Gartner Analysts Warn That Windows Is Collapsing

[Gnome]

you going to answer 2) or must i do that as well?

or are you going to learn to read the post before being a sour grape ?

it doesnt take a genius to know that im talking about operating systems.....so dont take this whole thing out of context please

Oh I see you weren't actually trying to make a point you were just babbling, saying that because he/she learned how to use product X and therefore it is better is idiotic.

 

[Devill]

You seem to suffer under the illusion that Open Office can only be downloaded when you can obtain the installation CD's in stores these days. Microsoft just has more exposure because of their operating system. Most people trust a name they know and since they are already using Windows (and usually think it's the best) they think Microsoft's other products will be equally great (in their minds).

I'm not for or against any Operating System, in fact kudos to the people who created Linux, OSX and Windows, I think people don't really understand just how much goes into it, but software wise I think Microsoft only has a few great products those being Windows, Visual C++ and SQL Server. The rest just don't shine compared to alternatives, my 2c.

lol...im not suffering(but thanks for your concern).... im also not under that illusion mate, sorry if i gave you that impression

im saying that windows will be the trusted operating system for a while still till someone brings along another easy to use point and click operating system....would your granma who knows microsoft word / office programs by now really like to start learning how to use new software at the age of 70?

most older(people above 50) people dont even whant to upgrade their cellphones....why would they change software?

i never said that windows/microsoft is better...i simply stated that its been in use longer and like you yourself said that people stick to the tried-and-trusted things in life

 

[Devill]

Fact : Windows is being used more because very few people know how to use open source software

see i stated windows(think thats what the thread was about?) not office nor any other product so i was really talking about the operating system.

i can see the point to some of your ideas/statements.

Lol just dont be so defensive..maybe one day you guys will have a smile on your faces when linux 2050 comes out

 

[Gnome]

Lol just dont be so defensive..maybe one day you guys will have a smile on your faces when linux 2050 comes out

I don't use Linux (at least not daily, more like weekly), I use Windows XP, but I almost exclusively use open source software (apart from Windows) not because I am a open source nut, simply because open source products are so far the best out there, best is that I can fix it if it crashes for some reason.

 

[fskmh]

lol...im not suffering(but thanks for your concern).... im also not under that illusion mate, sorry if i gave you that impression

im saying that windows will be the trusted operating system for a while still till someone brings along another easy to use point and click operating system....would your granma who knows microsoft word / office programs by now really like to start learning how to use new software at the age of 70?

most older(people above 50) people dont even whant to upgrade their cellphones....why would they change software?

i never said that windows/microsoft is better...i simply stated that its been in use longer and like you yourself said that people stick to the tried-and-trusted things in life

This just perfectly illustrates my point from a few posts back:

"Windows will be the no. 1 (desktop) choice as long as people choose to ignore the alternatives. The situation is worsened by people, even the technically inclined, offering insights based on 2nd hand information and their own limited experience with alternatives to Windows."

What's also clear from your responses is that while you're completely ignorant about the alternatives, you're quite willing to opine about it and further dilute the ailing technical merits of this thread, without actually reading any feedback from people who are familiar with Windows and its alternatives.

see i stated windows(think thats what the thread was about?) not office nor any other product so i was really talking about the operating system.

i can see the point to some of your ideas/statements.

Lol just dont be so defensive..maybe one day you guys will have a smile on your faces when linux 2050 comes out

This from the guy who answers his own rhetorical questions and posts opinions based on zero real-life experience as "fact".

 

[chiskop]

1) is windows the most used operating system or not world wide currently? yes or no (no buts ifs or ahhhhs)

Windows - but then try to buy a computer without it. People aren't choosing it - they have no choice.

2) can your gran - ma install then use firefox? can she download openoffice and use it?

Nope. So wait, did your grandmother install Office 2007? Respect if that is the case.

IMO, Open office is simpler for new users to pick up and use, no fiddling about trying to figure how the ribbon works, or realising that you have to click the windows logo to save your document.

But hey, use what works for you.

 

[Gnome]

IMO, Open office is simpler for new users to pick up and use, no fiddling about trying to figure how the ribbon works, or realising that you have to click the windows logo to save your document.

