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Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked
An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"
Pull the plug!
Seriously.... they claimed all this same stuff for vista. and we all found out they were full of crap.
7 might be better than vista. but i still dont believe it's the fastest ever or any of their other bs.
This isn't news. it's an ad.
> fastest version of Windows to shut down,
Was that ever a problem? start shut down, and turn out the lights, It will be down when you come back in the morning.
How about boot up time?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
From installation to wipe in an average of ten days. A pioneering achievement.
As for the rest of this prerelease hype, I'll believe it when I see it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Hmph.. No comments that even remotely imply having RTFA'd, but sure enough there's an "astroturfing"-tag. Classy..
Did they run out of thing to be proud of?
I sure wouldn't be someone to boast about how fast my OS can shut itself down i'd find something that people actually cares and wait for: booting
When i shut down my computer, i'm certainly not looking at it and even less timing how long it takes for it to be completely off...
"'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.'"
So it's Snow Leopard?
Linux never had anything from fear from Windows 7. It's well past Windows in terms of usability and elegance. All Linux needs now is more high quality applications.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Just FYI-- the claims of better gaming performance from 7 than Vista or XP have not materialized (not on my machine at least). It's just as slow as Vista.
That said, it's still worth having (like Vista) with UAC turned off, simply because the aggressive prefetching loads frequently used programs into RAM. Stuff opens faster.
but it's not bad...It's not great, but it's not bad. It's an improvement over Vista, but it's not as intuitive as XP was. I'm happier with my OS X machine, but that's just my personal preference. I can see where they've tried to reduce some of the more egregious dumbassery that Vista introduced, but in a lot of ways, for the average end user, it really is just a Service Pack for Vista, with some bells and whistles and cleaning up. It's what Vista likely should have been. YMMV.
"split the clouds and divide the sea and show those evil guys how nasty the Tiki gods can be."
FTFA: "Importantly, it won't require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded, partially because the hardware has caught up"
Yes, but how does it do on my old hardware that struggled with Vista in the first place? I know Mac OS 10.1 > 10.2 > 10.3 > 10.4 gave me better performance on the same hardware. It wasn't until I moved to Leopard that I REALLY noticed my PowerBook 1Ghz PPC chip was at it's limit.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
They can pry my Ubuntu from my warm sweaty palms!
What in a OS could be taking up 16GB for a minimal install?
Excellent.
When Microsoft turn Windows into OSX then all the businesses will run the the next best alternative to avoid it, Linux.
Then they will all pay me licensing fees. (channelling Darl Mcbride)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No, you still cannot copy it.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Microsoft should give Vista users a free upgrade to Windows 7. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't work well with XP, because the drivers are unstable. So I'm stuck using Vista, which is a huge beast, slow, and shitty. Now that Windows 7 is coming out, I would love to use that instead, but I get stomach pains when I think about handing my hard earned money to get what Vista SHOULD have been. Now I wait for the /. crowd to flame me to death me for using windows.
Exactly. And this is where 7 wins. It "FEELS" extremely quick, because it responds to user input better. If you need to take a minor throughput hit for that, so be it. Most people multitask these days anyway - some fractional of a percentage point difference in throughput loss means jack shit if you can actually use the computer while its doing stuff in the background...
I've been running the RC since it came out, no way I'm going back to XP or Vista for Windows stuff.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The stuff you can't see with the benchmarks, that people actually notice and care about in reality. Like UI responsiveness. Seriously, the RC is still available, go download it and check it out rather than speculating wildly.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Uh huh...and pull this leg, it plays jingle bells! Seriously, how many times have you had to go CLI in the past month? The past week? Hell most Mac and Windows users don't even know there IS a CLI interface, and they sure as hell don't want to be using it!
Look, I'll be the first to admit that Linux rocks on servers. It is rock solid, secure, a real tank of an OS. But we are talking Windows 7 here, which is most definitely NOT targeted at servers. It is targeted at home users. Home users, I might add, who often can't even find their way around control panel without someone holding their hand. Windows is quite good at that BTW. But Linux? You better be bestest friends with Mr. CLI if you want to play in that sandbox. It seems like every time there is an update something breaks and requires CLI. Sound broke? Ooops..CLI. Monitor isn't showing the right resolution? CLI baby. Which you can understand as the big money being spent on Linux is by the likes of IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and it is all going to server support. And server admins live and die CLI and hate GUIs, as they just suck precious resources.
I know this will get me modded to hell, and I don't care. Being a fanboy is one thing, being delusional is another. I can make an example that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Linux isn't ready for home users. Ready? Remove Bash. That's right, no Bash, no Korn, no Bourne, no shells of ANY kind. Do that with a fresh install and see if it will run six months, with allowing updates, without any access to CLI. But I bet not a single Linux user would dare to do that. Because they know without CLI they are boned. But Windows home users will NEVER use CLI. Let me repeat that: Windows home users will NEVER EVER use CLI. In fact most power users don't care for it either. They don't like it, don't want it, and if you make them use CLI you might as well say "please have someone go install Windows for you" because that is EXACTLY what will happen. I truly hope that a day comes when you can actually remove CLI from Linux and still have a usable machine, but I won't hold my breath.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's well past Windows in terms of usability and elegance
Get off my lawn. You were referring to OSX in that sentence... right? Or was this a joke/troll that was lost on me? Ok I'll bite:
What I have to point here is much to the disdain of a acute microsoftus haterii patient, we all know Linux is not elegant or stunningly usable by any reasonable and pertinent definition. Maybe you were more impressed with wobbly windows than most of us, but while there is an outstanding choice to customize and make it beautiful it just not pretty out of the box. I have yet to see a elegant Linux distribution that doesn't have amateurish desktop and default themes. Don't get me started on the ugly fonts. Multimedia is still broken on Linux. Usability is a very mixed bag, but I will concede that is getting very good.
