Cogs can think.

Right.

For the life of my I cannot figure out how you would get pleasure from inserting your penis into a piece of software. Or, from inserting a piece of software into your vagina. Or both.

Well, anyway, this is why Digg is pointless.

APCMag has published ‘Ten Reasons Not to Get Vista‘, but it seems as if the author has never truly tried out Vista himself. I have been using it for months (years, even) and I thoroughly disagree with many of the ten reasons.

Vista doesn’t do anything you can’t already do with XP.

Can I change the volume on a per-application basis in Windows XP? Do I have integrated system-wide search in Windows XP? Can I set the language on a per-user basis in Windows XP? Does Windows XP have per-file emails and contacts? Does Windows XP have a photo organiser application (the fact that it sucks compared to iPhoto and especially Picasa2 is irrelevant)? Does Windows XP have an up-to-date, modern look? Does Windows XP have all those under-the-hood improvements like address space layout randomisation, a new networking stack, and so on?

I could go on for hours.

You already have XP, and alternatives like Linux are free.

Good point. However, 95% of the world will get Vista not by retail, but via OEM. And when it comes via OEM, people don’t experience it as “paying for” (even though they obviously do).

It’s outrageously overpriced

Yes, no doubt about it. However, as said above, most people will get Vista via OEM.

XP was demanding at release, but Vista more so.

Vista most certainly is demanding. However, on my hardware (two computers), Vista with Aero performs better than i.e. Ubuntu or OpenSUSE with Beryl. On top of that, Aero is a hell of a lot more stable than Beryl. The only operating system which (so far) has done very well on older hardware is Mac OS X. Too bad that you actually need to buy a new computer anyway if you want to upgrade from Windows XP to Mac OS X.

This is a typical ‘your mileage may vary’. Vista is demanding on resources, no doubt, but not as bad as some make it out to be.

Key hardware like video and sound is crippled at the moment.

Yes. This is usually the case when an operating system has seen massive internal restructuring, like new frameworks for graphics and audio.

There’s been plenty of coverage about applications that won’t work without a vendor update.

Yet, other than Nero, I have not yet encountered a single application that refused to work on Windows Vista. Obviously there are some that will break, but again, when you massively restructure your platform, this is to be expected.

If you use Windows for mission critical environments (dot dot dot), you should wait until SP1 or maybe even SP2 anyway. That’s called common sense.

It’s a big fat target - with a new and untested in the global wild architecture

This one is kind of weird, as the author claims Vista has nothing to offer over XP - yet he does recognise it has a ‘new and untested’ architecture. Contradictio?

The point he makes is valid, though. But as with the above, mission critical environments should wait anyway.

UAC - Oh yes, the Microsoft solution for an operating system where mutli-user was an afterthought.

Multiuser an afterthought in Windows NT? Does the author even have the slightest understanding of what NT is and where it came from? NT has been designed from the ground up with multiuser in mind, and I do not think Dave Cuttler would like it that NT’s multiuser was called an ‘afterthought’. Statements like this seriously hurt the author’s credibility. On the 9x series- yes, multiuser was an afterthought there- but on NT?

As for UAC, it’s not even half as annoying as some make it out to be. I do not find it any more annoying than sudo, and it is more advanced than Mac OS X’ version. Security comes at a price.

DRM

I have never come into contact with DRM (in a way that it hindered me, in any case), because I use a - how old-fashioned - CD player and a record player to play my music (I actually buy albums in a real store, and I have a huge collection of vinyl albums as well) and I play my DVDs on my stand-alone DVD player.

The problem is definitely there, though, and in all honesty I have too little experience with it to talk about it.

The draconian license

In this section, the author spreads some misinformation (like the license transfer he mentions, which has been changed by Microsoft months ago), so it is pretty difficult to correctly rebut it. Microsoft has some darn restrictive licenses, and I do not think Vista is an exception.

The author has failed to mention the real weaknesses of Windows Vista, such as the idiotic amount of different editions or the simple fact that Microsoft’s obsession with backwards compatibility is hindering its development.

Instead, the author decided to just rehash the average anti-MS zealot’s points, without actually trying out Vista himself.

I have no idea why they called OpenSUSE 10.2 a ‘release’.

The installation from DVD kept failing; it appears one specific package was missing from the DVD.

There is something seriously wrong with GRUB on OpenSUSE. It takes well over a minute for GRUB to get from stage 1.5 to stage 2.

Loading the actual kernel again takes ages.

