See, thing is... Back when I ran windows, I didn't know about Cygwin or how to use bash effectively. Now that I run Linux however, I've learned to use it, which really helps. Now, yes, I could install Cygwin or bash... but would it really benefit me over native Linux? As it is, things are quite responsive, quick to boot, stable and as customizable as I want. Updates are easy, handled through one tool, and update/everything/ properly at once. Why should I give that up for a Windows system which I'd still have to wrangle into working just the same? I mean... I'm using it enough at work; why force myself to use it at home, too?
Re:XP SP2+ was Microsoft's last decent computer OS
on
10 Years of Windows XP
·
· Score: 1
You aren't foxhoundz either...
Re:XP SP2+ was Microsoft's last decent computer OS
on
10 Years of Windows XP
·
· Score: 1
MS shill much? Sorry, despite mostly agreeing with you, I believe the parent is a shill.
Aand, scripting on Linux is/far/ better, due to how easy and modular it is as far as tossing programs together. I can now do stuff I'd never dream of on Windows, due to that.
I dunno; I like KDE over w7... These days, I can't live without 3-6 bash tabs open in addition to my 40 FF tabs.
I actually like XP x64 over 7, mainly due to W7's "audiodg.exe" problem. Oh, and still having to reinstall drivers to fix issues - I never realized how little I miss that little thing until I have to use windows and run into it. XP X64, for me, was quite stable, worked excellently, and had/no/ issues with audio. Linux has minor ones, and wU has glitches where audiodg.exe can suck up the entire CPU for 30s for no reason. Horrible when trying to game.
I definitely agree. Personally, I was allowed a computer most places, and when writing essays it's invaluable for several reasons including being faster(by far) than writing, as well as the whole edit/copy/paste stuff.
If I had a choice, I would never force anyone to hand-write more than a few sentences, it's just causing the student unneeded pain and annoyance.
Who says they don't? Seems to me that the fact that the site talked about in the topic even/exists/ is because it's a honeypot.
I remember reading here on slashdots how these people/really/ operate: With encrypted DVDs and the US mail etc. The/real/ molesters wouldn't be on such sites, which makes catching them hard.
They have that... Go into the preferences, select "block flash", "apply these restrictions to whitelisted sites too" and "show a placeholder for blocked...." Works like a charm, for me anyway.
That I'll agree 100%. I will say it's nice having a soft raid-5 for your data(mdadm raid-5 improves performance greatly over a single disk), but not for backup. You want a seperate,/disconnected-when-not-in-use/ drive or set for backups.
I also learned the hard way that EXT4 + deletion = extremely hard to recover from. NTFS and FAT and even EXT2 are much better in that regard. Which is why you should really have nightly/weekly backups of your stuff if you use it.
Let me take this one thing at a time: 1. IE7 appears to be horrible, and it was the only browser on the one P4 2.4ghz in my area - it's a machine basically used for a time clock and communicating with special stuff over RS232, so it doesn't really need much. Giving it firefox, though, gave me a workable system I could use if needed. 2. Font issues: No, on both Ubuntu and Debian it's the same: By default, all fonts are subpixel-rendered, like Win 7 fonts are. I like the sharp-and-clean look of XP, so I have a custom.fonts.conf file to make that work. FF and all other programs handle it just fine, chrome ignores it. 3.No, I haven't messed with about:flags - I don't really want to use it, and so haven't done more than a cursory attempt to improve it. I like My FF(derivitives, currently running iceweasel) due to it generally working, allows me to tweak everything and continue to use my FF2/3 UI setup, and allows my pack of addons(disabling compatibility checks really helped). 4. IE9/10, I couldn't care less about: Our two windows 7 machines(out of 4 total in my area) have FF7 which everyone uses(Hooray!) and it works well enough to keep me from trying other stuff. Also, I suspect that when you say "best font rendering available" you mean "blurry sub-pixel antialised fonts, like the rest of W7"... which I don't like. I see XP's font rendering as far better than anything later, at least on these sub-100 DPI displays.
