Microsoft Windows 8: Mostly A Crap Wreck

[FutureSuture]

Windows 8 is the OS that will bring more users to Linux and Mac, not because Windows 8 is not good, simply because it will force the user to become open-minded and accept changes. When a user accepts something different from what he knows, there are high chances he will become curious to try plenty of other things.

I would say more to Linux than Mac really. If the fear and dislike of change is dealt with, then Linux has far less barriers to entry than Mac OS does simply for the fact that the vast majority of distributions are free and can be run on hardware you currently possess.

[szymon_g]

"(..)Windows 8 also obviously is the first Microsoft Windows release with ARM support,(..)"
Incorrect. Windows NT had a support for ARM (As well as Alpha and, afaik, MIPS) in 90ies.

And about Windows 8- metro interface is nice, although I prefer the interface of win7. New explorer is better than in win7; in overall- I'll get win8 on preorder (same as i did with win7)- but only after i'll ensure that it supports my soundcard (x-fi xtrame gamer)

[AJenbo]

It is also true that WINE has some compatibility advantages - I have heard of people who use WINE instead of native windows because it is better than playing there older games. Due to the fact it is by it's nature trying to emulate certain environments, that is also understandable.

True, that and dosBox are often better at old games then windows it self.
Problem with source ports of Q3 is that they do not have punk buster so it's cribbed for multilayer, I do however play Quake Live natively.

I would say more to Linux than Mac really. If the fear and dislike of change is dealt with, then Linux has far less barriers to entry than Mac OS does simply for the fact that the vast majority of distributions are free and can be run on hardware you currently possess.

Sadly i doubth that, only few people want to be bothered with downloading and installing something, and with the Mac they get a shiny box they can brag to there finds about.

[allquixotic]

Funny how you compliment their hassle-free installers. I'm trying to install Windows 7 SP1 on an Ivy Bridge system with a hardware RAID controller. Here's an incomplete list of drivers I had to extract from the installer exes using uniextract under wine, and put them all in the same directory on my flash drive because the installer doesn't know how to search directories recursively:

• Chipset/motherboard drivers (Z77)
• USB DVD drivers (external enclosure of a Blu-Ray ROM / DVD+RW)
• Hardware RAID card drivers (Adaptec 6405E)
• USB 3.0 chipset drivers (Intel USB 3.0 on Z77)
• Motherboard SATA AHCI drivers (one Intel chip and one ASMedia chip)
• Ivy Bridge processor driver (part of chipset package)
• PCI Express bus driver for Z77 to enable the socket that the RAID card is connected to (part of chipset package)

All this and my CD is Windows 7 SP1, not the original release. You'd think if the installation is going to be this much of a hassle, they'd do some kind of re-spin or SP2 with more drivers on the Windows CD. But that level of ease would be un-Microsoft-like.

This is the third PC build in a row for me (this one and two prior generations) where I've had to download one or more drivers and put them on a floppy or USB drive or CD during the Windows install because it didn't support my hardware. So much for Windows always having a pain-free install

The annoying part is that the Windows installer is up on my screen right now on my desktop saying "Select the driver to be installed." with a long list of compatible device drivers that it found on my USB drive, including all the drivers i mentioned in my list above... when I click "Next", it literally seems to be installing the drivers as I can see disk activity on the USB drive, and there's a long 5 minute pause while the progress bar goes across from 0 to 100 repetitively. But then at the end it says "No drivers found" in an error message and refuses to continue.

So am I supposed to guess what piece of hardware it's trying to initialize but can't? Am I supposed to be psychic, Microsoft? Should I just "know" which little component of my system, out of hundreds, is the one component that you don't have a driver for, and then figure out where the driver is downloaded online, download it, extract it using UniExtract (because vendors are too stupid to ship the drivers in a zip file), and put it on my USB drive? Huh, Microsoft? Huh?! Motherfuckers.

By contrast, I stick the Ubuntu 12.04 CD in, hit the "Install Ubuntu" button, click through, type my username, and it goes. No prompts, no nothing, it just works.

Talk about biased reporting.

[RealNC]

By contrast, I stick the Ubuntu 12.04 CD in, hit the "Install Ubuntu" button, click through, type my username, and it goes. No prompts, no nothing, it just works.

And not be able to update for half a year. And when you do, instead of updating software, you need to upgrade a whole OS. Wow, l33t.

