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Report: Windows Blue Reaches Its First Milestone Build
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley has been collecting tips on Microsoft's accelerated Windows development schedule, codenamed 'Blue.' She reports that the program, which is attempting to replace the multiyear product drops for the Windows-branded desktop, server, phone, and network services products with a more agile release cycle, with better continuity across the suite, has just hit the first of two scheduled milestone builds. What's in the build? As with North Korea's nuclear program, details are scarce, but so far we have a Chinese Windows start screen; indications that the kernel number has been bumped from 'NT 6.2' (Windows 8) to 'NT 6.3'; and a job posting for a Windows Blue SDET (test engineer). Slashdot reported on Windows Blue in November."
... screen?
...chunks?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
...It?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Wow, quintuple-first-post... impressive :)
OMG! Where's the eye bleach? Congratulations! You got me on that one.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
...me
Let me guess... they've gone further on their way to declare desktop applications as deprecated? With Windows 8, Microsoft has made it clear that it thinks that desktop applications are on their way out, and the only way to go is to make programs for Metro.
Oh, and I'll put this out there: won't run unsigned programs by default, though I suspect that this will be like OS X 10.8 and allow being turned off.
All part of boiling the frog.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
It might sound neat, but no one really wants it.
Be seeing you...
Why is it that sometimes code names are better than the name of the final product? "Windows Blue" is a better name than simply "Windows 9". Similarly, "Xenon" was a better name than "Xbox 360".
Nintendo's fond of that, too. "Nitro" versus "DS", "Dolphin" versus "GameCube", "Revolution" versus "Wii".
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
I know that is probably over done, but...The last thing I need from Windows is more blue. I see it enough when trying to use windows.
If they don't then IMHO, this is a dead duck. They have a wonderful opportunity to stop the patch/reboot/patch/reboot cycle here
or the Patches on top of patches shell game.
If they don't grasp this then they are merely fiddling while the City of Redmond burns to the ground.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
I believe they got the job title wrong - surely it's Windows Blue ScrDETh (thanatest engineer).
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
noob
I saw word agile in the summary a second in one day. As always if not used by a guru it makes me confused (even more than I normally am) - the word in itself is OK. The moronic context in which it means something fluffy, from which a deviation by a split of a pussy's hair should be punished by death in boiling oil, is not as OK. It is an ongoing process of language destruction. I think ancient Romans were onto something when they used cross to eradicate the guru problem. Pity it went out of use.
Well, I guess it does streamline the whole Windows experience to its bare essentials...
impressive :)
It's hilarious as well.
MS reputation managers are going to run out of mod points trying to clean this one up!
Actually it was quintuple-second-post.
Like this individual I feel like I have to post just so you can notice me. C'Mon, c'mon, c'mon!
You're probably right :(
I wonder if the catastrophic failure of the Metro-Only Windows RT will be enough to serve as a heads-up...
As with North Korea's nuclear program, details are scarce,
Has anyone detected Xenon-133 that can be traced to Seattle yet, or did MS manage to contain it pretty well underground?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
As in "start hacking anyone clicking on this link".
CHINESE CHARACTERS CONFUSE AND SCARE ME!
That name sounds a bit like IBM's 'Deep Blue', the chess computer. But I think it is too reminiscent of the BSOD - can I suggest they change the name to something like 'Deep Brown'? It somehow feel more right, all things considered.
If they don't then IMHO, this is a dead duck. They have a wonderful opportunity to stop the patch/reboot/patch/reboot cycle here
or the Patches on top of patches shell game.
If they don't grasp this then they are merely fiddling while the City of Redmond burns to the ground.
I sound like a troll here, but that's not what I intended: /. posting .
You clearly have poor knowledge of how computers really work. They're NOT websites! You're demanding full virtualization AND maximum performance in the same time. That's not going to happen, not with windows or any other OS for that matter. Sure, as the hardware computing power increases, you may have DECENT performance and full virtualization, but that's NOT the Windows dogma. Windows will always aim to deliver MAXIMUM performance and decent virtualization. Which, if you really knew what you were talking about, is the thing you want with your daily
Whenever a company starts aping their competitors they not only acknowledge that they are second rate but that they have already lost, unless they come up with something really new ...
Microsoft are now just copying entire concepts from Apple, Linux, Google etc. .. and do not seem to have anything new to offer ... ?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Why do I feel this is like Microsoft trying to pull a Chrome and Firefox but with their OS instead?
sounds old school to me
Steve Ballmer is flying the plane now. Tower is on the horn telling him he needs to gain altitude, but Ballmer thinks they said Attitude; whilst headed for the ground in a sweaty dance.
All the boys and girls from Neowin are on on that plane, living it up and having a damn good time. Unaware Ballmer is piloting the plane "This is your Captain speaking, we need more Attitude!" as cheers erupt. Bill Gates was unavailable for comments, as he thinks 'Blue' airlines is headed in the wrong direction.