I'm using Win7 RC to write this, which has been my main desktop OS when I'm not in a bash shell.
Linux is the far superior workhorse, OSX and Windows are better show ponies, don't get the them confused. Mod me down for saying it I don't care.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
"Remove Bash. That's right, no Bash, no Korn, no Bourne, no shells of ANY kind. Do that with a fresh install and see if it will run six months, with allowing updates, without any access to CLI."
That's an absurd thing to say and betrays your ignorance here. The shell is an integral part of a Unix system. If you remove /bin/sh, the system will not even boot. Any Unix system will be this way, including OS X, because this specific interpreted language is part of what makes Unix Unix.
As far as not using the shell for day-to-day tasks, you can do that with Linux now. Ubuntu has all those point-and-click controls you love, and you're free to use them instead of the shell if you like. You'll get things done more slowly, because GUI configs suck, but that's your choice.
What may make you believe it's impossible to go without using a shell in Linux is the fact that Linux people tend to suggest typing shell commands when people ask how to fix problems on a forum. This is because the shell is the best, fastest way to fix problems in Linux, even when other options are available, and we won't suggest an inferior solution unless pressed for it.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
It's no longer 2002. Install Ubuntu and you will NEVER have to use the CLI. That's right. NEVER. I like it because you can do some neat things with it, but then I use CLI in windows too. But is it required for normal operation? No. It's not.
Do I think Linux is retard-friendly on the level of windows? No. But It's come a long way. And the old CLI complaint has officially died. Buried next to driver support qq and native-app woes.
Don't like? Fine. But leave your FUD at the door please.
Linux is anything from a little single shot Derringer to a 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling gun at 4200 rounds per minute.
OSX is clearly stamped down the side "Desert Eagle point five oh"
And Windows has "'Replica' written down the side"
--
BMO
to come back to your laptop after a few hours, which you thought was off or on standby, only to find it warm and with 8% battery remaining, displaying an unresponsive Windows desktop?
I find it's less about superiority of the shell when I suggest a solution. Saying "Open the terminal and type..." is a lot easier than "See that thing there? Click on that, and then in the menu find..."
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
That's a good point, but I consider the ability to easily communicate shell-based directions to be a legitimate shell advantage. After all, what you're basically doing when you say that is giving the user a script -- even if it's a script written with the human as a preprocessor since you didn't have enough info to actually write it out yourself :)
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Go play with Cocoa / Xcode / Interface builder, and you'll get a bit of an idea as to why Linux is even now, still trying to catch up to NextSTEP 1991.
This is why there is a lack of high quality applications.
Don't get me wrong, Linux is great and I'm trying to get into OpenStep development myself (so i can do OS/X -> Free unix cross platform application development), but the state and lack of standardization on toolkits on Linux is quite apparent.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I'm for _anything_ that gets more people to stop using IE6. :)
I'm one of those with double height taskbars in windows classic mode. I find it faster to be able to directly click on a taskbar item to select any of the 30+ windows open, than to click one of 6 items, then click again to select one of 5 items. I don't care how cluttered or messy it makes it look.
I've used KDE before and the problem with KDE was (is?) the sort order is wrong when you have a double/multi height taskbar - the items are organized from top to bottom then only left to right. This is bad because if one item is removed, everything to the right of it gets shuffled up or down. So you lose track of where stuff is. Windows does it right - right to left then only top to bottom. Perhaps I should put the taskbar on the side to sidestep the problem.
The other problem with KDE is "everything" is named starting with a "K" which makes it harder to scan to find stuff quickly.
User that know what they are doing can perform more tasks per unit time via a command line than poor old GUI users wandering through menus and dialogs. Objective studies have repeatably shown this. Just compare the time it takes you to copy a file via the old Windows COPY command versus selecting the file in Windows Explorer, right clicking to copy, then paste, then rename the copy. You don't have to be an expert to appreciate the command line.
Windows network file service is just as slow and as network-chatty as ever.
When you compare it to NFS4, it is most miserable. With SMB, the client and server shoot packets at each other all day and barely any data gets transferred. NFS4 will totally saturate my gigabit ethernet and it's almost all data in those packets.
Microsoft should just embrace NFS4 and drop SMB like a hot potato. It serves noone's interests to have such a crappy file service system in this day and age.
Or I can, ya know, get things done faster by using GUI configuration tools that don't suck.
THAT would require a Windows Server, however.....
Are all these non-server versions in your view?
