Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: greatscot on 12 March 2005, 21:50
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The following steps will show you how to make your Windows machine more stable and secure.
1. Open the CD tray
2. Insert a Linux distro - CD 1 of x or DVD
3. Reboot your machine into BIOS and make the changes necessary for your machine to boot from CD/DVD
4. Install Linux using the entire hard drive
5. Throw all Windows CD's/DVD's in the dumpster where they belong
I did this and have been very satisfied with my machine because it is now more stable, secure and faster than ever.
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Worked for me. :)
Throw all Windows CD's/DVD's in the dumpster where they belong
I gave them to my neice -- she made a nice wind chime out of them. Waste not; want not. :D
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I can almost see us fifty years from now, trying to teach our grandchildren of the scourge that was Windows. "Grampa, why did they get away with selling drink coasters for so much those days?" To which, I'll reply, "those aren't drink coasters hun, those were once a great media format - a bridge between old analogue cassettes and the newfangled laser-based hypnoplayers of today - used to an unjust end by a corporation bent on world domination. Fortunately, Linus Hood saved the day from their evil goons, and restored the media to its former glory."
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My two windows systems are both completely stable and secure. Haven't had any real problems with them, ever. I suspect windows is just too complex OS for you guys, so linux and such systems might be a better choice for your needs.
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My two windows systems are both completely stable and secure. Haven't had any real problems with them, ever. I suspect windows is just too complex OS for you guys, so linux and such systems might be a better choice for your needs.
Thats going right in my n00b quote of the day.
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Thats going right in my n00b quote of the day.
Hey, I was being serious. Well, kinda :)
So, who's the n00b, the guy who has problems with his system and doesn't know how to explain them and blames the software supplier, or the guy who has perfectly running system without problems at all?
Well, I have to admit I was being a little provocative there, but didn't find a better way to introduce myself to these forums. I'm a Windows user, and happy to run windows. I consider linux to be simple system, for the simple users. IMO, if you feel you're bound in windows and only able to express yourself in linux, it's probably because you can't use Windows :)
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Well, I have to admit I was being a little provocative there, but didn't find a better way to introduce myself to these forums. I'm a Windows user, and happy to run windows. I consider linux to be simple system, for the simple users. IMO, if you feel you're bound in windows and only able to express yourself in linux, it's probably because you can't use Windows :)
Wow, first people complain about Linux being too hard, then people won't use it because it's too easy (which it isn't).
You can make Linux as easy or as hard as you want.
Have you actually used Linux?
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Wow, first people complain about Linux being too hard, then people won't use it because it's too easy (which it isn't).
You can make Linux as easy or as hard as you want.
Have you actually used Linux?
I'm not complaining about linux being too hard, although I don't particularly see the two being mutually exclusive. Easy and hard are bad words anyway, they don't really describe much objectively.
Linux is definitely a simple system, while windows is more complex. Straightforward comparisons tend to suck, though, as both systems approach problems from quite a different (yet, somehow similar) perspective. In *nix systems, the ideology is that everything is a file, while in windows everything is an object. Average linux users know how to manage files, but how many windows users know how to manage objects?
And yes, I've used linux, but my home systems stay 100% Windows powered, because it's a better system for me and my needs.
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My two windows systems are both completely stable and secure. Haven't had any real problems with them, ever.
I never said that this couldn't be done. I ran Win-95 for years, and learned a thing or two about various registry hacks that stabilized it. Of course your average, atechnological, non-geek user won't know these things and "regedit" should be kept way away from them. Sort of like loaded machine guns and chimpanzees. :D
I suspect windows is just too complex OS for you guys, so linux and such systems might be a better choice for your needs.
Oh! Now there's a new one! Haven't you guys been telling us for years now that Linux "isn't ready for 'prime time'" because it's too hard for "grannies" to use? Looks like someone's getting desperate here. :D
And yes, I've used linux, but my home systems stay 100% Windows powered, because it's a better system for me and my needs.
Fair enough, but what are you doing here then? Is it your intention to show us "the light" and give up our "apostasy" from Redmond-land? :D
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I never said that this couldn't be done. I ran Win-95 for years, and learned a thing or two about various registry hacks that stabilized it. Of course your average, atechnological, non-geek user won't know these things and "regedit" should be kept way away from them. Sort of like loaded machine guns and chimpanzees. :D
Indeed. The default windows configuration is quite braindead, and the users who are ignorant of how the system works will typically have a bad system as the result. If Microsoft made it easy to create installers for custom configurations, and made it legit to distribute these to whoever wants them, we could have a totally different windows world out there.
I suspect windows is just too complex OS for you guys, so linux and such systems might be a better choice for your needs.
Oh! Now there's a new one! Haven't you guys been telling us for years now that Linux "isn't ready for 'prime time'" because it's too hard for "grannies" to use? Looks like someone's getting desperate here. :D
I'm not a believer of the "computer is a media center" ideology. I think computer is a general purpose tool, particularly practical for all sorts of automation and computation. If people want to use computers yet are unwilling to learn to use them, they should be given Live CDs to boot from along with their internet connectivity subscription, and new CD mailed in every month. It could run on xbox. This would eliminate a lot of the problems, and the real computer users could focus on actually using the computer.
And yes, I've used linux, but my home systems stay 100% Windows powered, because it's a better system for me and my needs.
Fair enough, but what are you doing here then? Is it your intention to show us "the light" and give up our "apostasy" from Redmond-land? :D
Ah, this is a tricky one, and I was wondering how long it'll take until it gets asked. Basically, I think windows haters are just ignorant, and want to see if this hypothesis holds true. On the other hand, I want to sharpen my windows skills, and to better oneself one must first know what he's lacking. I think you guys could be very good at pointing out things I need to know, and things I can't do with windows and never knew I should.
So, would you be so kind to entertain me, and tell me why you think windows is such a bad OS? To narrow the focus, I'm only talking about the NT series (Windows 2000 and 2003 particularly), and just the operating system.
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I'm not a believer of the "computer is a media center" ideology. I think computer is a general purpose tool, particularly practical for all sorts of automation and computation. If people want to use computers yet are unwilling to learn to use them, they should be given Live CDs to boot from along with their internet connectivity subscription, and new CD mailed in every month. It could run on xbox. This would eliminate a lot of the problems, and the real computer users could focus on actually using the computer.
That would be a good thing. After all, you don't need much more for doing what most folks do: send/receive E-Mails, 'Net surf, balance the checkbook, write the occasional document. They tried selling these "web appliances" years ago, but they didn't go over so well. Probably because the advertising was unintentionally offensive by implying that even stupid, nosey old ladies could use them.
Basically, I think windows haters are just ignorant, and want to see if this hypothesis holds true.
I would tend to doubt that highly. Except for the long-term Mac users, everyone here is either an ex-Windows user or are seeking to leave the Windows world. Even a dedicated Mac user has probably been exposed to Win-whatever at some point or other. The fact that a web site like this could have been started, and last as long as it has, demonstrates that Microsoft has created plenty of highly dissatisfied customers. Simple "ignorance" or "Bill Gates jealousy" isn't going to sustain the haters for very long. The regulars here are a tech-savvy collection of "geeks" who simply don't appreciate unstable, insecure, poorly designed systems.
So, would you be so kind to entertain me, and tell me why you think windows is such a bad OS? To narrow the focus, I'm only talking about the NT series (Windows 2000 and 2003 particularly), and just the operating system.
What else can one say about an op-sys that depends so heavily on third-party apps to overcome its inherent design flaws? An entire industry exists for no other purpose: companies such as Symentec, MacAffee, Lavasoft, do little else:
Profile
Symantec is the global leader in information security providing a broad range of software, appliances and services designed to help individuals, small and mid-sized businesses, and large enterprises secure and manage their IT infrastructure. Symantec's Norton brand of products is the worldwide leader in consumer security and problem-solving solutions. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has operations in more than 35 countries.
about symentec (http://www.symantec.com/corporate)
These companies would not exist had Win-d'ohs been designed properly from the get-go. What better testament to the piss-poor engineering of the beast is there? Then there's IIS (Internet Information Services) which has become notorious for its security flaws, and behaves more like a worm propagator than a server.
Use a different web browser
There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, local file system (Local Machine Zone) trust, the Dynamic HTML (DHTML) document object model (in particular, proprietary DHTML features), the HTML Help system, MIME type determination, the graphical user interface (GUI), and ActiveX. These technologies are implemented in operating system libraries that are used by IE and many other programs to provide web browser functionality. IE is integrated into Windows to such an extent that vulnerabilities in IE frequently provide an attacker significant access to the operating system.
It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when viewing untrusted HTML documents (e.g., web sites, HTML email messages). Such a decision may, however, reduce the functionality of sites that require IE-specific features such as proprietary DHTML, VBScript, and ActiveX. Note that using a different web browser will not remove IE from a Windows system, and other programs may invoke IE, the WebBrowser ActiveX control (WebOC), or the HTML rendering engine (MSHTML).
Vulnerability Note VU#713878 (http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878)
When the gov't itself simply gives up and recommends that everyone quit using Inter-nut Expl-Horror, you know that there are some serious problems here. This is inexcusable. If I'm asked to spend far more for something like Win-XP (then put up with WPA, the phone-home "daemons", the nag-ware) than I'd spend on even the priciest Linux non-enterprise OS, I damn well expect better than that. Nor do I like the idea of forking over even more $$$$$ to get those third-party anti-virus apps, the adware and spyware killers, and the rest of the Norton System Works suite just to keep the damn thing running. I get a helluvalot more from Linux for a helluvalot less.
Then there's the question of doing programming. When I wanted to get into this, I had to fork over some $100 for the Borland C++Builder suite of programming apps. The only reason I got it so "cheap" is that this was in early 2000, on the eve of the initial release of Win-XP, and Borland was unloading them for whatever they could get as it wouldn't run on XP anyway. Linux (except for Linare :mad: ) OTOH, includes everything you need to code Linux apps. And let's not forget that you will need to pay extra for other apps, such as the MS Office suite. You get word processors, office apps, art programs with just about any Linux distro, right there on the install CDs. Linux is just a better value.
And we haven't gotten into the business "ethics" of MS itself. The Halloween Documents (http://www.opensource.org/halloween) would be a good place to start as for looking into this.
Yeah, I have lots of reasons for disliking Win-Doesn't and its parent company. :p
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Basically, I think windows haters are just ignorant, and want to see if this hypothesis holds true.
I would tend to doubt that highly. Except for the long-term Mac users, everyone here is either an ex-Windows user or are seeking to leave the Windows world. Even a dedicated Mac user has probably been exposed to Win-whatever at some point or other. The fact that a web site like this could have been started, and last as long as it has, demonstrates that Microsoft has created plenty of highly dissatisfied customers. Simple "ignorance" or "Bill Gates jealousy" isn't going to sustain the haters for very long. The regulars here are a tech-savvy collection of "geeks" who simply don't appreciate unstable, insecure, poorly designed systems.
Tech-savvy or not, I've found that most windows haters simply do not understand how windows works. I won't defend Microsoft as a company, although I think the US government is partially to blame for the inability to cut MS into pieces. A lot of problems with Microsoft come from the fact that they're so damn big and so damn rich, that they can do pretty much anything they want to.
I've found windows to be fairly stable, quite secure, and many parts are well designed. Unfortunately, microsoft values backwards compatibility more than security, so there are some total braindead things around left from single user win16 times. I wish they'd go away, however the problem only relates to win32 apis and the concerned executive subsystem. If some day we can throw that away and move completely to .NET, a lot of the problems will just simply disappear.
So, would you be so kind to entertain me, and tell me why you think windows is such a bad OS? To narrow the focus, I'm only talking about the NT series (Windows 2000 and 2003 particularly), and just the operating system.
What else can one say about an op-sys that depends so heavily on third-party apps to overcome its inherent design flaws? An entire industry exists for no other purpose: companies such as Symentec, MacAffee, Lavasoft, do little else
These companies would not exist had Win-d'ohs been designed properly from the get-go. What better testament to the piss-poor engineering of the beast is there? Then there's IIS (Internet Information Services) which has become notorious for its security flaws, and behaves more like a worm propagator than a server.
I'm afraid these companies existence isn't completely dependant on issues with Windows. There have been several viruses out there which have depended on tricking the user to run the attached executable. Users don't understand the consequences of running untrusted binaries, and shit happens. Vulnerabilities exist in a lot of software, and pretty much all modern operating systems are equally vulnerable by design. Windows just happens to get all the attention because worm propagation efficiency is linearry proportional to vulnerable userbase squared. If you're ten times as popular as the other guy, you get hundred times more problems.
There have been several vulnerabilities in apache, mysql and other alternative applications that would've allowed for worm propagation, had the application been more popular. Obviously this is a weakness of a monoculture, but it's also a weakness to the compilers and languages used today. C and C++ are both specified in a way that encourages unsafe code generation. What's up with a language that specifies operations that result in undefined behaviour, which in practice can mean execution flow being diverted? I'm aware that there is a place for such languages, but most applications should be written in highlevel languages such as C#, Java, Python, Ocaml, etc... The problem isn't a Microsoft specific one.
When the gov't itself simply gives up and recommends that everyone quit using Inter-nut Expl-Horror, you know that there are some serious problems here. This is inexcusable. If I'm asked to spend far more for something like Win-XP (then put up with WPA, the phone-home "daemons", the nag-ware) than I'd spend on even the priciest Linux non-enterprise OS, I damn well expect better than that. Nor do I like the idea of forking over even more $$$$$ to get those third-party anti-virus apps, the adware and spyware killers, and the rest of the Norton System Works suite just to keep the damn thing running. I get a helluvalot more from Linux for a helluvalot less.
Internet Explorer used to progress really well, until Microsoft basically stopped the development. That sucked. Thank god we have firefox around now to motivate them again. I'm using IE myself, but with activescripting and activex turned off. As of such, nearly no past vulnerabilities have affected me.
I don't run any anti-virus software on my windows systems and I've been totally fine. However I have made preparations and know what to do if something bad happens. I regularly use all sorts of scanners (VICE, for example) to see that there's nothing naughty on my system. So far, I've never been infected.
Btw, I hate XP, too. That's why I'm still running w2k on this box, and w2k3 on the other. W2k3 happens to be the best windows ever, IMO, even for desktop use after proper configuration.
Then there's the question of doing programming. When I wanted to get into this, I had to fork over some $100 for the Borland C++Builder suite of programming apps. The only reason I got it so "cheap" is that this was in early 2000, on the eve of the initial release of Win-XP, and Borland was unloading them for whatever they could get as it wouldn't run on XP anyway. Linux (except for Linare :mad: ) OTOH, includes everything you need to code Linux apps. And let's not forget that you will need to pay extra for other apps, such as the MS Office suite. You get word processors, office apps, art programs with just about any Linux distro, right there on the install CDs. Linux is just a better value.
You have a point there. The availability of development tools for linux is a big bonus, but the system is targeted for a whole different people than windows is. Nowadays you can always get MinGW for windows, or the commandline compiler Visual C++, for free. Scripting was always possible either way, although nearly no home users use Windows Scripting Host for anything. One of the big problems of WSH is lack of generic purpose GUI dialog object. So, you simply can't create a GUI apps with jscript/vbscript, without third party GUI object installed on the system.
Regarding Office apps, they're available for windows, too. If only Microsoft allowed people to make their own distributions, things would be so different. And if the OS development was separated from the rest of the club, I think they definitely would do so. Why the heck didn't they split Microsoft? Anyway, I don't have MS Office and I haven't missed it at all. I can write documents in HTML or RTF, or PDF if the layout matters.
Also, Windows ships with MS Paint. Don't diss ms paint, it's an art program too, and perfectly suitable for drawing stuff. I use it all the time myself.
And we haven't gotten into the business "ethics" of MS itself. The Halloween Documents (http://www.opensource.org/halloween) would be a good place to start as for looking into this.
Yeah, I have lots of reasons for disliking Win-Doesn't and its parent company. :p
I can understand disliking the parent company, but IMO Windows itself is great, as are many of Microsoft's products.
PS. This post is growing long. For next reply, I'll have to drop some parts x_x
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Tech-savvy or not, I've found that most windows haters simply do not understand how windows works.
I don't see the relevance here. What's the correlation between "understanding how windows works" and having bad experiences with it? How is such a thing even possible, considering that the source code isn't available?
Vulnerabilities exist in a lot of software, and pretty much all modern operating systems are equally vulnerable by design.
It's been estimated that soft contains one bug for an average of five lines of code. Not much you can do about that as bugs become something you live with once you get much beyond the "Hello World" stage of programming. However, this does not make "all modern operating systems" "equally vulnerable" by any means. Linux is certainly more secure by design, and Open BSD is the champion of security. All are more secure than Windows, since security was a consideration from the get-go, not an after-thought.
There have been several viruses out there which have depended on tricking the user to run the attached executable. Users don't understand the consequences of running untrusted binaries, and shit happens.
Not much you can do about "social engineering". Big difference though: running untrusted binaries on a *NIX system will trash the user's home directory; it will not trash the entire system, if the users don't have root access. Unless priveledge escallation occurs, there's not much harm that malware can do to a *NIX system. It's considerably more difficult to escallate priveledge on a *NIX system than on a Win* ssytem.
C and C++ are both specified in a way that encourages unsafe code generation. What's up with a language that specifies operations that result in undefined behaviour, which in practice can mean execution flow being diverted?
C/C++ were designed to meet a specific need: low-level access that had traditionally been handled by Assembly. In order to grant the maximum freedom and flexibility, it is also necessary to assume that your programmers know what they're doing. There is no excuse for creating unguarded buffers that can be overflowed. I certainly don't write such code. Don't blame the language; blame the dumbasses who aren't competent in it. A lot of the blame for this goes to "RAD environments" that all too easily lead to horrible code hiding behind pretty GUIs. Dumbed-down development environment == dumbed-down developers.
I'm aware that there is a place for such languages, but most applications should be written in highlevel languages such as C#, Java, Python, Ocaml, etc... The problem isn't a Microsoft specific one.
Not possible. I've used such languages, however, all graphical apps written with one of these use GUI toolkits that are written in C/C++, with a "wrapper lib" to connect the Python/Ruby/Java/etc. code.
Also, Windows ships with MS Paint. Don't diss ms paint, it's an art program too, and perfectly suitable for drawing stuff. I use it all the time myself.
Still, it's nowhere near as capable as The GIMP.
If some day we can throw that away and move completely to .NET, a lot of the problems will just simply disappear.
A day I hope I never see. Not only do I see this as a kludged-up, unworkable mess (how else can you get dozens of apps all written in different programming languages to make nice?) but I do not trust these folks any farther than I can throw them:
Scenario Operating system
Client Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation with Service Pack 6.0a or later
Microsoft Windows NT? 4.0 Server with Service Pack 6.0a or later
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family
Note On all these systems, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 or later and Microsoft Windows Installer 2.0 or later are also required.
.NET Framework Developer Framework (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/technologyinfo/default.aspx)
See any mention that this will work on Linux, or anything else that isn't windows? :nothappy:
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I don't see the relevance here. What's the correlation between "understanding how windows works" and having bad experiences with it? How is such a thing even possible, considering that the source code isn't available?
Bad experiences tend to be because something unexpected and frustrating happens. If you understand the system, there will be significantly less of such experiences. And so what if the source isn't available? There is documentation, and the binaries are still there to be analyzed. What, can't read disassembly? Well, not everyone can read C.
It's been estimated that soft contains one bug for an average of five lines of code. Not much you can do about that as bugs become something you live with once you get much beyond the "Hello World" stage of programming. However, this does not make "all modern operating systems" "equally vulnerable" by any means. Linux is certainly more secure by design, and Open BSD is the champion of security. All are more secure than Windows, since security was a consideration from the get-go, not an after-thought.
In most cases, when you have admin/root access, the system is competely compromised. Further, such access is required for many applications to function. In ideal OS design, the scope of access would be minimized in all ways. In-process memory curtaining, limited visibility to filesystem, limited ability to execute syscalls, inability to directly jump into library functions, yaddayadda. If the system could enforce such fine grained access, any problems with application logic wouldn't have such a big impact. Once TCPA comes around it will be possible to implement a lot of this in hardware, but even now it could be implemented through virtualization. For example, see the project Xen for limited (yet very practical) application of this.
Linux isn't more secure by design, linux is totally braindead when it comes to design. No ACLs by default, everything's a one big hack, it's a wonder the OS works at all. With processes having to be suid for things to work, everything's pretty damn messy. Also, I laugh at your view that openbsd would be a champion of security. That's just ridiculous.
Not much you can do about "social engineering". Big difference though: running untrusted binaries on a *NIX system will trash the user's home directory; it will not trash the entire system, if the users don't have root access. Unless priveledge escallation occurs, there's not much harm that malware can do to a *NIX system. It's considerably more difficult to escallate priveledge on a *NIX system than on a Win* ssytem.
And what if it cannot escalate privileges? Keyloggers on X only need access to the X display, which can be implemented by "merely" taking over the user account. Good luck never typing passwords in X. And that's not the only attack that can be performed by just taking over the user account. You don't need to be root to do significant damage.
C/C++ were designed to meet a specific need: low-level access that had traditionally been handled by Assembly. In order to grant the maximum freedom and flexibility, it is also necessary to assume that your programmers know what they're doing. There is no excuse for creating unguarded buffers that can be overflowed. I certainly don't write such code. Don't blame the language; blame the dumbasses who aren't competent in it. A lot of the blame for this goes to "RAD environments" that all too easily lead to horrible code hiding behind pretty GUIs. Dumbed-down development environment == dumbed-down developers.
That's some harsh text, and definitely arrogant. Human error is the inevitable input to any complex system. Tell me, why are high level applications written in a low level languages? I like to think that I'm above writing buffer overflows in my own code, but all the time it turns out to be false. You know, they happen in many other ways than just the trivial case. In C++, you have to consider object lifetime issues, object destruction order, object ownership issues, etc. They're not trivial things. Yet, a bad pointer can cause nasty stuff to happen since the class methods still get executed, and operated on the pointed data. There are solutions, smart pointers and class dependency managers, but it just gets horribly complex. And mistakes happen. It'd be better if the language didn't allow for code execution path to get fucked.
Not possible. I've used such languages, however, all graphical apps written with one of these use GUI toolkits that are written in C/C++, with a "wrapper lib" to connect the Python/Ruby/Java/etc. code.
If the toolkit can guarantee execution path consistency, it does its job. Any bugs in the C/C++ portion are isolated there, and can be fixed by fixing the library... as long as static linking doesn't happen (repeat after me: yay zlib)
Still, it's nowhere near as capable as The GIMP.
Users can always install gimp if they want it. MS Paint is capable of drawing stuff, and if the user needs something more powerful they typically know where to get it.
A day I hope I never see. Not only do I see this as a kludged-up, unworkable mess (how else can you get dozens of apps all written in different programming languages to make nice?) but I do not trust these folks any farther than I can throw them:
(.. list here ..)
See any mention that this will work on Linux, or anything else that isn't windows? :nothappy:
They happen to be ECMA standards, so I'm sorry but you lose. Just because Microsoft isn't implementing it for linux doesn't mean nobody is. Check out http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:About
Granted, the mono implementation isn't quite perfect yet, but it's getting better. It already works and can run .NET applications, and C# compiler apparently works great too.
Regarding "unworkable mess", it's not going to be a mess. Everything gets compiled to bytecode, and everything works together on this level. Since bytecode becomes the new machine abstraction, the actual hardware and underlying OS can be changed at will and the applications will still work. This is the future, and this is what I hope will change the whole computing world.
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Bad experiences tend to be because something unexpected and frustrating happens. If you understand the system, there will be significantly less of such experiences. And so what if the source isn't available? There is documentation, and the binaries are still there to be analyzed. What, can't read disassembly? Well, not everyone can read C.
Now you've left the realm of user-land and entered geek territory. Most users aren't going to be able to do that. As for myself, what do I care? I don't use Windows, I don't want to use Windows, and Windows does absolutely nothing that I want badly enough to make me consider getting it. If it works for you, then that's wonderful. Use it and be happy, but don't expect to convert the rest of us. The Microsoft Eradication Society exists for a reason: plenty of less-than-satisfied customers who have had enough.
Linux isn't more secure by design, linux is totally braindead when it comes to design. No ACLs by default, everything's a one big hack, it's a wonder the OS works at all.
Doth the pot sayeth unto the kettle: "Thou art black"? Sounds like a Linux-ignorant statement to me. Furthermore, didn't you already concede that maintaining backwards compatability was a source of problems for Win-*? Doesn't doing that make Win-* just as much a "hack"? :p
Also, I laugh at your view that openbsd would be a champion of security. That's just ridiculous.
Laugh all you want, but not at me. Take it up with these guys: http://geodsoft.com/opinion/server_comp/security/openbsd.htm
So what does "Four years without a remote hole in the default install!" really mean? It means that no one who has installed OpenBSD with default options has actually experienced a network based intrusion in four years. Since the OpneBSD authors can only go on what they know, it means no one who has reported such an intrusion. As OpenBSD is only used those who are more than casually concerned about security in the first place, it's very likely if such an intrusion had occured, it would have been reported. Even though OpenBSD is not widely used, it is an impressive record. I know in my Internet explorations, I've seen statements to the effect that many would be intruders, as soon as they determine a target system is OpenBSD, move onto other targets.
Tell me, why are high level applications written in a low level languages?
For speed. I have a couple of projects up at SourceForge: FurCoder (http://sourceforge.net/projects/furcoder) and FurCoderCXX (http://sourceforge.net/projects/furrycoder). The one and only difference between them is that the former was coded in Ruby, while the latter is a C++ app. Both do exactly the same thing; both use the FOX GUI toolkit for graphics. However, FurCoderCXX is a helluvalot more responsive. There is no waiting for the GUI to update, as this happens with no noticeable lag. The Ruby app takes a couple of seconds to update.
They happen to be ECMA standards, so I'm sorry but you lose. Just because Microsoft isn't implementing it for linux doesn't mean nobody is.
So what? The W3C sets standards for HTML. We all know how reliable MS has already proved to be when it comes to making Inter-nut Expl-Horror compliant to standards. :rolleyes: Perhaps they will do better with .NET and the ECMA, but I'm certainly not going to bet on that. :p
This is the future, and this is what I hope will change the whole computing world.
Yeah: thin clients with all the apps rented, and hosted on MS's servers. That "future" is looking more and more like 1975 when I started with the WATFOR FORTRAN compiler, keypunch machines, card readers, and line printers run from some remote "big iron" mainframe no one ever saw. Been there; done that. PC's were originally intended to free us from remote hosting and rent-an-app soft that was out of your control. I have no desire to give up control of my system to any outside entity, let alone the Redmond Beast.