According to the article, Blue is a Windows 8 refresh. I assume that to mean that it's going to add all the stuff that Windows 8 was lacking when it came out, particularly in relation to its mouse / keyboard and "classic" behaviour. But even metro is a bit shit on the desktop, lacking stuff like folders to group icons, zoom in / out, certain multi-select actions and so on.
ne zaman bir modern mobilyaya ihtiyaç duyarasanz bir koleksiyona bakn
When did they ever do anything but copy from others? Microsoft have never been innovators, except possibly in the field of shady business practices. And frankly, they probably copied those too!
They are quite good at remaining current though, reinventing their offerings as new concepts emerge in desktops and servers with a proven market for them. Unfortunately, since everything has to be tied in to preserve the cash cows of Windows and Office, they aren't very good at entering entirely new markets.
When exactly was the last time Microsoft came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
Please enlighten me as to why you think I don't know what I'm talking about.
I just patched a clean Win 7 build and it took four patch/reboot cycles before I got everything uptodate.
Whereas my Linux Systems patch the lot in one go and only need to reboot when there is a kernel update. IIRC and I was running SLES I wouldn't even need to do that.
Or did I dream that I had to reboot my system so often in the patching process?
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
They will never, ever be able to remove support for the legacy desktop apps that is what keep customers from moving away from windows. What they WILL do however, is realize that home users don't really provide as much income as they should for microsoft. Apple is a shining example of a company that makes money from consumers, not business. Microsofts cash-cow is income from people using workstations and servers in offices around the world. So the question: How can microsoft make good business from consumers, without risking their revenue stream from business? Answer: by separating the tiers further. Make desktop/legacy a "premium" product, and sell the consumer OS cheaper by forcing users to adopt apps that give MS a piece of the revenue. I predict that the desktop will live forever, but only in the higher SKU:s of windows. Meanwhile, microsofts "Home"/OEM offerings of windows will steadily become cheaper and slowly move into an apps-only ecosystem.
Where in my post did I talk about wanting full Virtualization and Max performance? I didn't so please stop trying to read something that is clearly not there.
The question is
Do MS system require rebooting when applying patches?
Yes
Do other Operating System apply patches without the need for reboots?
Yes
ergo,
If MS is going to a continuious update cycle then they really need to reduce the number of reboots required after applying patches.
If they don't they are going to piss off a lot of users with the increased reboot frequency.
not that hard really is it?
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
ummm did you even read the original post?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
At least OSX and Linux do require reboots when applying OS patches so ...
If they don't then IMHO, this is a dead duck. They have a wonderful opportunity to stop the patch/reboot/patch/reboot cycle here
Please... While this is a problem for some, I'm willing to bet the amount of revenue they've lost because of it is incredibly low.
Microsoft are in serious danger of scaring off their massive army of third party developers, exactly the people who have guaranteed them success over nearly 20 years. THIS is their major problem. Metro and the Microsoft App store is a massive "fuck you" to us. This is especially true if you're invested in OpenGL. The amount of work required to bring a professional OpenGL based engineering suite over to Metro is massive.
That is the clumsiness that is Windows OS. The other day a Visual Studio update went seriously wrong. Now the dialog's were telling me to shut down VS to avoid a reboot. It still needed rebooting, and still fucked up.
Code Blue?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I really hope that's not true.
I had to use a computer today with XP and the "classic" windows theme. Sure, the operating system has come a very long way but the UI is definitely going backwards.
WIMP is a sound UI paradigm and "classic" theme makes it very clear and intuitive. A few modern gradients, higher DPI and a new set of high resolution icons would have made it a sheer delight.
With the touch-optimized, flat, giant controls, modal paradigm you can't really do anything other than the most basic things and even that's confusing.
Normal Windows Update is good for incrementally keeping a system up-to-date. If a system is far out of date, then you would be better off using WSUS Offline Update, or if you're installing from scratch, make a sliptreamed install disc with all the current updates.
This sounds about right, it'll be interesting to see how quickly consumers take this up. I haven't met anyone yet who actually wants to use the 'Metro' interface, much less buy thier software throuh the Microsoft store. Of course I've read plenty of 'I use Win 8 and I don't see what the fuss is about' posts in various tech forums, but even from those people I've never heard anyone extolling the virtues of a 'killer' Metro app. Until such things exist, where is the compelling reason to make the switch? I fear the only answer is that we will be steadily 'forced' to use the new interface with subsequent versions of Windows.
I currently use Windows for productivity and gaming, this Metro crap I can see being the reason I move to Linux for my productivity stuff, and if Steam for Linux takes off with enough publishers, possibly my gaming as well.
I've never loved Windows, but I've never really hated it either (well maybe sometimes), it's always been 'good enough' to do what I want it to do, as soon as it starts to tell me how I should interact with my desktop, and where I should buy my software, well thats the point at which it ceases to be useful for me, and probably a great many others.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
It is only a big deal for the people who have an ego in uptime. The issue in the real world is availability, not some uptime number and you get that through redundancy. I don't care if a Windows DC reboots. Why? Because I have like 5 more. You want to have multiple systems that are redundant so that when (not if, but when) you have a hardware failure service isn't interrupted.
