A few weeks doesn’t seem like enough time right now, especially given the current state of Windows 10. The latest build (10130) looks almost finished and polished, but then there are continued issues with the Start Menu not opening or crashing and driver problems that are slightly alarming at this stage of development. Perhaps the biggest issue I have encountered is the upgrade process between builds. Microsoft has been testing this vigorously, as it’s a key part of getting Windows 7 and Windows 8 users to Windows 10 for free. If an upgrade fails then it’s one less machine running the latest operating system. I’ve had a variety of upgrade failures, even with the recent builds that Microsoft has distributed.
The consensus among testers seems to be that no, Windows 10 isn’t ready. Unless they’re going to pull a miracle, we’ve got a Vista-esque launch on our hand.
Whilst I agree the current build has some outstanding bugs which need to be addressed before RTM – comparing it to Vista is a bit rich.
I have to agree. I’ve been testing it for weeks and the only real issues I’ve seen are having to use an older Intel video driver for HD 4600, and the occasional Windows Update failure. I’ve read in several parts of the Web that Microsoft’s internal builds are far ahead of what they put out to both Slow Ring and Fast Ring testers, so it’s much closer to being complete than any of us realize.
Overall I’m highly impressed, and I fully expected another Windows 8 level dud before I started testing it.
I like how in Microsoft land, problems are perpetual. Windows Updates failing has been a problem since forever. Yet nobody has changed the system to something that delivers all of updates for Windows in one big package (and another one for Office).
It’s a miracle Windows Updates even work when they do. When you are updating, you are performing dozens of installations, some of them dependent on each other. Ouch!
I could say the same about dependency hell in several Linux distros. But it’s part of the game, and I accept it. That’s one of the reasons I run Slackware as my main OS; there’s no dependency hell because the user is 100% in control of what gets installed. I do wish Windows could be more like Slackware in that regard, but it is what it is. Honestly, it would probably bother me more if Windows was the only OS I used.
It shows you are running Slackware and are not up to date with the Linux world. Dependency hell ceased to be a problem *long* ago.
How so? I also run Antergos, which is Arch based, and I have issues with conflicting packages there. Up until last year I had a Crunchbang (based on Debian) partition and it was even worse. Tell me what exactly has changed in Pacman and Apt that has magically gotten rid of dependency issues? Because it’s been the same experience for me throughout the years.
Really? How often did you update your Crunchbang/Debian? I ran Crunchbang as well, for a couple of years, got into dependency troubles once, when I did not update for 6 months or so (I know, I know…). When I finally DID update, there were conflicts.
But other than than….I’m using Archlinux for a few years now, I remember one minor conflict only. I don’t have problems in LinuxMint either
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. You seem to be refuting my position that dependency hell still exists…by talking about having dependency hell and conflicts yourself?
Anyway, I had more than one occurrence of dependency hell when on Crunchbang; one example was when I wanted to install a game from the Debian repos (I don’t remember the game now, maybe Nexuiz or a similar FPS) and Synaptic failed with a dependency issue and broken packages. After an hour of fussing around with it, I figured it wasn’t worth the effort and did without. Again, this was the official repos, no third party software.
In Antergos I’ve been trying to get my printer working for a month now and every time I get it to work, something else breaks. I’ve also had issues with Pacman asking me which version of a package to install, and after choosing what turned out to be the wrong one I ended having to roll back and choose the other. Not a deal breaker but definitely annoying.
I’m sorry, my point was that yes it does exist but it is rare. Your experience is different, though. Guess it depends on which applications you use….
Hey, I was actually agreeing with you! Which part of my reply made you think otherwise?
I think you’re confused, my comment was to PieterGen.
Eeeh, I can understand your point.
Not to mention the cases when you can’t afford to be connected to the web repositories (i.e. my workplace lab) and want certain packages (i.e. development tools) to quickly install and be ready for work.
(rant)
So you download the packages and try manually, and the package manager keeps pushing you down into the dependency tree, telling you first need libthis, which needs libthat, which maybe depends on libd|ck(*) etc. etc. …
(/rant)
There has to be a simpler way! Why they couldn’t embrace something like, say, zero-install with ROX?
(*) not to mention libd|ck-devel! >-D >-D >-D
I honestly can’t say what changed in Pacman or Apt because I use Yum, but last time when I had dependency issues was back when I used to install with rpm packages from various CDs, or individually downloaded from websites. And that was some 10 years ago.
