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> Apparently Southwest Airlines’ ingenious strategy of never upgrading from Windows 3.1 allowed it to remain unscathed. this is pretty damning both ways on th

by bedobi 2y ago

> Apparently Southwest Airlines’ ingenious strategy of never upgrading from Windows 3.1 allowed it to remain unscathed. this is pretty damning both ways on the one hand, it's insane, unfathomable and inconceivable that anyone can run anything critical on windows 3.1 (!!!) on the other hand, it's equally insane, unfathomable and inconceivable that those who do are actually better off - 30 years of "progress" is actually just bs? what are we as an industry "even doing here"???? is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly already working systems?

TonyTrapp 2y ago
From my memory, this wildly circulating Windows 3.1 quote is inaccurate. The software they were running was compared to running something like Windows 3.1, but it wasn't actually running on Windows 3.1, as far as I understand. Edit: https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-windows-3-1-blue-screen-crowdstrike-1851603013 https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-windows-3-1-blue-scree...
Swizec 2y ago
> is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly already working systems? 80% of the work is json bureaucracy The other 80% is adapting to new requirements And if you’re lucky maybe 0.1% of the time you get to build something new. Fear not, a lot of this stuff was perfectly solved with pen and paper long before us computer nerds came to play in the big boy sandbox
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nightpool 2y ago
Obviously Southwest is not using Windows 3.1, and you should probably be thinking hard about the trustworthiness of any outlet or article that repeats that claim: https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-is-not-still-using-windows-3-1/ https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-is...
m3kw9 2y ago
It’s like a calculator, if you need to do basic math, you can use an old calc.
jandrese 2y ago
In the long run the hardware that can still run Window 3.1 will become harder and harder to find and they'll be forced to upgrade, but currently enjoying the benefits of "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Plus, there were literally millions of systems made that can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many years before the hardware is too hard to find. We're talking about a problem on the scale of 4,000 flights per day. Assuming you avoid O^2 complexity computations that's the sort of thing even 90s computers could handle easily.
- arsome 2y ago
  You can basically run Windows 3.1 in dosbox on a potato now, so the hardware really isn't even a problem. If any of this was actually true...
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >> Plus, there were literally millions of systems made that can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many years before the hardware is too hard to find. Two of my first contractor roles I had as a developer really opened my eyes to a lot of this. We were building an inventory management system for a large company that built farm equipment. We started building it and once we got to the browser and mobile requirements, one of the VPs spoke up and asked if it would run on IE6 since they had not one, but THREE of their inventory legacy systems that still ran on Win98. This was in 2014, a full 6 years after many companies had stopped supporting it. And another 4 years since websites stopped supporting it. The other one was for a very large, regional construction company. Same thing, we were building a web app for them and in one of the conference calls, one of the VP's was asking how this would run on Windows95 for the same reason. They had several legacy ERP systems that were running on Win95 and had specific requirements for stuff to run on that OS. As a developer who was used to working with somewhat current tech - it was a real eye opener. It was crazy to think how many massive companies just didn't have the constitution to upgrade their stuff, and then by not doing so, had now dug themselves into an even deeper hole. Once I started hearing stories about the details of this scenario, it made perfect sense to me since I had seen it multiple times. And not from little companies who didn't have the money or resources to upgrade, but massive Fortune 500 companies who just neglected their stuff until was too late.
shagie 2y ago
Thirty years of progress is still progress for managing the additional complexity that modern software needs. A lot of software doesn't need that additional complexity. Having thirty year old software, if properly sequestered (since there are security holes large enough to fly a 737 through), means that this is software that has been working for three decades. It has issues (as the mess they had previously showed), but Southwest appears to be able to be able to manage that to some degree without needing to incur the additional complexity of managing a modern software stack for application software that doesn't need it. The ability to play minesweeper on critical computing equipment without impacting it isn't necessarily a desirable feature. Having the computer boot in five seconds and run the desired application is. And there are a number of ways to handle that ... running old operating systems is one of the ways. Space Force S02E07 is not a desirable situation https://youtu.be/xDLvUqhwHZc https://youtu.be/xDLvUqhwHZc . You could also have a kuberentes cluster with multiple replicas and load balancing and all of that additional complexity that takes more people to be able to manage without any real gains in what the application itself is doing.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  > Having the computer boot in five seconds There are certainly more modern options that allow that and it's highly doubtful that specifically is particularly relevant for Southwest. Not that there is any evidence that they're actually using 3.1 for anything? > that this is software that has been working for three decades Or it's so buggy or designed (or more likely updated) so poorly that everyone is afraid to touch it. e.g. I doubt there are many (even any?) practical reasons for airlines to use GDS besides the cost and complexity involved in designing an entirely new system and somehow forcing all other airlines to switch to it?
