Why so much hate against Windows Vista?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-08-02 02:56pm

Some of the biggest complaints likely have to do with all the ultra heavy DRM garbage that Vista keeps being rumored to have. Want to scare off a certain group of consumers? Install lots and lots of DRM.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2006-08-02 03:31pm

To be completely honest, I'll only be 'upgrading' to Vista in mid 2008 for DirectX 10. I've seen the beta, and it's not that great.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-02 03:45pm

I see no reason to upgrade bar DX10, and even then, I don't have the hardware. Frankly, MS' overconfident demo of the voice recognition software earlier this week speaks volumes to me.

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2006-08-02 04:04pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I see no reason to upgrade bar DX10, and even then, I don't have the hardware. Frankly, MS' overconfident demo of the voice recognition software earlier this week speaks volumes to me.

Did anyone use the infamous "format C:" "ENTER" "Y" "ENTER" voice command?

Pezzoni · Post by **Pezzoni** » 2006-08-02 04:15pm

Because it's Microsoft. And everyone knows it's cool to hate Microsoft.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-08-02 04:39pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I see no reason to upgrade bar DX10, and even then, I don't have the hardware. Frankly, MS' overconfident demo of the voice recognition software earlier this week speaks volumes to me.

Larry Osterman gives a decent description of the bug. Heisenbugs are wonderful.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-02 04:48pm

Beowulf wrote:
Larry Osterman gives a decent description of the bug. Heisenbugs are wonderful.

That makes a hell of a lot more sense and saves more face than the "it was too noisy" excuse we got. Even when this is fixed, I have yet to see a voice recognition app. that can do anything but the most basic commands, and even then, after hours of tinkering. I hope I'm wrong though, because it's been a long time coming for some cool hands-free computing.

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2006-08-02 05:01pm

I wonder if we're seeing the "Daikatana effect" in action? As originally promised, Vista would have come out in 2004 and contained plenty of new and useful features. Instead, we're looking at probably a mid-2007 release, and little incentive to upgrade from XP.

Rin · Post by **Rin** » 2006-08-02 06:11pm

"Why I dislike Vista"

I have been using Vista beta 2 on my other machine for a while. My largest problem is user interface. Start menu can be changed back to normal, "file" -menus can be had back, but lots of annoyances still. I really hope that they will make those "classical" modes do more than just cosmetical things. (I felt more comfortable with Gnome than Vista when I tested Ubuntu...)

Also current control panel feels like big mess, especially network settings. (iirc. those had updates after beta2?) And those confirmation boxes are really annoying. Could undestand on user accounts, but on the fake-admin also...

Multiple versions and figuring out what of those should I get... I have got used to be able to remote to my home machine, that means any of the "home" versions (not counting "ultimate") is no-no...

Btw. Computerworld article: Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won't Like About Windows Vista (iirc. there is an article to other way also)

And I just can't see any reason why I should update.

(And best thing that I liked with Vista was while installing and choosing hd, there were option to load drivers. I have missed that f-key pressing with xp installations many times. And cd and usb support! But why in the name of Valen that only scans root folder of given media!?!)

--Rin

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-08-02 08:20pm

Destructionator XIII wrote:But, I am losing track of my original purpose. I am not here to attack reviews of Vista, I am here to attack the reviewers.

Been a while since I saw a sentence declaring a thread's intent to so mire itself in the basics of a common fallacy; Ad Hominem is not something we consider usable at times. The modstick wants to be used.

I want to know what drives them to nitpick bugs in beta software, and post ignorant speculation against the system. I am starting to believe it is the same thing that makes Mac or Linux fanatics tick: plain, simple, blind stupidity.

I'm reading this 20 things, which you deplore as basically Mac fellatio and nitpicks on bugs. Only I'm having trouble seeing your point. The limitations running it on older machines, or mobile machines(Which are becoming increasingly prevalent), security nag screens that make even the oldest 'Nix systems seem intuitive, cumberous networking, peer networking that is still sucktastic, unnecessary changes, and a rising sticker price... Well, what the christ?

A grand total of two or three are on 'It's buggy now', and if one is making a OS, one should expect some comparison to competition. That's a big freakin' duh. Or is it simply assumed 'It's Microsoft, why would they ever need to compete'?

As for myself? Vista is another example of Microsoft being a bunch of retards. There's no reason to hurry to upgrade, and it's myriad problems, high cost, and DRM make it a negative change.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2006-08-02 10:03pm

Since Apple would have to completely screw the pooch for me to go back to Windows, I enjoy reading about Vista's troubles for the pure schadenfreude value of it.