Edited 2015-06-03 12:14 UTC
So because you have had relatively smooth sailing under one package system, there isn’t a dependency issue on Linux anymore? That’s a logical fallacy, my friend.
The thing is, there are issues with every single operating system out there. OS X has update issues; Windows has update issues; every Linux and BSD OS I’ve ever used has update issues. It simply comes with the territory, and you either learn to deal with it on the OS you depend on, or you find an OS that has the least amount of issues for your particular workflow.
But making a claim of “there is no dependency hell on Linux because of a sample size of one” makes no sense.
No, the fallacy is if your distro dependency resolving is broken, you assume all other are equally broken. Install only from reliable repos and you will be fine.
Except that’s not the case; as I said above, official repos have let me down, and searching the Web for help revealed that I was not the only person with those specific issues.
It’s obvious I’ve stepped on your feelings regarding the software you use, and that was never my intention. It just seems to me that you’ve got your rose-colored glasses on and you refuse to take them off even for a second. I’d recommend trying a wide range of Linux distros, and maybe some of the BSDs…get some experience under your belt before you make a claim you can’t back up. You said yourself you’ve only ever experienced YUM based installations, so how can you know for sure what the situation is with other OSes if you haven’t tried them?
nicubunu,
What distro/repos?
If you want a rolling release, you take Debian.
If you want long term release, CentOS, or maybe Ubuntu.
If you want more customization, Slackware or Gentoo.
I assume you are talking about one of these? The thing is they all of different pros/cons.
Ubuntu updates have broken my systems several times, so I doubt you are referring to it.
CentOS may be stable, but in my experience it’s been extremely frustrating when needed packages aren’t present or aren’t sufficiently up to date. When you have to install things manually to compensate for the repo’s staleness, it kind of negates the benefits of using a repo to automate updates.
This is one of the reasons I’ve leaned towards Debian as a rolling distro with very comprehensive repos. There are occasional clashes between updates and local settings in /etc, but to be fair they are trivial and debian’s update process typically warns about them. Recently though a debian stable update butchered my client’s production system and I couldn’t fix it – I ended up reverting to a backup. To be honest this was the first non-trivial breakage I’ve experienced with debian stable that I couldn’t fix; what a stressful night that was. It’s making me rethink my update strategy.
Maybe slackware or gentoo are better ways to go, but I don’t have recent experience with them and I’m not sure if it makes sense to put client systems on those.
Sometimes I wish the update process could do a 3-way diff on config files(original, local changes, and updates). The problem with the 2-way diff (local changes, updates) is that it’s ambiguous and requires manually reapplying the local changes to the updates and/or manually reapplying the updates to the local changes. It would be so awesome if the update system could rebase the local changes to the updated version automatically. It’s common for code repositories to do this, does anyone know of a way to get distro repositories to do it too?
I have seen quite a few Linux systems in business critical environments the last couple of years. No dependency problems.
So dependency problems with recent distributions? Smells like PEBCAK to me…
But one always can learn from the professionals:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/12/microsoft_pulls_a_patch_and…
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2859120/windows-7-users-urged-to-uni…
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3024777
Edited 2015-06-03 19:47 UTC
I guess I run on average between 30 – 60 machines, usually Ubuntu but with a reasonable number of CentOS and Debian systems. I haven’t had a dependency problem in at least 6 years and it could be longer.
The only exception to this is if I have tried to install a deb package that wasn’t built for the system, and I have never had a dependency problem from the main repository.
So either you are doing something exceptional maybe trying to install all your software windows style or you are misleading us. The logical fallacy is that your experience is representative.
Hi,
Dependency hell is thriving like Cthulhu on steroids.
In general, distro/repository maintainers do a massive amount of work “behind the scenes” in an attempt to hide the problem from the end users. Sometimes they succeed (and end users don’t realise there’s a problem) and sometimes they don’t (and things break for end users); but the problem still exists regardless of how many people’s lives are spent trying to hide it.
Maybe the maintainers are getting better at shielding end users from the pain. I honestly don’t know (I stopped updating my Linux machine 5+ years ago because I got sick of everything breaking, and now just updating one trivial/little thing is virtually impossible).
– Brendan
There are still dependencies, but is it hell managing them?
