Early Testers Say Vista RC1 Not Ready 457
digihome writes "A number of partners and analysts who have downloaded Vista RC1 say the code is solid but they are not convinced it will be ready for release this fall. A Directions on Microsoft analyst said, 'I would call this at best a Beta Three and not a Release Candidate One.'"
RC1? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fud (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm getting really tired of people predicting how vista or anything will do based on anecdotal evidence
actually using the product in question and reflecting upon its immaturity is anecdotal evidence?
Well that was informative... (Score:5, Insightful)
The more interesting question is that of nomenclature. I agree that this is Beta3 - but more because an RC everywhere else is something that is ready to go, it just needs spit and polish to get it ready, fix a couple of bugs. Then again, this is what Microsoft is telling people to test their applications against to check for breakages, so yes, I suppose you could call it a "Certification Beta" or what have you. But call it what you may, I think it's the Ultimate version, with all the games, and goodies, that needs more time. Enterprise-wise, it looks stable enough for use - networking is better than XP (even though it's a new stack), group policy has been better fine tuned, UAC is usable enough, and hardware detection is light-years ahead of XP. All of those basic things are ready and if thats what enterprise customers are expected to get, then I think it's good to go, after they fix the occaisonal dialog box with three different fonts.
I just wish there was something truly innovative to encourage an upgrade. Halo 2 doesn't count, especially for business!
Re:I'm Jumping Ship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fud (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista has major Explorer bugs, still in evidence. Thumbnail rendering (the default setting)is buggy, and causes crashes.
DivX codec is a big culprit here. On trying to render the thumbnail, the codec causes an excepton under Vista. Explorer SHOULD trap this, and render a grey square, or something.
Instead, explorer faults, and the entire desktop - including the menu, taskbar, and any current file transfers - goes HUP.
The "cure" is to check the option for opening all new explorer windows in their own process. That's incredibly wasteful of resources - of course, if you can run Vista at speed... you probably already have a Lamborghini. You can also tell explorer to never render thumbnails. Seems like a real waste, 'tho'.
Re:RC1? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'm Jumping Ship (Score:5, Insightful)
From an aesthetic point of view, MacOS X is a no-brainer. You can run Photoshop on it, and if you decide the GIMP or other open source applications are your cup of tea, you can run them too.
Also, if you do video or plan to do video, the Apple applications are absolutely unbeatable.
D
In my experience with RC1 (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why Vista is definitely *not* ready for release though, is the overall design of the OS itself. Vista has no unified feel to its design, and certain key changes from Windows xp feel more cumbersome(or at the very least awkward to get adjusted to).
Vista really does highlight the differences in design philosophy that went into it versus Mac OS X. While technology implementation wise the two OS's are rather similar in what they can offer the user, OS X goes to great pains to offer a unified and relatively easy to use design. Vista, on the other hand, feels exactly the way it was designed: done in pieces by various different groups then pieced together.
The short of it is the core of Vista, baring a few more bug fixes and performance improvements, is certainly there. But, Vista right now is like that unassembled bike you got as a kid for Christmas. All the parts are there but you can't quite get it fitted together right.
In my honest opinion Vista needs about 3 more months and one more major release to get the final kinks out of the system performance and bug wise, but then it needs another 6 months of heavy and pure public beta use and feedback to get the interface and design unified into a user friendly operating system. As it stands right now, I think performance and bug wise Vista should be pretty much ok by the time the consumer release hits in January, but it is going to be far more cumbersome and even less intuitive to use than Windows XP is on release.
Let's define "RC"/Beta/Alpha (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the inconvenient fact that everyone who has seen it knows that's simply nonsense. In reality, this is a late alpha (unoptimized, feature incomplete, substantial bugs remain) or at best an early beta (feature complete, largely optimized, some bugs remain), but based on reports calling this a Beta is being generous. But to call it a release candidate is absurd. No way! Seriously, we're STILL hearing reports of features being removed from the product.
Re:hmmm? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, perhaps its not that bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Normally (Score:3, Insightful)
This time they are just lying. It's Beta 3 but they don't want to call it that since people are so discontent with how behind schedule they are.
