View Full Version : Corenominal, the Crunchbang creator had gone Microsoft Windows!
Chanath
June 23rd, 2015, 07:09 AM
Corenominal, the Crunchbang creator had gone Microsoft Windows! It maybe why he had dumped Crunchbang...
https://corenominal.org/blog/switching-from-linux-to-windows
(https://corenominal.org/blog/switching-from-linux-to-windows)
fkkroundabout
June 23rd, 2015, 01:35 PM
shocker
he says it's about convenience ? to be honest i don't find windows any more or less convenient than linux, for a personal computer, but i feel more favorably towards the philosophies and community of linux
edit: so i never use windows on my own computer !!!
buzzingrobot
June 23rd, 2015, 01:44 PM
He published the 'four essential freedoms" of FOSS from gnu.org. The only one that has any relevance to me is "freedom to run the program as you wish...". The other three focus on studying/using source code, redistribution, and modifications. I've never had a reason or an interest to do any of that. Those freedoms are, effectively, developer-only.
That's why emphasizing the "freedom" in FOSS for 30 years has done little or nothing to expand its user base.
People are equally free to try new software on Windows or OS X as they are to try new software on Linux. That's all that matters to most people.
mastablasta
June 23rd, 2015, 07:12 PM
well when you need desktop stuff to just work and install with no fuss then it seem widnwos is the way to go. no more botched updates of drivers and even if you do have them there is restore points. plenty if not all opensource programs have windows version. there are also closed source ones that definitelly have windows versions.
no silly showstopping bugs that have "won't fix" status despite many people reporting them and complaining about them.
i saw some terrible performance o PC's under widnows but i saw more of them running wonderfully without a hitch.
my fathers PC (fulyl linux compatible and linux prelaoded) just had some freezing issues. seems like proprietary drivers were not loading, not loaded or something. not sure what update made that happen. anyway i told my bro to just install fglrx from repo. it got to a blank screen on boot. ok so he knew how to solve it and remove the drivers (he is using Linux at work) . my father wouldn't and would be stuck with no way to do his work. i plan to give it a closer look of what was wrong (i see no report about problems with this GPU chip) - but in windows:
- one would get at least VESA access
- i never had a problem at general desktop performance after loading proprietary drivers in windows.
- in windows update usually won't overrun drivers that are installed and needed to run the PC smoothly.
- even if for some strange reason windows update decided to touch the GPU drivers it would have a reasoter point - you woudl just restore to previous version and not load offending update.
no OS is perfect. windows has it's flaws, but it's just so convenient. even software there usually works as intended. i installed ET on linux -it installed well, but no sound, i installed same version on windows side of the disk runs with no issues.
i am still running xp and thinking if i could actually pull off a win 8 on this PC. it might be that it is too old (legacy drievrs, single core PC etc.), so maybe it will get Linux soon or at least as dual boot (i have 500 Gb partition of free disk space since i can't decide what to put on it). but the new PC when i have the money to buy it seems like it will run windows again. it's just less things to worry about. i don't want to fight with the OS i just want to run programs on it and do some work.
Chanath
June 23rd, 2015, 07:35 PM
I've been staying away from Windows for quite long time, more than 5 years, but maybe I'd buy a laptop with Win 10, when it comes around. I do hope Ubuntu would be even better by that time, so I won't need to buy that Win 10 laptop.
pretty_whistle
June 23rd, 2015, 11:57 PM
If I bought a laptop with windows on it I'd install ubuntu on it, case closed.
I can't understand wanting windows over linux. Go figure.
wildmanne39
June 24th, 2015, 04:45 AM
I almost never use windows I have version 8 but when I do boot it, it spends forever updating and it annoys me to no end. I only boot it once every few months for my wife.
yetimon_64
June 24th, 2015, 04:50 AM
If I bought a laptop with windows on it I'd install ubuntu on it, case closed.
I can't understand wanting windows over linux. Go figure.
I sort of understand where he is coming from having just bought a new HP laptop with hybrid graphics. Definitely designed for (and supplied with) Windows and a "flamin' nightmare" to set up with Ubuntu 14.04. I feel sorry for any new starter or Windows user who tries to dual boot or set up Ubuntu on such hardware.
It "just works" for him was noted, which I have to agree is nice to have happen, and is very attractive for busy people (developers etc) or inexperienced users just starting out.
