blogs.cnet.com — Nice column talking about why Windows will be doomed if it doesn't go open source. Reasons: the Internet, Web 2.0 and the open source movement. Gives Windows about 10 years before it meets its demise. Really great argument for open source. But the real question is: will it ever happen?
Jul 17, 2007 View in Crawl 4
frsrblchJul 18, 2007
Why does he keep talking about internet speeds increasing? I've had the same connection for 3 years, and I still get the same speeds...
jveezyJul 18, 2007
"You don't want this audience to abandon Windows, so it's important to remind them that Windows is still the most interesting operating system to develop for."It's also the most interesting one to use if you consider random crashes in the middle of extremely important tasks to be interesting. It certainly adds a little pizzaz to my life.
disco5896Jul 18, 2007
I thank Al Gore every time I use the internet!
Closed AccountJul 18, 2007
i could care less if windows converts to an open source model. seeya windows!
oneandonlysnobJul 18, 2007
Being a programmer, I like open source software. I can and have customized software and fixed bugs thanks to having available source code. You benefit from people like me.
grumpyrainJul 18, 2007
@init100There is a compromise here. The OS has a responsibility to protect users from shooting themselves in the foot. *nix has always been used by more tech savvy users, it is really only in the past few years that you would even consider using *nix as a desktop OS for my parents generation. They do not understand the user rights thing, well they do understand it in the context of a business network, but not in the context of them actually owning the machine. 'What do you mean I can't install this, I own this stupid computer, why won't it install?' Of course, we know that by running at the lowest possible account level, about 99% of the windows viruses, spyware, keyloggers and trojans would be impotent.Since Win2K, home users of Windows have had the option of running as a non-administrator account. The truth is that for the average non-tech savvy person, it was just 'easier' to make your account administrator than to log out and back in every time you try to do something. XP introduced fast user switching that made it less annoying (as in you could leave everything running while you switched accounts), but still, the default user was an administrator and most non-tech savvy users didn't think to change it.Those that did change it then come across the annoyances. On my laptop, i could not double click the clock (to view the calendar so I know what day the 28th is) and I could not switch my power profile between high performance and max battery unless I have administrative access. I can do it now because I searched through some MSDN blogs and found the ACLs and group policies I needed to set permissions to, but this is beyond the capabilities of many users.Vista introduced UAC which does a similar but different thing to sudo, but works differently. Sudo executes the binary from a higher account to allow system wide changes. UAC doesn't use a different account, there are different permission levels within a single administrator account. (Even administrator users can't make changes without being quizzed). BOTH UAC and sudo must face the same problem. How can we implement it without being so annoying that people turn it off (UAC) or just log in as root (sudo). *nix has a huge advantage here, in that because of its long history, there are next to no apps that presume root access. To avoid the annoyance, sudo caches credentials for a period of time. The upside to this is that it is extremely quiet. The downside is that it is a potential weakness where malware could (in theory, I am not aware of any that does this) remain dormant until some trustable application is run which requires sudo and sneak through during the cached credential period.UAC goes the other way, and instead of caching credentials, makes it 'less annoying' to authorise something, just click allow. Obviously non-administrator users need to actually type in their admin credentials.In response to the users who complain about having to type in root passwords, all the common OS available today (not counting pre-Vista versions of Windows which will phase out) demand authorisation to do system wide changes. If they thing *nix sucks because you need to authorise things, they will hate Vista and OS X too, so don't get too worried about them. I am sure people used to complain about having to wear seatbelts too.
iam9376Jul 19, 2007
Well, based on your comment I'm going to go ahead and assume you have never developed for Linux or any 'alternative operating system'. The technologies used to develop the majority of games out there are based on platform independent code, obviously this excludes all DirectX based engines. Moreso the languages used are highly portable. In reality, the differences for programming for Windows versus Linux (on a good engine platform) is very minimal, and often a simple recompile for that platform will work.