Windows Vista...

rsynnott

Achilles wrote:

Hrm... will they run games too yeah? .

Nyet.

mr_angry

rsynnott wrote:

Nyet.

I wouldn't worry about it tbh. The new dual- and quad-core chips will open up the market for virtualisation software that will allow you to run an OS on one core, and another OS on another core. Switching between the two will be as easy as alt+tabbing. In which case, you can have your cake and eat it.

In response to the actual question, I don't think Vista is anything special. To me, it looks like XP with some new visual styles and widgets (most of which you can already get on XP with some 3rd party software). The window transparency looks pretty nice, but nothing to write home about. Considering WinFS and Palladin have long since been put on the back burner, what does that leave? Some "trusted computing initiatives" that will inevitably be cracked, and Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF), which is effectively just DX10 with a twist, some of which is used to make some nice desktop eye candy.

IMO, we wont get the full retail until 2008 at the earliest, and by then virtually all of the features will have been emulated by Linux (with the obvious exception of 3D gaming). I'll probably end up buying a copy at some stage to keep up with compatibility, but not really for any other reason.

rsynnott

mr_angry wrote:

virtually all of the features will have been emulated by Linux (

Already done, I'm afraid.

MrVestek

Aye, that's why I'm just worried about ditching Windows altogether, compatibility. Damn you commercialist Microsoft force-everyone-to-use-our-OS bastids! Still it begs the Question, if some games are released for the Mac, which is Unix based (from OSX onwards) then... technically... couldn't said games be ported to Linux much easier?

rsynnott

There's no technical reason that games aren't usually ported to Linux; simply low return on investment.

mr_angry

rsynnott wrote:

There's no technical reason that games aren't usually ported to Linux; simply low return on investment.

The vicious circle of "no gamers run Linux, why would we develop for them?" - that, and the obviousness of DirectX only being available for Windows. If more games were OpenGL-based, it wouldn't be so much of a problem. (Quake III being a fine example.)

I wouldn't go as far as to say that all of the Vista functionality is available in Linux. ReiserFS 4.0 is a good step towards a metadata-based filesystem, but its very difficult to get running properly. If Sun ever get around to finishing Project Looking Glass, 3D desktop might actually become a reality, but that seems to be forever delayed at the moment. And despite the best efforts of apt, YaST, and RPM, Linux is still riddled with compatibility issues between the sheer number of applications you have to install to get a fully-functional home desktop up and running. Thats a major barrier to newbies running Linux, and in order to convert entrenched Windows users, thats exactly the opposite of how it should be.

rsynnott

mr_angry wrote:

I wouldn't go as far as to say that all of the Vista functionality is available in Linux. ReiserFS 4.0 is a good step towards a metadata-based filesystem, but its very difficult to get running properly.

What? Did WinFS go in in the end? I thought it had been decoupled and delayed till 2050?

mr_angry wrote:

If Sun ever get around to finishing Project Looking Glass, 3D desktop might actually become a reality, but that seems to be forever delayed at the moment.

That's nice. Since when did Longhorn/Vista have a 3d desktop?

mr_angry wrote:

And despite the best efforts of apt, YaST, and RPM, Linux is still riddled with compatibility issues between the sheer number of applications you have to install to get a fully-functional home desktop up and running. Thats a major barrier to newbies running Linux, and in order to convert entrenched Windows users, thats exactly the opposite of how it should be.

Hmm, never really hd trouble installing applications on Linux, have had a hell of a lot of trouble installing Certain Applications on Windows. I have no concern for newbies

Stark

rsynnott wrote:

Hmm, never really hd trouble installing applications on Linux, have had a hell of a lot of trouble installing Certain Applications on Windows. I have no concern for newbies

Actually,both I and just about every operating system reviewer on the planet has found it much easier installing applications on Windows rather than Linux. Just the other day I was getting many unresolved dependancies that conflicted with each other and many of those dependancies would require changing massive portions of the OS like the entire GNOME desktop in order to resolve. Even upgrading galeon in the day used to be a right pain as it required upgrading mozilla, which in turn would break many other software packages.

rsynnott

Stark wrote:

Actually,both I and just about every operating system reviewer on the planet has found it much easier installing applications on Windows rather than Linux. Just the other day I was getting many unresolved dependancies that conflicted with each other and many of those dependancies would require changing massive portions of the OS like the entire GNOME desktop in order to resolve. Even upgrading galeon in the day used to be a right pain as it required upgrading mozilla, which in turn would break many other software packages.

