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Chrome Will End XP Support in 2015; Firefox Has No Plans To Stop
Billly Gates writes "Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP in 2014. Fortunately for its users who want to keep browsing the web, Google is continuing to support Chrome until at least 2015. Firefox has no current plans to end support for XP. Hopefully this will delay the dreaded XPopacalypse — the idea that a major virus/worm/trojan will take down millions of systems that haven't been issued security patches. When these browsers finally do end XP support, does it mean webmasters will need to write seperate versions of CSS and JavaScript for older versions if the user base refuses to leave Windows XP (as happened with IE6)?"
Update: 10/29 17:31 GMT by S : Changed headline and summary to reflect that Mozilla doesn't have plans to drop XP support any time soon.
They'll take my XP when they put me in the ground. Warning: this post may contain traces of levity.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
The article says they have no plans to end support for XP, how in the world did the summary end up saying exactly the opposite?
Or is now even blatant lying ok as long as it might work as clickbait?
I know there are versions of Firefox for older systems maintained by other parties.
The linked article, posted 20 hours ago, actually says
Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."
and basically the same for Chrome.
The lack of patches mean all these old boxes get taken out; there'll be no need to write web apps which run on them as they'll be too busy serving up DDOS/malware to people using slightly more recent versions of Windows!
I only use Windows for dual booting when I need Windows for some reason, which is rare, but XP was a solid and decent version of the Windows family. I'd have kept it if it weren't being sunsetted. I now have Windows 8 on my other partition. I hate the interface, passionately, but luckily I don't have to use it often. I felt like I had to move to 8 just to have software support.
Sad to see it go. It was the first decent OS Microsoft made.
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
From the fine article:
Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Does this mean that Firefox will finally go 64 bit?
Only an idiot would run a browser on an OS with unpatched vulnerabilities. Windows XP will not get any security issues fixed after April 2014. If you ignore those simple facts, you deserve becoming a part of a botnet, sending your passwords and credit card numbers to the botmaster.
Exactly. Like. XP. With classic window option and all. Just change the stuff under the hood. Instant top seller. Instead they're trying to sell me a cellphone for my desktop. Bloody idiots.
It will keep my computer from 2002 on the Inter-webs via dial-up...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
I thought i read not too long ago on /. that Chrome support would outlast Microsoft's support?
Article: "Both Mozilla and Google said they WILL continue to support XP"
Slashdot: "OMFG NOBODY WIL SUPPRT XP NE MOAR"
Seriously timothy, Fuck you.
The first link says that Mozilla plans to continue supporting Firefox on XP; it gives no end date, so they presumably mean indefinitely (though practically probably not much longer than a few years--for example, they supported Windows 2000 until Firefox 12 in April 2012, a bit over 2 years after its EOL; on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if they went a bit longer with XP given its larger user base). The second link says Google plans to continue Chrome support on XP into at least 2015. Neither one of these links talks about Firefox or Chrome ending support for Windows XP. In fact, both mention the exact opposite, at least for the foreseeable future, so I'm really wondering where the author of this summary got this information.
R.Mo
User experience will degrade for XP in normal desktop environments. In other use cases nothing will change much, as these systems do not use browsers. They control some weird machinery and the day the hardware fails, they have to be replaced. As long as the new hardware is able to run the old setup, these system will remain in that state. At the very day, the user/company is unable to acquire a replacement unit able to run the old stuff, they either migrate to a new OS or they collapse trying. As a company you should get rid of un-maintained software stacks. As a desktop user, you will migrate when it hurts more to stay with XP then migrating to something else.
Actually I'm in really bad shape finacially. I pay money to my ex-wife as part of our divorce settlement, amongst other bills.
I just have no choice to use an old XP laptop because I can't afford a new one.
captcha: trapped
Snarky reference to "Winblows", and link to text-only browser.
Have you ever visited the planet earth?
As of April 8th, 2014, Microsoft is ending all support for their 12 year old operating system. We can't continue to support legacy systems because people refuse to upgrade. There has been THREE full OS versions that have come out since XP. There are people still using Windows 98 and Windows ME, doesn't mean we still provide support for them.