Well, that depends on the distro. One of the reasons I left the gentoo world was because of their poor management of dependencies within portage. Something like Fedora does a much better job. I don’t think I’ve had a dependency issue, and I’ve just been upgrading for seven years.
Is it hell for the Fedora distro managers?
No, it doesn’t seem to be. Feel free to ask any of them. Updates are carefully managed and planned out.
What does the future hold: Containers. No dependencies, no hell. Many different people are working on the problem from different angles. But basically,each app can have its own version of libraries that it wants to use. I guess the downside would be upgrading something like openssl, if it were vulnerable. But then each app would be responsible for updating the library itself. or I guess you could manually update it too.
I’m happy to inform you that Ubuntu’s Snappy packages will solve this for good.
Edited 2015-06-03 19:07 UTC
I agree that the comparison to Vista is a bit much. I have been running the beta since the first day it came out on various machines. I have used it as my primary laptop since January without too many show stoppers. The past few builds have been excellent.
I believe that the build we have now is several builds behind what Microsoft has internally. This is based upon the build numbers various presenters at BUILD had in contrast to what we have now and was available at that time.
That may be so, I tried a build for a short time and it wasn’t extraordinarily bad. However, I’d really like to hear about a 99+% success rate for win7->win10 upgrades before I’d attempt it.
I updated my windows 7 box last weekend and had no issues. everything still worked. I was pretty impressed.
ERM, NO. Even build 10125 which I thought showed promise, Microsoft has a long way to go. The biggest issue resides around the new modernUI start and notification, sometimes you click them and nothing pops up. Stability is also lacking. And I’m using a HP pavillion laptop. Build 10130 would not even complete the first install process. Hopefully 10134 will show a bit more stability and promise.
I agree- Vista was pretty stable, as an OS. Third party drivers and applications didn’t work well with it, since they’d been blatantly ignoring all of Microsoft’s programming standards for years, but the OS itself was rock solid.
Adding a bluetooth device to Windows 10 is still an exercise in frustration and stupidity, but then again, that’s the case in Windows 8.1, too.
The big issue for Vista was not that Third Party Driver vendors were ignoring Microsoft, it was that Microsoft made a major change to the Driver APIs between RC2 and RTM without telling them, or giving them time to fix it. Vista RC2 was really stable and didn’t have the driver issues that Vista RTM had.
There really should have been an Vista RC3 but the manufacturers and retailers were wanting the Vista RTM quickly because of the looming holiday sales, so they had to push RTM in July so HP, etc could test and have systems out by end of August/September to fill the pipeline for the sales in November and December.
I always wait at least a couple weeks after a new Windows launch to see if there are widespread reports of issues. (I also do the same with iOS these days.) I recommend those who are able to do the same. Let others be the guinea pigs while you sit back and wait for major glitches to get squashed
That’s a solid plan any day, and given how many issues remain with the beta, I’d say to most people they should wait even longer, maybe even six months or so after the release date. Personally, I’m going to jump on it on day one since my Windows 7 install is mostly for gaming; I do the majority of my non-gaming stuff in Slackware (and recently, Antergos for kicks). If it seems safe enough and she’s comfortable with it on my machine, I’ll upgrade my wife’s desktop (currently 8.1) and laptop (currently 7).
In the past, RTM was months before you’d see it on actual devices. The product guys had time to get the new software and hardware working together. Only the enthusiasts needed to worry about day-1 problems.
But if Microsoft launches this thing to millions of old windows computers via download in a couple months, I fear things will go poorly.
Something I don’t get is why doesn’t Microsoft use their built in virtualization (hyper-v) to sandbox a browser instance into a docker or something?
If a grandparent needs a simple laptop to get online its hard for me not to recommend Chromebook to them at this point partly because of how often clicking the wrong thing ends up installing some garbage they don’t want.
What does Microsoft think of articles like this one named: “Here^aEURTMs What Happens When You Install the Top 10 Download.com Apps”
http://www.howtogeek.com/198622/heres-what-happens-when-you-install…
I think technical users manage to avoid most that crap but Windows is still hostile territory for less technical users. I always assumed if Microsoft lost their position as a monopoly they would use the opportunity to make huge improvements to the ecosystem of crappy software plaguing the “windows experience” but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
It’s cool to see them offering free upgrades to people but it would also be cool if buying a single user license OEM version of windows wasn’t 3 times as expensive as Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. pay for the same license because it hurts people who build PC’s or generally want to avoid OEM installed crapware like Levono’s Superfish debacle. The unsupported OEM version of windows is only $10 cheaper than retail.
