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Post by novisnick on Jul 17, 2016 15:05:56 GMT -5
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Post by wilburthegoose on Jul 17, 2016 15:49:43 GMT -5
For what it's worth, I use "StartIsBack" to give me a usable start button. I think it cost me something like $2.
URL is startisback.com
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Post by Chuck Elliot on Jul 17, 2016 16:00:31 GMT -5
Be aware that you only have until 29 July to get the free update from Win 7-8 to 10.
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Post by knucklehead on Jul 17, 2016 16:22:46 GMT -5
Be aware that you only have until 29 July to get the free update from Win 7-8 to 10. I would bet that there won't be many more takers for the 'free' upgrade. I'll keep my Win 7 on the partition and I'll never upgrade it. If it becomes obsolete that's fine with me. I'm getting more comfortable with Linux each day. I can't stress this enough - Ubuntu Linux is EASY. It supports older hardware than Win 7 or 10 and runs very faster on those older computers than XP ever could. My brother has an old HP laptop with a Celeron single core processor and 2gb of ram. I lent him an old 80gb laptop drive and a Ubuntu 16.04 DVD to load on the drive. So now he can switch from XP to Ubuntu by changing the drive caddy. He's been using Ubuntu about 80% of the time of late. He is finding that not having to wait for a firewall and anti-virus programs and all those other programs that like to have a 'foot' in the door 'just in case' you call it up - those add up and suck up system resources needlessly. Ubuntu loads up and is ready in about 30 seconds - the XP install is 3-4 years old best we can remember and it takes about 4 minutes to load up! Checking with system resources shows there are on average 55-60 resident programs. He should clean it out but does not! Oh well. |
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Post by yves on Jul 17, 2016 17:54:31 GMT -5
Be aware that you only have until 29 July to get the free update from Win 7-8 to 10. I would bet that there won't be many more takers for the 'free' upgrade. I'll keep my Win 7 on the partition and I'll never upgrade it. If it becomes obsolete that's fine with me. I'm getting more comfortable with Linux each day. I can't stress this enough - Ubuntu Linux is EASY. It supports older hardware than Win 7 or 10 and runs very faster on those older computers than XP ever could. My brother has an old HP laptop with a Celeron single core processor and 2gb of ram. I lent him an old 80gb laptop drive and a Ubuntu 16.04 DVD to load on the drive. So now he can switch from XP to Ubuntu by changing the drive caddy. He's been using Ubuntu about 80% of the time of late. He is finding that not having to wait for a firewall and anti-virus programs and all those other programs that like to have a 'foot' in the door 'just in case' you call it up - those add up and suck up system resources needlessly. Ubuntu loads up and is ready in about 30 seconds - the XP install is 3-4 years old best we can remember and it takes about 4 minutes to load up! Checking with system resources shows there are on average 55-60 resident programs. He should clean it out but does not! Oh well. Easy or hard, I don't have time to futz around with >5 years old PC hardware. Linux is incompatible or offers only limited functionality with some of latest hardware products. Part of the software features I need are Windows-only. I don't have to wait for my firewall, and I don't use anti-virus programs because I don't download viruses. Windows wakes up and is ready in about 2 seconds because my Asus notebook uses Instant On. |
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Post by ÈlTwo on Jul 17, 2016 17:59:44 GMT -5
I've been running Windows 10 since it's been in beta, and am still running on the Fast Ring. I like giving feedback that really does result in change.
I also have all the systems I run set up to run Linux in a Virtual Box.
My home machine, as I said, is running the beta, but I'm going to install Win7 and upgrade to Win10 on this machine. As I have done in the past I will make my machine dual boot, but I'm not your typical user.
One of the bigger reasons to run Win10 is for PC gaming. I've been running Steam for years (and for anyone who remembers, Kali before that), and although there is Steam for Linux, the number of games just isn't there yet.
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Post by ÈlTwo on Jul 17, 2016 18:04:13 GMT -5
I agree that XP was a winner. Easy to use for just about anyone. That's why so many people are still using it. The new OS built for Tablets and PC just sucks for work use. All that clutter from the Tablet crap. Today, Windows XP is incredibly dangerous to use if you're on a network. It hasn't been patched for over 2 years, and the attackers know how to exploit it. Actually Windows XP has been patched. Want to continue to run XP? If you have a 32 bit machine, just alter the registry so Microsoft looks at as an Embedded PointOfSale device: Get security updates for xp until april 2019.I have an old desktop at work where I use this. |
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LCSeminole
Global Moderator 
Res firma mitescere nescit.
