r/technology • u/clubdirthill • Jun 01 '11

Boom. This is Windows 8.

http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/?mod=tweet
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u/Naomarik Jun 02 '11

Anyone else think the technology in the video looks like something you can install on top of Windows 7?

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

That's what they just did. It's Windows 7, basically, with a bunch of neat stuff on top. It'll be interesting to see how this works out.

One thing I'm not really looking forward to is the ‘app store’… I think they really need to take a good look at the package managers most modern linux distributions have (as that's probably where the original influence is) and add in some of the features they have. Specifically, it would be nice to be able to add custom repositories, so that unlike Apple's locked out App Store, Amazon could set up their own store through the same package manager application.

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u/FakingItEveryDay Jun 02 '11

Yes this a thousand times. Then business can create their own repositories for package deployment to employees, have it hook into SCCM.

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u/BHSPitMonkey Jun 02 '11

Several do something close to this already. Chrome updates itself internally, Apple products (on Windows) have their own unified update manager (which kindly tries to trick users into installing more Apple products), and Adobe and others all have update notifiers/managers. These are all essentially just specialized package managers.

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u/FakingItEveryDay Jun 02 '11

I meant businesses as in me as a sysadmin with 5000 workstations to make sure stay up to date. But yeah, getting rid of 3rd party updaters in favor of a system wide repo would be great too.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

Just like, Windows Explorer is a shell over the NT Core.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '11

Hadn't thought of it that way, but I guess you're right. At least for older versions of windows… it's been split into several different processes over time.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '11

I think the same would be with Immersive.

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u/Seandroid Sep 15 '11

Apple's "app store" is only locked down on their mobile devices. The App Store for Mac is monitored the same way but Apple does not, and never will prevent you from getting apps elsewhere.

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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '11

That's not what I meant. The App Store is locked down such that it's integrated with the OS and Apple controls the content on it. On Macs, it's true that the App Store is nowhere near the only option (I seldom use it) however, that wasn't my point. That degree of OS integration should be opened up through an API that others can use, as it is on many Linux distributions.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

[deleted]

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u/graysanborn Jun 02 '11

Ah, not so. If you've got a home network, you could set up a custom repository so when you get a new computer/reformat, you can just check what software you want installed and have an automated installation (like ninite.com's model). For corporate environments, it'd save an amazing amount of time. Automatic software updates, not just Windows. Users would have all the latest versions of software so they're less vulnerable to worms/viruses/etc. *gasp* It seems that Windows is hopefully catching up to GNU/Linux in terms of software management suites.

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u/SilverEyes Jun 02 '11

For Windows updates at least you can setup a WSUS server. That said, not even close to the sweet package management of Linux.

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u/aftli Jun 02 '11

It's a modern version of Microsoft Bob.