Lisa · Post by **Lisa** » 2006-08-05 01:16pm

We're still using w2k at my work (they didn't like my idea of thin clients) maybe by the time vista is released we'll be using xp.

I haven't realy looked at vista, how ever I am planning on switching completely to mac soon (have a g4 ibook already, going to get a macbook soon as the dust in my life settles)..

MacOSX isn't perfect but I support it and windows at work. to give you an idea what supporting them is like here's how it works.

Mac person calls with problem - universal fix is applied, if os isn't terribly corrupted customer goes off fixed.

Windows person calls with problem a - fixes 1 through 17 are applied in sequence - spend more time attempting to fix then one would formatting and uninstalling and everyone's time is wasted.

Why do people hate Vista? well going on MS's track record what you get will be pretty much what should be considered beta. We saw it with XP, we saw it with 2k we saw it with ME (which really wasn't much more then a service pack to 98se) adnausium.

Microsoft puts out some decent software, their OS's aren't one of them.

I will grant MS one thing, their OS's work ok on a multitude of hardware, no other OS can claim this, Linux is trying, OSX refuses to and many of the unixes are either proprietary hard ware or very limited intel hardware. But most people don't want to spend more time fixing the beast then using it.

I don't have alot of problems with my install of XP but then I keep what is installed limited and I'm using a laptop which has limited hardware.

I still have problems where I have to reboot occasionally but the biggest issue is how easily windows is rootkitted. and it's always been that way. Windows will need a complete rewrite from the file system up to fix that

Apple realized that with os9, which on it's own was fairly decent, they pretty much had to start over and that's what begat osx.

basicly ms has 20 + years of the same bullshit to counteract, and they would have to release something so entirely different to fix it. I don't believe they can do it, they can't think different, and will continue to put out the same sludge they've always put out. The public beta's prove that.
being seamlessly backwards compatible proves that. If they want to improve security they need to firewall that backwards compatibility. Drop dos support all together, make something new. It won't happen.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-08-05 01:31pm

A quick thought: I don't hate Vista, I simply don't see the need for a new OS at this time.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-08-05 02:47pm

Destructionator XIII wrote:
Lisa wrote:I still have problems where I have to reboot occasionally but the biggest issue is how easily windows is rootkitted.
With a competent administrator, it is no more easier than rootkiting a *nix system.

Competent administrators are not exactly common these days. And for the home-user, there's little hope. They, there's already a rootkit and now they're taking it to the Black Hats in Vegas.

and it's always been that way.
This is indeed the real problem. People from the 9x days, developers included, were used to a no security whatsoever system, and kept working like that in the NT / 2k / XP days. Microsoft can and should take some of the blame for this, but they are attempting to fix these problems. For a program to get the made for Windows XP logo, it has to be able to run in a more secure environment. With Vista, they are taking it to a whole new level, taking tremendous security steps, and people who are still used to the outdated approach to security are bitching about that.

Not really. Dozens of programs get released with the WinXP logo which won't install or work unless under an Administrator-class account. Which is vunerable to all sorts of attacks.

Sure, MSFT still has work to do, but they are making big steps, adding well known security enhancements so everyone can use them easily, and actually doing some real innovation in under the hood security as well.

Call me when they start succeeding instead of talking about it. There's a rootkit already which would require reworking the kernel to block. That's not a small issue for a normal beta.

Windows will need a complete rewrite from the file system up to fix that
No it doesn't. A very good portion of Windows is all ready for security, and parts that aren't are being thrown out in Vista. A complete rewrite of any one of the modern operating systems is not going to happen, but it is not necessary for any of them either.

Oh good lord, who fed you this line? It's so ridiculous it's not even worth entertaining, but since you'd whine: Yes, there are vunerabilities that go down all the way to the most basic levels. And these need fixed.

Apple realized that with os9, which on it's own was fairly decent, they pretty much had to start over and that's what begat osx.
MacOS was utterly primitive from a technical standpoint until OSX, and it needed a rewrite. One big difference between Windows XP and classic MacOS is Windows XP is a modern system, MacOS was not.

It's one thing to call it 'modern', it's another to dismiss the idea of a rewrite in the same breath as claiming that a rewrite was inevitable because of 'modernness'.

being seamlessly backwards compatible proves that.
You do realize something can be entirely different under the hood and still be backwards compatible, don't you?

Windows programs, that need to be run as administrator on regular Windows, can be run as limited user on the very different system of Linux or BSD. There exist commercial products to allow something similar to that as well on Windows: it allows the programs to think they are in their old environment, when in actuality, they are locked down. This is done by adding another layer to the API, which, if done well, need not have a noticeable effect on speed.

