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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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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.
3. Vista was the first version of Windows which enforced admin/user separation. Unix-based OSes (Linux, OS X) have this built-in since Unix was designed assuming a multi-user environment. Users are given just enough privileges to run their programs, and likewise user programs are written assuming these minimal permissions. Windows was built upon DOS and the assumption that there was a single user who had total control of the computer. Consequently, even though Windows 2000 introduced the concept of admin/user separation, it was widely ignored. Most Windows programs were written assuming they had admin privileges.
When Vista took away admin privileges (for programs run from a non-admin account), lots of programs stopped running. The ones which did run triggered countless UAE elevation request dialogs - so many that users became trained to just click OK every time it popped up, which pretty much defeated the whole purpose of requiring privilege elevation. Over time, programs were modified to run limited to user privileges, which is why it isn't a problem to run Vista now. But if you had to use it when it was first introduced, it was a nightmare.
4. Microsoft's system requirements for Vista were totally unrealistic. Most XP systems at the time had 128-256 MB of RAM, with the occasional 512 MB system. 1 GB was profligate with XP. Microsoft didn't want to freak people out, so set Vista's minimum memory requirement at an unrealistic 512 MB. With that little RAM, Vista begins swapping the moment you try to start your first program. Realistically, 1 GB is the minimum, 2 GB a comfortable amount.
5. XP was developed from 1998-2001 and released in 2001. Vista was developed from 2001-2006 and released in 2007. 2004-2005 was when Intel ran headfirst into the brick wall of physics (higher clock speeds resulted in excessive leakage and power consumption) and processors stopped doubling in clock speed every 1.5 to 2 years. Based on Windows 3.x, 95, 98, and 2000, Microsoft had assumed CPU speeds would increase by a certain amount from development to release. Consequently, XP was a dog when it was being developed, but by the time it was released computers had gotten fast enough that it performed well on customer machines. Vista was a dog during development, and was still a dog when customers began buying it.
Those of you claiming Vista runs well and was unfairly maligned should try running it on period hardware - a Pentium 4 or Core Solo/Duo (not Core 2) with 512 MB of RAM. I'd say run it with period software too just so you can experience getting a UAE elevation prompt a dozen times a day, but it'll probably be tough to find period software.