OEM versions of Windows should be $40 or $50, not $100. Counting every computer I’ve purchased and built I probably have a dozen total windows licenses not counting work. At a minimum they should probably offer some kind of discount 5 key “household license” that is good for a fresh without having to install something else and upgrade it.
If they want to keep their complex licensing structure I should be able to tie all my licenses to an account that I can log in to and manage or upgrade them or ship replacement install disks for when I need them. I would be happy with that because I could untie old office licenses from hardware that has long since been retired etc.
And while I am veering wildly off the original topic I think a lot of (technical) people moved to OSX because it offers decent shell integration compared to Windows. Some of those defectors are few in numbers but still important like engineers and developers.
I always expected that once they started to lose their position as a monopoly it would grant them freedom to do a bunch of cool stuff. Maybe the free Windows 10 upgrade but I’m reserving judgement on it until I see/understand how much vendor lock in the move comes bundled with.
They are working on sandboxing apps. In Windows 8 they are called Windows Store (aka “metro/modern” apps). The problem is that their solution effective asked everyone to rewrite their apps. In Windows 10 they added something called App-V that allows Win32 apps to be sandboxed as well. How well that sandboxing work I don’t know.
On the OS X side they are toying around with sandboxing too: apps installed via the App Store are all sandboxed.
The problem is that both solutions closely tie the store monopoly concept with the sandboxing, making the solution rather unattractive to large developer audiences. And doing a good sandbox is more tricky as you might think – sandbox too aggressively and your apps can do nothing, and too lightly and all the malware gets through.
Finally the sandbox also needs to function reasonably with regard to porting from older API’s as MS learned the hard way with Windows 8. If it requires a lot of work to make your app sandbox-compliant existing mainstream developers just won’t do it.
Sensationalistic comments like the one above are exactly what has been detracting a lot from this website lately. They just look like clickbait stuff, and don’t add any real value to the discussion – perhaps only questionable bias. Can’t we have something a little more objectively presented, just like in the old days?
I’m taking the Vista comparisons straight from serious testers and programmers, first-hand. I follow and talk to them about the state of Windows 10, and they are incredibly worried. We’re talking massive driver issues, performance problems, a completely broken tablet mode, crashing start menus, and so on – stuff that seems impossible to fix in just three weeks before Windows 10 goes RTM.
In its current state, Windows 10 is not ready for a consumer release. The worries of a Vista-like release are merited.
I understand you do surely have your sources to assume a dubious stance on the progress of Windows 10 development, but it seems to me that even the source article you linked to takes on a more balanced/slightly optimistic tone than your conclusion. And the public feedback process that has been set up for this Windows release is undoubtedly very different – for the better – than that of Vista. IMHO this can mean a lot in this final development phase…
I am a professional tester who (for my sins) tested vista and windows 10 on behalf of my companies.
They are not equitable in quality at this stage. Longhorn’s betas were a shambles and indeed many promised features never materialised, or worse were cut mid cycle. This meant things that previously were stable had problems introduced. They released the software in this state.
Their lack of a regression suite irks me to this day…
Don’t get me wrong, Windows 10 has bugs. I myself have raised about 40 reproducible ones (38 resolved at time of writing), a big one often highlighted being bitdefender and other AV get blocked by the OS’s security. Is that Really an OS bug, or is it a bug caused by the AV software not updated to be compatible?
Windows 10 drivers are compatible with those before, Vista broke that compatibility. If you think back quite a number of the vista problems were later attributed to the apps or graphics drivers. By then though the OS’s reputation was tarnished beyond repair.
Everyone knows only odd-numbered releases of Windows are decent. The decision to go straight to 10 could be costly!
Even Microsoft has acknowledged that at Build 2015.
They were very explicit what is coming in Window 10, and what will come later with the rolling updates.
Pure sensationalism from “journalists” that don’t bother to check the full story.
Current Windows 10 icons are so ugly I refuse to look at the thing. Christ, get some decent artists.
The whole modern ui is ugly, so when they finally replace explorer with modern one the icons won’t stand out so much.
