VISTA PESSIMA EST

[Ildûrest]

The age of computers has given rise to many kinds of software; first it was just software, but then we had shareware and freeware, and the great freeSoftware and openSourceSoftware. We even had PC-Anywhereware. But we also entered the age of malware and adware (To help us in this regard, Ad-Aware emerged). But never before, not a single time in human history, has Planet Earth had upon it an actual specimen of f*ckware - until the rise of Microsoft Windows Vista. - Me

Given the time at which it was released, the OS-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named is, my friends, the worst system ever created. Probably because it isn't an operating system. It's an operation restriction system. Its purpose is not to help you make use of your computer, but rather to hinder you in that regard. Wow! Vista is just so bad.

Let's start at the root of most of Vista's badness.

Digital Rights Management.

DRM is one of the worst things ever to afflict mankind. A computer, a mindless machine, deciding whether or not you ought to be allowed to do something.

It's understandable (though by no means appealing) for a piece of software to prevent you from using some of its features - for example a trial version for a product which you must purchase to gain full use of. Or even preventing kids from seeing adult content. What's different about Vista? Three things:

• Vista prevents you from using some features of other programs. Like a 3rd-party media player.
  
• Often there is no way to get past this (bar hacking)- it doesn't make a difference whether you're Bill Gates, or Administrator, or you've bought the full version, or you can enter the secret password - Vista will never let you copy that DVD. The feature is there, but can be used with some data but not others.
  
• The rules are not necessarily legal, can be completely inconsistent, and incorrect decisions might be made. It's not a simple "If you've paid, you get in" scenario. It's based on rules and procedures and agreements that are complex. And the rules are not necessarily just enforcing copyright law. It's not illegal for Vista to degrade your video quality so you don't steal the content (Vista will do this if a suitable protection level is placed on a video); but it's not illegal for you to watch it at full quality, either. And Vista might not make the right decisions anyway - it demands that hardware devices report any suspicious behaviour (such as voltage dips) to it, to try to detect hackers physically attaching things to your computer's devices. A brownout or voltage spike, or noise in the electrical grid, could set these off and cause Vista to unexpectedly restart the graphics card, for instance.
  

And I've barely scratched the surface. All the ridiculous measures Vista goes to (so that Microsoft is able to present a convinving argument to Hollywood and other music and movie companies as to why their products should ONLY run on Vista, but in reality will probably be easily cracked anyway) mean that for one thing, Vista's device driver system has been completely redesigned. (Among many other things, 'generic' device drivers that work for lots of hardware are now 'bad' because it makes it harder for Vista to be assured that a given device is exactly what it claims to be) This means that:

• All device drivers need to be rewritten for Vista
  
• Vista device drivers are harder to write
  

which in turn means that drivers will be less reliable (less time for them to have been tested), more expensive (for both of those reasons) and of course harder to find, becuase people are reluctant to go to the trouble.

I should point out th-- DO NOT, -EVER- UPGRADE* A NON-VISTA MACHINE TO VISTA--

_{* I use upgrade in its "didn't have Vista before" sense, not in a "Vista is an improvement" sense. If I had to, I would choose DOS over Vista.}

Preinstalled Vista will probably be fairly inert for a while, because devices are hand-picked to be ones that play nice with Vista. Upgrading to Vista should not be done under any circumstances. Driver conflicts are rife, Vista is really slow (a large part due to all the overhead of DRM; even when you're not using it) and if you've upgraded from XP, your XP activation will be permanently cancelled so you can't go back to XP.

That's not all, but it's enough to make me sick.

Anyway I'm thinking very deeply about a new OS that would solve all our problems - something that succeeds in those areas where Linux fails. (Technically it's users that fail to use Linux correctly, but I count difficulty to use as a type of failure.) But it's a big ask. Still, I have some terrific ideas, and enough knowledge of how kernels work to support them. Might make a post about some stuff sometime.

Ildûrest

[earlofqb]

If it were legal, I'd propose we all get "together" (in a global sense), and burn every box of Vista that's out there (as well as blow up the Vista manufacturing plant (of the DVDs)).

Every single time I walk in any tech store, and see Vista sitting there, it's all I can do to not go through with part of the above plan...

Vista is such a step backwards, that sometimes I wonder if WindowsME would be better...

Ild, why don't you join in on the open-source team and help write some Linux code? At the very least, openly tell them your ideas...