And what about the dozens, hundreds, thousands of users and administrators who don't know about this? Why not include it in XP, if it's a modern system, when two competitors already have?

Microsoft is doing something similar to that in Vista, maintaining a high level of backward compatibility along with the new security enhancements. If it wasn't backwards compatible, Microsoft would alienate a good portion of their current advantage.

You mean like when they discontinued service for their nineties-era systems?

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-08-05 06:18pm

Destructionator XIII wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Not really. Dozens of programs get released with the WinXP logo which won't install or work unless under an Administrator-class account. Which is vunerable to all sorts of attacks.
They aren't supposed to. Take a look at the Logo program's requirements, found under "Build Products" on this page from Microsoft. I will quote the relevant section, 3.4. The first sentence sums it up quite well:

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

There's a rootkit already which would require reworking the kernel to block. That's not a small issue for a normal beta.
Making the kernel impossible to rootkit is a nontrivial task at least, and might not even be possible while maintaining its general purpose usability. Instead, they aim for a more reasonable goal: making it hard to actually inject the rootkit.

The request is never to make it impossible, merely to not be released with one already waiting and working.

This is all ready accomplished on all modern operating systems. The method is called limited user accounts, and Vista is trying to get everyone to use them at all times.

And until they show they will actually force their 3rd party programmers to ensure that their programs will run like that, I'm gonna have to shake my head at the naivete.

It's one thing to call it 'modern', it's another to dismiss the idea of a rewrite in the same breath as claiming that a rewrite was inevitable because of 'modernness'.
The reason why I am dismissing the idea of a rewrite is it would take a very long time, and probably not be that much better than what Microsoft has now.

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?

If MacOS wasn't tossed out, it would have simply died. Also important to note it wasn't actually rewritten either: they built on top of a different product (the Berkeley Software Distribution). Windows is in no such position - they have years of work, millions of lines of code, all working well enough to survive, with some faults. Would you rather work on fixing those faults, building off what does work, and have a product within a reasonable amount of time, or just toss it all out, good and bad, and start down the very long process of rewriting all that code again, with people once again making mistakes as they code?

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

Microsoft will need to do a full rewrite. This is more or less an axiom; there will come a point where the corner-cutting on production time will not be worth the wealth of legacy problems. Given how deep the vunerabilities already exposed on Vista go, perhaps it is indeed time to strip it down to the nuts and bolts and restart. Would it take time? Yes. Big whoop. Quality takes time.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-05 06:37pm

Nitram, I don't think Microsoft is capable of doing a ground-up OS creation. I think they've gotten so huge and bloated, not as a codebase, but as a human organization, that they cannot achieve anything significant anymore without tripping over themselves. Look at how long Vista has been delayed, and how many features have been dropped since the project was started. Hell, IIRC, NT wasn't even totally MS-original; it was derived from their cooperation with IBM on OS/2.

Then consider that even if they do manage to create a whole new operating system, it doesn't stop there; the Office division then has to turn around and significantly alter Office so that it can interoperate with nouveau-Windows. And remember that it's not really Windows that carries Microsoft; it's Exchange. Exchange is the iron vise-grip on the balls of Microsoft's corporate customers. Exchange, with all it's features and bells and whistles and power, is what cements Microsoft's presence in many of their largest customers. Microsoft absolutely cannot afford to break Exchange.

The only way in which I could see Microsoft successfully writing a whole new operating system from scratch is if they spun off a team of developers into their own little corner of the company, where they could do nothing but work on a new operating system.

I think we're going to see the NT kernal, in some form or another, for the next ten years. At least.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-08-05 06:41pm

Thats Microsoft Research, which actully produces alot of interesting ideas, but none get developed.

Regarding bloat, the key issue in Microsoft is the Windows division, thats the bloat point, its what, something around a good 500-1000 people on it. This is compared to any other Microsoft division, which are much smaller, and produce good products at far more reasonable timescales.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-08-05 07:08pm

Ok, its been a while since my OS class, so I don't remember the discussions about NT and Linux kernel implementations, but is there are real, pressing reason for making a brand new kernel? 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.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-08-05 07:12pm

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 · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-08-05 07:17pm

Destructionator XIII wrote:
SirNitram wrote: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 · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-08-05 07:19pm

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 · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-08-05 07:30pm

Ace Pace wrote: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 · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-08-05 07:50pm

Ace Pace wrote: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.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-08-05 08:11pm

SirNitram wrote:
Destructionator XIII wrote:
SirNitram wrote: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 · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-08-05 09:52pm

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?