Please MS just go to hell... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 12:58:04 pm
content: Joining the latest pieces and hints posted here and there...Minimum requirements to "so they let you use your hardware" areABOVE AT LEAST an iCore i7 latest gizmo a latest Ryzen/EPYC allowedMicrosoft is also requiring a front-facing camera for all Windows 11 devices except desktop PCs from January 2023 onwards.An absurd TPM 2.0 pre installed module for whatever hell knows forLater on modifications on SYSTEMD to control block and loop devices so to track your data and storage mediumSo combined the ability to run APKs and all systemd wayland shell distrosunder control of WSL... all under their DRM TPM and supervision of yourproperty hardware... now claimedAttached a picture exactly how a I see what systemD is de facto..The death sentence of all your hardware unless it is up 2/3 y old..and all your invested asset base..Sources:https://www.osnews.com/story/133623/microsoft-remains-vague-and-unclear-about-windows-11s-minimum-requirements/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/heres-what-youll-need-to-upgrade-to-windows-11/https://www.osnews.com/story/133617/microsoft-will-allow-you-to-install-any-android-apk-file-in-windows-11/https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Block-Global-CounterPaul

author: OZ1LQB
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 01:50:10 pm
content: hi..you cant even get the latest update with a i7-4770 you are stuck with ver 1909 witch ends support in 2022 :-(

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 02:03:28 pm
content: In American law, corporations are "persons", so they have a damnable immortal soul...

author: OZ1LQB
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 02:33:47 pm
content: Hi Ed..i get the hinti think thats the road i chose now.

author: edpalmer42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 04:38:17 pm
content: Yup. I don't have a single system that can be upgraded to Win 11 and I'll be damned if I'm going to replace multiple computers that are working fine just so I can upgrade the OS.I've dabbled with Linux for years, but there hasn't been enough of a reason for me to leave Windows - until now. I'm sure the process will have a few detours and frustrations, but at least there is a path instead of a brick wall.Ed

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 05:51:15 pm
content: QuoteRight...

author: szszoke
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 06:03:13 pm
content: I wonder how many others have CPUs that are too "too old" despite them still working fine.Eventually people will probably be vocal enough that Microsoft has to change course.The CPU support goes back to Ryzen 2000/ Intel 8th generation.As far as I know the TPM module is used to store encryption keys which are connected to a boot image.That way you can encrypt your storage drive and the decryption key can be stored in the TPM module.When the system boots it will ask for the key from the TPM module. The TPM module will make sure that the boot image was not tampered with.In theory if you just use your computer normally, Windows will silently decrypt your storage drive during boot via the TPM module.If your boot image was tampered with (an attacker who has physical access to the computer wants to find the decryption code with a custom boot image) then the TPM would detect that and would not provide the description keys.The camera thing is scary in one way but not so scary in another.It's only applicable for new laptops built after 2023. The laptops will need to have decent webcams if they want to ship Windows.The scary part is that there will be a lot more "decent" eyes that could be watching.A nice addition to that would be regulation which mandates a killswitch that physically disconnects webcams and microphones. Just like with a desktop machine where you can unplug your webcam and microphone.It should not be that hard. Webcams are already connected via internal USB ports in laptops. We would just need two switches. One that cuts the power and data likes for the webcam and another that cuts 2-3 lines for the microphone(s).

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 06:34:46 pm
content: QuoteBut hasn't that always been the way,your 386 that worked fine with win 3.1 wouldn't run 95,the 486 you upgraded too struggled with 98, rinse and repeat

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 06:38:29 pm
content: What I'm starting to think about is the scary idea that all those requirements, that are of course marketed as being purely for security purposes for the greater good, might actually become a legal requirement in a few years... rather than seeing regulations that would allow users to bypass them.Hopefully this is just a bad dream.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 06:46:51 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on June 27, 2021, 06:34:46 pmThings were different then though. A 2 year old PC was getting pretty slow and would struggle to run some of the latest software. A 5 year old PC was hopelessly obsolete and would not run most modern software, it just wasn't fast enough, didn't have enough memory, hard drive was too small, things really moved fast back then. It isn't like that anymore, a 10 year old PC may not provide an optimal experience but for most typical use it is just fine, even the latest games will generally run, if not great. Computers have gotten so powerful that most people simply don't need the latest or anything close to it, and there is no excuse for an operating system to require something new just for the sake of it being new. Not that it really matters, I don't like the direction Windows has gone and can't see myself using it in the future outside of a VM.

author: edpalmer42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 06:49:24 pm
content: Quote from: szszoke on June 27, 2021, 06:03:13 pmSure, but since Microsoft is as nimble as a fully loaded supertanker it'll take a year or two before that happens. By that time, anyone who cares will have migrated to Linux and won't be coming back.QuoteIt's one thing for us to decide thatOURsystem is too slow forOURpurposes. It's something quite different for Microsoft to decide that, in their arrogant opinion, our systems are too slow and therefore they won't support them.Are they suggesting that Windows 11 is such a resource hog that anything older than their allowed CPUs will run so slow that it will make their OS look bad??Ed

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 07:48:41 pm
content: QuoteI find that a refreshing change compared to there previous claims of what hardware was required,olny for the user to find out that whilst there machine met the specs it ran slower than a sloth on mogadon

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 08:35:28 pm
content: Microsoft first and foremost wants to avoid the bad reputation coming from people not patching their XP (first and foremost, at all running XP should be punished, it is so outdated.) and having it pwned by kiddi3s. TBH, if you've shipped the software that -- licensed or not -- runs on more than 50% of the end nodes on Ethernet / Broadband, you have something of a community responsibility to not fuck up, which standard they, as well as any other OS vendor, have failed to uphold, repeatedly.Coincidentally, by locking down and making things safer by automatic patching and more controlled authentication, they also create a perfect surveillance machine, where things like telemetry are merely the icing on the cake. It ends up in a situation where you're not allowed to fully control your computer, simply because 98% of people can't manage their computer even if their life depended on it.The exit on 10 has been to run Win 10 Pro, and join it to an AD (can be a Samba one, which is free and runs on POSIX systems). Then 90% of the annoying crap shuts up, you're not constantly being asked to set up a cloud account, and so forth. Parental controls work, et cetera. This of course is a "2% of the users" solution. Let's hope it does not disappear. I'm guessing they'll keep it around for their military customers, among others. Air-gapped (really, not just inconveniently networked where you need to jump through hoops to surf) systems don't play well with the cloud.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 10:11:15 pm
content: I was planning on building a new game computer. I guess I'll put Windows 11 on it. I'm wondering why the "Home" version is the only one that requires internet and an account to install. I would have gone with the Pro version anyway, but still think that's a bit odd.Quote

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2021, 10:41:19 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on June 27, 2021, 06:34:46 pmits not the case now when moore's law broke down sometime like a little more than a decade ago... imho my 2008's Q9400 core quad 2.66GHz still relevant today.. esp when i upgraded to 8GB DDR2 recentlyand run W7 just fine as fine as WXP before.. if not because of cpu limitation starting in W10, i think it can run W10 pretty well too...Quote from: edpalmer42 on June 27, 2021, 06:49:24 pmwe do care, but since we made money from M$ Winglows (a little, if not much) we will find work around for this matter. we are sure there will be a quick fix, a toggled value in registry for example, to disable all this bullshit when they realize the sale go down rapidly, like what happened during early stage of W10 with its moronic appearance smartphone like GUI with no start menu available. as much as i want to find a better alternative to Winglows, unfortunately there is none. if M$ go to hell dead today and all brand names like Adobe, Autodesk, Epson, Canon and Altium et al jump in Linux boat in their entirety, me and many others will too, but as long as there is M$ at their front, we have to deal with its political correctness (or however bullshitness it is)... there is no money for us in Linux unfortunately.

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 05:02:35 am
content: Quote from: rdl on June 27, 2021, 10:11:15 pmOn 10, you get all that nagging on Pro as well. It won't go away unless you join an AD. Expect a stand-alone 11 Pro to be worse.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 08:47:43 am
content: Well, as long as the Pro edition will install and start without an internet connection that'll be good enough. Of course, they can always change that. I only want it to play games and right now there are not many that require Windows 10, so it won't see much use.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 09:49:37 am
content: People still pay money for Windows?

author: gmb42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 10:04:44 am
content: Quote from: mansaxel on June 28, 2021, 05:02:35 amCan you give examples of when that happens as from my experience that's totally untrue? My two home machines have been running Win10 Pro since it came out (one started with 1809) and they aren't joined to a domain. The machines have been updated as each new Win 10 flavour came out and their status in respect of this has never changed.I've also set up a fair amount of Win 10 VM's for testing that weren't domain joined and can't remember seeing the issue of nagging about using a local account.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 10:06:30 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on June 28, 2021, 09:49:37 amYep, they doI did, just in April, for my new build. Luckily, in Germany, MS has to allow for the sale of OEM (SystemBuilder) licenses to the enduser. So i do not have to pay 260 Euro official MS price, retailers can sell around 130 Euro. So what that i do not get officicial MS support :pOut of principle, i stay away from shady "used" keys for 10 Euro though.I also paid back in the day for Vista (*shudder*) and 7. The 7 was then upgraded to 10, but that machine was given away as a whole unit, so i needed a new license.In general though, i am very ambivalent regarding Windows 11. MS has surprisingly not crossed my line yet: A MS account is not required for 11 Pro. If it had been, i would never upgrade.I will wait and see how strong the nagging will be, but if past experience is an indicator, i can easily wait until 2025 until i upgrade :pRegarding the nagging of Windows 10, i can personally recommend O&O Shutup 10. That tool is a easy, everything in one place way to, well, shutup windows 10. You need to be careful with disabling anything marked yellow and red, but all the green option can mostly be disabled safely.EDIT: @gmb42: As far as i know, if you have an active internet connection during installation, you *cannot* skip setting up an online account. That change came with 1909 or 20H1 if i remember correctly.Office 365, which i am using, will ask after installation, to convert your account to an online one, if you hit the wrong button on first start. Other than that i have not encountered any nagging as well, but i have turned off OneDrive, online Search and Cortana, and generally do not use the MS Store *at all*.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 11:13:21 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on June 27, 2021, 10:41:19 pmFrom my past experience w/M$..These arguments are understatements.Simply put there are 2 sides of the same coin:- We actually make money by SAVING WASTED MONEY- They gave me so much prejudice along 2 decades ... that just getting rid of that made me money- THEY MAKE A GROSS MONEY... using shallow people on a hyped OS- They gave me prejudice (have said that?) and I made a pathetic money orders of magnitude lower .. net result for me was always negative with M$No there is no benefit filling their pockets with so easy moneyand letting they have total ownership of my hardwareMy investments are made with caution - which they give no value at allThey are bad business.But now they are also a security hazard and liabilityI just won't allow them to have a mic and camera open at willon my house my life and my devices.. letting they decide whatI can or can not do with my assets.So.. that just soundsMS just should go to hell.Paul

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 11:51:46 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on June 27, 2021, 10:41:19 pmSimilar story here. Main system is a Gigabyte Extreme EX58 that started with 3GB and Core i7 920 and was upgraded many years ago to 24GB and Xeon W3690 - it still works quite well with whatever I throw at it (except the latest games) and Windows 11 will throw a wrench to it.Quote from: Mechatrommer on June 27, 2021, 10:41:19 pmThat is the major factor to still have Windows around: application software. Sure, you can do VM gymnastics and/or other tricks but the underlying OS is still there. Truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the people simply does not give a flurry animal's rear end for this dance around specifications and privacy as long as it does not cost any money and does not affect their browsing. That is the (evil) genius move from MS when offering Windows 10: the person doing a "free" upgrade was too excited to get "something for nothing" to notice their data being stolen.Quote from: PKTKS on June 28, 2021, 11:13:21 amThat is a way to increase efficiency, not making money. The "Great Reset" (you will own nothing and still be happy) will make everyone millionaires? I don't think so.Quote from: PKTKS on June 28, 2021, 11:13:21 amAgree, but so does the vast majority of the "new economy": the mobile smartphone manufacturers, the social (engineering) apps, the online retail business (killed local businesses everywhere) and so on. Do smart moves to adapt or succumb.Quote from: PKTKS on June 28, 2021, 11:13:21 amIf you have a smartphone you are also open to that. Anyone is open to that level of scrutiny if using anything post-2010. Put tape in front of the camera and use other smart moves to prevent these issues.Quote from: PKTKS on June 28, 2021, 11:13:21 amI really don't understand why you are so hell bent into MS since you mentioned you don't use it anymore... Are you concerned about them tapping into systemd's source code as you mentioned in your OP? Well, if you have the clout to thoroughly analyze its code, you can start pointing out (or commenting out) their attempts. For anybody else, it will be a shift in whom to trust - from a company (or companies) with a bad business history to an army of unknown people modifying its code (and hoping they won't push their own interests ahead).

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 11:59:57 am
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on June 28, 2021, 11:51:46 amI do not use it anymore...But vast majority of stuff I deal with actually uses it.So despite the fact I got rid of it on what matters to my sanity..I am still forced to deal with them - no matter how much i despise them.Reality still is that they achieved an unprecedented and disturbinginvasive greed among general life.The other simple fact is that I spend 99% of my timeon the bench and desktop. Cell phones are brickswhich I waste about dozen minutes a day.. kept them back sidedmost of the time.So comparing my bench desktops and servers to a cell phone..there is no chance in hell..BTW I won't use devices eon the bench w/wide openmics an cams.. and above that ..sliding grease fluxed fingerson screens..MS achieved a pathetic level- which unfortunately - i am forcedto deal with... nevertheless they are in other people devices..Paul

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 06:06:09 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on June 28, 2021, 09:49:37 amActually, yes. Of course.Although upgrading Windows starting with Win 10 has been made essentially free by MS, OEM licenses are still not free. Computer vendors have to pay for a license. So every new computer bought has a paid license AFAIK. If you build your own computer, same thing unless you can waste time installing a previous version of Windows, and then upgrade it for free. Or use some illegal means...Server editions are also of course paid for. And expensive.

author: artag
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 07:32:32 pm
content: Quote from: edpalmer42 on June 27, 2021, 06:49:24 pmThat's exactly what they're saying. Running Windows on an older machine will make it look bad, and they don't want that.The only winning move is not to play.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 28, 2021, 07:46:45 pm
content: the most worshiped OS today only run on 1GHz arm cpus, majority of people only want to fool themselves around with sounds and videos and some manually controlled simulated dream worlds. go fuck with that madness. that statement only revelant to minority of people and the real power hog is things like HFSS (EM simulators) and surreal blend 3d renderers out there, which not much people use them.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 08:41:19 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 28, 2021, 06:06:09 pmI dont know about the rest of world..But here there is virtually no chance to buy a laptop without oem MS pre installedOf course pre paidSome desktops with some buntus trying to emulate that ms thing just failed and vanishedSo 99% chance one will have to deal with the golden eggsPaul

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 04:41:46 pm
content: QuoteOr as i found a few years back,you can buy a machine without an os but it will be more expensive than the same machine with windows pre installed

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 06:24:49 pm
content: Quote from: artag on June 28, 2021, 07:32:32 pmNot that it really matters, but it's not really what this says.Even Windows 11 would work perfectly fine with CPUs from 10 years ago. Moore's law for CPUs has clearly slowed down significantly. And the resources Win 11 would use more than with older versions would essentially be related to all the telemetry and online accounts crap. Win 10's (and 11 is probably very close) kernel itself is actually not bad and all in all more efficient than previous versions. The GUI, well it's not all that fancy either. With any reasonable grahics card, it should be plenty.Now there can be reasons for stopping the support of older hardware, even if it's perfectly fit performance-wise. First, to cut development costs: the more hardware you have to support, the more maintenance and testing you have to do. It can get extremely expensive over the years.Of course, another reason, as many can guess, would be purely commercial: by pushing sales of new hardware, they give incentives for hardware makers to buy OEM licenses, because it gives them a good reason to sell to their customers for buying new machines.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 09:32:36 pm
content: 'Ole Gary has been going off like sour milk...

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 10:11:26 pm
content: Quote from: PKTKS on June 29, 2021, 08:41:19 amIn the US and Europe you can buy pc's / notebooks from Dell, Lenovo and HP with Linux pre-installed instead of windows,they are also cheaper than with windows.Ofcourse you need to order them online, you will not find them in the supermarkets.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2021, 11:14:09 pm
content: i guess we should expect an influx of inexpensive fairly new computers on eBay that are not good for W11 but perfectly good for other things....

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 12:38:31 am
content: Quote from: Bud on June 29, 2021, 11:14:09 pmThat would be better than seeing them end up as piles of electronics garbage. Unfortunately...

