Their arguments are horribly vague, to say the least. There's a difference between acting sensibly and willingly spreading myths.
Since when are omg-Vista-is-teh-uber people allowed under my administration?
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Their arguments are vague for a reason: They are biased towards their own software. NPoV doesn't sell products. While I disagree with the updating and no help available aspects, the other parts hold SOME truth.
Since when are omg-Linux-is-teh-uber people allowed to administrate? :P
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
I have always wondered why Microsoft is so concerned about Linux and its puny 3% market share. I really think Microsoft has much bigger competitors for their products. What is Microsoft afraid of?
A propaganda campaign against Linux for computer vendors seems pointless. People who want Linux in their computer will want Linux in their computer. They want it for a reason, and some propaganda is not going to change their mind. The rest of the people are content with whatever comes with the computer by default (iow. Windows).
The new linux kernel 2.6.31 is a bless because X Windows works a whole lot better and it was about damn time they did those changes.
However, the only compiled packages I've found so far have disabled dhcp for some reason, so I have to manually set my IP as static if I want to use that kernel, I don't have this problem if I start my computer with any other kernel. Very annoying. :/
i don't know much about operating systems... all i know is that vista is crap, windows 7 will be good, mac has no programs, and windows is best because it has most programs and games. i also know that some people use linux, which is an operating system made for programmers or other computer geniuses.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Warp wrote:
According to Microsoft itself, 96% of netbooks in the US ship with Windows XP. Yes, I can see how that can be a real source of worry for Microsoft.
96% sounds a bit high (there's alot of eeePCs shipped with Linux), and even then, this is only in the present. It's entirely possible that they're worried that Linux netbooks are going to take market share.
Also, how come you trust this statistic but not their "Windows is better than Linux" presentation?
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
all i know is that vista is crap, windows 7 will be good
Have you actually used it? As far as I can say, it's only a "bit" better than Vista. It's become a little more colorful (I'm waiting for the day that thing looks like the computer interfaces they use in CSI) and there are even more "easy to use" interfaces which try to keep you away from getting stuff done (from an admin's point of view, that is).
The new linux kernel 2.6.31 is a bless because X Windows works a whole lot better and it was about damn time they did those changes.
However, the only compiled packages I've found so far have disabled dhcp for some reason, so I have to manually set my IP as static if I want to use that kernel, I don't have this problem if I start my computer with any other kernel. Very annoying. :/
Shouldn't have anything to do with your kernel.
emerge dhcpcd
Also, why not compile your own kernel?
FWIW, running 2.6.31 now, I am having extremely inferior performance in X. Other things were updated so it likely is not a kernel issue, but X CPU is spiking like it never has before. Compositing is choppy and CPU-bound now, almost like it's being done in software, but acceleration is definately working. Haven't had time to investigate yet...
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
ShinyDoofy wrote:
Used XP a long, long time and it worked fairly well (had to reinstall it ~15 times, but it got a little better with service packs). What I didn't like about XP that it magically got slower and slower as time went by for no apparent reason.
I took this machine, wiped it clean, installed a fresh Windows XP on it, along with a few emulators and games for them. Only thing done with the machine was play those games inside emulators (NES, SNES, DMG).
The machine just kept getting slower and slower. Nothing should be changing about it, I'm not installing anything, no config files are being modified all over.
I've concluded Windows has the following function in it:
void waaaaait()
{
volatile unsigned long long i = 0;
while (i < daysSinceInstalled()) { i++; }
}
Which is called within every major function.
I think this is in place so whenever Microsoft releases a new OS, and you go to test it out on a PC in the store, it always seems faster than what you have at home, no matter how much more powerful your PC at home may be.
ShinyDoofy wrote:
After painfully realizing that x86_64 is just destined to fail if you want a 64bit-only system (sound, flash, media playback with 32bit codecs, other shit), I switched back to 32bit and haven't been happier since.
I've been running an x86-64 distro since 2004. I installed a 32 bit Firefox an a 32 bit MPlayer just to deal with the problems you described (and for developing ZSNES, I have 32 bit compilers), everything else is 64 bit, and I couldn't be happier.
nineko wrote:
To be honest, I really miss MS-DOS... And I doubt I'm the only one.
