky behavior"? Allowing the administrator of the machine to install the software that they want? My frustration comes about because, if I've just installed Windows Server fresh, I can't go to the Internet and download drivers that I might need. I can't go download my backup software and install it. I basically can't do much of anything without reconfiguring the security settings first, even if I'm the administrator. And it doesn't just prompt, "This might be bad, do you really want to do this?" I doesn't allow it.

 

The reason it isn't true: go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level. IE's security options are actually extremely fine-grained -- it's pretty far from an all-or-nothing approach.

Great, so i should go mucking around in list of random poorly-labelled security settings in order to do things I should be able to do by default, and hope that I'm disabling the right things, and not doing something even dumber? Why not just have reasonable security settings from the outset?

Dude -- let me repeat -- it's a server OS. All these defaults make sense for an application/web/database/whatever server that sits in a datacenter somewhere and needs to be as locked down as possible. The user experience takes a lower priority to security.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has gone crazy with some of the password requirements-- I'm fine with complexity, but IIRC the default domain settings on 2003 are something like, "Force users to change their password every 30 days, and don't let them re-use any of their last 14 passwords." And that's stupid.

Yes, because security is stupid. BTW, it actually remembers the past 24 passwords and requires you to change the password every 42 days.

Again, some of the security enhancements on Microsoft's servers are absurd. I can't remember all the details, but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet, won't let you install plugins or ActiveX controls (it won't even ask you, it just won't allow it), and even if you manage to download something, Windows won't run it.

It's called Internet Explorer Enhanced Security. It was added in 2003 to protect someone from getting their server hijacked by a drive-by while surfing the web. Of course if you know anything about security you probably don't do a whole lot of web surfing from your server. And on the off chance that you DO need the functionality that the Enhanced Security feature blocks, you can simply uninstall it via add/remove programs. If you knew half as much about Windows as you pretend to then you're know that. But this is Slashdot, so you don't have to know anything about Windows and any random anti-Windows slam is accepted as fact and modded as "insightful."

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[j.sanchez1]

So, which OS is Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper?

OSX

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Curate]

Windows Update doesn't use an ActiveX control anymore, starting in Vista / Server 2008. The UI is now through a control panel applet. This makes it completely browser-independent.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Dude. If it's a server OS, and it's actually being used on a production server, then the admin account shouldn't be given to anyone that's planning using that access to install Bonzai Buddy anyway. If I have the admin account and I want to download some software and install it, and my OS has security policies to prevent me from doing that, then I'm going to disable those security policies. Because it's a dumb design.

If you want someone to be able to log in and not install software, then give them a restricted account. But if I have the full monty on the machine, then the OS should just keep out of my way and not try to block me from doing things that I obviously want to do.

Dude.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[TW Atwater]

"No, Vista is definitely a Ford Edsel"

Not even close. Edsels were a commercial failure, but they were perfectly capable cars, on par with most American made cars of the time. Vista, to use a car analogy, is a Cadillac chassis with a Yugo engine.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[koolfy]

Something will save us from Vista.

Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu.

Yeah, and what will save us from *buntu ?
Lucky we've got Gentoo to save our souls...

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[negRo_slim]

but as a kid, I chowed on their burgers and fries and actually liked it. Today, I tried their chicken nuggets once on a long drive home and almost threw them away. It was as if they somehow formed the nuggets from some mixed slurry, prettied it up with a coating, and then cooked the outside to make it appear appetizing. Hmmm, mixed slurry, prettied up, made to appear appetizing? Remind you of anyone?

Yeah equating liking McDonald's to childishness, you are so superior to the rest of us. With your mature palate could you please tell me more about your disdain for the world's most popular restaurant, it's just oh so hip!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[TClevenger]

if I've just installed Windows Server fresh, I can't go to the Internet and download drivers that I might need. I can't go download my backup software and install it. I basically can't do much of anything without reconfiguring the security settings first, even if I'm the administrator. And it doesn't just prompt, "This might be bad, do you really want to do this?" I doesn't allow it.

Has this changed in 2008? In 2003, it prompts you when it blocks something and gives you an "Add" button to easily add the sites to the whitelist. A server is probably only going to need to go to two or three sites in its lifetime, so it's trivial to whitelist them, and if you're using it as a workstation, you disable the Enhanced Security mode entirely (or use Firefox with NoScript.) What's hard about that?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

He was simply following in the footsteps of "Windows Server 2008": a "lean, efficient, reliable 'power user' OS".

Now I'll go back to coding in Ruby, one of the top 3 languages named after a gemstone ever.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding, what a prick of a manager.

This was quite a while ago, but when I was working there most of the managers didn't care who ate what for lunch as long as they paid for something so the bookkeepers could see the half price discounts go through.

I'd regularly make a huge (at least a tray full) breakfast or lunch concoction based on several item off the menu.
One of my favorites was a few bacon-egg-cheese biscuits with an inch thick of bacon(real stuff, not the canadian ham) and english muffins instead of the biscuits. I guess those could be called just egg mcmuffins with lots of real bacon, oh and lots of butter. Washed it all down with a gallon or so of orange juice.

Ahh the good ol' teenage days... If I ate a tenth as much now I'd be three hundred pounds.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[anti-human 1]

Anecdote sure, but I'm happy with my Dreamspark Server 2003 installation. I mostly use it for games, but some server goofin' around goes on as well. I had to monkey with some settings, but other than the internet settings, it wasn't difficult to get going.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely no need to muck around in a list of obscure security settings.

Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components -> Uncheck "Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration"

Simple as that (at least under 2003)

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Keen Anthony]

TGI-Applebee-Chili-Tuesdays are a singular restaurant. Don't let the varying amounts of flair and the width of the stripes on the waitresses uniforms lead you to believe otherwise. There's no use in addressing TGI-Applebee-Chili-Tuesdays as "those places"

But it can pump out an excellent burger.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Keen Anthony]

It's still kinda sad that one might consider Windows 2008 as a replacement for Microsoft's flagship consumer desktop OSen, Vista/XP. I mean sad in the sense that this is nothing new. I knew guys who went NT 3.51 on their laptops because they wanted more stability than Windows 3.11 had. I went NT 4.0 over Windows 95/98 for the same reason.

In both circumstances, I ran into hardware compatibility troubles. I wonder if Windows 2008 users wanting to use their multitude of consumer grade peripherals will have compatibility issues anymore.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Nimey]

Bleh. Prior to last summer I hadn't eaten at a McD's in... ten years, excepting a very occasional breakfast biscuit when someone else chose it.

Eating there last summer reminded me why I don't eat there anymore. It just tasted cheap. Actually, so did the takeaway breakfasts that the others kept bringing over--greasy gut bombs that made me feel like taking a crap a lot.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[MBGMorden]

I didn't mean "those places" as in limited to the ones I listed. I basically just mean bar and grill type reasturants. I could have named The Kickin Chicken, Wild Wings, Red's Ice House, or Vickery's for example, but since those are local chains (or single restaurants) to my area, not many people would recognize them, so I use more common ones ;).

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Keen Anthony]

Oh I know, it was joke.

I was just pointing out how all these restaurants have morphed into a singular place serving basically the same items. :D

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[amcdiarmid]

Having worked in several places that required RSA-ID tokens.. (you know the funny ones with the numbers that change every minute, and if you drift more than three minutes you can't log in.)and having a few friends on "isolated networks."

I would say the microsoft requirements (change every 42 days, passwords have 8+ charachters including three types from: Numbers, lowercase, uppercase; symbols.) are not that bad: Especially if you consider how vulnerable some of their systems are.

Consider: You run an email server. Some user has sold their password to a spammer for $.001 per email sent. Your server is sending 10,000 spam emails per hour. How long do you have before your email server is blacklisted everywhere? (The "wisdom of the crowds" in my office pool was one week.)

If you do not have a lockout policy, a modern computer can break a six letter password in a matter of hours. (I once cracked 350 of 1500 passwords in 15 minutes, using the 2k3 password file.) - Of course, if you have a lockout policy .. it may take a number of years...

In any case, if you look at the email case above: at least with a very short password time you can hope that the password gets changed before the email server gets blacklisted...

$.02
Alex

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Antique Geekmeister]

IRIX.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

I have no problem with the complexity requirements, but I think the default policy for how often it changes and how many passwords it remembers is a bad default-- meaning it's inappropriate for most environments. I changed my policies immediately, so I don't remember all the details off-hand, but isn't it 42 days w/reminders starting 2 weeks before expiration? So users actually start getting requests to change their passwords every 28 days?

If you do not have a lockout policy, a modern computer can break a six letter password in a matter of hours. (I once cracked 350 of 1500 passwords in 15 minutes, using the 2k3 password file.) - Of course, if you have a lockout policy .. it may take a number of years...

And a lockout policy paired with sufficiently complex 10 character passwords? Yeah, it'll take a while. And then rotate passwords once a year, remembering the past 2 passwords, and you have a policy that sufficiently secure for most situations, without being tremendously annoying.

Of course, leave it configurable so people can require 50 character passwords rotated daily, remembering the past 100 passwords-- if someone actually wants to do that. Just don't make that the default.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Kalriath]

Uh, "Trusted Sites" on the servers is the same as "Internet" on the workstations. Which is to say, completely untrusted.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Toll_Free]

Arch Deluxe

Now you've crossed the line. The Arch Deluxe was the best McDonald's sandwich ever. It made Big Macs look like they came out of a vending machine.

And the arch deluxe still tasted like it came from McDonalds.

BK Lounge, Wendy's and In n Out all 0WN Mickey Dee's.

--Toll_Free

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Allador]

My frustration comes about because, if I've just installed Windows Server fresh, I can't go to the Internet and download drivers that I might need. I can't go download my backup software and install it. I basically can't do much of anything without reconfiguring the security settings first, even if I'm the administrator. And it doesn't just prompt, "This might be bad, do you really want to do this?" I doesn't allow it.

Look, its really simple. Add the site you want to download from to Trusted Sites. Download your files. Remove the sites from trusted sites.

Or even easier, grab firefox as the very first thing, and then leave IE for nothing except when you need to hit Microsoft Update.

Great, so i should go mucking around in list of random poorly-labelled security settings in order to do things I should be able to do by default, and hope that I'm disabling the right things, and not doing something even dumber? Why not just have reasonable security settings from the outset?

If the settings appear to be 'random poorly-labelled' settings, then you're just not very experienced with the platform. Thats okay, but dont go complaining about that, spend some time getting up to speed on the platform.

There's a reason that IE on Server has such locked down settings. IE has a history of being as strong as swiss cheese. Even that legitimate website you're getting drivers from could easily be compromised and have an injected javascript exploit stuck at the bottom of the page. It's quite common, even for legitimate, big sites.

So the security settings default commensurate to risk. In many situations, if your server gets owned, its likely that your entire company could be owned. Therefore the security settings are cranked waaaaaay up.

If you dont like it, grab firefox or opera as the first thing, and get on with your life.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

... the admin account shouldn't be given to anyone that's planning using that access to install Bonzai Buddy anyway.

The admin might think he/she is visiting a legit site and still get pwned because of a vulnerability. Attack surface reduction is one of the most basic and most important tentets of security and for a server it means shutting down things you don't need. Web browsing is not needed for a server role. You have the ability to override if you wish -- but for the primary role, it is not needed.

If you want someone to be able to log in and not install software, then give them a restricted account.

If it's primary role is that of a server, why would you want someone logging in and doing anything at all? Besides, even a less privileged user could get the system pwned by a vulnerability that includes a privilege-escalation. The primary role of this OS demands that security overrides convenience.

As always, the ability is there if you want to use it. But the primary role is very well defined, and the machine is streamlined for that role. WS '08 is supposed to be an AD/exchange/database/web/app/<many more> server -- not a workstation. Security is of vital importance. You can use it as a workstation if you so wish, but you have to tweak a few settings to make it suit that role. That's what TFA is about -- the settings you need to tweak.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Just re-read your post and noticed this:

If I have the admin account and I want to download some software and install it, and my OS has security policies to prevent me from doing that, then I'm going to disable those security policies. Because it's a dumb design.

You can recognize 'dumb design' but your reaction is to lower the security of your server?

Anyway, configuring a server over an "air gap" network is a very common security requirement. It's not anticipated that you will need to go to the 'net for anything, and if you do, you should be a good enough admin to do it the right way. Generally that means downloading stuff on a different machine, scanning it, and then transferring it to some media.

For a machine that's ideally supposed to chug away at it's task unattended for several years no security measure is too paranoid. The convenience of running smoothly for years trumps the admin's 10-second convenience of doing downloads the easy way.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[The Grim Reefer2]

Perhaps Windows ME was New Coke and Vista is just Pepsi.

No, Vista is definitely a Ford Edsel

That's why we're all here, right? To celebrate V Day, the date 2 years ago when Microsoft took one of the computer industry's most hilarious pratfalls. But why? It really wasn't that bad an operating system. True, the OS was kind of homely, resource hungry and too expensive, particularly at the outset of the late '00s recession. But what else? It was the first victim of Redmond hyper-hype. Microsoft's marketing mavens had led the public to expect some plutonium-powered, pancake-making wonderOS; what they got was a XP in drag. Cultural critics speculated that the software was a flop because the CEO behaved like a cunt.

Paraphrased from Time's 50 Worst Cars.

No, the Edsel was a marketing failure of near biblical proportions, not an engineering failure.

Do you think someone will be able to get $200K+ for a mint condition Vista Ultimate CD in 50 years?

I do like your paraphrasing of the Time write up though.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

If the settings appear to be 'random poorly-labelled' settings, then you're just not very experienced with the platform.

Or else I am experienced but can still recognize poor design.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

If it's primary role is that of a server, why would you want someone logging in and doing anything at all?

Depends on the environment, doesn't it? Maybe I want to make some changes to AD, run a backup, etc. Maybe I'm using it as a TS server for a specific application, or for remote access. The point is, when admin explicitly tells the OS to do something, the OS ought to do it. It might be a great idea for the OS to ask, "Are you sure?", but stupid for it to say "No."

Because the person who's logged in as admin should know something about what they're doing. If the admin knows what he's doing, then the OS shouldn't be refusing orders.

And you might ask, what about people who don't know what they're doing? Well, often enough they'll see the absurd level of security, get frustrated, and disable *all* of the security and probably open some extra holes for good measure. In that sense, reasonable security measures can be far more effective than super-paranoid security settings that have to be disabled in order to get things done.

That's what TFA is about -- the settings you need to tweak.

Yes, and my part in this conversation began when I explained that the reason TFA advised disabling IE security is because it's absurdly tight by default.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

You can recognize 'dumb design' but your reaction is to lower the security of your server?

Didn't say I'd lower the security, I said I'd disable those security policies. Specifically because those policies are poorly designed and aren't actually making my server more secure.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Nero Nimbus]

Finally, an operating system designed with Steve Ballmer in mind.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Henk Poley]

Like this patent ? :: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2002044935&wo=2002044935&DISPLAY=CLAIMS

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[man_of_mr_e]

Not true. Even in Windows 2003, you just click the "Add" button to add the URL to the safe list, then you can download just fine without compromising the security settings.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

You can recognize 'dumb design' but your reaction is to lower the security of your server?

Didn't say I'd lower the security, I said I'd disable those security policies. Specifically because those policies are poorly designed and aren't actually making my server more secure.

Works well when this is your own personal web server or some such thing. Doesn't work so well for a server in a data center, virtually administrated by a team of admins, and actually physically administrated by a team of operators who really don't know better. In a real data center, you will have made your server less secure.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Depends on the environment, doesn't it? Maybe I want to make some changes to AD, run a backup, etc. Maybe I'm using it as a TS server for a specific application, or for remote access.

Dude! It does not work like this in the real world. Have you seen the reams of change management you need to go through to actually make changes to a server that does real commerce (I'm talking Sarbox regulations and such). Many companies have policies that are even stricter than SarBox. This ad-hoc "maybe i'm doing this, or maybe i'm doing that" is a very vague requirement for a server OS (though it's valid for an end-user OS). I want to run a server that handles real data or real commerce, and should be rock-solid-reliable with the smallest possible attack surface -- that's a requirement for a server OS.

The point is, when admin explicitly tells the OS to do something, the OS ought to do it. It might be a great idea for the OS to ask, "Are you sure?", but stupid for it to say "No."

In this case, the admin is explicitly supposed to enable this scenario on the server. The server default config is "do not allow". It's obeying the default config. As admin, if you want to change it, you can. If you don't have the IIS role installed on a machine and type 'net start whatever' the server won't obey you. It's the same case -- you're using the OS the wrong way. I acknowledge that your larger point is that this usage shouldn't be incorrect. But that point itself is wrong -- because security trumps the convenience of the admin on a server OS.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu CE will save us all. Though Ubuntu FSM would be better.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[redxxx]

That's great.

To clarify the concept of a non-Euclidean space, consider the fictional TARDIS device in the British science fiction television series "Dr. Who".

of course, neither Linux UI developers nor Elder Gods respect design patents.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Ok, you say yes, I say no, you say yes, I say no. Are we going anywhere? I'm going to say "no" again. If security profiles which allow admins to have full control of the machine is dangerous, then you're doing something else wrong. You have the wrong security elsewhere, and perhaps it as simple as who you're allowing to have access to your machines and the training they're receiving.

To put it another way, if you're giving admin access on your servers to a bunch of malicious morons and relying on a security profile to lock them out from causing trouble, then *that* is bad security.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Dude! It does not work like this in the real world. Have you seen the reams of change management you need to go through to actually make changes to a server that does real commerce (I'm talking Sarbox regulations and such). Many companies have policies that are even stricter than SarBox. This ad-hoc "maybe i'm doing this, or maybe i'm doing that" is a very vague requirement for a server OS (though it's valid for an end-user OS).

Dude! I'm not saying that I don't know what I'm doing with the server, I'm saying MS doesn't know.

I want to run a server that handles real data or real commerce, and should be rock-solid-reliable with the smallest possible attack surface -- that's a requirement for a server OS.

Then wouldn't you want a server OS that didn't have IE installed at all, rather than one that that has it installed with absurd security policies? Hell, if you want to argue that Windows is a bad server OS because it comes with all sorts of bullshit installed that shouldn't be installed on a server, we'll have a different discussion. When I install a Linux server, I don't install any GUI-- but I might install a web browser. But if Debian came with a default security policy where even logged in as root, Links refused to download files, I'd think that was a pretty stupid design.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[Anonymous Coward]

you were never a Linux user were you.

security is not your friend?

why do you need to install ActiveX controls on your server machine? And yes, you can get around it -- and disable it. google?

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Actually, I think we're making progress.

To put it another way, if you're giving admin access on your servers to a bunch of malicious morons and relying on a security profile to lock them out from causing trouble, then *that* is bad security.

Actually -- if you need to use *trust* for an extended period of time *that* is bad security. There's a reason that in any datacenter worth the name, admins don't actually get to touch the machines they administer. They need to have very clearly documented processes that are carried out by the *operations* folks. Even the passwords to machines are controlled by ops and not admins. The ops folks work in rotations so that there is a team present 24/7/365 -- not on call, but on site.

And the ops folks are not computer experts -- they are experts at *following procedure*. That's real change management in a real data center -- and that's what WS '03 and WS '08 are designed for. And guess what - this actually makes things *run smoother*. Most (if not all) fortune 500 companies have this sort of change management in place for thier data centers.

If you've been through the pain of a Sarbanes Oxley audit, you'd know that a lot of these procedures are actually mandated for servers that do anything affecting financials/the general ledger. So at the risk of sounding like a stuck record -- the issue here is much much bigger than the convenience of the admin, or his/her competence, etc.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Dude! I'm not saying that I don't know what I'm doing with the server, I'm saying MS doesn't know.

I realized that. But that's the very definition of a "vague requirement". The concrete requirement is that MS knows that this OS is to be used for some role where security is of paramount importance.

Then wouldn't you want a server OS that didn't have IE installed at all, rather than one that that has it installed with absurd security policies?

Yes - that would be ideal. No GUI would be ideal as well (though there are scenarios where you'd still want a browser). MS has made their usability vs. security trade-off very well in this case, but these suggestions would make it even better. Hopefully we get this in Windows 7 -- I've heard talk about that. Window's Server OSes have been improving dramatically with every release, so I have hope for Windows 7 that we'll get a server SKU with that option. I'm sure even if it does happen, that most Windows server SKUs will still have GUIs and browsers.

But until then, IE's Enhanced Security Config will have to do. And that's ok because of the scenarios I alluded to earlier. Namely:
- Sites in the "trusted" zone (whitelist security).
- Sites in the intranet zone that are ok to hit.
- Access to HTML documentation on the server itself.
It's at the point of general access to the internet at large, that the security risk becomes too large to permit by default on a server OS.

But if Debian came with a default security policy where even logged in as root, Links refused to download files, I'd think that was a pretty stupid design.

This argument is pretty silly. As admin you can turn of IE ESC and do whatever you want. You have the power. You have the knowledge. Go do it. Windows is not trying to defy you. It's just got a strict default security setting.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

I don't know if we are making progress. If everyone touching the machine is an expert at following procedure, and the procedure doesn't include the steps "(1) open IE (2) download malware (3) install it", then why does IE need to be locked down? I agree that whoever has admin access to your computer, whether they're "admins" or "ops", needs to either know what they're doing or else to be able to do only what they're trained to do, and nothing else. If that's the case, then you don't need security policies that give you the illusion of security without real benefit. If that's not the case, then those security policies won't stop them because *they're the admin*. They can undo the security policy if they want to.

