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With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

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Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#111

Post by throwaway2048 »

ekianjo wrote: post #73
adamnemecek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows is just horrible in so many ways Care to enumerate a couple?

I think I did: lack of reactivity between the time you click on something and something actually occurs on screen (talking about OS feel in general), same applications running much slower on Windows, higher general memory consumption, extreme sluggishness when running multiple applications in parallel, extensive usage of scratch disks while OpenSuse seems to be able to use RAM more effectively...

all of these points were significantly more of a problem in windows XP, especially responsiveness under ram pressure and 100% cpu load.

Windows 7/8 has made all of these issues significantly better. If you are comparing XP to modern linux, its not much of a fair comparison to compare a 13+ year old OS to a modern one.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#113

Post by channikhabra »

pekru wrote: post #87
kamaal wrote: post #34

Actually a free Windows OS would actually be great. Here in India, Pirated Windows OS are like as common as mosquitoes. No one but Microsoft was losing in all this. The price of Windows is generally prohibitively high and was by no way affordable to home and even small business users. The only option was to pirate them or use Ubuntu. People walk in to buy a laptop, check the difference in price for Laptops with Windo…

> Actually a free Windows OS would actually be great. Here in India, Pirated Windows OS are like as common as mosquitoes. No one but Microsoft was losing in all this. Actually, MS knew all along that piracy is rampant and they let it work for them quite well. With everyone familiarizing themselves with nothing other than MS products, MS knew for a fact that money would eventually come, in sacks that too. It wasn't a…

> Even the local coke/hash peddler would give out stuff for free to get one hooked.

Stole my words.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#114

Post by jejones3141 »

superuser2 wrote: post #107
beagle3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You copied half of my paragraph. I was specifically referring to Microsoft refusing to support DirectX and new Browsers on older operating systems. The limitation was definitely not technical - Chrome and Firefox supported 2000 and XP years after Microsoft stopped. > > Your interest is to keep an OS supported. > That's not true. That's basically always true (even if you quoted me out of context) - it is always your i…

But it is technical. IE, Chrome, and Firefox are different codebases and what's true of one isn't necessarily true of the others. Chrome and Firefox are largely self-contained. Being multi-platform, they have to be. It makes sense that they can be modified without touching their underlying operating systems. You keep calling IE "Browser" but it's more than that - it is (or at least used to be) a core component of Win…

And that tight coupling was done for political reasons back in the antitrust suit days, to make it impossible to have Windows without IE.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#115

Post by 72deluxe »

Ygg2 wrote: post #105
roel_v wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it's more reliable as a platform. Try to compile, let alone run, a program written for Linux 5 years ago on a distribution today. I compile and run 20 year old software, unmodified, on Windows 8, without any problems.

You must have had some amazing luck because my colleagues tried to install some DBs (it was a combination of Oracle 11g Weblogic and Maximo) and had miserable luck. And it was working on Win7. Didn't Win 8 jetisson most of the compatibility?

I think the difference between installing applications that are basically written for Unix (Oracle for example) on Windows and compiling software is a vast chasm.

The parent to you is correct in that you can compile really really really old software on Windows with ease and very few changes. This is not possible on Linux.

Of course, that's because the libraries in fashion change on Linux very quickly and nobody cares about backwards compatibility that much. They say "just grab the latest version!" or "why are you trying to compile such OLD software?!", particularly if written in C or C++. I don't know about Python or scripting language support.

But a rubbish installer written by a company that has much of its UI written in Java (last time I checked years ago) doesn't really compare to the excellent backwards-compatibility of the Windows API and surrounding libraries.

This isn't even an anti-Linux rant; the same problem is found on Mac OSX. That runs into both problems - impossible to run old software (Rosetta support please?!) and impossible to compile it because the system has changed so much.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#116

Post by jejones3141 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #61
RyanZAG wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a business. Their interests and your interests have never and will never be aligned. They may occasionally release products which can solve your needs - but their interest in this case is to extract the maximum amount of money from you in exchange for solving your need. Solving the need has never been an explicit interest in itself. Moving to an advertising based pricing model doesn't change any alignmen…

Their interests and our interest may not have been aligned, but at least the user was the customer. In an ad supported model, the advertiser is the customer, the users are the product, and the software is the bait. We've already seen where that gets us.

You're not the customer for Windows, at least not an important one. The OEMs are the customers for Windows.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#117

Post by roel_v »

Ygg2 wrote: post #105
roel_v wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it's more reliable as a platform. Try to compile, let alone run, a program written for Linux 5 years ago on a distribution today. I compile and run 20 year old software, unmodified, on Windows 8, without any problems.

You must have had some amazing luck because my colleagues tried to install some DBs (it was a combination of Oracle 11g Weblogic and Maximo) and had miserable luck. And it was working on Win7. Didn't Win 8 jetisson most of the compatibility?

I meant as a developer platform. Yes it's true that, depending on the way it's implemented, it's common that software can't be installed on the exact versions the vendor tested it on or 'approved' it for. What I meant was that Microsoft bends over backwards to provide compatibility, although I guess I should qualify that by saying 'at the lower levels', i.e. on C/C++ code written not too far away from the OS dll's. Silverlight of course is a higher-level counter-example.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#118

Post by pjc50 »

ekianjo wrote: post #73
adamnemecek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows is just horrible in so many ways Care to enumerate a couple?

I think I did: lack of reactivity between the time you click on something and something actually occurs on screen (talking about OS feel in general), same applications running much slower on Windows, higher general memory consumption, extreme sluggishness when running multiple applications in parallel, extensive usage of scratch disks while OpenSuse seems to be able to use RAM more effectively...

I eventually found that turning off Aero and 90% of the stuff in Performance -> Visual Effects made a huge difference on my Core i7 laptop with external monitor. (Windows 7).

The giveaway was high memory usage by "dwm.exe"; it seemed to have enough memory pressure that unused windows would have their decor paged out, so switching between applications had to wait for a page fault to be serviced from disk.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#119

Post by pjc50 »

roel_v wrote: post #104
bytefactory wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I might get some heat for this but I must say Windows is still the OS with the least closed garden or heck even a garden. Surely you meant "OS with a significant market share" or something, because there's no way Windows is more "open" in any way than Linux!

At least it's more reliable as a platform. Try to compile, let alone run, a program written for Linux 5 years ago on a distribution today. I compile and run 20 year old software, unmodified, on Windows 8, without any problems.

What? This usually works just fine. The only area where it doesn't is Gnome, who like making breaking changes.

Quite a lot of the core tools (shellutils) are 20+ years old with only minor updates.

Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way

#120

Post by pjc50 »

10098 wrote: post #48
kamaal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can script the installation of software I need to develop with. I've d... This is a serious problem with Linux'es. Seriously, what user base is Linux optimizing for? Nearly 100% of the people using a computer don't have to ever do such a thing ever. People use computers to get work done, or get some entertainment. Not play with their guts. Imagine if your TV or Washing Machine, or even you Car required you to have…

You missed the point completely . "I can script the installation of software I need to develop with" means he can simply write a script (similar to a windows batch file) that automatically installs whatever software he needs using the package manager. You are not required to do this, and this is simply a convenient method of preparing a freshly installed OS for use. For example, if I install an OS on a new machine, I…

To be fair, you can do this on Windows .. with the enterprise tools. It's just that there's no easy way to find this out and they require a domain controller anyway.
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