Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn)
 

are we looking at Windows XP SP3 or a completely different OS. With the WinFS filesystem pretty much scrapped it seems that their new OS will be more like Windows 98/98SE was to Windows 95 than the biggest and most ambitious OS since Windows 95. Theyre placing alot of emphasis on search. Copernic already does that for me. Also the machine will boot into least priviledged user mode to keep people from installing malicious code: okay so I already have that with XP with Admin and Guest accounts. Also security will be tighter and the user interface will be cleaner and prettier....nice. Let me get this straight, you wait 6 years (it comes out Aug 2006) to make improvements that couldve taken 2?

They should call it "Windows Ricer". It doesn't seem like they changed much under the hood. They just added tinted windows, chrome rims, added a lift etc.

ill vote for Windows CCCoQQ (crashy, crumbling code of questionable quality) ...... at least then it would sound like it MIGHT be a secure and fast OS.

It was not much difference from Win2k to WinXP, except for a slightly better gaming support and the ugly bluish theme. However, I hope that they improve Windows Longhorn (or whatever it will be called) accounts. WindowsXP does, have administrator and limited user accounts, but I've found pointless to run as limited user in Windows: A lot applications won't run, others as Winamp crash, while others as media player can't read codecs previously installed as administrator. The whole system and the applications that run with it are single user only. You can push hard to make extra accounts, but I don't use it.

Again, there're plenty of room for improvements. If MS will use that or not is another question. Also, it's not only up to MS to develop good applications. In Linux, every application is created with multiple users on the same system in mind and their personal configuration files are usually hidden files at their /home/. If you install Gimp for Windows, you will notice that the same happens in Windows: Users configuration files are stored at C:\Documents and Settings\User name. Now try running Winamp as a guest/limited account and you will see that it will use the same configurations as administrator and will crash because of it. Blender3D, Firefox and other open source applications for Windows has the same behavior as The Gimp has; storing personal configuration files in the right places.

Now, is that MS fault? Nope... it's the lack of knowledge and good programming practices from Windows programmers not doing a nice job. Open Source community does a way better job with their applications, without filling them with a bunch of registration(even for freeware) and spyware crap nonsense. Windows is not that bad, really. The developers around seems even more money hungry then MS... not even text editors are free in Windows (as TextPad).

I'm not asking for everything to be free, but spyware, single-user applications that requires you to be administrator and registration non-sense is not MS fault. Most Windows developers suck... putting it in a vulgar way, they suck...

Yep, as has been noted else where "Vista" means "pleasant view," and that's exactly what it's going to be. Some eye-candy slapped onto XP. The only other real difference is that they've made some minor tweaks to the default user permissions that are so obvious I'm amazed it took them this long to fix.

Everything else of interesting (WinFS, Avalon, Indigo, etc.) is already scheduled for back-porting to XP.

And they expect people to waste a couple hundered dollars on this? :rolleyes:

Actually what is really interesting is - DB managing system - if it will work it might be really good feature... Of course they may do it and it will work very bad and no one will use it. (lime limited user access)

I need such feture even now to organize all my music, pictures and other stuff (hadn't found anything like then neiser for windows nor for linux).

However what I've heard (correclty if I'm wrong) first version will not include new WinFS - with DB support...

Anyway lets wait and see...

Maybe I even will give it a try... If it is really user friendly and ready for normal unexperienced user ;)

How exactly does this work? Do you know any details. I saw a video from a microsoft employee once talking about database style file systems but he didn't give any details.

Do any linux filesystems work like a database?

If you guys did some reading you'd know that it's going to be a whole new OS. Sure on the surface it looks just like a flashy WinXP but the reason they renamed it from Longhorn to Vista was because they scrapped the codebase in favour of starting again. See? Microsoft realised that Windows wasn't as strong as it should be and are working on that, they're going to officially support linux in their virtualisation software, they aren't that evil...

ROFL! How about they cut down on the cr*p on their OS? The whole WinFS thing sounds like running win95 ontop of DOS, Now it's Vista ontop of XP.

I want to save some of my computer's resources for applications (OOo, World of warcraft), not let the OS use it all. I bet the minimum requirments for this baby would be:
Pentium D/AMD 64 ar faster CPU,
4GB of RAM,
A top of the line/waste of money video card,
2/4 disk RAID (120GB min).


I'm just gonna use XP as long as I can, then I'll switch to linux.

