Why do you suppose Ubuntu comes in Desktop and Server versions?
Why does Red Hat have their Enterprise Server Linux and Fedora Desktop Linux?
Why does SuSE have a regular and a Desktop version?
Microsoft is not the only OS that has seperate server and desktop versions.
The reason is simple, Desktops tend to have all the bells and whistles installed. Fancy graphics, sound, etc... But servers are configured for higher network throughput, usually they have older (more stable) versions of the applications and drivers and kernel. Servers are tuned for different scheduling. Etc..
So why is that you think Microsoft is the only OS that comes in a special server version?
I'm sorry, but I just can't believe you even gave 2008 even a casual glance with those remarks.
IIS7 only a new GUI? Are you nuts? IIS7 has more new features than all versions of IIS compbined..NET integration, for instance, is killer for shops that use.NET. The ability to completely maintain IIS via config files is an even better feature. A whole new host of command line tools are also new, not to mention Powershell support.
IIS7 alone is more than enough reason for many shops to upgrade.
Unfortunately, of the biggest problems with Linux is the fact that there's so much outdated "how-to" information out there. It's virtually impossible to be certain you have the latest information, and googling is no help.
There's no equivelent of Technet or MSDN for all the major Linux distro's, and one can seldom rely on the projects home-site for up-to-date information because the developers are usually too busy developing to maintain their documentation and write thins like how-to's that are comprehensive and accurate.
Do you realize how ridiculously cheap RAM is these days? 2GB is like $30 or less, that is if you're not buying high performance overclocked gaming RAM.
And a dual core processor is not required, just recommended. In fact, i've seen Windows 7 run on a single core Pentium III, just fine. It's mostly memory that makes the difference. And you might need to upgrde that agin 20GB hard disk, to something that's 90x faster. Hell, 1TB hard disks are less than $100 now, which means an 80GB has got to be just about free.
I don't think it can't recognize the trackpad. I think the problem was that they had an OEM driver installed, and that the old driver would not migrate to Window 7 (ie it wasn't compatible with it). That would mean either finding a new driver, or just using the default pointing device driver. I think the install was just warning that the old driver was not compatible.
Upgrades have never been a problem free process, and clean installs have always been recommended. This is nothing new. If anything, upgrades have become more difficult as time goes on.
Windows 7 has been pretty stable, especially for a beta. But honestly, I will never upgrade any version of Windows, ever. You're just taking 3 years of cruft with you.
Besides, the upgrade process has nothing to do with the stability of the OS in general (other than, of course, the fact that the upgrade process affects how the OS is configured). That's an installation problem, and further beta testing of the OS itself doesn't fix that (beta testing of the upgrade process might, but that's something we as users only do once while we run the OS every day).
I guess my point is that you can't ding the OS for the installation systems problem (ie upgrade process). Especially since 90+% of people get their OS pre-installed and if they ever need to re-install, they run a restore CD which puts it back in it's factory default condition.
Uhh.. i'm don't think you know what you're talking about.
Windows 95 was ready, and had gone through a 2 year beta program. In fact, it was over a year late specifically to make it more compatible with existing software. If anything, Windows 95 was overcooked. I'm not sure where you came up with this.
Yes, it's true that Windows 95 wasn't as stable as NT, but that was basically by design. The compatibility required of Windows 95 made it impossible to be a fully stable OS (particularly with old DOS drivers). As an example, look at OS/2, which had "good" compatibility with dos and Windows 3.x, but not excellent. Many kinds of drivers wouldn't work and it required a huge amount of memory to make things stable (basically running a seperate copy of Windows for each application). Windows 95 was, in many ways, an amazing piece of software that went above and beyond what could be hoped for, *GIVEN IT'S CONSTRAINTS*.
Windows ME was a different story, but I don't think it was "released before it was ready", I think it was just hastily designed to meet the fact that Windows 2000 wasn't going to ship in a consumer version. Microsoft had planned for Win2k to replace Windows 9x, but when that didn't happen, they needed a version with updated drivers and system compatibility for OEM's to replace the aging Windows 98SE.