The reason Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP is because they want to support Windows Server 2003, which has an End-of-Life of 14-Jul-2015. Since Win2003 (and XP Pro x64) use the NT 5.2 kernel and they don't want to lose that marketshare, by default supporting it on the NT 5.1 kernel (e.g. XP 32-bit) would be a trivial affair. That's why they chose "at least 2015"...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
As soon as Micr$oft comes up with a better version, we'll start using it.
Lousy goddamned Fisher-Price tabletized piece of crap. This is a real big-boy computer I use to get real work done on, not some damn device for consuming BookFace and MeToobe videos. Plus there's no signed W7 driver for the lab control interface card. Mabel II would be very unhappy if that stopped working.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Web Developers have learnt from the past, there will never be a supported code that will be dependant on a specific version again.
Cross-compatibility and Browser Independence is a main focus that hasn't been in the past. Most websites are not locked into a particular browser, so there are more options if things go pear-shaped in a particular browser. If for example Firefox drops XP support and there is a bug with the old version, the customer can change to Chrome until another solution is put in place.
IE6 was the exception, because it was too difficult in many codebases to update it for compatibility beyond IE6 in the short term, for time(=money) reasons. As soon as the codebases were updated (or the solution replaced) to work beyond IE6, IE6 was kicked right out the door. IE6 didn't stay king because so many people loved that browser so much that they didn't want to change, it was because they HAD to keep using it for some reason. It is not uncommon for companies still relying on IE6 to have Firefox installed for general web browsing and IE6 only for the specific app they need. You can bet your ass they have retirement plans on how to eventually get off IE6 (& now also XP) altogether.
Unsupported code (eg: unmaintained websites) that won't work with new versions - Yes that is inevitable.
Supported code - No.
If it is a supported codebase - The web developer's solution would be to update it to work with the new version, not make it work with the old. If that means that it will break compatibility with the old version, then so be it, it is industry practice not to support unsupported software.
It's worth pointing out that Mozilla & Google are not supporting XP - They are supporting their browsers. If there is a problem in XP, they are not going to help you with it.
It will adversely affect the virtual machine I use to watch Netflix. That's about it... I have a legal license for XP and run it in a VM. I no longer have a valid license for 7, and would not touch 8 with a 10-foot pole, even if you paid me to do it. But I still need something modern to support Windows XP, because that's how I access Netflix from my desktop PC.
Admittedly, with the number of devices I have with native Netflix clients (tablet, phone, smart TV, game consoles, etc.), that will become less of a problem, but I do still find time/reason to watch it on the desktop, and the Linux-native attempts do not work very well in my experience.
What does any of this have to do with Kai Opaca's lips?
For those of you wondering how this happened, I told my bosses about it about 2 years ago. I made a schedule of replacing 2.5 computers every 100 days and that would bring us right up there. Every single time it came up, they delayed it. We actually added about 4 more XP workstations so the number of replaced PCs went negative. Now we need to replace about 24 in the next 6 months and we don't have the money for that so we're screwed. I plan on finding a different job prior to April 8th.
I now have Windows 8 on my other partition. I hate the interface, passionately
You'll probably hate Classic Shell less. It adds a proper Start Menu to Windows 8, which you can configure to look like Windows 9x, Windows XP, or Windows 7.
They replaced the entire OS because the kernel stack was a tangled mess of spagetti that had numerous dependencies that made absolutely no sense. It was an unholy merger of Win9x and WinNT/2k with bells and wistles added throughout it's life (and three service packs).
You're not replacing the entire OS any more than you do when you do a Linux kernel upgrade or an update to Mac OS X, you can still upgrade Windows, though most people prefer to take upgrade time (seeing as it only comes infrequently) as an opportunity to start afresh and clear out the plethora of applications they don't use any more and so forth.
If you mean "Why do I have to pay for a whole new OS?" then the answer is instead simply that Microsoft make things easy for people and you'd never get end users to put up with needing to pay for an upgrade to the kernel one week, the networking stack a few months later and so forth. End users would get sick of doing it in bits and pieces and paying each time.
If you're asking why does it cost anything to update at all, well, that's Microsoft's business model, a different discussion that's been well had over the years.
But both Linux and MacOS have changed at least as much since 2002 as Windows has, if not more. So it's silly to pretend there's something unusual about upgrading Windows after 11 years. Most people upgrade their OS in that timeframe whatever their preferred OS is. You wont find many people sat on MacOS from 2002 or Linux from the same era. Most will have upgraded substantially at some point.
