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Windows 7 Not Getting A Second Service Pack
An anonymous reader writes "Windows 7 was expected to have Service Pack 2 issued roughly 3 years from its introduction (late 2009). People, including myself, have been asking 'Where is it?' and the answer apparently is, 'It isn't, and will never be' which lends itself to the giant pain of installing Windows 7, then Service Pack 1, and hundreds of smaller hotfix patches. Why Microsoft? No go to Service Pack 2 for Windows 7!"
NT4 - 6 2000 - 4 XP - 3 Vista - 2 7 - 1 8 - 0???
Duh. People won't willingly switch to Windows 8, so this is just another way to push them there.
Having barely used Windows for the last few years I'd almost forgotten the horror of Windows Update compared to apt-get or yum update.
When service-packs were slow in coming for previous windows OS's, weren't there some "unofficial" bundles that basically did the same thing?
This is disappointing, but not surprising. Microsoft knows that most experienced Windows users don't want any part of Windows 8. But they are convinced that Windows 8 is a vital part of their business strategy going forward. So they are doing whatever they can to bribe, force, or coerce users to switch to Windows 8. They don't want Windows 7 to become the new XP, even though they profited handsomely for many years from XP licenses. The power user/business desktop just isn't cool enough for Steve Ballmer, Steven Sinofsky, and the other myopic decision-makers at MS these days.
DISM supports offline patching of .WIM Images:
http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2012/01/31/offline-wim-patching-with-dism-a-more-automated-method/
If you're just installing Windows 7 from CD on a large install, you're doing it wrong. Deploy a patched WIM.
Has decided that its out with the old and in with the new. Anyone opposing him is binned or sidelined. To underline the drive involved in Windows 8 - Windows 7 will quite quickly face a lock. If they can force you onto 8 thats where they will do so.
If he doesn't do this, the moment they will get on 8 will be minimised and he will look a private and public failure. And Mr Sinofsky doesn't like to be a failure.
It may questionably be good for windows users long term - as this might mean that the eco system has the earthquake required to shunt a billion trillion manhours of ecostructure from old win to new win.
Personally I think metro/notro is very poor. And it would take more than Sinofsky being a knob and a shitty UI to persuade people in the real world. Thus, looks rocky to me.
Its a shame, because to be blunt, 8 has some good engineering as does server 2012, utterly ruined by Sinofsky's insane LSD based unwindows, no windows allowed, ported from zune, but still broken beta UI. To rub your nose in it, they broke the old UI as well, and denied you the start bar and old desktop even if you like it. From now on its notro for you. Unless you go get classic shell and give sinofsky the finger.
The problem is I think he'd like the finger, so lets not.
I'll get my coat.
We`re all equal
I also think so, and I think that's one difference. I'm pretty sure MS patches are incremental.
Suppose patch B depends on patch A. In the Windows model, installing patch A is faster than the Linux model (ignoring all the other crap like system restore points that Windows does during updates to actually make it slower). The same is true of patch B when applied to a system with patch A: since MS only sends Windows users the things that need to change, it's smaller and faster to apply than under the Linux model where they have to send you everything.
The problem with the Windows model comes when you want to apply both patches to a system that has neither. Under the Linux model, you just get patch B since that's a full image, but under the Linux model you need patch A first.
My feeling is that the Windows model is better for the long-term, since incremental patching is what you do most of the time anyway; but it gets really really annoying when you want to do an initial install, as you have to install tons and tons of patches.
The other consequence is that (re. your other post about 1.0/2.0 to 1.0.1/2.0.1) is that in some sense there isn't a latest version of Windows, while there is usually a latest version of Linux and its software. (And the main exceptions to the latter case are when you have two separate packages, e.g. Qt3 and 4, where one doesn't strictly override the other.) But in the Windows model, you can have person 1 who has patches M, N, and O, and person 2 who has patches N, O, and P. Why doesn't person 1 have P? Maybe P is to fix some specific piece of hardware or something, and person 1 either deliberately chose not to install it under the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" mantra or doesn't even know that the hotfix exists because Windows Update didn't suggest it (perhaps because it knows that person 1 doesn't have that piece of software). This also works in favor of the Windows model in terms of long-term behavior: on Linux, I'd guess I get updates for things which I don't even care about or use, while those would be filtered out of what I see on Windows. (OTOH under the Windows model maybe there's some problem I'm having which would be fixed by a patch, but I don't know about it.)