If you insist on using a package manager for everything, you'll have trouble.

But you'll never have the same sort of problems as on Windows, where an application will just decide it's not installing, and that's that, and no, it has no intention of giving an error message.

In particular, Window's way of handling different versions of the same DLL is obtuse.

Stark

rsynnott wrote:

If you insist on using a package manager for everything, you'll have trouble.

What do you suggest using instead of a package manager? Do you remember the dark days during the Windows 3.1 era when applications came without uninstallers? Mess left everywhere in the system when you tried to delete an application. Without package management, there is no uninstall facility for applications under Linux.

And commerical Linux applications that come with installers rather than as packages are just as bad when it comes to obscure error messages "can't find prequisites" "Error code 5407, undocumented error" and the like.

rsynnott

Stark wrote:

What do you suggest using instead of a package manager? Do you remember the dark days during the Windows 3.1 era when applications came without uninstallers? Mess left everywhere in the system when you tried to delete an application. Without package management, there is no uninstall facility for applications under Linux.

./configure
make
make install
...
make uninstall

In any case, lack of a registry reduces the annoyance factor of unwanted apps considerably. If you're worried about uninstallation... rm -r /usr/local/myapp. If MS make one improvement to Windows it should be to get rid of the ****ing registry.

Stark wrote:

And commerical Linux applications that come with installers rather than as packages are just as bad when it comes to obscure error messages "can't find prequisites" "Error code 5407, undocumented error" and the like.

I've yet to see one that can't be trivially extracted manually.

Stark

rsynnott wrote:

./configure
make
make install
...
make uninstall

The make uninstall part is infrequently provided. Besides, it's rediculous having the install folder lying around taking up disk space and adding to clutter just so you can uninstall in the future.

rsynnott wrote:

I've yet to see one that can't be trivially extracted manually.

You've never tried to install middleware in that case.

Besides, extracting manually is hardly the solution for the users targetted by Windows Vista. And if you can learn to do it for commercial Linux installers, I'm pretty sure you could do the same for Windows installers.

Linux has many advantages of Windows, virtual memory management being the most notable one I found when trying to run a 1.5GB application under both OSes, but simple software install isn't one of them.

dahamsta

rsynnott wrote:

If you insist on using a package manager for everything, you'll have trouble.

Because generally speaking package managers could be better. Which I'm pretty sure was Stark's point.

But you'll never have the same sort of problems as on Windows, where an application will just decide it's not installing, and that's that, and no, it has no intention of giving an error message.

This has never, ever happened to me.

You could hardly call me a Windows cheerleader, but I still think suggesting that Windows installation procedures are somehow worse than Linux is utterly ridiculous.

adam

Dr_Teeth

I dunno what's with MS. I mean really, apart from 'crashes less' I can't think of a single important feature (to me anyway) that they've added to their OS since Windows '98.

Teeth.

ressem

Originally Posted by dahamsta

This has never, ever happened to me.

You run with local (domain? for shame) admin privileges I take it?

Originally Posted by rsynnott

lack of a registry reduces the annoyance factor of unwanted apps considerably.

Maybe I'm using the wrong distrib, but you have the bin, sbin etc files, init.d entries, /usr/share/doc/x, /usr/share/x,/usr/lib, /var/lib, info files, gconf and equivalent entries and anything you've had to add to your bash rc file or whatever.
Or do you manually create all those links to your extracted tarball?

As for a Looking Glass installation, while it's interesting to be able to have parallax/panorama backgrounds and spinning application windows round like a sheet of glass, didn't find anything on the desktop in itself of much interest.
(but I said that about Java in 1.0 days )
The apps in 3D with transparency do show promise, but that can be done today in DirectX in 2000 (kind of).

dahamsta

ressem wrote:

You run with local (domain? for shame) admin privileges I take it?

Ever seen this message?

[user@host user]$ rpm -i package.rpm
error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm

adam

rsynnott

dahamsta wrote:

Ever seen this message?

[user@host user]$ rpm -i package.rpm
error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm

adam

RPMs (and packages in general) are not for normal mortals to be installing.

dahamsta wrote:

The apps in 3D with transparency do show promise, but that can be done today in DirectX in 2000 (kind of).