Reboots are just not a big deal in the server world. If they are, then you've designed your service wrong and you need to re-think it. Unless you are buying mainframe hardware (and even then sometimes) you are going to have a system failure some day, you want other systems that smoothly handle the load while it is down. Reboots are just small, non-destructive tests of that.
As for desktops this has never been a real issue, but is even less with SSDs. It is real hard to care about a reboot for patches at all when it happens at 3am while you sleep (or alternatively on manual shutdown and boot up) but it is harder still to care when you system reboots in less than 10 seconds, as systems with SSDs are wont to do.
While I am a Visual Studio fanboy, I gotta say that uninstalling VS is also a pain in the ass. It sprinkles around a good bunch of these little "Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data-Tier App Framework" programs, which you will have a field day removing one-by-one, as the main uninstaller does not delete them.
"City of Redmond burns to the ground"
If you really think that is the reason they will burn to the ground you really don't understand the average user.
"only way to go"
You just made it clear you've never used Win8.
While I am a Visual Studio fanboy, I gotta say that uninstalling VS is also a pain in the ass. It sprinkles around a good bunch of these little "Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data-Tier App Framework" programs, which you will have a field day removing one-by-one, as the main uninstaller does not delete them.
Because those other little things are also used by programs other than VS. Your example, if removed, could break SQL Server 2012 for instance.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
When exactly was the last time Microsoft came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
When exactly was the last time Apple came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
When exactly was the last time Sony came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
When exactly was the last time Canonical came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
When exactly was the last time Nintendo came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
When exactly was the last time Sega came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
That's the nature of business ;) The issue isn't the aping per se, but whether they've improved on the feature in question.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
There's plenty wrong with Windows, but that's pretty far down the list of stuff to fix. NT has always been like that - just prior to a service pack on a fresh install it will take a few reboots to get caught up. Thing is, on a fresh install you are unlikely to have a bunch of applications and data open so it's not such a big deal.
Once it's installed, it's a reboot once a month and most people turn their computers off every day anyway.
Hell, I reboot my Linux boxes after a big patch because it's quicker than parsing the list of packages updated and restarting all the services by hand.
I use windows 8 and don't get what the fuss is about. I basically don't use the metro interface and don't intend to ever do so until I can do ALL my work in it. That is, I don't dislike the UI per se, but dislike having to switch back and forth. I don't really care if MS gets a share of what I pay for applications either, but here is the chicken and egg problem: I won't buy any metro apps until I use that interface. I won't use that interface until I can use it exclusively. I won't use it exclusively until all my applications are there.
Microsoft (and Apple, Oracle, etc) takes nothing away from FLOSS software, it merely competes with it. Sometimes it wins, sometimes it loses. It most often wins in market segments where FLOSS was/is seriously lacking, like n00b-friendly GUI apps, software for sweet ol' secretary ladies who've barely learned to point and click, and of course games. (True, sometimes it coasts on the momentum of past accomplishments, but this momentum cannot last more than a few years.)
Microsoft's software makes millions of people more productive (or more entertained / happier) than they would have been without it, providing value for value. This injects money and jobs into the IT sector, some of which in turn goes to FLOSS, or the salaries of people who also contribute to FLOSS, etc. FLOSS benefits tremendously from proprietary software that got ahead of it, learning both from its innovations and its mistakes. In time FLOSS software catches up in a particular market segment, and Microsoft moves on to something else.
If what you hate is "intellectual property", then Microsoft should be on the very bottom of your "enemies list", since a large and growing part of their products are not hinged on mere IP and EULA ("implicit contracts"), but operate through far more legitimate means: explicit business / education / certification / support contracts, hardware bundling, SaaS and other services, etc. Compare this to Copyleft, which is entirely dependent on IP to be enforceable. The only software that is completely free from IP is Copyfree ("permissive" / "don't sue, don't plagiarize" licensed software) or "Public Domain".
--libman
Paragraph one wrong. Paragraph two right.
It's Microsoft, they adhere to a pattern which if you're a big company making lots of money simply have to be on guard for. If MS shows up and offers a strategic partnership, show them the door and smile, it means what you have is worth lots and MS wants to steal it. If you lift the hood on your products and invite them in then instantly your days are numbered and you will eventually lose.
- Look at FB and MS. That's nothing but win for MS. Half of FB is powered by Bing! and now look at what's happening with Skype. Plus they doubled their money when FB went IPO.
- Look at Novel and MS. MS win. Nothing but bullying and win for MS. Linux being licensed back to MS, Freakin Maddness!!
- Look at Norton and MS. MS win. Strategic partnership that turned into MS Security Essentials and killed Norton's consumer market.
