Vista - Microsoft's new OS

[PPRuNe Pop]

Anyone know if there is a planned launch date for it?

Indeed, does anyone know how good it is? (Or bad!)


A little later I thought I would give Google a go. It seems there is quite a lot of good things coming with the new OS. Just type VISTA. Quite interesting.

PPP

[Conan the Librarian]

Get your wallet ready for some serious spending by about November Pop. Longhorn is going to need an impressively specced machine to run well, so it might be advantageous on many ways to wait a few months more until the hype calms down a bit and prices stabilise.

If you buy the OS itself, look carefully at your own machine and work out whether it will be worth this no doubt expensive little package.

Conan

[airborne_artist]

I've been told by a guy who should know that Vista is quite demanding on video resources, and so PCs with integrated video (most cheap ones) will struggle with it. Just a rumour, but then that's what Pprune's about :ok:

[Mac the Knife]

Most PCs that are less than 3 years old should be able to run it without problems, though less than 512MB memory will be noticeably slower - suggest at least that.

PCs with less able graphics WILL be able to run Vista, they'll just have to turn off most of the eye candy (so games written for Vista won't run).

WARNING: Vista looks like an interesting OS to me - MS have finally got around to fixing many of the previous security and many other issues, but there's a price (of course!). XP/2000 drivers won't work in Vista - so you'll need new drivers for all your devices. If your vendor isn't going to develop one then you're outta luck - and only MS certified drivers will be allowed, with NO option to allow installation of unsigned drivers (MS charges for certification and it takes quite a while).

DRM: Vista will have pretty aggressive Digital Rights Management, not just for music and video, but documents and images as well. If you don't mind not being able to do a lot of the things you once took for granted then be my guest.

Privacy: If you ever bothered to read the MS EULA (End User Licence Agreement) that comes with your MS OS/software you know that you effectively sign away pretty much ALL your rights by accepting it. The OS can watch what you are doing, phone home and use the info as MS sees fit - misbehave in MS eyes and your OS will be disabled - your habits WILL be know to MS.

I wouldn't be caught dead near Vista, not because it isn't a clever and pretty OS (and the indications are that it will be) but because I don't like MS's attitude and business methods, I think that they are far too powerful for their own good and ours, I don't trust them one bit and I don't like DRM and the feeling of the loss of my autonomy and privacy. And Vista will be expensive. But hey, whatever floats your boat....

MS are terrified of Linux and are using every means at their disposal to hinder the steady adoption of Linux - fair (a bit) and foul (a lot) - bribery, lies, innuendo, payoffs, threats to vendors, perversion of web and document standards and lawyers, lawyers, lawyers. Nasty.

Example: developers who plan Linux and MS versions will find that their MS certification will take a l-o-o-o-o-g time - probably enough to ruin them. If they promise not to develop for Linux they'll get a big discount on the certification fees. Don't laugh - it's happening right now, and MS has been employing these bully-boy tactics for years.

Example: MS is just ignoring the AntiTrust judgement against them in the States - they've bought off the supervisors of the judgement and with Vista will just sidestep the whole thing anyway.

Example: MS were ordered by the EU to release the full documentation of the XP program interfaces so that non-MS software writers could compete with MS. What MS then did was to offer to licence (for hefty fees) part of the source code (not the same as documentation and pretty much useless for writing apps.) for XP (which Vista will render obsolete anyway). And the huge fines? MS can afford it, even though they would bankrupt a medium sized country.

MS's army of lawyers and their bottomless pockets mean that legally only perhaps IBM could take them on in Court - with any other company or individual they just drag it on until your money runs out and you're bust.

GNU/Linux is roaring ahead with improvements in usability and user-friendliness, is rock-stable, already secure, unencumbered by DRM and I'm in control and can tinker as much as I like. No fees, no EULA, no phoning-home with my info. If I need to run Windows apps., WINE (the Windows Emulator) is getting better daily and can now run the majority of Windows programs (many of which are now cross-platform or are being ported to Linux anyway now). Linux apps are mostly GPL (so free) and those that aren't are at a fair price and compete fairly.

Finally, the Mac OS is now out for the x86 platform and it'll only be a matter of time before Apple releases it for non-Apple PCs (it'll be expensive though).