It wouldn’t matter if you could switch back to the Windows “classic” theme. But apparently Windows is now so sophisticated that that is no longer possible.
I’m not referring to Modern/Metro/whatever it’s called, but just the desktop UI in general. The flat UI look is nothing but ugly. It’s like going back to Windows 2.
We just upgraded to Office 2013 at work, and in addition to being as slow and bloated as ever, it is now ugly as ass. I’ve gotten used to it, but 2010 looked a hundred times better and I wish I could go back to that look.
I never had a problem with the ribbon, but I do have a problem with big monocolored blocks of screen with nothing to visually distinguish windows from each other. And menus in all caps? I guess the eternal September users are now running the UI design departments.
Microsoft’s best desktop UI was Windows 2000. Full stop. Windows 7 isn’t bad, but I still prefer the old look.
Haha, microsoft has always had some of the worst UI artists working. Maybe the people aren’t horrible, but their combined output is less than inspiring.
I’ve always imagined the UI and graphic design teams at Microsoft as a ragtag, understaffed, un-funded, little band of outcasts made to work in the basement of the oldest building on campus.
They’d be led by a maniacal hippy named “Ted” or something, spouting off things about Engelbart and DOS while his ponytail swings from his segway, firing people who call the recycle bin a trashcan. A guy with a picture of him and Ballmer looking uncomfortable together on his desk and his wall.
Everyone is afraid of Ted, assuming he whored around with the upper management 30 years ago and is untouchable. And just about all of us think Ted’s work is horrible.
Also Ted’s niece was hired to write all the error messages.
And yet, Windows Phone (before they started butchering it) looked so good that it set an industry-wide trend and everyone else – including Apple and Google – copied it.
Funny that, eh?
Yet I subscribe this statement of yours entirely. Nobody put it down that clearly like you just did. Full agreement on my part!
And it’s a pity that they toned down such beautiful design so much in the coming Windows versions, probably just for the sake of app convergence and portability between platforms. Nevertheless, should this work to improve the filling rate of the store, it’s probably quite worth it.
Yeah, but it wasn’t a good standard they copied. Flatter and lower levels of differentiation may be what inspires graphic designers right now, but it’s a lousy way to design a UI.
UI design basically peaked about 10 years ago, and it’s been going retrograde ever since.
LOL. Guess it’s true I always have the impression that those UI teams are staffed with 20 year olds only. Who are not aware of any non-Windows UI-paradigm (OSX, KDE, Gnome) nor of any lessons learnt in this field, such as all the research of the Nielsen Norman Group.
Or even the 17 principles as written by Eric Raymond. Yes, they are about Unix programming, but apply to UI design as well….. how about the Rule of Least Surprise? I’m looking at you, Windows 8. Or the Rule of Silence – if you have nothing to say, then say nothing. Stop bothering me with useless chatter like ‘Windows is closing down’ – I know it’s closing down, d*mn it, I gave that command.
To be fair, if your shutdown process can take 10 minutes, then I’d like to see a “shutting down message” as well, if only to verify I clicked the right button somewhere. A meaningful throbber would be nice too, not one that rotates for the sake of rotating, even when all other threads crashed and the animation is all that is left.
Yeah, it would be nice to know why, for example, it often takes 20 minutes to install updates on Patch Tuesday.
I seem to recall it took about the same amount of time to install an entire service pack 20 years ago. What can be going on that it takes more computing power than the entire Apollo program used just to update some DLLs?
That’s the main reason I delay installing updates. I have to wait until I’m at a point where I don’t need my computer for a half hour, and it’s getting worse with every Windows release, not better.
It would be nice if there were some visual indication that it simply hasn’t locked up (to be fair, I haven’t seen that in a long time, but it’s hard to tell when it does nothing for several minutes).
The biggest issue I’ve had is that it has never upgraded properly for me yet. I’ve had to reinstall to get to the newer builds.
Even the regular updates fail half the time.
No, it isn’t ready yet, but I’m guessing it will be decent in a couple months.
What worries me is that Microsoft might be guessing too.
The reputation of “dot oh” releases from Microsoft being buggy and not ready has been earned over let’s see now, the last 30 years. There’s no reason to believe it will be much different this time around.
However, I don’t recall hearing a whole lot about the initial Windows 8 release being buggy, but that was because everyone hated what it did right so much to not even bother commenting on how stable it was.
