Microsoft Windows 8: Mostly A Crap Wreck

[bnolsen]

And not be able to update for half a year. And when you do, instead of updating software, you need to upgrade a whole OS. Wow, l33t.

oh please. I just recently took a system from 10.04 -> 10.10 -> 11.04 -> 11.10 (and soon to 12.04). So everything isn't the newest but I haven't had problems with this machine nor with the updates.

Personally I really dislike debian based distros and have been running arch on my dev boxes (used to be gentoo). Arch isn't perfect either. I don't really like the "fsck you" attitude of the maintainers much which is what i seem to get too often.

[allquixotic]

Oh, you are so wrong. On Windows I can update software without breakages, because the core stays stable, and I can have the latest user apps. Well, I can do that with Linux too, since I'm using Gentoo, but Gentoo is not for the masses. Ubuntu is. And it locks them with the same software for half a year and then tells them to install a whole new version of the entire OS.

This is brain damage, imo. Windows has got that one right.

I agree with you, but this is a management issue that distros could deal with if they wanted to. It's just that no one has really undertaken the task.

To do something similar to Windows, basically what you'd do is start with RHEL 6 and continually compile the latest stable version of userland apps (by "apps" I mean, not things like gcc and libc, I mean end user programs that a casual user will be familiar with by name) and ship them as automatic updates.

It's not impossible to do that. A vast majority of applications have backwards compatibility with system libraries and kernel APIs, meaning that you can compile, for instance, GIMP 2.8 on an old system, or LibreOffice 3.3. Some things will be more difficult to do (and riskier), like upgrading between the 4.x versions of KDE or upgrading from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, but the minor releases for sure should be possible to do risk-free, and many distros still don't do that.

I also like how Fedora often updates the kernel to the next version on their stable release. Linux 3.3 is now the standard on Fedora 16, whereas it shipped with 3.2. It's a nice touch and a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, you don't want to go willy-nilly just updating every single package on the system to the latest stable. That's called ArchLinux, and while many people can deal with the potential upgrade breakages you get from that, non-technical users can't.

There's a happy medium somewhere between Ubuntu and ArchLinux, but nobody (to my knowledge) has yet implemented a distribution upgrade policy that exactly nails that happy medium. But there's no theoretical reason why it's impossible. You just have to identify all the programs that are true applications and not just infrastructure, and separate them out and keep them updated. The user doesn't care if they have libc 2.18 instead of 2.19, but they do care if they have Firefox 8 instead of Firefox 12.

I've experimented with this in the past on CentOS 5 and 6. Start with base distro and start installing newer versions of apps. I was generally successful, but in most cases I had to compile from source. A distro could do that for you.

[RealNC]

oh please. I ...

Yes, you. Not everybody else.

[RealNC]

I agree with you, but this is a management issue that distros could deal with if they wanted to. It's just that no one has really undertaken the task.

Arch Linux has.

To do something similar to Windows, basically what you'd do is start with RHEL 6 and continually compile the latest stable version of userland apps (by "apps" I mean, not things like gcc and libc, I mean end user programs that a casual user will be familiar with by name) and ship them as automatic updates.

No, you can't do that. You can't update drivers without updating underlying infrastructure. Not only the kernel, but also the whole X stack and its dependencies. And this is why Windows' driver ABI is helping users, and Linux's lack of one hurts its adoption. But as said earlier, Linux is focused on enterprise and server usage (since those companies own the kernel developers), not normal people.

A real desktop OS needs a driver ABI. The kernel devs have no real incentive to do all the work of creating and maintaining one. They are not being paid for that. They are paid for maintaining server/enterprise functionality.

[Kano]

I dont get your point. Do you want just for 1 drivers a stable abi? nvidia has got no problems following kernel+xorg releases, just amd's way to work on drivers is plain stupid. I think it is fully enough when kernel changes do not break userspace apps. The name change from 2.6.x to 3.x caused a bit trouble but not that much. Also the number of desktop linux users seems to be large enough for amd to follow ubuntu releases, they should just do a bit more and support mainline changes and integrate user patches if they are not able to fix it on their own.

