then .... that box under my desktop... what is it!??? (it doesn't run Microsoft OSes)

like the mac commercials (with the two guys: one, a younger hippie; the other, a greying ibm-er) says that pc's are prone to virus's and bugs implying microsoft windows.

the business/ marketers create their own definition in order to sell things - which isn't totally bad. we (the technologists) just have to speak more semantically in order to make sure that the lay-people and experts are both level-set.

no offense meant, I was just mocking around

I read in an article here that microsoft have released a beta version of vista for free. To be honest I don't plan to use it myself though I would be interested to know what people here think if they do decide to try it. As a worst case scenario I would say it's a good way of seeing how bad it really is.

I haven't read all 12 pages, but I do want to contribute to this thread. Every single feature I hear about in Windows Vista is a rip-off of Mac OS X or Linux.

Aero Glass Interface <-> Sun LG3D, XGL/Compiz, Mac OS X Quartz
Internet Explorer 7 <-> Mozilla Firefox
ASLR <-> PaX, OpenBSD
Live Messenger <-> Google Talk chat style
Execute as admin <-> Sudo
Desktop Search <-> Google Desktop Search, Beagle

Any more "innovations" ?

I rwad 5 pages. This is my thoughts from what I have heard/seen.

Vista is XP on steroids, and well all know steroids cause serious problems. Prettier desktop, fixes that should have been in XP, and what could be aruged as a (if aplicable) copyright infringment on M$'s behalf by copying KDE. I mean, the screens of Vista looks like a high-end KDE desktop.

Windows is Windows, no matter the version name you give it. Far as I am concerned, Windows just hit 0.0.12, while Linux in general, by comparison, is around the 6.0 mark.

Vista seems like a great idea, and possibly a step in the right direction, though Windows needs a complete rewrite, even down to the basis for the system. They are basically just hacking '95, and maybe by relation, 3.1 or whichever one came out before 95. They don't inovate, they play catch-up. We can all agree I think that Windows is in a constant race with Linux, and just keeps passing the go-karts along the side of the track that the Linux community took and have since then been doing for ages before Windows decides "Hey, thats looks interesting. Lets steal it, slap our name on it, and go. We can afford the court cost for a decade worth of court cases...".

Windows is what most people learn on, and Linux is what people learn to think on. Windows, for awhile, has been going on a path the will end with dialogs such as:

M$ Word:
Please type in;
Mary had a Little Lamb
then press Ok

[user inputs Data Worksheet for ITTSE. Dialog pops up]

Invalid input.
Please type in;
Mary had a Little Lamb
then press Ok

[user reinputs previous line. Dialog pops up]

Error #19334298472397234972497234982347
T0000x003x000
t0000x004x000
Invalid Windows copy. Overloading CPU and HDD.
Step away from the computer, and turn yourself
into the local police for piracy,

[user hits CTRL+ATL+Delete. Blue screen pops up]

System-wide failure.
FATAL ERROR:
Error #1165161651431813513843184564954
System has Crashed
Please press OK and replace your computer.

[user loads Knoppix, fdisk the system, and installs Gentoo]


[end funny story]

A Rose by any other name...........

Longhorn or Vista, it does not matter what Bill calls it, when it does come
out it will contain WPA, which should still be considered spyware!! it is None of M$ business what hardware we use or how much Ram or video memory our boxes have.........

Don't forget the Master Log in the Systems folder you cann't see!

[Granted that may be a myth, but with Windows...]

Dralnu I like the sound of that and think I might borrow it from you

Go ahead. I may or may not be the first to say it, and as far as I'm concerned, use it yourself, just don't give yourself credit for it

I completely agree with you. My friend sent me a link (which I have now lost) of a bunch of screenshots of Vista, and I distinctly remember feeling sick. The GUI is taken froma Mac, because it has that classic "cute" look. They seem to support a sort of root password, another "innovation". The firewall blocks both inbound and outbound connections, kinda like iptables since networking was added to the kernel. The only difference is that I don't need to buy another firewall to supplement iptables. The new internet explorer is essentially a commercial firefox. To listen to some of their ads they make it sound like these are all original ideas...

The worst part is the heavy system requirements. Most people don't even realize what a good computer is anymore, because they need a new one with every new Windows. I consider anything with a 200 Mhz processor and 32 MB RAM a useful system, which it is with Linux, FreeBSD, or NetBSD. After all, it's in Microsoft's favor to make you buy a new PC. They wouldn't be trying so hard to make it illegal to sell a computer without an OS otherwise. When a company tries to take control of the marketplace not through innovation but through bullying, the market suffers. This is why it is so afraid of Linux and it's open source equivalents: it's technically not in the market so it can't bully it.

I agree partly on the 200MHz and RAM. Get a bunch of old PCs like that (maybe worth, oh, 50.00 now adays), link them together, and suddenly you've got a system with a hell of alot of speed if you set them up to all run like one PC.

One good side to Vista (No, this isn't blasphemy or sacralge), is that such high requierments will mean RAM will become cheaper (hopefully) for the large sticks (1024MB I hope), and then you can (if your Motherboard will handle it) plug two of those in, and you've upper your speed quite a bit hopefully. M$ Can make Vista and any other OS as system-heavy as they want for all I care, that will mean a *nix/*BSD machine will just be that much cheaper to be able to (continue) to burn Windows like they were still dealing with KB RAM...

Huh, never looked at it that way. Maybe I will be able to upgrade to 1GB for under $20 after all...

Never really considererd that myself.... I'm gonna visit a computer dump!

Thanks btw

A single system makes for a great server or router, but I have never tried (and don't know how) to connect them together to make a single system, although that sounds really sweet. I'm sitting right next to an old AMD k6 FTP server, and listening to music from a special development board with a 200Mhz ARM9 and 32MB ram. All works fine, except when the network decides to ignore my buffering.

Dralnu, would you be so kind as to send me a link to a place where I can read about hooking the systems together? I have an idea...