Actually -- if you need to use *trust* for an extended period of time *that* is bad security

Nope, you need trust either way. If I have admin rights on your server and I'm either malicious or stupid, I can screw you over. There's really no way around that. The only way to lock me out from doing damage is to make it so I don't have administrative rights, which is a good thing to do in any case where you can't trust the user/administrator.

But beyond that, part of my point is that, sure, special security measures are necessary depending on your particular situation, and there should be sensible defaults that should apply to *everyone*, and have the admins lock it down more tightly if need be. If you really need such high security, then you should have security experts auditing the systems anyway, and not relying on the default settings to protect the systems from bad people with admin rights. It's bad security design. I'm not complaining because I have particular daily problem with these things. I'm just saying it's laughable security procedure to have IE installed by default on every computer, but cripples so as not to work, with the explanation that "you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway!"

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

I don't usually reply to ACs, but yes, I do use Linux. No, I don't generally install X11 or Firefox on my servers. But if Debian couldn't be administered effectively and easily from a command line, I would install a GUI. If I was admin on a Debian machine with a GUI and I bothered to install Firefox (for some reason), I would expect that Firefox would allow me to download things. If aptitude required ActiveX and root was forbidden from using ActiveX in Debian's default security policy, that would seem silly to me.

So, yeah, in answer to your question, as of Windows 2003, the designated way to fetch updates (even security updates) on a stand-alone server was to use Windows Update. Windows Update required ActiveX. The administrator account was not allowed to use ActiveX without special configuration or whitelisting, and Windows Update wasn't in the whitelist by default. That's why I might want to use ActiveX on a server.

You could argue that any one of those things is sensible, but taken together, it seems like a slightly silly design.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[geekoid]

You probably also like it if the car manufacturers welded hoods shut and told you to take what they think you need as well, right?

Contrary to your opinion, nobody is you bitch, suck it.

Please stay retired, your exactly the kind of person they gives IT a bad rep and keeps us regulated to corners of corporations and treated like a used condom, asshole.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

I don't think it's a silly argument. My point was never, "I want unsecured web browsing on my servers!" It's not, "Windows servers are poorly designed because I can't use the web!" My argument is that Microsoft's design is stupid. They force you to install IE, refuse to let you uninstall it, but that lock it down to the point of being unusable, even to someone with an admin account, because you shouldn't be using a web browser on a server anyway.

If they're acknowledging that you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway, and acknowledging that having a browser on a server is a security concern, then let me remove it! Don't put it on at all!

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

Actually -- if you need to use *trust* for an extended period of time *that* is bad security

Nope, you need trust either way. If I have admin rights on your server and I'm either malicious or stupid, I can screw you over. There's really no way around that.

In the model I described, admins don't have access to the machines -- so a malicious admin can't screw you over. And ops people don't have the knowledge to be malicious. IE's current security model prevents them from doing dangerous due to stupidity. I'm done arguing with you -- if you don't want to see the point in this design, that's your choice. Thanks for a civil discussion though.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[dhavleak]

My argument is that Microsoft's design is stupid. They force you to install IE, refuse to let you uninstall it, but that lock it down to the point of being unusable, even to someone with an admin account, because you shouldn't be using a web browser on a server anyway.

If they're acknowledging that you shouldn't be browsing the web on a server anyway, and acknowledging that having a browser on a server is a security concern, then let me remove it! Don't put it on at all!

As I said earlier, the current design permits safe uses of the browser: viewing html documentation on the machine itself, hitting intranet sites, and hitting trusted zone sites (whitelist security). So your point about the design being flawed is invalid.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

Ok, you're done, I'm done, we're al done. When I say "admin", I mean whoever has administrative rights. Saying the admin is "not admin" but "ops" is pretty meaningless. They don't have the knowledge to be malicious? So if you get a smart ops who knows a bit more than the average, and you're just as screwed. Relying on people with admin rights to be stupid, untrained, and ignorant isn't a good security policy either.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[nine-times]

I didn't say it was "flawed", I said it was "stupid".

For example, if I wanted to prevent unauthorized access to my data, I could unplug my machine from all networking, fill the case with concrete, and sink it at the bottom of the ocean. The security approach wouldn't necessarily be "flawed"-- it might be the most certain way to prevent unauthorized access. But it'd be stupid.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke"

[peragrin]

oooh I can do a bad analogy.

  Mcdonald's is like MSFT Windows Just because it is the worlds most popular, doesn't make it the best one available.

Plust best of all

[nizo]

You can double the cost of your $700 PC.

Re:Plust best of all

[mrbluze]

You can double the cost of your $700 PC.

Microsoft don't care whether you love or hate their flagship OS as long as you pay them money one way or another.

Re:Plust best of all

[voltheir]

And this is why, as a developer or a card-carrying geek club member, you get an MSDN account. I've been running Server 08 as my core OS since its beta versions and have been nothing but thrilled with it. I still prefer the linux command line and power, but with the add-ons and virtualization at my fingertips I can get my BASH fix whenever I please (and no more).

Re:Plust best of all

[lukas84]

If you use the WS08 Version from MSDN on your Desktop, what you're doing is most likely illegal. MSDN licenses are granted for development only, and posting on slashdot is not covered by that.

Re:Plust best of all

[syousef]

You can double the cost of your $700 PC.

Downloads on the pirate bay cost $700? *smirk*

Re:Plust best of all

[Savage-Rabbit]

Downloads on the pirate bay cost $700? *smirk*

That's true, they are free and as an added bonus they come preloaded with all kinds of malware. Even if you download virgin ISOs only chances are the software you use to crack your pirate bay goodies is a vessel for malware. *smirk*

Re:Plust best of all

[gparent]

Never gotten malware from TPB. Maybe you just suck at identifying or protecting yourself from malware. *smirk*

Re:Plust best of all

[Anonymous Coward]

oh noes, the partition I'm about to wipe out so I can install Windows Server might get malware when i run a keygen!!!!1

Re:Plust best of all

[Savage-Rabbit]

Never gotten malware from TPB. Maybe you just suck at identifying or protecting yourself from malware. *smirk*

No I don't. I run Unix. *smirk*.

Re:Plust best of all

[Anonymous Coward]

oh noes, the partition I'm about to wipe out so I can install Windows Server might get malware when i run a keygen!!!!1

Keygens are the least of your worries. The installation package of Windows Server that you downloaded probably came with a rootkit pre-installed.

Re:Plust best of all

[hey!]

The last time I got a new laptop, I thought I'd be a decent guy and save the company a few hundred bucks. I got a Toshiba, instead of the ThinkPads I'd been literally wearing out year after year. The specs looked good for the price.

Bad move. I'd been accustomed to using a laptop until the keycaps were wiped blank and the out layer of plastic on the palm rest had been worn through. The new laptop developed stuck keys in a couple of months, plus a host of other smaller annoyances like broken ACPI functions.

You buy computers to maximize user productivity. $700, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't amount to very much money counted against a tiny increment of productivity per hour times thousands of hours.

Re:Plust best of all

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so you admit you are just talking out your ass. Right.

*smirk*

Re:Plust best of all

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so you admit you are just talking out your ass. Right.

What? That some of the Windows XP and other software packages people download through Pirate Bay and don't think twice about installing have been spiked? No I'm not, some of that stuff has definitely been tampered with.

Re:Plust best of all

[cstdenis]

Ya, but it's made by Microsoft. The retail ones have the same rootkit.

Re:Plust best of all

[Anonymous Coward]

MSDN only allows you to use software such as Windows Server 2008 for development and testing. Using it as your 'core OS' or business workstation is in violation if the terms of the MSDN subscription.

Re:Plust best of all

[gparent]

Well let me educate you then - There are a lot of programs to remove malware nowadays. Like I said, if you're getting malware from a keygen, you clearly have no idea how to protect yourself from it. There are various programs to either remove an infection once found, or prevent it entirely in the first place (Sandboxie for instance). As for tampered images, usually the comments are a pretty good indication of whether the image has been tampered with. At any rate, I have a MSDNAA account so I couldn't care less.

Some software requires extra co$t for server OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Regular Ghost, for one, won't run on a Server edition OS. Big price difference to get the server version of Ghost.

Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

"rarely needs to reboot"
Wow, that is progress!

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not convert Windows Server 2008 into the lean, efficient, reliable 'power user' OS that Windows should be?

Or why not just use an OS that works like it should, and is lean and mean? Pick a choice, Win2K, Linux-whatever-flavor, MacOS X... Just about anything will do better than Vista, and won't involve all the crap you'd need to go through to setup a custom Win2008 Server/Workstation.

Re:Why not...

[OrangeTide]

XP 64 is better than win2k in many ways. (not to be confused with standard XP). it's more like server 2003.

I wouldn't mind going the Win2008 route (even though I'm a Unix&Linux die hard). But the price for Win2008 doesn't really make it a viable option as a Vista substitute:
Windows Server 2008 Standard $999
Windows Web Server 2008 $469

the webserver edition doesn't have any client access licenses, but I think you don't need any if you want to turn it into a workstation OS. Could be the cheapest route, but not certain if that would work.

Re:Why not...

[RLiegh]

XP 64 is better than win2k in many ways. (not to be confused with standard XP). it's more like server 2003.

That's because, for all intents and purposes, it is server 2003.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition uses version 5.2.3790.1830 of core files, the same version used by Windows XP 64-bit Edition 2003 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 as they were the latest versions during the operating system's development.

Wikipedia

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

what part of "it's more like server 2003" didn't you get? should be "-1, Redundant"

Re:Why not...

[FishWithAHammer]

Saying "it's more like 2003" is misleading. It is Server 2003 in all ways that matter.

Re:Why not...

[mcbridematt]

I've tried both XP x64 and Server 2003 x64. While XP x64 had better compatibility (some DirectX games couldn't run due to absent dll's in 2003), it wasn't as stable.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cheaper to get an MSDN subscription than to buy server 2008.

An MSDN operating systems subscription = $699. This gives you all versions of server 2008.

Crazy, but there you have it.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

XP 64 is better than win2k in many ways.

XP and XP64 are better than win2k in many ways. There fixed it for ya. Windows 2000 is obsolete uber shit.

Re:Why not...

[drsmithy]

That's because, for all intents and purposes, it is server 2003.

What's entertaining about this article, is that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 have the same relationship.

Re:Why not...

[FishWithAHammer]

You can toss those DLLs into the 2003 install, I believe.

Re:Why not...

[OrangeTide]

I like running Win2K under a VM because I still have a licensed copy. But also because it uses slightly less memory (RAM and disk) than the XPs. But as far as I know Microsoft quit supporting Win2k. Of course I get about as much game compatibility from Linux and wine as I would from Win2k these days.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played around with XP x64 and Server 2003 (x86) and settled on XP x64. It's a little snappier than XP (x86) and while its footprint is larger than Server 2003, I don't have to worry about all of those little quirks popping up here and there when I am just trying to do whatever. It's just less hassle to toss XP x64 on your box and go about your business. I even remember having to use a Vista x64 driver for something and XP x64 was just fine with that. Been using it 6+ months now without any major issues. Granted I have to use a 32-bit browser (Firefox) due to Adobe never releasing Flash in 64-bit. Any issues I might have had with it are so minor, I don't even remember what they were. It is also still snappy unlike how XP (x86) starts to slow down after awhile. It's like having you cake and eating it too.

I've been having an itch to try out Vista x64 even though I know it will probably be slightly slower than XP x64. It's just one of those IT quirks where you want to try (learn) something new every so often. I've already and still do play with linux and bsd, just can't either my main OS because I still play games.

Why not more of this?

[Zymergy]

I have often wondered why we have not seen more of this.
The stability of MS' "Server" line of OS' is proof that they have no real excuse for the Vista poor performance (other than it was deliberately done).
If I were not such a PC gamer, I would probably still be using the Windows 2000 Advanced Server on my current 4-core CPU. (It supports up to 4 CPUs if memory serves). XP is still fine by me, but no where as stable as Win2kAS ever was.
I assume that 2008 server is made from the same stuff.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Jeffrey Baker]

I still use Windows 2000 wherever I need Windows. It runs all the games I have, and it can still be installed on recent PCs as long as they don't use native AHCI and don't have enormous LBA disks. There's nothing in Windows 2000 that is worse than what was in Windows NT Workstation 4.0, so it was a logical upgrade from that. But there's tons of stuff in XP that regresses with respect to Windows 2000, so I never upgraded. Also, by sticking with one version I become immune to Microsoft's perpetual crusade to make my Windows admin knowledge obsolete. The downsides are that Win2k sucks on a laptop, has bad/no wireless networking, and has many usb and firewire quirks. But if your computer is more along the lines of keyboard+cpu+display, and it sits on the floor, it should work fine.

Re:Why not more of this?

[vux984]

I have often wondered why we have not seen more of this.

Price? The reality that it doesn't matter? Both.

NT Server wasn't really any more stable than NT workstation. Server 2k wasn't really any more stable than 2k Pro. Server 2003 wasn't really any more stable than XP.

The stability of MS' "Server" line of OS' is proof that they have no real excuse for the Vista poor performance (other than it was deliberately done).

I find Vista to be very fast, and it hasn't crashed on me yet. I use it on multiple PCs. I don't deny its been something of a fiasco in general, but at the end of the day, if you put Vista on suitable hardware with good drivers there is really almost nothing seriously wrong with it.

A lot of the 'vista' problems were related to bad drivers, buggy bioses, and so on. Ultimately relatively few of the "Vista Issues" are related to Vista, and can be traced to some flakey 3rd party software.

On some level blaming Vista for running legacy windows stuff poorly is like blaming Linux for running legacy windows stuff poorly. The only difference is that Vista actually runs it well enough for people to expect it to work.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were not such a PC gamer, I would probably still be using the Windows 2000 Advanced Server on my current 4-core CPU. (It supports up to 4 CPUs if memory serves).

Actually, the regular version of win2000 server supports 4 CPUs. Win2000 can't tell the difference dual-core & dual-cpu though, so a single quad-core CPU is fine with the standard version.

Win2000 Advanced Server supports 8 CPUs.

Re:Why not more of this?

[SenorCitizen]

I also used W2k for a long time after XP came out. But then I switched to an LCD display, and the subpixel anti-aliasing (Cleartype) was more than enough reason to switch to XP. I could do without some of XP's features, but never that one.

Re:Why not more of this?

[jamesh]

Server 2003 wasn't really any more stable than XP.

Server 2003 was one of the most stable RTM releases ever, but only because it was basically XP and they'd released XP a while earlier and incorporated all the bugfixes from that :)

Re:Why not more of this?

[DimGeo]

Server 2008 is mostly Vista SP1. The "real excuse" is just about a year of bugfixing. Just get Vista, slap SP1 and the classic theme on it, tweak some stuff and you will have more or less the same setup as the "Server".

Re:Why not more of this?

[FishWithAHammer]

What, exactly, is a step backwards in XP from 2000? I've never been able to get a good answer out of people on this. I mean, sure, you can get better performance out-of-the-box, but other than that I just don't see it. And I turn off most of the eyecandy and other bullshit as a matter of course.

To me at least, XP with themes off feels as snappy as Windows 2000, even on older machines. Some stuff's been moved around, but meh--that happens in every version of Windows and complaining about that is somewhat silly. It's all still there. I do wish there was a way to establish Windows settings in a slipstream, though.

On my machines, I turn themes off, put the Start Menu and Control Panel back to classic view, show hidden files, show file extensions, and default all folder views to Detail. From a user perspective, it's pretty hard to distinguish that from Windows 2000, and you get the advantages (yes, advantages) of a more modern OS.

And a side note: decrying upgrades because you're afraid of your Windows admin knowledge becoming "obsolete" indicates that it already has.

Re:Why not more of this?

[lgw]

I run server 2003 64-bit as my destop OS. I ran all my games on it for years - only games that explicitly checked for the Windows version had any problems. Everything form Steam *64-bit Source engine) worked fine. Outside of drivers, 32-bit apps just worked.

Be warned though that there are some driver issues - my oddball HP printer, for example, never had a driver that worked on a 64-bit OS.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still run my 40$ copy of Win2k Server I got on eBay. So far, it runs every game I've tried...

Re:Why not more of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is forked off the Server 2003 code-base. Since server 2003 MS has had a policy of "minimum crap turned on by default" to reduce the attack surface area of the OS, so the improved server perf could be attributable to it just having less junk running. I have 3x vista boxes at home (2x x64, one x86) and a laptop running Server 2008. Once you turn on the "client experinece" in server it seems pretty much the same as Vista SP1, except you can run hyper-V in server 2008, and getting bluetooth to work on 08 is a PITA.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Tweenk]

if you put Vista on suitable hardware with good drivers there is really almost nothing seriously wrong with it.

This "if" thing is what's seriously wrong with it.

Re:Why not more of this?

[AbbyNormal]

Also, the servers are meant to run as...a server. They usually have a lot more services than are available on the workstation version. IIS for multiple virtual sites, Active Directory Server (DC), Certificate Authority, terminal server (not just remote desktop)...etc.

  Win2k advanced server is still my primary windows os today. Can do most of my development on it.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Zymergy]

It would be interesting to see a performance comparison of both classically themed (ala Win2k) Server 2008 vs. Vista SP1 performance comparison, all other things being equal.
I have read that the DRM components of Vista and it's gestapo memory tactics (think physical video card memory) are what make it a real dog (as well as the UAC and other "let's think for the user" detritus).
Having spent years using Win2000 Advancer Server, the switch to XP was hard enough... IMHO, Vista gives me the look and feel that I would expect if I ever entered cartoon land (sans Jessica Rabbit)...

Re:Why not more of this?

[NSIM]

I think you are confusing OS stability with the experience of the operator. Folks turning W2K08 into a desktop OS are not your average user so I would expect them to see it as stable. The same phenomenon occurs with Vista, I have absolutely zero stability problems with Vista, my desktop has been rock solid starting way back in the Vista beta. It has never blue screened, never had to be reinstalled, never had to be rebooted to fix problems. The only time it gets rebooted is when MS delivers a patch that requires a reboot.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Thelasko]

I dual boot Vista and Ubuntu Hardy. I mostly agree with you. I haven't experienced any issues with Vista crashing, and for the most part it seems fairly fast. The big performance issue I noticed was that Vista couldn't play an MP3 without stuttering. I just googled the issue and it appears to be due to some sort of "enhancement" in Vista.

Re:Why not more of this?

[thegermanpolice]

Server 2003 wasn't really any more stable than XP.

I started in my job in 2004, the business had 2 servers, an NT4 and 2003 server, they both argued over who should run the network, consequently they crashed and took the network down with it every 5 days.
I took the NT4 server out and replaced with another 2003 server and this uptime went up to 60-70 days between reboots.
After installing SP1 onto the 2003 servers, now we have 6 of them, I have today an uptime of 604 days, on the main file store. (the last reboot was to install SP1)
Other servers running exchange have a lower uptime of around 60-70 days, and SQL 120-180 days.
You cannot say 2003 server is as stable as XP, it just doesn't work as an analogy.
It either that or I'm setting some new records here for uptime, on Server 2003. Its so stable I don't even want to install SP2 for 2003.

Re:Why not more of this?

[The Gaytriot]

This article has me interested in trying out Windows Server 2008, but it depends on a couple things. I googled a bit and couldn't find a few things out about the OS, like whether it supports DX10, which are important to PC gamers.

I did read that you can enable things such as AERO glass in WS2008 just like you could in Vista, so this leads me to believe that DX10 may be a feature. But another thing I wonder about is driver support for typical gaming hardware in the 64-bit OS.

One more problem I could see running into is the licensing restriction. The WS2008 licensing seems much more stingy than XP or Vista because you can't transfer it to another computer at all. I haven't yet found anything on upgrading, so I don't know to what extent I could swap hardware without breaking the license.

Does anyone have more insight into this?

Either way I think I will be getting the 60-day trial to play with.

Re:Why not more of this?

[TheQuantumShift]

I agree completely. That "if" changes everything. Make a pile of this suitable hardware and see if it fills your desk. I'll be over in superdome with my pile of "Linux-Suitable" hardware.

I must have gotten just the wrong laptop, but when everything from startup to standby takes considerably less time and my HDD indicator isn't constantly twitching when using linux, I have to wonder. I couldn't try XP, nVidia drivers won't install for my nforce/7150 combo, and HP only lists drivers for Vista.

My last straw came when I attempted to install the software that came with my new camera to read it's RAW format, and the installer was allowed by the system to install 32 bit directx 9. On vista x64. First, shame on me for not tossing any included cd's, they're always a waste of plastic. Second shame on Sony for coding such a stupid installer. Third and most importantly, shame on vista for letting it happen at all. And if my error is "Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt", and it tells me to put my install dvd in, shouldn't it logically follow that it's just going to replace those files? I guess not since it sat thrashing my HDD for 15-20 minutes and finally gave up.

Oh well, ubuntu just works, the only pain was the wifi (which took 1 download, 2 commands and a reboot to fix).

Re:Why not more of this?

[PPH]

A lot of the 'vista' problems were related to bad drivers, buggy bioses, and so on. Ultimately relatively few of the "Vista Issues" are related to Vista, and can be traced to some flakey 3rd party software.

Flaky software as in products from driver and application vendors who are getting sick and tired of jumping every time Microsoft tells them to. Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.

