Slashdot Mirror
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."
From article:
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?
Really from the company that's actively pro active in sabatoging privacy and people owning their own software via UWP? So much so that Gabe at Valve wouldn't let the new age of empires onto steam because of the windows store and UWP issue.
I'm not sure you could say it "failed". It ended up becoming Windows 7, probably the best of the ms desktop os's ever, with a clean upgrade path to boot. So, if you think of it as "Window 7 v1"...it sure beat "Microsoft Bob".
From what I remember:
1. They tried to write big chunks of it in .NET which wasn't quite a mature framework yet, and...
2. They tried to component-ize everything into discreet, independent modules, and once they brought all of the modules together to compile as one coherent OS, it failed miserably
They are still trying to do step #2 - witness the ARM based windows they are still working on, and Windows running on the XBox One, etc..
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Mojave (Windows Vista SP1) fixed a lot of the technical problems with Windows Vista. Was Windows 7 worth the price of the upgrade from Mojave, other than for three more years of patches?
When Vista initially came out it was rife with performance issues and other flaws that were astonishingly bad and it was clear that it had been released prematurely. So I can understand the initial hate. But after SP1, its initial problems were corrected and SP2 made further fixes and minor improvements. I used Vista as my main PC's OS for nearly 8 years and I was quite satisfied with its performance and capability. So why the continued Vista hate so long after SP1?
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.
The Open Source collaboration scheme is what he's referring to.. not the specifics.
The fact that so many different (and almost divergent groups are WILLING to help/contribute/collaborate on a single (overall) goal, without it quickly devolving into bickering, lawsuits, and enemies is really a miracle. And it has to do with the fact that most contributors see their efforts as something beyond JUST what they get out of it..
But that's different from a commercial enterprise where there is a definite check at the end of the road, and everyone is jockeying to make sure they get the first and largest cut of that check.. (and woe be he who gets more than what was expected or others feel is warranted).
You know why we dug into the fucking mess you call a kernel? Because it was a NECESSITY to get anything to work. The security of Windows up to 7 was such a catastrophic failure that the only way to defend against malware was to dig even deeper into your kernel because you had NO, ZERO, ZIP safeguards against malware actually doing something like this.
What did you expect us to do? Run on the crap you dared to call a kernel and rely on its nonexistent ability to defend against malware undermining it? That would make the whole idea of protecting the system absurd because the system's functions you're supposed to trust cannot be trusted.
The reason Vista was the mess it was? Because it was a damn atrocity from a security point of view. It tried its best to obscure and obfuscate its inner workings, mostly because as soon as you noticed just what they were like you realized that the problem is way bigger than you could possibly imagine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
Try to run a 2.4 binary on modern linux. No fucking way. 2.2 or 2.0? You have to be out of your bloody mind.
Backward compatibility is absolute bullshit for Linux.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
.
Linux development has often devolved into "bickering, lawsuits, and enemies".
Just look at how much strife systemd has caused within the Linux community. Systemd basically tore apart the Debian community and project, and it still hasn't healed even after several years. There have also been numerous arguments regarding systemd in mailing lists, bug reports, and other discussion venues.
Then there are the numerous incidents where Linus has unleashed extreme anger toward other kernel developers for various reasons.
As for lawsuits, just a few days ago Slashdot reported that the IBM and SCO shenanigans are still ongoing. There was also some recent lawsuit involving Bruce Perens that Slashdot reported on. And there was some SFLC and SFC lawsuit that Slashdot reported on. And there was some lawsuit involving the GPL that Slashdot reported on.
This rosy, all-is-good idea that you've got about Linux and open source software is a myth.
From what I've seen of Linux development, and open source development in general, it's far more chaotic, argumentative and disjointed than closed source corporate software development.
Better topic for next article: Why microsoft ended up being a mess.
Vista was meh in every way. Win7 was an OS worth paying for. 10 isn't something I'd use if you *payed me*.
I don't see this trend improving from here either.
