Looking Back on Five Years of Windows XP

david.emery writes "In an article in the Washington Post entitled If Only We Knew Then What We Know Now About Windows XP, post technology columnist Rob Pegoraro points out the 5 year legacy of Windows XP. The article starts 'Windows XP is turning five years old, but will anybody want to celebrate the occasion?' This is (IMHO) a very well-reasoned critique of WinXP, although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors." More from the article: "Consider stability, the single biggest selling point of XP. The operating system was meant to stop individual programs from crashing the system, and it succeeded. It takes an especially malignant program to send my copy of XP to a 'blue screen of death.' But that's not the only way XP can crash. Drivers, the software that lets XP communicate with hardware components, can still lock up the system. If you've seen an XP laptop fail to wake up from standby, you can probably blame it on buggy drivers."

Laptop Drivers

[JeepFanatic (993244)]

But that's not the only way XP can crash. Drivers, the software that lets XP communicate with hardware components, can still lock up the system. If you've seen an XP laptop fail to wake up from standby, you can probably blame it on buggy drivers.

My Thinkpad R52 at work still has this problem when I'm booted in Windows. I dual boot Ubuntu on the computer had have zero problems when I'm running it instead of Windows. I find that I'm now doing most of my work in Linux instead.

Re:Laptop Drivers

[Pxtl (151020)]

The other feature Redmond needs to work on: "not listening to a single damn thing Adobe Reader says".

Nothing like strolling into the office in the morning and finding your computer still at the shutdown screen... and what is it holding it open, pray tell? Not the IDE. Not the source control client. Not the database browser. Nope. Adobe Reader is sitting there smugly asking "are you sure you want me to shut down?" holding up the whole system from logging off. FFS, it's VIEWING TEXT - it can shutdown when I damn well ask it to.

Re:Laptop Drivers

[jZnat (793348)]

What Linux (and other UNIX OS's) do is send SIGTERM to all processes which allow them to clean up before shutting down. Then it sends SIGKILL which effectively kills the remaining processes that don't feel like terminating quickly enough.* If Windows would send some sort of SIGKILL after a certain amount of time, programs like Acrobat wouldn't be able to give a shit about being terminated since the kernel would deallocate its memory and shut that fucker down.

* Of course, there's the rc init scripts that need to be shut down in a specific order and possibly some other shutdown shit I'm forgetting, but the SIGTERM/SIGKILL is the last step of the halting process.

Re:Laptop Drivers

[Psykosys (667390)]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's found that drivers can crash Linux perfectly well, too.

Re:Laptop Drivers

[walnutmon (988223)]

Here I am, Jerking off to Microsoft hate/Linux love, and then you bust out with your Linux can crash too bullshit. It is like I was just staring down Jenna Jamisons tits, as they delightfully flop back and forth, when, just at the moment of climax, the camera focus shifts to sweaty balls slapping her ass hole. Except this was worse.

It just amazes me

[Travoltus (110240)]

how people are willing to put up with all the bugs that Windows has, and all the restrictions it is now tacking on.

MS will require all PC software & games be XP compatible whether the consumers want it or not, and people will just obey.

Whatever happened to consumers dictating how the market changes?

Re:It just amazes me

[GFree (853379)]

Whatever happened to consumers dictating how the market changes?

I'm not so sure this happens with software as much as some other business models. I use Windows XP because that's where the software is, at least for me. I'm sure that's the case for most other people who continue to use Windows even when they know of the alternatives.

We obey because it's the path of least resistance. I sure as hell ain't gonna start using Linux exclusively and abandon the stuff I like using just to stick it to Microsoft. Doesn't do a damn thing in the long run.

Re:It just amazes me

[Bonker (243350)]

XP is not a bad OS when you tally up the features vs. problems. Saying that 'I can't believe people are willing to put up with the bugs' is about like saying 'I can't beleive people are willing to put up with compatibility issues' when discussing the Linux distro of your choice. They're not the same problem, but they're about the same order of magnitude.

Please don't mistake me for a Microsoft apologist, though. XP does have some serious flaws.

My take on the worst flaws of XP:

Kernelspace Hardware Drivers - A driver that locks up the system is BAD! I'd be willing to bet that every Windows XP user has at least one such driver on their system.

Cryptic Registry Settings - I've never quite gotten why it was determined that putting all your settings and configuration in one basket was deemed to be a good idea. I can't think of any positive justification whatsoever for this.

OS-level DRM - Bad for so many reasons.

Enabling executeable content by default in Outlook Express - The source of the vast majority of Windows Specific internet worms. This is not really an OS specific issue, but Microsoft is pretty keen on insisting the OE is an uninstallable part of the OS.

No real super-user - You can get 'SYSTEM' user access in Windows via illegitimate means. There is no mechanism for a machine administrator to get this without some sort of hack or workaround.

Crippled IP stack - There are a lot of features between the desktop and server distributions that are crippled to try to keep people from running servers with the desktop distros. Completely fucking pointless since the real money in server distros is not licensing fees, but the support contracts companies.

Re:It just amazes me

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

Just a few things:

1) About the kernel mode drivers. Isn't this the case on, well, pretty much every desktop OS? Unless I greatly misunderstand the may the monolithic Linux kernel works drivers on Linux are in kernel space too, even complied as a part of the kernel. It seems that it is just how things are done to provide the speed people want on a modern OS. One can argue that it's fine, drivers ought to be well written. After all what would you rather have: A well written kernel mode video driver that is fast and essentially never locks up your system, though it could, or a poorly written user mode video driver that is slower and crashes all the time (causing your display to restart) because the developers can be sloppy?

2) The registry is one of those kind of good idea/bad idea things. The little appreciated good part is that being centralized it provides a place for everything to find the information it needs. Things like file associations, locations of installed software (and associated required files) and so on. I think there's probably a better way to do it, for example have the registry contain only minimal information like where an app is and a pointer to its config file, but don't discount the advantage of having a central store for information on the system. It means that I can install an app that interacts with another app and they can both get the information they need on each other easily, even if there's been verison changes.

