[TriLUG] Rant: VISTA OMG PLEASE SHOOT ME

[Andrew C. Oliver]

So I've been doing a little side work and this has put me in contact
with Windows Vista.  My god this is an unpleasant little operating
system.  Not only does it needlessly move everything around like every
other Windows NT release, but it seems mainly to be hell bent on
ANNOYING THE FREAKING HELL OUT OF USERS and making Windows XP look
really good by comparison!  

Top 5 most annoying things that make me want to carpet bomb Redmond, WA
(sorry Tanner, but I've just read "Mao: the unknown story" and so "land
reform" is on the mind):

1. Cygwin is broken: if you write to files especially with vi (other
editors are similarly affected but they aren't relevant), Vista will
exclusively lock them and not release them
2. Vista may lock your files anyhow for no obvious reason.  If you use
eclipse then even after exiting eclipse, you cannot edit eclipse.ini
directly.  (It could be that you must just reboot first)  copy it to
another directory, delete the original, edit the copy, copy it
back...otherwise it will act as if the file is read only or there is a
permission problem or something (none of the above were true and it
wasn't open anywhere else).
3. Are you sure you want to do elementary task?  YES.  Blur the
background (which takes a moment where the screen goes black) "Allow XX
to do elementary task?" (like the mac commercial) YES DAMMIT!
4. You have installed some rudimentary periphery that wasn't a flash
drive, you must reauthorize vista (this doesn't appear to be in the
corporate version apparently as only home users are pirates haha)
5. Winzip something in Vista that has a lot of stuff and some
multi-level directories...  unzip it on XP "Bla cannot find XYZ file
that you just unzipped".  XP->Vista works.

The cygwin issue and the "are you sure, are you really sure" prompts are
the biggest for me.  They make my Linux driver annoyances with my
temporary laptop that I bought because my MBP is in the shop again look
rather minor.  (I got intel graphics card, atheros wireless, intel sound
-- but the version of the atheros isn't supported even by the HEAD of
the atheros driver [ndiswrapper works] and the graphics card isn't
working with the projector here but it very well could be the projector
and I haven't looked into sound yet).   

So I'm glad when my wife broke her laptop that I immediately wiped vista
and "upgraded" her to XP (her school work is all MS Office and she keeps
the books).  So XP wasn't my preference, I'm a linux junkie, but I
didn't find it especially unpleasant to use (just slow) when using
Cygwin...but Vista...OMG Vista....  MS needs some SERIOUS purging!  

I wish we could do like a Linux ad with side by side Ubuntu and Vista...

-Andy