EDIT: (found this on vista's site)
Windows Vista Business
Regardless of the size of your organization, Windows Vista Business will help you lower your PC management costs, improve your security, enhance your productivity, and help you stay better connected.

Windows Vista Enterprise (WVE)
Windows Vista Enterprise is designed to meet the needs of large global organizations with highly complex IT infrastructures. Windows Vista Enterprise can help you lower your IT costs while providing additional layers of protection for your sensitive data.

Windows Vista Home Premium (WVHP)
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.

Windows Vista Ultimate (WVU)
If you want all of the best business features, all of the best mobility features, and all of the best home entertainment features that Windows Vista has to offer, Windows Vista Ultimate is the solution for you. With Windows Vista Ultimate you don't have to compromise.

Windows Vista Home Basic (WVHB)
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.

I cant make up my mind between WVHB, WVU, and WVHP. Whatever one takes same/less resources ar XP, cheap (less that 80 bucks), and is very similar to xp home.

Uh oh! Better not tell that to a mate thats running it on a Athlon 3800+ with 512MB RAM, maybe it'll crap out once it realises what's going on!

Come one, don't post rubbish man, makes you look like an idiot.

IMO it's Windows XP Service pack 3 + DRM and media + new interface

That's FUD. Microsoft start from scratch their DEVELOPMENT process; they throw away Longhorn code not Windows XP (and backwards, even DOS) spaghetti code (which is STILL there).

That makes no sence. Try writting that again after double checking your grammer.

You can talk...lol

Sorry, don't take it the wrong way, I couldn't resist :)

There's quite a difference between what Microsoft promised Longhorn would be, and what they actually delivered. Basically, as far as I know, every single one of the significant new features got dropped-out. They've gotten themselves into the stock-market expectations that they will release a new system every two years, and, like IBM before them, they're serving Wall Street analysts more than their own customers.

I predict that "sales" of Vista will come from new-hardware sales where the system is bundled. Other users will pass.

I agree. Especially after they anounced that they are going to release a serious of updates for XP that will give several of the new features included in Vista, and to increace compatiability between the two.

That nicely sums up what I have gathered about Vista as well.

This article http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...microsoft.html
doesn't make me want to touch Vista. From what I've gathered from people I know who installed the beta, it's very much ram hungry, which makes me think it'll cause a lot of people who want to use it to have to upgrade their system. My other issue with it is the list of versions, do you really need that many version of an OS? From what I've seen of it so far, I wouldn't want to use it.

As far as Vista being Ram hungry, I wouldn't worry to much about that. Its very common for beta products, soft and hardware, to be sub-par performance wise.

As far as needing that many different versions of an OS, well I don't know if I can count all the different flavors of Linux. My guess though on a serious note is that the average user will probably never even encounter several of them. Especially the busniess ones, and the server editions.

A bit of a resource hog, yes it will be..they also recommended a 'video card' and not onboard.

It's not like I'd recommend onboard video anyway. It's actually a step up for Microsoft not to be pushing for cheapo proprietary parts.
All I can really say is, remember how much of a resource hog Windows XP was when it first came out? "Resource hog" is only a relative term. I realize Microsoft is just trying to sneak DRM on to our systems, but if you don't like it, don't buy it.

Right? How many computers run fine on XP that will choke on Vista? Most OTB computers you buy right now run on on-board video and only come with 256mb of ram. Maybe a light version with a light Desktop for way less money, but I doubt MS would do something like that. Would be to 'Linux' like. But lets wait and see. It could happen.

Today I listened to a speech by Alan Cox that I recently downloaded. One of the comments or predictions that he made was that there would not be a rush to Windows Vista because most home users and offices were just going to stick with the systems that they are now using.
I already had Windows XP installed on my computer when I bought it. Its failures brought me to Linux. Vista may do the same for others.

Most isps don't support linux though, but they will support windows users, with that many versions, it'll be hell for them, ever tried asking a clueless user -which- version of windows they're running? You'll get answers like Outlook, Internet Explorer, Windows <year they bought the computer> etc so if you need an accurate version, it'll be fun. The difference with linux is that we're talking about different distributions, distributed by different people, we're not talking about 182937291837 versions of one OS made by the same people.

So far there's nothing about Vista that I even remotely find appealing, nothing at all, I'm still trying to find a use for the 3d window thing or whatever it is, the ability to flip windows around.