3) What is the OS level DRM you refer to? I've yet to encounter it. The only MS DRM I'm aware of is the Windows Media DRM and the Office DRM. Both are specific to their programs. I suppose you can argue, to an extent, that the WM DRM is OS since media playback is a part of the OS, but it's not automatic or anything. If you try to play a DRM'd file it whines at you and asks if you want to get the licenses for it. However either way it functions on media files only. You can't DRM up an executable or something. It is functionally no different than DRM built in to other media players.

It's also purely optional. It's not like a WMV file needs to have DRM. Most don't and in fact you have to install more software to protect them. You are perfectly free to make unencumbered files if you want to. Same deal with Office. If you want, as a company, you can install the DRM features and control distribution of documents you make, but by default there's no restrictions on anything.

I realise that DRM is unpopular around here but the answer is to simply not purchase DRM'd media. Nobody is forcing you to buy anything. If you don't like it, refuse to play ball. However I don't think it's appropriate to get mad at the people who provide the technology to use it. That's along the same lines of "We shouldn't have done atomic research because it can be used to kill people." Most technology can be used for good or bad, you can't really get pissed at those that make it if people use it for bad.

As an example of good DRM usage, suppose I decide to use streaming media to do technology briefs within my company. I keep employees up to date on progress on new projects via a media stream, rather than staff meeting. However this is all confidential stuff, it's works in development and for it to get out would be harmful. Well, DRM allows me to control that and make sure someone doesn't just save the file on their laptop and walk it over to a competitor.

The people to be pissed at are the content producers that feel you shouldn't own your own content, not the technology producers that make the DRM technology. You don't have to use it if you don't like it, it's just an option.

Re:It just amazes me

[dave420 (699308)]

I don't have any problems with my install of XP, so clearly not all users have issues, hence XP still being as common as it is. Saying anything else is just ignorant bullshit, something we don't like microsoft spreading around.

I use XP because it has all the software I want to use (as does OSX), and it has a good UI that is very keyboard-friendly (as are most Linux flavours I've encountered), while still allowing me to play all the games I want to (currently just XP here), and watch any media I might want to watch, regardless of codec or DRM-infection (again, only XP does that for me). I use my computer to actually use it, not to make a statement :) As soon as any other OS is better-suited to my needs, I'll switch in a heart-beat.

Acting all surprised that people still use it, then insult them as if they're brain-dead drones following what Big Bill tells them is a bit rude. There are plenty of competent non-fanboys out there using Windows, as it does what they want. Just as there are plenty of non-fanboys out there using the many flavours of Linux and OSX to do exactly the same. Again, I use my computer as a tool, not a statement.

Markedly better?

[RedWizzard (192002)]

although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors.

I don't think it is markedly better than Win2000. Marginally better, sure. Perhaps the article's authors feels the same way.

Re:Markedly better?

[CastrTroy (595695)]

To be fair, Windows 2000 never released a home version, so for most consumers it was never really an option. Sure you could run windows 2000 Pro at home, and many people I know do, but it's priced a big higher than what most people are willing to pay for an operating system. Also the fact that windows 2000 never came in a "home" version means that it wasn't offered on very many home computers. Non only that, windows 2000 only came out about 20 months younger than windows XP. That leaves a pretty small window for buying windows 2k, and deciding to wait for XP to come out. So, for most people, windows 2000 never really existed, and the predicessors are windows ME/98/95, which were all pretty terrible operating systems. However, I found that windows 98 was pretty stable provided you didn't install tons of crap you downloaded off the internet.

Re:Markedly better?

[RedWizzard (192002)]

To be fair, Windows 2000 never released a home version, so for most consumers it was never really an option.

You're right, but my point is that WinXP was an upgrade for Win2000 too, not just 95/98/ME. To only consider the home use angle is a bit unreasonable, IMHO. How many of those 480 million installs are business installs? I'm sure it's a significant percentage.

Sure you could run windows 2000 Pro at home, and many people I know do, but it's priced a big higher than what most people are willing to pay for an operating system. Also the fact that windows 2000 never came in a "home" version means that it wasn't offered on very many home computers. Non only that, windows 2000 only came out about 20 months younger than windows XP. That leaves a pretty small window for buying windows 2k, and deciding to wait for XP to come out.

A lot of people were exposed to 2000 at work and a lot of people ran it at home. 2000 was a vast improvement over 95/98/ME and people who experienced it did not want to go back. And people who were on 2000 have tended to stay on it rather than jumping to upgrade. Personally I only upgraded about a year ago. Also, keep in mind that at the time no one knew when XP was actually going to be released (just like no one knows now when Vista will be), so I'm not sure just how many people would have held off upgraded to wait for XP.

Price of Windows

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

The "price" of Win2k, to most home users, was the same price as virtually every version of Windows since (but not including) Windows 95: $0.

I say zero dollars, because in my experience, people either acquire Windows "free" with a computer, or they pirate it. Seriously, those two modes of acquisition have to be the largest two. Very few folks actually buy a retail box of Windows. They either use what comes on the computer, or they get somebody to 'upgrade' it for them, more than likely with a downloaded ISO.

The only version of Windows that I ever saw 'Joe User' run out and purchase was Win95, and I think that was more due to the media attention than anything else; that level of attention/media-circus has basically never happened again.

Windows Wins

[by Anonymous Coward]

The early 21st century saw an unprecedented array of attempts to dislodge Microsoft from its dominant position in PC operating system market share. From Linuces of may sorts to Apple's new OSX, word was, the time for Microsoft's fall was at hand.

Then came Windows XP.