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 01:04:50 am
content: Quote from: Bud on June 29, 2021, 11:14:09 pmAll the Linux peeps will have a hard on from here to you know where.

author: BrokenYugo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 03:21:26 am
content: I was expecting them to finally drop 32 bit or something, not this.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 05:53:19 am
content: Quote from: BrokenYugo on June 30, 2021, 03:21:26 amThey did that, too.This is all about selling hardware.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 06:48:22 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on June 30, 2021, 05:53:19 amMay be an ironic ad on the radio here today. Dell Australia are advertising end of financial year laptops 'for windows 10'. I wonder if any of these Dell stink bombs will qualify for win11.Dell Australia lost me a few years ago when they refused to sell the flagship Dell/Linux Laptop here with Linux installed and not Windows.I bet Dell are stuck with piles of laptops and PCs that will invariably go out with Win10 on them to an unsuspecting public.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 07:55:04 am
content: By now it has been clarified by MS that the CPU and TPM requirements are "soft".I think that simply is what is required to get a nice Winsows 11 sticker for a new system.Only 1GHz, 2 cores, 4 GB of RAM and TPM 1.2 are hard requirements.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 04:39:46 pm
content: People like me might probably get a single windows 11 computer and remote into it with all other "outdated" computers.Quite the direction, Microsoft is going towards...Just a while ago, they were trying to run windows on ARM which are usually slower but made equal with hardware acceleration parts (correct me of I'm wrong).Quote from: OZ1LQB on June 27, 2021, 01:50:10 pmCan't conform... But I did read somewhere, if you haven't upgraded to the latest windows 10 from 1909 by a set date, you'd have to reinstall to get the latest.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 06:13:14 pm
content: Microsoft creating millions of tonnes of e-waste again there.As for TPM it does require TPM 2.0 still. TPM 1.2 or opt out is possible for hardware vendors only. I’m sure those builds will leak of course.What is more worrying than all of this is the mandatory webcam requirement (probably for windows hello which sucks dick big time) and the worst undiscussed thing being secure boot enabled. That means no more frigging vendor IDs for USB devices that use generic chips with custom IDs (a shit load of test gear does this).It’s a fucking pile of dog shit.Edit: also this shows what total clowns they arehttps://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548753/microsofts-windows-11-live-stream-technical-difficulties

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 06:56:21 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on June 30, 2021, 06:13:14 pmSomeone's waste is my resource.In pretty sure, techies of the world would happily buy all that to make their own Linux servers, raid arrays, maybe even crypto miners or web serversAs for problems windows hello, and incompatible devices. I'm pretty sure enterprises would prevent that from happening by demanding it isn't so.Secure boot is simply a check for what you're booting up is really what you think it is and not a malware. I doubt it'll brick and device.Then maybe, they'll still continue with all this bull crap and enterprice customers will continue to use xp and win 7 for some applications like they are right now.I'm worried that ability to dual boot will go away.I sometimes boot into Linux from time to time.

author: coromonadalix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 07:15:40 pm
content: Runing the newest Dev chanel version fine on a i5-7400 with an tpm in it, used a trick to do the installation thks Win10 lollFor the os side: they fuc#^%$# ed up real good this time, more mouse clicks to do the job, more crapware than ever ....They ripped off Mac and Linux desktop look and funnctions loll Un impressed so far ..... well seeIf they receive strong negative feedback they may soften the requirementsMy tpm module was at 12$ usd, now sold for a mere 100-120$ usd

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 08:03:10 pm
content: Quote from: coromonadalix on June 30, 2021, 07:15:40 pmShould read: They hired Mac and Linux desktop developers.

author: Ranayna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 08:20:34 pm
content: Might actually be a dealbreaker for me...In the list of not supported features, it lists this innocent looking item:The only possible location for the Taskbar is on the lower edge of the screen.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2021, 08:35:50 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on June 30, 2021, 08:03:10 pmNo they got their existing developers to do it. This was after they pissed all the other ones off and they left and went to work for Google and Apple. What is left of Windows is a C rate Linux theme you used to get on a Drupal site randomly circa 2003 with all the sores sticking out like Linux did in 2003 (i.e. bits of Motif here, bits of Qt there, bits of raw Xt elsewhere).Windows 11 looks like a programmer did the UI design and that's a terrible terrible terrible thing and I say that as mostly a programmer these days.As for their perpetual wanking over the start menu redesigns from them on every fucking windows release since 95, whyyyyyyyy?!?!?!? It doesn't improve anyone's lives. In fact all the start menu does over the lifecycle of any windows release is attract flies because the implementation is excrement. Ugh. All it does is make things worse, every damn time. Argh.

author: coromonadalix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 02:05:46 am
content: Same thing for Ms Office, who the hell tough of a tabbed menu, you have to add some third party software to make it usable pfffStopped using Ms Office and used Open Office

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 09:16:38 am
content: Quote from: Raj on June 30, 2021, 06:56:21 pmare you going to US all the way just to collect trashes and bring them home by plane? btw i'll love to see more more modern xeon workstations come up in ebay...Quote from: Raj on June 30, 2021, 06:56:21 pmvery funny. you must have abundant free land with river flowing next to it over there.

author: OZ1LQB
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 10:43:37 am
content: Hi Raj..you were right, a clean install solved my problem now i have ver 21h1.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2021, 04:20:24 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 01, 2021, 09:16:38 amActually the opposite. The electricity where I live, costs the highest in India, average cost is 4 cents per KWh in India, I pay 11. But my cousin does have a briefcase full of old drives that he'd gonna get for me from Canada.Quote from: OZ1LQB on July 01, 2021, 10:43:37 amFolks, now that's how microsoft wastes your day and punishes you for not upgrading in time. Pretty stupid, ain't it?Upgrade too early and you might catch some bugs.

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 09:14:39 am
content: IMO:Microsoft realize their shrinking market share is inevitable, and it's time to shear the sheep.As proof - their new windows 11 requirements quite restrictive, first time in history and they are visibly not afraid to lose major part of flock. And key features they require - useful only for restricting user environment like in iOS.Because there is no more need for subsidizing windows to users because of fear losing MS office subscribers. Office apps now available in cloud, from any OS.So now they can make walled garden, have % from all apps sales (by forcefully integrating other stores as Steam, and taking % from them), similar to Apple and Google.Forcing app vendors to give them 15-30% is too tempting.Ofcource they will force that after while, "for sake of security" or "to protect the children".If you have a long term strategy, try to consider something like Ubuntu Linux.P.S. I predicted this for Fusion 360 and Eagle CAD, and it came true. Previously, partially free (for personal use) products became available only by subscription, and it is quite expensive.The strategy is extremely simple - to make a free product, very attractive, so that it becomes the de facto standard in the industry and is mentioned everywhere, and community creates a bunch of free training and advertising materials, and then slam the mousetrap door.Companies do not care that only a small percentage will remain using their product, profit is profit.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 11:44:05 am
content: Quote from: nuclearcatReminds me of Fritzing. Not a standard or good program by any standard (lots of bugs specially when part count is high)But ones you use it, it's extremely hard to even try any other cad software.It was free, and now, you have to pay to get it, (unless you compile it)

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 11:50:03 am
content: Quote from: Raj on July 04, 2021, 11:44:05 amI think compiling is still OK, as soon as they dont make artificial obstacles to make it difficult.They are still very far from Autodesk, which will simply make your "cloud" projects inaccessible and useless, since you did not pay for a subscription.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 11:52:05 am
content: Quote from: nuclearcatThey lock your projects up on the cloud? That's criminal, almost like holding a part of your computer for a ransom. I can understand if Netflix doesn't let you see the remaining episodes of a series that you've been though half way. But for autodesk, that's your creation.Atleast the should give a free, one time 'get your data back' button

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 12:05:42 pm
content: Quote from: Raj on July 04, 2021, 11:52:05 amAccording to Autodesk, to be max correct, it is possible to download them, but it is non-trivial and they are almost worthless:https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/expired-subscription/m-p/7379099#M10016QuoteI think once @eevblog covered similar issue about Eagle, that you might pack project for customer, and it will work with specific CAD version, if he wants fixes, but with all this SaaS garbage it is becoming impossible.And even if you renew subscription try to open them after 1-2 years, it will be different version of software and you might face compatibility issues.Also, on my experience with subscription models, we had several times experience, some person bought appliance for let's say $100k, with yearly licensing fees $30k, and didnt used it. Then he tried to sell it after 5 years, but vendor refused to renew subscription without paying all years that was skipped. One of such appliances - Bluecoat cacheflow.So with all depreciation this equipment barely worth $10k, and vendor wants $150k to make it work.So nothing stops Autodesk in future to do the same. "You want to open and edit one thing 5 years old project? Pay 5 years skipped subscriptions".

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 12:11:01 pm
content: Quote from: nuclearcat on July 04, 2021, 09:14:39 amwe waited long enough... since the beginning actually.. we came and tried and hoped for several times...Quote from: nuclearcat on July 04, 2021, 09:14:39 amthats why we stayed away from anything cloud based nonsense, esp if you have to store our IP/sensitive/very high priority/hard work files in it. although there are some people who swear by it, even in this forum... through sentiment i guess, but what i know is... programmers dictate reality, in this simulated dream worlds. the topping is the marketing people giving out promises and soothing words. ymmv.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 12:27:22 pm
content: Unfortunately we'll have to cope with MS for a long time because there's so much software written for Windows that it's not possible to switch easily, especially for businesses and public authorities. It will require a lot of effort to break free from that vendor lock-in. Some authorities and municipalities over here started talking about a github for the public sector. They pay a lot for licenses and enforced upgrades. It would be much smarter to hire software developers writing/maintaining the programs and tools they need while sharing the software.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 12:56:01 pm
content: Meanwhile, the trends are as if, they are are going towards a negative direction...DVDs and BluRay backups are a thing of the past, Despite being cheaper than any flash or hard drive based backup. Way more reliable than cloud (might not be as cheap).I wonder why tape storage is super expensive and non-existent for consumers.Software moved from buy the source code/ free to buy ones, to subscription.Companies just arbitrarily force random rules, written in sand, based on politics and plain old stupidity and marketing.I guess, good will isn't valuable anymore can companies can and are able to survive bad reputation easily.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 02:04:40 pm
content: DVDs and BluRays are definitely not more reliable than other mediums. In fact they are particularly bad backup mediums. They are fragile, error prone and have poor shelf life before writing and after writing!Cloud backups are durable and reliable as long as you understand what you're doing. Pushing your stuff to AWS S3 in two geographical regions is 10,000x more reliable than DLTs stored in a nuclear bunker.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 02:14:10 pm
content: Quote from: Raj on July 04, 2021, 12:56:01 pmA 1 TB HDD is about €35 to 40 at the moment, i.e. 4 cents per GB. A pack of ten DVD+RW 4.7 is about €8, i.e. 17 cents per GB. The HDD is also faster and you don't have to deal with a large pile of DVDs.Quote from: Raj on July 04, 2021, 12:56:01 pmThe drives are expensive and slower than HDDs, but the tapes are cheaper than other media in terms of cost/GB. It's meant for PB of data. For a typical consumer a USB HDD is the most economical and convenient solution.

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 06:18:20 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 04, 2021, 02:04:40 pmM-DISC. More expensive for large amounts of data than tape, but cheaper for relatively small personal backups (because tape drive is expensive and tapes more sensitive to storage conditions).You end up in hospital for a few month, miss payment, and your data is gone.Cloud provider dont like you? They write "you violated our ToS" - and your data is gone.Some developer pushed buggy release to "cloud" prod? Your data most likely gone.And many other situations.These are rare but possible events, and worst of all - you have no control on them. With your own storage backup, you have more control over your data, although this may require skills.Because "cloud is just someone else's computer"P.S. For long-storage Amazon have "Glacier", and Google have something too. Hybrid backup strategy is good too.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 06:30:10 pm
content: Quote from: nuclearcat on July 04, 2021, 06:18:20 pmAs for M-DISC, no thanks. That's the wrong end of the solution. You still have the same aggregate risk for personal backups.Oh completely agree with the cloud stuff. If you backup just to the cloud you're a moron. If you have no completely offline backups you're a moron too. I work for a company that hasn't worked that out yet.My personal backup strategy is better than most enterprises:1. Stuff is synced real time with iCloud.2. I have an offline backup which is kept in my house unencrypted in a fire safe which is updated weekly. This is a Samsung 870 Pro 1TiB SSD.3. I have two offline backups which are alternated and kept in my car which are encrypted and updated quarterly. These are Samsung 870 Evo 1TiB SSDs.My immediate loss window is zero. I just order a new computer, sign in, wait and job done. If any of those cloud concerns shoot me down, I have 1 week which I can live with. Total backup compromise end to end is ~6 months which I can also live with. If my kit is stolen, I'm fine. If my house burns down, I am fine. If I drop dead, my family have access to the offline backup and the passwords for the offline encrypted backups is in my will.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 06:41:45 pm
content: Quote from: Raj on July 04, 2021, 11:44:05 amI absolutely loathe Fritzing, it cannot die soon enough. It drives me crazy trying to decipher "schematics" that are a render of a solderless breadboard with a rat's nest of jumper wires. It is the sort of thing that might be appropriate for young children building their first couple electronics projects but that is is, beyond that point it becomes a crutch that enables people to avoid ever learning to read schematics and starts just holding them back.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 06:43:47 pm
content: Yeah that thing is absolute cancer. I saw Curious Marc (of YouTube fame) using it last week and I sort of lost some respect for the guy.

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 07:40:25 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 04, 2021, 06:30:10 pmSSD drives are very tricky as long term storage and have lot of corner cases.https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retentionFor example: "As the table shows, the data retention is proportional to active temperature and inversely proportional to power off temperature, meaning that a higher power off temperature will result in decreased retention. In a worst case scenario where the active temperature is only 25-30°C and power off is 55°C, the data retention can be as short as one week, which is what many sites have touted with their "data loss in matter of days" claims. Yes, it can technically happen, but not in typical client environment."You might end up with corrupted data, if you keep them in car and write in room under A/C, also often drives need to be powered for some time to do some necessary background housekeeping.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 08:30:46 pm
content: Might want to read further into that. That’s for drives which have passed their endurance rating.These are new drives. Realistic retention is 10 years. Drives are cycled out after 3.

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 09:06:54 pm
content: Microsoft lolhttps://twitter.com/BenKrasnow/status/1411531491306205190

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 09:32:24 pm
content: HEIF is patent encumbered. When you buy an Apple device the license is included in the price. When you buy windows (oh no wait you didn’t) it’s not.This is incidentally fucking annoying.

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 09:37:22 pm
content: Not sure about that, people in the thread comment that anyway it does not work properly, and it is better just to download VLC

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 10:29:14 pm
content: It seems Microsoft will continue it's tradition of "every second Windows is a pile of turds".Windows XP - usableWindows Vista - explosive diarrhoeaWindows 7 - usableWindows 8 - explosive diarrhoea but somehow worseWindows 10 - usableWindows 11 - so far it seems like explosive diarrhoea but somehow worse and with ants or something.At a quick glance look at the UI they implemented not only their own bad ideas but also stole bad ideas from just about everyone else. Great.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 10:59:58 pm
content: That "every second Windows" thing doesn't really hold up under closer scrutiny. Vista is not a bad OS, it just got a bad rap because the average PC was not powerful enough to run it properly at the time it was released. Within a few years things had progressed and PCs with >1GB of RAM were common, and the driver situation had improved to the point that Vista was solid and worked really well, I know people who are still using Vista and it's reliable and performs fine. Windows 2000 that came out prior to XP was very good, XP was a bit of a turd when first released but became very good after a few patches. Win8 had a solid framework but a terrible UI, Win10 improved the UI while trashing the framework with the stupid forced updates.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2021, 11:09:36 pm
content: Quote from: OZ1LQB on June 27, 2021, 01:50:10 pmWhere did you find that? We have Windows 10 machines here with older CPUs which are fully updated.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 01:52:19 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 04, 2021, 10:59:58 pmDon't forget the UAC was the worst thing that had happened back then... But it was only due to the fact all application software treated the system critical areas as their own backyard and tried to crap all over - it seems the software houses tested only with users with Administrative privileges. By the time 7 came along, much of that initial stupidity was properly handled.I still have Vista in a few machines and it is quite alright.Quote from: james_s on July 04, 2021, 10:59:58 pmThe way I remember is that people liked Windows 3.11 but had to put up with its bad cooperative multitasking (where only a handful of applications really cooperated). Then 95 was crap-ish at first, especially since MS wanted to advertise it as fully supporting the advanced games of the time, (it took a while until they had DOS4/GW running well, and SCUUM only worked good on 98). 95 OSR2 was alright due to FAT32, but only 98 was the one that fixed quite a few things. Me was really bad. 2000 was good albeit much heavier and slow to boot and XP came about with faster boot but lots of crap decisions that were fixed along the way. Common to alltse versions? An absolute crap printer spooler, really fixed on Vista.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 06:48:38 am
content: Quote from: MasterTech on July 04, 2021, 09:37:22 pmIt does work properly. I paid for it. It’s needed for more than videos. If you want to display and process HEIC images from iOS / Mac then you need it too.

author: OZ1LQB
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 07:55:26 am
content: hi coppice..i did not find it anywhere,it was just my computer that did not want to updatethe cure was at new install of win 10

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 08:20:52 am
content: Quote from: nuclearcat on July 04, 2021, 07:40:25 pmWhat's worse, is They aren't even marked clearly is they are SLC, DLC, TLC or QLC.Quote from: OZ1LQB on July 05, 2021, 07:55:26 amYou want HEIC or HEVC Codec? there's a free for OEM version on windows store (anyone can get that BTW). It won't show up in windows store search though...only via links shared over the internet so google it.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 09:39:37 am
content: All the drives are MLC these days. Other than some enterprise cache drives.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 06:48:49 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on July 05, 2021, 01:52:19 amUAC was terrible initially but everybody just turned it off which was easy to do. At that point on decent hardware Vista was fine, the extremely popular Windows 7 was just Vista with a few tweaks.I think most people who actually used Windows pretty quickly saw 95 as a massive improvement over 3.1. The issue is that the vast majority of games were still DOS based and with Windows 95 you couldn't easily exit into a pure DOS mode. It took DirectX for Windows to finally turn into a reasonable gaming OS, and gaming has always been what drove the consumer PC market.Windows ME was a real turd. It was all the worst features of both the consumer OS line and the business (NT) OS line rolled into one with none of the advantages. Windows 2000 looked almost identical to ME but was far more stable. Right around that time games started being developed to work on it and by the time XP came along most stuff ran just fine on it.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2021, 07:16:25 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 05, 2021, 06:48:49 pmIf consumer Windows remained as unreliable as Windows ME, Linux probably would have taken over in the mid 2000s. We have to thank Linux for telling M$ that they can't just keep pushing junk on consumers, because an alternative was emerging.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 05:04:20 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 05, 2021, 07:16:25 pmI'm not so sure about that. Desktop Linux was pretty rough around the edges still in the mid 2000's and the larger problem is it couldn't run the enormous library of software supported by Windows. Ultimately nobody buys a computer to play with the OS, it's all down to the software. A fantastic operating system on state of the art hardware will go nowhere if it doesn't run the software people want to use.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 06:36:03 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 06, 2021, 05:04:20 amIf that's the case... Windows will be dead in 5....4....3...2...1......oh well it didn't. cause windows is easy to use even when you can run most stuff on linux either via proton or virtual machine windows.Brand loyalty is a thing too. Plus someone unfamiliar with linux will hard time choosing what distro to use.But since I was a kid in that era. Why did most devs make software exclusively for windows? Why did all the school had windows 95 on them? I don't know.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 07:52:08 am
content: Quote from: Raj on July 06, 2021, 06:36:03 amBecause MS was never a soft companyThey are a property holder umbrella made by buying other company and soft from others..This way they always made their buz by pushing that bundle into hardware sellers forcing consumers wo choiceThey also adopted an agressive demolish strategy of imploding all competitors they could not buy.. the list is very very long..This is their buz.. buy from others or kill them. Lock users by origin and deprecate soonA hell crappy buz.. patent troller harbourPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 09:30:50 am
content: As much as I am not a fan of MS, that's complete bollocks.

author: Just_another_Dave
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 09:35:15 am
content: Quote from: Raj on July 06, 2021, 06:36:03 amIt’s not just having difficulties choosing a distro. Installing the programs they need in windows is pretty easy (they just need to download an installer and press next several times), whereas in the Linux world it is not uncommon that you need to use the shell to install a new application and even search or ask in forums to solve installation or configuration problems. That’s discouraging for most people without a programming background and telling them that they will need to use a virtual machine to run the programs that they had been using their whole live might seem too complicated for them.Nevertheless, appimages might help, as they simplify a lot using and distributing distro independent (to some extent) programs, yet a distro that almost never requires using the shell for the things an average user might need is still missing. Linux distros are prepared for people that need to finely tune their computers to take advantage of what they can provide, but not for users that just don’t care what an os is. Additionally, relying on proton for running the windows-only programs that you need for your job is not usually a good option, as updates might make them to crash and force you to switch back to windows.On the other hand, porting a program with a graphical user interface to another operating system is not usually trivial (unless you chose a cross platform GUI api like QT when you started developing it). Many companies develop their programs in Visual Studio and that tights them to windows GUI api, so ports are unlikely to happen unless a cross platform library that uses the same api is created