Just goes to show that the Win32 API is stable compared to say, MacOS X. Even though Mozilla dropped support for 10.4 and 10.5 PowerPC, the TenFourFox project keeps up with Mozilla's changes. Whats missing from Win32 in XP/2K3 that would force Mozilla to drop support in the future? OS X had big changes to font handling in 10.5 and higher, plus that big architecture change.
There are still plenty of 32-bit machines running Windows Vista and netbooks running Windows 7 Starter, so probably not. A 32-bit app on a 64-bit operating system is perfectly fine unless a single process needs more than 2 GB, which isn't quite the case for web applications. Firefox will more likely follow Chrome in splitting the user's browser session into multiple 32-bit processes.
Microsoft's own tools don't even work on XP anymore. It's a highly obsolete codebase for them.
If people want to keep using it, then can take those machines off the net and use them until they die without problem. But at some point Microsoft wants to devote its time to building better stuff, not infinitely supporting the old stuff because corporate IT still thinks that their IE6 only web app is good enough.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It was an unholy merger of Win9x and WinNT/2k
Actually I would say that Windows 2000 (one of the best OS's MS has made) was the merger of consumer and business lines (Win98 and WinNT4). Windows XP was developed from the 2K base and made it more bloated, more unstable and more unsecure.
Of course it is stable compared to Apple. Apple's attitude is that all apps should patch annually to keep up with OS changes. That have no intention nor desire for stability, they like rapid progress and encourage this attitude in their developer base and user community. Apple brags about how quickly they retire old versions of their operating systems to investors.
Puppy Linux is excellent on older hardware and fast on more recent boxes.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Funny, when XP launched the Slashdot consensus was that it was 'goddamned Fischer-Price crap' for consumers who didn't care about the lack of signed drivers for (your favorite obscure ISA card here), and real big boy computers ran Linux, UNIX, or Win2k if you really needed Microsoft software.
0 1 - just my two bits
Paul Thurrot. OK, guess I'll ignore that drivel.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Not a viable business strategy for Microsoft.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
How hard would it be to create a runtime environment for XP similar to WINE on Linux and MacOS that provides missing APIs and such so that things written to require newer versions of Windows could continue running on it?
Related point: is enough known about the OS that third parties could realistically provide their own security updates to it?
does this mean will not have to worry about upgrading to a new version of Firefox every other fortnight and having it break all the add-ons
sounds good to me
btw I just upgraded to FF 25 on my Win7 box and had to fiddle with Foxtab a lot to get it going again
there was no mention during the upgrade process that Foxtab was incompatible
Was published early August, so there may have been some changes and press releases and announcements since then, no? I would imagine AV companies will support whoever pays, especially the annual plans.
It's been over a decade, guys.
Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago, guy. Those PCs are still perfectly capable of doing most things that most of their users want to do. Why should they dump them just because Microsoft won't support its products?
I haven't tried it but Android-X86 might be a viable replacement. I can't see whether Netflix works on it but given that there are some Atom based tablets about I would've thought Netflix would've ported it.
What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
I've found WinXP running in a VM the sanest way to connect to the VPNs of various clients that I work with. Many VPN clients attempt to take over the entire network stack and direct all your traffic through their VPN which creates havoc with accessing company servers.
With WinXP I can clone a VM for different clients. I tried this with Windows7 and ran into activiation nightmares. Possibly not strictly legal, but I refuse to fork out cash just because different VPN clients won't play nicely with each other on the same instance.
Lack of Performance is a metric for suck, and in that regard Vista+ ARE sucky compared to XP.
I only use windows to game and for the rare 'Windows Only' app/DRM requirement (Notably various mandatory college web applications, and Netflix and similiar DRM'd media apps.) In regards to that windows is a necessity, and if XP works, why break what you've got for something new?
Additionally 16-20 fucking gigs for an OS with no more available features than XP? No thank you.
Those reasons by themselves are enough for me not to switch to Vista+ over XP. And given that even my full linux installs only take up 4-8 gigs with a whole pile of programs installed, I think the standard modern Windows install is a bigger security hazard than pretty much anything else on the planet. But maybe that's just me.
That said, if you're planning on using an OS after it stops getting security patches, you'd better be sure that it's not connected to a network, which somewhat limits the utility of a web browser...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?
Which part of 'Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago' is proving so hard to understand?
