You're missing the point here. They aren't talking about accelerating the frameworks (the JRE, the Common Language Runtime, any other program that was compiled to native code at or before install time), they are about accelerating the applications that are run using those frameworks. The reason is that both frameworks use JIT-compiled code (I believe old JVMs translated instructions individually, but these days I'm pretty sure the whole.class gets compiled to native code just before execution).
The advantage of these extensions is that they can make it possible to optimize the hell out of the JIT, producing code at run-time that takes full advantage of the available capabilities of the processor(s). Theoretically, this could make these JIT-compiled programs faster to run (though they will always incur a startup penalty) than non-JIT native code because the JIT compiler knows things about the environment in which it will be executing that would be specific to that machine at that time.
Interesting story. One slight correction: even if the NIC's computer was not turned on. I'm pretty sure if you physically removed the NIC from the machine it would have gone dark. However, modern systems are designed to be bootable via a network signal, so the card likely still gets some power even when the machine is off. There's a reason you remove the power cord, not just flip the switch in back, before doing open-case maintenance.
True, but generating plasma with lasers isn't the problem. For one thing, these lasers wouldn't produce anywhere near enough heat/pressure (yes, pressure, as in essentially massless photons pushing atoms around) for fusion, and for another just initiating fusion doesn't make it self-sustaining. It needs to have new fuel (typically hydrogen isotopes or He3) introduced, and waste products (typically He4) removed eventually. Since the startup lasers draw a great deal of power, you don't want to run them any more than need be, which means you ideally need to be able to do the fuel exchange without restarting the reactor. Do you start to see the problems yet?
I'm not saying it won't happen - we make a few notable landmarks every year or so - but it's a ways off yet.
Is ozone really that much of a problem? I was under the impression it was pretty much inert... never mind that there are still places (especially down around Australia IIRC) where the ozone layer is really thin.
The UV seems a more likely problem. The only practical solution I can see for the at is a have a glass or plastic barrier between the viewers and the display (might be necessary anyway, since you obviously wouldn't want to touch this display even accidentally) that can block the dangerous frequencies. On anything except animal flesh, most UV frequencies are relatively harmless; plants are used to high doses of it and while it tends to destroy some kinds of paints and plastics over time, we do have UV-inhibitor coatings.
Ooh, new refactoring tool? Sounds good. Can you give me a quick idea of what it can do that the built-in refactoring can't? I've found VS2005's built in refactor is actually pretty good; thinks like changing a defined name (variable, class, method, whatever) giving an automatic option to refactor with just a click of the mouse is pretty sweet, as is the automatic refactor when working in design view (of course, this has been a feature of VS for years and years, now).
I dual-boot Vista and Linux (openSuse) and have been developing.NET apps and web apps for over two years. These days, while I do nearly all of my development in Windows (Visual Studio is simply the best IDE I've ever seen, bar none... though for Java I've found NetBeans is pretty good) I've found pretty much everything I do works perfectly well in Linux using Mono. Make sure you have the WinForms package and, if needed, the mono-basic (VB.NET support) package installed, plus packages for whatever database you use, and you're pretty much good to go for desktop apps (console apps will work with just the stuff that installs itself if you use any GNOME apps - I'm a KDE user and those were still already auto-installed).
I hear Mono is now working properly on OS X as well. Considering all that, I'd say you should be fine working with.NET/Mono for full cross-platform capability. It would be nice if there was a better IDE available for the other platforms... monodevelop shows a lot of promise but is still years behind VS in terms of features. You don't even need to recompile using Mono; Mono understands the intermediate language produced by either their own or Microsoft's compiler, and will JIT compile it to native code. I think Mono has native support for a few architectures (other than x86/x64) already, in fact.
Obviously you'll need to avoid using any Windows-specific features, but given the size of the.NET libraries I havne't found that to be a problem. Besides, you can link to native libraries if need be, although I'm not sure if that works cross-platform without recompiling (never tried).
Re:How cross-platform are we talking here?
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Cross-Platform Microsoft
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, with regard to backward compatibility MS does a better job - especially considering the sheer volume of legacy code, much of it written for small, one-off jobs - of maintaining backward compatibility than almost any other large software house I can think of. So, taking the spirit of your sig here...
New OS releases that come with new and incompatible driver models
Well, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any OS that didn't break a few things version to version, but 2000 to XP was minimal (mostly additions like the native WiFi networking, not changes to old stuff) and in all my playing with Vista's driver models (a lot; I've been using it since early beta 2 when almost nobody was making native Vista drivers) the only thing I've found that I simply can't work around is networking. My guess is that the new (written in-house from the ground up) network stack in Vista is just different enough from the NDIS in earlier versions of Windows that old drivers won't work. Pretty much everything else, including old video drivers (though you lose all the advantages of WDDM) can be loaded by either tweaking the INF file (if it's a manual installation, which only a few drivers are anymore) or running the installer in Compatibility Mode (which Vista will automatically prompt you to do if the install fails the first time).
New Office releases that save in new file formats that can't be read by older software
You mean the new formats that, when you attempt to open them in an older version of Office (all the way back to Office XP I think) prompts you to download a free converter plugin for those files? MS would certainly like you to upgrade, but they aren't making interoperability between the versions impossible, even if the Office 2007 user forget to save in the legacy format.
Visual Basic 6 will no longer be supported
This one I admit I'm not sure where you're going with it. Since VB4, VB code should compile to native binaries without need of a redistributed library, although it obviously will rely on some native Windows libraries that may (but shouldn't) have changed slightly. In other words, programs coded in VB6 should still run happily enough. If you mean they aren't supporting the development platform anymore, I can't say I'm surprised... VB6 is history, and rightly so. VB.NET is a nearly identical language with much better libraries and capabilities, is cross-platform (through Mono), and has good performance. I can't for the life of me see why they shouldn't EOL VB6; the copies people have will keep on working but nobody should be either learning it or starting work on a new project in it. That said, if you have any details about this I don't know, send me a reply please.
Oh, and they gave you free, automatic upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. Right, that means Internet Explorer 6 won't work anymore, and neither will software that requires it
Technically true, but you're insulting the intelligence of anybody expected to take this at face value. IE7 is an automatic upgrade, but it's not a silent one; even with automatic update installation enabled, the user must approve the installation. It's also possible - easy, even - to uninstall IE7 using Add/Remove Programs like XP users are used to. This will restore IE6 in all its antique and insecure glory. Of course, if you managed to write some inhouse web app or ActiveX so badly that it actually doesn't work on IE7, go right ahead (though I hope you'll be using Firefox or another alternative for all external browsing). That said, the policy where I work presently is "Don't install IE7, it will break things. Uninstall it if you have it." Well, fine; I just don't use IE on my work desktop. On the laptop, which is mine and not the company's, I run Vista (and openSuse Linux) and in Vista I use IE7 primarily. I have yet to come across a single company page or tool that wouldn't work. YMMV of course, but you need to screw up pr
The ability to diagnose and fix computer hardware can be very valuable, actually. Lots of places around the world don't really have any support infrastructure for high-tech electronics. Getting things fixed requires shipping them off to a city, an expensive and time-consuming process. For those who are just visiting these places, or are away from home, needing to send computers away for repair is a serious problem. Even when the hardware is cheap junk (or just cheap, and affordable to replace) it might not be easily possible to replace it, so the ability to get it fixed is essential. In communities like that, OLPC machines would be ideal.
