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FSF Launches "BadVista" Campaign
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Dec 16, 2006 08:13 PM
from the restricted-computing dept.
from the restricted-computing dept.
FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."
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Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:4, Funny)
- Vista is a Microsoft product
- Vista is bad
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the shortcomings they list is 'Lack of AppleTalk support.'
Is support for a dying, proprietary protocol something we'll really miss?
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article you were referring to was rather lackluster - I read the first page and couldn't be bothered to click next. Heck, needing better hardware, more RAM and more disk space are all separate reasons! Not only that, they're all top 10.
I'm not a Vista fanboy, but this and the other articles linked smell of desperation. I would think there would be enough legitimate, well reasoned reasons to bash Vista without having to resort to FUD already.
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. People use Windows because it had first mover advantage. Windows is an operating system running on commodity hardware, which comes bundled with said commodity hardware. It has a vast catalog of software running on it. Including applications and services which have become defacto standards such as Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Exchange. It is also the most viable commodity PC platform for gaming and multimedia because of its driver, API and app support. You can get World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights 2, Medieval Total War, Oblivion. Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat. Lightwave, 3D Studio. That is the reality. Microsoft may try to spin things as if it was something different, as if people used Windows for its low support costs, but that pack of lies should not make us blind enough to see the truth for what it is.
Developers, developers, developers... Microsoft basically gives away its development tools to students. Microsoft Visual Studio is actually a pretty decent development environment. Shame the Windows APIs are an utter mess and brain damaged to the extreme. Hence .NET. I believe that in order for an operating system to overthrow Windows, it must have lower barriers for entry due to less brain damaged APIs and simpler programming. NeXT could have been the thing if the hardware wasn't so bloody expensive and hard to get. Not to mention they were stuck on an Objective C mindset while C++ was gaining ground.
Linux already has the free GNU toolset. PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby. It will soon have a wholly free Java toolset from Eclipse to the JDK. To me the largest weakness in Linux is the multimedia support. I am not surprised by the lack of multimedia apps and games for Linux. Try getting two Linux programs to use the soundcard without one locking the other up. Try getting 3D graphics to work properly.
The OSS sound API sucked. ALSA sucks. OpenGL support is feeble. Why does not every Linux distro come with something like OpenAL? Why must users have to painstakingly compile and install it themselves? Why must users have to install closed source and buggy graphics drivers? Certainly some of these problems are difficult to solve, since there are barriers from the hardware manufacturers. However there is plenty of room for improvement even despite that. The sound situation being a good example. Why is there no standard Linux media API? MPlayer comes with its own, VLC another, there is FFMPEG, then there is GStreamer and whatever the KDE people use. WTF!
The problem with being a good liar, is that eventually you start believing what you say. Then you act as if it was true and you end up destroying yourself. Being a compulsive liar is a dangerous thing to be. Dismissing the real reasons Windows is at the position it is today as if it was merely due to rhetoric is doing a disservice to yourself.
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:4, Insightful)
To this day, they give away development tools not only to students but to everyone who buys one. On every mac sold, there's a compressed copy of Xcode; anyone can sign up to the ADC. It has persistently been the leader in the film industry and the graphics industry, except maybe in the last couple of years where it's coming towards a level pegging. But as is obvious from market share, those reasons make little difference.
A huge number of 'geeks' move away from windows to some flavour of linux, whether clean install or parallel OS. The problem is not in having a better OS - the problem is in the marketing and the general mindset of the population - they're used to Windows, an upgrade is an upgrade, linux is difficult to install (it may not be from the inside, but from the outside it's a dangerous beast - unfamiliar and with no grandly laudable advantages). While you expand nicely on APIs, the average home user doesn't even know what an API is. They have no clue whether the windows APIs are the same as or different from any other. Once someone is interested enough to get technical, sure - but most don't.
That's the reason people use windows. Ease.
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Informative)
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Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:
Purely speculative.
More guesswork.
Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.
No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.
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Re:Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the shortcomings picked are fairly irrelevant. The few that could be are not very well addressed. Very lacking paper and poor reporting IMO.
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Re:Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Informative)
14. Hardware Vendor Support
Tier-one and tier-two hardware vendors seem to be taking a slow approach to offering "Windows Vista Capable" systems.
If it was built in the last two years, it's probably "Vista Capable". A sticker does not enable some magic compatibility.
19. Installation
Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.
It took half an hour on my system. My system that is over 3 years old. (Which is a long time, by computer standards.)