What they should have done was make a Windows 98 Third Edition, with only the needed updates. But they also tried to throw in some things from the planned consumer release of Win2k, by shoehorning them into the older OS.
It's not that Me was released too early, it's that it should have never been released at all.
As for Vista, it's unclear to me that a longer beta period would have solved any or many of it's problems. They needed to get UAC out there so that app developers got it through their head that they needed to write software that conformed to the guidelines. Most vendors refuse to support beta software, and they don't lift a finger until the OS goes gold.
The fact of the matter is, most of Vista's problems were related to software and hardware compatibility, which would only be solved by getting the OS out there in the market. Another 2 years of development would not have this any better. They also needed to make UAC extra annoying to get people to take notice.
This is not to say that Vista didn't have it's problems and couldn't have done with a bit more testing in some areas, but I think it was important to get Vista out when Microsoft did.
You are confusing utilities like telnet and ftp with the TCP/IP stack in the OS. The stack in the OS was rewritten, the utilities were not.
Further, the key to understanding the licensing issue is in fact the copyrights. If you run strings on these utilities, you get "Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California." 1983 is an interesting date, because in 1983 there was no open source version of BSD. In fact, the first open source version was in 1988, but that version did not contain any TCP/IP network code. The first version with TCP/IP was Network Release 1, which came out in 1989. And yes, the Network Release 1 had a 1989 copyright.
This means that in order to use the 1983 they had to use a non-open source version, which required explicit licensing from UCB, not open source licensing.
I don't think you want to show them compromise statistics of servers. All the available data suggests Linux gets hacked significantly more than any other OS.
In an interesting case of Irony, I went to one of the leading web site defacement archives to pull up some statistics, Zone-h, and was greeted with:
hack3d By Cyber-Terrorist & HeLL cYbEr
uname: Linux ubuntu1 2.6.24-22-server #1 SMP Mon Nov 24 20:06:28 UTC 2008 x86_64
Microsoft did use code from BSD, but it was licensed from UCB (via Spider Software) and predates the first open source versions of BSD's network stack, as evidenced by the copyright dates. And Windows Network stack is not based on it anymore.
Windows already has something similar to Skel, it's called the Default User profile, and it's copied into new profiles when new accounts are created. However, there are some gotchas. For instance, if a computer is connected to a domain and an existing user logs into a new computer, then it's not a "new account", so Default User doesn't come into play (and remember, different computers can have different software installed, so it's not something youc an just copy to all users profiles on the domain).
All Users gets around that problem, because even domain accounts will then share icons and start menu entries. So the Skel approach doesn't really work. I would suspect there are similar problems on Linux when using LDAP.
. I'm absolutely certain I'd be getting a phonecall after she got prompt number two (for no good reason) in the same day. Why does it keep doing that? Fix it!
It's not the OS, it's a number of factors.
First, many apps think they can write anywhere they want, and many of them try to write to the programs own directory, which is protected. Some don't try to write, but still open some file with read/write permissions, which again will fail.
Second, Many USERS think they can write anywhere they want. So, they go creating folders at weird places, and again get prompts. It would be like a user trying to save their files to/mystuff on linux, rather than ~/mystuff
Third, some users don't understand the way certain things work in Windows. For instance, Windows has the concept of an "All Users" profile, in which data is shared between all users, but it's not writeable by normal users. So, when you install a program for "all users" to access, it puts the icons in the "All Users" startup menu or the "All Users" desktop. Then, individual users try and move or delete those icons and they get a prompt.
Finally, some actions SHOULD require elevation, but users think they should be able to change them under a normal user, such as system date/time or network settings.
Microsoft has a history of using patents to protect its desktop market share.
They do? Can you name a single software patent lawsuit Microsoft has initiated? No? Why not?