Of course, then the actual Windows Update mechanism goes and kills those benefits by dicking around and doing-who-knows what during the actual installation.(Taking 30 minutes to just install updates that were already downloaded -- even on a desktop drive -- in my experience was fairly common.) I strongly suspect those are independent of the incremental/full decision though.
Microsoft wants to shove Windows 8 (The Playskool OS) down everyone's throat, so they'll phase out Windows 7 as soon as they think they can get away with doing so. Step 1 in that process is not issuing a Service Pack 2.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Special security updates aside, whenever Apple updates the OS e.g. 10.7.2 to 10.7.3, it's essentially a service pack. Normally there's a combo updater that rolls up all updates for that major release so you could go from 10.x.0 to 10.x.4 (example only).
There are times when Apple's monolithic updates are a drawback, especially for traditional enterprise IT who might need to exclude certain updates, but here they have a clear advantage over Windows' hundreds of individual patches (sometimes requiring 2 or 3 Windows Update runs and restarts to get them all).
Microsoft hasn't done one of those since Windows 2000, but at one time they had a roll-up patch for 2K SP4 that incorporated all the updates released between the SP and the roll-up. I wish they'd re-institute the practice because it saves us desktop-support types a lot of time.
Maybe make a yearly roll-up so that I shouldn't have to install more than a few dozen updates at the most when I put our image on the computers. I've rolled my own image, but it's a bit of a pain to install updates.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Glass is gone, not Aero.
Aero is the desktop composition engine that uses the GPU to do all kinds of rendering shit. This is present in 8 and in fact faster/more capable than ever. Glass (Aero Glass) is the shiny UI in Windows 7, that is gone in Windows 8, replaced with an uglied up flat, square, UI.
So basically there is an even better desktop composition engine, that is used to composite something that looks like Windows 3.1 :).
In terms of drivers, yes older drivers seem quite compatible. My pro sound card works no problems with the 7 drivers and pro audio cards have some of the most finicky drivers out there.
Windows isn't distributed as individual packages from desperate sources
And that's Linux's secret edge. Its developers are outlaws, lean and dangerous. We could do anything, anytime. We could fork your OpenOffice.org and call it LibreOffice... and then fork it right back. We could switch your default filesystem to btrfs, stone cold. We could drop X11 and replace it with Wayland... just like that.
Don't push us, man.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Be careful when you highlight the high cost of Windows. They charge a lot more than Apple, but you get a lot more:
Average support lifecycle for recent Apple OS releases (bugfixes and security patches): 2-3 years. The latest OS to be abandoned is Leopard (after 2 years). Snow Leopard is expected to be abandoned soon (it's in Extended Support now), and Apple has made no commitment to how long they will continue to support it.
When you pay more for the Microsoft OS, you get a commitment to long support lifecycles, AND you know exactly how long your OS will be supported:
Mainstream Windows 7 Support (bugfixes + security fixes) = until 2015
Extended Windows 7 Support (security fixes) = until 2020.
So what Microsoft is giving you here is a CHOICE - you can choose to use your Windows install for a decade after release, and have no fear of your system being exploited by an unpatched vulnerability. In the Apple world your only "choice" is to keep upgrading, and that's not much help if your hardware is suddenly unsupported.
So, in this perspective the $200 cost of a full-on Windows 8 license is a pretty good deal (and if you want less freedom you can always buy the OEM version for $100). And for the big picture the $40 upgrade price is an absolute STEAL: for your $40 you will get bug fixes until 2018 and exploit fixes until 2023 (by that time even Mountain Lion will be long-since forgotten).
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.