Re:Why not more of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do wish there was a way to establish Windows settings in a slipstream, though.

You need to nLight your install

Re:Why not more of this?

[vux984]

Flaky software as in products from driver and application vendors who are getting sick and tired of jumping every time Microsoft tells them to. Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.

Right. It should be more like Apple? Where application vendors have to jump everytime Apple tells them to? You can still run 1995 windows software on Vista, and most of it will even work.

I'd love to see you pull that off on a new mac.

Or maybe it should be more like Linux? Where most application vendors and hardware vendors steer well clear, and if they try at all, they only support a couple specific versions of specific distros, and everything else is 'up the community'.

Or don't have the manpower/finances available to keep patching their products for Microsoft's benefits rather than for their own needs.

1) Seriously. Its been 8 years since Microsoft had a version change. Windows 2000 was "version 5", windows vista 8 years later is "version 6".

XP was '5.1', and for the most part not a lot really changed. That was why XP was such a painless upgrade compared to Vista. It wasn't really much different.

2) The big compatibility breaking feature of Vista is security. Vista finally has it turned on by default. That benefits users. And if it means vendors have to fix some code to work in a secure environment, good, that benefits users too.

Re:Why not more of this?

[vux984]

You cannot say 2003 server is as stable as XP, it just doesn't work as an analogy.

I've got a client with an XP Pro box that runs a Filemaker Pro Server (hosting a CRM, point-of-sale system, and manufacturing process control system). It is in constant use throughout the day, every day, although the load is relatively light.

Its currently at 161 days since the last reboot. (Someone put a nail through an ethernet cable, and the ensuing network problems included continually crashing the gigabit switch, and we brought everything down to sort it out. I probably could have left the unit running... but the network was down anyway, so there wasn't really any reason to.

Prior to that it was 343 days. (brought down due to an extended power failure).

To my knowledge it has never actually crashed.

I think windows recent desktop OSes are percieved as less stable than their server counterparts primarily because of what is run on them and what they are run on.

You don't load your server up with all that desktop crud -- 14 tray icons to detect your ipod, camera, scanner helper, printer utility, sound-fx, msn messenger, java-notify, office-preload, adobe speed launcher... much of which is poorly written crap.

Similiarly you don't generally install a server OS on a $350 dell piece of crap PC... yet enterprises roll XP out on those things en masse. Cheap generic ram, cheap generic power supply, cheaply made motherboard and drives... while the server gets rolled out on a much better made set of hardware.

Is it any wonder the XP boxes were less stable?

Its not really fair to compare stability of the two OSes like that.

In my experience at least, if you use a Windows desktop OS in a 'server like' role, ie where you set it up with its services on good quality hardware and then otherwise leave it alone, its just as stable as a server. I've got a couple other XP boxes in situations like this too.

Re:Why not more of this?

[prestomation]

I agree. I remove all the dumb themes in XP also and people ask me all the time, "How old is your computer!?? Is that 95?" or something like that.....

Re:Why not more of this?

[keith_nt4]

I happen to be have working on importing settings auto-magically as a automated install project I'm working on. If save the following in notepad with a .REG extension you can then easily import into your registry without much trouble. Something like "disablethemes.reg"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Disable Themes: Provides user experience theme management. (one less thing that has to load)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Themes]
"Start"=dword:00000004

You can then use a command like regedit /S disablethemes.reg in a batch file have it auto-magically disable it as matter of course during windows install.

As for the other settings I discovered I it's possible to:

1. Create a new user and log into it.
2. Make all settings adjustments, extensions, "adjust for best performance" in system properties/advanced etc. and then open reg edit.
3. Select the HKEY-CURRENT-USER key and export it as HKCU.REG.
4. Then you can import the whole current user key at once, either after logging in or in an automated way during a windows installation using the method above. (Of course if someone out there can tell me a reason NOT to import an entire HKCU like that I'm all ears.) Look up the RunOnceEx key in the registry. It's very useful when re-installing windows.

Here's some links:

Best way to learn automated installs:
http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/sitemap

Best set of registry tweaks I have found in one place:
http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/page/list/registry/

Re:Why not more of this?

[TheNetAvenger]

You have outlined what the author of the site and people on Slashdot don't seem to understand no matter how many times it is explained to them or written about on Wikipedia.

Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 are identical OSes. The only differences is the features or components allowed to run and the default packages for applications installed.

If you turn on the same applications and services on both OSes (Vista SP1/Win2008) they function 100% the same.

They are the same code, just as NT has 'tried' to always be, with XP and 2003 Server being the exception (XP 64bit and 2003 were the same).

Going back to NT 4.0 people would claim that NT 4.0 Server was more stable or faster than NT 4.0 workstation, which back then was as insane as it is today.

For anyone here that doesn't get this... Go read any whitepaper on NT or Vista or Windows 2008 server.

If people are 'minimalists' and want Vista's features removed, it is easier to just TURN THEM OFF ON VISTA than to monkey with trying to get Windows 2008 to work as your desktop OS. You can turn off the Vista features in about 10-15 clicks, and BINGO, EXACTLY like Windows 2008 Server. Even though you are actually reducing overall performance by doing so.

This is like the people that turn off Aero when they first Boot Vista 'thinking' they are increasing performance, because if they had a clue they would realize that they just turned of 20% of the performance Vista brings to applications, and I'm not talking just what a Composer does, as Aero shoves GDI functions through the 3D GPU, as well as font drawing, and even bitmap decompression/compression that speeds up OLD applications drawing on the screen, and this isn't even touching the benefits of .NET 3.0/WPF and the Vector Composer relationship they lose by turning off Aero.

Microsoft is NOT stupid, their engineers are NOT stupid... Vista has features turned on that are not used on a Server and Windows 2008 has features turned on that a desktop won't use. That is the difference.

As consumers, turn as many of them on or off as you want, MS isn't stopping anybody.

Server core...

[genican1]

sounds nice, but what I usually do is just regedit my shell from explorer.exe to cmd. Saves time and resources. Turn off the unecessary services, and you've got a stable little (figuratively) os.

windows server is pimp

[mrterrysilver]

this is true, windows 2008 is awesome. i converted to it from vista and i never get the spinning circle anymore. its just snappier.

one thing to note, its kind of a bitch to get drivers working. vista drivers work fine but you'll have to open those driver installers with an archive utility, pull out the .inf driver files and manually install through device manager. although if you're installing windows server you probably can do that stuff no sweat. i highly recommend windows 2008

Re:windows server is pimp

[atv1990]

What obscure drivers are you trying to install? In about four months of running Server 2008 (64-bit, no less), I've never had a driver meant for Vista64 give me trouble, refuse to install, or otherwise misbehave. The only issue with Server2008 drivers is that some old stuff doesnt have the drivers (and this is the same issue with Vista as well, since they're the same drivers!)

Re:windows server is pimp

[EvanED]

Agreed here. I'm running the "Vista 64" drivers for both my video card (Nvidia 8800) and sound card (Audigy 2), and haven't had problems with either.

Re:windows server is pimp

[Anonymous Coward]

>this is true, windows 2008 is awesome.

It's a pity it broke your keyboard, though.

Re:windows server is pimp

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Vista and win 2008 are very similiar to each other. They share essentially the same kernel, drivers...etc.

Much the same way windows XP and win 2003 have virtually idential kernel versions and share the same drivers.

Win 2008 is not consumer OS crippled in any way and does not come with hundreds of whacked out services turned on and running in the background that most people will never use or care about.

If you have a few hours to spare you too can approach the performance of win 2008 by manually turning off 90% of the hideous crap installed with vista. Its insane that on a new notebook with 768MB of ram installed you can't even open a browser window and surf a few minutes without descending into swap hell with vista. A few hours of tinkering later yielded a useable system but it shouldn't be necessary and some of the blaim was specific to the vendor installing their 'crap' on top of the crap already included with vista.

Always run server versions of MS OS's if you can. They just work and there is always less 'crap' to deal with.

come on this is not remotely affordable for most

[atarione]

how much more is Win2k8 than vista... I mean unless of course you are ARRRGH! pirates...for god sakes Win2k8 is going to be cost prohibitive as a desktop os for the vast majority of people.

Install RAM

[DigiShaman]

Just install the 64bit version of Vista with 8GB of memory and be done with it. That solution is cheaper than Server 2008.

Re:Install RAM

[scsirob]

All that, just to be able to do exactly what you could do with XP on a 32-bit machine with 512MB RAM three years ago?
Now that's absurd...

Re:Install RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

x64 vista does not support a lot of chipsets that can address 8GB of memory. Until they fix it, this is not a solution. Not to mention, they have that annoying memory mapping bug with video cards. That kills gaming which some people use desktops for. If you're using it for other tasks, it might work out.

Re:Install RAM

[The_reformant]

....and with less cores.

Re:Install RAM

[dave420]

That was a weak troll effort. Just because you keep repeating how bad Vista is doesn't make it so. With a 64-bit Vista machine with 8GB of ram you can do far more than an 64-bit XP box with 8GB of ram. The only thing absurd is your cognitive dissonance :)

Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[jaxtherat]

OEM Vista Home Basic $105
OEM Vista Home Premium $136
OEM Vista Business $166
OEM Vista Ultimate $229
OEM Vista Workstation (AKA 2008 server) $1090

Wow, that's quite a markup for a workstation OS!

(All prices in AU$)

Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux? If you want a 'home PC', Vista is fine, but Windows is not a 'Workstation' OS, and it never was.

Meh.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux? If you want a 'home PC', Vista is fine, but Windows is not a 'Workstation' OS, and it never was.

Meh.

It is if you're developing windows apps.

Just sayin'

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[jaxtherat]

Yes, that'd probably be the only case where this would apply, but I find that an alternative is to code in my favourite worstation OS (linux), and test in Vista in a VM. This has the benefit of saving you ~$800 in OS license costs, and that is a lot of beer money.

Also saves me the hassle of actually using the darned thing for doing work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly happy to use windows to play games (ever tried to get Stalker to run under Wine?), but I'd hate to code in it :/

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[drspliff]

I'm currently developing Windows apps without actually having to "use" windows to get my work done. Yup the beauty of cross compiling with MinGW and testing on the Windows XP machine I have hidden in the corner.

I think I've actually gotten better at writing code, because I have to read/check more and make sure that I think it works before testing.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Hey now. You can get it for $800 ... maybe as low as $699 through the partner program. With today's prices on PCs, that's $999 for a desktop. Cheap, huh?

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[no-body]

Thanks for the numbers!

Would I ever throw that much dough in a certain direction? Even if I get it for free, I would not use that stuff privately as a matter of principle.
W2K for windows stuff, all else is Debian - case closed. Call me antiquated.

Some people have no integrity!

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux?

Solaris what?

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[jaxtherat]

Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux?

Solaris what?

Open Solaris is quite nice... To be frank it's the only Solaris/SunOS I have any reasonable experience in :/

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[KiloByte]

Junk that separate machine, it's what VirtualBox is for. Or VmWare if you're into that.

I don't have the comfort of using MinGW right now and need to use an actual Windows devel environment -- but doing that inside the virtual machine makes Windows actually stable as somehow it can't cope with my motherboard natively.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[FishWithAHammer]

Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux?

When those become a decent workstation OS, I might do that.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux? If you want a 'home PC', Vista is fine, but Windows is not a 'Workstation' OS, and it never was.

Meh.

Since he started using '08 for Visual Studio development, Solaris and Linux might not have been good choices.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[Nursie]

Twat.

Seriously, you sir are a complete gimp.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[FishWithAHammer]

Why? Because Solaris and Linux are unpleasant to actually do work on? Solaris/BSD/Linux are fine at a low level. I have a Linux server running in the other room right now (right next to the Windows Server 2008 box). But the idea that they come anywhere near the usability of Windows, as sad as that may be, for the desktop use is insane.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[Nursie]

You're a twat because both have been more than adequate (and more adequate than Windows) for workstation use for over a decade.

If you want to argue about the desktop market, which is an entirely separate market and user base then go ahead. But sun (and SGI amongst others) had the workstation market sown up for a long time. If you don't know how to use them as a workstation that's your problem.

Re:Incorrect use of the term 'Workstation'

[FishWithAHammer]

I most definitely do know how to use them, buddy, I've been writing code on *nix platforms for about five years now and using *nix machines for over a decade.

From a hardware POV, citing SGI and Sun as examples of UNIX being great for workstations is disingenuous. SGI and Sun had decent UNIX workstations in the past because there was no more useful alternative and because they had a hardware advantage (SGI in particular--MIPS boxes running IRIX were a lot better than PCs running...well, anything, at the time). At the time, X Windows and UNIX on non-x86 archs were the best of all the choices out there. But with modern computers, that's just not really true anymore.

From a software POV, citing them as examples of UNIX being great is just plain wrong. It still sucks to use as a workstation because--guess what? You still need a decent desktop environment for a workstation to be worthwhile. UNIX simply does not have that. It's got a bunch of weird fucking DEs programmed by people who can't follow HCI guidelines to save their lives and random, completely perplexing usability issues. The underlying OS is great, don't get me wrong--but it has to be a decent desktop in order to be a decent workstation.

If we were comparing workstations in 1994, sure, I'd agree with you that they're worth using, because everything else sucked. The reverse is true today. I can write code on Windows (and don't misunderstand me, Windows isn't perfect or even all that good, but at least it is consistent as a desktop, which means it's consistent as a workstation) and deploy code on Linux/BSD/Solaris remote machines or virtual machines just fine.

guerilla os ?

[yorkshiredale]

guerrilla OS has turned his Dell notebook into a well-oiled machine that never gets sluggish and rarely needs to reboot

I've got an old, old Dell notebook. It's a well-oiled machine that never gets sluggish and rarely needs to reboot.

I didn't know I was using Workstation2008. Thanks for the info!

Or.....

[Anonymous Coward]

....you could just install XP?

The new Windows 2000?

[snarfies]

Back in the Windows 98 days, my friend introduced me to Windows 2000. It was a "server" OS, but was far more stable than 98, and, for the most part, did or could be made to do everything 98 did (in other words, you could easily play games on it). Sure enough, the Windows XP wound up using the same basic core as Windows 2000. Will history repeat itself with Windows 7...? If it does, they may yet convert me. Until then, I'll stick with my XP setup, thanks.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[jonnythan]

Windows 2000 wasn't the "server" OS.

Windows 2000 was the business OS. It came in Professional desktop versions and various Server versions.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[jimmux]

I believe Vista and 2008 share the same core. For example, 2008 was released as SP1 to keep the versioning consistent between them.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. GP is cluesless and way overrated.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are also wrong about windows 2000 it was not compatable with many games until after i believe service pack 2. i could easily be wrong there but i still run 2000 SP4 on my cel 300/oced to 450 and its rock solid... the only things it cant run are bloated versions of icq, aim, and who gives about that crap...

but you are right its a stable beast...
only reason i bought xp was because of battlefield 2.... up til that point there was no need for xp. and xp sucked until post SP2 anyways.

Vista is actually fairly decent with a PROPER machine (read, 4gig mem at least.... 3 ghz e3110.... good mobo.. good drives... good vid...)
but vista still is way too bloated for my liking. too much fancy crap.

Media player wont even work on it anymore i managed to break that... VLC + Media player Classic FTW

die microsoft. long live bill gates now that hes no longer directly microsoft. good choice mate.... run while the company still has profits

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 2000 was the *best* OS Microsoft ever came out with. I use it to this day for developing software on Win32 in a VM. (on my Linux laptop)

It's stable, has excellent compatibility with current Windows OS's, and runs a champ in VMWare Workstation & Player.

I get the strong impression that Microsoft has "jumped the shark" with Vista.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[evilviper]

Windows 2000 was the *best* OS Microsoft ever came out with.

Such is true with every version of NT... The older, the better...

That holds true right up until the point that they can't run some new software that you need... Then, the next oldest NT-based OS becomes the *best ever*.

Mark my words, in just a few years, a significant number of applications will not run on 2000, the next release of Windows (7) will be an infamous bloated beast that nobody likes, and people will be singing the praises of XP as the *BEST EVER* Microsoft OS.

That's not to say I entirely disagree with you. I've still got 2000 running on a machine that I steadfastly refuse to upgrade. However, before new applications became by and large incompatible with it, and lack of drivers for newer hardware passed it by, Windows NT 4.0 was the "*best* OS Microsoft ever came out with" without question. However, even FEWER of us were exposed to and used NT 4.0 in it's time, so it doesn't have quite as big of a following. The same will be true of 2000 in comparison to XP in the next few years, though.

I miss the NT4 days, as you will miss the 2000 days, and others will eventually miss the XP days... etc. Someone is bound to eventually miss the Vista days (gasp!), when computers are so fast and cheap that the system requirements for it look quaint.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah!

Looks like someone doesn't remember NT 3.51. What a piece of junk. NT 4.0 was barely better.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[Phroggy]

Yes, history is repeating itself.

Before your friend introduced you to Windows 2000, while most people were still running 98, the early adopters started switching to 2000. You know what they found? A disaster. It was a mess. Nothing worked. Those games people wanted to play were all broken. Video drivers just weren't available. Applications that weren't written with the new security model in mind just wouldn't run.

People complained to Microsoft, but their response was, "Windows 2000 is a workstation OS designed for corporate use where it can be managed by an IT department; it is not intended for home use. Don't blame us if your applications don't work."

So they went to the application vendors and hardware manufacturers, and demanded solutions. They got them. Everybody fixed their crap to make it work on 2000. By the time you switched, most things worked, and 2000 was solid as a rock compared to 98. When Microsoft released XP, it was mostly just 2000 with a Fisher-Price theme, but marketed to the masses. Everything generally worked.

Vista is broken in the same ways that 2000 was broken before you switched to it. The difference is, Microsoft can't dodge the blame this time - Vista is being marketed to consumers, not just to businesses, so Microsoft can't say it's not their fault. However, third party developers are slowly fixing their crap, and while the next version of Windows will be mostly identical to Vista under the hood, everything will generally work. By that time, Vista will work fine too, and just like some people swore by 2000 and refused to upgrade to XP, there will be people who swear by Vista and refuse to upgrade.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

same idea though.

they had a line for mass consumption, and then something for the elites.

so badging and naming aside, grandparent was right, and you are a word nazi.

Re:The new Windows 2000?

[evilviper]

Looks like someone doesn't remember NT 3.51. What a piece of junk. NT 4.0 was barely better.

I still have my NT 3.51 install CD around here somewhere... It hasn't even been that long since the last time I installed and played around with it.

There wasn't anything wrong with NT 3.51. It was, in fact, very fast and stable. That was before they decided to integrate the graphics into the kernel, which has caused a lot of crashes with systems ever since.

The interface is a bit... "clunky"... being Win3.1-like after all. The biggest problem was that Windows 95 came out not long after, and took over the world, so app compatibility with NT 3.51 wasn't long lived at all. Still, there was a reasonablely lengthy overlap, when you could continue to get Win3.1 apps of everything you might need, so it's not even an exception to the rule, really.

NT 4.0 was (and remains) a damn good OS that I still use from time to time. You certainly haven't given any reasons that you happen to dislike it.

no dice: superfetch

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

It all sounds promising and rosy, as good as win2k... but then he gets to superfetch. enabling it.. Frankly, making it default disabled makes me trust 2008 more... but anyway, I havent seen any benchmark that a decent pc will perform any better with superfetch and readyboost turned on. Please inlighten me if I am wrong.

You can try it for free

[PercentSevenC]

It's a free download on Microsoft's website, good for a 60-day trial, extendable to 240 days. I'm a diehard Linux user, but I actually was pleasantly surprised when I tried it (not enough to keep it around, but it's probably my favorite Windows). Relatively snappy, PowerShell is built in, and no DRM crap. It's what should've been released as Windows Vista, IMO.

Re:You can try it for free

[endr]

You are wrong. The "DRM crap" that Vista has is nothing more than protected process/protected media path which ceretainly is in server 08, because surprise surprise, they're basically the same OS. So saying "I hate Vista but love using 08 as a desktop OS" just makes you look stupid.

Re:You can try it for free

[the JoshMeister]

I'll provide links since you didn't. =)

Download Windows Web Server 2008 trial (or if you prefer, you can get a trial of a different version of Windows Server)

Buy Windows Web Server 2008 - apparently U.S. $140.91 ($157.76 after shipping according to shopzilla.com) from pcRUSH.com (I'd never heard of this company, but here's their Shopzilla customer rating page); this is the best price I could find, but it seems rather low so I'm somewhat skeptical.

Buy Windows Web Server 2008 - U.S. $362.49 with free shipping on Amazon.com; this is the second best price I could find, and looks a bit less fishy considering the price is closer to retail and the seller (Amazon) is well-known.

Feel free to search for better prices. I tried shopzilla.com and pricegrabber.com and the prices above were the best that came up.

In case you're wondering, the reason why I singled out Windows Web Server (as opposed to another edition of Windows Server) is that if you're not going to actually use the OS for the server features, it doesn't make sense to buy a more expensive edition. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:You can try it for free

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't get why the article was whining about "DRM baggage". Even if there was such stuff, why would any of it come into play if all you were running is Visual Studio? I don't think people even know what DRM is any more, it's just a catchall for "something bad". Pretty soon people will be using it as an excuse to call in sick for work.