Re:Fud (Score:3, Insightful)
The review was based on an install done on a Powerbook.
Look at what... (Score:4, Insightful)
When will Microsoft, with all its economic power and marketing prowess, realize that they need to take the plunge and go open source? When will they realize that by mixing all of their software with lots of stuff from the FOSS community, they can grow the functionality of their software by orders of magnitude while increasing its stability?
Re:Well, perhaps its not that bad (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh yeah totally. Just like the last time. Oh and the time before that. Linux still has a far way to go before the average user will be capable of slapping a linux installation onto a machine and be comfortable using it. But keep dreaming!
No wait.
Stop dreaming, and get back to making Linux user friendly.
Re:Fud (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:hmmm? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a real problem for Linux. You can get there, but only for certain hardware, and there is often a lot of blood sacrifice involved. I have even seen WiFi drivers that kernel panic linux. There is a good argument that this is because the vendors are not supporting linux, and have heavily restricted access to the driver APIs. But you still cannot count it as a place where linux is superior to Windows.
There are lots of other places were linux is simply not polished enough... or better said: is rather rough. It has been improving, but still has a long way to go.
Re:How is it MS' fault? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the job of the Windows Explorer to recover gracefully from faulty plugins/libraries.
It wouldn't matter the source. If the plugin faults - Explorer should trap this and revert to its default/null response, as if no plugin were present.
If you are not trapping this generically, you have an incomplete design.
Re:Well that was informative... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmmm? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I mean is Windows 2003 cost about 800$
Linux (Most distro come at NO cost)
Second Windows is supported by a huge corporation (and support device reseller (ie Wifi, SATA, MB, WinModem)
Linux is created by a bunch of "lunatic" (I'm one of them)
Windows aims to be as easy to use as possible (Lower cost of ownership = Low salary wages) (Check box, Wizard)
Linux aims to be as "powerfull"/features/customizable as possible. Complete Config txt files.
So Windows is easy and Linux is complexe (high learning curves)
When you ask "Name one thing Linux does worse than Windows" there are tons of stuff, others will probably point some of them to you. My point remains, Linux and Windows are not on the same playfield.
Don't you think ?
Re:Fud (Score:3, Insightful)
But the trick, according to the conspiracy theory, is that no one actually upgrades Windows. They buy a PC, which happens to have Windows sold with it by the OEM. I have never upgraded a copy of Windows until I bought my next PC, which came with the OEM version of the next release.
Vista will take over, not because we'll upgrade en-masse, but because people will buy new PCs with it installed by default.
Re:We all know what's gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmmm? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't. I disagree completely.
Basically your argument is what windows users use when Linux is eating windows' lunch in the server market. which, by the way, it is doing. Only Linux and Windows are gaining market share in this space now (they seem to trade off gaining ground here and there, but that could simply be due to the release of various studies at various times.)
Linux is competing directly with Windows. Period. It's competing for the desktop (somewhat poorly) and it's competing for the server market (with great success.) It's competing for the embedded market (where it has made serious inroads against the incumbents, including the aptly-named wince) quite well, too; for instance, I work in a Casino, and I walked in one day and saw kernel messages on a slot machine that had just rebooted. Using Linux for slot machines is something of a no-brainer due to the high level of security and reliability, and low cost.
By the way, have you even used Ubuntu yet? The learning curve on that is, if anything, shallower than Windows. The install is easier, and using it is no harder.
Re:hmmm? (Score:2, Insightful)
(Both storage methods allow for GUI tools to configure the software in question, they're equal in that respect.)
Price is too high, but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm Jumping Ship (Score:5, Insightful)
What we need is a mod rating of "-1, crack baby".
Re:hmmm? (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is Windows is taking either new marketshare, or from existing non-Windows installs, whereas Linux is largely just displacing legacy unix installs.
I'm highly sceptical of any assertions Linux is "eating Windows's lunch" in the server world - the evidence simply doesn't bear it out.