The fact of the matter is, open source software probably violates a hell of a lot more than 235 patents out there. That's not a scare. That's simple fact. It's almost impossible to write ANY software that doesn't violate someones patent these days. Patents are bad, yes. And sure, Microsoft isn't above waving patents around, but they have *NO* intention of filing any lawsuits against anyone, otherwise they would have done so already at least once in the last 10+ years they've been talking about them.
Microsoft is not going to sue anyone over software patents. I don't have to be a mindreader or have any insider information to know that. I only have to look at their *ACTUAL* behavior. Microsoft has actively avoided software patent litigation, and I don't see them changing that stance anytime soon.
Sure, they want people who infringe their patents to pay up, but they wren't going to sue anyone to do it. Just like the guy who wants everyone who cuts across his land to get to the cool pond to go swimming to pay him, but unless someone is stupid enough to actually say "sure, here you go", they're just going to say "ok.. never mind"
IE8 will be reasonably CSS 2.1 compliant, CSS3 has not yet been finalized. XHTML support is lacking due to the lack of correct mime types (largely because Trident can't parse XML properly yet, which is why MS has refused to add the mime type). Full DOM support isn't there either, but in general it's getting a lot closer.
At this point I'm putting most of the blame on the W3C for not finalizing CSS3. Yes, many browsers implement parts of CSS3 to varying degrees, and IE generally doesn't, but you can't hold MS accountable for not shipping something that isn't yet a ratified standard.
For instance, IE8 passes Acid 2. It doesn't pass Acid 3 (no browser yet does, according to the WaSP page), but then Acid 3 is largely based on not-yet-standards standards.
Face it, the problem with web standards is that the standards themselves aren't standards.
Of course new versions of Windows will come with newer versions of IE anyways, and IE8 is approaching "reasonably standards compliant" to some degree, so the argument of standards is kind of specious. Firefox isn't standards compliant either, and it's getting to the point where choosing browsers means choosing between different non-standards compliance. Just choose which features you care about.
Opera has never spent a lot of time trying to be compatible with IE anyways. That's always been one of it's major problems, not anywhere near as compatible as Mozilla with legacy sites.
Actually, the problem is that you're living in the last milennium.
In Vista, IE has been effectively removed from Windows Explorer and is no logner needed for system updates. Since we're talking about Vista, you think you would actually have some experience with it.
Character assassination, eg of Gutmann and Schneier and opinion/speculation is no substitute for clear numerate analysis and benchmarking.
Gutmann's analysis has been debunked by numerous people, not to mention the fact that he never even performed a single bit of analysis of a real vista machine to make any of his claims.
Schneier, while a great cryptographer, is blasted because he accepted Gutmann's analysis without so much as a thought as to whether or not it might be valid. Real scientists prove each others work (or disprove it, no hard feelings). Schneier didn't do either of them, he just parroted it and lended it credibility by his name.
All versions of Vista have a telnet client. It's just not installed by default, you have to go into programs and settings and then windows components and install the client, no disk needed.
"story" is no longer a marketing word. It's used in programming now, particularly in the case of Extreme and Agile programming methodologies. It's use, as appears to be the case here is in "use cases". So it's no longer a marketing buzzword, it's a programming buzzword.
You mean apple falsely prides themselves. Do you really think that features like Time Machine don't add mroe CPU cycles to the load? They may improve the efficiency of the kernel or some miniscule measurable piece, but overall the workload goes up, just like every other OS.
Linux is the same. I guarantee you that if you run Red Hat 3 on the same hardware you are running the latest FC10, FC10 overall will be significantly slower, even if the kernel or other individual pieces may be faster. I'd make the same bet on Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, Mandriva and Suse.
Obviously, that wouldn't apply to something like DSL which works hard to reduce functionality, but overall, most OS's get slower over time even while they become more efficient at doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet Ubuntu Server is a seperate download, and you completely ignored my point about the other distro's.
Why do you suppose Ubuntu comes in Desktop and Server versions?
Why does Red Hat have their Enterprise Server Linux and Fedora Desktop Linux?
Why does SuSE have a regular and a Desktop version?
Microsoft is not the only OS that has seperate server and desktop versions.