It is only my long experience (approaching the 8 year mark) with Ubuntu and other distos, and a lot of online information from sites like this and askubuntu etc that finally got me through my recent nightmare set up. The Nvidia GTX 850M graphics card needed xorg edgers PPA to even be seen by 14.04. I initially set it up and as suggested in the ppa notes let it update all its packages on my system ... not a smart move, never again will I do that ... ended up in a dependency hell that had me having to reinstall. Now whenever that ppa is activated to check for any updates (done manually naturally) the other packages that the ppa would normally update get "pinned" in Synaptic until the ppa is then disabled when they can be unpinned again for the normal system to look after. A big difference from Windows usage of that same hardware. Obviously being able to spend "megabucks" on driver development helps Windows, and Linux will always lag in that respect being "open".
In the end it is the flexibility/freedom within Linux that keep me here along with the very helpful "community" aspect. Having just gotten back on a Windows install since Win 7's release (the price of the upgrade turned me as a "dual-booter" with Vista into a "Linux only booter" at that time) I am finding Win8.1 fascinating in a strange sort of way, I still use Ubuntu/Linux extensively and like it, but am finding the advances in Windows very interesting.
As someone who initially disliked unity to now have to admit to liking the Metro interface as an option in W8.1 is definitely "strange". I suspect it is actually my perseverance on Unity that has let me adjust to Metro so easily this time. Seems the "violent" design changes in Unity at the time sort of prepared me for the Metro set up, it wasn't as daunting taking to Metro after going through the Unity switch over. I'm very impressed at the improvement in Unity for customizations in 14.04 even if it doesn't get back to the same level of customizability of the old gnome2 desktop.
I'm seeing both systems now as being pretty good, my usage preference still is Linux, dual booting is "the best of both worlds" in my opinion. Mind you, I notice in the article he is still using Linux on his servers ... smart move. ;) Cheers, Yeti.
Edit: I also like the fact I can "give the finger" at Win 8 :lol: ... the fingerprint reader works nicely on Windows for logging in (note I even make it the finger used in a rather rude gesture, ;-)). Can't find anywhere in Ubuntu that recognizes that feature, though everything else seems to work (apart from the nvidia graphics noted above needing special attention).
Bucky Ball
June 24th, 2015, 06:30 AM
I sort of understand where he is coming from having just bought a new HP laptop with hybrid graphics. Definitely designed for (and supplied with) Windows and a "flamin' nightmare" to set up with Ubuntu 14.04. I feel sorry for any new starter or Windows user who tries to dual boot or set up Ubuntu on such hardware.
Yep, we see problems with hybrid graphics here on a regular basis.
On the other hand, I just bought a HP Stream 11 and installed Xubuntu 14.04 without a hitch and it 'just works'. No issues at all, but no hybrid graphics. The hybrid graphics seem to be a hurdle that is not yet 'automagic' for Ubuntu-eers.
yetimon_64
June 24th, 2015, 07:09 AM
Yep, we see problems with hybrid graphics here on a regular basis. ....
Yeah, plenty of those threads sure helped me sort my mess out, all working beautifully now thanks mostly to this forum and the advice given. :) I hope 16.04 when it comes out has the support for these graphics natively, I do prefer to stick to an LTS release generally.
This model HP is the Envy 17". Saw it advertised in the shop as "Nvidia GTX 850M" no mention of Hybrid graphics etc. But of course they don't need to tell the whole story when Windows is used by the purchaser, no need to as it is designed for Win. I got a hell of a shock when booting in and finding it using Intel graphics and not even a single entry in the "Additional drivers" section for Nvidia. My fault really, not enough research on the product knowing I'd be using in on Ubuntu.
With the time I've spent here over the last 5 years I knew pretty well that being nvidia, that xorg edgers would likely have it covered. Just can't wait till the 349 or higher version numbers for the nvidia cards hit the repositories for easier management etc. The next LTS release is when I hope it gets sorted out by and everything gets back to the usual "automagic" state.
mastablasta
June 24th, 2015, 07:31 AM
I almost never use windows I have version 8 but when I do boot it, it spends forever updating and it annoys me to no end. I only boot it once every few months for my wife.
you shouldn't do that. :P
MS actually advises against such massive updates. as I found out recently...
Windows 7 wasn't used in 2 months and I decided to do the update. 85 waiting (that's without AV, firewall, Firefox, Thnderbird, Filezilla, Libreoffice....). anyway it crashed on reboot or rather failed to boot. had to pull the battery out, boot into safe mode, reboot and finally ta-da. basically later I read that if you update every month this doesn't happen, but if you have a lot of updates at the same time it might happen. but I guess restore points should cover these kinds of cases. not sure of they do.
anyway yeah it takes quite long to update. I do not quite understand why it takes so long to download, but I guess it's because they lack mirrors nearby?!
kagashe
June 24th, 2015, 07:39 AM
Yep, we see problems with hybrid graphics here on a regular basis.