- Look at Zune and MS. Tragic fail. Apple was smart to not let peering eyes in on that one.
- Look at Xbox and MS. MS win. Get the game makers on side and now MS is making their own award winning games like Halo.
MS wins more than it loses and it's up to "who" lets them win more than if the company is second rate. Simply put, they come a knocken send them packing or you'll pay for it! I don't like their way of doing business but it's how I see them.
A little bit of Nokia a little bit of MS's strategic partnering, a couple years later you have Surface ...
Same process, same Borg like attitude .. same old Microsoft.
I have met a few people excited about the Metro screen. But these people barely know how to use a computer and to them, Metro is a lot easier to find what programs they want to run. I personally don't mind Windows 8 and Metro although the first thing I did was set the default for all Metro apps to the full version and pin my most used programs to the taskbar. Any time that I need another program, I simply hit the windows key, type in the first few characters of what I want and hit enter. Metro pops up and goes away quickly.
it took you FOUR reboots to update a new install of windows 7?
after install and first-startup to desktop, with 'recommended' updates off (critical only)....
first run of windows update updates itself. no reboot.
(not a terrible idea to 'hide' update KB971033 even 'legit' installs)
second run of windows update can get all non-SP updates, including those released after the SP, in one shot. reboot needed.
third run of windows update gets the SP. reboot needed.
forth run of windows update.... there is no forth run... perhaps a dotnet update is left, but that's no big deal.
two reboots needed to update a new windows 7 install, only one if you're working with install media with integrated SP.
next time know what the fuck you're doing.
Totally hilarious reference to North Korea - but c'mon - Microsoft is run like an open source software project compared with Apple. What's interesting is that consumers seem to greet Apple's secrecy and paranoia with an almost Willy Wonka like fascination.
Microsoft "lets" their users test the product and send back error reports.
you just got internetted
After Windows Screen, when Windows Death is released, the fat lady will sing.
Unix systems gladly replace system libraries that are in use, and just hope that not problems happen because two different versions of the same library are in use simultaneously. The further away from the core libraries you get, the lower the odds of a problem, but it's still a risk. The Unix approach is basically "Let's just go ahead and do it, it'll probably be ok."
Windows takes the safe approach of only updating libraries that are not in use. I'm sure you'd wind up with weird glitches if your apps were using multiple versions of GDI simultaneously. The Windows approach is "It may be ok to update this now, or it may not. Just to be safe, let's not update it until we can guarentee it's safe."
Yes I get that win8 is OK and you can work around the metro screen, it's the direction that I don't like. Optional work around today, walled garden tommorrow, my tactic is to not buy into it and hope that enough people do the same thing.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
Unix systems gladly replace system libraries that are in use, and just hope that not problems happen because two different versions of the same library are in use simultaneously. The further away from the core libraries you get, the lower the odds of a problem, but it's still a risk. The Unix approach is basically "Let's just go ahead and do it, it'll probably be ok."
Windows takes the safe approach of only updating libraries that are not in use. I'm sure you'd wind up with weird glitches if your apps were using multiple versions of GDI simultaneously. The Windows approach is "It may be ok to update this now, or it may not. Just to be safe, let's not update it until we can guarentee it's safe."
It is OK on Unix because that replaced library still exists in memory and can continue to be used by the programs ... running in memory!
Each new invocation of the programs that try to use that library will of course pick up the new version. It's not magic. I don't get why people can't grasp this.
I was about to answer all of your questions, just to be snarky, but I'll just say this: There's an answer to each one, and the only answer that's extremely dated is the Sega one.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
It would be nice if the Windows application management interface was a _little_ bit more like a package manager, though. It would be great if you could scan through the list of installed programs and see which ones are dependencies for other installed programs and which are not. Then, you could go through removing leaf nodes from the dependency tree until you run out of things that aren't needed, with confidence that you aren't going to be breaking stuff that you actually use.
My pet hate are all the minor dot releases of VC++ frameworks installed by various games. I'm sure I don't *really* need them all, but damned if I can figure out which are expendable.
I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I really like Windows 7.
But you can have my unsigned desktop apps when you wrest them from my cold, dead hands.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have a hard time believing an entity the size of Microsoft is really going to be capable of 'agile'.
It has to be an absolutely vast code base, with a huge number of things to test -- and undoing that long of corporate culture takes a lot of work.
I'll be curious to see how they fare, but changing from big giant releases and versions to more frequent builds and releases is a difficult thing to do. And Microsoft is kind of well known for having their own intertia keep them from being able to really do this kind of thing.
I also think a lot of corporations won't be really keen to start getting these kinds of drops from Microsoft -- I've seen OS upgrades deployed in large organizations, and it's usually better part of a a year or so, with a large amount of manpower and planning. Doing even quarterly upgrades is something which would be almost impossible to keep up with. If you need to be sure nothing is going to break with each release, that's an awful lot of testing.
