Vista Kicks Ass | Hacker News Reader

Vista Kicks Ass

mattmaroon.com

14 pointsdrm23750 comments

Matt's take on Vista.

I haven't had to reinstall once, and with XP I typically would have 3 times by now.

I had no idea MS OSes were so bad. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing?

The MS OSes are terrible. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing. More typical computer users just buy new systems when they become unusably slow after a couple years, which is good for Dell and the like.

What gets me to stay is tablet PC support and font rendering. Linux doesn't have an application that comes close to Microsoft OneNote for note taking. I wish that Apple made a touch screen Mac and I will probably switch when they launch one.

The font rendering on Windows blows away Linux and Mac, in my opinion. There is nothing so crisp as Windows standard font smoothing (not ClearType). Linux and Mac look incredibly ugly without subpixel font smoothing or other heavy anti-aliasing. I spent a while trying to figure out how to get Linux to render fonts better and gave up when it required a kernel recompile.

Has anyone here gotten Linux to render fonts well without subpixel anti-aliasing?

You are right on the font, Windows blows away while Linux blows.

downmodded for being slightly profane? Linux font rendering really does blow.

Downmodded for lack of supporting arguments.

Looks fine out of the box on every install I've seen of the current most popular distribution (Ubuntu 7.04).

Also has worked fine on every distro I've used since at least 2000 (though back then I used Fedora, which at the time was a little ahead of the pack).

Vista, incidentally, requires a reboot to increase the font DPI. Try it.

Yes, it looks fine if you have font smoothing on, but try turning it off. The underlying font rendering is really poor, the underlying font rendering for Windows makes everything look like a pixel font.

Sure, monochrome fonts look bad.

Since font are rendered with smoothing by default, rather than the monochrome option, it's not really a supporting argument.

At less than obscene resolutions, I greatly prefer monochrome fonts over smoothed fonts, which look blurry to me. Whenever I'm running at 200DPI, I'll switch to subpixel anti-aliased fonts.

Windows gives me the option of having incredibly readable subtly smoothed monochrome fonts and Linux only lets me have smoothed fonts. This is one area (the only area, I admit) where Linux is less configurable, or at least has less worthwhile options than Windows. But text readability seems like the single most important issue to me in an OS, so I have to stick with Windows until I find a Linux kernel recompiled for better monochrome fonts.

Or I need to download a pixel font for all the standard web and system fonts, but copyright makes that illegal and impossible.

How the heck did you get your hands on a 200DPI display? The highest I've ever seen is 132DPI.

(It was an arbitrarily high number for rhetorical purposes. I probably should have made it smaller. I was trying to imply that I will switch to subpixel smoothed fonts at some later date.)

edit: here's one from 2003 that sold for $8,400. http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/03/28/ibm-t...

You could just learn to compile a kernel. Not that tough, really -- and a valuable skill if you want to know about Xen and other things.

OK, I found some good instructions that require only a recompile of freetype -- apparently the reason Linux renders fonts so poorly is that Apple has the good algorithms patented, so they can't turn on the good font rendering by default.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=694...

I might have to reinstall Linux this weekend, if it works I'll write a blog post with lots of pictures.

This guide has pictures of a Linux install with properly non-smoothed fonts. http://avi.alkalay.net/linux/docs/font-howto/Font.html

He doesn't need to compile a kernel for that, just Freetype.

Slightly off topic, most people who compile a kernel don't need to - they usually need to add a module, which if it isn't already packaged, is easily compilable on its own. Check RHEL 4's release notes (which show how to create a Makefile for a single module).

The compile love of Linux novices comes from old documentation from before kernel 2.0, when most drivers started being available as modules.

Good point, thanks for bringing that up.

Nailer, I was just expressing one point of opinion. I cannot support the fact that something looks bad.Its an opinion. Both me and my friend are looking at the same monitor (ubuntu fiesty) and he thinks "its just fine" and I think the fonts blow. It probably has to do with my extreme and acute sensitivity for colors and shapes. My screen resolution is 1920 by 1300.Anything less and I become irritable. Notice my news.yc id?

I love Linux, but the fonts blow(till fiesty standard installation). I have to check out Gutsy yet.

I'm definitely not a fan of Mac fonts, but that might just be what I'm used to.

With Windows, you can turn font smoothing off completely and the fonts look like pixel fonts. With Linux and Mac, things look terrible without font smoothing.

See this post for an explanation of the fundamental difference between Mac and Windows font smoothing: Mac tries to render as closely to the printed typeface as possible and Windows tries to look good onscreen. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000885.html

Odd... Personally I see Mac as gorgeous on screen fonts, and whenever I have to check things in IE on Windows XP the fonts look like some kid knocked them up in paint shop pro on a lazy sunday.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've not seen nice fonts on windows yet.

I think there are all sorts of encumbering patents around doing that sort of stuff with fonts in certain ways. And the companies involved have been known to enforce those patents. Hence linux stays away (for the moment). Although it seems like with newer distros it is getting easier to turn this stuff on (but it is still up to you, and isn't a easy setting as yet).

Thats about all I know about it.

What about a good shell environment, stability, package management?

An OS is a lot of different things. It's too bad that the OS market is dominated by superficial concern with 'interoperability' (defined in the narrowest sense) and appearance. You can't get the best of everything, all in one nice package. Make sure the things you want the best of are really the things you can make the best use of!

> Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing?

No. Reinstalling Windows is recommended by kids on forums - everyone else knows that a defrag suffices.

Depends on usage. My grandma is happiest with Win 95. She never had to reinstall once.

Not sure I agree that a defrag will fix the issues. I will say that running anti-virus and not clicking on every link that says you've won $50k does wonders...that and using firefox over IE.