The reason is simple, Desktops tend to have all the bells and whistles installed. Fancy graphics, sound, etc... But servers are configured for higher network throughput, usually they have older (more stable) versions of the applications and drivers and kernel. Servers are tuned for different scheduling. Etc..
So why is that you think Microsoft is the only OS that comes in a special server version?
I'm sorry, but I just can't believe you even gave 2008 even a casual glance with those remarks.
IIS7 only a new GUI? Are you nuts? IIS7 has more new features than all versions of IIS compbined. .NET integration, for instance, is killer for shops that use .NET. The ability to completely maintain IIS via config files is an even better feature. A whole new host of command line tools are also new, not to mention Powershell support.
IIS7 alone is more than enough reason for many shops to upgrade.
Unfortunately, of the biggest problems with Linux is the fact that there's so much outdated "how-to" information out there. It's virtually impossible to be certain you have the latest information, and googling is no help.
There's no equivelent of Technet or MSDN for all the major Linux distro's, and one can seldom rely on the projects home-site for up-to-date information because the developers are usually too busy developing to maintain their documentation and write thins like how-to's that are comprehensive and accurate.
Do you realize how ridiculously cheap RAM is these days? 2GB is like $30 or less, that is if you're not buying high performance overclocked gaming RAM.
And a dual core processor is not required, just recommended. In fact, i've seen Windows 7 run on a single core Pentium III, just fine. It's mostly memory that makes the difference. And you might need to upgrde that agin 20GB hard disk, to something that's 90x faster. Hell, 1TB hard disks are less than $100 now, which means an 80GB has got to be just about free.
I don't think it can't recognize the trackpad. I think the problem was that they had an OEM driver installed, and that the old driver would not migrate to Window 7 (ie it wasn't compatible with it). That would mean either finding a new driver, or just using the default pointing device driver. I think the install was just warning that the old driver was not compatible.
Upgrades have never been a problem free process, and clean installs have always been recommended. This is nothing new. If anything, upgrades have become more difficult as time goes on.
Windows 7 has been pretty stable, especially for a beta. But honestly, I will never upgrade any version of Windows, ever. You're just taking 3 years of cruft with you.
Besides, the upgrade process has nothing to do with the stability of the OS in general (other than, of course, the fact that the upgrade process affects how the OS is configured). That's an installation problem, and further beta testing of the OS itself doesn't fix that (beta testing of the upgrade process might, but that's something we as users only do once while we run the OS every day).
I guess my point is that you can't ding the OS for the installation systems problem (ie upgrade process). Especially since 90+% of people get their OS pre-installed and if they ever need to re-install, they run a restore CD which puts it back in it's factory default condition.
Uhh.. i'm don't think you know what you're talking about.
Windows 95 was ready, and had gone through a 2 year beta program. In fact, it was over a year late specifically to make it more compatible with existing software. If anything, Windows 95 was overcooked. I'm not sure where you came up with this.
Yes, it's true that Windows 95 wasn't as stable as NT, but that was basically by design. The compatibility required of Windows 95 made it impossible to be a fully stable OS (particularly with old DOS drivers). As an example, look at OS/2, which had "good" compatibility with dos and Windows 3.x, but not excellent. Many kinds of drivers wouldn't work and it required a huge amount of memory to make things stable (basically running a seperate copy of Windows for each application). Windows 95 was, in many ways, an amazing piece of software that went above and beyond what could be hoped for, *GIVEN IT'S CONSTRAINTS*.
Windows ME was a different story, but I don't think it was "released before it was ready", I think it was just hastily designed to meet the fact that Windows 2000 wasn't going to ship in a consumer version. Microsoft had planned for Win2k to replace Windows 9x, but when that didn't happen, they needed a version with updated drivers and system compatibility for OEM's to replace the aging Windows 98SE.
What they should have done was make a Windows 98 Third Edition, with only the needed updates. But they also tried to throw in some things from the planned consumer release of Win2k, by shoehorning them into the older OS.
It's not that Me was released too early, it's that it should have never been released at all.
