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I think it is interesting to see how Microsoft has had to change their policy regarding Windows XP. Initially when Vista was released there were indications XP was soon to be abandoned. Then Dell and HP complained their user base was still requesting XP. I run a dual boot XP/Fedora box and XP works fine. Upgrading to Vista would overtax my box due to the increase in system requirements. It is pretty much a no-brainer that until the box is really outdated I would have to stick with XP or build a new one. A lot of businesses appear to be in a similar situation and they don't have enough good reasons to upgrade to Vista. I don't know exactly what this all means but it definitely points to some sort of paradigm shift regarding Microsoft and their OS releases.

Next time maybe they wont take so much time to release an OS... Otherwise it's going to be another "die hard" version.

The problem is that they're making 'gradual breakages' to the point that customers know that each release is going to break something major.

The solution; completely overhaul the operating system rather than incremental breakages; then at least people *know* that the following release will less like to introduce mini-breakages.

The solution; completely overhaul the operating system rather than incremental breakages;

We already know that does not work: for example,that is why people are not switching to Linux even though it is free.

Compatibility is *very* important hence gradual changes.

that is why people are not switching to Linux even though it is free.

People don't switch to Linux for many reasons. The most obvious one is they can't buy a typical Windows program like Office or TurboTax and install it by clicking next, next okay in a wizard dialog box. There are all kinds of attempts to make this functionality work but it is still not as easy as installing on Windows. You could make the argument that apt-get and yum are superior -- which they are -- for installation and updating but the average Windows user doesn't know how to use these methods. Change is tough and people don't like to do it unless they have a convincing reason. Even saving money falls flat as an argument. What is the cost of Vista $200? For the Windows user to be able to use existing software and not have to learn a new way to use the PC is a *huge* motivator. Also, if you are a diehard gamer XP is just so much more practical. Ever try and run Quake 3 virtualized? I'm not really a big Windows supporter I just am practical about why it continues to be so popular.

I completely agree with you on that topic, just a few corrections:

Quake 3(and 4) runs on Linux natively. Even if you run some things (Steam, Half-Life 2 and friends) using wine - it's not emulation and it runs fast.

You are right there. I was just using Quake 3 as a typical 3D shooter game reference. But my point is still valid. Look at the steps it takes to get it up and running. 1) install Linux RPM. 2) Copy map files to Quake Linux directory 3) change permissions to get files to run in X. Just imagine explaining that to a typical Windows user. If you can't hit next, next install people won't use it. It is different if you are a Linux user since you are probably more of a techie and like to tinker with such things.

i dont see the point buff.

how you can say that is easy insert an cd chose the installer or do several clic on the next button against only select the package on linux distros today without do next,next next.

I understand that the average user has some fears to try linux, and they already don't know windows, and they dont want to know. but that's not the point here.

i dont see the point buff. how you can say that is easy insert an cd chose the installer or do several click on the next button against only select the package on linux distros today without do next,next next.

Maybe my experiences working for marketing companies has messed with the way I see things. You need to think like a newbie or a non-technical Windows user. People are used to opening the installer and clicking next, next, okay. Opening the packaging manager is absolutely easier but, and here is the major point, it is *foreign* to the average Windows user. People that are used to using something in a specific way don't like to change. This might sound ridiculous but it is the core reason why people stick to Windows i.m.o. That reason and also the fact that they can't download or buy TurboTax at the computer store and run it exactly the same way as it runs on Windows without tinkering. These really seem like ridiculous reasons but if you have ever worked in a computer store you would see what I mean. When I worked as a salesperson people would ask me if XYZ piece of software worked on Windows. I would have to explain it is a Macintosh computer and runs Macintosh software. People would look at me and say, "So it doesn't run Windows?" Honestly, that would happen to me at least several times a week.

You do have a point on the installation and availability of software. Yes, Linux does have a lot more software available, but it's not necessarily the same software people want. For instance, my wife wants certain software that isn't available on Linux so I can't fully migrate my home systems over to Linux - I have to have at least one Windows system. Fortunately, Win2k does the job so I don't have to spend the outrageous amounts Microsoft wants for the OS's now-a-days.