Newer X-windows systems, too.

ressem wrote:

Maybe I'm using the wrong distrib, but you have the bin, sbin etc files, init.d entries, /usr/share/doc/x, /usr/share/x,/usr/lib, /var/lib, info files, gconf and equivalent entries and anything you've had to add to your bash rc file or whatever.
Or do you manually create all those links to your extracted tarball?

If you have an application you think you'll want to remove, put it in its own directory. Most applications don't require init.d entries. I maintain that all this mess of configuration files is far, far easier to deal with than the bloated, fragile, non-network-safe registry.

Stark

rsynnott wrote:

RPMs (and packages in general) are not for normal mortals to be installing.

We bow to your l33tness :rolleyes: Original poster gave out to Adam for installing software under Windows whilst having administrator privileges. Adam was pointing out that you also need administrator privileges to install quite a bit of Linux software. Both OSes can be equally as anal about requiring administrator privileges when technically the application could run from the user's home directory. I've been able to work around it with equal ease in both OSes.

I'm saying this not as a Linux-basher. I love Linux, I get far far more work done under Linux than under Windows. But you come across as having a very fanboyish attitude. You claim software install & management under Linux is far easier than Windows because you've gained all these "l33t" skills through sheer perseverance with the system. Yet if Windows so much as sniffs at you, you simply run off professing "windows is sh1t!" without taking so much as a second peek at the problem.

You even say the solution is to dump package management altogether, which I do feel that despite its problems, is the one "cool feature" of Linux software management. Without it, I wouldn't have a clue where all my software ends up. I just don't have the time to keep a detailed record of the files on my system like you probably do. My package manager keeps track of those for me. URPMI under Mandrake/Mandriva is in many ways fantastic in my opinion (I've also used apt-get under Debian, but I find it comes with quite a few annoyances that people aren't prepared to admit).

However despite great tools like urpmi, and to a lesser extent apt-get and yum, I still run into pain trying to do a simple thing like install a new version of Firefox because of all the dependancies/requirements. One of the big problems is the underlying library base which rapidly shifts from distribution to distribution and from version to version. Efforts such as the joke that was UnitedLinux and LSB(Linux standard base) haven't eased the problem.

Windows on the other hand has maintained software compatibility over years worth of versions. Most software for Windows XP can be installed on Windows 95. I can't install most current Linux software on Red Hat EL 3.0 which isn't particularly old. While I do think it adds to the coolness of Linux, that developers are free to innovate without the burden of backwards and forwards compatibility, I don't think Linux is ready for the newbies market in this regard yet.

Which brings me back to the start. "RPMs are not for mere mortals to be installing". Neither is the whole Linux software installation gig to begin with. This is still an area where Windows is much more basic-user friendly. You're coming at this whole thing from the point of view of a power user.

ressem

Give Out forgot the smiley

But original comment was about dahamsta never seeing silent install failures. Which I come across frequently in windows when you don't have the correct permissions as a member of the power users group who in Microsoft's words "Can modify the computer and install programs".

You're left to assume admin is required. And runas fails fairly regularly IME.

If anyone cares:
To install in <wrongforum desktop distro package manager> I'm compelled to log in as admin or I get a clear " requested operation requires superuser privilege", and sudo/gksudo requires only that allowed users know their own password to use admin level tools, rights are user only for the rest of their work.

dahamsta

ressem wrote:

But original comment was about dahamsta never seeing silent install failures.

Which came up because it was being asserted that Windows installation management was somehow worse than Linux package management.

Like Stark, I'm no Linux basher. I'm logged into four servers right now (as root, aren't I naughty). However there's an awful lot of clueless claptrap issued forth about Windows, and much of it is being perpetuated in this thread.

adam

Capt'n Midnight

Stark wrote:

Windows on the other hand has maintained software compatibility over years worth of versions. Most software for Windows XP can be installed on Windows 95. I can't install most current Linux software on Red Hat EL 3.0 which isn't particularly old.

In fairness the backwards compatibility was to appease the corporate sector and to a lesser extent in XP gamers. The key difference is that if you broke all the old apps ("Dos ain't done till Lotus won't run" etc.) people would not pay for an upgrade, something that isn't such an issue in the Linux world. I'm not going into the whole list of latest releases of stuff that won't run on 95 as that has nothing to do with VISTA.

I think we can all agree that it is easier to install malware on windows than on linux, but that VISTA should be a step in the right direction.

Speaking of which, if we don't get back to talking about Windows Vista I'll close the thread.