Comments on: Why Windows Seems Like a Dead End http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/ Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75840 Roy Schestowitz Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:02:02 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75840 It's not about duration. It’s not about duration.

]]> By: Yuhong Bao http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75837 Yuhong Bao Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:34:46 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75837 What helped, I think, was the five-year gap between XP and Vista. What helped, I think, was the five-year gap between XP and Vista.

]]> By: Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75836 Roy Schestowitz Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:23:50 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75836 So that's the "post-Vista" era of Windows; still, leaving a trail of almost-obsolete binaries. So that’s the “post-Vista” era of Windows; still, leaving a trail of almost-obsolete binaries.

]]> By: Yuhong Bao http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75834 Yuhong Bao Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:18:36 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75834 "Vista architecture. See? That’s why it’s called Vista 7. " Yes I know, but not the problem. MS do try to ensure driver backward compatiblity, XP and Vista drivers often do work in 7. It was mentioned in the comments, and by DaemonFC on IRC too when I was discussing why my old Palm device did not work on Vista. “Vista architecture. See? That’s why it’s called Vista 7. ”
Yes I know, but not the problem. MS do try to ensure driver backward compatiblity, XP and Vista drivers often do work in 7. It was mentioned in the comments, and by DaemonFC on IRC too when I was discussing why my old Palm device did not work on Vista.

]]> By: Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75815 Roy Schestowitz Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:08:28 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75815 <blockquote> It was obvious from the review itself that the problem that caused the bad review was the lack of drivers. </blockquote> Vista architecture. See? That's why it's called Vista 7.

It was obvious from the review itself that the problem that caused the bad review was the lack of drivers.

Vista architecture. See? That’s why it’s called Vista 7.

]]> By: Yuhong Bao http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75804 Yuhong Bao Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:52:45 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75804 Yea, in the Alpha NT days DEC had FX!32 and MS was going to create it's own solution to run x86 Win32 apps too. BTW, guess why a solution to run x86 DOS and Win16 apps came with non-x86 NT but not x86 Win32 apps? Yea, in the Alpha NT days DEC had FX!32 and MS was going to create it’s own solution to run x86 Win32 apps too. BTW, guess why a solution to run x86 DOS and Win16 apps came with non-x86 NT but not x86 Win32 apps?

]]> By: Yuhong Bao http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75803 Yuhong Bao Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:49:37 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75803 Get The Old New Thing book too. Among other things, it has an example where a journalist wrote a bad review on Win95. MS ended up calling in the journalist to investigate the bad review, and it turned that the journalist installed it via XCOPY, and not only that was unsupported, it caused a third-party control panel to hit an untested error path and crash due to a double-free. Also look at the comments on the Louderback review of Windows 7. It was obvious from the review itself that the problem that caused the bad review was the lack of drivers. Get The Old New Thing book too. Among other things, it has an example where a journalist wrote a bad review on Win95. MS ended up calling in the journalist to investigate the bad review, and it turned that the journalist installed it via XCOPY, and not only that was unsupported, it caused a third-party control panel to hit an untested error path and crash due to a double-free. Also look at the comments on the Louderback review of Windows 7. It was obvious from the review itself that the problem that caused the bad review was the lack of drivers.

]]> By: David Gerard http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75793 David Gerard Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:02:30 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75793 Well, yeah. Backwards compatibility is the only reason to keep buying this stuff. Let's duplicate Win32 on ARM! Uh, what? HORRIBLE programming interface. Well, yeah. Backwards compatibility is the only reason to keep buying this stuff. Let’s duplicate Win32 on ARM! Uh, what? HORRIBLE programming interface.

]]> By: Roy Schestowitz http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75792 Roy Schestowitz Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:43:33 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75792 That's also why Microsoft can't quite depart from x86. That’s also why Microsoft can’t quite depart from x86.

]]> By: David Gerard http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75791 David Gerard Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:19:34 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75791 Yeah, that example was from Raymond Chen's blog. Which everyone should read, because it's a shining example of what ensuring backward compatibility means in the real world: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ Fantastic stuff. The problem is that if you buy Windows 95 and your old programs don't work, you're not going to blame the old program - you're going to blame the new OS. So they have to do stuff like that. That's the pain of selling an OS for proprietary software. With free software, people are used to recompiling - GNU/Linux has extremely bad backwards binary compatibility, because it doesn't need it. Wine is so far resisting app-specific hacks (Crossover has a few, but the winehq tree doesn't), but yeah, eventually it'll have to implement them. At the moment it confines itself to accurately reproducing more general Windows bugs ;-) Test-driven development, no new features without a conformance test, etc. Yeah, that example was from Raymond Chen’s blog. Which everyone should read, because it’s a shining example of what ensuring backward compatibility means in the real world: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ Fantastic stuff.

The problem is that if you buy Windows 95 and your old programs don’t work, you’re not going to blame the old program – you’re going to blame the new OS. So they have to do stuff like that. That’s the pain of selling an OS for proprietary software. With free software, people are used to recompiling – GNU/Linux has extremely bad backwards binary compatibility, because it doesn’t need it.

Wine is so far resisting app-specific hacks (Crossover has a few, but the winehq tree doesn’t), but yeah, eventually it’ll have to implement them. At the moment it confines itself to accurately reproducing more general Windows bugs ;-) Test-driven development, no new features without a conformance test, etc.

]]> By: Natasiel http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75790 Natasiel Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:07:57 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75790 This remember me a post on Slashdot, and I have read it somewhere else too. As a sample example: Civilisation II has been released on Windows 3.11 then somewhere in the code, the application freed some memory. Due to a bug in Windows 3.11, the memory was not properly freed and Civilisation had to access this "not properly freed memory" to read some data. This bug has been fixed in Windows 95, but the proper fix broke Civilisation II. So, binary speaking, to keep backward compatibility, Windows 95 had a hack to verify if the calling application was civ2.exe before freeing memory. This is but one known of the many "features" inside the hidden Windows code. Wine has a better win32 API implementation than any Windows. Otherwordly, to be 100% compatible, Wine has to implement bugs. -Dominic This remember me a post on Slashdot, and I have read it somewhere else too. As a sample example:

Civilisation II has been released on Windows 3.11 then somewhere in the code, the application freed some memory. Due to a bug in Windows 3.11, the memory was not properly freed and Civilisation had to access this “not properly freed memory” to read some data. This bug has been fixed in Windows 95, but the proper fix broke Civilisation II. So, binary speaking, to keep backward compatibility, Windows 95 had a hack to verify if the calling application was civ2.exe before freeing memory.

This is but one known of the many “features” inside the hidden Windows code. Wine has a better win32 API implementation than any Windows. Otherwordly, to be 100% compatible, Wine has to implement bugs.

-Dominic

]]> By: David Gerard http://techrights.org/2009/11/20/windows-ugly-truth/comment-page-1/#comment-75785 David Gerard Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:32:27 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=22190#comment-75785 This sort of thing is why I'm amazed Wine works so well. And why I'm not surprised Alexandre Julliard is *incredibly* fussy about what gets into Wine. This sort of thing is why I’m amazed Wine works so well. And why I’m not surprised Alexandre Julliard is *incredibly* fussy about what gets into Wine.

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