Right away, Microsoft's revolutionary new revision of the Windows operating system was a hit with home and business users. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern computing world as we know it, the innovations of bittorrent, the deep and involving fun of World of Warcraft, the wide ranging social networks of Myspace and Facebook, none of these would have been possible without Windows XP.

From the stylish new interface, to the easy-to-use features, to the vast improvements in security and reliability, Windows XP has proved to be worthy of the title Greatest Operating System of All Time.

Re:Windows Wins

[Epsillon (608775)]

Right away, Microsoft's revolutionary new revision of the Windows operating system was a hit with home and business users.

Aye, that it was. Why? Because MS had deals with OEMs to keep their OS outlay to a minimum as long as said OEMs didn't use any other operating system. In other words, every fscking new computer sold had, and still has, a copy of this rot on it and people found they had to use it. After all, Joe Sixpack can hardly install any operating system from scratch without help.

Windows is the de-facto standard because MS's marketing department is the best there is. There's nothing technical about it, nor is it the vote of the end users. It's the fact that MS has the manufacturers right where it wants them: With their bollocks in its twenty tonne press and the salesmen, watching they don't break the agreements, ready to pump the handle by making them pay the "going rate" for the OS if they sell so much as one PC with another OS on it.

Dell was bloody lucky the n series with FreeDOS didn't bring the wrath of Redmond upon it. Of course, FreeDOS isn't much use to anyone these days unless you're flashing the odd firmware or two, so they probably weren't worried about Joe Sixpack discovering that Linux et al are just as simple as Windows XP when someone else installs it for him.

MS as a home builder

[Dracos (107777)]

You can think of Windows XP as a house with a second floor built of spackle, wood filler and duct tape.

This is correct, but misleading. The main floor of Windows is built of balsa wood with a nice hardwood veneer. It looks solid to the casual observer, but isn't. As for the foundation, styrofoam sure can look like concrete blocks with a nice coat of gray paint.

And as someone else pointed out elsewhere, you're renting this house, and the landlord insists that all you need for a back door is strings of beads, which they add more of every time someone just walks into the house.

The main difference between all versions of Windows is that the house just keeps getting bigger, but not much stonger.

Re:MS as a home builder

[obeythefist (719316)]

And Linux is like a house, but you used to have to build it yourself, but not so anymore! Because every two weeks some company or other makes a new house that is always so much better than the other companies houses, and the other houses made by that company, but it's usually designed so that only scientists or people with 500 children or people who keep angora rabbits can use it because it's the angora rabbit house distribution.

Anyway, the house is free and you don't even have to build it yourself anymore, the company comes around and arranges everything perfectly depending on the size of the land you have and the available power and water. It looks really great! Then you try to get in the house, but the doorway is bricked up. You look for an easy way to open the door but it just isn't going to happen. Turns out the only way to get that door happening is for you to wander up and down the street looking for other people in Linux houses to find someone who knows enough about masonry to teach you how to rebrick the area around the door so you have a doorway that works right. One all-nighter with a bunch of bricks and cement you've gotten yourself into your new house!

So you go out and you buy a sink for your new kitchen, it's a really popular sink and everyone in the Windows rental houses has one. You try to install your new sink and the pipes are all wrong! But your neighbour has a linux house and he had a similar sink, it's easy, all you have to do is get a metal pipe and an oxy-acetaline torch...

print view

[oscartheduck (866357)]

For those not wanting all the crud that surrounds the article on the linked view http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/23/AR2006092300510_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]here is the print view.

Um, Win2k?

[foo fighter (151863)]

This is (IMHO) a very well-reasoned critique of WinXP, although it does fail to credit XP as being markedly better than its predecessors."

WinXP is little more than a skin or theme for Win2k plus the downgrade of mandatory product registration. Please note that 2k is Windows version 5.0 and XP is 5.1. I acknowledge some enhancements to the OS, but most could have made an appearance in 2k SP5.

Whenever I bring this up I always have someone come back with "But XP is better for games." I've never seen this. To this day I play all my PC games on 2k with absolutely no problems or notable performance degradation.

2k is all the Windows OS you'll ever need on your desktop.

Re:Um, Win2k?

[Wilson_6500 (896824)]

2k is all the Windows OS you'll ever need on your desktop.

Not if you want to play any new PC games that use DX10.

WinXP vs Win2K

[JeepFanatic (993244)]

IMHO the best "improvements" that XP has over 2K was the built in CD Burning, .zip support, and the ability to fool old programs into thinking they're running on an older OS. Most of this is a non-issue though because there is good software out there that can remedy these missing features of 2K. When I last dual booted XP and 2K on my system at home I found that with a clean install of each OS that XP would boot faster but once booted 2K actually was less of a hog on the system. Not that 3DMark is the best tool for comparison but I would always score higher in 2K vs XP (no extra services or processes running on either OS). XP basically boiled down to eye candy and the addition of features to remove the necessity for some 3rd party utilities.

OS X, Markedly Better

[MBCook (132727)]

First, remember that the "markedly better" comment references what HOME users were using before, Windows ME. For businesses, XP isn't much better (or is much worse).

But let's look at what OS X has done in the past 5 years (I only converted early last year). OS X has hardware accelerated it's GUI. It has gained Spotlight and Exposé, probably the two best inventions in improving computer use in the last 5 years. It has had little touches like spring-loaded folders. It manages to get basic window use right.

The fact that Apple did the first 3 things (OpenGL GUI, Spotlight, Expose) which MS sat around (really: spent all their time on patches) is just sad. MS has improved things (the wireless handling was abysmal compared to today's XP), but not others. I took a job last month that has me using a Windows box for the first time in a year and the result of having to use it for long periods is jarring.

Let's ignore the lack of Spotlight (which I love). Let's focus on something simple. Something that was in Windows 95. Something that was in Windows 3.1. Something that was there before that (don't know which version exactly, probably 1.0). Let's talk about the Z-ordering of windows.