20. HHD
Hybrid Hard Drives. These are potentially a huge performance booster, but there's little information and support is available (even though should be available).
Uhh... an emerging technology that will boost performance is a shortcoming?
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Re:Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Informative)
If it was built in the last two years, it's probably "Vista Capable". A sticker does not enable some magic compatibility.
Yeah right. Vista doesn't run SQL server, and that's a MS product. What makes you think there won't be other landmines (probably related to DRM)?
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Re:Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Informative)
Tier-one and tier-two hardware vendors seem to be taking a slow approach to offering "Windows Vista Capable" systems.
If it was built in the last two years, it's probably "Vista Capable". A sticker does not enable some magic compatibility.
Not only that, but when I was at Best Buy yesterday, almost every computer they had on the shelves were sporting those "Vista Compatible" stickers. That doesn't sound like a slow approach to offering Vista Compatibility...
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Re:Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Insightful)
ample resources are no excuse to waste them.
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Re:Speculations and guesswork (Score:5, Funny)
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Clarification of SMB support/FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Also, #18:
Funny, some might have said the same thing in WinXP, until they realized there is a classic view. Vista also has this classic view.
And, #25:
Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open
#8:
I suppose the author of the article missed the article on their own website about key management servers [72.14.209.104], and also on the Microsoft support website [72.14.209.104], which states:
Last but not least, #6:
No... just, no. Vista does use more RAM than WinXP, but why do you think that is? That's right, Aero and the Windows Sidebar. Between those two, I'm using a whopping 48 megs of RAM. You can always turn them off if your system is strapped for RAM. Right now my system is sitting at 696MB usage, which might seem like a lot, until you read that 452MB of that is for cache. So, I'm really only using 244MB.
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"Treacherous Computing" "Genuine upgrade promlems" (Score:5, Interesting)
Eventually MS and others pushing [Un]Trusted Computing and Digital Restrictions Management will find out that the strangle grip is not the best way to hold and attract costumers.
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More detail (Re:"Treacherous Computing" "Genuine (Score:5, Interesting)
This page [minasi.com] says something about the nature of Vista. It shows the six privilege levels:
The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.
Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control? If you prefer to own your own copy of an OS, you will have to choose free software over Vista.
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Re:More detail (Re:"Treacherous Computing" "Genuin (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer in the consumer market will be "Hell, Yes." No one there wants to deal with the internals of the machine on anything but the most superficial level.
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Re:More detail (Re:"Treacherous Computing" "Genuin (Score:4, Interesting)
As computer users we have slowly been giving up more and more of our computer to Microsoft and other OSes (even Mac is starting to expand). I think it's time we start saying "Fuck you" to people who over charge us so they can take our computer and run rampant on our hardware. I don't think it's time for Linux if you don't already run it. But it's time for us to remain on Windows XP. It's time to demand that DirectX 10 get ported to XP if you need it. It's time to basically stop taking shit from OSes and start demanding a better OS. Dos could give you a disk operating system for 640k, All I want a simple GUI, that all the programs now run on. Why am I sacrificing 2 gigs of memory just to my OS when it's something that should only require a couple megs if done properly. If we want to clog our systems it's our option.
That's my opinion. But i believe it's anyone else who is sick of being forced to upgrade every 3-5 years to an OS that takes at least double the processing power. Moore's law? Didn't know Moore's first name was Peter.
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Free software protects free speech (Score:5, Interesting)
Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.
But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.
I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.
This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.
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I cant understand if you are stupid, or real (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of over-trustful approach is this ? Are you living in a place where people still can sleep with their doors unlocked at night ?
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:4, Informative)
Size is also a major problem. On my notebook (2GB RAM), there is a pre-allocation of 2GB for the hibernation file and 2.6GB for the swap file, making for a 10.5GB 32-bit Vista installation and a 12.7GB 64-bit installation using Vista Enterprise. That's ridiculously large, as I can build up a complete Linux installation with OpenOffice and KOffice, some games, and an entire suite of security apps and utilities, and remain fairly easily under 6GB without much effort.
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:5, Informative)
Vista's new graphics system is not about eye candy, although that is a good side effect. Here are just a few things that the new Vista graphic system has that you can't do on earlier versions of Windows.
- It can multi-task GPU RAM with system RAM intelligently. Meaning if your Video card only has 128mb or RAM, and you want to run all the extra High Quality Textures in a game that would normally want more GPU RAM, Vista will let the game do this, seamlessly with existing games.