I was gonna bring up the same point but reason only works on logical thinkers

 

[milomak]

On the new Office you have to click the Windows logo to save?

Also if you make your grandma aware of the price differential between Office and OOo (assuming of course you are not pirating her software), I think she might just want to have OOo installed. And imagine her surprise when she finds that about 90% of the functionality is the same. In fact it would be better for her to move to OOo than the new Office in terms of the functionality she has learnt.

As for browsing. My guess is that she will be clicking on links, using her bookmarks or typing urls in. I daresay no matter which browser you use will do this things the same.

And given I would assume most grandmas will have their PCs setup for them, the installation is a moot point.

 

[chiskop]

most APPS do not run under Linux

17 000 packages that can be installed with a couple of clicks on my linux-running computer disagree with you.

Oh, you mean Windows apps - that's like me complaining that amarok doesn't run on windows.

 

[Kasyx]

17 000 packages that can be installed with a couple of clicks on my linux-running computer disagree with you.

Oh, you mean Windows apps - that's like me complaining that amarok doesn't run on windows.

*sigh*

I love you, Amarok...



Oh, sorry, what were we talking about?

 

[milomak]

an excellent piece of software that

 

[d0b33]

I'm waiting for Ubuntu to fully support the santa rosa macbook before I give it a go again. Currently I don't have it installed anywhere

 

[ShockG]

I wouldn't say anything about ailing technical merits of this thread. I also would not call the programming abilities of Microsoft's designers into question simply because no other company, no other group of people in a corporate or not have ever undertaken the massive task that Microsoft have undertaken in an attempt to be all things to everyone.

Open source pundits are so quick to speak about their technical advantage over everything Microsoft yet have simply nothing real to show for it to the end user. Productivity (work) and entertainment (read games) is what interests me. I can do this on one platform on windows but I can't if I use any version or distribution of Linux.

For all Open source's greatness (more in particular Linux punters) where is your equivalent graphics API? Where is it, you had a head start on Microsoft of at least 7 years. You had the pioneer of the industry to spring board from (SGI) as well. So show and tell please? If all that is open source is great and without fault. This is a sticking point for me and several hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Tell everybody every engineer, physicist, mathematician, programmer, coder graphics artist employed at NVIDIA, AMD, Matrox, Intel, at hundreds of game developer studios (who make Xbox and PC content) why they should move away from Windows platform to Linux and open source...

Give me and these others a better platform in what interests us (graphics and the games associated with them), then you have a case.
Please nobody sidestep this one, give me an open source alternative that is as proficient in real time graphics as the solution offered by Microsoft and you will have won me over and I will start being an avid open source\linux guy today.

 

[Gnome]

For all Open source's greatness (more in particular Linux punters) where is your equivalent graphics API? Where is it, you had a head start on Microsoft of at least 7 years. You had the pioneer of the industry to spring board from (SGI) as well. So show and tell please? If all that is open source is great and without fault. This is a sticking point for me and several hundreds of millions of people across the world.

You're gonna push the DirectX issue again are you? Technically DirectX does not offer anything OpenGL doesn't, except that it runs only on Windows & XBox. Perhaps you should check out the actual standards before you judge.

Tell everybody every engineer, physicist, mathematician, programmer, coder graphics artist employed at NVIDIA, AMD, Matrox, Intel, at hundreds of game developer studios (who make Xbox and PC content) why they should move away from Windows platform to Linux and open source...

I highly doubt you'd have to tell the people who work at nVidia, AMD, Maxtor and Intel because there is nothing that proves they are using Microsoft products, as for games, well the Playstation console uses OpenGL so I guess all those developers must be deluded, oh yeah ID Games also (How dare they not follow the heard!? I mean using OpenGL, how could they it's worse than DirectX right?)

"engineer, physicist, mathematician" <-- Did you just pull that out of your ass? Seriously?

Please nobody sidestep this one, give me an open source alternative that is as proficient in real time graphics as the solution offered by Microsoft and you will have won me over and I will start being an avid open source\linux guy today.

OpenGL, where exactly is your evidence that DirectX offers something that OpenGL does not?

 

[fskmh]

I wouldn't say anything about ailing technical merits of this thread. I also would not call the programming abilities of Microsoft's designers into question simply because no other company, no other group of people in a corporate or not have ever undertaken the massive task that Microsoft have undertaken in an attempt to be all things to everyone.