The hybrid graphics seem to be a hurdle that is not yet 'automagic' for Ubuntu-eers.Is there any hope to resolve it soon (say on Linux Kernel 4.1)?
I use Windows to file the Annual Income Tax Return because although the uploading the return file (xml) to the server works on Ubuntu, signing the file with Digital Signature does not.
Kamalakar
Chanath
June 24th, 2015, 07:47 AM
I can understand having to use Windows at work, but completely dropping Debian even at home doesn't look serious/honorable, after pulling lot of users to Crunchbang for more than 10 years and then dumping a group of Linux users to Windows.
Bucky Ball
June 24th, 2015, 09:54 AM
Is there any hope to resolve it soon (say on Linux Kernel 4.1)?
I use Windows to file the Annual Income Tax Return because although the uploading the return file (xml) to the server works on Ubuntu, signing the file with Digital Signature does not.
Kamalakar
Urm, no idea about the first part and unsure what the second part has to do with graphics cards or drivers. Maybe I'm missing something ... :-k
Don't hesitate to post a thread about your digital signing issue in the support forums. Back to the adventures of Corenominal ... :)
kagashe
June 24th, 2015, 01:09 PM
Don't hesitate to post a thread about your digital signing issue in the support forums. Back to the adventures of Corenominal ... :)I had posted here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2244867).
Kamalakar
buzzingrobot
June 24th, 2015, 01:51 PM
I can understand having to use Windows at work, but completely dropping Debian even at home doesn't look serious/honorable, after pulling lot of users to Crunchbang for more than 10 years and then dumping a group of Linux users to Windows.
This has nothing at do with being "honorable" or "serious". Sorry, but I always find this notion that use of one kind of software make that user ethically superior to be annoying and offensive.
He explicitly said he's continuing to use Debian on his servers. "Completely dropping Debian..." didn't happen.
He's one user who created a Debian spin that he made available and that he maintained until he decided not to maintain it. Some of those users are working on a follow-on spin. People who use spins that depend on a single individual are, obviously, *depending on a single individual*.
How, in any sense, can his choice to use Windows, made after he stopped maintaining Crunchbang, be seen as "...dumping a group of Linux users to Windows..."? Are they sheep?
malspa
June 24th, 2015, 03:51 PM
People who use spins that depend on a single individual are, obviously, *depending on a single individual*.
Yep. It's great that those distros are out there (I enjoyed running CrunchBang), but they seem to be here today, gone tomorrow, and that happens a little too often for my tastes.
Like Corenominal, I'm kinda curious about Windows these days -- haven't run it at home since XP, and I feel like I'd be lost if I booted into Windows right now.
I'd play around with it if I got my hands on a Windows computer (a very inexpensive one), just to re-familiarize myself with the operating system. I'm not sure how long it would be before I wiped the drive and installed Linux on it, though. When I quit running Windows here, it kinda felt like the handcuffs came off...
QIII
June 24th, 2015, 04:13 PM
I'm not sure why people talk about "switching". It's not a marriage.
I use Windows, Ubuntu and Fedora along with puttering around with other distros.
I don't have to cleave to any exclusively.
night_sky2
June 25th, 2015, 02:46 AM
I am a fan of Microsoft's products though I also have great love for Linux (especially the Ubuntu family).
I have a Windows 8.1 laptop, I use Hotmail, OneDrive, Skype and MSN news regularly (all available on Xubuntu).
I can understand his feelings. Windows 7 and 8.1 are very nice operating systems. You can use pretty much every open source apps available on Linux (Firefox, Chromium, VLC, BleachBit, LibreOffice, QbitTorrent ect ect.) and much more. There is no limitation in terms of apps and hardware. This is a big selling point. But the drawback is that Windows itself isn't free and not at all open source. MS also has it's own corporate agenda.
Copper Bezel
June 25th, 2015, 04:02 AM
As does Canonical.
But it's just a balance of available features and workflows for me. I'll definitely want to try Win10 on my desktop when it's released.
mikodo
June 25th, 2015, 06:41 AM
When I quit running Windows here, it kinda felt like the handcuffs came off...
Ya, me too! :) My first 6 months with a computer was with vista. Seemed all I did with it was try to keep the nasties away. lol A casual acquaintance, who's father is a professor in Comp Science in our University, was using linux and suggested I learn it instead of windows. I'm very happy he mentioned it.