The multi-tasking of GPU RAM also extends to GPU multi-tasking as well, which is a new concept and works even marginally already with current generation boards from ATI and NVidia. So you get GPU RAM and GPU multi-tasking that also extends beyond a single game or application or even the interface itself.
On Vista for example, you can load WoW, SWG, CoH, and pick a good FPS, put them all in a Window and they will run side by side with VERY little FPS drop in any of the applications. Now take into consideration they all want the GPU to themselves, and they all want all the GPU RAM. However, it just freaking works in Vista, and works well. This example I give is one demonstration one of our techs uses. He will set the characters to auto-run in the applications and he will then hit Flip 3D, angling all the applications in perspective on their side with all the Aero effects, and point out to people how the FPS didn't change in any of the applications. And this is with a 256MB NVidia 6800 card that is almost two years old.
- Accelerated drawing. Everyone should know Vista adds 3D technology to the basic desktop and desktop applications, but another fact missed is that even the old 2D drawing of applications uses the 3D GPU functions to accelerate rendering. And this happens on even old DirectX 7 cards from 1998 that couldn't dream of running Aero/Glass.
How does this affect everyone? Well the display, rendering and movement of bitmaps and vector images is significantly faster than on WindowsXP, or any other OS. Take an application like CorelDraw or AI, they will draw very complex vector images and are are pre-Vista made applications, yet on Vista they will display and redraw their graphics 10x faster or more. I have one layered image that on WindowsXP and OSX takes close to 30 secs to redraw fully, yet on Vista it will redraw in less than 2 secs fully.
So if you work in the graphics world, Vista will impact your life tremendously. So existing and old applications get a tremedous speed boost when they are very graphically heavy applications.
- 3D composer. Vista like OSX sports a full Composer, so images never tear. Again this is a performance improvement over WindowsXP. It also features a full vector based composer, meaning that newer applications using the WPF side of Vista get even more of a performance increase, as it can talk to the composer in pure vector and redraws and changes can be communicated in vector instead of full bitmap redraw changes being shoved to the composer. This again not only adds more performance for applications that haven't even been released yet, but adds interface quality as Vista can properly anti-alias the vector images, etc without any work from the application.
Another nice 'visual' side effect of the graphics composer in Vista, is that is can scale 'old' application on high resolution displays. So if you want to get all the use out of the pixel on your 17" 1920x1200 display and don't have perfect eye sight, you can still run your desktop at 1920x1200 and Vista will scale things up to a level that you can see and look like a printed page.
- User Mode Video Drivers - Video in Vista has been put back in the user mode. This means more stability if a video drivers crashes. However, one clever side effect of how Vista has implemented the WDDM
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Re:Would've been nice if... (Score:4, Interesting)
- The RAM thing exists already - without the paging. Drivers can allocate AGP- and even Sysram to get some space for the data. Sysmem is obviously a very bad idea with AGP, but its there. With PCI, this is much less of an issue. There the drivers can transfer from/to sysram, which gets paged by the OS already.
- Running multiple games at once will obviously hurt their FPS, unless they are not very demanding (running Gothic 3 and Oblivion at the same time is not a good idea). Running several 3D apps side by side HAS to work in Vista since the entire interface is going to be a 3D application, actually. In fact, D3D10 adopted a server/client model from OpenGL here; in OGL it never was a big deal to run several GL apps at once, because they are clients using one server (the graphics card).
- Accelerated drawing: not going to happen. At least not on a primitive stage. The windows are VERY likely to be rectangular textures, but forget about drawing every line with 3D, this is just too inefficient as it chokes the CPU because of wait states. 3D engines usually avoid as many API calls as possible for this reason. CorelDraw's calls are likely to involve GDI. It is perfectly ok for GDI to draw in the window texture. This is faster than traditional GDI because pre-Vista GDI immediately shows the result and has TONS of waitstates built in. The texture approach just involves some writing in a memory block. (Afaik this is the same way Qt4 handles drawing with GL-acceleration, and it is really MUCH faster than traditional 2D.)
- The composer: well, it is really strange why nobody EVER thought of this before. You don't even need a fully-featured composer, just some simple double-buffering would do. This is the very reason why tearing does not happen with Aero, NOT the blending and composing. Turn off double-buffering, and the tearing is back.
As for the vector thing, this DOES sound like marketing babble. I want this in a more detailed form. It would be very strange to see entire bitmaps transferred to the composer anyway, and I doubt its done this way now; heck, even X11 does not handle it this way.
