Microsoft formally names Windows 7 release date

[bob]

BTW, you should do a simple google search to see who is growing the fastest in the server market. You might really be surprised. Hint: It ain't windows. But then anyone who has seen Microsoft run ads comparing windows server to linux would not be surprised. You don't run ads comparing yourself to the one is second place, unless they are catching up. Advertising 101.

[Zach Wegner]

Linus Torvalds re-implemented Unix, while Dave Cutler designed and built a totally new OS. I can easily tell you which one is smarter (and way, way richer). I have implemented an OS (Itron) and its a piece of cake. I have not invented one. That is the hard part.

Inventing an OS is one thing. Inventing one that doesn't completely suck is another. Ken Thompson et al get the credit for inventing Unix. Microsoft got things like preemptive multitasking when exactly? Things we take for granted as necessities in an OS design took them years, and undoubtedly millions of dollars, to implement, whereas *n*x users had them several decades ago. Other areas where they are different from Unix (seemingly for the sake of difference), they ended up making really stupid decisions. CRLF line endings? File system case insensitivity? Backslash file system separators?

[Zach Wegner]

Linux may be great for servers and programmers (of C, C++, PHP and Java - nothing else)

Nothing else?? What on Earth are you talking about? Are there any languages (besides those that are Microsoft-proprietary) which _aren't_ better on *n*x??

[Vladimir Xern]

Never heard of Rocks? Didn't think so.

I want to quickly echo that Rocks is amazing. One of few reasons I come home without a migraine.

As for the holy war, I think Linux is very much usable as a desktop platform. Check e-mail, surf the web, write assorted documents--it comes with more out-of-the-box than a Windows installation, and the modern package management is so, so much better. Speaking of installation, it is really painless these days. If you have a broadband connection and disk space, there's really no reason not to give Ubuntu a try. Get Wubi: Ubuntu installs like any other program under Windows that you can uninstall; you can even run 64-bit if your Windows is still 32-bit. No live-CD slowdown, no disk partitioning. The only caveats to dual-booting this way are no hibernation/suspend, and a *slight* speed penalty you can mitigate if you defrag your Windows installation.

All that said, several criticisms are mostly accurate. While open source developers and contributors absolutely bend over backwards to implement, reimplement, or work-around to meet demands for hardware compatibility and software interoperability, some proprietary vendors just refuse to play nice. Adobe Flash on 64-bit, for example, is still a buggy kludge. Hardware support for random wireless cards is somewhat spotty, I hear. At the end of the day, whether your ire lies with Linux or the proprietors is up to you.

If you have some mission-critical niche application you can't live without (such as Photoshop, AutoCAD), don't bother. If you want to play the latest games, don't bother. If you absolutely can't stand change whatsoever, don't bother. For the open-minded, though, the free stuff can carry you a long way. The chess niche makes a good example. There's no Chessbase and Fritz, but Scid and a strong open source engine can do a lot of what you may want. And if not, you could always dual boot.

[bob]

Never heard of Rocks? Didn't think so.

I want to quickly echo that Rocks is amazing. One of few reasons I come home without a migraine.

As for the holy war, I think Linux is very much usable as a desktop platform. Check e-mail, surf the web, write assorted documents--it comes with more out-of-the-box than a Windows installation, and the modern package management is so, so much better. Speaking of installation, it is really painless these days. If you have a broadband connection and disk space, there's really no reason not to give Ubuntu a try. Get Wubi: Ubuntu installs like any other program under Windows that you can uninstall; you can even run 64-bit if your Windows is still 32-bit. No live-CD slowdown, no disk partitioning. The only caveats to dual-booting this way are no hibernation/suspend, and a *slight* speed penalty you can mitigate if you defrag your Windows installation.

All that said, several criticisms are mostly accurate. While open source developers and contributors absolutely bend over backwards to implement, reimplement, or work-around to meet demands for hardware compatibility and software interoperability, some proprietary vendors just refuse to play nice. Adobe Flash on 64-bit, for example, is still a buggy kludge. Hardware support for random wireless cards is somewhat spotty, I hear. At the end of the day, whether your ire lies with Linux or the proprietors is up to you.

If you have some mission-critical niche application you can't live without (such as Photoshop, AutoCAD), don't bother. If you want to play the latest games, don't bother. If you absolutely can't stand change whatsoever, don't bother. For the open-minded, though, the free stuff can carry you a long way. The chess niche makes a good example. There's no Chessbase and Fritz, but Scid and a strong open source engine can do a lot of what you may want. And if not, you could always dual boot.