Also if you REALLY tried to run W8 on old hardware, then you would know that there ARE driver problems. Do you see W8 drivers for older Intel gfx chips used by netbooks? I don't! It is definitely not the case that you can run legacy hardware on latest Win releases, sometimes you have got more luck and you can run XP drivers on Vista/7, but thats not always the case. For LOTS of old scanners you do NOT find any 64 bit Win drivers, same for older webcams. Printers are often better supported due to generic drivers, but thats just a side effekt, those work on Linux usually as well. So what do you need to do when want to use those hardware? Well you need a VM, for scanners you could use a Linux VM or a XP VM but it definitely does not work natively. So please tell me what is so much better with Win? Basically every PC sold now has got a 64 bit os, beginning with W8 it is even IMPOSSIBLE to ship a 32 bit os preinstalled as uefi only works with 64 bit. But of course you never thought that you might want to reuse your old hardware... Replacing a gfx card by a new one for 20 bucks is not that critical for desktop users, every other hardware replacement usually costs more.

[RealNC]

I dont get your point. Do you want just for 1 drivers a stable abi?

No. There are hundreds of drivers in the kernel. You can't update only a few of them without updating the rest of them too. And if you do want to update all of them, you have to update the whole kernel. So you had a problem that the new driver solves, but you might end up with 3 new problems because you updated *everything*, the whole kernel instead of only the problematic driver.

I think it's you who didn't understand my point and what the problem is :-)

[Kano]

Thats definitely not so problematic. You get out of tree updates for wireless, dvb and alsa and maybe others as well. You should be more specific. What exact driver you could not use with which kernel? And why couldnt you update the kernel?

[AJenbo]

Oh, you are so wrong. On Windows I can update software without breakages, because the core stays stable, and I can have the latest user apps. Well, I can do that with Linux too, since I'm using Gentoo, but Gentoo is not for the masses. Ubuntu is. And it locks them with the same software for half a year and then tells them to install a whole new version of the entire OS.

This is brain damage, imo. Windows has got that one right.

You must not have heard about PPA's? Also some apps are already being updated during the cycle (Firefox, Chromium).

[Windywoo]

I find the Windows hate expressed here to be more along the lines of prejudice rather than well informed opinions. If Windows were as awful as you claim there would be a lot more Linux users right? Simply because everybody would be driven mad by the poor experience delivered by PC manufacturers and Microsoft.

Even when Microsoft released Vista the number of Mac and Linux users did not rise significantly. If I were to list my Linux issues and Windows issues side by side the Linux list would be longer despite my having worked on more Windows PCs. I don't think this is the place for a full list but here is a few of the worst.

Linux crashed a router. Yes, by enabling IPv6 by default my old router crashed because it didn't support IPv6. How in hell can Linux have a reputation for stability with crap like this? Installing a new graphics card broke X windows. I took out a Geforce and put in a Radeon and X would no longer boot. Safe mode and rebuilding the xconf did not help. Reinstalled Linux. Video not accelerated by default in the default Ubuntu media player despite the nvidia drivers being installed. I had to install a new media player from the repository and manually tell it to accelerate to get smooth playback.

I've had my share of bluescreens in my time but because Windows is more widely used it is easier to find a fix. Trawling through Ubuntu forums through threads for one version or the next provides fewer solutions in a longer period of time.

But on the topic of Windows 8 this "overview" sounds like someone with little skill at adapting to new ways of doing things. I have been testing the Consumer Preview now since it came out and I think there has only been one thing I haven't found an easy fix for in this new build. Basically ignore the Metro bit if you want to multitask. The desktop is there and it works pretty much as it did in Windows 7, you just have to make the desktop and the taskbar do the job of the Start menu. The one thing I couldn't find a fix for was run program. Control Panel and all those features that were on the Start menu are still in Windows 8.

I do hope they find a better way of integrating older apps into the new Metro Start. Old programs all showed up as mini tiles and they would be better off with a tile for their program group, not every single shortcut in that program group.

So basically it's quite easy to avoid Metro if you don't like it, but it's there for those who may find its simplicity useful.

[fuzz]

Linux crashed a router. Yes, by enabling IPv6 by default my old router crashed because it didn't support IPv6. How in hell can Linux have a reputation for stability with crap like this?

You blame linux for an old router's problem?