Actually it was the other way around, I responded to a post calling the abilities of open source programmers' abilities into question.

Open source pundits are so quick to speak about their technical advantage over everything Microsoft yet have simply nothing real to show for it to the end user. Productivity (work) and entertainment (read games) is what interests me. I can do this on one platform on windows but I can't if I use any version or distribution of Linux.

Yes, seems our "open source pundits" are quick to shoot down FUD and 2nd hand info. The technical advantage is best argued on case-by-case merit. Extreme generalisations on both sides are pointless.

For all Open source's greatness (more in particular Linux punters) where is your equivalent graphics API? Where is it, you had a head start on Microsoft of at least 7 years. You had the pioneer of the industry to spring board from (SGI) as well. So show and tell please? If all that is open source is great and without fault. This is a sticking point for me and several hundreds of millions of people across the world.

http://www.libsdl.org/
http://www.ggi-project.org/

Those are the only two that come to mind offhand.

Did anybody say open source is without fault? Where do you get the 7 year head start from?
SGI ran a proprietary Unix that is fading into obscurity. This is part of ancient history that has nothing to do with GNU and open source.

Tell everybody every engineer, physicist, mathematician, programmer, coder graphics artist employed at NVIDIA, AMD, Matrox, Intel, at hundreds of game developer studios (who make Xbox and PC content) why they should move away from Windows platform to Linux and open source...

I am a physicist and a reasonable programmer. Do you think scientists at NASA, (hello - origin of Beowulf cluster), and CERN are using Windows? Many researchers in my field use GNU/Linux, not merely only because open source apps are not patent encumbered, but because they work very well (gnuplot, octave, root, etc.). Some use proprietary products like Matlab, Mathematica etc, and they work just fine on Linux because they are actually available for Linux. This is not the case for gaming, which you are trying to constrain the argument to. The gaming issue has been argued ad nauseum.

Give me and these others a better platform in what interests us (graphics and the games associated with them), then you have a case.
Please nobody sidestep this one, give me an open source alternative that is as proficient in real time graphics as the solution offered by Microsoft and you will have won me over and I will start being an avid open source\linux guy today.

Go and do your own homework. It's not our duty to bring Windows bigots up to speed.
So you're not using open source, huh?
Take a look at the applications at the bottom of that page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(programming_language)
Now sidestep that.

 

[ShockG]

You're gonna push the DirectX issue again are you? Technically DirectX does not offer anything OpenGL doesn't, except that it runs only on Windows & XBox. Perhaps you should check out the actual standards before you judge.

Nope you couldn't be further from the truth if you tried. Just simple things taken for granted in the DirectX like managed state change in DirextX10 is not available in OpenGL.
Let alone a unified shading language. The equivalent to what was HLSL in DX9.0c doesn't exist as GLSL can't emulate fixed function operations within the language.

I highly doubt you'd have to tell the people who work at nVidia, AMD, Maxtor and Intel because there is nothing that proves they are using Microsoft products, as for games, well the Playstation console uses OpenGL so I guess all those developers must be deluded, oh yeah ID Games also (How dare they not follow the heard!? I mean using OpenGL, how could they it's worse than DirectX right?)

I believe you are mistaken. Maxtor was never in visual computing

1. If you didn't know G80 in the years it spent in R&D from 2002 up until 2006 was built form the ground up around Microsoft's DirectX10 API (read DirectX-Next by "Wavey" who is now at AMD for more info) not around OpenGL's pitiful GL1.4 at the time. At every turn NVIDIA and Microsoft engineers were comparing notes on what is physically possible on silicon and what should still remain in the API. (e.g state change is managed by both hardware and API, unlike in GL and DX9 where its all the hardware's load) AMD also built the Xenos chip at the time around concepts that would later on appear in the R600 i.e a unified pixel computing system.
Make no mistake about it R6XX and G8X going forward were built around Microsoft's DirectX.

2. Ever since NVIDIA started save for their first graphics synthesizer chip, all other ones from NV3 were based around the upcoming or current DirectX specification.
If you didn't know Cg+ from NVIDIA was part of what formed the basis of HLSL first introduced in DX9.0c. Even though Cg+ was designed initially to fit in with OpenGL's vertex and fragment extensions it never really took off in that environment, but found it's way into DirectX.