  - shagie 2y ago
    > Not that there is any evidence that they're actually using 3.1 for anything? Windows 3.1? No. I'd even say there's no evidence that windows 95 is being used but rather that they've got what appears to be some old software with older design. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2022/12/30/whats-the-problem-with-southwest-airlines-scheduling-system/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2022/12/30/what... > 2. The crew scheduling system is the main culprit. > Southwest uses internally built and maintained systems called SkySolver and Crew Web Access for pilots and flight attendants. They can sign on to those systems to pick flights and then make changes when flights are canceled or delayed or when there is an illness. > “Southwest has generated systems internally themselves instead of using more standard programs that others have used,” Montgomery said. “Some systems even look historic like they were designed on Windows 95.” Screen shots of this are in http://www3.alpa.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=IO7kd%2Bfm2Do%3D&tabid=11702&mid=33968 http://www3.alpa.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=IO7kd%2Bfm2Do... Unfortunately, I don't know the nuances of Microsoft Windows UI well enough to be able to pick out which OS version is running the software in those screen shots. --- > Or it's so buggy or designed (or more likely updated) so poorly that everyone is afraid to touch it. That is a very common occurrence (I'm dealing with that now ... a .jar file that hasn't been rebuilt in 15 years). The big rewrite is something that comes with one part excitement (I can do it right this time!) and dread (oh my, that's how much code that I need to retest?!). I was involved in the tail end of a 3 year project at one company with some software that replaced previously running DOS (and yes, it was DOS - they had an C and assembly guru employed who's job it was to remove / optimize code in the binary to get it to fit into 640k) to a Java Web Start (which was a neat technology) and the millions of lines of software that monstrosity had and needed to be debugged and fixed. While they're in a better spot now (can use modern hardware), and its something that they can build in house (a major part of the reason to do it was to drop the external contractor who didn't like maintaining the C code) ... but that also came with the added complexity of the software that they licensed and the maintenance and deployment of that software. Before they could put the software on a floppy and have it shipped to each location ... now its a big bigger and more complex of a deployment (that was built with duct tape and chewing gum one night to do diff deployments of specific class files rather than trying to push the entirety down the pipe for each location). My rambling point is that we are moving forward with complexity - and that allows us to manage more complex situations, but it comes at the cost of managing that additional complexity of the infrastructure and software it needs and that cost is ongoing and not always taken into account.
aftbit 2y ago
Well all you'd really need to do to avoid this outage is not run auto-updating proprietary kernel modules in the early anti-malware environment. Bare Windows 11 would have been fine - the problem was Crowdstrike.
jakub_g 2y ago
You don't want to know what OS Sabre (backend for 30% of world's airlines) is using on their mainframes.
- bedobi 2y ago
  actually, I do :) is it DOS? some IBM mainframe OS? do tell
  - Wytwwww 2y ago
    Was DOS actually every used on mainframes/servers on a significant scale? (genuine question, not saying it wasn't)
    - wrs 2y ago
      A mainframe OS called DOS was in fact quite popular, but it’s not the same thing as the DOS that was in PCs. (There were others, too, like Apple ][ DOS. As soon as your computer gets the capability of attaching a disk drive, somebody has to write a Disk Operating System.)
- kayodelycaon 2y ago
  I do actually. My last job had a mainframe team maintaining (and adding to) an AS/400 application. They still had punchcard programs. They had json apis. Each one had some variation on parsing http from a raw tcp connection with IBM RPG. I had to do some unspeakable things to a ruby library so I could control the order of the headers.
- fourteenfour 2y ago
  Looks like it was IBM System/360 mainframes but they've recently migrated to google hosted services.
numpad0 2y ago
It is BS. Continuous updates for security notion, especially so. That said, the barrier to entry for programmers did come down significantly.
alliao 2y ago
productivity wise 70's and 80's peaked with those thin terminals with every action carried out by keyboard... workers tapped at light speed due to muscle memory, didn't look fancy, but it got the job done. GUI is sexy but like short videos ultimately did nothing for the user
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > productivity wise 70's and 80's peaked with those thin terminals with every action carried out by keyboard Computers only started showing up in nationwide productivity figures in the 80s to 90s.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  > GUI is sexy but like short videos ultimately did nothing for the user That's a stretch. I guess it increased the productivity (measured in amount of "work" done, not necessarily something useful) expectations for most workers which effectively did nothing for them because they still need to work as much even if modern software allows them to accomplish much more in the same amount of time. So t might make sense in that regard. > workers tapped at light speed due to muscle memory That's great if we're mainly talking about robotic tasks than can be mostly automated to only require a fraction of those clicks but wasn't for some unclear reasons.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Almost every industrial embedded system I've ever used runs Windows XP at the absolute newest, and it is not uncommon in the slightest to see stuff as old as 95/3.1. These are computers that operate machinery that costs 6 or 7 figures. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't get me wrong, my Macbook is an absolute beast for all of my work tasks, and my gaming PC is an utter joy to use for my recreation time, but at the end of the day, for a ton of applications, a computer doesn't need to do shit beyond sending a lot of signals out of a parallel/RS232 port to control systems to operate... I mean Christ, anything. CNC mills, building lighting/security systems, packing machines, or to do things like issue tickets to people parking in a ramp. Like... a lot of this stuff just does not benefit at all from a modern software stack. Stick a crappy PC inside instead, load it up with the same image it had before which includes firewall rules that shut down every last port and connection apart from whatever needs to manage it, and you're done. Don't fix what ain't broke.