Microsoft trying to be more agile might in the end costing companies much more money and resources as they try to keep up. Which is why they've extended support for Windows 2003 to something like 2015 -- because an awful lot of people have mission critical stuff that isn't easily moved.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
also enterprise use of windows is way to high to go that way.
What about all the other windows app / games stores?
So what you're saying is that if I update a system library that has some sort of security vulnerability, it will continue to be in use until I reboot? This is considered to be a good thing?
You still have to restart your apps. If you were in a recent SLES release, it is recommended to run "zypper ps" and check out which apps/services need to be restarted. Otherwise, these might be using old code.
what about Steam? Origin? GOG? GamersGate? and others that are big with home users??
My Toshiba laptop spends three hours repeatedly rebooting when reinstalling Windows 7 from the recovery partition. I could have installed Linux about six times before it's finished.
OK, it's a retarded installer, but most people's experience of installing Windows will be using the recovery partition and not a clean install from an actual Windows disk.
Indeed but at least in OSX the interface is much simpler and less annoying. I can select to update the things that wont cause a reboot and then say "not now" to the things that will and it wont remind me i have updates every 15 minutes and ask to restart. In fact i have an update that I've been putting off for a few weeks and I cant even remember the last time it asked me to install it and it NEVER just installs it then asks me to restart ever 15 min - 4 hours.
driver updates? Some drivers are in windows update.
They went back to a monolithic windows to getaway from the compatibility issues. This approach will just add to market fragmentation and destroy the one thing MS still has left on the PC. I think you are going to start seeing real push-back. In a mature market, products shouldn't go obsolete in two years. Hardware should go 3-4 years (power users), and an OS should double that. There just isn't business logic to need to update things that often. Same goes for home; most people's needs just don't change that often/quickly.
Or you can just reload the process that was using said library.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Heck, seems like we do nearly a full OS update every stinking month, on the 2nd Tuesday!
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
This doesn't work in cases where the library talks to a daemon (or uses RPCs or whatever). In which case it breaks horribly and unpredictably.
This is probably why Windows reboots (and Linux distros like Ubuntu often does).
And other platforms (e.g. Ubuntu) handle this by recognizing when a package was installed to fulfill a dependency and implements an 'autoremove' to remove packages acquired to fulfill a requirement that has since been uninstalled.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Indeed !
Plus in OSX the user gets an icon showing them if a reboot is even required in the first place. This is an OS doing what it is supposed to: presenting information to the user and letting the user decide AND then getting out of the way of their choice -- that is, respecting it.
I give Microsoft another 5 years before they figure it out.
First of all, I saw a screenshot of a warning about a disclosure for a Windows 8 beta. So, how exactly is that solid proof of a Windows Blue or 9? Anyway, as if Apple had more reasons to not be used in a business environment, their insistence on constantly changing the OS every year with a big release and then breaking half the legacy apps is the real killer. There are businesses (mine for example) that are just finishing or even starting testing Windows 7 to replace XP. Now we have to test 8 and then 9 and then 10 all in one year each? I think we'll have to hire someone to do just that full time and then never actually deploy a new OS because it will have changed to the next one by then. I thought they'd pull a post-vista and come down off their crazy train and take 3 years to build something that wasn't a useless piece of shit. But nope, they're opting to piss people off twice as badly but on a yearly basis and stick with that awful interface. There goes the Microsoft "every other" cycle.
Microsoft's goal appears to be to make the new version sufficiently different and incompatible with extant versions, formats, UI, etc., so that users will recognize that it is 'new.' Shouldn't the goal be, though, to have the new version have some major new capability that did not exist in previous versions and gives users a new ability to do something important?
The two key things are: -Mandating/nagging updates: only MS nags the users so much. To be fair, MS has been unfairly characterized as having a less secure platform than they really due thanks to their user base being lazy and trying to avoid updates, and that's a tough problem. -Duration of updates. Because MS never really implemented a sane way to do in-place updates, they have to go into this 'limbo' state to install updates. Other platforms can install updates behind the scenes. Even if they do require a reboot or decide it's best to do a reboot even if not strictly required, none of the update activity blocks normal usage. A reboot to do updates is exactly the same length of time to reboot without updates.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Are you sure that whole dependencies tree between processes and libraries is taken into consideration during an update on unix/linux?
If MS is going to a continuious update cycle then they really need to reduce the number of reboots required after applying patches.
If they don't they are going to piss off a lot of users with the increased reboot frequency.
not that hard really is it?
There are a lot of "shoulds" when it comes to Windows. The issue isn't that simple. The underlying structure is still apps running on a PC for a single user. Unix was designed from the ground up as a multiuser system, with multiple layers of separation between kernel, drivers, hardware, windowing, network, etc. With Unix you can patch a part of the system, and not touch the kernel directly. With Windows, you have to patch libraries and executables that can be used by multiple layers. So basically you need a complete conceptual rebuild, instead of the slow decoupling that they've been trying over the years. In other words, to quote MST3K, "They just didn't care."