So have no doubt the people at NVIDIA, AMD, S3 and the like chose Microsoft for a reason.

3. If you're gonna use the PS3 as an example be sure to know everything about it. RSX is an NVIDIA chip from the bottom up. It's G70 actually ( but only with a 128-bit mem crossbar and two quads shut off) and that as you may have guessed was designed much like all other NVIDIA chips around Microsoft's DirectX API. This was an easy choice for Sony to make because using DirectX would put Microsoft in their console and hence make it have to compete with the Xenos (a superior chip) directly in terms of the number crunching. So they went with an OpenGL esq API (It's not straight GL) which would make comparisons impossible but still offer a relatively equivalent feature set. (DX9.0c vs DX9.0c+ type scenario since Xenos isn't DX10)

4. Know the reason why iD went with OpenGL in the first place
Yes long before DirectX had a meaningful renderer people used Mini drivers like 3Dfx who had a very good mini driver for an accelerated Quake. (Obviously because Scott Sanders and others who stated 3Dfx worked at SGI which coined the OpenGL standard in the first place)
Quake run and looked better on GL based drivers than software. As result of the tool set of the time. Writing for GL and Dirext3D was near impossible because DirextX was just so poor. (When the original Unreal came out, the Direct3D rendering path was slow, of low quality and terribly broken, but the 3Dfx /Glide version was incredible)
iD continued to work on GL engines. When Quake3 came around, curved surfaces and the like required some form of fragment shading and that was not available in DirectX6.1 at the time but did exist in any OpenGL1.3 ICD.

If you look at Doom3 code you will see that it was started way before GLSlang was around so its shaders are issued via the fragment and vertex extensions and not via the shader language. Which is why it looks pretty much the same on a GeForce3 as it does on an 6800.
JC is genius at engines don't take away from him by using him to defend a questionable argument. The best looking engine in the business today par none is DX (Cry Engine) so is the 2nd best (UE3), etc...

As to what DX offers that OpenGL doesn't. Simple = allot

 

[ShockG]

I am a physicist and a reasonable programmer. Do you think scientists at NASA, (hello - origin of Beowulf cluster), and CERN are using Windows?

See now that's just pitiful. Is Beowulf or any other movie using a real time renderer? Is that not what Dirext3D and OpenGL are? In its Unix guise what we call OpenGL today was an offline renderer. Please get with the program, offline renderers can be custom made are far easier. Its nothing new. Heidi, RenderGL and the like are all offline.
Try again

employed at NVIDIA, AMD, Matrox, Intel, at hundreds of game developer studios (who make Xbox and PC content)

Focus here please. Are you employed at any one of these companies? If not your programming know how is meaningless because you don't deal with real time graphics... How is this info on you being a programmer and physicist relevant to graphics APIs?

Take a look at the applications at the bottom of that page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(...ng_language)
Now sidestep that.

I see S.T.A.L.K.E.R there wow I was under the impression that is makes use of Microsoft's DirextX9 API and Direct3D for it's nifty visual tricks in its deferred rendering engine...
We are on the same page here right? Talking about graphics APIs in this context no?
Its clear that despite your programming know how and your proficiency in physics you aren't really sure of what is being discussed here.

So I wait patiently then for a better open source graphics APi than Microsoft's DirectX.

 

[fskmh]

See now that's just pitiful. Is Beowulf or any other movie using a real time renderer? Is that not what Dirext3D and OpenGL are? In its Unix guise what we call OpenGL today was an offline renderer. Please get with the program, offline renderers can be custom made are far easier. Its nothing new. Heidi, RenderGL and the like are all offline.
Try again

Focus here please. Are you employed at any one of these companies? If not your programming know how is meaningless because you don't deal with real time graphics... How is this info on you being a programmer and physicist relevant to graphics APIs?

Open source pundits are so quick to speak about their technical advantage over everything Microsoft yet have simply nothing real to show for it to the end user. Productivity (work) and entertainment (read games) is what interests me. I can do this on one platform on windows but I can't if I use any version or distribution of Linux.

