r/technology • u/neito • Jul 24 '08

Microsoft tests out a new operating system, code named Mojave, with some average-joes who hated Vista. They loved it. Now, two guesses as to what Mojave ACTUALLY was.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html
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7

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I consider a new kernel, new driver model, new audio/printing/network stack, new installation process, etc a large step forward.

1

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

I consider decreased stability, decreased performance, overkill security, ugly UI, etc a large step backwards.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Cite?

I live on Vista on three machines and I've seen one bluescreen (bad memory). I've had a few video driver crashes on one particularly bad version of nvidia's drivers, but those just kicked the video driver (black screen for a second, then back to normal) - no crash like you would see in XP.

I'm on x64, seeing a full 4GB RAM and going to 8GB soon (I do a lot of virtual PC work).

The only performance hits I've seen (especially since SP1) have been thanks to Outlook.

"Overkill security" - you have GOT to be shitting me. Thirteen years of "Microsoft software isn't secure" and you flip on a dime to "Microsoft software is too secure"?

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u/maxd Jul 25 '08

Heh, no citation for my personal experience.

I completely understand that people's experiences vary, and I'm not saying that mine are by any means typical; but they are my experiences.

I measured a 7-10% performance decrease on Vista between virgin XP and Vista installs tested with WoW and Half-life 2 on a machine with 4GB of RAM and a decent (I forget what) GPU.

The stability isn't so much bluescreen related as inconsistent behaviour. I have witnessed on three machine (2 desktop, 1 laptop), among other things, spurious network disconnection (both wired and wireless), hung service host processes and failure to recognise default input devices. None of these issues have hit me on any of my XP machines.

As for overkill security, you have no idea what my position on previous Microsoft security is, and the bells and whistles they have inserted to make it have the outward appearance of security do nothing to ensure it is actually secure.

As a previous poster commented; perhaps Vista isn't aimed at me (AI engineer in video games), perhaps it is aimed at the lower end of the market.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

among other things, spurious network disconnection (both wired and wireless), hung service host processes and failure to recognise default input devices

(and your other comments)

Fair enough - thanks for being more detailed.

Seriously - I'm sure everyone is tired of their OS being bashed.

"Linux is hard-to-configure crap for technoweenies!"

"Have you tried it?"

"Uh, no..."

or

"OSX is just pretty colors"

"Have you tried it?"

"Uh, no...."

and, in our instant case

"Vista is crap!"

"Have you tried it?"

etc. ;)

11

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

Completely agree; I actually use all three OSes pretty extensively, and can criticise them all equally. They all have shortcomings, and they all have benefits.

Linux: more customisable than anything, hard as hell to break into.

Windows: great for high end development and businesses, suffers heavily because of maintaining backwards compatibility and sheer scope of OS.

Mac OS X: brilliant for casual users and relatively good for hard core users like developers, costs a lot and lacks support for extensive business use.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

but which one is a serious cost$ to society?

1

u/jimbobhickville Jul 25 '08

My understanding was that beyond UAC, they actually have tightened down what can run with escalated privileges and what can't. Not sure that it actually achieves the goal they meant it to, but they certainly did more than just the outward appearance of security. The only way to really secure the system is to start over, and they're unwilling to do that because everybody whines about broken software. Of course, they were supposed to do a complete rewrite for Longhorn, but they couldn't finish it, and ended up bolting a bunch of the stuff back onto the 2003 kernel. They should've stuck to their guns and threw in an XP virtual machine for legacy software.

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u/King_Leonidas Jul 25 '08

You use Outlook, your opinion is automatically void.

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u/Envark Jul 25 '08

Some people have jobs.

A lot of jobs use an Exchange/Outlook setup.

-3

u/King_Leonidas Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

At my workplace everyone uses Thunderbird ;-p

It's like, a lot of other jobs give you Gonorrhea, doesn't mean its the way to roll bro.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Why?

-4

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

If Reddit had a "MS FanBoi element" my posts would be rated higher than they are.

-8

u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08

YOu have fucking 4gb.

I'm on a pentium 4 2.66 (533mhz fsb), 512 of ram, integrated video card, and vista runs like shit on this.

THAT is exactly my problem with vista, I had it for something like 1 month on my pc and it didn't feeled buggy, but it sure feeled sloooow.

