Microsoft Windows 2001 Beta Slips Out 601
Phredd was among the first to write with this news: "A copy of MS Windows 2001 beta has been leaked out to the Net. I wonder if it will have fixed any of the 65,000 documented bugs. No one is installing Win2k so I guess the MS marketing machine is trying to get rev 2 out the door ... New and Improved! Only 32k bugs! Geesh ..."
Here's the story on 2001-pre, codenamed Whistler.
Now, if the MPAA and the DMCA can exert enough pressure to get Napster pulled from thousands of sites, and if U.S. copyright law is enough of a spur to arrest teenagers in Norway, what will be the fate of ftp sites which (knowingly or unknowingly) host this one?
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:1)
Guide to being a karma whore (Score:1)
By the way, the article says that Whistler will not be a consumer oriented release, but both consumer and business since M$ is dropping Neptune and Odyssey.
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:1)
*** Wow - you yell oh so well... OK, if you were to look, you would see that I'm not sending this message from microsoft, that yes, the company I work for is a phone company...
After using Windows forever, and Linux off and on for the past couple of years (and throw NetWare in to boot), Win2K isn't all that bad. I've been an avid NT user for a long time now...When I first started testing Win2K, it was on a p200 box with 64M of memory. It worked fine (albeit a tad slow due to the p200). The same box - Linux installed fine (albeit, slower than my p2-450, but slightly faster in "response" to me, on my p200 box).
Win2K works with just about ALL the hardware out today (with the exception of some 4-5 yr old stuff). Can anyone say that for Linux? No. I didn't think so. Bugs in Win2K? Sure. There's bugs and security issues in EVERY OS (Linux, Solaris, DG Unix, Windows, etc)...So what...there's not a DAMN thing in the world that can be open to other hardware and be compatible with other software and be 100% bugfree...Just get over it.
Some people like Windows (of whatever flavor), some like *nix.....As was once said "can't we all just get along?"
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:1)
I am not bashing M$, i use Win95 while typing this, but Linux works on more machines than Win2000 ever will. I think its more reasonable to introduce Linux as an upgrade rather than Win2000, if you want to keep using your old computer. I myself like to keep the old machines doing work and not have to go out and dish out cash for new hardware.
Maybe Bill was misquoted (Score:1)
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:1)
Ah, the, eat shit 50 billion flies can't be wrong theory eh?
What exactly does Mr. Gates ability to unfairly control and manipulate the desktop operating environment have to do with the quality of Microsoft's latest OS offering? I just don't see the relationship between Mr. Gate's wealth on paper, and the quality of his company's software offerings. McDonalds shareholders are rich, doesn't make the food taste any better though.
I'll admit it, I haven't run WIN2k. I'll go further to say that I do not plan on running it, or any other Microsoft product any time too soon. Billy ain't got enough money to pay me to run his crap! (my opinion) I'd like to say though in closing, if it works for you, more power to you (and more RAM, more HDD space, more CPU cycles...). I got better things to do than ride the MicroMerry-Go-Round, like download a new distro of Linux, every now and again, to try out the latest offerings. On my now 3 year old hardware. I haven't tried it, but something tells me WIN2K wouldn't even boot on my system (P233 64MB RAM). Like I said if it works for you fine, what I do works for me.
Don't all of you Windows trolls like have your own websites you guys can post in? Last time I looked the slash was leaning forward here. Any OS with a popular command worded like see colon enter gives me pause...
There's a sucker born every minute. --P. T. Barnum
Informative?...maybe. Accurate?...nope. (Score:1)
Windows 2000 Sales Brisk [winntmag.com]
Microsoft says that it has already sold more than 500,000 retail copies in the 2 weeks since Win2K's introduction. Retail sales are traditionally at the low end of the sales spectrum, especially for a business-oriented product such as Win2K
These numbers don't include corporate upgrades, and I suspect we'll have to wait a few months before we have any accurate data about them.
Re:Am I the only one who likes Windows 2000 !? (Score:1)
My win2k machine, BTW, has run flawlessly since the day I installed it. No reboots and no crashes, and not even any "illegal operations." At home, on my largely mongrel homemade PC, win2k has also run flawlessly. But you just can't tell that to *nix guys 'cause they still, in their minds, substitute the stability of 16-bit windows 3.1 when they think about NT.
Don't get me wrong. Linux is a great thing, and they're great guys. Just, as a rule, I've seen on
1. inaccurate
2. horribly biased
3. overstated
You don't have to lie and obscure the facts to prove that linux is a better platform. That's what billg does. If it truly is, the "fact will leak out without too much assistance" . . .
Re:I wonder what happens to the... leaker... (Score:1)
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop... (Score:1)
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:1)
I remember going into the Social Security office in Orlando Fl. about 5 years ago to replace a lost SS card. They were running IBM PS/2's with some kind of CLI. Just thought I'd mention that.
Not silly (Score:1)
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:1)
I thought the telnet server for W2K was a pretty sweet add-on, although if I had a W2K box I guess I'd want to be running SSH instead... But to really feel at home I'd have to install BASH and the other UNIX tools. And then... well, what's the point, eh? I'd rather run Linux, have all the good stuff run natively, and run xdos over SSH if I ever need to...
It isn't hard for something to be a "tremendous improvement" over NT and 9x. I really doubt W2K is that, in all areas. It has higher system requirements and worse hardware compatibility. But that's the future for you, eh?
The companies roll out what they think the customers want, especially if Microsoft gives them a discount. And I don't know about Compaq or GE, but DELL really *IS* an Intel / Microsoft stooge. They try to sell computers with RAMBUS memory, for crying out loud!
There are many ways to define success. If Bill Gates cared about his customers even a tenth as much as he cares about his money, or the success of his company, I'd reward him for it. As it is, though, I fart in his general direction.
I used DOS since 3.2, and I still have a copy of DOS 2.0. I used Windows 3.1, and even though I didn't like it, I knew it well, got it to work, and found out what everything did. That all changed in Win '95, and it pissed me off. I couldn't figure out how a company could make their product less stable, more bloated, more annoying, less useful, and hide more helpful stuff from the user. Before, it was "edit WINBLAH.INI to make the problem go away". Now, it's "reboot the computer and pray".
So why do I use Linux? Because I don't trust "faith healing" as a valid system recovery method. It's *my* computer, and I'd like to know what its doing and why. I think my Operating System owes me that much. So Microsoft lost a power user. Ha ha ha ha ha.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Slashdot/Andover/VA Linux has lots of reasons (Score:1)
>that is a strong contender as a server and light years ahead of Linux
>for the desktop.