So no, I won't be going to Vista.

[frostbite]

Another good reason to hang back/ignore is the extreme likelihood of the release of SP1, etc., etc., shortly after it becomes available.

[Saab Dastard]

Mac,

With you 100% on this!

I have made backup backups of all my Win2K and WinXP installation media, and I am learning Linux!

I will have to use Vista at work (I'm going to be on a RC version soon), but no way am I going to be dictated to (at home) by MS to the extent that Vista promises.

Long Live Linux! Go Gnu!

SD

[hobie]

BBC news on VISTA here ..... (27/02/06)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4754462.stm

[VP959]

Mac,

I agree with your philosophy 100%.

Out of interest, how easy is it for a reasonably intelligent but not particularly computer savvy individual to get to grips with Linux?

I have been seriously thinking about this for some time, but as a user of several expensive bits of Windows software (AutoCad, SolidWorks and a handful of odd computational fluid dynamics programs) I have always fought shy of making the jump.

My current XP machine is stuffed to the gunnels with odd bits of useful stuff, like umpteen Excel spreadsheets for doing odd bits of aircraft design and analysis, plus lots of Word reports, templates etc. Does all this sort of stuff port across to Open Office on Linux reasonably well?

I guess I could try it out by converting my spare PC to Linux, whilst keeping the XP machine going, but if Windows emulation is reasonably good then maybe I might be able to completely cut free from MS domination (that certainly appeals!).

VP

[BOFH]

Out of interest, how easy is it for a reasonably intelligent but not particularly computer savvy individual to get to grips with Linux?


For a (l)user, exceedingly easy. Break them in with Thunderbird, Firefox and Open Office on Windows and there should be only a few contusions (theirs, naturally) as collateral damage when you switch. As the owner of the box, it is straightforward in the same way as these unfortunate people who learned to drive on automatic cars and had to make the jump to a proper transmission. You just need to put in some time and thought. Is the latter such a bad thing? What do you think of people who can only drive automatics?

As Mac has vociferously argued, why on Earth you'd pay for something which will make life harder, make you spend more money than you have already done to go about your business, and tie you in a relationship you will learn to abhor, is nuts.

Keep an XP kernel running - that's what I am writing from right now - but with partitions or spare drives you can have the best of both worlds.

BOFH

[Conan the Librarian]

This is a good thing. However, there are various hairy arsed old users (yes, I count myself amongst them) who, having gained years of experience of either getting to live with MS, or (B) have had quite enough nervous trauma, will stick with them for a while yet. If and it is more of a question of when, I suppose - I get given another old base unit, I might even play with Linux myself. It is just that with a limited brain that is full of more shortcuts than a London cabbie, one does feel a bit maxed out, which in itself, is a pointer to consider moving, I suppose.

Time to lie down somewhere dark, methinks....

Conan

[Keef]

Linux - it may be the answer, but it's hard work!

I made my "old" PC into a Linux machine a year or so ago, to learn this new stuff. The good news is that Linux is (mostly) free. The software that goes with it is free, and very competent.

The bad news is that it's a lot geekier than Windows: you have to type the "admin" password every few minutes (or sometimes less) if you're trying to set anything up. Installing software is (mostly) a nightmare if you don't speak "job control language" - there's one example of how to install a simple graphics package here (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/install_help.html). In contrast, I use a similar package for Windows: to install that I had to run the setup.exe - and that was it.

When I got stuck (which happened often), I asked on various Linux forums. From those, I learned above all that a) Any idiot can do it; b) I'm stupider than any idiot, and c) What do you want to do that for anyway? When I got to the hard questions, the only responses I got were "I have the same problem - did you ever find the fix?" I still get those to this day.

Then I found one super guy who really knows this Linux stuff and is supremely capable and helpful, and no, I'm sorry but I'm not passing on his details.

There are many flavours of Linux to choose from; the aficionados call them "distros". I tried four distros before I got one that actually worked at all. The one I have (Debian) is pretty solid and stable, except that most of my peripherals don't work (ie printer, soundcard, scanner, webcam, and joystick). Some can be got to run by opening a command prompt and typing a load of JCL at it - but that only works till you reboot the machine, then it all has to be done again. I tried to write "startup" batch files to do that automatically, but it doesn't seem to work like that.