At least once a day I seem to run into this. Let us consider 3 windows among about 10. We'll use FireFox, Outlook, and Calculator. Let's say those windows are all maximized (as are all others) except for Calculator. Calculator has been buried to the very bottom of the windows (or near). Firefox is on top, with Outlook below. Now click on the taskbar button for Calculator. What happens?

What SHOULD happen is you see Firefox with Calculator on top. That is what happens most of the time. But some times, for some random reason I can't find, doing this will bring Outlook to the front window behind Calculator, so you see those two on your desktop (Calculator on top). You can often repeat this 3 or 4 times before Windows "gets it" and things are put correct. By this I mean you can switch back to Firefox (which works), then click for Calculator and have it happen again.

I have NO IDEA how this happens or why, but how hard is it to keep a Z ranking of the windows I have?

I won't even touch on how hard it is to manage 10 windows with your only tools being the taskbar and Alt-Tab. Exposé is so intuitive and simple. From the screenshots I've seen (I haven't looked hard) Vista only seems to have a graphical version of the current Alt-Tab.

There are no spring-loaded folders (terribly handy for moving stuff around).

Windows DOES have a Cut command in Explorer, something that still boggles my mind about the Mac (how can Finder not have a Cut?)

Windows hasn't really improved at all (other than in security) since 1999 (when Windows 2k was released). Look at the changes OS X has made from 10.0 to 10.4. I'm not even including the cool stuff that's coming in Tiger. OS X even gets faster.

I'm glad to be off Windows for my personal use. And since my job is all Java and HTML, I'm going to ask for a Mac when my current Dell is no longer powerful enough. I think Exposé alone will vastly improve my productivity.

Lack of cut in OS X. Design of Windows vs. Mac.

[Jimithing DMB (29796)]

Windows DOES have a Cut command in Explorer, something that still boggles my mind about the Mac (how can Finder not have a Cut?)

I believe it's actually a design decision on the part of Apple. The traditional way to move or copy files on a Mac has always been to use the mouse to drag them. This isn't hard at all when you have a decent sized screen and you can simply stagger the source and destination windows then drag from one to the other.

It is interesting though because dragging files is really something someone needs to be shown. My experience has been that people don't just pick it up without at least some minor prompting. Once you show someone on a Mac they seem to understand it quickly. However, I've had a hell of a time showing how to do it on Windows PCs. It just seems that people can't get their mind out of the one maximized window mindset and it's rather hard to drag from one maximized thing to another. Of course, you can drag through the task bar but that's another learned behavior, one that doesn't make that much sense compared with a normal drag.

This, I think, is one of the major shortcomings of Windows. Microsoft has basically crippled the UI to the point where it's nearly impossible to run more than a few apps with more than a few windows open. Unfortunately, it seems that Vista doesn't really fix this shortcoming. They have a cool looking alt-tab replacement but it's just that, cool looking.

It would be very hard for Microsoft to move to the Mac model here. Part of the Mac model is that the menubar switches with the app you're using and that all the toolbars and pallets disappear when the app is not active and switch when you switch which document you're working on within an app. Contrast this with the Microsoft style of putting giant sidebars on all four sides of the document area within the window. It makes the windows too big to be sized anything other than maximized on many screens.

Of course, some people have a preference for the Windows way. They say it "looks cleaner" because they only see what they're working on. Maybe some people really get distracted by having portions of other windows behind their active one still visible. Funny enough, that aspect of OS X never bothered me. I found it relatively easy to get used to the idea that windows generally exist on the screen and don't try to own the entire screen. To me it seems similar to the way one stack of paper sometimes obscures another on my real desk. I never stack everything neatly in piles and grid them out like tiles. I've got one pile of papers that's half covering another so I can see at least part of what's under it to know it's there. This way I can put a lot more crap on my desk and still know where it is. Now I know I'm not the only person whose desk looks this way

Still, can I really blame Microsoft for these things though? Not really. They made these decisions years ago trying to get people to move from DOS to Windows and then later from Windows to newer versions of Windows. The latest trend I'm seeing is for some people to get dual monitors on Windows. This way they can have two apps maximized, one maximized on each screen. I ran dual monitors on OS X for a while but lack of real maximization (and no desire to have it either) means you wind up with a good sized worksurface with a huge line in the middle of it. I've since decided that Apple is defiitely on the right track with the bigger displays. Particularly if you have the 23" you can begin to see how it completely changes how you want to interact with the computer. You're not going to maximize things; even at the smaller 20" size a window would be ridiculously big. What I find myself doing is just staggering more and more windows all over the place. It looks just as messy as my real desk. This, I think, is exactly the point. Apple has taken the desktop metaphor one step further with these huge displays.

And what has Microsoft offered us? More of the same. Compu

My 2 cents

[B3ryllium (571199)]

Having used FreeBSD, Linux, Windows XP Pro, and Windows 2K3 Standard, my opinion is this:
FreeBSD for servers, Windows XP Pro for the desktop.

It works very well for me - in fact, well enough that I'm considering trying out Vista when they release that. Part of the reason it works so well for me, is that instead of being locked in to IE, OE, and Office, I have opted instead to use Firefox, Thunderbird+Lightning, OpenOffice, and other OSS tools (like Eclipse). Theoretically, I could swap out Windows XP Pro and barely even notice the difference.

Why don't I? Because I don't feel like it just yet. It's comfortable.

Reverse FUD?

[wbren (682133)]

This article is complaining about a lot of things Microsoft has no control over. Drivers causing the OS to crash? You're telling me Linux/MacOS cannot be locked/crashed by a bad driver? I don't have much experience with MacOS, but I know it can happen in Linux.

"Microsoft doesn't write most of that software, so it asked the companies that do to submit their work for its own testing... many developers have ignored Microsoft's testing requirements."

Damn you, Microsoft, why did you force all those developers to ignore your test requirements!?