Yes, of course. Enterprise is for "enterprise" desktops (it has BitLocker, not sure what else, above Professional). Ultimate is the one with everything. None of them are server versions. Server one is 2008 R2 (which also comes in Standard, Enterprise, etc editions).
That's not true. I've installed Ubuntu on three different computers (two laptops and a desktop) and with pretty much every major update (8.10->9.04 for example), I needed to use the CLI to fix crap. Hell, even recently I (in vain) attempted to get my ATI card to work properly with hardware acceleration in 9.04 and had to drop into CLI to fix my now-broken X.org.
Look in the forums of any distro (even Ubuntu) and I bet you'll find the vast majority of the fixes don't start with "goto System->Preferences/Administration ..." but "open a terminal, and paste this into the shell".
I hate to do this (not really), but here is the obligatory xkcd reference (and from the newest comic too). http://xkcd.com/619/
Actually, Windows 3.1 required to be "shut down", otherwise it left tons of temporary files in C:\DOS (at least in Standard Mode).
DOS required to be shut down, too, if you used SmartDrive (which, IIRC, was active by default at least since MS DOS 5.0, as it improved performance quite a bit). What you had to do was to press CTRL + ALT + DEL before turning off the system, to let SmartDrive write back to disk the dirty blocks in its cache. It would display a short message during the operation, then reboot the computer. This behaviour was recommended in the DOS user's manual.
Since when is checking SMART info a standard task in Windows?
Wow, your anecdotal evidence is rock-solid, ergo he must be an idiot. If only there were a counter-point... Oh, here is an anecdote "proving" that you are an idiot!
I installed Ubuntu on my Vaio laptop. I've had to use the CLI to...
Guess what? In Windows, all of those features *just worked*. No CLI. No sudo apt-get update/install/whatever. In Windows, when I hit the power button the machine suspends. Click here to see the instructions on how to get it to *maybe* work on Linux. Sure, you could edit all those conf files and write the scripts without using the CLI but we're still talking about a decent amount of scripting.
Of course part of this is due to the machine being intended to run on Windows, but there's no need to call someone an "idiot" just because you survived 4 weeks without CLI.
More importantly than how many times you've had to run CLI in the past month, can you tell us how many times you had to use the CLI when you first configured your machine? Did everything work right out of the box?
You have an operating system with buttons or icons you can click to fix any sort of problem you might ever encounter? Must be an insanely cluttered GUI then...
Also I don't see how 'Open the control panel, click on the hardware icon, open the driver panel, click on the devices tab, find small icon with the plus sign before it that reads audio devices, expand it, find the audio card in the expanded list, which would probably be the one that doesn't have the word codec in it, see if it has an exclamation mark before it, right click it and pick properties, go to the resources tab, write down all the values in the list of ports/interrupts en post them here' would be easier than to say 'open the terminal application from the menu and first type 'dmesg' and copy paste the results here, then type 'lspci -v -v -v' and post this output here as well'
Point is, the CLI is much more efficient for many, many tasks. Maybe not the common everyday ones, but that's what we have GUI apps for. Linux is no exception. If you have system problems or have to do crazy stuff to fix something at least in Linux you are able to do that through the CLI and to post instructions for other people to help them, even though they have no idea what they're actually typing. In Windows you're generally stuck unless you know a friend or relative you can offer a beer to fix it (which would be the guy I used to be for half of my family and friends until I finally ditched Windows for OS X and Linux. Now officialy "I know nothing about Windows PC's" anymore ;-)
Who cares if it's standard? It still doesn't require a command line in Windows.
A good operating system is discoverable and user-centric. At the moment, the desktop environments available for Linux are somewhat discoverable (but the second you drop to the command line, you've thrown discoverability out the window) and process-centric* rather than user-centric. Windows is not perfect at either task (OS X is much better), but Linux is really, really bad at it.
*: Process-centric operations don't focus on what the user wants to do, they focus on what the computer needs to do to accomplish the task. Frame everything around the user or you'll lose them.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Is this article a joke? I clearly see that vista beats Win7 in 3 out of 5 benchmarks, and XP beats Windows 7 in all but one (how can we forget the all-important "shutdown time" benchmark.
Yet CNet is telling me that *this* is the version of Windows I've been waiting for?
reboot = shutdown + boot
So every time you reboot, you shut down.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That was fixed over 2 years ago.
Windows Vista and up automatically checks the SMART data for you and will display a warning to the user in case SMART data reports critical status.
I've found SMART to be almost useless, though. But that's another story.
This interests me greatly. I just had to install Ubuntu (9.04) on my gaming computer because my wireless card "just works" with it and I don't have a way to get it up near enough to the router to plug it into the intertubes.
Downloading wireless drivers for windows on Linux ftw. :-)
I have been running Ubuntu on my other (non gaming) computers for over a year, as well as setting up my parents with Ubuntu, and have so far used a CLI about 4 times.
Installing flash was interesting, and was the biggest pain. However it should be noticed that I was installing a workaround to allow flash to run in an 64 bit browser and that's not even possible in windows as far as I know.
meanwhile I am constantly having to kill the explorer process and restart it from the task manager in windows. I'd personally much rather have a CLI to fall back on.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Try reinstalling that VAIO with a different Windows version, one that hasn't been customized by Sony, and then post your luck getting all the right hardware drivers and configuring the system. You're comparing a PREINSTALLED version that has all the kinks already worked out by some guy at Sony, to a MANUALLY installed operating system you have to configure yourself. It's like saying how much easier it is to just drive that new car you just bought from the dealer to buying the same car and then swapping the engine yourself.