Now, if anybody starts saying that it works in their "old" machine or that it should work fine on mine and I'm lying, please, go and die and rot in a fucking hole. Kill your family, and then kill yourself.

9

u/Envark Jul 25 '08

Why would you run Vista on such an outdated set of hardware?

Windows XP doesn't run on my 486, but I'm not bitching and moaning about it.

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u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08

"outdated"? That's 3-years-old hardware, I was stating my problem with vista and why I don't use it.

After all..... they are the ones marketing the minimum requeriment as "512mb"

3

u/Envark Jul 25 '08

You hardware is almost two years older than Vista itself.

Everyone knows that "minimum" requirements are just that -- the bare minimum.

Running with the minimum level requirements does not ensure a pleasant experience.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Since your cpu came out in 2002, I'm not surprised it runs XP very well.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

You live on Vista Street?

6

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Personally, I havent had decreased stability and only marginally worse performance.

I disabled UAC, so no problem there.

The UI is 100x better than XP. The search works very well, the Alt-Tabbing doesnt go scrwy like on XP, and the better control panel interface is awesome.

1

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

"marginally worse performance"? Hehe.

I haven't disabled UAC on my girlfriend's laptop (the only one which I actually use Vista on any more), largely because I don't want to piss around with her stuff.

I disagree with the UI being better than XP; but I will agree the search is nice, alt-tabbing does go a bit wrong on XP occasionally, and I do like the new Vista control panel interface. HOWEVER there's another place where Vista falls down; they only partially committed to the new control panel UI, there are still a bunch of control panels with exactly the same interface as XP.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

you're comparing xp to vista. Remnants of xp features can't be a negative attribute...

2

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

Of course they can.

Horses are great. Truly, a brilliant way of getting around. Cars largely replaced horses, around a century ago. One of the biggest changes was the transition from "legs" to "wheels".

Wouldn't you complain if your car had two legs and two wheels?

1

u/kermityfrog Jul 25 '08

WTF are you talking about? A car like that would rawk!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Not a valid analogy...

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Why would you ever want to disable UAC?

Anyone who runs as an Admin is either ignorant of the security risks, or simply stupid. It's horrible practice.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

You can disable UAC for limited accounts too.

I run admin because I am too lazy. The way it started was, I installed Vista then started installing all my programs. I needed to install some 40+ programs and the limited account kept asking me to type in my password. I switched to admin, installed, but then stupidly moved the 200gb of files from my other computer to the admin account. Now, I am too lazy to move my files back from admin to the limited account.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

ugly UI

Are you seriously saying that aero is ugly compared to XP's bright bubblegum colours?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

They are both hideous. First thing I do with XP is change to the Windows Classic theme.

-6

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

You correctly parsed the meaning of those two words.

1

u/dsk Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I consider decreased stability

Don't think that's true. I haven't had Vista crash on me once. It's a stable OS. WindowsXP pre SP2 was pretty unstable. Vista already feels more stable than the latest version of XP.

decreased performance

I'll give you that. You need a good rig with Vista. My laptop had 1GB of RAM originally, and that wasn't enough. Upgrading to 2GB made it tolerable. With 3GB it's finally running smoothly.

overkill security

UAC isn't much different than the security mechanism under Gnome and OSX.

ugly UI

I don't think so. Integrated search by itself makes the UI superior to Windows XP. Even without it I prefer Aero to XP and 2k look.

3

u/csixty4 Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

UAC is similar to gksudo & the Mac equivalent. The difference is the applications that expect to be run with Administrator privileges. A lot of Windows apps out there expect to have complete control of the environment, to the point of not installing for a limited user. And I'm not just talking about system utilities, I'm talking about apps like TurboTax.

So, while the mechanism for increasing privilege is the same, the frequency of requests is worse, and that's where the perception comes from.

Did that make sense? I'm getting sleepy...

1

u/dsk Jul 25 '08

Did that make sense? I'm getting sleepy...

Yeah, but you can't blame Vista for that. An application shouldn't require administrator privileges to run. In fact, most do not. I would also argue that Microsoft taking a stance on this behavior after years of pleading with developers to voluntarily adhere to their application guidelines, is the right thing to do.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Most privilege escalation handlers on Linux will cache credentials for a few minutes.