In my experience, computer repair can actually make a decent amount of money in such communities. Sure, I wasn't making much by American standards, but I was still in high school, and by local standards it wouldn't have been a bad income. There was a time when I was getting more requests than I could handle by myself, and I wasn't even advertising... it was all word of mouth. Sure, sometimes it would be an unfixable issue (well, short of something like replacing the mobo, which requires having a replacement handy) and often enough it was software rather than hardware (I could do both, but this discussion seems to be about hardware). My point is that by giving kids an easily disassemblable computer and encouraging them to play with it, they already are learning a useful, marketable skill.
My case is a little different, because my community was that of live-aboard ocean cruisers, people who typically have money and computers but live out of reach of any kind of professional tech support. That said, there are parallels even with them, and I helped a lot of people on shore too... people with electricity, telephones, usually TV, maybe a car, and whose kids can go to school at least through age 16 or so. Those people, and their children, can benefit heavily from cheap computers with Internet connections and easily accessed hardware.
Microsoft is an American company, you know. Their products must conform to the (local) laws. If they had some way of guaranteeing that some copies of their software would be used only in those countries where it is legal to have certain features, they might include those features... but odds are, they still wouldn't. Why should MS complicate their testing, licensing, and distribution systems, not to mention risk lawsuits if such a copy ever did find its way into the US or the US ever managed to get legal action brought against somebody in your country (such things have happened)? Do you REALLY think you're important enough that MS should go through the hassle of providing a special version for you?
Not sure why I'm responding to such a clear troll (you didn't even call the MacBook Pro by its correct name) when I have mod points, but what the heck.
1. You don't have to buy a computer - even a laptop - with *any* OS. You can also, with some vendors, refuse the MS license and demand a refund for the OS if you format it off the hard drive. Finally, there are a couple companies selling Linux laptops (System76 sells nothing else).
2. Although I personally rarely interact with Macs except when my computer-illiterate friends and family members need me to troubleshoot theirs, one source I've found for installing a lot of great F/OSS programs is NetBSD's pkgsrc, a package management tool that can work with either binaries or (more often) build from source. Although not the same as the Ports system found on other BSDs, it has a similar ability to almost completely automate the whole installation and updates process, including configuration of source packages. More importantly, it runs on a wide variety of platforms, including Interix in Windows (see #3) and Darwin (Mac OS X). It's pretty easy to install and generally works well.
3. In Windows, if you want a POSIX environment and shell (I prefer bash but zsh is also available) you can install the Services for Unix (SFU, WinXP and earlier NT versions) or Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA, Server 2003, Vista, and above), which will install what I guess could be called a "parallel OS" called Interix. The only particularly noticeable lack is that it still goes through the NT kernel for device IO (using the POSIX subsystem rather than the Win32 subsystem, but the same at the kernel's lowest level) which offers no direct block device access. You don't have to worry about finding compatible drivers though. It's not fantastic but it makes the XP machine I'm forced to use at work usable. I haven't managed to get a native X server running, but there are Windows-based X servers and they work well enough for a desktop environment, let alone XEmacs. In theory it should be possible to install KDE or similar, although you'll need to compile from source. All the common Unix shells, including zsh, are available (although only csh and ksh are initially installed). You can get more software for it either from Interopsystems.com (binaries built specifically for SUA/SFU) or NetBSD pkgsrc (will require building most packages from source).
I haven't even used XP on my own machines in over two years, but... my family has 6-year-old Win2000 machines that still work fine (once you get past 2000's startup time, which was always annoying). Their XP machines are 4 years old and also work fine (these were far from top-of-the-line either, although they did upgrade the RAM from the original 512 to 768).
While I don't deny I've seen the "Windows Rot" phenomenon, it's most commonly due to people installing shit that runs at startup (often silently and near-invisibly) that, as they accumulate more such programs over time, slow the machine down. Malware obviously forms a sizable chunk of this problem, but also things like iTunes, Acrobat Reader (older versions at least, I refuse to run that crap anymore), and hardware drivers that install user-space software to do things like help you manage wireless networks or check printer ink levels. Defragmenting every month or so can help too, although it's really only necessary if moving largish files around and can be mitigated my using hard drives with a faster seek time. Programs uninstalling incorrectly and leaving shit in the registry (lookin' at YOU, Symantec) is another problem, though much less of one (in my experience) than the others (and can be cleaned manually or with specialized software). Side note: avoiding all this is a lot of what Live OneCare's "Tune Up" process is about; regularly scheduled deep virus scans, (in addition to the nightly scans) hard drive defrags, and such to try and keep Windows running well. It could be improved but was a logical feature to add to a software suite. There are probably alternative programs that do similar things, but as I said I don't run XP anymore haven't found any elsewhere.
Anyhow, back to my point: if you know a few things about computers, you can easily keep older Windows systems running well (NT-based at least; the design is solid enough but the users give it a bad name). Honestly, I sometimes think nobody should be allowed to have root access on a Internet-connected machine without passing some sort of certification. Probably neither my mother nor sister could pass such a certification, but both know what they don't know and generally follow good practices with regard to installing unneeded junk and the like. My father is quite good with computers though (for all that I can't get him to run Linux) and can help them out when they have a question. He doesn't even need to really work to keep the machines up; all it takes is just avoiding letting them degrade.
Perhaps the best way to describe this is that it's more along the lines of KDE's philosophy than GNOME's; there are lots of ways to do things, some are a bit faster for one purpose or can do anything related but require a few more steps, but it's always easy to find a way to do what you want, and you can choose whatever way you prefer. For example, I always use Software Management, because I might not just do updates, I might install something else as well. Or remove something, possibly replacing it with another. Sure, it's more clicks and possibly a bit longer waiting (I can't remember, to be honest) but it's also the nicest graphical package manager I've ever worked with, and it's how I like to use the system. If I were to just install some everyday updates, I'd use the ZEN Updater anyhow (I'm running openSuse 10.2; I don't know if ZEN is available in SLED).
Bizarrest interface? What were you expecting... Ubuntu's "I need a IM program." "OK, here you go. I'm sure this is the specific program and version you wanted!" or Synaptic's "Hey guys, lets wrap an old command-line package management tool in a GUI that has nearly as many features and is only slightly less intuitive!" My only gripe about Yast's package manager, aside from the time it takes to sync with the various repositories I have set up, is that it doesn't start, by default, with the search sidebar. Oh noes... that's an entire click-drag-release motion I need to do each time, and yet it's literally my biggest gripe about the thing! My second biggest is needing to click on the Versions tab for a package to see which versions are available in my (many) repositories - sometimes packages from third parties are either a little broken or break something else, so if the version number in the list looks too strange I'll check it out. Wow... it's such a pain, I know. Never mind the fact that it is completely functional even in terminal mode (this is a serious blessing for both remote management and fixing whatever broke the X Server this time (seems to hit me at least twice a year; the last one was a broken nVidia driver update).