I agree; the users that complain about Windows stability (the ones that aren't Mac using journalists) are the type that install sleazy toolbars and slipshod freeware.

It's like having sex with everyone in the art department and wondering why you have herpes.

I defrag and run anti-spyware regularly. Use Firefox only, and never even see such a link due to adblocker. It's mostly the DLL nightmare.

It's funny how much people these days think defrag does.

Defrag does ONE thing, and ONE thing only. It speeds up your hard disk access a bit by making sure files are sequential.

It's not going to fix all those driver issues windows gets, won't fix the crappy registry, won't remove all those hidden programs that start up automatically making it take 20 minutes to boot. It won't remove all the IE add-on bars that somehow got installed with some other software. It won't remove all the spyware/adware/viruses.

Don't install shady programs and, like I said, a defrag will suffice. If you do however install a bunch of junk then you'll need to reinstall Windows.

The same would be true for any other OS that is filled with malicious programs; that is, it's easier to start over than to remove the junk one-by-one.

Problem is most PCs that come with windows, also come with the manufacturers own selection of 'shady programs', trials, adware, etc etc designed to make them some extra money.

Get an Acer. My TravelMate came with no software other than Windows and stuff necessary to operate the hardware (drivers, DVD burner, touchpad enhancements, user guide, etc.) I've needed to reinstall the OS once in its 3-year lifetime.

It helps that I don't install software lightly. I do most of my development in VMWare under a Linux guest OS, and typically run only Winamp/Gaim/Firefox/SSH/uTorrent under Windows. The one time I did need to reinstall the OS was because I'd been going through a bunch of different programs for movie playback/decompression and some of them didn't play very well together.

When I had 95, I would get up in the morning, take a shower, brush my teeth, reinstall the OS.

I followed that routine for three weeks with FreeBSD -- the first time I had ever worked with a UNIX family OS. After I finally figured out the basics of partitioning a drive, setting the locale and time, I didn't 'reinstall' again until, three years later, I switched to Gentoo Linux.

Windows rot happens if you install/uninstall a lot of programs due to DLL hell. I suspect I have to reinstall way more often than my parents, but it does happen even to them.

And even then it's probably only certain applications. Office plugins seem to be among the worst offenders in my experience. I remember problems with both IBM Rational and FileNet Panagon. Those are both huge software packages developed by big companies, so I don't know how much blame to lay on microsoft.

Barring hard drive issues, I've never had to reinstall the OS on my personal PC.

I've reinstalled my OSX 3 times since March.

Reboot hourly, reinstall O/S daily. Replace computer weekly.

No.

Some people do wacky things on their PC's. I've got a laptop and a PC running XP, do a good chunk of development (granted nothing hardware related) and can't remember the last time I crashed, let alone re-installed.

I think the point of the anti-Vista stuff is not that Vista is significantly worse than other MS OS, but that it is not enough of an improvement over XP for people to put up with the speed hit. It seems the people who hate Vista the most are people who use Mac OS or Linux anyway.

I'm still divided on Vista. I've been using it for well over 2 years starting before the beta stage via an MSDN account. Lately, I use Vista, Ubuntu, and XP evenly throughout the day and XP is my least favorite. Vista has been more annoying then XP, but the added features (yes there are actually features worth using) make it worth it still. That said, Ubuntu is great, but I have had more issues with it on an old laptop than either XP or Vista which have both been on the machine. I think I am more willing to accept Ubuntu's short comings because I know it's open source, and it's what I expect.

That said, my next laptop will probably be a mac, although which OS I use most (OSX, Vista, or Ubuntu) has yet to be determined.

I always want to try OSX, but the ridiculous price and sub par hardware/build quality keep turning me away. All of my friends have Macbook Pros, had it not been for that I probably would have gotten one by now.

Matt, here's the secret to buying from Dell: shop in their small business section, not their home section. I'm quite pleased with my Inspiron 9400.

There used to be a real build quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines but now some of the Latitudes are just black-painted Inspirons with marginally better support.

Lenovo is the way to go.

I'm not talking about Inspiron vs. Lattitude, I'm talking about the home line of Inspirons versus the SB line (9300 vs. 9400, when I bought mine). I find Lenovo's displays intolerably bad.

Oh, ok. What was the difference between the 9300/9400 Inspiron when you bought it?

I don't recall exactly, but there were at least two components -- the video card and wireless card IIRC -- that worked well with Linux on the 9400 but not the 9300.

....And IBM Intellistations for desktop use. They're almost studio pc quiet, built like a powermac, and I have never had a single problem with one. They even ship with a decent keyboard. Just can't go wrong buying IBM....

Cool, I didn't know they still made computers.

http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US...

I've heard that from a few people actually.

the 9400 is the same as e1705 rebranded.

Vista Kicks Your Ass...

1. Self-limiting software

2. Vanishing functionality through invalidation

3. Removal of media capabilities

4. Problem-solving prohibited

5. Limited mobility

6. One transfer only

7. Stealth Installs with Windows Update turned OFF...

8. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video 9. Windows Update file deletions of 3rd party software

Reference:

http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding...

And thats just the EULA. Once you actually install this piece of malware you find that if you watch it with a net snffer, even while completely idle, after several days with no interaction, it is constantly sending stuff across the net. Try it for your self with Snort. Its spooky.

If you value your privacy, the security of your company, and give a damn about protecting your investments, you will read the EULA for yourself before you rush down to the beach with the rest of the lemmings.

The author hints at a major issue with corporate deployments -- old machines. It's all fine, well and good that Vista runs on machines it shipped with; but many large shops have to turn down an upgrade to Vista just because the performance is egregiously bad on older machines. By extension, it is unwise for developers to assume that Vista will be there when they need it, making it unsuitable as a platform for the near future.

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