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
This is incorrect for linux, ever heard of Ksplice? No reboots for minor revisions, major revisions on the other hand are a differnt matter.
They have already lost the day they desided to build the FOSS FUD engine. In a few years if they keep going the way they are going the desktop platform will belong to linux and the rest of the open source community. What we are witnessing is what happends to corperations that try to out muscle an enitity that is far more powerful then they are, an enitity that can't be bought and no amount of money are going to make them go away. An enitity that plays by the rules, and will distory anything that gets in its way.
> How can microsoft make good business from consumers,
> without risking their revenue stream from business?
A better question: How can Microsoft come to terms with the fact that it should just be a fantastic product for business and quit worrying about the consumer market? Just like the kid who has to accept that he'll be an accountant, not a pop star, MS should just focus on business and accept the fact that it'll never be cool like Apple. Just be like plain old boring profitable IBM.
Step 1: quit doing crap like making the-UI-formerly-known-as-Metro the default. Step 2: Refine, refine, refine. Make the products better each release (note: NOT each year) and don't add new crap just because it's new. Live search in the start menu? Great idea. (Even if Apple did it first.) Doing away with the start menu? Not so much. Smarter window managing? YES. More like this please.
Just focus on making a product that lets people who need to do more than one thing at a time be super-productive. I'm an Apple fan and I love my Mac and my iPhone, and the iPad is nice but I barely use mine. Whenever I want to do anything that's not totally trivial, it's worth the time to wake up my laptop and work on that, rather than slowly poking around from one iPad screen to the next.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
OMG NO I WILL HAVE TO REBOOT FOR THE PATCHES OMG NOOOOOOO
How often will this hell happen? 1 time a year.
Your acting like this is something you need to do every time you start your computer.
Give it a rest.
PS LINUX STILL SUCKS
Actually Windows NT being reimplementation of OpenVMS was designed from the ground up as an advanced multiuser system with many more features than earlier versions of Unix.
Which is why Windows needs a proper package management system, I agree :)
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
...Ballmer running around screaming "Developers"!
Maybe Douglas Adams was referring to this when he introduced a character as a "Super Intelligent Shade of Blue".
It is OK on Unix because that replaced library still exists in memory and can continue to be used by the programs ... running in memory!
Each new invocation of the programs that try to use that library will of course pick up the new version. It's not magic. I don't get why people can't grasp this.
But that's exactly why there is a problem!
Library version numbers generally change when the API changes. If a new version of the library is source compatible with the old one, the version generally stays the same. However, that doesn't mean the internal workings are compatible.
Let's say you've got a library that handles communication between applications. You've got Foo running with library version 1.2.3. The developers discovered a bug in the library's internal data transfer protocol. The bug is an implementation detail, not an application visible one, so they simply fix it and release version 1.2.4. It's 100% API compatible - taking advantage of the fix just requires updating the library. You update the library in place, with Foo still running using version 1.2.3. You start up Bar, which now loads library version 1.2.4. When the two apps try to interact, you're now going to get bugs or even crashes when they interact. They believe they're using the same library, but they're not. You've now run into a class of bugs that only exists because you updated a library that was already in use.
The issue gets worse if on-disk data is involved. You've now got data files potentially being updated by different versions of a library, potentially leading to data corruption or loss.
Windows RT still has desktop mode.
Badda Bing!
Interesting question. When .net was all the rage, I used to get annoyed because Microsoft seemed uninterested in anything that *wasn't* a business, preferably one that we in the office termed "www" (i.e. selling widgets to wankers on the web).
Since then, Microsoft has seemed actively anti-business. They switch programming language platforms willy-nilly, with virtually no discernable advantage from any perspective except their own (e.g. WPF, the latest pointless iteration of ASP, and the "de-emphasis" of Silverlight). Server licensing models are an incomprehensible, ever-changing mess. Platforms and products randomly appear and disappear (Remember Windows Live?). And Windows 8? Need I say more? All of this is Microsoft continuing to "solve" problems my business never had, and that no other business I knew of had either. Microsoft seems to have run out of useful things to do and is now going for "change for changes sake" as a marketing strategy, which is failing (e.g. the surface and Windows 8's "metro" interface).
At this point, I would welcome a little pro-business activity from Microsoft. Not screwing your current developer and user base by making their hard won knowledge of your product obsolete might be nice. That courtesy, however, only seems extended to C++ programmers. I'd like changes and additions to software to be vetted by whether they'd actually be useful to paying end users, instead of "the 20-something whiz kid down the hall had a brainwave - let's do it!" strategy. OK, perhaps I'm exaggerating that last bit, but it sure doesn't feel like it. I'd like to think that Microsoft's culture has grown up from the late 80s, early 90s, sneery, arrogant, adolescent nerd culture, but that culture shows every sign of still being the dominant one at Microsoft.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I don't really care if MS gets a share of what I pay for applications either,
I find it disturbing people are soo willing to let this kind of power be aggregated in the hands of the few. The cavalier willingness to take such a short sighted view is depressing.