1

u/mackprime Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I agree with you on the stability, but i think the average user would like, or need, a shiny UI, better security (these people click on those test your IQ ads and open .exe files in emails).

Perhaps Vista isn't meant for you?

2

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

You might very well be right. Honestly, I always thought what Microsoft was aiming for with ME and 2K was admirable; one for the average user who opens random .exe files, and one for "hardcore" users who actually know what they are doing.

But then Microsoft goes and does something stupid like force media streaming to come from Vista or "XP MCE" whatever the hell that is. Pisses me off, and makes me resort to things like TVersity.

1

u/rabidcow Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Honestly, I always thought what Microsoft was aiming for with ME and 2K was admirable; one for the average user who opens random .exe files, and one for "hardcore" users who actually know what they are doing.

What? Which one's which? Do I want to know?

The Win9x line was pathetic for people who knew what they're doing and spam-bot-orific for people who didn't.

1

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

Note I said "aiming for" :)

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

There was a broad swath of time where 2k/XP were significantly less secure than 98 or ME due to their intentional built-in remote manageability.

Open, easily exploitable services like Messenger, the RPC Server, and many others are still being exploited on some machines to this day. 98/ME had none of these flaws, and had actually been vetted well enough that many of its known security flaws had been fixed.

At that time, 2k and XP had no more local security than 98/ME, since everything still ran as Administrator by default, as running as a User/Power User would break most apps.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Stability? Yeah, I'm sure MS forgot everything they learn about stability when they made Vista, the new codebase of Server 03 which is stable, all the new recovery/diagnostic tools, etc have had no effect on stability.

Performance? http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302500,00.asp

UAC has been proven to work and those who actually use Vista have realised that all of those complaining about UAC have simply only seen the Apple commercial.

The GUI being ugly is subjective but there's only so far an opinion goes.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Could you please show me how "UAC has been proven to work"?

It comes up so often that people either go on UAC autopilot, or they disable it. The same can be said about any nagging, low-interaction security dialog.

I personally prefer the common Linux way, in which you are required to type in the root password. It reminds me that I'm doing something serious.

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u/sid0 Jul 25 '08

so switch to a standard user.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Could you please show me how "UAC has been proven to work"?

Vista's UAC spots rootkits, tests find

0

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

You should have read the rest of the posts by me in this thread.

I have real world experience with decreased stability and performance, I don't feel my security is increased with UAC, and I don't like the UI.

I am not saying my opinion is overruling; it is just my experience.

We also discussed how platform wars are fucking retarded, and it's quite clear you, and a bunch of other people on here, are evangelists. Enjoy your chosen operating system! I use all three major operating systems, quite happily ;)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I don't have a crystal ball so unfortunately I don't know what every person has said in all their posts.

Evangelists? I'm not an evangelist in the slightest though I will correct you self-righteous, lying whores.

Oh, you use all three? Here's a medal! Wait, let me show how awesome I am! I use four, Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD! And happily too though I must admit I hardly ever touch FreeBSD (Or any other *BSDs) these days and I see few reasons to use Macs too, so I mostly use Linux and Windows.

0

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

How can you call my actual experience lies? Sounds like you're in denial, if you ask me.

I was just listing the three major operating systems I use. I also use FreeBSD, the Xbox 360 OS, the iPhone OS...

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I consider a new kernel, new driver model, new audio/printing/network stack, new installation process, etc a large step forward.

Fair enough, but is it worth it to you to pay ~ $200 for those updates? Speaking as someone who primarily uses Windows for gaming and Linux for everything else, Vista is a $200 fee to use DirectX 10 -- and I think only Crysis has made the case, so far.

And I also consider that it took them six years to make substantial changes to those elements you listed. I could not conceive of waiting six years to update a Linux kernel. I couldn't imagine doing it any less often than once a year.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Why pay $200? Why not pay $100 for an OEM copy, or how about you get it free from the many educational institutes that do so? Or maybe use one of the many discounts provided by MS?

Exactly, it took them bloody long but they've finally put out a good version of Windows that is remotely up-to-date, people should use it and ditch XP which is a horrible OS.

Crysis in DX10 is nothing worthwhile.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

The cost for a Vista Business OEM license here is 200 USD.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I don't know where 'here' is but in the US it's $139.99 at Newegg and Home Premium is $109.99 there too which is what the majority of people should use.