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Linux isn't more secure by design, linux is totally braindead when it comes to design. No ACLs by default, everything's a one big hack, it's a wonder the OS works at all. With processes having to be suid for things to work, everything's pretty damn messy. Also, I laugh at your view that openbsd would be a champion of security. That's just ridiculous.
For an untrusted application to run in a users homedirectory, the user first has to let it be chmod +x in the first place. This leaves stack smashing flaws in user applications. The most common user applications are Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. If you could trojan a user into installing a keylogger as an xpi or something, it would infect a few people. However if anything like that happens, and similar things have happened in the past, there are many geeks on standby that are going to view the code out of interest, and will see it.
That system is not perfect, and your right: no system is. Nonetheless I have had more problems that "just arise" on Windows then any other operating system. When my laptop was running Windows the network stack would fuck up and stop letting anything work with TCP, UDP, or anything important. Restarting the adapter would fix this, however often it would stop responding, the stupid little taskbar icon, the window for "repair", or even if I tried doing it by just disabling and renableing the adapter. Other bizarre crashes and other things kept happening.
As for the comeing Longhorn and .NET objects behind it: This is a new model to use, and will probably create problems. Microsoft will probably end up using a load of legacy code to save time on the release (Microsoft always do). The other things with new models is it will attract new security flaws, and ideas in the darker areas of computing. As for TCPA, it is the stupidest thing ever: It will allow users less control over there system. How the hell is that security? It is not security, its the biggest security hole I have ever heard of. What if someone does a man in the middle attack of the TCPA providers? Your fucked, and everyone else using it is as well.
Also I will point out that Microsoft Windows still has stupid methods of permissions, that are its biggest problems. Executables are executable via a silly file extension, which makes things MUCH easier for a hacker. Not only that but it hides in unsuspecting file extensions like .SCR for example.
Microsoft does not have anything that really compares to what runs on Linux, or what is being shipped with most good distros. Windows' shipped firewall is very backwards in most respects. With iptables you can put a lot more into the rules, you can restrict individual users, individual groups, and all kinds of stuff. Then there are things like snort which provide even better security because it actually looks at the data and works with that.
Then there is SELinux, which also comes with Fedora Core 3 and probably other distros. SELinux is a lot more versatile then even an ACL setup.
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I can almost see us fifty years from now, trying to teach our grandchildren of the scourge that was Windows. "Grampa, why did they get away with selling drink coasters for so much those days?" To which, I'll reply, "those aren't drink coasters hun, those were once a great media format - a bridge between old analogue cassettes and the newfangled laser-based hypnoplayers of today - used to an unjust end by a corporation bent on world domination. Fortunately, Linus Hood saved the day from their evil goons, and restored the media to its former glory."
According to SCO Linus Hood "stole from the rich and gave to the poor" as well.
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My two windows systems are both completely stable and secure. Haven't had any real problems with them, ever. I suspect windows is just too complex OS for you guys, so linux and such systems might be a better choice for your needs.
You never know what a closed source OS is doing behind your back. How do you know your Windows machine is secure? If I were a hacker, I would break into a machine and do it in such a way that the user never knew I was in, so I could use their machine to send email and spread viruses, worms and trojans without their knowledge. Windows is the best OS for such a thing because it is horribly insecure and sloppily coded by a corporation which cares nothing about its users.
I run rkhunter, chkrootkit, snort and tripwire twice daily. Probably overkill, but, when it comes to computer security, there is no such thing as overkill.
Your machine is probably rooted and you aren't smart enough to know it.
Here's a hint: There is no such thing as "completely secure".
Of course your aren't having any problems, a cracker needs your machine in order to do their evil bidding so they will make sure you don't have any problems. But, when they try to hack into fbi.gov or cia.gov (or any other site for that matter) via your machine, you're the one who will be visited by the men in black, not the cracker - since it is your machine that is being used for bad things and it is your machine that will be tracked. The cracker will know how to cover their tracks and leave you hanging to be the scapegoat.
The best thing you can do is format your hard drive, install Linux and learn how to use it properly. Once you learn about Linux, your eyes will be opened to exactly how horrible Windows is and you will be glad you got rid of all M$ products.
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I refuse to use software that is written and/or distributed by a corporation who was caught red-handed trying to fake evidence in a court of law. That tells you how underhanded they are and how much they think that lying and fraud is "ok". The only reason M$ still exists today is because they have enough money to buy off the immoral people who work for the US gov't.
And the only reason they have all that money is because Windows users are stupid enough to buy their products.
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I refuse to use software that is written and/or distributed by a corporation who was caught red-handed trying to fake evidence in a court of law. That tells you how underhanded they are and how much they think that lying and fraud is "ok". The only reason M$ still exists today is because they have enough money to buy off the immoral people who work for the US gov't.
And the only reason they have all that money is because Windows users are stupid enough to buy their products.
I read about this and found it unclear what was really going on. The only proof for fraud was that the titlebar of a window didn't change. Why do you yell fraud, when it could've been just incompetence?
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I run rkhunter, chkrootkit, snort and tripwire twice daily. Probably overkill, but, when it comes to computer security, there is no such thing as overkill.
Your machine is probably rooted and you aren't smart enough to know it.
Obviously I cannot be 100% sure my windows is clean, but neither can you. I run VICE, RootkitRevealer, and some of my own stuff every now and then. I've never found anything.
The best thing you can do is format your hard drive, install Linux and learn how to use it properly. Once you learn about Linux, your eyes will be opened to exactly how horrible Windows is and you will be glad you got rid of all M$ products.
I know linux, and it's a horrible mess. Just because the source is available doesn't make it any better technically, it's just a matter of freedom. Yeah, I value freedom and that's good stuff about linux, and I hope all of the computing industry will head to move free direction. Some of the things I dislike about proprietary software is that I'm not supposed to fix them, and I'm not supposed to ask the authors about their design and implementation decisions. If I do, they'll likely threaten to sue. This however isn't just a Microsoft issue, it's got to do with the whole industry.
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Now you've left the realm of user-land and entered geek territory. Most users aren't going to be able to do that.
I thought reading sourcecode was geek territory already. Also, your use of the term "user-land" is slightly confusing since it typically means something different than what you imply.
Linux isn't more secure by design, linux is totally braindead when it comes to design. No ACLs by default, everything's a one big hack, it's a wonder the OS works at all.
Doth the pot sayeth unto the kettle: "Thou art black"? Sounds like a Linux-ignorant statement to me. Furthermore, didn't you already concede that maintaining backwards compatability was a source of problems for Win-*? Doesn't doing that make Win-* just as much a "hack"? :p
The backwards compatibility solutions in windows are indeed a hack, however the whole linux kernel is one big hack. I've had a plenty of lovely experiences regarding it. Few years ago at work, I had to investigate how to let processes keep more files open. Turned out, the constant that defined it in the kernel was redefined in userland as a different value, but only if you included the headers in a specific order. No explanation whatsoever for this was provided anywhere. They've fixed that since then, but all sorts of various kludges exist all over the place.
What comes to security design, there's very little of that anywhere. The overall design is the old *nix design, of filesystem defining the access right, with suid bits set for applications that need greater access. Capabilities came at some point but I'm not aware of them still being used. Regarding the suid, it'd be more secure to have one central database of what's suid and what's not, so nobody's going to create a suidroot shell under some obscure directory and hide it there. And don't you tell me that there are security solutions to detect these, when you were pointing out the existance of security industry being implication of insecure design in Windows :)
Tell me, why are high level applications written in a low level languages?
For speed. I have a couple of projects up at SourceForge: FurCoder (http://sourceforge.net/projects/furcoder) and FurCoderCXX (http://sourceforge.net/projects/furrycoder). The one and only difference between them is that the former was coded in Ruby, while the latter is a C++ app. Both do exactly the same thing; both use the FOX GUI toolkit for graphics. However, FurCoderCXX is a helluvalot more responsive. There is no waiting for the GUI to update, as this happens with no noticeable lag. The Ruby app takes a couple of seconds to update.
Not being exactly a Ruby programmer, I can't take guesses at what might be going on, but "couple of seconds" sounds like it's not just Ruby's fault. Highlevel languages can be just as fast as C++, for example Ocaml has been claimed to generate code that rivals Intel's C++ compiler.
So what? The W3C sets standards for HTML. We all know how reliable MS has already proved to be when it comes to making Inter-nut Expl-Horror compliant to standards. :rolleyes: Perhaps they will do better with .NET and the ECMA, but I'm certainly not going to bet on that. :p
HTML standards leave much for interpretation, while the CLR doesn't do that. The "problem" you will be seeing is same that happened with java, Microsoft will implement their proprietary packages and will encourage people to develop against them. This means that these applications will not run on other systems until someone reimplements the said packages.
How to fight this? Make sure someone else provides plenty of useful packages for .NET, ofcourse. There's gtk# already as a replacement to Windows.Forms, and hopefully others will follow.
Regarding your comment about application providers, I agree that the idea of them is somewhat flawed, but not as horrible as you'd think. Can you imagine buying for a linux shell, where someone else takes care of the software upgrades and patching and stuff? Yeah? Why is the same thing with windows any different? Obviously there's a slight difference in balance here, but if application service providers and application developers are isolated from each other, it could just work.
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What comes to security design, there's very little of that anywhere. The overall design is the old *nix design, of filesystem defining the access right, with suid bits set for applications that need greater access. Capabilities came at some point but I'm not aware of them still being used. Regarding the suid, it'd be more secure to have one central database of what's suid and what's not, so nobody's going to create a suidroot shell under some obscure directory and hide it there. And don't you tell me that there are security solutions to detect these, when you were pointing out the existance of security industry being implication of insecure design in Windows
PAM.
Good distros all use it.
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Oh my, I'm replying to a lot of people now, am I not? Well well, here I go again...
For an untrusted application to run in a users homedirectory, the user first has to let it be chmod +x in the first place.
Ohyeah. Since linux apps are so hard to install, there won't be an issue of running untrusted applications. Or if they're ran purposedly, they're being trusted huh? Nice way to get out of the real issue :)
If you could trojan a user into installing a keylogger as an xpi or something, it would infect a few people. However if anything like that happens, and similar things have happened in the past, there are many geeks on standby that are going to view the code out of interest, and will see it.
Will these geeks also go clean up everyone's systems? Didn't think so. When something like that happens in windows, there are various anti-virus companies and a lot of geeks as well to check it out. That doesn't make the problem go away, it's just another step in the security process, you still need to recover from the infection. How do you get the infected people to fix their systems? The problem is same that exists with windows. It's only a bigger problem in windows because windows is more popular.
That system is not perfect, and your right: no system is. Nonetheless I have had more problems that "just arise" on Windows then any other operating system. When my laptop was running Windows the network stack would fuck up and stop letting anything work with TCP, UDP, or anything important. Restarting the adapter would fix this, however often it would stop responding, the stupid little taskbar icon, the window for "repair", or even if I tried doing it by just disabling and renableing the adapter. Other bizarre crashes and other things kept happening.
Hardware or driver issue. I cannot see how this is different from using linux and running a proprietary driver. Due to how modern operating systems are designed, drivers have a little bit too much freedom to operate. I have a kind of "dream OS", which would involve a Xen-like approach of separating the guest OS and host OS, with drivers being in the simple host OS layer. And here, the drivers would run under some sort of JIT VM, bytecode, so they couldn't crash the damn system. Well, one can dream. Perhaps in future, once the .NET implementations get stronger, this kind of approach will become viable as well.
As for the comeing Longhorn and .NET objects behind it: This is a new model to use, and will probably create problems. Microsoft will probably end up using a load of legacy code to save time on the release (Microsoft always do).
I cannot see any problem with using legacy code here. Once the stuff works, portions can be rewritten to be "more pure" if desired. However since the .NET will create a completely new machine abstraction level, anything that goes underneath it is not an issue. It's just the machine implementation, and it can be changed anytime without affecting stuff above it.
The other things with new models is it will attract new security flaws, and ideas in the darker areas of computing.
I don't quite understand what you mean with this, are you saying that a beast you know is better than one you don't? Definitely there will be issues that need to be resolved, but with the VM being a single point of failure for many security related issues, you won't have to go running around patching all applications if a common security issue is found. It only has to be patched once, in the VM.
As for TCPA, it is the stupidest thing ever: It will allow users less control over there system. How the hell is that security? It is not security, its the biggest security hole I have ever heard of. What if someone does a man in the middle attack of the TCPA providers? Your fucked, and everyone else using it is as well.
You are making some wild assumptions here, and I think it's because of the TCPA FUD that's been going around. You know, pretty much everything TCPA does can ALREADY be done with software. You don't think so? See Xen and what it does: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ ... this same approach could be used to implement a lot of the TCPA functionality. However, a hardware support on some level is needed to make things straightforward. What's I've read about TCPA, it seems to be damn good stuff, and I can't wait to get to play with it.
Also I will point out that Microsoft Windows still has stupid methods of permissions, that are its biggest problems. Executables are executable via a silly file extension, which makes things MUCH easier for a hacker. Not only that but it hides in unsuspecting file extensions like .SCR for example.
And if you unzip or tar x some file under linux, the executable metadata doesn't get propagated to the filesystem? Damn, it does. There you go. Ofcourse, the windows issue is that the metadata isn't for the OS, it's for the GUI. All files are potentially executables and you can CreateProcess() against even a .txt file.
However, the lack of metadata isn't the issue here. The issue is overloading of doubleclicking. In some cases, it runs the associated program. In some cases, it runs the file itself as a program. This isn't necessarily bad, but it requires user to know the difference, and in some cases, it gets relatively tough. Another example of the same issue is how command prompt overloads file execution. If you type a filename in cmd.exe, it first tries to CreateProcess() and then it tries to check for file associations and stuff. The problem is, CreateProcess() can start an executable no matter the filename. Try this: rename the extension of some exe to "txt", and try to run it in the command prompt. You'll see that it still runs it, since the extension resolution only happens afterwards.
So, the problem is overloading of different operations. This is definitely bad security, as seen elsewhere where it has happened. Another example of it would be Outlook's midi-executable hole that was found (and fixed) long ago. Attach an executable, and claim it has a .mid mime-type, then require it be played as a background sound. The implementation used some overloaded mechanism to process the file, that was able to do more than was required, and definitely more than was expected. Result: the damn file ran when mail was read.
I agree that this is bad design, however there's no going back in win32-land, since ShellExecute() and similar things are depended on by everyone. Getting to .NET is the ultimate solution to fix the mess, since that lets us drop the win32 crap behind.
Microsoft does not have anything that really compares to what runs on Linux, or what is being shipped with most good distros. Windows' shipped firewall is very backwards in most respects. With iptables you can put a lot more into the rules, you can restrict individual users, individual groups, and all kinds of stuff. Then there are things like snort which provide even better security because it actually looks at the data and works with that.
Obviously you're only comparing the things that you want to. The windows native kernel is superior to that of linux, except in some specific things. Unfortunately, these specific things are quite significant, but the windows kernel still compares pretty damn well to linux. Yeah, I'd like better networking mechanisms, too, that's one thing where linux wins. If you want a router that performs complex traffic shaping (weighted round robin, for example), there aren't really any alternatives than using linux/iptables/tc and friends. This might be the only reason I'll ever get a linux system running at home, but for now I haven't had such a strong need for a traffic shaper.
What comes to snort, I've found it gives way too many false positives to be useful at all. It'd take a year to configure it to only show sane things.
Then there is SELinux, which also comes with Fedora Core 3 and probably other distros. SELinux is a lot more versatile then even an ACL setup.
There have been some funny kernel patches for linux around for quite a while now, but I hadn't seen any real distro use any of it. I hadn't heard that FC3 ships with it by default, and that definitely makes things interesting. With such patches, you can actually have a linux system that I'll admit is more secure than Windows. However, for now, I'll wait to see these things actually get more widely used.
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PAM
PAM definitely solves some problems, but only relating to user authentication. Why are there still so many suidroot apps on the system, and why are SSH vulnerabilities still remote root holes? :)
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Ohyeah. Since linux apps are so hard to install, there won't be an issue of running untrusted applications. Or if they're ran purposedly, they're being trusted huh? Nice way to get out of the real issue.
Well this isn't a big issue for a Fedora User, all the applications come from a trusted source with apt-get. And on my server, it runs trustix which users a similar system exclusive to trustix called swup which uses gpg signed sources. However if any of the servers got cracked themselves.
Nonetheless, snort provides very advanced protection against all these vulnrabilities. Including even those for Windows if you run it on your router/firewall which is a bonus.
Hardware or driver issue. I cannot see how this is different from using linux and running a proprietary driver. Due to how modern operating systems are designed, drivers have a little bit too much freedom to operate. I have a kind of "dream OS", which would involve a Xen-like approach of separating the guest OS and host OS, with drivers being in the simple host OS layer. And here, the drivers would run under some sort of JIT VM, bytecode, so they couldn't crash the damn system. Well, one can dream. Perhaps in future, once the .NET implementations get stronger, this kind of approach will become viable as well.
Tried updating the drivers several times, and other things. However now that I have no Windows on my laptop, its not an issue, it is fine in Linux. It seems the kernel maintainers can differentiate between STABLE and UNSTABLE, Microsoft have given me a lot of unstable drivers in the past, so, not an issue.
Besides
SELinux > Microsoft.
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Well this isn't a big issue for a Fedora User, all the applications come from a trusted source with apt-get. And on my server, it runs trustix which users a similar system exclusive to trustix called swup which uses gpg signed sources. However if any of the servers got cracked themselves.
Apt is nice, but what if you want to install some third party cool monkey that will run around your desktop doing cool stuff? And don't tell me it's ridiculous that anyone would want such a thing, practice proves otherwise.
There will always be countless amounts of software out there that won't be in known repositories. Then you have to get it yourself, from untrusted source, assuming you want to run it in the first place. A lot of the time you can apt-get everything you need, and if you can't get your favourite text editor "pico", you only need to whine about it to your geek friends and they'll tell you to get "nano" instead.
Anyway, I've understood that "normal" users just tend to go around and try whatever software they can find. They'll download and run anything, to find cool stuff. If such people were to use linux, and knew how to do what they want to do, you'd have a security disaster right there and then.
Security isn't just something a system provides, it's more about the users than about the systems most of the time. Good systems enable users to make informed security decisions, but uninformed users can't make good security decisions no matter the system.
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I thought reading sourcecode was geek territory already. Also, your use of the term "user-land" is slightly confusing since it typically means something different than what you imply.
Here is what you said: "Bad experiences tend to be because something unexpected and frustrating happens. If you understand the system, there will be significantly less of such experiences."
What does this have to do with anything? Three years ago, these friends of the family bought a brand-new Sony Viao with Win-XP installed. They didn't really care what they were running until the wife lost two weeks' worth of work needed for her college graduation. XP ate the whole damn thing at 2:00AM the morning it was due at 8:00AM. Of course the professor wouldn't take: "XP ate my homework" for an excuse. She failed the course, and this delayed her graduation for six months. The day after, they practically begged me to install Linux on their system and show them how to use it. This, I did. So far, there have been no further incidents of this sort. How would their having a "greater understanding" make them more forgiving towards Win-XP? All they care about is that XP trashed valuable work at the worst possible time, and that Linux doesn't.
The backwards compatibility solutions in windows are indeed a hack, however the whole linux kernel is one big hack. I've had a plenty of lovely experiences regarding it. Few years ago at work, I had to investigate how to let processes keep more files open. Turned out, the constant that defined it in the kernel was redefined in userland as a different value, but only if you included the headers in a specific order. No explanation whatsoever for this was provided anywhere. They've fixed that since then, but all sorts of various kludges exist all over the place.
You make this sweeping generalization: "...the whole linux kernel is one big hack." You have nothing more substantial to back that up other than: "Few years ago at work, I had to investigate how to let processes keep more files open. Turned out, the constant that defined it in the kernel was redefined in userland as a different value, but only if you included the headers in a specific order. No explanation whatsoever for this was provided anywhere. They've fixed that since then, but all sorts of various kludges exist all over the place."
Key words here: "A few years ago...", and "They've fixed that...". This nullifies whatever point you thought you were making. One incident of some variable getting redefined, or someone's being less than diligent with their forward declares hardly damns the entire kernel as "one big hack". That's pretty weak.
Not being exactly a Ruby programmer, I can't take guesses at what might be going on, but "couple of seconds" sounds like it's not just Ruby's fault. Highlevel languages can be just as fast as C++, for example Ocaml has been claimed to generate code that rivals Intel's C++ compiler.
Ruby isn't the peppiest language out there. It has some bitchin' features, but those features slow it down. The idea that these interpreted languages can be as fast as C/C++ is just not right. They are not. To say: "Ocaml has been claimed to generate code that rivals Intel's C++ compiler." does not imply equality of speed.
Will these geeks also go clean up everyone's systems? Didn't think so. When something like that happens in windows, there are various anti-virus companies and a lot of geeks as well to check it out.
Yes, they will. So far as the turn-around time for Open Source and bug-fixes goes, Open Source is way ahead of Microsoft.
You are making some wild assumptions here, and I think it's because of the TCPA FUD that's been going around. You know, pretty much everything TCPA does can ALREADY be done with software. You don't think so? See Xen and what it does: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ ... this same approach could be used to implement a lot of the TCPA functionality. However, a hardware support on some level is needed to make things straightforward. What's I've read about TCPA, it seems to be damn good stuff, and I can't wait to get to play with it.
So far, I'm witholding judgement on this. Like any technology, it's neither good or bad per se. However, I don't trust that Microsoft won't attempt to use this to lock out other soft and operating systems.
Regarding your comment about application providers, I agree that the idea of them is somewhat flawed, but not as horrible as you'd think. Can you imagine buying for a linux shell, where someone else takes care of the software upgrades and patching and stuff? Yeah? Why is the same thing with windows any different?
It's different precisely because no one is trying to lock you into Linux. Indeed, the Linux and Open Source communities have been far better about this than has Microsoft. You can run: Firefox, Mozilla, the GIMP, BASH, X, for starters on Windows. So far, this has been purely a one-way street. What Microsoft apps run natively on Linux?
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Here is what you said: "Bad experiences tend to be because something unexpected and frustrating happens. If you understand the system, there will be significantly less of such experiences."
What does this have to do with anything? (... story snipped ...). How would their having a "greater understanding" make them more forgiving towards Win-XP? All they care about is that XP trashed valuable work at the worst possible time, and that Linux doesn't.
So, how exactly did it happen? What went wrong? There's always an immediate reason for why everything happens. It could've been user error. Also, depending on what exactly happened, that data could've still been recoverable. I greatly suspect this wasn't fault of Win-XP itself, unless the filesystem just mysteriously went wookoo. Not knowing what really happened, I don't have further comments about the incident.
You make this sweeping generalization: "...the whole linux kernel is one big hack."
Yes, I didn't provide very good reasoninig. By same logic, your story above about Win-XP eating people's work is equally worthless. :)
How about the 2.6.x kernel tree, then? Weren't even branches supposed to be stable? I tried compiling 2.6.9 recently with scheduling and stuff, and even with days of debugging, I couldn't get it to work. When the scheduling stuff was compiled into the kernel, the network cards wouldn't get recognized anymore, or wouldn't just work. Reading around, I found I wasn't the only one having problem, and that 2.6.x had plenty of experimental crap in it. It wasn't a stable tree by any means. On my primary shell, we had an incident with bittorrent causing kernel panic on 2.6.x kernel, again google reported various similar incidents having happened to others. Mysterious bugs, all sorts of strange things going on.
My linux experience starts from around 1.2.x times, and I mainly administrated boxes during 2.0.x kernel tree. Back then, people were already bashing microsoft all around and moving to linux, although bsd system would've been a lot lot better choice for everyone. Well, Linus has been doing unbelievable job at having the damn thing working and keeping it together, but from my perspective I have to say it looks like one huge mess. I'd pay more attention to the more recent kernel trees if they actually worked.
Ruby isn't the peppiest language out there. It has some bitchin' features, but those features slow it down. The idea that these interpreted languages can be as fast as C/C++ is just not right. They are not. To say: "Ocaml has been claimed to generate code that rivals Intel's C++ compiler." does not imply equality of speed.
Dynamic languages don't need to be interpreted. Also, ocaml isn't just an interpreted language. It can be compiled to native code, and I know people who say it's really damn fast. No, I don't have personal experience, that's why I said it's been claimed so. Obviously, benchmarking against C++ compilers would suck because the two languages are just so different. However, let's make those comparisons anyway:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all&sort=fullcpu
Go ahead, you'll see that ocaml ranks quite high in the list, even though you can question the methods of benchmarking. You'll also see that Ruby scores quite low :)
It's different precisely because no one is trying to lock you into Linux. Indeed, the Linux and Open Source communities have been far better about this than has Microsoft. You can run: Firefox, Mozilla, the GIMP, BASH, X, for starters on Windows. So far, this has been purely a one-way street. What Microsoft apps run natively on Linux?
So, wouldn't the best approach to solving the problem be user education? Software lock-in can be expensive, and businesses understand money. However, GNU is an evil empire when it comes to lock-in as well. Everyone's writing their "sh" scripts with bash syntax nowadays, m4 is backwards incompatible, gcc has language extensions that are widely used, etc. How are these not lock-in issues?
Also, how many GNU apps really run NATIVELY on windows? Don't a lot of them use the cygwin api wrapper to implement signals and *nix apis for them? I know there are a lot of native apps, but a lot of them aren't. For a long time, GIMP didn't use native widgets on windows either. It'd go on implementing its own damn scrollbars and buttons. Talk about bloat and inconsistencies.
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I know linux, and it's a horrible mess. Just because the source is available doesn't make it any better technically, it's just a matter of freedom.
i have to disagree with you about this. the concept behind open source software is peer review.
basically, and i am sure you know this, if the source code is open, then potentially thousands upon thousands of people are looking over it, with a view to wiping out any holes, malware, inefficiencies et cetera. with closed source code like mswindows, only the microsoft developers get to see it, therefore only they get to bugfix it. thousands versus perhaps one floor (at the most i suspect) of nine-tofivers.
and there's my second point. these open source coders are all (well, mostly, this brings up the issue of companies contributing to GPL stuff because it benefits them to do so, which i will ignore for now since it does not weaken my point) doing it for the love of it, while the coders at microsoft are being paid a salary to do it. amateurs will naturally have a more personal interest in fixing bugs and making stuff work right. people who have to file paperwork and who will collect their paycheck whatever happens are less likely to be quite so ambitious and successful from the point of view of "good" code, in my opinion.
Basically, and i am sure you know this too, the whole thing is explained *perfectly* in ESR's book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s02.html) which i cannot recommend enough, if you are not familiar with it already.
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i have to disagree with you about this. the concept behind open source software is peer review.
basically, and i am sure you know this, if the source code is open, then potentially thousands upon thousands of people are looking over it, with a view to wiping out any holes, malware, inefficiencies et cetera. with closed source code like mswindows, only the microsoft developers get to see it, therefore only they get to bugfix it. thousands versus perhaps one floor (at the most i suspect) of nine-tofivers.