Scaling old apps will give you a blurred result because of the bilinear filtering. Still better than having huge pixels though. GDI calls could be scaled nicely, yes, by sending the coordinates through a scale before drawing. But bitmaps will get blurry (that is, all icons etc.)
- User mode drivers are back, finally. But how am I going to handle GPU driver crashes in Vista? There is no textmode console, so what if video just doesnt restart?
I agree that Vista is a leap, but it just doesnt make it more attractive, really. Its expensive, has a bazillion features that need to be turned off etc. Direct3D 10 is going to be the likely reason why I'm gonna get it (its new features are VERY cool, and I write 3D graphics stuff), as soon as VistaAntiSpy is available
Then again, once OpenGL 3.0 is available, D3D10 won't be alone...
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FUD??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot and its minions seems to hate Microsoft FUD, but shouldn't you people have a problem with FUD on the other side? This site has gone full throttle on the anti-Vista campaign already and it isn't even on store shelves yet. Sheesh.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If they see flaws in MS-OSs (as I do), point Joe Shmoe to Apple - it's the best alternative.
My linux desktop is more customised and intelligent than an Apple Desktop will be (as far as I'm concerned) because I've been configuring my bashrc & enlightenment config files for over a year - and always adding/evolving. Everything is automatic and on cron or timeout (from closing a open eterms to switching virtual desk
Re:FUD??!! (Score:4, Insightful)
No it isn't. Not by a longshot if you go by the FSF's beliefs. Their core principle is that people should be free to use their computers without any artificial software-induced restrictions. OSX may be partially free and open source "under the hood" but the top layers are every bit as proprietary as Windows.
I'd certainly say that Apple/OSX is better than Windows for "Joe Schmoe" and I would recommend that over Windows or Linux for someone who wants an elegant "just works" new computer. For myself, I prefer to build my own boxes and run Linux (though I have no qualms about using non-free software and drivers on my box)--but I recognize that in the present world, that just isn't right for everybody. "To each their own," "Choice is good," and all that jazz.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is also no doubt - you click "I agree" and the rights are gone...
And dare I say there is not even any fear in the end user - and that is something we should be really worried about
I'm no great fan of MS... (Score:4, Insightful)
-b.
All I have to say is... (Score:3, Interesting)
No really, this might be a new low for the FSF. I mean, really people, does this tactic ever work? Far from becoming an effective bad PR campaign it is going to further elevate consumer and user awareness of Vista.
While were at it, why aren't we bashing the hell out of Apple and it's release of Shaguar? After all, Jaguar runs on fully DRM'd, TCP'd hardware. The same cannot be said for Windows users.
Re:All I have to say is... (Score:5, Informative)
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So.... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all well and good to say that Vista is a "don't upgrade" for the next twelve months -- but there are improvements in it, some of which rise to the level of intuition, and right now there's no Free way to get those improvements.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am writing this on my Vista-installed laptop, through Firefox. I just checked my e-mail on Thunderbird, and, if I thought it was worth my time, I could intall OpenOffice. I have a few gigabytes of music here, all MP3 without any DRM on them at all.
The only thing that Vista does to "reduce" my freedoms is have better support for DRM-enabled stores. So, if I want to purchase music instead of getting a CD from the store (as I prefer), I can go to someone other than iTunes, and put my music on a device that isn't made by Apple.
Does MS have DRM here? Sure. Can I remove it entirely at will? You betcha. Is this entirely irrelevant to the new features MS put in Vista, like the GPU-utilizing pretty windows or the "press a button and type a command" functionality of the start menu? Yep.
Everyone who cares or will care knows about the FSF, and what "free software" means. If you want to discourage "not-free" software, it's time to start promoting how good free software is -- otherwise, the question is "are those freedoms worth the annoyance"
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Bad Vista, starring Billy Bob Thornton? (Score:5, Insightful)
All the effort should be spent on advocating your advantages in a positive manner - and then you can compare yourself to the competition, you have a solution to the problem, you're not merely pointing out the bad stuff.
Negative marketing has been shown time and time again to annoy the people that catch the brunt of it - political campaigns through to Apple adverts. Maybe it will stop a few people upgrading, but it won't make them think of switching another solution unless you present that alternative solution in a wondrous halo of wonder fixing all of their issues.
How about a GoodLinux or something campaign as well?
