XP

[geckzilla]

Our IT guy at work is trying to get me to try a Linux operating system for my home PC. Any words of wisdom?

Good luck, and don't get into any arguments with any nerds about distros.

[Chris Peterson]

Our IT guy at work is trying to get me to try a Linux operating system for my home PC. Any words of wisdom?

Unless you're a real computer geek, I'd steer away from it, at least on the computer you use for productivity (if you have one). Steep learning curve, not always the most robust OS on the desktop, or supportive of the most robust apps. Not always easy to make work with your peripherals. Not compatible with the apps most people tend to use the most.

If you want to play around with it, you can install VirtualBox on Windows and then install a Linux distribution (Ubuntu is probably the most popular) on that. Or, you can google "linux on windows" and find distributions that run like apps on Windows. These approaches let you get your feet wet without losing your existing machine and software, or without setting up a dual-boot machine and risking partition problems.

[Fred the Cat]

Ekes. I was looking around and ran across this. I think I see what you two are talking about. Best keep trying to focus on photography and astronomy. Thanks!!

[geckzilla]

On the other side, a lot of science is done and is most easily replicated in the Unix environment. I think a lot of people are using Macs for this purpose these days, but a lot are also using some form of Linux. I tried using VirtualBox for this purpose and gave up. I really need a separate physical box to mess with and wipe clean. I was way too worried about accidentally wiping out something important on my Windows machine.

[Chris Peterson]

On the other side, a lot of science is done and is most easily replicated in the Unix environment. I think a lot of people are using Macs for this purpose these days, but a lot are also using some form of Linux. I tried using VirtualBox for this purpose and gave up. I really need a separate physical box to mess with and wipe clean. I was way too worried about accidentally wiping out something important on my Windows machine.

I have a Linux box set up to run some things that were developed for that environment (science things) and use special hardware. I also do stuff with Raspberry Pis, which are Linux based.

VirtualBox is just another app. There's nothing you can do inside it that will mess up your host machine, any more than you can with Photoshop or Blender. Less so, even. On my main desktop machine I have VirtualBox running, and inside that I have quite a few VMs- Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10, OS X, several Linux distros, DOS 6.22, Win98SE. Anything can be snapshotted and rolled back. No malware can escape. Pretty cool.

[geckzilla]

Yeah, it might have been an actual partition I was trying to set up. I remember staring at the drive letters and thinking "I'm really not sure which one of these I want to do..." and from then on decided it wasn't worth the risk. Oh, I remember what my problem with VirtualBox was, now... I didn't have enough space for it because the data I had I wanted on both my Windows machine and then it needed to be copied to the VirtualBox and I couldn't actually figure out how to FTP it from my computer to the little computer within my computer. Bah!

[Chris Peterson]

Yeah, it might have been an actual partition I was trying to set up. I remember staring at the drive letters and thinking "I'm really not sure which one of these I want to do..." and from then on decided it wasn't worth the risk. Oh, I remember what my problem with VirtualBox was, now... I didn't have enough space for it because the data I had I wanted on both my Windows machine and then it needed to be copied to the VirtualBox and I couldn't actually figure out how to FTP it from my computer to the little computer within my computer. Bah!

Well, if you decide to try again, there's no need for copying files or setting up FTP. You can share folders on the host computer and open them from virtual machines. Very simple, and built into VirtualBox, independent of the host and guest operating systems.

[geckzilla]

Hm, I must not have been trying VirtualBox itself, then. There was no way I could find to copy it to my virtual machine. I'm kinda over it, anyway. I wanted to mess with the astro drizzle software. I have abandoned that aspiration.

[rstevenson]

Apple is, for some reason, who designers look up to for interface design. That one button mouse, that one button tablet... so sleek, so simple... so ENRAGINGLY MYSTERIOUS.

Apple -- who is, as you say, looked up to by designers everywhere -- has for decades produced the most useless mice in the computer world. I have, until very recently, used either a Microsoft mouse or one of the other top brands with my many Macs. But one of the stupid things Apple has done with this round of the OS is to greatly reduce the functionality of all "foreign" mouse drivers. Not sure if the alternative mouse makers will bother to play catchup with Apple this time. For now, I've had to get used to their silly small Apple Mouse. (I could fit two of them in my paw.) I've just barely come to accept its surface scrolling capability, but I had to turn much of it off to avoid causing unexpected cursor movement when I could no longer hover my arthritic fingers over the mouse.

--- Just after typing the above, having moved my hand to the mouse in case I wanted to move the cursor for editing, a second finger accidentally touched the surface of the mouse. Suddenly all I had written disappeared, as if I hadn't done anything. Luckily I now have some experience with this insanity, so I swiped sideways and the previous screen slid back into view, with my post intact. What fun! ---

And I put up with this why? Because the alternative is much worse. And yes, I have experience to justify that opinion, with 3 versions of Windows and one of Linux (with a forgettable UI nailed to its exterior.) YMMV.

Rob

[geckzilla]

I don't find Windows and OSX terribly different from an interface standpoint, but I've used Windows for so long that I am used to all its shortcuts and little tricks to get stuff working. What annoys the hell out of me is the way people venerate their mobile interface design. Icons for everything without any kind of text is called mystery navigation. At some point you've got so many little pictograms to memorize it's worse than a foreign language.

Anyway, yeah, the the one-button mouse unforgivable. The extra utility from all the extra buttons at my right hand is tremendous. Plus a lot of software I like (read: games) aren't made for OSX.

As someone who does a lot of gaming, I've got a mouse specialized for this task. It's got 8 buttons for my thumb, three clickers up top, plus the scroll wheel which counts as another three type of clicks (down, left, and right). Plus two more utility buttons just below the scroll wheel. I LOVE this mouse.