As to Quake3 - why are trying to virtualize it?! It's available for Linux natively.
http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/games/linux-quake3.html
So is Quake2 and Quake, and a number of their variants, along with Decent and its variants, and Doom and its variants. Id software is pretty good with Linux. :->

Compatibility has nothing to do with the lack of traction; the lack of traction has to do with the lack of middleware which companies need. The cause is also sitting on the shoulders of companies who refuse to look at the savings over a long term. Quarter by quarter, sure, Windows is cheaper, but when you look at Windows over a period of several years, it isn't a viably cheap solution to business.

You also have businesses who have fetishes over applications; take Sharepoint - the biggest piece of hype ever, doesn't contribute anything substantial to improve productivity and yield only to lock documents into yet another proprietary format. Companies need to stop jumping on the 'latest bandwagon' and critically look at what is being offered. Stopping falling into the hype of Microsoft and other vendors, and ask yourself; what is the purpose of IT and do I really need what they're offering - look beyond the hype and other marketing tricks.

Companies need to stop jumping on the 'latest bandwagon' and critically look at what is being offered.

Wow! "Companies need to stop jumping on the latest bandwagon"?

Are you kidding me? Companies are always slow on adopting new applications, operating systems, etc. Because it always involves a lot of work, compatibility issues, and it takes time and money to change anything..

Quarter by quarter, sure, Windows is cheaper, but when you look at Windows over a period of several years, it isn't a viably cheap solution to business.

By "it isn't a viably cheap solution.." you mean - it is not free, right? No, it is not. Why should it be?

Why don't you let those companies make that decision? Sure, they should know what is better for them? Oh wait, they do. And they still prefer Windows.


P.S.
Anyway, what are you talking about now??? I think you are confused.. and just pulling stuff out of your a**, no offense. Can you please stay on topic? You were talking how it would be better to "completely overhaul the operating system rather than incremental breakages". That is just plain wrong and so out of touch with real world.

In all due respects, you excessive use of question marks and exclamation points give me the impression of a poster whose IQ is barely above room temperature.

Look at the WHOLE argument then come back and debate - don't come in with a chip on both shoulders without the contextual understanding of the debate.

The 'backwards compatibility' argument became a red herring, the day that MS bought VirtualPC.

MS needs to properly integrate VirtualPC into their next version of Windows, and when someone clicks the 'Windows XP' compatibility checkbox on a software app, run that app in a sandbox. They own the old versions of Windows. They own VirtualPC. The hit that software takes running as a guest OS in a virtual machine is just not that big. This would bring virtually 100% backward compatibility while allowing the the new version of Windows to completely break compatibility with old APIs.

I don't expect this to happen though. Can you imagine the flack that MS would take if they wrote a new OS from scratch, and it sucked as bad as Windows? 'Backward Compatibility' is a very convenient excuse that they are not going to want to throw away by using a simple available solution.

I am still ordering XP laptops from HP. they are getting a bit harder to find at a decent price though.

Vista simply isnt ready for decently priced systems. I should be able to spend 1000 a system and have it work with decent speed, vista isnt capable of that (i recently tested a brand new Dell, 6 minutes before the desktop was usuable)

Wow, way to go insinuating that OSnews readers are a bunch of pirates! Don't worry... I'm sure those that went through the hassle of obtaining and "activating" their Windows via alternative means aren't going to fall into Microsoft's little traps easily. But, thanks for the concern nonetheless.

Ofcaurse a lot of OSnews readers are a bunch of pirates!

I got my Windows for free, via msdn. So did a lot of people here.

Yup, that's how I got X number of licenses and ISOs for Windows 2000 -> Vista (and a lot of applications).

Personally I'm not impressed with the new features in XP. I'd like to have seen some a proper implementation of indexed searching, an official "Vista" Sidebar for XP, and an official backport of DirectX 10. Now, that would make SP3 really newsworthy.

"Personally I'm not impressed with the new features in XP. I'd like to have seen some a proper implementation of indexed searching..."