Coming from a Linux background – but using Windows as well, I see these weak points in Windows:
* the primitive package management. Installing or de-installing stuff is a chore. System reboots are often necessary. Lack of centralized repositories. No easy way to find & install updates.
* the registry. A central, non-human readable configuration file for the OS and all applications – why ? Why make it central? Why non-human readable?
* language choice.
When you install Windows, you must choose the language (English, French, etc). You can’t change that language later on. Why? Or look at apps, for instance MS Office. MS Office in English is a different program than MS Office in French. In other operating systems you would have only one program plus language packs. The only reason I can think of, is that Microsoft thinks it can sell more packages now.
* No support for ext3, ext4, btrfs and other modern file systems Windows refuses to read my ext* formatted USB-sticks. Is this to force users to use the old fashioned but money making exFAT?
* MS Outlook Who thought it was a great idea to have an email program do calandars? To save emails in a non-human readable .pst format? To have a full blown wordprocessor (MS Word) as the editor for emails?
* aggressive install practices. Windows doesn’t recognise the existence of other OS-es in a machine. When you try to install Windows next to Linux on a machine, it breaks you bootloader
* behind the curve. No support for modern file systems, clunky virtual desktop solutions (but hey, they finally offer it), no booting from USB stick/live distro…etc.
* dat terminal & shell. If you don’t know what I am talking about, keep it that way and please don’t look at a Linux or OSX terminal …..
I don’t see them improving this so I guess I’ll stick to Linux
edited for layout
Edited 2015-06-03 12:31 UTC
This is why you see all Google engineers having Mac Pro’s on their lap at conferences.
Beautiful and nice UI, yet a very powerful Unix-y command line.
Windows is so far behind the curve in this area, it’s not even funny.
Edited 2015-06-03 12:38 UTC
It’s easy to not see things improve when you’re stuck in 2001.
I guess you haven’t really used zsh.
Powershell is a slow kludge with a nasty “object api”. Yuk.
I guess you haven’t really used powershell– it could be faster, yes… but in some ways, powershell is mind-bogglingly advanced.
The “nasty object api” is exactly why powershell is completely different– You want to process files? They’re objects. Partitions? Objects. Users? Objects. Mailboxes? Objects.
Some time ago, I had to migrate a number of workstations from one domain to another, with non-congruent account names… ‘bob’ on one domain might be ‘robert’ on the other domain.
I wrote a script that loaded a CSV file into a lookup table, created a list of profile objects, and for each object, looked up the current user, found the new user, and changed the ownership of the entire user profile to the new user/domain.
Then a few more lines to remove the machine from the old domain and join to the new domain.
The same CSV file was used in a script that read ACL’s on a multi-terabyte file system and create duplicate ACL’s for the new domain/users.
Then, using the same table, we had a script that would migrate someone’s exchange mailbox from the old domain to the new one– again, each “mailbox” was an object, so using the Exchange extensions, it was effectively a one-line script command to migrate a mailbox.
Being able to handle anything from “directories” to “user profiles” to “exchange mailboxes” as objects that you can iterate and manipulate is INSANELY powerful.
Yeah, but a proper unix environment makes the equivalent of all of those easy.
Non-equivalent account names? Rsync or cp -r and chown -R their $HOME.
Moving mailboxes? Rsync or cp -r their $HOME/Mail and copy the spool file.
Handling ACLs? chmod.
Wrong. I’ve worked with Windows for a long time (3.1, 3.11, 95, NT, 2000, Vista, XP, 7, 8) and with many Linux distros since 2008 or so. Guess it ultimately comes down to taste. To each his own
gconf. At best, you’re using some insanely long string on the command line, at worst, you’re writing your own XML and regenerating a database.
By comparison, the Windows Registry is at least well documented, and has consistent tools for management.
Of course, if Gnome would stop assuming I’m stupefied by having the ability to make a decision, it might be less of an issue.
You trying out for a career in stand-up comedy or what?
I take it you don’t know PowerShell and/or trying out a comedian carrier yourself.
?? What’s wrong with Powershell?
The console GUI is bad, but they started working on it for Win10. This is probably because you use GUI in Windows for everything, so there is a very limited audience for terminals. Even if you are a developer, compiling from VS is the way to go!
As for the scripting language, PowerShell is pretty much the most powerful shell out there. Give it a try.