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 09:44:13 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 06, 2021, 09:30:50 amDo you think ? think again..by 90s there was no "Internet" as we know it today- 80s they bought DOS and hired the developer later 'cause they could not even bear it- to implode Netware after the FIASCO of Xenix they bought LanManager (kinda Lantastic)so to have some kind of stack to detonate all Netware base.- by 90s they "obtained" what was necessary to have a "GUI" (hype at that time) fromIBM really a shameless OS/2 deteriorated clone- using the exponential Internet wave at 90s .. they just released the crappiest ever OScalled 98 then "ME" - a plethora of bugs and Blue screens... nightmare..a lot of hardware damaged by that crap..- by early 00s using the public *NIX base at time they managed to put togetherwhat they sold as 2000 "NT" - TBH the "best" ever thingy they did.- I could go on putting all the imploded competitors..LOTUS/COREL/NOVEL/Borland/WATCOM... very long listBut you got it..They are very sick people with one goal - no matter consequences:- TO BE THE SOLELY DIGITAL LANDLORDS.Everybody requested to pay fees and things as tenants..Today they extended that to absorb not just Linux as a "SUBTHING" butthey will incorporate Android apps.. the thing goes on...to the CLOUDWhoever was in their way ended up bought or imploded.Unless Antivirus partners which turned to be top alliesPaul

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 01:49:26 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 06, 2021, 05:04:20 amWindows XP was a big leap in consumer Windows, offering a big advantage that Linux had (good reliability) along with remaining compatible with most Windows apps. Had consumer Windows remained as unreliable as Windows ME was, most likely dual booting Linux would have been common for things like browsing the web and basic office work so that users wouldn't have to deal with a machine that crashes all the time.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 05:23:42 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 06, 2021, 01:49:26 pmThat's Windows 2000 that offered this, which was just a Windows NT4 with modernized GUI and USB support.XP itself didn't add so much to the table from Win 2000, except a - questionable IMHO - cartoonish GUI and a few enhancements here and there. The real breakthrough for consumer Windows was definitely Windows 2000.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 06:32:55 pm
content: I don't know what they were thinking with that Fisher Price UI theme on XP. Switching to classic theme was always the first thing I did on any XP system, that garish blue and green one was just hideous. Easily disabled though, I almost never saw anybody using that.Windows 2000 was never intended to be a consumer Windows. It was released roughly concurrently with Windows ME and was the continuation of the professional NT line while ME was the consumer line. Win2k was polished enough that it started to become popular as a consumer OS and with XP the lines were finally merged so that consumer and corporate both used the same core.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 09:55:34 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 06, 2021, 06:32:55 pmWTF is that thing ?MS decided that "a consumer" is some sort of (home)underclass citizen that should have a (paid) deplorable 2nd class OS..and ..a professionalis some sort of stupid folk which shouldpay 10 times as much for a non deliberated crippled OS?TBH both solutions can go to hell with MS altogether..Times changed where we can choose not to be treatedas underclass imbeciles by these MS assholes2 centsPaul

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 06:01:58 pm
content: Well, I don't have internal info about exact MS plans in the late 90s, but what I do know is that while Windows 2000 was indeed Windows NT 5 for most of its development, it was clearly meant to unify all Windows versions and MS wanted to get rid of the W9x line for good. I remember a lot of computers were sold with Windows 2000 already in 2000. Win ME never really took off and was mostly a failure. It was just Win 98SE with a couple GUI changes and a few new built-in apps. I'm sure they perfectly knew at MS that it was going to be the last artefact of the W9x line.For the record, as a Windows user, here is what I have ever installed throughout the years:- Win 3.11 for Workgroups- Win 95- Win NT 4 Workstation- Win 2000 (all SPs)- Win 2003 Server (configured as workstation) (all SPs)- Win 7 (all SPs, but there was only 1, although there has been a post-SP1 cumulative update that is sometimes referred to as SP2!)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 09:11:44 pm
content: I was working at MS during that era, not in the OS group but I was around none the less and we were developing software to run on Win2k and WinME simultaneously. It was widely rumored that unification was ultimately the plan but it was not expected to happen as quickly as it did. Win2k and WinMe were released almost simultaneously and it was expected that Me would be what most home users would run. It turned out to be problematic while Win2k ended up being much more popular with home users than most thought it would be, it was a lot more polished than NT and ran games reasonably well after some initial hiccups. I remember there being a lot of problems with games trying to write to locations that were forbidden in Win2k but once those issues were ironed out it worked pretty well. I dual booted Win98SE and Win2k for a year or so before realizing that I never really booted into 98 anymore and started using Win2k exclusively.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 02:38:17 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 06, 2021, 06:32:55 pmApart from theinteresting storybehind the wallpaper photograph, the overall look and feel was a precursor of what was coming with the infantilization of UIs all around (another much more modern example ishere).

author: Robbin
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 09:58:50 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on June 28, 2021, 09:49:37 amUnfortunately, yes, Halcyon

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 01:29:19 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on July 08, 2021, 02:38:17 amThere's a wonderful German derogatory term for too colorful and overloaded UIs: Klickibunti. It's a made-up word based on "klicken" (to click [the mouse button]) and "bunt" (colorful) in a kind of baby talk.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 04:54:12 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 08, 2021, 01:29:19 pmGerman is a language unique by itself.I am German descender from father part.Absolute unique proper definition ...Although in Brazil German dialects are spread in southbarely you find such constructs..Paul

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 05:42:01 pm
content: Quote from: Robbin on July 08, 2021, 09:58:50 amFor the crap it has become, it would be unfortunate indeed.But, as others have said, I'm personally all for paying for stuff that is well designed, works well and doesn't do things behind my back. If MS released a Windows edition that I could buy, but that didn't have any of the telemetry crap, online account forcing, could be fully customized and had a leaner and more reasonable UI, I would buy it.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 06:03:22 pm
content: I can’t remember the last time I paid for windows. You guys must be doing something wrong

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2021, 10:29:44 pm
content: Quote from: PKTKS on July 07, 2021, 09:55:34 am"Microsoft isn’t evil, they just make really crappy operating systems."-- Linus Torvalds.I switched to Linux for the OS. Stayed for the sarcasm.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 07:29:22 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 08, 2021, 06:03:22 pmWell, you can buy a computer that comes with it, in which case you paid for it as part of the purchase price, or you can steal it, or you can get somebody to give you a copy. I'm not sure how else to get it. Up through XP I was able to get the current version at the MS company store for $50, Win7 came with my laptop and then later I salvaged a few product IDs from dead PCs that were scrapped at a former job. I'm not opposed to paying for software provided it's of reasonable quality, and perpetual license.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 08:39:21 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 09, 2021, 07:29:22 amgot a windows 7,8,8.1 pro keys from my college at no cost (in addition to college fee). used up and upgraded 2 of my computer to windows 10 using 7 and 8 key.Karma is such, both computers won't run windows 11 officially.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 09:37:15 am
content: Free Windows 10: Most off the shelf PCs since around 2016 have an embedded product key. Trick is to buy them second hand and upgrade. The other one is the window between around 2015 and 2017 where they stuck product keys on the case for windows 10 pro like the old days. I regularly hear of a skip full and go and photograph all the product keysYou can get an i5-6400 with 8Gb of RAM and 256Gb SSD here for about £180. Stick another 8Gb of RAM in it and perfect workstation for 99% of users.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 10:25:36 am
content: Quote from: Raj on July 09, 2021, 08:39:21 amI'd think that it's not karma, but simply corporate greed.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 04:42:04 pm
content: Quote from: bsfeechannel on July 08, 2021, 10:29:44 pmYeah. I do not agree with that though. Don't know when he said this. But this isn't true IMO.- Windows NT was certainly not "crappy". Dunno if he was considering NT when saying this. And honestly, I've used NT4, 2000, 2003 and 7, and never thought they were crappy OSs. The older 3.x and 9x lines were not that good, certainly.- As to being evil? Well, again I don't know when he said this. MS *wasn't* evil. What they have been doing for a few years, though, makes this statement questionable.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 05:17:34 pm
content: NT, 2000 and XP were absolutely excellent operating systems. Was a shit show since which is why I’m now a Mac user.

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 07:46:08 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 09, 2021, 04:42:04 pmYou seem not to know Torvalds very well. He said that in 2013. In case anyone took what he said at face value, I added the comment you cut out: Came for the OS, stayed for the sarcasm.Microsoft have always been evil. They were tried and found guilty of abusive commercial practices.For those of you too young or too old to remember, please read this article by Wired Magazine, entitled"The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth". I have the printed version of this issue, so significantly historical it was at the time.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2021, 07:51:21 pm
content: To be fair with Linus he's fairly well balanced and ripped Gnome and NVidia new asshole a couple of times as well

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2021, 12:28:51 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 09, 2021, 09:37:15 amI wouldn't accept an install or an upgrade to Home or Pro even if it was offered to me free.The last one I got down the skip that had a Windows 10 Pro coa key (all excited at first) gave me so much grief when I ended up removing a lot stuff and stripped it most of the store out but I replaced that with LTSB 2016 in 2019 that I modified and so far so good. Loyal as a dog and no interference. All set up in the way I want, works beautifully and very quick but can be unstable attimesI'd go for the Enterprise LTSB/LTSC and I have a LTSC 2019 virtual machine template (all setup with the defaults I set) that I use to disk image when I want to install it on something so I can start/stop windows update or any service when I please and all I do is buy another key.In the Home and Pro edition There are so many "horrors" like the "apps" store I keep forgetting about and that is certainly don't want and things being installed on there without my permission and interfering with foreground tasks during the updating of them.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2021, 01:46:26 am
content: Can't stop using Windows?The first step in solving any problem....

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 11:28:50 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on July 10, 2021, 01:46:26 amIt does solve a hell of nasty problems..But sick people from MS spent last decades spreadingthe nasty insane PATENT minefield on software and "desktop"aberrations (including gestures and common sense)..Which will turn vendors and hardware manuf. practical adoptionof sane stuff a total nightmare.MS will request fees to cross their patent minefieldI like to thing that some crank allowed to patent the wheel to someone.That someone ...Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 11:43:02 am
content: Um which patents are those? All I hear is a lot of paranoid bullshit.If your want to kick them in use some tangible things ie unreliability, half of it is a burning trash heap or the privacy concerns of telemetry.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 12:07:08 pm
content: Funny thing is MS were doing a campaign in Africa, where you could buy a legitimate copy of Windows 98 and XP for a very low price, as part of a hardware upgrade. I bought a lot of USB A to B cables, parallel port cables, power cables and the odd keyboard and mouse using that incentive. Still have a shrink wrapped copy of 98SE around, never used, and at one point had a CD containing all the cabinet files, the setup program, and another directory with 400M of every single Windows update, used to reinstall 98 and get it to the latest version. Format hard drive, copy the 2 directories over, and run setup, then on the first boot enter the key, and then run every single upgrade one after the other, ignoring those hundred reboot requests, till the last one finished, and then a single reboot, with a 20 minute churning of all upgrades getting installed. Then you had a fully updated system, with no massive set of windows updates to do. Saves a lot of time having all updates locally.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 12:09:46 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 11, 2021, 11:43:02 amMS typical M.O. is to finance several TROLL shell companiesto shadow this issue.Across last decades I have read countless times on the net andother specialized mags. about such problems.MS and theirs shells REFUSED TO DISCLOSE the patent portfolio 99.99% times...Usually the threats of sue for some "obscure" patent over the USPTOmessy insanity is enough. Large competitors (like phone makers).. they have typically choosing to set some sort of fee agreementinstead of being held on that for an unpredictable time and value..Fairly easy to find some cases last decades instead of actuallyhaving MS and shells to disclose their portfolio of threats..Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 12:18:48 pm
content: You're talking complete bullshit.MS's entire portfolio is open and they don't operate shell companies (unlike say Alphabet Corporation). ISVs do but that's different and they aren't related to MSFT. They also opened 60,000 of their patents under OIN unconditionally in 2018 as well.Also this one makes people pee pee themselves when they actually see it...https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/main/ms-openspeclp/3589baea-5b22-48f2-9d43-f5bea4960ddbI don't like them as much as the next person but please, this is like reading Slashdot in 1999 which was populated by way too many stoners convinced that the evil corporations were going to get under the tinfoil hats and meddle with their marbles.It's important that we look at the actual facts not misinformed opinion.Now I'm going in the shower as I feel a little dirty for defending them

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 12:29:12 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 11, 2021, 12:18:48 pmWell.. is that classic case of the wolf dressed like sheep ...Their M.O. was *NEVER* ever direct.They use undisclosed financed shell companies to do that.These folks do their dirt..While they pose of being "open" and on the mood of charity ...A clever but obvious way to do dirt.The shell patent trollers never undisclosed the portfolioAlmost all cases I have read settle the fee agreementPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 12:36:09 pm
content: Bollocks.

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 01:12:53 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 11, 2021, 12:36:09 pmhttps://americansfortaxfairness.org/issues/corporate-taxes/hilights-of-microsofts-tax-dodging/https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 01:22:11 pm
content: Every American megacorporation does that. I work for a different one which is 10x more nefarious. The whole thing is set up to make sure that is possible.But that's not even the point that was raised a minute ago...

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 06:20:02 pm
content: The patents argument is old news. A couple of examples:2007:https://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/05/24/1916203/microsoft-too-busy-to-name-linux-patents2013:https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ms-patent/Something newer than five years ago:https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-calls-truce-in-linux-patent-wars/https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-readies-exfat-patents-for-linux-and-open-source/(but somehow I imagine this will be glossed over the vitriol)

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2021, 08:02:18 pm
content: And this is interesting, how Microsoft tried to put down Linux by proxies.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes#Microsoft_funding_of_SCO_controversy

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2021, 06:32:23 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on July 10, 2021, 01:46:26 amSome people have a more radical solution (albeit for the wrong reasons).https://odysee.com/@neworderwolrdconsp:2/arrest-bill-gates!!!--arresto-a-bill-gates:3

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2021, 06:40:05 am
content: What a pitty they never executed this order:"Microsoft ordered to split into two companies"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/jun/07/microsoft.business1

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2021, 08:52:07 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on July 12, 2021, 06:40:05 amI wonder how that would look today. Alternate history is always interesting.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 06:38:17 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 12, 2021, 08:52:07 pmI guess LibreOffice would be bundled with windows and ms office would run natively on Linux

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 07:34:45 am
content: Next office version will run on Linux. They’re already working on it. In fact the next version is a superset of their web applications.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 07:39:45 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 07:34:45 amYou mean to say they are working on making it backwards incompatible.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 08:23:18 am
content: Not totally. They’re getting rid of VBA and VSTO though. Which is a good thing if you’ve ever worked with them. I built a fairly large commercial document templating system on top of VSTO and it was horrible.To be fair they have to get rid of COM going forwards as it’s not platform portable.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 10:28:20 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 08:23:18 amIt looks like they are steadily preparing to get rid of their crappy Windooozee itselfhttps://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-CBL-Mariner-1.0Somewhere in short time windoozze goonies will have to sign in their cloud to pay for the use of open source free source in MS style.. paying them..It looks like so.. so WSL financed with the Wayland layer makes all sense... in porting their already done API to the new environmentalas nothing in their portfolio is "portable" unless paying themPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 10:40:21 am
content: I’m not allergic to paying for stuff. Most of us aren’t.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 10:52:54 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 10:40:21 amFor sure.. me too.Unless they are charging me for something that is already "free" ...And deliberated locked by their known methods..That is something that bugs mePaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 11:19:20 am
content: People are compensated for work. You compensate them by paying for stuff.Even free stuff isn’t free. Someone converted their surplus time or income into altruism.There’s nothing to be pissed about. Other than if you’re annoyed that you might have to pay for someone’s work.There are no open source lawn mowing services

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 11:42:21 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 11:19:20 amFor sure.. I see the point..But not the case here.BLENDER Foundation seems to be doing the proper thing.Can not say that in MS case in which "taking" open source is just privatizing other people work without paying the original developers.. in that case the point is other.Privatizing open source into MS buz is not the same as paying developers.The case is MS making money at the expense of other people workI doubt they will pay developers.. they will just takeover what they can use for their own will without benefit for others.. usual thing of MSVery different pointPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 11:51:01 am
content: The thing you are missing is that the vast majority of open source contributions are coming from people at companies doing paid work. Red hat is a good one. They own pretty much the entire Linux and Gnome core development people.I’ve fixed over 50 bugs in open source projects in my usual line of work. I’ve been bouncing a Chromium bug around this week already.People do contribute.Might want to check Microsoft’s GitHub repo list as well and the licenses in there. This is always a good starting point:https://github.com/dotnet/core

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 12:47:54 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 11:51:01 amI am aware of that... but the days of RH being an opensource contributorare *LONG* gone.I have used RH a LOT from the good old days late 90s.Ditched that when they became totally a oriented businessnothing wrong about that but their business suit only themselves..Today we just can not associate RH to opensource.Same thing to Canonical - it is a business.Their solutions are totally biased and diverted to their own goals.True they contribute.. but that is collateral imposed by GPL/LGPL.If possible make no mistake about it they would not contribute and do just buz.Both are examples of privatizing opensourcenevertheless they started as something else..Nothing wrong having bread and butterbut let's not mix the pointsPaul

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 12:55:27 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 11:51:01 amThis sort of corporate thing scares the shits out...They are obviously paving the way to the digital landlord top..Having total control over projects and now a proprietary (althoug "open" kernel)..Expect to see subverted fragmented and sabotaged things for *NIX itself.Make no mistake . MS is a sick business - it is not about bread and butter.Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 12:59:34 pm
content: Meh I pay money for problems to fuck off. It's working pretty well for that.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 03:56:40 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 07:34:45 amMS getting too interested in Linux does scare me a little though, I must say.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 04:13:36 pm
content: I wouldn't worry. They aren't really making much headroom on it and that's not what they want to do.All Microsoft want to do is to get you to use Azure and Office 365 as they are the only profitable (and decent) parts of their enterprise left at this point. To do that they need to move to an everything everywhere model and push open development platforms out and sell you their APIs and consumer applications for them. They have more Linux nodes on Azure than they do Windows as an example.If you look at the professional software development side of things as well, bar a bunch of legacy and specialist win32 based companies, no one cares about their platform any more so the focus is either dedicated applications per platform, portable apps (wx, qt, electron etc) and service based (web apps/hybrid model). Purely by chance they actually produce a reasonable component for that and leverage it: TypeScript leveraged by VScode. And of course Azure for hosting service based applications. And C# which is really not a bad language for a lot of application domains.So they hope you will use Windows to develop Linux software to run on Azure. Hope being the word. I develop Python and Go software using VScode that runs on AWS