As for Vista, it's unclear to me that a longer beta period would have solved any or many of it's problems. They needed to get UAC out there so that app developers got it through their head that they needed to write software that conformed to the guidelines. Most vendors refuse to support beta software, and they don't lift a finger until the OS goes gold.
The fact of the matter is, most of Vista's problems were related to software and hardware compatibility, which would only be solved by getting the OS out there in the market. Another 2 years of development would not have this any better. They also needed to make UAC extra annoying to get people to take notice.
This is not to say that Vista didn't have it's problems and couldn't have done with a bit more testing in some areas, but I think it was important to get Vista out when Microsoft did.
You are confusing utilities like telnet and ftp with the TCP/IP stack in the OS. The stack in the OS was rewritten, the utilities were not.
Further, the key to understanding the licensing issue is in fact the copyrights. If you run strings on these utilities, you get "Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California." 1983 is an interesting date, because in 1983 there was no open source version of BSD. In fact, the first open source version was in 1988, but that version did not contain any TCP/IP network code. The first version with TCP/IP was Network Release 1, which came out in 1989. And yes, the Network Release 1 had a 1989 copyright.
This means that in order to use the 1983 they had to use a non-open source version, which required explicit licensing from UCB, not open source licensing.
I don't think you want to show them compromise statistics of servers. All the available data suggests Linux gets hacked significantly more than any other OS.
In an interesting case of Irony, I went to one of the leading web site defacement archives to pull up some statistics, Zone-h, and was greeted with:
hack3d By Cyber-Terrorist & HeLL cYbEr
uname:
Linux ubuntu1 2.6.24-22-server #1 SMP Mon Nov 24 20:06:28 UTC 2008 x86_64
and some goofy video of dancing babies.
Actually, if you compare, say IIS's track record to Apaches over the last 6 years, Apache looks pretty bad...
Actually, it's not true.
You should read this article http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/6/19/05641/7357
Microsoft did use code from BSD, but it was licensed from UCB (via Spider Software) and predates the first open source versions of BSD's network stack, as evidenced by the copyright dates. And Windows Network stack is not based on it anymore.
Windows already has something similar to Skel, it's called the Default User profile, and it's copied into new profiles when new accounts are created. However, there are some gotchas. For instance, if a computer is connected to a domain and an existing user logs into a new computer, then it's not a "new account", so Default User doesn't come into play (and remember, different computers can have different software installed, so it's not something youc an just copy to all users profiles on the domain).
All Users gets around that problem, because even domain accounts will then share icons and start menu entries. So the Skel approach doesn't really work. I would suspect there are similar problems on Linux when using LDAP.
There wasn't even a cease and desist in that case, it was just one microsoft project manager who unofficially contacted the guy. Hardly a smoking gun.
. I'm absolutely certain I'd be getting a phonecall after she got prompt number two (for no good reason) in the same day. Why does it keep doing that? Fix it!
It's not the OS, it's a number of factors.
First, many apps think they can write anywhere they want, and many of them try to write to the programs own directory, which is protected. Some don't try to write, but still open some file with read/write permissions, which again will fail.
Second, Many USERS think they can write anywhere they want. So, they go creating folders at weird places, and again get prompts. It would be like a user trying to save their files to /mystuff on linux, rather than ~/mystuff
Third, some users don't understand the way certain things work in Windows. For instance, Windows has the concept of an "All Users" profile, in which data is shared between all users, but it's not writeable by normal users. So, when you install a program for "all users" to access, it puts the icons in the "All Users" startup menu or the "All Users" desktop. Then, individual users try and move or delete those icons and they get a prompt.
Finally, some actions SHOULD require elevation, but users think they should be able to change them under a normal user, such as system date/time or network settings.
Microsoft has a history of using patents to protect its desktop market share.
They do? Can you name a single software patent lawsuit Microsoft has initiated? No? Why not?