As a counter-example: I once bought an HP pavilion laptop with XP home on it (which I couldn't remove or have upgraded to another XP version by the way because HP tied the license to the machine and didn't offer anything but XP home). Because I needed to logon to a Windows domain, I upgraded to XP pro. After that, I didn't have 3D acceleration, the TV-out stopped working, no wifi until I installed drivers from directly from the card manufacturer and it took 4 months before HP finally released downloadable drivers for the ATI chip that was in it, the stock ones didn't recognize the card because HP screwed with the PCI ids, and the only way to get the machine to work fully was to do a full system recovery. Using the XP home recovery discs...
The other problem with KDE is "everything" is named starting with a "K" which makes it harder to scan to find stuff quickly.
This drives me absolutely batshit insane...
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Look in the forums of any distro (even Ubuntu) and I bet you'll find the vast majority of the fixes don't start with "goto System->Preferences/Administration ..." but "open a terminal, and paste this into the shell".
Well obviously. A forum is a text based system. Text commands are the easiest way to provide help. If you were getting help from someone in person maybe they'd show you how to solve your problem using a GUI. Describing GUI actions in a forum is much more difficult and error prone for both parties, that would never be my first choice when helping someone on a forum.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
"Also I don't see how 'Open the control panel, click on the hardware icon, open the driver panel, click on the devices tab, find small icon with the plus sign before it that reads audio devices, expand it, find the audio card in the expanded list, which would probably be the one that doesn't have the word codec in it, see if it has an exclamation mark before it, right click it and pick properties, go to the resources tab, write down all the values in the list of ports/interrupts en post them here' would be easier than to say 'open the terminal application from the menu and first type 'dmesg' and copy paste the results here, then type 'lspci -v -v -v' and post this output here as well'"
As a Windows user, I definitely prefer the former. Precisely things like 'lspci -v -v -v' are what's keeping me from using Linux - I don't _want_ to remember 500 different console commands.
Never having seen a Windows PC before, using common sense and your ability to read, you can figure out how to get (almost) anywhere. On Linux, if you don't know the console command you're looking for and don't have anywhere to look it up, you're SOL, because the GUIs don't fucking work half the time (yes, using Linux _has_ frustrated me)...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"It's no longer 2002. Install Ubuntu and you will NEVER have to use the CLI. That's right. NEVER. I like it because you can do some neat things with it, but then I use CLI in windows too. But is it required for normal operation? No. It's not."
Bullshit. Even setting up display resolutions and refresh rates (don't get me started on xorg and nVidia's proprietary driver) or sound on my setup required CLI in 7.10 and 8.04...
Sure, it's great when everything works out of the box for some people, but everyone else is fucked.
Right, I choose to do most of my file management from the command line just because it's usually the quickest way to go about it.
There's only one situation I can think of where the GUI is better, when I need to select a number of arbitrary files from a directory. Since globbing or find can't be used to quickly match the files you want I find control-clicking a bunch of icons is quicker than typing out a bunch of file names. That's the exception though, the rest of the time the CLI is better.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
As an IT contractor I've made a very good living from Microsoft's shoddy OS. With the impending release of Windows 7, I can forsee green shoots rising once again. :)
I want to meet the guy who invented beer and see whats he's up to now.
I'm using 7 right now and copying is just as fast as XP, and that bug was fixed in Vista a long time ago.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
You have obviously never done tech support over the phone.
Wait until you are trying to figure out what the person on the other end of the phone is looking at and where they clicked wrong and you will understand why tech support people love the shell.
When I am helping people fix osx over the phone I am more likely than not to wind up telling the person to type commands into the terminal.
Work bio at MMWD
Which version? Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No... you need Gnome or KDE for that, and they're still in flux.
See above. I'm talking KDE and Gnome not QT and GTK. GTK and QT do not provide all the frameworks required for application development using standard libraries for stuff other than UI widgets. Gnome and KDE are nearer the mark, and they are continually breaking shit and changing (for better or worse).
There is no equivalent to appkit (for example) that you can RELY ON to be installed on a linux box as yet. There is no single platform to target. GTK and QT simply do not compare as an "application development framework", they're little more than widget libraries for GUI development. There is a lot more to applicate development than GUI widgets...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Well let's put it this way: I simply disagree with everything you say, but I guess that's personal.
When I have to do stuff in Windows it takes me 10 minutes of mucking around all the stupid settings windows, tabs and icons, every Windows version shuffles all that around, and eventually I find out I have to edit some obscure registry key just to stop some stupid program I didn't install consciously from loading on startup. The fact that you remembered what icons you have to click to get somewhere doesn't mean it's easier to remember or anything, most likely you've had so many stuff to fix on your windows machine that you now know what is where from the top of your head. Most non-geek people I know who use Windows don't even know they have a control panel.