Re:You can try it for free

[PercentSevenC]

After checking, I see that you are right. I was under the impression that PMP was not part of WS2K8. However, I never said I hated Vista. Quite the contrary, actually; Vista is a step up from XP in my (not very popular) opinion. But of course I prefer 2K8 over Vista, since it's noticeably faster (even with indexing, the Desktop Experience package, Aero, etc. enabled) and doesn't treat you like quite as much of an idiot. It also includes some nice power-user features that Vista doesn't, like Hyper-V and the System Resource Manager.

Re:You can try it for free

[Anonymous Coward]

The right question is why noone yet has a fix to remove whatever crap is disabling or crippling things. If it is DRM, then it should be ditchable, as if it gets in the way, the software is not fit for purpose. Many photographers agree, if you got tons of files, the damm thing does not work.

Re:You can try it for free

[Phroggy]

Vista is a step up from XP in my (not very popular) opinion.

You're not alone; I share your unpopular opinion. Vista doesn't piss me off the way XP always did. Although, the lack of fine-grained controls for UAC (e.g. being able to specify that a particular application can run with administrator privileges at login time without asking) is just stupid.

And apparently there's no way to change the color used to highlight selected items in Explorer (the default light blue isn't visible on my LCD projector). You can change it if you use a Windows Classic theme, but the new Aero uses a completely different theming system that doesn't respect that setting.

Re:You can try it for free

[Anonymous Coward]

What you request, on a kernel level, is no different than programmatically allowing a process to execute without an elevation prompt. Even though *you* gave it permission once, any malware that you install later on can fake this and run with elevated permissions.

I think MS learned from the fact that if you give power in the hands of incompetent users they always fuck things up. I run with UAC off and auto elevation on. Has worked so far for me.

Re:You can try it for free

[Phroggy]

What you request, on a kernel level, is no different than programmatically allowing a process to execute without an elevation prompt. Even though *you* gave it permission once, any malware that you install later on can fake this and run with elevated permissions.

Ah, but what I'm envisioning is a simple database of applications that I have approved to run with administrator privileges without a UAC prompt. The database would include the path to the file, obviously, but also a hash (MD5 or whatever) of the actual binary, to protect against tampering. This would be an application that I explicitly trust to run on my system, even if a piece of malware launches it instead of me. For added security, let me specify which command-line options are OK to launch it with (typically none), to prevent malware from launching it with command-line options I don't like.

Do you see any problem with this?

Re:You can try it for free

[Anonymous Coward]

You can extend a Server 2008 trial version for up to 6 months. I personally reinstall my notebook more than twice a year for trying out new OS's or configurations (such as the new TrueCrypt hidden OS feature). Should we all just stop bitching about price and install the trial already?

Re:You can try it for free

[Zantetsuken]

The reason "Web-server" edition is so cheap, that as with the same Server 03 version, its there much for the same reason that MS Works exists - it shows you some of the stuff it *could* do, so that you realize "Shit, the company actually needed uber-crazy edition"

Also, the only version that can be clustered across machines is the "Database" edition - so that clustered computing is possible with Windows Server 03 (and now probably 08 also) but has been artificially limited on other editions so that you gotta pay the big bucks to get what you really need...

how about Windows Server 2003?

[mako1138]

All I ever wanted was a stable (Windows) OS, without the eyecandy crap. So I ran Windows 2000 for a long time. Then I decided to try Windows Server 2003, and ran it for a few years. All the drivers from 2000/XP worked fine, and after some tweaking, everything was great.

So why don't I run it anymore? First, I got the software free through my school, and there was a legal agreement attached to it that I don't want to have to worry about now. Second, I'm not shelling out a kilobuck for a server OS so I can use it on a desktop. Third, there is a lack of decent firewall software for 2003, particularly free firewalls. Fourth, I don't want to deal with activation. (Also, the EULA apparently prohibits non-server use, but who cares about that.)

2008 has some nice features, but I'm not interested in adopting a Vista platform. I'm currently on XP, but only because of applocale, really.

Re:how about Windows Server 2003?

[ya really]

Only complaint I have about 2003 is no DirectX 10, though it's not really important at the moment. 2008 does have dx10, though and hypervisor looks somewhat interesting.

Re:how about Windows Server 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using comodo firewall pro version 2.4.19 on my 2003 workstation and found it adequate.

Re:how about Windows Server 2003?

[keith_nt4]

I wish I could find a more direct link but on the enclosed page if you select "MSDN Operating Systems" it will list everything you get for a subscription of $700. Every version of XP/MCE, every Vista, every server 2003 and 2008 and even betas of the next versions. No need to drop a "killabuck" on the server. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx Also, Comodo personal firewall works on server 2k3...

Re:how about Windows Server 2003?

[mako1138]

$700 is better, but it's still too much.

I tried Comodo along with a lot of other firewalls. It didn't meet my requirements; I don't remember why exactly.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people just happen to have a license. Back then before I switched to linux my corporate had a kind of "flatrate" license for Windows NT 4 Server for all employees. I made a workstation out of it and deleted the Windows 95 which came with my computer. Worked quite well!

XP?

[DogDude]

I don't really get the point of this. What does this accomplish that XP Pro doesn't accomplish, except taking a LOT more time and money?

Re:XP?

[EvanED]

Despite what /.-think would lead you to believe, there are a lot of upgrades from XP to Vista, and Server 2K8 gives you an avenue to skip some of the stuff that sucks about Vista. (There aren't enough improvements to XP to justify 5 years IMHO, but Vista *is* a better OS I think.) You've got stuff like a better volume shadow copy service (which gives Vista's "previous versions" feature), true symbolic links, transactional NTFS (can you tell I like FS features?), UAC (funny how a lot of the people who denigrate this don't mind typing "sudo" on their OS of choice*), DirectX 10, and a few others.

* There are differences between UAC and sudo, and sudo is better designed. However, it's better designed in such a way that doesn't particularly matter for home users (specifically, UAC is closer to su in that you need to know the password of the target account rather than your account), and in practice it works out to be about the same. UAC prompts basically appear at the same times you would need sudo on a *nix. Beyond that, there are a couple minor points that go in Vista's favor and a couple points that go in *nix's.

Re:XP?

[mjwx]

I don't really get the point of this. What does this accomplish that XP Pro doesn't accomplish, except taking a LOT more time and money?

DirectX 10.

Games are eventually going to be DX10 only, that means I, as a gamer either have to stop buying new games or adopt a DX10 OS (Microsoft will never back port DX10 to XP, it would kill the upgrade cycle as DX10 is the only good thing in Vista). When this dark day comes I'd like a small, streamlined, no frills OS to run it on.

Re:XP?

[DavidRawling]

Oh for goodness sake, stop being sensible will you - this is Slashdot!

Actually UAC becomes a lot more usable if you install the Elevation PowerToys:

• The Originals
• The New Set

Re:XP?

[DavidRawling]

Oh for goodness sake, stop being sensible will you - this is Slashdot!

Actually UAC becomes a lot more usable if you install the Elevation PowerToys:

• The Originals
• The New Set

Re:XP?

[DavidRawling]

Oh for goodness sake, stop being sensible will you - this is Slashdot!

Actually UAC becomes a lot more usable if you install the Elevation PowerToys:

• The Originals
• The New Set

Re:XP?

[hwsb]

here ya go, friend

http://www.technospot.net/blogs/download-directx-10-for-windows-xp-from-alky-project/

Re:XP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work, never did, alky is scamware. IF it could work, it would be at much lesser speed, directx 10 was all about efficiency and speed improvements.

I tried this with 2003 on a D600

[Loualbano2]

I did the same thing when I was trying to go from w2k to something besides XP. Don't ask my why, I just was.

Anyway, I downloaded some drivers for my laptop and the install denied me with a specific message that the drivers did not support 2003 on a Laptop.

Has anyone else had this happen?

Browsing through the section on drivers on his site does not mention this for 2008. Perhaps it is a non issue now-a-days.

ft

*** WARNING ***

[rmdir -r *]

Slashver-assver-tisement. I fail to understand why this is news, why it matters, or why the kdawson isn't embarrassed by posting that summary.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Xibby]

The author of the article mentioned he was setting a a Visual Studio development environment, which probably means he is a MSDN subscriber, which gives him rights to pretty much all of Microsoft's software for development purposes. So to someone who has the full MSDN subscription, or even just the OS portion, this is a no additional cost option: they have already paid for it.

How much did you pay?

[clarkn0va]

I downloaded the free trial from microsoft and am using it occasionally for when I want to run cpu-z or the odd game (NWN2 refused to install).

Having run a bit of vista and Ubuntu on the same machine, I have to say 2008 runs a lot better than the one and not as well as the other ;)

db

Pft

[inKubus]

You can add Powershell to vista pretty easily, and strip off most of the junk. But what you really want is to move to 64 bit and Vista 64 is pretty dicey even in SP1. They tend to test the server products more completely before release. So they might have something there. But really, people should be complaining about why Vista isn't good, not moving to the next OS already..

The bottom line is they are basically the same, with different modules. So if you configure 08 with the exact same configuration as Vista, it will run just as crappy.

Personally, I have been forced into using Leopard (Mac OSX) at work for the past two months and I have been very pleased. UNIX is just great. Powershell is a step in the right direction but I'm not too impressed with it. You have to be very very knowledgable about all of the classes to use it effectively. For most tasks I am only needing text anyway, so why add the extra bloat of object piping? The only problem with Mac OSX is the GUI but I can run X and do most of what I want. I mean, I like the Mac GUI, but some of the stuff is frustrating to a power user. And all the addons cost money! It works pretty well for a dev box, with linux test and production servers to back it up. The best part is the huge, beautiful monitor and really really great fonts and typesetting. Nothing on windows comes close.

I have a beta of 2008 rolling around here somewhere that I picked up at the launch event. I also have VS 2008 which I believe is the finest IDE available. Although Eclipse could trump that if they could just move faster. So maybe I'll try this. Most places want you to use windows and I'm getting rusty already.

Re:Pft

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had Vista 64-bit SP1 since SP1 was released. I have had absolutely no stability, performance or driver issues.
I use the system very heavily for video & photo editing, record HD television on Media Center, serve pages on IIS to distribute private photos, Video chatting, Visual studio, etc.

Re:Pft

[Cannelloni]

The Mac GUI is not crippled, well, not compared to Windows GUIs that is. It's just different. It would be nice - and I am not being smug or ironic (I hate irony, it's just not constructive) - if you could mention in more detail exactly what is is you find frustrating with the Mac GUI.

Re:Pft

[oPless]

> Personally, I have been forced into using Leopard (Mac OSX) at work for the past two months
> and I have been very pleased. UNIX is just great.

I switched to using a mac as my main box a few years ago, back in the days of Panther (10.3) Was using it until a couple of weeks ago when the hardware on the ibook started failing badly. Now I'm on Leopard, and a shiny new Leopard-based macbook, and apart from some OpenGL glitches that prevents Unity3d using shaders I'm more than happy with it.

> The only problem with Mac OSX is the GUI but I can run X and do most of what I want.
> I mean, I like the Mac GUI, but some of the stuff is frustrating to a power user.

What's wrong with the UI exactly? You have to spend at least 3 months to unlearn all your windowisms (yes that includes many linux window managers)

I'm a serious poweruser, and there's nothing that I can't do on OSX I can't do on linux/windows (other than visual studio, which is the only reason I have a windows VM) I suppose I could make do with monodevelop, but I'd rather not.

What can't you do?

I've bought a couple of tools ... transmit being the most significant (still I could get around that by using fuse...) Apple apps tend to be more polished than their windows counterparts, and I don't feel any resentment from paying for the apps either.

Re:Pft

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft...visual studio 2008 doesn't hold a candle to emacs

Re:Pft

[Anonymous Coward]

"Vista 64 is pretty dicey even in SP1"

i use vista 64 as my primary os, i have 0 problems with it. I'm running maya, visual studio, blender, audacity, playing games, and everything works just fine

occasionally i can't use 64 bit versions of software. collada plugins for maya were not available for 64 bit, and internet explorer 64 doesn't work with a lot of plugins, but i've never run into any dead ends where vista 64 screwed me over.

Re:Pft

[Phroggy]

It is different, but it is also crippled. This is a deliberate choice by Steve Jobs, who likes things to be "just so". If you adjust your personal preferences to match what Apple will allow, then everything is fine, but good luck trying to modify the OS to fit your personal preferences.

Re:Pft

[ToasterMonkey]

Are we still talking about Windows & OS X??? What will Microsoft allow that Apple wont? Forgive me, it's been a while (yesterday) since I've last used a windows machine.

Re:Pft

[inKubus]

Find a file on a network share (such as with Apple's AFP)

Now try to find a way to copy the file's path (afp://xyx/wwjhs/etc) to the clipboard. Without opening terminal. Without buying a third party app. You can't.

And sending people links to files on a fileshare on the LAN is something office workers do EVERY DAY. Otherwise I have to send a copy, by email. It's hyperlinking, man! We've been doing it for decades.

Whereas the newer versions of Windows are totally going into pure hyperlinking. Sharepoint Services is free with every Windows Server product, and it's quite good. It seamlessly integrates with their Office products. So you have an end to end content creation to publishing solution, which the Mac no longer has. Well, a competing, similarly priced solution.

That's not to say Apple isn't trying to whip something like this up, but I don't see them competing in the business arena at the level of Microsoft anytime soon.

Re:Pft

[Cannelloni]

Exactly, and it would be nice if people could be more specific. What is it that you want to do that this or that operating system won't allow you to do, and also, is tweaking the look and feel of the OS more important than what you can actually create or accomplish with the computer? Why do you own a computer? Is it because you want to tinker and screw with the system, or is it because you want to do something useful, for fun or profit? I think for most Mac and Windows users, it is the latter case.

Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[tjstork]

Vista is the Windows Server 2003 kernel with some junk thrown in on it, and Windows Server 2008 is just the next generation of Windows Server 2003. So, right off the wheel, you are getting a better kernel in Windows Server 2008.

The thing is, though, if you are doing client development on Windows, you are probably going to want to be developing on Vista and on XP just so you can be using an OS that is tested.

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, Vista has the same kernel since sp1.

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[Your.Master]

Nope. Vista SP1 and Server 2008 share the same kernel. The real difference between Server 2008 and Vista SP1 is a set of defaults and a few different shell services (much the same as the Ultimate SKU compared to the Basic SKU). You can pretty much Vista-fy Server 2008, or turn Vista Ultimate into Server 2008 (superfetch, search indexing, classic mode), though you might miss a few things with the latter conversion.

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[networkzombie]

You are wrong. Vista and 2008 share the same kernel. Are you just making shit up?

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you got it backwards...

Windows 2003 uses the XP kernel.
Windows 2008 uses the Vista kernel.

There is very little difference between server and consumer versions of these operating systems in terms of core kernel and drivers.

Consumer versions have several useful advanced features disabled or limited due to licensing restrictions and a whole lot of extra consumer oriented crap thrown in that cause the bulk of the problems and waste the resources everyone is complaining about.

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[lukas84]

This is not entirely true. While WS08 and Vista share the same kernel, WS03 and XP (32bit) do not. XP x64 uses the same kernel als WS03 x64.

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[tjstork]

No, I just missed this article:

Vista SP1 gets kernel upgrade

So Vista pre-SP1 got the Win2003 kernel, and Vista SP1 got 2008.

You don't need to be an accusatory jackass. Dick.

Re:Windows Server 2008 has a better kernel..but

[Toreo asesino]

So Vista pre-SP1 got the Win2003 kernel, and Vista SP1 got 2008.

That's so far from true. Win2003 has always been an minor upgrade from XP kernel. Vista has always been a major upgrade from the Win2k3 kernel....UAC for example is baked deep into it.

SP1 just patched it to exactly the same build as Win2k8 - not even a minor upgrade; just a patch.

Upgrading the downgrade?

[Rui del-Negro]

So Server 2008 is better than Vista. What isn't?

The real question is what does it offer over Server 2003 x64 (or XP Pro 32) that offsets the less mature (sometimes non-existent) drivers and compatibility problems.

Re:Upgrading the downgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

well I guess it depends on what you do. The modularity of IIS7 is a significant improvement over IIS6 (even though IIS6 is actually pretty good, 7 is another big step forward). The server manager in 2008 is excellent, it also uses the newer TCP stack and has all the kernel improvements of Vista without the pain. Hyper-V is also actually pretty damn good, beats VM-Ware on performance but not as nice to manage, but if your using it as a workstation it is more than adequate. The whole OS generally feels snappier than 2003, if they had made Vista interface like 2008 with the extra eyecandy as an option Vista would have been a MASSIVE success.

Re:Upgrading the downgrade?

[gbobeck]

So Server 2008 is better than Vista. What isn't?

Windows ME. Arguably...

drivers may be a problem

[Eil]

A few years back, the company I worked for tried pushing Windows 2003 terminal servers (using Linux as thin clients) for its clients. It actually worked rather well, but there was one major drawback: since Windows 2003 was a "server" OS, a lot of desktop applications and workstation hardware flat out refused to support it.

Our biggest challenge was printer drivers. Practically no printer manufacturers released Win2k3 drivers, because it was the only major MS operating system at the time that didn't have some sort of workstation edition. Even though there was no technical hurdles to providing the drivers, the installation packages would refuse to run, saying that they didn't support the OS. I was usually the one stuck having to hack in the manufacturer's Windows 2000 drivers just so our customers could print their stuff. In one case, we ended up deploying a Linux CUPS server just to forward the print jobs through because the Windows drivers were so terrible.

Re:drivers may be a problem

[DraconPern]

What printers are you using? In a normal win2k3 environment, you install the driver on the server so it automatically distributes to clients.

Re:drivers may be a problem

[networkzombie]

I'm very confused by your post. You stated "because it was the only major MS operating system at the time that didn't have some sort of workstation edition." I'm confused because Windows XP is the workstation edition of Windows 2003 Server, just as Vista is the workstation edition of Server 2008. Also, using Windows 2003 for workstations would be rediculously expensive. Type ver in a command prompt. Windows will tell you the exact version without the Workstation or Server moniker.

Server 2003 is version 5.2.3790.3959
XP is version 5.1.2600.5512
2000 is version 5.0.3700.6690

Re:drivers may be a problem

[spec8472]

Windows Server 2008 shares the same driver model as Vista.

That means that if your device has Vista drivers for your architecture, you're fine.

I've been using 2008 as a desktop since the launch, and I've only had a few application incompatabilities.

Most of these incompatabilties were fixed by enabling XP SP2 Compatability mode for the app, or for really stubborn things: Running an XP Virtual Machine.

Yes, Running a VM uses more ram - but thre are significant benefits of isolating XP-specific bits to a VM and running most of your environment under 2008. Performance is not noticably different if you have hardware virtualisation and a decent amount of RAM (4GB+).

Re:drivers may be a problem

[archen]

I think what he means is that the printer drivers do not install on on Win2003. I've had a lot of problems with HP print drivers lately, and generally they seem much more prone to crashing on 2003. Aside from that we have one terminal server where people connect to remotely from home PCs. Of course these people have general crap dell printers and such, none of which you can use the installer for. In the end you can usually use the XP driver by just forcing them to install via ini files. I really wish they would do something with the print model where everything was forced into a generic postscript type interface and translated back to something like PCL if needed. Funneling everything through CUPS is not an uncommon solution for a business, and a mess that should not be necessary.

Re:drivers may be a problem

[machine321]

You had a problem finding Win2k3 printer drivers? Huh, I guess nobody uses print servers any more. Either that or you're trying to use some $20 inkjet printer with drivers that barely work on a supported OS.

Re:drivers may be a problem

[Eil]

Right, but the clients are a Win2k3 terminal session so you'd still need Win2k3 drivers and you're back at square one.

Re:drivers may be a problem

[Eil]

I'm very confused by your post. You stated "because it was the only major MS operating system at the time that didn't have some sort of workstation edition." I'm confused because Windows XP is the workstation edition of Windows 2003 Server, just as Vista is the workstation edition of Server 2008.

You're familiar with Windows Terminal Services, right? If not, go read up on it and my post will make sense. We were deploying Windows 2003 as a terminal server, so when users connected to a desktop session via a thin client (running Linux), they had a Windows 2003 desktop on their monitor. It would defeat the purpose of a terminal server to buy a WinXP license for every client machine. We used license-free thin clients to save our clients a lot of money (and therefore make us a lot of money).

Re:drivers may be a problem

[Eil]

You had a problem finding Win2k3 printer drivers? Huh, I guess nobody uses print servers any more. Either that or you're trying to use some $20 inkjet printer with drivers that barely work on a supported OS.

We didn't have a choice in selecting the printers, in most cases they were already bought and paid for by the client well before we were brought on board to do the terminal server. In some cases, we did have to spend a bit to buy a print server or JetDirect card.

I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[PhrostyMcByte]

I got Windows Server 2008 free at the LA launch, so I figured I'd give it a go. I installed it and quickly changed everything to function as a desktop. Then I switched back. Here's why:

• Many applications have real dumb incompatibilities. Usually it's just because they check the version, assume Server has everything that Vista has, and attempt to load some DLLs that don't exist on the Server version. This is fixable most of the time.
• Some applications have installer issues. Their Windows Live stuff will refuse to install on a Server OS. Unreal Tournament 3 seems to be hardcoded to only install on Vista and below - it should be a laugh when Windows 7 comes out and nobody can install the game on it. The workaround is to dump the DVD to your hard drive, remove the check in the .msi, and install from there.
• The sound system is screwy. Priorities are setup for different workloads, resulting in pops and hisses when you play music. This is fixable, but took me a while to figure out how and I still never seemed to get it perfect.
• The bluetooth stack is absent. It's not an optional component in the installer, it's just not there. So you don't have the nice integrated solution anymore, and have to install crappy vendor-specific stacks that don't seem to work for everything.