With regard to a billion systems for software installation, I'm as opposed to duplication of effort as anybody - I think it's a large part of what has held OSS back - but I really consider Yast to be the best of the breed. In any case, nothing's stopping you from using another system (although I, like the GPP, really wish Yast was available on other distros). As for complaining about how many places Yast appears in your K Menu, you have two options: edit the menu (it's not terribly hard, the newest versions of KDE finally support context menus for menu editing) or try using three brain cells at once (your complaint is so ridiculous I have a hard time believing it's not a troll... if you honestly can't tell the difference betweek KDE's Control Center and a few places places with a entry called Yast then you probably shouldn't even use a Mac, let alone Linux with root access). For all I care, do everything from the terminal and edit config files by hand... or use some other distro. You're a perfect candidate for Fedora Core or similar; it has nearly all the advantages of Suse except Yast, so it should be perfect for you.
Would running a user-permissions binary from a flashdrive count? It doesn't put anything on the hard disk (I believe it works even if there is no writeable hard disk). Firefox Portable uses its own directory (on the flashdrive, if you run it from there) to store its user configuration and such. It can store themes, bookmarks, and extensions there, and many plugins (Flash, etc.) as well.
While you're correct that XP's firewall can block IIS, it isn't even an issue on most machines. The default configuration, even for XP Pro, doesn't install IIS. As with Vista, you much go into the Windows Components section of the (Add/Remove) Programs window and select it. In XP you'll also need the install media; in Vista IIS is part of the installation image (this is part of why Vista's install footprint is so big; every feature, even those you aren't going to use, is copied to the hard drive at install time).
You can test this yourself: Go into Computer Management, then Services, and look for the IIS process (daemon). Generally, it's not even present, let alone enabled. Similarly, ping an XP machine - even one with its firewall off (or inside the firewall - try going to http://localhost - and you probably won't see anything at all (other than a server not found error). Netcraft would have a difficult time even detecting that the machine runs Windows.
Is there some reason you can't install Firefox or Opera on your own machine, just locally? There's a portable version of Firefox that requires no special permissions to execute, doesn't use an installer, and can be run from a single folder (which can be placed on a flash drive, hence "portable"). There are other methods that may work, depending on your situation, but portable Firefox may be the best bet.
I'm very, very sorry you still have to use that sorry excuse for a browser. My work machine also has IE6, but I don't need to *use* it, thankfully.
Well... a quick search for odf-converter site:microsoft.com turns up a couple hits, although many seem to be non-English press releases. I wouldn't call it prominently displayed, but it's not like it isn't listed at all either.
You're correct about Unix(tm) being much more specific than POSIX specification (and AFAIK, MS has never tried to get the subsystem certified, although hey do use Unix in its name). However, you may be mistaken about the filesystem; within the POSIX subsystem, the filesystem is laid out just like any UNIX or Linux FS, including the standard folders. Drive letters are mounted at/dev/fs/, so the home folder for a Windows user with the username foo would be/dev/fs/C/Users/foo/ (note that it is also case-sensitive). The subsystem itself is installed in a SUA folder in the Windows directory, so for most setups/dev/fs/C/Windows/SUA/ is equivalent to / within the subsystem. Yes, this can cause loop issues while traversing the filesystem.
My biggest bripe is that while hard links work correctly in both Win32 and the subsystem, Vista's symlinks are not the same as UNIX symlinks so the POSIX subsystem's links can't be used in the Win32 environment.
If you had actually bothered to read the Sourceforge page, you'd see that the project is Microsoft-funded. There was actually an article about it in Ars Technica over 6 months ago. I've gotten tired of actually retyping everything so now I'm just going to link to a couple of my many prior comments on this subject.
Among the items of note here: Sun's plugin is a serious Johnny-come-lately by comparison. I was running the Office 2007 plugin back when Office itself was in beta. It works great, produces small files, and has quite a few features. I don't know how much MS has put into the project, monetarily or otherwise, but the project's own page mentions their support in a couple places even though I'm pretty sure no MS developers were involved.
I own a Vista machine (laptop, about 8 months old) and at work I have an XP machine that technically has more processing power (although older architecture CPUs). The work machine needs a RAM upgrade, but otherwise is quite good. However, I do all my *real* work on the laptop. The reason is simply that even when working primarily within a single program (Eclipse in this case) Vista still makes it easier to get things done.
The search is probably the biggest improvement (find programs instantly without digging though the start menu, track down emails, documents, and recently browsed web pages without needing to start any other programs, and use utilities like Start++ to add other functionality) but live thumbnails on the Taskbar and Alt-Tab help a lot when you have a great many programs open (a couple web browsers, a few documents or emails, a calendar app, instant messenger, multiple bash - yes, bash on Windows - and powershell terminals, and a handful of Windows Explorer sessions). (I try not to have that many all at once, though it has happened, or close enough. Certainly several of the same or similar programs open at once, such as three bash terminals, a couple email windows, and a pair of web browsers plus a necessary popup that appears in the taskbar as a third browser window.) Note that the live thumbnails require Aero - it's more than just eye candy.
Other handy little things like the Sidebar (the Notes gadget in particular, although there are others that I use frequently) also help improve productivity. While they could be replaced by other means (I used to keep a notes.txt file on my desktop, usually with a Notepad session open to that file) Vista provides a very easy-to-use and convenient working environment that needs less third-party software and is easier for the user to manage.
The Windows Experience Index value is computed independently on five characteristics: Hard Drive Speed, CPU speed (real speed via a benchmark test, not just clock rate), RAM (not sure if it's performance, quantity, or some of both), Video hardware capabilities (not sure how they test this, though GPU speed is presumably a factor), and video RAM. After each category is rated, the computer's overall score is the LOWEST such rating. If the entire computer scored 5.9 (by the way, MS plans to extend the index as hardware reaches the point where it would be meaningful to do so) then every single component tested went off the scale, not just the CPU. I can imagine both the CPU and GPU(s) hitting that high, plus most likely the VRAM, but the system RAM and hard drive I don't know about. It's also worth noting that these values are really only intended for gamers and other people running hardware-intensive apps; I ran Vista (well, betas of it) on a machine that scored 1.0 overall because that's the highest rating Vista will give to a video card without pixel shader 2.0 acceleration. None of the other attributes scored too well either, but it certainly ran both the OS and DirectX 8.x games well enough. The only portion of the OS that didn't work was Aero, which the video card had no chance of handling in software (I tried).