XP's always had indexing, but not a built-in UI front-end. But Microsoft has provided Windows Desktop Search for a while now that provides that.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/d...
It was originally introduced with MSN Toolbar, but then became available separately as well a couple years ago. From what I understand, Vista's search is based on the same tech.

As for porting SideBar and DirectX 10, MS doesn't want to give away so many Vista features for free, of course. Microsoft did back-port .NET 3.0 to XP which is pretty significant.

(It's much more than Apple does for it's old OSes. I'm still on Panther (having implemented a policy of upgrading OSX only every other feline-release), but it would've been cool for Apple to backport Tiger's Spotlight and dashboard. )

But I agree that SP3 isn't "newsworthy". I don't think it's meant to be.

Well if it includes .Net 3.0 and IE 7 that will make my day... My unattended installations will go much faster!

My copy is legal, thank you very much

Uh, my copy, is er, legal now too. A couple months ago though I was, uh, misled into, uh, installing an unmarked XP CD. But I have seen the error of my way now and it is all legal and good. For the record, I would like to say I had no knowledge the CD, was, er, not legitimate. I did not have inappropriate use of that CD. ;-)

My copy was, thanks to heaven, illegal. Applying a fix broke my 32-bit XP. I recovered it, retried, rebroke it. Good-bye XP. No SP3 needed here. I like trying before purchasing.

Edited 2007-10-08 14:46

People are not switching to Linux? Then why I made the switch completely and erased windows from all my systems?

It is still insignificant number. I also from time to time try Linux, but.. Windows is THE environment for me and most of other people.

You are the minority - nothing wrong with it, but people are really not switching to Linux in any significant number.

Why have Vista sales fallen?

Fallen compared to what? Linux? :-)

1. Compatibility: Vista still has compatibility problems (drivers, games, etc). I said in my previous post that compatibility is very important and that applies to Vista too.
2. Windows XP is good enough for most people. No need to rush to Vista. Businesses also won't switch just like that - why would they. XP works fine, people (users and IT staff) are familiar with it, SP3 is coming.

Edited 2007-10-07 21:20

Sure, 5% is insignificant

There's a reason why an increasing number of Windows applications are being ported to Linux. Increasing user base.

5%? Yeah.. right.

Even though if it was 5%, you consider that something significant for OS that costs $0? Wow..

Alas, I don't think it is anywhere close to that number.

W3Counter has Linux at 1.38%:

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

There's a reason why an increasing number of Windows applications are being ported to Linux. Increasing user base.

Yeah.. who is porting them? Adobe? AutoDesk?

Last time I checked any computer store I didn't see a single application or game for Linux. You did? Where exactly?


P.S.
Don't forget to mod me down, like you always do. And give yourself +1, like you always do.

Edited 2007-10-07 23:06

Gonzo said:

> W3Counter has Linux at 1.38%:

Well, the same page says that the number of hits for China is 2.07%. By the same reasoning does that make the Chinese as insignificant as Linux?

Things people quoting such statistics often forget are: 1) that such stats are approximations that only refer to desktop use. Don't forget there is plenty of money in servers and Linux is doing ok there!

2) For those small proportion of business that use Linux on the desktop they may not appear on sites such as w3counter as company policy may restrict such use.

3) If Linux desktop use is 1.38% then that is probably a desirable market segment to access, since they will be 'smarter than the average bear' and make purchasing or influencing decisions for others.

4) That 1.38% is a pretty hefty number, even if it is a small proportion of the boxes out there. This is because the size of the market (the entire number of desktops) is still increasing rapidly. Given the lack of marketing for consumers it's pretty impressive.

Actually the whole "Develop only for Windows because it is the biggest" never made sense to me. It is entirely analogous to "Forget W3C compliance and develop only for Internet Explorer" on the web. Now with Firefox having a decent number of installs everyone who developed for IE only looks like a bit short-sighted. As the number of Linux desktop grows (not that it will ever dominate the number of Windows installs, but it will increase in governments) then everyone who doesn't have a cross-platform option will look the same. It really isn't that hard to build stuff right in the first place so that it works anywhere (the best software development houses can do this when they have the will, eg. ID software, or most Java developers).