If it weren't for Rocks, large clusters would be impossible to manage. With Rocks, it is child's play. I'd hate to have to do 128 installs on our current cluster to upgrade each node. With Rocks we don't have to. Nor do we have to have a zillion copies of config files and such.

As far as installation goes, I can install Fedora 10 (and Fedora 11 as of tomorrow) in under an hour. I can start the process and when I return in 30 mins or so, all that is left is some last minute settings. I just installed XP (again) on my home box because it became corrupted in spite of windows firewall, a wireless router, anti-virus software, and it was a painful and slow process. You can't turn your back for over an hour or you will miss a question and have it sit there waiting on you...

I installed FC 10 on my core2 duo laptop, built-in wireless worked out of the box, sound worked. bluetooth worked. Synaptics keypad worked. It will work with both wireless and wired networks up at the same time. Supposedly F11 is going to boot in under 20 seconds. I tried Fedora 11 pre-release and it booted in about 15 seconds flat, from hitting power button until I could do useful work with X up and everything. XP (my laptop is dual boot, the only thing I use windows for is my card-counting practice software Casino Verite') takes 4 times that long.

[Bill Rogers]

Hi Bob
On your PC at home that had and has XP were you using Norton? I ask because I had an XP operating system on one of my laptops on which Norton was not only my firewall but my antivirus utility too and yet a trogen managed to get through my defences and wipe out my hard drive.
Bill

[Graham Banks]

Hi Bob
On your PC at home that had and has XP were you using Norton? I ask because I had an XP operating system on one of my laptops on which Norton was not only my firewall but my antivirus utility too and yet a trogen managed to get through my defences and wipe out my hard drive.
Bill

The only thing I ever got from using Norton or McAfee were problems.
I'm very happy running the free AVG anti-virus these days.

[bob]

Hi Bob
On your PC at home that had and has XP were you using Norton? I ask because I had an XP operating system on one of my laptops on which Norton was not only my firewall but my antivirus utility too and yet a trogen managed to get through my defences and wipe out my hard drive.
Bill

No, I was using the Microsoft antivirus program. Seems like the name is "one care" or something similar...

That happens down at the office all the time. Yet in running a unix box in my office for 25 years now, I have not had one single "virus", "trojan horse", etc bother my machines in any form.

[bob]

Hi Bob
On your PC at home that had and has XP were you using Norton? I ask because I had an XP operating system on one of my laptops on which Norton was not only my firewall but my antivirus utility too and yet a trogen managed to get through my defences and wipe out my hard drive.
Bill

The only thing I ever got from using Norton or McAfee were problems.
I'm very happy running the free AVG anti-virus these days.

I've tried that. It failed enough that we bought the microsoft antivirus program. The primary function of _that_ software is to make an already very slow operating system much slower. Microsoft has that down to an art form.

[CThinker]

OK, Linux or the MAC is for you then
And then, half your chess programs won't run at all.

That many really? I haven't found one that won't run on my Mac yet.

You have to hack around Fritz and 64-bit Rybka to get it to run on Wine. Who has time for that?

Its not politically correct to criticize Linux, but the reality is, its a total crap for the average user. Of the more than 500 distros, a tiny few is usable at all, by geeks.

The average user who has bought a Linux pre-installed on a netbook, returns it and exchanges for a Windows one. The consumer rejects Linux, totally. When netbooks first came out, they were "all" sold with Linux, but very few bought them. Now, almost all that are sold come with Windows. Windows pushed Linux out of the market in the only market that Linux is supposed to be good at - free OS on a cheap hardware.

If all one would do is browse the web, Ubuntu 'might' be usable. Now try installing Flash to watch youtube. Goodluck. "sudo aptget" what? Netflix? Edit raw photos with GIMP - not even doable, even if you could forgive the awful interface and crashing. Play Crysis anyone?

What is Linux good at then? If you can program, then its for you. It runs gcc well. It will surely run a chess engine that has a source code.

So you want an "easy to install" windows, that comes with lots of "easy to install" viruses? Lots of "easy to crash" system applications?

I've installed windows XP on multiple machines. Fedora 10 installs easier and faster. And (gasp) stays up for years unless you choose to take it down for a hardware upgrade or whatever...

Windows is horribly designed to allow the nonsense it allows.

It is not me who wants the easy-to-use and just-works environment. Its the world. That is a fact. Linux has less than 1% desktop use. Given that Linux is free and Windows cost a lot, something is definitely terribly wrong with Linux.

Someone gives you free food, and instead you opt to pay for another (expensive) food, simply says that it must be a terrible food.

