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Having trouble getting devices to work properly, and being driven crazy by a user interface "unintuitive and strangely rearranged" has mostly be the lot of those switching to Linux so far.

Nothing lasts forever.

Maybe not a reason to switch to Linux. But, maybe a reason to stay with XP. I have to find one good reason to for a Vista "upgrade."

"Having trouble getting devices to work properly, and being driven crazy by a user interface "unintuitive and strangely rearranged" has mostly be the lot of those switching to Linux so far."

Actually, those feelings matches mine for good ole XP. Unintuitive and frustrating to use, hardware strangeness and the odd need to install 3rd party drivers from CD.

I decided the article was junk about the time I got to the line about Vista being based on the "NT Workstation" code.

Vista is based on Server 2003, not XP.

And yeah, I'm always amused that people seem to think they HAVE to run Office 2007 on Windows, but OpenOffice is "more than they need" under Linux.

Basically, a badly written piece of linux advocacy masquerading as an operating system review.

I decided the article was junk about the time I got to the line about Vista being based on the "NT Workstation" code.

Vista is based on Server 2003, not XP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT

Windows Server 2003 shares the same codebase as all other members of the NT family. While it is based on 2003, 2003 is based upon 2000 and NT, so the OP was essentially correct.

NT 4.0 "server" and "workstation" differed by exactly two registry keys.

I don't recall if the split between workstation and server versions happened with Windows 2000, or in the XP/2003 divergence.

Regardless, Vista is based on the "server" code branch, rather than the "workstation" branch, as the article maintains. Otherwise there wouldn't have been the huge "Vista sucks, we're scrapping it and starting over from the Windows 2003 codebase" event.

Except that Windows 2003 contains numerous security enhancements over Windows XP, 2000, etc.

That's the primary difference, they're all run on NT Kernel but then again a kernel doesn't make an OS.

The article is junk, who has trouble getting a mouse to work?

What performance? My desktop performs WORSE with Aero off . This guy is full of shit.

Mod me down if you want, but everything I said before is factual information.

Cut that fanboyism.

"Vista is based on Server 2003, not XP. "

You know that Server 2003 is based on NT, right?

which are those good and free burning apps? My Nero keeps crashing on me on this particular system, so I am close to buying another one. And are the free ones already any good with Vista?

CD Burner XP Pro
http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

http://www.imgburn.com/

Builds and burns. Began using it a year back, and never used anything else since.

I must agree with Replaced. That is just pure propoganda article. Especially when you look at their new pool "Most evil software company?"

I must be running a different OS. I can't tell any performance difference between Aero on, or off, and the only difference between "Glass" and "Basic" is about 20 megabytes of memory consumption.

Granted, that's on a 7600gt with latest NVidia drivers, but still.

"

"

You clearly missed the point of his analagy if you make such a statement.
His point /wasn't/ that Vista is great OS but rather Vista /looks/ like it should go well but in reality responds poorly.

Edited 2007-05-15 13:52

You clearly missed the point of his analagy if you make such a statement.
His point /wasn't/ that Vista is great OS but rather Vista /looks/ like it should go well but in reality responds poorly.

I think it was you who missed the point. OP wasn't saying that Vista is a great OS. Was saying quite the opposite. And that the author is insulting the De Lorean by calling Vista the De Lorean of operating systems. Lots of people like those cars.

Edited 2007-05-15 14:25

Now you're arguing opinion as fact.

Most Linux users may find Vista about as appealing as stepping in dog-sh*t, however Vista is not aimed at most Linux users.
However my girlfriend loves Vista. She finds it pretty, great for watching downloaded TV (most UK stations offer these services), checking her e-mail and updating her iPod. Just because she's not a geek it doesn't invalidate her opinion - so therefor I find the authors analogy perfectly reasonable as generalisations go by considering the wide variety* of computer users out there.