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 04:25:58 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 04:13:36 pmHope you're right. But the real reason not too worry, at least for now, is that Linux still weighs nothing as a 'desktop' OS. But if it ever grows (which, I admit, is not very likely, although each new Windows version now tends to help this happen...), MS will be very aggressive. As I said earlier, the fact Android is now leading the overall market for OSs (of course due to mobile devices) is making them extremely nervous.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 04:32:56 pm
content: Linux on the desktop will never be a thing so I wouldn’t worry. I said that in 1998 and have been right for 23 years so farAndroid is interesting. It’s a delivery platform for apps they can leverage a subscription for. The ability to run android apps on windows will be turned off within 2 years of releasing windows 11 I guarantee. It’s not useful.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 05:29:08 pm
content: Linux on a desktop may not ever be mainstream, but quite a few of us have been making it work. My mom has been using Linux exclusively for about 5 years now, I use it on everything other than my main daily driver laptop. As long as it exists and runs the software I need I don't care if it's mainstream or not.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 05:35:49 pm
content: I like to keep my stuff in a format that my non technical family can access should I cop it without having to pay someone to work it out. That means mainstream platforms for me.I had to do some digital archaeology with my father and mother and that was bad enough (Mac and windows respectively)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2021, 05:41:56 pm
content: Ubuntu is pretty much mainstream, if a person can figure out how to use Windows or Mac then they can figure out how to use that. A lot of my family is going to have to pay someone to work on their computer no matter what OS is on it if something breaks so it doesn't really matter. I also keep backups of my important stuff on external drives and occasionally a DVD-R, any OS can be used to access that.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2021, 03:35:18 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 13, 2021, 05:41:56 pmOnce upon a time I used to "think" that debian and/or RH and/or SuSE..and or ... fill yourself.. would be mainstream.Then.. obviously "the desktop" metaphor brought me back to the land where GPU vendors and hardware fabs are integrated into a cash flow network where they will not allow any other mainstream to reduce the rate of cash (flow)In other words... if they can not launch a "new GPU" a "new MOBO" every 15 days requiring a "new OS" and new license.. well they just will not allow other landlord mainstream.Now comes de facto the mainstream where the very same model will applyEmbrace (done) - Extend (fully done) - Extinguish will soon be done ..https://linuxiac.com/microsoft-cbl-mariner-linux-1/Expect the MUD where Wayland compatible layer will implode XOrgVanishing all possible scenarios where a distro *not compatible* w/WSLwill exist ..So why someone choose anything besides this aberration "MARINE" thingrunning inside the bundled WSL thing?Extinguish is soon on the horizon by imploding XOrg and taking over*NIX "desktop" completely to the mains stream.Welcome new Merdsoft Linux on all hardware already bundled by vendors.No need to have anything else.*NIX and XOrg are already a complete obscure MUD ..promoted by these things not *NIX and not anything else...just MerdSoft *NIXPS> try to compile the latest MUD on XOrg freedesktop.. see for yourselfwhat they have done from the inside..Paul

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2021, 06:14:23 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 13, 2021, 04:32:56 pmThings have changed. Desktop Linux is increasingly usable these days, even for non-tech-savvy people. That may never be a significant market share, but I wouldn't be that confident thinking that MS will never care about it and will essentially leave Linux alone. That's what I'm a bit worried about. I have no certainty that in some point in the future, they won't try to make life miserable for people willing to use Linux. They already sort of tried with all this secure boot thing that could prevent people from booting Linux unless you disabled it. There are tons of ways that could make it very hard to run Linux on regular computers, probably always with the same excuse: security.If you think being able to use free software tools, if you so wish, is guaranteed forever, well. I'm not all that sure myself anymore. And if that ever effectively gets compromised, MS probably won't be last to contribute.They may not feel threatened by desktop Linux whatsoever at this point, but they certainly don't want to risk that. And they don't want people to have alternatives either. And even if it's still a small minority, it's becoming clear lately that a fraction of Windows users is actively looking for alternatives.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2021, 06:27:21 pm
content: Sorry but general usability on latest gnome software is abysmal. Really awful. It’s a shit show.They copied the bits of windows and bits of Mac and iOS that sort of looked about right and fucked it up. There is no consistency, quality or usability.It’s worse than gnome 2 by a mile.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2021, 06:43:41 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 14, 2021, 06:27:21 pmIts bound to get worse because so many people abandoned Gnome when 3 turned out to be such an ugly duckling. They aren't getting the feedback from real world users that a thriving platform gets. I realise that the Gnome 3 people are not the sort to welcome feedback, but if the users hadn't been able to flee to something better their voice would have become overwhealming by now.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2021, 08:43:17 pm
content: I don't use Gnome, I've been using Mate for several years, haven't had many issues with it. Cinnamon is a good option for people who like the look and feel of Windows.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2021, 09:25:18 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 14, 2021, 08:43:17 pmYes, and there are tons of others options.I happen to use Gnome 3 on my laptop, I used not to like it much, but I've grown used to it. With a few extensions, it works fine. I probably wouldn't use that on my workstation for heavy use, but for a laptop and occasional use, that's fine. Otherwise, many options indeed. I'd probably try Mate or Cinnamon for workstation use, and also KDE. Doesn't seem too bad lately.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 12:06:41 am
content: Derek shows how the latest Mint is set up to look and feel similar across 3 desktops. So that boring old argument about Gnome this and Gnome that is old hat.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 06:14:44 am
content: Yeah it sucks three times now. Spend a few weeks on macOS and going to this feels like someone has cut your hands off.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 06:40:23 am
content: I prefer KDE & Plasma desktop. You can tweak almost everything, it's the most configurable desktop.After a fresh install it takes me 20 min. or so to change all kinds of settings in order to make it look like win2000In system settings, select "MS Windows 9x" as application style and "Plastik" for window decorations.Right-click on the startmenu button and change to a traditional startmenu (cascading).The same with Dolphin, the filemanager. Spend some time to set it up and configure it.No need to install plugins or tools.The only problem of KDE & Plasma desktop is that the default settings looks shitty.But I can live with that as long as I can configure the things I want to change.A small prise to pay for the best desktop available at the moment.

author: Just_another_Dave
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 01:32:42 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 14, 2021, 06:14:23 pmTaking into account how difficult changing the operating system of most tablets and mobile phones, it’s a matter of time that the same practices of impeding the user to change it and not having drivers publicly available extends to computers. Profesional workstations may probably still allow to use Linux (some companies need to be able to run programs that just run in UNIX environments), but I won’t be surprised if at some point small laptops like chromebooks stop allowing to install whichever OS you want

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 02:01:33 pm
content: Next hype: Windows 365 - your personal virtual Windows PC

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 02:10:41 pm
content: Quote from: Just_another_Dave on July 15, 2021, 01:32:42 pmI doubt that. There are no PCs or macs on the market that you can’t replace the OS on. Even the new M1 macs have an open boot loader.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 02:11:52 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 15, 2021, 02:01:33 pmThis is a really good thing because it means I can use one as a control machine from my Mac circumventing the security policy which means I have to have a windows laptop. And I don’t need some rancid x86 VM poisoning my ARM laptop.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 08:03:16 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 15, 2021, 02:11:52 pmI love VMs, but that was too funny

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2021, 09:16:48 pm
content: I just read part of the thread, very interesting. Just went through buying a couple of refurbed i5 machines (HP EliteDesk 800G1 SFF i5-4570 and Lenovo M90P USFF i5-650) made sometime around 2013 and 2010 respectively. They both came with Win10 64 bit PRO installed on them (NOT ORIGINALLY... I can see by the history that they were both upgraded to Win10 sometime along from either Win7 or 8, and being both OEM channel machines they *DO* allow license transfers).I needed to wipe them, put Win10 32 bit PRO on both to support a couple legacy hardware devices that only come with 32 bit drivers. I was able to transfer the licenses from the pre-installed 64-bit OS's to my installs of the 32-bit OS, so all is activated (as mentioned previously, it appears even OEM licenses can be transferred once but in this case hardware DID NOT CHANGE, I just needed to reinstall the OS and decided on 32 vs 64 bit - so technically shouldn't even register on the "transfer" count). Bummer is that even though both machines have 8 GB RAM, it's mostly useless due to 32 bit limit. But these were the cheapest "business class" i5 machines I could buy.I asked the store if I could get the refurbs OS-less, but they don't sell any, which means I just bought 2 licenses from Microsoft essentially without needing them (as I could just as easily have activated Windows by pulling the licenses from the older Celeron computers these are replacing). NOTE: The older computers also run Win10 PRO and they are maybe 13 years old, no problems. The *ONLY* reason I even upgraded them is because they are pulling support from the current version of the proprietary software I am using, and insisting on everyone upgrading to the next version... and I need to meet minimum requirements of i5 machines. I can't refuse because this mission-critical software needs to communicate with 3rd parties as part of it's main function, and protocols keep changing so they make sure their software is up to date with changes. Otherwise if it was stand-alone I wouldn't care.Personally I use LINUX at home and set up all my kids laptops with it. All on machines as old as these, or older. However, in my small office I need to run proprietary software that requires Windows networking and specific hardware that only works on Win 32 bit (due to drivers). So I'm stuck dealing with Windows. If it wasn't for that, I would be rid of Windows long ago.I've tried to virtualize some of my office to some extent. Before I needed to upgrade to Win10, I was actually virtualizing a few WinXP Mode machines on Linux and they were playing nicely with the rest of the Windows machines in the office. The VM's had no problem running this proprietary Win-only software I am using, and also connected fine to the specialized hardware using those 32-bit drivers. I just gave the VM access to the USB ports and it ran fine. However, to put Linux on every computer in my office and expect my entire staff to work out of VMs running Win10 and expecting all to work efficiently (using SQLServer database within the VM that my Windows-only software uses) would be too much to ask.So for now at least, I'll just have to work around all of Microsoft's B.S., until I find a replacement of my proprietary software that is either cloud-based or available for Linux. By the way, the cost to get set up with it costs $16,000 and annual upkeep which is mandatory is another $2500-3000, but so are all of the competitors too (none of which offer a Linux version as far as I know), and the market is fairly small so that's why they charge so much. Nevertheless, this mission-critical software helps you run your business so compared to all the other costs, it's really nothing for such an important role. And now that it has all of our stuff in it... it's a pain and costly exporting/importing data if you want to migrate to a different software package. Which means that it is still CHEAPER for me to buy a bunch of new computers that meet Windows requirements if I'm forced an upgrade, vs. changing to another specialized software vendor!

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 10:11:52 am
content: geez... what to conclude..MS is a total spherical liability ...There is not possible best angle to view otherwise.In our buz our home our life...I am very worried to see their filthy hands on LINUX..it already stinks MS in several new changes.Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 12:44:06 pm
content: No offense intended but that stinks of mismanagement rather than anything vendor specific.When you optimise for lowest cost, you eventually always end up spending maximum time. And that's where you are now hacking around with all that shit rather than delivering business value.I've dealt with my fair amount of Windows legacy and the only problem has been that the people who provisioned it didn't do a proper TCO analysis and a what if. They bought something shiny and assumed it'd work forever.It's not like this doesn't happen on Linux either. I had some dedicated hardware (specialist serial interface) the vendor only supported on Linux 2.4 binary modules. Contacted vendor and they told us to fuck off. Well that meant we had to drag an ancient version of Linux around. Or not. The module was only 24k so I disassmbled it, reverse engineered it over the space of 3 months and wrote a new driver from scratch. It was about 5000 lines of C.I did exactly the same thing 5 years before on NT...

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 03:28:10 pm
content: I have been on this trail countless times...Even before I could tell MS to fuck off .. they had already changed everything.Made everything unsupported buggy and requiring new hardware and license.So what.. to say the least it is indeed more "manageable" to have the sources..To craftour/yourbuz in solid base (instead of MS vanished ones)Once you have control over your hardware and assets and code..you do have control of value and options aheadThey gave me deep prejudice by just telling me to fuck off and pay gain..Countless times over 1/2/3 decades? since 80s....One day .. I just told them to fuck off.Never regrettedPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 03:38:08 pm
content: This is my point about mismanagement.If you have a requirement to be in control of your hardware and assets you should put that in as a use case at the start of the purchasing cycle and include that in the TCO calculation over the expected lifecycle of the software. In fact the company I work for pays escrow for commercial software, so that if the vendor goes under, the source code is made available.As for new hardware, stuff changes. Keep it old or buy new stuff. On the software front I've got shit that I wrote for Windows NT4 that still runs today. That's 25 year old binaries that work today on brand new hardware with latest software. There have been API and ABI changes in Linux in that time that make compatibility an issue. Sure you can just recompile it. Oh no wait, GCC won't compile some source written back then due to proprietary extensions used (no shit!), even if you run it with -fpermissive ...My point is that everything is shit and full of compromises. There are different ones. The only way you win in the IT business is to thoroughly understand the consequences of a compromise you are selecting and pick one for your organisation.You just like shitting on Microsoft which is tinfoil hat extremism, nothing more.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 03:46:45 pm
content: You are right on one point:- there is no infinite ahead solution..Some point in the future we need to change all things...Hardware got obsolete and software as well.But one thing I have learned the hard way w/MS:- They gave me 10x more prejudice with their buz model.ON the paper - black and white - I just sent them to fuck off in hellAll about the final budget.They do not worth that muchPaul

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 05:10:17 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 27, 2021, 06:46:51 pmThe simple fact is that processors are not getting that much more powerful, they have hit the speed limit and multithreading is only of any value on tasks that can use it, after 4 cores you don't get any added processing speed from general tasks just the ability to run more tasks.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 05:18:23 pm
content: Yep. We need to turn to the software.Unfortunately software engineers are idiots. Discuss

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 06:27:17 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 16, 2021, 05:10:17 pmTRUE.Even *IF* you have 8 or 12 cores.. things do not scale unless you invest on it.Example: I was trying to speed a BACKUP using plain TAR over XZ (or PV over XZ)and XZ is a total multithreaded applet but a memory PIG..As soon as you ask it to use 4 or 6 threads ir puts an impossible memory scale problem, it asks to scale the memory more than proportionally over the threads.. result is a trashed swap in /out system.Investing on a system with 12 cores.. 64b w/memory up to 12 cores is insanely expensive.Add that a power hungry GPU over 500W at least of bottom line power per day..Things are about to change..https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-just-blew-up-the-only-reason-you-cant-use-a-linux-desktop/Even coming from ZDNet the header do not surprises me ..But the contents although predictable for some time is true.The bottleneck will soon be the BANDW. we afford to pay.As soon as the datacenters with multi-servers start to push data onto these small portable gizmos.Things are about to enter a new hypeNo idea what pops out from thisPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2021, 06:35:57 pm
content: Talking of which, this the reason I use an M1 Mac. I have a fanless laptop that does the following single threaded… see attachment.Genuinely rips a new asshole in my desktop PC

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:09:59 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 16, 2021, 06:35:57 pmwhat tool did you use to benchmark?What's funny, is even if you have that performance, where are you gonna use it?All the games and high demand applications are on the windows and linux. (unless you write your own programs and can adapt the source code to run anywhere) Except for photo and video editing software. But even in those areas, 3D animators like to use a lot of graphics cards and often use windows.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:57:30 am
content: Passmark ranking.I’m compiling a lot of code on a regular basis. It’s 20% less time than my Ryzen 3700X doing that. And only sucks 12 watts or so doing it.Also it has dedicated hardware codec which makes it chunk through h264/265 transcodes.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 09:00:13 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 17, 2021, 07:57:30 amI really wonder what makes it faster. An ARM machine needs to go through several clock cycles to do the same job as x86.Sure the extra bits doing hardware acceleration matters too, but for ARM, in most cases you're stuck with what the manufacturer gives you, (can't just upgrade the GPU on M1).Intel 11900KF has higher clock speed and same no of cores, yet is barely behind in passmark.If it's because M1 does out of order execution better, properly written multithreaded tasks should run faster on other processors.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 09:38:12 am
content: Three things. Firstly IPC is better on M1. It’s not a reference design. Secondly huge pipeline. Thirdly huge memory bandwidth.You’re right about GPU. I don’t need that. Also you can’t get the damn things at the moment anyway.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 11:05:21 am
content: Reading some articles here and there, it seems the single thread memory bandwidth is quite excellent (multiple cores will choke the memory, but that is nothing new on this arena). Having the LPDDR integrated into the CPU saves on latency cycles - prior instances of this were the Pentium II and the Package-on-Package common in the mobile industry.All that comes at a cost, especially the manufacturing yield of these processors, which need to keep both leakage and power at manageable levels. I imagine there'll be less powered variants along the way in case Apple feels the need to reap more $$ per wafer (perhaps to feed their mobile handsets).

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 12:59:06 pm
content: Quote from: PKTKS on July 16, 2021, 06:27:17 pmNo it will never get better. Running a word processor will never be faster on more cores as it will only ever use 1. This is why processor benchmarking is unrealistic as it gets the numbers from video encoding speeds. What percentage of users do video encoding?Why does boinc not have projects on CPU's that use multiple cores? because it is futile and esier to just crunch more jobs simultaneously. If you really can do parallelism, they just put it on a GPU.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 05:02:15 pm
content: When they finish porting it to typescript it’ll benefit from multiple threads. The key issue at the moment is the extensions API is COM based and the threading model does not support parallelisation. There’s a butt load of stuff that can benefit from threaded code including document rendering, sync, spelling and grammar checking etc.On M1 core yield they sell a lesser M1 (7 core GPU). I assume the GPU reliability affects yield so the ass end one has a broken GPU core.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 05:08:49 pm
content: Yea but there comes the point where its pointless having 64 cores just to open a PDF.... how much hardware and resources do we waste just to keep companies in business? 99% of machines just need 4 cores at most foe everyday office work. If an employer thinks that having a workforce equipped with machines that can open a document in 10ms instead or 100ms is going to make them more productive they need shooting!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 05:15:33 pm
content: Yeah that’s why they mostly have 4 cores.I like Apple’s approach. They have 4 performance optimised cores and 4 energy efficient cores and schedule the work according to requirements. If you’ve got crap ticking over not doing anything important it goes on the energy efficiency cores. Result - I charge this laptop every 2-3 days. That’s the game changer.See:https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=vk3m204o

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 05:18:33 pm
content: Yea, I sort of do that with my laptop, I make it wort 0.9GHz instead of 1.8 overclocking to 3.4GHz, the fan shuts up and battery lasts longer, but yes what apple have done takes care of that automatically.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:14:58 pm
content: Just saw a "Windows 365" presentation the other day.If you thought Windows 11 was a bad idea - take a look at this. This is fun.Now I can see how this 365 thing can be a "dream" for IT departments though. Well, until something goes really wrong with MS servers or something - but it won't be IT's fault then!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:23:30 pm
content: Yeah it’s great. They’re already talking about giving me one of those instead of a laptop. I can connect to it from my Mac and if anything goes wrong I can down tools, sip cocktails in the garden and point at ops.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:44:27 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 05:08:49 pmWell, if you factor in all of malware detection and other agents installed on a corporate computer that often deal with Cloud for protection, that may well translate to 1s vs 10s to open a file, so all of a sudden raw performance begins making sense!

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:45:25 pm
content: Oh, and if I got it right, they are not just talking about being able to run Android apps, but apparently also MacOS (and possibly Linux soon) apps.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:53:29 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 17, 2021, 07:23:30 pmActually it's nothing new. Two decades ago we already had MS terminal servers, Citrix and other solutions. Every few years everything is turned upside down and sold as new hype. Now we shall replace fat clients with thin clients, again.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:54:28 pm
content: It's a real shame that the linux world spends all it's time falling to peices into factions instead of having one gold standard of linux that just woks. Just about to delete the umteinth install of linux that just didnt do it for me.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 07:56:09 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 07:54:28 pmNo it's not, because it's the only real guarantee that it remains independent and free. You can't have it all.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:10:50 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 05:08:49 pmEven two core CPUs are sufficient for typical office usage. One core for the current application in use and the second one for antivirus, printing and other tasks.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:15:39 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 17, 2021, 08:10:50 pmWell. The moment resources for executing a given task - the part that is useful for the user - become a small fraction of necessary resources for running all housekeeping/"administrative" tasks behind the scenes, you know something is going wrong and will not end up well. It's like when administration becomes predominant in a given company. It rarely ends up very well...