[earlofqb]

Well, first off, Vista. It's evil. Like a great quote I read once said, "Don't go there. It's ugly, and it never stops being ugly".

Of course, the Aero interface isn't what I'm talking about. I mean, as far as resource-hogging interfaces go, Aero (especially Aero Glass) is about the best you can get without a mind-computer interface. Then again, I don't know of anyone who would actually use this feature, as it doesn't improve functionality, and after the "wow" factor subsided, you'd probably turn it off.

Secondly, Vista is so "secure", that a free trial of it can be hacked just by modifying a very visible vb script (seriously, there's supposedly a VB script file in one of the system folders that holds code to control the trial's expiration. All you have to do is stop decrementing the counter, and you've got a free version of Vista (until M$ patches it, but then again, no one says you have to patch it )).

Last (because Ild said a lot of my rants already), it takes an interminable amount of time to turn the thing on/off (and load a lot of applications). This is partly due to DRM (probably checking the state of your computer), but also to the horrible code-bloat they threw in there. Aside from being a resource hog (there's no reason the full version should practically require 2 GB of RAM), the code is so poorly written (I think) that quite honestly someone with no knowledge of OS design must've made the majority of it.

Now, my Linux rant. Yes, for all its good, Linux is deficient. It doesn't natively support a lot of user-friendly stuff out of the box. This is mostly because Linux started out as a "power users and above" OS, made by and for people with a lot of knowledge of computing and programming. For those without such knowledge, sure Ubuntu comes close; but you still need to know a good deal about troubleshooting and sometimes even command line stuff. It's a great front-end, but it needs to be self-evident what some of the features do. Unfortunately, the entire Linux community seems stuck on making up better release names for products, that they fail to notice that you need some stability of product for newbies.

Now, Linux is good, but I've a feeling it's not great. Every time someone claims to have read the source code (I haven't), after I laugh, the first thing I ask is, "how simple was it?". More than likely, the (likely to be a) faker will go on about the complexities of open-source code, and how it all looks like a jumbled mess at times.

I agree, if only because it logically makes sense. The open-source movement, although I condone it and support it in every way, is still lacking. There's no guarantee of communication, and sure the code will eventually get better, the simple fact is that it is seldom properly documented (I've looked at Linux code. The first thing I scream is "where are the comments?!". The second thing I scream is "why don't they use a standard naming convention?"). Personally, there needs to be some sort of movement within the Linux community to set very strict standards, because without even attempting this, we'll get script kiddies writing code (which somehow passes Linux dev inspection), then when there's a problem with it, the kiddie can't be found, and his code is ****. Then we're all ****ed.

Well, enough about my anti-Linux rant, because if I didn't need Windows for school, I'd run nothing but Linux (I plan to salvage a computer shortly, and install Linux on it, so soon I'll have a better understanding than what I've gleaned from friends' computers). Windows is nice, but it's insecure as all get out (read above on Vista). Also, it's a part of the "(Wo)Man", which means Big Brother/Sister is close by when you run Windows.

Bah, who are we kidding? We all know that the Antarcticans (not the band) are responsible for all our wars and troubles. Instead of trying to take over the Middle East, GWB needs to invade Antarcticans and bring order to our penguin/human hybrid masters.

[Mikrondel]

earlofqb said:

If it were legal, I'd propose we all get "together" (in a global sense), and burn every box of Vista that's out there (as well as blow up the Vista manufacturing plant (of the DVDs)).

Every single time I walk in any tech store, and see Vista sitting there, it's all I can do to not go through with part of the above plan...

It isn't the innocent boxes that make me twitch. It's the idiots. Like someone (either 136% retarded, being paid by Microsoft, part of a Vista-support company {for every person switching to Vista, that company gets another customer}, or being really sarcastic) arguing for Vista in some comments to a blog. Among the things he said:
-most of the problems people were complaining about were not due to flaws in Vista but in fact to users being unaccustomed to the amazing new features of Vista. (Most complaints in the comment list were about sluggishness, DRM, or devices not working. Hmm.)
-Vista has "5 million lines of smart code". (Right. Smart. And doesn't anyone realise that the more code, the longer it takes to load the code into RAM?)
-it's like comparing an ordinary domestic vehicle to a luxury mercededs (Maybe, except Vista isn't the mercedes in this comparison, and they haven't mentioned how Vista's paint job is hiding the rust that's almost finished taking the car to pieces)
-"Experience the WOW" (I very much agree, I was taken aback by Vista)

But back to those 5 million lines of smart code. I have a theory for why Vista took so long and was delayed time and time again. Very simply - because of how hard it must have been to track down programmers who don't mind making a system this evil. And all the programmers who ran off or jumped out of the Window (HEHEHE) because they couldn't take it.

earlofqb said:

Vista is such a step backwards, that sometimes I wonder if WindowsME would be better...