On Corenominal and windows. He paid his dues here. I don't think he should be slammed for exercising choice. He's obviously very computer savvy, and from what I read in the article, is doing fine with windows. Good on him. We should wish him our best.
d-cosner
June 25th, 2015, 01:15 PM
I can sort of understand why the guy switched to Windows. I have looked at Windows 10 Consumer Preview myself recently. From an employment standpoint there certainly is no choice right now. Windows in my opinion is easier in the sense that it always has hardware support and most specialty apps are written to run in it. Windows 10 does invade my privacy but so do many other things these days and it is a loosing battle. In all honesty, if I were to see desktop support jobs appearing in my area I would switch back to Windows.
I used to make good money working in IT as Desktop Support and I liked NT 4. When the plant closed it's doors all the IT jobs just dried up in my area... I began running Linux because I could no longer afford new software or hardware. In the back of my mind I thought Linux would become more popular with business but after all these years I can see that it's never going to happen at least in the US. Linux is just too slow to respond to the consumers needs in my opinion. That sound harsh but but it's the reality of the situation.
A very good friend of mine is going to try running Windows 10, he has been a Ubuntu user for a long time. My friend is attracted to Windows 10 because it will be a rolling release and that is something he has wanted for a long time. Microsoft makes lots of mistakes, there is no question about that! The one thing they do right is deliver what they advertise. Microsoft has convergence, a rolling release, and are just about ready to ship final product to consumers. For all of the faults I find with Windows I can't deny the fact that they are delivering new desirable technology to consumers.
I do prefer Linux, it has the advantages I value most. The thing is though, businesses are not going to wait for Linux to catch up. Linux distros waste time playing catch up with Windows and Apple rather than develop their own unique feature sets to attract consumers. Linux has some amazing features, don't get me wrong but they are not what the business sector wants or needs on the desktop. I have seen businesses use the backwards compatibility features in Windows for example. They spend thousands of dollars on software and simply want to continue to use it.
Linus said in a speech once that one of the things that held Linux back on the desktop was having to recompile everything for each new release. A business does not want to spend time or money reinstalling an OS on their systems to have new software or features. The last factory I worked for still ran DOS 6 on their machines! It worked, there was no security issues because they were not connected to the outside world and it was not costing them money.New machines came with new versions of Windows but still ran the exact same software.
Windows has been on the desktop 10 years before Linux existed, we tend to forget that. Microsoft has the resources to quickly deliver new technology to the consumer where we wait years just to try and catch up. Linux meets my needs and I personally like it better than Windows but I can see why someone might switch back. As much as I would like to see Linux on the desktop in the main stream it is never going to happen.
montag dp
June 25th, 2015, 05:17 PM
My reasons for avoiding Windows whenever possible are:
1) It's just slow. I dual boot Windows on my laptop and everything is slower there, even my own programs that I compile myself. It also takes forever to boot and shut down.
2) Updates and virus scans are annoying.
3) It's much more of a pain to get the programming tools that I use all the time (i.e. python and extensions like matplotlib and qt; gcc; etc.).
4) Forgot to mention before I edited this post, but the terminal is so much better in Linux. But cygwin kind of fixes that in Windows.
I still keep it around because sometimes it is needed or useful, but I don't like to use it.
Copper Bezel
June 26th, 2015, 12:56 AM
Linux distros waste time playing catch up with Windows and Apple rather than develop their own unique feature sets to attract consumers. Linux has some amazing features, don't get me wrong but they are not what the business sector wants or needs on the desktop. I have seen businesses use the backwards compatibility features in Windows for example. They spend thousands of dollars on software and simply want to continue to use it.
Business desktops generally need their big, expensive proprietary apps written for the platform - that's the first criterion, and utterly impossible for the Linux world to address. Anything any distro could possibly do about it would be playing catch-up. And increasingly, businesses are moving their PCs to the server room, using thin client workstations and local VMs, which simplifies an awful lot of administrative problems. At present, Windows is leagues ahead in that game.
Meanwhile, there are quite an awful lot of features that appeared in Ubuntu long before they were implemented on Windows or Mac, even if it's little things like search-and-launch that actually works or tabs in the file browser.
And of course businesses have inertia with whatever software they adopt. Users very rarely really fully understand the tools they're using. Switching software requires re-training and always means a lot of complaining and awkward transition periods. It's an immense cost to upgrade that probably exceeds the cost of the software as often as not.