It bridged the 32 and 64 bit eras. Hardware companies used that as an excuse to discontinue product support en mass, and MS got the blame. Every compliant I ever heard about it boiled down to software and peripheral vendors successfully selling the idea that an inevitable transition was Vista's fault. You want to talk about a deliberately shit os, talk about 8.
How MS played the incompatibility card against DR-DOS
I don't know much about Silverberg, but I can say I never read an article about Allchin where he didn't come across as a world-class slime weasel.
Jim Allchin
Perhaps in 2023 (2017 + sixteen years) we'll all be able to let bygones be bygones.
He references Longhorn repeatedly in the article.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I got a new laptop in 2007, with then new Vista. I also put Vista on some of my household machines. I hated it at first, as you said. Then, it improved with SP's, and it got better, as SP's tend to do. And, as time went on, I got used to it. I learned to live with it. Yet I rarely had a session where I did not have some reason to swear at it. On my main desktop machine which was my computing center, I continued to run XP (I loved XP, still do). Work with anything long enough, learn its quirks, and you can learn to live with it even if not love it. In the end, it turns out that Vista preserved the majority of computing paradigms that MS introduced with 3.11-95-98-200-XP, so once you got over the shock of what changed, it wasn't really so bad.
There were some big objections such as UAC, "min spec" debacle, security, etc., but there were also a zillion little sniggling things that were wrong. Technical architecture aside, an OS has two components, what's under the hood, and the user interface. Regardless how well or poorly it did with under the hood architecture, there was no reason to alter user paradigms that everyone knows and uses, especially since MS had invented or at least promoted and entrenched so many of them. Imagine suddenly all autos have the steering wheel and driver switched to the opposite side. Imagine that suddenly screws, nuts, and bolts have an entirely new system of thread sizes, that suddenly the qwerty keyboard is replaced with some new scramble of letters dictated by Steve Ballmer. I do a lot of work with font design. Vista suddenly broke font handling. File management via Explorer was suddenly deficient. Utilities such as Classic Shell came about not just because a few old fogies could not keep up with changing times, but because there is no reason to break basic functional paradigms just to be different.
Regardless who "invented" this, that, and the other OS feature (Xerox, Apple, IBM, MS, whatever), MS had its pivotal role. When MS made those earlier versions of Windows, they were not constrained by prior notions of what it should be. Right or wrong, they worked through the issues, and tweaked the interface, to get something that worked and people liked or at least got accustomed to. When Ballmer and Vista were in play, they tried, for better or worse, to fix core architecture problems, but they were not obliged to fudge the user interface paradigms, but they did. In so doing, not only did they disrespect and disregard the entire world user base, but they disrespected their own company forebears, second guessing what 20 years of MS engineers had developed before them. A lot of it was just change for change's sake, dumb and misguided.
Anybody could have learned to live with and adapt to the UAC prompts if that is all it was, or just corrupted font handling, or any other single thing. But, everything all piled up made it unpleasant, even after getting used to it and accepting that it was not too different than prior versions. It was different enough, and mostly for no sound reason, and that is why it was hated. It was better than Win 95. It wasn't better than Win 2000 or XP. Good riddance.
It's the collaboration model that is often the problem with Linux et. al. Thousands of libraries or drivers with tens of thousands of developers many repeating same libraries or applications over and over again introducing interesting and sometimes clever bugs, misfeatures, and incompatibilities. Linux et. al. shows that sort of loosely coupled organizational architecture. I'm not saying Linus et. al. sucks. I am saying Windows and Linux both suck, but both suck in interesting and sometimes imaginative ways.
Linux et. al. should be more cohesive with better couple, while Windows should loosen up and decouple a bit and become more modular. Maybe they can meet in the middle and we could have WinLux.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
vista was actually a good OS. it had a file copying bug before SP1, other than that its only fault was that it was too modern and advanced for the time. vendors were selling still old hardware, and in some cases selling hardware that was too slow for the OS.
people actually required having a faster computer than they had, so it ran slower than 98. fast foward a few years later, almost the same OS with a nicer skin and some UI enhancements was released to public fanfare. it was called windows 7, and was built on top of vista.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
From: billg
To: pascalm; russw; tomle
Cc: philba
Subject: Dr dos
Date: Thursday, September 22, 1988 12:41 PM
You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app
would do that would make it run on MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS.