You're not.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Warp wrote:
When playing with ALSA, the volume control works, but sometimes the sound is noisy.
Turn your PCM down from max.
This is a deficiency in ALSA. I don't know what's wrong with them, but the volume controls in it don't go high enough, and the highest settings distort. Installing OSSv4 on the same machine gives volume controls which go even higher which never distort.
I recently upgraded my brothers computer. He had a 4 year old Linux install. The upgrade switched from OSS 3 in the Kernel to ALSA, and he complained about the sound being too quiet, he couldn't hear people whispering in any of his movies even if he had his speakers and software sound controls on max. I installed OSS v4, and problem solved.
Warp wrote:
Johannes wrote:
It seems Ubuntu is not the right distro for me. I'll try OpenSUSE, Fedora and Debian.
AFAIK Ubuntu is based on Debian, so the latter might not offer you anything that the former doesn't already. (Never used either, though.)
Ubuntu seems to be Debian made a bit more use friendly, but also made quite a bit more broken. If you don't need the extra friendliness, but want the extra stability or sanity, I suggest Debian over Ubuntu.
Johannes wrote:
Bumping up this thing to say that I take back my whining about GNU/Linux and that Arch is awesome. It's my main OS now.
Calling it GNU/Linux is an insult to the Linux developers.
If you're in the camp that believes an OS is more than a Kernel, then calling it GNU/Linux is an insult to everyone else.
Where's X? Where's GNOME or KDE? Where's OpenOffice? Mozilla? All the other major programs? Qt?
In fact the GNU coreutils that the name is derived from is the least amount of work involved. You can rewrite all their utilities inside a week easy. Besides from power users, no one even uses their utilities. Some even drop them in favor of BSD ones, or BusyBox.
Take credit for <0.001% of everything installed, and putting your name first? It's an insult. Do we call it zlib/Windows? zlib/Mac OS X?
An egotistical moron who can't figure out life had a hard time writing a couple of small command line utilities, and couldn't really do anything else, feels he needs to tack his accomplishments onto something which he feels finally achieved his dream even though he had nothing to do with it.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
I've been running an x86-64 distro since 2004. I installed a 32 bit Firefox an a 32 bit MPlayer just to deal with the problems you described (and for developing ZSNES, I have 32 bit compilers), everything else is 64 bit, and I couldn't be happier.
64 bit is great, but I find it's less of a hassle to run a 32 bit browser as well. A few plugins I'm forced to use are only 32 bits so I'm stuck with it.
Nach wrote:
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Warp wrote:
When playing with ALSA, the volume control works, but sometimes the sound is noisy.
Turn your PCM down from max.
This is a deficiency in ALSA. I don't know what's wrong with them, but the volume controls in it don't go high enough, and the highest settings distort. Installing OSSv4 on the same machine gives volume controls which go even higher which never distort.
I recently upgraded my brothers computer. He had a 4 year old Linux install. The upgrade switched from OSS 3 in the Kernel to ALSA, and he complained about the sound being too quiet, he couldn't hear people whispering in any of his movies even if he had his speakers and software sound controls on max. I installed OSS v4, and problem solved.
I also run into this, but it only applies to the PCM gain. Set that to 80% or so, but set the master volume to 100..... or maybe it's the other way around. I've got my settings set perfectly so I don't mess with them.
But yes, ALSA is not the glorious thing some make it out to be. And the API sucks.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
DeHackEd wrote:
Nach wrote:
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Warp wrote:
When playing with ALSA, the volume control works, but sometimes the sound is noisy.
Turn your PCM down from max.
This is a deficiency in ALSA. I don't know what's wrong with them, but the volume controls in it don't go high enough, and the highest settings distort. Installing OSSv4 on the same machine gives volume controls which go even higher which never distort.
I recently upgraded my brothers computer. He had a 4 year old Linux install. The upgrade switched from OSS 3 in the Kernel to ALSA, and he complained about the sound being too quiet, he couldn't hear people whispering in any of his movies even if he had his speakers and software sound controls on max. I installed OSS v4, and problem solved.