* not just in preferences but also in skill levels

[edit]

I personally hate Vista. I'm just putting across a balanced perspective of the novice user given that this site is populated by geeks therefor the opinions posted are obviously (and understandably) biased towards the enthusiast.

Edited 2007-05-15 15:04

>>Most Linux users may find Vista about as appealing as stepping in dog-sh*t<<

So do most XP users, from what I've seen.

>>However my girlfriend loves Vista. She finds it pretty<<

Now there's a compelling reason to "upgrade."

>>great for watching downloaded TV (most UK stations offer these services), checking her e-mail and updating her iPod.<<

Can't you do all that with XP?

1stly: I'm slightly annoyed that you'd choose to deliberately only quote small passages within my overall post thus changing the context of the entire post. At no point was I saying X is better than Y. However I was offering a balanced counter argument for why my girlfriend enjoys Vista and what she uses it for. So what if it could be done in XP? It could also be done in DOS with lynx and a command line torrent client but she happened to choose Vista because it was prettier. Maybe it was superficial, but then it's her money, her computer and her decision.

2ndly: Why are you arguing with me when I'm on your side. All I was doing is putting across the opinion of the novice PC user as the comments posted on here are massively biased. It seems these days you get flamed for just being sympathetic towards non-geeks

People have to remember that home users often this like this: "So what if Vista is slower but little (if any) better at day-to-day jobs than XP - it's prettier"
Not everyone is a geek and Vista is aimed at the lowest common denominator. These half wits /ARE/ Vista's target audience.

<rant>

Quite frankly I get sick and tired of all the unproductive (and often massively biased) anti-MS bullsh*t posted on here by l33t g33ks (who have probably never used Vista in their lives), a lot of who take great pleasure in flaming anyone who even dares post an educated and balanced opinion about Vista. I may hate the OS but at least I'm smart enough to understand why some people have /chosen/ to run Vista.

</rant>

[edit] I appolagise for the wording of my post - my English is very poor.

Edited 2007-05-15 17:16

I did not missed the point, that author says that Vista could be great but is crap and puts that into car analogy.

You missed the point what I was trying to tell.

To NOT compare Vista to De Lorean.

De Lorean was not the best car, nor the fastest, cheapest etc, but it had a soul. This something that You can not tell about a car like Ford Focus for example.

Seems an appropriate comaprison. Both Vista and a De Lorean need unfathomable amounts of power, like on the scale of 1.21 "jigawatts", before they can do anything really interesting.

The DMC 12 is anything but a wonderful care to drive. They are extremely underpowered, very very heavy, steering is unresponsive.

"it looks cool and has a few interesting features, but performs poorly and is impractical in nearly any imaginable scenario."

That sums up the DMC-12's (2) that I have driven.

Hear, hear.

The sad thing is that so many people are taking the bait, hook, line and sinker.

oh and don't forget how many problems for people that tried to do early migration to windows 2000 from windows 98 (for personal usage).

Vista got you slowing down?
Let's see... didn't this happen when XP first shipped?
Kinda happened when 2000 shipped? 98? 95 slowed your computer down in comparison to the good ole DOS days?

Well, it's done on purpose by MS. It's meant to drive you to go buy new hardware. Get it?

You don't see this much performance degradation with Linux and OS X.

This is true - when XP first came out, if you didn't have a decent machine, it ran like a dog in comparison with Win98. However, with new more powerful machines, the performance was near enough the same. Whilst the same may not be true of Vista at the moment, it appears to be driver issues or bug fixes, not an underlying problem with the OS.

I rember seeing an article on Toms Hardware just after XP came out that (from memory) basically said unless you had a brand new machine, don't bother upgrading. That's sounding pretty familiar.

I have to say as well though that, in line with some reviews that I've seen of Vista, I've found that some things are faster, some are slower. On my machine (admittedly, it's pretty powerful), Vista runs nice and smoothly.