Connecting to a network is easy for the Internet access bit - it took me less than four hours to set up the Internet so that it could browse and send/receive e-mail. I doubt I had to type the supervisor password more than 50 times in the process.

But the network interface (called Samba) is something else. After about three months, I managed to cheat it enough to get it to talk to the other machines on the network and transfer files around.

There's a very clever package (called Kpackage) that will download the full list of all software available for Linux, and install it for you without any of the JCL stuff. The only slight snag is that 80% of the install processes end with an error message that it wasn't able to complete the job. Usually the reason was in Klingon, but often it told me I hadn't got the right version of something else. That meant load another item, which in turn needs another item which...

The killer for me was when I'd at last got enough stuff working to be able to use it "in anger". At that point came the time to upgrade to the new release that promised lots of fixes for the "doesn't work" items. Ah, no, you can't upgrade. You start again from scratch and install everything. Yes, right.

At that point I dug out the old Win2000 CD and loaded that onto the machine in "dual boot" mode. For playing, Linux is a challenge. For doing serious work, and for "server" duties, it's Windows.

I'm assured by those who can drive it that there are reasons why all those pitfalls and obstacles are there in Linux. I'm sure they're right. At my age, life's just too short...

[Mac the Knife]

...how easy is it for a reasonably intelligent but not particularly computer savvy individual to get to grips with Linux?

No harder than DOS.... Joking aside, a good distro like Ubuntu or SuSe makes it pretty easy

...as a user of several expensive bits of Windows software (AutoCad, SolidWorks and a handful of odd computational fluid dynamics programs.....

These don't port easily - stay with Windows for the moment

.....My current XP machine is stuffed to the gunnels with odd bits of useful stuff, like umpteen Excel spreadsheets for doing odd bits of aircraft design and analysis, plus lots of Word reports, templates etc. Does all this sort of stuff port across to Open Office on Linux reasonably well?.......

OO copes very well with simpler documents, but stumbles over complex documents with embedded stuff. No surprising, because MS keeps the formats secret and it all has to be reverse-engineered. Stay where you are for the moment.

......I guess I could try it out by converting my spare PC to Linux, whilst keeping the XP machine going, but if Windows emulation is reasonably good then maybe I might be able to completely cut free from MS domination (that certainly appeals!).

Thats the way to go. Learning Linux isn't difficult (people coped with Windows for Workgroups which was a lot worse) but it takes some minor effort - well worth it though!

[Mac the Knife]

"...you have to type the "admin" password every few minutes (or sometimes less) if you're trying to set anything up. Installing software is (mostly) a nightmare if you don't speak "job control language"".

Hmmm... Well I usually go to Computer Administration" and "Install new software" or their equivalents and choose "Install new software", point it at the RPM or deb file, give the admin password when asked for it and off it goes. I had to Google for Job Control Language"....!

Some of the people on Linux forums can be just as you say, but you'll get good help more often than not.

"The one I have (Debian) is pretty solid and stable, except that most of my peripherals don't work (ie printer, soundcard, scanner, webcam, and joystick). Some can be got to run by opening a command prompt and typing a load of JCL at it - but that only works till you reboot the machine, then it all has to be done again. I tried to write "startup" batch files to do that automatically, but it doesn't seem to work like that."

Odd. Ubuntu is Debian based and it picked up all my peripherals permanently on install and they all work. This JCL thing is starting to confuse me!

"But the network interface (called Samba) is something else. After about three months, I managed to cheat it enough to get it to talk to the other machines on the network and transfer files around."

I found SAMBA confusing when I started working in a mixed environment - it took me a day or two of tinkering to get everything tickety-boo. Most modern distros have a nice GUI for configuring SAMBA and you don't have to tinker with smb.conf

"....Kpackage..." I haven't used this particular package manager but most of my install packages work just fine. You can indeed have dependency conflicts that are a pain in the arse, but if you stick to stuff from the package depository designed for your own distro you should be OK. I presume you're not compiling from scratch!

"...At that point came the time to upgrade to the new release that promised lots of fixes for the "doesn't work" items."

