Arfa Daily wrote:

snip

You know Graham, I've never been a Gates / MS / Windoze basher. A lot of the
flak that they take seems to come from people not liking the fact that they
tied the market up, and make squillions of dollars a day. OK, so maybe there
was something better than Windows just waiting to come on the market, and
maybe Gates and co did stop it by working to make Windows the dominant OS
worldwide, but looking at it the other way, it has got to have done more to
'standardise' the world of home (and business) computing, and to make it
practical and affordable to the whole world at large, than any other factor
which has had an influence.

It is difficult not to want to respond to this post and I hope that other
folks do express their opinions in this thread (yet another o/s religious
debate), especially those with expertise and experience in these matters,
but I would like to make a few points (briefly);

1. O/S2 should have been the 'standardized' MS o/s; it incorporated the Win3x
API but was built on a sane kernel and improved security model and its
driver structure IMHO was superior; later versions were poised to outperform
Win9x but due to the IBM departure, were relegated to business and mission critical
applications. It could have incorporated the Win9x API for compatibility.

2. Windows API emulation on Unix is a superior platform for legacy development
and maintenance as MS abandons hardware and o/s versions as a continuous-upgrade
business strategy. Virtual machine technology is also permitting retaining older
Windows installations deployed on new hardware that can't directly support them;
this wouldn't be necessary in a scalable o/s that doesn't force hardware migration
at every release.

3. Much objection to MS Windows regards the hiding of critical portions of the API
and kernel hooks to thwart third parties; also the forced inclusion of non-o/s
functionality at low levels has degraded the o/s (again in an attempt to thwart
third parties).

4. Continuous patching would not be necessary if the o/s was secure by design;
evidently NT engineering was headed by ex DEC VMS folks imported to MS - they
could have preserved the best of NT philosophy in designing the new o/s but
must have been pressured by other internal forces to release a product
insecure-by-default.

5. Yeah, I like the convenience of expecting hardware and software to 'just work'
and Windows (up to XP) provided that experience for most folks, but when push comes
to shove, I use versions of linux to identify, test and qualify hardware that Windows
doesn't quite grok. Currently I am wrestling with a system timer issue that
borks certain multimedia drivers and applications running on a rather significant
list of motherboard chipsets under NT/2K/XP; MS considers the behavior a 'feature'
whereas the rest of the world knows it is a 'bug'; fixing it will require changes
to drivers and applications, whereas it should be fixed in the kernel, and would
be done so quickly in most other operating system development and maintenance
programs (e.g. opensource).

6. Vista is a truly unfortunate step in the wrong direction - even more bloat forcing
ever more powerful hardware to just maintain a performance level of previous generations;
forced DMCA and IP protection, impossible driver restrictions, poor quality control
in releases not-ready-for-prime time, etc., etc. Folks are desperate enough to be
stocking spare machines and software to permit running earlier Windows releases
into the indefinite future since new commodity hardware now, if not in the near future,
not run them. Vista wont run a large number of apps used by folks like embedded
engineers which depend on certain types of peripheral port access, DOS windows, and
other services which have always been available in Windows.

With these sorts of issues, many people may decide to use a scalable opensource o/s
that has worldwide continuous support and development in order to preserve their
investments in software and hardware. And many of these alternatives also 'just work'
and support even more hardware than under Windows.

Michael