Inventingsteel, that brings up a good question, has anyone heard any news as to how much Microsoft plans on charging for a copy of Vista? I'm assuming the different versions their pushing will cost different amounts.

I agree with you 100%. They may be behind but at least they are trying.

But Win95, 98 & ME were in Beta their whole lives. As is XP. Deny it all you like, but the thing still crashes for me. Maybe not as much as earlier versions, but usually when it is most inconvenient, and for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, due to the use of some industry-specific software, I have to use the crap at work.

Anyhow, there'll never be another "Windows 95 moment" for Microsoft. People have learned that it's always "more of the same" from that particular company.

In all the excitement, a friend of mine waited until Midnight outside a computer shop on the eve of the release of Win95. Two hours after purchasing it, he had microwaved the floppy disks it came on and had reformatted his HD and was reinstalling DOS. An expensive lesson learned.
With good reason. It has been my desktop OS at home for 8 years now, and has proven to be rock solid.

And the rest of the story...

The guy that hacked it was given shell access to begin with. Random bad guys trying to break in won't have shell access.

If thats the truth thats one of the lamest comparison tests i've ever seen.

Oh, it is true enough. The site is archived now, but here is an archive copy of the page where he would let you establish an SSH account on his machine.

http://rm-my-mac.wideopenbsd.org.nyu...tatic_ssh.html

Here is the current homepage for this whole thing:

http://rm-my-mac.wideopenbsd.org.nyud.net:8090/

The test was pretty bogus, alright.

At work, I'm a software developer. Our business platforms are all Windows, our targets are big businesses. One of my jobs (where I'm really fluent) is software deployment - software deployment must not fail on even a single client. Our customers are large companies. We're a Microsoft Partner, and we're getting all their ubsoftware for free, including Beta software for previews.

Now you know
1. I'm heavily involved with Microsoft technologies
2. I'm responsible for deploying our software to any platform being in use by our customers

-- Let me tell you, I haven't even looked at Vista.

Maybe it comes out in a year or so. And even at that time noone will really be interested in using it because it takes so much hardware resources and because there's no actual gain over Windows XP, concerning new possibilities (both, from an end user's and a developer's point of view).

To me, Ubuntu is much more interesting although none of our - I mentioned: large - customers is using Linux yet. I really don't see the gain in Microsoft products anymore.

Look at Microsoft Office 2007 - they're offering partner programs - but I don't think this revolutionary, easy interface will impact businesses. I think people need to get their job done, and they don't need "revolutionary" interfaces but improved ones.

I think Linux, and GNU, is a real alternative. Privately - as a programmer - I've changed almost completely.

Let's face reality.

Operating systems are now a mature technology. Given the hardware, there really isn't anyplace to go.

But microsoft can't admit that. They have to sell the "latest and greatest", even if it doesn't bring anything to the table but more resource-hogging eye candy. And, given the monolithic design of the microsoft OS, improving it is really hard anyway because of all the interactions.

So, they promised a revolutionary file system and had to back off of that because it wasn't happening fast enough. What do they have left? Nothing at all.

So they'll change some peripheral things; the GUI will get fancier (and, IMO, more annoying). File formats will change, thus breaking older but perfectly functional software. They'll drop support for 16 bit apps, thus breaking many more older but perfectly functional software.

Beyond that? Nothing at all.

Thats true, but I still think there is alot more to come for OSes. Didn't the CEO of IBM say there were only need for a total of four computers in the world? (granted that was in 1950 something, but the same idea applies)

Agreed, just because we can't think of a next step for OSes, that doesn't mean there isn't one...

Well to be fair an OS at it's simplest level is merely a way of bridging the gap between hardware and software. A lot of the things that are accepted as part of an OS now aren't really a part of the OS (or don't need to be) they are just applications. Most things regarded as improvements to an OS are things which were previously an application which are integrated into the OS. Case and point windows has explorer.exe which is an application but provides the user interface, yet it is seen as part of the OS because you can't interact (very well) without it.
I guess my point is that "OS" expansion and improvement is only as limited as the applications you can create for it outwith fundamental stability and speed.

Vista is playing catch-up. The security levels in it have been around in linux for as long as i have used it, and i would have thought that they have been there since the beginning.

I somewhat doubt that the new explorer or Areo will have no where near the number of effect that KDE 3.5.2 (or gnome iv not tried) have running on Xgl with compiz running. the hole spinning cube desktop is amazing, you dont need a super GPU for KDE 3.5.2 or compiz, i have a fx 5500 128, and it runs fine. Security will never be perected or even close to it in windows, as people will always try and break it to 'beat' MS, and people will always 'not care' and run as admin all the time as in xp.

Lets face it vista has a tiny bit of transparency and sum shiny 'bits', its looks bad. Windows looks bad. Theres not enough choices around to make it look good.
From what i have seen its a slightly more 'prettier' version of xp.

I have to argue a couple of points from that last post...

First, a GeForce FX5500 may be out of date by gaming standards, but it's still relatively high spec. I have set up several linux boxes with much older cards.

Second, the problem with Windows security is not that 'people will always try and break it to beat MS', this applies equally to Linux. There's nothing in most Linux distros to stop people running everything as root either. There were several design flaws in the Windows security model, but saying 'people will always not care and run as admin all the time' applies to both OSes.

Finally, I don't found Windows XP particularly attractive, but it looks better out of the box than most Linux distros I've tried. It's less customisable, but most people I know wouldn't know how to change the appearance of either Linux or Windows. While a lot of people say eye candy isn't important, for the average home user I'd have to disagree. If you've spent a whole lot of time developing a good OS, it has to be worth spending the bit extra time to make it pretty (although this doesn't necessarily mean that it should be bloated, which is often what happens!)

Not meaning to antagonise, but I had to make a couple of points.

Gethyn brings up a good point. Just as the average user dosen't know much about security, they do care alot about what looks good and pretty. That is something to think about if your out to make Linux more of a mainstream peice of software.

Hey, that's my card! For all of my purposes, it's still a very high-end card. I don't do any resource intensive graphics rendering on my main system (what I use 99% of the time) so maybe it's even a little overkill for me.
It's the best product I ever purchased from WalMart...
I have to disagree with you there.
I do not believe that the deciding factor for a move in the community should be how it will affect the process of making Linux more mainstream. I believe it should be based on how much better it will actually make Linux. It is unique; it really should not try to be a replacement for Windows. It needs to change objectively based on how much better it will make Linux. I'm not saying that it would necessarily be a bad thing to have developed autodetection features in the kernel or a "prettier" desktop, it's just that we have to come to those conclusions based on if they would actually make Linux better or not -- not based on how much more popular it will make it. That's bad thinking and might get you to places you never even dreamed on commercialization-wise, but will likely get you nowhere quality-wise. If we were to think that way, then we'd ultimately end up following Windows, since that is what sets the "mainstream" standard these days. Our quality development would all depend on where Microsoft went. If they were wrong, we'd be wrong.
Remember what your teachers told you in school: Don't copy your partner's answers on a test. They might be just as wrong as yours.
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
What is popular is not always right...
*Hey, America Online is the world's most popular ISP! Why don't all of the struggling ISPs in the world rethink their services so they all act more like AOL's? I'm sure they would get a lot more customers if they did!*