Too bad this doesn't work in practice. People don't read uninteresting parts at all. Was it in PGP or where exactly, that key generation wasn't very random at all and nobody noticed? The code was so obviously flawed that everyone should've realized it's broken. Yet, nobody noticed, for a full year. Just because the code is available doesn't mean that anyone's going to review it. In linux, this means that rarely used drivers and other rarely used things wont likely be read by many people.
and there's my second point. these open source coders are all (...snip...) doing it for the love of it, while the coders at microsoft are being paid a salary to do it. amateurs will naturally have a more personal interest in fixing bugs and making stuff work right. people who have to file paperwork and who will collect their paycheck whatever happens are less likely to be quite so ambitious and successful from the point of view of "good" code, in my opinion.
Just because people are interested doesn't mean they're good. Amateurs write crappy code and don't even realize it themselves. To them, usually the only thing that counts is that code works. Theoretically this is OK, programming should indeed be goal oriented and the primary goal is to have something that works. However, just because something seems to work doesn't mean it does work. In many opensource projects I've seen, there are clear indications that the developers don't even know the language they're using. These include C++ projects where pointers are tested to not be null before deleting them, "OO" code where all classes are glorified monostate patterns or worse, and all sorts of stuff that just makes you go wtf. I'm well aware that similar stuff happens in commercial products for the same reasons, but professional programmers tend to always write better code than a bunch of amateur geeks.
Basically, and i am sure you know this too, the whole thing is explained *perfectly* in ESR's book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s02.html) which i cannot recommend enough, if you are not familiar with it already.
I'm familiar with it, however you are making some funny assumptions there. First, you assume that the only difference between professional and amateur is that the professional gets paid and amateur doesn't. A lot of free software development is done by professionals who are developing software as a hobby, too. That stuff tends to be good, and these people tend to know what they're doing. However, a large amount of the amateur development only works because the said amateurs need the software and are going to fix the bugs when they run into them. If you assume that professionals write as sloppy code as average amateurs but won't fix issues unless they get paid, then obviously you can conclude the very same things you already assumed. See a flaw in logic here?
Now, even while Linus is taking good care to see that totally complete crap doesn't get into the kernel, the submitted patches are still what they are. There's this great saying, "If operating systems were beer, linux would be an empty barrel into which everyone could pee", which is something I think a lot every time I have to go through some sources.
Also, if we extend the quality comparisons to the userland, Microsoft still has professionals writing most of the non-kernel parts of the system, while what you get to run on linux comes from zillions of sources and are subject to zillions of different programming practices and levels of testing and such. Reminds me of this one "secure finger daemon" and the funny advisory about it on bugtraq. Whoever wrote it, decided to make the socket calls blocking, so the damn thing could be DoS'd by merely opening a single connection against it. Further, it contained serious holes (symlinking .plan to any file, then reading it through finger) and so on. This is the kind of stuff that amateurs write, and being amateurs they have no idea how much their stuff really sucks.
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Too bad this doesn't work in practice. People don't read uninteresting parts at all. Was it in PGP or where exactly, that key generation wasn't very random at all and nobody noticed? The code was so obviously flawed that everyone should've realized it's broken. Yet, nobody noticed, for a full year. Just because the code is available doesn't mean that anyone's going to review it. In linux, this means that rarely used drivers and other rarely used things wont likely be read by many people.
Uhm, PGP isnt open source.
You provide no news sources with any of your arguments either, credibility wise your on about the same level as Fox News.
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Yes, I didn't provide very good reasoninig. By same logic, your story above about Win-XP eating people's work is equally worthless.
No. It is not. It is, indeed, the same point you were trying to make concerning the 2.6.x kernel. Now you can damn Linux all you want for 2.6.x's not being "perfect" right from the get-go. However, Windows has the same problem. Testing under fire is really the only way to make certain everything's OK. Given the various combinations of processors, mo-bo's, miscellaneous hard, it's a wonder that anything other than Macs run at all. Given that, I have seen far fewer problems with Linux than with Win-whatever.
Furthermore, with Linux you do not get onerous EULAs, activation headaches, nagware, spyware, an op-sys filled with "daemons" that like to go running home to mother every time you go on-line. This is why I prefer to use Linux. If these things don't bother you, then go ahead and use Win and be happy. But know this: you won't convince me to return to the Redmond fold. I get considerably more value from Linux than I can from any current Microsoft offering. I don't need it; I don't want it.
Dynamic languages don't need to be interpreted. Also, ocaml isn't just an interpreted language. It can be compiled to native code, and I know people who say it's really damn fast. No, I don't have personal experience, that's why I said it's been claimed so. Obviously, benchmarking against C++ compilers would suck because the two languages are just so different. However, let's make those comparisons anyway [...] Go ahead, you'll see that ocaml ranks quite high in the list, even though you can question the methods of benchmarking. You'll also see that Ruby scores quite low
I knew this already; I said as much.
So, wouldn't the best approach to solving the problem be user education?
Too late for that. The marketing weenies have already convinced all too many users that "education" is not necessary. I don't see this changing any time soon.
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Uhm, PGP isnt open source.
You provide no news sources with any of your arguments either, credibility wise your on about the same level as Fox News.
Ah, "open source" vs. "Open Source". Ok, so their license doesn't conform to the Open Source Initiative, and their definition of Open Source. Here's a reference:
http://cryptome.org/cipn052400.htm#pgp
My point was that even though the source was available to everyone to read, it doesn't get "peer reviewed" if nobody's interested in reading it.
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Now you can damn Linux all you want for 2.6.x's not being "perfect" right from the get-go. However, Windows has the same problem. Testing under fire is really the only way to make certain everything's OK. Given the various combinations of processors, mo-bo's, miscellaneous hard, it's a wonder that anything other than Macs run at all. Given that, I have seen far fewer problems with Linux than with Win-whatever.
If we disregard win9x series, I've had way more problems with linux than windows. And I mean real problems, such as netscape crashing whole X, strange kernel panics on same system in which windows worked fine, etc. On Windows 2000 there were initially some problems with memory management (the "out of buffer space" problem), but those have been patched long ago. On windows 2003, I can't remember having a single problem related to windows itself, only third party apps.
Furthermore, with Linux you do not get onerous EULAs, activation headaches, nagware, spyware, an op-sys filled with "daemons" that like to go running home to mother every time you go on-line. This is why I prefer to use Linux. If these things don't bother you, then go ahead and use Win and be happy. But know this: you won't convince me to return to the Redmond fold. I get considerably more value from Linux than I can from any current Microsoft offering. I don't need it; I don't want it.
I assume you mean GNU/Linux in this context. If you want to use only GNU software, you can avoid all the above mentioned crap in Windows as well. You don't have to use any software you don't trust, I definitely don't.
Linux can be more suitable to you, and as I said it's probably better for a lot more people because it's simpler than Windows. Windows is more complex, and way tougher to learn. Despite Windows being marketed for clueless folk, the Windows itself hasn't been designed for newbies. It's a serious OS for serious people, and currently (imo) the biggest problems are the amount of work it takes to properly configure one. If the default installation wasn't so braindead, a lot of you guys would appreciate the whole system more.
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If we disregard win9x series, I've had way more problems with linux than windows. And I mean real problems, such as netscape crashing whole X, strange kernel panics on same system in which windows worked fine, etc.
I have never had any app completely crash X (then, again, I don't use Netscape). During the course of doing development, I have had code that misbehaved badly that caused lock-ups. Simple solution: bring up a new console and kill the damn thing, fix the mistake, and try again. NBD. The only time I've seen a kernel panic is making a mistake at either the LILO or GRUB command line while trying to boot another distro. As for why your systems are screwing up like that, who knows? I've never seen it myself on any system I've run.
I assume you mean GNU/Linux in this context. If you want to use only GNU software, you can avoid all the above mentioned crap in Windows as well. You don't have to use any software you don't trust, I definitely don't.
How do you "avoid" the consequences of Microsoft's own EULAs without violating the law? How do I avoid shit like this:
By the middle of this year, Microsoft will make the verification mandatory in all countries for both add-on features to Windows as well as for all OS updates, including security patches.
Microsoft: Legit Windows or no updates (http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Legit+Windows+or+no+updates/2100-1016_3-5550205.html?tag=st.pop)
How does one avoid the nag-ware that pops up every time you go on-line demanding that you sign up for a Passport? I don't want a GD Passport, I don't want MSN (or whatever that IM is called), I don't want Hotmail (Two lousey services if ever there was one). XP refuses to take "No!" for an answer. :mad: How do I keep such things as mouse drivers from calling the "mothership"? As for why a mouse driver would go squeeking to Redmond is beyond me. :eek: I don't like all this sneaky reporting back God knows what information for God knows what purposes. I don't appreciate having to firewall off my systems, not because I'm afraid of what may be coming in, but because of what may be going out. What I do with my systems is none of Bill Gates' GD business. :mad:
As far as "software you don't trust", that's Windows-XP, and anything else coded by Microsoft. :p
That's why I installed Linux.
Linux can be more suitable to you, and as I said it's probably better for a lot more people because it's simpler than Windows. Windows is more complex, and way tougher to learn. Despite Windows being marketed for clueless folk, the Windows itself hasn't been designed for newbies...
OK, you finally admitted it: Windows is a kludgy mess that defies understanding, and is difficult to install so that it works correctly. If you want to bust your ballz trying to understand it, well, we all have our own little hobbies, don't we? While you're doing that, I will be getting serious work done on my Linux systems. :D
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Ah, an intelligent debate I see. I'll need to steer well clear of this thread. :D
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Uhm, PGP isnt open source.
You provide no news sources with any of your arguments either, credibility wise your on about the same level as Fox News.
Ah, "open source" vs. "Open Source". Ok, so their license doesn't conform to the Open Source Initiative, and their definition of Open Source. Here's a reference:
http://cryptome.org/cipn052400.htm#pgp
My point was that even though the source was available to everyone to read, it doesn't get "peer reviewed" if nobody's interested in reading it.
Yea well who would when theres GPG.
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Ah, an intelligent debate I see. I'll need to steer well clear of this thread.
Yeah. It's becoming quite obvious that nothing is going to be resolved here.
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Ah, an intelligent debate I see. I'll need to steer well clear of this thread.
Yeah. It's becoming quite obvious that nothing is going to be resolved here.
On the other hand, I've greatly enjoyed posting here. I didn't expect you guys to be so respectful towards my love of Windows. :)
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And I've enjoyed reading your posts, it's good to see both sides of the arguement.
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Oh talking of intelligent debate has anyone read this before, I know it's old but it still makes good reading.
http://people.fluidsignal.com/~luferbu/misc/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html
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First, you assume that the only difference between professional and amateur is that the professional gets paid and amateur doesn't. A lot of free software development is done by professionals who are developing software as a hobby, too. ...... Further, it contained serious holes (symlinking .plan to any file, then reading it through finger) and so on. This is the kind of stuff that amateurs write, and being amateurs they have no idea how much their stuff really sucks.
i don't have a lot of time, or you would see pages of reply, but i must address this one point.
the word "amateur" literally means "for the love of it", while as you know professionals are doing it "for the money".
You don't seem to provide any proof that people who love what they are doing do a worse job than people who are being paid to do the job, so clearly you have misunderstood the basic concepts involved when i talk about amateurs and professionals.
no offence intended, just pointing it out.
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i don't have a lot of time, or you would see pages of reply, but i must address this one point.
the word "amateur" literally means "for the love of it", while as you know professionals are doing it "for the money".
You don't seem to provide any proof that people who love what they are doing do a worse job than people who are being paid to do the job, so clearly you have misunderstood the basic concepts involved when i talk about amateurs and professionals.
no offence intended, just pointing it out.
I'm not going to fight over what words mean, it's a fact that companies shell out money to train their employees, and said employees can be very motivated. Why is photoshop still better than gimp, even though gimp can be developed by the whole world? Why is blender such an annoying app compared to all the commercial alternatives?
Software development is difficult, and it's best done by experienced people. Hobbyists can be experienced, too, but professionals are paid to get that experience, and trained to learn good programming practices.
If you compare opensource development and commercial development only on single variable (love vs getting paid), obviously your straw man model will give you the conclusions you wanted to get.
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Terms like "Better" and "Sucks" are terms of taste, which is defined by an entity, we have different tastes muzzy, so fuck off.
I prefer gimp over photoshop (I have had both running on Linux before), however I dont use gimp for the same reasons.
More or less, I dont give a shit muzzy.
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When are you people going to grow up?
Microsoft does my day much easier with Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003.
Thank you Microsoft!
Well done, Gates!
;)
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You know... I was able to get Microsoft Office 2003 legal for just $5.
But I refused, since I don't use crappy software.
Also, Windows XP is the biggest bloatware in the history of operating systems. Have you tried Linux yet?
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Terms like "Better" and "Sucks" are terms of taste, which is defined by an entity, we have different tastes muzzy, so fuck off.
I prefer gimp over photoshop (I have had both running on Linux before), however I dont use gimp for the same reasons.
More or less, I dont give a shit muzzy.
Indeed, whatever is better depends on your values and your preferences. If you value freedom over functionality, I can see why you won't bother even trying with Windows. And about gimp, maybe someday it will be usable for the things I use it for. For now, windows just wins.
Also, photoshop doesn't run properly under linux afaik. Crossover office lists several known issues for it, some of which I'd find to be seriously annoying if I had to deal with them. I'd rather use the application in an environment I know to be stable.
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You know... I was able to get Microsoft Office 2003 legal for just $5.
But I refused, since I don't use crappy software.
Also, Windows XP is the biggest bloatware in the history of operating systems. Have you tried Linux yet?
I Doubt He Has
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Indeed, whatever is better depends on your values and your preferences. If you value freedom over functionality, I can see why you won't bother even trying with Windows. And about gimp, maybe someday it will be usable for the things I use it for. For now, windows just wins.
Okay, let me get this straight.
Windows has fuck all in the way of functionality, I have no problems with Linux at all, unlike Windows. However you have problems with Linux and none with Windows. So this "functionality" is a matter of taste". Yet you rather state that "windows wins" and other claims as if they apply to the entire fucking planet. I was using Windows for several months after I got my new laptop, and functionality wise it was completely fucked. It had repeated crashes, bugs, programs not working, lack of memory because of all the third party stuff I would need to get a half-decent system out of it. You call this functionality?
Your the biggest psuedo-intellectual fool that has ever posted here by far. You seem to not be able to differentiate between taste and values and ideals. This clearly shows that your entire psyche is based around idealogy and you obsesses around the assumption that everyone else is as well. A lot of people make this foolish assumption.
My case, as with a lot of people here, was not "Oh god I cannot hack notepad.exe to write my own office-style paperclip, because its closed source,". It was "Windows is an unstable peice of shit, I might try Linux... Oh how rad all this Open Source software runs so much better," And from about there most of us just liked the experience of Open Source software better. Then some of us after using it for an extended period of time got into hacking it. However a lot of people barely touch sources and other things, so most dont really value "freedom over functionality" because this world also currently has "mass scale piracy" so if it was the pricetag they would run a pirate copy of Windows, since the source means nothing to a large number of people. I however build my own RPM's and other things, and I prefer the functionality of Linux. I prefer everything about the experience of Linux over Windows.
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I'm not going to fight over what words mean,
ok, i have come up against this many times on boards like this. if you can't be arsed to use words that mean what you mean to say, then don't fucking speak. that's my advice. if you are just going to spew some inaccurate twaddle and claim that you meant something else, then nobody else can join in the discussion since they haven't a clue what you are going on about.
your posts are usually quite coherent compared with some of the people on here, so why this is an issue for you i don't know, but i have no time to waste on somebody that is not interested in trying to remain intelligible.
If you compare opensource development and commercial development only on single variable (love vs getting paid), obviously your straw man model will give you the conclusions you wanted to get.
as i said, your posts so far have been very well put, with justifications for your opinions and so on, so i take even more exception than usual to your blatant attempt to turn this into a shit slinging contest. please do not reduce what i say to meaningless rubbish, as i do not do this to you.
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Windows has fuck all in the way of functionality, I have no problems with Linux at all, unlike Windows. However you have problems with Linux and none with Windows. So this "functionality" is a matter of taste". Yet you rather state that "windows wins" and other claims as if they apply to the entire fucking planet. I was using Windows for several months after I got my new laptop, and functionality wise it was completely fucked. It had repeated crashes, bugs, programs not working, lack of memory because of all the third party stuff I would need to get a half-decent system out of it. You call this functionality?
Obviously my opinions are subjective to my experiences, as are yours. However, let's see... you installed a shitload of third party apps, ran out of memory, and had crashes and issues as a result? What third party stuff are you talking about that's absolutely necessary to have a "half-decent" system, that actually has to be running all the time?
A lot of crappy windows "power tools" load drivers to do nasty things in ring-0, and such things can lead to system crashes. Nmap has crashed my windows a few times, for example, but that's because the application has privileges to do so and it's obviously fault of the application and not the system.
I have to admit that I run with 1 Gigabyte of memory because I'm well aware that the system is a memory hog. I don't consider it an issue, memory has been cheap for years.
Your the biggest psuedo-intellectual fool that has ever posted here by far. You seem to not be able to differentiate between taste and values and ideals. This clearly shows that your entire psyche is based around idealogy and you obsesses around the assumption that everyone else is as well. A lot of people make this foolish assumption.
Indeed, I was under the impression that you use linux and avoid microsoft because of ideological purposes. Why else would you rant about mispractices of the company and such, if you were only interested in system that works? So, if you run linux because of taste alone, I can only conclude to my original statement that people who dislike windows just tend to not know how to use it. Yes, it takes work to configure it properly and you have to know what you're doing. Windows is way more willing to let users do stupid things due to the default configuration that tends to allow everything to happen. I'm sure if someone was always using linux as a root and managed to accidently trash it, you'd blame the user. Yet somehow, when it happens in windows it's blamed on the system.
My case, as with a lot of people here, was not "Oh god I cannot hack notepad.exe to write my own office-style paperclip, because its closed source,". It was "Windows is an unstable peice of shit, I might try Linux... Oh how rad all this Open Source software runs so much better," And from about there most of us just liked the experience of Open Source software better. Then some of us after using it for an extended period of time got into hacking it. However a lot of people barely touch sources and other things, so most dont really value "freedom over functionality" because this world also currently has "mass scale piracy" so if it was the pricetag they would run a pirate copy of Windows, since the source means nothing to a large number of people.
In pretty much every case that I've seen windows misbehave really badly, the problem has been with hardware or the user. This is why I said linux might indeed be better for a lot of people, as it's more simple system, and thus easier to learn. Once the user understands the system, there are no more user errors that get blamed on the system. A lot of windows users just expect the system to magically work, in a Do-What-I-Mean fashion. This just won't happen, and people are disappointed. In linux, due to simplistic nature of the system, it's more clear to the user that he's giving commands to the system and the system only responds to them. The feel of control is more concrete, as opposed to a Windows environment where everything has been hidden from the user, in name of "ease of use".
Funny thing you mention about this piracy thing. I was under impression that a lot of people really do run pirated windows systems instead of linux or other alternatives. This, again, is most likely because of the functionality windows provides. Most likely they don't value windows as an OS, but as a gaming platform. For these people, windows is the only choice because applications of their preference aren't available for other operating systems.
So, as a conclusion, if stability and functionality are the reasons you are using linux and you can't find them in windows, the only explanation I can find is that you don't know how to use windows and you're unwilling to learn.
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wat a bloody long disscussion this is! :nothappy:
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wat a bloody long disscussion this is! :nothappy:
We're glad you thought of something useful to add.
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We're glad you thought of something useful to add.
And we're glad you're contributing such self-irony to cheer us up :)
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Oh talking of intelligent debate has anyone read this before, I know it's old but it still makes good reading.
http://people.fluidsignal.com/~luferbu/misc/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html
Heh, "Linux is obsolete" is classic. It also contains my favorite Linus one-liner of all time:
"Portability is for people who cannot write new programs" -me, right now (with tongue in cheek)
lol. :D
The KDE website has a much better archive of it. Contains everything, without the weird file format.
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Obviously my opinions are subjective to my experiences, as are yours. However, let's see... you installed a shitload of third party apps, ran out of memory, and had crashes and issues as a result? What third party stuff are you talking about that's absolutely necessary to have a "half-decent" system, that actually has to be running all the time?
ZoneAlarm (would install ring-0 stuff I imagine), AVG Antivirus (would install ring-0 stuff I imagine), AdAware. Thats the needed stuff, I also ran WindowsBlinds. There was no "running out of memory", just a lot of it so things ran much slower. The crashes were related directly to Windows and Windows drivers that were Signed By Microsoft. I gathered this from error logs and other things at the time.
Other software like nmap, and ethereal (hence libcap and all that stuff) would have caused problems. I also had installed Mozilla Firefox for a decent browsing experience (Microsoft should just ship that, like Fedora do).
Indeed, I was under the impression that you use linux and avoid microsoft because of ideological purposes. Why else would you rant about mispractices of the company and such, if you were only interested in system that works? So, if you run linux because of taste alone, I can only conclude to my original statement that people who dislike windows just tend to not know how to use it. Yes, it takes work to configure it properly and you have to know what you're doing. Windows is way more willing to let users do stupid things due to the default configuration that tends to allow everything to happen. I'm sure if someone was always using linux as a root and managed to accidently trash it, you'd blame the user. Yet somehow, when it happens in windows it's blamed on the system.
There is a lack of free documentation on configuring it properly, there is also the case that every problem I had with Windows was related to some form of driver fault or other random explorer.exe crash, with a report that provides lack of information on fixing it. Explorer.exe has been crashing on every version of Windows since 98 that I have used, Including: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Windows .NET, Windows 2003.
I have had OpenBSD also just freeze without any intervention, warning, or even log entries (I left the mailinglist and installed trustix (http://www.trustix.org) when all they could do was blame my hardware which was fine with Linux for 5 years), and on a couple of occasions Linux has crashed, and froze, when running beta and RC release kernels. The thing with Windows is they have 90x the amount of bug reports coming in, they have more money, but still I get stupid errors, and little to fix them unless I want to spend a lot of time doing so.
Windows has a large amount of users (not including yourself who tends to know what your talking about regarding windows) that think they know everything about computers. So I can never really bother with Windows Help Forums very often because so many users tell you to do things that are along the lines of complete bollocks. Linux however has badass forums (http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/forums/) that you can get help within minutes or hours. A far larger and recognisable support base.
I also had a problem with my fathers computer, running Windows 2000 with little third party applications except for AVG antivirus, which suddenly decided to stop working at all with anything TCP related, it would respond to ICMP and other things. This problem, after changing drivers, reinstalling things, and all kinds of other bullshit, would never-ever-ever come back, including reboots and other things.
There is only one computer in the house running Windows that has not had problems like this, which runs Windows XP Pro. My laptop was running Windows XP Home, which it came shopped with. If you put the difference there between the two you would almost think Microsoft implant bugs in Windows XP Home to make users want to pay extra for XP Pro. However, that would not explain why a system running Windows 2000 Corp Subscription release with SP3 would do such a thing.
All in all, I have come to the conclusion that Windows is screwy, and wastes to much of my time. Linux is much better to use, especially with having things like multiple workspaces, ssh to make admin easy (setting up ssh on cygwin is rather easy nonetheless), AES-256 crypto at the device level of the filesystem, and a kick arse documentation (http://tldp.org).
In pretty much every case that I've seen windows misbehave really badly, the problem has been with hardware or the user.
Well then I guess I am to stupid for Windows, it will be StupidLinux
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We're glad you thought of something useful to add.
I think it has something to do with that useful thing in his avatar. Apple: Useful software, for Useless people.
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Funny thing you mention about this piracy thing. I was under impression that a lot of people really do run pirated windows systems instead of linux or other alternatives. This, again, is most likely because of the functionality windows provides. Most likely they don't value windows as an OS, but as a gaming platform. For these people, windows is the only choice because applications of their preference aren't available for other operating systems.
Talking of this, I have several friends, including a few who claim welfare benefits from the government as "sociopaths" that cannot leave there houses. These friends of mine play games, all the time, there lives live in the relm of Everquest II, the government provide them with money to smoke cannbis, 24 hours a day. A lot of these friends, have tried Longhorn, which they have noticed make it very very difficult to run pirate games and music (mainly music, these people worship game companies and buy everything they can, unless its EA trash). A few of them are now getting into Linux, and one of them told me recently he has got Half-Life 2 and other favorites running under cedega on Linux.
I see a lot of people will be making these change overs as Microsoft make there foolish move towards protecting piracy and other things (look where it got Nintendo, with a playstation you can literally goto the market and buy any game you want for $5, and get your system chipped for around $40-$100). I however am not delusional, Microsoft will never go broke or loose the entire marketshare, they will always have some business. I think Linux and other distributors, including some who are aiming to fix the shortfalls the usual setup of the system you have described will provide some hefty competition.
A friend of mine tried SuSe for a while, and then he went back to windows, this was about a week or so ago. He said he would never go back to Linux, yet Windows has pissed him off once again and he is going back to Linux, and actually brought some books this time.
Looks like Windows doesnt win, most people run Windows, because most people still dont have a bleeding clue what-the-hell linux is, most people who know about it, are pretty damn interested.
Up Yours,
John.
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WARNING! Long Reply!!! Hopefully worth reading though, and i will try to format it nicely into paragraphs...
muzzy, i'll quote things you say in this thread and then comment on them, here goes:
Indeed. The default windows configuration is quite braindead, and the users who are ignorant of how the system works will typically have a bad system as the result. If Microsoft made it easy to create installers for custom configurations, and made it legit to distribute these to whoever wants them, we could have a totally different windows world out there.
that's right, open standards, possibly open source systems, and education of users, all good ideas, shame microsoft has an active interest in thwarting all of those things.
I'm not a believer of the "computer is a media center" ideology. I think computer is a general purpose tool, particularly practical for all sorts of automation and computation. If people want to use computers yet are unwilling to learn to use them, they should be given Live CDs to boot from along with their internet connectivity subscription, and new CD mailed in every month. It could run on xbox. This would eliminate a lot of the problems, and the real computer users could focus on actually using the computer.
whatever, different strokes for ddifferent folks, personallyy i think people should get the choice eithher way.
Basically, I think windows haters are just ignorant, and want to see if this hypothesis holds true. On the other hand, I want to sharpen my windows skills, and to better oneself one must first know what he's lacking. I think you guys could be very good at pointing out things I need to know, and things I can't do with windows and never knew I should.
this board now has an official policy of not providing windows support, however you will no doubt find a lot of intellectual stimulation of this sort here.
So, would you be so kind to entertain me, and tell me why you think windows is such a bad OS? To narrow the focus, I'm only talking about the NT series (Windows 2000 and 2003 particularly), and just the operating system.
why? do you think the windows 98 stuff is a complete write off?
