Computer operating systems

[myglaren]

I do agree with that as far as it goes and there are some hardware manufacturers who steadfastly refuse to provide engineering details to allow Linux developers to produce drivers for that hardware.

HP are generally good with Linux support. Canon the opposite but I have heard of some recent Canon printers working out of the box.

Despite Linus' widely published rant, I have always had excellent results with NVidia graphics. Intel graphics work well too but there was some nonsense on a Packard Bell laptop that would only work at 800 x 600.

It is quite reassuring how much intrinsic hardware support there is with Linux though.

[Ben82]

I used to often switch back and forth between a windows install and a Linux one. Generally when one would get frustrating enough I could just wipe and install the other.
Also did originally use Firefox back when it was called Phoenix, and Thunderbird when it was called Minotaur. So porting settings etc was easy across platforms.

Used various distros, red hat 4 was the first one (way before red hat went commercial and fedora came along) since then had used Slackware, gentoo and a few others. Technically I use CentOS on a daily basis as its my local dev server.

In my opinion, there is no decent alternative (or hasn't been when I've looked previously) for the Win7 Superbar, especially with the 3rd party "Bins" upgrade. And these days I have no real incentive to look at changing as Win7 doesn't get on my nerves as half as much as xp used to.

[spider]

* refrains from complaining about the Win8 'start' page * that does not properly work with my upgraded 7 machine. I found a third party start menu anyway.

'nix for servings, Windows (preferably XP or 7 now 2K is too old and unsupported) for desktop use for me.

Talking of DOS, was it just me who noticed that the basic 'install' for say XP / 2K (until we got to Vista or 7) had not changed since at least MSDOS v5 ? , traditional blue screen with white / grey (gray!) text install...

[Ben82]

Talking of DOS, was it just me who noticed that the basic 'install' for say XP / 2K (until we got to Vista or 7) had not changed since at least MSDOS v5 ? , traditional blue screen with white / grey (gray!) text install...

Not just you

[CitroJim]

Talking of DOS, was it just me who noticed that the basic 'install' for say XP / 2K (until we got to Vista or 7) had not changed since at least MSDOS v5 ? , traditional blue screen with white / grey (gray!) text install...

Not just you

And I can show you something in Win 7 that dates right back to Windows 3.11 if I try hard enough...

[Ben82]

Talking of DOS, was it just me who noticed that the basic 'install' for say XP / 2K (until we got to Vista or 7) had not changed since at least MSDOS v5 ? , traditional blue screen with white / grey (gray!) text install...

Not just you

And I can show you something in Win 7 that dates right back to Windows 3.11 if I try hard enough...

Depends on how hard you want to try since it's not that difficult... Notepad is pretty much identical, "About" windows are mostly the same, Character Map still exists, you could say the Run window is unchanged.

SysVInit probably has lasted a lot longer than the textmode install for xp.... At least alternatives like Upstart are finally gaining traction with other distros though.

[Xaccers]

Urgh talking of W8, I got to install Office 2013 yesterday.
Having to have a Live account to download it is bad enough, but like W8 it looks bloody awful!

[Citroening]

Been using Windows 8 for two days now, and it's starting to annoy me!

Very tempted to downgrade to Windows 7...!

[Xaccers]

Been using Windows 8 for two days now, and it's starting to annoy me!

Very tempted to downgrade to Windows 7...!

I had to sort out a remote access problem for a user running W8 on his own laptop today. I very nearly threw it out the window!
The company uses a self signed certificate for the https connection, so visiting the website gives a "this could be dangerous, are you sure?" type message and even if you click you're sure it's safe, it won't run the active X remote access software.
So, you need to manually install the certificate. Dead easy on XP and Vista.
Windows 7 is a bit more complicated, you have to run IE as admin, so you just right click on the shortcut to IE, then right click on the IE shortcut in the menu that pops up and select run as admin. Then visit the site, view the certificate and install it, close IE, start it normally and it all works.
Windows 8? Bloody hell what were they thinking with that tablet view of IE???
So you tap the spanner and select desktop version. That gives you the ability to run it as admin (there probably is something that lets you run it in tablet mode but I couldn't find it) so you can install the certificate.
Right, so certificate installed, lets try tablet mode for IE. Nope, certificate not installed. Hang on, the certificate was INSTALLED, it isn't software specific, all browsers on the computer should recognise it! Nope, tablet IE didn't want to know.
As for the wifi network list, does it really have to take up that much screen space???
Without a touch screen that computer would have gone out the window.
Hopefully the rumours are true and MS are trying to get W9 ready for the end of the year and it will be more like W7.

[CitroJim]

Been using Windows 8 for two days now, and it's starting to annoy me!

Very tempted to downgrade to Windows 7...!

Upgrade to Ubuntu Linux... You know it makes sense

Far better than the stuff Mr Gates tries to foist onto you...

Interesting on W9 Xac. So W8 is another Vista or Windows ME then?

There's a pattern here of Windows releases: good, bad, good, bad, good, bad...

[Xaccers]

It follows the Star Trek films pattern

[myglaren]

Been using Windows 8 for two days now, and it's starting to annoy me!

Very tempted to downgrade to Windows 7...!

Upgrade to Ubuntu Linux... You know it makes sense

Seconded!

Far better than the stuff Mr Gates tries to foist onto you...

Interesting on W9 Xac. So W8 is another Vista or Windows ME then?

There's a pattern here of Windows releases: good, bad, good, bad, good, bad...

Crap, crapper, crappest, unbelievably crap.

[myglaren]

Incidentally, spotted a bit about the Chromebook Pixel the other day:

One thing that the Chromebook Pixel really brings home is how crap normal laptops have become. Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more? No wonder the PC business isn't doing well, when they stick to just churning out more crappy stuff and think that "full HD" (aka 1080p) is somehow the epitome of greatness.

Torvalds asks 'Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more?

[CitroJim]

Torvalds asks 'Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more?

Quite. I'm staggered at how slow and pedantic modern PC and OSs seem to be... That's not progress or innovative at all.. It's rubbish.

I run Unbutu on some quite (in PC terms) elderly hardware. It flies and I've yet to find anything it can't do that Windows can. In fact most, if not all, things it does better, simpler, slicker and above all a lot faster...

[Citroening]

Hmm have thought about Linux especially as a couple of you have mentioned it before...

Seems that iTunes can't run on it through, or Photoshop which is a bit of a pain.

Any thoughts on partitioning the HDD to have Windows and Linux? It's large enough, 1 TB...