I also don't really get why you think you have to remember any commands for everyday linux use, like many people alread posted a fully working linux system doesn't need the CLI, and it just keeps working unless you deliberately screw it up. It's sometimes a hard way to get there, especially on new hardware, and that's what the CLI is really useful for, much more useful than the Windows GUI (you know how to see the system log for example? Or the boot log? Or the PCI ids of that 'unknown device' on your system).
Last but not least let me add that people often view Windows as 'much easier' because they are used to it, and they bought the machine pre-installed and ready to go. Most people wo think Windows is easy would be completely lost if you gave them a generic installation CD and told them to get the machine up and running with all the hardware working properly.
Hell most Mac and Windows users don't even know there IS a CLI interface, and they sure as hell don't want to be using it!
You're so mad that you're bordering on saying nonsense.
How come you know that the users don't want to use something they don't even know about?
Are you the god thinking for all these people?
What did strike such a nerve into you? Seriously. It's hatred at this level.
Look, I'll be the first to admit that Linux rocks on servers. It is rock solid, secure, a real tank of an OS. But we are talking Windows 7 here, which is most definitely NOT targeted at servers. It is targeted at home users. Home users, I might add, who often can't even find their way around control panel without someone holding their hand. Windows is quite good at that BTW.
I agree with everything you say, even the part where you say that Windows is quite good at making people unable to find their way around control panel.
Me too, I always have problem finding the correct option in control panel, usually I have to parse all of them. Just because they're inconsistent. It's sad really, after all these years.
But Linux? You better be bestest friends with Mr. CLI if you want to play in that sandbox. It seems like every time there is an update something breaks and requires CLI. Sound broke? Ooops..CLI. Monitor isn't showing the right resolution? CLI baby.
Now you're really looking like an ignorant fool. You didn't use Linux in the latest 10 years, right ? You shouldn't talk about what you obviously don't know about, seriously.
And server admins live and die CLI and hate GUIs, as they just suck precious resources.
This shows clearly that you have no idea what the CLI is in Linux and Unix OS. ... interface.
You seem to believe CLI in these OS is just some kind of, well,
Which shows just how ignorant you are about it.
These are shells, and are much more powerful than DOS.
Being a fanboy is one thing, being delusional is another.
Yet you are both.
I can make an example that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Linux isn't ready for home users. Ready? Remove Bash.
Now you're retarded. You just said "remove the OS".
I hope you didn't believe you were smart. Seriously...
Go learn what Linux is before talking about it, you're not qualified, at all.
But Windows home users will NEVER use CLI. Let me repeat that: Windows home users will NEVER EVER use CLI. In fact most power users don't care for it either. They don't like it, don't want it, and if you make them use CLI you might as well say "please have someone go install Windows for you" because that is EXACTLY what will happen. I truly hope that a day comes when you can actually remove CLI from Linux and still have a usable machine, but I won't hold my breath.
LOL. Repeating wrong things won't make them true. But I agree this part is done like a good fanboy coupled with a delusional guy. You know also perfectly well what people want and what they hate. But do you have any evidence of what you're saying?
Whilst removing the shell is obviously going to break the OS, and therefore nonsensical, I think the spirit of this post is worthwhile. Can a user survive without the CLI in Ubuntu, for example?
My experience is: not really. It's not that far off, but it's not perfect. People who argue that Linux users spend all their time configuring things on the commandline are exaggerating, but equally it's unrealistic to say that a GUI can be used for all configuration.
In my current Ubuntu install, I've had a wireless problem that I've fixed with a small amount of messing around in the shell. Besides that, I've not been forced to use it. Having said that, previously I've had X Server issues that have required lots of CLI use to resolve.
I'm not interested in "my OS is more user-friendly than your OS" arguments, but I'd prefer it if people didn't big up / write off Linux on the basis of exaggeration.
RS
Uhhh...dude? Its Windows we are talking about here. I know it makes Linux guys shit puppies but NOBODY uses limited user in Windows,okay? Hell I have been building, fixing, and networking Windows boxes since Win3.11 for workgroups. Do I run limited user? Nope, admin all the way. Why? Because too damned much Windows software breaks horribly and takes three fricking forevers to fix if ran as a limited user.
So there is actually a GOOD reason why they didn't put that in Windows XP Home, it is because home users never fuck with permissions. hell most wouldn't even know what that was, and if you gave them control of it they would just fuck shit up so bad they could even access their own stuff. MSFT knew this, which is why the left permissions to XP Pro, where there is more likely an admin that is controlling permissions. That is why power users run XP Pro, because XP Home is for home users.
I think though by accident you have pointed out why it is so damned hard to get Linux guys to "get it". It is because they expect folks to think like them, and they don't. The average IT guys thinking is as alien to them as any martian. Believe me, of this I know. I have had guys throw me $20 to make a problem go away that would have taken maybe five minutes, if that, of me gently walking them through a couple of simple tweaks. The second I mention "control" panel this or "device manager" that they just get a glazed look on their eyes and break out their wallet. And THAT is why Linux don't work for home users, it is because you have to think like THEM and build it so it is easy for THEM, even if you think their way is nuts. I have been in the trenches for 15 years and therefor know how to pull it off.