Tech-savvy or not, I've found that most windows haters simply do not understand how windows works. I won't defend Microsoft as a company, although I think the US government is partially to blame for the inability to cut MS into pieces. A lot of problems with Microsoft come from the fact that they're so damn big and so damn rich, that they can do pretty much anything they want to.
most windows don't understand how windows works? most windows *users* don't either! i wonder why?
I've found windows to be fairly stable, quite secure, and many parts are well designed. Unfortunately, microsoft values backwards compatibility more than security, so there are some total braindead things around left from single user win16 times. I wish they'd go away, however the problem only relates to win32 apis and the concerned executive subsystem. If some day we can throw that away and move completely to .NET, a lot of the problems will just simply disappear.
i don't know enough about this to comment, but i will say it's a shame windows is closed source, or some distributor would have probably done this already as a fork project.
I'm afraid these companies existence isn't completely dependant on issues with Windows. There have been several viruses out there which have depended on tricking the user to run the attached executable. Users don't understand the consequences of running untrusted binaries, and shit happens. Vulnerabilities exist in a lot of software, and pretty much all modern operating systems are equally vulnerable by design.
ah ah ah! there's a sweeping statement! and one you don't bother to back up too, i already mentioned peer review (people checking each other's work), and i also think that "integrating" internet explorer and so forth in your "system" is asking for trouble. there ae more points to mention, i am no expert though, so i won't go into it. Windows just happens to get all the attention because worm propagation efficiency is linearry proportional to vulnerable userbase squared. If you're ten times as popular as the other guy, you get hundred times more problems.
whatever, i remain unconvinced by your dubious maths.
There have been several vulnerabilities in apache, mysql and other alternative applications that would've allowed for worm propagation, had the application been more popular. Obviously this is a weakness of a monoculture, but it's also a weakness to the compilers and languages used today. C and C++ are both specified in a way that encourages unsafe code generation. What's up with a language that specifies operations that result in undefined behaviour, which in practice can mean execution flow being diverted? I'm aware that there is a place for such languages, but most applications should be written in highlevel languages such as C#, Java, Python, Ocaml, etc... The problem isn't a Microsoft specific one.
no, but you imply it is a system related problem, when actually it is 100% to do with applications, in the examples you specify anyway. some systems do not "integrate" huge shoddy kludges of insecure drivel into the "system".
Internet Explorer used to progress really well, until Microsoft basically stopped the development. That sucked. Thank god we have firefox around now to motivate them again. I'm using IE myself, but with activescripting and activex turned off. As of such, nearly no past vulnerabilities have affected me.
good for you, shame the same can't be said for many other windows users, although you already laid the groundwork to lay the blame for that at the users' feet, rather than microsoft's (which is odd since microsoft extracts a lot of money from the users for "support").
I don't run any anti-virus software on my windows systems and I've been totally fine. However I have made preparations and know what to do if something bad happens. I regularly use all sorts of scanners (VICE, for example) to see that there's nothing naughty on my system. So far, I've never been infected.
again, fab.
Btw, I hate XP, too. That's why I'm still running w2k on this box, and w2k3 on the other. W2k3 happens to be the best windows ever, IMO, even for desktop use after proper configuration.
wait, so does "hating" XP not qualify you as one of those people who hate windows? whom you believe don't understand it?
Regarding Office apps, they're available for windows, too. If only Microsoft allowed people to make their own distributions, things would be so different.
they'd have to open their source for this to happen, and as you already said, this is as good as pissing in a barrel. or something, your words, *i* certainly don't agree with them. and yes, i agree that many other people could make a better windows release than microsoft ever could. And if the OS development was separated from the rest of the club, I think they definitely would do so. Why the heck didn't they split Microsoft? Anyway, I don't have MS Office and I haven't missed it at all. I can write documents in HTML or RTF, or PDF if the layout matters.
in OpenOffice.org by any chance? again, nothing more needs be said.
Also, Windows ships with MS Paint. Don't diss ms paint, it's an art program too, and perfectly suitable for drawing stuff. I use it all the time myself.
oh yes, state of the art stuff. i use gimp all the time myself, and i am also sick of people slagging it off. usually these people use all sorts of fancy graphics and dtp things that i have no idea about, but as you say, gimp more than suits me fine for manipulating images to be used on webpages.
In most cases, when you have admin/root access, the system is competely compromised. Further, such access is required for many applications to function.
there are several ways around this as you know, if something really does need real root access, then this is probably down to poor program design than anything inherently wrong with the OS, wouldn't you say? In ideal OS design, the scope of access would be minimized in all ways. In-process memory curtaining, limited visibility to filesystem, limited ability to execute syscalls, inability to directly jump into library functions, yaddayadda. If the system could enforce such fine grained access, any problems with application logic wouldn't have such a big impact.
or maybe if people wouldn't bring out rotten applications and utilities, the system wouldn't have to do the pthird party programmers' jobs for them. Once TCPA comes around it will be possible to implement a lot of this in hardware, but even now it could be implemented through virtualization. For example, see the project Xen for limited (yet very practical) application of this.
ooh ah! no, i would rather have a *choice*, this is why i am not getting juiced up about TCPA.
Linux isn't more secure by design, linux is totally braindead when it comes to design. No ACLs by default, everything's a one big hack, it's a wonder the OS works at all. With processes having to be suid for things to work, everything's pretty damn messy. Also, I laugh at your view that openbsd would be a champion of security. That's just ridiculous.
interestingly it is commonly held to be the most secure system available. re: linux is a hack, hmm, depends on your definition of hack. i know you use words without thinking of what they mean, but i would agree that if linux is a hack, windows is a kludge.
And what if it cannot escalate privileges? Keyloggers on X only need access to the X display, which can be implemented by "merely" taking over the user account. Good luck never typing passwords in X. And that's not the only attack that can be performed by just taking over the user account. You don't need to be root to do significant damage.
to log in, i use gdm (or kdm on the laptop), this runs as user "nobody", which is the user receiving the password. if the keylogger runs under my user then it is not running when i log in. just mentioning it. I am aware this does not address the wider issue.
I read about this and found it unclear what was really going on. The only proof for fraud was that the titlebar of a window didn't change. Why do you yell fraud, when it could've been just incompetence?
why do you claim incompetence when you just said how brilliantly windows is designed?
Obviously I cannot be 100% sure my windows is clean, but neither can you.
i literally can't since i don't use windows (well, ocassionally, but it has no access to any network, so i think i am pretty safe) I run VICE, RootkitRevealer, and some of my own stuff every now and then. I've never found anything.
so it's not there? sorry, just stirring, but you really should think about these things you say.
I know linux, and it's a horrible mess. Just because the source is available doesn't make it any better technically, it's just a matter of freedom. Yeah, I value freedom and that's good stuff about linux, and I hope all of the computing industry will head to move free direction. Some of the things I dislike about proprietary software is that I'm not supposed to fix them, and I'm not supposed to ask the authors about their design and implementation decisions. If I do, they'll likely threaten to sue. This however isn't just a Microsoft issue, it's got to do with the whole industry.
this is very silly. in one breath you say free software is not any better (and you previously said it was worse) than proprietary software, and then you immediately say that with closed source stuff you can't fix anything, clean it up et cetera. what do you think "better" means? or is this another definition you don't want to go into?
The backwards compatibility solutions in windows are indeed a hack, however the whole linux kernel is one big hack. I've had a plenty of lovely experiences regarding it. Few years ago at work, I had to investigate how to let processes keep more files open. Turned out, the constant that defined it in the kernel was redefined in userland as a different value, but only if you included the headers in a specific order. No explanation whatsoever for this was provided anywhere. They've fixed that since then, but all sorts of various kludges exist all over the place.
i am no coder, but i might just say this:
scalability
i have heard that the design of the linux kernel is designed to be scalable. i have no idea how this compares with how the NT kernel is designed though.
What comes to security design, there's very little of that anywhere. The overall design is the old *nix design, of filesystem defining the access right, with suid bits set for applications that need greater access. Capabilities came at some point but I'm not aware of them still being used. Regarding the suid, it'd be more secure to have one central database of what's suid and what's not, so nobody's going to create a suidroot shell under some obscure directory and hide it there. And don't you tell me that there are security solutions to detect these, when you were pointing out the existance of security industry being implication of insecure design in Windows
i am not convenced that *one* file containing information that many different processes need to access is a good idea. This is the problem with the windows registry for example and it's habit of generating its own errors in fact, lots of reading and writing to it, and it's only, what, five files?
Hardware or driver issue. I cannot see how this is different from using linux and running a proprietary driver. Due to how modern operating systems are designed, drivers have a little bit too much freedom to operate. I have a kind of "dream OS", which would involve a Xen-like approach of separating the guest OS and host OS, with drivers being in the simple host OS layer. And here, the drivers would run under some sort of JIT VM, bytecode, so they couldn't crash the damn system. Well, one can dream. Perhaps in future, once the .NET implementations get stronger, this kind of approach will become viable as well.
hmm, this isn't too efficient though, yes? a lot of people like the idea of java virtual machine for instance, because it's platform independent, so long as you can get a java runtime environment for your platform of choice, however actually java stuff is crap. the widgets are horrible, the apps are slow and clunky, it's rotten. you could make this idea work, it's been 25 years since they thought of the java virtual machine, but it's mean a huge waste of resources in my opinion, although fair enough i am no expert. i agree about drivers too, they shouldn't be able to control the actual system, however perhaps a proper set of specs should be hammered out and then adhered to, so that very few third party drivers would be needed anyway. you know how tons of things use the usb-mass storage driver? great! this enables me to use tons of peripherals really easily across windows at work and linux at home, for example. with devices that could (but don't) use this driver, this becomes a big problem.
I cannot see any problem with using legacy code here. Once the stuff works, portions can be rewritten to be "more pure" if desired. However since the .NET will create a completely new machine abstraction level, anything that goes underneath it is not an issue. It's just the machine implementation, and it can be changed anytime without affecting stuff above it.
depends on the design, surely, are you oversimplifying?
.........
I agree that this is bad design, however there's no going back in win32-land, since ShellExecute() and similar things are depended on by everyone. Getting to .NET is the ultimate solution to fix the mess, since that lets us drop the win32 crap behind.
you see? this is what i was saying above, windows is a big clunky crufty mess, and its backwards compatibility is the reason, however if you get rid of that to make a better system, you can guarantee the majority of users will start to finally take an unbiased reassessment of whether windows is their best option. you and i both know what'll happen if that is allowed, and therefore, we both know why microsoft will not take this option.
Obviously you're only comparing the things that you want to.
you too, as kintaro points out elsewhere.
The windows native kernel is superior to that of linux, except in some specific things.
define some. also, let's have some elaboration instead of just some statement with no justification.
Unfortunately, these specific things are quite significant, but the windows kernel still compares pretty damn well to linux. Yeah, I'd like better networking mechanisms, too, that's one thing where linux wins. If you want a router that performs complex traffic shaping (weighted round robin, for example), there aren't really any alternatives than using linux/iptables/tc and friends. This might be the only reason I'll ever get a linux system running at home, but for now I haven't had such a strong need for a traffic shaper.
whatever. i find that different distributions make a better comparison with windows, and that the comparisons come up with different answers depending on circumstances. here are some examples. say i am considering some systems: FreeBSD, SuSE, Fedora, MSWindows 2000 and Vector Linux. Now think of the following scenarios: i have a lot of windows games/apps that i paid for and want to use regularly. i will choose windows, since i know wine is no substitute. if i am rich, i may choose a linux (suse if i want support, fedora, if i don't) and run vmware. if i am not, i might dual boot with windows and something else. now in a different scenario, say i have an old laptop with 64MB of RAM, 1 gigabyte hard drive, and a 133mhz pentium processor. Clearly i cannot run fedora or mswindows on this, probably not suse either. i have doubts i could install freebsd with all the apps i want, so i would probably choose vector linux for this. i might choose freebsd actually if i want an adventure (i am less familiar with its use than a slackware based linux), you see what i mean? simple "windows/linux is better arguments are useless without considering the application of these technologies in the real world and the expectations placed on the system, and so on.
Apt is nice, but what if you want to install some third party cool monkey that will run around your desktop doing cool stuff? And don't tell me it's ridiculous that anyone would want such a thing, practice proves otherwise.
that is ridiculous actually, but you can (for some reason) get a myriad of that sort of thing (xsnow, xsanta and all that crap) via apt, particularly if you use debian, be my guest, it's your cluttered GUI environment you're messing up. at least with xsnow you know you're not installing some garbage that'll waste your bandwidth with phone home crap, pester you for money after 40 days or mess up your registry.
There will always be countless amounts of software out there that won't be in known repositories. Then you have to get it yourself, from untrusted source, assuming you want to run it in the first place. A lot of the time you can apt-get everything you need, and if you can't get your favourite text editor "pico", you only need to whine about it to your geek friends and they'll tell you to get "nano" instead.
pico is part of the "pine" package. it's about 7MB and is a mail suite including a text editor, this requires about 10 seconds of research (but yes, nano is a better choice if you just want the editor, or in fact jpico which is part of the joe package is probably best since you can invoke it as jmacs as well). that aside, so what? most of your windows rubbish is from untrusted sources, do you trust download.com? or tucows? like it or not, that's where your average windows user gets their stuff from. i haven't heard of anything like apt for windows. and windows update does not really come close, for configurability, choice of packages or ease of use. in fact, this point of yours, claiming apt is not up to the standard that windows users require is complete and utter drivel.
Anyway, I've understood that "normal" users just tend to go around and try whatever software they can find. They'll download and run anything, to find cool stuff. If such people were to use linux, and knew how to do what they want to do, you'd have a security disaster right there and then.
true, but that's not the point. a critical part of any system is between the ears of the system administrator. you use the term "users" though, which is misleading in this example.
Security isn't just something a system provides, it's more about the users than about the systems most of the time. Good systems enable users to make informed security decisions, but uninformed users can't make good security decisions no matter the system.
wrong, for the reasons i mention above. only a bad administrator blames the users. the administrator of a system is responsible for security, stability et cetera, not the users. if the users can mess the system up, without administrator priveleges, there is something wrong with the system, or with the administrator who configured the system. it is easier in windows, mainly because it assumes all users should be administrators by default (generally speaking) for users to mess everything up. of course the "integration" of such security chasms as outlook, internet explorer and windows mediocre player into the system doesn't help.
So, how exactly did it happen? What went wrong? There's always an immediate reason for why everything happens. It could've been user error.
i might just repeat something i said above there:
only a bad administrator blames the users.
Also, depending on what exactly happened, that data could've still been recoverable. I greatly suspect this wasn't fault of Win-XP itself, unless the filesystem just mysteriously went wookoo.
what are the chances of this, in your opinion? why is this something a filesystem can be considered to do? also, why can't it recover from a journal? why do you say windows xp is not at fault? interesting diagnoses, from perhaps scant input. Not knowing what really happened, I don't have further comments about the incident.
that's better.
My linux experience starts from around 1.2.x times, and I mainly administrated boxes during 2.0.x kernel tree. Back then, people were already bashing microsoft all around and moving to linux, although bsd system would've been a lot lot better choice for everyone. Well, Linus has been doing unbelievable job at having the damn thing working and keeping it together, but from my perspective I have to say it looks like one huge mess. I'd pay more attention to the more recent kernel trees if they actually worked.
by "worked" you mean... what? this whole paragraph makes some huge sounding statements but adds up to roughly nothing, well done, by saying nothing you seem credible, but actually, you get your money's worth both ways by not having to commit to anything either.
So, wouldn't the best approach to solving the problem be user education? Software lock-in can be expensive, and businesses understand money. However, GNU is an evil empire when it comes to lock-in as well. Everyone's writing their "sh" scripts with bash syntax nowadays, m4 is backwards incompatible, gcc has language extensions that are widely used, etc. How are these not lock-in issues?
they are, just like any "de facto" standards, but i think there's the matter of perspective here. you can easily say that anything proprietary is a "lock in issue", but in my opinion creating your lock in issue and then using it to literally force all the competition out of the market by brainwashing the user base into believing they have to use the .doc format to save their documents in, or they have to use internet explorer rather than netscape (or any other browser, although most windows users still don't know there's anything other than IE and netscape available), is a different thing altogether.
Also, how many GNU apps really run NATIVELY on windows?
for somebody who's so smart, you sure are dumb. didn't we have the "natively" discussion just last week with somebody else? how many *windows* apps really run natively under a GNU system? define natively, and then take a flying leap, because when it comes down to it different systems require different implementations. I am sick of people criticising linux for not running applications that were written and compiled for other systems, and now we're hearing the same criticism in the other direction, with GNU apps now having to be able to run natively on probably the most completely non-GNU-like system available. Don't a lot of them use the cygwin api wrapper to implement signals and *nix apis for them?
just like you have to use wine to run windows apps in linux. i suppose both of those adds up to a point against linux for you, yes?I know there are a lot of native apps, but a lot of them aren't. For a long time, GIMP didn't use native widgets on windows either. It'd go on implementing its own damn scrollbars and buttons. Talk about bloat and inconsistencies.
talk about whatever you want. doesn't it use gtk+ rather than whatever windows comes with? you'll see that gaim (which uses gtk+ under windows too) is consistent with gimp if you run the two at the same time. you'll notice the same thing with gimp or any gtk+ app under kde for instance, or any kde/qt app under gnome. There's been a lot of good results allowing the apps from different forks to work together, and personally the visual inconsistency is less than negligible. one or two windoids do harp on about it though, so it must be important to them i suppose. whatever...
If we disregard win9x series,
why should we disregard windows 9x? because it sucks and would knock the whole bottom out of your already flimsy position? I've had way more problems with linux than windows. And I mean real problems, such as netscape crashing whole X,
X is an application, netscape is an application (and not a very integrated one at that) both are runnable on many non-linux systems. This is not a linux issue. strange kernel panics on same system in which windows worked fine, etc.
same system? how can windows and linux be the same system? you make no sense. if it comes to that i have had many unstable windows systems on machines that linux runs perfectly well (stable) on, even with my not being an expert or anything. On Windows 2000 there were initially some problems with memory management (the "out of buffer space" problem), but those have been patched long ago. On windows 2003, I can't remember having a single problem related to windows itself, only third party apps.
however windows comes with very little in the way of applications software, and what it does come with are always garbagey microsoft apps, that you can't uninstall properly. linux distributions often do not even need anything installed on them besides what you get out of the box. fair enough these are technically third party products, but the fact that hundreds of things get bundled with the OS, each of which is fully removable and reinstallable, and all of which still makes a perfectly stable system beats the pants off of windows, if you ask me. by contrast you install windows, then spend three days remembering where you left thevarious CDs with winrar, winzip, photoshop, staroffice, realplayer, the one version of quicktime without the nag screen and so on on them, and if you are very lucky you might get through the endless reboots after each install without too many blue screen errors.
Linux can be more suitable to you,
can it? thanks for that. and as I said it's probably better for a lot more people because it's simpler than Windows.
this is an interesting comment. since i work with windows as my day job, and i work with linux as a hobby (configuration in both cases, no programming or anything), i know that there are a lot of ways of doing a lot of things in both systems. i find windows simpler, and more restrictive for a lot of things. this is why windows is a better choice of OS for computer simpletons (if you understand what i mean) in a way, it has less to misunderstand for them. i don't stand by this ruling in all specific areas, some things linux s much simpler than windows at, configuration wise, once you find out what to do. /etc/fstab for example, as far as i know there's no easy way to make the equivalent of an fstab in windows, it's all mapping by hand and ticking the box to remap on next reboot, or use some third party tool to do your mapping for you. i still don't know how to hand configure the drive letters of your local partitions (and neither do i ever need to know, if i ever do, i know where google is, thanks). Windows is more complex, and way tougher to learn. Despite Windows being marketed for clueless folk, the Windows itself hasn't been designed for newbies. It's a serious OS for serious people, and currently (imo) the biggest problems are the amount of work it takes to properly configure one.
i think you are blowing this way out of proportion here, also, why is it such a bonus if a system is complicated to configure? especially in an age where even somebody as clued up as you confuses the terms "user" and "administrator", as you appeared to do earlier on. If the default installation wasn't so braindead, a lot of you guys would appreciate the whole system more.
uh, quite. the people responsible for the braindead defaults in windows, are the same people responsible for writing and compiling windows too. if they can't get the configuration anything like decent, why should i pay them my money and trust that they will somehow be better at writing, debugging and compiling the system than they are at configuring it?
Indeed, whatever is better depends on your values and your preferences. If you value freedom over functionality, I can see why you won't bother even trying with Windows.
ha! you don't think you can have both? perhaps you sincerely think that the more functionality software has, the less freedom it has to have. i wonder if, to you, this means that freedom stifles creativity. perhaps you should join microsoft's marketing department, if you aren't already an employee of theirs that is. And about gimp, maybe someday it will be usable for the things I use it for. For now, windows just wins.
gimp is not as good as windows? that'd be right, if you wanted to... move files, run applications et cetera. windows is a system, gimp is a graphics manipulation application, how can you compare them? well i suppose since you use pbrush.exe all the time, you are trying to say that's better than gimp, then this truly is a good example of how your values and preferences influence what software you think is better.
Also, photoshop doesn't run properly under linux afaik.
hmm, could this be because it's only been released by its vendors for macintosh and windows platforms? let's see you run a linux binary on windows "properly". shame you windoids never make equal comparisons about these things, isn;t it? Crossover office lists several known issues for it, some of which I'd find to be seriously annoying if I had to deal with them. I'd rather use the application in an environment I know to be stable.
in this i agree with you. you want to run windows programs, run them in windows. you want to use linux, find an alternative or write tons of letters to the vendor till they bring out linux binaries.
Obviously my opinions are subjective to my experiences, as are yours. However, let's see... you installed a shitload of third party apps, ran out of memory, and had crashes and issues as a result? What third party stuff are you talking about that's absolutely necessary to have a "half-decent" system, that actually has to be running all the time?
anything that isn't outlook, IE, windows mediocre player, and oh yes, ms paint. basically every possible program you ever want to use that doesn't come with the system. see my example above, once you have installed your winzips, acrobat readers and so on, you've just got a big box of BSOD waiting to happen, again and again.
Funny thing you mention about this piracy thing. I was under impression that a lot of people really do run pirated windows systems instead of linux or other alternatives. This, again, is most likely because of the functionality windows provides.
"most likely"? do you think about what you type? or do you just type it? the reason they all use pirated windows copies is because they know how to use windows already (windows at school, work and all their friends' houses), they probably have some windows software that they think is worth a lot of money (games, or some pirated ms office shit, or photoshop or something) or else they have some crappy hardware that comes with windows only drivers (their modem/lan card perhaps, or some scanner maybe). We briefly mentioned lock in technology before didn't we? did we mention the financial incentives for vendors that provide only windows support for something that could have been open standards compliant? well, add those three reasons up, and combine them with the natural human want to have something for free that they think they should have had to pay for and that's a lot more likely than any alleged functionality that windows might have. ask any windoid and i think functionality might not even come in on the top ten list of reasons to use ms windows, that's if they could spell "functionality" in the first place. Most likely they don't value windows as an OS, but as a gaming platform. For these people, windows is the only choice because applications of their preference aren't available for other operating systems.
and now what? you contradict yourself and agree with what i just said (albeit after you said this yourself, if you get my meaning).
So, as a conclusion, if stability and functionality are the reasons you are using linux and you can't find them in windows, the only explanation I can find is that you don't know how to use windows and you're unwilling to learn.
if that's the only explanation then you oversimplify things to the point where they are meaningless and i am glad i don't have to work with you. i could say the same thing to you with the words "linux" and "windows" reversed and it would mean just as much, ie: very little.
and i still think comparing "linux" with "windows" is like comparing shoes to cheesecake. both are useful, but they are so different that it is pointless comparing them. if you want to compare windows to linux, compare it to a full linux based system such as red hat or mandrake. you can't even claim you refer to them all together using the qword "linux", i have seen some awful linux based distributions, (mklinux for one, it is worse than any other system i have ever seen, including the one written purely in assembly language, including every version of ms-dos) but this can usually be the fault of the vendor, rather than the kernel contributors.
the issue is a lot more complex than you admit, and contains a lot of things you ignore because you don't see that they are relevant to you as a windows user.
it's a lot like trying to talk to a christian about polytheism actually, their paradigm just doesn't have the leel of understanding required to get the idea across without a lot of frustrating and compromising ideological translations.
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Oh my, that's a very very long post indeed. Do I have to answer all of it? :o
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I think I'll start by addressing some of the more relevant things that are quick to answer. A lot of your response just seems to be a series of quick stabs, and I'm not sure if there's much to be gained by returning a similar series of quick stabs.
Regarding W9x-series, I don't want to think of it as a Windows because it differs so greatly from the NT-series. The NT series has a serious and stable native kernel running it, with Win32 Executive Subsystem on top of it implementing the win32 user environment. On the other hand, w9x is just a pile of black magic and hacks. Although it does work to an extent, and is an usable system for some purposes, the system design is a joke. Everything in it has been designed for backwards compatibility, and compromises have been made in the very core design. I don't like it.
What I said of all operating systems being equally vulnerable by design, I was referring to the minimum privilege principle, and how badly it applies in every system when it comes to practice. In an ideal system, applications would manifest what they need to see from the filesystem, what libraries they need to access, what system apis they need to call. Then, anything not requested would be plain and simple blocked, out of sight completely. Modern filesystems supports ACLs to do privileges on user-based granularity, but I'd be more interested in a process-based granularity. To thwart arbitary code execution issues, perhaps even memory map based. Also, I'd be interested in the privilege minimization to happen before execution, not during runtime. This would mean that every process would have its own virtual filesystem, and virtual api to use based on what was requested in the manifest. With such a design, it would be much easier to determine what applications are safe and what are not, since it's a fact that it's computationally impossible to predetermine for sure if an application will perform some action or not, without actually running it. There are no systems that do this. Also, in all modern systems the kernel space and security there is an arms race.
About worm propagation efficiencies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law
Regarding MS Paint, my mspaint gallery: http://muzzy.net/mspaint.html
Redarding root: Why is there a root user in the system at all if only badly designed applications would need it? Go and check how many suidroot apps you have: "find / -perm +4000", I'm sure you'll find plenty, and you probably won't even question why basic things like "su" and "passwd" are suidroot.
About source availability, having sources around doesn't make application better quality. It's an additional freedom for you, and independent to the right to modify applications you run. You don't need sources to do that. They are two independent things, although sources usually come with licenses to modify the application. The license doesn't make the application itself better, it just grants you freedom to modify it, which I'd prefer to be everyone's right without explicit permission.