[THX1138]

I was under the impression that apple wasn't doing so......I was way wrong'
As for all the things windows 7 thru 10 can do that xp can't or does not support, i have no need for any of them in my line of work and xp ran my printer just fine. I loved xp
As for gaming, this is how bad its gotten around here with the kids. Yesterday they were playing some Tron game where you have to take out the (MCP) master control program, before it kills you and every time you kill it some few seconds later another MCP is created twice as smart as the one you just killed.
So when they are tired of playing this game Tron they will kill the MCP and then eject the CD before another smarter MCP is created, so that TRON is safe in there while there not playing . LOL

[starsurfer]

Our IT guy at work is trying to get me to try a Linux operating system for my home PC. Any words of wisdom?

Good luck, and don't get into any arguments with any nerds about distros.

What are distros? Sounds like a Greek dish with cheese and potatoes?

[starsurfer]

Apple is, for some reason, who designers look up to for interface design. That one button mouse, that one button tablet... so sleek, so simple... so ENRAGINGLY MYSTERIOUS.

Apple is so overrated! And their adverts are annoying! What next, they'll bring out a tablet called Pi?!

[starsurfer]

I got a new windows 10 and after 4 mos. I am finally getting it to be mine! After weeks of fighting all the aps popping up: I finally got rid of enough of them that I can use it some! My gosh; it sure had enough junk files on it that it was slower than my old XP! Right now; I still like my XP better!

Windows 10 is awful! Windows XP is the shiz!

[rstevenson]

Apple is so overrated! And their adverts are annoying! What next, they'll bring out a tablet called Pi?!

Being overrated and annoying potential customers is how they became the most valuable brand in the world? An odd way to succeed.

Rob

[Chris Peterson]

Apple is so overrated! And their adverts are annoying! What next, they'll bring out a tablet called Pi?!

Being overrated and annoying potential customers is how they became the most valuable brand in the world? An odd way to succeed.

I'd say it's a pretty common road to success in today's world.

[Chris Peterson]

I got a new windows 10 and after 4 mos. I am finally getting it to be mine! After weeks of fighting all the aps popping up: I finally got rid of enough of them that I can use it some! My gosh; it sure had enough junk files on it that it was slower than my old XP! Right now; I still like my XP better!

Windows 10 is awful! Windows XP is the shiz!

Windows 10 is a much better OS than XP. Don't confuse the user interface with the operating system itself. Fortunately you can change the user interface to get back something very similar to XP, but keep the advantages of a better, more secure, more robust operating system.

[geckzilla]

Steve Jobs always had that weird cult of personality thing going. Back at my old job my boss was an Apple fan. He'd always buy things as soon as they came out whether they were any good or not.

[rstevenson]

Steve Jobs always had that weird cult of personality thing going. ...

Maybe it takes the sort of extraordinary personality that inspires such a cult to drive others to do the sorts of extraordinary things that Apple has done over the years. But we'd need an alternate universe to know how things would have turned out if Jobs had not existed. If you compare Jobs to more ordinary people, he comes off as a little odd to say the least (odd Jobs?), but if you compare him to the leaders behind many successful companies, in all fields but especially in the tech field, he's not that unusual.

Not unusual, but very successful... When he was pushed out of Apple (not exactly fired) by the ordinary businessman Jobs himself hired to run the company, Jobs founded NeXT and bought Pixar from Lucasfilm, bringing NeXT and with it the NeXTSTEP OS (which morphed into Mac OS X) when he came back to save Apple, and later selling Pixar to Disney for a profit of multiple billions. Wherever his drive came from, and whatever it did to others along the way, he was successful in business.

Rob

[geckzilla]

He was fairly unusual back decades ago. Picture the IBM logo, the old Microsoft logo, or any big tech company logo and then picture that rainbow Apple logo along with their slogan, think different. At some point Apple shed the rainbow, its influence grew, and with the advent of the iPhone especially, it moved from the realm of creatives and fans into the mainstream. These days it's just another player rather than an outsider poised to jump in and make a difference. The time has passed along with Jobs himself.

[rstevenson]

Yes, that's probably right. In computers, at least, we've likely reached a kind of hardware and software plateau where innovation is only incremental. Any paradigm shift will either be absorbed or just ignored. All we can expect is an increase in the power of our devices and a decrease in their size, and likely a certain amount of incoporation beneath our corporeal integument. (I can't wait!) The real innovation is occurring elsewhere now. But enough of this -- I have to go find some Pokemon.

Rob

[geckzilla]

You missed the Vaporeon stampede.

[orin stepanek]

I got a new windows 10 and after 4 mos. I am finally getting it to be mine! After weeks of fighting all the aps popping up: I finally got rid of enough of them that I can use it some! My gosh; it sure had enough junk files on it that it was slower than my old XP! Right now; I still like my XP better!

Windows 10 is awful! Windows XP is the shiz!

Guess what! This windows 10 had a complete foul up; and I had to put it in restore mode! After it was 65% finished it completely froze up! I wound up having to send it back to Acer where it was repaired and sent back to me! I had to re load everything as the repair process erased almost everything I had in it! Today it is a completely different machine!

[orin stepanek]

I got a new windows 10 and after 4 mos. I am finally getting it to be mine! After weeks of fighting all the aps popping up: I finally got rid of enough of them that I can use it some! My gosh; it sure had enough junk files on it that it was slower than my old XP! Right now; I still like my XP better!

Windows 10 is awful! Windows XP is the shiz!

Windows 10 is a much better OS than XP. Don't confuse the user interface with the operating system itself. Fortunately you can change the user interface to get back something very similar to XP, but keep the advantages of a better, more secure, more robust operating system.

I like it now since I had it overhauled by the manufacturer!