The experience is definitely not a simple "setup windows, modify windows, use as normal" one. Most of the random things that screw up are fixable, but just too much of a pain in the ass and ultimately a waste of time.

Server *can* run faster than Vista, but only because various artificial limits are raised or removed. Most developers work around these limits and most are very good at it, so I doubt any non-developers would ever notice any performance difference. If you're looking to speed up Vista, find one of the various sites that list descriptions of services and which are safe to turn off. Most of the "bloat" of Vista can be turned off through that.

Not suprising

[A_Non_Moose]

as VS2003 was a nitemare on XP, and ran great on (drumroll) 2003 server.

Only thing that really needed doing was putting grfx in full acceleration otherwise some things just went funky (apps, screen savers, etc).

I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[Stonent1]

Many off the shelf antivirus programs will not install on any of the Server series of OSes. They flat out refuse because they want you to buy their more expensive server version...

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[DigiShaman]

Duh! Server software is always more expensive than workstation side. They figure if you own a server, then it has a home to a company with deeper pockets than a single user.

My latest run-in with this was Adobe. Regardless of how many Acrobat 8 licenses you own, you can *not* install it on a Windows Terminal Server without it going into "cripple ware" mode. I've contacted Adobe about this as a technical issue, and I was informed the licenese keys need to Terminal Server aware. Oh, and that will cost you $$$$ above and beyond any ol standard workstation licenese.

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[jimmux]

So use a free option.

I used to use a little Server 2003 box in a pretty workstation-y fashion, and ClamWin worked well for me. It apparently runs on 2008 with some niggling issues.

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[Orion Blastar]

I think there is a setting in the registry to change the OS from server to workstation. It is also discussed here how to do it.

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Firewalls have issues as well. Like AV these issues are probably not compatibility problems but just requirement checks in the installers.

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[BigDogCH]

This is true, however if someone is running windows server 2008 as their OS, they are probably tech savy enough to live without an antivirus package bogging down their PC.

I mean, why spend $1k on your snappier OS, just to bog it down with the latest bloated antivirus?

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[Phroggy]

Keep in mind that ClamWin won't scan files in realtime as they come into your system; it only does a full system scan periodically (the thing other AV programs recommend that you also do in addition to their normal realtime scanning). This is why ClamWin doesn't satisfy the requirements of XPSP2/Vista's Security Center.

OK, to be fair, ClamWin also lets you scan a specific file by right-clicking it; you don't have to do a full system scan for that. And there's a plugin for Outlook, so it will scan attachments as they come in. And there are probably plugins for Firefox and Thunderbird to do the same for those apps. Still, I can't recommend ClamWin as a good solution for my clients yet.

Re:I tried this...Antivirus Issues

[wozza96]

so then you run as a user account, and you shouldn't need to worry about viruses. Alternatively, use clamwin.

LastXP, et al.

[wizzahd]

There are a bunch of different homebrew "versions" of XP and Vista around, most notably LastXP and LastVista. AppzPoint.net (unfortunately that site is broken now) used to host a whole bunch of them including one called TinyXP that was supposed to be completely bare bones (never tried it). You can find torrents to this stuff on the 'Bay and other sites, and while they come with a pirate key, you're free to change the key to a legit one. I've used LastXP for a couple of years now and I completely love it. It's very stable and comes with drivers for every device I've had. I'm sure some other /. users can recommend some other modded versions of XP, too.

Re:LastXP, et al.

[mr_stinky_britches]

Do you know where one can would be able to find more information on LastV/LastXP/LastVista? It sounds like it could be really cool.
Thanks!

Wi-Fizzle.com; I guess it's really just a blaaaaaaaaahg..

Re:LastXP, et al.

[Trashman]

You are crazy. How do you know that these Shady homebrew Operating systems don't contain a trojan, rootkit, or even a keylogger? And remember that not all of these are detectable by AV and Anti-spyware utils.

Re:LastXP, et al.

[digimortal_uk]

...and how do you know that the OS you're running doesn't have an undocumented back door or a security hole or the like??

It all comes down to trust. I don't study the source code to all the open source apps I install. I just read the prevailing opinions out there on the interweb and make a judgement.

That's how I got one of the excellent eXPerience editions of XP. SP3 slipstreamed, unatended installation, no serial to enter, just pop the cd in press go and leave it for half an hour.

These 'shady' homebrew OSs are the only way your going to get a 99mb version of XP as well.

Re:LastXP, et al.

[wizzahd]

One of the child posts below have some information on one, I believe, but unfortunately like I mentioned the site where they all seemed to congregate has been down for a long while. If you want to view the readme, you can do a search for "lastxp readme" and it'll probably pull up PirateBay.

The latest LastXP version is v20, which I haven't tried yet. v17 is running on five computers in my house almost (ACER is absolutely horrible) flawlessly.

I've got less information about LastVista. Mostly, I just know it exists.

Re:LastXP, et al.

[wizzahd]

So when's the last time you perused through your kernel's source? How do you know there's not a trojan, rootkit, or even a keylogger contained therein?

I mean, I guess it's great to ask questions like that, but really you just have to trust the community sometimes. Not everyone is out to get you.

...

::puts on tinfoil hat::

How to download freely in Server 2008

[clarkn0va]

1. Visit www.getfirefox.com

2. Download FF3

3. Install FF3

4. Click a dozen or so security warnings in the process.

5. Never look back.

db

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Visit www.getfirefox.com

2. Download FF3

3. Install FF3

4. Click a dozen or so security warnings in the process.

5. Never look back.

6. Profit!

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[EvanED]

There's the occasional program that uses IE (technically: the MSHTML component) to render HTML, and you can still face this problem. For instance, if you don't install the MSDN docs locally, help in Visual Studio goes out to MSDN's site, and the security settings in IE apply to this connection. I've hit it a couple other places too, but more esoteric.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[VGPowerlord]

If you're a PC Gamer, Valve's Steam uses MSHTML.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

But where's the profit????

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Lennie]

7. The smile on your face - priceless

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[jonbryce]

Problem is that it doesn't let you download executables or installer packages. You need to either do it on another computer, or disable the enhanced security to enable you to do it on your win2k3/2k8 system.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you just click "Ok" on the prompt that tells you Enhanced security is on. Please, don't reply if you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[stonertom]

More difficult than you'd think. You have to allow every host you download from on the net, and Firefox's mirror system makes that tricky.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[nine-times]

That's actually what I did on the last server I set up. Except I had to add:

0. Go to another computer because IE wouldn't let me download Firefox

2.5. copy the installer over to the server

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[sk1ppy]

but recent versions of their servers won't allow you to download anything from the Internet

Kind of makes visiting www.getfirefox.com diffcult, wouldnt you think?

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[HAKdragon]

Evan, IE isn't a food.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually used IE with the enhanced security configuration? It practically disables the internet. You can't go to a site without whitelisting it first. It's like their answer to IE being insecure is just to not allow you to use it.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[TeacherOfHeroes]

Swing and a miss...

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Now they can deny the problem. You bypassed our security? Your own fault for having problems.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[joss]

yeah, after enabling the first couple, exit the site and go back otherwise you toggle through the list

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[George Beech]

or you could have dropped to a command line

C:\>ftp ftp.mozilla.org
ftp>get "/pub/firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0.exe"
Then you don't have to be bothered to go to another computer.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[TClevenger]

4.5. Install Flashblock and NoScript

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[jonbryce]

Or you just click "Ok" on the prompt that tells you Enhanced security is on. Please, don't reply if you have no idea what you're talking about.

That doesn't work on its own. You have to whitelist the site first. Firefox sends you to a different mirror every time you try to download, so you have to whitelist the entire mirror list, disable enhanced security completely, or use another computer.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[awehttam]

It's more like syrup of ipecac.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Feanturi]

And yet it still leaves me feeling all bloated and gassy.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Visit www.getfirefox.com

2. Download FF3

3. Install FF3

4. Click a dozen or so security warnings in the process.

5. Never look back.

5b. ???

6. Profit!

Fixed.

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[indi0144]

so the cake was a lie?

Re:How to download freely in Server 2008

[Jurily]

Really, how is this Informative? It's like it's not the default action for anyone around here?

P.S. I use Opera.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

This works pretty well if it's all the same price. I'm a non-pirate, but I've got a subscription to MSDN. Hence, I've got 1 of everything, including Server '08. Might give this a try this weekend, see if I notice a difference on my dev machine. The author does the conversion on his laptop, but I'd like to know about the power requirements before I do that.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[whoever57]

Some applications have installer issues. Their Windows Live stuff will refuse to install on a Server OS.

Did you try removing the checks from the MSI file using the Orca MSI editor?

windows server is limp

[Max Littlemore]

i converted to it from vista and i never get the spinning circle anymore. its just snappier.

So you spent probably more than the cost of the hardware for an average PC on an operating system to replace vista? Why do that? Linux is free and performs great on new hardware and old hardware alike. Considering modern Linux distros have UIs which are easier to use and more productive than windows (give windows users a few days adjustment, of course), the only reasons left for running Windows are legacy apps that only run on Windows, difficulty with drivers and games.

one thing to note, its kind of a bitch to get drivers working. vista drivers work fine but you'll have to open those driver installers with an archive utility, pull out the .inf driver files and manually install through device manager. although if you're installing windows server you probably can do that stuff no sweat. i highly recommend windows 2008

So from what you're saying, one of the arguments for running windows is out the window. Driver installation sucks, and sounds about the same as installing most tricky things on Linux these days. (my recent experience with a newer DVICO TV tuner and broadcom wireless come to mind). That leaves legacy apps and games, but then a lot of legacy apps don't work on newer versions of windows, so it's a safer bet to keep the old OS in a VM image or running on an old box.

That really just leaves games.

Therefore windows is now just a toy.

Windows Server 2008 is an extremely expensive toy.

What is the point of this article?

Re:windows server is limp

[Anonymous Coward]

So you spent probably more than the cost of the hardware for an average PC on an operating system to replace vista?

If someone is a hard-core Visual Studio Developer, there's a good chance they have a MSDN subscription, so they already have any Windows OS available to them for free. For most other people who try to use Server 2008 as a workstation, they either don't mind spending the money (probably a small percentage) or just use torrents/newsgroups to obtain the software.

Linux is free and performs great on new hardware and old hardware alike.

I have to agree, Linux is free and performs great. But this doesn't mean much to someone who is trying to use the Windows platform to use or develop specific applications.

only reasons left for running Windows are legacy apps that only run on Windows, difficulty with drivers and games.

Sounds like some big reasons for running Windows to me.. and it is not just "legacy" applications, but also newer applications which are not available or have the same features on competing operating systems.

Driver installation sucks, and sounds about the same as installing most tricky things on Linux these days.

Sorry but installing drivers in Server 2008 is easy.. install WinRAR or some similar extraction utility and extract all of the files, go into device manager and point to the extracted folder. That doesn't sound too tricky to me - at least for someone who is trying to convert Windows Server 2008 to a workstation (which the average user would rarely ever think of doing, let alone try to do). I hate running installers for drivers no matter what Windows OS I use so I can do this in my sleep, but anyone who is at least partially awake at the keyboard can do it.

Re:windows server is limp

[Anonymous Coward]

I certainly haven't been impressed with the UI in Linux

Which one?

I guess with most zealots reading their email in Pine and typing in Bash windows 95% of the time they never really take notice.

2000 just called and they want their cliche back.

Re:windows server is limp

[Max Littlemore]

Yeah, one more reason I missed is that someone is a developer that is married to Windows development tools. But that's a given, why would anyone who develops in a Windows only tool for Windows use any other system for development? Makes now sense.

Are there really any (non game) apps by anyone other than Microsoft that won't work on Linux or don't have any equivalent method in Linux? The only software I have personally bought from MS in the last 7 years has been Vista included with my notebook and games for the xbox. If they released Visio for Linux, I might buy that.

Installing drivers on Linux is easy too. In most cases with the majority hardware and most good distros, you do nothing.

Re:windows server is limp

[FishWithAHammer]

Which one?

Any of them? I'm not the grandparent poster, but I work on Windows and Linux machines regularly and can say that GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, e17, iceWM, and XFCE all suck massively in different and painful ways. None are pleasant to use and all get in the way. Of them all, KDE3 is the least painful, but hey! KDE4 sucks, so that one won't last long.

Re:windows server is limp

[FishWithAHammer]

Linux is free and performs great on new hardware and old hardware alike.

It's also extremely unpleasant to use if you expect software to just work and be in a finished state. (Hi, KDE Project!) I write OSS code and I respect the work of Linux developers, but it's absolute shit on the desktop and will remain so as long as there are eight thousand different distros all zooming in diffrent directions.

Considering modern Linux distros have UIs which are easier to use and more productive than windows (give windows users a few days adjustment, of course)

Um, no. Modern Linux distros have terrible, terrible UIs. I spent six months using nothing but Linux, except for my dev tools in a virtual machine. I was never more happy to get back to Windows. You have no idea how shitty the Linux UI is to those who don't have any interest in bending their brains around weird, unintuitive paradigms that a bunch of nerds (they're nerds--geeks have social skills) find useful.

And I'm saying that as somebody who wanted Linux to be good. As it is, it's barely usable. It's unpleasant for anyone who just wants to sit down and do something, as opposed to fight with the system in order to get to the point wheere you can do something.

the only reasons left for running Windows are legacy apps that only run on Windows, difficulty with drivers and games.

Are you a child or something? Are you posting from your mother's basement? How about Windows application development (so actual people, and not just a tiny segment of the population, can use your software)? How about using those very-fucking-much-non-legacy apps that are required to do work? "Legacy" is not defined as "running on a platform that doesn't give RMS a boner."

And no, WINE is not the answer to using those non-legacy apps on Linux; I respect what the WINE guys do but their execution remains shitful.

The critical failure of Linux advocates like you is in assuming that other people want to work to make their computers do what they want them to do. Linux expects that. You expect that. Normal people will tell you to fuck off, like I'm doing now.

Re:windows server is limp

[FishWithAHammer]

Are there really any (non game) apps by anyone other than Microsoft that won't work on Linux or don't have any equivalent method in Linux?

Anything by Adobe. The GIMP is not a valid Photoshop equivalent. Inkscape is not a valid Illustrator equivalent. Scribus is not a valid PageMaker equivalent.

WINE is not an acceptable solution. You and the rest of your Linux advocates desperately want people to fiddle-fart with the computer in order to get to a place where they can do the work they originally came there to do. That's not going to fly.

I'd say "when you can point to a DE that's as good as Windows, then you're allowed to talk," but you've made it clear that in your little fantasy world, the Linux DEs that exist now meet that requirement. In the real world, they most certainly do not.

Re:windows server is limp

[MightyYar]

So you spent probably more than the cost of the hardware for an average PC on an operating system to replace vista? Why do that?

Yeah!

Linux is free

Man, I thought you were going the Mac route there... :)

Re:windows server is limp

[Kokuyo]

I really don't think anyone assumes that people actually pay for a windows OS with this article. It just doesn't seem plausible.

Re:windows server is limp

[barzok]

Are there really any (non game) apps by anyone other than Microsoft that won't work on Linux or don't have any equivalent method in Linux?

Quicken is either Gold or Garbage under WINE, I can't tell which.

If you've already got 10 years of data including investment accounts, etc. then converting to another application is incredibly painful, if it's even possible. You can't get all your data extracted & converted perfectly.

So the answer to your question is...yes.

Re:windows server is limp

[The_reformant]

Because they need a Visual Studio environment as you would know if you had read the summary..I know reading the article is a stretch but really this is ridiculous.
When you see the designed for XP or vista stickers on the copmuters at work to you feel the need to write "or linux" on the bottom?

Re:windows server is limp

[Nursie]

Please elaborate on how gnome sucks and/or gets in the way?

I use it on my main linux client/workstation machine at work (in a big multinational), my Solaris workstation and also on my home Linux box. I have yet to see it get in the way.

I'm genuinely interested in the problems people are having with it, because I've found it so simple.

Re:windows server is limp

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite a number of people can get the MS server OSes for free for noncommercial use through some sort of deal - I know I can get server 2008 (and all variants of vista) from my university.

As for apps, it's actually useful things and not games I have problems with in Wine - WoW runs fine, but adobe lightroom is quite problematic. I know there are OSS programs for dealing with raw files and photo collections, but I quite like lightroom.

Given that, windows is more of a no-extra-cost tool than an expensive toy to me, and I might be interested in running it. Knowing that I can use server 2008 and that it has a set of positives and negatives different from vista is useful information to me.
Of course linux (and FreeBSD, in my case) are good and viable alternatives, but that doesn't invalidate the previous point.

Re:windows server is limp

[FishWithAHammer]

Please elaborate on how gnome sucks and/or gets in the way?

It's hard to put into words, because in many ways it's just wrong.

It gets in the way because it has this dogged persistency about not letting you easily change the defaults or preferences for anything (one of the things I like about KDE). Windows does not have this problem, in many cases because Windows is simply more smoothly laid out.

It gets in the way because the bundled applications are simply not very good. Yes, the underlying software's good; I like BSD and Linux for server use and only have a Server 2008 box because Mono's not good enough to rely upon for ASP.NET quite yet. The stuff on top, the stuff that makes up the desktop, is just ugly and hideous and shitful. OpenOffice? No thanks, I own Office 2003. The GIMP? No thanks, I own Photoshop. Evolution? Oh hi there, Crash City. The list goes on and on. Frankly I'd rather the OS come with nothing and have to buy the software, a la Windows (but have the software be at least decent), if the bundled software is going to suck so hard.

It also has absolutely idiotic HCI guidelines. "Do you want to do this? [No] [Yes]"

It's just...amateurish. It's unpleasant. The problems stick out like a sore thumb.

KDE is better, but KDE4 is looking to be an epic disaster and KDE3 won't be supported forever.

It may be fine for you, but I consider it low-tier and shit compared to the free (MSDN subscription) copies of Windows I get.

Re:windows server is limp

[Fallingcow]

Tell me about it.

I finally broke down and installed Photoshop CS3 in a VMware XP environment on my Linux laptop, because The Gimp just wasn't handling our designer's .ps files correctly.

I hadn't used it in a few years, and I'd started to doubt my fond memories of it as being so much easier to use than The Gimp. Hell, by now I've probably got 5x the number of hours using The Gimp as I do Photoshop, overall, so I should even have become more acclimated to it than to PS.

Oh, man, BREATH OF FRESH AIR. God, it was so wonderful going back to it. The only, ONLY thing I miss is "paste as new" (ctrl+shift+v), because it's slightly faster than "Ctrl+n,click OK,Ctrl+v". Took me about five minutes to get used to it, and then everything was a breeze.

Fuck The Gimp. The fact that it remains the best FOSS Linux graphics editor says more about the state of FOSS Linux graphics editors than it does about the quality of that program. It's OK for slicing up an image for web, but if I need to do anything more complicated, even just working with simple layers... to hell with it, it's worth it to fire up VMWare for that.

Re:windows server is limp

[Khyber]

"That really just leaves games."

Not even that - UT3 will not install on Server 2K8, nor will Steam.

Re:windows server is limp

[ChrisA90278]

I have to agree that the Adobe products don't have open source equivalents. Gimp is not Photoshop. But really how many Windows users use Photoshop? I'd bet not even 1%. Most just surf the web and read email. Some use MS Office. Very few are using their PC to create digital content at the profesional level where Adobe CS3 is the "standard". All of those web surfers and email readers could switch over to Ubuntu Linux and not miss a beat. Of those who do use Adobe for professional work a slight majority are on Apple's Mac OS X. In the end the need to run Adobe's suit does not hold many back.

The big hang up is games. If you bought the PC and run Windows toplay games you are kind of stuck there. I suspect the huge majority of Windows users use the machine for games mostly

Re:windows server is limp

[FishWithAHammer]

Krita has a better chance of being worthwhile than The GIMP does.

Re:windows server is limp

[FishWithAHammer]

If you think OpenOffice is a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, you're not looking at it objectively. OpenOffice is a steaming pile, as was StarOffice before it.

Re:windows server is limp

[Nursie]

OK, well you have your reasons. None of them are anything that affects me.

I'm a software engineer that works in C. Scoff you may but 30 some years on and it's still No2 language on the planet. Anyhow, I meet relatively few that actually use photoshop for anything remotely tricky, In fact it seems most people use photoshop for a bit of copy and paste.

In fact I hear this a lot - GIMP isn't photoshop! Well 1) did you pay for photoshop? Didya? Really? and 2) what do you do? cut/paste/trim/maybe the odd sepia effect?

Don't do ASP so don't give a fuck about mono. Don't own MS Office and don't see it's any better than OO.o 2.x
(Again, what is it lacking that you need?)

Never used evolution because thunderbird is fine...

Reviewing your post, you have nothing at all against gnome there, not a single sausage. You have windows software you want to run. Well good luck to you, but railing against window managers is just fucking stupid when what you really have a problem with is moving to any OS but windows.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it would be interesting to read all of the fine print in the special EULA that comes with MSDN OSes to see if you're really allowed to use it for all the things you'd do with your "primary OS". If not, doing this would still make someone an ARRRGH! pirate.

give the guy creds for sheer nads

[inode_buddha]

If he can make a windows box fly and post it here then I want to see it.