The present Linux implementations have grown up on home desktops, servers, and task-built enterprise workstations, like the ones Google uses for all its desktop machines. It's definitely still doing the things it's good at, and that's true of Ubuntu, too. I mean, I'm not quite sure who Gnome is trying to target these days, but it's all in ways that tend not to affect Unity very directly; the touch implementations of Unity may or may not take off, but they're becoming a testbed for things that will be very nice to have on the desktop.
Hell, if you want "playing catch-up" ... technically, that's what Snappy will be by the time it hits the LTS. But I certainly wouldn't want to opt not to have transactional delta updates and applications with permissions just because Android has had them for, like, most of a decade and is making everyone else look bad. = /
night_sky2
June 26th, 2015, 02:33 AM
1) It's just slow. I dual boot Windows on my laptop and everything is slower there, even my own programs that I compile myself. It also takes forever to boot and shut down.
Strange. I use Windows 8.1 on a Dell Inspiron 1525 with 4GB of RAM and an Intel 2.00GHz proc and it's really fast and responsive.
Boot time has been improved in Windows 8 since they introduced this interesting feature called ''Fast Startup''.
See: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-windows-8-hybrid-shutdown-fast-boot-feature-works/
2) Updates and virus scans are annoying.
I think it depends on your set up. To me, Windows update is set to download updates automatically in the background
(which I hardly notice) and install them when I turn off my computer. This makes the whole process easier.
The only problem I have is when you make a clean install of Windows and has like 200+ updates to run. This can be long indeed.
I use Windows Defender for my antivirus, which pretty much takes care of itself.
But there are some (free) antivirus programs in which you can schedule the date and hour of scans for convenience.
All in all, there are ways to optimize performance in Windows as in Linux. ;)
yetimon_64
June 26th, 2015, 04:37 AM
...
Boot time has been improved in Windows 8 since they introduced this interesting feature called ''Fast Startup''.
See: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-windows-8-hybrid-shutdown-fast-boot-feature-works/...
Just a note about "fast startup" after having just set up a dual boot with Ubuntu 14.04 on a Win 8.1 laptop.
Fast Startup has to be disabled in Windows for dual booters with Linux. Apparently it is a form of hibernation not a full shutdown and a "full" startup.
However, instead of closing the kernel session, Windows hibernates the kernel session. Then, the hardware session shuts down normally.
I believe not shutting the fast startup option in Windows and booting into a Linux install can corrupt the Windows install. Only works safely if you are on a "Windows only" machine. Take note of that if you are dual booting and have that setting on in Windows.
When that setting is disabled on this laptop Windows is as "slow as a wet week" at starting and shutting down. I don't fancy not being able to use Linux at all so it gets turned off. I've always had the impression that MS believes it is the only OS worth using on the planet and tries very nearly anything it can to keep it that way. Having said that I do like Win 8.1 but am fully aware of such pitfalls the company who profits from it puts in the way of other systems.
Regarding corenomial, from mikodo's post ...
On Corenominal and windows. He paid his dues here. I don't think he should be slammed for exercising choice. He's obviously very computer savvy, and from what I read in the article, is doing fine with windows. Good on him. We should wish him our best.
A big +1 from me. Crunchbang will continue in some community developed form, his work there over the years was impressive even from an ubuntu/debian users view of the open source world at work. The community that developed around his distro put out some good information that at times even helped my usage of Ubuntu and Debian. Defiitely, "All the best to Corenominal" from me.
Cheers, yeti.
montag dp
June 26th, 2015, 06:42 AM
Strange. I use Windows 8.1 on a Dell Inspiron 1525 with 4GB of RAM and an Intel 2.00GHz proc and it's really fast and responsive.
Boot time has been improved in Windows 8 since they introduced this interesting feature called ''Fast Startup''.
See: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-windows-8-hybrid-shutdown-fast-boot-feature-works/I have Windows 7, so it doesn't have that fast startup trick. Apart from the startup/shutdown time, have you tried dual booting Linux on your machine and comparing how fast the same program runs? For me it's no contest, Linux is just faster. This is especially noticeable when I compile and run one of my own programs, which are always in the scientific category and CPU-intensive.
I think it depends on your set up. To me, Windows update is set to download updates automatically in the background
(which I hardly notice) and install them when I turn off my computer. This makes the whole process easier.
The only problem I have is when you make a clean install of Windows and has like 200+ updates to run. This can be long indeed.
I use Windows Defender for my antivirus, which pretty much takes care of itself.
But there are some (free) antivirus programs in which you can schedule the date and hour of scans for convenience.