Hmmm. SuSE at least upgrades pretty smoothly in place, as does Ubuntu, but you certainly CAN hose the system and need to reinstall though I haven't had to for quite a while.

"At my age, life's just too short..."

I sympathise. In exchange for getting an entire OS and software for everything under the sun for free you have to invest a bit of effort. Sometimes it's easier to pay the money, accept the chains and just do it. Your choice.

Linux is now a very long way from where it was 5 years ago when installing started with creating a bootdisk and a rootdisk and compiling lots of stuff yourself. In another 5 years it'll put Microsoft to shame.

[BOFH]

Mac,

I think the JCL Keef refers to looks like this:
//EXAMPLE PROC
//EXAMPLE1 EXEC PGM=IEFBR14
//EXAMPLELIB DD DISP=(NEW, CATLG),DSN=&DSNAME
// STORCLAS=DASD,
// SPACE=(CYL,(16,4,4)),
// DCB=(RECFM=FB,LRECL=80,BLKSIZE=720,DSORG=PD)
//PEND
// SET DSNAME=MYLIB.EXAMPLE
//STEP001 EXEC EXAMPLE

I have just created a dataset called example (and brought back a few nightmares).

I think Keef is referring to what it's like introducing new programs to *nix. More advanced distros do, as you say, make things easier, but it is always more laborious - especially when you want root - compared to Windows' <click this shiny button to install spyware> feature.

If you're working in a systems environment, you have to go through the hoops of dev, UAT and then production. If you haven't had to do that, then the *nix way of doing things seems like too much effort (let alone the JCL above). It is probably, as you point out, because most users haven't had to grapple with expanded and extended memory, stacks, buffers and the like from the primordial slime which begat Windows. If a new app creates BSODs or kills partitions, just reinstall and lose some data.

Once that's happened a couple of times, people begin to ask about Linux....

BOFH

[Mac the Knife]

BOFH, I'm confused - I've been running various Linuxes for about 5 years and never encountered or had to use JCL when installing drivers or otherwise - usually there's a binary driver available but occasionally I've had to compile from source - never needed JCL.

AKAIK Job Control Language (JCL) is a means of communicating with the IBM 3090 MVS Operating System.

Google tells me that JCL consists of control statements that:

* introduce a computer job to the operating system
* request hardware devices
* direct the operating system on what is to be done in terms of running applications and scheduling resources

So sorta like a script (batch language for DOS old-timers) and JCL scripts can be converted to Korn or Bash scripts.

What has this got to do with installing device drivers in Linux?

If I've never needed to use JCL scripts in fiddling with Linux for quite a while, then what am I missing (and what if Keef doing that needs 'em)?

Ahhhh DOS!

PRINT [d:device][/B:buffsiz][/U:busytick][/M:maxtick]
[/S:timeslice][/Q:quesiz][/C][/T][/P][[d:][path][filename][.ext].....]

[VP959]

Thanks for the advice Mac, I'm going to take the plunge and play with my spare PC this weekend.

Ubuntu is the distro I now have, so I'll see how I get on with it.

I think I'll have to do some hardware tweaking first, mind, as I currently run the spare PC over the network, using the remote desktop. I guess a trip[ to the loft to dig out the old monitor, keyboard etc is in order first.......

VP

[BDiONU]

So which distro version of Linux would you all recommend for those of us looking to switch with the least amount of pain?

BD

[Tinstaafl]

There are quite a few good distros. I favour Debian based ones because I like Debian's package management system & it's dependency handling.

Of the Debian based ones there's:

Debian (of course), a very stable-but-slow-to-release-the-latest-&-greatest distribution. Has *HUGE* amounts of software available for it. Has been used as the based for lots of other distributions including:

Ubuntu: A simplified version of Debian with good hardware recognition released by Mark Shuttleworth's foundation. Has fewer from-the-box software options (but what's there is certainly good). They've decided to be more of a 'here's our choice of software to do xxxx tasks'. Committed to regular release dates, unlike Debian.

Kubuntu: Ubuntu but using the KDE desktop interface instead of Gnome. KDE has a lot more choices about how you set up your machine, Gnome -by design - is a lot simpler.