When we get 200dpi displays, I'll change my mind(subpixel AA looks great on my 230+ dpi N900). But not before.
I'm using a Phenom II x4 proc on my main system, though everything else is Intel - I try to go AMD when I can, but, well... it can be hard(and near impossible when picking up junk systems). Perhaps Iceweasel uses the GNU compiler(likely) which solves that, though I didn't see any issues with FF nightlies a few months ago. As far as disk goes, I'm currently running 3x7200rpm drives in raid-5, and I used to simply have FF's disk-cache ram backed for extra speed. Still, even without that, it's reasonable.
Using Intel's compiler, though... cheap shot, I'll agree to that.
Personlly, I've never had the issues you seem to have. I have a 1ghz pentium M tablet that I use occasionally, and I don't see the problems you do. At work, we've got a mix of 2.4ghz P4's and Intel Quads, and it seems reasonable on both: IE7 is an absolute nightmare on the P4, whereas FF7 is merely slow. I haven't tried Chrome here for obvious reasons.
On my main quad, while I haven't done any core-limiting, I can tell you that Chromium/chrome(I've had both) is signifigantly slower to load pages(No pipelining?), and I lack any acceleration with the chrome-based browser: The CSS animation demo( http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/HWACCEL/ ) with the/limiter removed/ gives me around 300fps in FF, and 40 in chrome-based systems . FF is also around 40 with HW accel disabled. I also run a number of extensions including NoScript, and end up with 500mb of memory used with my usual 40+ tabs, and it responds pretty well to random tab switching(switching within 50ms typically). I do have slight issues with the JS GC algorithm and it making webm video skip slightly, but oh well .
Also, Chrome refuses to use my.fonts.conf file for font rendering, resulting in blurry, anti-aliased fonts. FF respects the settings I've chosen, so I get my usual clean fonts at 16px, with AA above that(I.E. like windows XP fonts). This is, for me, a *huge* problem. That being said, I do use it - I can't get FF to use the Google Talk plugin, so Chromium is kept around for free calls via it.
As far as disabling extensions go, What I'm saying is disable everything until you get improvement, then figure out what's causing the issues. Could it be ABP poorly written or with a bad set of filters? All those filter regular expressions aren't free, you know...
Yeah, I agree. Hell, I hate the "shiny web2.0" websites as well - give me nice plain HTML, a few images and some CSS. Rollovers? Kind of anoying from a mobile tablet/device. Flash? Usually unneeded and wasteful. JS? Occasionally good, usually not.
I think you have something else wrong with your system. I typically run 40+ tabs on my FF install and I've *never* had things get slow enough to make typing into a textbox lag(well, not from CPU usage anyway; 8ve had it happen when thrashing the disk one way or another but...). I've had animations cause skipping in html5 video playback, yes, but that's about all.
Interesting; would you mind explaining more please? I'm not sure how this would work - disconnecting the solonoid in my case just kills the engine in a second or so due to lack of fuel... do you mean repeatedly flipping it off and on to reduce fuel input?
Note about my previous post: I *do not* have 3d glasses for it. Just the monitor. I won't get 3d glasses until Nvidia decides to support them on Linux with GeForce cards.
True enough. I have to give Nvidia credit, though - They and they alone brought us 120hz LCDs. Before that, if you wanted *anything* over 60hz, you had to go with a smallish screen. Now? 1920x1080 monitors with 120hz! I have one, and I really like it. It makes lots of stuff feel smoother, including the mouse cursor.
"Unless you run breaker points or a magneto or a mechanical injection diesel" Heh. I do. Not for the above reason of course, but... Unless someone manages to hit me with a powerful enough EMP that it literally fries the fuel solenoid coil, I'm pretty sure my truck will continue to operate.
Personally, I grew up with a smallish rocking chair and used a laptop. When I grew out of that, I put together a custom setup involving a car's bucket seat(1), a "lap desk" suspended from the ceiling above me which my monitor and keyboard tray are mounted. It seems to work nicely - 8 hours with barely a break or two and I'm not feeling much strain at all. http://robbiethe1st.afraid.org/images/20110917_005-small.jpg
(1) - Think: Cars these days generally have people sitting in them for many hours at a time, and you can't usually just get up at a random time to stretch. So it makes sense it'd be comfortable.