Most manufacturers would give their eye teeth to have a product that their customers love as much as our users love Wincows XP. It does everything that our people need done, it is stable and secure and simple and they know it well. As tech support I know it well, too; on XP I don't have to search for "Where did Microsoft put the device drivers THIS TIME!"
But the problem that Microsoft faces is that they hire programmers, and programmers are change agents. If the program really does the job well, nobody will ever buy a new version. So they have to artificially destroy Windows XP in order to sell newer versions. Trojans, viruses, malware are all allies of Microsoft.
Sort of like getting a new wife every eight years, whether you want one or not.
Troll rating: 1/10.
Try to be less obvious in future.
The great thing about the original Windows 95 is that it doesn't support USB, so you don't have to worry about people plugging infected USB sticks into your PC.
Why are his summaries so despised for being inaccurate?
is when MS turns off the Activiation servers for XP and all of those computers go silent except for a BSOD that demands money to Upgrade to Windows ?#.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Just give me a free Chrome OS to put on my Asus eee PC as a replacement.
that frankly, who gives a rip. we are still stuck on XP at work until somebody finally gets off their wallet and completes the Win7 upgrade project.
I finally did it at home, picked up a bargain laptop for the hamshack. 73 critical upgrades for Win8 later, all I have to do is fight the "Modern" interface. it's good exercise sliding to the bottom left all the time.
the eMac is another issue, but that's my editing machine...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
What the new and improved slashdot really needs is a "flag as inappropriate" (i would also settle for bullsh*t) button for articles...
Too bad the summary cleverly delivers misleading information about the clearly communicated future of chrome for XP - i would very much love for google to sue dice into oblivion because of the headline alone...
At least you see what the editors are doing around here, covering their asses when it comes to the big $ while kicking the OSS projects into the nuts all while spreading FUD for the usual joe coming here for serious "tech-info".
Head of Department of Redundancy Department
The headline:
Firefox ... Will Soon EOL On XP
From the article
Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."
You're a freakin' genius, y'idiot.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Everyone talks like the patch treadmill is absolutely necessary. It's not. The only reason this treadmill is marched by IT depts is to protect their jobs from the logical fallacies of management. The proof is the false assumption that the system's secure once the latest patches are installed, coupled with the rash of new patches the following week. Windows is fundamentally insecure. Hell, just about every OS is insecure if setup incorrectly no matter how many vendor patches are applied. If you're going to use an OS in a networked environment, just accept that, and when planned for accordingly, it's not the biggest issue in the world. Everyone posting here should know how to mitigate risks like this by now, patches or no patches.
Since when does an OSS community abandon an entire segment of the population just because Microsoft makes a commercial decision? I hope there's a fork and some group continues to support XP.
What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?
Most of the ones I've worked for support 10+ years old versions with regular patches and updates. Our software wasn't marketed towards the consumer market, and all of these companies relied on support contracts for their revenue, but it's worth noting that the entire software industry isn't video games and internet apps.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
XP was a fairly minor iteration to W2K, polishing off the UI and other rough edges to make it more suitable for mass consumption.
Not two or three, more like four or five now. SP3 was released in 08, and once 7 released, manufacturers made the switch.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Microsoft gave the business community a decade, support and all. Bureaucracy and inefficiency shouldn't be Microsofts problem
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
The beauty of open source is that the code is there for anyone to work with it if needed. Mozilla and Google will keep supporting Win XP users for now, but if they ever stop supporting the OS someone can fork them (specially Firefox) and keep the browser working. We know MS will not open source Win XP anytime soon, but if they did someone could take the OS and write patches for it. I have Windows XP in a dual boot with Linux on my laptop, because there are certain programs which I don't particularly use, but my wife does. I don't even have the original CD anymore to some of them, and maybe the company went under years ago. I virtualized the XP once and it worked. Then I isolated it from the internet just in case. I can do that again, because I know how to do it, but most people have no idea how to do something like that. They don't have money to buy a new computer and their systems are filled with photos, and files they want to keep. Is up to us to help them save those files. If you now someone like that tell them how to save those files somewhere else, and maybe introduce them to Linux so they can keep their computers without buying new ones. Its good for the mental well being of people and good for the environment.
