Zugg Software :: View topic

Novice Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Posts: 37

I'm completely happy with ZMud, however I'm going to give CMud the 30 day trial. I have one big question though...Why didn't Zugg wait until the release of the new Windows Vista to develop another product? Vista has tons of good possibilities, other than it being a Microsoft product, I have nothing against it :).

Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 1:26 pm

cMud is designed to work with Vista.

Enchanter Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 511 Location: USA

And you probably won't see Vista for quite a while. Zugg has been working on CMUD for quite a bit now.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

Please keep in mind that VISTA as a product is already out in public beta form. However he has stated he wont be doing more testing / development on the VISTA enhancements until Vista itself isnt so unstable as well.

Not to mention at this current time i dont believe is the time to begin playing with more things until we get these cmud builds a little more stable. Course thats just my opinion.

Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:47 pm

I am not part of the Vista beta test, so I'm not going to see a copy until it's released to the public.

Also, there are *LOTS* of people who will not upgrade to Vista for a long time, so I wanted to make sure CMUD was optimized for Windows XP and not just Vista.

And yes, as people have stated already, I started work on CMUD 9 months ago which was well before Vista was available/useable.

Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:22 pm

I just got the July CTP from my MSDN subscription so I can send you a copy if you want.

Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:24 pm

No, I don't *want* to install the Vista BETA. I'm only going to play with Vista once it's stable. I don't have any spare computers that I can afford to get messed up by a Beta operating system. Besides, I want Microsoft to fix all of the emulation bugs for WinXP apps. It doesn't do me any good to mess with an OS that might still have emulation bugs in it.

CMUD is not going to use any Vista-only features for a long time. So as long as Vista can run WinXP apps, then there shouldn't be any problem with CMUD. In the distant future, when the majority of people are using Vista, then I might do some Vista-specific stuff.

As I've said before, when I say that CMUD will support Vista, what I mean is that any bugs in CMUD that prevent it from working with the publicly-released Vista will get fixed so that you will be able to run CMUD on Vista. I'm not talking about supporting Vista-only features.

This is sort of like how zMUD supported Win98,ME,2000,XP even though it was written for Windows 95. zMUD didn't use any WinXP-only features (like CMUD does). But I always ensured that zMUD would still work. But with Vista I am not making that guarentee with zMUD, only with CMUD.

I have already gotten several reports that CMUD mostly works on Vista, so I'm not really worried about it. I also think that zMUD mostly works on Vista also, even though I won't be officially supporting that combination.

Apprentice Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Posts: 119 Location: Sweden

One thought... Since the security model in Vista has changed and Microsoft is actually trying to encourage users to run under a limited account. You might want to reconsider putting all files in the CMUD folder and instead save all settings under each user account (the Document & settings folder). That should hopefully be enough to get it running without administrator privileges.

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:11 pm

Yeah, I'm really going to have to give that some thought, although I *REALLY* *REALLY* hate this kind of security thing that Microsoft is doing.

As a former SysAdmin, I hated software that used the Registry and/or the Documents/Settings folder. Maybe it has improved with WinXP, or maybe it's improving with Vista, but it used to be a real pain to separate the Documents/Settings stuff from the Windows system. I had systems were we tried to keep Windows itself on one drive, and all user-related files on a different drive so that the user stuff could be backed up without also backing up a bunch of Windows system stuff.

But this never worked well, because so many programs depended upon registry or other system stuff, so the only way to really back up a system was to back up *everything*. And when you are talking about backing up thousands of PCs, it was a real waste of space to have thousands of copies of the Windows system files.

In my opinion, Microsoft has always done a really poor job of separating user software from the system. What I tried with zMUD was to put *everything* that zMUD needed into a single directory. That way, if you wanted to backup zMUD or transfer it to another computer, you just had to copy or move a single directory. You didn't have to worry about the registry or anything.

But yes, I know Microsoft is trying to change this in Vista. It's one of my personal pet-peeves. I'm all for running under a limited user account instead of being Admin all the time. But they still have a bunch of issues that they need to deal with before I'm going to be happy with it. And I probably won't do anything until Vista is released and I see what I really need to do to make this work.

I'd really like to avoid splitting stuff into different directories and scattering files all over your hard disk, and I'd really like to continue using INI files and SQL database files instead of the Registry.

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:13 pm

I should also mention that the other complexity is that this messes with the licensing. zMUD and CMUD are licensed to the USER. If you have multiple users on the same computer, each user is supposed to have their own license. I don't want to end up with a situation where someone can install CMUD to a Vista server and then let hundreds of users share the same license.

Wanderer Joined: 09 Jun 2006 Posts: 62 Location: Florida

Actually, if you're all for having users using a limited account rather than "root" as it were, you'll probably be pretty happy with Vista. Most of the little problems are solved and it is a rather smooth interface. Even the betas up to this point aren't very quirky, and are operating rather smoothly. I don't think it's going to be quite the problem you think it may be. Vista definitely isn't XP, which was just "Oh yeah, let's make limited users as an afterthought." They actually did some thinking BEFORE they started making it :P

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:31 pm

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Unless they have caught up with the concepts and technologies of 20 years ago finally, then it still isn't even close. Oh yeah, there have been yet more devolopments in those past 20 years. MS is very far behind in all server based concepts and they can't even catch up at the rate they are moving.

What is truly needed as a minimum for multiple users is that the registry for user specific data is stored in the specific users folder. Permissions must be setable for all folders and all users in a top down exclusion manner, groups likewise with user specific settings overriding, further all programs need to have the ability to be permissionable at the same levels as users, and finally it all needs to be available trough a single clean interface. None of this 5 different interfaces to find the setting you want to adjust crap.

Magician Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 482

Vista now institutes the document and settings folder into a users folder. As such Backing up their data isnt all that complex. In addition much of the overall scheme has changed but the underlying concept the same.

As an owner of my own oncall company for the last 10 years migrations are almost standard with every business contract I have and there is always a way to simplify migration of data.

As this pertains to CMUD (licensing and otherwise) It runs just as it does before. They are and always have recommended limited accounts. ZMUD and CMUD can both be ran with run-as command for users or individually under the parent security account as long as admin allows it. I have them both running on both admin and limited accounts in winxp pro winxp home and vista enterprise setups.

In either case the licensing issues I dont believe will be a problem in vista. Im sure there will be minor adjustments to locations of files due to the change in security and pathing for user information (if any of it is hardcoded however im sure zugg uses system derivations and those arent changed only being added on to) however the overall product works just fine and licenses have no problem in either situation for me.

The only issues i am aware of are pretty much common knowledge around here now. They involve the methodology of installing and running the program the first time to setup the licensing etc on the MASTER ADMIN account. Also making sure their is no administrative block on write permissions to that directory. After that it works like a charm