How Good *is* Vista Anyway?

To hear them tell it, Vista is the be all and end all of security. The charts are massive in size and point out some things that perhaps zealots don't view as part of their dogma.

You tell someone that Global Warming is a made-up thing, and you are deemed, essentially, a heretic. You tell someone that Vista is better than Linux, you better be right"unbiased", whatever that means.

Do I like Linux? Yes. Do I think it's rock solid stable? Yes. Do I think it's all that an OS can be? Depends. My experience with MythTV left me unimpressed. I'm reasonably comfortable in almost any PC environment that I encounter. Mac, Linux, BSD, etc. doesn't make any difference to me. Spending hours and days compiling stuff may be fun for some people, but for me, it's quickly losing its luster. I *know* I'm going to have to get Vista, if only to support it for the people who give me the money to do so. Based upon reviews, I think I'd personally think about upgrading to Vista Home Premium for the MCE.

Do I want to roll Vista out in my office environment? Not if I can help it. I was on Windows 2000 Professional across the board even until 2005. You want to know why the uptake was so slow for XP? Simply the same as XP->Vista. WHY? Now, I'm on XP and I don't want to go back, to be sure, but I tell you, Windows 2000 Professional *was* perhaps the best OS of its time.

Back to the ZDnet article. The comments are telling, and as much as I don't want to admit, very persuasive on Microsoft's behalf: If Microsoft is claiming so little vulnerabilities in its first 6 months for the shipped package it ships (15GB OS???? FIFTEEN GIGABYTES?) versus hundreds of vulnerabilities that, say, RedHat ships, -- even if not installed, even if not used -- it does beg the question, "How much junk/buggy/vulnerable software is worth including in a package?" I'm coming to a saner conclusion. Stop distributing distros with buggy software. Leave it to the end user to put their own software on their system. At the very least, it appears that a Linux distribution should come with appropriate drivers and xorg and an appropriate package manager/install utility and basically nothing else.

Come to think of it, that PC vs Mac Bloat seems all the more apropos if you take it into consideration of what Linux "provides" you with on the install CD. Or maybe Microsoft Vista vs Linux is the eternal feud that cannot die.

Nonetheless, keep it coming. I long to read about the next volley.