All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors
WINDOWS 7 might create the rebirth of Microsoft OS, which was blighted by the release of its Vista operating system, according to Open Sauce guru Linus Torvalds.
In an interview with Computerworld, Torvalds said that Windows 7 is better than Vista and the Vole may have a huge PR advantage as people will compare it to Vista and think it is good so, "angels will sing again." This is what happened with Windows 95 compared to Windows 3.1.
He thinks that Microsoft may have even done this on purpose.
The Vole realised the Windows development cycle is way too long and it would be insane to do that again, however they might aim for a two-year development cycle and Torvalds think that is too long.
Torvalds thinks that Vole should disconnect the operating system from the applications and release products sooner.
He said for Linux six months is quite tight and the bits that are thrown together sometimes don't work properly. However an annual release cycle is a reasonable cycle for doing a whole distribution.
Microsoft wanted people to rent the software, but users don't want to. If you do development over five years and make so many changes it is more painful for the user. The cost of the pain is likely to be higher than the cost of the operating system which is why people are slow to upgrade, he said. µ
Windows 7 is even MORE Vista then Vista! http://www.jabcreations.com/blog/windows-7-beta
I agree that a 6 month release cycle means that many Linux distros end up a bit half baked and that a 1 year release cycle might fix things up a bit. The big problem is that things move so fast in the land of FOSS that 1 year is too long. Maybe if the major distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, *cough* Gentoo death camp, etc) moved to a yearly cycle for their main release and a 6 month 'merge fest' that is buggy as all hell but provides the latest FOSS and hope that the bugs are ironed out for the main release.
doesn't have any release-cycle. ^^
Gentoo has the optimal release pattern. You have only 2 (or 3 if you ready to work hard)flavors. Testing and Stable. Once you complete installation, you system updated to chosen level of stability. You don't have to mess with distribution upgrades or to wait 6 month to upgrade you favorite applications to newer version. You always have the latest. They do release annual updates to Live and Installation CD/DVD. BTW, with current hardware, it's better to have Gentoo since installing package is few moments (3 minutes to install firefox from source)and you have +-40% performance advantage over Ubuntu.
Vista has pecularity of turning off computer deeply, then cycling back on while in start up. 7 won't tolerate that deep cycle. So Your OLD 690G continues with deep off/on cycle & 7 promtly turns itself OFF. Vista Recycling meant ALL NEW Hardware for system to work properly, 7 refusal to Recycle Means: ALL New Hardware, again. So Go Figure. Entire NEW O/S Concept is Flawed by desire to be incompatible with recent modifications of Todays Hardware, Just to Be That WAY. WE ARE THE SUCKERS. More & More Processes Load Up Needlessly Your System as Developers build More Flakey Pseudo Viral like churnings, soon vista starts to freeze, with 80 processes & 5.9 Million Files flying about 10 partitions & You Seek Solution: New O/S? Probably NOT.THERE IS NO REASON SUCESSFUL BUILD WON'T LAST 10 YEARS, IF YOU ADD PARTITION ONCE YEAR. Nothing More.By Then You Surely be Better OFF With UpDate on HArdware & O/S. STeWie Drashek
Nonsense, time to post some links to backup that made up 40% number. I used for Gentoo for 6 years, since it's inception, before finally giving up and going to Ubuntu (package breakage sucked, as was having to unmask a gazillion dependencies just to get a version of Gnome that had been out for a few months). Show us all some benchmarks of Ubuntu going that much slower in Gentoo in FF. The difference between a SSE3 optimized version and a 486 optimized version of FF is going to be computationally minimal. I know, I used both on Gentoo (from source and the -bin packages).
Microsoft used to worry about ease of use before stability, that's how it originally got ahead. Linux worries about stability first and ease of use, er, never. Linux won't be dominant on the desktop until it takes a coding guru the exact same time as it does a coal worker who's never touched a computer to find out how to compile code, after digging through hours worth of menus.
Dan, this article and comments about Update/Release pattern/cycle. And Gentoo (IMHO) has the best way to do it. About performance. I did some tests on the same HW and found few things: Compiling is much faster (15-25%) Decode/Encode media files (without using HW acceleration)faster. On some old laptop i tried to install XP and video playback (MPEG-2) was 7-8 fps, with Ubuntu it was 12-15, with Gentoo it was 24fps. on the other hand, Phoronix published performance comparison of 4 Ubuntu versions 7.04,7.10,8,04,8.10 the oldest was the fastest. Gentoo not only because of HW optimizations, but also because you don't have 250000000 unnecessary packages and services installed and running just to use some little applet. I wont recommend Gentoo to people that not computer educated and don't familiar with NIX because they don't know what they need/want. Gentoo/BSD/LFS is for people that really know what they want and know to find/figure how to do it. Back to the point. The "always latest version" is the best. This way you annoyed as little as possible with incompatibility problems as they come in little packages. Usually in Gentoo you have few versions to specify when choosing program to install. This is headache in Ubuntu. To rollback some app you might have to reinstall half of your system. not to mention compilation of some packages (just to get amarok playing all my music formats).