Either Firefox forks, or I'll quit using it. I have no plans to change from XP. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me subsequent versions of Windows have made it more and more difficult to work "under the hood", and spend more and more time trying to turn every scrap of information they can gather over to Microsoft.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
so no need to upgrade. All my new machines have Vista or higher though.
hats off to firefox then...
b/c this, in TFA summary, was a really stupid question:
I LOL'ed
i'm making an 'ecommerce' site *right now* and putting custom system shortcuts & stuff all over it...using CSS3 alot to make quasi-animated features but still be lean
there's absolutely no way in hell I would do something like this...w/ my CSS3 'magic' i'd have to fucking run javascript (which my goal is not to need for presentation stuff) on all my main visual 'content' to make it all render properly
this crap is *exactly* why i hate M$ to begin with!
see, I actually have fond memories of Windows XP...it was the least bullshit of M$'s stuff & i could actually get work done on it w/ some tweaking
there will always be a place in my heart for a super-lean, fast, simple, non-Mac OS...
so again...thnx firefox!
Thank you Dave Raggett
Both Chrome and Firefox use DirectX on windows to support various features like access to direct2d and hardware video decoding. So they both end up emulating OpenGL for WebGL by using ANGLE so they can have access to both an OpenGL API and those other things at the same time. It also doesn't help that the state of OpenGL drivers on window is pretty poor for most user. Sure gamers have high end gpus and up to date drivers but most users don't.
Well, in order to for angle to emulate OpenGL ES 3.0 it requires DirectX 11 (or maybe only 10). Regardless that means for all practical purposes XP won't be supported.
Given that Opera is switching to Blink, I would assume that their support will end when Chrome's does.
Because their machines will become a part of a botnet next time a remote code execution vulnerability in XP is found.
What software company is still actively supporting products from 2003?
Which part of 'Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago' is proving so hard to understand?
How it is Microsoft/third-party developer's responsibility to support outdated OSes just because the OEMs where being sticks in the mud about changing what they sold?
How it is Microsoft/third-party developer's responsibility to support outdated OSes just because the OEMs where being sticks in the mud about changing what they sold?
Maybe because Microsoft took all those years to create an OS that anyone wanted to buy. Vista doesn't qualify.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
the start screen is mostly just a full-screen version of the start menu anyway.
Full screen is entirely the problem. It's like going through a doorway to the kitchen: the complete change in scenery makes it harder to remember what you went in there for.
It's been over a decade, guys. I understand there are legacy software needs, but you've had ample time to find a replacement.
My 2002 automobile works just fine, and if a dangerous defect is found, the manufacturer will recall it. The computer I have XP on works fine, why should I have to replace my OS because Microsoft's code is full of bugs that they refuse to fix? The product is defective or it wouldn't need support. It is plain EVIL that MS won't support XP until the last computer running it lets out the magic smoke, and from what I've read a third of computers on the net are running XP.
There is simply no excuse for MS not supporting it, and no excuse for your excusing MS. Do you work for them, own a lot of stock, or are just not too smart? Stop excusing thieves!
Free Martian Whores!
If you mean "Why do I have to pay for a whole new OS?" then the answer is instead simply that Microsoft make things easy for people and you'd never get end users to put up with needing to pay for an upgrade to the kernel one week, the networking stack a few months later and so forth.
I'm not looking for new functionality, I want them to fix their factory defects.
Free Martian Whores!
What company is this? I would like to know so I don't do business with them.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Thank you, Firefox. I am amazed that MS touts improved XP as a reason to move away from XP. Does anyone use IE? I would move from XP to Win7, if MS would pay the costs of converting my machine. Time, support help, potential program upgrade costs, etc. My hardware is sufficient, but I would need to essentially delete the operating system and all of my programs and settings, then rebuild the machine. Not cost effective.
Pinned applications in Windows 7 and 8 support multiple launch instances. Right click the icon and choose the program's name, which is just above "Unpin". Besides, Classic Shell does include a few enhancements to File Explorer.
Folks who live on the festering edge of technology will forever be in reactive mode.
They most likely live there because they don't know any better and have become "accustomed" to wearing their hair shirt.
Sure, and when Blackberry goes belly-up, they can suffer through a protracted outage while they scramble for a replacement. Nothing says success like a decision made in fear in panic. Or, they could start their planning and migration now and move as soon as they're ready.
Yeah, right.
Which are?
You seem to be making an awful lot of noise, but providing a complete lack of substance.