(I didn't read the article)
I can already see... (Score:3, Informative)
Vista - it's a trap thing, really. Break out as long as you can.
Re:I can already see... (Score:5, Informative)
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FSF burning the last of its legitimacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Region encoding on DVDs sucks... but does that keep people from buying DVDs... NO NO NO!
Re:FSF burning the last of its legitimacy (Score:5, Insightful)
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The site has bad design... (Score:4, Interesting)
But the point I am making is the site is crappy. The site is ugly. It consists of bunch of long TEXTS (like anybody likes to read long texts). It should communicate better with some pictorials and clear picture of what Vista will not allow you to do.
Re:The site has bad design... (Score:5, Interesting)
I went in wanting to be convinced, but instead it comes across as a Fanboi site like many others pointed out. The main page should have the juice straight away. You get in and you read the bulletpoints: Windoze is teh sux because a) It will take away your freedom to copy your legally owned music (insert link)
b) It will spy on you, reporting your every move back to the corporations (insert link)
And so on. They really don't have a clue how to present the information, they are overly verbose for the intended audience which it is very clear they don't understand, the design is so ugly that it takes away much credibility, their claims are not backed up by concise facts, they constantly appeal to emotion, and they don't offer clear-cut instrucions for the alternative.
Also their choice of gNewSense as an alternative OS is weak because it lacks in the same departments: null communication skills, poor design, ZERO instructions. They could at least have picked Ubuntu, which looks much more professional and at least would make an unexperienced user that the thing may actually work.
Why the FSF and other antimicrosofites can't get it through their heads that the average windows user is not stupid but they are also utterly unconcerned with the technical side. From the few distros that I've seen, only Red Hat and Ubuntu seem to have picked up on this fact. If it looks ugly it breeds distrust, and if it is complicated it's deemed not worth it. Free as in Gratis is not enough. In fact, it's no different from a cheap knockoff in their minds. Don't take my word for it. Talk about it to people around you that are not tech fans and you will see, they are not idiots, they simply have different interest and this is a very, very bad attempt at interesting them and it will backfire.
Unless they completely revamp the site and make it look as serious and well presented as the marketing sites for Vista are/will be, offer sensible, to-the-point arguments, and a clear and easy guide to upgrade they would appear to the uninformed like a National Enquirer next to a Wall Street Journal.
I'm registering at the site to tell them this now, if many of us do the same maybe they will listen.
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More crap from RMS (Score:3, Insightful)
I cringe every time RMS steps out into the scene. It's like trying to tell someone to stop beating his dog, and having PETA step out; or having one of your friends jokingly call you a fag, and having half of Gay Pride suddenly show up behind him; or groping your girlfriend, and having three women from NOW jump up from the next table and tell you how much of an asshole you are and start yelling out into the whole restaurant how guys are all pigs.
RMS is the definition of a modern politician. His campaigns are "XXX IS TRASH BECAUSE IT RAPES YOU OF YOUR FREEDOMS AND KICKS YOUR DOG AND TOUCHES YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER DON'T EVER TOUCH XXX BECAUSE IT WILL CHAIN YOU TO YOUR CHAIR AND GLUE YOUR EYES OPEN AND MAKE YOU GIVE YOUR SOUL TO THE BIG GIANT HEAD!!!!!!!111111111" I'm sick and tired of him, and his GPL (LGPL is a great general purpose license), and his bullshit. The only time he says something nice is when XXX becomes GPL XXX; if you want free marketing, start your new product closed source and get RMS to shriek at you, then open source it so he gives you tons of free positive press for 5 weeks.
Why can't we have someone out to show how great Open Source Software is? Talk about what Ubuntu Linux offers, what RedHat and Novel can do for you, what people like about Debian and Gentoo enough to make them use those over more sophisticated derivatives (like Ubuntu), and the various applications. Don't come out here spewing about how everything else is crap, because ONLY the fanatics care; anyone else either wishes you weren't representing them, doesn't care because they're already using OSS and never actually listen to you talk, or uses something else and doesn't quite get why you're such a nutball over this "DRM" and "proprietary freedom restrictions" crap.
I miss DOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Not an upgrade? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is nothing more than a giant pile of FUD. Accountability in drivers is a huge upgrade, not some soul sucking attempt to steal your humanity. Besides... since when did 'freedom' apply to our computers and operating systems. What's next? My office chair needs the freedom to vote? If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do, I don't care if Stalin programmed it and titled it "3D Studio Max for the advancement of the Social Utopia and down fall of Democracy." It works it works. Vista works very well. Windows XP hasn't let me down yet, and I'm looking forward to some new glitz and sparkle.