It’s more than just the GUI/shell to me: backslashes, spaces, terribly long and similar directory names (“My<space>[dirname]”) and locations, the Application Data and registry chaos, disk letters instead of mounting, no proper symbolic links, no POSIX, the lack of decent userland tools, …
They’re all minor inconveniences that add up and I know Linux and BSD aren’t exactly perfect either, but at least everything is shorter
Exactly this!
I get your point. One of the problems I have with .exe files is that I don’t know what I am installing and where. I might open a box of pandora. I prefer an installer (part of the OS!) that does that job. That installer should inspect the package, see where it should be installed, warn when something suspicious is going on.
Basically, this is what GDebi does in Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linuxes. When you want to install an .deb file from outside the trusted repositories, you download the .deb file and ask GDebi to install it for you.
There IS an installer part of Windows. It is called Windows Installer and are those .msi files you might have seen.
Of course they have the same problem as .deb and .rpm packages in the sense that they can shit all over your OS. Why isn’t it a problem on Linux then? Because Linux repositories are generally trustworthy and its community doesn’t have many Ask Toolbar types that attempt to rape your system. And finally by the end of the day, that package installed on Linux will execute code that you just downloaded off the Internet. That means they can still modify all your chrome user config files to redirect to hell and so on. You *trust* the Debian package maintainers and upstream devs to not do this, but there is no *verification* that this is indeed true.
Sandboxing is the only real proper solution as random code from the Internet generally can’t be trusted without gatekeepers. On Linux we just happen to like our Debian package maintainers, but in reality if they went rogue they could do some pretty bad things. The original security model of Windows, OS X and Unix is fundamentally broken because it makes the fatal assumption that 1) the system admin knows what he is doing (LOL!), and 2) the app developer is your buddy down the hall that would never deliberately try to deceive you about its true intentions. Neither is remotely true since the Internet went mainstream.
drstorm,
I agree it’s not important to microsoft, but let me bring up another twist that may not be obvious: microsoft screwed over independent open source developers by locking us out of the kernel starting with Vista. While an open source project can purchase it’s own code signing keys, it may not distribute those keys to other independent developers without risking MS revocation of the keys used by the project. This really hurt collaborative open source kernel development. A 3rd party tool came out to allow independent developers to install their own drivers, but then MS banned it too. I was developing windows file system drivers in XP at the time and I really felt betrayed by MS when they prohibited us from installing our own drivers. Why aren’t we entitled to do this on our own machines? I completely stopped developing drivers for windows – it was clear we weren’t welcome.
By only natively supporting their own file systems, they basically force every vendor of storage media to use NTFS/FAT file systems, and conveniently collect patent fees. How is that not some serious monopoly abuse? The EU should have fined them to hell for this, instead of that whole Windows Media Player nonsense.
The repository point is also a very good one. All those background processes nagging about updates, to then download an installer which will download the actual application (looking at you, Adobe) and trick you into installing a shitty toolbar (Java).
And even updating the base system is a pain in the ass. Complaining that you should restart *right now* to launch the update process. That sort of shit is especially funny during presentations or troubleshooting in the field. Then at startup it may reboot 1-2 times, and if you’re lucky there will be no failed updates, otherwise you can restart the above procedure all over again.
I feel like the whole process greatly discourages users from updating their software. In Kubuntu it simply says “Hey there are updates available, click me when you’re up for it! Ah, you just updated a system component and may want to reboot to have it work. Do so when you’re ready, meanwhile I’ll shut up and sit in the tray as a tiny reminder.”
Wait– I didn’t install Windows 10 from a USB stick?
Hrm. Pretty sure I did– probably because the bootable USB stick is sitting right in front of me….
No argument there for sure! But let’s be honest, Windows isn’t designed to be used from a shell/console so I wouldn’t expect that area to be all that great to begin with. Windows is great as a desktop, horrid as a console. I feel the exact opposite is true for Linux. The idea of using Linux as a desktop makes me want to vomit, but I use it from console every single day and have no real complaints.
I don’t expect Windows to be Linux, and I don’t expect Linux to be Windows. I understand they aren’t the same thing. Each has their own areas where they shine and where they don’t. Neither one is greater than the other in my opinion. I use both, daily, at home and at work, and that suits me just fine.