Basically the same thing happened to Microsoft's attempts to clean up the look of Windows. Recall how simple a fresh installation of XP can appear, with only the recycle-bin icon on the desktop and a single column of programs in the Start Menu... The initial simplicity almost never survives contact with software installers. Most of them ignore Microsoft's programming guidelines by dumping shortcuts and icons across the Start Menu, the desktop and the "tray," that parking lot of tiny icons at the bottom-right corner.

Again, I don't know why Microsoft forced all those developers to ignore their guidelines! It's all Microsoft's fault!

The operating system has done little to ensure that programs move in and move out in an orderly manner; they can throw supporting files and data all over the hard drive, then leave the junk behind when software is uninstalled.

InstallShield used to do that by default, until they realized developers were often sloppy and didn't put their files in the right places. That led to missing DLL files, missing OCX files, etc. Again, is this really Microsoft's fault? I don't think so.

I can't say much good about the registry, since it clearly should have been scrapped a long time ago. Same goes for Windows Genuine Advantage, it is intrusive and prevents a lot of legitimate users from getting security updates. Service Pack 2 did a lot to improve security. I agree more could have been done, but SP2 was a positive step. Vista sounds like it will have some fairly good security tools built-in (depending on the version) for home users.

I have a tough time believing these articles, mainly because most people I know don't have problems with XP in general. When I go to customers' homes/businesses to fix problems, it's usually a result of them downloading porn or free screensavers. I don't really blame MS for that, mainly because a stupid user will find a way to screw up their computer. I don't think that will change with Vista, and I don't think MacOS/Linux are any different.

This article did make some good points about things XP did wrong, but it threw in enough complaints about minor or non-existent problems that I lost confidence in the article's content.

Re:Reverse FUD?

[Inoshiro (71693)]

"InstallShield used to do that by default, until they realized developers were often sloppy and didn't put their files in the right places. That led to missing DLL files, missing OCX files, etc. Again, is this really Microsoft's fault? I don't think so."

It sure is Microsoft's fault. Apple was smart enough to say, "Look, let's adopt some of these sane ideas that have been coming out of the OS research people. Like these .app files -- they're not really files, but a bundle of everything the program needs to run it its own sandbox. We'll let the memory manager layer and the program loader figure out when to use a shared or private copy. In the meantime, the applications just need to be dragged in."

And they do. If I want Camino in my Mac, I download the .dmg file and mount it (by double clicking it), then I drag the Camino icon to my Applications folder. With that taken care of, I can drag the .dmg to the trash (unmounting it and deleting it in one action). If I'm done with Camino, I can drag it to the trash, too. No registry settings, no OCX files, no DLL files, and no bullshit installers. If a stupid Wizard is the best answer Microsoft has to the task of installing and removing programs, they've already lost.

Some people have been pushing for this kind of ease-of-use in Linux, but it's hard to get the momentum that Steve Jobs can get. Autopackage was kinda easy to use, but most people (who are like myself) seem to be using Synaptic for new applications. It's still hiding the same garbage that Windows has, in terms of the swarm-of-files approach to application distribution (instead of .app blobs), but it's a lot easier to manage and handle since it's through a reasonable interface. That's two solutions that solve the problem you mention, and both were easily achievable 10 years ago as much as today. So why is it that you have to even mention Installshield? Because Microsoft is unwilling to take a serious stance on anything that's not about supporting other Microsoft products -- that's why they're a monopoly!

Vista

[JustNiz (692889)]

I tried the RC1 (release) candidate of Vista.
Very buggy, very bloated, very slow compared to XP, the GUI has been redesigned to hide (even more) the system from you so now you can't do anything even slightly technical without really digging deep.
Also it kept crashing and wouldn't play a lot of my own media.

I used to think XP had lots of room for improvement. I went back to it after 20 minutes with Vista.

got one thing right...enforcement

[Twillerror (536681)]

Slashdot posted to a story the other day that has a lot to do with MS woes. That was the story about MS not forcing their own employees to run as non-admins.

The home version actually seems to do this a little better then the Professional edition. My parents and my siblings login to their computer with their own accounts and all as non-admins. Of course they don't lock down admin, so they all install all kinds of stuff.

Vista seems to go a long way in stopping unwanted stuff from installing, but with such a mainstream system does is it really going to help? If a user has to switch to admin to install that screensaver that also is spyware does that really help? Does Ms have to be held accountable for Spyware that is purposely installed on a machine. If it comes in through IE 6...sure it is MSs fault.

Linux installers are applauded by most, but I wonder what will happen to them in the mainstream. Commercial software will probably still install with stand-alone installers if Linux where to take off. Linux ( and others ) has standards that adhered to via open source packages, but would another company really put up with it. So a user in Linux goes to run an executable off a web page...they get an error from it saying please be in root mode. If they login as root would Linux do anything to stop them from overwriting system config files? Would we blame the problem on Linux or the author?

The author seems to be misplacing the blame. MS has to be the app cops? I guess in this day and age yes...5 years ago...not so much.

In the long run I think all OS's need to force application to install in virtual file systems. When I go to install a major app I wish that it would just copy a big file and "mount" it to the machine. You wouldn't even need to be in root to do it if done via an API call. The app would be registered with the OS and given a small amount of hardrive space to write it's config files to that only it would have access to. When it goes to save data files for the user the OS would ask the user if it was alright for it to. We can run entire OSs in a VMWare like system, why not applications themselves.

Of course lots of apps, especially in OS use pipes and heavily rely on other systems and libraries. Back in the day when sharing a DLL was needed to save HD space it was a good idea...is it now. Should we require all the apps to include their libraries? This would make code injects a lot harder as well....sorry botters.

The fundamental idea of an App installing needs to be re-engineered. Some OSs do a better job then others, but they all fundamentally invovled the installer coping files around, which will always lead to the types of problems we are seeing.

 

Re:reasoned review?