Obviously, whether or not this is a cunning ploy between MS and the hardware manufacturers to try and get everybody to buy new machines is another argument...

I'm not completely convinced about the new linux distros running as fast as the old ones - I'm pretty sure that with a full KDE / Gnome installation, a new distro is a lot slower than an old one. Obviously, you have a lot more choice as to what to install and what not to install using a linux distro however, not installing the latest (and, some may say, greatest) is not a completely fair comparison.

You're right IME re: OSX though - that has gotten faster in each new itteration. Nice one Apple!

The_ox

Ditto!

"OSX though - that has gotten faster in each new iteration"

That is one of the nicest things about running OS X. Each new version still runs great on my existing HW. And I fully expect Leopard to run just fine on my, At the time leopard comes out, 4 year old system. I did buy top of the line with the system, but the point is that a top of the line PC, and I hate that term because in reality a Mac is also a PC, purchased four years ago would have all sorts of problems running Vista.

And to top it off a four year old top of the line PC would most likely run any major Linux distro just fine. But I have to admit on this machine I do prefer the BSD's over Linux. :-)

Not really...I can't speak for Gnome, as I don't use it, but each version of KDE has been further optimized to run just as fast (and sometimes faster) than the previous one.

You're right IME re: OSX though - that has gotten faster in each new itteration. Nice one Apple!

So is both KDE and Gnome current faster than earlier releases.In addition to additional features and eye candy.

So is both KDE and Gnome current faster than earlier releases.In addition to additional features and eye candy.

Fair enough - I take it back. You're right, with KDE (not much recent Gnome experience) - it has gotten faster over earlier versions.

You cannot compare minor revisions to major revisions.

OSX 10.2->10.3 was a performance boost, but OS9->OSX was a massive performance hit. I have never been a KDE fan so I can't point to specific versions, but in Gnome from the 1.x series to 2.0 again took a massive performance hit, so big that alot of distros kept 1.x for a very long time.

There are usually alot of optimizations and bug fixes in minor revisions, the more of the base os that is new, the slower it will be.

"You're right IME re: OSX though - that has gotten faster in each new itteration. Nice one Apple! "

I think the transition from XP to Vista is more akin to the transition from OS9 to OSX 10.0 than it is from OSX 10.n to OSX 10.n+1 (though the transition from XP to Vista isn't as drastic as the one from OS9 to OSX 10.0). And it's well known that OSX 10.0 was vastly inferior to OS9 wrt performance. OSX did get faster with the releases of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 (which was the first version with decent speed, though would still be blown away by OS9). (10.4 is a mixed bag; for some it's faster than 10.3, for others it's slower.)

Vista may get faster with the releases of SP1 and SP2 just as OSX did with the 0.1 upgrades. (Though SP1 and SP2 will be free, unlike the OSX 0.1 upgrades (except for 10.1).)

Gnome installation keeps improving. For example, version 2.18 on Fedora 7 Test 3 has a better memory consumption than said 2.6 on Fedora Core 2.

>>>Let's see... didn't this happen when XP first shipped?
Kinda happened when 2000 shipped? 98? 95 slowed your computer down in comparison to the good ole DOS days? ...
You don't see this much performance degradation with Linux and OS X.
>>>

It's true, since I started using Linux with Redhat 8.0 several years ago, most of the current popular Gnome and KDE distros now perform much better on the same old machine I had back then.

However, I don't think that Windows resource usage increased all that much between, say, from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 (even though they are radically different systems), or even Windows 2000 to Windows XP. Windows 2000 is probably the best compromise between compatibility, stability, and performance even on very old hardware. But it seems the MS engineers really went overboard with Windows Vista. Not everyone is willing to buy a new computer just to run the latest OS. As someone said, they will loose marketshare if they start shipping bloatware.

What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?'
Steve Ballmer



Since when did Microsoft start selling PC hardware ?

Since when did Microsoft start selling PC hardware ?