About centralized databases (for suids, windows registry), database corruption isn't an issue. Filesystem can die, too, in a similar fashion. What's the difference? Having a centralized database, however, allows you to strictly regulate access to it. No incidents with mounting an old fs with suid option and then realizing there's a backdoor there, when the suid database is central and easily reviewable. About windows registry, the registry hives can be mounted anywhere in the registry namespace, so you could have any number of hives you wanted to. Each user has their own hive in their profile, too. Registry is just a standard namespace in windows, a concept which might seem strange from *nix perspective where there is only single filesystem namespace where everything gets mounted even if the contained data is semantically different. This is why windows devices are in a separate namespace and not in a filesystem in /dev
About java and bytecode languages: It's not true that they're slow. Java apps are only slow because the UI code is braindead and sluggish. The VM itself performs pretty well, and since bytecode gets JITed in runtime, they can dynamically recompile slow parts based on how they're used, etc. Things like this are difficult with traditional compilers, and definitely lacking the advantages of JITting VM without implementing a bytecode engine into compiled binaries (can you say bloat?). Theoretically, bytecode-compiled applications can perform faster than natively ran binaries.
About .NET and machine abstraction, I'm not oversimplifying things by saying that anything below it can be reimplemented without issues. Any issues would be performance differences in new implementation, as applications expect some things to perform in some way. This is because all the applications are compiled into intermediate language which shouldn't interface with the lowlevel system at all. The framework provides interoperability services for the transition phase of moving into .NET, but new applications can be written without depending on anything beneath .NET layer.
Regarding use of word "user" and not "administrator", it's indeed a little confusing, but in contexts I've used it I've meant desktop systems where the user is the system administrator. Typical user plays the administrator role happily without the require competence for it, and with results we all know about.
Then, about my definition of when a system works and when it doesn't. I define it to depend on the intent for which the system is used. If it cannot fulfill those requirements, then it doesn't work. It's not enough if it boots and all the apps run fine and it doesn't crash. If network cards fail to work (at all) on my ancient compaq when I compile the kernel for a traffic shaping setup, then the kernel definitely doesn't work. For some seemingly innocent kernel configurations, the damn thing just died during boot. A lot of the advanced network functionality in 2.6.x tree is known to have system crashing bugs. That's enough for me to declare that the kernel tree doesn't work, as I couldn't get the damn thing to work even after several days of kernel hacking and debugging. The only thing I managed to figure out that the NIC drivers themselves weren't likely at fault, but something strange in the iptables/packetscheduler implementation.
Regarding native applications and GNU, my point was that the applications that are written against one api do not necessarily perform very well on a system where the api is provided in form a translation layer. Also, my wget on windows has some strange issues that it doesn't have on linux, and although the glitches only happen rarely they're still annoying. Another thing about native applications is applications that have GUI. I recently installed bittorrent-4.0.0 with its crappy api. Now, I'm not that picky, but the damn thing breaks so many of windows GUI principles it hurts. Not to mention that if I minimize it, the UI processing dies COMPLETELY and I won't be able to even close it. It does this every time. I'd rather have a native GUI.
Phew, which of the skipped issues you want me to respond to, or do you have any comments about what I just said?
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I think I'll start by addressing some of the more relevant things that are quick to answer. A lot of your response just seems to be a series of quick stabs, and I'm not sure if there's much to be gained by returning a similar series of quick stabs.
i don't agree that this is the case, if you mean my comments were pointless and were personal, however if by "quick stabs" you mean i don't take many words to refute what you say, then fine, i can agree with that, but i can't agree that there's no value in that. here we go...
Regarding W9x-series, I don't want to think of it as a Windows because it differs so greatly from the NT-series.
tough shit, smartarse. if you are going to keep moaning about linux 1.2 and complaining about one application or another and blame all your problems on "linux" as a result, then i think you should have few qualms about people who think of "microsoft windows 98" as a release of microsoft windows, whether you want to think of it as one or not. The NT series has a serious and stable native kernel running it, with Win32 Executive Subsystem on top of it implementing the win32 user environment.
so, the windows 9x stuff is implemented using a virtual machine? or is it an emulation layer? this is the sort of backwards compatibility i don't think will give the best or most reliable performace. i am not a fan of wine either. On the other hand, w9x is just a pile of black magic and hacks.
no arguments there, except perhaps for the "magic" part. Although it does work to an extent, and is an usable system for some purposes, the system design is a joke. Everything in it has been designed for backwards compatibility, and compromises have been made in the very core design. I don't like it.
me neither, but you will find that most "windows haters" whom you write off as imbecilic slack jawed yokels (i am paraphrasing) will justifiably and reasonably base a lot of their experiences on this windows release. not surprising since 17 years of microsoft windows has been various versions of this crap. you can't just write off millions of people's experiences of microsoft's useless software by saying you don't like to think of it as windows.
What I said of all operating systems being equally vulnerable by design, I was referring to the minimum privilege principle, and how badly it applies in every system when it comes to practice. In an ideal system, applications would manifest what they need to see from the filesystem, what libraries they need to access, what system apis they need to call. Then, anything not requested would be plain and simple blocked, out of sight completely. Modern filesystems supports ACLs to do privileges on user-based granularity, but I'd be more interested in a process-based granularity.
sounds fair, it's similar to how zonealarm blocks applications from accessing the internet (for example) while iptables blocks ports instead. To thwart arbitary code execution issues, perhaps even memory map based. Also, I'd be interested in the privilege minimization to happen before execution, not during runtime. This would mean that every process would have its own virtual filesystem, and virtual api to use based on what was requested in the manifest.
would this cost a lot of RAM? because on low RAM systems (if this were the case) i'd like to think i could have the choice of not doing something that might run slow or not at all as a result of this model. With such a design, it would be much easier to determine what applications are safe and what are not, since it's a fact that it's computationally impossible to predetermine for sure if an application will perform some action or not, without actually running it. There are no systems that do this. Also, in all modern systems the kernel space and security there is an arms race.
what do you think of the HURD concept incidentally? where everything is seperated form the kernel if it possibly can be? seems like they are having a hard time implementing it after all these years, i don't know much about it, but just wondered what you think of their general principle behind kernel design.
About worm propagation efficiencies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law
i honestly do not see how this relates to vulnerabilities of one system versus another relating to worms. i understand metcalfe's law but not your habit of invoking it regularly.
Regarding MS Paint, my mspaint gallery: http://muzzy.net/mspaint.html
this is not an answer. if i email you my CV, how does that prove the abiword is superior to wordperfect? files produced using ms paint, no matter how impressive, reflect the artist's creation rather than the technical capabilities of the program. i often think people's expectations have a lot to do with it too. i find ms paint easy to use, but highly simplistic and therefore unsuitable for a lot of things. i never learned how to use photoshop much, and so gimp is not a step down for me, like a lot of photoshop users seem to complain. surely photoshop is for photos and gimp is a more general app anyway. what i am saying is, this isn't the point.
Redarding root: Why is there a root user in the system at all if only badly designed applications would need it?
the administrator uses it. i log in as root to create users, change passwords, edit config files (that are read only from the applications' point of view and so on. Surely you don't think a system can administrate itself? the assumption that it can has led to microsoft windows' appalling approach to security and i do not believe it is a sensible approach. Go and check how many suidroot apps you have: "find / -perm +4000", I'm sure you'll find plenty, and you probably won't even question why basic things like "su" and "passwd" are suidroot.
here are the results:
/usr/bin/chage
/usr/bin/gpasswd
/usr/bin/at
/usr/bin/sudo
/usr/bin/passwd
/usr/bin/crontab
/usr/bin/gpg
/usr/bin/gpg-agent
/usr/bin/gpg2
/usr/bin/lppasswd
/usr/bin/chfn
/usr/bin/chsh
/usr/bin/newgrp
/usr/bin/desktop-create-kmenu
/usr/libexec/openssh/ssh-keysign
/usr/sbin/ping6
/usr/sbin/traceroute6
/usr/sbin/traceroute
/usr/sbin/usernetctl
/usr/sbin/userisdnctl
/usr/sbin/userhelper
/usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86
/sbin/pam_timestamp_check
/sbin/pwdb_chkpwd
i wonder if this counts as plenty? i have no idea what this is all about actually, so i should probably read up on it. i should say though that this reflects red hat's defaults, and is still not blameable on "linux". blame red hat if you must, but unless you can explain to me why things cannot be configured securely under a linux system, your attempts to snipe at the defaults of a specific linux based system are unlikely to move me in any way.
About source availability, having sources around doesn't make application better quality. It's an additional freedom for you, and independent to the right to modify applications you run. You don't need sources to do that. They are two independent things, although sources usually come with licenses to modify the application. The license doesn't make the application itself better, it just grants you freedom to modify it, which I'd prefer to be everyone's right without explicit permission.
me too, and i agree with you here, as far as it goes, but you fail to even admit that such a thing as people checking each other's work for errors is beneficial. people checking each other's work cannot create more errors, it can only eliminate existing ones, and with thousands upon thousands of people doing this, it stands to reason that this is more effective than dozens and dozens (in the case of a company, such as microsoft). if you choose to discuss a subject, why not address the issue actually at question, instead of just repeating yourself?
About centralized databases (for suids, windows registry), database corruption isn't an issue. Filesystem can die, too, in a similar fashion. What's the difference? Having a centralized database, however, allows you to strictly regulate access to it. No incidents with mounting an old fs with suid option and then realizing there's a backdoor there, when the suid database is central and easily reviewable. About windows registry, the registry hives can be mounted anywhere in the registry namespace, so you could have any number of hives you wanted to. Each user has their own hive in their profile, too. Registry is just a standard namespace in windows, a concept which might seem strange from *nix perspective where there is only single filesystem namespace where everything gets mounted even if the contained data is semantically different. This is why windows devices are in a separate namespace and not in a filesystem in /dev
up until windows 98 they were also accessible using filenames, has this never been the case under NT, out of interest? personally i think there are a lot of benefits to the "everything is a file" idea. database design is not my forte, so if there is something i should be criticising in your reply, i will have to leave it to somebody else to do so.
About java and bytecode languages: It's not true that they're slow. Java apps are only slow because the UI code is braindead and sluggish. The VM itself performs pretty well, and since bytecode gets JITed in runtime, they can dynamically recompile slow parts based on how they're used, etc. Things like this are difficult with traditional compilers, and definitely lacking the advantages of JITting VM without implementing a bytecode engine into compiled binaries (can you say bloat?). Theoretically, bytecode-compiled applications can perform faster than natively ran binaries.
i have heard this, but this is kind off topic, since we were discussing operating systems, and how one is allegedly better than another. whether compiling is better than interpreting is another discussion entirely, and of course is dependent on circumstances.
About .NET and machine abstraction, I'm not oversimplifying things by saying that anything below it can be reimplemented without issues. Any issues would be performance differences in new implementation, as applications expect some things to perform in some way. This is because all the applications are compiled into intermediate language which shouldn't interface with the lowlevel system at all. The framework provides interoperability services for the transition phase of moving into .NET, but new applications can be written without depending on anything beneath .NET layer.
this is kind of like an interpreted language, or virtual machine, emulation layer, whatever. again, i question whether this sort of thing is always appropriate, and suspect that there are performance issues related to it. I think that you should always try and make stuff work on the most minimal hardware possible. i don't go for the idea of testing stuff on the latest machinery and then just saying those are the minimum requirements. not everybody can buy new kit all the time. I think i am digressing though.
Regarding use of word "user" and not "administrator", it's indeed a little confusing, but in contexts I've used it I've meant desktop systems where the user is the system administrator. Typical user plays the administrator role happily without the require competence for it, and with results we all know about.
yes, and that's my point. this is one reason why having a "root" user separate from user accounts is a good idea, because the person behind the keyboard knows which hat s/he is wearing at any one time, and if they don't they can just do a quick whoami. i was horrified when i heard that some linuces were trying to be like windows by having users log on as root - this is an appalling model, but sadly one that microsoft is happy to encourage amongst their "users".
Then, about my definition of when a system works and when it doesn't. I define it to depend on the intent for which the system is used. If it cannot fulfill those requirements, then it doesn't work. It's not enough if it boots and all the apps run fine and it doesn't crash. If network cards fail to work (at all) on my ancient compaq when I compile the kernel for a traffic shaping setup, then the kernel definitely doesn't work.
i think i have to take a leaf out of your book and blame that on you. if you fail to compile the kernel in a way that is capable of supporting your hardware, then whose fault is it? if you were not able to recompile your own kernel, then you could blame the kernel coordinators (like with windows, in fact, you can't recompile their kernel, so microsoft are to blame for unsupported hardware if the problem is at kernel level, yes?), but if you do it yourself, then you know where the buck stops. This is not the same as the winmodem problem, incidentally, where actual hardware gets artificially emulated in software, but the software is only available for mswindows. In past years a lot of people blamed linux for not being able to support their modems, when the hardware vendors were responsible for the problem just mentioned, by churning out kit with bits missing and hardware to emulate it (of course, this has an associated performance cost, so is not as good as the real thing, even under mswindows). A similar problem still happens with some hardware, but less people are using dialup modems now i suppose. For some seemingly innocent kernel configurations, the damn thing just died during boot. A lot of the advanced network functionality in 2.6.x tree is known to have system crashing bugs. That's enough for me to declare that the kernel tree doesn't work, as I couldn't get the damn thing to work even after several days of kernel hacking and debugging.
do microsoft release their testing versions of software? you can consider that since the whole world is the development team for the linux kernel, that you are dealing with a "testing" version. how is it appropriate to compare testing versions with finished releases? The only thing I managed to figure out that the NIC drivers themselves weren't likely at fault, but something strange in the iptables/packetscheduler implementation.
ok, i haven't used the 2.6 kernels yet, many 2.4 based systems work fine on my compaq m300.
Regarding native applications and GNU, my point was that the applications that are written against one api do not necessarily perform very well on a system where the api is provided in form a translation layer.
true, and it's what i was saying above in my replies to you here. Also, my wget on windows has some strange issues that it doesn't have on linux, and although the glitches only happen rarely they're still annoying.
ok, my solution to this is don't use it in windows, use it in a real GNU system like linux, your mileage may vary though, since you seem to consider that things should run fine in windows. i am sure you are right in your criticisms about crossover office incidentally, and i am not keen on this sort of thing either, this is essentially the same thing you're complaining about here, i suppose. Another thing about native applications is applications that have GUI. I recently installed bittorrent-4.0.0 with its crappy api. Now, I'm not that picky, but the damn thing breaks so many of windows GUI principles it hurts. Not to mention that if I minimize it, the UI processing dies COMPLETELY and I won't be able to even close it. It does this every time. I'd rather have a native GUI.
that's not much use. still, it has nothing to do with linux does it? is it from the GNU software people? i suspect that's a third party app, just like any crappy third party app (there are thousands) with its own bugs. the fact of it being open source, or whatever your main point is doesn't really come into it. one of my favourite applications in windows is CDex - it looks consistent with the windows UI, is fast, efficient, easily configurable and completely stable. It is also totally open source, and incidentally, it's written for mswindows. what i am saying here is that criticising the open source model based on some crappy software is ludicrous since there's no connection between the two just because some crappy software happens to be open source (tons more shit software is shareware or postcardware for example)
Phew, which of the skipped issues you want me to respond to, or do you have any comments about what I just said?
there are my comments, if you skipped them, then you probably had your reasons, what we have said is still there for other contributors to read and comment on, so maybe somebody else will ask a question.
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By "Quick Stabs" I meant your way of answering my points by merely addressing a way I express it. I.e. tangling to words, twisting them, and so on. I have a view here that I'm trying to express, and I'd rather like to discuss about it itself than the exact words I use to express it.
Regarding my view of not considering w9x series as a Windows operating system, it's because the two series are a completely different operating systems with completely different design and approach at doing things. NT is what Windows should've been from the very beginning.
so, the windows 9x stuff is implemented using a virtual machine? or is it an emulation layer?
Neither, actually. The win32 executive subsystem is practically just a process. The applications you run just communicate with it through a client/server type of relationship. The win32 api is implemented as a bunch of libraries that applications link against, and these libraries implement the message passing between the win32 executive. I think you've seen the CSRSS.EXE in your process manager and been wondering what it is, it's the win32 executive subsystem server process. The graphics and gui stuff however are implemented as a separate kernelmode subsystem for higher performance, so that no context switching is needed for message passing. Nothing is "emulated".
The Win16 Executive Subsystem server is more of a virtual machine, even though it runs the binaries natively.
not surprising since 17 years of microsoft windows has been various versions of this crap. you can't just write off millions of people's experiences of microsoft's useless software by saying you don't like to think of it as windows.
17 years? Has it really been that long? All of the win3.x, win9x, and NT have been quite radically different systems. I think you're right about my use of the word, I should just call my OS of preference "Windows NT", except that people would think I mean some ancient version. I've preferred to use "Windows" to only mean the current design, which btw has been a separate branch of an OS since pre-3.x times. If only microsoft didn't call them all just "Windows", this naming practice makes me think they're referring to the user environment and not the OS...
what do you think of the HURD concept incidentally? where everything is seperated form the kernel if it possibly can be? seems like they are having a hard time implementing it after all these years, i don't know much about it, but just wondered what you think of their general principle behind kernel design.
I haven't really looked into HURD, but since it's a pure microkernel design, I'm expecting they won't get a high performance desktop running anytime soon. The message passing overhead of a pure microkernel design is just too heavy IMO. Windows NT bypasses these issue by having a slightly altered microkernel design. If HURD can design around context switching and scheduling overheads which will come from having a microkernel design, it could turn out to be a really good OS. It's a bit early to say, and I haven't really had an in-depth look into it.
i honestly do not see how this relates to vulnerabilities of one system versus another relating to worms. i understand metcalfe's law but not your habit of invoking it regularly.
There have been countless holes in linux which have been as severe as the windows holes. There has been enough time for people to write worms too. Typically, they haven't had such a big impact as the windows worms do. This is because of numbers.
About MS Paint, yeah it isn't very feature filled, however my point was that it's perfectly suitable for drawing and should not be considered as a joke. It's a serious application that can do a lot of things, just like gimp can do a lot of things. However, mspaint isn't a gimp replacement and gimp isn't a photoshop replacement.
And regarding suidroots, there just isn't a way around all of it. Applications are set suidroot because they need to do something that the user cannot do. Typically applications drop their root privileges after they're done using it, but there have been countless of vulnerabilities that have occurred before this happens. One way to solve the problem in *nix environment is to create a separate user for the process. This works fine with services, so they can be chrooted for filesystem scoping and so on. However it doesn't work at all for those said applications, because users cannot be given fine grained privileges without really funky patches. Pretty much all of the current linux distros depend on root user to exist, and suidroot applications ran as its privileges. There are some interesting process based security patches which takes root privileges away from the user and give them to specific binaries, but such systems aren't used by any common distros.
but you fail to even admit that such a thing as people checking each other's work for errors is beneficial.
You are making the assumption that sources are necessary for this, yet quality assurance testing is regularly done without sources.
up until windows 98 they were also accessible using filenames, has this never been the case under NT, out of interest? personally i think there are a lot of benefits to the "everything is a file" idea.
The devices are still available under the unified namespace, the CreateFile() api supports syntax like \\.\FOO to access objects under the object namespace \??\ directory. The command prompt still looks up object names from the same directory as well, and this is where things like C: D: E: and other symbolic links live, and point to the real physical devices. The idea of the object namespace is to have systemwide (and per-session) named objects for things like events, processes, threads, desktops, etc. Named pipes are still implemented as a filesystem and are all files, even though they're not part of either object namespace nor the filesystem namespace. There are various similar unofficial namespaces, and they are accessible through device objects in the object namespace. In conclusion, I don't think there are any benefits over the "everything is a file" over the NT design. Any issues I can think of can be blamed on the command prompt implementation, which doesn't even support the full NT filesystem namespace (alternate stream syntax not properly supported, for example)
i think i have to take a leaf out of your book and blame that on you. if you fail to compile the kernel in a way that is capable of supporting your hardware, then whose fault is it?
The thing is, it supported my hardware. Trying to compile it with packet scheduling (hardware independent) stuff made it trash. The kernel is supposed to be compiled with various different settings, and every configuration is supposed to work or at least give a sensible errors what's going on. Some of the configuration I tried wouldn't even go as far as starting init, they'd either mysteriously reboot (bug), or kernel panic due to something unexpected (bug). I know perfectly well how to compile stuff, and to my best knowledge my configurations were totally OK. The kernel just didn't work. If you had the patience to go through some of the changelogs, you'd find that the 2.6.x series is totally fucked. In 2.6.9 you could crash the kernel by merely opening enough connections, a bug which took down my shellbox once. Even with "normal" configurations the damn thing is so bugridden it hurts, and I figured that there were some things that almost always made the kernel die a horrible death when turned on (ingress filtering, for example)
2.4.x late kernels work fine, but lack stuff for which I would've wanted to use 2.6.x. So, I made the mistake of assuming a kernel tree with a "stable" version numbering scheme would've actually had stable kernels.
do microsoft release their testing versions of software? you can consider that since the whole world is the development team for the linux kernel, that you are dealing with a "testing" version. how is it appropriate to compare testing versions with finished releases?
This was a really REALLY low now. Basically, you are saying that linux shouldn't be ever expected to work? Yeah, that's about right. Now, think again what you said, think carefully. Do you really want to ask me this question?
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To misquote Albert Einstein:
NT ist VMS to ze SECOND POWER, you TWIT!
That silliness out of the way, I'd just like to make a short observation. You seem to have a bad habit of blaming bad applications in Windows on the program sources, then blaming the same under Linux (not even a specific distro, mind you, the kernel AS A WHOLE) on the kernel compilers. I'll consider having a debate with you over that particular fallacy once you return from Ganymede and have your spacesuit disinfected.
EDIT:
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law)
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a communication system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system (N
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I though the the even-number branches were the STABLE one's. (e.g. 2.2, 2.4, 2.6) and the odd-numbered kernels were the testing and UNSTABLE branch. (2.1, 2.3, 2.5, 2.7).
PS. When I tried 2.6.0 when it was first released, I figured that since it was an even-numbered release it would work smoothly, right? WRONG!
I was running gentoo at the tme, so installing it wasn't too bad. I installed it with the drivers for my hardware selected. Only, one thing when I booted it. The NIC and sound-card didn't work.
Okay, I go back and make sure that the drivers for my NIC's chipset are selected, they are. I have emu10k1 selected, as before. same thing happens.
I keep trying with no success, I'm missing xmms by now.
On the nest try I boot with a kernel panic saying that it can't mount root(/)
Well I look in make menuconfig, and I see that I have reiserfs and ext3 selected (neither are modules). and try again.
same thing.
Guess I had too high of expectations of it, expecting it to work and all...
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By "Quick Stabs" I meant your way of answering my points by merely addressing a way I express it. I.e. tangling to words, twisting them, and so on.
bullshit. you say something, at least admit it. I have a view here that I'm trying to express, and I'd rather like to discuss about it itself than the exact words I use to express it.
then say what you mean, and stop trying to change your mind about what you said afterwards.
Regarding my view of not considering w9x series as a Windows operating system, it's because the two series are a completely different operating systems with completely different design and approach at doing things. NT is what Windows should've been from the very beginning.
whatever. you give this reason, but it does not change the fact that windows 98, 95, 3.11 and so on are very much a part of what ms windows is and has been, for a huge proportion of users, myself included.
17 years? Has it really been that long?
longer i think, actually, i think the first windows was 1983 (is this right?) so that makes it twenty something years... All of the win3.x, win9x, and NT have been quite radically different systems. I think you're right about my use of the word, I should just call my OS of preference "Windows NT", except that people would think I mean some ancient version.
would they? it'd be better than your current choice of words, although i know you prefer not to choose your words very carefully so that you can let other people misunderstand you liberally. I've preferred to use "Windows" to only mean the current design, which btw has been a separate branch of an OS since pre-3.x times.
again, prefer what you like, windows is windows. and btw it also sucks! :-D If only microsoft didn't call them all just "Windows",
oh if only! and if only they didn't crash to BSOD within a day of installing them. considering you "hate" (your word), windows XP too, i wonder just exactly which windows releases you actually do like. this naming practice makes me think they're referring to the user environment and not the OS...
as has always been the case, yes.
I haven't really looked into HURD, but since it's a pure microkernel design, I'm expecting they won't get a high performance desktop running anytime soon.
ok, just wondered if you had checked it out, what you say seems to have been borne out since it's been ongoing for decades with no finished product on the table that i have heard of. The message passing overhead of a pure microkernel design is just too heavy IMO. Windows NT bypasses these issue by having a slightly altered microkernel design. If HURD can design around context switching and scheduling overheads which will come from having a microkernel design, it could turn out to be a really good OS. It's a bit early to say, and I haven't really had an in-depth look into it.
well, perhaps early when counted in ice ages, in my opinion it should be brought out while at least some of the people who originally started working on it are still alive.
There have been countless holes in linux which have been as severe as the windows holes. There has been enough time for people to write worms too. Typically, they haven't had such a big impact as the windows worms do. This is because of numbers.
like how you back that up, if i say "this is because linux is inherently more secure", then i think i have backed myself up with about the same amount of evidence as you have.
About MS Paint, yeah it isn't very feature filled, however my point was that it's perfectly suitable for drawing and should not be considered as a joke. It's a serious application that can do a lot of things, just like gimp can do a lot of things. However, mspaint isn't a gimp replacement and gimp isn't a photoshop replacement.
yup.
And regarding suidroots, there just isn't a way around all of it. Applications are set suidroot because they need to do something that the user cannot do. Typically applications drop their root privileges after they're done using it, but there have been countless of vulnerabilities that have occurred before this happens. One way to solve the problem in *nix environment is to create a separate user for the process. This works fine with services, so they can be chrooted for filesystem scoping and so on. However it doesn't work at all for those said applications, because users cannot be given fine grained privileges without really funky patches.
you have lost me here, why can unpriveleged users not be created for every time this happens? i just don't have the general knowledge to understand you here i think. Pretty much all of the current linux distros depend on root user to exist, and suidroot applications ran as its privileges. There are some interesting process based security patches which takes root privileges away from the user and give them to specific binaries, but such systems aren't used by any common distros.
specific binaries then would always be run as root? which ones? is this the same as now, but with no root user? sorry to seem dumb.
You are making the assumption that sources are necessary for this, yet quality assurance testing is regularly done without sources.
i don't see how if one person writes something (in source code, yes?) and then compiles it into a working binary, then gives it to somebody else to check, that the checker will be able to point out potential errors and vulnerabilities just as well from the binary as from the code. the code will contain everything the developer originally wrote, including comments. have i missed something here? this seems pretty simple in concept, to me.