Knoppix: well known amongst the Linuxim for a very, very good 'live CD' distribution with excellent hardware discovery/driver loading routines during boot. Not as optimised for hard disk install but certainly workable. Knoppix has spawned lots of live CD distros.

Kanotix: Based on Knoppix but with excellent optimisation for HD installation. It's the one I use on my laptop. It's the I use now & is the only one I've used so far that could operate my laptop's Winmodem (yech!) out of the box. It has no troubles with the internal wifi card & I think it's even set up the integral bluetooth hardware.

[ORAC]

I run SuSe 9.1, but can I get a wireless Wi-Fi card to run? Can I... Tried all the shells etc. Still stuck on a Cat 5 cable... @%$*&^%$$.

[Tinstaafl]

Why don't you download the .iso for Knoppix &/or Kanotix? Burn either/or/both to disks & try them? They both run from the CD without touching your HD file system. I'd be surprised if one of them can't drive your WiFi card. Unless your card some weirdo chip thing? What sort is it?

[Binoculars]

It seems fairly clear to me, and nothing said on this thread has remotely changed my mind, that Linux is a loooooooong way from being suitable for use by the "any idiot" fraternity, including myself, regardless of its benefits. Which causes me to ponder. Standby for pondering results.

When MS decide they need another skydillion umptillion dollars to keep their shareholders happy, they issue a new OS which nobody needs but which everybody eventually has to get, because MS are clearly not going to play along if 90% of the PC owners said "No, XP is fine for my needs thanks, you can shove your Vista where the sun don't shine." They simply stop producing XP, and since we're long past the golden days of W98SE when there was no DRM and your disc could be copied ad infinitum, there is no choice.

But wait a minute. MS don't sell computers, they sell operating systems. What if the Dells and Compaqs and HP's of the world said to MS, "we think this new system is completely unnecessary and adds so much to the cost of basic systems which are our bread and butter that we're not going to pay for it. Keep producing XP or we'll go elsewhere."

Right now MS obviously rely on there being nowhere else to go, in other words they are abusing their virtual monopoly. So, where is Linux in all this? I have no idea how a free product works, but wouldn't somebody, a company, a cooperative, whatever, be able to get together less than 1% of the MS budget and drag Linux into the world of being useable by "any idiot" in a relatively short time?

I have long been of the opinion that the vast majority of computer users are overserviced by a factor of lots. That is, they don't use a quarter of what their basic machine is capable of. The only reason I ever changed from W98SE is because it was deliberately made obsolete by new software.

I am probably missing something obvious, but it seems like there is a real opportunity to throw whatever is needed at Linux to get it to an easy interface with no geeky knowledge at all needed, so that Mr Dell can say to Mr Gates, "sorry Bill, we don't need you anymore", as he did to Intel a few years ago, forcing a price cut. Or is the pervasiveness of MS software such that it's already too late, and we are doomed to buying every new and unnecessary OS update they thrust upon us?

Isn't this how the free enterprise system is suposed to work? Competition? I suspect Mac's five year vision for Linux could be made a lot shorter with a couple of billion bucks thrown at it, and lots of anti-Microsoft nerds out there who would leap at the opportunity to get paid for working on it.

Ok, ok, I'm awake now. Sorry, it was just a dream.....:{

[Mac the Knife]

Good points Binos, however...

I can't agree that Linux "...... is a loooooooong way from being suitable for use by the "any idiot" fraternity". Ubuntu, Kanotix and SuSE distros are pretty much there. They're certainly infinitely easier to install and use and update than DOS or the 3.x Windows series. SuSE's YAST really makes installing new apps as easy as XP. Have you every tried it on a reasonably modern PC?

Things ARE a bit different, but a lot less than converting from a Boeing to an Airbus or a Seneca to a Cherokee, or any of the things that professional pilots do without too many problems. However the idea is not to produce an MS clone, but to produce something equally good or better!

As for your comments about Dell and Compaq and HP, they just LOVE new operating systems with higher requirements! That way folks will junk their last PC and buy a new one from them that CAN run Hasta la Vista properly!

"...wouldn't somebody, a company, a cooperative, whatever, be able to get together less than 1% of the MS budget and drag Linux into the world of being useable by "any idiot" in a relatively short time?"