[Cyborg16]

So am I supposed to guess what piece of hardware it's trying to initialize but can't? Am I supposed to be psychic, Microsoft? Should I just "know" which little component of my system, out of hundreds, is the one component that you don't have a driver for, and then figure out where the driver is downloaded online, download it, extract it using UniExtract (because vendors are too stupid to ship the drivers in a zip file), and put it on my USB drive? Huh, Microsoft? Huh?! Motherfuckers.

No. You're meant to give up and either buy a computer with pre-installed Windows or download Ubuntu. Good find. Seriously though, MS aren't the only ones to give useless error messages; I've had the same with Gnome applications and Android.

And not be able to update for half a year. And when you do, instead of updating software, you need to upgrade a whole OS. Wow, l33t.

Come on, there's no right answer here. You want constant (non-security) updates, go and use debian testing or opensuse tumbleweed or one of many others ? and be prepared for breakages. You want well tested software: use Windows or debian stable or something with a 2-5 year release cycle. Still not perfect, but still, what is?

[fuzz]

I prefer a rolling release option. Haven't tried Arch, yet, but Gentoo is pretty damn stable. Even under ~amd64.

[RealNC]

Come on, there's no right answer here. You want constant (non-security) updates, go and use debian testing or opensuse tumbleweed or one of many others ? and be prepared for breakages. You want well tested software: use Windows or debian stable or something with a 2-5 year release cycle. Still not perfect, but still, what is?

Oh, you are so wrong. On Windows I can update software without breakages, because the core stays stable, and I can have the latest user apps. Well, I can do that with Linux too, since I'm using Gentoo, but Gentoo is not for the masses. Ubuntu is. And it locks them with the same software for half a year and then tells them to install a whole new version of the entire OS.

This is brain damage, imo. Windows has got that one right.

[bnolsen]

And not be able to update for half a year. And when you do, instead of updating software, you need to upgrade a whole OS. Wow, l33t.

oh please. I just recently took a system from 10.04 -> 10.10 -> 11.04 -> 11.10 (and soon to 12.04). So everything isn't the newest but I haven't had problems with this machine nor with the updates.

Personally I really dislike debian based distros and have been running arch on my dev boxes (used to be gentoo). Arch isn't perfect either. I don't really like the "fsck you" attitude of the maintainers much which is what i seem to get too often.

[allquixotic]

Oh, you are so wrong. On Windows I can update software without breakages, because the core stays stable, and I can have the latest user apps. Well, I can do that with Linux too, since I'm using Gentoo, but Gentoo is not for the masses. Ubuntu is. And it locks them with the same software for half a year and then tells them to install a whole new version of the entire OS.

This is brain damage, imo. Windows has got that one right.

I agree with you, but this is a management issue that distros could deal with if they wanted to. It's just that no one has really undertaken the task.

To do something similar to Windows, basically what you'd do is start with RHEL 6 and continually compile the latest stable version of userland apps (by "apps" I mean, not things like gcc and libc, I mean end user programs that a casual user will be familiar with by name) and ship them as automatic updates.

It's not impossible to do that. A vast majority of applications have backwards compatibility with system libraries and kernel APIs, meaning that you can compile, for instance, GIMP 2.8 on an old system, or LibreOffice 3.3. Some things will be more difficult to do (and riskier), like upgrading between the 4.x versions of KDE or upgrading from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, but the minor releases for sure should be possible to do risk-free, and many distros still don't do that.

I also like how Fedora often updates the kernel to the next version on their stable release. Linux 3.3 is now the standard on Fedora 16, whereas it shipped with 3.2. It's a nice touch and a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, you don't want to go willy-nilly just updating every single package on the system to the latest stable. That's called ArchLinux, and while many people can deal with the potential upgrade breakages you get from that, non-technical users can't.

There's a happy medium somewhere between Ubuntu and ArchLinux, but nobody (to my knowledge) has yet implemented a distribution upgrade policy that exactly nails that happy medium. But there's no theoretical reason why it's impossible. You just have to identify all the programs that are true applications and not just infrastructure, and separate them out and keep them updated. The user doesn't care if they have libc 2.18 instead of 2.19, but they do care if they have Firefox 8 instead of Firefox 12.

I've experimented with this in the past on CentOS 5 and 6. Start with base distro and start installing newer versions of apps. I was generally successful, but in most cases I had to compile from source. A distro could do that for you.