The devices are still available under the unified namespace, the CreateFile() api supports syntax like \\.\FOO to access objects under the object namespace \??\ directory. The command prompt still looks up object names from the same directory as well, and this is where things like C: D: E: and other symbolic links live, and point to the real physical devices. The idea of the object namespace is to have systemwide (and per-session) named objects for things like events, processes, threads, desktops, etc. Named pipes are still implemented as a filesystem and are all files, even though they're not part of either object namespace nor the filesystem namespace. There are various similar unofficial namespaces, and they are accessible through device objects in the object namespace. In conclusion, I don't think there are any benefits over the "everything is a file" over the NT design. Any issues I can think of can be blamed on the command prompt implementation, which doesn't even support the full NT filesystem namespace (alternate stream syntax not properly supported, for example)
i don't know, (and i really don't, since it's not something i think about a lot), but the model you describe at least sounds messy compared with everything being a file. i am sure that's not the most involved criticism, but that's my instinctual thought.
The thing is, it supported my hardware. Trying to compile it with packet scheduling (hardware independent) stuff made it trash. The kernel is supposed to be compiled with various different settings, and every configuration is supposed to work or at least give a sensible errors what's going on. Some of the configuration I tried wouldn't even go as far as starting init, they'd either mysteriously reboot (bug), or kernel panic due to something unexpected (bug). I know perfectly well how to compile stuff, and to my best knowledge my configurations were totally OK. The kernel just didn't work. If you had the patience to go through some of the changelogs, you'd find that the 2.6.x series is totally fucked. In 2.6.9 you could crash the kernel by merely opening enough connections, a bug which took down my shellbox once. Even with "normal" configurations the damn thing is so bugridden it hurts, and I figured that there were some things that almost always made the kernel die a horrible death when turned on (ingress filtering, for example)
2.4.x late kernels work fine, but lack stuff for which I would've wanted to use 2.6.x. So, I made the mistake of assuming a kernel tree with a "stable" version numbering scheme would've actually had stable kernels.
hmm, that was a mistake, when looked at historically. of course stable and unstable when referring to continually developing software is always misleading. if it was stable, then essentially you are saying NO bugs can ever be found in that code again. over a certain size this is completely untenable to ensure. i make no claims for the stability of various version numbers of the linux kernel, but your habit of comparing linux with windows usually hinges on the design model, not the specifics of a particular kernel version, also, you still do not mention the fact that you are comparing a kernel with an operating system, for example red hat and suse seem totally stable to me, they are both based on a linux kernel (from the late 2.4s, so that agrees with you). I have indeed heard pretty horrible things about the 2.6 kernels, another reason i'm steering well clear until one happens to come by default in a linux distribution. i seem to recall the uptake of 2.4 was a lot faster than the uptake of 2.6 seems to be, and this is an indication of just how stable it is, but this in no way reflects on the development model, it could mean a lot of things, organisational problems in the maintainers, trying to implement lots of new (clashing) things at once and many more.
This was a really REALLY low now. Basically, you are saying that linux shouldn't be ever expected to work?
if that's the case then basically you have cotton wool in your ears and your head up your arse. there have been thousands of available versions of the linux kernel, and maybe a dozen or so versions of the NT kernel (always embedded in a take-it-or-leave-it operating system) and to some degree all the linux kernels are development versions, oho but so are all the NT ones, i bet. nothing "works" by your definition. my linux systems "work" for everything i want them to do (well, actually the driver for my samsung printer sucks a bit and prints only half a page at a time, but since it is contributed by samsung, i have them to blame, not the linux kernel itself), but windows fails to "work" by even remaining running long enough for me to save my work sometimes! i know how many of our users' PCs need to be reimaged at work just to fix some problem that is known but unfixable, so don't go moaning to me that linux never works and windows always does. Yeah, that's about right.
thank you, it is. Now, think again what you said, think carefully.
ok, you too. why is this necessary? Do you really want to ask me this question?
i don't need to. clearly you have different criteria for what "works" means than me. clearly you have different ideas of who is responsible for one problem or another and clearly you have different ideas of the severity of one issue or the other from me, and probably this is the case for everybody in a way.
you stick with your nice happy windows if you want, and i will stick with what works for me. hint: not windows
in fact this has always been my position and it will continue to be my position. why you expect me to try and defend "linux" is beyond me, if you're so sold on mswindows, why even bother discussing the issue with people here? are you on some gods given mission to "convert" us to your cause. it reminds me of all those people who whine on about not being able to run xxxwindows-app under linux, why do they bother trying? run it under windows, that's what it's been compiled and released for! the odd thing is, those people never usually seem to have much discursive (and perhaps cognitive) ability, so why your position is so similar confuses me.
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bullshit. you say something, at least admit it. then say what you mean, and stop trying to change your mind about what you said afterwards.
This is such a big point that I'll address it in a separate message. You were making assumptions about what I was saying, making up connections between things merely because of words used. For example, I said I hated XP and you tried to hit me with what I had earlier said, that most windows haters don't understands how windows works. These two are unrelated, there's no deduction that makes your logic possible.
For another example of your incorrect use of logic and quick stabs, I was asking why do you think a fraud has happened when it could be explained by incompetence. You replied, asking why I claim incompetence when I say windows is well designed. Again, these two are completely unrelated things, and you have introduced unstated assumptions about how incompetence works. I was trying to say that it could've really been just an accident, due to quickly running the thing on some system and making a video of it, and people performing the video making didn't know it was supposed to be a virgin system or whatever. Such mistakes happen, and they're not due to malice. They have nothing to do with implementation of the system, as should be bloody obvious.
I chose not to reply to the specific punches because your logic was completely off, to an extent which made me believe you're just purposedly trying to find something to throw at me. I understand that communication tends to always fail, and things are left misunderstood, but I don't think you're so stupid to make such logic mistakes if you'd stop to think about what you're saying. Now you're calling it bullshit, so I have very little choices left. I'd rather leave your hastily made comments alone, as I don't think there's much point in attacking them. Definitely the details of expression have nothing to do with the subject.
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And now, regarding the linux kernel development process.
Typically it has worked so that odd branches have been used for developing, 1.1, 1.3, 2.1, 2.3, 2.5 .. and then mature features have been incorporated into the stable trees when they've been tested and found to be good. In theory, this should makes it easier to keep the stable trees actually stable. However, currently they've screwed with the 2.6.x tree, and they're releasing versions such as 2.6.11.5. Yes, one additional minor number, reserved for bugfixes alone. You could say that this reflects the increased rate of kernel development speed or some other nice sounding crap, but the fact is that 2.6.x tree is being BUGGY AS HELL, and developing isn't done in a development branch of the kernel. The 2.5 tree was abandoned two years ago and currently there is NO DEVELOPMENT TREE for linux at all. The development is done in a "stable" tree, which truly boggles the mind. Why the heck is this?
It used to be possible to expect that the linux kernel actually works, but no longer with 2.6.x tree. It's not intentional that the "stable" tree kernels don't work.
You're trying to redefine the word "stable" in a new way, and obviously the stable tree cannot be guaranteed to be bugfree. However, the damn code could at least be tested before putting it there. Otherwise the naming practices are just totally pointless. Ofcourse, there hasn't been much logic into them for a while now, with "rc" releases not being release candidates, and other grumpy things going on.
Either way, I don't think there's any purpose to argue about if linux or windows is better for pretty much any purpose, if you're saying that one shouldn't ever expect linux to work at all. System that cannot be trusted is worthless for a great many purposes, since the availability cannot be guaranteed. I thought you were unhappy because windows was buggy and crashing for you, yet you say that linux is better because it can't be expected to work at all. WTF? Did I misunderstand something now?
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You're trying to redefine the word "stable" in a new way,
not really, no. and obviously the stable tree cannot be guaranteed to be bugfree. However, the damn code could at least be tested before putting it there. Otherwise the naming practices are just totally pointless. Ofcourse, there hasn't been much logic into them for a while now, with "rc" releases not being release candidates, and other grumpy things going on.
yes i agree, and a lot of people have said similar things. but considering how long we (rhetorically speaking) wait for a windows release to come out, all i am saying is that at least you get the buggy code immediately with linux. i think from what you're saying that you want the versions with an even minor number to be considered not suitable for developers, which is something like the intention of the numbering scheme in the first place, i suppose, i don't really have a serious argument against this point of yours, but i just think that there are working linux kernels, that are not all that old, and in fact are more recent than a lot of windows stuff that is considered current by people who use it.
Either way, I don't think there's any purpose to argue about if linux or windows is better for pretty much any purpose, if you're saying that one shouldn't ever expect linux to work at all.
ignore me as you will, but you are the only one who said linux doesn't work. i say that it does something like five times in my last reply in fact! nevertheless, if you believe there's no point talking about it, if you think linux doesn't work, then why are you still talking? System that cannot be trusted is worthless for a great many purposes,
precisely why i do not use windows any more. since the availability cannot be guaranteed. I thought you were unhappy because windows was buggy and crashing for you,
this is true. yet you say that linux is better because it can't be expected to work at all. WTF? Did I misunderstand something now?
i think so, since i didn't say any such thing.
i am saying (very roughly) that with windows, you get a release every year or two years, that is often unstable for the applications that everybody wants to run on it, and is usually later shown to be insecure in a number of ways. with linux, there are always usable, working kernels, and systems based on those kernels that are at most a few months, or in the case of the occasional distro a year old. these work by and large with the software that people use with them, to the extent that hundreds of software vendors have packaged these apps with the kernel along with their own config files and utilities to create functional, stable systems.
guess which model i prefer, and more importantly why.
you can probably out-wow me on a lot of technical issues, but seeing what works (and what doesn't) for me, and for some other people i know, or have met, and figuring out why is not something you can pull the wool over my eyes about, even though you may educate me on the specifics.
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This is such a big point that I'll address it in a separate message. You were making assumptions about what I was saying, making up connections between things merely because of words used.
the *only* input people get from you here is the words you use. stick by the words you use, or everything you say is a farce. For example, I said I hated XP and you tried to hit me with what I had earlier said, that most windows haters don't understands how windows works. These two are unrelated, there's no deduction that makes your logic possible.
they are related in a simple and clear way: they are both about windows, and they both state who hates microsoft windows. if you don't make sense, please do not blame that on me, just try to make more sense in future, or nobody's going to be able to understand you.
For another example of your incorrect use of logic
my "incorrect use of logic"? who made you my judge and executioner? after repeatedly misusing the english language, i find this a bit rich on the nose coming from you. and quick stabs,
do you object to the quickness? i really still do not understand why you have a problem with short replies to comments. nevertheless, perhaps i can soften the blow by padding this response out a bit. there we go, that's two completely unecessary sentences slapped onto the end already! any better? I was asking why do you think a fraud has happened when it could be explained by incompetence. You replied, asking why I claim incompetence when I say windows is well designed. Again, these two are completely unrelated things,
no they are not. one is where you state that windows is well designed, the other is where you say it was designed by incompetents. this is clear, simple and precise. and you have introduced unstated assumptions about how incompetence works.
you have a habit of introducing unstated assumptions yourself, which is why your words are often (apparently) taken by their real meanings and not by the meaning you imagine them to have when you type them. I was trying to say that it could've really been just an accident, due to quickly running the thing on some system and making a video of it, and people performing the video making didn't know it was supposed to be a virgin system or whatever. Such mistakes happen, and they're not due to malice.
neither is incompetence. thanks for explaining yourself, but you now seem to be saying i suggested malicious behaviour when all i did was question your seemingly out-of-place cries of incompetence. They have nothing to do with implementation of the system, as should be bloody obvious.
ok, but you seem to want people to be a lot more restrained linguistically than you would like to be able to be yourself. I wasn't actually criticising what you said, mainly because i hadn't ascertained what it actually was yet that you were saying. sorry, sometimes i need things to be made pretty clear to me. it helps to avoid misunderstandings.
I chose not to reply to the specific punches because your logic was completely off,
you just responded, though to what i have no idea. to an extent which made me believe you're just purposedly trying to find something to throw at me. I understand that communication tends to always fail, and things are left misunderstood, but I don't think you're so stupid to make such logic mistakes if you'd stop to think about what you're saying. Now you're calling it bullshit, so I have very little choices left.
you just called me stupid, i think. you are saying (correct me if i am wrong) that either i am trying to get you angry or else i am stupid. please clarify, and then i would thank you to keep such opinions to yourself in future, unless you care to take the time to address the specific issues, which you seem to think are beneath you. I'd rather leave your hastily made comments alone, as I don't think there's much point in attacking them. Definitely the details of expression have nothing to do with the subject.
to the contrary, if you express yourself with inaccurate words, you are simply introducing rubbish into the discussion, you even criticise me for making hasty remarks just now, which is in fact more or less what i was commenting about you earlier, something which you continue to deny is an important factor.
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And then, to reply to the rest of the things...
My hate towards XP is because of the even more braindead configuration than w2k. In w2k3, the default configuration is a lot better, although it needs some work as well. The operating system internals behind XP are fine, however it's loaded with so much cruft that it takes hours and then hours to setup. For a home desktop setup, I find this unacceptable. Then again, I should just quit whining and make my own install CD with registry patches and so on to do the main work for me. However, I'd rather stay away since w2k does everything I need and most of the things I want. XP sure has some lovely kernel changes, such as ability to detach debugger once you have attached it, as under w2k you can't detach without killing the process. Overall, the fact that XP is targeted strongly towards home users is probably what makes it so crappy by default. I just don't belong to the target audience of that specific version.
Regarding source availability and binaries, obviously having the sources allow the software to be studied in a lot easier fashion, and by many more people especially if it's written in some mainstream language. I already stated that my point was that having sources and being allowed to make changes were two independent things. I'm not saying that it's just as easy to work on binary than it is on source, I'm saying that source availability isn't a factor to being allowed to modify and analyze software. For a concrete example, consider any leaked sources of your preference. Half-Life 2 or Windows 2000/NT4 sources for example. They're out there for public to download, yet this doesn't give you any rights.
You might think this isn't exactly on the topic here, since you're probably talking only about the open source development model. Right, it's just a one variable in the whole thing. In the open source model rights are typically granted for modification and somewhat free use. However, the proprietary development models aren't equivalent to the one variable simplification either. Companies have QA departments, they do testing with paid testers and write unit tests and other stuff. Some open source projects have great testing processes implemented, but then the quality isn't because of open source but because of the development process itself. In my opinion, open source doesn't lead to better quality by itself, it requires a lot more than that.
Again, there's just too much stuff in your posts to reply to. If you think I haven't answered to something you consider important, point it out. I'm not intentionally skipping any "difficult questions", I'm just trying to keep the signal-to-noise ratio from drifting into madness, with varying success :)
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ok, thanks for answering, this is a good answer at this juncture because it makes me feel like you're not just in it for a shit slinging match.
again, if somebody else has other questions, go for it. i'll ask questions again as and when new issues are raised (or old ones resurrected perhaps!
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Fine, we seem to be having some communication problems here.
If my words are misunderstood, you still say I should stick to my words? Do you mean I should stick to the meaning you understood, or to what I was saying in the first place? It would make more sense to stick for the latter.
Regarding the trust to linux releases, if the kernel version number says "this is stable" and then it isn't, you obviously can't trust it. You said they can't be expected to be bugfree, I agree. But I'd like to know some effort has been made to guarantee that what is called "stable" is actually tested, just like it used to be. It's just like it is with random numbers, it doesn't matter one bit what you have if you don't know it came from a good source.
Regarding your logic in the XP hater thing, here's how it goes. "Most windows haters don't know how it works" is same as: For all windows haters, most don't understand how it works. Now, based on this statement, you cannot make any assumptions about any single windows hater, it's about statistics. Need an example? Let's say "most flying animals are birds", and "bat is a flying animal". Irregardless of correctness of these assumptions, you cannot use them to conclude that bat is a bird. This is because "most" is not same as "all".
Also on topic of quick stabs, you again get stuck on the words. Perhaps these posts have become too long to be used for a meaningful conversation. I don't object to short responses, I object to responses on single words alone that miss the meaning of them. I stated your logic was incorrect and gave examples of why I thought so. If you didn't understand what I was saying, you could've asked for a clarification. I tried to say something, you know.
I have to admit that as someone into mathematics and programming, I see things and language in a slightly different way than most people seem to see them. I don't think this needs to be a problem, though, as long as you understand that I'm here to talk about THINGS, not about WORDS. Please try to understand what I'm saying, and tell me when you think I don't understand what you're saying. It serves no good to engage in a verbal swordfight for the sake of arguing alone.
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Heh, I wrote that before I read your response above. Writing takes a horribly long time x_x
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I am laughing because my post got completly ingored in this thread, heh.
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I am laughing because my post got completly ingored in this thread, heh.
It didn't. I just didn't have anything to say about it. It's similar to my 2.6.x experiences, and I addressed that already. Thanks for the post, though, it feels nice to have someone else in the forums to confirm that issues with 2.6 indeed exist. Perhaps this will help people see I'm not just blindly ranting.
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You know what crosses my mind, and the reason why most people haven't responded yet? So there was a deviation from a standard by the community that established it. Big deal, it's nothing that Microsoft hasn't done a few hundred times. Oh wait, those would be regulated standards...
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I am laughing because my post got completly ingored in this thread, heh.
Ok. I'm sure 2.4.0 worked (didn't work) just as well as 2.6.0.
And look what 2.4 is now. ;)
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why they decided to rename the driver for my NIC to the chipset, instead of the card, is beyond me...
All it did was make it a pain in the ASS to compile for me.
and why did it mysteriously stop booting, when the root partition's filesystem was installed, and not a module?
the very fact that compiling the karnel requires something like make xconfig/menuconfig is a testament to its own feature-bloat.
and we all know that the bread and butter linux apps, are (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) not (http://www.kde.org/) bloated (http://www.gnome.org/).
right?
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I wouldn't know, I've been using Fluxbox for everything. :p
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Heh at your examples of bloated apps. Time for some trivia, hands up how many of you guys know what Gnome does with an ORB, and why :)
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Just don't confuse "distributed" with "clustered" kay? ;)
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the very fact that compiling the karnel requires something like make xconfig/menuconfig is a testament to its own feature-bloat.
Actually, it doesn't. Menuconfig is a convenience, as you could hand hack the #defines, which I have done. The fact remains that the Linux "karnel" is a very complex bit of soft, that includes a wide variety of ways to compile it. Blame that on the wide variety of processors, mo-bo's, the various disk drives, etc. that are out there. So it's going to be a bit harder than compiling your average "Hello World" app.
and we all know that the bread and butter linux apps, are not bloated.
First off, I don't consider EMACS to be "bloated". Not when you consider that you have a complete development IDE right there. I do all my programming from EMACS, and never have to leave it.
As for KDE and GNOME, well, KDE is pretty bad so far as bloat is concerned. GNOME is better in that regard, but it's still getting up there. There's a reason for that:
Konqueror Browser
Konqueror is KDE's next-generation web browser, file manager and document viewer. Widely heralded as a technological break-through for the GNU/Linux desktop, the standards-compliant Konqueror has a component-based architecture which combines the features and functionality of Internet Explorer/Netscape Communicator and Windows Explorer.
http://www.kde.org/info
This goes to the biggest mistake that the Linux community is making: trying too hard to copy Windows, and everything that's bad about that. For KDE and GNOME, it's all about adding the same sort of mindless eye-candy that burns up resources for no good reason. This is why I prefer Enlightenment. The Enlightenment "tarball" is 1791137 bytes. My Enlightenment Desktop (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/jtpenrod/MyDesktop.jpg) looks perfectly fine. Sure, it doesn't work like Win-d'ohs, as there's no "Start" button, or "tray", or a bazillion icons blotting out the wallpaper, or any of the rest of that bullshit. Linux isn't Win-Doesn't, and it shouldn't try to be. I installed some excellent apps for doing what I need to get done: the Emelfm file manager doesn't work like "Explorer": it's considerably better, if but just a bit less capable than the command line file manager: Midnight Commander. For a good, general purpose text editor, there's JEdit. The GIMP replaces at least three different KDE apps, as you can use it for editing icons, and taking screen shots in addition to a drawing program.
Linux doesn't need to follow Winderz. Not realizing this is the community's biggest mistake.
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Linux doesn't need to follow Winderz. Not realizing this is the community's biggest mistake.
I can see your point but Linux needs to copy Windows to win over Windows users. They had to make it's interface similar to Windows, so they made KDE and they need to allow ex-Windows users to continue to use their clasic Windows software so the came up with Wine.
This all makes perfect sense as Linux will never win a decent market share until it's at least 99.9% compatable with Misrosoft Windows.
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First off, I don't consider EMACS to be "bloated". Not when you consider that you have a complete development IDE right there. I do all my programming from EMACS, and never have to leave it.
i don't know about that, it certainly is "feature rich" for a text editor, but again, it depends what you want it for. it reminds me of this quote:
"Emacs is a nice operating system, but I prefer UNIX." - Tom Christiansen
As for KDE and GNOME, well, KDE is pretty bad so far as bloat is concerned. GNOME is better in that regard, but it's still getting up there.
you go on to explain this very well, i might just add that what muzzy continues to do, even though i have mentioned this more than once, is to criticise applications, and blame their shortcomings (real or perceived) on a particular operating system. It is perfectly easy to have a linux system with a wide selection of desktop environments for users to choose from, and not have kde or gnome installed. you can install mandrake really easily, and have icewm, windowmaker and enlightenment, and no gnome or kde, if you like. and i remember one linux i used that was totally enlightenment based, and another that used a combination of dfm and icewm as the default environment. if it were me, my distro would include xfce4, windowmaker, icewm and rox. whatever, the point is that criticising kde or gnome does not have anything to do with the operating system they run on. in particular the fact that the GUI is seperate from the OS, unlike some systems, is a distinct advantage, for this very reason.
Linux doesn't need to follow Winderz. Not realizing this is the community's biggest mistake.
hear hear, if people want to use windows, then they should.
i just don't want to hear them bleating about adware, viruses, slow systems and whatever else they moan about.
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Fine, we seem to be having some communication problems here.
If my words are misunderstood, you still say I should stick to my words? Do you mean I should stick to the meaning you understood, or to what I was saying in the first place? It would make more sense to stick for the latter.
fair enough. how about, if you realise you didn't mean what you said, say so, so people know what you really mean, instead of just ignoring the fact and then denying you said it later.
Regarding the trust to linux releases, if the kernel version number says "this is stable" and then it isn't, you obviously can't trust it. You said they can't be expected to be bugfree, I agree. But I'd like to know some effort has been made to guarantee that what is called "stable" is actually tested, just like it used to be. It's just like it is with random numbers, it doesn't matter one bit what you have if you don't know it came from a good source.
fair enough again, i suppose. this would appear to suggest iresponsibility on the part of the developers with regard to their numbering conventions.
Regarding your logic in the XP hater thing, here's how it goes. "Most windows haters don't know how it works" is same as: For all windows haters, most don't understand how it works. Now, based on this statement, you cannot make any assumptions about any single windows hater, it's about statistics. Need an example? Let's say "most flying animals are birds", and "bat is a flying animal". Irregardless of correctness of these assumptions, you cannot use them to conclude that bat is a bird. This is because "most" is not same as "all".
touche! but this logic is as good as the logic i used, and so if you still stand by your comments about how my logic made no sense, then neither does yours! ;-)
actually, fair enough, and well explained, the word "most" saved the day in this case. but this still leaves the issue that you are saying you are a person who hates windows XP, even though you *do* know how it works, so i still don't see how this is a good platform to defend the current crop of windows OSs from.
Also on topic of quick stabs, you again get stuck on the words. Perhaps these posts have become too long to be used for a meaningful conversation. I don't object to short responses, I object to responses on single words alone that miss the meaning of them. I stated your logic was incorrect and gave examples of why I thought so. If you didn't understand what I was saying, you could've asked for a clarification. I tried to say something, you know.
ok, sometimes if i misunderstand somebody i am not aware that i am doing so (because it seems to me that they are saying something, while it seems to them that they are saying something else).
I have to admit that as someone into mathematics and programming, I see things and language in a slightly different way than most people seem to see them. I don't think this needs to be a problem, though, as long as you understand that I'm here to talk about THINGS, not about WORDS. Please try to understand what I'm saying, and tell me when you think I don't understand what you're saying. It serves no good to engage in a verbal swordfight for the sake of arguing alone.
i agree, although i don't agree that this is what i am doing, i am simply trying to get the ambiguity out of what you are saying, since what you say is often controversial, in the setting of these forums.
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I am laughing because my post got completly ingored in this thread, heh.
i didn't think there was anything new there that muzzy hadn't already brought up (generally speaking), so in this case, i didn't directly respond to your post.
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fair enough. how about, if you realise you didn't mean what you said, say so, so people know what you really mean, instead of just ignoring the fact and then denying you said it later.
We seem to have some differing views about very nature of communication. You see, what I said still means the same thing from my point of view. However, different people interpret same words in different ways. Please read this text about Wiio's Laws (http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/wiio.html) to understand what I mean, I think it explains it pretty well.
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i don't know about that, it certainly is "feature rich" for a text editor, but again, it depends what you want it for. it reminds me of this quote: "Emacs is a nice operating system, but I prefer UNIX." - Tom Christiansen
One would expect that a text editor would grow up to become a word processor. In the case of EMACS, the text editor became the first windowing system. That does require a certain amount of what would be considered "bloat" when you have a graphical desktop with multiple work spaces. EMACS isn't strictly necessary anymore since you could do programming through an IDE such as Anjuta, or use a plain-jane text editor like GEdit or JEdit with your compiler and debugger running in a second desktop. I still like it for development, and with the right plug-ins, you can even launch the compiler/debugger/interpreter right from EMACS itself.
you go on to explain this very well, i might just add that what muzzy continues to do, even though i have mentioned this more than once, is to criticise applications, and blame their shortcomings (real or perceived) on a particular operating system.
I wouldn't be too hard on muzzy. After all, he is a Win-d'ohs guy with a Win-centric way of thinking. It's hard to adjust to a new paradigm when you've been dealing with an op-sys that continually blurs the distinction between an application and the OS itself. It takes a crowbar and a case of dynamite to pry Inter-nut Expl-Horror from Win-Doesn't; to ditch Mozilla/Galeon/Firefox from Linux takes an uninstall. It's no surprise that he doesn't get this.
...and i remember one linux i used that was totally enlightenment based, and another that used a combination of dfm and icewm as the default environment.
I just did an install of Slackware 10.1, and that's how I rigged it: as an Enlightenment-based distro. I did install IceWM to see if I had X configured correctly, and for GUI-convenience while compiling and installing Enlightenment (doesn't come with Slack, as Slack's still KDE/GNOME-centric) still, you do have that freedom to make it what you will. (Try that with Winderz :D )
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We seem to have some differing views about very nature of communication. You see, what I said still means the same thing from my point of view. However, different people interpret same words in different ways. Please read this text about Wiio's Laws to understand what I mean, I think it explains it pretty well.
yes, i understand this, but trying to have agreed definitions of particular words (like they do in the dictionary et cetera) is an attempt to reduce misunderstanding, and having a cavalier approach to the definitions of words does in no way help the situation.