Da man hisself is fearful. Damn, and I was just beginning to think Windows 7 was reborn Vista. I just hate it when my belief system gets dented.
try to make Linux work first and when (if) you succeed then somebody might be interested in your opinions regarding working and mature operating systems.
Gentoo is no longer a good distro. They started downhill after the ugly displacement of Daniel Robbins from the management. It's not clear who or how manages the distro now but the process seems to be compromised. There is no passion about technology, the future of the distro, or its users. I don't like ubuntu, but I guess, a lot of people are moving away from Gentoo to whatever they like. The trend has a foundation which should not be ingnored.
...because I have enough fun compiling on *BSD, but take note: Windows has a significant advantage for developers because the API stays relatively frozen for years after a release -- and of course Microsoft dedicates some serious effort to making sure even the oldest "legacy" software still works. (Sure, everything still broke with Vista, but they try. Most of that was software that had to bang hardware in some way, e.g. drivers.) "Linux" the operating system, as packaged by Ubuntu, Gentoo, RedHat, SuSE & co. has significantly higher turnover; developers (of the sort who put projects on SourceForge) never seem to want to target the equivalent of Debian "Stable," or even provide binary packages for software that "old." This causes some hurt, because while upgrades are necessary, if you're doing them every 6 months you may not be getting much else done. Linux-the-kernel is okay on a shorter cycle because it's "just" the kernel and 99% of the changes are simply sucking in more support for new devices (essentially, drivers). Of course, with regularity, Linus decides to let people break something, but that's because he's Linus. Frankly, if Linux itself didn't release more often than the distros, the distros would be held up because the developers who want to be bleeding-edge would have no "claimed stable" tree to test with and develop against. It'd be nice if distros could stick to slightly longer release cycles (maybe 2 years is asking too much, but maybe 1 year) and cherry-pick the best versions of packages out of the previous year -- this way, if a project, including Linux itself, is going down the "wrong" path (such that version N-1 gets shipped instead of N), its team gets some real feedback and a real incentive to clean it up in the next release.
Please remove your head from your arse. Linux works very well, so much so that Microsoft is "throwing chairs" over it. Linux is so prevalent you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has NOT been exposed to it in one form or another. For example, my parents' new HDTV runs linux (even though you'd never know it unless you read the manual). Most people don't realize it (and it's obvious to me that you do not), but every time they get online they interact with at least one linux-based system. What do you think Google runs? I hope you're not being paid to troll, because you aren't doing a particularly good job.
Some of us believe the following is the most apt description of the relationship of the two Windows by-products: Windows Vista = Turd. Windows 7 = Polished Turd.
I'm with Donovan. Further, in the server space Linux has managed to grab 50+ % of the market. It is a very good operating system.
Package install is sometimes STILL a major pain in the butt even with these newfangled installation schemes. Windows, no matter how much you hate it and all its incarnations, still install software easily, ALWAYS.
"Vista + Brasso = Windows 7" This was a funny title. I hve been saying Vista SP2 but that's got me beat. As far Linux being hard to use I agree but it has come a hell of a long way since several years ago even. I found Ubuntu very easy and it auto updates. Linux needs a standardizes installer/uninstaller utility for third party apps so the average Joe can install a program without pulling up the terminal.
I cannot believe a FOSS advocate suggesting the Windows world needs a 12 or even 6 months OS release schedule. If you spend too much time in the linux world one becomes somewhat ignorant of how things work in the microsoft camp. The majority of window software, even freeware, is usually closed source. And even open source stuff is seldom downloaded and compiled by users. This is because the windows API is frozen in the release cycle, so there is little need to ever recompile your applications since nothing really changes as the librarys you use will will pretty much remain static. A binary on one machine will be fine on the other. Something that's easy to forget. This is why software on windows is so easy to work with - you just kind of download it and click on it and it will only not work in the most rarest of cases. In linux, you can very easily get into depency hell. So much is distribution specific without a recompile. If Microsoft started making significant changes on a whim, alot of software would be broken. Infact here is where Linux could learn something.