josephg 2y ago
> is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly already working systems? On a whim I tried playing Solitaire on windows the other day. You know, that game that’s shipped with windows since forever. Well, it’s horrible now. When I tried firing it up, it first spent several minutes downloading software updates. Then it loaded in some horrible “casual games bundle” app which felt laggy like a web app - complete with Xbox cloud sync for my progress, and daily achievements and other junk. The game used to run flawlessly on my old 486. My computer now is orders of magnitude more powerful - but solitaire feels laggy. I bet the entirety of windows XP is smaller than the “update” it performed to install solitaire. I have a personal theory that there’s always something that gets the attention of the best engineers. Decades ago it was human interface guidelines and UI toolkits. Today it’s LLMs and AAA game engines. Most of the rest of the software in the world is worked on by the B team. And they don’t blink an eye at the idea of rewriting solitaire for windows on top of electron. If JavaScript is all their team knows, so be it. Heaven forbid we have to learn how to properly build software for windows.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >Heaven forbid we have to learn how to properly build software for windows They already are properly building software for Windows, and your Solitaire app is a good example of it. It's much, much better than it used to be: it's laggy and slow, and downloads a bunch of extra crap, which has the potential of getting you to spend more money. In short, changing from the old and simple Solitaire to this bloated mess makes Microsoft more profitable, and customers like you keep using Windows regardless, so why shouldn't they do this? Meanwhile, on my Linux box, my simpler games haven't changed substantially in years, if not decades (perhaps updates for the newer GUI toolkits being used), and still work great. But people prefer to stick with Windows and then complain about things being too bloated.
  - josephg 2y ago
    > which has the potential of getting you to spend more money. I don't think any of the extra stuff is monetised. I don't know; I didn't look closely at it. > customers like you keep using Windows regardless ... But people prefer to stick with Windows and then complain about things being too bloated. "Stick with windows"? I run windows, macos, linux and freebsd at home. I want all of them to be better. It pains me to see any of the great operating systems of our time fall slowly toward mediocrity. Of course I complain about it. Windows should be better than this.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Well, what actual new features does Windows 11 give you compared to Windows 3.1? It will support a huge number of new chips, new peripherals, more memory, and so on. If I'm running Southwest's crew scheduling software, how much of that do I care about? Do I care that it will now support the latest Bluetooth? Do I care that it now has the same UI as tablets? Do I care that it has better ads to display on the start menu? No, no, and no. The only thing might be more memory. (I mean, the UI might not look like it belonged in the Stone Age, so that's something, I guess...) There hasn't been a real fundamental improvement in the functionality of OSes since Windows 3.1. It's all been device support (including new classes of devices), new CPU support, and new UI styles. (The security improvements in Windows were a legitimately big deal, but those were fixing what was broken, not adding new functionality.) And I'm sure that, having said this, someone is going to point out something really important that I forgot...
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  > If I'm running Southwest's crew scheduling software, how much of that do I care about? Not a lot of if you can't/don't want to upgrade or replace that software to make sure it runs on modern OSes. I'm sure that for the most part that software is causing various unnecessary issues and decreasing potential productivity at least to some extent. Just look at GDS, they love to get rid of that, but that would require a coordinated effort and extensive collaboration between all major airlines which is somewhat tricky. > There hasn't been a real fundamental improvement in the functionality of OSes since Windows 3.1. Multitasking? A massive amount of other important features that matter if you want to build new software or significantly improve what you're using now. Also you seem to be downplaying security a but too much? Those devices would need to be carefully isolated from everything else (not that as I understand there is any evidence that Southwest Airlines is actually using 3.1?). > but those were fixing what was broken, not adding new functionality It's like saying that every new feature in introduced in any type of software that wasn't entirely novel was actually fixing stuff that was broken and wasn't "new". I guess some would apply to the claim GUI/desktop wasn't something new but it was just "fixing" (inherently "broken") command line interfaces? Being able to design significantly objectively better (based on how much it could increase productivity) is I guess is not strictly tied to the OS at least in some cases. But it certainly make it a lot cheaper/easier.
qingcharles 2y ago
It was a "troll tweet" says the guy who started the rumor: https://x.com/ArtemR/status/1815408553131426179 https://x.com/ArtemR/status/1815408553131426179