> Last time I checked any computer store I didn't see a single application or game for Linux.

Agreed, but the commercial stuff for Linux is available online rather than retail. Although obviously the lack of retail availability is a PITA for the average consumer.

All I'm saying is be careful with statistics. The statistic is worthless if you don't think about all the implications of it.

Anyway, good on Microsoft. While I get to use, and prefer, Linux for my main desktop (I'm a astrophysicist turned IT consultant doing extremely well from Linux) it's good to see that Microsoft are at least slowly attempting to clean up the engineering mess that lies under Windows.

it's good to see that Microsoft are at least slowly attempting to clean up the engineering mess that lies under Windows.

Windows -- engineering mess??

Now.. that is a statement... especially when it comes from someone favoring Linux.

That *WAS* funny.

Given the lack of marketing for consumers it's pretty impressive.

And.. why do you think there is the lack of marketing for consumers??

Impressive? After ~10 years of "Windows sux, use Linux" on every damn forum (or news site such as this one) you think not enough people know about it? Like, my network administrator doesn't know about Linux? Like Dell and others didn't know about Linux until this year? Yeah right..

gonzo
> Windows -- engineering mess??

Have you ever coded Windows in C, which is the underlying Win32 API? Don't say C#.Net fixes it all, cause it merely masks the suck. Now compare Win32 to the alternatives (fair question, are you a software engineer and able to)?

Why do you think that Windows has so many problems nearly 20 years after its inception? It's because of all those dumb architectural decisions they made back in the day to squeeze 5% more out of a 386. They could have made their API clean, but chose not to. It wasn't like people then didn't understand how to write good software, but MS used cruft to lock people in. For another software engineering analogy, compare the all the COM gynastics of older versions of DirectX versus the relatively clean elegance of OpenGL. Similar thing.

Windows has problems now because of all the legacy dumb stuff MS did to get minor optimisations and also lock people in a long time ago. Sure Win XP is quite nice to use, but don't confuse that with the underlying engineering.

Yes, I have coded C/C++ on Windows, although not in the last 7-8 years. I also have people here that work with me and they did the same, but on both Windows and Linux (I never myself did Linux programming). Yes, I am software engineer.

Never heard anyone complaining that much about Windows when it comes to programming or underlying API. But Linux? Give me a break.

You know, to say that Windows is engineering mess, especially compared to Linux, is just silly.

Can you create crappy application for Windows? Sure you can, but I don't think any OS is proof to that - crappy (application) programming. It has nothing much to do with the OS itself.

Why do you think that Windows has so many problems nearly 20 years after its inception?

What problems? Are you joking me? Just compare that to Linux.

Pal, you can believe whatever you want to..

Edited 2007-10-08 02:34

To add to what kensei said,

I find that Vista is such a departure from XP that a windows-user friendly Linux (thinking PCLinuxOS here) is easier to figure out than Vista.

Ok, so the user does need to know how to use synaptic, but I just tried to install a point of sale package on a vista computer and a) it was dog slow (512mb ram and norton preinstalled, but still) b) it was not compatible with the POS software and c) all the UI changes were for the worse.

Task Manager a few clicks/keystrokes after the ctrl-alt-del?

Digging multiple layers to find your programs?

The ask about everything security model?

No advice on setting up compatibility modes?
(I guess 99% CPU on a older program isn't enough to prompt Vista to know there is an issue)

I literally got an older laptop up and running with PCLinuxOS, with wireless (through the NDISwrapper, but so easy it was likely much less painful than windows itself), and even installing wine and the POS program, all FASTER than the time I wasted on Vista.

I think Linux is not to the level of XP, quite yet, but I think it is AHEAD of Vista.

.... and don't even get me started on the fact than only vista ultimate can supposedly be "downgraded" to XP.

I am a switcher too.Before I would tuck tail between my legs and run back to Windows.Now 100% Linux on all boxen.Thanks for the push Kroc and Raver31.Been a fun ride so far and in for the long haul.