Yeah right. Then why has the use of Apache hit 60% despite the release of Win2K for instance? Remember Apache isn't really used/run under MS OS's
Re:I wonder what happens to the... leaker... (Score:1)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Feh. Even OS/2 sold one million in a month. (Score:1)
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Mac, NT, Win95, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody! (Score:1)
Why do I keep hearing people complain about a lack of SMP support in the SB Live! driver? The SB Live! driver has had SMP support since mid-November, about two weeks after it became open source! It's certainly not hard to find if you look for it. Go to opensource.creative.com and grab a snapshot or check it out of CVS. It will work under the latest 2.2.x or 2.3.x. Just watch out for the recently introduced occasional device-close freeze bug that's still being tracked down. (Haven't been able to reliably reproduce the bug yet so it may be a couple weeks or so)
Windows installations (Score:1)
Re:Win2000 (Score:1)
Well, then, can I have them? :)
Re:Did ya ever think just maybe? (Score:1)
You're right, M$ probably did fudge the numbers. My post was in no way supportive of Microsoft, their products, etc. If it weren't for Descent 3 and the lack of a good media player for Linux, I wouldn't use Windoze at all. I was merely pointing out that the comment 'No one is installing...' is pitifully inaccurate.
At the risk of sounding like YASWAC (Yet Another Slashdot Whiner And Complainer), comments like that are childish and diminish the quality of Slashdot, IMO. I wish 'timothy' had chosen another poster's intro that was less biased.
Cheers....
Re:¿ Paranoico ? (Score:1)
I read somewhere: never put to malice what can be put to dumbness.
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Re:Links in Spanish about PCWorld's full Win2000 (Score:1)
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Tab auto-completion (Score:1)
How do you enable tab auto-complete in NT 4?
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www.activewin.com - Solaris? (Score:1)
what's www.activewin.com [netcraft.com]
Re:Windows installations (Score:1)
And besides, memory is *cheap*. So what if Linux can boot in less memory? My Commodore 64 could boot with even less, big deal.
Fake? (Score:1)
Maybe I can if I try really hard.
I don't know...
Re:They wont fix any bugs - errr remove any featur (Score:1)
and software bugs in computers can kill you very easily. i see you don't realise how much computer systems run our little mud ball of a planet. take for example a hospital, check out how many critical systems they have that run embedded software. let someone leave bugs in them, and watch the body count pile up, oh, of course it may not happen, since its less code, and it is tested damn well before it can even be put into use. but the potential for it is there. and think about the systems that is being used now by doctors to send your medical history to the pharmacy for you to get your prescription, and if the wrong drug or doseage gets prescribed.. well my friend, it was nice knowing you.
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:2)
BTW, I have installed Win2000 and ran it for a week. Granted it was a bit more stable than my Win98 which crashes weekly and needs to be rebooted daily thanks to memory leaks, it still has its shares of crashes. In fact, INTERNET EXPLORER 5.5 IN PARTICULAR WOULD OFTEN CRASH, AND AFTER RECOVERING ALL MY RUNNING PROGRAMS WOULD NOT APPEAR ON THE START BAR OR THE TRAYBAR, SO I WOULD HAVE TO USE THE TASK MANAGER TO CLOSE THEM AND RESTART THEM. THIS WAS PRETTY ANNOYING.
That and the colossal hardware requirement (64MB and 2G partition was apparently not enough for a quick trial run) and the fact that backwards compatibility is killed with at least half of the games that run on Win98, made it worth my time to uninstall and restore the Win98 ghost image.
So here is my PERSONAL TESTIMONY that Win2000 indeed does crash, kills backwards compatibility, has huge hardware requirements, and can just be plain fucking annoying. Maybe this will mitigate all the anonymous posts from MS employees that pretend Win2000 is really stable. By the way, I have several friends that find Win2000 completely unusable as a desktop environment (though as a server is pretty reliable). For example, one friend showed me how dialup networking will eat up 100% of his idle cpu time in the system monitor, despite running no programs in the background or foreground. Another friend has big latency problems running networked games such as Starcraft or Unreal Tournament. They both have uninstalled Win2000 since.
Re:Come on people, is Windows really that bad? (Score:2)
You appear to be trying to be reasonable, but I have my doubts.
Firstly - I'm a profesional programmer with 15 years industry experience.
Secondly - the company that I work for uses Windows.
Thirdly - my machine at home run's Linux with the Gnome desktop.
In terms of overall ease of use, the Gnome desktop and Windows are about the same. I don't use MS Office so in that regard I'm just as happy with Gnome as I am with Windows. The difference is that under Gnome I have a lot more control than I can ever have under Windows.
As for writting programs that do what I want, there is just no comparisson. VB and VC++ are like shaving your head with a cheese gratter - one mistake and it's your blood everywhere. Admitedly, Gnome still has a way to go in terms of some things in the user interface area, but it's getting there ( and fairly quickly ).
However, that doesn't change the fact that Windows is a fundamentally great and solid product.
Have you tried running Windows continuously for more than a day without rebooting? Methinks you are definatly streaching the bounds of credibility here sirrah!
I remember a few years ago trying out OS2 (from IBM); it was then that I started truly appreciating Windows.
Bad comparisson. OS/2 has allways been more robust but less user friendly than Windows. They were designed for two fundementally different markets ( OS/2 for scientists/engineers/specialized control systems, Windows for the room temperature IQ types in management ).
In terms of Linux, as already stated, Gnome is pretty good ( as long as you have a stable version installed - the one included with RedHat 6.0 is flaky. 6.1 is much better, so don't judge Gnome on your experience with only one version ).
So to answer your question - yes, there is something which at least as good a desktop environment as Windows. It's called Linux with Gnome. It may take a little bit longer getting up the learning curve than Windows does but it's not that difficult and once you get there you can say goodbye to Windows for good ( at least on your own machines ).
number of releases! (Score:2)
I don't hate Microsoft (by the way it is Microsoft, not M$, Microsloth, Micro$oft, Microcrap, or any other play on the name you trolls) like many slashdot readers . I am just dissapointed that a company with the resources it has turns out a bloated, unstable, and security flawed OS.
odd labels (Score:2)
Someone relabeled one, "ELevator Girls in Bondage"--a label which apparently remained for at least a couple of years.
Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody! (Score:2)
I'm actually getting sick of hearing this. The very fact that your post got moderated up means that slashdot isn't a complete Linux troll central station. You proved yourself wrong.
If you don't want to see MS bashing posts, do as other sensible people do here and browse at +1.
And yet you go on to post here on slashdot a review of Windows 2000. What does that have to do with the topic? It should have been -1'd to death as off-topic.
Windows and Linux (Score:2)
Linux does not support my generic SCSI card/CDR, so I am forced to use Windows 95. Windows 98 dosent like my CDR and i'm scared to even know what Windows 2000 will do with it.