All in all, there are ways to optimize performance in Windows as in Linux. ;)Quite possibly, and I'm sure my perception is skewed by the fact that I don't run Windows that often, so it probably has to do more updating when I do run it.
If I had to, I think I could be more or less happy with Windows. Cygwin is a big hero for me, because it gives me a BASH shell and most compilers and other packages (but not all) that I would want to use on Linux anyway. I also use Dexpot for virtual desktop support. However, if I'm going to set up my Windows machine to work like Linux, I figure I might as well just use Linux in the first place. Also, believe it or not, I've actually had fewer hardware issues on this Thinkpad running Linux than I have with Windows.
Copper Bezel
June 26th, 2015, 07:08 AM
I have Windows 7, so it doesn't have that fast startup trick. Apart from the startup/shutdown time, have you tried dual booting Linux on your machine and comparing how fast the same program runs? For me it's no contest, Linux is just faster. This is especially noticeable when I compile and run one of my own programs, which are always in the scientific category and CPU-intensive.
"Faster" and "always" are very broad terms. A lot of things can determine whether or not the set of applications you're concerned with happen to jive with the kinds of calls the OS handles really well on the particular arrangement of hardware you have. A small example is the discussions on Mutter vs. Compiz - two different machines, two different supported, Intel graphics cards, and I had one desktop that was more responsive under Unity and one that was more responsive under Gnome. As for a CPU-rather-than-GPU-intensive application, we can get into how the kernel manages the processor and what services are running in the background and how the libraries are built on one OS or the other, and you can come up with a scatterplot of benchmarks for different arrangements.
Windows is consistently more frustrating for me than Ubuntu, and I can make that assessment of my subjective experience with objective certainty. Fast? Fast is a cloud of priorities within a pie chart of tradeoffs. If you really want fast, use Android. Or Ubuntu Core.
Welly Wu
June 27th, 2015, 07:10 AM
Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64 bit does look interesting to me and I would be inclined to download, install, and activate it using VMWare Workstation 11.1.2 64 bit in a guest virtual machine just to kick the tires for one year if it is available for free of charge. I would not buy a third new PC with Microsoft Windows 10 Home or Professional 64 bit pre-installed. The reason why I write this is due to the fact that my father has an old Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch notebook PC that came with Microsoft Windows 8.0 Home 64 bit and he took advantage of the Windows 10 Home 64 bit upgrade offer so he is waiting in line for the notification that it will be ready for his PC to download and upgrade. This entails that I will need my own legal copy which I will pay for eventually just to support him as I expect that he will have endless questions about how to get his hardware devices and software applications to work after the upgrade process is completed provided that there are not any specific issues that he must contend with. I'm going to have to provide him with free help and technical support over the lifetime of his notebook PC. He also plans to purchase a Microsoft Surface 3 hybrid notebook and tablet PC along with the keyboard, touch pad, and perhaps the digital pen. So, that will be another device that I will need to support for him. He's wedded to Microsoft Windows permanently and there is no point in me trying to persuade him to try GNU/Linux. He has far too many third party, closed source, commercial, and proprietary hardware and software products and services that he expects to just work magically and I will have to caution him about upgrading to Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 bit at the end of next month. Knowing him well, he'll upgrade blindly without a plan and he'll call me when trouble occurs. This almost always happens whenever he tries new technologies.
Microsoft Windows 10 64 bit looks to be interesting as it seems to be the most GNU/Linux like. I would like to be able to try and test it for a period of time on my ZaReason Zeto desktop PC system using VMWare Workstation 11.1.2 64 bit. I stopped switching among different desktop operating systems and I do not dual or multi boot any longer. Windows 10 seems to be charming at first glance, but I have become accustomed to how Microsoft Corporation treats its' customers with its decidedly unfriendly business practices in the past. I think that I will wait for the final shipped version to consumers before testing the waters. I have read too many horror stories about the Windows 10 Preview version and I am skittish. At first glance, it doesn't seem to be too different from both Windows 7 and 8.1 64 bit combined. In fact, it seems to be a late bloomer in terms of adopting features and capabilities that have existed for years with Apple Macintosh OS X and GNU/Linux in particular. It has an attractive design and it seems fairly intuitive to me by now. I am not eager to try it out, but I'm not hell bent against the company's latest software product either. I may very well find a good use case scenario and work flow for it in due time.
