[PLUG] 2008: Linux’s year on the desktop

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

On Feb 1, 2008 10:09 PM, m0gely <m0gely at telestream.com> wrote:
> > Windows 7 is the same 50 million lines of code that Microsoft
> > has been crufting-up since NT was born (single millions).
>
> I doubt it.

OK, then you are just naive and we can chalk it up to that.  Yes, the
same 50+ million lines of code in Vista will also be in Windows 7.
You think they coded it all from scratch?  Ummm...yeah...heh

> Now more on topic, Linux the kernel has been ready for the desktop for a
> long time. The problem however is the OS, not the kernel. Ubuntu and

The kernel, shell, and utilities *are* the OS...

> the FOSS community's fault when things like documentation get in the

Documentation is a large problem, so that is one downfall unfortunately :-(

> way, but I could argue your 50 million lines of code by saying 50
> million developers has it's drawbacks too. The inconsistencies in the
> user experience scream out all over the place if you put any thought
> into it.

Well, the model is different.  I can run a basic Win32 binary I
compiled for NT4 and it will still likely run on Windows Vista.  With
nix, the point is to not duplicate labor, and this brings in the
dependencies problem, which will always be with us.  It is a trade-off
for having lots of duplicated code everywhere...

> Personally, I give kudos to Apple for OSX. They created a GUI/*nix
> environment in a relatively short amount of time that for the most part
> works very well.

It is nice, but I don't like to pay premiums for being locked into
restricted freedom.  I guess we all pick our battles.  My original
point was that all the code is the same in almost every Windows
release.  Every reverse engineer already knows this.  Why do you think
bugs in WMF affected every version of Windows :-)  Now, I'll grant you
that Windows 7 is smaller code base, but all they did was pick and
choose the existing bits they wanted, slim it down, remove the GUI,
and give you a simple shell to get the state of things.  However, the
kernel is nearly identical to Vista, just with some new code sprinkled
in to glue it all together.  The guy even mentions this in the
video...
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen
"Know something about everything and everything about something."