I also have to agree with the GP. By and large, Windows and Linux are not competing in the same market spaces (there are some crossovers, eg: webservers, but not that many). On the Desktop it's not even worth talking about - OS X is the real competition to Windows there. On the server side, most people who are after a Windows server, are after it because of functionality Linux can't provide as well (if at all). Similarly, for people actively looking at Linux as a server OS, it's unlikely they'll be considering Windows, usually due to an existing reliance on a unix-like systems (be it software or skill sets), or the higher licensing costs (although that's almost always false economy).
We use both Windows and Linux servers, and the Linux machines vastly outnumber the Windows ones. However, where we do use Windows, Linux is simply not an option - domain controllers, fileserving, groupware, windows-only software. Similarly, where we use Linux - mostly for in-house applications - Windows is a relatively poor choice due to its lack of easy customisability.
I can't think of a single Windows server we have that I would want to replace with a Linux server (and, believe, me, I've considered and even trialled it many times). Likewise, I can't think of any of our Linux servers that would be better off running Windows.
Re:hmmm? (Score:2, Insightful)
Asynchronous I/O. API/ABI stability. A development process that isn't design-driven.
Personally, I'm struggling to think of anything Linux does notably *better*, on a totally technical basis. LVM and software RAID are the only things I can come up with and even the former arguably has more to do with Linux tending to be used more for lower-end hardware tha anything else (Linux's LVM, however, is excellent and unmatched in any other stock-standard OS, with the possible exception of Solaris).
Or perhaps you might convince me that OSX is not superior to Windows, again, on a technical basis.
OS X has atrocious performance. There are technical reasons, I am sure, why this is so, but Windows (and Linux) spank it in performance - *expecially* interactive GUI performance in the case of Windows (with the exception of certain eyecandy that's handled almost completely by the video card). Its scheduling isn't particularly good either - multitasking in OS X is not as good as Windows or Linux - again, especially in terms of GUI interactiveness.
OS X *is* a more advanced OS in some areas, but given how much newer it is, it would damn well want to be. Windows "XP" (ie: Windows NT) was conceived in the late '80s and first released in 1993. You'd certainly hope an OS only released in 2000 that was largely just a warmed over version of an earlier OS (NeXT) would introduce something new.
Hell, just talk me into believing that Windows is a better candidate than BeOS for the user desktop, even in its current state, and I'll be amazed.
BeOS was only single user, therefore less secure. This is before we even get into things like little hardware support, a questionable network stack and it's poor handling of higher end machines (eg: large memory hacks). BeOS's widespread use of multithreading (which Windows also has) was about its most technologically interesting feature. It's kind of hard to make any meaningful comparison, though, since BeOS was never really finished and hasn't been under worthwhile active development for a very long time.
The simple truth is that Windows is technologically retarded compared either to OSX or Linux, its two most significant competitors.
The simple truth is that all contemporary OSes are largely a wash, technologically speaking. Linux is probably the *least* interesting of the bunch, since most of its features were already present in its competitors long, long before they appeared in it (eg: the O(1) scheduler that was such a big milestone, Windows NT had since its first release) and "new" features tend to be reimplementations after they appear on other platforms.
Re:hmmm? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmmm? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't really leave BeOS in if you're going to disallow NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux for being "relatively unfinished".
I don't think a serious argument can be made for Windows 95 being superior to OS/2 3.0, except in the area of available software.
Single Input Queue.
I was an OS/2 user back in the day (migrated to NT4 Beta 2 in early 1996) and I think picking between Windows 95 and OS/2, without any historical influence, would be extrememly difficult. OS/2 technical had "better" multitasking and memory protection, but in actual usage - particularly if you were only using 32 bit applications and drivers in Windows 95 - the two of them were basically the same. Windows 95 was much nicer in terms of hardware resources and was more usable on lower end machines. I only stuck with OS/2 because I already had a significant investment in OS/2 software (NT4 - even at Beta 2 stage - was vastly superior to both in pretty much every way, which was why I switched).
This is also ignoring hardware support, something which Windows 95 had orders of magnitude more of.