by bedobi 2y ago

TonyTrapp 2y ago

From my memory, this wildly circulating Windows 3.1 quote is inaccurate. The software they were running was compared to running something like Windows 3.1, but it wasn't actually running on Windows 3.1, as far as I understand. Edit: https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-windows-3-1-blue-screen-crowdstrike-1851603013 https://kotaku.com/southwest-airlines-windows-3-1-blue-scree...

Swizec 2y ago

> is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly already working systems? 80% of the work is json bureaucracy The other 80% is adapting to new requirements And if you’re lucky maybe 0.1% of the time you get to build something new. Fear not, a lot of this stuff was perfectly solved with pen and paper long before us computer nerds came to play in the big boy sandbox

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nightpool 2y ago

Obviously Southwest is not using Windows 3.1, and you should probably be thinking hard about the trustworthiness of any outlet or article that repeats that claim: https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-is-not-still-using-windows-3-1/ https://www.osnews.com/story/140301/no-southwest-airlines-is...

m3kw9 2y ago

It’s like a calculator, if you need to do basic math, you can use an old calc.

jandrese 2y ago

In the long run the hardware that can still run Window 3.1 will become harder and harder to find and they'll be forced to upgrade, but currently enjoying the benefits of "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Plus, there were literally millions of systems made that can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many years before the hardware is too hard to find. We're talking about a problem on the scale of 4,000 flights per day. Assuming you avoid O^2 complexity computations that's the sort of thing even 90s computers could handle easily.