Ive been a Linux user since 1993! Back then, X was not yet ported to Linux. Everything fit in 6 floppy disk. You multitask with virtual consoles (alt-1, alt-2,...). I have Ubuntu now, and it still sucks, as much as it did in 1993.

I'm sure you love your Linux. You know how to program right? Of course.

Let me give you another fact on Unix/Linux rejection by the non-programming IT world.

Before the year 2000, the server world is totally dominated by Unix. Windows server had zero market share. When Windows 2000 came out, together with Active Directory, the IT community celebrated. Finally, a server for the non-geeks.

In 2008, Windows Server had 70% market share. That's from 0% - 70% market share in 8 years.

You jumped too far forward too quickly. You do realize that 10 years ago windows was by far the most common server platform? And that over the last 10 years linux has eaten into that to reach the 30% point to day (and still growing). Care to guess why? Performance. Plain and simple. Linux scales far better on SMP boxes and clusters, the system is so much more reliable that we won't even mention windows in the same breath, etc...

Desktop World: Linux, 0% to <1% in 20 years. What a total flop!

Server World: Linux/Unix: 100% to 30% in 8 years, and still dropping.

That's off. Linux is not "dropping". It is climbing. So much that Microsoft has had to take notice. You ought to try to buy a large cluster from Dell and ask them to ship it with windows installed. Won't happen.

How do you configure Linux Servers? "Edit config files". Try enabling PXE on a Linux server. You have to edit at least six config files. What exactly should you put on those text files? Good luck. On Windows Server - one check box. Yes, one check box.

You should try distros from the last 5 years, not something from the 90's. I don't "edit config files". I run one of several dozen configuration utilities. Set up printers. Set up network. Set up file systems. And it is a lot more intuitive doing it in linux today than in windows.

How do you manage Linux/Unix servers? MIBs? That archaic MIBs? That sums up the problem with Linux - zero innovation, zero invention. The Linux kernel itself is a re-implementation of Unix.

Never heard of Rocks? Didn't think so.

Linus Torvalds re-implemented Unix, while Dave Cutler designed and built a totally new OS.

Sorry, but that is dead wrong. Windows NT kernel came _directly_ from a rewrite of DEC's VMS operating system. It is _still_ just as clunky today as it was back then. Shoot, about 6 years ago, Microsoft announced that a couple of their engineers had spent three years and had developed something they called a "symbolic link" in the file system. Ken Thompson had that working in the middle 70's.

I can easily tell you which one is smarter (and way, way richer). I have implemented an OS (Itron) and its a piece of cake. I have not invented one. That is the hard part. Even Apple has abandoned the OS that they invented. They now use BSD Unix, and charging people for it.

The Linux interfaces (confusing, multiple, non-complementing interfaces) is a re-implementation of the Windows interface. And a very bad copy at that. Nothing new, and missing a lot.

"re-implementation of windows."

We live in _different_ universes. Nobody in their right mind wants to re-implement windows. Any more than they want to re-invent the Edsel automobile.

Windows "Server" had 100% market share 10 years ago?

Microsoft did not even have a server division at that time. We are talking "servers".

10 years ago, servers were dominated by Sun.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1016_3-6041804.html
http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management ... 1126OSMRMS

Yes, I know 'Rocks', and I also know that you don't know what I am talking about when I say 'management' and MIBs. The question is how do you 'manage' machines. In the IT world, that means a very specific thing. What does Rocks have to do with that?

I quick IT for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatio ... re_Library

The fact is, Linux is very costly to manage. Support calls are plenty. There is no good desktop sharing. No centralized update. What you save in OS license, you pay for extra IT personnel.

So, you use Symbolic Links as an example of Windows being late to technology? You obviously don't know the reason why that was even added to NTFS. Unix apps are migrating to Windows. Many customers 'requested' that to help ease the migration. You can't teach these old Unix folks how to do things right, so, yeah, you just give them a compatibility feature.

So, nobody wants to re-implement windows? Tell that to the WINE folks and to ReactOS.

The fact is, Linux is trying to look like and behave like Windows. Taskbar, anyone? UAC? Samba? WINE? You mean, all of these are Linux ideas?

Not only is Windows being copied by programmers, it is also the most pirated software. Rather than install a free Linux, people would rather do the 'illegal' task of installing pirated copies of Windows. People go against their morals and avoid Linux. That is how bad Linux is. And that is even after you claim that Windows has viruses. Now, Linux looks even really, really bad.

You can't force garbage on to people. The world is not stupid.