[Dclug] Where is the free software dividend?

[Alexey Toptygin]

On Sat, 2 Dec 2006, Adam Morey wrote:

> Ubuntu gets better and better with every release?  It will take years at its
> current snails pace to reach the capabilities of Vista.

Oh, <flame on>!

> I can give a first count experience of Vista, as I've been using the full
> production release for about two weeks now.  Not only is it fun to use
> Windows again, the OS is faster

Psh, like that's hard for winslows :-)

> and has some interesting new features.  One called ReadyBoost, formats a 
> thumbdrive or flashreader to augment virtual memory (or something like 
> that) to make the system faster - finally something to do with those 5 
> in 1 flash drives that all new machines get now.

Umm? Trivial on any real OS. sudo mkswap /dev/sdX && sudo swapon /dev/sdX

> Vista looks great, not something you can say about any linux desktop I've
> seens except for maybe Novell

Have you seen ahything other than Gnome and KDE? Really? Please try that 
and then say that again.

> - and has very strong features to make it adoptable for corporations

Sure, no problem. I'm not a corporation.

> much improved laptop support (I don't know how but it resumes from 
> hibernation is seconds)

Seconds isn't very precice. Are we talking 1? 5? 59? In any OS, it takes 
as long as a) your BIOS makes you wait, and b) the disks make you wait to 
copy the contents of RAM back into RAM. It's a hardware issue.

> and new scripting language called powershell for remote admin,

Great, just what the world needs, another scripting language.

> app troubleshooting with a resource monitor addition to task manager

You mean they finally have all the features of top and vmstat? Next, 
you'll be telling us that Microsoft has invented /proc :-)

> and the biggest one in my opinion is the ability to finally roll out 
> workstations

<cough>kickstart</cough>

> and not rely on all users to be local admins to install apps and use 
> their machines, that security model didn't scale in the Internet world 
> and I'm glad to see it gone.

Umm? Other OSen have done this since their inception. How is removing a 
critical flaw in your OS considered taking a leap ahead of the 
competition?

> You can debate whether Linux does or will eventually do these things, 
> but the reality is, there are productivity and technology improvements 
> of Windows that slay linux, mostly in the presentation aspects, that 
> hinder linux desktop adoption.

Wow. Just WOW.

> Linux was getting close to XP is terms of features and support

Fear.

> personally I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu,

Uncertainty.

> but think Freespire will become a dominant player, as unlike Ubuntu it 
> has a strong commercial backing in Linspire to keep it fresh

Doubt.

> and their core business model is to make it user-friendly, and of course 
> to make it look good (personally I think the fonts available for Ubuntu 
> for example, to surf the web, are kind of sad).

Ouch. Fonts are the first thing I look for in an OS. They're really that 
important to my overall computing experience :-)

> but the oem market will continue to give MS $50 for every PC shipped for 
> now until we're all old men and women - that's a lot of money. 
> Remember too, the MS gets %35 of its revenue from office, which also has 
> a new release and will keep that monopoly alive and well for a long time 
> too.

Delusion. TANSTAAFL.

> If anyone is in the market for a new machine, only buy one that is 
> giving free Vista upgrades, most company will give coupons right now, to 
> redeem for Vista upgrades when it becomes available to non-businesses in 
> late February.

Brazen appeal for cash.

<burnout>

All I want to add is: the last time I coded on Win32, the API I was using 
(GetFileVersionInfo/GetFileVersionInfoSize, if you want to look it up and 
try it) had a weird feature: GetFileVersionInfoSize was returning a nuber 
almost twice as large as the buffer GetFileVersionInfo needed. What I 
assume happened is: GetFileVersionInfoSize forgot to count the 4 byte 
length that is prepended to the GetFileVersionInfo buffer, so callers were 
getting buffer overflows. How did they fix it? They doubled the number of 
bytes GetFileVersionInfoSize returns! Now you waste n-4 bytes every time, 
but hey kids, at least you're not getting buffer overruns! Figuring out 
why the only possible use case is failing is hard, let's just throw 
resources at it :-)

This rebuttal provided courtesy of Saturday night alcohol and general 
bitterness.

 			Alexey,

who ran NT4 SP2 before it made him cry.