arsome 2y ago
You can basically run Windows 3.1 in dosbox on a potato now, so the hardware really isn't even a problem. If any of this was actually true...
burningChrome 2y ago
>> Plus, there were literally millions of systems made that can run Windows 3.1 so it will be many many years before the hardware is too hard to find. Two of my first contractor roles I had as a developer really opened my eyes to a lot of this. We were building an inventory management system for a large company that built farm equipment. We started building it and once we got to the browser and mobile requirements, one of the VPs spoke up and asked if it would run on IE6 since they had not one, but THREE of their inventory legacy systems that still ran on Win98. This was in 2014, a full 6 years after many companies had stopped supporting it. And another 4 years since websites stopped supporting it. The other one was for a very large, regional construction company. Same thing, we were building a web app for them and in one of the conference calls, one of the VP's was asking how this would run on Windows95 for the same reason. They had several legacy ERP systems that were running on Win95 and had specific requirements for stuff to run on that OS. As a developer who was used to working with somewhat current tech - it was a real eye opener. It was crazy to think how many massive companies just didn't have the constitution to upgrade their stuff, and then by not doing so, had now dug themselves into an even deeper hole. Once I started hearing stories about the details of this scenario, it made perfect sense to me since I had seen it multiple times. And not from little companies who didn't have the money or resources to upgrade, but massive Fortune 500 companies who just neglected their stuff until was too late.

shagie 2y ago

Thirty years of progress is still progress for managing the additional complexity that modern software needs. A lot of software doesn't need that additional complexity. Having thirty year old software, if properly sequestered (since there are security holes large enough to fly a 737 through), means that this is software that has been working for three decades. It has issues (as the mess they had previously showed), but Southwest appears to be able to be able to manage that to some degree without needing to incur the additional complexity of managing a modern software stack for application software that doesn't need it. The ability to play minesweeper on critical computing equipment without impacting it isn't necessarily a desirable feature. Having the computer boot in five seconds and run the desired application is. And there are a number of ways to handle that ... running old operating systems is one of the ways. Space Force S02E07 is not a desirable situation https://youtu.be/xDLvUqhwHZc https://youtu.be/xDLvUqhwHZc . You could also have a kuberentes cluster with multiple replicas and load balancing and all of that additional complexity that takes more people to be able to manage without any real gains in what the application itself is doing.

Wytwwww 2y ago
> Having the computer boot in five seconds There are certainly more modern options that allow that and it's highly doubtful that specifically is particularly relevant for Southwest. Not that there is any evidence that they're actually using 3.1 for anything? > that this is software that has been working for three decades Or it's so buggy or designed (or more likely updated) so poorly that everyone is afraid to touch it. e.g. I doubt there are many (even any?) practical reasons for airlines to use GDS besides the cost and complexity involved in designing an entirely new system and somehow forcing all other airlines to switch to it?
- shagie 2y ago
  > Not that there is any evidence that they're actually using 3.1 for anything? Windows 3.1? No. I'd even say there's no evidence that windows 95 is being used but rather that they've got what appears to be some old software with older design. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2022/12/30/whats-the-problem-with-southwest-airlines-scheduling-system/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2022/12/30/what... > 2. The crew scheduling system is the main culprit. > Southwest uses internally built and maintained systems called SkySolver and Crew Web Access for pilots and flight attendants. They can sign on to those systems to pick flights and then make changes when flights are canceled or delayed or when there is an illness. > “Southwest has generated systems internally themselves instead of using more standard programs that others have used,” Montgomery said. “Some systems even look historic like they were designed on Windows 95.” Screen shots of this are in http://www3.alpa.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=IO7kd%2Bfm2Do%3D&tabid=11702&mid=33968 http://www3.alpa.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=IO7kd%2Bfm2Do... Unfortunately, I don't know the nuances of Microsoft Windows UI well enough to be able to pick out which OS version is running the software in those screen shots. --- > Or it's so buggy or designed (or more likely updated) so poorly that everyone is afraid to touch it. That is a very common occurrence (I'm dealing with that now ... a .jar file that hasn't been rebuilt in 15 years). The big rewrite is something that comes with one part excitement (I can do it right this time!) and dread (oh my, that's how much code that I need to retest?!). I was involved in the tail end of a 3 year project at one company with some software that replaced previously running DOS (and yes, it was DOS - they had an C and assembly guru employed who's job it was to remove / optimize code in the binary to get it to fit into 640k) to a Java Web Start (which was a neat technology) and the millions of lines of software that monstrosity had and needed to be debugged and fixed. While they're in a better spot now (can use modern hardware), and its something that they can build in house (a major part of the reason to do it was to drop the external contractor who didn't like maintaining the C code) ... but that also came with the added complexity of the software that they licensed and the maintenance and deployment of that software. Before they could put the software on a floppy and have it shipped to each location ... now its a big bigger and more complex of a deployment (that was built with duct tape and chewing gum one night to do diff deployments of specific class files rather than trying to push the entirety down the pipe for each location). My rambling point is that we are moving forward with complexity - and that allows us to manage more complex situations, but it comes at the cost of managing that additional complexity of the infrastructure and software it needs and that cost is ongoing and not always taken into account.