Already been being done for quite a while - whaddaya think Red Hat, Novell/SuSE et al. have been up to for the last few years? And they're pretty much there - they'd be a lot further if MS wasn't leaning heavily on hardware manufacturers NOT to release drivers for Linux and to keep their specs secret so that Linux distro people have to reverse-engineer the specs to write their own drivers!

MS are **** scared now and using every dirty tactic in the book to slow down the Linux train - as I said, "...bribery, lies, innuendo, payoffs, threats to vendors, perversion of web and document standards and lawyers, lawyers, lawyers."

"Isn't this how the free enterprise system is suposed to work? Competition? "

Forgive me for chuckling - of course you're right, but MS have never had the slightest intention of allowing anyone else to compete on their turf - check-out Judge Jackson's "Findings of Fact" in the DOJ vs MS case at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

The worrying thing for the more philosophically minded among you is how can a company become so rich and powerful that it can afford to ignore with impunity the courts in it's own and other countries?

Bill's vision is a Microsoft world - where MS runs on all the PCs, runs the media, runs the phones, runs the PDAs, the TVs, the camcorders; and the MS formats of image files, document files and everything else is the de facto and preferably the de jure standard of the world.

MS is NOT an independent or impartial arbiter. At best Microsoft is consumed by monumental hubris if they believe that they truly know what is good for all the rest of us. We have no reason to believe it's protestations that the Microsoft way is the best way and that is why we should be doing it. On the contrary, in this information age, to have so much power and control vested in a single, supranational independent company, with it's own personal agenda is folly of the most dangerous kind.

:ok:

[slim_slag]

What I've come to believe is that Linux is brilliant server OS software, but not so good on the desktop. Your O/S should be invisible and 'just work', and on the desktop windows is and linux isn't. I had a windows machine becoime unbootable recently, and the best way for me to get to the drive before reinstalling Windows was to boot using Ubuntu (very 'non geek' software) - but even that required me to manually mount the drive. It picked up all my obscure hardware, but not the drive! What sort of nonsense is that? They say it's for my safety, which is rather 'we know best', but if they keep that up then ubuntu will never become mainstream. Very few people are going to be able to mount a drive using a command shell.

And microsoft probably is a nasty company which wants its domination to last for as long as possible, but they are all like that. If you worry about big companies keeping tabs on where you are and what you do, you should bin your mobile phone and credit cards. They know far more about you than microsoft.

[Mac the Knife]

Ubuntu.....required me to manually mount the drive. It picked up all my obscure hardware, but not the drive! What sort of nonsense is that? They say it's for my safety, which is rather 'we know best', but if they keep that up then ubuntu will never become mainstream. Very few people are going to be able to mount a drive using a command shell.

New shiny Breezy just mounts them, and the end up quite nicely in the Places menu next the the System menu... There's a nice GUI for mounting drives. Even Apple makes you mount drives (though you can automate it). Suppose you have a string of drives - do you want the OS to chunter along mounting each one on boot? Then people would complain about THAT.

And microsoft probably is a nasty company which wants its domination to last for as long as possible, but they are all like that. If you worry about big companies keeping tabs on where you are and what you do, you should bin your mobile phone and credit cards. They know far more about you than microsoft.

True enough, but that's not the point.

[slim_slag]

New shiny Breezy just mounts them.....

Must be new? Downloading that iso as I type. Don't get me wrong, I think ubuntu is brilliant, but it is touted as one of the best Linux has to offer, and it is still not as 'invisible' as windows.

Even Apple makes you mount drives (though you can automate it). Suppose you have a string of drives - do you want the OS to chunter along mounting each one on boot? Then people would complain about THAT.

Is Apple mainstream? I wouldn't say it is, even though a large amount of the 'innovative' things MS has claimed to develop were first seen in Apple. I would have the OS automatically mount all local drives, and any networked drives I ( or the network administrator) had configured. If you have 10 local drives, then mount them all out of the box, if you don't like that then remove them using easy to understand tools.

Default behaviour has to be simple, my mother has to be able to use it, out of the box. All the people who are smart enough to get a job should be able to use it, out of the box. A significant percentage of these people probably don't even know there is a hard drive in there.

