With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:27 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #148

beagle3 wrote: post #51

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. The Windows App Store is as closed as Apple's, just not as successful - and I was comparing interests, not achievements. > To get even the legitimate and popular x86 applications you still have to manually browse to websites and download it. You can install whatever you want whether it has a dig…

> Then read skrebbel's post I was replying to. He is under the mistaken assumption that because he was paying for Windows, he had any control over the direction it went in the last 10 years. You sure like putting words into people's mouths.

I apologize, I understood the words "less control over" in your post implying that you believed you had "nonzero control" to start with. Can you please explain what you meant (and what words I put into your mouth)?

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

#152

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:33 AM UTC

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.

I'm doing this on a daily basis with problem. However, in 2003 I had great problem compiling a Win3 program written in 1996 (only 7 at the time, not yet 20 year old today) program to run on Win2000.

The secret to being able to do this properly is to keep a curated development environment that has the old tools/libs in their proper form -- which I suspect is why you don't have a problem (20 years ago you had VC5/VB5 - do you compile the same program with VS2013?).

YMMV, but my experience is that the Microsoft environment is worse than Linux in this regard.

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

#153

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:52 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #95

beagle3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Except ... I'm not paying Ubuntu for my desktop OS; and I would for my server, except they're taking it where I don't want it to go, so I don't. And ... if you don't like Ubuntu's Unity (many people don't), Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment and ten other desktop environments are basically an apt-get away. Remind me, what was the command to get rid of The-UI-formerly-known-as-Metro and use the desktop instead?

>>ten other desktop environments are basically an apt-get away. This one thing you should never do. I once tried to apt-get shift to KDE from GNOME and then could never get Network to work ever again. After searching the internet the only feasible option seemed to be to back up all data and reinstall the OS.

I used to do it regularly before I settled on my current setup. Never had a problem.

I'm not sure what you did, but all it SHOULD do (and in fact, did, for me) was add another session to the login manager. I didn't remove anything, and I can still choose my desktop environment from the list on every log-in.

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

#154

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 3:54 AM UTC

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…

> it is (or at least used to be) a core component of Windows, and very tightly coupled with parts of the operating system that have nothing to do with web browsing. (Navigating local files, for one thing.) Consequently, overhauling IE without overhauling Windows is (or at least was) a hairy proposition and Microsoft decided it wasn't worth it.

That's the company line, they even stated this in court. It might be true today, but I seriously doubt it -- it was definitely NOT true at the time they stated this in court. It was put into the OS with duct tape, definitely not anything at any "core".

I saw a demo of 98 or ME or XP (don't remember which one - the first one that came with integrated IE4) with the web control disabled; some "web folder" views and "active desktop" did not work but the older win95/2000 "folder view" did. If you did not use ActiveX, you didn't feel anything amiss.

In the default setup, if you browsed a local directory through "iexplore.exe", it would fork "explorer.exe" opening another window unexpectedly, although "explorer.exe" would not fork one for a web view (but folder view->web view->folder view did again). Definitely felt like the work of someone who had no access to the "core" to integrate it properly.

If you believe that NOT supporting a newer Trident engine and IE shell on older OS is anything but a political decision, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn you might be interested in. Sure, it costs more to support - but it's a rounding error in Microsoft's development budget.

Finally, even if the "core" issue is true, which (as I stated) I have issues with, the architecture lets them easily keep the old "web component" in the core, and only use the newer one from the IE container. The decision is political in every possible way.

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

#155

Post by chr1 » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 6:25 PM UTC

madhuprasanna wrote: post #150

roel_v wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, anything that only uses posix functions is less fragile, obviously. It's the user space libraries: UI, sound, notifications (for those last two, it's not just the API's that change, it's complete subsystems being pulled from under you), ... Look, I'm not saying there is no Linux software that doesn't keep working, it's the overall time you spend over the lifetime of your software to keep up with updates in its d…

> I don't see how anyone can reasonably argue that Windows isn't a whole lot better than Linux at that. My colleague is wondering how can he install latest copies of Office and Visual Studio Express on Windows XP SP2 for quite some time, without success.

What this have to do with reliability of windows as a platform.

Reliable platform means, that new versions of OS do not break your old program. Which is true for windows.

Of course, as OS becomes more capable, it's possible to write programs that can't work on less capable older versions. But even then, windows tries to add fallbacks so that most new programs still work on old versions.