OS WARS MEGA THREAD (Now debating proprietary vs. open-source!)

[n122vu]

I do not know why people hates both Vista. I have Vista since 2007 and still works perfectly.

I agree. I ran Vista Ultimate on my old home desktop for 6 years and I had no complaints. It ran rock-solid, never had a BSOD. FSX and Orbiter both ran well, and this was well before D3D9 client and before I had discovered the VistaBoost module. I was limited to 4GB memory on that board; utilizing as much of that as I could was really my only motivation for upgrading that box to Win7. But man, once I did, the seals all expanded, she dried out, leaned into the wind and flew like a batoutahell.

 

[TMac3000]

Despite the hatred I often see directed at Vista, I've never really had any problems with it--but perhaps that's because I only used it at college. I do have to admit I didn't like the look of it, and I didn't see the need for all that ribbon business in Office 2007 (and the change of document format REALLY me off)

But Vista seemed to run okay to me...

 

[Fabri91]

Both times I had to do with Vista were relatively near to it's original release, so before the service packs which seem to have transformed it in a slightly different looking 7.

Some months ago I played around with it in a VM a bit (with SP2 installed) and, however short and subjective this test might have been, it didn't seem to be particulary slow or buggy.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

By whom? I've written code on both Windows and Linux (and I even wrote code on Windows with Linux toolchain). In terms of productivity, Visual Studio beats any IDE Linux has to offer. Automatic highlighting syntax errors in editor, before even compiling, is a huge time saver compared to digging through several screens of GCC errors just to learn that you have forgotten a semicolon after a class definition.

I do agree that the MSVC++ IDE is somewhat helpful for writing code, but there are a lot of annoying behaviours in Visual Studio that eventually make it too much of a pain to use. Settings for an SFML project will disappear halfway through setting it up, VS projects themselves take up an absurd amount of space on a hard drive (my projects folder is in excess of a full gig of memory just due to autogenerated files), and both the IDE and the compiler tend to be fairly slow.

Working on linux is sometimes trickier as far as getting things set up, but Ive found it to contain fewer time-wasting surprises than Windows did. The lack of a really good IDE is a pain, but even geany is adequate enough for me when writing code. It does bring up suggestions for variable names while writing code, somewhat similar to the scope contents feature in MSVC, although it doesn't have the error highlighting feature.

Even then, the error highlighting in MSVC++ will sometimes declare normal code to be incorrect, which wont go away until you restart the IDE... Ugh...

Ive literally stripped down programs to the point of "Hello World" and still had MSVC++ fail on it, only to work after restarting the computer.

MSVC++ is great if youre just getting started given how much easier it is to write code in it, and avoid all of the other complexities involved with using linux, but I find it has way too many annoying behaviours to use as my main development environment.

But, on the topic of Linux IDEs, is Code::blocks any good? I havent tried to use it very much, but it seems to be quite popular as far as IDEs go?

 

[n122vu]

Meanwhile, the idiocy in Redmond continues.

Microsoft Abandons Windows 8.1: Take Immediate Action Or Be Cut Off Like Windows XP

In a nutshell, Windows 8.1 users who haven't installed Update 1 will no longer receive security updates after May 13th, but Windows 8 users who have not upgraded to 8.1 will still get updates until January 2016. Yes, you read that right. Seriously Microsoft, get your crap together.

 

[Hielor]

Meanwhile, the idiocy in Redmond continues.

Microsoft Abandons Windows 8.1: Take Immediate Action Or Be Cut Off Like Windows XP

In a nutshell, Windows 8.1 users who haven't installed Update 1 will no longer receive security updates after May 13th, but Windows 8 users who have not upgraded to 8.1 will still get updates until January 2016. Yes, you read that right. Seriously Microsoft, get your crap together.

Wait, why is this idiocy?

Just get the update. Problem solved. The only idiocy is people who don't update, and if they're not updating their machines anyway, why would they care if they don't get updates?

Notably, from that same article:

Windows 8.1 Update 1 is a great update. In fact it is arguably the best and most important update Windows 8 has received.

 

[jedidia]

Just get the update. Problem solved.

The problem is the equisitly tight time frame. Update 1 isn't even quite finished yet. Microsoft recommends to postpone the update until they fixed several issues.

Now, I personally wouldn't have any problems, but if you're responsible for an IT system with a few dozen machines I understand that you might be a bit itchy slapping a major update on all machines without doing propper compatibility tests of the system first. For which, depending on when Microsoft will release the darn fix and say that you can now actually install their update, which will be the new baseline standard in less than a month, there might be precious little time.

I can totally understand how this very artificial and completely microsoft produced bottleneck can piss people off.

 

[Urwumpe]

Microsoft recommends to postpone the update until they fixed several issues.

Microsoft doesn't.

http://www.techradar.com/news/softw...s-windows-8-1-update-1-for-businesses-1241127

They have not several fixes to do, but a single one, that can only happen to a special configuration.

 

[jedidia]

They have not several fixes to do, but a single one, that can only happen to a special configuration.

Ok, on issue then. But they still recommend not installing it until they fixed it.

 

[Urwumpe]

Ok, on issue then. But they still recommend not installing it until they fixed it.

If you use it together with the Windows Server Update Services - everybody who doesn't have this combination should better update.

 

[n122vu]

Wait, why is this idiocy?

Not Update 1. I'm cool with that.

Just get the update. Problem solved. The only idiocy is people who don't update, and if they're not updating their machines anyway, why would they care if they don't get updates?