Well, what OS has been pre-installed by PC vendors for years now?

There are to many vendors relying on MS for software.
So, with the requirements for vista many people will have to buy a new machine.

Even so, Microsoft do not get a cut from the manufacturers. Every PC that gets built and comes with Windows installed, actually comes with OEM Windows.
Microsoft get pennies for that.

If they could develop a system that runs properly on current hardware, they would do better in the sales department from upgrades.

Microsoft apologists all over always say that it is written for future machines ? What ? Excuse me ? I want to compute NOW !

I was just getting ready to post pretty much the same thing (Ya beat me to it)

I never checked out the RAM consumption, but the fact that the sidebar takes up the right side of my desktop is far more bothersome than the RAM usage. I care more about the usage of my screen than about the usage of my RAM.

Well, in fairness, the principle is the same. You can create groups and manipulate file permissions with ntfs the same way you can in *nix, in fact I'd argue that granular file-level ACL's may even be easier to implement in Win. At it's core, the NT kernel and ntfs allow for a fairly granular security model.

But the problem with Windows isn't so much the security model, it's the fact that both MS and the ISV's didn't hesitate to ignore it for oh so many years. A *nix based app would generally never be designed to require write access to system directories or files, yet legacy Windows apps insist on using the registry as a store-all or dumping all the config files in /Windows. That's mostly the fault of the ISV's, but MS still carries some responsibility for not trying to derail that practice until the damage was already done.

Vista's security enhancements are pretty much neutralized by any requirement to run legacy Win apps under Admin simply for compatibility reasons. It's like a bad hangover that just won't go away.

This really has nothing to do with how the OS handles security and everything to do with Blizzard not designing WoW to work in a multiuser environment. It's not MS fault that Blizzard can't (or don't care to) design their game correctly.

Resource usage and speed of OOo are now within about the same order of magnitude as office (at least with Office 2k7 and OOo 2.2). With a simple document open in each, OOo consumes about 4 megs more RAM and starts up about 2 seconds slower on a 1.5 GB Vista Core Duo machine (Intel graphics). It's still kinda ugly and I haven't used it enough to figure out how good its features are (why drive a Hyundai when you have a Lexus?). Speed/perf doesn't seem to be a huge issue with OOo anymore.

I'm surprised VS 2k5 takes admin privs for your use. Did you install the Vista Patch? Maybe you had it launching as admin before and can now remove that flag on the .lnk if it's no longer needed. I only do basic single-user programming on VS, so perhaps if you need to interact with IIS or some other-user processes you may still need to run as admin.

I think you were a little easy on the reviewer. He seems like just another one of those Ubuntu users who writes glowing pie-in-the-sky reviews as a means of advocacy. From his performance problems, he seems to have misconfigured hardware (read: owns something made by NVidia without the very latest drivers) or is just lying intentionally. Intentional dishonesty really pisses me off.

I mentioned that cause of this article http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=480.

"We can see that the OpenOffice.org ODF XML parser (while vastly improved) is still about 5 times slower than Microsoft's OOXML parser. OpenOffice.org also seems to consume nearly 4 times the amount of RAM to hold the same data. While OpenOffice.org continues to have fewer features than Microsoft Office, it continues to consume far more resources than Microsoft."

If those tests have since been debunked, I stand corrected. But thats my source for that statement.



I did apply the patch, but I do ASP.net development, so I do interact with IIS. On top of that, since vista home doesnt support windows authentication, I cant use F5 debugging, I have to manually attach the process. While both that and the UAC prompt arent exactly show stoppers, they are still a pain in the ass, considering its MSs own product.



Well, his discussion of the new stuff in vista at the beginning is what I was talking about. For the most part, it was fair and succcinct. Most Ubuntu fanbois will refuse to say there is anything beyond desktop compositing eye candy that is any good in vista.