Is there any version check or api that they fail to have? Is there
a feature they have that might get in our way? I am not looking
for something they cant get around. I am looking for something
that their current binary fails on.
This is a fairly urgent question for me and I have received
nothing.
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/ho...
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Woe? Son, we call that #winning!
People needed antivirus software from your "friends" because your OSes were vulnerable in the first place, having a track record of being hackable by displaying a picture (e.g. the wmf bug) or by being present on the Internet (e.g. the "blaster" bug). Also, people could accuse you of abusing your monopoly position because 1) you had a monopoly on the desktop OS market and 2) you had a history of taking advantage of that position; both being problems that you could fix at any time if you really had any interest. Accusing antivirus vendors of being the cause for your OS requiring twice as much RAM as its /successor/ is inelegant and the accuses themselves are unbelievable to me.
create an operating system that's not the most-hackable crap sandwich on Earth, and then there won't be a NEED for anti-virus software and you won't be fighting the vendors of such software as they try to wedge into the OS to patch the holes your lazy architects and coders put in there in the first place.
Vista was a disgrace, as are all the more-recent versions of Windows, albeit for different reasons (mostly the user-spying)
Doesn't exactly flow on a business card, does it?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Sometimes multiple options are good (and Windows 10 has Edge and IE), but I'd agree that sometimes it can lead to a dilution of effort. The irony is, that for all those that suggest that Linux is 'communist,' it's a market place of ideas more closely attuned to capitalism, in terms of the non-kernel elements of a distribution. The inner workings of a company are more like Five Year Plans. I am not sure how you'd want to compare Linux kernel development to an economic or political system.
1. User Access Control -
The OS ceaselessly asking me 'are you sure?', 'are you sure?'. How can I be sure? Give me a realistic option instead of just 'yes' or 'no' (maybe offer to sandbox the process and help me check if it runs OK).
2. Vista’s desktop search indexing (Windows search) -
Ah, here was the OS pretending to be both goggle.com AND google's database for your local filesystem. Indexing slowed 80% of new laptops to a crawl -- especially cheap, high-volume AMD-chipped laptops from the likes of Compaq, HP, Acer.
The summary is white noise. It doesn't say anything about why Vista was out the gate. Only that it would be hard to support post-release. Every system is hard to support post release though.
The obvious reason Vista was not stable (and could not be stable) is that 64bit Win Api did not support atomic 64bit operations in Vista version of the Windows runtime. The 64bit atomic operations only gained support starting with Win7 (64bit). So there was a bunch of 64 bit Vista application code written without atomic operations. In multthreaded environment that essentially guarantees that sooner or later corruption will occur. Given that the pipelining can reorder operations, there was no sure way to lock this down without slowing down critical sections of the code significantly. This is not the kind of code that most application developers are used to writing. So there it was.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is related to Vista how, exactly? As an ad hoiminem of choice?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm sure there's lots of technically competent people working on Windows. There's also probably many managers who want to do things right. Sadly, politics and economics issues always interfere and thus we get the user-hostile Windows 10. It's a pity because it could be a great OS for everyone.
Want to back that up with any evidence? Of all of the pieces of Windows, the kernel is probably one of the better ones. The UIs built on top of it are pretty terrible, but the kernel is one of the better designed ones. I'd recommend Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems for an overview of the NT kernel and its similarities and differences to a *NIX one (though, of course, the book will leave you believing that the way of comparing operating system kernels is by their relative inferiority to MINIX).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
We'll make great pets
Android might fit this definition, but Android probably shouldn't be considered "Linux", given how deep down the kernel is hidden.