You asked for graphics APIs and I gave you two. Everything after that refers to the bit I quoted in bold. I mentioned my background because it is relevant to that bit. Try focus yourself .

I see S.T.A.L.K.E.R there wow I was under the impression that is makes use of Microsoft's DirextX9 API and Direct3D for it's nifty visual tricks in its deferred rendering engine...
We are on the same page here right? Talking about graphics APIs in this context no?
Its clear that despite your programming know how and your proficiency in physics you aren't really sure of what is being discussed here.

So I wait patiently then for a better open source graphics APi than Microsoft's DirectX.

No, it's just you trying to constrain the discussion to the one pitiful area that you can argue about: gaming. As I said above, argued ad nauseum.

Who's sidestepping now?

 

[Gnome]

Nope you couldn't be further from the truth if you tried. Just simple things taken for granted in the DirectX like managed state change in DirextX10 is not available in OpenGL.
Let alone a unified shading language. The equivalent to what was HLSL in DX9.0c doesn't exist as GLSL can't emulate fixed function operations within the language.

Sorry to break it to you but in term of shader language OpenGL can do anything DirectX can, I haven't installed Vista or looked at the latest DirectX 10 specs so I can't comment on that but I don't see much of a improvement as far as screenshots from games go, perhaps when it actually becomes viable I'll have a look at the spec, but shader enhancements are usually on order of optimization anyway, I'd be surprised if you couldn't do almost everything with PS3.0 you could do with PS4.0 (if not everything)

I believe you are mistaken. Maxtor was never in visual computing

Typo, Matrox.

1. If you didn't know G80 in the years it spent in R&D from 2002 up until 2006 was built form the ground up around Microsoft's DirectX10 API (read DirectX-Next by "Wavey" who is now at AMD for more info) not around OpenGL's pitiful GL1.4 at the time.

The fact that Microsoft and nVidia collaborate when making a GFX card doesn't surprise me in the least, but the fact that you blame a failure by ATI/AMD on OpenGL is just absurd.

At every turn NVIDIA and Microsoft engineers were comparing notes on what is physically possible on silicon and what should still remain in the API. (e.g state change is managed by both hardware and API, unlike in GL and DX9 where its all the hardware's load) AMD also built the Xenos chip at the time around concepts that would later on appear in the R600 i.e a unified pixel computing system.
Make no mistake about it R6XX and G8X going forward were built around Microsoft's DirectX.

Microsoft and nVidia collaborate because A) most games for the x86 are developed for DirectX & Windows and B) Microsoft obviously has to collaborate with the hardware designers that actually make the hardware that uses their API, the fact that they are working together is not significant what
is significant is that DirectX doesn't offer anything OpenGL does, stay on topic.

2. Ever since NVIDIA started save for their first graphics synthesizer chip, all other ones from NV3 were based around the upcoming or current DirectX specification.
If you didn't know Cg+ from NVIDIA was part of what formed the basis of HLSL first introduced in DX9.0c. Even though Cg+ was designed initially to fit in with OpenGL's vertex and fragment extensions it never really took off in that environment, but found it's way into DirectX.


So have no doubt the people at NVIDIA, AMD, S3 and the like chose Microsoft for a reason.

Yes they did, most games on run on Windows and it removes the burden of writing a optimized OpenGL library from the GFX developer to use DirectX, and Microsoft always has to use a proprietary technology. Why do you think Quadro GFX cards cost so much, and for that matter, go read up on why OpenGL is used for professional applications rather than DirectX.

3. If you're gonna use the PS3 as an example be sure to know everything about it. RSX is an NVIDIA chip from the bottom up. It's G70 actually ( but only with a 128-bit mem crossbar and two quads shut off) and that as you may have guessed was designed much like all other NVIDIA chips around Microsoft's DirectX API. This was an easy choice for Sony to make because using DirectX would put Microsoft in their console and hence make it have to compete with the Xenos (a superior chip) directly in terms of the number crunching. So they went with an OpenGL esq API (It's not straight GL) which would make comparisons impossible but still offer a relatively equivalent feature set. (DX9.0c vs DX9.0c+ type scenario since Xenos isn't DX10)

Honestly I didn't even read all that drivel, I just read the part about Nvidia RSX, I already know that chip is basically a G70, just like you said. So let me explain a little concept called R&D to you. Sony came to nVidia and said: "I need a chip for the PS3", nVidia gave them 2 choices: "Pay me x amount which I could earn created a new GFX card for x86" or "Pay me y amount which is less than what we could earn by developing a new chip for x86 but we get to use that chip on our next generation which will also be released for the x86". Guess which one they picked. Obviously the chip wasn't just developed for the Playstation, wake up and smell the dollar bills.