I don’t think they need to be the same either, but sometimes it would be nicer if they worked better together. I’ve often wanted to use logical volumne management across operating systems… if only windows & linux could agree on a volume format.
I didn’t think BartPE gives you a full desktop environment. Admittedly it’s been a long time since I’ve looked into it though. I agree there are use cases where a `live` OS is preferable, or even better suited. But, it has to make sense within the scope of Microsofts business for them to do it.
but then there are continued issues with the Start Menu not opening
Glad I am not the only one. I thought this issue was only related to me as I was running Windows 10 in visualization. I do hope they would have a good launch, as the launch date is not that far off. Looks like it is crunch time in MS office.
Edited 2015-06-03 12:37 UTC
Vista RTM may have had issues, but the RCs were really stable and Vista RC2 (the last public release before RTM) didn’t have the driver issues that Vista RTM had.
In the case of Vista, it was Microsoft screwing up by making major last minute changes without giving another release candidate. The issues of RTM were a big surprise to anyone that used the Release Candidates.
In the case of Win10, it seems that even the testers using the RC candidates are saying “wait, it’s not ready”.
I haven’t tried Windows 10 but if it feels like something else pretending to be a desktop, or if it still looks like a child designed it during arts & crafts time in their kindergarten class, then I would say hell no it isn’t ready.
Windows 8 was also rushed to market when it wasn’t ready. This feels more like that to me than Windows Vista, which had a much lengthier and painful incubation time leading up to release.
I was in the private betas for Win Vista & Win 7 and one thing that really struck me about both is how much Windows comes together in the last few weeks.
As weird as that seems, since it should be stable months ahead of time with refinements for those last few weeks, I seem to recall Windows 7 having a lot of bug squashing at the last moment, making for a pretty good release.
I hope my memory is correct and lends true for Win10. I’ve got it on my work machine to get ready and there are definitely a few bugs, but I remain hopeful.
This may seem like a non-event to a lot of people, but I’m quite put out by the lack of USB floppy drive support. I still deal with about a dozen floppy disks a day.
Also I use them as a completely separate issue with some of my retro systems to get data back and forth (pdp-11, Amiga, the CP/M system, one of my VAXen).
Oh snap, really? We have a lot of old oscilloscopes and whatnot around here that run on floppies and USB floppy drives have been a godsend. That’ll truly be disappointing if there’s no support; hopefully there’s just a driver to be made.
…or I keep my WinXP machine with a Real, Actual floppy drive in it around.
Just did a test — Running build 10130 and using a Bytecc BT-144 USB diskette drive, it recognizes as “A:” with the correct icon and everything. I don’t have a floppy to test with off hand, but it seems to me likely that it will work.
That’s really good news for me. Thanks for the test. I hope they leave it in, because it’s apparently not meant to be there.
Dit they finally fixed that tiny little input box where the environment variables can be set?
I made it about 50% bigger. (It’s still tiny.)
That’s one of my favourite WTF things in Windows
Edited 2015-06-04 13:25 UTC
jazzlin,
For me it’s probably when windows goes to sleep while shutting down. Ie “shut down” the laptop, and then close the lid too soon. Then when turning the system on, it proceeds to shut down. WTF! This also means the laptop was in stand by when I intended it to be off saving it’s power.
To be fair, I don’t know if this still happens in windows 8 (I’m curious if anyone can test this), but I was quite disappointed when found out windows 7 had the same bug existing since windows xp.
Nope, it still shows 4 lines of dialogue and cannot be resized. Sad trombone…
Non-resizable dialogue boxes in Windows drive me nuts, too. Fortunately, you don’t see them quite so often anymore, but they still come up.
Obviously not or they would have released it.
Edited 2015-06-04 12:09 UTC
Start Menu working and adequate for most user needs.
Remove Start Menu, add tablet mode, hated by desktop users.
Reintroduce an “enhanced” but borked version of the Start Menu.
Tablet mode now unusably broken.
Ship it!
Nice Post..
Is it work like a window 7 or 8?
http://companyinfoz.com/
Edited 2015-06-05 11:14 UTC
While not ready for launch, its not a Vista-esque launch. It needs some work but the real important bugs have been fixed. They can be fixed with further updates but a pretty good release. Not good enough to make me drop Linux. But good.
Roberto J. Dohnert
Lead System Designer/Consultant
http://www.blacklablinux.org