As for Corenominal, I say that different strokes work for different folks. He still uses GNU/Linux on his servers. Good luck to him in becoming a power Microsoft Windows user over time. We all get too comfortable and we need a change of scenery from time to time. Myself, I am thinking about purchasing a 2015 or later Apple MacBook Pro 15" with Retina Display with the optional AMD R9 M370X 2.0 GB GDDR5 VRAM GPU. I never used Apple products extensively and I am giving it some serious consideration. The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence. It's a solid product that earned stellar reviews.
mastablasta
June 29th, 2015, 01:27 PM
.
Microsoft Windows 10 64 bit looks to be interesting as it seems to be the most GNU/Linux like.
just because it looks similar to KDE or something like that on pictures doesn't mean it acts and runs in the same way. you know Windows is not Linux :-) I am not sure what in Win 10 is Linux like to you... source is still closed, as are many other things you can do with the OS.
My reasons for avoiding Windows whenever possible are:
1) It's just slow. I dual boot Windows on my laptop and everything is slower there, even my own programs that I compile myself. It also takes forever to boot and shut down.
2) Updates and virus scans are annoying.
these problems seem to be endemic to dualboot systems. users don't boot into windows, then when you do boot the programs search updates. all at once. it takes time for it to load the desktop and such. and responsiveness is slow. once stiff is loaded and updated it runs reasonably well.
also it could be your programs are not made with windows in mind. which brings me to:
3) It's much more of a pain to get the programming tools that I use all the time (i.e. python and extensions like matplotlib and qt; gcc; etc.).
using tools in widnows is ok as long as they are supported well. you would feel the same pain trying to run windows games or other programs for example on Linux. we use MS stuff at work and the CPU is nothing special (i3 with 4GB ram). it all runs very smooth and fast. the only slowdown we get is on server applications and I think those servers are Linux (not sure though). it's not Linux fault though (or any other OS) but the app itself (the ERP).
Ya, me too! :smile: My first 6 months with a computer was with vista. Seemed all I did with it was try to keep the nasties away.
ouch. my first one was Spectrum and then some local made PC with MS-DOS 3.0 or something like that. anyway - our company never touched Vista. I used windows XP at home, still do. I also didn't use XP until SP2. as I remember initial XP was a disaster. I used very stable 98SE before that and win95 was good to me as well. I remember having a bit more crashes in Win3.11, but nothing major.
the biggest problem I have is that you need to practically buy a new PC in order to upgrade. the system requirements always get higher and higher. and not a little bit higher but a lot. like 2 times as much. eventhough one could run the OS on much less than recommended, you actually need to have 2x as much power and then it's all smooth.
even so in last could of iterations I think they slowed down the OS requirements bumps.
like in Linux you need hardware compatibility to get a stable OS. mostly windows has good backwards compatibility. and even better one for preinstalled PC's. still I saw a win7 Acer PC where nothing seemed wrong and it kept slowing down for no good reason. sometimes even freezing at moments. system resources were not maxed out or anything. anyway I tried Kubuntu on it and it was smooth, fast etc. I would advise the user to replace the OS, but they needed to do work in MS office and at the time version they used wasn't supported by wine yet. so all I could advise is to get system fully up to date first, then install a good AV and firewall.
buzzingrobot
June 29th, 2015, 01:49 PM
just because it looks similar to KDE or something like that on pictures doesn't mean it acts and runs in the same way. you know Windows is not Linux...
Yep. The two operating systems are very, very different. The most fundamental difference: Linux is a Unix, Windows is not. Linux and OS X have considerably more in common than either does with Windows.
For an ordinary user, of course, who interacts with the GUI, how the actual OS works is less important. GUI's are designed to mesh with user experience and expectations (so they seem "intuitive", meaning icons and such behave the same way on any platform). From a user's perpective, GUI's tend to paper over the differences between operating systems.
Win10 does look to me to be shaping up as a very nice Windows release for folks who need or want to use Windows. The visual similarity with KDE has always been there thanks to KDE's obvious choice to emulate Window's GUI design to attract users. Win10 and the new KDE both show the influence of the current flat-ness fad.
Chanath
June 29th, 2015, 09:06 PM
I was reading your comments and reading a bit about Crunchbang and corenominal. It is not about Windows 10 might be better than Win 7, its about corenominal dumping Crunchbang and going away. After releasing last Crunchbang release called Waldorf in 2013 (!) he hadn't done any development on that distro.
There was a massive fight going on Crunchbang forums, about what had been actually done on that Waldorf distro. A guy had been telling the present community that all corenominal had done was only changing some looks of Openbox WM, but nothing on the kernel or whatever. One of the guys had gone out to prove it and had created a distro on the latest Debian 8.1 on Openbox and all the last eye-candy changes, the so-called crunchbang tweaks.