So grab the code you want from the last release of Mesa and port it yourself! That's the real difference here: if you lose support on Windows, your screwed. On Linux, with open source drivers, you have a shot. It might be a fairly long shot involving porting, but it/can/ be done!
Well, if we have IO and Socket functionality, just asynchronously, that's one thing. But I read the OP as saying basically that you'd end up with a very locked down file input; perhaps only able to access files in it's program directory, with anything else being about as locked-down as Javascript -- How else could you enforce "self contained app bundles"? Also, if a program *could* access everything, that means it can access other apps' data, which is obviously unsafe if you'e trying for sandboxing... which it sounded like they are.
So, basically, 90% of the applications you really want - Games with multiplayer(sockets), image viewers/manipulators(File IO), stuff like wget(sockets), web browsers(both), raw media players(like Mplayer, etc)(File IO) - won't be available from the store. I don't see the point, myself...
Um... *raises hand* I have Windows 7 on my ThinkPad laptop which I dual-boot with Linux. I've just about gotten fed up with 7 and am very tempted to go back to XP. Why? Here's a few reasons: 1. Takes 5-8 minutes to shut down, thrashing the disk the entire time(And not when updates are happening either). 2. While playing TF2, "audiodg.exe" will randomly take the entire CPU for 30s, then start working properly again. Doing the various suggestions found on google - updating audio drivers, disabling effects on the sound device etc - improved but did not rid me of the problem. 3. Several times, it has randomly shut down while I'm working. Not a crash, just a controlled shutdown for no descernable reason. Power management is disabled, it's on AC... and yet it decides to shut down. And my hands were *nowhere* near the power button.
So, yes... It may be shiny and nice, but if it won't let me play games - which is the only reason I'm using it and not Linux exclusively on that machine - what use is it?
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See, thing is... Back when I ran windows, I didn't know about Cygwin or how to use bash effectively. Now that I run Linux however, I've learned to use it, which really helps. /everything/ properly at once. Why should I give that up for a Windows system which I'd still have to wrangle into working just the same?
Now, yes, I could install Cygwin or bash... but would it really benefit me over native Linux?
As it is, things are quite responsive, quick to boot, stable and as customizable as I want. Updates are easy, handled through one tool, and update
I mean... I'm using it enough at work; why force myself to use it at home, too?
You aren't foxhoundz either...
MS shill much?
Sorry, despite mostly agreeing with you, I believe the parent is a shill.
Yup.
Aand, scripting on Linux is /far/ better, due to how easy and modular it is as far as tossing programs together.
I can now do stuff I'd never dream of on Windows, due to that.
I dunno; I like KDE over w7... These days, I can't live without 3-6 bash tabs open in addition to my 40 FF tabs.
I actually like XP x64 over 7, mainly due to W7's "audiodg.exe" problem. Oh, and still having to reinstall drivers to fix issues - I never realized how little I miss that little thing until I have to use windows and run into it. /no/ issues with audio. Linux has minor ones, and wU has glitches where audiodg.exe can suck up the entire CPU for 30s for no reason. Horrible when trying to game.
XP X64, for me, was quite stable, worked excellently, and had
I definitely agree. Personally, I was allowed a computer most places, and when writing essays it's invaluable for several reasons including being faster(by far) than writing, as well as the whole edit/copy/paste stuff.
If I had a choice, I would never force anyone to hand-write more than a few sentences, it's just causing the student unneeded pain and annoyance.
Who says they don't? Seems to me that the fact that the site talked about in the topic even /exists/ is because it's a honeypot.
I remember reading here on slashdots how these people /really/ operate: With encrypted DVDs and the US mail etc. The /real/ molesters wouldn't be on such sites, which makes catching them hard.
They have that... ...."