Given that the kernel is the heart of the OS, it has to count. It's irrelevant what users perceive to be the truth.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Programming is haaaaaaaaaard!
Yes and the proper response to that is hiring interns, recent college graduates and/or h1b visas because people will real experience solving hard problems are just too expensive... nevermind the cost of doing business...
We'll make great pets
I've spent more than an hour total waiting for a windows 10 update to complete before the computer being ready to be usable. It's not vista the only windows which is a mess... tough of course,,, Microsoft doesn't give a sh. about user computers being usable the most, so for their accounting only internal messes are real messes.
By the way every three or four days I update Linux (arch - manjaro) without even noticing other than a green color in my notifying bar and the following password input.
No. Ben Fathi is on the record as that being his personal opinion. He hasn't been at Microsoft for a decade, he's just retired from being head of engineering at Cloudfare and was CTO at VMWare in-between. So a pretty experienced guy to hold that kind of opinion, but he still isn't representing Microsoft when making that statement.
During the failure of Vista, it opened the door for Apple, while Linux more or less just stayed consistent in its growth, and innovations.
Linux was keeping its pace, more or less undeterred by Windows. Microsoft failure caused it to go behind for a bit, so it seems like Linux was catching up, while it was just going at its same pace. Apple on the other hand, took this period of weakness from Microsoft, and pushed hard and gained a lot of extra ground. It made it so every kid wanted a MacBook and an iPod. While having a PC was the boring cheapo alternative.
It took Windows 7 for Microsoft to gets its groove back. But by then Apple had a lot of momentum.
In this article I was surprised about the talk of Linux during this time. Because Linux wasn't really doing anything new or interesting, they were just going further at their pace.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As some don't look at AC posts I'll repeat: Microsoft isn't admitting anything, one person have that as his personal opinion.
"...Was it an incredibly complex product with an amazingly huge ecosystem..."
... the complexities of the market, then they should have left the market. Instead, it appears that they knowingly foisted a broken product upon one of the largest markets in the world.
paying full price for a beta. I especially don't like it when said beta is my operating system. I _really_ don't like it when motherboard manufacturers and system start to prematurely drop support for the working OS (Win XP) under pressure from the OS maker.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Maybe they can meet in the middle and we could have WinLux.
It would still be better than windows.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I bought Vista for a new build back in the day, and actually ran it for some time (until my next build).
Vista has a lot of hate, but I ran it for a long time and for the most part it was a good OS.
To my mind, Vista had exactly one problem, which they fixed after a couple years. The problem was a lack of compatible drivers that were pre-loaded. I'm pretty sure even after SP1, it still was missing a ton. Don't get me wrong, the drivers existed, only you had to go manually find them and install them yourself, which was more than a bit of a pain in the ass, particularly if you had to do more than one clean install. Once you visited the various hardware websites, downloaded and installed updated Vista driver, Vista worked pretty well.
Why did it have such bad initial driver support? Well there are a number of different reasons...
#1 First of all, Vista was the first OS to follow the most popular and long lived OS of all time in Windows XP. So yeah, there were a lot of people not prepared.
#2 You could argue that Microsoft didn't do enough outreach to the hardware folks for specifications and deadlines, I don't know specifics, but it could be a cause.
#3 Lazy hardware folks just putting off new drivers until the last minute, missing the release date, and just posting it on their websites.
If Vista had the bulk of the drivers available on websites preloaded on the install disk, or even by SP1, I doubt people would be making such a big deal about Vista. It WAS a pain in the ass to install, but not because of the OS itself, but rather all the various drivers to be individually loaded.
Sure it had it's various things like UAC and such, and many while annoying were good ideas. Can you say the same for the tile UI of 8, or the various BS like the app store and Cortana in 10 that you and everyone else just ignores?
like a huge pile of spaghetti
Poettering, are you reading this?
Have gnu, will travel.
In a business environment, you do not want to throw out working equipment, such as printers, networking equipment, etc because there are no drivers. It's disruptive and it gets expensive real fast. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is the mantra, and Windows will never let you do that.