Moral of the story: Just because you don't give a fsck doesn't mean that it isn't interesting, even useful info - after all, a complete setup that rates that well (for perspective, my current laptop's core 2 duo 1.83GHz CPU gets a 4.4) will perform quite fantastically whether or not you put Vista on it.
Oh, and I have no idea what qualifies this as funny; while I wouldn't have wasted a modpoint on it it reads more like a troll - certainly YOU didn't add anything to the discussion.
While I haven't ever tried to actually do this, Suse's SaX2 (automatic X configuring program) allows setting up dual-head mode quite painlessly, in theory. Of course, I say this while running the proprietary nVidia driver, so i don't know if it will do so for ATi. However, it supports both cloned desktops and xinerama, and appears configurable in just a few very simple, clear steps.
In fact, of all the configuration tools that come with Suse, sax2 must be one of the most wonderful - I've almost forgotten where the xorg.conf file is. I don't know if it's portable to other distros, but the source should be available - all of Suse's configuration tools were open-sourced when they were bought by Novell, IIRC.
For 2000 and XP, you want Windows Services for Unix or SFU. The download includes a complete - though basic - POSIX environment, a working GNU build toolchain (and yes, sources for all GPL code), and NFS server and client abilities. You shouldn't need to do anything except run the self-extracting download archive and run setup.exe. The installer will provide options to enable setuid and case-sensitive behaviors in the filesystem used within the subsystem, which should be used as a number of programs need them. The version of Perl included with the installer is obsolete and probably not worth installing; I'll get to that in a sec.
For Server 2003 and Vista, you must first enable the Windows component called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA). This can be done by going to the (Add/Remove) Programs control panel - there's an option on the side for enabling Windows components. In Vista at least, you can also enable NFS and Unix-style printer connectivity here. You will then need to install the Utilities and SDK for the SUA, which is available for Vista/Longhorn and for Server 2003. On Vista there will be an additional install option to enable su-to-root behavior, required for programs like sudo - this option is important because by default, the Administrator account is disabled in Vista and privilege escalation is achieved through UAC. Although UAC can be used to start a Unix shell as root/admin, it cannot be used to change a shell's permissions while it runs. If you install sudo this becomes possible.
In all cases, you will get two Unix shells, the Korn shell and the C shell, in your start menu. Either one will start the subsystem and run a login process that creates the necessary environment variables and such. However, there are a few notable lacks. One of them is that while x11r5 and x11r6 client libraries are installed (with the r6 libraries used by default), there is no X server. Thus far I haven't managed to port x.org to Interix (the name of the subsystem "OS") so I use a win32 X server, specifically xming which runs on everything including Vista. The second major lack is a package manager or any software beyond the most basic requirements. For resolving this issue there are a couple options; the two I have tried are InteropSystems and NetBSD pkgsrc.
Both provide a good number of commonly used programs, and support the Interix platform. However, there are some major differences: InteropSystems primarily distributes binaries, with an eye to very easy package management and rapid usability. It also integrates better with Windows, doing things like adding a Start menu link for the Bash shell if you install their package. There is a fairly good forum for assistance and mostly it's a very easy out-of-box experience. However, their package tree is somewhat limited, and installing older versions of some libraries is trickier than it might be. They suuport all versions of Interix, from 3.5 (XP-era SFU) up to 6.0 (Vista's SUA). NetBSD's pkgsrc, on the other hand, is mostly source-based (although there are some pre-built packages for Interix; roughly as many as InteropSystems has, in fact). It takes longer to compile from source, and the initial download is hefty. However, a much wider selection of packages is available (although there's no guarantee they'll all work; indeed some, such as the X server, are flagged to not even attempt to build in Interix) and the packages are presumably optimized at least somewhat for your system during compilation. It's harder to find the right packages at times, though, and I have yet to get even the source-based boo
In the testing I've done with this (Vista x86 Ultimate Edition, UAC and Protected Mode enabled, fully patched IE7 and Firefox, both used actively... though I'm actually posting from openSuse in Knoqueror at present) it doesn't even work in Vista. Neither did the firefoxurl: handler attack. I wonder of the difference is in how Vista handles URIs, or the different permission levels, or something else... in any case, from my experience, Vista users are safer than XP users here (which is as it should be, after all).
Vista-specific features that are well worth the slightly higher resource usage (this machine is fast enough it's not really a slowdown; I almost never max out both cores):
SuperFetch: My programs start almost instantly, even huge ones like EVE Online. Starting even a simple, everyday Linux program such as Konqueror takes a few seconds the first time it is loaded after a reboot, running natively on the same hardware.
Integrated instant search: I don't even use the Start Menu's programs list anymore. I hate it, to be honest; it's slow, virtually requires mouse control, and finding things can unintuitive unless you spend time tweaking stuff. In Vista, it's WinKey + a few letters + Enter to start a program, and the program is loading in less time than the All Programs menu would have expanded in XP. Also very useful for finding documents, and even more useful for finding pages in my web history. I literally only need to remember a few words that were on a page I recently visited and I can get right back to it.
Built-in two-way firewall: Stop programs from phoning home, block web access to programs that I don't trust, get notifications when a program tries to go online, and block pings and such... all without needing third-party software.
UAC: You might not believe me because there are a lot of dumbshits in the world who are used to running Windows as an Administrator and can't believe they need to approve privilege escalation dialogs just to make a change in their Windows system folder and so they whine about it, but UAC is possibly the best thing to happen in Vista. It's more convenient and requires less work then sudo (although you can configure it to demand your password for privilege escalation, handy if you either might have an untrusted user accessing your account or you want to avoid the automatic click-though response), is automatic rather than requiring that the user know when a program will need full permissions, and makes the pile of shit I had to go through using Runas on a non-admin XP account look really, really ridiculous.
Media Center: Fantastic program, really nice for those of us who neither have the money nor the space for a dedicated PVR box + TV but still wants to record the Colbert Report, some sci-fi, and the occasional sports game... or even just wants to occasionally WATCH more-or-less-live TV while skipping ads, pausing when people walk in, and creating my own instant replays. Those aren't nearly all the features of WMC but I don't have an extender or external TV so those are the ones I use most. Yes, Media Center was available for XP, if not when it first shipped, but only in versions that lacked a lot of other things found in the professional/tablet editions.
Aero's live thumbnail views: mostly used when I want to see if a program is done compiling, or a file down downloading, or something like that. All I need to do is move the mouse over the program's taskbar button and I can see - if not well enough to read, well enough to see if anything is happening - without waiting for the be restored and start handling user events again. Also handy when alt-tabbing, and if I need to be able to read the windows as I'm switching I use Flip-3D (admittedly this is uncommon but it happens).
Application-level volume control: A lot of programs don't have an easy volume control, but are too noisy or too quiet. Or perhaps I just want to mute all programs except the TV r movie I'm watching, or something like that... in Vista it's easy.
