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Windows 8 Features With Linux Antecedents
itwbennett writes "As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0. So ask not 'did Linux have this first', but 'does Windows 8 do it better?'"
The Microsoft twist: No Linux distro does ISO mounting as easily as Windows 8, as it requires some command line trickery (or, again, third-party tools).
Here's your "command line trickery" (once you've gotten superuser):
Did you see that trickery? Someone call the pope, I'm well on my way to sainthood after that "miracle." Hahah that's funny though, this guy should see some of the command line paragraphs I've typed out for stuff like ffmpeg back in the day. I think the author doesn't understand that there are many linux machines that are servers or headless and many distros that love to leave you the option of not having to run a window manager. As a result, it's almost always up to you if you want to run a heavy GUI to execute two whole commands.
My work here is dung.
That goes for anything, but a more mature implementation will be more robust and so will the applications that support that implementation.
Twinstiq, game news
As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0.
Perhaps they're not jeering Windows for "copying" Linux so much as they are happy to show that the flexibility and community involvement in open source is starting to surpass those closed source equivalents? Isn't that what Windows used to gain so much marketshare? Supporting everything before everyone else?
My work here is dung.
Does it really matter?
I don't really see anything here worth the attention -- this really just looks like an attempt to generate traffic.
Move along, nothing to see here.
...No, really. It's quite dull and profoundly uncontroversial.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It boggled my mind that even Windows 7 didn't have that. At my job, I'm the Mac tech and there are a couple of PC techs. When they're overbusy, I take some of their workload... had to do an install of Office on someone's machine, so I found a folder of ISOs on a network share, downloaded it, and...? Hmm. "I may be an idiot," I said to my colleagues, "but I can't figure out how to mount this ISO file." "Burn it," they said. "Why, how do you open it on a Mac?" "Uh... you double-click it."
Talk about your long times coming.
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"things that were just a natural evolution"
Try to tell that to the patent jerks at Apple, and Microsoft...
Maybe someone like SCO will sue Microsoft for using the the USB protocol, even if Microsoft and Apple may have paid for using USB, and SCO doesn't even own the patents. This business is so litigious.
And what will Linux do that Windows 8 doesn't when Win8 finally gets on the market?
Or maybe:
When will people start to care about paying for low quality products when hight quality ones are free?
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I would have thought Linux users would be happy if MS borrowed their ideas- it makes the "mainstream" operating system more like the one they have chosen to use for themselves.
Surely MS copying Linux can only be a good thing? No?
I've heard MS is going to even start using a penguin as their logo too. ;)
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Things you mount aren't located in /mount, no it is /mnt. Ahh well that is so easy, I can't believe it didn't know that right off the top of my head!
That's what makes the *NIX command line even worse as a tool (not saying the Windows command line is better, but you needn't use it) is that commands are all kinds of random abbreviations. You can't make the argument with a straight face that it is "intuitive" or people can "use commands that seem natural." You don't list directories, you ls them, you don't put user programs in "Programs" you put them in /usr and it isn't short for "user" it is short for "unix system resource" of course that isn't what it originally meant since it used to be where user stuff is that is a backronym.
You really have to already know how to do what you want before you can do it. You can't stumble through things by looking through a list of menu options and finding the one that says what you want.
The name ISO is taken from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media, but what is known as an ISO image might also contain a UDF (ISO/IEC 13346) file system or a DVD or Blu-ray Disc (BD) image.
blog
There's no question that companies like Microsoft borrow good ideas from F/OSS, and often improve upon them. This is not a bad thing in and of itself: borrowing good ideas is a central tenant of F/OSS. The important question is, how much of the improved idea does Microsoft let F/OSS borrow back? For example, will the Gnome project get sued if they incorporated elements of Windows 8's file copy dialog into Nautilus?
HTC and Samsung are known to be paying Microsoft royalties for the devices they sell with Android.
AC is pointing out that something similar could happen if Microsoft patented ideas it gleaned from the open source community. An "Embrace, Extend, Patent, Profit" modus, if you will.
... and vice versa.
Quite a few features on the Mac OS X UI are directly lifted from Enlightenment and similar projects. Enlightenment was the first UI emphasizing beauty and, for instance, had first spikes into OpenGL support about 10 years ago. They also were the the first to introduce the 'brushed metal' look throughout an entire UI. That all was back in the day when Mac OS 9 still looked like a souped up Windows 3.1 in a few places.
The new system settings tray introduced in Windows XP is a direct copy of the KDE settings layout of the time - which at the time also was a first. As where the Frog Design UI element designs.
All this is quite natural though, and can be taken for granted.
To be honest, I wouldn't take a professional UI designer serious, if he *weren't* intimately familiar with the various alternatives outside of mainstream OSes and UIs.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's not like Microsoft said, "hey, we invented an easy way to mount ISO's. Take THAT Linux! wait, you already have that? Oh well, our way is superior!"
It's more like Microsoft said, "Hey, we made ISO's easy to mount."
The rest of the crap comes from those who make a living trying to instigate fights between users in both camps.
You may laugh but I suspect there's a lot more in your one-liner than you realise...
I think the PC desktops and laptops do have a while to go yet but they're certainly on the decline as Joe Sixpack's main computing device in the house and Microsoft currently have very little to offer in the portable device arena, which are mostly ARM-based CPUs. Therefore Windows 8 is targeted primarily at ARM devices and Microsoft will be hoping that people will want to use similar environments on both PCs and portables, and therefore also upgrade to Windows 8 PCs as well.
Windows 7 has been a success story but over a much longer period than XP was a success story and it's a clear demonstration that a lot of Windows users aren't going to "just" upgrade to Windows 8 like they have done with previous upgrades.
Another thing to bear in mind is that with Windows Vista and 7, Microsoft was able to play the "unavailable for Windows XP" hand with DirectX and Internet Explorer versions - but these days PC games manufacture has slowed considerably (unless you look at indie titles which probably aren't too bothered about state-of-the-art DirectX and graphics in most cases) and IE is slowly dying away anyway.
Yes, as long as PC desktops and laptops survive, Microsoft will find some way of making Windows 8 successful (unless they shoot themselves in the foot with it like they did with Vista) but they definitely have an uphill struggle to get it there.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
Quite a few features on the Mac OS X UI are directly lifted from Enlightenment and similar projects.
Actually, I think you'll find that Enlightenment "lifted" features from NeXTSTEP, which significantly predates E. OSX is really just the latest and greatest flavor of NeXTSTEP.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
OS X has had hardware accelerated Quartz, "Quartz Extreme" since 10.2 Jaguar, available August 2002, so close enough to 10 years.
And yeah, as another replier notes, NEXTSTEP had hardware accelerated blitting in the 1980s. The window manager on a NeXT Cube is not noticeably less snappy moving windows around than a Mac of today.
you had me at #!