My cameras are black boxes, my lights are black boxes, my chroma paint is top secret, I eat proprietary cereal, my car's design is patented, my apartment design is owned by another company, I can't even paint my walls without permission. but wait... my Operating System... THAT's a holy grail of democracy and freedom. I use almost 0 Open Source software day in and day out, because in my field, it's all worthless except for linux. Gimp? Pfff... yeah why don't I just use MS Paint?
If the author drives an open source car, lives in an open source house, uses only open source hardware, only eats food from freely available recipes and sleeps on a mattress with a freely available design I'll give a shit.
What a funny list (Score:4, Insightful)
4. Driver Support
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.
This is not Vista-specific, same thing happened in e.g. Windows 2000. Or Windows 95. Or other significant upgrades. Trust me, this will become less of an issue or "bad thing" in 2007, and then, once again, competing operating systems are likely to be worse off in the driver area. Unfortunately. The most common OS developer tend to get the best drivers because driver developers likes making profit from supporting the most common operating systems.
And of course MS made most built-in drivers. They always do in the shipping versions of large OS upgrades. If third party devs aren't done in time, MS will ship reduced functionality to give the user at least something to work with until the real driver is done. NVIDIA, Creative Labs and more are currently developing more complete Vista drivers. You can even read up on this on their sites.
6. Memory
Vista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.
1 GB works here on my test install. I can run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Office 2007, Guild Wars.
Can they be more precise about "real-world needs"? Working at rendering industry buildings in 3D Studio?
8. Activation
The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
That's why there are KMS servers to reduce it to only one server connecting to MS every half a year per company with 25+ installs, i.e. "mass deployments".
9. Storage Space
With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
Is 10 GB making up a large part of current hard drives? I see similar sizes in competing operating systems.
10. Backup
See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
See above.
11. Urgency
Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
Was suddenly security looking like hell in Windows 9x and XP non-issues? Interesting how they're only issues when it's suitable to complain about them, otherwise not. Vista may still have its share of these issues, but it's way too early to say there are no must-have reasons behind Vista compared to earlier Windows releases. There may not be in case of trouble, but there may also be big ones. They should not make this judgment at this time as it's premature.
12. Learning Curve
Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
Did this stop KDE's first release? Gnome's? Windows 3.0? Windows 95?
Do this author think Windows XP's UI therefore is excellent?
What is the problem exactly, or is the author only stating the blindingly obvious?
13. Cost
Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
Yes, moving to new OS's tend to cost a lot. That's why we're still running even Windows 2000 at places.
And again, I'm not sure of what hardware upgrades they're talking of.
Memory = see above, graphics cards = similar to in XP if you don't need the Aero eye candy which I can't see too many companies really hungering for.
19. Installation
Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.
However, note how they conveniently fail to compare to other operating systems, Microsoft's or others.
I'm sure I can find hardware where a full install of Mandriva will take "hours" on as well.
On my 4 year old hardware, Vista install took ~25 mins.
21. 50 Million Lines Of Code
Even with the five years of development and long beta test period that went into Vis
The most impoortant aspect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, for me the most important thing about owning a computer is productivity - to be able to do the tasks I want to do. I could migrate to a non-proprietary system, but I would not benefit if it had fewer applications that I find useful. I can't write my own high-level applications. Nor do the Open Source and Free alternatives meet my needs yet. Of course, control is nice, but my proprietary OS (MacOS) gives me more control than I actually use, in addition to great applications. If it stopped me from working with those apps, or locked up the media I used, then it would be an issue.
An analogy might be automatic transmission on a car, or electronic systems in a car. It gives less control and serviceability - but most users find the benefits of automatic transmission and electronics to be worth it. I could buy an old Chevy that I could fix myself - but then I would suffer many drawbacks in actually using the vehicle. Or games consoles - they are not as customizable as a PC system, but most people just want to play games, and a console makes this goal a lot easier to accomplish.
It's rather annoying when people assume what the most important thing is to me.
say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I invite my friends over to show off how much control I have over it.
this is just asinine. The most important aspect of ME owning and using a computer is that it does something useful for me. (like letting me post on slashdot or look at porn) If I was interested in control, I would use a pencil and paper.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software. (Score:5, Funny)
Forget Linux, I'm waiting for GNU/HURD. Any day now...
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