Linux guys think "open up bash and type" is easy because it is easy FOR THEM, but for the home users CLI=total failure. I can promise you if the choice is ten minutes of CLI or $89 for XP Home? They would have their wallets out so damned fast your head would swim. Accept that, and maybe one day Linux will have a shot. But I won't hold my breath.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Well let's put it this way: I simply disagree with everything you say, but I guess that's personal."
No problems there ;)
"When I have to do stuff in Windows it takes me 10 minutes of mucking around all the stupid settings windows, tabs and icons, every Windows version shuffles all that around, and eventually I find out I have to edit some obscure registry key just to stop some stupid program I didn't install consciously from loading on startup. The fact that you remembered what icons you have to click to get somewhere doesn't mean it's easier to remember or anything, most likely you've had so many stuff to fix on your windows machine that you now know what is where from the top of your head. Most non-geek people I know who use Windows don't even know they have a control panel."
Perfectly true. I've been using Windows all my life (since 3.11), so I'm pretty used to it.
However, when there's a new Windows version and everything gets shuffled around, I can still easily find stuff because I'm capable of reading. Most people who have trouble navigating GUIs (I'm talking about the average Joe here, not CLI gurus who just don't WANT to use GUIs) just seem to be incapable of reading what's on the screen before deciding to hit the OK button...
"I also don't really get why you think you have to remember any commands for everyday linux use, like many people alread posted a fully working linux system doesn't need the CLI, and it just keeps working unless you deliberately screw it up."
Possibly - IF you have hardware that is 100% compatible, and are satisfied with a web browser, mail client and a half functional media player. If you want to setup anything more, however trivial it sounds - WiFi, sound cards, multi-monitor setups... well, it gets pretty difficult.
Sure, once it's running it's (usually) rock solid, but getting there on non-standard hardware is a pain in the ass, and pretty much not possible without CLI.
"It's sometimes a hard way to get there, especially on new hardware, and that's what the CLI is really useful for, much more useful than the Windows GUI (you know how to see the system log for example? Or the boot log? Or the PCI ids of that 'unknown device' on your system)."
So why would you not know that that "unknown device" is? Just install all the drivers that came with the machine, and if it's still showing up as unknown, call the manufacturer (if it's a pre-built machine - You won't get a lot of "unknown device"s in machines you build yourself... unless you forgot what you put in there).
If I have a problem like that on Ubuntu, I can either post on the forum and get jack shit for an answer, or wallow in my own misery.
"Last but not least let me add that people often view Windows as 'much easier' because they are used to it, and they bought the machine pre-installed and ready to go. Most people wo think Windows is easy would be completely lost if you gave them a generic installation CD and told them to get the machine up and running with all the hardware working properly."
I'm guessing that if you give a reasonably smart person a Windows CD and a CD with all the correct drivers (either as executables, or just a big folder with inf files that they can point the Device Manager to), they can figure it out. It's just a matter of navigating through very familiar GUIs - Next, next, install. If you can install software on Windows, you can install drivers.
Of course, if you don't give them the drivers, they might have a few problems, especially with older versions of Windows where stuff like Ethernet or WiFi doesn't work without third party drivers, but most manufacturers provide a driver CD. If not, you can always hop on the net somewhere else and put the files on a thumb drive...
On Windows 7 it's even easier - the drivers for most system components are installed right away or downloaded automatically...
The primary difference between Enterprise and other SKUs is that is uses volume licensing (no license keys, instead it connects to Windows Server box on its domain, and activates through that). However, one other thing that Enterprise has and no version below it does (Ultimate also has this, but sadly not Business/Professional) is the POSIX subsystem. Subsystem for UUNIX Applicaitons (SUA) is a POSIX-complaint user-mode subsystem on top of the NT kernel. Microsoft provides a minimal but functional operating environment called Interix that runs in SUA, and you can install a package manager and considerable amount of software for it. I use this constantly - I do more in bash on Windows than I do in cmd and powershell put together (and I actually like powershell, but bash is just quicker to do many things with despite beling less powerful). It's seriously underappreciated, and most people don't need it anyhow, but it works better than Cygwin in many cases and makes it possible to use many UNIX/Linux tools and programs without rebooting or virtualizing (I have a Linux install, but I need to do something on Windows that doesn't work in Wine more often than I need to do something in Linux that doesn't work on Interix).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Never having seen a Windows PC before, using common sense and your ability to read, you can figure out how to get (almost) anywhere.
In as much as this is true of Windows (not very) it's equally true of Linux. I've plonked naive users down in front of a PC running Linux with a Gnome desktop and they find it just as easy to use as beginners on Windows. People who have previously learnt to use Windows (and believe it or not - learning to use Windows also takes time) tend to find it slightly harder because they think they know where things should be and then are surprised to find them somewhere else.
When it comes to *administration* (which is what I think was under discussion) neither system is the slightest bit intuitive. Fixing a Windows PC if you don't already have a lot of experience of doing it is a positive nightmare. Nothing is where you would expect it to be, and the system will persistently think it knows better than you and refuse to do what you tell it. Yes, both Linux and Windows require quite a bit of study before you can administer them successfully, but once you've got the experience I find Linux by far the easier, precisely because you can see what's going on and the system doesn't keep trying to second guess you.