Go into the preferences, select "block flash", "apply these restrictions to whitelisted sites too" and "show a placeholder for blocked
Works like a charm, for me anyway.
That I'll agree 100%. I will say it's nice having a soft raid-5 for your data(mdadm raid-5 improves performance greatly over a single disk), but not for backup. You want a seperate, /disconnected-when-not-in-use/ drive or set for backups.
I also learned the hard way that EXT4 + deletion = extremely hard to recover from. NTFS and FAT and even EXT2 are much better in that regard. Which is why you should really have nightly/weekly backups of your stuff if you use it.
Let me take this one thing at a time: .fonts.conf file to make that work. FF and all other programs handle it just fine, chrome ignores it.
1. IE7 appears to be horrible, and it was the only browser on the one P4 2.4ghz in my area - it's a machine basically used for a time clock and communicating with special stuff over RS232, so it doesn't really need much. Giving it firefox, though, gave me a workable system I could use if needed.
2. Font issues: No, on both Ubuntu and Debian it's the same: By default, all fonts are subpixel-rendered, like Win 7 fonts are. I like the sharp-and-clean look of XP, so I have a custom
3.No, I haven't messed with about:flags - I don't really want to use it, and so haven't done more than a cursory attempt to improve it. I like My FF(derivitives, currently running iceweasel) due to it generally working, allows me to tweak everything and continue to use my FF2/3 UI setup, and allows my pack of addons(disabling compatibility checks really helped).
4. IE9/10, I couldn't care less about: Our two windows 7 machines(out of 4 total in my area) have FF7 which everyone uses(Hooray!) and it works well enough to keep me from trying other stuff.
Also, I suspect that when you say "best font rendering available" you mean "blurry sub-pixel antialised fonts, like the rest of W7"... which I don't like. I see XP's font rendering as far better than anything later, at least on these sub-100 DPI displays.
When we get 200dpi displays, I'll change my mind(subpixel AA looks great on my 230+ dpi N900). But not before.
I'm using a Phenom II x4 proc on my main system, though everything else is Intel - I try to go AMD when I can, but, well... it can be hard(and near impossible when picking up junk systems).
Perhaps Iceweasel uses the GNU compiler(likely) which solves that, though I didn't see any issues with FF nightlies a few months ago.
As far as disk goes, I'm currently running
3x7200rpm drives in raid-5, and I used to simply have FF's disk-cache ram backed for extra speed. Still, even without that, it's reasonable.
Using Intel's compiler, though... cheap shot, I'll agree to that.
Personlly, I've never had the issues you seem to have. I have a 1ghz pentium M tablet that I use occasionally, and I don't see the problems you do. At work, we've got a mix of 2.4ghz P4's and Intel Quads, and it seems reasonable on both: IE7 is an absolute nightmare on the P4, whereas FF7 is merely slow.
I haven't tried Chrome here for obvious reasons.
On my main quad, while I haven't done any core-limiting, I can tell you that Chromium/chrome(I've had both) is signifigantly slower to load pages(No pipelining?), and I lack any acceleration with the chrome-based browser: The CSS animation demo( http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/HWACCEL/ ) with the /limiter removed/ gives me around 300fps in FF, and 40 in chrome-based systems . FF is also around 40 with HW accel disabled.
I also run a number of extensions including NoScript, and end up with 500mb of memory used with my usual 40+ tabs, and it responds pretty well to random tab switching(switching within 50ms typically).
I do have slight issues with the JS GC algorithm and it making webm video skip slightly, but oh well .
Also, Chrome refuses to use my .fonts.conf file for font rendering, resulting in blurry, anti-aliased fonts. FF respects the settings I've chosen, so I get my usual clean fonts at 16px, with AA above that(I.E. like windows XP fonts). This is, for me, a *huge* problem.
That being said, I do use it - I can't get FF to use the Google Talk plugin, so Chromium is kept around for free calls via it.
As far as disabling extensions go, What I'm saying is disable everything until you get improvement, then figure out what's causing the issues. Could it be ABP poorly written or with a bad set of filters? All those filter regular expressions aren't free, you know...