Why Windows 95? Because it is fast, small, works with my cdrom and dosent crash toooo often. In my mind, Windows 95 was bascially the last stable version of Windows.. now I may be wrong because I haven't seen Windows 2000 yet, but 98 was just a waste.
I just thought I would share my setup with others.
--
Scott Miga
suprax@linux.com
Re:Come on people, is Windows really that bad? (Score:2)
If you want to use a cute toy OS that crashes constantly and manages memory like Krusty the Clown manages money, then go buy a Mac. Along with the OS, you'll get a proprietary box that is bound to clash with the color scheme of your home or office.
If you want to use a bloated OS with the esthetic charm of a circa '75 Chevy station wagon* and the rock-solid stability of the Jell-O (tm) family of products, then by all means install Windows. A good reason to upgrade to Windows 2000 is the new blue screen of death - it's really, really pretty!
If you enjoy reading through page after page of badly written documentation and editing cryptic files in order to perform trivial tasks, then Linux, FreeBSD, or any other UNIX would be the OS for you. A longing to learn new keyboard shortcuts for every application is also helpful.
I use a Mac and a Windows NT box at work, and Windows 2000 and Linux at home. They all have their advantages, and they all have their disadvantages. There is no one perfect OS yet. The Holy Grail would be an OS with wide application support, rock-solid stability, a short learning curve, easy maintenance and troubleshooting, and extreme flexibility, but we're not there yet.
* Yes, as a matter of fact I did rip that off from Neal Stephenson.
Re:ReWindows 2.12=win2001 (Score:2)
Re:They wont fix any bugs - errr remove any featur (Score:2)
By that rule no one will ever produce a bug free product. And while I realize that's probably true (that there are no bug free projects) I don't see how you have the right to bash M$ over it.
Re:In a word yes. (Score:2)
At home, I usually only reboot about once every 6 months or so (I let it rest a while during Chrismas and in the summer, when I'm away for longer periods of time). (Need I say that it runs Linux?)
But at work I have to reboot about every other week to once a month, almost every time due to "Out of virtual memory"-reasons (NT4SP6). Whenever that happens, NT goes ballistic... Other than that, NT isn't too bad, if you have X-Win32 and a VNC-server installed :-)
Distributers of financial data do it (Score:2)
Cheers,
Ben
Re:BugNet Posts Top 30 Win2k Bug List (Score:2)
While far from a bug list, here's a couple things that have left me baffled in my brief experience with Linux in the last few weeks.
1. If I install Red Hat on a certain set of Machines (Gateway 2000 P5-120 & P5-166's) X fails to start. Every time, after a clean install, it detects the card right, but doesn't work, just bombs back to the command prompt.
2. X works fine in Mandrake, BUT, the ethernet cards do not! They work fine in Red Hat, however. Again, they're detected, and as far as I can tell are using the same drivers, but they don't work.
3. Corel Linux works fine with both of these things, right out of the box. Yes, I know Corel is based on Debian, not Red Hat. I'm just saying that it works.
I tried this on four different machines, same basic configuration, with the same results. And while I didn't spend hours trying to troubleshoot it or anything, I'd consider any of these to be more of a "show-stopping" bug than that list of Windows 2000 glitches.
I'm not trying to say Windows 2000 is better than Linux, don't get me wrong, I just get a little sick of the holier-than-thou attitude around here sometimes, as if Linux is perfect, and doesn't have any bugs.
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Linux groupies just jealous (Score:2)
I like the referance on here recently, about people who think Msft *must* make great software because their a multi-billion code shop, must also think McDonalds serves up really great chow because they're the worlds largest restaurant chain.
I see it all the time - all you have to do is upgrade one employee for a valid business reason, and suddenly all the other employees get jealous and feel left out and wanna status symbol too! No doubt Msft has learned to play on peoples petty emotions, like intellectual fashion leaders who can just change this years style to sell a bunch of new clothes when the old one's arent even worn out yet. But that's human nature in the ol' rat race!
Bugs (Score:2)
We just don't know what they are yet. The basis for that count is Microsoft's list of bugs they have already found, which I doubt has much relationship to the number of bugs lurking in the OS, waiting to be discovered.
D
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Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop -here we go again (Score:2)
This would make sense, because the hardware requirements of the product are so daunting.
Windows 2000 is an automatic revenue generator simply because people will automatically receive it with new higher-end computers. So I don't think it will be such a disaster as to bankrupt Microsoft.
But I don't doubt that few upgrade sales will show up compared to what they "should" be.
D
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Re:Wondering about Microsoft strategy... (Score:2)
Looking around me at the various computers that my company owns, I see the following:
Windows 3.1 for PC98
Windows 95
Windows 95R2
Windows 98
Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 4.0SP3
Windows NT 4.0 SP5
Windows 2000
Try and explain to your average luser which ones of the above can handle PnP/USB/DX7.0/etc., which ones can run that old word processor software he's so fond of, which ones will run that game he's been wanting to try out...it just goes on and on.
Re:BugNet Posts Top 30 Win2k Bug List (Score:2)
2. X works fine in Mandrake, BUT, the ethernet cards do not! They work fine in Red Hat, however. Again, they're detected, and as far as I can tell are using the same drivers, but they don't work.
3. Corel Linux works fine with both of these things, right out of the box. Yes, I know Corel is based on Debian, not Red Hat. I'm just saying that it works.
The X problems are X problems, not Linux problems per se. That said, I've been there too and, while initially frustrating, it doesn't take too much digging to get it sorted out. The two problems I've run into frequently are: (1) resolution/color depth not configured properly (Redhat's Xconfigurator will fix this, and if you really want to you can fix it by hand in the XF86Config file) (2) No entry for your hostname in resolv.conf. Now, I think it's just plain weird that X doesn't start because of (2) but the fix is pretty obvious (just enter you hostname/ip into resolv.conf).
Linux would in general would be a ***whole lot*** easier to install/use if XFree weren't such a strange beast. Oh well, that will change in time - see yesterday's thread that mentioned MicroWindows and NanoGui. Help is on its way.
As far as ethernet cards go - they're pretty hard to break. Probably you just don't have the proper kernel module installed. That's a matter of doing "insmod yourethermodule". Normally this is done automatically, but some install programs just don't get it right. It may also be possible that the module for your particular ethernet wasn't compiled in the kernel that was shipped (maybe because the card is too new?) and what you have to do is install/compile the kernel source. Which isn't that hard and it's pretty satisfying once you've figured it out.
The thing is, if you have similar problems in Windows - and believe me, you will - you basically don't have any options but: reboot; reinstall the driver; reboot; reinstall Windows; reboot; reboot; reboot; FDISK; repeat.
Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody! (Score:2)
Open Explorer make a folder and go in to it.
delete it from the left handside frame and explorer crashes.
I found tons of others (mainly memory leaks).
Glynn
PS. Has anyone else noted that the development versions of NT are named after mountains in a Cadian Ski resort called Whister?
Re: (Score:2)
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Re: (Score:2)
Allow me to prove you wrong again, then :) (Score:2)
First off, why do you (and others) continue to cling to that 65K bugs myth? The people who do that are practically tagging themselves with an "I am vapid" sign -- basically saying to the world, "I get my news from ZDnet headlines." Because anyone who actually went beyond the headline and read the article, or saw the countless, and countless, and countless discussions about it, knows that it was a dishonest headline. Please go check out the article in its entirety.
Now that that's out of the way, onto the main point, about your suspicion.
The reason your suspicions are incorrect is because Microsoft doesn't pass around the source code to the entire Win2K, not even internally. Just as the OS is very modularized, so are the working teams -- they only see the source code for the part of the OS that they're working on, and they aren't allowed access to parts which don't involve them. Certainly there are some people high up on the food chain who have full access, but I doubt they're the type who would leak it.
Also, given the quantity of pre-release software floating around on the net (it was no strenuous exercise to obtain early Win2K builds), I don't think it's very surprising at all that this ended up on the net, too. There are just too many people with access to it to keep a lid on it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Slashdot/Andover/VA Linux has lots of reasons (Score:2)
Good reply, timothy -- thanks. I still think you choosing the submission that you did to be a poor move. Quite a few times in the past, when Slashdot would receive a lot of submissions of the same story, the staff just posted the news themselves, instead of quoting anyone's submission. The only real value in the one you posted was the link itself, and all the off-topic dishonest flamage only served to give the same tenor to the following posts. I appreciate the reply, though.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:I like W2K review (was Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody!) (Score:2)
Well, funny you should mention that, since the coordinator for KDE translation mentioned to me recently that Arabic is high on the list of languages that still need to be translated to.
Your English seems to be very good, so why don't you head over to the KDE translation page [kde.org] and read the Translation HOWTO [kde.org] to see if you could help to change the situation (This would be a help to all KDE users, not just Linux).
Or, if KDE isn't your 'thing' you could look into other i18n projects in the free software community.
So we have to keep an open mind about this, and make the most out of it
Getting involved is the best way I know to 'make the most of something'
Chris
Don't forget these other Windows releases! (Score:2)
Windows 95 OSR2.5 (OSR2 + IE4)
Windows 98 SE
Windows CE
What will Windows 2001 be called? (Score:2)
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:2)
Funny, that's not what my other news sources are telling me, either.
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Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:2)
Doh! Is it too late for me to rephrase it as "new installs" ?
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Kills Win63^H^H2K ? (Score:2)
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Re:Kills Win63^H^H2K ? (Score:2)
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Our problem... (Score:2)
Deals is with the security model. Since our university has a long standing kerberos implementation, the problem is how to mesh 2000 with standard custom in house kerberos software. It looks like so far, the answer is, forget it. 2k's kerb implementation isn't standard enough to make it an easy integration, which I'm betting is intentional... MS has "innovated" kerberos!
Re:first post (Score:2)
BTW: Have you noticed how the moderators have
pretty much given up Level 0 to the trollers?
I used to read at 0, now I can't anymore (specially because of that goatse.cx asshole -- I mean that literally -- who almost made me puke my coffee onto the keyboard). I don't mind the first posts, but the hot grits et al. trolls are really getting on my nerves (and I've recently even observed some of them on other forums too, arrgh). It's been a long time since I've seen an intelligent troll on
Moderators: Fight back and reconquer level 0 for us please!
Clive Longbottom is an MS Stooge (Score:2)
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Clive Longbottom, an analyst at Strategy Partners, said
Microsoft should treat any leak as an opportunity to develop
better code, by letting outside developers look at it.
"Microsoft is working with a lot of developers, so it isn't that
surprising that code was leaked. If you get a lot of open source
people looking at Microsoft's code, some will dismiss it but other
will raise issues," he said.
---
Earlier, from
http://www.silicon.com/public/door?REQUNIQ=9535
---
Phil Roberts, systems manager for a network installer, said
running secure environments on Linux is like giving hackers
a key to the door of the system. "Anyone running vital
systems on Linux must be crazy," he said.
Clive Longbottom, strategy analyst at Strategy Partners,
agreed with his analysis, saying the problems are preventing
its adoption in secure areas. He said: "Security needs to be
built into the architecture of the operating system. This
cannot happen if your source code is publicly available." He
added that the issue could lead to proprietary versions of
Linux being developed.
---------
So which is it Clive? Make up your mind!
Re:BugNet Posts Top 30 Win2k Bug List (Score:2)
Simple, actually. Win2k has an unpublished "feature" wherein the OS commandeers your Irda port, converts electrical energy into IR energy, and transmits it to Redmond, WA (think microwave powerstation [slashdot.org]) where it is captured, converted back into electrical energy, and sold at a hefty profit (especially with recent crude oil prices at their recent highs).
When Microsoft first saw its profit projections slumping, they began to seek alternate sources for economic growth, and this is what they came up with. (It narrowly beat out the idea of extracting spittle from registration-card envelopes and selling genetic profiles of all registered MS software users to direct marketers.)
(And anyone who marks this post as "troll" or "flamebait" is a bigger joke than this post is.)
Woo-hoo, I'm nobody! (Score:2)
Consider me one of the one million nobodies that legally upgraded to Win2K this month. I was previously running NT4SP5, but because of my hard disk partitioning, I had to reformat and do a fresh install.
All the talk of 65k bugs in 2k really means nothing without actual usage backup, so I'll be one of the first people to actually post how Win2K runs, at least on my machine.
First, Win2K is big. I wasn't expecting 900MB for the OS, but to be fair, 60MB is used by DRIVER.CAB (all the included drivers), 192MB by my swap file, and another 70-80MB by the multilingual options (30MB by nihongo alone). Granted, even subtracting out those options, Win2K is far and away the largest OS I have ever seen or used. But, having installed it with more than enough space left over for my programs and MP3s, my real question was how it would compare to NT4SP5, which had run wonderfully for over a year.
First, the bad. Win2K has several minor bugs that I've noticed. Most of these pertain to little graphical nuances in programs - occasionally menu bars don't always repaint themselves correctly, and on some occassions cursors don't alwyas update on applications like ICQ. All in all, nothing I can't live with (or that a service pack won't fix). NT4SP5 didn't have these problems - of coures, NT4SP5 didn't support USB, Plug and Play, AGP texturing, DirectX, or numerous other things that are in Win2K. Another (minor) downside is that it took a little more effort than it should have to enable tab auto-complete in the Command Prompt, but this was also the case with NT4.