I agree with you completely on this. It's the part about people that don't update that makes me question the scope of Microsoft's support here.

From an MS/TechNet blog on the subject, it's this part that I think is idiocy (emphasis mine):

For those users who are still using Windows 8 and Windows 2012 (and not Windows 8.1 and Windows 2012 R2) you are unaffected and will continue to receive updates as normal.


The new baseline only exists for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Why not make Update 1 the baseline? Period. Why continue to work on security updates for the stock Windows 8/2012 installation? I would just expect them to want everyone running the most up-to-date version of the OS, that's all.

Even XP came to the point where you had to have a minimum of SP1 to be able to use the old Windows Update site, right?

---------- Post added at 01:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 PM ----------

Take it lightly guys & gals. I love giving MS a hard time, but honestly I don't think they're really all that bad.

 

[Fabri91]

I think the point of this distinction is that the jump from 8 to 8.1 is actually "non-trivial", so to speak. For example, I actually encountered some (solvable) issues with systems that got upgraded to 8, instead of having it installed from a blank slate, since they've got a smaller system-reserved partition (100MB instead of 300MB), while the 8.1 Update 1 is, from the system's point of view, a bog standard "second Tuesday of the month" update.

 

[Pablo49]

I think the point of this distinction is that the jump from 8 to 8.1 is actually "non-trivial", so to speak.

Yeah, the point updates aren't the same as service packs, seemingly. I am still on 8 on my laptop because of a couple lingering driver etc issues. (Probably resolved by now, I haven't check too recently. I just don't want to mess with it until I get me new EHDD for backups.)

 

[Hielor]

Why not make Update 1 the baseline? Period. Why continue to work on security updates for the stock Windows 8/2012 installation? I would just expect them to want everyone running the most up-to-date version of the OS, that's all.

Even XP came to the point where you had to have a minimum of SP1 to be able to use the old Windows Update site, right?

I suspect that at some point before 8.1 Update 1 becomes the baseline, Update 1 will become a required update, so everyone will get updated anyway.

As Pablo pointed out, 8->8.1 is a rather less trivial change (it is in fact a different OS version, 6.3 vs. 6.2), so there's probably some legal obligations to continue supporting 8.

 

[Spacethingy]

Replace a few numbers in this article, and it's still slightly pertinent to this discussion... (thank you Wikipedia!) :lol:

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/21/windows.98/index.html?iref=allsearch

Heck, I was only 4. I'm feeling old.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

In other news (just in time for XP end-of-support)......

.......the most popular Linux release of them all, Ubuntu, has just released their 14.04 version - a Long Term Support release with 5 years support, no less. :tiphat:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

What a shame! After 10 years to get all the department computers to switch to Linux....

....the city of Munich is thinking of getting back to Windows.

 

[Ghostrider]

Well, if they haven't completed the switchover in 10 years, I'd say something is wrong.

Seriously, license costs cannot be an issue. The government wastes way much more money in useless stuff. More than the costs of software license, which actually cost less when you're dealing with public administration and lots of machines. Being independent from a US company may make more sense (especially with security in mind) but that should be dealt with at the Federal level.

Maybe if more cities had joined in the costs would have gone down. And maybe again, having Microsoft offices on city ground means more jobs and tax money.

 

[Enjo]

users in the rest of Germany that use other (Microsoft) software have had trouble with the files generated by Munich's open source applications.

Maybe if more cities had joined in the costs would have gone down.

This too, but I generally dislike how incompatibility of one user-space software (LibreOffice) with MS Office results in scapegoating the whole GNU/Linux.
Secondly, the incompatibility is nothing that can't be fixed, but big projects like LibreOffice although free, could sure use some funding to get it done. Especially since:

The Council says the use of open source software has yielded savings of more than €10 million (more than $13 million).

Although the developers work for free, still a commercial quality expected from their software, and that they can be criticized from boss-like perspective. But hey. The guy is an MS fanboy after all.

Jobs at MS? I'm not taking any. We're short of intelligent and educated people willing to work here at IT, not IT jobs
But seriously, of course, the less competition I have on the open jobs market, the more I earn.

 

[kamaz]

The Council says the use of open source software has yielded savings of more than €10 million (more than $13 million).

That's completely laughable -- it works out to 0.7EUR per citizen per year.

users in the rest of Germany that use other (Microsoft) software have had trouble with the files generated by Munich's open source applications.

So there was a cost in lost productivity, which is not being accounted for.

---------- Post added at 06:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------

Maybe if more cities had joined in the costs would have gone down.

The whole thing failed because it was being done backwards.

The problem is that everywhere you have Office, you have heaps of business logic implemented in the form of VBA macros and/or super-complex Excel formulas (and don't even get me started on Access). This code officially does not exist -- it is not accounted for anywhere, it was written by computer-savvy employees to make their own jobs easier and then shared within the organization. So throwing out Office means throwing out working business code, in which case, either someone has to rewrite it for the new platform, or the employees are back to doing things manually.

Of course the right thing to do would be to rewrite this business code as proper cross-platform (Java) applications, however even a quick analysis will tell you that the whole thing would be cost-prohibitive. Especially because some genius will invariably decide to build the whole thing on top of SAP. Suddenly, what has before amounted to writing an Excel formula, now requires writing an offical requirements document and getting five signatures, so the $250-per-hour SAP consultant can be brought in. That is of course assuming that you have already completed the public procurement process for choosing the SAP consultant for the current budget year.