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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."
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
In my last job we ran some binaries designed for RedHat 6.2 (kernel 2.2 if I'm not mistaken) on RHEL 6 with kernel 2.6. Worked just fine. The thing that keeps binaries from running isn't usually the kernel; it's the C library and dynamic linker loader. In my case I had to set up a complete RH 6.2 chroot environment to run this app in. Think about that. Redhat 6.2 user space running on a then-current 2.6 kernel.
I'm fairly confident the same binary would, with the chroot environment and supporting libc and ld.so, run on RHEL 7, and probably would work fine with kernel 4.x (though I doubt it would work with selinux without some serious tinkering).
By and large, the Linux kernel is quite compatible with older binaries, if you can get a linker and libc version that work with the binary in question. Certainly it's much more compatible than you claim.
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.
Omitting the key sentence in the post you're replying to: "Although you don't have to, since all the distros already have."
+3 "insightful" instead of -1, "Can't fucking read". Yep, this is Slashdot.
And I'm gladly telling average users that, if they are stupid enough to not do due diligence. Buy stuff which is compatible, or suffer. Not to mention that if your hardware needs some funky driver under Linux, it's probably going to be an unreliable POS under Windows too!
As for the rest, Linux doesn't need a BS in CompSci to install, and it doesn't shit itself. Shitting itself is Windows territory. All it takes to install Linux is a rudimentary understanding of the OS and compatible hardware. The exact same premisses as for Windows, the main difference being that you have a slightly higher chance of having your piece of hardware "kind of" working out of the box with Windows, and a massively bigger risk of being left at a later point with a fully functional device but no working driver, as opposed to your having drivers which improve over time. Really important to people who just needs to get shit done, you know.
Why Linux doesn't take off has nothing to do with these non-issues. It has everything to with inertia, lack of mind share and general resistance to change, fear of the unknown as well as outright corruption and sabotage from Microsoft and their stooges who realize that the day people get rid of them, they are fucked.
That said, I'm off to a customer setting up their office with openSUSE later today. Windows 10 with it's incessant spying, vulnerability to malware, inclusion of crapware and planned obsolescence proved too much, for no material gain at all.
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.
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.
1. Easily and usually turned off. (Yes it was annoyingly excessive which is why it usually was quickly disabled.)
2. Fixed with SP1. (Learned long ago to never buy Windows before SP1 was released.)
I ran Vista for years on my primary home laptop, I didn't buy that machine until after SP1 came out, (I repeat, never buy Win before the first SP). Vista was no more or less stable than prior versions, Win 7 was more stable when it came out and I started using it at work, but not enough for me to invest in upgrading.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I've been using Linux as my main, or only, O/S for over twenty years and I've never needed to compile a kernel.
I have the freedom to do things more the way I want than on alternative O/S's - Microsoft & Apple O/S's are very restrictive in how you can configure your Desktop Environment - I use the Mate D/E, I could download and install a totally different D/E without having to reboot my computer. I can use up to 35 virtual desktops('workspaces', according to some), also I can have multiple tabs on my directory windows and terminals -- without having to install additional software.
Not having to run anti-virus products is wonderful.
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.