Yeah, I agree.
Hell, I hate the "shiny web2.0" websites as well - give me nice plain HTML, a few images and some CSS. Rollovers? Kind of anoying from a mobile tablet/device. Flash? Usually unneeded and wasteful. JS? Occasionally good, usually not.
Try disabling your plugins and extensions.
I think you have something else wrong with your system. I typically run 40+ tabs on my FF install and I've *never* had things get slow enough to make typing into a textbox lag(well, not from CPU usage anyway; 8ve had it happen when thrashing the disk one way or another but...). I've had animations cause skipping in html5 video playback, yes, but that's about all.
Interesting; would you mind explaining more please?
I'm not sure how this would work - disconnecting the solonoid in my case just kills the engine in a second or so due to lack of fuel... do you mean repeatedly flipping it off and on to reduce fuel input?
Note about my previous post:
I *do not* have 3d glasses for it. Just the monitor. I won't get 3d glasses until Nvidia decides to support them on Linux with GeForce cards.
True enough.
I have to give Nvidia credit, though - They and they alone brought us 120hz LCDs.
Before that, if you wanted *anything* over 60hz, you had to go with a smallish screen. Now? 1920x1080 monitors with 120hz!
I have one, and I really like it. It makes lots of stuff feel smoother, including the mouse cursor.
"Unless you run breaker points or a magneto or a mechanical injection diesel"
Heh. I do. Not for the above reason of course, but... Unless someone manages to hit me with a powerful enough EMP that it literally fries the fuel solenoid coil, I'm pretty sure my truck will continue to operate.
Personally, I grew up with a smallish rocking chair and used a laptop. When I grew out of that, I put together a custom setup involving a car's bucket seat(1), a "lap desk" suspended from the ceiling above me which my monitor and keyboard tray are mounted. It seems to work nicely - 8 hours with barely a break or two and I'm not feeling much strain at all.
http://robbiethe1st.afraid.org/images/20110917_005-small.jpg
(1) - Think: Cars these days generally have people sitting in them for many hours at a time, and you can't usually just get up at a random time to stretch. So it makes sense it'd be comfortable.
So grab the code you want from the last release of Mesa and port it yourself! That's the real difference here: if you lose support on Windows, your screwed. On Linux, with open source drivers, you have a shot. It might be a fairly long shot involving porting, but it /can/ be done!
Well, if we have IO and Socket functionality, just asynchronously, that's one thing. But I read the OP as saying basically that you'd end up with a very locked down file input; perhaps only able to access files in it's program directory, with anything else being about as locked-down as Javascript -- How else could you enforce "self contained app bundles"?
Also, if a program *could* access everything, that means it can access other apps' data, which is obviously unsafe if you'e trying for sandboxing... which it sounded like they are.
Huh, never even thought of that!
I guess I've been running Linux too long...
So, basically, 90% of the applications you really want - Games with multiplayer(sockets), image viewers/manipulators(File IO), stuff like wget(sockets), web browsers(both), raw media players(like Mplayer, etc)(File IO) - won't be available from the store.
I don't see the point, myself...
Um... *raises hand*
I have Windows 7 on my ThinkPad laptop which I dual-boot with Linux. I've just about gotten fed up with 7 and am very tempted to go back to XP.
Why? Here's a few reasons:
1. Takes 5-8 minutes to shut down, thrashing the disk the entire time(And not when updates are happening either).
2. While playing TF2, "audiodg.exe" will randomly take the entire CPU for 30s, then start working properly again. Doing the various suggestions found on google - updating audio drivers, disabling effects on the sound device etc - improved but did not rid me of the problem.
3. Several times, it has randomly shut down while I'm working. Not a crash, just a controlled shutdown for no descernable reason. Power management is disabled, it's on AC... and yet it decides to shut down. And my hands were *nowhere* near the power button.
So, yes... It may be shiny and nice, but if it won't let me play games - which is the only reason I'm using it and not Linux exclusively on that machine - what use is it?