Which are?
Bugs unfound by their pathetic QA. A vulnerable OS is a poorly written OS.
Free Martian Whores!
Except that's not true anymore and is just a meme that should've been retired a good few years ago. Windows has decent QA now and isn't really any more vulnerable than MacOS or Linux.
Windows has decent QA now and isn't really any more vulnerable than MacOS or Linux.
Microsoft has decent QA? Then why does Microsoft Admit Windows 8.1 Update May Bork Your Mouse? And look at the trouble this guy had after using it for 5 hours.
Decent QA, my ass.
Free Martian Whores!
Find me a piece of software that's never had bugs.
Despite the size of the community, Linux releases have always had far more and far more problematic issues for example.
Yes, Linux does have bugs and fixes them as soon as they're fixable. No waiting for Patch Tuesday, no reboots. But every OS is less buggy than Windows. I've seen bad distros, and desktops getting borked, but in Linux never anything like the litany of woes being reported about W8.1.
Microsoft can afford sloppy coding, since their OS is installed on almost every new computer and "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". Other OSes don't have that luxury, they HAVE to do it right.
Free Martian Whores!
Lucky you then. Personally every time I've tried Linux I've had hardware outright not work, and not work for over a year - wireless connectivity, graphics cards, TV tuners. X just outright keeling over one day for apparently no reason forcing me to try and resolve the issues in the command line. That sort of thing.
It's not like any of my hardware was non-standard or uncommon either. Expensive Cisco and cheap Netgear wireless adapters alike had issues for example.
Granted I haven't tried it again for a good few years now but I always just went back to Windows for precisely the reason that stuff did just work there. No screwing about.
I like Linux as a server environment, but part the reason it's always failed to gain traction on the desktop is precisely because of shitty server support, lack of decent failsafe modes if something goes wrong (it took how many decades for X to get a safe mode?) and so forth.
Windows isn't just prominent because of it's monopoly, it's prominent because it works without any hassle.
I don't disagree that 8.1 is a shitty release but that's cherry picking. Take Windows 7 for example - fast, stable, secure, familiar, usable, great backwards compatibility. It's hard to argue that there was much wrong with it.
Granted I haven't tried it again for a good few years now
Ah, there it is there. I'd had those issues (maybe not as bad as yours) a long time ago; a USB sound blaster I'd bought because I lost the Windows driver (dual boot PC) wouldn't work in Linux, some extra buttons on a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard didn't work, etc. Choice of distro may have something to do with it, too. SVGA from the computer to the TV didn't work with Suse but worked fine with Mandrake.
I still have that keyboard and mouse, all the extra knobs and buttons now work. It's greatly improved, haven't had problems like that in years.
I bought a bluetooth dongle to move pictures from my phone to my computers and didn't think it would work on the Linux (kubuntu) box, since there were install programs for Windows and Mac but not Linux. So I installed the drivers on the Win7 notebook, rebooted (of course, it's Windows), went through its setup program, rebooted again, and had to hunt for the program to actually use bluetooth. It worked fine after all that.
I wanted to see what Linux would do if I plugged the bluetooth dongle in, and was amazed when a new icon appeared on the task bar. Clicking it brought up a screen to pair with a bluetooth device. One click on the computer and on the phone and I was moving pictures.
So which OS "just works"?
it's always failed to gain traction on the desktop is precisely because of shitty server support
I take it you mean connecting one to a network, I'm not sure I understand you. I've never had any problem connecting my Linux computers, Samba just works and is usually installed as a default. If you mean for it to be a file server I still don't get it.
lack of decent failsafe modes if something goes wrong
What? Windows is the one without failsafes. I've lost lots of data to Windows malfunctions, none to Linux. I had a dual boot box a few years ago and was cursing XP up and down because it kept crashing, but it wasn't completely Microsoft's fault, as one evening after I'd given up getting Windows work I was in Linux, Linux froze for a second, then the PC stopped. The power supply was flaky and trying to fail and causing Windows to crash repeatedly while Mandrake kept chugging along. I put the drive in another computer and Linux booted up just fine, except I couldn't access the windows files as I usually could, and when I tried to boot Windows I couldn't even get into safe mode, the entire file system was trashed. It was a good thing I had the data backed up.