[AnodeCathode (787159)]

I agree. Patching an OS is unreasonable. And the fact that they back up what they patch in case you have to remove the patch is unreasonable (source of the bloat in size). This is why I still run my original Slackware 96 distro. I can't get anything done, but boy it still is running.

Re:Windows = the problem

[Quantam (870027)]

...why not just move straight to Linux and save the complete redesign and recoding? Oh, that's right, because Windows is THE standard in software. Remember that NT has been around for longer than 95 has, and it only overtook the 9x line with XP, despite NT being a much better OS than 95. Want to know why? It's very simple: because 95 ran all the existing programs and NT didn't; the only reason XP overtook 9x at all is because it brought compatibility with old programs up to 9x's level. Linux has fought tooth and nail for every 1% market share it's gained, and still that number is dominated by server computers that don't need to run all of the legacy apps. So I guess that's just a roundabout way of saying: your suggestion is absolutely crazy. It'd likely be a decade before the new OS became the new standard and Windows disappeared for all practical purposes. And who knows, maybe that'd be Linux' chance to crush MS (or at least MS' OSes) once and for all, and the new OS would never become the standard.

My perspective is different - my rant

[dbIII (701233)]

...why not just move straight to Linux and save the complete redesign and recoding? Oh, that's right, because Windows is THE standard in software.

Not everyone uses a computer as a glass typewriter. It depends on the software - some of the very expensive commericial software people use in my office has never run on a Microsoft platform and linux on basicly 1U gamer godboxes is the cheap way to use it. To look at the displays you can use Hummingbird Exceed on MS Windows or just use linux instead with a faster X windows as part of the standard install. To print on plotters you can spend many minutes and wasting metres of paper trying to get the page setup to the correct size in MS windows applications (if you can remember which application to use for a specific graphics format so you don't run out of memory) or on a dozen kinds of *nix you can just tell it to go away and print the thing or even just dump the file in the plotters memory by ftp if you want. As for network printer setup - someone went to sleep at MS that day.

As for compatibility - some new machines where I work had Windows98 installed on them so that old stuff developed expensively in house over many years would run (so yes - there is some redesign and recoding going on - and it will run on a lot of platforms), as well as things like expensive A/D conversion cards which just don't have drivers for newer versions of MS Windows. We even have to keep a DOS machine to get some stuff around - possibly buggy and incorrectly written to a poorly documented API but there are a lot of old programs that just will not run. A lot of scientific software was written in VB back when it was basic, then pascal and now it is java instead - so a lot of stuff really has to be rewritten from scratch even if you stay purely on the MS platform. If some guy has spent three solid years working out how to do some brilliant method of manipulating data in a certain way to solve a scientific problem you don't want to have to find their notes five years later, teach someone in their field how to program and get them to redo it in on a different platform - you want to just run the thing.

One last thing - having a single standard OS to rule them all is the stuff of meglomanic fantasy and ignores the idea that people want to do different things with their computers.

Re:Windows = the problem

[drsmithy (35869)]

Why couldn't they just write some kind of compatibility layer for legacy apps?

They did. It's called WoW (Windows on Windows). That's how NT runs old Win16 apps.

Note, however, that there is much old software Windows NT will *never* support, because of the way it expects to access the hardware and OS internals.

I also think it's worth mentioning that they would never do this with Linux; if they did (and I'm not saying they will) they would use one of the BSDs.

Neither Linux, nor any of the BSDs, would provide any technological advantage. At best, they'd be a step sideways. That's the single biggest reason Microsoft would never use them as a base.

Re:Windows = the problem

[Eideewt (603267)]

Because it's not done ye.

It works for me

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

I've used WinXP for all of that 5 years and it's been a productive platform for me. I've edited and processed video, ran a digital audio workstation, built web pages, wrote documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Photoshopped, Skyped and played the hell out of Half-Life 2 and Eve-Online. Even made a few java apps. BitTorrent is my window to the world. I have actually had Windows Restore save my bacon a few times.

My computers talk to each other, and with liberal application of Kaspersky's finest, I haven't had a single bit of virus damage on my home wireless network. I can open a link to my network at the office and it also has not been taken down by virus or spyware, thanks to a moderately small application of care. I go more than a month without rebooting regularly and haven't had to reinstall the OS since 2003.

Although it costs about 150% of what I think it should, so does my car and iPod. I don't like the way Microsoft does business and I hope the Zune goes right down the crapper. I'm extremely apprehensive about Vista, and the WGA has been foul in the extreme.

But Microsoft made a pretty good OS in Windows XP.

Re:Windows = the problem

[Overly Critical Guy (663429)]

Um, XP wasn't built from the ground up. It's derived from the NT line that began in the early 1990s. Additionally, XP's API layers (Win32, registry, etc.) are the same APIs dating back to the Win 9x line, which themselves date back to the original Windows 1.0.

There is much more that needs fixing than Internet Explorer, so much so that Windows developer Phillip Su called the codebase "overly complicated" and full of dependencies, many of them circular. There are hundreds of layers, and you may only ever understand two or three of them. It's so bad, that after a minor Vista refresh codenamed "Fuji," Microsoft wants to start with a rewrite codenamed "Vienna" and use virtualization technology to run pre-Vienna apps.

Of course, it remains to be seen if any of that actually comes to fruition or how long it will take. In the meantime, Vista is a mess both bug-wise and interface-wise. I count at least five different styles of menus and various conflicting dialog styles...some of them are the same dialogs from XP and even Windows 3.1, like the Install Font dialog. Don't even get me started on how many contradictory light source directions there are on the default Vista desktop's icons and interface. They quickly slapped Glass together to look like Aqua, and it's so obvious, even down to ripping off the OS X save dialog in IE7 all the way down to the disclosure triangle in the lower-left that reveals the filesystem browser. And UAC is absolutely horrible and intrusive, rather than the occasional password prompt you recieve in OS X.