aftbit 2y ago

Well all you'd really need to do to avoid this outage is not run auto-updating proprietary kernel modules in the early anti-malware environment. Bare Windows 11 would have been fine - the problem was Crowdstrike.

jakub_g 2y ago

You don't want to know what OS Sabre (backend for 30% of world's airlines) is using on their mainframes.

bedobi 2y ago
actually, I do :) is it DOS? some IBM mainframe OS? do tell
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  Was DOS actually every used on mainframes/servers on a significant scale? (genuine question, not saying it wasn't)
  - wrs 2y ago
    A mainframe OS called DOS was in fact quite popular, but it’s not the same thing as the DOS that was in PCs. (There were others, too, like Apple ][ DOS. As soon as your computer gets the capability of attaching a disk drive, somebody has to write a Disk Operating System.)
kayodelycaon 2y ago
I do actually. My last job had a mainframe team maintaining (and adding to) an AS/400 application. They still had punchcard programs. They had json apis. Each one had some variation on parsing http from a raw tcp connection with IBM RPG. I had to do some unspeakable things to a ruby library so I could control the order of the headers.
fourteenfour 2y ago
Looks like it was IBM System/360 mainframes but they've recently migrated to google hosted services.

numpad0 2y ago

It is BS. Continuous updates for security notion, especially so. That said, the barrier to entry for programmers did come down significantly.

alliao 2y ago

productivity wise 70's and 80's peaked with those thin terminals with every action carried out by keyboard... workers tapped at light speed due to muscle memory, didn't look fancy, but it got the job done. GUI is sexy but like short videos ultimately did nothing for the user

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> productivity wise 70's and 80's peaked with those thin terminals with every action carried out by keyboard Computers only started showing up in nationwide productivity figures in the 80s to 90s.
Wytwwww 2y ago
> GUI is sexy but like short videos ultimately did nothing for the user That's a stretch. I guess it increased the productivity (measured in amount of "work" done, not necessarily something useful) expectations for most workers which effectively did nothing for them because they still need to work as much even if modern software allows them to accomplish much more in the same amount of time. So t might make sense in that regard. > workers tapped at light speed due to muscle memory That's great if we're mainly talking about robotic tasks than can be mostly automated to only require a fraction of those clicks but wasn't for some unclear reasons.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

Almost every industrial embedded system I've ever used runs Windows XP at the absolute newest, and it is not uncommon in the slightest to see stuff as old as 95/3.1. These are computers that operate machinery that costs 6 or 7 figures. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't get me wrong, my Macbook is an absolute beast for all of my work tasks, and my gaming PC is an utter joy to use for my recreation time, but at the end of the day, for a ton of applications, a computer doesn't need to do shit beyond sending a lot of signals out of a parallel/RS232 port to control systems to operate... I mean Christ, anything. CNC mills, building lighting/security systems, packing machines, or to do things like issue tickets to people parking in a ramp. Like... a lot of this stuff just does not benefit at all from a modern software stack. Stick a crappy PC inside instead, load it up with the same image it had before which includes firewall rules that shut down every last port and connection apart from whatever needs to manage it, and you're done. Don't fix what ain't broke.