Vista SP1 == Server 2008

[benwaggoner]

Of course, Win 98 and Win 2K were radically different kernels.

Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 are the *SAME* kernel

As was said upthread, if want you want is a workstation that doesn't use all the Vista services, it's easier and cheaper to just turn off the services you don't want :).

Re:Vista SP1 == Server 2008

[hkb]

I know that Microsoft says there's no difference officially. However, independent tests (Google them) and my own personal tests indicate that 2008 is still superior in performance. The independent tests done reflect the same experiences.

Re:Vista SP1 == Server 2008

[dotancohen]

As was said upthread, if want you want is a workstation that doesn't use all the Vista services, it's easier and cheaper to just turn off the services you don't want :).

It would be even easier and cheaper to install Kubuntu.

Re:Vista SP1 == Server 2008

[redstar427]

As was said upthread, if want you want is a workstation that doesn't use all the Vista services, it's easier and cheaper to just turn off the services you don't want :).

But that would require actual learning!
Everyone on Slashdot should know that RTFx is way too much work.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[socsoc]

If it was part of the "Heroes happen here" launches... I got a trial disc of 2k8 and a full (unadvertised) disc of Vista Ultimate. I threw out the 2k8 trial and have not opened the Vista Ultimate case. I wanted a full 2k8 and was disappointed, but Ubuntu gives me a full version of their server and my small business is happy to use it... I enjoyed telling the survey lady when she called a few weeks after the event that I would buy 2k8 only because you can't buy 2k.

The "ready for a new day" launch was better than this one...

Re:Can someone update us on REACTOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit bitching and start paying, or start coding.

For most OSS devs, reimplementing a broken system is fucking boring.

Actually good for something?

[catmistake]

We live in great times... imagine, a Windows Server that is actually good for SOMETHING.

Guerilla OS?

[Nimey]

I too am an Internet cool guy.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[EvanED]

The sound system is screwy. Priorities are setup for different workloads, resulting in pops and hisses when you play music. This is fixable, but took me a while to figure out how and I still never seemed to get it perfect.

I'm running Server 2008 as my main box, and I haven't seen this problem.

I did see the first one though (the incompatibilities) with both AVG and Avast! anti-virus; both seem to assume that since I'm installing it on the server OS it's not being used on a home, non-commercial desktop and tell you to buy the full version.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is that the natural Windows updrade path is Vista -> Windows 2008 Server -> XP?

It's the same!

[Toreo asesino]

Vista SP1 == Windows Server 2008 + Active Directory + some other extra toys (depending on version) and minus others (Media Center for instance).

I mean really, I love how the image of one is completely tarnished but the image of the other is "not bad for a MS OS"....it's like comparing Windows 2000 Server & Pro.

The only other difference is what's enabled by default, which in Win2008 is rather less. It only takes a few minutes to shutdown the same services in Vista.

Re:It's the same!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that's not true, except on a superficial level - the kernel is the same, that's all.

No matter what you switch off in Vista is still runs like a dog, thrashes the hard disk and uses up insane amounts of memory just to run the OS.

2008 is a clean install, is fast and in fact works really well.. you can't even compare the two experiences. They're built on the same core but are entirely different above that.

Arrgh salty dog! It be "Tiny XP" for me!

[memorycardfull]

If you want XP without any bells or whistles, try it you'll like it.

Mods on crack?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't understand how the parent post is "Redundant". It is on-topic for the discussion, there are no other posts discussing the same issue. Is there someone out there with mod points that doesn't want people to know about the Orca MSI Editor?

Re:Mods on crack?

[sneezinglion]

read your grandparent post.(my great-gp) and see that he mentions removing the check in the msi file. That is why it was redundant.

Re:Mods on crack?

[hdparm]

It is redundant because its parent explained already how was this accomplished.

Re:Mods on crack?

[asylumx]

It was already described that hacking the MSI could fix the problem, that's why it's called redundant.

Re:Mods on crack?

[Just Some Guy]

And it was also covered by the parent.

Re:Mods on crack?

[jibjibjib]

Thus it was redundant.

Re:Mods on crack?

[Just Some Guy]

And also a repeat of what was already said.

Re:Mods on crack?

[repvik]

He mentiones removing the check, but now "how". I didn't know "how", so for me that post added more information even though most of it was redundant.
Is it still redundant then?

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[the JoshMeister]

Win2k8 is going to be cost prohibitive as a desktop os for the vast majority of people.

Is that so?

(Note: I posted this in another thread, but I'm reposting it here because it's relevant.)

You can apparently buy an HP OEM copy of Windows Web Server 2008 for U.S. $140.91, supposedly $157.76 after shipping (to California). I'd never heard of the seller, pcRUSH.com, but it looks pretty legit based on the Shopzilla customer rating page); this is the best price I could find, but it seems rather low so I'm somewhat skeptical.

Or you can buy Buy Windows Web Server 2008 for U.S. $362.49 with free shipping on Amazon.com; this is the second best price I could find, and looks a bit less fishy considering the price is closer to retail and the seller (Amazon) is well-known.

I searched shopzilla.com and pricegrabber.com and the prices above were the best that came up.

Anyway, these prices are not really that much higher than what Vista costs. Amazon lists Vista Home Premium for $94.99 and Ultimate for $277.49 (note that the latter is just $85 more than Amazon's price for Windows Web Server 2008). Assuming pcRUSH's price for Windows Web Server 2008 is accurate, you can actually get it cheaper than Vista Ultimate!

Summary

[networkzombie]

It is easier to slim Vista into a real workstation than it is to tweak 2008 into a real workstation and a lot cheaper. Try adding $100 worth of RAM. If you can't afford $100 worth of RAM then you don't need a real workstation (or you're broke from buying an iPhone). Post suggests "rarely needs to reboot" so I call BULLSHIT. I run 20+ Vista systems and none, if you don't install unsigned drivers or crappy software; ever need a reboot or get sluggish. One user thought there was a problem when WSUS installed SP1 and rebooted; they had to logon rather than unlock the workstation. They thought there was a power failure. I'm sick of reading about users who have ONE computer that they upgraded from {some OS} to Vista then complained about driver problems. Puh-leez. Stop installing Vista on VIA chipsets with AMD 3D NOW processors.

Re:Summary

[UnknowingFool]

I think one of the issues with upgrading Vista is the variation of hardware out there. By your admission, you shouldn't install Vista on VIA chipsets and AMD 3D NOW processors, but where in the Vista requirements does it say that you shouldn't do that? The whole Ready/Premium issue existed because the minimum requirements for Vista are really higher than MS says. As geeks, we've always known that. Average consumers don't. For example, this is what MS says the recommended requirements for Home Premium/Business/Ultimate are:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of system memory
• 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space

Here are the minimum requirements:

• 800 MHz processor and 512 MB of system memory
• 20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
• Support for Super VGA graphics

Looking at these as an average consumer, I would think that Vista Ultimate should be fine on a 3200+ Athlon XP with 2GB of memory. But it's not unless I turn off a lot of things, and that requires a geek not an average consumer. If MS really listed the requirements, not many would upgrade their OS as it would require many to buy a new computer instead. If they're buying a new computer, hey, those Macs look cute.

Re:Summary

[MoreDruid]

OK, so I've got a fairly recent box (intel Quad Core, 2GB RAM, nvidia 8xxx series video card). Now please explain to me why I should shell out an extra $100 for RAM to just run Vista when XP & linux both run fine with it? A recommendation of 2GB+ for an OS + some apps (this is what MS factors into the eqation BTW, they base this on OS + Office + a few other apps like Adobe reader & Anti-virus software) is ridiculous, even for systems that will be built next year.

You shouldn't need a quite hefty computer just to run an OS & some apps for mail/wordprocessing/browsing, and this is why the eeePC is such a success (next to a very portable form factor)

One problem with "server" class "workstations"

[NotQuiteReal]

When you run a "Server" OS, many software vendors don't believe you are still on a "Workstation" budget.

For example, try getting a reasonable price for something like Acronis for personal "workstation" use if you are running a flavor of Windows "Server", whatever...

There are reasons to run a "server" OS, even if it is just for development and testing work, if not legitimate personal use.

Re:One problem with "server" class "workstations"

[fyoder]

Weird. From a Linux perspective if I was paying for it I would expect to pay less for a lean server distribution than for a full on all the bells and whistles multimedia distribution (that is, what most desktop users would want).

Why the high cost? Do Microsoft's server operating systems come with hookers or something?

Re:One problem with "server" class "workstations"

[k8to]

Because development is illegitimate personal use?

Re:One problem with "server" class "workstations"

[larry bagina]

from a linux support perspective, would you expect to pay more for a desktop version or a server version?

Second System Syndrome?

[pentalive]

Second System Syndrome: Learning from the errors of the first system.

Third system: Adding too many bells and whistles missed in the first system that will need to be fixed in the fourth system.

Re:Second System Syndrome?

[somersault]

In Microsoft's case the cycle is repeating infinitely, since they are far past their 'third system'. The sad thing is that they have hardly added any bells and whistles, apart from the aero interface. Stuff like the DRM is more like adding dog-doo on a stick.

Use adobe's PS as a workaround

[Werrismys]

Adobe has a free (as in beer (as if beer ever really was)) PS driver that can happily be used with CUPS. This trick worked even with ancient NT4 machines with practically no modern driver support.

Factually incorrect article

[Ged Murphy]

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are exactly the same operating system.
The article author and the guys at win2008workstation.com obviously have no idea what they're talking about.
Turning Windows Vista into Server 2008 is just a matter of turning off a few bells and whistles.
These people will argue until they're blue in the face that Server 2008 is amazing, while Vista is terrible....

TinyXP

[Zo0ok]

Try TinyXP (Rev 09). It is illegal. It is free as in beer. It can be found on your favourite torrent site. It is "better than the real stuff".

A thought... now when MS is not even selling XP anymore, how criminal can it really be to warez it? I mean, (C)-law is about making sure the producer of something is the one getting paid for copies. But if the producer refuses to provide copies in any form (and used copies are not completely ok, because of Genuine Advantage and stuff), can it really be illegal to make/use your own copy?

Why not...

[DimGeo]

Why not convert Windows Server 2008 into the lean, efficient, reliable 'power user' OS that Windows should be?

Because it's mostly the same stuff as Vista SP1? Just set the classic theme and you're good to go.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[FishWithAHammer]

I had this happen to me. I ended up using ClamAV, which sucked. That machine only connects to the 'net through a browser in a VM, though, so I don't really care.

Shell

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Cygwin not work?? (or not to your liking I presume!) I like to use the command line and I have to say I found Powershell to be a fairly big step in the right direction even if it is very .NET oriented, but if you're going Windows anyway... what the hell!

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[FishWithAHammer]

The power requirements are less than Vista's defaults--it doesn't come with Aero or the rest of that garbage.

It uses Vista's power management facilities, so there shouldn't be any change there.

Re:Can someone update us on REACTOS

[FishWithAHammer]

And yet they expect people to switch to their broken new system, and dick around with it trying to make it work in a manner that's pleasant for them. Marvelous.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[dave1791]

Interesting.

UT3 is the reason why I usually don't run my Ubuntu install. It is how I relax and recharge. When I'm working, once or twice a day, I fire up UT3 in offline mode, choose Instant Action ->Warfare -> Torlan and spend fifteen minutes or so playing Charles Whitman on top of the big tower. Then I can get back to productive work.

UT2004 does not run very well on Ubuntu and UT3 not at all.

Driver compatibility could be a big issue

[George_Ou]

Driver compatibility could be a big issue since Windows Server has VERY little official driver support. Now if you could fool the driver installer in to thinking it's installing on Windows Vista, then it MIGHT work since Windows Server 2008 kernel is identical to Windows Vista SP1 kernel.

Or, as I've heard it put

[Sycraft-fu]

"Linux is only free if your time is worthless."

Linux is a very labour intensive OS if you want to do lots of desktop stuff with it. There's a lot it can do, but often there's a lot of work on your part to make it happen. That's fine if that is your thing, but I think evangelists need to understand that it really isn't for many people.

Like the WINE thing for example. It is actually better than I thought at making things run. The reason it is better than I thought is because I've had so little luck with it. However one of our students at work is a real Linux head and he is quite good at wrangling WINE to run things. However it sometimes takes DAYS of effort on his part to make an app work. Now that's cool if you have that time and you are willing to spend it, but to pretend it is a solution for everyone and that everyone should gladly spend that time is silly.

Re:Or, as I've heard it put

[FishWithAHammer]

Well said. I respect the people who work on Linux an awful lot. (I wouldn't be working on a project to allow Windows developers to seamlessly test .NET/Mono apps on Linux if I didn't think that Linux was a good thing. But to say that it's anywhere near as out-of-the-box good as Windows just doesn't make sense.

Evangelists want you to convert to their OS--and then do a bunch of work to make it work right. Why do that when Windows already works right?

Re:Or, as I've heard it put

[Max Littlemore]

I kind of wanted to avoid the fanboi flamewar thing, but doing a comparison between any operating systems is going to see that happen on ./

Both my father and mother now use Ubuntu. My father has been developing software since the late 60s, but in the last 20 years has worked predominantly with Microsoft stuff and my mother is the archetypal mum who has no clue about technology. She and my dad separated in the 70s by the way, so she hasn't really learned anything by osmosis. They both find Ubuntu simpler to use for day to day stuff "out of the box" than windows. Simple as that.

Applications are in a menu at the top grouped by functionality. System settings are in a menu called "System" and then divided into user specific and system wide stuff. Places on the file system are under "Places". The file system is not some bizzaar thing where the Desktop contains My Computer which contains weird things called "C:", "D:", etc, one of which contains the Desktop. That right there is something that I was always having to help my mum with on XP. She just didn't get it. She doesn't have the history of DOS, so she doesn't know or care about drive letters or the insane legacy that Microsoft is hanging on to.

My dad still uses windows in his A/V post production business because he is running professional software that has been windows only for a while. He uses Ubuntu for his general purpose office PC. Both prefer the Gnome UI to any of the windows desktops. His first install was Feisty Fawn, I think, and he comment on how the installation to a fraction of the time of a windows installation and everything just worked.

My wife, another non-tech, rates usability of the desktops she knows in this order, "Ubuntu", "Mac" then "Windows". I know a couple of PHB types who installed Ubuntu at home and said "wow, everything worked and i didn't need to feed in 5+ driver disks!"

Three to five years ago I might have agreed with you. Now, it is a very different story.

As for wine, I have it installed at home so I can run the games that came on a Shrek DVD I bought for my son - took me more time to fix the case insensitive mess that was the html navigation than to get the games working - a symptom of bad practice on the html developers part - but thankfully I had a powerful shell. Otherwise, I don't use it, so I can't comment there.

The real difference

[bertok]

While it is true that Windows Server 2008 is almost exactly the same as Vista SP1, down to the hotfixes and drivers, the tangible difference is really a bunch of compiler macros and flags that Microsoft charges hundreds of dollars for.

I run Server 2008 with the "Desktop Experience" pack as a substitute for Vista on my work laptop because of a bad experience I once had while doing a demo for a customer on an XP laptop - I had developed a simple ASP.NET website and was making a demonstration when one of the users had managed to produce a "HTTP/500" error. It was incredibly embarrassing to have my supposedly "highly reliable" system lock up after just a few clicks. It took me days to figure out that the "crash" was caused by a completely artificial limitation introduced by Microsoft into XP to differentiate it from their Server line - one of the TCP/IP connection limits was the culprit. I had never noticed it while developing, because loopback connections are not affected.

So now I run an MSDN licensed Windows 2008 as a "workstation" OS so that I can avoid the Microsoft Marketing Department's deliberately introduced bugs, leaving only the plain old technical bugs, of which there are thankfully fewer than some previous MS operating system releases.

Re:The real difference

[Almahtar]

It took me days to figure out that the "crash" was caused by a completely artificial limitation introduced by Microsoft into XP to differentiate it from their Server line

See, now this is why I run with open source. These artificial limitations are just bull. You can expect bugs in any system, but at least with the open source stuff I don't have to worry about intentional ones.

No

[Sycraft-fu]

For that you need about 1GB. Vista roughly doubles XP's RAM requirements in my book. For XP I listed it as 256MB/512MB/1GB meaning that 256MB was the absolute minimum for a usable system. If you had less, I said stick with 2k. 512MB was the minimum for reasonable performance if you wanted to load only a couple apps and such. 1GB was the recommended amount for good performance for normal use.

For Vista I say it's 512MB/1GB/2GB. Vista on 512MB is pretty painful. Vista on 2GB runs great.

There's really no room to bitch, either. 2GB of RAM now is cheaper than 128MB was when XP came out. Right now on Newegg you can get 2GB of DDR2 for $20 shipped after rebate. That's $10/gig. If you can't afford that, well then you probably can't afford the upgrade price to Vista and shouldn't. Even if you want high performance RAM it's cheap. High performance DDR2 800 4GB sets (2x2GB) are $100 with no rebate. So for $200 you can max out a motherboard.

The whining about Vista needing lots of RAM is silly, since RAM is just dirt cheap. Also bitching that old hardware can't take a new OS is silly. XP has not stopped working. It will continue to work, and continue to be supported, for many more years. If you have an old system that can't handle Vista, just don't get it.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Dr. Spork]

This post was far more informative and useful than TFA. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. You're more of a power user than I am (I wouldn't know how to hack an .msi file to not do version checks, for example), and if you had this sort of trouble, I would have my hair ripped out!

of course it is

[BBird]

(c) limits the licensee right to make copies (you can't except fair use or if the license says otherwise as in GPL). Does not oblige the author to make or sell any copies if he doesn't want to.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[DavidRawling]

That's easy to answer.

You're not allowed. It's development ONLY. Even if you use it to access your work email, you're in violation of the EULA.

Also a lot of Vista issues

[Sycraft-fu]

Are people who want to run it on old hardware, and are mad that it doesn't work well. This is silly. When has it ever been the case that a new Windows version didn't want more power, particularly more memory? Old computers have problems with new software. This is life. It's not just Windows. Take Firefox, for example. Right now I have two browsers open and it is taking damn near 100MB. That's no problem, I've tons of RAM. However I do remember the time when I browsed on a system with only 16MB of RAM. However I don't begrudge Firefox, it does a hell of a lot more than the old Netscape browser I used back then, and it is a hell of a lot faster. However, if I tried to run it on that old system (setting aside that it isn't even possible) it'd be much slower since it'd be continually swapping to disk for lack of resources.

New stuff does more, and so uses more power. That's life, deal with it. Also, RAM (which is mainly what Vista wants) is so dirt cheap there's just no room to bitch. IF you have $200 for an OS upgrade, you have $20 for a RAM upgrade.

Re:Also a lot of Vista issues

[Cro Magnon]

The thing is, a lot of NEW hardware didn't run Vista. Much of the blame should go to the hardware vendors for putting Vista on their underpowered crap, but it still hurt Vista's reputation.

Re:Also a lot of Vista issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably more accurate to say they don't run Aero well. Unless you're talking about mini-notebooks.

2008 doesn't have substantially different requirements than Vista anyway.

Re:Also a lot of Vista issues

[vux984]

The thing is, a lot of NEW hardware didn't run Vista. Much of the blame should go to the hardware vendors for putting Vista on their underpowered crap, but it still hurt Vista's reputation.

This is partly microsofts fault too, as they released minimum specs that were unrealistically low.

But I agree this is ultimately the hardware venders fault. They should have tested them and concluded that the units weren't performing adequately with the minimal hardware. But instead they met all Microsofts checkboxes, slapped a Vista capable sticker on it, and then sold them to pissed off customers, who blamed Vista and Microsoft for their shitty new pc.

Imagine if someone tried building and selling a "Crysis capable PC" by reading the minimum requirements off the box... we'd laugh them out business.

Yes

[Sycraft-fu]

You'll find that there's an awful lot of shit about Vista that some random person just made up. Then the echo chamber effect takes over and people who don't like Vista will repeat it over and over since they don't like Vista and what to make it look bad, without any consideration to it's veracity. They are interested in information that supports their world view, not what is correct.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

on the subject of cost... why not just install linux?

Benefits
  - better performance
  - stability
  - security
  - can't be beaten on price

Cons
  - some MS apps don't run on Wine, but most do
  - you'll no longer be sucking steve ballmers cock
  - very limited support for 3rd gen ipods due to steve jobs being a cock. (With 3rd Gen crapple introduced an ancryption layer to prevent users from using any application other than iTunes for managing music on said iplods) there is a library available which has mixed success with 3rd gen ipods but I don't think it's perfect yet.

oh yeah and no more viruses,mal/ad/spyware.

One of the first things in this server 08 website

[poetmatt]

Is "disable internet explorer security"

I think that speaks for itself in both irony and otherwise. I think I'll stick with ubuntu.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had an anti-virus package installed on my Windows machine since DOS, and have yet to get a virus.

Pointless way to kill your I/O. And no, asynchronous I/O in Vista/Server2008 does not address the overhead of realtime scanning.

Don't go too fast

[peppepz]

Windows Server may be nice, but still, it's missing parts of the multimedia system (BDA) so you'll have a hard time trying to use your tv tuner card with it. And some applications just won't install on Windows Server (windows live, for instance).

If all you want is a workstation, ...

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Oh, never mind. You know what I was going to say.

And I'm pretty sure you weren't interested in that opinion.

If you can't join them...