That pretty much jives with a study by google. They found SMART to be pretty damn dumb.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
It's slower than XP for everything but the critical "shut down" benchmark.
No, I'm not making this up. That's straight from the article.
Windows 7 is Vista R2.
The server version even makes that explicit. Vista's server version is Windows 2008. Seven's server version is Windows 2008 R2.
I'm a "sophisticated" user, installing client PCs for just about everyone around me, including some small companies. I'm having a very hard time getting into Linux on the desktop.
I just managed to install Linux for the first time 4 days ago. All other times (about 10), installation failed, due to MB drivers I suppose. That was very disappointing, the PCs were very vanilla, with no expansion cards, and XP installed without a glitch on them.
I don't mind using a bit of CLI since I'm a nerd, but, believe it or not, I can't find how to mount a windows networked share via fstab. I can do it in the graphical thingy, but it mounts it only after I've clicked on it. I need it mounted sooner, and.. I need to know where it gets mounted... I did find how to install VNC, but could not make head nor tails of how to install an RDP server on the linux PC.
My question about it in the forums has been answered by the usual 'you're an idiot', or "you don't need it with our wonderful graphical interface". I'm not an idiot, and I need it outside of Gnome. And remember, the hardest part of any problem is asking the right question, so yes, I didn't ask clearly the first time around.
So, again, I think Linux needs
- more and better drivers. It's progressing, but still. Having to turn off the compositing thingy to be able to use VLC sucks, too. Then again, Aero in Vista causes problems with many games, too.
- better documentation. there's lot of good stuff and how-tos, but out of date.
- nicer community attitude. Yes, I'm an incompetent idiot that not only does not know how to do things, but doesn't even know where to look for the answer nor how to ask the question. I'm trying to change !
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Mail on Mac OS X even saves the window positions, come to think of it.
That is complete bollocks.
The point of the major version number in nearly every piece of Free Software ever is as a marker of backwards compatibility. Version x.y+n will be backwards-compatible with version x.y, for arbitrary n.
If backwards compatibility is broken, that is invariably a bug, and you will usually find version x.y+n+1 released within a day or two fixing back-compatibility. The broken version will rarely make it to any distro's repositories, with the rare exception of something like Debian experimental, which is truly for those who are technically capable, brave of heart, and wish to put themselves in a position to spot bugs like this and kill them before they get close to anything like a normal user.
KDE 3.0.0 was released in April 2002, over 7 years ago. All versions of KDE3 have remained backwards-compatible to that version. Any program written for KDE 3.0.0 will run fine on KDE 3.5.10 (released August 2008). KDE have released KDE 3 updates throughout the KDE 4 development process, and KDE 3 is co-installable with KDE 4. Your KDE 3 apps are guaranteed continue to work correctly under KDE 4, and the libraries they depend upon are not going to break backwards-compatibility *ever*. You can continue to write new KDE 3 apps if you like; they will work fine on old and new KDE desktops.
KDE 4 has similar guarantees about the stability and backwards-compatibility of new releases with respect to KDE 4.0.0.
Gnome 2.0 was released in June 2002, and all versions since then have maintained strict backwards compatibility with it. Any program written for Gnome 2.0 will work fine on Gnome 2.26, released in March 2009. I don't have that much data on Gnome 3 (I don't follow it's development) but there is no way that it could possibly cause Gnome 2 apps to break - absolutely *no-one* would use it if it did. You are free to write new Gnome 2 apps, and they will work for the indefinite future.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Ubuntu installed in under 40 mins, including applying all security fixes, and was able to access pron^h^h^h^h Youtube with no grief. After installing about 40 apps, it asked for a reboot for some reason. I went to bed and started it the next day.
Eventually I got the NIC drivers by fowl means (Yeah, someone e-mailed me a chicken with the drivers on an SD card clipped to its leg), and was able to get Windows running. Approx two days and 33 1/3 boots later, the urgent updates were complete, and it was ready for use, apart from the limited range of apps (Windows Paint is not all that useful). I asked not to install IE8, but it sneakily tricked me into installing it as a "necessary update" anyway.
Default boot is going to be Ubuntu for now! If i get any of that "Windows Genuine Disadvantage" crap, then I will reclaim the disk space and use it as a dedicated partition for something. Windows is just annoying the hell out of users for no benefit.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I take issue with a viewpoint that a GUI magically makes things easier. If you have thousands of paths with very advanced concepts, it will not be possible to extract the data with any degree of enhanced ease. In fact, navigation becomes clunky when there are too many options to parse at once or too many layers of depth to traverse. In that aspect, Windows really punishes advanced users or those seeking to give simple instruction. In linux support, I can generally paste a line or few of shell script. For Windows, I end up having to take several screenshots generally (the command was quicker to type as well, *and* more amenable to scripting and using against many machines at once). The 'cmd' scripting is painfully bad and severely lacking and awkward (many MS provided capabilities are possible via CLI, but not in as useful a manner, and many installers must run with a GUI, even if not interacted with). 'Powershell' is their 'answer' to the inadequcies of their cmd shell, but it's horribly slow and in many ways misses the point. An example central to that is how they deal with piping. They thought piping providing a dumb stream was not useful enough, so they made their piping require more work to describe simple concepts. Yes, dumb piping is limited to some types of programming, but for shell, the simplicity makes 95% of the usage cases easier, and you just have to go to a language like python for the other 5%.