josephg 2y ago

> is computing actually a solved problem and we're really just mostly reinventing the wheel and enshittifying perfectly already working systems? On a whim I tried playing Solitaire on windows the other day. You know, that game that’s shipped with windows since forever. Well, it’s horrible now. When I tried firing it up, it first spent several minutes downloading software updates. Then it loaded in some horrible “casual games bundle” app which felt laggy like a web app - complete with Xbox cloud sync for my progress, and daily achievements and other junk. The game used to run flawlessly on my old 486. My computer now is orders of magnitude more powerful - but solitaire feels laggy. I bet the entirety of windows XP is smaller than the “update” it performed to install solitaire. I have a personal theory that there’s always something that gets the attention of the best engineers. Decades ago it was human interface guidelines and UI toolkits. Today it’s LLMs and AAA game engines. Most of the rest of the software in the world is worked on by the B team. And they don’t blink an eye at the idea of rewriting solitaire for windows on top of electron. If JavaScript is all their team knows, so be it. Heaven forbid we have to learn how to properly build software for windows.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>Heaven forbid we have to learn how to properly build software for windows They already are properly building software for Windows, and your Solitaire app is a good example of it. It's much, much better than it used to be: it's laggy and slow, and downloads a bunch of extra crap, which has the potential of getting you to spend more money. In short, changing from the old and simple Solitaire to this bloated mess makes Microsoft more profitable, and customers like you keep using Windows regardless, so why shouldn't they do this? Meanwhile, on my Linux box, my simpler games haven't changed substantially in years, if not decades (perhaps updates for the newer GUI toolkits being used), and still work great. But people prefer to stick with Windows and then complain about things being too bloated.
- josephg 2y ago
  > which has the potential of getting you to spend more money. I don't think any of the extra stuff is monetised. I don't know; I didn't look closely at it. > customers like you keep using Windows regardless ... But people prefer to stick with Windows and then complain about things being too bloated. "Stick with windows"? I run windows, macos, linux and freebsd at home. I want all of them to be better. It pains me to see any of the great operating systems of our time fall slowly toward mediocrity. Of course I complain about it. Windows should be better than this.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

Well, what actual new features does Windows 11 give you compared to Windows 3.1? It will support a huge number of new chips, new peripherals, more memory, and so on. If I'm running Southwest's crew scheduling software, how much of that do I care about? Do I care that it will now support the latest Bluetooth? Do I care that it now has the same UI as tablets? Do I care that it has better ads to display on the start menu? No, no, and no. The only thing might be more memory. (I mean, the UI might not look like it belonged in the Stone Age, so that's something, I guess...) There hasn't been a real fundamental improvement in the functionality of OSes since Windows 3.1. It's all been device support (including new classes of devices), new CPU support, and new UI styles. (The security improvements in Windows were a legitimately big deal, but those were fixing what was broken, not adding new functionality.) And I'm sure that, having said this, someone is going to point out something really important that I forgot...

Wytwwww 2y ago
> If I'm running Southwest's crew scheduling software, how much of that do I care about? Not a lot of if you can't/don't want to upgrade or replace that software to make sure it runs on modern OSes. I'm sure that for the most part that software is causing various unnecessary issues and decreasing potential productivity at least to some extent. Just look at GDS, they love to get rid of that, but that would require a coordinated effort and extensive collaboration between all major airlines which is somewhat tricky. > There hasn't been a real fundamental improvement in the functionality of OSes since Windows 3.1. Multitasking? A massive amount of other important features that matter if you want to build new software or significantly improve what you're using now. Also you seem to be downplaying security a but too much? Those devices would need to be carefully isolated from everything else (not that as I understand there is any evidence that Southwest Airlines is actually using 3.1?). > but those were fixing what was broken, not adding new functionality It's like saying that every new feature in introduced in any type of software that wasn't entirely novel was actually fixing stuff that was broken and wasn't "new". I guess some would apply to the claim GUI/desktop wasn't something new but it was just "fixing" (inherently "broken") command line interfaces? Being able to design significantly objectively better (based on how much it could increase productivity) is I guess is not strictly tied to the OS at least in some cases. But it certainly make it a lot cheaper/easier.

qingcharles 2y ago

It was a "troll tweet" says the guy who started the rumor: https://x.com/ArtemR/status/1815408553131426179 https://x.com/ArtemR/status/1815408553131426179