Now, the good. Installation was so amazingly painless that I thought I had just installed Unreal Tournament. Win2K boots from the CD, and asks how you want to format your disks (just like NT4). However, dozens of SCSI and mass-storage drivers are included, even my Diamond Fireport 40 (thus saving me the effort of reinstalling a floppy drive to install Fireport 40 drivers). Then, 2K asks you 2 other questions throughout installation - one is what language options you want installed, and the other is what networking options (system name, etc.) you want installed. This can be configured from the command line, so installation can literally just be a matter of inserting the CD, rebooting, and letting it run for an hour. When I returned, *all* of my hardware, sans my DVD Decoder card (Creative Dxr2) had been installed - my RivaTNT, Fireport 40, Sound Blaster Live!, 3C905, everything was in and running just fine. After downloading and installing NVIDIA's new drivers (to enable hardware OpenGL support), all of my OpenGL applications worked flawlessly.
Performance - it is quite apparent that NTFS' disk caching is better under 2000 than it was under NT4. Other things seem just slightly faster than under NT4SP5, and nothing seems slower. Basically, if you liked NT's performance, you won't be disappointed with 2000 (I don't have any data for performance with FAT).
Stability - so far 2000 seems as stable as NT. Granted, this is only something that time can prove, but so far everything is extremely responsive, and I have noticed no hiccups at all. Another major improvement is that you do *not* need to restart anywhere near as often for applications. This is definitely nice; however, unless you install applications 3-4 times daily, probably won't matter much in the long run. Also included is a boot console interface (for major emergencies). I never understood why this wasn't included in NT4; however, while it is definitely on the sparse side, the CLI may prove invaluable, if driver manufacturers start releasing shitty drivers that cause BSODs when starting 2K.
Usage - this is all a matter of taste, but I like some of the Active Desktop features (Quickstart bar, etc). There is lots of alpha blending used in the UI - this will never be useful, but it is pretty cool, at least until the novelty wears off. Having DirectX is really nice; however, I will always be a proponent of OpenGL, so while I will enjoy being able to play the games that are DX-only, I will privately be wishing that they used OpenGL instead. Also, 2K has some very nice support for multimedia files (read: MP3s) built into explorer.
All in all 2K is a worthwhile operating system, and a very nice update to NT4. Not having to deal with the archaic 'Devices' control panel is an extreme relief (stupid NT3.51 hold-over), and a lot of the new features do make doing mundane tasks (installing hardware, managing user accounts, etc.) much more palatable than under NT4. Also included is a nice "auto-login" feature, for anyone interested in using 2K as a work-alike replacement for 98.
I've heard horror (and success) stories about upgrading from 9X->2000, but so far my experience has been very positive. If anyone on Slashdot uses Windows but hates 98's "reliability" or wishes NT played more games, 2000 would be a decent upgrade.
Quotation from submitter... (Score:2)
"No one is install Win2k so I guess..."
In another reply, someone was calling Windows 2000 a flop and someone else replied that it had sold a million copies right away, so it couldn't be that bad of a flop...
I have no idea whether this is terribly common or not, but through family and work, I know of at least 6 businesses (a couple are quite large) who have purchased full licenses for Windows 2000, but will not install them as they are running legacy software that runs in a console. I myself don't know the full extent of what Microsoft has done to DOS support, but I gather that the corporation could easily be shooting itself in the foot by dropping this.
Many people tend, stupidly IMO, to upgrade to the latest version of software even when they have absolutely no need to. Look at the people who are running Windows 2000 at home. It's just silly. However, doing something like dropping support for console-based programs prevents people like this from upgrading under many different circumstances. Microsoft shouldn't want this. It strikes me as inevitable that the legacy applications will be updated/rewritten, but in the meanwhile, it is hurting Microsoft's bottom line.
Whether you support Microsoft or not (I'm not rabid either way), this should concern you somewhat if you are involved in any business using computers whatsoever. Why? Relatives asking what's wrong with their computers. (Why won't my dos-based poker game work?)
As to the early version slipping out.. I love Microsoft's "pay us money so you can have the privilege of doing our beta-testing for us". I suppose the only way of justifying this thing "spreading like wildfire", as the article says, is teenage "hackers" wanting a preview of the next version so they can be elite or whatever.
A while back, I had one Windows 2000 preview site bookmarked because it was simply comical. "TOP SECRET" gif's all over the place. Screenshot's titled with "Secret shot of _______". "Lookatthis!! Top Secret Stuff!!" (The comments on Betanews provide many such links to people's websites.)
It boggles my mind.
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Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop - moderation flop (Score:2)
Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody! (Score:2)
The installation - well, all I can say is that it worked. X takes longer to compile than any program I've ever seen, so if the compile had failed I might have put a dent in my monitor, but lo and behold, it worked.
Configuration was kind of messy. The only available program to make a config file so far is 'xf86config' (yes, without capitalization) - a text interface with no way to back up when you make the wrong choice except to start over. By the time I finally got things right, I had the keystrokes for the first 10 or so screens memorized.
One of my configuration choices was wrong in the end - I thought an Intellimouse was a Microsoft mouse with a wheel, which is what I have. It's actually just classifed as a PS/2 mouse.
I skipped the accelerated server configuration and went with XF86_SVGA instead, because the documentation about it was horribly inconsistent.
When it was done, I had to manually edit the XF86Config file to add stuff like setting up my mouse wheel, and taking out all the superfluous screen mode information so it wouldn't start in 640x480. (XFree86 3.3.5 did that too - if you had more than one possible mode, it would start up in the worst one. Why?)
Anyway. After all that was said and done, I only had a few problems. The Alt keys didn't work in Sawmill, because they're now apparently really called "Alt" instead of "Meta". I redefined all the hotkeys involving Meta and it worked.
There are minor improvements - It runs at 1152x864 at a decent refresh rate, though I assume that's from having to put in the video card and monitor settings myself instead of letting Xconfigurator do it. The mouse no longer goes nuts when I switch virtual consoles. The mouse pointer moves smoothly even when the CPU is being heavily used.
But I don't see any huge improvements. Maybe that's what I get for not using an accelerated server. Anyway, I hear fonts are supposed to work better, but I've had enough negative reinforcement against it (if you use an X login manager, like gdm, and X can't find every single one of its fonts, the computer crashes hard) that I can't even conceive of touching another fonts.dir file in my life. I don't care how it's done, but if I can put fonts in a directory and have them work automatically, and maybe skip the ones that don't work, THEN I'll say that X has good font support.