Sidebar: The notes gadget is far and away the one I use most often, because it's fantastic for those numbers you hear on the phone and need to write down, or grabbing those three text snippets or URLs or whatever without needing to copy and paste each one to its final destination before grabbing the next. That said, the Live Maps gadget is great for a quick glance at traffic before heading across the bridge or something, the meter gadget lets me know when I'm getting close to using all available RAM or CPU at a glance, and the fe
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You're missing the point here. They aren't talking about accelerating the frameworks (the JRE, the Common Language Runtime, any other program that was compiled to native code at or before install time), they are about accelerating the applications that are run using those frameworks. The reason is that both frameworks use JIT-compiled code (I believe old JVMs translated instructions individually, but these days I'm pretty sure the whole .class gets compiled to native code just before execution).
The advantage of these extensions is that they can make it possible to optimize the hell out of the JIT, producing code at run-time that takes full advantage of the available capabilities of the processor(s). Theoretically, this could make these JIT-compiled programs faster to run (though they will always incur a startup penalty) than non-JIT native code because the JIT compiler knows things about the environment in which it will be executing that would be specific to that machine at that time.
Interesting story. One slight correction: even if the NIC's computer was not turned on. I'm pretty sure if you physically removed the NIC from the machine it would have gone dark. However, modern systems are designed to be bootable via a network signal, so the card likely still gets some power even when the machine is off. There's a reason you remove the power cord, not just flip the switch in back, before doing open-case maintenance.
True, but generating plasma with lasers isn't the problem. For one thing, these lasers wouldn't produce anywhere near enough heat/pressure (yes, pressure, as in essentially massless photons pushing atoms around) for fusion, and for another just initiating fusion doesn't make it self-sustaining. It needs to have new fuel (typically hydrogen isotopes or He3) introduced, and waste products (typically He4) removed eventually. Since the startup lasers draw a great deal of power, you don't want to run them any more than need be, which means you ideally need to be able to do the fuel exchange without restarting the reactor. Do you start to see the problems yet?
I'm not saying it won't happen - we make a few notable landmarks every year or so - but it's a ways off yet.
Is ozone really that much of a problem? I was under the impression it was pretty much inert... never mind that there are still places (especially down around Australia IIRC) where the ozone layer is really thin.
The UV seems a more likely problem. The only practical solution I can see for the at is a have a glass or plastic barrier between the viewers and the display (might be necessary anyway, since you obviously wouldn't want to touch this display even accidentally) that can block the dangerous frequencies. On anything except animal flesh, most UV frequencies are relatively harmless; plants are used to high doses of it and while it tends to destroy some kinds of paints and plastics over time, we do have UV-inhibitor coatings.
Ooh, new refactoring tool? Sounds good. Can you give me a quick idea of what it can do that the built-in refactoring can't? I've found VS2005's built in refactor is actually pretty good; thinks like changing a defined name (variable, class, method, whatever) giving an automatic option to refactor with just a click of the mouse is pretty sweet, as is the automatic refactor when working in design view (of course, this has been a feature of VS for years and years, now).
I dual-boot Vista and Linux (openSuse) and have been developing .NET apps and web apps for over two years. These days, while I do nearly all of my development in Windows (Visual Studio is simply the best IDE I've ever seen, bar none... though for Java I've found NetBeans is pretty good) I've found pretty much everything I do works perfectly well in Linux using Mono. Make sure you have the WinForms package and, if needed, the mono-basic (VB.NET support) package installed, plus packages for whatever database you use, and you're pretty much good to go for desktop apps (console apps will work with just the stuff that installs itself if you use any GNOME apps - I'm a KDE user and those were still already auto-installed).
.NET/Mono for full cross-platform capability. It would be nice if there was a better IDE available for the other platforms... monodevelop shows a lot of promise but is still years behind VS in terms of features. You don't even need to recompile using Mono; Mono understands the intermediate language produced by either their own or Microsoft's compiler, and will JIT compile it to native code. I think Mono has native support for a few architectures (other than x86/x64) already, in fact.
.NET libraries I havne't found that to be a problem. Besides, you can link to native libraries if need be, although I'm not sure if that works cross-platform without recompiling (never tried).
I hear Mono is now working properly on OS X as well. Considering all that, I'd say you should be fine working with
Obviously you'll need to avoid using any Windows-specific features, but given the size of the
Well, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any OS that didn't break a few things version to version, but 2000 to XP was minimal (mostly additions like the native WiFi networking, not changes to old stuff) and in all my playing with Vista's driver models (a lot; I've been using it since early beta 2 when almost nobody was making native Vista drivers) the only thing I've found that I simply can't work around is networking. My guess is that the new (written in-house from the ground up) network stack in Vista is just different enough from the NDIS in earlier versions of Windows that old drivers won't work. Pretty much everything else, including old video drivers (though you lose all the advantages of WDDM) can be loaded by either tweaking the INF file (if it's a manual installation, which only a few drivers are anymore) or running the installer in Compatibility Mode (which Vista will automatically prompt you to do if the install fails the first time).
You mean the new formats that, when you attempt to open them in an older version of Office (all the way back to Office XP I think) prompts you to download a free converter plugin for those files? MS would certainly like you to upgrade, but they aren't making interoperability between the versions impossible, even if the Office 2007 user forget to save in the legacy format.
This one I admit I'm not sure where you're going with it. Since VB4, VB code should compile to native binaries without need of a redistributed library, although it obviously will rely on some native Windows libraries that may (but shouldn't) have changed slightly. In other words, programs coded in VB6 should still run happily enough. If you mean they aren't supporting the development platform anymore, I can't say I'm surprised... VB6 is history, and rightly so. VB.NET is a nearly identical language with much better libraries and capabilities, is cross-platform (through Mono), and has good performance. I can't for the life of me see why they shouldn't EOL VB6; the copies people have will keep on working but nobody should be either learning it or starting work on a new project in it. That said, if you have any details about this I don't know, send me a reply please.
Technically true, but you're insulting the intelligence of anybody expected to take this at face value. IE7 is an automatic upgrade, but it's not a silent one; even with automatic update installation enabled, the user must approve the installation. It's also possible - easy, even - to uninstall IE7 using Add/Remove Programs like XP users are used to. This will restore IE6 in all its antique and insecure glory. Of course, if you managed to write some inhouse web app or ActiveX so badly that it actually doesn't work on IE7, go right ahead (though I hope you'll be using Firefox or another alternative for all external browsing). That said, the policy where I work presently is "Don't install IE7, it will break things. Uninstall it if you have it." Well, fine; I just don't use IE on my work desktop. On the laptop, which is mine and not the company's, I run Vista (and openSuse Linux) and in Vista I use IE7 primarily. I have yet to come across a single company page or tool that wouldn't work. YMMV of course, but you need to screw up pr
The ability to diagnose and fix computer hardware can be very valuable, actually. Lots of places around the world don't really have any support infrastructure for high-tech electronics. Getting things fixed requires shipping them off to a city, an expensive and time-consuming process. For those who are just visiting these places, or are away from home, needing to send computers away for repair is a serious problem. Even when the hardware is cheap junk (or just cheap, and affordable to replace) it might not be easily possible to replace it, so the ability to get it fixed is essential. In communities like that, OLPC machines would be ideal.