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:16:41 pm
content: well as it stands it's the reserve of a few nerds and anti capitalism nutjobs in the desktop segment. No software house will support the thousands of versions of linux. Like drop box, every time I went onto linux, dropbox was logged out. I just can't be assed to try and figure out why every thing that I can take for granted to work on windows does not work on linux even though the program for the same service was developed for linux and even though drop box claims to contain open source software....Independent you say? Independent of what? I want an operating system that works and does not force me to do things that I don't need to do but it wants me to for it's own financial gain and, I will pay money for that just as I was willing to pay money for windows.Sadly the reactOS project is just a feeble joke as there is precious little hardware they will write drivers for for their own operating system, it's just an even worse cause than linux. No wonder microsoft can do as it pleases.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:18:59 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 08:16:41 pmI guess you don't consider engineering workstations, like EDA machines, to be desktops. No software house needs to support many versions of Linux. They pick one or two well supported ones, and stick with them.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:26:58 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 17, 2021, 08:18:59 pmEnginering workstations? yes they are desktop, even including those what percentage seriously use linux? what is an EDA machine?Hm, one or two well supported versions? like which one or two? there are more than one or two and unless all software makers pick the same one or two you will never have a complete system. Basically until Microsoft release a distro there won't be wide scale use of Linux.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:28:38 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 08:26:58 pmUbuntu and RedHat seem to be the platforms of choice for most CAD tools, like EDA (Electronic Design Automation). Basic CAD tools, like PCB design, are most often seen on Windows machines, but I've never seem serious silicon design on Windows. Some basic ASIC development, but nothing more. I wonder if there are still holdouts, designing silicon with derivatives of the old Sun systems.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:33:02 pm
content: Are they the platforms of choice for everything else? I tried to find me a PDF editor for linux, again, happy to hand over money, I got a trial for a program that was god awful and did not count as it could not properly deciper the PDF and allow me to edit text with every word being split into multiple text boxes.... On windows i have many options. All other programs claiming to be PDF editors were all lying as all they banged on about was adding notes to a PDF not editing the original text.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:37:11 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 08:16:41 pmThat's a preconception, and it's incorrect. There are a few "root" distributions which are the base for most other distributions. And there are many tools to convert packages from one format to another.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:42:56 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 08:33:02 pmWhen you say edit, do you mean the forms filling functions you get with the Adobe tools, or actually altering the document/ The Adobe tools work for form filling, but most other Linux tools don't seem to have taken forms as seriously as they might have. For general document editing, what's wrong with LibreOffice, or Lyx, or a number of other document tools?

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:46:49 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 17, 2021, 05:15:33 pmThis concept of multiple asymmetric cores comes from the mobile industry, but since the turnaround of terminals in that industry is so fast, the software efforts to use these extra cores was either not implemented nor efficient (the first octa-core processors had four of them simply powered off, and I suspect this is still the rule). Apple seems to actually have done the proper work to fully partition the system and use them in a way that benefits the overall product.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 08:51:41 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on July 17, 2021, 08:46:49 pmI don't know why that would be lacking in Android, as Linux can handle those asymmetric machines quite well. Intel has blown hot and cold over asymmetric cores because MS has taken so long to get proper handing into Windows, and they won't release parts that aren't handled well by Windows. I read that WIndows 11 was finally getting support, but Intel seems to have just canned another asymmetric cores project.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 09:34:28 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 17, 2021, 08:42:56 pmYou can't "just" open any PDF in libre office and start editing.....

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2021, 09:43:51 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 09:34:28 pmTrue. They come up with the tag "This document is open in read-only mode". You click "edit document" and off you go.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 07:04:07 am
content: Quote from: coppice on July 17, 2021, 09:43:51 pmAs the forum rules do not permit me to call you an idiot I will demonstrate!Attached are two screen shots, one of a PDF readers view of the document and one of libre office draw, yea, because despite opening it in writer it decided to switch to draw. As you can hopefully see even before I give a toss about being able to edit, libre office could not even interpret the document properly. To the point that "rectifier" has become "rectier". i will happily pay someone money for a program specifically written to work on the PDF format, for the sub £200 that is better use of my time/money than titting about with a tool that was not really meant to do this job or at least they are still working on it! Lets not start talking about the inability in libre draw to do bookmarks and I don't have the time trying to find out if all of my lovely bookmarks will disappear the moment I hit save in libre office draw....

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 07:32:51 am
content: Got to say I’m not a fan of libreoffice as a whole. Utterly clunky bit of gear. O365 family costs me about £55 a year and gives 6 people the ability to run native office apps on 6 devices each. That’s not much money for the reduction in arse ache. Also it does a marginally better job of PDF editing.But the Mac wins on that. Open pdf on iPad, draw notes on it, save it again.Another but though. Thou should not be editing PDFs really. They’re a “committed” format. The source document should be edited and a new PDF generated.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 08:21:23 am
content: I like libre office, it does not treat me like an idiot and do stuff "for me" that I neither asked for or wanted. I also has nice features 365 does not. For example in calc unlike in exel I can insert a row or column before or after another. When you have lines/borders drawn up and want a row inside the border this is a godsend as in excel it has you redrawing your borders and wasting a lot of time.But PDF format is a a format of it's own and needs treating properly.I produced that document by printing from multiple web pages put together into one document. The only way to do this in libre office is to copy paste each paragraph and image one by one and line them up. So it is easier to handle this document in PDF entirely. Yes if I was writing the whole document I would do it in a word processor. Also libre office will not handle the formula's often in these documents so I would have to recreate them from scratch. The are not exactly editble in PDF but at least they display correctly and I can carefully make minor edits.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 10:53:17 am
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 08:33:02 pmI use Inkscape for this. It only does one page at a time, though. Note that you do need to obtain the font used in the PDF, to be able to edit the text and not have it look all wonky; the default font name matching is less than optimal. I typically first split the PDF into separate pages (pdfseparatesource.pdfpage-%05d.pdf) or page groups (isolating the to-be-edited pages), optionally convert the PDF to PostScript (since there are more editing options for PostScript than PDF), edit the pages in various tools including Inkscape, then combine the pages into a new PDF.I used to have a very capable cow-orker who demanded self-contained applications suites and editors, just like they were used to having in Windows. I tried to help them see that instead of looking for aspecific type of tool, they should concentrate onhow to solve the underlying problem. They refused (by saying they weren't interested in that, and just wanted to solve the problem at hand without wasting time), and kept calling Linux "open sores crap", because it wasn't sufficiently Windows-like.As long as you use Linux as if it was a no-cost version of Windows, you will be unhappy.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 11:45:52 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 18, 2021, 10:53:17 amNo I don't compare it to windows, I expect it to be a functional operating system that I can run programs on. I could not care less what the operating system is. And it's not just about the operating system but the various programs that I actually want to run else I would have little use for an OS.For widespread adoption you need both an OS that the everyday user can use and for the wider software industry to support that OS so that finding programs and being able to run them is simple. Why else do we install GB of code on our computers? surely not to be told that we have to start using the command line and writing bits of our own code just to get through the working day.So long as things remain as they are Windows will dominate and those with money may buy apple and then call themselves geeks.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:07:20 pm
content: The funny thing is the actual geeks do use Apple stuff….https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:09:44 pm
content: I'm sure they do, maybe why people class themselves as geeks just because they bought the same brand phone a geek did.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:20:09 pm
content: I think most apple purchasers buy their stuff because it conveys status.I buy it because it actually works properly.

author: greasemonkey
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:34:34 pm
content: This is how I have been sending MS (I am running Windows 10 pro) to hell for the last 3-4 years:1) My PC (and instruments) are behind a router (a cheap one running OpenWRT).2) I configured the firewall on the router to completely reject any traffic from my PC.3) The programs that need internet (e.g. browser, mail client) get internet through a proxy (actually a beaglebone black on the same network because the router is too slow to handle the traffic).No updates, no viruses, no nagging. Also Windows and other programs cannot "call home" telling the galactic overlords what kind of (engineering) porn I am watching.I know this solution is not for everyone but it sure works for me.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:42:32 pm
content: User: hey I know better. I turned off all updates. Works for me!Everyone in the IT industry:Remote attack vector in your case is pretty bad. Windows defender has a sandbox escalation vulnerability which just requires you to receive an email with bad code in it. You don’t even have to open the email. Machine owned.

author: greasemonkey
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:47:40 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2021, 12:42:32 pmI understand what you're saying and you are right. I am actually updating (I should have said no unscheduled updates). I just do it offline. Basically I turned off the internet.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:48:47 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 18, 2021, 11:45:52 amFor widespread adoption, we have Windows and MacOS.Quote from: Simon on July 18, 2021, 11:45:52 amWhen you cater to the lowest common denominator with backwards compatibility, you end up with Windows. Perhaps there are a few things you don't like about Windows and would like to change, but I assure you, a large fraction of the billion or so users don't want to change those.The only thing you can change, is your own workflow. You asserted you could not find a tool for editing PDF files even when you were willing to pay, and I described how I routinely do that sort of stuff. For me, the annoying detail is the font matching, if the PDF used a font I don't have, because then I have to doshenanigans. (If it is just a typo or such, I usually try and see if editing the PostScript version is possible.)I am not telling you you are doing thingswrong, just like I never told my coworker they were doing thingswrong, because they too got work done; and if it works, it works. Reality wins over opinions every day. (Note that I described them ascapable; even though the "open sores" quips really annoyed me, I still think of them as a friend, and would not hesitate giving them a glowing recommendation if the situation ever arose.)What I am telling you, is that you will not behappyusing Linux, unless you change your approach. Whether you want to, is up to you, and should not affect anyones opinion of your technical skills, because technical skills are not involved here, justpersonal preferences.I believe the core of the "happy Linux user" is inUnix philosophyand modularism. When you encounter a problem, you always start by splitting it into sub-problems, until you find tools to deal with those sub-problems. Don't like your desktop environment? Switch to another; no need to change the distro, the DE is just a set of software like everything else. Don't like one thing or another? Change it, and submit a patch upstream, explaining what and why; but be prepared to engage a bit, in exchange. Want a new tool? Describe the problem, your idea for the tool, and how it would solve that kind of problems better than the existing solutions, and you can often attract a developer to help you implement it. Doing itrightis harder, because you'd need to think about stuff like internationalization and working across desktop environments, both of which require experience, and getting experienced developers to do stuff for you is much harder.The rules by which the free/open source software works are completely different to the rules under which proprietary commercial software works. Both are based on competition and resource exchange ("payment"), but even the hard currency differs –– money in one; time, effort, and experience in another.The "cost" that I personally dislike the most, is the clique-ism: when projects form a core set of developers who only interact with each other and select others, and those others always deal with "outsiders". I just don't want to play the kind of social games that are needed to effectively cut through that.So, I do claim that there is nothing wrong in choosing to work within the Windows environment only, or only with proprietary software; it's a valid choice.But claiming that it is thelogicalornecessarychoice until the free/libre software environment becomes more similar to proprietary software, that is just short-sighted bullshit.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:56:14 pm
content: Quote from: greasemonkey on July 18, 2021, 12:47:40 pmOk phew. You are excused then

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 12:58:29 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 18, 2021, 12:48:47 pmThe *only* case I found impossible to do that is when the PS itself is bitmapped.Otherwise all cases boil down to PS editingPaul

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 01:17:34 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 05:08:49 pmI do know that few of those cores can be turned off, in bios. But, how much power (consumption and output) does it make to do so?Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 05:18:33 pmso do I, Summers are brutal here with >39 deg. Celsius ambient.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 01:31:03 pm
content: Quote from: PKTKS on July 18, 2021, 12:58:29 pmSome PDF (and PS) files originating in Asia I've seen have mapped latin alphabet to some really odd code points. Copy-pasting text from such PDF files yields garbage. I guess you could reverse-engineer the code points from that, but my quick and dirty solution is to convert the page to paths instead.Quote from: Raj on July 18, 2021, 01:17:34 pmI'm physically part arctic seal. I sleep best at +17°C, work best under +25°C, and at +30°C and above am reduced to a smelly sweat-producing semisentient blob.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 01:59:44 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 14, 2021, 06:27:21 pmThere is always the old CDE project

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 02:10:02 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on July 18, 2021, 01:59:44 pmI was stuck in front of CDE/Motif equipped sun kit doing stuff in Cadence for a while. I’d take it over gnome 3!

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 02:46:14 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2021, 02:10:02 pmThere you go:https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/https://sourceforge.net/projects/motif/

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 02:54:44 pm
content: Niiiiice. Look at that visual consistency and discoverability. Almost as good as NT was!Edit: incidentally fuck XFCE. I decided to try that out a few months ago and they hadn’t managed to ship a single theme with borders wide enough to use as drag handles

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 04:20:22 pm
content: Way before that "NT thing" using the "modern look feel Win9x"..OpenWin desktop bundled in Slackware was (may be still is) a decade ahead that shit.I took some time and effort keeping all my systems binary compatible on a rolling basis .So .. something like running 199x OpenWin desktop **TODAY** here now is still possible..And TBH .. with a incredible ultra small ultra fast memory footprint..an outstanding written code base almost wo bugs...There is no possible way to compare it with those so claimed MS beasts..or these TODAY memory hog pigs..2 cents of kicks for funthat thing still got my eyes although I do not use it daily.. for other reasonsPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 04:29:03 pm
content: Hell no. You need some new glasses.openwin is a poor rip off from Sun OpenLook / OpenWindows / SunView which I sat in front of through university on SunOS 4. It doesn't actually do much and is horrible to use. Everyone replaced it with twm or mwm on their x sessions so there was enough memory left in the shitty Sparc 2's to run mosaic. Damn had to STOP-A every 5 fucking minutes when openlook was grinding.When NT4 dropped with the win95 UI running Office 95 it literally ended commercial unix on the desktop which was barely chugging along trying to push CDE out against windows 3.1's UI. It was that damn good at the time and it was 1/4 of the cost. Within 3 years of that happening our office went from stacks of HPUX and Sun kit to NT. All the back end shit was running on a collection of SPARCserver and Ultra stuff but we were connecting to it from NT.This was peak goodness in 1998. I was using Cadence. Even that crawled onto NT with a Motif UI. Then Windows 2000 then came along with active directory and it killed Novel, all horrible NIS/YP implementations on Unix, the lot. It was groundbreaking what you could do with your IT budget and it really did actually work.The irony of this is that I'm typing this on the most successful of all commercial official Unix'es on RISC processor at the moment, with a turd polished UI from NeXT and no one even knows the history behind it these days or cares because they hid it all away that wellhttps://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1212p.pdf

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 04:41:45 pm
content: well I never tried it on anything other than x86...There are small things and if compared to today they sure sucks...But.. geez take a look on that.. it is running today now...Recompiled some times to match new linkage of glibc and X11 ..But still without major issues..99.99% usable as the shot shows.. memory footprint is pathetic lowSo far as I wasted some time on recompiling it it has no visible major mem leaks..Usable. as it was in 199...ehhh 1993? probably then 1995 i rebuilt the server again...and again in 1999... and just kept rolling thingsPaul

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 08:38:46 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2021, 02:54:44 pmWhich distro?

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 07:50:21 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2021, 12:20:09 pmEvery Apple product owner I know -- which is a lot, as it covers college students, "regular people," and professionals such as musicians, composers, photographers, video producers and oh my yes engineers and scientists and developers --doesn't give a shit about conveying status.They (we) buy the products because they do what the user requires, they work with minimal fuss and bother, and they last longer than Windows and Android hardware.That notion of "status" is broadcast by people who dislike Apple for whatever reason. Usually when someone says something anti-Apple it's because they really have no clue.What I have not understood is why the EDA business supports Linux (well, Red Hat Enterprise) and dicks around trying to make sure the Linux stuff runs on Windows, while all along there has been a better Unix-on-the-desktop experience called macOS that would be easier for everyone involved. Sure, they "claim" that "nobody has ever asked for the tools to run on macOS," but that's bullshit and they know it.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 07:56:13 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on July 19, 2021, 08:38:46 amIt's not any particular distribution. It's a flaw in the design of themes for Xfwm which were designed by people who had never consulted their users about what they want out of a computer.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 08:00:35 pm
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on July 19, 2021, 07:50:21 pmActually no about 50% of the people I know are entirely clueless and went with Apple so they can show off the logo. They buy an iPhone Pro and can't take a photo with the thing. That's a significant market share, larger than the professional userbase. I'm in the professional userbase side of things.Your last point is spot on. I got told that for years working in fintech "everyone uses windows". Culture shock it has been getting rid of all that shitty ActiveX I told them not to build, desktop win32 apps I told them not to build and all that IE specific shit. They they all use iPads and Macbooks now. I think our windows userbase is only corporate cube farms.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 08:47:51 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2021, 07:56:13 pmI use Fedora with XFCE. I change nothing from the default install, and I'm pretty happy with the way it behaves. I doubt we'll ever again see something as well thought out for efficiency as NeXTStep, but XFCE is OK.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 08:51:08 pm
content: You can buy a modern NeXTstep machine from Argos these days