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I wouldn't be too hard on muzzy. After all, he is a Win-d'ohs guy with a Win-centric way of thinking. It's hard to adjust to a new paradigm when you've been dealing with an op-sys that continually blurs the distinction between an application and the OS itself. It takes a crowbar and a case of dynamite to pry Inter-nut Expl-Horror from Win-Doesn't; to ditch Mozilla/Galeon/Firefox from Linux takes an uninstall. It's no surprise that he doesn't get this.
Oh my. What about the horrors such as GLIBC integrated into the linux operating system? It's so tightly integrated that half of the world breaks if you try to remove it! And yet, it's called a library, so it's supposed to be modular? What's this then?
While I admit that it's a slightly extreme to compare the components IE uses to the C library, the point remains. It's trivial to get rid of it, however if there are things that depend on it, those things will break. This is why microsoft doesn't want to remove IE, it's a library that third party developers are depending on.
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While I admit that it's a slightly extreme to compare the components IE uses to the C library, the point remains.
No, it's a whole lot of extreme, and not apropos either. Glibc is simply a shared library of functions and subroutines to take care of implementing such convenience functions as "printf" and Co., to look after the malloc arena, make system calls, etc. You can quite easily ditch it with a simple rm -f libglib*. Of course, then you would either need to write your own library to implement the same functionality or code in all low-level access and statically link it. IE is still an application, regardless of what you want to call it: "...however if there are things that depend on it, those things will break. This is why microsoft doesn't want to remove IE, it's a library that third party developers are depending on". This is something that never should have happened in the first place. It's still a piss-poor design philosophy. Aside from that, the IE "library" sux ballz, and has been responsible for most of the BSODs you get with Win (and Inter-nut Expl-Horror is the shittiest browser I have ever used). After uninstalling IE from Win-95, I went for months without seeing a BSOD.
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Well, go ahead and remove iexplore.exe, and you'll see that the application is indeed gone.
What comes to IE on w9x platform, I've had similar experiences with it causing unstability. Doesn't happen on NT series. The BSODs are because the OS itself (the 9x-series) sucks, not because the application sucks. IE is fine.
And the IE libraries can be reimplemented as well, and applications can do low level access if they want to. However, it's quite practical to use things like InternetOpen() in win32 to do HTTP work.
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(http://forumspam.articblue.nl/post_related/misc/images/0760.jpg)
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Oh my. What about the horrors such as GLIBC integrated into the linux operating system? It's so tightly integrated that half of the world breaks if you try to remove it! And yet, it's called a library, so it's supposed to be modular? What's this then?
While I admit that it's a slightly extreme to compare the components IE uses to the C library, the point remains. It's trivial to get rid of it, however if there are things that depend on it, those things will break. This is why microsoft doesn't want to remove IE, it's a library that third party developers are depending on.
this is a little misleading though and i'll say why:
with windows, you want to remove something, and if you do, and other things depend on it, you're stuffed. that's it, totally buggered. put that thing back, or you can't use the other stuff.
theoretically, even with something like libc, you *can* remove it if you do it sensibly on an open source/gnu system. this is because you can compile everything that is written against this library statically (or is it link it statically? i am no genius when it comes to this...) and then remove the library. This is actually done as part of the install process for the likes of "linux from scratch" (an extreme method of installing and maintaining linux that a few brave souls go for), they compile everything from source, statically, to make a bare bones system, then use that system to recompile another entire system so they can get rid of the static one (i think)
anyway, the point is that if you did this, everything would be huge and take up tons of memory, which is why it doesn't get done and why (generally) there are a lot more dependency issues under, say, linux than windows, because a lot of windows programs bring their own libraries with them, for instance, and are independent of the system's, or each other's libraries.
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"put it back or you cant use other stuff" applies to every system regarding dependencies. You can't really remove libc either. If it's statically linked, it's not removed. It's still there, and used.
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this post has more than 765 views. what the internet world wants is how to make their shitty windowze computer more stable and secure. because a:
it is not stable
b:
it is incredibly insecure.
there. :mad:
Mr X :beos: :beos:
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a) Windows 9x is not stable. Windows NT is stable.
b) Windows 9x is not secure. Windows NT is secure.
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i beg to differ. with winxp (based on NT)
within five minutes, i got 3 worms just from being on some warez sites. what has this world gotten too? good thing im not using that computer.
Mr X
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Let's see. You were using IE. Unpatched IE? And you were going to some warez sites, which are known to contain malicious stuff. Or did you think that sites which are open about illegal activity would be there just to serve you, out of goodness, paying all that bandwidth out of their own pockets to fight the system?
So, now you've fucked your system by doing something stupid. Weren't you a firefox user, though? Oh, so it wasn't your computer? That's really responsible of you, trashing other people's systems and then blaming it on the OS. You could've at least turned high security settings on before going to a known-hostile site, with a likely vulnerable system.
Anything else?
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this post has more than 765 views. what the internet world wants is how to make their shitty windowze computer more stable and secure. because a:
it is not stable
b:
it is incredibly insecure.
there. :mad:
Mr X :beos: :beos:
LOL tell people how to fix their Windows problems - that's really going to encourage them to convert to Linux, BeOS, BSD, MacOS etc.
:tux: :beos: :bsd: :macos:
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or is it link it statically? i am no genius when it comes to this...
Compiling is simply preparing *.o (object files) that don't really do anything until you link them into an executable. So it's static linking, which brings into the executable the actual library code instead of simply adding remote calls to library routines.
This is actually done as part of the install process for the likes of "linux from scratch" (an extreme method of installing and maintaining linux that a few brave souls go for), they compile everything from source, statically, to make a bare bones system, then use that system to recompile another entire system so they can get rid of the static one (i think)
Yuppers, that's how it's done. The whole point of the static linking is to create a basic toolchain that's independent of the header files that are on the system that does the initial toolchain compiling. Though this is not strictly necessary, it does result in a new Linux system that's not a derivative of another distro.
Definitely not for the impatient and/or faint-hearted.
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muzzy:
oh- i forgot to say that i was using zonealarm AND firefox.
i was quite 'fluxmoxied' to notice the strange new processes running in the backround after my first reboot after installing xp. thank goodness for Security Task Manager- it has saved my butt many times.
my usual routing for a 'windows install is'
download zonealarm. download firefox. everything else.
Mr X :beos: :beos:
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Then how the heck did you get that malware? I'd like a video prepared of this kind of experience, to show exactly what the user does, so I could see that nothing funny is done.
Oh, ofcourse, unless you install XP in pre-SP2 state, then get on the internet. This is why microsoft has been shipping out SP2 CDs for free. It's damn necessary, unless you're going to enable the windows builtin firewall before connecting to the net.
This whole thing reminds me of incident with linux tcp/ip stack several years ago. There was this fragmentation attack which could remotely crash the kernel, and most linux users weren't running any sort of firewall. They were loudly stating that linux doesn't need firewall because it's secure. Well, how will you patch your system if you can only get the patch from the net, and the network code is vulnerable? A friend of mine had to use another system to download the patch as people were flooding his ip with the attack. When something like this happens, there just aren't any beautiful solutions to it. The default XP pre-SP2 installation happens to be insecure, so you'd better get a slipstreamed installation CD prepared in case you need to reinstall, or a real hardware firewall. Otherwise, you're going to have to enable the damn firewall before you patch, and spend some quality time downloading SP2 right after installation.
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i knew you were going to hammer me on the sp2 thing. it was a pre sp1 release of xp pro.
that's why I prefer an OS without virus' or malware. welcome to warez world. i mean BeOS. damn i love that. ive gotta register that domain.
Mr X :beos: :beos:
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You knew I was going to hammer you with it, because you knew beforehand that the damn thing was vulnerable to various worms and you'd get spanked for staying on the net for only few minutes with it? For this reason, you also figured it'd be better to not mention it? It doesn't help your anti-windows cause if you purposedly hide facts which you find significant.
You should've known better about using ancient unpatched version, and you should've known better to not try to use it as an example here. The malware was your own damn fault and you know it. Undeniably the old versions are vulnerable, but full well knowing it going to the internet with it makes it your fault, not the system's fault.
Please format and reinstall, with network cable unplugged. Once done, enable windows firewall, after which it's safe to connect to network and patch your system. Thanks.
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...the damn thing was vulnerable to various worms...
there's Microsoft for yeah.
but full well knowing it going to the internet with it makes it your fault, not the system's fault.
Vancouver Sun, Monday March 21
just today, the front page of the newspaper warned:
Computer working when you're not? It may be a Zombie
it talks about how windows computers get turned into zombies, especialy because they are windows machines (okay, i put the last part in :p )
side fact sheet:
"7360 new win32 viruses and worms documented in the six months, an increase of 64% of over the first half of the year."
"Vulerabilities in web applications made up 48 percent of all documented vulnerabilities, up from 39% . "
"97 percent of vulnerabilities disclosed were rated as moderately or highly servere."
[/quote][/i]
i feel sorry for you and your shattered windows.
but i have a phd in pain . your welcome.
Mr X
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Fine. Go install Firefox 0.8 and then I'll make you a website to browse, let's see if you'll whine about firefox sucking ass when your system gets brutally owned.
NEWSFLAWS: Old software contains bugs.
This is in no way specific to microsoft or windows. Old linux distros are equally vulnerable, old browsers, old web servers, old php scripts, old everything. Bugs are found, bugs are fixed. The only way to stay secure is to stay recent. If you are using some age old version of software AND YOU KNOW IT, it's your own fault.
I suspect you are only trying to blame microsoft for your own faults. You can't possibly believe it's microsoft's fault if you know shit is going to happen and then it happens. I recommend you try walking in front of cars and suing everyone you can, because it's so obvious that cars are a health hazard and properly designed cars shouldn't hurt you even if you jump in front of them.
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good call, muzzy, i don't know how anybody could argue with that.
the reason there's a firefox 1.0 is because firefox 0.8 and 0.9 were not stable (although you say they are not secure either, perhaps this is true for some versions, i wouldn't know. that's not the point anyway, the point is i agree with you here)
but
most linux users weren't running any sort of firewall. They were loudly stating that linux doesn't need firewall because it's secure.
hmm, this doesn't really sound like linux users. are you sure linux users weren't loudly stating that they didn't need a virus checker? to me it seems like anybody using the internet should know they need a firewall, and i am hardly the most educated computer user.
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"put it back or you cant use other stuff" applies to every system regarding dependencies. You can't really remove libc either. If it's statically linked, it's not removed. It's still there, and used.
i'm not really sure what you propose as a better model here.
are you suggesting that all functions be reimplemented from scratch for every program and process that wants to use them? and that libraries should only be usable by the specific application they are associated with? this sounds quite similar to having a "Program Files" directory with each program in its own directory with its own dlls but surely this has the potential (in the existing windows model anyway) for confusion between similarly named (but functionally different) libraries, and also, i can imagine it to be about as resource hungry as static linking, no?
it's clear i've misunderstood what you're proposing, please clarify.
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There is one(virus/spyware scanner), it's called chkrootkit, and it shoould be in every linux users cron.
remember, spyware needs only to run under a users account to collect and send data. A clever one would come as an rpm download and ask to install a needed library. the user say yes, and it installs a daemon that greps the net-logs for urls and sends it back. Granted, it would be harder, and less users to grab info from, but still possible.
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look *i'm* not saying linux doesn't need a virus checker (although for a number of reasons it is a lot less important than on a windows machine) however i am saying that i have a much easier time imagining a lot of linux users saying they don't need a virus checker, than that they don't need a firewall.
everybody needs a firewall, how could anybody not know this and be in charge of an internet connection?
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Firewalls aren't needed for systems that don't provide services, or servers which aren't interested in filtering some ip ranges. Firewalls are needed for networks, when someone might connect something nasty there which you aren't responsible of. I ran unfirewalled windows 2000 for years without issues. When the DCOM exploits came out, I had already turned it off ages ago. I was slightly pissed about the RPC port still being open, microsoft wouldn't let me close it :(
Also, regarding linkage and stuff, I'm not proposing anything, that's your own interpretation. It seems you are against rewriting functionality from a scratch. If so, why are you against the internet functionality libraries that IE depends on?
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i'm not against rewriting functionality from scratch at all, i'm just thinking that if tons of programs need to implement the samething then some will do it worse than others, why not rely on the open source model and give everybody the benefit of the "best" way to do something? also, it represents a lot of time wasted and wheels reinvented if everybody holds their cards to their chest.
but for the purposes of getting rid of crufty old software with deeply embedded bugs for example, i'm all for rewriting for functionality's sake.
all i said btw was "i'm not sure what you're proposing", this is hardly me interpreting something, all i am saying is, you complain about something here (which i think is a minor point, but which you and other may not), but don't give any alternative, and i am kind of asking you what options you might put forward.
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I thought you were the one complaining about IE. Also, it works pretty damn fine for me. You seem to have quite a talent in twisting "open source" into everything, completely sidestepping the real issues.
I'm merely pointing that IE isn't integrated to system any more than any other library. You could say that the default C library is a lot more deeply integrated into the system, as it's even harder to remove.
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I thought you were the one complaining about IE. Also, it works pretty damn fine for me. You seem to have quite a talent in twisting "open source" into everything, completely sidestepping the real issues.
you say nothing, while throwing in a couple of "quick stabs" of your own. please elaborate.
I'm merely pointing that IE isn't integrated to system any more than any other library. You could say that the default C library is a lot more deeply integrated into the system, as it's even harder to remove.
i know you said this, is this then another semantic discussion about what integrated means? i would rather avoid the whole thing, if that's what this is really about.
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Ah, we get to "what do words mean" thing now? Fine, how about telling me how having a system library perform things is less secure design than having every application implement things themselves? I thought this "integration" was what bugged you about IE? Are you also annoyed about "integration" of zlib into linux, and how it made unmeasurable amount of applications insecure when a hole was found? Are you perhaps annoyed about how opengl is "integrated" into systems, too? I suspect not. Why only IE?
Regarding my quick stab, I was referring to "why not rely on the open source model and give everybody the benefit of the "best" way to do something" and how it completely ignores the issue of libraries. Once applications is written against a library, it needs a rewrite to work against a new solution if a "better" one comes around. Also, availability of an implementation to link/work against doesn't require open source in any way. Any advantages that opensource have are also available to proprietary solutions, as long as you have right to link against them. Microsoft is providing apis which are good, and people are free to use them or free to use "open" alternatives. I recall this wasn't the first time you've purposedly narrowed your views to favor your point of view, while ignoring a broader view. I might be guilty of the same too in some posts though, not sure. It just annoyed me quite a bit here as we seem to be talking about completely different things which only touch each other slightly.
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seemingly.
shame that is a cause for annoyance with you, considering annoyance does nothing to further the discussion.
i am not convinced that APIs can be considered to be as good as having full read access. sometimes they will be, but that's at the discression of the publisher of those APIs. and if the API is required to write good software, and the company publishing the APIs has an interest in outdoing their competition, then there's a motive for publishing incomplete specs right there.
not saying this happens, just that the model is not very good when taken in the real world.
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Talking about different things and pretending they're about same subject doesn't further discussion either.
This whole thing started from jtpenrod's comment: "It takes a crowbar and a case of dynamite to pry Inter-nut Expl-Horror from Win-Doesn't". I was trying to argue that this isn't the case, and that any issues that result from removal of IE are not specific to IE but rather apply to all library type entities.
You're welcome to ditch IE, but third party apps might expect it's there. Microsoft doesn't want you to remove it because of these dependency issues, so you have to do some little work to get rid of it.
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Talking about different things and pretending they're about same subject doesn't further discussion either.
This whole thing started from jtpenrod's comment: "It takes a crowbar and a case of dynamite to pry Inter-nut Expl-Horror from Win-Doesn't". I was trying to argue that this isn't the case, and that any issues that result from removal of IE are not specific to IE but rather apply to all library type entities.
You're welcome to ditch IE, but third party apps might expect it's there. Microsoft doesn't want you to remove it because of these dependency issues, so you have to do some little work to get rid of it.
Yes, a lot of Windows applications depend on Internet Explorer.
But, it's wether they decide not to start at all, or simply give you an error and start anyway, to decide if you want to remove Internet Explorer from Windows XP or not.
But luckily, I don't have to make that choice.
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chances are, if the program relies heavily on IE and it doesnt make any effort to work with other browsers (for example the download managers used with the firefox exstension flashgot , they can still be used after scrapping IE) so basiaclly it means that the programs are cheap and shouldnt be used.
especially when i get windows programs, and it is like a $30 program, so i get a crack for it and then use it for a week to see how it is and it ends up like being a piece of crap that has so many errors. except things from macecraft, they are great.
Mr X
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You're welcome to ditch IE, but third party apps might expect it's there. Microsoft doesn't want you to remove it because of these dependency issues, so you have to do some little work to get rid of it.
whatever.
i don't see how this proves either:
a) IE is not too heavily integrated into the system
or
b) the reason microsoft does not want you to remove it is because you would then be using a competing product.
neither does it convince me that:
c) IE is secure.
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Oops, forgot that this thread existed, sorry for not responding earlier.
Regarding IE and "integrated to system", this completely depends how you define those words and what they mean. The way I see it, IE isn't very deeply integrated at all.
About competing products, I don't know about marketing issues that might be around it, but there's a real technical reason why it's a bad idea to remove it. You can still use a competing product without removing it, so I cannot see how this is related at all.
My point doesn't try to "prove" anything, it just states how I see one specific thing. Does the IE "integration" issue prove that gravity exists, or that earth has an atmosphere? Ofcourse not. Does this IE design prove that IE is secure or works at all? Ofcourse not. They're totally unrelated issues. Regarding the whole design of IE, the only security issue associated with the design is when people use the component to display their own HTML stuff, not realizing the exact consequences of using such a mechanism (regarding tainted input, for example)
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Oops, forgot that this thread existed, sorry for not responding earlier.
Regarding IE and "integrated to system", this completely depends how you define those words and what they mean. The way I see it, IE isn't very deeply integrated at all.
i thought we weren't going to worry about what words actually mean, instead preferring to make up our own definitions to suit the moment (and our own opinions). i know it bores you when i define the words i use, but my last post simply lets you know that you haven't said anything of substantial content to convince me of the three points that i mentioned.
About competing products, I don't know about marketing issues that might be around it, but there's a real technical reason why it's a bad idea to remove it. You can still use a competing product without removing it, so I cannot see how this is related at all.
because of potential/perceived problems related to alleged spyware, and unnecessary network traffic generated by IE. I don't know about this but plenty people seem to be worried about it. Also, it sets a dangerous precedent that people have no control over how their system is set up. If i want to replace mozilla with opera on my system, i can uninstall one and install the other, easy. There's no technical issue stopping this, why should there be one with IE? there shouldn't. if there is one, it's either through design or bad implementation.
My point doesn't try to "prove" anything, it just states how I see one specific thing.
ok, then we're both cool. Does the IE "integration" issue prove that gravity exists, or that earth has an atmosphere? Ofcourse not. Does this IE design prove that IE is secure or works at all? Ofcourse not. They're totally unrelated issues.
ok, as i said: whatever. Regarding the whole design of IE, the only security issue associated with the design is when people use the component to display their own HTML stuff, not realizing the exact consequences of using such a mechanism (regarding tainted input, for example)
so bad html causes a windows system security problem? this gets better! and this from somebody that thinks IE is secure? am i misunderstanding you or are you blaming a system's insecurity on its users again?
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goddamnit you just love twisting words do you? if i could punch you over the internet i damn sure would. right now. you just refuse to understand what i'm saying, don't you?
your comment about the word definitions is heavily offensive. i have no idea why i'm bothering to reply to you at all, since you clearly show NO INTENT TO DISCUSS THE SUBJECT but instead just want to mock me. you keep saying things that have nothing to do with the subject, and are not related to it except through a common item (in this case, IE). it makes my blood boil.
then you try to thwart the discussion by making some statements, again unrelated to the subject, and say that my on-topic discussion doesn't address these off-topic issues. no shit, sherlock! IE security issues have nothing to do with "integration", thus my views on the integration don't address security.
and finally, the last paragraph in your previous post, you ask "bad html causes windows system security problems?". You obviously had no fscking clue about what I said in the text you're replying to. That, or you're defining "system security" to mean something else than it means. If application uses a library which lets you do more than you intend, and then you use that library, it's not a system security issue. It's an application issue. That application acting like that can be a system security issue, but ITS NOT FAULT OF THE LIBRARY!
... time to go get something cold to drink, i need to cool down. if you keep replying with your bullshit, i wont bother continuing this discussion further.
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I'll be brief in the rationale behind a microkernel implementation: a module "integrated" (cutely quoted, as you put it) so tightly with the system kernel that the system cannot run properly without it is a security breach. Likewise, a secure module - by design - cannot integrate with the system kernel. Forget for a moment that LiteStep and whatnot exist, we're talking about the rationale of the LCD (lowest common denominator) - the most clueless possible user. They're not going to take the time to remove IE and secure the system like they should when they're told the opposite is "just fine" at every juncture.
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You need IE to do system updates, and I would presume that the IE library is a different module than the one that's displays the Internet Exlporer window. They could easily make a different update manager and at least romove the code responsible for displaying the Internet Explorer window. You can't tell me that they didn't start shipping Windows with Internet Explorer to put Netscape out of bussiness and to remove all of the competetion.
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I'll be brief in the rationale behind a microkernel implementation: a module "integrated" (cutely quoted, as you put it) so tightly with the system kernel that the system cannot run properly without it is a security breach. Likewise, a secure module - by design - cannot integrate with the system kernel. Forget for a moment that LiteStep and whatnot exist, we're talking about the rationale of the LCD (lowest common denominator) - the most clueless possible user. They're not going to take the time to remove IE and secure the system like they should when they're told the opposite is "just fine" at every juncture.
First of all, Windows NT isn't exactly pure microkernel. Second, neither the native core kernel, nor the win32 executive subsystem depends on IE for functionality. The whole system up to that level works great without IE. The issues only come on top of win32, in the actual shell implementation.
Now, you're doing a nasty logic error there, I think. You are assuming that the system is not going to be configured and the defaults are used. If you make such assumption, you cannot conclude the same thing and have it mean anything. If you assume that user won't install alternative browser, then it means nothing to conclude that it's unlikely that alternative browser gets installed.
So, what's your point exactly and what are you trying to say? I'm not quite following your thoughts with either the microkernel thing nor the idiot user thing. You're talking about system core design with the microkernel issues, yet you refer to the whole userland and user experience as a "system" as well when you talk of IE. I don't see how they relate, as the scope of "system" is different for both cases.
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goddamnit you just love twisting words do you?
not as much as you enjoy spouting bullshit (apparently) if i could punch you over the internet i damn sure would. right now. you just refuse to understand what i'm saying, don't you?
nope, i don't, but you appear not to be too keen on talking what is known to the rest of us as "sense".
your comment about the word definitions is heavily offensive.
not really, it's a rough summation of your attitude towards defining what you say. I find it offensive that you continue to say generalised and contrary comments while expecting people to instinctively know what you are talking about. now for a REAL offensive comment, try this:
Go and fuck yourself you moron.
See? totally different from what i said before.
i have no idea why i'm bothering to reply to you at all,
well you'd be best placed to answer that, don't you think? if you don't know, i certainly don't! since you clearly show NO INTENT TO DISCUSS THE SUBJECT but instead just want to mock me.
firstly, mocking you is a lot of fun, however i only do it as a byproduct of attempting to communicate with you. Your communication skills seem to be throttled one way, so you can output a tremendous amount of information (or a good imitation thereof) but you're not too good at taking it in. contrary to your accusations, i'm happy to discuss any subject here, so long as i know something about it, so pick up your toys and let's get back to it. you keep saying things that have nothing to do with the subject, and are not related to it except through a common item (in this case, IE). it makes my blood boil.
oh so terribly sorry. do people in finland stick to the point 100% of the time? if so, then why have you just wasted an entire paragraph to air your frustrations publicly?
then you try to thwart the discussion by making some statements, again unrelated to the subject, and say that my on-topic discussion doesn't address these off-topic issues.
jeez! usually when you start a new paragraph, it means you are finished with the point at hand. why do i have a feeling of deja vu here? no shit, sherlock! IE security issues have nothing to do with "integration", thus my views on the integration don't address security.
aha! now some sort of substance (finally). ok, smartass, SOME people think that the two ARE connected, and you getting your underwear in a knot is NOT going to change their OPINION. get it?
and finally, the last paragraph in your previous post, you ask "bad html causes windows system security problems?". You obviously had no fscking clue about what I said in the text you're replying to.
oh how dumb of me. HEY EVERYBODY, COME AND LAUGH AT ME, I COULDN'T UNDERSTAND ONE OF MUZZY'S POINTS! how is this a problem? simply explain yourself C-L-E-A-R-L-Y and this problem will disappear of its own accord. do you seriously think you can waltz onto these forums, spew a load of confusing shit about how windows is the best operating system (except windows xp, and windows ME and every other windows up to windows ME) and expect everybody to understand what your unreasoning gobbledygook means? not everybody will, surprisingly, and even more surprisingly, i am one of them. That, or you're defining "system security" to mean something else than it means.
whatever. but i think you are dangerously close to going off topic here. If application uses a library which lets you do more than you intend, and then you use that library, it's not a system security issue. It's an application issue. That application acting like that can be a system security issue, but ITS NOT FAULT OF THE LIBRARY!
ok, again, this is NOT what i was talking about. how come if i don't understand you, it's my fault, but if YOU don't understand ME... it's ALSO my fault?
dumbass.
... time to go get something cold to drink,
i would recommend sulphuric acid. i need to cool down. if you keep replying with your bullshit, i wont bother continuing this discussion further.
oh no! how would i live with myself.
the same does not go for you, i actually enjoy replying to your bullshit, even though it saddens me that you have gone so far off topic in this "post" of yours.
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Word to word responses, mud slinging eh?
The way you discuss about IE, you just throw random things at the table, and when I point out how these things work, you're saying I accuse some third party for the problems you're experiencing while you'd prefer to blame Microsoft for their design decisions.
Technical issues aren't opinions, technical issues are FACTS. You cannot argue about facts, unless you're arguing about validity of them. If people have differing views, they're either discussing opinions or only one of them is right. I've been trying to discuss facts about the design of IE and its implications on security. Either I'm right or I'm wrong, other people's opinions can't change FACTS. If you don't believe me, there's no need to. Just say so, it's ok if you don't have solid knowledge about the subject, but I really really dislike it when you don't understand what I'm saying, and attack some interpretation of yours and expect me to defend it, or simply refuse to comment and instead say something completely unrelated.
And could you PLEASE read this post through a few times before you choose to reply? If you just grab on words sentence at a time, you're guaranteed to just annoy me again and not contribute to discussion (as if there's any discussion left here anymore)
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while i think it's great that you have calmed down enough to communicate effectively again, i really think it's better if i don't reply specifically, since i am not an expert on how IE works, but also because as you say, there's little to no discussion left, if there ever was any in the first place, given that the subject is primarily factual, rather than interpretational.
