Linux......Come of age!!!!!

S0litaire

be_alright wrote: »

Windows XP will stop being sold retail at the end of this month and Microsoft will provide support up until 2014, five years after it's discontinuation.

But XP will still be sold as OEM with PC's from places like DELL until 1Q 2009.

Also for them to compeate with Linux in the growth of the Ultra Mobile Personal Computers (UMPC) market will mean Microsoft will still have to use XP for these devices (Since Vista is a resource HOG!) so they have to tailor it to the small devices and support it till atleast Windows 7 is released (there will have to be a UMPC version of Win7). Think they have given up on getting Vista to run on these resource limited devices!

[Deleted User]

S0litaire wrote: »

But XP will still be sold as OEM with PC's from places like DELL until 1Q 2009.

Also for them to compeate with Linux in the growth of the Ultra Mobile Personal Computers (UMPC) market will mean Microsoft will still have to use XP for these devices (Since Vista is a resource HOG!) so they have to tailor it to the small devices and support it till atleast Windows 7 is released (there will have to be a UMPC version of Win7). Think they have given up on getting Vista to run on these resource limited devices!

You'll pay the premium for XP with Dell over Vista, £60 I think it was earlier when I was pricing a laptop up.

Microsoft could not scale Vista down to work on low powered devices, it's unfeasible both technically and financially when they have a perfectly apt operating system that ran perfectly well on the machines of 2001, which these smaller devices are very similar to. Vista was never designed to be anything but a Workstation/Server system.

I'd hardly say Vista is a resource hog. Windows 7's development is taking Vista as the base and Microsoft are making it one of the development aims of 7 to run on the same hardware that Vista does today.

S0litaire

I Personality i feel Vista is a resource hog. each to their own.

My 5 year old Dell Laptop running Ubuntu8.04 and has all the flashy graphical stuff (Compiz) running on a 32Mb video card that takes Vista "Aero" a 256Mb DX9 compatible to do.

For others that don't know what "compiz" is take a look at this comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ

mikegahan

I had an old Sony vaio with Windows XP and when i downloaded a security update i was locked out(apparently this had happened to a lot of users). Thanks, Bill! Anyway I tried various distributions in a spirit of enquiry and found one - Mepis - that worked in the sense that I could get an internet connection via Ethernet. And it is very fast now. But I am still trying to get the wireless connection to work and this is the limitation of Linux that it requires considerable knowledge to be able to do so and thus it is OK if it comes pre-installed on a machine like the Asus but not if you have to do it yourself. There is help out there in the Linux formums but of course it is all voluntary and i understand that the problem with Linux - drivers, etc, is not the fault of Linux itself.

[Deleted User]

What particular aspect of your machine is Vista "hogging" though, it's a terribly glib statement..

The overhaul of what has culminated in Aero does quite a lot more than the GUI. Display tasks are now handled by the GPU and taken away from the system kernal so in the event of a driver failure, it can simply be restarted without affecting the stability of the system ie no more bluescreens and no more shifting of graphical information around between the gpu and cpu, hence more more windowlag when the cpu is doing something and can't accept a priority task at the same time.

So in effect, compiz doesn't do anything remotely near what the Aero and associated tasks do

S0litaire

I found that the whole OS seemed slow. I was running it in a core2duo 1.6Mhz with 2Gb ram. I've been using Vista since the beta pre RC builds (was in on the beta testing). Was using Vista Ultimate right up untill I lost my Job mid last year and a few months later a power surge blew my PSU and Mobo!

Since November i've been running Ubuntu on an old laptop and it feels faster not had one crash or hangup, Vista done it to me at least once a month if not more while doing normal tasks and a few CPU intensice tasks like converting Video for DVD. Which, although slow, my laptop does with no complaints.

As i said to each their own.

superscaper

The rumour in the articles I've read is that Windows 7 will be modular and completely stripped down and so you install really what you need to rather than the one size fits all that Vista (and XP) is. We'll have to wait and see but that sound like a good idea and solves the complaints of MS bloating its software.

BillScarab

superscaper wrote: »

The rumour in the articles I've read is that Windows 7 will be modular and completely stripped down and so you install really what you need to rather than the one size fits all that Vista (and XP) is. We'll have to wait and see but that sound like a good idea and solves the complaints of MS bloating its software.

Apparently the latest stripped down Windows 7 core (WinMin) runs in 25Mb of memory. But thsat is only the most basic module.

As they said in a magazine article I read recently the problem Microsoft has is that everyone says Windows is bloated but if they take out the bloat everyone complains becuase the software they bought 10 years ago no longer works.

S0litaire

MS should have done with Vista what Apple Did with OSX.

Start from scratch and if you need to run a legacy program then use the inbuilt emulator.

Microsoft has had the ability to do this for a while but never aimed it at it's home computing clients (Just business and development clients). Virtual PC and Virtual Server products, both which are free, you supply the OS.

[Deleted User]

I'd like to see Microsoft doing more with third party drivers to ensure they are of good enough quality to not cause system issues and that WHQL and Certified for X actually means something.

Bad drivers nearly crippled Vista.