Oh, that's debatable. I'd use DOS over Windows ME. But ME might still beat Vista.

earlofqb said:

Ild, why don't you join in on the open-source team and help write some Linux code? At the very least, openly tell them your ideas...

Being a Linux kernel programmer involves being on a mailing list that gives you a few hundred emails a day. That's not my kind of environment. And my ideas are too radical anyway.

And I also disagree about the problems of GNU/Linux. Honestly, who cares about naming and comments? Only developers. Naming and comments don't make any difference to a compiled program, and so end users get the same result. And that's the issue here.

What I'm trying to say is, better documentation of code and more consistent naming might make development a bit faster, but in the end won't make Linux more user-friendly or flexible.

The problem with GNU/Linux, is Unix. It's not a big problem. Unix is good, but it doesn't give you enough guidance, and standardisation. For a desktop OS, those things can make a big difference.

Unix and GNU/Linux are rock-solid foundations. But Windows is more like a pre-built house. (And Mac is a pre-furnished house.) (Let's ignore Vista for the time being.) Linux in a way gives you too much choice: while this relates to everything, I'm particularly thinking of choice of Window managers and Package managers. In Windows you're stuck with one of each, so software generally runs smoothly with them. Under GNU/Linux, things are much more messy, and getting software to work with your particular system setup can be hellish.

But that level of choice is the same thing that lets you put Linux with twenty server programs and masquerading network capabilities onto a 3.5 inch floppy disk with room to spare. It's good and bad.

The way I see it - if open-source worked on this amazing, general-purpose, high-performance operating system, maybe we should try using open-source on an OS that's focussed on the desktop arena. An OS that makes some strong suggestions about some fundamental things, helping to create a more reliable environment. (That's an advantage of consoles- game makers know your system specs exactly)

Anyway I think I'll start on a new file system and write drivers for it for Linux. The beginning of the idea for this is basically "why not treat ZIP files just like folders... or maybe the other way round?" But I don't want to reveal any more right now.

Good evenin'.

[earlofqb]

First, what's wrong with senselessly burning "innocent" boxes? Last I heard, if you wear the colors of the enemy, you're with them. If you're with them, you're the enemy. So, we must kill the enemy (stay the course?) and save the world from bugs like Vista (but will we be greeted as liberators?).

I wrote "smart code" once. I called it an extensible program (plug in a "small" script and your Notepad replacement could be a mini-game platform).

Ok, so I didn't write it, because I stonewalled with the debugging and how to properly interface the scripting language. Also, it used Visual Basic, so you know it wouldn't have been too great anyway. I might look at the idea later after I've learned more about the C family (probably C# would be best...).

I can experience the "WOW" on XP. I see no reason why I should upgrade to Vista just to play a future version of World of Warcraft... (lol).

I agree that there needs to be a simple standard for Linux. For the most part, free enterprise has contributed to this. Sure, there are countless flavors of Linux, however there are only 5 or so main ones. All we need to do now is find a way to simplify and standardize everything, and these 5 flavors can remain (all they'd really be is the same general idea, but with a new UI and maybe one or two small differences).

The only problem, is that the majority of the Linux community seems to have the "I'm right, you're wrong" mentality, that they're the only ones who can possibly be right, and that everyone else is wrong.

Further, I argue against your "documentation standards won't help Linux" argument. If there were a clear, concise way that the code was written, then more code could be added/existing code modified at a much faster rate. Once that happens, there will be a flood of new features and other stuff, and popular opinion will/should dictate what is best (maybe not the best for security or fastest code, but the best for user interface and extensibility). Unfortunately, it's too big to change in any short time period (would take years and the express blessing of some of Linux's founding fathers).

Now, about your "Zip files like folders", that would mean that you'd have to either have instant unzipping, or a permanent copy of the files in some low-access-time storage (RAM?). Unless you have another idea for that...

Well, I suppose I'll go to bed as well. Can't dream in code if you aren't asleep (more on that in a bit...).