Is there an alternative to Windows for non-geeks who don't want to pay Apple's 30%-100% price hike? I tried RedHat, I still can't fathom how to install software. It was never explained what any of the pkg steps are doing. And why are Linux users happy to type everything manually when they have computer that can do it for them?
Most of the people who have actually tried Windows 7 are quite pleased with it. The first commenter who posted his blog link is a moron. The whole thing was just him bitching about default settings that he didn't like. I suspect that unless MS makes big changes between the beta and release, people are going to find a very user friendly (almost on par with OSX) experience and very little to complain about. Which, if you think about it, is all MS needs.
Show me the numbers of success. Show me, from multiple reputable sources, the numbers that support your claims. Those sources need to be legitimate research and/or testing centers who have their data verified by bona-fide underwriters. Some geeky dude in a backroom on a Saturday night who can't get a date doesn't qualify. The truth is all you have is your unverified, untested opinion. That counts for nothing. Show me the money!! Uh no....Cuba said that...Show me the numbers!!
Windows has taken a lead because its user friendly. Linux is still not user friendly and the linux geeks don't want it to be. Their elitism is their downfall. When the linux people stop being elitist pricks and start trying to think like normal people think, then maybe- Just maybe linux might have a chance.
"Please remove your head from your arse. Linux works very well, so much so that Microsoft is "throwing chairs" over it." Not on the desktop it doesn't. It may "work", but Windows 7 beats it hands down on the look, feel, ease of use and feature front (at least with respect to accessible features). There's little or no "distribution" confusion with Windows either, which is why people like me prefer to develop for it. If you haven't tried 7, you aren't qualified to comment on it. Microsoft are ahead of the curve in terms of developer tools and libraries (WPF, .NET, etc.) - there's nothing on Linux that even comes close.
@ viscountalpha " Linux is for the elitest of the elite. " errrr.... that be BSD, surely?
"the windows API is frozen in the release cycle, so there is little need to ever recompile your applications since nothing really changes as the librarys you use will will pretty much remain static. A binary on one machine will be fine on the other." A Virus on one machine will also be fine on the other. ;) This is another (for there are many) reason why Windows is so plagued by viruses and malware, whilst Linux has remained relatively untouched. ABI/API volatility can certainly be irritating, but it has it's up-sides. Not least of which of course is the ability to really innovate and create cutting-edge software, without worrying about backwards compatibility. I work for a software firm, who have a very slow release cycle and a set of back compatibilities that are quite frankly archaic. We spend 90-99% of our time making sure that what we write is rock-solid stable on every possible platform with every combination of third-party hardware/software. Time that could be spent making new and exciting products, were we using the Linux model of "if it works for me on my hardware, release it and someone else can test it later". This is why Linux is so efficient and innovative, but not very reliable if you are compiling and running the latest bleeding-edge kernel/userland every day. Obviously that model would not work for MS, as they are a commercial company with legal requirements and industry standards to meet, just like the one I work for. Sometimes I do wish we could drop all the back compatibility, quality standards, procedures etc and just hack. We'd get some seriously powerful and innovative products out of it. Products like Linux, perhaps. :)
God help me.... but I actually like Windows 7..... Having said that, 7 should be the initial release of Vista.... So on those grounds, I should get 7 free, since my laptop came bundled with Vista..... and it is STILL a broken OS....
I'm happy with Win98SE/Lite. Fast and small, and no more updates! When will microshaft release something better than BETA software?
Damnit! Couldn't you tell me before? Now it's too late: I already installed Linux on all my desktops, and it's running on my router and on my netbook and on my server and... It's everywhere! Sure, the next edition of the broken OS is going to stem the tide. Yeah right! Dream on Stevie B.! I'm gonna try Windows again the day you make it open source and give it away for free. Oh, I forgot, you just did the latter. When are you going to do the former?
Sir, I do not believe that you are posting in the correct forum. We're here to: make Windows sing again... Run along before I call an admin. jeeesh.
and concentrate on Linux... I too would like to see Ubuntu switch to a yearly cycle... the last LTS was seriously half baked because they wanted to get it out the door on time and also have some new features in it... bad move, the new pulseaudio system seriously sucked on Hardy because it got chucked in without getting everything set up correctly to use it. There always seems to be a mad scramble to get the distro out the door as soon as possible after a Gnome release so as to be first out there with the new hnome... stop it... step back and get it right first... The LTS should be a highly polished version of the previous issue, not a chucked together fresh version with all new show stopper bugs...
I just realized reading this article that Linus now works on something else: http://spedr.com/2r1qz