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Flamebait aside two people have replied to this thread in a reasonable manner, why not just respond to them?
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I tried respond to orethius above, and what comes to system updates, I wasn't aware that the autoupdated depends on IE. Is this the case? I could do some research later.
Regarding the windowsupdate site, yeah, IE dependency there is kind of an issue, traditional approach to writing a standalone update application in the first place would've been better. I don't think there's any malice involved, though. Someone just thought it'd be good to have a kind of "application service provider" type of approach there.
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But yo can't despute the fact tha Microsoft put Internet Explorer there push Netscape out in the first place.
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But yo can't despute the fact tha Microsoft put Internet Explorer there push Netscape out in the first place.
that's not the topic
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I don't have enough background knowledge about the IE-Netscape fight, but I have to admit it's quite disturbing that IE development was stopped when it had gained dominance. I'm more interested into the technical side of my OS of choice than politics, sorry :)
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I don't have enough background knowledge about the IE-Netscape fight, but I have to admit it's quite disturbing that IE development was stopped when it had gained dominance. I'm more interested into the technical side of my OS of choice than politics, sorry :)
(most of what people do here is bitch about politics)
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It sucks that so many people hate technically superior system due to marketing practices and other issues. I suspected earlier that people oppose Microsoft for ideological reasons and now I'm sure this is most likely true even in the cases where people claim otherwise.
Call it arrogance if you want to, but if you don't understand something, your opinions about it are going to be useless. I haven't researched the marketing and don't understand business too well, so my views on microsoft's business practices are going to be useless. Similarly, if you don't understand how Windows NT works, your views of it are going to be useless. One thing which you can claim competence is understanding user experience for clueless users, which apparently indeed sucks. However blaming it for technical issues you have little knowledge of is not going to be fruitful.
My views might seem unrealistic because I mostly refuse to helpdesk newbies (it's such a hassle), and I know what I'm doing so my views are based on what Windows NT systems are like when they're used by someone who at least knows the minimum necessary basics of computers, operating systems and windows. My point of view is also a programmer-centric, which could explain why the system makes so much more sense to me than it does to you. Based on my experiences, Windows is a wonderful OS which is quite stable and secure. It's not perfect, but it's great, and for me it's better than any other alternative out there.
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I don't see anything wrong with not buying something for political reasons. It's like not buying a pair of trainers even though they're both better and cheaper because they're make by child slaves. However Microsoft Windows is not the best operating system and it certainly isn't the cheapest.
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Ideological/political reasons are fine, there's nothing wrong with it if that's indeed the reason. But a lot of people have such reasons, yet claim otherwise. This is silly and annoying, because there's no point discussing with them about the issues they claim are the reason, because they're not the reason.
What is "best" always relates to some specific use and specific requirements. Windows isn't "the best operating system" for this reason alone, such a concept as "universally best" just doesn't exist. Things can be good for some purposes or bad for some purposes, but are generally not universally good or bad.
Oh, and it's quite naive to think that the sales price is the only thing that affects cost of running a system. Ofcourse, it's easy to find a scenario where a free (as in beer) operating systems are truly cheaper than windows, but it's equally easy to find a scenario where windows ends up cheaper to run. It's a case to case thing, and its significance varies from case to case as well.
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TCO is bullshit jargon used to justify the existence of a system that costs US $350 retail, ~ US $180 OEM. Maybe if it only measured cost of maintenance, there'd be a fair competition, but corporations always feel the need to include the ever-more-vague - and highly subjective - term "training" in the shootouts. Figures.
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Muzzy you have a point about understanding the system.
Personally I do not see it as technologically superior. Linux has as much as NT does, it has accses control lists and everything you have talked of so far, and just like Windows most distro's dont use them. However Fedora has SELinux as an option for example, which I have mentioned, and being The Linux Hitler I repeat myself often.
You might want to start it in another thread, because I am curious what Windows has that Linux does not.
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TCO is bullshit jargon used to justify the existence of a system that costs US $350 retail, ~ US $180 OEM. Maybe if it only measured cost of maintenance, there'd be a fair competition, but corporations always feel the need to include the ever-more-vague - and highly subjective - term "training" in the shootouts. Figures.
Well, TCO just basically means how much the company has to invest to use some system. To be able to operate a system, you need to be able to use it. If some people don't know how to use windows and the required applications, you need training. Same applies for linux and the required applications. Comparing mere numbers is pointless, though. Whatever method is used to calculate costs, it will vary on case by case basis.
With TCO, as with all statistics, you have to understand what is being measured and if it applies to what you're using it for before you use it. If your case doesn't match with the assumptions used for the calculations, the numbers are worthless. However, just because generic studies don't work in some specific cases doesn't mean things aren't that way. Windows based solutions can be cheap, and often are, for specific cases.
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oddly enough, the discussion has veered away from the issue of IE's integratedness, almost immediately after me getting a bitchslap for going "off topic". And now we've got another moaning sourface chiming in purely to whine about what's on and off topic too!
considering the thread is called "How to make your Windows machine more stable and secure", i wonder why certain people keep trying to intimidate certain other people (some of whom are no doubt not posting here as a result) by moaning about them being off topic.
this thread title includes a WIDE range of potential discussions and I think that people (esp people who are not moderators) should probably moan LESS about what's on and off topic.
and this post is not off topic, consider it an administrative comment, i suppose.
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Calum, if there's still something unclear IE's integratedness, go ahead. I've stated my views already, which are to say that the "integratedness" is not a security issue, and IE isn't necessary for system operation although Windows itself doesn't want you to uninstall it. You're free to download a third party tool such as nlite to remove anything you want to.
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It sucks that so many people hate technically superior system due to marketing practices and other issues. I suspected earlier that people oppose Microsoft for ideological reasons and now I'm sure this is most likely true even in the cases where people claim otherwise.
What is "best" always relates to some specific use and specific requirements. Windows isn't "the best operating system" for this reason alone, such a concept as "universally best" just doesn't exist.
From one post to another, you contradict yourself. What constitutes "technically superior"? You have already admitted that the whole Win 9x series is not "technically superior", nor do you seem to think all that highly of Win XP either. The comment in red is the correct one. There are no "ideal" solutions out there, never were, never will be.
In many ways, Linux is the "technically superior" platform. If I were setting up a server farm, Win-d'ohs would be my absolute last choice. When it comes to setting up a system for a routine, run-of-the-mill user who's largely atechnological, and not interested in learning, then, perhaps, XP would be the best choice. As for myself, it is not an option. I'm too enamoured of the configurability of the *NIX's. My desktop of choice is Enlightenment. Now, should I decide to get KDE, GNOME, IceWM, etc. it's NBD to install one or more, plus a desktop switcher, and I can still keep Enlightenment. Change the desktop in XP, and it's quite a job of hacking, nor do you have the option of easily switching desktops and themes. XP just is not as configurable.
Furthermore, Linux is a better platform for learning programming. The RAD development kits that come with Win * are certainly convenient and you can move apps out the door quickly with them. However, these dumbed-down development environments lead to lazy, dumbed-down developers. A pretty GUI can easily hide a multitude of bad code. We've all seen the result: apps that crash at the drop of an electron, the wide-open buffers, apps that don't perform as advertised. "Professional" programmers who don't seem to be able to understand what a pointer is and what it does.
I suspected earlier that people oppose Microsoft for ideological reasons and now I'm sure this is most likely true even in the cases where people claim otherwise.
You are never going to separate "ideological" concerns. It was Microsoft themselves who made it an issue. WPA, the onerous EULAs, the attempt to 'jack Java, the on-going attempt to 'jack the very protocols that drive the 'Net: all these are political and ideological. Microsoft could put an end to it any time they wanted to: use W3C compliant HTML in IE so that there would be no more web sites (and I've seen a few) that won't render on alternative browsers, cancel the NDAs that they require manufacturers of hardware to sign for full access to the Windows API, so that the protocols of said hardware could be published and Open Source drivers could be written for such things as WinModems, WinPrinters (Note: I personally visited the corporate headquarters of Lexmark to ask about the protocols for the Lexmark WinPrinter. They refused, even though I told them that I would code a Linux driver and give the code to them, citing an NDA.) audio and video cards so that full functionality could be guaranteed when used with non-Win * platforms.
Don't like it? Then take it up with Sir William of Redmond; you're barking up the wrong tree here. :p
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Indeed, I'm still talking about Windows NT, not the 9x. The reason I dislike XP is unrelated to the core kernel, but the cheese that some jerks have managed to push on top of it.
What comes to window managers, some applications would just totally die if you were to change the default windowproc or the default widgets. I happen to like the windows look, and the desktop itself is configurable enough. You can change your shell without screwing the whole system, and you can have per-user shells. That's well enough for me. The shell can then perform any skinning hacks it wants to. Just because there isn't some cute "Shell Changing Wizard" doesn't mean it's less configurable. I suppose you're ok with editing configfiles by hand in linux? Well, you can edit the registry by hand in windows.
Regarding the programming, stupid developers exist using all platforms. The development platforms aren't really always "dumbed down", a lot of things are just abstracted. The problem is that the abstractions tend to always leak in a way or another, so the developer would better know how the stuff works underneath the abstraction. The higher level language you take, the less programmers have to care about lowlevel issues, and the less they will care about them. The solution is not to teach developers about lowlevel issues, but to move to even higher level languages. Buffer overflows only happen in languages where it's possible to do in the first place. Applications not working as advertised tends to be due to lack of testing, i.e. the whole development process is to blame, not merely the programmer. This isn't fault of windows, this is fault of inexperienced developer. Are you saying it's a bad thing to enable these people to write software? By the same logic Photoshop sucks too, because it enables 10 year old kids to smack lens flares on top of otherwise fine pictures. The fact that incompetent people can still do something that does its job is only a proof that the development tools are damned powerful.
Regarding the issue with drivers, this is a lot bigger thing. NDA is just an excuse in some cases, the real thing is that keeping the drivers closed gives a competitive advantage. With complex devices, you can usually determine a lot of stuff about the hardware based on the driver and the hardware interface alone. Opening that information would be same as revealing trade secrets to your competitors. It's just a bad idea, so people won't be doing it unless everyone is forced to do it. The issue is especially touchy with the winmodems and winprinters, because a lot of the functionality gets implemented in software. If this software was free (as in speech), it would enable competitors to merely copy the hardware and use the same software for their own hardware. This would save a significant amounts of money, and companies are responsible for making profit. They can't just give away stuff that will save a lot of money for their competitors and cuts their own share.
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Calum, if there's still something unclear IE's integratedness, go ahead. I've stated my views already, which are to say that the "integratedness" is not a security issue, and IE isn't necessary for system operation although Windows itself doesn't want you to uninstall it. You're free to download a third party tool such as nlite to remove anything you want to.
no, no, i was just commenting (in an admin type way) that the thread topic is quite wide, so i am a bit bemused by the flying accusations of off-topicness going on, that's all.
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Personally its quite damn easy to secure up IE a little, however I find the interface so damn annoying, I dig Tabs, yaar.
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If you want tabs with IE, you can use some other application host for it. A friend of mine uses Maxthon (http://www.maxthon.com/), which uses the IE html services and other stuff to do its work, and gives you tabbed browsing and other things. I can't comment about it any more than that because I haven't tried it out, but it might be just what you need if you want to use IE but dislike the application UI.
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Okay, I will try...
[x11@kintaro Windows]$ chmod +x msetup.exe
[x11@kintaro Windows]$ ./msetup.exe
bash: ./msetup.exe: cannot execute binary file
DOESNT EVEN WORK!
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Cannot execute binary file? Aww, perhaps you need to write a wrapper application to load the binary image into memory by yourself since execve seems to be screwing with you! ... that's how much linux sucks, doesn't even support PE executables. Just some silly ELF crap. Isn't it embarassing to explains to people that your system is ran by a bunch of invisible elves?
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Bahahahahaha.
I just installed it blind, and it wont run... (needs IE of course)
http://web.aanet.com.au/kintaro/Ahem.jpg
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http://web.aanet.com.au/kintaro/Ahem2.jpg
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What comes to window managers, some applications would just totally die if you were to change the default windowproc or the default widgets.
This, right here, is a sign of a technically inferior design. There is no way that changing a window manager or a widget set should kill an app. This doesn't happen on a *NIX system, where you can run your GNOME or KDE apps from any other window manager. As a desktop, I'm not too damn fond of GNOME. However, I do like a lot of GNOME apps. It's NBD to run said apps from Enlightenment. The window manager should not be a factor.
I happen to like the windows look, and the desktop itself is configurable enough.
Do you really? Or is it that you have settled for it because you know that there is precious little that you can do about it? "Configurable enough" is good enough for some, but not for me. :p
The higher level language you take, the less programmers have to care about lowlevel issues, and the less they will care about them. The solution is not to teach developers about lowlevel issues, but to move to even higher level languages.
I'm glad you agree with me: dumbed-down development environments lead to dumbed-down, lazy, don't care developers. Furthermore, just who is going to write the interpreters for those "even higher level languages" if noone knows, or cares to know, about "lowlevel issues"? :p
Opening that information would be same as revealing trade secrets to your competitors. It's just a bad idea, so people won't be doing it unless everyone is forced to do it. The issue is especially touchy with the winmodems and winprinters, because a lot of the functionality gets implemented in software. If this software was free (as in speech), it would enable competitors to merely copy the hardware and use the same software for their own hardware. This would save a significant amounts of money, and companies are responsible for making profit.
This is nonsense. Lexmark doesn't make a damn thing from selling their crappy printers. These things go for about $90, or so. All the profit comes from selling the replacement ink cartridges which go for $30 a pop. Go through three or four and you've invested more in ink than you did in the printer. This is where they make all their profit: get the user hooked on a cheap printer, and you've got a customer for life. Besides, just what deep, dark secrets do you think will be given away from disclosing the prorocols for a modem? There is more hardware in a real, hardware, modem or have you forgotten this little fact?
BTW: nice attempt to dodge the issue :D
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The widget issue is because applications subclass widgets and expect some kind of default behaviour. You can change it and the apps will run, but some applications will not function nice with it. In the very least, ownerdrawn windows will have nasty look as they'll stand out and won't theme. I'm not aware of how X11 window managers do the theming, but I'd say the widget library has to cooperate there. The applications written against a widget library that doesn't support such things will stick out. How can such a system be any better, if theme support only comes for you if you use a specific widget set? The reason why gnome/kde apps work with other window managers, too, is that they likely fall back to some default rendering mechanisms on the widget library level.
You can have all the same theming functionality in windows. The issue is that a lot of the time people use their own custom widgets which are subclassed from the existing ones. If the app only uses standard widgets, there aren't going to be issues with skinning the windows, and there are many skinning systems for windows as a proof. They just don't work with every application out there, for a good reason.
Although I'm not personally going for skinned systems, this looks quite configurable to me: http://box.crackmonkey.us/screenies/2789.jpg
And I really do like the default look of windows apps. It's good and clean.
I don't agree that dumbed down dev environments lead to dumb developers. These developers already exist. Powerful dev environments enable these people to develop software, too, which is a good thing. The problem is that these clowns don't take any responsibility for their shoddy products, which is a bad thing. However, if they manage to sell their software to someone, all is fine. You don't have to buy crap, and if a crappy products does its job then it's not a crappy product, no matter what a pile of spaghetti code it might be.
Also, you don't seem to have a grasp of the reality if you're serious about your "just who is going to write the interpreters" view. There have always been and there will always be people who research the lowlevel stuff. Most of the really good highlevel people know about lowlevel issues, and know when to care about them and when to not. Also, interpreters and compilers can damn well be written in high level languages as well. If you're going to take the chicken and egg scenario out, I dare you research about how C compilers can possibly be written in C.
Regarding the drivers and hardware issues, I don't consider it dodging an issue. Definitely it still applies to graphics hardware and printers and so on. As for the winmodems, if someone makes hardware compatible modem which will work with same drivers, they can do it cheaper if they dont have to develop drivers. Winmodem makers have to make their profit, too. Regarding the ink selling, that's a business plan that sucks and they're realizing it when they have to sue people who make compatible cartridges. Such stupidity can't last forever.
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The widget issue is because applications subclass widgets and expect some kind of default behaviour. You can change it and the apps will run, but some applications will not function nice with it. In the very least, ownerdrawn windows will have nasty look as they'll stand out and won't theme. I'm not aware of how X11 window managers do the theming, but I'd say the widget library has to cooperate there. The applications written against a widget library that doesn't support such things will stick out. How can such a system be any better, if theme support only comes for you if you use a specific widget set? The reason why gnome/kde apps work with other window managers, too, is that they likely fall back to some default rendering mechanisms on the widget library level.
I'm not aware of how X11 window managers do the theming...
That much is quite obvious. All along, you have been telling us that if only we understood Winderz, that we'd all stop the criticism, and come to love it. Well, here you are, criticizing Linux and you admit that you don't understand Linux. Oh sweet irony! :D You see, the reason it works in Linux is that nothing is tied together that tightly. The X Server handles low-level pixmaps and primitives. The X Server doesn't give a damn about widget sets and themes. This is strictly up to the window manager. Therefore, it doesn't matter that you have GNOME apps or KDE apps running on something other than GNOME or KDE, or that you're running Enlightenment apps (ETerm, GkrellM, etc.) on something other than Enlightenment. Win-d'ohs, by design, lacks that flexibility. Once again: I consider this to be a technical limitation.
Although I'm not personally going for skinned systems, this looks quite configurable to me: http://box.crackmonkey.us/screenies/2789.jpg
It's a Linux window manager port to XP. Funny how that works: Linux apps get ported to Win*, but when has any Win* app ever been ported to Linux?
However, if they manage to sell their software to someone, all is fine. You don't have to buy crap, and if a crappy products does its job then it's not a crappy product, no matter what a pile of spaghetti code it might be.
Still short-sighted stupidity. That crap spaghetti code is way more difficult, time-consuming, and, hence, expensive, to maintain. You can either pay knowledgeable coders who know what they're doing, what they're worth to write good code from the get-go, or you can pay them a whole lot more to fix the dumbass's code when that app needs maintenence.
Also, you don't seem to have a grasp of the reality if you're serious about your "just who is going to write the interpreters" view. There have always been and there will always be people who research the lowlevel stuff. Most of the really good highlevel people know about lowlevel issues, and know when to care about them and when to not.
Here, you try to insult me, and only manage to prove my original point. :rolleyes:
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Well, there are plenty of window managers for X11 and I was under the impression that they only managed window placement and borders. I tried quickly reading about it when I was replying, and found the some window managers (icewm) supported themes only this way (themed borders), while some seemed to support more. However, it's not a window manager thing anymore, it's a widget library which does the theming support. If you want widget library with theming support, you can do it under windows as well. Not a problem. I'm under the impression that you only get the theming to work properly under X windows if all applications you run are using the same widget library (or happen to support same theming mechanism). I'll research this later.
Also, that bb4win is not a PORT, it's a reimplementation and somewhat sucky at that, happened to be the only one I remembered quickly. As additional bonus, I think it handles skinning through external application, for which there are alternatives as well. This isn't an issue of application portability, this is just some kids reimplementing a toy for windows.
About application development, I'm sorry but in real world software is written in a goal oriented fashion, and what goes into actual code doesn't matter. Good code is always great thing, but it doesn't matter how good the code if something important doesn't work. And it doesn't matter how good the code if the damn thing works. For server applications, "small" used to mean "takes less than half the system resources" in some cases, and if your business needs a software that performs some task, you're going to pay even for crap if it's really what you need.
Also, I'm not trying to insult you. You're out of touch of reality if you think that all people would suddenly be bad programmers if there are some bad programmers out there. Obviously the guys with one year of visual basic experience won't be writing compilers and interpreters. Big deal!
Also, regarding to understanding a system, a point you made up early in the post. You seemed to enjoy just punching it in my face, as if we're having an ego fight of some sort here. I pointed out my lack of knowledge on the X11 WM theming details because it sucks to pretend to know something when you don't. I have an idea how I think it goes, but having never worked with the theming crap I don't have any concrete experience. Now you're somehow extrapolating that this means I don't understand linux.
From what I understand of the theming issue here, windows approach is indeed a lot better. The issue with defwindowproc replacement is applications that have been written to expect something of it although the system makes no such guarantees. This includes hacks like adding new buttons to captionbars through evil trickery and other such stuff, even done by big players. Windows XP changed how things render, and apparently had some attempt at theming. I don't know details of how it works, but I recall some applications didn't like it.
I cannot possibly see how a looser approach to doing things is better. The whole idea of pixmapped themes just doesn't fit the X11 design. You can no longer run the applications remotely unless you're ok with them eating shitloads of bandwidth. Advantages of X11 just don't work together with the modern crap.
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Plus, it looks like you totally dodged the issue of configurability in windows by tackling some irrelevancy which happened to also be incorrect. I should put some more effort into writing these replies, you're happily redefining the subject here :)
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The X11 thin is not just Linux it's unix as a whole. Windows has a standard widget set. UNIX does not, and that's by design. The people who first developed X make it plain they didn't want to make it bloated. They set the software developer have a choice about widgets the look and feel. X is just a API for drawing graphic object on the screen. I not even a programer or UNIX expert and I know this!
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Yepyep, X windowing system is quite old stuff. However, the modern uses for X11 go way beyond what X11 was designed for. When it comes to theme support, it looks like GTK has a standard widget set that it can theme, and anything other than that won't be themed. When it comes to specific widgetsets and window managers, the current linux desktop systems become quite a bit more messy than plain X11.
Saying that windows is inferior just because some Gnome desktop can theme Gnome applications that are written against Gnome libraries, is quite absurd. If I were to make my own widget library for windows and implement theme support for it, I could have the exact same behaviour. Since there are standard window classes as well, I can go further than that and theme all the fscking applications, as long as they don't try to do anything funny.
Tackling to a single funny issue is weak, too. It doesn't change the rest of the points. Windows still stands superior in many fields, and if you think you can change that by trying to twist any point of your choosing into advantage of non-windows system, you're just trying to avoid the actual subject.
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Yepyep, X windowing system is quite old stuff. However, the modern uses for X11 go way beyond what X11 was designed for.
X Windows is differs from the Windows UI, of course it isn't old or inferior (with the exception of XFree86), because it's an open source product.
This means that lots of people keep improving the product, and this happens to X.org, because it's a common wide used application. Claiming that it's inferior because X is around for so long isn't a good argument, because X renews itself everyday.
I haven't looked at the code myself, but I'm certain that there isn't much code left from the X project that started decades ago. In fact, it isn't even the same application anymore, because it differs greatly.
So my point here is that it doesn't matter that X11 now goes way beyond what is was designed for. It has been improved, wether the original creators like it or not. That is the strenght of open source.
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Are we going to argue about X11 now? As far as I know, a modern X11 desktop uses shitloads of bandwidth, and running remote applications on it with all that eyecandy is a lagfest. I've always considered the remote nature of X11 to be one of its strenghts, and that's being greatly reduced with all the blehbleh stuff.
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Sorry about my last post the grammar really sucked.
Some things about X haven't changed because they can't or it would break the compatibility with other applications. X is good because minimalist, not bloated and it does a good job of separating the hardware from the software, this is good as lots of users can share the same graphics card if needs be.
But developers often prefer having a widget set, common dialogues, drag and drop etc. so desktops were created. But back then every UNIX vendor would have their own desktop (if they chose to have one at all) and this was a pain for develops because they had to change their desktop applications to run on a different desktop. This is why developers prefer Mac OS or Windows, because a Mac or Windows program will run on numerous versions of the operating system they chose without any modification and they don't have to worry about dependences like on Linux.
At the moment they're two main desktops for Linux GNOME and KDE. It seems that GTK is one of the most popular GUI development libraries and KDE is the most common desktop, not long ago they didn't interoperate very well but this is improving and I hope it continues to improve.
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Are we going to argue about X11 now? As far as I know, a modern X11 desktop uses shitloads of bandwidth, and running remote applications on it with all that eyecandy is a lagfest. I've always considered the remote nature of X11 to be one of its strenghts, and that's being greatly reduced with all the blehbleh stuff.
That "blehbleh" stuff is the responsebility of KDE and Gnome, not X.org.
You are still able to run a light-weight Blackbox or IceWM without the eye candy lagfest. And yes, those two are pretty modern too.
If it's necessary to run X on a server (which can sometimes be useful), I strongly disrecommend KDE or Gnome, because it wastes CPU and it slows down VNC.
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I actually prefer fvwm, although it sometimes feels a little bloat, especially if I'm forced to use fvwm2. That's the way X should be, and that's the way it shows its power. I don't see the need for gui apps under X, since the ideology it best works with is having multiple terminals and some special display windows (xload, xclock, pager) along it. Web browser and gimp tend to require gui, because of the way they operate.
I heavily dislike any theme crap on X, and I dislike it on windows as well. Form follows function, and as long as the UI is functional, it will look good too. In my opinion, the people who disagree are the kind of people who don't use computers as a tool, but rather want an entertainment center or a decorated idling place. I personalize my systems with functionality rather than looks.
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i prefer windowmaker and in fact xfce myself, for more or less the same reasons.
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This may just be the most useful tutorial ever written.
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You make a windows machine more stable by removing Windows and installing Linux. :p
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i prefer windowmaker and in fact xfce myself, for more or less the same reasons.
Me too. :eek::thumbup:
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Oh dear god no, a thread resurrection with immediate "me too" posts. And a whine about a thread resurrection (this post). Will it get any more pointless than this?
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Oh dear god no, a thread resurrection with immediate "me too" posts. And a whine about a thread resurrection (this post). Will it get any more pointless than this?
Resurrecting a sticky thread is sorta meaningless.
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This thread isn't sticky anyway one vote for bin because this is a M$ Winblow$ help thread.
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This thread isn't sticky anyway one vote for bin because this is a M$ Winblow$ help thread.
It's a thread for helping Windows users by pointing them to an alternative. Something wrong with that?
It doesn't break any rules anyhow, greatscot didn't ask how to fix any Microsoft products.
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I say we sticky this but change the name a bit. This was origanally about alternatives to Windows but changed into a thread about the quality of MS products, Windows in particular. This shows some of the arguments for and against Windows and remains a fairly civil discussion. I say for this reason it should be sticked.
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I stand corrected.
The following steps will show you how to make your Windows machine more stable and secure.
1. Open the CD tray
2. Insert a Linux distro - CD 1 of x or DVD
3. Reboot your machine into BIOS and make the changes necessary for your machine to boot from CD/DVD
4. Install Linux using the entire hard drive
5. Throw all Windows CD's/DVD's in the dumpster where they belong
I did this and have been very satisfied with my machine because it is now more stable, secure and faster than ever.