Oh and, Windows 95 can't take credit for plug and play. Most of that is done by the hardware; the OS can choose to move things around to other settings, but typically it does not. The drivers are more responsible for this.
How it's done is irrelevant. Windows 95 was the first mainstream OS that supported it (and you *did* need support on the OS side as well back then).
So basically, Windows 95 was a sad, sad joke even then.
Not even close. Windows 95 did what it was designed to do exceptionally well (too well, if anything - it and Windows 98 arguably worked so well they knocked back the migration to Windows NT by several years). It allowed people to install it on reasoanbly priced hardware of the time. It gave them complete backwards compatibility with all their existing software and a substantial chunk of their existing hardware (ie: peripherals).
Nothing else even came close. OS/2 needed at least as much - more, IMHO - hardware resources and had worse legacy support. Linux wasn't even playing the same game in terms of important capabilities (software, UI, hardware support). Windows NT required *way* too much hardware grunt and had even worse legacy software capabilities than OS/2. MacOS required expensive new hardware and software. NeXT required frighteningly expensive new hardware and software.
For those who had access to the media, and had no hardware requiring Windows 95, even NT 3.51 was a better choice.
Untrue. NT 3.51 had substantially higher hardware requirements, the sucky old Windows 3.x interface and dramatically worse legacy software support.
Then along came NT4, with support for that hardware, but with less separation between memory spaces, and it was probably about half as reliable as 3.51.
But with substantially better performance. For the market space, the performance was more important. Not to mention if you stuck with the bog-standard VGA driver the stability difference was negligible.
It all makes sense now. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bad, because people might decide it's worth sticking with indefinitely.
Therefore, themasses must be goaded into upgrading to a shiny! new! OS which is a 1.0.0 release at best and will require umpteen more rounds of patching.
This is, of course, accomplished by EOLing past versions, and pointing out that oh, by the way, the latest batch of 43 security vulnerabilities has been in every version since Windows 3.11 and will only be fixed in this shiny! new! version.
Re:Microsoft Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Dammit, twitter. Every time I stumble on one of your posts, it's like an icepick in my ear.
Typos aside, that's the one fair statement in the whole post. Microsoft has monopoly power, so there's nowhere to go but down.
Ah, typical twitter logic. "Hmm, I want to get my software on 90% of desktops in the world. I'm not building it for that nasty, tricksy Windowses. If I make it cross-platform, somebody might run it on Windows anyway. I know! I'll write it for Linux, then wait for 90% of the desktops in the world to convert! And if anybody asks for a Windows version, I'll tell them to fuck off! Then they'll convert to Linux for sure!"
Oh, bloody hell. I fell into a decade-long coma again? The first time, The Police broke up. Now Linux has conquered the desktop and Microsoft went Chapter 11, and they're just building keyboards and mice for Sun?! At least my hairstyle is back in fashion again.
Of course, the only reason you picked that quote from the parent post in the first place was because somewhere, deep down, you recognized yourself in it.
Re:Microsoft Resources (Score:4, Insightful)
No, just the cognitive dissonance of how someone who, by all evidence, knows Linux well can allow their primitive, reactive hindbrain to lash out at every post about Microsoft with such aggression and hatred.
Re:hmmm? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the home desktop, you could be right. I don't think you are, but you could be. It's still true that you can get a dinky low-end PC (the slowest crappiest PC you can buy new today is sufficient for 99% of the population, probably) and slap Linux on it for probably half the price of the cheapest Macintosh. Oh sure, it's a bit less powerful, but that won't even affect most people.
Macintosh does have something Linux doesn't, and that's marketing. If I were to think of one place money could best be spent to promote Linux, it would be advertising. Get the word out. Put out some clever TV commercials, etc.
On the corporate desktop, most companies won't even consider macintosh computers, because they can't be maintained the same way other PCs can - you just don't have access to the same commodity parts, which is mostly to say you can't just throw a new motherboard in a machine that HAS to be up today and reinstall the OS for drivers - if your OS even demands that, like Linux doesn't. Obviously there are some stunning counterexamples. NeXTStep rides again. Too bad it didn't gain acceptance when nobody else had features like those.