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Re:Quotation from submitter... (Score:2)
Anyhow, DOS console apps are begging for investigation anyhow. I surmise that y2k has been addressed, but most dos apps I see still in use are on Novell lans, and are inextricably tied with things such as Btrieve.
matt
64,000 bugs aren't enough! (Score:2)
We need 640,000 bugs! After all, 640k should be enough for anybody...
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:2)
False. Check out the sales for Age of Empires, and Theif. They picked up around the 9 month period.
Re:I wonder what happens to the... leaker... (Score:2)
It is certainly possible they leaked a copy deliberately to see where it was going and try to shut down the distribution of it.
Re:BugNet Posts Top 30 Win2k Bug List (Score:2)
I know this makes the story far less exciting, but hey... My favourite from the list is number 18: "On a Windows 2000 computer with a wimpy power supply, an Adaptec ANA62044 64-bit 4-port PCI Fast Ethernet adapter may not be able to automatically negotiate network connection on two of the ports. The only "fix" is to upgrade to a computer with a greater power supply." Now can someone with a greater knowledge of PC hardware than myself explain how a change in OS can cause changes to the power levels provided by the PSU? Damned if I know... Oh, and who are they to call my PSU wimpy? My PSU can kick sand in their PSUs' faces any day of the week...
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Cheers
Re:Wondering about Microsoft strategy... (Score:2)
That's not exactly truth: we bought a new computer three weeks ago, and got MS OEM NT 4.0 (without a handbook, damn them), german version, SP 1. I can guarantee to you that down here in Germany most of the people want to stick to NT 4.0 for some time more, before the dust settles on Win2K, and that you can buy NT 4.0 practically anywhere. As to other versions - heck, I know people using Windows 3.1, and I find it a shame that Microsoft is not supporting anymore a product which they sold only five years ago. I know, I know, "who the hell wants to use 3.1" -- well, I tell you: there are many computers in the scientific area dedicated to certain tasks, or having specialistic software written specifically for that and not an other version of the OS. Look, we even have got two OS/2 babies to look for our HPLC/FPLC (liquid chromatography).
Enter paragraph two and Linux.
I agree with you partly. Speaking in mathematical terms, I was comparing the differentials (df/dt), and you wrongly assumed that I'm talking about absolutes :-) I just want to say that things are getting easier in Linux, and more and more complicated in Windows. This is partly due to my experiences of installing some Windows machines in our lab and getting them to work together, and installing SuSE 6.3 over ftp and a full suite of programs not distributed within SuSE (like molecular biology specific programs, StarOffice etc.). Of course, I know that I just know more about Linux than I know about Windows, but even a certified Microsoft-something was not able to make our scanner software work on NT. Never mind, because you are right: we are going into holy-war mode. Anyway, what I mean is: independent of distributions, you have a common and constant logic behind everything you do: packages, distinct environments, exchangeable parts, global preferences in /etc, local in .*rc, root/users distinction, different layers with separate functions, etc. Linux connects the variance among different flavours with interchangeability of its parts, whereas to, for example, incorporate NT in the AppleTalk Network you have to buy the Server edition, because Workstation will not do.
windows there's pretty much 3 answers
Oh. OK, I assume that you would recommend a polish version of NT for a polish user? Wrong -- it's kind of unstable, as with most of national versions of Windows during last few years. SP 6? Why not 6a? And why did my NT broke down after I have installed something from the original CD-ROM *after* installing SP6? And why doesn't it work as a print server? Ah, no, it's not a server edition, no. And the W95 computer? No, we can't upgrade it to 98, it's to slow, but nevertheless we have no option but to keep it. Besides, we don't have a free license to do that (this is Germany, man, they check whether we have licenses for the software we're using at the university).
Well.. OK. I agree -- most of my ranting is just because I don't know much about Windows OS myself, and I was just in a little breakdown lately due to the problems we had with our Windows -- I'm a simple biologist, and our admins are Mac/Unix savvy, so we had to do it ourselves. And the Linux installation, as I mentioned, with all the new hardware stuff and programs not distributed with SuSE was simple and fast. OTOH, I can mention at least one thing where Windows beats the -- whaddyacallit -- out of Linux: printers. Printer selection. Printer drivers. Still, Mac solution is even better and easier to learn.
Regads,
January
Re:I wonder what happens to the... leaker... (Score:2)
10100010111101010101000100201010010010
So it looks like they did tag it.
Re:Wondering about Microsoft strategy... (Score:2)
Enter paragraph two and Linux. You end up having different distributions, which do different things and have different version numbers. Redhat 5 has what version of the kernal? 2.something? I really don't know. And is Debain 2 newer or older than RH5? I'll give you that windows has some confusing names, the marketing dept of windows should be flogged sometimes, but windows is not as fragmented as the Linux world.
Paragraph 3, one I've entitled "Don't touch". This starts getting into the religious side of things. Linux vs Windows in Usability, Power, etc. I don't want to get killed so I'm not going to remark, except to say that there are quite a few people that can say (and provide compelling evidence) that Windows is more powerful than Linux. It depends on what you call power and what features are important to you.
Paragraph 4, Replace "Windows" with "Linux" and the sentence is just as true. The thing is with me if I had Linux machines I wouldn't upgrade them, I'd be too damn scared to break them, however I would upgrade ANY windows machine I had to Windows 2000. I suffered with crappy pre-release Open-GL drivers from nVidia that would bluescreen Win2000 and made me have to turn off features of Q3 in order to work rather than use Win98. (nVidia has finally released some decent drivers, so I haven't had a bluescreen in months, and I've never had a blue-screen other than with those crappy drivers from nVidia).
Paragraph 5: 9x: If you are using fvwm go to step 412. 9z: If you are using KDE go to step 419. 9aa: If you are using KDE, TCL/TK and csh go to step 917q then go to step 124, do step 143 6 times, then kill yourself, 'cause everyone knows you should use bash. 9ab: If you use the bash shell see step 9aa.
:)
In summary: I agree Windows can be confusing with different names and versions, but Linux can be just as bad, or worse. Not to mention ask someone fairly technical which on you should use and you get 10 different answers, and maybe start a small land war in asia. With windows there's pretty much 3 answers: 1) Win2000 2) If you don't trust Win2000 then NT4 Sp6 (or SP3 if you are super paranoid for no reason). 3) Win98 if you really need compatibility with just about everything and don't mind giving up stability for it.
Cheers,
Joe
P.S. I used to work at Microsoft, I don't anymore, nevertheless these opinions are mine, not anyone elses. If someone agrees with me, that's just a coincidence. If someone doesn't agree with me, then they're wrong.
Re:Windows installations (Score:2)
Of that 1 million copies, I'd guess only 3-400k are actually installed and being used right now.
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:2)
(c'mon 1GB + for a full install of Visual Studio 6?)
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If God Droppd Acid, Would he see People???