I also run into this, but it only applies to the PCM gain. Set that to 80% or so, but set the master volume to 100..... or maybe it's the other way around. I've got my settings set perfectly so I don't mess with them.
No reason to, just install OSS v4, and use something which works properly, instead of something which forces you to lower the volume which is pretty low to begin with.
DeHackEd wrote:
But yes, ALSA is not the glorious thing some make it out to be. And the API sucks.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
I haven't noticed any slowdown with Windows XP, but I have noticed that disk usage grows in completely normal usage, something which doesn't seem to happen with Linux so easily.
I don't do much with XP nowadays other than play games and a bit of surfing (although the majority of surfing I do on the Linux side). Sometimes try some program. Anyways, completely ordinary normal Windows usage as a gaming platform. Yet once or twice a year I have to perform a serious cleanup of the Windows partition because it tends to get full of trash.
Windows itself, and a bunch of third-party programs (such as the JVM) like to update themselves and not remove temporary files nor old files. Tons of programs like to create temporary files which they don't clean up afterwards, and which Windows' own disk cleaning utility won't remove. Many programs want to put their data files in the C drive (in the "My Documents" folder) even though the program itself has been installed in the D drive, so even when I install a program on D, it still ends up filling C. Naturally many such programs won't remove all those files after uninstallation. Likewise web browsers really like to fill up the C drive with files they won't remove afterwards. And so on.
If you perform a thorough cleaning of your Windows drive eg. once a year, not only using Windows' own cleaning utilities, but searching for obsolete files manually (there are very good tutorials on the net about this subject), you can often free up several gigabytes for better use.
I haven't noticed such a phenomenon in Linux. It doesn't "grow" like that over time. My Linux partition isn't particularly fuller now than it was when I installed it, save for the libraries and programs I have deliberately installed over time. Also programs use my home directory for their data and temporary files and thus removing them is much easier because you don't have to search in cryptic system directories for them. (Also files in your home directory are completely safe to remove in the sense that you know that removing them won't break the system. This is unlike in Windows, where it's always anybody's guess whether removing a file or folder eg. from C:\windows will break something.)
if you're referring to the KB[somenumber].LOG files, those are actually some of the most clearly labelled files in there.
They're each named after one of the windows "automatic update" patches, and if you google for the KB[somenumber], you'll find an article from microsoft describing the issue and the fix in great detail as the top result.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
So uhh, what was that huge list supposed to serve?
How messy the folder is. I thought the
tag would limit the size of the box and add a scroll bar though.
upthorn: I was mostly referring to how random images, random dlls, logs and random programs are shattered around. Oh, and there are also a bunch of folders named like $hf_mig$ or $NtUninstallKB968816_WM9$, which were hidden for some reason.
I should know better than to get into a Linux vs GNU/Linux discussion, but this post is so utterly wrong I cannot let it slide:
Nach wrote:
Johannes wrote:
Bumping up this thing to say that I take back my whining about GNU/Linux and that Arch is awesome. It's my main OS now.
Calling it GNU/Linux is an insult to the Linux developers.
If you're in the camp that believes an OS is more than a Kernel, then calling it GNU/Linux is an insult to everyone else.
Nice way to put your foot in your mouth for our amusement :-)
You have it completely backwards: "Linux" is the name of kernel (derived from "Linus' Unix"). So, "f you're in the camp that believes an OS is more than a Kernel", the name "Linux" insults everyone but the kernel developers because you are lumping X, GNOME, KDE and everything else under the name of the kernel... This is especially true since the kernel alone would be all but useless without all those other utilities.
Nach wrote:
Where's GNOME
A GNU project, all the way. It was started by the Free Software Foundation because KDE was flirting with the (then) non-GPL Qt.
Nach wrote:
In fact the GNU coreutils that the name is derived from is the least amount of work involved. [...]Take credit for <0.001% of everything installed, and putting your name first?
By your logic, "Windows" should actually be called "NT" instead, and "Mac OS X" should be "XNU" instead: those are the names of their kernels, after all. But regardless, the "zlib" part is such a horrible, horrible analogy it can be dismissed out of hand: comparing all the GNU software typically bundled in GNU/Linux distributions to zlib is like saying that New York is 1 mile away from San Francisco...