In my experience, computer repair can actually make a decent amount of money in such communities. Sure, I wasn't making much by American standards, but I was still in high school, and by local standards it wouldn't have been a bad income. There was a time when I was getting more requests than I could handle by myself, and I wasn't even advertising... it was all word of mouth. Sure, sometimes it would be an unfixable issue (well, short of something like replacing the mobo, which requires having a replacement handy) and often enough it was software rather than hardware (I could do both, but this discussion seems to be about hardware). My point is that by giving kids an easily disassemblable computer and encouraging them to play with it, they already are learning a useful, marketable skill.
My case is a little different, because my community was that of live-aboard ocean cruisers, people who typically have money and computers but live out of reach of any kind of professional tech support. That said, there are parallels even with them, and I helped a lot of people on shore too... people with electricity, telephones, usually TV, maybe a car, and whose kids can go to school at least through age 16 or so. Those people, and their children, can benefit heavily from cheap computers with Internet connections and easily accessed hardware.
Microsoft is an American company, you know. Their products must conform to the (local) laws. If they had some way of guaranteeing that some copies of their software would be used only in those countries where it is legal to have certain features, they might include those features... but odds are, they still wouldn't. Why should MS complicate their testing, licensing, and distribution systems, not to mention risk lawsuits if such a copy ever did find its way into the US or the US ever managed to get legal action brought against somebody in your country (such things have happened)? Do you REALLY think you're important enough that MS should go through the hassle of providing a special version for you?
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
Not sure why I'm responding to such a clear troll (you didn't even call the MacBook Pro by its correct name) when I have mod points, but what the heck.
1. You don't have to buy a computer - even a laptop - with *any* OS. You can also, with some vendors, refuse the MS license and demand a refund for the OS if you format it off the hard drive. Finally, there are a couple companies selling Linux laptops (System76 sells nothing else).
2. Although I personally rarely interact with Macs except when my computer-illiterate friends and family members need me to troubleshoot theirs, one source I've found for installing a lot of great F/OSS programs is NetBSD's pkgsrc, a package management tool that can work with either binaries or (more often) build from source. Although not the same as the Ports system found on other BSDs, it has a similar ability to almost completely automate the whole installation and updates process, including configuration of source packages. More importantly, it runs on a wide variety of platforms, including Interix in Windows (see #3) and Darwin (Mac OS X). It's pretty easy to install and generally works well.
3. In Windows, if you want a POSIX environment and shell (I prefer bash but zsh is also available) you can install the Services for Unix (SFU, WinXP and earlier NT versions) or Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA, Server 2003, Vista, and above), which will install what I guess could be called a "parallel OS" called Interix. The only particularly noticeable lack is that it still goes through the NT kernel for device IO (using the POSIX subsystem rather than the Win32 subsystem, but the same at the kernel's lowest level) which offers no direct block device access. You don't have to worry about finding compatible drivers though. It's not fantastic but it makes the XP machine I'm forced to use at work usable. I haven't managed to get a native X server running, but there are Windows-based X servers and they work well enough for a desktop environment, let alone XEmacs. In theory it should be possible to install KDE or similar, although you'll need to compile from source. All the common Unix shells, including zsh, are available (although only csh and ksh are initially installed). You can get more software for it either from Interopsystems.com (binaries built specifically for SUA/SFU) or NetBSD pkgsrc (will require building most packages from source).
I haven't even used XP on my own machines in over two years, but... my family has 6-year-old Win2000 machines that still work fine (once you get past 2000's startup time, which was always annoying). Their XP machines are 4 years old and also work fine (these were far from top-of-the-line either, although they did upgrade the RAM from the original 512 to 768).
While I don't deny I've seen the "Windows Rot" phenomenon, it's most commonly due to people installing shit that runs at startup (often silently and near-invisibly) that, as they accumulate more such programs over time, slow the machine down. Malware obviously forms a sizable chunk of this problem, but also things like iTunes, Acrobat Reader (older versions at least, I refuse to run that crap anymore), and hardware drivers that install user-space software to do things like help you manage wireless networks or check printer ink levels. Defragmenting every month or so can help too, although it's really only necessary if moving largish files around and can be mitigated my using hard drives with a faster seek time. Programs uninstalling incorrectly and leaving shit in the registry (lookin' at YOU, Symantec) is another problem, though much less of one (in my experience) than the others (and can be cleaned manually or with specialized software). Side note: avoiding all this is a lot of what Live OneCare's "Tune Up" process is about; regularly scheduled deep virus scans, (in addition to the nightly scans) hard drive defrags, and such to try and keep Windows running well. It could be improved but was a logical feature to add to a software suite. There are probably alternative programs that do similar things, but as I said I don't run XP anymore haven't found any elsewhere.
Anyhow, back to my point: if you know a few things about computers, you can easily keep older Windows systems running well (NT-based at least; the design is solid enough but the users give it a bad name). Honestly, I sometimes think nobody should be allowed to have root access on a Internet-connected machine without passing some sort of certification. Probably neither my mother nor sister could pass such a certification, but both know what they don't know and generally follow good practices with regard to installing unneeded junk and the like. My father is quite good with computers though (for all that I can't get him to run Linux) and can help them out when they have a question. He doesn't even need to really work to keep the machines up; all it takes is just avoiding letting them degrade.
Perhaps the best way to describe this is that it's more along the lines of KDE's philosophy than GNOME's; there are lots of ways to do things, some are a bit faster for one purpose or can do anything related but require a few more steps, but it's always easy to find a way to do what you want, and you can choose whatever way you prefer. For example, I always use Software Management, because I might not just do updates, I might install something else as well. Or remove something, possibly replacing it with another. Sure, it's more clicks and possibly a bit longer waiting (I can't remember, to be honest) but it's also the nicest graphical package manager I've ever worked with, and it's how I like to use the system. If I were to just install some everyday updates, I'd use the ZEN Updater anyhow (I'm running openSuse 10.2; I don't know if ZEN is available in SLED).
Bizarrest interface? What were you expecting... Ubuntu's "I need a IM program." "OK, here you go. I'm sure this is the specific program and version you wanted!" or Synaptic's "Hey guys, lets wrap an old command-line package management tool in a GUI that has nearly as many features and is only slightly less intuitive!" My only gripe about Yast's package manager, aside from the time it takes to sync with the various repositories I have set up, is that it doesn't start, by default, with the search sidebar. Oh noes... that's an entire click-drag-release motion I need to do each time, and yet it's literally my biggest gripe about the thing! My second biggest is needing to click on the Versions tab for a package to see which versions are available in my (many) repositories - sometimes packages from third parties are either a little broken or break something else, so if the version number in the list looks too strange I'll check it out. Wow... it's such a pain, I know. Never mind the fact that it is completely functional even in terminal mode (this is a serious blessing for both remote management and fixing whatever broke the X Server this time (seems to hit me at least twice a year; the last one was a broken nVidia driver update).