While the new devs (or community devs) of the new Bunsenlabs had only managed to make a script to install those so-called tweaks on a Debian netinstall, which takes more than 1 1/2 hours to install, this guy had created a live dvd and posted it on sourceforge. I had downloaded it and installed it. It looks just like the last known crunchbnag release of 2013, but with Debian 8.1. It is very quick.
Personally, I have no idea, what the bunsenlabs guys are waiting for all this time, but I can understand why corenominal jumped ship, though. Checking this new distro thoroughly, one can see how easy to "create" this Crunchbang. It is called Crunchbang-Monara and, if you guys want check it out, it is in the sourceforge.
buzzingrobot
June 29th, 2015, 10:43 PM
...its about corenominal dumping Crunchbang and going away.
User of FOSS products don't have any right to expect developers to be obligated to them in any way. Corenominal was one person who released his own Debian spin. Support of such a thing is non-trivial. When real life intervenes, people make real-life decisions.
I've seen some of the petty bickering at the CB forums. This sort of thing does seem to happen too often when a FOSS project ends and people decide to fork it. I find it one of the more unattractive aspects of FOSS. If I ever switch entirely to Windows or OS X, it will be in large part to leave that kind of nonsense behind.
night_sky2
June 30th, 2015, 03:31 AM
the biggest problem I have is that you need to practically buy a new PC in order to upgrade. the system requirements always get higher and higher. and not a little bit higher but a lot. like 2 times as much. eventhough one could run the OS on much less than recommended, you actually need to have 2x as much power and then it's all smooth.
even so in last could of iterations I think they slowed down the OS requirements bumps.
They did because the system requirements for Windows haven't really changed since Windows 7. In fact, Windows 8.1 is better for older hardware because of the various improvements they made under the hood. Windows 10 will have the exact same requirements than 8.1 BTW.
I am running Windows 8.1 on an Dell Inpiron 1525 that came with Vista in 2008. All we did is to add 2 GB of RAM (to make it to 4 GB) and it works really nice.
I am pretty sure I could have gone away with 2GB of RAM (they still sell brand new laptops with similar specs) but even with Ubuntu Unity, 2GB is kind of tight.
Chanath
June 30th, 2015, 09:08 AM
If I ever switch entirely to Windows or OS X, it will be in large part to leave that kind of nonsense behind.
Oh, I hope that'd never happen. I don't want to switch over to Windows at all. I had used OS X, and it is very good, only I won't buy a machine only to use the OS.
fkkroundabout
July 1st, 2015, 11:46 AM
I am pretty sure I could have gone away with 2GB of RAM (they still sell brand new laptops with similar specs) but even with Ubuntu Unity, 2GB is kind of tight.
but unity is one of the heaviest
http://blog-imgs-68-origin.fc2.com/m/y/p/mypace75/cmp-all4.png
^ don't know how old/new the graph is
but this has similar stats: https://renewablepcs.wordpress.com/about-linux/kde-gnome-or-xfce/
and the newest reference for that write up is mid 2013
mastablasta
July 2nd, 2015, 08:13 AM
last one i saw points to KDE 5 taking the lead in "heavyness" again :)
still in KDE you can usually easilly turn off things and make it light. but for some reason games play faster in unity nowadays (another graph i saw).
i wonder how fast the games Will ruin on win10 since mostly they still make games with Windows in mind.
buzzingrobot
July 2nd, 2015, 01:28 PM
Much software is written to take advantage of as much free memory as it needs as long as its available. That makes sense. These "heaviness" versus "lightness" comparisons need to be taken with a grain of salt. They're accurate only on the machine the tests were run on, with that specific software configuration.
On my systems, with plenty of RAM, Kubuntu's KDE 4.14 and Unity are in the middle ranks of memory use. KDE 5 is a bit hungrier. That does not surprise me, since it is very new and hasn't benefited from the scheduled monthly fixes that were applied to KDE4.
The thing is: Whatever base I have installed, once I load the applications I typically use, memory use is much the same. The differences in memory use I see on the bare OS with no apps running come close to vanishing once those apps are opened.(Firefox is the fattest app in use here, most often. It can exceed 1-gig with several tabs open. Adblock adds 100-150 megs to each tab.)
fkkroundabout
July 2nd, 2015, 03:13 PM
i use a window manager, after i read this for the first time:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Maximizing_performance#The_first_thing_to_do
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