I seriously fear for anyone planning to trust Vista on their machines with all its 1.0 APIs and untested technologies and further bloat on top of the aging Windows codebase. It's five years later, and we're still getting patches for XP and IE6, at an increasing rate, in fact. I have to admit to a bit of schadenfreude in anticipating how many pieces Vista is blown up into by black hat hackers on release, like stopping to watch a roadside accident..

The NT line was basically stolen from Digital

[leonbrooks (8043)]

It was basically a derivative of VMS 5 called MICA; for a while, NT and MICA were patch-compatible; Microsoft hired many of the key Digital people (there was even a lawsuit about this) & still couldn't make it anywhere near as tough or secure as VMS routinely was.

So... even with such a blatant head-start, Microsoft couldn't make it anything but rattley.

No change there in decades.

Re:The NT line was basically stolen from Digital

[dcavanaugh (248349)]

Back in the day, Digital wanted to compete on hardware vs. Intel. They figured they could sell VMS (and perhaps Unix) as upgrades over NT, so long as the customer bought Alpha-based hardware from Digital. Robert Palmer was the CEO. He came from the chip manufacturing division, and he saw the ability to sieze the CPU market with superior technology. Letting Microsoft conquer the low-end market was part of the plan. The theory at the time was that Digital made money selling hardware -- the OS was just part of the hardware sales pitch. As a result, they were perfectly content to help Microsoft get into the game.

After all, the real enemy was Intel. And Intel's main attraction was the dumb and cheap OS that ran on "PC clone" hardware. Digital wanted to be just as dumb and cheap, with an upgrade path that Intel lacked. Such was the plan, and Microsoft had a role to play. Nobody (at Digital) realized that the people who bought the "dumb and cheap" OS would be willing to accept the limitations. Today, a generation of IT people is satisfied with NT/XP -- accepting the limitations that were unacceptable 20 years ago.

Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of NT, you can see the missing pieces. Certain key parts of VMS never made it to NT because Microsoft didn't hire Digital people from those groups. Consider the VMS job queueing system vs. the NT/XP job queueing system. Oh wait, there isn't one! Scripting languages -- DCL vs. MS-DOS batch language. Then we have clustering, where Microsoft has yet to catch up with Digital's 1984 technology.

But it was not a totally one-sided comparison. Microsoft beat Digital's print drivers, price, and third-party developer market share. I would rate security as a toss-up (both were vulnerable to all kinds of mischief). Ditto for Internet support (an afterthought for both). Even so, when all things are considered, NT is a poor knockoff of VMS.

Microsoft wins this battle, so there must be something really important about the areas where they beat Digital. If the past is any indication of the future, the key factors in building an OS are price, commodity hardware, and third-party developer market share. That's really all Microsoft had over Digital. Guess who leads in all of those areas today?

Hindsight

[TrisexualPuppy (976893)]

Maybe I am in the minority, but I have had huge success with Windows XP Pro in installation, management, troubleshooting, and day-to-day operation. If you have installed Windows XP regularly enough to really understand its quirks, shortcomings, and nuances, the reality is that you can have a viable, stable system up and running in literally minutes. Create an unattended install disk, and on a newer PC, you can be online and productive in a very short time.

It's so easy to disparage Windows XP and Microsoft, but compared to its predecessors, Windows XP Pro really has matured into a decent product. The other night, I helped troubleshoot one of my wife's work computers running Windows 98, and I was frustrated by the lack or "mispalcement" of utilities, settings, and system tools that are always and predictably available in Windows XP Pro.

This is certainly not to say that it is without faults, security and vulnerability being the biggest issue. Microsoft should forget about the whiz-bang Vista approach, and re-write Windows XP Pro from the ground up. THAT would sell.

My only real complaint with Microsoft and Windows XP Pro is that they have never provided cost-effective licensing for home users to legally maintain multiple computers. WIndows XP Pro is really the way to go, but at its original $300+ price, it was far out of the reach of most home users. I bit the bullet and purchased multiple copies, but if Microsoft had provided a more cost-friendly option, I would have promoted it and recommended it much much more.

Re:Hindsight

[daviddennis (10926)]

It's worth comparing Windows XP licensing with Apple, which will cheerfully sell you a five-user license of their latest and greatest for $199. And they don't saddle you with a crippled "home" version, either.

However, I will contest your idea that Windows XP is intuitive while 98 is not. I remember very distinctly seeing my company moving from 98 to 2000 and XP, and in those years it was hard as heck to figure out where everything had been capriciously moved in the newer operating systems. You just think XP is more intuitive now because you haven't used 98 in a long time.

Recently, I've been looking at average people's average computers - ones not maintained by corporate wealth - and all of them suffer from confusing maladies. XP was advertised as something an average home user can maintain successfully, and despite a lot of money spent on anti-virus software, it doesn't seem like most home users can manage at all well.

Now, there are plenty of Slashdotters who have good Windows experiences, and I'm happy for them. But the real contest is what non-technical people face, and in that respect I have to call XP a shameful failure.

D

Re:Hindsight

[by Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope you're insinuating that OSX is the better replacement and not Linux. If said home user wants to change some setting, he will probably poke through his XP control panel for a while and has a decent chance to find the checkbox or dropdown associated with the change he/she was looking for. In Linux, said user will never in a million years open up a terminal, type man somecrypticallynamedconf.conf, find the appropriate boolean, integer, or string value in the man page, su to root, fire up an editor and point it to /etc/rxcgsd.d/init/conf/somecrypticallynamedconf.c onf, make the appropriate edits, and restart the service.

Before you pounce on the Windows Registry, just compare the number of times you have had to regedit a value, to the number of times you have edited a conf file. I think you will find the argument stands.

I'd like to see *nix succeed, but you do it a disservice by declaring it ready for Grandma when it is clearly not.