[fsmunoz]

"Lean", "mean", "power user", "guerilla OS", damn. There is something rather sad is the attempt to make Windows sound like something interesting, something "rad".

I guess it's a form of self-justification. Some people can't take the hit of using Linux on their daily lives, and that is perfectly understandable all things considered, but trying to make it "it is just as elite!" is depressing to watch, like the guy who bought the mini-van because of the space but feels the need to justify to others that the mini-van is truly a racing vehicle.

Re:If you can't join them...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like people haven't used these terms to describe Linux before. Or is an OS automatically not meant for power users just because it's Windows?

What I find rather sad is you trying to say that Linux is "elite", as if it was "rad". Irony at its fullest.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[cloakable]

Enterprise? Like the ability to act as a domain controller? Or the ability to act as a head to a SAN?

How about the fact Linux can handle 32PB partitions on said SAN, and can easily generate them using LVM? Mirroring disks with LVM? Can do. Snapshots? Also easy.

Just because you don't know how to provide enterprise-level services on Linux doesn't mean it's not possible.

Oh, and the server box I have running at home is providing SSI using LDAP and Kerberos, and is also providing file storage to my hosts - for hardware costs only. The only thing I really need to do is SSH in once a day, and run 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade'. Usually results in no updates, but better safe than sorry :)

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[trifish]

Unreal Tournament 3 seems to be hardcoded to only install on Vista and below - it should be a laugh when Windows 7 comes out and nobody can install the game on it.

That's why Vista auto-detects failed installation and offers you to retry it in Compatible mode (which means that, in the future, Windows 7 will identify itself as Vista or XP as part of the same procedure).

You can also switch a file permanently to compatible mode in the exe file properties (in Windows XP too).

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

probably because his "small business" is sitting in the dorm room, taking bong hits, and masturbating to 2girls1cup.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[trifish]

Visual Studio development environment

Unless, umm, he set up the Express edition, which is completely free of charge (and no MSDN subscription is required).

I always run my keygens under VirtualPC

[Joce640k]

VirtualPC is the condom of the PC world.

Re:I always run my keygens under VirtualPC

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the pope doesn't run it then...

*or*

[raddan]

Do what I did and simply dump your entire Windows partition into a Parallels VM. I recently discovered that Parallels has a VM product for Linux, and I am running it as we speak on an Ubuntu box. 8.04 is not officially supported, but it seems to run fine. For me, my day job requires a UNIX-like machine, but my night classes often require a Windows machine (specifically, Visual Studio). I find it ironic that I've been moved to Linux *by necessity*, but people keep repeating the "Linux is not ready for the desktop" mantra. I didn't even *want* to use Linux (I prefer OpenBSD), but it fits, so I use it. I suppose if you need access to the new shiny, then go ahead and run a very expensive version of Windows for your machine, but XP works just fine for my purposes. Ubuntu has plenty of shiny for my own tastes.

Piece of Microsoft Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still a piece of crap inside. Removing some of the crap won't turn the rest into a gold nugget.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[CastrTroy]

Or any other edition. I personally find that the standard version provides more than enough features for most developers, and costs a lot less than the full MSDN, and has no recurring subscription costs. You could go all out and get Team System, but it's a lot cheaper to just use the standard version, and go with SVN for source control, and NUnit for unit testing. Team System costs 15 times as much as standard, yet offers only a minimal amount of functionality over what you could do with the standard version + add-ons. Many development shops I've been to don't have MSDN subscriptions for all their developers. And it seems like the ones who do have it seem to enjoy spending lots of money on useless stuff, like government and uber-huge corporations.

"lean, efficient, reliable 'power user' OS"

[Linus the Turbonerd]

But, but... isn't that what Linux is for?

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[superslacker87]

In Soviet Russia, Windows 7 identifies you!

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had an anti-virus package installed on my Windows machine since DOS, and have yet to get a virus.

I love comments like this. If you don't use any sort of AV software, how do you know you haven't gotten a virus? There are quite a few that you can get where you would never know about them unless you checked for them.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[drsmithy]

I enjoyed telling the survey lady when she called a few weeks after the event that I would buy 2k8 only because you can't buy 2k.

Which is a pretty dumb thing to say, given how much better use 2008 will make of any somewhat modern hardware than 2000 ever could.

Disenchanted with vista.

[seeker_1us]

"Disenchanted with Vista? Why not stop being Microsoft's bitch and move to Linux, *BSD, or Mac?

There, fixed that for you.

Stop with the elitism, okay?

[pandrijeczko]

Why do so many people have this innate need to be different from everyone else when it comes to computers & operating systems?

For gods sake, people, computers are nothing more than tools that are designed to get tasks done and provide amusement to you - nothing more than that. So go use whatever you need to use that best fits your needs, okay?

Personally, I use a bit of Linux and bit of XP and, combined, I can get a computer to do what I need it to do and as efficiently as I want to do it. Yes, Linux is great for some things and XP is great for others - so I don't need to give Vista a second thought and, even worse, ever even consider paying 30% over the odds for an Apple Mac purely because it looks pretty.

But most of the Vista people on Slashdot seem to constantly complain about it - which tells me that they've not made a considered choice before upgrading to it but have done so "on a whim" just to be the first person on their street to be using it.

And the people now bleating on about Server 2008 on the desktop are even worse, quite frankly...

Sorry, people, but life is far too short to worry about fashion statements. Yes, I'm a Linux geek and Open Source fanatic but even I know that THERE IS A REASON WHY SO MANY PEOPLE USE WINDOWS XP! It's because it works pretty well for what it is - SO WHY THE HELL CHANGE FROM IT?

Re:Stop with the elitism, okay?

[argent]

THERE IS A REASON WHY SO MANY PEOPLE USE WINDOWS XP!

Yeh, it's because Microsoft charged too much for Windows 2000. There's damn little difference between XP and 2000 under the hood: XP is more like "Windows 2000 Plus Pack".

The only reason for XP was marketing. Calling it a new OS and bundling an ugly theme and some third party software let them sell a lower priced "home" version with crippled networking and stronger copy protection.

The server line, 2003 and 2008, seem have less of the Windows XP taint, let alone the Vista infestation.

paying 30% over the odds for an Apple Mac purely because it looks pretty.

Life's too short for dual-booting. I'd rather have the UNIX operating system and consumer applications at the same time, thanks. Paying 40% more is cheaper than paying 100% more for a second computer.

Re:Stop with the elitism, okay?

[Deadplant]

THERE IS A REASON WHY SO MANY PEOPLE USE WINDOWS XP! It's because it works pretty well for what it is - SO WHY THE HELL CHANGE FROM IT?

Dude, we would stick with XP if we could.
The problem is that MS is dropping it and that means no more security patches.
It won't be safe to use it long after the security patches stop flowing.

Thus, if we want to run windows-only apps we have to choose a new MS windows version to install. We have tried vista and it was very unpleasant. We are now looking at server 2008 because it seems to have all the right features.
That's not hard to understand.

Re:Stop with the elitism, okay?

[gothzilla]

XP security patches don't stop till 2014. W2K security patches stop at the end of next year.

Re:Stop with the elitism, okay?

[pandrijeczko]

You have years before MS stop patching XP.

Someone, somewhere, will screw this up...

[zerofoo]

and put a rogue DHCP server on some poor bastard's network.

-ted

Re:Someone, somewhere, will screw this up...

[Blackknight]

DHCP and DNS services aren't default components and you have to start them up after they're installed manually any way.

But how many people really need them ?

[DrYak]

Anything by Adobe. The GIMP is not a valid Photoshop equivalent. Inkscape is not a valid Illustrator equivalent. Scribus is not a valid PageMaker equivalent.

On the other hand, how many people have an actual need for full fledged professional suites ?
If you are a professional photograph, a publisher, etc. I understand that you live and die by Photoshop & Illustrator.
But a big majority of the windows users who are complaining about the lack of adobe software on linux, mainly use it to quickly crop and remove red eyes from the pictures they took during their vacation.

Adobe's product are a huge overkill and too much expensive for what the average Joe is doing with them.
Of course the average Joe got them (illegaly) for free on some peer-2-peer system, so the price isn't really an issue for them.

What the average user mostly does with a computer is pretty much covered under linux (and some times even better, see Firefox).
That's why you start to see success with Linux on sub note-books like the Asus eeePC, etc.

Not everyone has tons of disposable money to throw on expensive toys. Thus pro-tools are an overkill, and similarly using Sever 2008 as a main OS on a workstation is just completely insane for anyone but the most hard-core gamers (who are also willing to spend several days tuning and "fiddle-farting" their OS around drivers and missing DLL problems to get their games working - making it as much easy to handle as the worst case scenario in Linux).

Re:But how many people really need them ?

[FishWithAHammer]

On the other hand, how many people have an actual need for full fledged professional suites ?
If you are a professional photograph, a publisher, etc. I understand that you live and die by Photoshop & Illustrator.
But a big majority of the windows users who are complaining about the lack of adobe software on linux, mainly use it to quickly crop and remove red eyes from the pictures they took during their vacation.

And they like how Photoshop works for that, so you're going to get a "fuck you" if you suggest that they give that up to use your OS of choice.

Adobe's product are a huge overkill and too much expensive for what the average Joe is doing with them.
Of course the average Joe got them (illegaly) for free on some peer-2-peer system, so the price isn't really an issue for them.

Ding ding ding! Linux isn't competing against software that costs money, at least on the home desktop. They're competing against pirated software.

What the average user mostly does with a computer is pretty much covered under linux (and some times even better, see Firefox).

But the interface is utterly asstastic compared to Windows or even OS X (and I hate OS X). It's borderline unusable for somebody who's not a guru and has grown up on Windows. I'm pretty knowledgeable about both Linux and Windows, and the weirdnesses of GNOME and KDE still leave me scratching my head.

That's why you start to see success with Linux on sub note-books like the Asus eeePC, etc.

The EEE and Linux came together because of cheaper licensing more than anything.

Not everyone has tons of disposable money to throw on expensive toys. Thus pro-tools are an overkill, and similarly using Sever 2008 as a main OS on a workstation is just completely insane for anyone but the most hard-core gamers (who are also willing to spend several days tuning and "fiddle-farting" their OS around drivers and missing DLL problems to get their games working - making it as much easy to handle as the worst case scenario in Linux).

Those games are less likely to work on Server 2008, so you're pretty much wrong right there (the Server editions have some fun issues with DirectX).

Also: people don't use professional-level tools because they're overkill--they use professional-level tools because they're much, much more pleasant to actually use. People will pay money for decent presentation and decent layout. It's one reason why people like me don't use Linux on the desktop.

Re:But how many people really need them ?

[DrYak]

Ding ding ding! Linux isn't competing against software that costs money, at least on the home desktop. They're competing against pirated software.

Except one of the two is legal whereas the other isn't. Currently companies are neglecting it but may end up chasing the little guys if they like it or push so much DRM and piracy prevention in their software that the user experience will degrade.

But the interface is utterly asstastic compared to Windows or even OS X (and I hate OS X). It's borderline unusable for somebody who's not a guru and has grown up on Windows. I'm pretty knowledgeable about both Linux and Windows, and the weirdnesses of GNOME and KDE still leave me scratching my head.

I don't know but I haven't much troubles with either. They don't seem much more alien than, for example, Vista's or OS X interface compared to Windows XP.

Also: people don't use professional-level tools because they're overkill--they use professional-level tools because they're much, much more pleasant to actually use. People will pay money for decent presentation and decent layout. It's one reason why people like me don't use Linux on the desktop.

Pay several hundreds of dollars ? because that's what it's going to cost for legit softwares.
People don't pay for decent presentation/layout, they just steal it (or have a friend lend them an install CD) because they currently can get away with it.

Re:But how many people really need them ?

[FishWithAHammer]

Currently companies are neglecting it but may end up chasing the little guys if they like it or push so much DRM and piracy prevention in their software that the user experience will degrade.

Blissfully wrong. In the home market, piracy is good for their business and they know it. Hell, look no further than Microsoft's DreamSpark initiative--giving away full versions of their development software, their Expression Studio stuff, and even Windows 2003 in an attempt to get people interested in their software. Because if people become used to it, they will want to continue using it in the workplace.

Microsoft likes when home users pirate Office, because it means that in a professional capacity they'll go "I need to write a document? Well, my boss better buy Office for me."

Adobe likes when home users pirate Photoshop, because it means that in a professional capacity they'll go "I need to do some graphics work? Well, my boss better buy Photoshop for me."

Pay several hundreds of dollars ? because that's what it's going to cost for legit softwares.

Nobody buys it. I have a legit copy of Adobe CS3 only because my university has a massive student discount.

People don't pay for decent presentation/layout, they just steal it (or have a friend lend them an install CD) because they currently can get away with it.

And that will not change anytime soon.

Besides, in a choice between The GIMP and paying for Photoshop--I'd pay for Photoshop. The GIMP is that shitty.

Re:But how many people really need them ?

[Max Littlemore]

I have read a few of your comments in this thread and you, sir, are an idiot

But the interface is utterly asstastic compared to Windows or even OS X (and I hate OS X). It's borderline unusable for somebody who's not a guru and has grown up on Windows. I'm pretty knowledgeable about both Linux and Windows, and the weirdnesses of GNOME and KDE still leave me scratching my head.

Every thing you have to say on this issue is from the point of view of a developer with an MSDN subscription and you use Windows flavour of the day as a benchmark for how a UI should look and feel. That means that any other OS is going to look weird. KDE3 defaults to be the most like windows, so you hate it less than other systems, but I bet OSX leaves you scratching your head too.

A lot of IT professionals I know see my notebook and say "wow, that looks great" because the layout is good, the presentation is good. Sure sometimes the defaults suck, but theming is a matter of downloading a theme an dragging it into the appearance settings and a lot of windows users I know are jealous that theming is easier to manage and more stable out of the box than on windows.

Of course that means, with a lot of stuffing around, you can make gnome look and feel very much like windows. So given your criteria, you are completely correct. It does take a lot of work to get a Linux desktop working.

Re:But how many people really need them ?

[FishWithAHammer]

The gnulot calling anyone an idiot? That's funny.

Yeah, I have an MSDN subscription. Big deal. That doesn't change the fact that I still probably do more *nix development than you do. I would love for Linux to get off its ass and stop sucking. It seems entirely uninterested in doing so.

I don't want themes. I don't want any of that shit. I want a desktop that acts intelligently and has applications with halfway decent HCI. On Linux? Not happening so far.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[jibjibjib]

A user could notice symptoms of a virus, such as extra processes running, excessive/unusual network and disk activity, spyware/adware toolbars, etc. An experienced user is likely to be running more secure software than most users, have a properly functioning firewall, and not do things such as downloading and running untrusted programs or opening suspicious email attachments. Also, it's possible that although the user doesn't have anti-virus software installed and running all the time, they might scan their hard drive and/or backups for viruses occasionally. Thus, even without AV software running in the background, it's very unlikely that an experienced user will get infected by a virus, and reasonably likely that they would notice if they did.

TV tuner card? Windows Live?

[argent]

The word is "workstation", not "playstation". If you want a "wintendo" you're not on the same page.

Re:TV tuner card? Windows Live?

[peppepz]

Why, there are many "professional" uses for a video capture device. Moreover, you might want to relax with your full-serious workstation after you've finished working with it - without having to change operating system. Add your little sister who breaks in your room wanting to chat with her friends, and the picture is complete :-) .

Re:TV tuner card? Windows Live?

[argent]

Why, there are many "professional" uses for a video capture device.

Indeed, and if you're one of the small number of professionals who need one you're probably not going to want Windows Server, but for most people that's hardly relevant.

It's not like people are going to do this routinely for home computers, anyway, given the price of Windows Server.

Add your little sister who breaks in your room wanting to chat with her friends [...]

My little brother has his own Vista PC... I know, because I helped him select it... and lives halfway around the world from me. My daughter has her own Mac mini... and her own apartment.

Amusing...

[JerkBoB]

I understand why some people might stick to XP or Vista for their desktop OS (games, really) instead of something like Ubuntu. I am totally baffled by these people who are so insistent on using the Windows hammer that they'd waste time and effort on forcing a server OS to (badly) resemble a desktop OS.

Even the title (... "workstation" ...) alludes to the fact that the end result isn't really suitable for home users. OK, so it's Windows for Power Users? What's the point? I'm really not trying to be inflammatory... I'm just perplexed. What does a windows Power User do/need that a normal user doesn't?

I'm honestly trying to understand why anyone would go through all the time and trouble to lobotomize Windows Server just to avoid using Vista, other than refusing to learn/use Linux. If you're savvy enough to jump through all of those hoops, why not use a real Power User OS? It's not even much of a learning curve anymore.

Meh. Get off my lawn, etc.

So true! I used Windows 2k8 beta and Vista.

[Doug52392]

I had Windows Server 2008 betas installed on my PC alongside Linux and Windows Vista. One thing that always amazed me is that Server 2008, even though it was still a beta at the time, ran much better than Windows Vista, had no annoying popups, consistently was stable, etc.

Even with Active Directory Domain Services and all the Web services enabled, turning Windows 2008 into a domain controller, I STILL saw better performance.

I believe people did this for Windows Server 2003 as well, I remember seeing forum posts about Windows 2003 being the BEST gaming OS a few years back.

Mod as Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

How you get +5 Interesting is beyond me. Vista 64-bit with 1GB of RAM runs like XP 32-bit with 512 RAM used to. That's comparing default install to default install.

I have Vista Ultimate 64-bit with 8GB of RAM and its damn fast compared to my old system (4GB RAM on XP Professional 64-bit).

Vista, like all Windows versions, is not as fast as Linux on the comparable hardware usually. There is a point however when Linux can only get so fast and Windows can "catch up" I suppose the phrase would be.

Vista is a piggy of an OS. Just like every other Windows version before it. If you feed it though you'll be fine.

Until Linux can run the majority of games on the 'highest' settings, there will be a reason to use Windows. Hell, that's the only reason to use Windows. And before the obvious attack comes, you are wrong. Vista with all the candy turned on doesn't impact the performance of a game.

Vista has this nice thing where it stops that stuff if you are playing a game or full screen movie (at least in Windows Media Player). Same is true for their animated backgrounds, they stop when you're doing something intensive like a game.

Now if you excuse me, I have a Debian install to get working on an Inspiron 1501. So far that's the one computer that Windows seems easier to install and get working on than Linux!

Why the dichotomy?

[Peaker]

The workloads on a "server" and "workstation" are different - but why does that mean we need different OS flavors for it?

Why can't the scheduler and memory manager treat server processes one way, and GUI applications another way?

What's the huge difference, other than some parameter tuning?

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually hate "works for me" messages but I don't see the big vista woes in terms of speed or stability that get posted like this!

I run it at home and in the office we've got quite a few installations and no speed issues or otherwise. Snappy all the time, more stable hibernate/suspend on laptops.

I tend to think blaming the os is really just a red herring for a lot of issues I see, maybe even these in this article. I find no speed difference in my development work at all, but I'm using java/eclipse/maven setups.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Adelle]

Reminds me of "This program cannot be installed on Windows NT 4.0 unless service pack 2 has been installed", after installing service pack 3. Who hires these people?!

Silly

[ilitirit]

This is pointless. It requires much less effort to tweak Vista so that it runs faster than XP than to tweak Server 2008 that it runs just as fast as XP. Any windows geek would have been able to tell you that. I'm running XP Pro at work and Vista Ultimate with at home and my Vista machine is definitely snappier. It did take me a few days to get it to that state though, mostly because of research.

Re:Silly

[ivan256]

It requires even less effort to install a hacked MacOS 10.5 on your PC than it does to tweak vista.

Really.

Re:Silly

[ilitirit]

No, it doesn't. And when you do get it running, the performance is less than spectacular, depending on your hardware configuration.

Contrary to popular belief, OS X doesn't simply "just work". In fact, I have to buy a new piece of hardware just to get it to install (unsupported microcontroller).

Furthermore, Visual Studio does not run on OS X.

Re:Silly

[ivan256]

If you have hardware that is on the osx86 hardware compatibility list, it really does simply "just work". As in, pop in the DVD, click through the installer, wait 5 minutes for files to copy, reboot. Works.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Contrary to popular belief", 'cause as far as I'm aware popular belief is that it's a lot more difficult than that.

Furthermore, Visual Studio does not run on OS X.

The software you develop in Visual Studio probably only runs on Windows anyway. You should be writing cross-platform software.

And IDEs suck anyway. Having the Best IDE doesn't really fix that.

This is true about switching to 2003

[nbucking]

I work with Win Serv 2003 on a daily basis as well as XP on my work machine. Let me tell you Server 2003 is much better than XP. This fact has probably been true since NT was first created. Why do you think MS switched from using the DOS (win 95, win 98, and ME) to NT kernel? They figured out that what is being used for the server side is best. They probably put several times more testing time into their server software. Nothing on the server software should even remotely close to a beta version. It will be tried and true. On the other hand we have the commercial side users. They know the normal user is a good test bed for flaws in the system. They take this research and place it in the Server architecture. Also, they know normal users are attracted to shiny things and love advertisements. Some power users (linux geeks) will take the commercial software and make it a model hate Microsoft. This is alright and it is a show of how open source is different from closed source. Open source is much quicker to evolve due to the direct communication with average user. Closed source relies on limited but still effective communication. They are both the same but open is faster to change than closed. But because of the lack of active advertising and 'shiny stuff' linux may never build a large average user group. In conclusion, yes Microsoft is going to use only the best code for their Server software and perhaps the untested software is for us mice.