The only intentional dishonesty I can really point to is right at the end with app compatibility. I have never had to launch WoW as admin, and I run PS and DW perfectly fine. In fact, thanks to ReadyStart, photoshop virtually flys onto the screen, giving me a BETTER user experience then previous windows versions.

I'm pretty put off by linux users who write things based on "Hundreds of Articles from the web" that have no basis in current reality (if they ever had basis in reality at all). A good thing to do when you see an article on the web is look at the bottom. If it's written by anyone at ZDNet, regardless of their specific position on the issues it should be "distrust until verified." I noticed this first with SJVN and everyone he links, but it's also likely true with George Ou. ZD appears to be a dispenser of FUD (F**ked Up Data).

Thanks for the overall level-headed posts, though. It's good to see a non-zealot sometimes.

What happens when you do any of those things on your linux system of choice? Either you get a gksu popup, a "you lack priviledges" error, or better yet, it will crash unexplainably.

I agree that Microsoft's Cancel-or-Allow toy is borrowed from Linux, but I see gksu's prompt a lot less often than that. If I need to install a bunch of programs on a freshly-installed Ubuntu system, I only have to enter my password once and I can install the whole lot. UAC will ask me to Cancel-or-Allow every such installation.

In addition to this, there are a lot of applications which do require Administrator privileges to work -- which means another UAC prompt. Changing files in %Program Files% will also make up for another UAC prompt. So how many do you get?

Edit:
I couldn't help noticing the following quote:

Microsoft's biggest software development problem is that it is trying to do too much with an aging Windows codebase that has been extended long beyond its usefulness. It needs to design an excellent, lightweight, modular operating system from the ground up -- or preferably build on something worth using, like FreeBSD or HaikuOS -- and then add a few enhancements every 6-12 months. This is the only way the company can prevent its software from becoming laughably outdated halfway through its support cycle, as was the case with Windows XP.

Oh please...

Edited 2007-05-15 18:49

As I said, Linux does it better then Vista, but OSX is the only one that does it right, allowing for easy graphical installation of applications on a per-user basis.



There are fewer and fewer legacy apps that require admin privilidges for compatibility reasons every day. As of now, the only app that I get the prompt for is visual studio, and that is because I use the IIS integration features.

As for changing things in folders you do not have permission to change, the only difference between windows and linux is that windows asks for permission to perform the operation, linux doesnt ask, it just doesnt allow it.

There are fewer and fewer legacy apps that require admin privilidges for compatibility reasons every day. As of now, the only app that I get the prompt for is visual studio, and that is because I use the IIS integration features.

Agreed -- and this is understandable due to the transition to a permission-confined environment.

[However, I am willing to argue that it should have been done some time before the 21st century]

The reason why I did challenge UAC's position is that -- while a great addition -- it doesn't get the you-can't-get-it-right-the-first-time excuse. Microsoft had plenty of sources of inspiration (like usual) and there are a whole lot of things that can be done to improve the way UAC works. Instead of improving an already potent base (the OS X case which you mentioned), Vista has what looks like a dumbed-down version of anything but gksu. I am seriously hoping to see it improved in the first Service Pack. I'm used to Unix desktops and I found myself willing to de-activate UAC more than once, it's just too annoying.

...and I'm willing to agree with you ;-) Windows was never designed to be a network operating system, and it took the raging fiasco that was XP security to do what should have been done 5-10 years ago.



Behind the scenes, UAC is probably the best security implementation out there. The granularity you get from ACLs is far more powerful then what exists on osx, or linux (not counting SELinux, which is about as much fun to get working as a root canal)

What needs to be done is front end tweaking, which isnt hard to do and can definately be done in an SP1 release. For example, why do some things require two different confirmation dialogues that say pretty much the same thing? Why is there no way for me to tell the system to alwas run a program elevated, without prompting me every time? Another thing that would be nice is to be able to enter the password once, and then have a hot period, where you stay in elevated mode. This would allow for multiple software installations/system configuration changes without constantly having UAC in your face. What OSX does with per-user installations would be virtually impossible to do on windows at this stage of the game (although linux has no excuse, as apps should be able to run from anywhere already).