For a more in depth insight into how consoles are developed look at the XBox development and you'll see why a Console maker chooses X hardware over Y hardware, it isn't because it's better, it's because it's cheaper, the XBox doesn't use a Intel CPU exactly because Intel wouldn't develop a CPU to which they owned the IP (they being Microsoft), cutting down on the bottom line, if you think the same thought process doesn't go into the minds of the accounting department at nVidia you are deluded.

4. Know the reason why iD went with OpenGL in the first place
Yes long before DirectX had a meaningful renderer people used Mini drivers like 3Dfx who had a very good mini driver for an accelerated Quake. (Obviously because Scott Sanders and others who stated 3Dfx worked at SGI which coined the OpenGL standard in the first place)
Quake run and looked better on GL based drivers than software. As result of the tool set of the time. Writing for GL and Dirext3D was near impossible because DirextX was just so poor. (When the original Unreal came out, the Direct3D rendering path was slow, of low quality and terribly broken, but the 3Dfx /Glide version was incredible)
iD continued to work on GL engines. When Quake3 came around, curved surfaces and the like required some form of fragment shading and that was not available in DirectX6.1 at the time but did exist in any OpenGL1.3 ICD.

If you look at Doom3 code you will see that it was started way before GLSlang was around so its shaders are issued via the fragment and vertex extensions and not via the shader language. Which is why it looks pretty much the same on a GeForce3 as it does on an 6800.
JC is genius at engines don't take away from him by using him to defend a questionable argument. The best looking engine in the business today par none is DX (Cry Engine) so is the 2nd best (UE3), etc...

Really? You don't think ET: Quake Wars comes in somewhere over there? That is personal opinion anyway, the fact that Cry Engine needs Windows Vista and a monster of a computer to look pretty doesn't really impress me. There is no evidence to say you couldn't do the same on OpenGL just because it wasn't done on OpenGL.

As to what DX offers that OpenGL doesn't. Simple = allot

I've learned DirectX this past holiday and I took graphics in my third year (OpenGL). I couldn't see any benefits apart from not having to work in Linux. You'll need more to convince me one way or the other.

You must be thinking that I think OpenGL is better than DirectX, you're mistaken, I simply don't see one as better than the other, OpenGL keeps up with DirectX and in terms of professional application DirectX doesn't even exist, the reason being OpenGL works completely different from DirectX with different objectives in mind.

If you actually want to make a point rather try pointing out that most games run on DirectX rather than OpenGL because technology wise, there isn't much either way.

 

[ShockG]

You asked for graphics APIs and I gave you two.

Oh goodness this is just sad really... Lua is a programming language not an API. GGI is nowhere near Direct3D as a rendering API. In fact it can't match OpenGL1.4
Lastly SDL is a "Direct Media Layer" as it says and uses OpenGL as it's graphics rendering API as per quote

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer.

So no. you haven't offered an equivalent alternative. Take another stab at it

No, it's just you trying to constrain the discussion to the one pitiful area that you can argue about: gaming. As I said above, argued ad nauseum.

huh? er... is gaming not the fastest growing form of entertainment in the world? does it not generate several billions of dollars in revenue each year? I would not call gaming a pitiful area and I'm sure others wouldn't as well. Yes it may be a single area but it's hardly pitiful. Look here on this very forum how many threads ask about gaming graphics cards, CPUs and the like.
Yes it is one area but it is the one area I have some idea about. There is no point in me discussing security. I' have no knowledge of that so I can't attempt to engage in a meaningful semi technical argument in that area.

If Linux is superior indeed to Windows (I am not saying it's not as that's not the point), why is it failing in this one area that matters most to millions of people? Why should these people ignore this obvious short coming and focus on other merits Linux might have which they care nothing about?