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:2)
You forget that the average windows user installs windows at least once a week. THIS IS NO JOKE many self proclaimed 'experts' I know will tell you to reinstall windows when it crashes a few times. How many times did you read a newsgroup were someone proudly tells you that all his problems are fixed and his computer runs 10 times as fast just because they have reinstalled windows? None of them seems to think about the fact that they just installed the SAME program with the same bugs as before and that their registry will just bloat within a week.
Grtz, Jeroen
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:3)
You bet. Normally, the end of the industry that I'm in has been "Windows Uber Alles" for about the last five years, but everyones reaction to Win2K has been very reserved. There are a couple of factors that have probably contributed to this.
1). The DoJ versus Micro$oft. MS may still wriggle of the end of the hook, but the whole thing has been very damaging to their credibility with non-technical people ( they never had any with the tech types ;).
2). The public isn't brilliant, but neither is it completely stupid - they just take longer to work it out than the technologically sophisticated. It's been 5 years since the Rolling Stones helped to sell Win95, and in that time, most of the tinsel has rubbed of.
3). Changing perception's in the public. Windows is "twentieth century technology". At the start of the new century, there is a tendency to say "that's old stuff, we want something new".
I'm not expecting it to happen overnight, but the longer that people delay the upgrade of NT 4.0 to Win Whatever, the more likely it is that they may actually decide to go with something else ( including FreeBSD or Linux ).
I'll admit, I'm just guessing as to the reasons why, but there is a definate wind of change moving into the industry at the moment. This has been in the background now for more than about six months. I think that it is actually starting to look as if Micro$ofts days of market dominance may be at an end.
The really bizarre thing about it is that from time to time I'll get nostalgic about some piece of MS Idiocy ( like 640kB in MS-DOS, character loss on the comm port if you tried to use the bios at more than 1200bps, etc ) and I'll say to myself "Ah, Micro$oft, they wearn't really all that bad".
Then I'll suddenly realize - I've already started thinking of them in the past tense. They aren't part of my future as far as I can see. I suspect that there are probably a lot of people out there in the industry at the moment who are thinking the same way.
Links in Spanish about PCWorld's full Win2000 (Score:3)
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Re:Slantdot (Score:3)
Re:Slashdot/Andover/VA Linux has lots of reasons (Score:3)
Couple things:
When possible, we try to post a particular story from the first person who submits it. For a number of reasons, that doesn't always happen -- sometimes a link is bad, sometimes the submission contains no content (only the word "link!" or a similarly ambiguous phrase) and sometimes we consider for a longer time whether to post a story at all, then pick from the available submissions. I didn't pick this submission because it was "particularly dishonest and inflammatory," but because I thought it was interesting and would be of interest to other people too. It was also the first one that I say on the topic. I'm sorry you didn't like the one that got posted, but boy -- some of the others really were inflammatory and dishonest.
Also, though I can't force you to believe this, as far as I know no one at VA proper even knows who I am, and they certainly don't give a fig what I post, and this not-caring is recursive.
If I'm part of a conspiracy, the voices in my head have not yet told me about it.:) Any thoughts I have about VA Linux are my own (I think they make very nice, rather pricey Linux boxes), any thoughts they have about slashdot are their own. And for the record, I don't have (and as of now have no plans to acquire) any shares of VA. Maybe one day, but right now, zippo.
Hope this clarifies at least a little!
Cordially,
timothy
Re:Slashdot/Andover/VA Linux has lots of reasons (Score:3)
If VA only uses
disclaimer: I don't own any VA stock, have any professional ties to VAndover/. (or any other Linux co.) nor am I a professional stock trader - I just fool myself into thinking that I might have some common sense every now and then.
Re:My suspicion - it isn't a "leak" at all. (Score:3)
I can see it now ...
d00dz: 3y3 g07 d1z 3l337 z3r0-d@yZ \/\/1n2001 wAr3z, @Nd f0\/nD d@T t|-|3 c0|\|7r0L p@N3l cR@sH3z \/\/h3N 3y3 pR3zz t|=|3 d3L373 k3Y
p.s. 3y3 0\/\/N 3w3!!1!1!!!!1!!!!!11!!!!!
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Microsoft Slanders Canadian Skiing Resorts! (Score:3)
Ya, I know we're just north, across the border, from Redmond, Washington, but come on, leave us poor Canucks alone already!
I suppose it's just a matter of time before Microsoft and Starbucks are battling it out over for the spoils of British Columbia.
Oh ya. Eh.
You were begging to hear it, I know it.
Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:3)
Hm, if W2001 is Whistler.. (Score:3)
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Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
Re:I wonder what happens to the... leaker... (Score:3)
Doesn't happen at Microsoft. Not when there's a snapshot build every day that gets burned to CD-R and redistributed to quite a few people inside the company. Every day. (Depending on what you're working on that is, some projects don't do this.) The point is that MS really doesn't have any obvious way of "fingerprinting" anybody's particular distribution, since the daily build is also downloadable from an internal Web site (again, depending on project).
In other words, yeah, M$ technically could do it, but it would so completely screw up their existing development processes that I doubt it will ever happen.
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Dave... (Score:3)
I have disabled the floppy drive, the CD-Rom since I detected a Linux CD nearby.
Dave, if you go near that power switch, I will have to destroy the hard drive. Dave.....
On a related note... (Score:4)
You know those demo discs you get with computing magazines? They usually come with a bunch of software that not too many people really want. Well, instead of putting their demo crap on the discs, some genius at Microsoft put full versions of Windows 2000 on each disc!
The discs were shipped to the Spanish edition of PC World. Also, there seems to have been many of them - approximately 100,000 copies were shipped.
However, the CD Key listed on the CDs were for the evaluation version of Windows 2000 (there is such a thing!?), but thanks to the power of the Internet, that's fixable...
But it's not like this fiasco will hurt MS' bottom line at all anyway...
Re:Slantdot (Score:4)
Wow, and here I thought that they only choose what I see under http://slashdot.org, and that I choose what I think about. This is obviously more serious than I thought. Or did I think that because the people at Slashdot chose for me to think that?
it's not just Microsoft though, it's anything not linux slashdot IS basically the linux church of the Internet. and as in any cult/religion outsiders are not welcome to preach foreign gospel
Sure, outsiders are welcome. Otherwise who could we flame?
Chris
Re:Windows 2000 is so far a flop (Score:4)
In that light, a million copies isn't very impressive at all. And even then, knowing Microsoft's "tendency" to mislead (in between the outright lies), the figure probably contains the 750,000 beta testers' copies in the count.
Color me unimpressed. If all it did was fix the problems with NT4 it would have done much, much better than that.
I'll bet there were more Linux installs last month than there were W2K installs. Probably more installs of Red Hat 6.1 alone.
