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Why Windows Vista Ended Up Being a Mess (usejournal.com)
alaskana98 shares an article called "What Really Happened with Vista: An Insider's Retrospective." Ben Fathi, formerly a manager of various teams at Microsoft responsible for storage, file systems, high availability/clustering, file level network protocols, distributed file systems, and related technologies and later security, writes:
Imagine supporting that same OS for a dozen years or more for a population of billions of customers, millions of companies, thousands of partners, hundreds of scenarios, and dozens of form factors -- and you'll begin to have an inkling of the support and compatibility nightmare. In hindsight, Linux has been more successful in this respect. The open source community and approach to software development is undoubtedly part of the solution. The modular and pluggable architecture of Unix/Linux is also a big architectural improvement in this respect. An organization, sooner or later, ships its org chart as its product; the Windows organization was no different. Open source doesn't have that problem...
I personally spent many years explaining to antivirus vendors why we would no longer allow them to "patch" kernel instructions and data structures in memory, why this was a security risk, and why they needed to use approved APIs going forward, that we would no longer support their legacy apps with deep hooks in the Windows kernel -- the same ones that hackers were using to attack consumer systems. Our "friends", the antivirus vendors, turned around and sued us, claiming we were blocking their livelihood and abusing our monopoly power! With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I like how the essay ends. "Was it an incredibly complex product with an amazingly huge ecosystem (the largest in the world at that time)? Yup, that it was. Could we have done better? Yup, you bet... Hindsight is 20/20."
I personally spent many years explaining to antivirus vendors why we would no longer allow them to "patch" kernel instructions and data structures in memory, why this was a security risk, and why they needed to use approved APIs going forward, that we would no longer support their legacy apps with deep hooks in the Windows kernel -- the same ones that hackers were using to attack consumer systems. Our "friends", the antivirus vendors, turned around and sued us, claiming we were blocking their livelihood and abusing our monopoly power! With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I like how the essay ends. "Was it an incredibly complex product with an amazingly huge ecosystem (the largest in the world at that time)? Yup, that it was. Could we have done better? Yup, you bet... Hindsight is 20/20."
Yes it was worth it.
The same cannot be said of W10.
Windows 10 isn't worth the price of "free."
Linux has been more successful in this respect. The open source community and approach to software development is undoubtedly part of the solution. The modular and pluggable architecture of Unix/Linux is also a big architectural improvement in this respect.
So, Microsoft is on the record admitting that Linux's "modular and pluggable" architecture is more sound than Windows' monolithic approach... Not to worry, my friends, the Windows folks won't be behind this 8-ball for long. The systemd folks are working very hard, on closing this gap.
How in the hell can Linux be considered "more successful" than even Windows Vista for any of those metrics?
Support for "a dozen years or more" is exceedingly rare within the Linux world. You're looking at RHEL Extended Lifecycle Support to get anywhere near that. Ubuntu LTS releases are only really supported for 5 years, as far as I know.
I think you completely missed his point - Linux was more successful precisely because it wasn't tied up in dozen-plus years of support.
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This comment is almost literally the entire problem encompassing the Linux platform.
"Just recomplie" (Natch)
Sure. No problem for me, or you.
Tell the average user that who just wants their laptop to recognize their wireless card which requires a niche patch to the kernel to fix, or worse yet someone foolish enough at the end user side to be convinced to run Linux and needs software that they rely on that DOESN'T require a BS in CIS to install when their computer inevitably shits itself.
Want to know why "the year of the Linux desktop" hasn't happened and won't in the foreseeable future? Read. Your. Comment. AGAIN.
This signature is lame.
That is the crux of the issue: "from what I've seen". The problem is that you don't see corporate software development. Who knows what chaos happens behind the veneer of the corporate facade. Not only that, but also take into consideration the influence of politics, marketing, and just plain management incompetence on the development of their software.
The thing about open source is that, for all the arguments and chaos, a technically correct solution more often wins out. This is because it's inherently a meritocracy. I have no confidence that this is the case with corporate software development.