Linux can be a DC, but you're right, I wouldn't do that either. And that active directory shit wouldn't be necessary if it weren't a big fat windows network to begin with. Anyway, tt's better at being a fileserver than Windows, so I think you're on drugs there. Samba can participate in your windows network, and last I checked (not so long ago) Samba on Linux served files faster than Windows did. There's Linux groupware. Of course, there's always the windows-only software thing. That's not going to go away for a long time.
Actually Linux has a ton of features that make it one of the most compelling NAS OSes around, which is why so many of them are based on it. Linux md is a great software RAID system, and it's cheaper to add another CPU core and a half-gig of RAM to your system than it is to use a HW accelerated RAID. It's also faster. Then there's the fact that it supports every popular network filesharing system that has ever been, that's pretty compelling.
We're all familiar with the phrase "the hidden costs of running Linux" - but what about the hidden costs of running windows? Not least, that all of us giving them money are funding their fiendish plots to stamp out computing freedom which are simply enacted in order to achieve their financial goals. (For a prime example, I give you: Windows DRM.)
Of course, we've wandered off into the territory of the ideologue here. I do feel that Linux can stand purely on its technical merits.
Re:hmmm? (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly you can. But a hell of a lot more people use Mac Minis, MacBooks, iMacs, etc than use bottom-end PCs running Linux.
Macintosh does have something Linux doesn't, and that's marketing.
Actually, the biggest thing "Macintosh" has that "Linux" doesn't is people selling it. Plus widespread commercial support (both hardware and software), better usability and better software integration. Apple hardware also tends to be fairly solid (if somewhat more expensive) - something that can be a bit hit and miss with PCs.
If I were to think of one place money could best be spent to promote Linux, it would be advertising. Get the word out. Put out some clever TV commercials, etc.
No-one is really trying to sell Linux PCs (and make no mistake, average consumers don't buy OSes, they buy computers). Given that in the cutthroat world of PCs, the economic advantage of being able to undercut your competitors on price by ~$50 (roughly the OEM cost of Windows) is huge, I think that's pretty indicative that no-one thinks Linux is a strong competitor to either Windows or Mac in that market space.
On the corporate desktop, most companies won't even consider macintosh computers, because they can't be maintained the same way other PCs can - you just don't have access to the same commodity parts, which is mostly to say you can't just throw a new motherboard in a machine that HAS to be up today and reinstall the OS for drivers - if your OS even demands that, like Linux doesn't.
Assuming by "corporate world" you mean "big business" and not "small company", then I think any suggestions people aren't buying Macs because they can't just throw an off the shelf replacement part in is rather naive (and that's ignoring that a significant proportion of hardware in modern Macs *is* replacable with off the shelf parts). The corporate world works on 3 or 5 year warranties and *loathes* having to do such hands-on maintenance itself - particularly especially labour intensive work like changing motherboards - because it's more expensive.
(There are exceptions to this, of course, but they're few and far between.)
Macs are (relatively) unpopular in business because they're relatively expensive, because until quite recently they didn't integrate particularly well into existing infrastructure and because frighteningly large numbers of businesses rely on poorly written software, often developed in-house and/or no longer maintained, that only runs on Windows.
Obviously there are some stunning counterexamples. NeXTStep rides again. Too bad it didn't gain acceptance when nobody else had features like those.
That probably had something to do with its pricetag.
Linux can be a DC, but you're right, I wouldn't do that either.
As far as I know, Samba can't be an Active Directory Domain Controller and, to be quite frank, even if the developers said it could, it would have to demonstrate trouble-free running in such a role for a good year or two before I'd trust it as an integral piece of infrastructure (not that I have anything against the Samba developers, or question their abilities, but their entire application *is* based around reverse engineering another very large, very complex piece of software).
And that active directory shit wouldn't be necessary if it weren't a big fat windows network to begin with.
If better alternatives were widespread and cheaper, they'd be used instead. Not to mention, AD stands up quite well on its own merits.
Anyway, tt's better at being a fileserver than Windows, so I think you're on drugs t