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Microsoft announces bug-free Windows 2.12 (Score:4)
In other news today, Microsoft has announced that they have at last released a bug-free version of Windows, version 2.12. "We are proud that we have been able to release the first truly bug-free operating system ever," said Steve Ballmer, second-in-first-in-command of Microsoft. "With this version, we believe we will hit Linux where it hurts--on old, useless 386 PCs."
"It took us some twelve years, but we're proud of this achievement," said Bill Gates, first-in-second-in-command of Microsoft.
Linus Torvalds, leading light of the Linux open source operating system movement, admitted distress at having such hard-fought competition for the lucrative 386 market.
Now that Microsoft has released such a compelling 386 PC solution, Torvalds is believed to be concentrating his efforts on getting Linux to run more effectively on Macintosh SE/40s, in hopes of salvaging what he can of the Linux market in that sector, given the competitiveness of Macintosh System 4.0, a relatively bug-free version of the Macintosh System. Torvalds also announced work on a port to the Archimedes, believed to also be a possible gap in the Wintel hegemony.
Torvalds was also quoted as saying "First post."
Microsoft is a industry-leading monopolist and software startup buyer. For more information, visit Microsoft's homepage [usdoj.gov].
BugNet Posts Top 30 Win2k Bug List (Score:4)
My favorites:
I wonder what happens to the... leaker... (Score:4)
I always wonder if software companies try something like this, where of course, it would be much easier to accomplish. And if so, do they tell their employees, in order to dissuade them, or keep it secret, and then descend on them. Anyone got any stories of this kind of thing?
I know that MS's build distribution system must be high traffic, with thousands of developers checking out each new internal build, still they must have to log in somewhere, shouldn't be too hard to fingerprint this stuff on the fly.
Johnath
Wondering about Microsoft strategy... (Score:4)
I'm not much of a Windows user, and not much of a computer guru. Still, the situation in the Linux world, in spite of various Linux distributions, starts being simpler and more logical then what is happening now with Windows. Don't you have the impression that Windows world starts being obscure / twisted / full of funny looking names, and things are getting much simpler in our world?
No, I'm not from the let's-take-over-the-world-right-now dpt. It's just that how I see the future is, that you won't need to know anything about computers to run MacOS X on an iMac, and you will have to know at least a little to work on a Linux -- but you will also have to know much to work under Windows. And where Linux gives you all advances of a high-tech OS, Windows just stays in the middle, not really easy to use, but then not really powerfull either.
There are three or four PC's on the floor where my lab is placed (the rest being Macs and Unices). And each one of them has a different version of Windows, and this won't change for a while (because once you get it to work, you don't meddle with it -- never change a winning team, as the old biologist' saying goes). The compatibility problems between them are just pure ridiculous when you think how similar the OS are.
Folks, it's time to write a "Field Guide To Windows Operating Systems": "4a: log in with Ctrl-Alt-Del: proceed to 6. 4b: log in with pressing 'ESC': proceed to 5".
Regards,
January
Whistler? (Score:4)
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Re:Woo-hoo, I'm nobody! (Score:5)
"Yes. We are all individuals. We must think for ourselves."
Personally, I have only recently gone to an all Linux setup. It happened by accident, (my NT partition was eaten by an errant, sleep-deprived RH 6.2 beta install), but I've managed to actually do a lot of work in Linux. Full time. I've found replacements for just about everything I had on NT, some better than others, and working with Enlightenment 0.16.3 and GNOME is actually kinda fun. Kludgey, but fun.
So far, I've had the following shortcomings:
GNUcash is NOT Quicken or Money99 by any measure. It's very primitive, and while it gets the job done, I wouldn't want to use it for anything more than basic finances, and it definately does not *inspire* one to want to use it.
SBLIVE! SMP drivers: While Creative has promised them, I still haven't seen them.
Kai's Power Tools: I love these for Photoshop. The Gimp, so far, has proven *very* able to replace Photoshop, except there's no KPT. Im sure there are a bunch of nice filters, script-fu's etc out there, but I'd really like to see either a port of KPT, or an outright CLONE of these filter sets. Kai's interface is *very* intuitive. Those who have used it understand. These filtersets and their interfaces are what I consider *inspiring* programs. They are a ton of fun to play with. Check out KPT 5.0 with photoshop (or painter). I've spent hours creating images, just because.
Games: I don't play games, so this is really a non-issue with me.
Kludgey feel: something about X in general just feels.. kludgey. I can't explain it other than the "feel" of the GUI is really..ugh. BeOS has a great feel, NT has a nice feel. It could be that I'm used to these, kinda like muscle-memory, but there needs to be some work done in the standardization of interfaces. The themeability of most WM's allows for a custom look, now how about an X (which I suspect is the culprit) overhaul? Has anyone successfully installed Xfree86 4.0? Any reviews forthcoming for it?
The feeling that you're using yesterday's software. I mean, it's as if people writing the stuff are waiting for a commercial Win32 product to come out, then trying to copy it feature for feature. I'd like to see some innovation every once in awhile. The Gimp, as an application, is the only one I can think of that really feels innovative (built-in mail-an-image functions? UNREAL!) However, I've found that several apps are way behind Win32 development. Maybe it's because Win32 developers get paid.
I get this creepy feeling that many of the so-called Linux programmers are only in it because they absolutely can't stand to see other people get paid to do what they like doing (coding). I wonder if it's a "Dammit, I know I can do that! And better! But he's getting paid to do it! and on MS products! I've got to do something about that.. I know! I can write a "free" clone and try to erode their customer base, so we can all be poor together!" mentality. Personally, I find that mentality irrational, if it indeed exists.
Things I *like* about Linux:
I just like the way some things work. As I stated before, I run E 0.16.3, GNOME, and use Eterm 0.9. the configurability of these three alone make the OS worth using as a desktop OS. Granted, I had to learn how to read a few
StarOffice & Word Perfect: Neither of these is Office97 (still my favorite). They are *adequate*, but given a choice...
Regardless of my rant, Thanks for your "experience" with Win2k. I'm considering purchasing it later (I'm not an OS nazi). I really enjoyed using NT4sp6 (contrary to popular opinion, I found NT to be *very* stable. It took me a month of heavy usage to get to the point of a reboot). Use what you like using, even if that means having to hear these jerks whine about it. I'm reminded of an article (can't remember the name), where the reporter was at a Linux or Transmeta press release, and had to endure the "tssk tssk's " of his peers because he was using Word.. On Microsoft's OS. It was so faux-pas. Or something.
Sometimes I wish these MS bashers would get a girlfriend (or a prostitute, or a Life Sized Antonio Banderas doll) and find something else to do with their spare time other than bothering everyone else.