Re:This is true about switching to 2003

[jamie(really)]

Windows XP 64 is just Windows Server 2003, btw.

Same kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Vista (in SP1 form) is the Windows Server 2008 kernel. Exactly the same one.

just one problem

[Deadplant]

The $1500 price tag for server 2008 is a bit of a hurdle...

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I'm feeding the troll here, but the community support around Ubuntu makes answering questions or solving problems much easier than "a distro from people with an actual clue." I also run some BSD flavors, but they probably have no clue how to run a proper server os either.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[b0bby]

I haven't ever installed anti-virus on my home machines either; every 6 months or a year I'll scan using one of the online scanners. So far, nada. If you're not some dumb kid clicking on everything shiny, there's really not much chance of getting a virus/spyware. My dumb kids are using Linux, locked down to about 10 sites, so they haven't got any malware either ;)

Fun, not in my office.

[Anonymous Coward]

Server OS's are awesome as workstations because as a workstation why do you need sound, games, etc. As an employer you wouldn't want people to be able to have fun at the office, they have to work.

Personally, I find this to be a major problem with CentOS, I know that if I was an employe with it I would just play FreeCol all day.

"best McDonald's sandwich ever"

[JudgeFurious]

Arch Deluxe? I don't think so.

The simple fact is that the only sandwich that McDonalds has ever excelled at is the humble dollar menu double cheeseburger. It's perfect (for what it is) in every way. With a simple set of ingredients and without any attempt at all to be healthy it's the high-water mark of McDonalds food. All of their other sandwiches are in some way flawed.

The Big Mac has shrunk to the point of being insulting. At the rate their going it will be a White Castle in about ten years. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese is usually a dry, tasteless experience. It doesn't work if it's not right off the grill. All of their assorted chicken sandwiches taste like cardboard.

McDonalds makes these stupid decisions because they try to wring another penny or two per sandwich or because they get too ambitious for their own good and try to take things "upscale" or make them healthy. Those are both bad ideas. McDonalds is for kids and it's for packing your arteries with processed cheese slices and cholesteral. It's the summit of junk food and that's all they should even try to do.

If you find yourself at a McDonalds go order a couple of their $1 double cheeseburgers. It's what you're supposed to do at McDonalds. What kind of morons go to McDonalds to get healthy food?

Re:"best McDonald's sandwich ever"

[Anonymous Coward]

Has McDonalds really shrunk their burgers? Or is it that every other fast food place now makes huge 1/2 pound burgers for greater appeal to the morbidly obese subhuman fastfood addicts?

Remember that the "Quarter Pounder" used to be the big burger at McDs.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[dotancohen]

The experience is definitely not a simple "setup windows, modify windows, use as normal" one. Most of the random things that screw up are fixable, but just too much of a pain in the ass and ultimately a waste of time.

So basically, Windows is where Linux was before Ubuntu came along?

Mod parent incorrect

[tpz]

As long as the GP is developing software that can run on Windows Server 2008, and is testing his development work on that machine, what he is doing is most definitely covered by the license.

Re:Mod parent incorrect

[zonky]

Not true. MSDN licensing specifically excludes non-development work, i.e, using Corporate email on a O/S licensed under MSDN.

Re:Mod parent incorrect

[HornWumpus]

Have they ever enforced it?

MS knows what's up. There is no way in hell they will mess with developers that spend that kind of money on yearly subscriptions.

MSDN enterprise is a license to install and use all MS software pretty much anyplace the subscriber personally will be using it.

The fact you pay that kind of money to stay current, makes EVERYTHING you do testing or development as far as they are concerned.

You aren't using corporate e-mail with your MSDN licensed OS. You are doing extended testing of interoperability with corporate systems on a new OS you are simultaneously testing and developing software for. This is still true when the OS is four years old, then you are testing the newest patches.

Re:Mod parent incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it does, and I doubt it gets as specific as you say (it did say that you can only use it for "development", but doesn't get much more detailed than that unless it has been changed recently), any such clauses would fall down so fast in a court case that it would make your head spin.

I'm with HornWumpus on this one.

Re:Mod parent incorrect

[tpz]

PS - #24222401 is me, but I had forgotten to log in from work. ;)

That's still incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista was released with Kernel 6.0.6000
Windows Server 2008 was Released with 6.0.6001
Vista SP1 brought Vista up to the same kernel 2008 was released with, 6.0.6001

Windows Server 2003 has always been 5.2.3790
Windows XP was Kernel 5.1.2600
Windows 2000 was Kernel 5.0

Vista has never had the same kernel as Windows 2003.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Fallingcow]

If you're behind a router that's not forwarding ports to your machine (most home users with DSL or Cable these days, if they have more than one computer) then 99.999% of those "infect you the second you connect to the 'net" viruses will be foiled.

A few years ago, when I moved out of my parents' house, I took my router with me and plugged my mom's machine straight in to their provider's modem--I didn't really think about it, and I hadn't installed AV software on any of the computers in the house (all but one of them being mine). The next day I got a phone call. That router had been stopping all of the non-user-initiated viruses.

If I had to choose between a router or some AV software, I'd pick the router every single time.

Re:One of the first things in this server 08 websi

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "disabled enhanced IE security" which is an additional layer designed for servers which makes common deskop tasks like downloading a file an executing it very difficult on the server. This makes sense since you shouldn't be downloading and executing stuff on a server unless you've explicitly added the site to the safe zone. However, if you use Win2K8 as a desktop it's just not usable (even if it is more secure) so there's an option to disable it. This makes IE just as secure as default IE on Vista (which, FWIW, has a very good track record).

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[FishWithAHammer]

Not trolling. Ubuntu Server sucks. Ubuntu's the best Linux has on the desktop (although Debian packages are starting to make my eye twitch--why are there 15 different packages, all necessary for most software, in order to install Mono?), but on a server? You're being silly. Things change far, far too fast in the Ubuntu repos for that to be a smart idea.

Solaris, RHEL, SLES--those are some decent, supported *nix server OSes. Ubuntu? LOL, no, sorry. BSD would be great if you can find some corporate-level support. I don't really know of anyone who does it though.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[FishWithAHammer]

I was thinking about the more basic stuff, though. Like...err...a mail server that's worth using. There's nothing that steps up to Exchange in the OSS world. There's also software like SharePoint whose functionality doesn't really even exist in the OSS world.

For, say, high-load web apps (not written in ASP.NET, of course, although Mono's ASP.NET implementation is getting good), Linux makes a lot of sense. But for internal apps? Why make life harder on yourself?

The dept name is more apt

[Anonymous Coward]

Guerilla? No! Active-Vista

No-active vista

activista!

Activist where i come from ;-)

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Lord Apathy]

This is not the issue I had with ClamAV. I think its close to the perfect AV for me. What I like the most is it doesn't hang around in the background soaking up cpu resources by checking everything I load into memory.

When I download something or have something I don't trust, I right click on it and scan it. I have it scheduled to scan the entire system at night to pick up anything I missed. It mails me a nice report that I read through in the morning.

Of course I'm much more careful of what I download and what sites I visit so virus and other shit have really never been an issue with me. The last virus that infected my primary system was back on my Amiga 500. I keep a sandbox PC around with a base load to test shit I really don't trust.

It's the Price, Stupid...

[Cato]

I can't believe this entire thread doesn't mention the price of Windows Server 2008 - list price is $999 (see http://4sysops.com/archives/windows-server-2008-prices/) and you can get it in the UK for equivalent of about $850 US.

If you are in a corporate, maybe you can get it for free, but it assumes you can install whatever you want, rather than having to run your standard corporate XP or Vista - so that's already a small subset of most corporate IT users, and only applies to people who are in IT and have some latitude. If you're an independent developer you can get it from MSDN.

For home use, your options are to pirate it from somewhere with the obvious risks, or to pay $850!

XP OEM version is about $110, and Ubuntu is $0. However good Server 2008 may be, I really don't think it's worth an extra $700 - go buy a low-end PC or laptop, or an eee PC instead.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke" - McRosoft

[Locutus]

This is great, a thread about McDonalds food within a topic on Microsoft Windows. Mediocrity abounds, how appropriate is that. LoL.

LoB

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Lord Apathy]

There are other ways to get around this too. I've seen compatibility mode work sometimes for this. Just tell the installer that you are installing in vista or xp. This is one of the few times I've actually had compatibility mode ever do something useful.

Another is to use something like winrar and crack the install open and lay it out. Most of the time you can find a second install program inside the first that by passes these checks.

Not only Windows fanboys hate Gnome/KDE

[Morgaine]

> I'm pretty knowledgeable about both Linux and Windows, and the weirdnesses of GNOME and KDE still leave me scratching my head.

Well your prior knowledge of Windows leaves you open to accusations of prior mind-shaping, by those who would dispute what you say.

That doesn't apply to me though.

In my case, I'm a 100% Unix/Linux person and I've never used Adobe Photoshop nor MS office apps nor any other such "standards", and yet the wierdness/dumbness/unergonomics of both Gnome and KDE apps leave me speechless, and annoyed. They're both so appallingly bad that I consider them as standing between me and my ability to use my machines, instead of helping. As a result, I frequently remove the bulk of their bloated and unnecessary layers from at least half the distros I use, and run with just a window manager plus some embellishments. I *want* to use higher level apps, but they need to be structured logically and consistently.

Seriously, the bulk of both Gnome and KDE is a disaster, and unergonomic to the extreme. It's as if the apps had been sent to a usability testing center, and then the worst possible app UIs chosen. FFS, it's just appalling. (And that's coming from a complete FOSS fan since I use nothing else, so don't bother with shill theories.)

I know that it's part and parcel of the FOSS environment (which I 100% use, endorse, and support) that developers scratch their own itch rather than working to requirements, but that's no excuse for developing atrociously unusable UIs. The mind just boggles.

I'm not sure where FOSS UIs are going, but I do know that things are seriously out of whack in this area. The situation is far beyond just "poor". I don't know of a solution currently.

Sadly, it's not possible to contribute to FOSS projects from a usability angle, as they're largely ruled by alpha-male elites and a fanboy entourage that dismisses any view counter to theirs.

On the positive side, I *CAN* do everything I want with these almost-unusable apps ... but why is such UI suffering necessary?

Re:Not only Windows fanboys hate Gnome/KDE

[FishWithAHammer]

Well put; this would be a lot of why I avoid Linux on the desktop these days. The gnulot who replied after you is hilarious though.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[aronschatz]

Wow, I've seen trolls, but this takes the cake.

Do you work for Microsoft?

Internal Mail apps? And you think Exchange is EASY to administer?

I've seen many people use qmail with a web setup component that is easy to use... Much easier than trying to fix a broken mailstore on Exchange.

Plus, you don't pay anything for it past the cost of learning and setting it up.

I've moved on from Microsoft software, maybe you should look at what you are bashing and give it a shot.

Microsoft Better Smarten Up

[Austin Milbarge]

In my opinion, XP was their best system to date. At least for a desktop. With Vista they went backwards. I am very surprised they allowed this crappy OS to remain like this. There are alternative systems slowly but surely getting better each passing day. If Microsoft isn't careful to produce a much better system soon, people are going to start looking elseware. Although Microsoft has a monopoly of sorts on desktop software, they should never underestimate people's impatience. No one ever thought IndyMac, Fannie May and Freddie Mac would fail.

The same thing happens...

[WheelDweller]

[no slowdowns, fewer reboots, etc] when I stop using Windows at all, and run Ubuntu Linux.

I'm sorry, guys- I'm not trolling here. It's a pretty simple issue. No more defrags. No more viruses. When something breaks, it's because it's *broken* not because I haven't paid enough to the right people. It has OpenOffice and Firefox. It runs on 10 year old hardware and 27 other platforms than x86.

It's all-gui. It's simple. It's even sexy. So other than no 'Halo 3' or Outlook, why on Earth would someone PAY for something that's being given away for free?

Reminds Me of NT 4

[Bob9113]

Heh - I remember back in my Windows lUser days all my geek friends and I switching over from Windows 95/98 to NT 4, and what a huge boost in performance we got.

Windows isn't that bad as operating systems go, if you just remove most of it. :)

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[FishWithAHammer]

Wow, I've seen trolls, but this takes the cake.

Somebody disagrees with you, so they're trolling? Interesting.

Internal Mail apps? And you think Exchange is EASY to administer?

I haven't seen a better mail/calendaring solution out there. Zimbra is unpleasant at best.

Plus, you don't pay anything for it past the cost of learning and setting it up.

"Free software is only free if your time has no value."

I've moved on from Microsoft software, maybe you should look at what you are bashing and give it a shot.

Right, because I don't write software that targets Linux all the time. 'Course not. None of it, ever.

(Hint: that would be sarcasm. I write a lot of software that targets Solaris/BSD/Linux. I've used it extensively both as a desktop and a server. I'd rather a Windows server any day for anything except, as I said, production use of a service or web app or the like.)

Yes, Ubuntu is not the only Linux distro.

[MsGeek]

Yes, I know. But right now the Ubuntu variants are the easiest distro for the Great Unwashed to use. And whatever you need on top of the original install is just a few clicks in Synaptic away.

Randall C. Kennedy

[Anonymous Coward]

That was an eyeball-gouging read. Say "Workstation" 2008 a few more times so I can have this bothersome other eye out and be done with it.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

The OS portion of an MSDN subscription is for test systems/virtual machines only. If you have the MSDN Operating Systems subscription you are not licensed to use these copies of Windows for production workstations, servers, etc. (including developer systems).

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[kialara]

Why not do something like this in your cron.daily:

apt-get update -qq
apt-get -s -y -qq -u upgrade | grep Conf | cut -d" " -f 2,3,4 | sort
apt-get autoclean -qq

I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but it was an easy hack.

It'll email the root user, and if you have aliases set up, send it to you if there are updates without actually performing any.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[__aaltii7299]

Yep you can get Microsoft Home Server 2008 for about $150 on NewEgg, so it isn't expensive. I personally use XP Pro 64 bit and wish I'd known about this solution.

WinXP

[Billly Gates]

Alot cheaper and its legal to use a copy of XP OEM edition if you have the OEM edition of Vista.

Its alot cheaper and screams with only 1 gig of ram. ITs much faster and quicker and no compatiblity problems at all and no ugly black gui.

Insane Code from Control Freaks.

[Anonymous Coward]

A "server OS" that forces installation of a browser with cripple code instead of just letting the user do without. Only someone deeply into M$ thinking could see Windows lack of modularity as normal. Modularity would give you choices and cost M$ control, oh noes!

Windows 2008 is great, but LEAN it is not

[sheldon]

Disenchanted with Vista? Why not convert Windows Server 2008 into the lean, efficient, reliable 'power user' OS that Windows should be?,/blockquote>

I got a chuckle out of that. Windows Server 2008 has Vista's hardware requirements. Ok, it doesn't have the graphics stuff, but you do know you can turn that off on Vista, right?

But memory and disk usage are nearly identical...

I run Vista 64-bit at home, along with a Windows 2008 64-bit server experimenting with hyper-V. I think both are great, but I'd not waste my time trying to use server as my desktop. Not worth it when Vista works so well.

Wasn't this how Windows 2000 got started?

[elrous0]

IIRC, Windows 2000 got "discovered" because people were so frustrated with ME. I believe 2000 was never actually intended for consumers (it was supposed to be a successor to NT) but was so popular over the clunky Windows ME that people began to turn to it instead (leading to it being the basis for XP).

Re:Wasn't this how Windows 2000 got started?

[Keen Anthony]

Yes and no. It all started with NT 3.51. Windows 3.11 users like myself installed NT for better performance. People did the same with NT 4.0 vs '95/'98.

I believe the conventional wisdom is that ME was just a last opportunity to make a buck on the legacy-focused '98 crowd. The intention was for us all to go towards one of two XP systems based on Windows 2000. I know I bought ME the day it released (I collected OSen back then), and even I looked at my fresh desktop and wondered why the hell I bought this. :D

just put vista on my Pent M 1.73mhz

[jaypaulw]

I have 1.25gb of ram. It's a secondary machine, I just wanted to begin playing with the Vista. I think it's fine at SP1. Honestly if I were microsoft I'd just relaunch the software with a different name and theme and the reception would be much better now that there is better driver support and many of the bugs have been worked out.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[Howitzer86]

Hmm, sounds like Linux.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have all that on vista, without sucking linus' cock. Thanks though.

Runs great even on old hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an old 1.3Ghz machine with 512MB of RAM. For sh*ts and giggles I installed Windows 2008 "workstation" on it and to my shocked surprise, it runs great, much better than I could have dreamed with Vista.

I'm not saying I have all the fancy desktop effects running on it, but even when I disabled everything I could with Vista, that machine was next to useless, it was so sluggish.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke" - McRosoft

[maglor_83]

Yeah I was expecting an off topic mod, but then ya never really can rely on moderators.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke" - McRosoft

[TheGeneration]

I'ld like a Big Mac,
      Mc DLT,
      A Quarter-Pounder with some cheese,
      Filet-O-Fish,
      A Hamburger,
      A Cheeseburger,
      A Happy Meal.

      Mc Nuggets,
      Tasty Golden French Fries,
      Regular or Larger Size,
      And Salads: Chef or Garden,
      Or a Chicken Salad Oriental.

      Big Big Breakfast,
      Egg McMuffin,
      Hot Hot Cakes,
      and Sausage.

      Maybe Biscuits,
      Bacon, Egg and Cheese,
      A Sausage,
      Danish,
      Hash Browns too.

      And for Desert
        Hot Apple Pies,
      And Sundays
        three varieties,
      A Soft Server Cone,
        3 kinds of shakes,
      And Chocolatey Chip Cookies.

      And to drink a Coca-Cola,
        Diet Coke, and Orange Drink,
      A Sprite and Coffee, Decaf too,
        A lowfat milk, also an Orange Juice.

      I love McDonalds Good Time Great Taste,
        and I get this all at one place...

      The Good time,
        great taste,
      Of Mc Donalds.

Re:Vista... Microsoft's "New Coke" - McRosoft

[56ksucks]

Man, I remember that. And the little square record they gave you with the song on it. I would love it if they would bring the danish back.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[Anonymous Coward]

But is says this on the MS licensing page
MSDN Subscription Licensing
MSDN Subscriptions are licensed to individuals who may install the provided software without restriction. Software provided through MSDN Subscriptions is licensed for design, development, test and demonstration of your applications. MSDN Premium subscribers may also use the 2007 Microsoft Office system* for any use.
Email sounds legit.

Using it right now

[bigplrbear]

This thing is FAST. I'm running it on this system-

AMD sempron 3400+ @ 2.0ghz
512Mb of RAM
ATI radeon xpress 200 w/ 64Mb of shared memory

I have the 'desktop experience' thing enabled, as well as wireless networking. I have Aero and flip3d enabled, and I'm currently running Firefox 3 and iTunes. It runs about the same that Ubuntu 8.04 does with Compiz enabled.

Being a Linux fanboy, I'm really impressed. If win 7 is going to have a core based off of server '08, this very well may NOT be the year of the Linux desktop

Isn't Win2008 Vista+1?

[lpq]

So what from Windows Vista(2006) isn't in Windows2008? The big problem with Vista was all the drivers that were degraded in order to downgrade AV content at some future point when everyone has switched to BluRay and DVD's are no longer a viable option. That and an abusive security model.

So is it the case that these problems haven't gone into the code base for future Windows releases?

Is Win2008 Direct10.X based for game support?

Re: 2008 - Vista without the suck

[ibsteve2u]

Didn't slashdot just run an entry regarding Microsoft looking for catchier advertising? "2008 is Vista without the suck" may give you a shot at MSOFT VP of Sales if Ballmer sees it.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[tgd]

Now I'm sure you paid for that 2008 server license, but in case you didn't, you could just steal the commercial versions of the anti-virus tools, also.

Re:come on this is not remotely affordable for mos

[tgd]

Microsoft has draconian licensing around their web server edition. You're definitely violating the license to convert it to a workstation.

If you're going to violate the license and effectively steal anyway, why not just grab the whole thing off a torrent? You can't half-violate a license -- either you're legal or you're not. It seems pretty dumb to spend $350 and still be "not-legal".

Windows 2008 Workstation Converter

[christefano]

The "Windows 2008 Workstation Converter" utility can be found at http://serv08convert.hirez.info/Serv08Convert10.zip (11.2MB).

This isn't new

[christefano]

http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2008/02/11/using-windows-server-2008-as-a-super-desktop-os.aspx

Perhaps you should list them all?

[geekoid]

Except I number them as they were actually released:
1 Suck
2 Suck
  3.1 Sucked less
3.11 same suck with network
95 non sensible interface that we are still stuck with..and suck
98 performance improvement from 95, marginally less sucl
98SE much less suck then 98, nearly reliable for 24 hours.
MS BOB - BWAHAhahhaha It sucked so bad, it blows.
2000 - Incredible less Suck, and stable.(I still use it)
XP - performance hog at release, first stage in embedded DRM - da suck
Vista - Still stuck with a non-sensible interface made even wors, random stuff moved, annoying as hell, and still has serious performance issues.

Re:I've done this. I switched back to Vista.

[EvanED]

I am pushing the terms of the license, but it isn't outright pirated. (Well, according to that recent Blizzard ruling, it is actually pirated, but I'm hoping that ruling is overturned.)