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 08:58:28 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 18, 2021, 07:04:07 amSo, you opened a file full of graphics and were surprised it didn't open with a text editing tool? Very smart.I guess you haven't editted PDFs that much. They are always a PITA, as they have lost all the metadata from the original file that made editing work smoothly. The quirks in your images look like the typical troubles you get with PDF editing. If you look at the several oddities in the PDF script itself you will probably find some hassles with fonts. If you only edit English files these things don't bite you every day. If you edit international PDFs you rarely see a file free of quirks. LibreOffice does no worse a job with PDFs than other things I have used. Even Adobe's own tools have all sorts of quirks, where they don't handle things like font substitution and TIFF embedding well. Adobe doesn't even seem to care. They made TIFF a long term important part of PDF, and stopped maintaining the TIFF spec. It seems they actually embrace a future full of quirks.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 08:59:47 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2021, 08:51:08 pmYou will have to explain that one.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 09:18:53 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 19, 2021, 08:59:47 pmNew old stock?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 09:32:36 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 19, 2021, 08:59:47 pmModern macOS (and iOS etc) is basically a direct descendent of NeXTstep on top of a hybrid Mach / BSD kernel. There are bits of NeXT hanging out still including the font selection dialog, services, the dock and the underlying architecture. And you can buy a mac on Argos.Here's the evolution...NeXTstep:OSX developer preview 1... several OSX releases later ...macOS 11.4... this machine.There's also Objective-C under it which originated on NeXTstep. They're replacing that now slowly with a more modern language (Swift) however but the whole signalling, dispatch and object model in the UI is the same.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 09:50:36 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2021, 09:32:36 pmI assume you never used a NeXTStep machine. Apple adopted the NeXTStep code base, but changed the feel of the UI to mimic the old MAC-OS, to keep the existing Apple user base happy. That UI has various benefits over the clunkiness of Windows. However, at least for the kind of work I do, the feel of NeXTStep let me work faster than anything I have access to today. Do you notice things like the scroll bars being on the left, instead of the right? That one thing made many of my activities much faster with NeXTStep.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 10:00:42 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 19, 2021, 09:50:36 pmI used one briefly. My tutor at university nearly bankrupted the department buying one and we got to play with it for a couple of hours. It was a world of difference to the SunOS 4 machines I was using at the time.Scroll bars are 100% dead for me. If you look at the screenshot of my Mac above you will see there are none. Sure if you have a mouse plugged in you'll get them but I will always reach for the touch pad first. The touchpad gestures are considerably better than any other solution on any other platform and better than a mouse by far. I am 10x more productive on macOS as a whole due to this, the virtual desktop system and general integration. I can triple-swipe on the touchpad (switch desktops) between my mac desktop apps, a terminal emulator and a Windows RDP session.I've got to be honest, putting them on the left with a mouse was a bad idea. There is more room to extend motion to the right of the keyboard than to the left. I regularly found myself banging the mouse on the keyboard using the Start menu on windows for example.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 01:40:04 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2021, 10:00:42 pmEach to its own... Despite I use the touchpad heavily with both regions or gestures (depending on the laptop, including an Apple), I prefer the accuracy of real PgUp/PgDn keys or a decent scrollwheel mouse (preferrably with Back/Forward buttons as well). It took me quite some time to figure out why was that, and in my case it has to do with the distance and position of my fingers to the keyboard as a whole - a touchpad forces me to move from a comfortable position of the hands over the keyboard to a crumpled position of my arm where I need to reach to an area closer to my chest. Eons ago I used to use a touchpad on my desktop computer and it was much more comfortable as it was at the right of the keyboardand at rhe same distance.Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2021, 10:00:42 pmI had a similar problem until I turned the mousepad 90° (to cover the newfangled 16:9 screens) and trained myself to get better control when setting the mouse sensitivity and acceleration properly.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 06:18:27 am
content: My desk setup has a separate touchpad and keyboard. I’m using this laptop docked most of the time. The apple one is huge. I don’t like the touchpad being in front of the keyboard either. As for accuracy the touchpad is nothing like the PC ones - this gives pixel level accuracy on scroll with no lumpy scrolling and has back and forward gestures as well.I used a top of the line dell touchpad recently and that was mostly hopeless in comparison.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 07:46:49 am
content: I like a lot of things about my employer issued Macbook Pro but the keyboard is mediocre at best and the touchpad is way too big. It's absurdly huge, to big that it gets in the way and results in the keyboard being compromised and there is no reason for it to be much larger than I can reach with my finger without having to move my whole hand. You can see in the right light the finger smudges where I touch it and I only use the lower-right corner, not even 1/4 of the total area, the rest is just wasted. Oh and the touchbar is a useless gimmick too. I love OLED displays so I really wanted to like it but ultimately the only thing it does is look neat, functionally there is absolutely nothing it does better than conventional keys and it drives me nuts that I have to give it an extra tap all the time to wake it up before I can adjust the volume, brightness or mute. I used to use it heavily for taking screenshots by touching a button but then one of the OS updates changed the default screenshot functionality so now the touchpad button for that is completely useless. Not sure if I can customize it, I tried briefly and then just started using the keyboard shortcut to activate the screenshot mode I use. Since it's activated by a feather touch I'm constantly brushing it by accident and it registers a touch. The really stupid thing is there's enough room even with that stupidly huge touchpad that they could have moved the touchbar up just far enough to include a row of function keys. At least the later model reverts to a real Esc key, I'm stuck with the idiotic touchbar key.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 08:42:20 am
content: Not sure what gen MacBook you have but there was a really crappy period of MacBooks recently.Touch Bar is apparently going on next generation MacBooks. It’s not popular. And new keyboards are much nicer (since end of 2020). Mine is an Air which has a proper keyboard.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 11:16:39 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 20, 2021, 06:18:27 amAh, good. Not all is lost.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 01:23:57 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2021, 09:32:36 pmI like very much the look of NeXTstep..Thankfully although Slackware base dropped OpenWindow/OpenLook from the code base.. they preserved the remarkable work of Alfredo Kojima and folks from WindowMaker.Sometimes I like to fill the bench which these always awesome looks of NeXTstep...It is still distributed and maintained in the master Slackware trunk...included the awesome configuration tool virtually everything tunable.Paul

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 01:35:11 pm
content: NeXTstep's GUI doesn't look much different from AmigaOS's Workbench.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 02:18:15 pm
content: Indeed. It looks like software developers designed it on a Friday afternoon after the pub

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 02:45:04 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 20, 2021, 01:35:11 pmGive me a break..If you compare that with GEM you will mostly find it similar to first MS versions of their win 1 and 2x as version 3x is mostly the OS/2 deteriorated..But never similar to NeXTstep or the cool looking of NeXtaw widget set.Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 04:18:00 pm
content: Fuck me amigaos is so ugly. Looks like someone with shit in their eyes used a mac for 5 minutes then proceeded to drink half a bottle of vodka and recall the experience.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 05:27:52 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 20, 2021, 01:35:11 pmI see two problems there. One is they look completely different. The other is its not the look, but the details of the feel that make a UI more or less productive.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 05:58:19 pm
content: Have you used Workbench 2.x or 3.x?

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 07:31:38 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 20, 2021, 08:42:20 amThe 2017 MacBook Pro has the crappy keyboard. I know because I have that exact machine. And clearly Apple got the message from customers about it because in the very next refresh they were back to the older, better keyboard style, like on my wife's 2015 13" MacBook Pro (which is obviously a 6-year-old machine but still works like a champ, and is still supported with Big Sur!). Also they put a real fucking Escape key on the refresh instead of having it on the Touch Bar.I don't know about the non-Pro MacBook models from that era because I have not played with one. When we bought our son a 2020 MacBook Air for school (literally like two weeks before the M1 machines were announced!) it had the better style of keyboard. The only Touch thing is the power button/TouchID thing. It has regular function and Escape keys.QuoteI think Apple got the message about the TouchBar, too. It's not that it's not popular. It's just that it's ... useless. Hell, even F1-F12 function keys are rarely used. Looking at how I use the machine, I think I know why. That big touchpad (which is totally great and every other manufacturer should just do exactly what Apple does with theirs) really makes it so easy to use the standard menus and toolbars. Look at the Mail program.TouchBar gives you a replica of the important things on the application's ToolBar. And that's cool if you are completely keyboard-centric. but I think most people (myself included) are very fast moving the mouse cursor with the TouchPad that we don't even think about using the TouchBar.One application that makes good use of the TouchBar is Apple's Logic digital audio workstation. But I use Logic on the iMac way more often than I use it on the laptop, and there's no desktop keyboard with TouchBar, so I'm used to not using the TouchBar.I thought that Apple might come out with a keyboard with the TouchBar, and that would go a long way to increasing TouchBar use. As it is, so many non-Apple applications don't bother supporting the TouchBar.Put it into the category of "things that seem like a good/clever idea but don't actually add value."

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 07:42:05 pm
content: I suppose that function keys are a vestige of the past, before GUIs. (Someone mentioned having to use Stop-A on a Sun, and I think the last time I thought about Stop-A on a Sun was ... 25 years ago? wow.)Many many programs have a shit-ton of icons and button-bars and tool-bars, and they all have various keyboard shortcuts to the events triggered by pressings those buttons and icons.And I bet that 'most users' don't bother with the keyboard shortcuts and function keys and instead click the mouse on the buttons and icons and menus. I know that, with rare exceptions, I don't. Why? Because every application has a different use for function keys and keyboard shortcuts. Just look at the mapping of keyboard shortcuts for any application. It's overwhelming. Logic has like a zillion. Kicad has north of a billion. Altium has several million. macOS has uncountable . Unless you live in one application day in day out for months at a time, you simply can't remember them all.About the only keyboard shortcuts I use are the Enter key for "OK" in a dialog, Escape to close dialogs or get out of something, Alt-Tab to switch between application windows, and of course the standard CUI Cut, Copy, Paste (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V). Let's add Undo and Redo to that list. Ctrl-Z is undo. But what is redo? Depends!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 07:50:33 pm
content: I wish for Stop-A every day. I used to drop out and use FORTH as a calculator occasionally.Agree with you entirely on all points in both posts. A rarity as I'm quite a disagreeable character usually

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 02:27:44 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 20, 2021, 08:42:20 amIt's the 2017 model, it was brand new and state of the art when I was hired. A friend of mine has a slightly newer one and said the keyboard is decent on his and it also has a real Esc key but I haven't used it personally. I don't know anyone who really loves the touchbar, most either hate it or don't care one way or the other, but from what I saw it seemed like Apple was doubling down on it and not showing any signs of yielding but maybe they've finally realized it's a gimmick. I'm closer to the latter but having lived with it daily for a few years, given the choice I would opt to skip it. It doesn't offer much in the way of compelling uses and mine has had a flickering white square on one end for a couple of years now, it hasn't bothered me enough to make the trek to an Apple store and be without my laptop for however long that takes.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 02:31:02 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 20, 2021, 04:18:00 pmPut it into the context of the era from which it came. When I first saw an Amiga back in the late 80s I was blown away. It could display stunning full color graphics in the era when Macs were still relying on a tiny built in monochrome display and most PCs had either Hercules monochrome or CGA with that godawful pink, light blue, yellow and white palate. The problem is that development pretty much ceased not long after that, Amiga OS is still essentially frozen in time more than 30 years ago.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 02:36:53 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on July 20, 2021, 07:31:38 pmUhg! Nooo! A lot of them already are and I hate it! If you like an absurdly huge touchpad that's fine, but please let's have options so we can choose! I want a much smaller touchpad, with real physical buttons under it. I typically rest my wrist while I'm using the touchpad and don't want to have to lift and move my entire arm just to use it. I've got the sensitivity cranked up all the way on all of my laptops and still none of them are sensitive enough, it requires way too much movement to get the cursor from one side of the screen to the other, I hate it. The touchpad on my old Toshiba from 2004 or whatever was fantastic, I still miss it. It was small and unobtrusive and it had real buttons with a nice tactile feel. I'd love it if I could get that on a modern laptop. I'm primarily a keyboard user though and I want it optimized for the keyboard, the touchpad just gets in the way most of the time.

author: Raj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 04:28:32 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 21, 2021, 02:36:53 amSo true. Also, I can operate a physical mouse & keyboard in total darkness (meaning I've learnt it, only sensation of touch is needed for feedback) but for touch interface, you have to keep looking at the thing to complete the "feedback loop".Btw, my cousin had a razer deathstalker ultimate (a keyboard with lcd pad) I absolutely hated trying to input numbers using it or using it as a mouse or any other touch functionality. Also, having a dedicated touch interface hardware instead of using the one you already have is anti consumer. Someone should make an app that connects your PC and phone. The game-sim pilots are already doing that.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 06:58:58 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 21, 2021, 02:31:02 amMeh. I bought a 32 bit ARM desktop back then (Acorn A440) which made the Amiga look like a joke.We had a weirdly advanced computer industry in the UK which didn’t lastAnd here I am today using a 64-bit ARM laptop. I’m home again

author: dave j
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 10:53:20 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 21, 2021, 06:58:58 amTo be fair, the Archimedes's first OS, Arthur, didn't look much better:At least it was replaced after a couple of years by Risc OS which was a big improvement:

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 11:30:52 am
content: That’s completely fair

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 02:19:16 pm
content: Back then Acorn had a booth at the Amiga con in Cologne. The hardware was quite interesting, also the concept of the stackable pizza boxes. However, it was more expensive and the lack of software was an issue too.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 03:00:59 pm
content: Yes it was extremely expensive. In fact mine was bankrolled by a relative who conveniently dropped dead and left me a bundle of cash. My mother went bananas when she realised I'd spent that amount of money on kitAs for the software, it was a smaller market, but what was out there was exceptionally good. I used techwriter and impression through university on RiscOS 3.11 which were way ahead of anything at the time and still pretty far ahead of stuff now. it only really started running out of steam when the world wide web became ubiquitous (gopher was fine!) and finally sold the Acorn A440 in 1997. I had a RiscPC 600 as well but never got around to really moving stuff to that. 8 years was a LONG run for a computer back then. I know the guy still who bought the A440 off me and he's still got it and uses it now even though various bits have blown up over the years.What replaced it? Well a Compaq Professional Workstation 5000 with two Pentium Pro 200 CPUs, 128Mb of RAM, 4.3Gb SCSI hard disk and Windows NT4.As for the RiscPC stackable cases, someone built a ridiculous one. Even has a kitchen sink and pizza oven in it

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 04:09:54 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 21, 2021, 03:00:59 pmUltra wide SCSI-2 15k rpm Cheetah?At that time we had a 9.1GB Cheetah running on our Dual Pentium II 300MHz with 128MB on a Supermicro MB. Those days were very exciting for home computing.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2021, 04:27:07 pm
content: Wasn't a 15k one. think it was a 7200rpm one at the time.I had some serious problems with the 15k cheetahs. If you powered down an array with them, reliably one or more dropped dead every time. Also had a supermicro chassis which one blew up in

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 07:24:28 am
content: What do you think of tiling window managers for Linux in relation with dual/triple monitors?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 07:47:43 am
content: Terrible idea IMHO. This is more fundamental than tiling window managers. I ran dual 27” for a bit and it has serious problems. Your neck position is never ideal ie centred so you end up with progressively worsening shoulder problems. I invested heavily in decent working environment in the end which was proper task chair, monitor stand, foot rest and desk and went back to one 4K 27” monitor. Then I looked at my workflow.After that the workflow was optimised and quite frankly the admin and inflexibility of pissing around with tiling window managers is just too much. You spend too much time ending up with windows that are too small and everything is distracting and generating noise all the time. I usually use iTerm to my Linux box (in AWS) and run tmux on that. Local VScode connects to it via ssh as well. Safari runs on top as does slack and outlook. And I haphazardly cmd-tab between them.Best bit? Well I run my entire stack off a docked laptop so when I want to go and do some work somewhere else I just unplug the dock cable and wham it’s all on the laptop screen. Tiling managers shit the bed then.I came to the conclusion that tiling window managers are inefficient and just look cool to outsiders as it makes you look like you’re neo from the matrix. It’s movie set tech. No better than LCARS from Star Trek. Looks cool but would be boiled assholes to use.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 09:18:42 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on July 22, 2021, 07:24:28 amHorrible! I prefer a virtual window WM with one monitor in a setup with multiple virtual screens.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 10:38:57 am
content: Must have been recent, because i don't remember noticing it before.They manage to fuck up the notepad!I don't remember when the search shortcurt was changed to Ctrl+T (because of "Trova"?) which of course doesn't work as it's Ctrl+F (or maybe in italian systems it's really Ctrl+T but i use a mix of italian and english in the interface so it's fucked up?)And you can also search on Bing. How useful

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 10:41:48 am
content: Glad it's not just me.Here is why I asked..

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 02:14:35 pm
content: If I understand him right, his point is about being able to freely assign virtual desktops to monitors. Opening a window on a specific desktop is supported also by non-tiling WMs. Same for maximizing a window on a specific monitor. The drawback he forgot to mention is that he can't have a window across two or more monitors. Neither can he have neighboring areas of multiple desktops on a monitor, i.e. the virtual desktops are basically jointless tiles of a large virtual screen and you can move around freely or jump to the next tile.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 06:41:31 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on July 17, 2021, 08:33:02 pmI've tried a number of programs... even ran an older Foxit PDF Editor under WINE for a while, but I finally stumbled upon a superior app in Master PDF Editor, which I believe is on version 5, for my Ubuntu Linux laptop. Yes it can edit text normally, add/modify/edit images, form objects, pretty much do anything and is the best PDF tool I've seen so far that is multi-platform including Linux:https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/I've been able to edit PDF's no problem. I believe version 4 was fully free, but with version 5 it adds a watermark when saving (when "unregistered") if using the more advanced features. However, this can easily be "rectified"post-save using a hex editor if you know what to look for.Although I highly recommend paying if you find the program useful. It's also available for Windows and MacOS, so it's nice to see developers now including Linux in their offerings.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2021, 04:45:53 am
content: Where Amiga really shone was games, and that was 99% of what I was interested in using computers for back in that era. There were a lot of arcade ports and clones which made good use of the audio and video capabilities of the Amiga hardware, the PC experience back before the sound card and VGA era paled in comparison. The Acorn stuff was never sold over here as far as I know, I never saw one, I've still never seen one in the flesh.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2021, 10:33:59 am
content: Not just games. DeluxePaint, FinalWriter, FinalCalc, several programming IDEs (SAS/C for example), CygnusEd, DirWorks/DIrectoryOpus, Newio (PCB layout), terminals (e.g ncomm or Term), FTS (FidoNet), WilhelmTel (ISDN VoiceBox) and many more. FinalWriter outperformed MS Word, even with large documents. And it didn't crash all the time.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2021, 11:31:37 am
content: Also vim!

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2021, 03:45:01 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 22, 2021, 02:14:35 pmThe XServer has been able to do that since the introduction of Xinerama extensionAny client wishing to have multi head or inter Workspace support on the server should be compiled and linked against Xinerama otherwise it *may* fail to properly interact in a multi head multi workspace setup.I have used that quite extensively across the 90s and all 2000s in my bench with 2 even 3 svga heads and several different WindowManagers each with some goods and some bads.Things got weird when DRM was introduced because mode set moved from the server to the kernel and things now are even more weird because it seems that an extensive work is being done to remove all these features from XWindows dragging it to the level of dumb displays like WSL via Wayland.Nevertheless I keep trying having a full features XOrg setup and all my clients are linked against Xinerama even though I have no longer a multi head setup because my bech is just too filled with stuff..But it still works fine here..Attached the remarkable extension of TWM - ak VTWM - with on the fly multi Workspace Multi Head and dynamic panner widget.Your answer is: ALL CLIENTS SHOULD BE COMPILED AGAINST XINERAMAget rid of the crippled Wayland deprecated distro. Just find a suitablereal UNIX like LINUX - Slackware is (STILL) my primary optionPOTTERIX shit is for my 6y old nephew. perfect for himSo your answer is Real UNIX distro with Xinerama supportPaul

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2021, 05:45:11 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 25, 2021, 11:31:37 amAlong with vigor, ajax and other classic kitchen cleaning products. I used to know this cleaner, Vi, who used them all.

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 12, 2021, 09:07:23 pm
content: I don't care much about the TPM requirement, either to or fro. If it makes software license management more streamlined, less of a hassle, and effective then I suppose I'm all for it.My personal beefs with Windows 10 in general though don't seem to be changed or fixed in Windows 11.The tying of keyboard layouts to languages, lack of custom layouts, and inability to switch layout without also switching language is a major annoyance. I mean, how do you type √2 in Windows? What language has a layout that includes √? On Mac this is found on the standard US keyboard layout, by pressing Opt-V. I would assume it's present on ALL the layouts. And if you want to you can create your own (though you need a utility to do so) - the keyboard switching switches layouts, unlike Windows which switcheslanguages. But this sentence is in English. There is no other language. Even if it included the phrase "the characteristic impedance is 100Ω", that's still entirely English despite the "greek" letter Ω.I still can't rearrange the virtual desktops. Sometimes you work on one thing, at other times something else. For example, you have three desktops. On desktop two from the left you open KiCad. You open the schematic editor. Then you want documentation on a separate desktop. So you add another - it will now be all the way to the right with a bunch of stuff inbetween, and there is no way to simply rearrange it like you would on MacOS. You get to open task switcher (Win-Tab) and sit and move individual windows around.And, with the soon 7 desktops given a few different things you're working on, the next time the F*NG thing updates it's all blown away.Makes me wonder if Windows users actually use computers for work, or if all they do is play games and browse...