The fact of the matter is, open source software probably violates a hell of a lot more than 235 patents out there. That's not a scare. That's simple fact. It's almost impossible to write ANY software that doesn't violate someones patent these days. Patents are bad, yes. And sure, Microsoft isn't above waving patents around, but they have *NO* intention of filing any lawsuits against anyone, otherwise they would have done so already at least once in the last 10+ years they've been talking about them.
Microsoft is not going to sue anyone over software patents. I don't have to be a mindreader or have any insider information to know that. I only have to look at their *ACTUAL* behavior. Microsoft has actively avoided software patent litigation, and I don't see them changing that stance anytime soon.
Sure, they want people who infringe their patents to pay up, but they wren't going to sue anyone to do it. Just like the guy who wants everyone who cuts across his land to get to the cool pond to go swimming to pay him, but unless someone is stupid enough to actually say "sure, here you go", they're just going to say "ok.. never mind"
Out with the old, in with the new. It's what we humans do.
Unless of course, the "old" is Windows XP, and the "new" is Vista or Linux.
IE8 will be reasonably CSS 2.1 compliant, CSS3 has not yet been finalized. XHTML support is lacking due to the lack of correct mime types (largely because Trident can't parse XML properly yet, which is why MS has refused to add the mime type). Full DOM support isn't there either, but in general it's getting a lot closer.
At this point I'm putting most of the blame on the W3C for not finalizing CSS3. Yes, many browsers implement parts of CSS3 to varying degrees, and IE generally doesn't, but you can't hold MS accountable for not shipping something that isn't yet a ratified standard.
For instance, IE8 passes Acid 2. It doesn't pass Acid 3 (no browser yet does, according to the WaSP page), but then Acid 3 is largely based on not-yet-standards standards.
Face it, the problem with web standards is that the standards themselves aren't standards.
Of course new versions of Windows will come with newer versions of IE anyways, and IE8 is approaching "reasonably standards compliant" to some degree, so the argument of standards is kind of specious. Firefox isn't standards compliant either, and it's getting to the point where choosing browsers means choosing between different non-standards compliance. Just choose which features you care about.
Opera has never spent a lot of time trying to be compatible with IE anyways. That's always been one of it's major problems, not anywhere near as compatible as Mozilla with legacy sites.
Actually, the problem is that you're living in the last milennium.
In Vista, IE has been effectively removed from Windows Explorer and is no logner needed for system updates. Since we're talking about Vista, you think you would actually have some experience with it.
Character assassination, eg of Gutmann and Schneier and opinion/speculation is no substitute for clear numerate analysis and benchmarking.
Gutmann's analysis has been debunked by numerous people, not to mention the fact that he never even performed a single bit of analysis of a real vista machine to make any of his claims.
Schneier, while a great cryptographer, is blasted because he accepted Gutmann's analysis without so much as a thought as to whether or not it might be valid. Real scientists prove each others work (or disprove it, no hard feelings). Schneier didn't do either of them, he just parroted it and lended it credibility by his name.
All versions of Vista have a telnet client. It's just not installed by default, you have to go into programs and settings and then windows components and install the client, no disk needed.
"story" is no longer a marketing word. It's used in programming now, particularly in the case of Extreme and Agile programming methodologies. It's use, as appears to be the case here is in "use cases". So it's no longer a marketing buzzword, it's a programming buzzword.
You mean apple falsely prides themselves. Do you really think that features like Time Machine don't add mroe CPU cycles to the load? They may improve the efficiency of the kernel or some miniscule measurable piece, but overall the workload goes up, just like every other OS.
Linux is the same. I guarantee you that if you run Red Hat 3 on the same hardware you are running the latest FC10, FC10 overall will be significantly slower, even if the kernel or other individual pieces may be faster. I'd make the same bet on Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, Mandriva and Suse.
Obviously, that wouldn't apply to something like DSL which works hard to reduce functionality, but overall, most OS's get slower over time even while they become more efficient at doing it.
And I would hazzard a bet that Red Hat 3 is faster than FC10 on the same hardware.
As software evolves, it gets more complex. More complexity means more CPU cycles used. Sorry, that happesn for all software that evolves.