Surely Apple has never abused their position by locking out competing apps or enforcing their values upon the rest of us have they? What could go wrong with a monopoly on execution..surely no company with a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make money would ever dare leverage their monoploy status.
You knew this was going to happen when Julie Larson-Green was made to be in charge of the Windows division at Microsoft.
I'll just be tactful and say that she is not compatible with that job.
"She reports that the program, which is attempting to replace the multiyear product drops for the Windows-branded desktop, server, phone, and network services products with a more agile release cycle, with better continuity across the suite"
This is just plain retarded. Why have "agile releases" of corporate software? We can barely afford to upgrade server OS and applications every 5-10 years including all of the time/labor for the upgrades! Now they are going to release Server OS, Exchange, etc every 12-18 months? I call bullshit.
Hell, Microsoft can't even have their flagship Exchange 2010 product run on Server 2012 yet....and that is 6+ months after Server 2012 was released. Now I'm supposed to believe that Microsoft will have interoperability between 5-10 server releases with 5-10 different flavors of Exchange, SQL, etc?
I can't even imagine trying to manage that mess - it's difficult enough now.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
They're just chasing the new money and the new paradigms having milked all they could from the old ones.
MS Management sees all the 20-something whiz kids writing mobile apps and figures everything to do with that is the future, and it's certainly where all the double-digit growth and money is.
"The existing developer base" isn't even seen as a constituency -- they're not doing anything lucrative and growth-oriented, and they're likely to be replaced with slave labor from India anyway, eliminating their involvement even in that legacy market.
If Office 365 is a sign of things to come, maybe one day Windows will be offered as a service subscription....
Yeah, your Windows installation will expire unless you pay up by the end of the month.
No, you cannot have volume licenses. One license for one machine. If you want to use your copy of Windows on another PC, you need to deactivate your subscription first.
An always-on Internet connection (think Diablo 3) is required for you to use Windows, there is no more 'offline mode'.
Don't forget your Microsoft account, you'll need to log in to it whenever you power up your computer. It also let's you have access to Microsoft's 'ecosystem': Bing, Skydrive, Xbox Live, Skype, Office 365 etc.
Yep, that day is coming soon.
Seems to me that Metro is the UI inspired by that hospital scene in the movie Idiocracy.
Most of us would rather that the entire Metro thing that's stapled onto Windows 8 is removed, uprooted entirely. We don't want to see it at all.
We don't want touch-centric UI on a desktop, and if we want a touch device, we'll get a non-Microsoft offering.
If Metro were that popular, Windows phones and Surface tablets would have been selling well. They're not selling well.
It is OK on Unix because that replaced library still exists in memory and can continue to be used by the programs ... running in memory!
You update the library in place, with Foo still running using version 1.2.3. You start up Bar, which now loads library version 1.2.4. When the two apps try to interact, you're now going to get bugs or even crashes when they interact.
If a shared library is already loaded why would the system not reuse the reference to that library it already has loaded rather than attempting to ask the current file system view for to establish a separate reference?
If two programs running in separate memory spaces experience these kinds of side effects while communicating with each other this is a protocol design issue. Remember it is entirely possible to have local versions of shared system/runtime libraries that differ between application because of locally installed DLLs or DLLs within search path.
The issue gets worse if on-disk data is involved. You've now got data files potentially being updated by different versions of a library, potentially leading to data corruption or loss.
Who writes an on disk format that changes between versions without properly versioning the file? Garbage In = Garbage Out.
Won't do. Microsoft (especially Steve Ballmer) has a serious case of Apple envy. Look at the ads Microsoft is churning out these days. Look at the site revamp. Look at the new Microsoft corporate logo. The Microsoft brick-and-mortar retail stores. The Surface venture. Xbox Music.
In summary:
Microsoft envies Apple on the consumer side.
Microsoft envies Google on the web/business/productivity side.
King Ballmer surrounds himself with flatterers and fools.
When exactly was the last time Microsoft came up with a new idea that wasn't aping its competitors?
PowerShell. I've spent time on the job writing unix scripts, but I still have a hard time explaining why this script language is so much better than bash or similar alternatives. I have to rely on the explanation that doesn't really explain: pipes pass objects instead of strings. My other name for PowerShell is "the only thing Microsoft ever did right".
Linux still requires reboots like Kernel upgrades. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Powershell is just a heavily object-oriented scripting language that combines ideas from a number of places - there's nothing particularly new or unusual about that. However, the reason it's particularly interesting in Windows is pretty much everything in Windows already is object-oriented in its architecture, which means a scripting language that exposes the various APIs and objects is an extremely good fit.
This isn't true in Unix, which means the only way you'd ever get a language that mixed the same level of sophistication with usability and portability across different Unix variants would be with a gigantic abstraction layer. Even then you'd be likely to run into trouble because the abstraction layer would have to deal with an awful lot of cases where something that makes sense on, say, BSD, makes no sense at all on Linux. It'd be quite difficult to write an abstraction layer that gracefully gave you a way of configuring both IPTables and pf without seriously limiting the featureset it exposes.