With regard to a billion systems for software installation, I'm as opposed to duplication of effort as anybody - I think it's a large part of what has held OSS back - but I really consider Yast to be the best of the breed. In any case, nothing's stopping you from using another system (although I, like the GPP, really wish Yast was available on other distros). As for complaining about how many places Yast appears in your K Menu, you have two options: edit the menu (it's not terribly hard, the newest versions of KDE finally support context menus for menu editing) or try using three brain cells at once (your complaint is so ridiculous I have a hard time believing it's not a troll... if you honestly can't tell the difference betweek KDE's Control Center and a few places places with a entry called Yast then you probably shouldn't even use a Mac, let alone Linux with root access). For all I care, do everything from the terminal and edit config files by hand... or use some other distro. You're a perfect candidate for Fedora Core or similar; it has nearly all the advantages of Suse except Yast, so it should be perfect for you.
Would running a user-permissions binary from a flashdrive count? It doesn't put anything on the hard disk (I believe it works even if there is no writeable hard disk). Firefox Portable uses its own directory (on the flashdrive, if you run it from there) to store its user configuration and such. It can store themes, bookmarks, and extensions there, and many plugins (Flash, etc.) as well.
While you're correct that XP's firewall can block IIS, it isn't even an issue on most machines. The default configuration, even for XP Pro, doesn't install IIS. As with Vista, you much go into the Windows Components section of the (Add/Remove) Programs window and select it. In XP you'll also need the install media; in Vista IIS is part of the installation image (this is part of why Vista's install footprint is so big; every feature, even those you aren't going to use, is copied to the hard drive at install time).
You can test this yourself: Go into Computer Management, then Services, and look for the IIS process (daemon). Generally, it's not even present, let alone enabled. Similarly, ping an XP machine - even one with its firewall off (or inside the firewall - try going to http://localhost - and you probably won't see anything at all (other than a server not found error). Netcraft would have a difficult time even detecting that the machine runs Windows.
Is there some reason you can't install Firefox or Opera on your own machine, just locally? There's a portable version of Firefox that requires no special permissions to execute, doesn't use an installer, and can be run from a single folder (which can be placed on a flash drive, hence "portable"). There are other methods that may work, depending on your situation, but portable Firefox may be the best bet.
I'm very, very sorry you still have to use that sorry excuse for a browser. My work machine also has IE6, but I don't need to *use* it, thankfully.
Well... a quick search for odf-converter site:microsoft.com turns up a couple hits, although many seem to be non-English press releases. I wouldn't call it prominently displayed, but it's not like it isn't listed at all either.
You're correct about Unix(tm) being much more specific than POSIX specification (and AFAIK, MS has never tried to get the subsystem certified, although hey do use Unix in its name). However, you may be mistaken about the filesystem; within the POSIX subsystem, the filesystem is laid out just like any UNIX or Linux FS, including the standard folders. Drive letters are mounted at /dev/fs/, so the home folder for a Windows user with the username foo would be /dev/fs/C/Users/foo/ (note that it is also case-sensitive). The subsystem itself is installed in a SUA folder in the Windows directory, so for most setups /dev/fs/C/Windows/SUA/ is equivalent to / within the subsystem. Yes, this can cause loop issues while traversing the filesystem.
My biggest bripe is that while hard links work correctly in both Win32 and the subsystem, Vista's symlinks are not the same as UNIX symlinks so the POSIX subsystem's links can't be used in the Win32 environment.
If you had actually bothered to read the Sourceforge page, you'd see that the project is Microsoft-funded. There was actually an article about it in Ars Technica over 6 months ago. I've gotten tired of actually retyping everything so now I'm just going to link to a couple of my many prior comments on this subject.
Among the items of note here: Sun's plugin is a serious Johnny-come-lately by comparison. I was running the Office 2007 plugin back when Office itself was in beta. It works great, produces small files, and has quite a few features. I don't know how much MS has put into the project, monetarily or otherwise, but the project's own page mentions their support in a couple places even though I'm pretty sure no MS developers were involved.
I own a Vista machine (laptop, about 8 months old) and at work I have an XP machine that technically has more processing power (although older architecture CPUs). The work machine needs a RAM upgrade, but otherwise is quite good. However, I do all my *real* work on the laptop. The reason is simply that even when working primarily within a single program (Eclipse in this case) Vista still makes it easier to get things done.
The search is probably the biggest improvement (find programs instantly without digging though the start menu, track down emails, documents, and recently browsed web pages without needing to start any other programs, and use utilities like Start++ to add other functionality) but live thumbnails on the Taskbar and Alt-Tab help a lot when you have a great many programs open (a couple web browsers, a few documents or emails, a calendar app, instant messenger, multiple bash - yes, bash on Windows - and powershell terminals, and a handful of Windows Explorer sessions). (I try not to have that many all at once, though it has happened, or close enough. Certainly several of the same or similar programs open at once, such as three bash terminals, a couple email windows, and a pair of web browsers plus a necessary popup that appears in the taskbar as a third browser window.) Note that the live thumbnails require Aero - it's more than just eye candy.
Other handy little things like the Sidebar (the Notes gadget in particular, although there are others that I use frequently) also help improve productivity. While they could be replaced by other means (I used to keep a notes.txt file on my desktop, usually with a Notepad session open to that file) Vista provides a very easy-to-use and convenient working environment that needs less third-party software and is easier for the user to manage.
The Windows Experience Index value is computed independently on five characteristics: Hard Drive Speed, CPU speed (real speed via a benchmark test, not just clock rate), RAM (not sure if it's performance, quantity, or some of both), Video hardware capabilities (not sure how they test this, though GPU speed is presumably a factor), and video RAM. After each category is rated, the computer's overall score is the LOWEST such rating. If the entire computer scored 5.9 (by the way, MS plans to extend the index as hardware reaches the point where it would be meaningful to do so) then every single component tested went off the scale, not just the CPU. I can imagine both the CPU and GPU(s) hitting that high, plus most likely the VRAM, but the system RAM and hard drive I don't know about. It's also worth noting that these values are really only intended for gamers and other people running hardware-intensive apps; I ran Vista (well, betas of it) on a machine that scored 1.0 overall because that's the highest rating Vista will give to a video card without pixel shader 2.0 acceleration. None of the other attributes scored too well either, but it certainly ran both the OS and DirectX 8.x games well enough. The only portion of the OS that didn't work was Aero, which the video card had no chance of handling in software (I tried).
Moral of the story: Just because you don't give a fsck doesn't mean that it isn't interesting, even useful info - after all, a complete setup that rates that well (for perspective, my current laptop's core 2 duo 1.83GHz CPU gets a 4.4) will perform quite fantastically whether or not you put Vista on it.