As to Windows 7, the only thing that's kept linux off of this notebook is laziness. Yes, it works, but I have the hassle of Patch Tuesday while the Linux tower just pops up a thing saying updates are available and I click "install" and it's done, no reboots, no fuss. I hate shutting this computer off, don't mind shutting Linux off at all. None of the "waiting to close program" and losing data if you force it or time if you click cancel, it just shuts down. When I turn it back on it enters the password for me (this is optional on install), goes to the desktop and opens everything like it was before you shut it down. On the notebook I have to enter a password then remember what I was working on and find where I was. What takes ten clicks on the notebook takes three on the tower.
I would disagree about fast. I had another notebook that was dual-boot, and the Linux side ran rings around it.
Yes, it's stable from what I've seen (and this computer is starting to get a bit elderly) but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on security (I know enough to have a thin grasp on how immensely ignorant I am) but disagree on useability. Take that dual-boot notebook. It took me a month or longer to find out where you shut off the annoying "tap to click" thing. It wasn't under control panel in the "mouse" selection although you could swap buttons there, but in an icon that was inside a hidden icon, and was 20 clicks down. I installed kubuntu on it and it took less than five minutes t
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"I take it you mean connecting one to a network, I'm not sure I understand you."
That's because I'm a retard. By shitty server support, I meant shitty driver support, though it may have been an Android auto-correct fail and not my fault I guess.
A large part of Linux's problems historically have been because a lot of hardware doesn't get first party driver support and relies on volunteers whom do what they can to get basic support it but don't necessarily have the hardware in question available to test it - that's always historically been the problem with Linux desktop issues and is certainly why I had so many non-working Wifi issues and so forth because drivers were implemented based on what little documentation was available and not tested with the actual hardware.
I know this isn't the fault of the FOSS community and is entirely the fault of companies, but either way it's also an unfortunate fact as to why Windows has historically worked better on the desktop for many people.
"but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on security (I know enough to have a thin grasp on how immensely ignorant I am)"
Years ago, and I mean years ago, I spent those years doing things I shouldn't to Windows, finding exploits and so forth and it's absolutely true that Windows was riddle with holes and Linux was a much harder play - things like DLL injection to hook into applications with higher privileges and a desktop presence allowing privilege escalation and so forth I discovered on my own. Nowadays it's almost the case that the reverse is true, circa 2000 Microsoft really began to realise it had to take security seriously given the bad reputation it had for it and it did actually work, since that point they've come in leaps and bounds and although their software isn't perfect (no software is) it's still pretty solid in terms of security - some of the things they've implemented in terms of security they did so way ahead of anyone else such as ASLR in the browser and so forth.
So in this respect I have a lot of sympathy for Microsoft, especially as someone with a history of breaking Windows and I do genuinely think that comments about them not being secure nowadays is indeed a little unfair because for each security vulnerability they do have they also have products that have security techniques that are mere theory in every other software community including FOSS.
I'm actually trying Windows 8, well, 8.1 now and even that isn't as bad as many have made out though this is in part because I use shortcut keys. I find it boots and runs way faster than even Windows 7 did. There's no doubt the new start menu is shit, but because of my shortcut key/pinned taskbar icon and desktop icon usage I thankfully pretty much never see it.
There's no doubt Microsoft deserve a lot of flack for this new start menu, there's no doubt they deserve a lot of flack for doing stupid things like removing features such as VPN auto-redial with the built in VPN client amongst other things. I also want to try and find time to play with Linux again but I don't have the time to play that I used to.
So my point is really this, yes Microsoft has it's faults, but even it's worst products (Windows 8) have advantages to some people (I've fortunately not had any driver issues at all). On a technical level Microsoft has put in a tremendous effort to improve things, and although that's not always shown through I think there are old arguments against Windows that aren't fair anymore - as I say, stability and security being the obvious ones.
I'm just of the opinion that credit where credit is due, a lot of people here hate Microsoft for it's history and I try to be a bit more balanced and pragmatic than that. This means I also slate Microsoft where it deserves to be slated - Windows Phone and it's patent trolling against Google are unacceptable, Visual Studio has deteriorated in recent releases, and the Windows 8 UI changes and feature removals were plain stupid. But then counter to that is the fact I've still not fou
The driver issues are way fewer than they used to be, I haven't seen any in a long time.
If you're developing Windows apps, of course you're going to need Windows.
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