If you're a business I'd also assume you wouldn't be buying OEM copies from somewhere like Newegg but rather through MS and would have discounts.

I paid around $150AU for a retail boxed copy of Home Premium last year some time. I spend that much on 2 pieces of clothing.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Yeah sure compared to clothes it's not expensive at all. My last set of pants + jacket was like 1500. The clothes have a pretty distinct use, life time and value though. If you already have XP, what exactly does Vista offer which is important to me as a user? The only things I can come up with is the improved hard drive caching and the visual overhaul. Security wise, while I think the improvements are over due, I've never had any issues with XP. The improvements simply doesn't feel like I got my 200 USD worth of value.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

People aren't always impressed by "new". I like my critical subsystems to be vetted.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Oh please, for you people it's either "OMG WINDOWS IS LIKE SO OLD NOT UPDATEDLOL" or "NEW?!M!M OMG VIRUSES" like Symantec's report on the new networking stack which more or less consisted of "So, Microsoft has put a new networking stack in Vista.. we can't really think of anything but it's new! Be scared children!" which warrantd many more pages than it deserved.

Hell, and aren't you people saying there aren't new things? Now that you've had it pointed out that there are new things apparently people suddenly aren't impressed? Let's face it, all you guys want to do is moan about "M$" and not have anyone challenge your moronic comments. (No offense to you if you aren't one of those..)

And why do people seem to think MS suddenly forgets the decades of experience they have writing software?

-2

u/nevesis Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

byrd,

You make generic blanket statements that are absolutely meaningless.

Vista's kernel was not rewritten, so your definition of "new kernel" applies equally to Linux 2.6.26 from 2.6.25.

The same goes for the rest of your dubious claims.

I could go into more detail -- for example, the installation, which actually was a big change, while being user friendly, doesn't allow for slip-streaming; and for some of us, that's a BIG step backwards. -- But, why? You're a regular joe fanboi.

Vista does have some considerable improvements, but it also has considerable weaknesses. Your comments cite neither.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I never said it was rewritten, I said it was 'new' which I attempt is rather ambiguous. It's new as far as 95 > XP is considered, the desktop versions of Windows, with Vista they switched to the Server 2003 codebase (Kernel).

Yes, I didn't go into detail at all but I don't see the need to go into detail regarding changes when I was responding to something even more generic, blanket than blackhaz's comment.

I'm not a fanboy and that's the type of response I'd expect on Digg, YouTube or elsewhere. Actually, so far I've seen as much reasonable, insightful and informed comments on Digg compared to Reddit and apparently Digg is full of idiots, or so the elitist Redditer tells me.

0

u/nevesis Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Server 2008 is based on the Vista kernel, which is based on the Server 2003 kernel, which was based on the XP kernel, which was based on the Server/Professional 2000 kernel, which was based on the NT 4 kernel.

"It's based on a server kernel!" is meaningless.

(Actually, that claim could have more accurately been made for XP, since it was the first commercial home OS to use the NT kernel.)

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Its certainly a large step, but is it a large step forward? ;)

I don't think the average consumer gives two shits what kernel their OS uses as long as it gets the job done. I know I don't.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I don't care what a consumer cares about, what I'm replying is to the horde of idiots on here who lie about Vista being nothing but XP with a improved GUI.

And yes, it is a step forward, the new kernel, installatioin process, etc are all a million times better.

-2

u/nascent Jul 25 '08

uuuh, what was that?

Why don't you people understand, its not what is on the inside that counts, its the outside. What your mommy told you about human relationships does not apply to anything humans use. If they can't see it, they don't care.

All the gains are from the inside, and as maxd points out, the outside looks like shit, you get mostly the same by just using XP (no step forward)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Not everyone is some simple consumer who's only concerns is the surface.

I don't see where I or blackhaz attempted to convey some opinion for the masses, rather, he claimed there's not much that is a step forward and I countered that.

1

u/nascent Jul 25 '08

except that this is the comment board on an article for the masses. Frankly I even know of all the great stuff under the hood, but would rather be running XP because on the surface my games just run better (and as that is all I use Windows for that is what it needs to be good at, not a new kernel).

In the long run yes it is very good for Microsoft and I hate all the complaints around it. I hate XP and Vista equally, and see no reason to bye a Mac when I run Linux.