You don't want to throw out Lab equipment worth $10's of thousands because the newest MS Windows doesn't support the old drivers and the the manufacturer won't upgrade the drivers. Same for production lines in the $100's of thousands and up for the same reason.
though, of course, the book will leave you believing that the way of comparing operating system kernels is by their relative inferiority to MINIX
LOL- half way through your post, I was going to reply with exactly that... Good to see I wasn't alone
I've seen people say that Vista was completely unnecessary and existed to fix things that weren't broken. That is, of course, reductive.
It certainly had its problems, chiefly in its UI changes (and the performance issues those changes caused). But on the backend it addressed a lot of significant issues, from creating a viable 64-bit ecosystem to major security improvements (including ASLR and DEP).
Ultimately, it paved the way for Windows 7, which I think it's fair to say is the best version of Windows overall.
At least the consumer releases:
Windows 3: Garbage
Windows 3.1: Much Improved
Windows 95: Garbage
Windows 98SE: Much more stable
Windows ME: TOTAL SHIT
Windows XP: Finally NT!
Windows Vista: Steaming pile
Windows 7: Damn near perfect
Windows 8: WTF Microsoft?
Windows 10: I know a bunch of you hate it, but its better than 7 in many ways including performance.
zosxavius photography
That just makes an already crappy day crappier. :( But you are right. Systemd has the potential to break Linux in such a way as to force us to come up with something better, and I don't mean a better systemd; I mean a better OS than what systemd will have forced it to become. I don't think that outcome is inevitable, but I do think it an unavoidable consequence of the direction Red Hat and most of the other major distro vendors are following, unless they change that direction, which would be painful now, but will only become more painful over time the longer they wait.
Nonaggression works!
XP was an operating system that was used to create a black box. For example, a Casino slot machine, an ATM, or some other fixed task system. (Elevator management system). XP survived because it was stable and limited in use. It did not survive as a "office system host", because the newer software would not function on XP.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
What lessons were learnt, were learnt half heartedly- PM (Program Manager) org wasn't defined neatly- they could pick up any task, so they picked up nothing- only conducting scrums which would be often be two hours long. What kind of scrum would it be? "I'm blocked at X point" "Because of who are you blocked?" and the finger pointing witch hunting would begin.
What lessons were learnt when MS teams didn't learn the art of working together? What was lacking? the dev culture. The Ballmer's regime had seen lots of privacy keeping tactics developed within teams- people didn't want to lag behind in the stack ranking race, knowing that someone who scores less than 3 would never be able to make up.
Lessons which were learnt were not circulated to top management. No workable strategies were defined, no steps were taken to improve work culture and no grass-root level changes were incorporated in the working of teams. Losing teams were always fire fighting and managers and program managers would keep on asking the SDEs and SDE IIs about what features could they add. It was chaos everywhere. Why did this happen? because the top management wasn't clear of the goals. They couldn't break the goals into small, workable chunk, always blaming the reportees that they were not able to break the work chunk. Even in the article, the author mentions about product being monolithic- why would a product be monolithic? because the higher ups didn't have the structured thinking to break down the issue (read "design") at hand.
The author conveys that he's not ashamed for the handling of affairs at that point of time- the fact that the CEO himself had to pay attention to WinFS file system itself is a signal that things are going towards grave, and there's a need to go back to drawing board.
The problem is not about managing thousands of people for a product, the problem is sitting together, and discussing openly who'd do what, and stick to that plan. Wherever there's no plan, chaos fills in the gaps. This was what was happening at Microsoft in many of the orgs. The HR policies, combined with oldies trying to be new blood, and ignorance / arrogance combined with lack of structured thinking was and is still killing the company which got in spotlight for a while.
Why wasn't the time spent at the beginning of the cycle, and close monitoring, and meticulousness maintained are never the questions on which the author ponders! When you are not pondering, you are not ashamed. When you're not ashamed, you don't learn. And then you rant. Even here the vision is not 20/20 in hindsight.