Why so much hate against Windows Vista?

[Ace Pace]

No, no real need for a new kernel from my understanding. A new kernel would be usful, but to bring it up to current levels of functionality would take insane amounts of time. Hell, to give an idea of timeframes involved, Linus Torvalds, in an interview in the early 2000s, said it would take 13 years to get the Linux kernel from scratch up to current levels of features. Thats not exactly time you throw away.

Many of the issues WinXP had, with kernel level drivers and such, have been fixed, with alot moved into 'userland', making sure the OS can recover from driver errors and software crashs.

[SirNitram]

Reality and Microsoft claims collide again, and as usual, the reality wins again.

Name a few of these programs. I'd like to see them myself.

Have you played any games lately? Because they've been unable to run. Just an example would be Dawn of War, albeit in this case, it's possibly patch-related from the time.

Okay, Destructinator, actually stop and engage the grey matter. There is a rootkit, designed now, going to be demonstrated in all it's nasty glory at the Black Hat convention in Vegas, on Vista. I want you to stop and actually think: Which is more damaging, the anticipated, perhaps nigh inevitable delay, or releasing with a wide open hole that will be crawling with malicious users exploiting it?

Rootkits are meaningless if they cannot be installed. They are going to exist on all systems unless a big change comes about (like DRM on everything to ensure you only run trusted code). Rootkits use legitimate device driver and API facilities to carry out their nefarious deeds. Preventing these would seriously limit the capabilities of the system. What is important is not allowing them to do any serious damage, and this is accomplished by restricting administrative actions to trusted users and programs.

The utter naivete....

We are dealing with an OS which is widely used by the ignorant, the folks who will not know how to restrict actions their first day.

Furthermore, you ignore the substance of the reply. It's not to rootkits in general. It's that one exists, now, and will undoutably be unleashed unless it's plugged up.

We'll have to wait for the convention and see what it actually does before we can say anything truly informed on this Vista rootkit specifically though.

Undoutably, but Microsoft would be a moron not to delay to deal with it. Given that the convention we're talking to is the Black Hat one, and that these are people who would specifically enjoy the chaos and damage this thing could do.. Which they will see with their own eyes.

Because of course, MacOS had no good code, nothing that worked... Oh wait, that's a steaming load.

I never said it had no good code. What I said is it was not good enough to survive in the modern world.

Which is a state of affairs that will come to WinOS sooner or later(For brevity, I will address your 'what's so bad?!' reply here.). The legacy code and the problems that have stuck with it(Particularly the uptime issues and tendency for memory to remain filled until restarted, two glaring issues I've yet to see even approaching resolved across several versions), are survivable now. They will not always be so. The question then becomes when and why that moment, and given Vista's continuing collapse(Haven't they totally scrapped the new filesystem, or are my wire's crossed), they might as well get it over with.

[Ace Pace]

Nitram, the rootkit in this case relied upon the user confirming administrator level acess for the program. This means its fucking social engineering attack. If we want to look at those, Linux, MacOSX, any OS in the world can fall when the user clicks Yes on the wrong thing.

EDIT regarding uptime. Properly managed, a Windows box can remain uptime for quite a while, didn't Farem post about some NT4 box he had running for years?

[Arrow]

EDIT regarding uptime. Properly managed, a Windows box can remain uptime for quite a while, didn't Farem post about some NT4 box he had running for years?

Exactly. At work we XP, and my team keeps our boxes up 24/7. The only time they get reboot is for updates and new installs. A former coworker and I had a competition at one point to see who go the longest without rebooting - I lost at 3 months because of a driver install. And don't get my started on our 2k3 servers, they only go down when the UPS run dry (or the dumbass IT guy at another division remote desktops into the thing and fucks something up - idiot). Windows up time issues are due to poor setup and configuration aka user error.

[SirNitram]

Nitram, the rootkit in this case relied upon the user confirming administrator level acess for the program. This means its fucking social engineering attack. If we want to look at those, Linux, MacOSX, any OS in the world can fall when the user clicks Yes on the wrong thing.

If that is indeed the case, I withdraw the point. Mea culpa.

EDIT regarding uptime. Properly managed, a Windows box can remain uptime for quite a while, didn't Farem post about some NT4 box he had running for years?

He might have. I must admit I doubt it. But the whole concept of 'properly managed' and 'competent administrator' rings rather empty to me. I've seen most folks in charge of such things, and they're never terribly competent.

[Beowulf]

Reality and Microsoft claims collide again, and as usual, the reality wins again.

Name a few of these programs. I'd like to see them myself.

Have you played any games lately? Because they've been unable to run. Just an example would be Dawn of War, albeit in this case, it's possibly patch-related from the time.

I've yet to see a game with a "Designed for Windows XP" Logo on the box. Games will typically require some version of windows, but they don't go through the Logo program. If you could show me say, a picture of the Dawn of War box, that has the Logo on it, then you win.

[Arrow]

unless they start offering free Microsoft training classes or something.

My first job was a lab assistant for my college. Given the idiots I saw taking Windows training courses (just general, every day stuff, not IT), I seriously doubt giving away classes will solve the problem. Oh, did I mention that the instructor for this courses didn't know how to format a floppy?

[Ace Pace]

He might have. I must admit I doubt it. But the whole concept of 'properly managed' and 'competent administrator' rings rather empty to me. I've seen most folks in charge of such things, and they're never terribly competent.

And we can show incompetent admins on both sides of the Linux/Windows debate, this point is essentially useless.

[Xon]

Ok, its been a while since my OS class, so I don't remember the discussions about NT and Linux kernel implementations,

The Linux Kernel is just getting features the NT kernel had since it's 1st release

but is there are real, pressing reason for making a brand new kernel?

It would be near criminal incompetence for them to replace the WinNT kernel. That sucker has been in development since the mid-1980s, much earlier if you consider the historical legacy inherited from VMS.

I don't read all the details about the security holes, but IIRC they all pretty much stem from Window's permissions system, remote procedures, driver model and the like - the higher level stuff, which Vista is attempting to address.

The vast majority of the problems with Windows stem from;

• a features over security mindset which the market wanted.
• Administrator as the default user and common to needing to run as adminisrator for applications.
• Using a language highly prone to buffer over/under flow attacks. (they are still using the same langauge, but with a hell of a lot more tools to make it safe)