When every Linux app comes with a small plugin to a configuration management GUI, that adds the conf settings to a panel that allows you to view and edit them visually, maybe we'll have made some real progress. Upon launch, config manager asks for root password, then loads all plugins that come installed with all Linux apps.

Panel opens, there is a list of all the programs that it is managing configurations for on the left, and upon clicking, opens a nicely tabbed and organized layout of all the options with tooltips so I don't have to flip back and forth between the man page if I need further information.

Conf files are reparsed on every opening, so manual edits to confs will show up as well, and leaves that as an open option to 'advanced' users that are used to them.

It's such an obvious idea yet nobody has made a real attempt at it. I'll even give my 'revolutionary' idea away for free. Please God, someone use it. /MLS

Re:Hindsight

[arminw (717974)]

......ALL MacOS X intel versions are intentionally crippled by Apple to prevent them from running on generic PC hardware......

Why is it that smart /. users STILL cannot get it through their heads that Apple is a HARDWARE maker who happens to make their own OS. There is nothing that prevents HP, Dell or any other hardware company from doing this also. if the did, would HP customers clamor to run the Dell operating system? Do Ford users clamor for Mercedes engines in their cars? Why should Apple write their OS do it would run on a Dell or other brand?

Re:W2K FTW

[1u3hr (530656)]

As far as I can tell, people who still use 2000 by choice are either ignorant or just dumb.

Or cheap, or just don't see a need to install a more demanding OS for no discernible benefit. I haven't found any software or hardware that refuses to install or run on Win2k, for instance. An OS is just a platform to run apps. If it does that without crashing, why change it?

Re:W2K FTW

[Bedouin X (254404)]

This is absolutely false. XP was absolutely more of a resource hog than Windows 2000. I used to support Win2K desktops in an office environment running standard productivity apps with 128 MB of RAM (2K required 64MB) and it ran fine. Try doing that on XP. I did, and it wasn't pretty.

Why I am still on 2K

[Lord Prox (521892)]

I tend to reinstall my OS every 6-9 months. Swapping hardware, testing drivers, the occasional software that just won't uninstall all adds up and makes all versions of windows glitchy and crufty. The Solution? Reinstall the OS.
I refuse to pick up the phone and explain to MS why I should be allowed to reinstall XP. 2k no suck problems.

My reason for sticking with 2K until I am forced to move? General F'ing Principal.



Place a curse on Microsoft. [i-curse.com]

Re:W2K FTW

[Simon Garlick (104721)]

XP is basically 2000 with added multimedia, games, and hardware support ... As far as I can tell, people who still use 2000 by choice are either ignorant or just dumb.

Or maybe they see no reason for buying a whole new hideously-overpriced operating system for "added multimedia and games" if their hardware is already supported by Win2K?

As far as *I* can tell, there's only one thing that XP has over Win2K: a terminal services client "out of the box". XP Remote Desktop is bloody good.

Re:W2K FTW

[Mistshadow2k4 (748958)]

Having used both for months, I will tell you what: reliability. XP may be more user-friendly, but the user-friendly components have a tendency to break occasionally. When that happens, they tend to screw up the system until you can fix them. Nothing like that ever happened to me when I used 2k for two years, but it's happened twice in the 6 months I've used XP. I now have XP on this machine and 2k/Debian on my main machine; XP is on the gaming rig.

Re:W2K FTW

[whoever57 (658626)]

Here's an honest question: Ignoring the cost, just what is it that you think is so much better about Windows 2000 compared to XP? I've used both and I'll tell you what: Nothing.

One word: Activation. W2K does not have this, XP does.

Also, W2K does not have the broken implementation of access to shares that XP home has. I know that XP home to W2K is not a fair comparison, but the point is that MS took something that works and deliberately made it less functional. An example: a person in my office cannot access a SAMBA share from his XP-H machine. He then accesses his home directory on the same machine and now magically, he can access the share that was previously denied earlier.

Re:W2K FTW

[John Miles (108215)]

Here's an honest question: Ignoring the cost, just what is it that you think is so much better about Windows 2000 compared to XP?

Product activation. If I tried to sell you my car, but insisted on keeping the starter-kill remote, you'd tell me to go jump in the lake. For some reason, people don't subject Microsoft to the same scrutiny.

Product activation is bad enough at the application level, where individual programs have to phone home to receive permission to run. It should be absolutely unacceptable at the OS level... which is why it really, really sucks that everybody accepted it.

As far as I can tell, people who still use 2000 by choice are either ignorant or just dumb.

Yeah, OK, that must be it.

Re:W2K FTW

[egarland (120202)]

just what is it that you think is so much better about Windows 2000 compared to XP?

Windows 2000 doesn't have activation spyware in it. As long as I can get the OS working on the hardware.. I'm good. I don't need approval from Redmond.

Windows 2000 is much lighter and cleaner out of the box. Everything you need, nothing you don't. You can hack XP to work like 2K but why spend the time when 2K will work just fine?

Windows 2000 is simpler. There are less services, less interdependencies, less things to break and go wrong. There's this strange notion going around that as long as it's "behind the scenes" people shouldn't care about it. That's complete BS. The stuff behind the scenes matters.

Hardware compatibility with XP is also an issue. Not all hardware vendors roll out new drivers perpetually. Sometimes the old software just stops working on new OSs and nobody bothers to fix it.

There are some machines that simply haven't been upgraded since the Win2K days. I know.. it's hard to believe a Microsoft OS lasting that long without needing a reinstall but it happens. Upgrading Microsoft OSs is a crap shoot. Even ignoring the cost of the software and the cost of the time to upgrade there's the risk that at the end of the day it just won't work.

As far as I can tell.. people who can't see the valid reasons for running 2K over XP are.. well.. let's just write that one off to lack of experience and immagination. It's ok though... teenagers often have a hard time grasping points of view outside of their own. You should grow out of it.