For me, Windows not having a CLI for everything is worse than Linux distros not having a GUI for advanced features that you either had to search online for or already know ahead of time even under Windows. However, I believe at least SuSE endeavors to have a GUI for everything within YaST that is not frequently used by typical users.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The difference is in windows, you can look around if you don't know where it is. Hand over a fresh install of windows and tell the user to adjust their resolution. It might take a while the first time, but they'll dig through the right folder/menu/tab eventually. Now fire up a command window and tell them to do the same, and they'll have no idea where to even start looking.
Organising the start menu by software manufacturer name is user centric? Sometimes windows seems easy to use *because you have been using it for decades.* I hope they haven't, yet again, shuffled around the *user centric* control panel. Every time I get asked to help someone fix their windows computer it gets harder to find anything now.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
IMHO that's usually better than staring at a blank screen prompt not even knowing what command you're even looking for, let alone what options you need to actually use it.
Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No... you need Gnome or KDE for that, and they're still in flux.
I'm not sure about GTK, but Qt provides modules for network connectivity, HTML rendering, XML parsing, and database integration.
Reposted with a few slight edits from my own blog a few days ago:
My poor PC broke. Some of my RAM went bad due to the summer heat, combined and my obstinate refusal to turn the AC on until the temperature in my office is well into the 90's. Fortunately RAM is cheap as hell these days, and I can get twice as much memory for half the price I paid a year ago, so I ordered a full 8GB of replacement memory, as much as my motherboard can handle.
The problem is that I was running Windows Vista 32bit, which can only address a bit under 4GB of RAM. The only way my Windows computer could use the extra memory I'd purchased would be to re-install a 64-bit version of Windows. But I've already pre-ordered Windows 7 Pro, and it seems silly to install Vista 64-bit now when my copy of Windows 7 will arrive in October. So, over the weekend I got a correctly-checksumming ISO of Windows 7 from The Usual Sources and installed it without a key, giving me 30 days to register. The plan is to just use the rearm trick to tide me over until my legal activation keys come in the mail.
It took a few hours to get everything installed, but today all my apps and games are back, and my files are copied over. I gotta say, if you're going to run a Windows desktop, this is the way to do it. It's NICE. It feels much snappier than Vista, and while it's got more overhead (and thus runs a bit slower) than XP 64-bit, the UI enhancements make up for it. Since today is apparently a bullet-list day, here's a quick rundown of my favorite things:
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
A good operating system is discoverable and user-centric
No, a good operating system is flexible and operator-friendly. You are thinking of a MARKETABLE operating system - real men call them "toys".
How do you check the SMART info on windows?
Right-click the drive from "Computer" and select "Properties." Click the "Hardware" tab. Warnings are reported there, or an "everything's okay" message if there are no warnings.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
RTFM then :-p
Which version? Do GTK and QT provide APIs for database access, network connectivity, HTML rendering, etc? No.
Actually Qt (not KDE) provides everything that you've listed. It's a general-purpose framework, not just an UI toolkit.
DOS required to be shut down, too, if you used SmartDrive (which, IIRC, was active by default at least since MS DOS 5.0, as it improved performance quite a bit). What you had to do was to press CTRL + ALT + DEL before turning off the system, to let SmartDrive write back to disk the dirty blocks in its cache. It would display a short message during the operation, then reboot the computer. This behaviour was recommended in the DOS user's manual.
And only NOW you tell me!?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Win32? The gui system which don't even have a split pane. (Yes I have developed for Win32, an interesting job but not one I care to repeat).
I can not mention a major application released within the last 4 year, with an interface based on pure win32 widgets. Not even microsofts own software. Win32 miss far to many things. (Even the toolbar in Microsoft internet explorer 6 is different from the Win32 toolbar).
Here is an other example: The menu that popup when you press the right mouse button: Does it come when you click or release the button? Answer: That depend on the application, because win32 don't even handle that stuff.
So if the only standard interface for windows is win32, then I can't mention any major application released within the last 5 years which have used the standard windows interface. Nothing released from Microsoft. Nothing released by Adobe. Not a single 3D editor, nothing released from Apple. Not a single browser. Well nothing (Except google earth, that is the only pure major win32 application I can mention).
Would you call MFC* part of the windows interface? If yes, then how does it differ from Qt? Developers who use MFC/QT both have to download MFC/QT, and both does a static link to (part of) the library, so the user don't have to download anything.
MFC is not part of windows. It comes with Visual studio and you are not allowed to static link to it, unless you have a license to Visual Studio which is in no way part of Windows.
And how could I forgot .net. The system where Microsoft once again wrote an entire widget system to replace the widgets in win32. A .net button is not a win32 button.
It seems to me that the standard way(As in: done by most) to develop a gui for Windows is to first find an alternate for the win32 widgets. And I don't see the difference between using the hellspawn that Adobe/Microsoft/Adobe use, or using Qt. It's all just a new gui system, which use gdi+ (And a few win32 calls) as a backend.