True enough, but that's not the point.

It addressed your 'Privacy' point in your earlier post :)

[Mac the Knife]

Default behaviour has to be simple, my mother has to be able to use it, out of the box. All the people who are smart enough to get a job should be able to use it, out of the box. A significant percentage of these people probably don't even know there is a hard drive in there.

Well, sorta. From what I see, a lot of people can't use Windows out the box. Lots of supposedly intelligent people (like my brother) are constantly infuriated with Windows because it can't read their mind!

Whichever way you slice it, Windows, Apple Mac, Solaris or Linux, some degree of intelligence and ability to learn is an unavoidable prerequisite!

:ok:

[Saab Dastard]

Dragging this back from the dead...

Anyone who does not want to move to Vista and wants to stick with XP should upgrade their PC components and peripherals sooner rather than later.

MS have moved large chunks of driver code out of the kernel ring to less protected rings - the effect being to make virtually all existing XP device drivers redundant in Vista.

So when new graphics cards, printers, scanners, etc. etc. are being developed and the manfrs have to write drivers for them they are going to keep on developing both XP and Vista drivers? Is MS going to be "helpful" in getting XP drivers developed and certified?

Dream on.

Upgrade to the latest and fastest soon, before it's too late!

Unless you want DRM :eek:

[Keef]

Sorry - been elsewhere arguing other things :(

I learned "Job Control Language" many years ago in a brief interlude now best forgotten, when I was learning to drive the IBM 360/50 downstairs, just in case. Quickly forgotten, I'm happy to say.

The "Job Control Language" I referred to above is the stuff I had to type at Linux to get it to work. For example, to make the sound card go (not exactly an arduous task in Windows - it "just worked"), I had to type at it:

-d alsa --device emu10k1
jackd -d alsa -d sblive
jackstat -Rv -d alsa -p128 -n2 -r44100
asfxload

How did I find out that lot? It's not on any website! I don't even know if it's right - but it worked. It doesn't any more, since I installed some plugins for Firefox, but I don't mind the Linux machine being silent.

To install a downloaded package that isn't covered by kpackage, the aficionado has to type stuff like:

ar xvfz zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.3
make clean
./configure -s
make
make install

It's not a problem if you can copy and paste, or if you can tell -1 from -l from -I but I did find it a little less than totally intuitive.

I'm told it's getting a lot easier, and I've used a Knoppix CD on a friend's Windows laptop which wouldn't boot and threatened to lose several gigabytes of digital photos that he'd not backed up... (He thought he had, but something hadn't worked). Knoppix recovered the lot. That was impressive.

[Mac the Knife]

-d alsa --device emu10k1
jackd -d alsa -d sblive
jackstat -Rv -d alsa -p128 -n2 -r44100
asfxload


Never had to do that sort of thing with the modern Linuxes. That's not to say that you might have to if you're building from scratch a la Gentoo or have an unusual configuration.


To install a downloaded package that isn't covered by kpackage, the aficionado has to type stuff like:

ar xvfz zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.3
make clean
./configure -s
make
make install


Well, that's if you're going to compile it yourself like a true believer. :D

Most of the time these days there'll be a pre-compiled binary for your distro available and you can just click on the .rpm or .deb or whatever package and after giving an admin password away you go.

I haven't had to compile an app from source for quite a while.

Are you sure you're working with modern Linux distros Keef? All that stuff sounds like the way it was 5 or more years ago.

Mac :ok:

[BEagle]

"Microsoft delays launch of Vista......

.....Efforts to improve security in the new system were largely behind the delay, Microsoft said. "

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4831374.stm

Who needs it anyway? What's wrong with Windows XP as a Windows OS? Yes, I know there are other OS, so don't bother trying to interest me in some geeky alternative. I'm quite happy with WinXP and I'm not going to fork out for something unnecessary!

[seacue]

Mr. BEagle, you ask who needs Vista. Microsoft needs Vista. Their income would suffer if they didn't have New, Better to sell. Similarly, the hotshots on their staff would leave if they didn't have something new to work on. Software maintenance isn't all that exciting.

Since support for XP will eventually be withdrawn, we need to recognize that we really rent the operating system, though it isn't explicitly stated that way.