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Post by LCSeminole on Jul 17, 2016 20:42:49 GMT -5
Those people don't deserve to get a start button.  Thats mean!  I just dont have the time or inclination to learn stuff when I need a respite. Marriage, restaurants, raising two 82 year olds, 5 boards to help better my community,,,,,,,,,,,,brother, I dont have time ,,,,,,but I would like a start button,,,,,,he,,,,,he,,,,,,he,,,,,,,  Wow, your raising two 82 year olds? I can see how you wouldn't have time as well!!  |
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KeithL
Administrator
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Post by KeithL on Jul 18, 2016 9:23:44 GMT -5
1) Yes, most recent programs will run on Windows 10. (Note that, with some, you may have to uninstall them, then reinstall them, after the update.) 2) Most people who've worked with all of them agree that Windows 10 is MUCH better than Windows 8.0 or Windows 8.1 . All three of those are pretty similar, but Windows 10 is by far the better of the three. (Microsoft is also trying to forget about Windows 8.x; which is why you see talk about how long they're going to support Windows 7, but not much mention of Windows 8.0 and 8.1.) The big change is from Windows 7 to ANY of the others... and that change has actually been softened with Windows 10 (they put back the regular start menu - mostly - and the default looks more like Windows 7). Windows 10 is gaining acceptance, and Microsoft is pushing VERY hard to get everyone to switch over.... this means that Windows 7 support is drying up fast. 3) Other than the various "privacy issues", Windows 10 isn't especially resource intensive, and runs pretty well on any reasonably recent machine. 4) NOTE: (at least on the last copy I installed) You do NOT have to sign up for a Microsoft account to install and run Windows 10. When it asks, tell it that you don't want to, or that you'll do it later; then tell it you want to do a local installation, and it will let you install and run it without giving it the name of a Microsoft account (or creating one). They certainly encourage you to sign up for or use a Microsoft account, but you don't have to. Does Windows 10 work will with JRiver and other softwhere similar to it? |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jul 18, 2016 10:07:47 GMT -5
Windows XP should be reinstalled every now and then - whenever it starts to get slow. Now, whether you can get by with some alternative, like Ubuntu, sort of depends on your needs. (What you want to DO on your computer.) You also need to remember that Windows and Ubuntu are both OPERATING SYSTEMS..... Their purpose is simply to allow you to access and run PROGRAMS..... Therefore, if you're going to make do with the free programs they throw in with it, then you need to look at it one way... And, if you plan to use it to RUN other programs, which are the ones that do what you actually want to do, then you need to look at it a different way... It's also different depending on whether you actually BUY programs or not... For example, starting from the last first.... If you actually own major commercial programs (like Adobe Creative Suite CC, or Microsoft Office, or Solidworks), then Ubuntu will NOT work well for you..... because most major programs won't run, or run well, on Ubuntu... and neither will most games. Face it, Windows is the most popular platform out there... which means that all the major programs are designed to run, and run well, on it. Sure, some Windows programs will run in Wine; but some won't; and some won't run WELL. (Google Ubuntu and Photoshop.... what you'll find is not "tricks for getting the best possible performance"; what you'll find is "how to get it to work - at all - hopefully".) Now, if you're looking to run free or cheap programs, things are a bit different.... There are some pretty good free programs for Linux... but, to be honest, in most cases the line stops at "pretty good". If you're going to write short letters, then Open Office is OK (and it's free) - but it's far behind what a current copy of Microsoft Word will do. And, while GIMP is pretty good for a free photo editor, it's a joke compared to Photoshop. And Audacity (a free audio editor) runs on Ubuntu... and it works OK... but it isn't very good compared to the available commercial audio editors. There is SOME overlap, with some very good free stuff, and some commercial stuff that runs on Ubuntu... but most major commercial apps don't run well on it. To be honest, I'm not especially familiar with the free stuff that comes with Ubuntu... but there is plenty of pretty good free stuff out there, and at least some of it runs on Linux. But there are lots of free apps that come installed with Windows that are also pretty good (or, at least, as good or better than the ones that come with Linux.) And, as for cheap software and shareware, while some of the popular ones DO run on Linux.... many do not. And there are LOTS of free and low cost programs for Windows. (In fact, when you try to figure out how to run many popular programs on Ubuntu - where you end up is a list of "replacements" and "alternatives" and "ones that are almost like the one you want". Well, sorry, guys.... when I want to run a program, I'm not all that interested in "finding another one that does almost what I want - sort of". ) And, to go into the specific for audio equipment..... Apple computers support bit perfect playback at pretty well all sample rates natively. And, with Windows, at least most serious programs support WASAPI. But, with Linux, audio support is even spottier than it is with Windows.... and you've got to mess with stuff like ALSA to even get close.... (Do you have an Ubuntu machine that can play 24/384k PCM at the proper sample rate? My old Windows 7 desktop machine can play it with no problem at all - and I didn't have to edit any text files.) To me, while Ubuntu is fun to play with, and, as they say, has lots of potential..... And the price is right..... As a "workhorse", which does everything I want it to do without a lot of aggravation and extra work, I find it falls far short.. So, out of curiosity, what PROGRAMS do you use on Ubuntu..... Be aware that you only have until 29 July to get the free update from Win 7-8 to 10. I would bet that there won't be many more takers for the 'free' upgrade. I'll keep my Win 7 on the partition and I'll never upgrade it. If it becomes obsolete that's fine with me. I'm getting more comfortable with Linux each day. I can't stress this enough - Ubuntu Linux is EASY. It supports older hardware than Win 7 or 10 and runs very faster on those older computers than XP ever could. My brother has an old HP laptop with a Celeron single core processor and 2gb of ram. I lent him an old 80gb laptop drive and a Ubuntu 16.04 DVD to load on the drive. So now he can switch from XP to Ubuntu by changing the drive caddy. He's been using Ubuntu about 80% of the time of late. He is finding that not having to wait for a firewall and anti-virus programs and all those other programs that like to have a 'foot' in the door 'just in case' you call it up - those add up and suck up system resources needlessly. Ubuntu loads up and is ready in about 30 seconds - the XP install is 3-4 years old best we can remember and it takes about 4 minutes to load up! Checking with system resources shows there are on average 55-60 resident programs. He should clean it out but does not! Oh well. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jul 18, 2016 10:36:51 GMT -5
I used to work in the computer industry for many years - and I've been keeping track of this... There have been a lot of reports of "unexpected" or "forced" upgrades. I'm sure some of them were simply due to people hitting buttons too fast; or leaving "full auto updates" turned on. And at least some were due to a somewhat sneaky trick Microsoft pulled where, when the box popped up to offer you they update, they interpreted clicking the close box (the red X in the corner) as accepting the update. (they described this in the documentation; but who reads that?) But at least some do appear to have been due to updates that occurred without being agreed to by the user.... and we'll never know if it was deliberate, or whether there was some sort of a glitch in their dialog, or what. (Considering that you usually have to "Agree to terms and conditions" before a major install; which is to protect them and not you; it seems odd that they would deliberately skip that step.) The case in California concerned a Travel Agency - which used several computers - and which claimed actual lost business due to the down time of several computer failures as a result of the uninvited upgrade. We'll probably never know the details because she won the original case; then Microsoft appealed; them Microsoft dropped the appeal; undoubtedly because they decided that either they couldn't win or, more likely, that the publicity outweighed the value of fighting either way. (I always keep my computers set to: "Download updates - but always ask before installing them"... and none of them has been overly troubled by the update beyond the occasional plaintive begging.) Also, I don't know if the details have changed here... but the way it used to work was..... As you said, according to Microsoft, once you've updated a legitimate Windows 7 machine to Windows 10, it will be "permanently licensed" to either - and you will then be able to perform a clean install of either on it. However, while there's no way to get the copy of Windows 10 off of one machine and install it onto another, it used to be possible to create an install DVD, and then use that to install multiple copies on multiple machines (as long as they'd already been licensed). This allowed you to use a single "install media" to install multiple machines... and avoid downloading Windows 10 separately on each. In fact, in the past, it's always been possible to acquire a copy of "the install media" for Windows - to use to install it on machines for which you already had licenses.  