"Windows was never designed to be a network operating system, and it took the raging fiasco that was XP security to do what should have been done 5-10 years ago."

Given that all versions of Windows since the grateful death of WinME are based on the WinNT branch, this just isn't true.

"1993: Windows NT 3.1
When Microsoft Windows NT® was released to manufacturing on July 27, 1993, Microsoft met an important milestone: the completion of a project begun in the late 1980s to build an advanced new operating system from scratch*.
(Linq: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/WinHistoryDesktop.mspx)

Further, many fundamental design aspects of WinNT come from VMS.

*my emphasis

XP was still catering to lazy ISVs who didn't want to change the way they were making windows software. Backwards compatibility has been the holy grail in Redmond for so long, that while the design ideas were appropriate in NT, they weren't enforced in any real way. Vista puts padlocks on the door.

"but OSX is the only one that does it right, allowing for easy graphical installation of applications on a per-user basis."

I install applications easily on a per-user basis on *nix with 0install.
Perhaps we should try to remember that there's more than one way to skin a cat, especially on *nix.

Which distro is it that you use that uses 0install as its package manager?

The fact is the default package manager on linux is either deb or rpm, and that is what 99% of linux users will use. 0install is very close to what OSX does, and I definately agree that it is great for allowing normal users to install user apps without elevating priviledges, however to say that linux does it properly because 1% of linux users download and install a framework not officially supported by any major distribution doesnt really stand up.

"Which distro is it that you use that uses 0install as its package manager? "

I'm not using a distro nor Linux but that wasn't the point. I am admittedly not aware of any Linux distro that uses 0install by default.

"however to say that linux does it properly because 1% of linux users download and install a framework not officially supported by any major distribution doesnt really stand up."

I never said that. My point was that it is possible for it to be done "right" on Linux even though it may not be the default (yet).

Agreed.

You can install anything anywhere in Linux with configure options (like --prefix=). The only reason you cant in package managers is because it would take a significant amount of work to make it like that. What OSX does is encapsulates their software into a virtual file, allowing that file to be run from anywhere, very similarly to 0install. This allows for users to install applications on a per user basis without needing the administrators password, which is the way it should be.

Article quote:
The biggest hurdle for me was usability. Windows Vista rearranges your Windows XP and 2000 workflow to the point that you can find yourself totally confused as to what certain buttons and menu functions do, and where to go to get to familiar utilities like the Add/Remove Programs section of the Control Panel.

Either the "reviewer" is making a very bad example, or he hasn't even opened the control panel:

http://www.protectiveparenting.com/web/Portals/0/ControlPanelVista....

I challenge anyone to hunt down that elusive dialog for uninstalling programs!

That said, it's clear only from the summary here that the "review" is utterly worthless. The OSNews editors shouldn't give attention to these kinds of blatant trolls.

The only app I use all the time that needs admin privs to run is (ironically) VS 2k5.

It's because VS 2k5 requires debugging (and remoting) privileges.

Here's the thing to do: remove all programs on the machine which the user does not recognize and which you don't think are vital. If you still think you have spyware, get AutoRuns from SysInternals and remove anything that looks suspicious (google is your friend if you're unsure). If you still think you have spyware, then get RootKitRevealer. If it finds anything that looks like spyware, reinstall the OS (it might find some stuff that's false positive because of the way it works, but here again Google is your friend).

Best of luck!

Really? Using what desktop environment? What program? I'm asking because I have *never* experienced anything like what the Register article is describing, nor have I read about anything like that on the Ubuntu Forums

(Although copying thousands of files in Konqueror sometimes slows down, but then doing the same thing from the command line flies...)

Considering your nickname and your trust rating, I think I'm going to take that comment of yours with a grain of salt...