Sweetshark

bani wrote:

'wow i really wish linux had an IDE as nice as visual studio'

Im working with VS - its a nice IDE, but personally Im not missing it when using linux.

bani wrote:

'microsoft does a better job of ui integration and usability than anyone else'

I would cut back on the 'anyone' *cough* Apple *cough* - but the Windows UI is of cause far more consistent than the various linux DEs and probably will always be.

bani wrote:

'wow linux api documentation sucks hard, msdn.microsoft.com is very nice'.

True point, but "documentation" just works different in linux. For example for Windows API questions IRC is not at all as helpful as for linux coding.

bani wrote:

that's about all I can think of.

of course total control of every aspect of the OS from top to bottom ensures you can enforce uniformity, whether your developers and vendors like it or not. (this is one of the things i dislike about both microsoft and apple, fwiw).

i can tell you a lot of places microsoft sucks like a hurricane, but then i'm sure microsoft is aware of all that already.

Microsoft has taken backwards compatibility and API stability more seriously then linux has. This is a convinience for third party app writers - but it is also becoming a huge liability. But compare this to linux, where some close source apps (by the now closed loki games) are already experiencing minor to major hickups for a install.

All these decisions are two-edged swords - they cut both ways ...

schrepfler wrote:

Of course you all guys know that the best combination is having all the GNU goodness, backed up by gentoo build system and running on the NT kernel and MSH as shell?
And it exists too
Haven't seen the interview yet but I hope that you have gentoo in your labs.
Question does MS have their C,C++ on the linux platform? I bet there are some gentoo'ers (like me) that would like their platform to compile a bit faster

"Updated 2005-04-01"
... hope you know what that means

But the slowest in adding of the new software on your PC
The time you spend compiling with gentoo doesnt matter (and thus doesnt make gentoo slower), because compared to the time to test and propagate a bugfix its irrelevant. The being said, for example debian is in general being faster to push bugfixes into their repos than gentoo.

As for side by side installations of shared libs in Windows: I think its not really a "technical" Microsoft problem. The problem is old software and dirty installers that roll over their dlls into shared folders no matter what. The more centralized control of linux package managers make it easier to discipline "evil" installers - distros keep their repos of software in a consistent state, where no two packages will hurt each other (or be installed, if they do ...)
I guess this is a road Microsoft can hardly go, as software vendors would cry havoc, if Micorsoft takes away freedom from "their" install process.