The key word is "support." If you know the slightest bit about what you are doing, the ISP absolutely does not care what kind of computer or OS you are running: it's all just TCP/IP.

If you don't know what you are doing, then the ISP's technical support people will have a short script of walk-through questions concerning Windows. And I've never encountered any ISP that's seriously going to go out of their way to inform or to help the seriously clueless. :rolleyes:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned DirectX 10 here. It's the only reason I'm keeping an eye on Vista developments. Given the direction most developers go when chosing a technology for a game, DX10 will probably dominate the market for a good while. I'll end up with Vista at some point, giving my strange addiction, but I'm almost certain I won't use it much beyond that.

hi guys have alook at this flash joke of windows it's called "windows realy good"

http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/

please have a look just this once

That was funny, but only because I've actually experienced many of those problems before.
Which in turn makes that really sad.

I've ran some version of Vista(from late fall last year I think) on my 2 year old desktop (2.6 P4, 1GB, Radeon 9800 128mb), and it actually was fairy good performance wise. And the eye-candy was pretty cool. The beta's of Office 12(I think that was it), also had some nice eye candy. But I've yet to see or hear anything about Vista that has made me think, wow! this will make my life so much better. And then there's the fact that it refused to play with my Samba server, yeah I'm sure that was totally unintentional on Microsoft's part. ;)

And thinking about stuff like this makes me realize why MS does so much to persuade/intimidate OEM's into always including the latest version of Windows on their desktops. Without that, how many Joe Sixpack's are going to go out and spend several hundred dollars on the [not-]new and [un-]improved version of Windows, and then go through the hassle of installing it or upgrading it.

I see what you mean, considering Windows 9x really was that bad. Seriously people, you've never truly experienced hell until you've used Windows 98...
Anyway...

windows is just windows
 

windows will still be the same bullsh** operating system till they scrap the registry. it tends to always get bloated and tends to slow down the booting process. you uninstall programs from your computer they leave residue in that darn registry (ie Norton anti virus). you will always need third party security software or something to that affect to really and i am using this term loosely secure your windows machine. the obvious is that they are pulling wool of the eyes of the masses and giving them some improvements and calling it a new operating system.

*Sigh* Not another old thread, and about Windows too, pff.,:rolleyes:

The registry thing has always irritated me in Windows but now I am worried that Linux distros like Ubuntu are trying to copy it. For example, I opened up the application config tool and it looks eerily like regedit. I know that these things are stored in hidden config files and folders in the user's home directory but I just hope that it stays that way. There is no need to copy nasty Windows problems into a good OS.

Hmmmm... what application was that? The only thing I remember in Linux which looks similar to Windows Regedit was Gconf-editor and that has really nothing to do with Ubuntu... leave alone Linux itself.

Gconf-editor sucks though. I will give you that. Still, it has really nothing to do with Windows registry except that it looks just as crap. Windows registry stores information about not only the "Windows" GUI but also file associations, hardware and installed software, system policies and a whole lot more things that peoples like to exploit :D

i'll put in a vote for the windows ricer. but they have to have a background. that hill pic-background is no longer faux!

well windows will always be there. you will never get rid of it till you tell oems like dell and lenovo and mdg to give a person the choice. it will never happen because then Microsoft will just take their privilege to put their operating system on. also about vista now they just did what they have done in the past integrating another app like ie and messenger into their operating system to corner the market as they always have done illegally and laughing. so we have to get the word out to other people teach these aunt marys and uncle joes to use linux and get it out of the server room and in the mainstream.:Pengy:

One thing that I'd like to see microsoft include in (long Horn) Vista is evolution as I have become accustomed to using it with Ubuntu and other linux Distributions that ship preloaded with GNOME.

As far as I can see, nobody has yet commented on the biggest change:

The EULA to which you must agree before you can use Vista grants Microsoft, at its sole discretion, the right to disable any application running on your system which it (Vista) computes to not have a valid license. This right includes the Vista OS itself.

And, as pointed out here there are several other "zingers" in the EULA.

So, as P.T Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minuet."

Though you didn't do it explicitly, to compare Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer to P.T. Barnum is pretty clever. I'm impressed.

I don;t think I'll ever get vista. I've heard it's pretty hardware hungry (looks like it too)... I need that power for games, not an eye candy OS.

Im using XP 'till linux is ready.