Oh, and I have no idea what qualifies this as funny; while I wouldn't have wasted a modpoint on it it reads more like a troll - certainly YOU didn't add anything to the discussion.
While I haven't ever tried to actually do this, Suse's SaX2 (automatic X configuring program) allows setting up dual-head mode quite painlessly, in theory. Of course, I say this while running the proprietary nVidia driver, so i don't know if it will do so for ATi. However, it supports both cloned desktops and xinerama, and appears configurable in just a few very simple, clear steps.
In fact, of all the configuration tools that come with Suse, sax2 must be one of the most wonderful - I've almost forgotten where the xorg.conf file is. I don't know if it's portable to other distros, but the source should be available - all of Suse's configuration tools were open-sourced when they were bought by Novell, IIRC.
For 2000 and XP, you want Windows Services for Unix or SFU. The download includes a complete - though basic - POSIX environment, a working GNU build toolchain (and yes, sources for all GPL code), and NFS server and client abilities. You shouldn't need to do anything except run the self-extracting download archive and run setup.exe. The installer will provide options to enable setuid and case-sensitive behaviors in the filesystem used within the subsystem, which should be used as a number of programs need them. The version of Perl included with the installer is obsolete and probably not worth installing; I'll get to that in a sec.
For Server 2003 and Vista, you must first enable the Windows component called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA). This can be done by going to the (Add/Remove) Programs control panel - there's an option on the side for enabling Windows components. In Vista at least, you can also enable NFS and Unix-style printer connectivity here. You will then need to install the Utilities and SDK for the SUA, which is available for Vista/Longhorn and for Server 2003. On Vista there will be an additional install option to enable su-to-root behavior, required for programs like sudo - this option is important because by default, the Administrator account is disabled in Vista and privilege escalation is achieved through UAC. Although UAC can be used to start a Unix shell as root/admin, it cannot be used to change a shell's permissions while it runs. If you install sudo this becomes possible.
In all cases, you will get two Unix shells, the Korn shell and the C shell, in your start menu. Either one will start the subsystem and run a login process that creates the necessary environment variables and such. However, there are a few notable lacks. One of them is that while x11r5 and x11r6 client libraries are installed (with the r6 libraries used by default), there is no X server. Thus far I haven't managed to port x.org to Interix (the name of the subsystem "OS") so I use a win32 X server, specifically xming which runs on everything including Vista. The second major lack is a package manager or any software beyond the most basic requirements. For resolving this issue there are a couple options; the two I have tried are InteropSystems and NetBSD pkgsrc.
Both provide a good number of commonly used programs, and support the Interix platform. However, there are some major differences: InteropSystems primarily distributes binaries, with an eye to very easy package management and rapid usability. It also integrates better with Windows, doing things like adding a Start menu link for the Bash shell if you install their package. There is a fairly good forum for assistance and mostly it's a very easy out-of-box experience. However, their package tree is somewhat limited, and installing older versions of some libraries is trickier than it might be. They suuport all versions of Interix, from 3.5 (XP-era SFU) up to 6.0 (Vista's SUA). NetBSD's pkgsrc, on the other hand, is mostly source-based (although there are some pre-built packages for Interix; roughly as many as InteropSystems has, in fact). It takes longer to compile from source, and the initial download is hefty. However, a much wider selection of packages is available (although there's no guarantee they'll all work; indeed some, such as the X server, are flagged to not even attempt to build in Interix) and the packages are presumably optimized at least somewhat for your system during compilation. It's harder to find the right packages at times, though, and I have yet to get even the source-based boo
In the testing I've done with this (Vista x86 Ultimate Edition, UAC and Protected Mode enabled, fully patched IE7 and Firefox, both used actively... though I'm actually posting from openSuse in Knoqueror at present) it doesn't even work in Vista. Neither did the firefoxurl: handler attack. I wonder of the difference is in how Vista handles URIs, or the different permission levels, or something else... in any case, from my experience, Vista users are safer than XP users here (which is as it should be, after all).
Vista-specific features that are well worth the slightly higher resource usage (this machine is fast enough it's not really a slowdown; I almost never max out both cores):
SuperFetch: My programs start almost instantly, even huge ones like EVE Online. Starting even a simple, everyday Linux program such as Konqueror takes a few seconds the first time it is loaded after a reboot, running natively on the same hardware.
Integrated instant search: I don't even use the Start Menu's programs list anymore. I hate it, to be honest; it's slow, virtually requires mouse control, and finding things can unintuitive unless you spend time tweaking stuff. In Vista, it's WinKey + a few letters + Enter to start a program, and the program is loading in less time than the All Programs menu would have expanded in XP. Also very useful for finding documents, and even more useful for finding pages in my web history. I literally only need to remember a few words that were on a page I recently visited and I can get right back to it.
Built-in two-way firewall: Stop programs from phoning home, block web access to programs that I don't trust, get notifications when a program tries to go online, and block pings and such... all without needing third-party software.
UAC: You might not believe me because there are a lot of dumbshits in the world who are used to running Windows as an Administrator and can't believe they need to approve privilege escalation dialogs just to make a change in their Windows system folder and so they whine about it, but UAC is possibly the best thing to happen in Vista. It's more convenient and requires less work then sudo (although you can configure it to demand your password for privilege escalation, handy if you either might have an untrusted user accessing your account or you want to avoid the automatic click-though response), is automatic rather than requiring that the user know when a program will need full permissions, and makes the pile of shit I had to go through using Runas on a non-admin XP account look really, really ridiculous.
Media Center: Fantastic program, really nice for those of us who neither have the money nor the space for a dedicated PVR box + TV but still wants to record the Colbert Report, some sci-fi, and the occasional sports game... or even just wants to occasionally WATCH more-or-less-live TV while skipping ads, pausing when people walk in, and creating my own instant replays. Those aren't nearly all the features of WMC but I don't have an extender or external TV so those are the ones I use most. Yes, Media Center was available for XP, if not when it first shipped, but only in versions that lacked a lot of other things found in the professional/tablet editions.
Aero's live thumbnail views: mostly used when I want to see if a program is done compiling, or a file down downloading, or something like that. All I need to do is move the mouse over the program's taskbar button and I can see - if not well enough to read, well enough to see if anything is happening - without waiting for the be restored and start handling user events again. Also handy when alt-tabbing, and if I need to be able to read the windows as I'm switching I use Flip-3D (admittedly this is uncommon but it happens).
Application-level volume control: A lot of programs don't have an easy volume control, but are too noisy or too quiet. Or perhaps I just want to mute all programs except the TV r movie I'm watching, or something like that... in Vista it's easy.
Sidebar: The notes gadget is far and away the one I use most often, because it's fantastic for those numbers you hear on the phone and need to write down, or grabbing those three text snippets or URLs or whatever without needing to copy and paste each one to its final destination before grabbing the next. That said, the Live Maps gadget is great for a quick glance at traffic before heading across the bridge or something, the meter gadget lets me know when I'm getting close to using all available RAM or CPU at a glance, and the fe