I can only start OpenSUSE 10.2 using the ‘failsafe’ option; using the normal entry results in a complete system lockup (I cannot even press ‘esc’ to get to the debug info, apparently it crashes before the kernel initialises USB).

Once I’m finally in OpenSUSE 10.2, it is slow. I mean, seriously slow.

To make matters worse, X is seriously fcuked because after the screen goes blank (when it is not used for a while) and I get back to my computer, all that is supposed to be white has turned black. I kid you not.

What a disaster. And before anyone starts blaming my hardware, no other Linux distribution has shown this behaviour, ever (not even OpenSUSE 10.1!), so yes, this is OpenSUSE 10.2 specific.

What a mess of an operating system. Seriously.

I bought a new videocard to replace my aging Ati Radeon 9000 with 128MB of RAM; it’s an nVIDIA Geforce 6200 with also 128MB of RAM.

The funny bit: Linux loaded in CLI mode, I modified xorg.conf, and I was ready to go.

Windows XP refuses to load. At all.

Update: Well paint me polka-dot and call me a girly scout, but swapping the old and the new card did the trick. It all works now.

Eugenia blogged about the stagnation in the Linux desktop world. One comment was rather interesting:

Hate to break it to you, but the KDE devs are planning big things for KDE4.

KDE developers are indeed planning big things for KDE4– but that’s what they’re stuck at. Show me where the results are. KDE4 was supposed to be fleshed out by now, with a release somewhere early 2007. However, if you now take a look at the latest KDE4 dev build– it’s just KDE3, but uglier. We’ve been hearing Plasma this and Appeal that for a very long time now; however, nothing Solid (ha ha ha) has emerged.

All the wonderful ideas behind KDE4 (and the accompanying slick websites) are just that– ideas and websites. There are no development builds that truly show these ideas in a usable state. KDE4 is supposed to be released in the first half of 2007, but if all they have to show now is KDE3+, KDE4 is more likely to see release somewhere in 2008– Q3/Q4 rather than Q1/Q2.

GNOME3 is in an even worse state, as Eugenia pointed out. There is literally nothing, not even one line of code. In fact, there are not even ideas, not even a vision; there are only some random thoughts and ideas by random people in random places.

In the meantime, Vista is close to shipping, a significant step forward both under the hood as well as graphically from Windows XP; it is truly something different from XP (no matter what the anti-MS fanboys want you to believe). Apple, on the other side of the spectrum, has continuously been improving its operating system, making it faster, adding new and sometimes even innovative features. Leopard is planned for the first half of 2007, and is supposed to have some major new features (even though we know nothing of these features, I think we can give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one seeing their track record of delivering).

And all that KDE and GNOME have to offer are some vague ideas, some vague visions (and in the case of GNOME, not even that). The future seems grim.

The bottom line of all this is that there are three groups:

1) the group that wants to ban non-GPL modules (by creating a patch that prevents them from running);
2) the group that thinks they should be allowed;
3) a group that is too pussy to actually make up their minds (Linus).

1 is bad because they limit the USE of the software, which falls BEYOND the scope of the GPL, which is a DISTRIBUTION license, and NOT an end-user license agreement. Were this patch to find its way into the vanilla Linux kernel, Linux ITSELF is not longer complying with the GPL, and hence is no longer Free software, because a restriction upon use is put in place.

3 is bad because it creates uncertainty. This is not necessarily bad for home usage, but it IS bad for companies. They REQUIRE legal certainty.

2 is the only possible way to go. Non-GPL modules should be allowed because it is a right of the USER to use them. If I want to run closed-source drivers on MY damn computer I should be allowed to. NO WAY that a bunch of Linux nerds can prevent me of that.

If this patch gets through, Linux is no longer Free software, and hence one of the prime reasons to actually use this piece of software becomes void.

Oh god.

Those poor children.

That’s one fcuked up UI.

I think the Linux world has a problem. And no, it’s not SCO.

When the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world says Linux infringes its patents, you’re in deep shit. That CEO won’t say this because he has some small hunch that it might be possible; no, he’ll only say this when he is 110% sure he has a case on his hands.

Now, you may or may not disagree with software patents and intellectual property stuff (software patents suck ass if you ask me), but fact remains that the law is the way it is (in the US at least), and as such, you’ll have to deal with it.

In other words, Linux companies are in a world of shit.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend of mine about how we find there’s so much stupidity in this world, so many dumb people.

Well, we are right. There really is a lot of stupidity in this world.