[slim_slag]

renting implies ongoing payments, which home users don't have to pay. You pay a one off fee to licence (not own) your copy of XP and that's it. When they remove support you can still use it. Whether that makes sense is not a licence issue, it's your choice, not Microsoft's. Desupporting software after a period of time is commonplace in the industry.

[Mac the Knife]

renting implies ongoing payments, which home users don't have to pay. You pay a one off fee to licence (not own) your copy of XP and that's it. When they remove support you can still use it. Whether that makes sense is not a licence issue, it's your choice, not Microsoft's. Desupporting software after a period of time is commonplace in the industry.

What about the ongoing payments for 3rd party AV software that home users have to pay to protect MS's insecure OS? The AV component of Vista (which won't be bundled) will require yearly renewal payments too.

I know MS (and the hardware manufacturers) would LOVE us all to move to Vista (at considerable expense to ourselves and even more to any software competition [because all the programming APIs will change]).

Desupporting some ageing application that not enough people use anymore is one thing - desupporting an OS that is used globally, just because you want to sell more copies of the "next edition" is extortion (something that MS is good at).

I've no doubt Vista WILL be more secure and prettier (and full of DRM stuff) - whether that will be enough to cause folks to junk their entire working systems and buy new hardware and software at considerable expense is a moot point. Particularly as they now have an increasingly viable alternative.

:yuk:

[Son of the Bottle]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, it looks as though it has been once already. I just wanted to ask Keef if you've tried using the Debian package management system called apt (http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/)? Or were the packages you've installed not in their database? Also I'm surprised that you're having to use jack to get alsa working with an emu10k1 - are you running alsa as a module or compiled into the kernel?

Mac, I must admit I've really been spoiled by using Gentoo. It doesn't get much easier than typing emerge <packagename>. The tricky part is getting it all set up, but if you follow the instructions there usually isn't a problem. It's a process I would recommend to anyone who's interested in the nuts and bolts of their computer OS.

[unclenelli]

If anyone wants to give it a go now, you can get Vista (& Office 2007) now here for free......

Unclenelli - I've removed the link you posted, which I'm sure you did with the best of intentions. However, PPRuNe policy is not to allow anything that might be construed as encouraging or facilitating an illegal activity.

If I may quote Danny on this:

Anyone wanting to get cracks or hacks to something they would otherwise have to pay for then they can go and find a website dedicated to that.

SD

PS - I'm just experimenting into Non-Windows OSs myself - got a spare desktop and a lappy running Fedora Core 5 and GNOME desktop (also got KDE loaded which I have yet to try)

[Fujiflyer]

PS - I'm just experimenting into Non-Windows OSs myself - got a spare desktop and a lappy running Fedora Core 5 and GNOME desktop (also got KDE loaded which I have yet to try)
Me too (the experimenting with other OS's bit), my feeling is that its worth the effort for the long term especially if Vista ends up as restrictive as rumoured. I'll keep the latest XP version I can get just to run my existing Windows apps (PocketFMS, OnTop, CartoExploreur and OziExplorer, all of which I paid money for recently) but find a Linux distribution that I like for the long term.
Like most people I do buy music and video media but I will not be dictated to on how I want to watch / listen to the same.
I have tried Ubuntu and put a fair bit of time into it but find it a bit awkward to setup and instal apps, also the graphical interface could be nicer. I am going to give Suse a go next. Any other recommendations??? I am reasonably IT competent but have precious little Unix knowledge.
I am impressed with the up and coming “free” & open source software. I am using Open Office 2.0, Opera (web browser) and Thunderbird (email) and definitely prefer it over Microsofts' offerings. :p

[Saab Dastard]

Fujiflyer, there is a very useful website that details and de-mystifies the various Linux distributions here (http://distrowatch.com/).

I put a link in the FAQ thread, but probably worth mentioning again.

[Fujiflyer]

Saab Dastard & Cheerio, thanks for that info.'

I'm going to try a few of the "easier" distro's starting with Suse and Linspire. Once I've tried a few I'll install the one I prefer on all the family's computers (3 desktops & 1 lappy).

Fuji :ok:

Quick edit: (Cheerio, I've just downloaded Suse 10.1 Beta 9)