[KLUG Advocacy] Windows Longhorn (was GEEK JEOPARDY 15 DAYS)

[Adam Tauno WIlliams]

> >winfile.exe!  :)   Honestly, it is a much better file manager anyway. 
> >Explorer sucks.
> I'll have to check that out.  I've always known it was theoretically 
> possible to replace the the shell program, but I'd never heard of 
> anybody actually writing a replacment.  How about one that asks like the 
> trusty OS/2 v4 shell, whatever they called it?

winfile.exe is just the file browser from NT 3.51 (or WfWg, at least in
appearance).  It is faster, and I think less intrusive to use: copy
means copy all the time, and not make-a-&%@^&@$-shortcut some of the
time.  Progman.exe sucked, but other than that I think the UI changed
seen in NT 3.51 -> NT 4.0 (or WfWg -> Win9x) was not an improvement; but
thats just my opinion.

> >>> large file, etc. etc.  
> >>> At least with the current versions you can turn off the "transitions" 
> >>> from the task bar menus.  This is why Linux or Unix is a much more 
> >>> efficient server platform than Windows: you can turn off the GUI, which 
> >>> a server doesn't need anyway.
> >Although repeated often enough to qualify as a manta I don't buy this at
> >all.  An idle GUI (in OS/X, Linux, AIX, or Win32) isn't consuming any
> >significant resources.   I've got X running on most of my servers,  all
> >X's crap gets pushed out to swap if something else needs the RAM (and
> >this is a server, so that means you need more RAM).  Switching from
> >runlevel 5 to runlevel 3 releases like 64Mb, that doesn't mean anything
> >on a server class machine.  And X never even makes it onto the "top"
> >screen it is burning so little CPU,  and on my Windows 2000/2003 servers
> >explorer.exe (which paints most of the desktop GUI) and other GDI
> >components never make it into the task manager's statistics they are so
> >absolutely trivial in terms of resource consumption.
> Depends on the age and duties of the server.

Okay, I buy this part, but we are equivocating terms.  "Server" - any
computer that provides SERVICES to another computeer -- OR -- a class of
machines DESIGNED TO PROVIDE SERVICES to other computers.  (A "server"
can also be a process running on a computer, some people call Apache a
"web server").

In terms of corporate or marketing speech, "Server" means:  class of
machines DESIGNED TO PROVIDE SERVICES to other computers.

> Until about a year ago, my 
> house server was an ancient P2 350 with 128 megs or less of RAM, if 
> memory serves.  At runlevel 3 it was fine, with minimal load.  It could 
> barely run Windows 2000, and if you kicked it to runlevel 5 Linux was 
> just as bad. 

Sure, this is true; but your using an old PC as a server.  I've got a
packard smell P133 serving a critical service on my home network.  That
does NOT make it a "Server", just because I'm using it as one.  No way I
could ever run X or Windows 2000 on that box.  What these boxes are
really closest to are "Appliances"

> >Linux is a superior server solution because (A) it is simply a better
> >implementation, (B) it has a more-or-less consistent conception model
> >(streams of I/O [pipes], everything is a file, etc...) verses the warty
> >Win32 (and Microsoft admits this as part of their rationale for creating
> >.NET) and (C) it has a heck of a lot more developers (recent stats show
> >on average ~2.5 patches going into the 2.6.x kernel tree EVERY HOUR,
> >Holy crap!).
> Can't really argue with that.  I guess it comes down to the origin of 
> the OS.  Windows NT borrowed heavily from the VAX VMS architecture, and 
> Linux borrowed more from Unix.  I'm not suggesting that there are that 
> many similarities remaining, but I don't think it's a coincidence that 
> VMS was kind of a mess and so is Windows.

And there is the whole we-need-backward-compatibility-thing, to M$-DOS
and Win16,  which are both radically different OSs (from Windows NT +). 
They effectively had to build a version of WINE into their OS;  of
course it is a mess.

> >It has nothing to do with the 'integrated' or not GUI (although I do
> >think the Win32 GUI is dumb).
> How would you design it?  

Well, like X!  The dumb is how their UI/GUI is connected to the OS;  but
that isn't the reason it is a crappy server OS, there are abundant other
reasons for that.

> As much as I dislike some things about 
> Windows, I think the interface is well designed in XP and 2000.  I'd 
> dump the active program taskbar for a button that pulls up a menu of 
> tasks, and maybe do multiple panes like XWindows, but other than that I 
> like Windows better.

We're really talking about preferences here.  But I prefer GNOME (Ximian
like GNOME anyway) which textual (vs. iconic) pull-down (vs. push-up)
menus.  Window behaviour seems more or less the same, except I use
focus-follows-mouse which Win32 doesn't offer;  having to raise a window
in order to use it drives me batty.  Roll up windows I find much more
useful than the minimize/maximize scenario, and again Win32 doesn't
offer that.  The only thing about the Windows UI 'user experience' that
is truly maddening is the control panel,  which is a pathologically
confused mess with configuration directives build several dialogs deep.

> >>> The only "advantage" that I believe will actually be an advantage is that you 
> >>> will have a 3-d API to the desktop, so you'll be able to run a 3-d game 
> >>> windowed without the huge performance hit this currently involves.
> >My answer: buy a game console to play games.  Computers are for doing
> >work.
> Unfortunately that's hardly true any more.  For a long time it's been 
> the entertainment industry, not the business or scientific industry 
> that's been driving PC hardware.  And too many types of games work much 
> better with a mouse, keyboard, and hard drive then a TV set and gamepad.

True, but so many times I've seen games trash workstations.  If you use
your workstation as a game machine you're playing with fire.  It should
at least be a separate machine;  but this depends on how really badly
you need your workstation to always-work.  And their might again be a
equivocation here, between "workstation" and "PC".
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