Why not just have software on the phones we already carry?
MS wins more than it loses and it's up to "who" lets them win more than if the company is second rate. Simply put, they come a knocken send them packing or you'll pay for it! I don't like their way of doing business but it's how I see them.
Guess what, they will be right back knocking on your door threatening patent infringement of hidden patent lists: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2011111122291296
Sure you could fight - or you could partner, CEO/board cashes out and lets their company nosedive.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The boiling the frog thing generally refers to slowly raising the water temp, so the frog doesnt notice. I think everyone noticed the metro thing, and theres a reason I havent heard businesses getting thrilled about it.
For the record, Office still is non-metro. Hmm, I wonder why.
The fuss is that IE9-metro-edition sucks about 10 times more than IE9-desktop-edition, and that half of the reason I went to Win7 in the first place was all the GUI improvements to multi-tasking with docking etc. Now im told that thats out the window, as is any mouse-oriented GUI? Yea, no thanks.
.
Anyway, these will be the future common machines. Huge touchscreen and otherwise state-of-the-art. And your ma and pa will snap them up without thinking.
I would too if it was $1,200.
Touch, & Win8, make a lot more sense on a massive monitor. Maybe, hopefully, that will be the next big "fad" -- giant monitors that leave 2560x1440 far behind. I'll take a 4000x2500, please.
I come here for the love
It's quite clear that you are the only one lacking expertise here.
Every Linux distro I'm aware of installs updates -- hundreds of 'em -- without so much as a hiccup. I'm supposed to believe that Microsoft, with their billions in cash flow and office towers filled with programming might, can't do the same?
Windows triggers rebooting after updates because of lazy programming. What they should be doing is figuring out what services need restarting, what dependencies they have, what dependencies those dependencies have and so on. But it's easier to just offload the task of restarting services to the boot sequence, so that's what they do.
But, I don't give a shit what makes developers' lives easier. Their job is to make my life easier; to shield me from the unnecessary kludgery of certain aspects of computer operations that don't apply to my workflow.
If a shared library is already loaded why would the system not reuse the reference to that library it already has loaded rather than attempting to ask the current file system view for to establish a separate reference?
Because that's how it's always worked in UNIX ? Some people think it's a good thing, and that's why this update in place stuff works.
If two programs running in separate memory spaces experience these kinds of side effects while communicating with each other this is a protocol design issue. Remember it is entirely possible to have local versions of shared system/runtime libraries that differ between application because of locally installed DLLs or DLLs within search path.
Ideally, sure. But I specifically mentioned bug fix cases. Stuff happens, things go wrong. You do have to deal with it.
The issue gets worse if on-disk data is involved. You've now got data files potentially being updated by different versions of a library, potentially leading to data corruption or loss.
Who writes an on disk format that changes between versions without properly versioning the file? Garbage In = Garbage Out.
Changing code that's in use = garbage in. I'm not talking things like a document file that's written once and closed, I'm talking files continually accessed by multiple processes.
For a specific example of this happening, back in the days when libc had major changes frequently (think libc5 -> glibc/libc6 days), it was pretty common to do a system update and end up with problems with utmp and wtmp caused by two versions of libc being in use. You'd get garbage output when you ran commands like "who". The problems went away when you rebooted to get rid of everything using the old libc.
Since there is no IE9 in Windows 8, everything you have posted is a lie.
Do MS system require rebooting when applying patches?
Yes
Do other Operating System apply patches without the need for reboots?
Yes
What's the big deal with having to reboot your computer, it's 2mins (if it's a shitbox and slow) out of your life?! Oh that's right, ePenis uptime scores. Don't give me that crap about servers needing to be up 99.9999% of the time either, if that was the case you would load balance for redundancy anyway and could reboot them one at a time.
Why are you that worried about this issue? I just can't grasp the need to worry. I used to worry about stuff like that, but then, having no disk space made that an issue. With today's hard drives, and even increasingly, SSDs, I just don't worry about that stuff anymore.
Powershell is just a heavily object-oriented scripting language that combines ideas from a number of places - there's nothing particularly new or unusual about that.
Since it's such a trivially unoriginal thing to do, then surely you can name an equivalent on unix systems? I've wanted to explain to people that it's like this, but I've never had a this that I could point to. Your example(s) would help me a lot.
Why don't they just adopt the OpenBSD project's strict six month release cycle? Say what you will about the project, its founder, misc@ etc, but that's the model to follow, open source or not.
yeah Ubuntu never had a bug, that would fill up /boot after 15 updates of kernels, it would keep each one there, until /boot was full and couldnt boot.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Well, I kind of assume that some of the dot point revisions are due to security fixes. Sometimes I wonder if having the older ones installed exposes me to risk.