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2021, 09:59:52 pm
content: Quote from: bson on August 12, 2021, 09:07:23 pmInteresting. I have two keyboard layouts (English, Portuguese), two languages and one location. Switching the keyboard layout (Alt-Shift) does not change the language.For special characters, I simply type the equivalent Alt code (Alt+234 for Ω, Alt+251 for √) - I have a small post it note tied to my monitor with my most used alt codes.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2021, 10:14:28 pm
content: Quote from: bson on August 12, 2021, 09:07:23 pmI am forced to use windows for work.I basically run a Debian VM and use PuTTY to SSH into it and fire up tmux and do all my shit in there. Windows does fine alt tabbing between slack, putty and Firefox

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 11:11:41 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 21, 2021, 02:31:02 amAmigaOS was designed to originally work on 256kbytes back in 1984, including graphics mem and run a multitasking OS from a floppy. Moving up to 512kb and stuck with many users of 1 floppy drive of 880kb to store both the programs and essentially the remainder of it's version of windows, yes it had to look primitive and there was no incentive to truly improve things since Comodore's main seller was the Amiga 500 in the UK. Commodore flopped it's resource development dollars into the failed CDTV and CD32 where if they listened to their engineers at the time, the Amiga 3000 would have had a better version of the AGA chip set supporting 8mb chipram supporting 256/32k(ham) color at 1280x1024 progressive with a true Motorolla audio DSP and 16 bit audio IN/OUT codec with 16 channel stereo audio retiring the PAULA audio chip. At it's release date, June 1990, this would have been a killer as the lower end modes, like a true progressive 800x600 and 640x1024 would be true 16 and 24 bit. We got stuck with the same old crap + a BS built in flicker-fixer line doubler with all it's zipper motion problems. The A4000 was supposed to have the never released AAA chipset which would have done the 1280x1024 at 24bit true-color. The engineers had good intentions and ideas, but, the ones running the show had short term imaginary $$$ ideas which couldn't cope with future.A sad predictable decline of what was once my favorite personal computer where I actually began my PCB development on as well as home made eprom programmer which ran circles around PC equivalents at the time in the late 80s through the Amiga parallel port.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 01:10:17 pm
content: Amiga was a dream - light years ahead of what we could get in an affordable way back then. However, I see the Amiga as the most potential threat to the Apple McIntosh at the time, as the PC industry was entirely based on clones and gained tremendous popularity across the world - for example, in Brasil we hadzeroaccess to anything other than PC computers and components, which were cheaper than an entire system and easier to smuggle (import taxes were/are prohibitively high and parts are easier to hide).

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 01:33:33 pm
content: Most people think of the A500 when talking about C= Amiga. When I retired my A2000 it had a 68040 @ 40 MHz with > 16 MB RAM, two SCSI HDDs, an ISDN TA, a NIC plus TCP/IP stack, and a high resolution graphics card with VGA output. The 486 and Pentium PCs alongside were sluggish compared to the A2000. Later on it was replaced by an AMD K6-2 @ 450 MHz.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 05:55:49 pm
content: Quote from: madires on August 13, 2021, 01:33:33 pmYep. You can also of course mention the Amiga 1000 for history, which predates the A500, but for the beefier stuff, also the A3000 and A4000 (and even A4000T in a tower case.)

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 06:32:31 pm
content: In the late 90s I was in the Music and Video Exchange here which was a junk shop full of all sorts of stuff. There was an Amiga 1500 for £10 and a JVC 100W amplifier for £10. I took the JVC and don't regret it

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 06:46:11 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 12, 2021, 10:14:28 pmJeeezsuuss..Who in perfect mental health at this point still forces people to run UNIX inside a crock of shit MS OS..You have my deep respectsPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 06:50:22 pm
content: Hey at least the power management works properly on windows though

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 07:00:17 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 13, 2021, 06:50:22 pmThat varies a lot from update to update.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 07:04:06 pm
content: Not had any problem for years with that here.Linux on the other hand when I was running it on laptops was a 50/50 always if it woke up again when you opened the lid.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 07:24:11 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 13, 2021, 07:04:06 pmI had endless trouble throughout the life of Win 7 with power management. I haven't really used Win 10 that much, so I have no opinion there. The fact that they could get to 2016 without reliable updates makes their performance bloody awful, even if they might have now cleaned up their act since then.Over the years I've mostly relied on suspend to RAM with Linux notebooks, and that has worked well. Suspend to disc has a dodgy history.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 08:48:00 pm
content: My experience is similar to BD139; Linux is very finicky when suspending to RAM or Disk. I suspect that, most of the time, the video subsystem is the one to blame.As for other issues, multi-displays in Linux are ok-ish, although scaling is still suffering. It still lags behind in comparison with how Windows improved since its introduction in Win98 (XP still had some issues here and there but I had zero issues with 7). Windows over the years was terrible for dock/undock - this improved for me with Windows 10 (used at my work laptop).So, all this is a continuum. Of course, unless there are regression bugs...

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 08:52:52 pm
content: It's an epic shit show sometimes. They actually broke alt-tab for about 3 months a while back in windowsI want to go back to the 80s. The bugs were there but you got to know them and they didn't keep getting swapped out for new even more interesting ones.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 09:25:06 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on August 13, 2021, 08:48:00 pmWhat's wrong with scaling in Linux? Using the nouveau drivers for multi-display Linux has issues, but I haven't had a problem using the nVidia drivers in many many years. Scaling and multiple displays with Windows is a horrible mess.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 02:46:30 am
content: Quote from: madires on August 13, 2021, 01:33:33 pmIf that was an RCS Management's Fusion 40, you can thank me for being outsourced and becoming friends with the developers in here in Montreal after I solved their initial over-heating problem just as they begun with their first 25MHz version. (It was a buss collision conflict on the Zorro 1 CPU slot generated by the imperfect voltage & timing that the Amiga custom chipset generated when occupying the bus which the normal 68000 wouldn't care about.)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 11:06:44 am
content: Sweet memories!In my case it was a Phase5 Blizzard 2040.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 01:45:31 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on August 13, 2021, 08:48:00 pmI agree. I have an HP EliteBook 820 G2 and a 840 G4 (the latter has a much nicer display BTW), using built-in Intel graphics with the in-kernel drivers, and they suspend (to RAM or to disk) just fine. (Four, five years of active use now.)In both, the built-in touchpad (Synaptics SynPS/2) has occasional glitches waking up, somehow dropping multi-touch support and acceleration/speed profile, but unloading and reloading the driver (psmouse) fixes those. The 840 G4 is now running on its second battery (the first one started expanding), and a replacement keyboard (25€ off eBay, seems OEM or equivalent quality, but couldn't find Finnish layout, so now my keycaps have a few Norwegian caps instead of the Finnish ones (Ø instead of Ö, Æ instead of Ä, plus three caps with partially incorrect glyphs near the corners of the keyboard). Just make sure you have a fast SSD when using a Linux laptop; that makes the most difference user-experience-wise.Suspend to disk (hibernation) is a bit weird case, because there are two completely separate ways to do it. One is to let the kernel handle it, putting the image into swap. This has the downside that depending on the swap size and state, the suspend may actually fail occasionally. The other is to use userspace tools like uswsusp (µswsusp) or hibernate. Some tools like commonly used pm-utils can support all three (kernel, uswsusp, hibernate). On many machines, all three work fine; but on some, depending on the hardware, only two or one of them works reliably. On some systems, a kernel driver (especially video drivers) can prevent suspend-to-disk, because they do not provide the power manager hooks the kernel needs to do this. In some cases, (privileged) userspace applications or services can prevent suspend and hibernation.In the last five or so years, I do have observed more and more issues that can be traced to internal systemd interactions, that really need a reboot to solve. The common thing seems to be when a component gets updated during runtime (say, a security patch). These often look like kernel issues (except that if one has a console terminal open with root logged in, simple testing shows that the kernel is still operating normally, while userspace is seriously glitching), and are treated as such by most users and distribution maintainers, so the true impact of systemd to stability is unfortunately hidden. (One of my hobbies is tracking the root cause of these problems, and I'm skilled in this enough to have done e.g. kernel runtime patching and discovering rare bugs in standard libraries. It is dull drudge work, unless like me, you're addicted to problem solving.)Now, I'm not as anti-systemd as PKTKS, but I see its impact on system stability and versatility, and I'm not happy about it, because as a completely optional userspace component – there is e.g.Devuan, a Debian fork without systemd; and many embedded distros like OpenWRT also do not use systemd – with severe stability and security deficiencies it negatively affects systems, but its effects are usually ascribed to the Linux kernel. I hate that kind of blame-shifting.For those who shut down and boot their Linux machines often enough, systemd tends to work without issues, so I am not saying it is useless. For some, it works just fine, and that makes it useful and worthwhile to such users. For organizations with lots of Linux machines, it may be a necessity, because finding support personnel for Linux that are familiar with systemd tends to be cheaper than finding those who can maintain a better customized system; and most bosses are unable to calculate the actual cost-benefit ratios of the two approaches, and prefer to go with the flow and not take any risks (that they cannot blame on someone else).My main gripe is that in Linux, we have enough headaches by having a monolithic kernel (in that using proprietary video drivers makes it impossible to debug kernel issues, as those drivers' bugs can affect any part of the kernel, since there is no isolation at all between drivers); and now a lot of developers are trying to consolidate base system userspace services into a similar monolithic blob suffering from numerous single-point failure scenarios. It just makes no sense to me why they want that, and don't see the serious negative aspects at all. Like they've forgotten the decades of useful Unix paradigm experiences, and are shifting towards the Microsoft Windows model of operation.To tie the above to this particular thread, just the other day I stumbled into another serious WSL2 issue wrt. Microsoft's current "Linux" support:DNS issues. In short, the WSL2 DNS component completely fucks up some name lookups. In the case of "baidu.com", it inserts the results for "nsX.baidu.com", causing e.g.getnameinfo()C library function call to provide those too as the results for "baidu.com".I'm sure this is to work around some kind of bug in the way Windows itself processes name service queries; probably somehow it needs those results for reverse lookup support, and internally filters them out. It is exactly the sort of fuckwittery MS did with OOXML (by defining certain properties as "model borders like Word 7", "model borders like Word 6", instead of defining their effects directly), which killed that "standard". They do say Microsoft is today much better wrt. its free/open source competitors, but this kind of stuff indicates old habits are deeply embedded within their corporate culture.Which is the reason I personally still don't trust Microsoft. I mean, I don't trust them to do the best thing to their shareholders; the above kind of fuckwittery is too deeply embedded in their middle management, no matter what their board and chiefs and the design and programming teams intend.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 02:46:32 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on August 14, 2021, 01:45:31 pmMy 6y old nephew loves the MINT (buntu POTTERIX thing) I have made for him..He is totally obsessed about Sgt MarkIV (ALIS) BRUTAL DOOM with COD ammo mods...It plays that restless switching ammos in COMIC BLOOD level..I love that shit..POTTERIX is made for 3 to 10? y.old kids..Now.. seriously? Would I ever put such insane garbage glued together on a workstation?Not a chance in hell but he loves it.And he already can do all MSSCE certificated stuff he is a MerdSoft - Crock of Shit Expert..he "upgrade system" (I showed that icon once and never forget that..)..he boots he start game .. shit like hell everything icon he can do.Would I be against POTTERIX? no.Would I use it for myself or serious stuff? neverPaul

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 06:24:38 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 13, 2021, 06:32:31 pmThe 1500 is a pretty rare item as far as I've seen.These days it would be worth a lot more than your JVC amplifier. But as far as being useful for daily use, I don't blame you. As an investment, I think you missed it though!

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 09:29:26 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 14, 2021, 06:24:38 pm5 years ago, I sold my completely jam packed A4000 on Ebay for 4.5k$USD. Here is what it had:Code:Amiga 4000/040, 33MHz, rare PCB cad software, 24 bit color EGS Spectrum 2MB graphics card + killer over 40 apps/programs installed.-System and boxing includes-Amiga:North American 120v power supply.33MHz 68040 with CPU fan.2 MB Chip ram16 MB Fast ram2 MB 24 bit color EGS Spectrum video cardKickstart version 40.63 (Known at Amiga Kickstart 3.1)Workbench version 40.42 (Known at Amiga Workbench 3.1)800 MB hard drive.Amiga 4000 keyboardAmiga mouseAmiga VGA adapter plug with EGS Spectrum video card pass-thru cable.I've made & included a PC CD-R disc with backup of the Amiga 4000's HD and a configured Amiga WinUAE emulator to optionally run my Amiga's HD on a window's PC.The Amiga's clock battery was removed approximately 8 years ago. The PCB is clean without any battery acid residue.A new NiMH battery has been installed and charged for 2 days prior to boxing.This Amiga has been tested before boxing & verified to function 100%.For those who want this Amiga specifically for PCB cad design, read below, for everybody else, all the other applications installed are listed below the second line...----------------------------------------------------------------From 'Prolific Inc.', installed PCB Cad & Schematic capture software:Pro-Board 3 - PCB cad software.Special exclusive existing version 3.04 (Jun 8 1993). A year after Prolific Inc. closed down, I luckily tracked down the programmer, had him make this special version for me by purchasing a full CAD package at the time. This special version allows 'SMC' video mode changer software to work with 'Pro-board 3' to run in video modes above 640x400, on the EGS video card. (I typically used 1024x768)(All other 'Prolific Inc.' PCB cad software from here on in will max out at 640x400)Pro-Lib - version 3.03 1991Library footprint generator.Pro-Drill / Pro-Plot – Print PCBsPrint, or, plot PCBs / and Generate gerber files.Pro-Net and Plot – Version 2.0CSchematic capture software.Special inclusions:My PCBs including the RCS Management's Excalibur PCB I designed for them. (pcb name 'A4000BG1')My normal 1x scale sized library, plus, my special 2x & 5x library designed for super small pitched modern PCB SMD components.My 'scalegerber' utility - (Written by me)1. Converts really old gerber format generated by Pro-Board3 to a more modern type with embedded aperatures.2. For working with my custom 2x and 5x scaled PCBs, it shrinks the PCB gerbers to a 1x size for production.I will provide email technical support for the PCB cad questions.------------------------------------------------------------------------------Additional Installed software:Monitor Video Drivers: (You can only choose 1 of these 2 at a time. CyberGraphX is the current default. Inside Devs/Monitort, swap 'Spectrum' with 'EGS' and reboot.)CyberGraphX Version 2.11 (Faster)EGS retargetable true color window system library version 7.9 (Slower, but, EGS utilities will now work.)smc, or, mc (ECS graphic) – Mode changer – forces applications to use the selected video mode instead of the old Amiga chipset graphics mode.USE "sm???x???" when using EGS's video drivers.USE "mc" when using CyberGraphicX video drivers.Utilities:Quarterback 6.0 - system backup utilityQuarterback 5.0 - system backup utilityTools: Calc – scientific calculatorTask v2.5 – software task priority editorVCLI 7.0 – Voice recognition software. (Requires an audio digitizer)PV – PowervisorModem:term v4.3JR-Comm v1.2LW/Lightrave – Software only version of Lightwave 3D 4000 v3.0 from NewTek's video ToasterDCTV v1.1b – NTSC (requires hardware)Music/Spectrogram – audio spectrum analyserAudiomasterIII – Audio sampling & editing softwareAudition4 - Audio sampling & editing softwareCD Player Simulator – audio IFF player softwareEdPlayer – midi sequence player.LED – tunr on&off the Amiga low pass audio filterAC-basic – Absoft AC/Basic compiler Version 1.3GPFax – Supra Modem fax emulator software versionDTP – Final Writer – word processor, version 1, October 21, 1993, English.DTP – PageStream V2.2, USSaxonscript – Postscript interpreter and renderer – version 1.00Lemmings 2 – video game....SASC_C – C compiler version 6.3ADPro - Art Department Professional v 2.5.0 - Image format converter, Scanner, Filters, EnhancerOCR – Migraph OCR v1.00 – optical character recognition.DpaintV – Deluxe Paint 5.0, supports 24 bit video modesGraphics / Photon Paint 2.0 HAM mode paint software.ProScan v1.0 – scanner software for cheap monochrome scannersUchess – animated chess gameMoned – Amiga AGA monitor editor (only use if you know what you are doing...)Monitors – Additional home made monitors modes. (only use if you know what you are doing...)Scale – Desktop magnifying glass'A' - PC 3.5inch floppy drive emulator'CD0' – CD filesystem for CD Rom drivesEGS – Full EGS drivers and software applications, games, tools which came with the 24bit video cardEGS-Paint – EGS paint software (Only works when using EGS video drivers running).PC – (Requires a 386SX bridge board to be installed to work)CybergraphX – alternate EGS video card driver instalation tools.Degrader v1.3 – Reboot the Amiga 4000 in lower older OS, older chipset to run old floppy disc video games & force 31Khz doublescan AGA VGA mode for older video games.Directory Opus v4.0 - File management utility, reader, and other toolsView – image viewer & anim playerCyberview – 24 bit image viewer displayed on 24 bit card. (Requires CyberGraphX drivers running)Truly equipped for the 'Amiga Lover'.It was in near mint condition, no plastic coloration, run in a smoke free environment, original box.If I kept my A1000 and A3000 in the same condition, they would also generate ~1-2K$. If I kept my A1000 in mint condition, with all original boxing and manuals, it may would have been worth a lot more.If anyone wants my A4000 WinUAE image (all software), with everything working, let me know and I'll send it out...

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2021, 10:59:19 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 14, 2021, 06:24:38 pmI have a habit of turning down things which may be a good investment

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 12:16:26 pm
content: I did not read the 12 pages, I just skimmed 5 minutes over it.I will do a dual boot maybe. Anyway looking at my 3 months old child, I need to learn the Linux stuff better (I already got nice experience with FreeBSD...).M$ has no future in the long run, or it will be in the hands of dumb people.I need to save my child.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 12:26:40 pm
content: That’s a good way of looking at itOn a positive note my eldest’s boyfriend uses Linux. I was surprised at that.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 02:01:01 pm
content: drooling atUbuntustudio now.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 03:53:12 pm
content: Quote from: Zucca on August 16, 2021, 02:01:01 pmI've seen these "BUZZwordys... " like Studio and Scientific and etc &alThey all lack a most simple puddin issue:- First and foremost - proprietary CODECs you can actually drop and use.they all mostly are spread across other packs (similar issue on windooze.. butsome folks crafted a huge packed codec thing to drop in)- Second and more troublesome is the total lack of real EDA and CAD support.By that you can enlist FORTRAN and LISP and all associated kits like BLAS LAPACKand ready made interfaces.. that include PERL mostly where PDL and TeX powerare above the question.- Complete absence of KiCAD and xCAD (FreeCAD, librCAD etal) associated file supportand wide system support...That includes SANITIZED GPU drivers (which are garbage trashed by proprietary stuff)and all other WORKSTATION WIDE setup.. (NAS readiness and inter workspace setup)Being Xorg deprecated to wayland the inter workspace setup became a messy problemOther factors and issue still plague a real Workstation setup for CAD/EDA andintensive Math simulation capabilities..The folks arestillbounded (sicked) by that GUI paradigm thing..instead of "functionality" they offer that zero setup thing..Nevertheless.. IT IS A WIDE STEP OVER last decades all property shit..wide step really. My nephew loves that kinda of shitPaul

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 06:46:31 pm
content: Quote from: PKTKS on August 16, 2021, 03:53:12 pmhttps://itsfoss.com/install-media-codecs-ubuntu/Quote from: PKTKS on August 16, 2021, 03:53:12 pmerr... I don't think UbuntuStudio caters to engineering. Audio/video production are much narrower and covered by a handful of tools - although the interfaces of the image/publishing are quite difficult to navigate (Blender, Inkscape).The "science" distros had troubles simply due to the vast array of specialties in the sciences.Quote from: PKTKS on August 16, 2021, 03:53:12 pmIn the days of Mandrake, zero setup was something that got my dad back into the Linux arena - and he was quite tech savvy, but just didn't see the benefit in diving into Slackware and its incredibly steep learning curve to reach a point so he could do anything useful with the OS (printers, graphics, network/TCP/IP were all terribly convoluted). Even still, there was quite a lot to get on board by today's standards.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 06:59:58 pm
content: They do not setup a real workstation...There is also a total lack of AVR functionality.. which should include compiler.. tools..And a proper sigrok installation...Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 07:28:40 pm
content: What does a "real" workstation consist of then? I am eager to know this

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 07:39:58 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 16, 2021, 07:28:40 pmI'll start: my ancient network gateway at work was a Dell Optiplex GX110 Pentium III 533MHz running Slackware 12 and, equipped with a 1Gbps Ethernet adapter with 9k jumbo packets and no GUI, it was the only machine at the time that I could run benchmarks of GigEth (2010, 2011)."Workstation"? Well, it was at work and it was an incredibly useful station, so...

