Let's take Vista for a spin...

Update:
MS has released Vista Release Candidate 2 (beta). You can access it here.

The comments below were based on RC1.

Microsoft will release Vista, aka Longhorn, in the near future. Or at least they have been saying this for nigh on 3 years. Recently I discovered they were allowing a free download of the Release Candidate, so I did so and decided to try it out. However, I have no desire to get rid of my trusty Linux installation, so I opted to run Vista in a virtual environment.

This is where the first problem occurred. Microsoft is smart enough to boot from the virtual CD in VMWare, but almost immediately complained it could not find the driver for the CD Drive. Go figure - it's smart enough to boot from CD, but not smart enough to know how to talk to the CD drive it is currently booting from - even though it had to talk to it to get to that point. OK, there IS a work around. The boot drive is noted as the X:\ drive. So, if you tell Vista that it's CD Device driver is at X:\windows\system32\driverstore\filerepository\cdrom.inf_25cba8ec you can get by this problem.

After that initial glitch, the install proceeded just fine.

The next problem I encountered was the lack of a network card. Vista cannot detect the correct settings for the virtual network card supplied by VMWare. Again though, an easy work around - install VMWare Tools. Immediately the NIC is detected, and you're online.

(These tips were found online at http://www.mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1493.)

So, now I had network support, AND and installed system. The initial desktop looks very highly polished from a graphical point of view. Personally I consider too polished. It feels like I'm interacting with a slick salesman who is trying to pull one over on me. But this is just graphics, and easily ignored or changed.

One of the first changes I wanted to do was resize the desktop from 800x600 to something more reasonable. So I right-clicked on the background looking for properties. Nope, there is no "Properties" option there anymore. In it's place is a "Personalize" option. This leads you to a window where you can change the appearance, font size, etc. for the desktop. Instead of the usual tab interface, you end up with interface presenting you with a number of possible options. Selecting the "Display Settings" option opens another screen where you can set your resolution options. This interface is almost like the KDE Kontrol Center, where you have your options, and then the pertinent parts open up in the same window. However, Vista makes you work with popup windows, which I feel actually breaks the flow of work - it takes more clicks, which means muscle movements, which means distractions from the task at hand. But the desktop resized just fine.

Next I wanted to try to get the sound card working. So I shut down Vista, which happens at a reasonable pace - as does the start up, created the device in VMWare, and then restarted. Vista recognized that there WAS a device, but could not find the drivers for it. Searching the Internet did not work either. Sound from Windows is not that critical for me, so I have set that one aside for now.

Of course, everyone wants to browse the web, so I opened up Internet Explorer from the nice looking, but cumbersome start menu. The start menu IS better than Win2K's, or XP's even, but in terms of getting to the file or application I want, there are still too many clicks. Again, a minor annoyance though. (perhaps I've been spoiled with the slicker KDE interfaces?) Once IE opened, I ran smack dab into what I consider not one, but two show stoppers for me.

First, Vista has IE 7 installed. IE 7 is beta software, and has been proven to have a number of issues to work out. While this version of Vista IS a release candidate, we can forgive some unfinished work, or a few bugs. But if you go to the Microsoft site with Win XP, and look for Internet Explorer, you are presented with IE 7. You have to dig to find IE 6. Microsoft is doing two things with this. First they are inadvertently admitting that IE 6 has way too many problems and people need to stop using it. However, I would recommend a stable application over a beta app for the general public - in this case Firefox. Second, MS is forcing IE 7, bugs and all on the general public. This has already resulted in a few issues - websites don't work with IE 7, and developers are being pressured into making them do so. Even if it means abandoning defined coding standards. (will they never learn?). They are also forcing the the general public to do beta testing. One might argue that the Open Source browsers do the same thing. However, a stable version of the Open Source browsers are used for the general public, and those who have a bit more knowledge and/or desire can OPT to use the newer/unstable versions. In which case the user is making a conscious choice to do so. MS seems to be removing the choice, or at least making it harder to refuse. (rant off)

Show stopper number 2. The moment IE 7 opens it dutifully reports to you that it can turn on a filter to help protect against websites doing phishing (trying to trick you into giving away your various identity items). This seems to be a good thing, until you read the smaller, and fainter, text that says that to do this filtering IE will need to sometimes pass the website you are visiting to Microsoft for checking. As near as I can tell, EVERY website you visit will be checked with MS the first time you visit, but only the once. My problem here is that this is reporting to MS what websites I visit on a regular basis. MS has no business knowing what I do with MY computer. So of course I turned this option off. IE 7 dutifully now lets me know when I am visiting a website that has not been checked, and gives me the "option" of checking with MS if it is a phishing website. Funny enough the very first site I visited was Google. The second was Microsoft.com, and then Yahoo, and then the Calgary Linux Users Group. Out of these, only Yahoo was deemed trusted - Microsoft didn't even trust it's own website. So, not only do you have to use unstable software, you must give up your privacy if you don't want to be nagged.

Now, IE 7 should be stable before Vista is officially released. So, these observations may be a moot point at that time.

BTW, IE 7 still does not support CSS 2, and apparently MS refuses to do so fully. IE 7 still fails the Acid 2 test. So next task was to install Firefox.

IE 7 / Vista (still) allows you to run an executable program directly to from the web site. Click a link, and tell it to run, and off you go. One thing that is different than previous windows/browsers is that you are prompted to confirm that you want to run the executable. My thoughts are that the Firefox approach is the better approach - force the file to be downloaded, and then let the user consciously start the program manually. Regardless, Firefox installs easily enough, and seems to run just fine.

There are a few other quirks in the system, but these can be attributed to being a release candidate. One such item is that some items on the menu, such as the "Windows Ultimate Extras" takes you to Windows Update, and then nicely reports an error in the process.

Because I installed under VMWare, some options cannot be used as a modern 3D accelerated video card cannot be detected. Most of these perks seem to be for decorative type purposes. I understand that Vista offers some very impressive 3D effects - much like XGL and Compiz. But just like those projects, there still seems to be a problem in finding a practical need for 3D effects. Sure there are some neat tricks like wrapping a running video around the corner of a box, but how does that help me do my tasks? To access these 3D accelerated bells and whistles requires a very modern video card, much memory (1 GB +), and a modern CPU. This means a number of organizations will need to upgrade their computer hardware to make full use of Vista.

One other note, the installation DVD uses a (newer) filesystem called UDF. It would appear that only Vista supports this as yet. Trying to view the contents of the DVD in Kubuntu results in only a text file being available. And this file simply says the media is using the UDF filesystem. For me, it's too early to see any benefits or misgivings in using UDF. Nor do I have much desire to find out, unless it becomes a mainstream filesystem under Linux.

Overall, my first impressions are that there are not many differences between Win XP and Vista. In terms of interface and usage, things seem to be more of the same. I purposely chose to approach this trial run as a typical end user. As such, we've covered all the tasks that are needed. A more advanced user may want to familiarize themselves with some of the options available under Control Panel - there seem to be some nice things there.

But I do not see anything here that will cause me to leave Linux. I'd rather not face the licensing issues in addition to the costs of upgrading my hardware. My current hardware can run XGL/Compiz just fine, and I have very few things that Linux cannot do. For those few items, VMWare helps with that.

Update:
MS has released Vista Release Candidate 2 (beta). You can access it here.