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 09:55:57 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 16, 2021, 07:28:40 pmWell, I remember that our old Apollo WORKSTATIONS ran Mentor PCB CAD software shipped on those fun tape cartridges. Does that count?

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 10:24:18 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 16, 2021, 07:28:40 pmIn my mind, it's a minimum 32-bit desktop machine, preferably RISC architecture, NOT made by Intel, running natively in Network Byte Order, with a POSIX compliant OS, sporting X11 graphical UI.Typical examples are nearly all SparcStations, RS/6000 43p boxes, PA-RISC machines running H-PUKES (but to offset that abomination, they have to have a GPIB adapter) and the like.Linux orshudderWindows doesnotqualify. Especially not on i386.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 10:28:26 pm
content: I agree. As I'm sure you know I formerly wrangled SPARCstations. Throwing all the poo into the bucket your life hasn't sucked until you've tried installing early Cadence Virtuoso releases on 10 netbooted SPARCstation 10's with only local swap disks over a 10base2 NFS shared CDROM drive with caddies. Even tar was quicker off the formely nodded to QIC tapes.I was quite happy to use windows NT after that

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 10:42:53 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 16, 2021, 10:28:26 pmI'm not surprised. Local disks combined with networked file systems did go a long way towards making machines usable.IMNSHO the biggest failure there was letting the users store files locally. SUN was on the right track with "The network is the computer" and it is entirely incomprehensible to me that, to this day, an AD joined Windows box, with a networked home directory for a given user, immediately starts to write shite to C:\Users\%user% -- it's not intuitive, very inelegant, and a big trap for multiuser almost-workstations. And don't get me started on "roaming profiles". Every time I come across that trainwreck of a clusterfuck, I want to kill something.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2021, 11:11:27 pm
content: So. Has MS gone to hell already?Or maybe that's where they have been all along...

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 07:47:06 am
content: Quote from: mansaxel on August 16, 2021, 10:42:53 pmOn that note you’ll be pleased to know that COVID has nearly completely killed the concept of profiles. Everyone spent a lot of time moving to Azure AD and OneDrive as the corp distributed network solution to support remote working. This turned out to work rather well compared to the old way of doing things. It’s not perfect but it’s the only “complete” solution out there that doesn’t require a stack of kit. The key decent thing if you ask me is it’s fully optimised for occasionally connected scenarios like mobile workforce unlike say Google’s stuff which is a brick without the network.When correctly applied (big disclaimer there) InTune is pretty good. You just ship your users hardware direct from the manufacturer and they sign in using their SSO creds and 30 minutes later out pops a locked down corp machine.All this is why MS hasn’t gone to hell yet. No one else can get close to this.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 07:58:56 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 16, 2021, 07:28:40 pmExactly all the items we talk above..Folks are splitting things making a proper setup unlikely to go right...As of Mandrake.. it came from Conectiva Linux making Mandriva.. which failed to get a proper share distrobtw they were trapped in that same pitfall of making Studio.. Home... Scientific... School..Bunch of splitted thingsMuch more concerned with GUI than function as a wholePaul

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 09:14:44 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 17, 2021, 07:47:06 amIt is also completely unusable for sensitive data. I do not trust it to keep anything except completely harmless information that is already published.I work at a media company. We have a constitutional obligation to keep our sources secret if they so desire. Failure will put journalists in jail. The current stampede towards everything in the cloud leaves us without source protection for digitally transmitted and/or stored information, and even if we retain a local ability to keep information separated, that is going to stick out like a beacon to people scanning for anomalies.No-one is going to fool me that M$, The Book Store or the Goog are able to block for instance FISA orders. If we have journalists reporting on things that are of interest to 3-letter agencies, they will learn of it, before the public does. And in ways that compromise the source.So, this rant is mostly aimed at pointing out the need for separate computing resources, something that's more or less equally hard on all platforms, what with our flocking around easy ways out from problems.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 09:23:51 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 17, 2021, 07:47:06 amEven with my deep despise of all MS sickosyou do have a point hereAutoDesk made such move with Eagle by turning a good usable product in such a subscription cloud thingo forcing every corporation out there to "rent" their stack or nothing..Tenants forced to renew their embed Eagle every 3y. E.g. pretty much all clients are now forced to rent software . no options left ..I am afraid how many other platforms will resist that big money make coin machines..However we are still free to choose if that "easy" worth that much (abandoning our will to purchase own and control our goods and property and privacy.. )Even wanting them to fuck off.. you do have a point here (unfortunately)Paul

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 09:49:46 am
content: For the record - A PROPER WORKSTATION SETUP - for CAD/EDA and simple numeric applications -without considering the GUI or server side or backup (NAS) required stuff listAlphabetic ordered - non extensive - just primary targets..Without considering therequired dependency among GCC and AVR and LIBC compilersand proper setup of required GPU drivers and DRM kernel.. (2 more lists needed..) (e.g. where things are getting fuzzy with BOOST LLVM/CLANG stack added in)Workstation for CAD/EDA/SIM basic stuff (license free e.g. rent free part GNU part OSS)http://ardour.org/releases/http://www.audacityteam.org/http://blender.orghttp://ctan.org/http://dfu-util.sourceforge.net/http://ffmpeg.org/http://github.com/tpaviot/oce/releases/http://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/minipro/http://github.com/OpenBoardViewhttp://gnuradio.orghttp://guvcview.sourceforge.net/http://jackit.sourceforge.net/http://kicad-pcb.org/http://lame.sourceforge.net/http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/http://maxima.sourceforge.net/http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/http://openhantek.org/http://pdl.perl.org/http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/http://sourceforge.net/projects/gputils/http://www.caam.rice.edu/software/ARPACK/http://www.clisp.org/http://www.dosbox.com/http://www.flashrom.org/Flashromhttp://www.freecadweb.org/http://www.gimp.org/http://www.gtk.org/http://www.gnu.org/software/octavehttp://www.gnuplot.org/http://www.libsdl.org/http://www.matroska.org/http://www.netlib.org/blas/http://www.netlib.org/lapack/http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/http://www.nongnu.org/avrdude/http://www.qemu.org/http://www.r-project.org/http://www.sigrok.orghttp://www.videolan.org/http://www.vorbis.com/http://www.winehq.com/http://www.wings3d.org/http://www.wxwidgets.org/http://www.xiph.org/Reference for the record - some stuff may bemoved from sourceforgesince GIT took overa lotof stuffPre requisites - bottom linehttp://gcc.gnu.org/http://www.gnu.org/pub/gnu/glibc/http://mesa.freedesktop.org/PaulPS> updated w.more refs at 23 aug 21

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 10:28:37 am
content: Quote from: mansaxel on August 17, 2021, 09:14:44 amWe have possibly higher security requirements than that in fintech market as we carry PII, finance, protected, medicial and insurance data on a vast scale. Saying that at no point do we think our cloud provider is at risk of these orders because the TLA spooks don't need to enter via that path and happily come knocking on the front door and telling us to hand it over. And when that happens we do have a massive tarpit of highly skilled lawyers to keep them busy for months.The only way to protect sources is anonymous escrow to break source tracking and signing for authenticity purposes via preshared keys via side channel. Then there is no risk of source attribution.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2021, 11:22:43 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 16, 2021, 07:28:40 pmIts easy to define a workstation.A bus station is where the bus stops.A train station is where the train stops.A work station is where...

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 05:13:02 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 17, 2021, 11:22:43 amComes handy IgorsLab hosting a proper Workstation soft/hard rankinghttps://www.igorslab.de/en/workstation-graphics-card-charts-benchmarks-tests-and-details/Interesting details.. as usual the folk can add somethingparticular interesting the page on Wattagehttps://www.igorslab.de/en/workstation-graphics-card-charts-benchmarks-tests-and-details/15/Paul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 05:18:18 pm
content: I was mostly trolling earlierA workstation is simply what your software vendor certifies the software you need to use on so everyone can point back at them when a six figure sum goes to shit. This is usually some crate from HPE with a Z at the start that runs windows in 2021.

author: mnementh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 05:33:13 pm
content: Honestly... I wouldn't take MS' place on a bet... Because of their market position, everybody expects them to make one OS that runs on every fucking shitbox made in the last 2 decades from Ifni knows what parts that they have zero control over, make it so every shiny idiotic gewgaw being flogged on FurkBook as well as your 20-year-old checkbook software will run on it, make it all secure (even other people's 6-layer dipshit software) and keep it secure in a world full of ne'er-do-wells for another 2 decades, and since it is well-known they sell in bulk to OEMs for cheap, they don't even expect to pay for all that personalized toe-jam-licking service, all the while damning them for engaging in the same datamining that the same people who are bitching aboot it allvolunteer foron other online "services".Honestly, it's a wonder it worksat all, much less as well as it does.Don't get me wrong; I understand the gripes aboot 11. And I will be one of the millions staying away in droves on my personal machines until they get their shit sorted, just like I did with Win7 and everything that came between it and Win10.And before you sayBleepity-BleepOS, orHonk-on-BoboNIX, realize that I just spent weeks with a dozen different *NIX variants on my Intel MacPro, all supposedly optimized for Macs, and it was like being teabagged by Satan every 5 minutes with one thing or another.In the end, theonlyvariant that actually successfully installedand was usablewas a plain vanilla build of Cinnamon/Ubuntu; the one *NIX subgenus that seems to be pretty universally despised around here.I see folks running around with their hair on fire in here (okay, slight exaggeration, but still), however the fact is I have a life and shit to get done. I want privacy, but first Ineeda machine that works without building the OS by hand. I don't build my car from the ground up anymore either, for the same reason; I just buy one that runs.Point being... I see a lot of OS-related ideology being bandied about here as if it were compellingneed; and that is just not so for a lot of people.mnem

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 06:26:29 pm
content: Quote from: mnementh on August 18, 2021, 05:33:13 pmYou apparently need a Mac. Not a broken one, a reasonably new, unbroken one, with a supported OS X release.I gave up on all the others years ago; for things that just need to work, every day, a MacBook is the only thing that copes. Think of it as a reliable UNIX(tm) that can show videos and Powerpoints. And won't fuck up hibernation.Yes, I think fondly of my sequence of SUN workstations, once every 5 years I try booting my RS/6000 workstation (which has a PCI full-length graphics card that cost something like 18000 USD new, and does Quake II in fullscreen; there is a port) and I'm running a bunch of vm's with FreeBSD and Devuan for various infrastructure stuff, but it's my two Macbooks (one for work, one for play) that do the heavy lifting.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 06:35:39 pm
content: As of about a week ago Apple are added to the vendor shitlist here. There another thread about that though.They still produce the best hardware and software combo but now compromised privacy and a compliance nightmare means I can’t conscientiously continue using their platform without endorsing a downward spiral for my kids.As you’ve heard me say: always have an exit plan and that has been played.Reference in context:https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/18/german-politician-letter-tim-cook-csam-scanning/

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 06:37:39 pm
content: Yes, that is a shit show. They played the privacy game well, for a while, but apparently it was hollow.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 06:41:58 pm
content: Yes indeed. The key problem being they cannot now put this cat back in the bag. They have declared the capability and now it can be made a legislative requirement to continue existing in regional markets. Craig makes hollow promises when confronted and steamrolls high profile critics resulting in loss of trust.Basically you’re going to like this feature. Oh you don’t. No you’re wrong you’re going to like it if you like it or not.Get fucked.On a positive note where do you think those piles of test gear on the TEA thread I’m buying are being funded fromEdit: keeping it on topic, you have to go with the vendor travelling in the right direction always. As much as MS are shitbags they only do this if you use OneDrive and do not do it and compromise your device doing so.

author: mnementh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 09:59:00 pm
content: So... I'm still okay to continue leeching off Apple with my curb-score MacPro, right...?Gawddammit, I just spent $40 on a GPU & power pigtails to get it running again, and I wanna utilize that !@$#%!!!! investment!mnem

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2021, 10:25:11 pm
content: You’re you’re ok as it won’t run the nasty versions of OSX coming over the hill

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 01:46:57 am
content: Quote from: mansaxel on August 18, 2021, 06:26:29 pmI'd buy a Mac if I had more choice, but none of their offerings are close enough to my liking to justify the price. I use one daily that belongs to my employer and there are a lot of things I like about it, but several deal breakers that preclude me from every spending my own money on one. I'm really not fond of the direction they are going, making the OS look more and more like iOS. One of the things I long thought Apple did so much better than Microsoft was not trying the idiocy of creating a unified experience between mobile and desktop, and lately Apple seems to be heading that way. The hardware is too locked down, I hate having no ports other than USB-C, and the whole thing just feels like it sacrifices far too much to be unnecessarily thin, it's too much form over function. As an employer owned appliance though it's fine. It does everything I need to do my job and I don't use it for anything else.

author: mnementh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 01:55:38 am
content: Maybe you need a prehistoric cheese-grater MacPro too.mnem"...if you took all the girls I knew when I was single,and brought them all together for one night;you know they'd never match my sweet imagination...and everything looks worse in black and white."

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 11:29:56 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 19, 2021, 01:46:57 amThe monumental idiot decision that if it is slim it will look better and sell more. So fruuustt..ckkk... retarted.All those brain damaged product artist designers convincing the management it is the right thing to do. Meanwhile the eng in the room are just sad and they are too shy to speak the hell up....Sometime even the ETH port is gone... Are you shitting me in my face?It's not just Apple, this colossal nosense it spreading like COVID Delta in the entire laptop industry.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 12:01:26 pm
content: Quote from: Zucca on August 19, 2021, 11:29:56 amI think it is the other way around.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 12:12:58 pm
content: Nathan Barley gets it right

author: mnementh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 04:34:48 pm
content: Yup.Theyare using 1984 and Idiocracy as the blueprint for modern society. errr, anti-society.Antisocialism...?mnemYes, Windoze is shit. But it is also the great equalizer.

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2021, 07:29:41 pm
content: Quote from: mnementh on August 19, 2021, 01:55:38 amActually, I did a "senior high" (Gymnasium in German, Lycee in French, IIRC) reunion 2 years ago. Me and 10 girls. All were as nice as when we parted ways 32 years earlier. That was an exceptional class.

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2021, 12:26:18 pm
content: Quote from: jonpaul on August 31, 2021, 09:08:59 pmQuoteThe urge to spy more and more on the users in all sorts of ways... No wonder why I had a difficult time trying to turn it off (about 10 - 30 firewall connections all to Microsoft and Azure in 2019 constantly) and even in Windows 10 Enterprise but ended up tracing and manually removing the telemetry and other similar modules and setting permissions on the empty folders and registry keys just incase it comes bundled again in some service pack/update sometime in the future.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2021, 06:30:12 am
content: And then there is Windows 10"S", which seems to be Microsoft's version of a dumbed down iPad!But wait! all is not lost!It is "a piece of piss" to upgrade it to W10 Home, so you can actually use it for something other than "surfing the 'Net", or playing Windows Store approved games, so all is butterflies & unicorns!Except it's not!!!The method touted far & wide, not least by "the big M" themselves, doesn't work, as dozens of people (sampled from many,many more) will attest on MS's own reporting page.I tried all the smart tricks, to no avail,so I now have a nice browsing machine, but no third party software will pass its virginal lips.The silly old iPad will do that job just as well!!!

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 13, 2021, 04:31:29 pm
content: In the future only linux / freeBSD for me. Windows 10onlyin a VM if needed.Windows 10S?Some companies are incredibly astute to lose many customers for some blind illusions.I am also very sorry for the big company I am working for now, there is no hope for my company to leave the MS boat.MS is everywhere from development tools to the stupid secretary outlook.And yes, starting with Office 365, Teams and all the MS cloud shit they are having currently huge security pain everywhere for everybody.For example, IT forced everybody to use a double identification with a phone to use teams and office...I mean I need to get my self approved with my phone just to use Excel?It's an orrific shit show, and IT has no other option than to roll down in the shit with MS.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2021, 05:30:42 pm
content: Yeah Azure SSO shit the bed today while we were in the middle of a critical migration. Fuck Microsoft

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2021, 07:45:53 pm
content: The whole Windows 10S thing has never made any sense at all to me. People choose Windows precisely because of the massive library of "legacy" software it supports. 10S is Windows in name only, it doesn't support any of the software so what is the compelling reason to use it? May as well just use an ipad or android tablet, at least then you get most of the popular mobile apps.

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 14, 2021, 12:25:15 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on August 14, 2021, 01:45:31 pmMore annoyingly, WSL 2 doesn't support mDNSResolver which after like forever MS has finally decided to support.And most annoyingly of all, WSL 2 can't use USB devices. Otherwise it would be useful with openocd. Thankfully Linux in a VM works spectacularly well.WSL 2 also makes running various python utilities a breeze - like InteractiveHtmlBom or KiPart. Installing python eggs or running setup scripts just never seems to work natively on Windows.The new terminal is usable. Not great compared to say iterm2 on Mac - but usable.PowerToys will swap caps lock and ctrl. Who uses caps lock anyway? The only reason I found to have it mapped to a key in the first place is so I can actually disable it after some asinine installer has turned caps lock on - and left it on.I miss MenuMeters. The real thing. MeterX... meh.TaskBarX with translucent task bar... works well and looks nice.Installers LOVE to drop shortcuts on my desktop. Why would I want application shortcuts on my desktop when I can pin them to the task bar, or add them to the launcher/tiles shown by the windows key?Windows' automatic GPU switching often doesn't work.The exact same python programs start up and run significantly faster in WSL 2 than natively on the host. Operating on data hosted by Windows no less. That says just about all I need to know about Windows' page caching, VM system, shared library mechanics, and scheduling.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2021, 05:23:27 am
content: WSL is entirely garbage. The file system abstraction is unusably slow and the permissions translation between the host and the guest is a fucked up nightmare. On top of all of that it has all the usual HyperV issues like clock skew and network failures. The new Windows terminal is pretty but has key mapping problems which make tmux a pain to use.Professionally I’m using Virtualbox and PuTTY and stock Debian 11.Don’t cross the beams!