A month ago while I was out of town, the devious folks at MS snuck a "forced" update from 7 to 10 in with a bunch of updates for 7. When I tried to restore my PC back to 7 it failed. I spent many hours over a long weekend with tech support "wannabees" from MS who were only able to send me a copy of 7 and I had to figure out how to reinstall it myself. Rather pathetic effort on their part. I recently saw where MS paid a woman in California $10,000 for doing the same thing to her PC which ran her home business. I've heard stories like this, but I have another Windows 7 laptop that I've successfully avoided upgrading for almost a year. Certainly MS has tried to get me to update, but I've been able to just say no. While Microsoft can be devious in places like the express settings, and they've really pushed this upgrade, I still think people allow the upgrade to happen by not fully reading the messages before clicking OK. That said, I plan to take the time to upgrade this laptop before the deadline, and will even turn on some older boxes sitting around to see if they qualify for the upgrade. Another thing nice about the Win 10 upgrade is that once you've upgraded and activated your machine, you can wipe it and do a clean install of 10 again without having any license keys, your hardware becomes authorized permanently. I like clean installs and do them with all my OS X and Windows machines. The downside of this 'feature' is that you can't take this copy of Windows 10 and move it to another machine, but that's what you get with free. |
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Post by copperpipe on Jul 18, 2016 12:32:47 GMT -5
Windows XP should be reinstalled every now and then - whenever it starts to get slow. Now, whether you can get by with some alternative, like Ubuntu, sort of depends on your needs. (What you want to DO on your computer.) You also need to remember that Windows and Ubuntu are both OPERATING SYSTEMS..... Their purpose is simply to allow you to access and run PROGRAMS..... Therefore, if you're going to make do with the free programs they throw in with it, then you need to look at it one way... And, if you plan to use it to RUN other programs, which are the ones that do what you actually want to do, then you need to look at it a different way... It's also different depending on whether you actually BUY programs or not... For example, starting from the last first.... If you actually own major commercial programs (like Adobe Creative Suite CC, or Microsoft Office, or Solidworks), then Ubuntu will NOT work well for you..... because most major programs won't run, or run well, on Ubuntu... and neither will most games. Face it, Windows is the most popular platform out there... which means that all the major programs are designed to run, and run well, on it. Sure, some Windows programs will run in Wine; but some won't; and some won't run WELL. (Google Ubuntu and Photoshop.... what you'll find is not "tricks for getting the best possible performance"; what you'll find is "how to get it to work - at all - hopefully".) Now, if you're looking to run free or cheap programs, things are a bit different.... There are some pretty good free programs for Linux... but, to be honest, in most cases the line stops at "pretty good". If you're going to write short letters, then Open Office is OK (and it's free) - but it's far behind what a current copy of Microsoft Word will do. And, while GIMP is pretty good for a free photo editor, it's a joke compared to Photoshop. And Audacity (a free audio editor) runs on Ubuntu... and it works OK... but it isn't very good compared to the available commercial audio editors. There is SOME overlap, with some very good free stuff, and some commercial stuff that runs on Ubuntu... but most major commercial apps don't run well on it. To be honest, I'm not especially familiar with the free stuff that comes with Ubuntu... but there is plenty of pretty good free stuff out there, and at least some of it runs on Linux. But there are lots of free apps that come installed with Windows that are also pretty good (or, at least, as good or better than the ones that come with Linux.) And, as for cheap software and shareware, while some of the popular ones DO run on Linux.... many do not. And there are LOTS of free and low cost programs for Windows. (In fact, when you try to figure out how to run many popular programs on Ubuntu - where you end up is a list of "replacements" and "alternatives" and "ones that are almost like the one you want". Well, sorry, guys.... when I want to run a program, I'm not all that interested in "finding another one that does almost what I want - sort of". ) And, to go into the specific for audio equipment..... Apple computers support bit perfect playback at pretty well all sample rates natively. And, with Windows, at least most serious programs support WASAPI. But, with Linux, audio support is even spottier than it is with Windows.... and you've got to mess with stuff like ALSA to even get close.... (Do you have an Ubuntu machine that can play 24/384k PCM at the proper sample rate? My old Windows 7 desktop machine can play it with no problem at all - and I didn't have to edit any text files.) To me, while Ubuntu is fun to play with, and, as they say, has lots of potential..... And the price is right..... As a "workhorse", which does everything I want it to do without a lot of aggravation and extra work, I find it falls far short.. So, out of curiosity, what PROGRAMS do you use on Ubuntu..... I would bet that there won't be many more takers for the 'free' upgrade. I'll keep my Win 7 on the partition and I'll never upgrade it. If it becomes obsolete that's fine with me. I'm getting more comfortable with Linux each day. I can't stress this enough - Ubuntu Linux is EASY. It supports older hardware than Win 7 or 10 and runs very faster on those older computers than XP ever could. My brother has an old HP laptop with a Celeron single core processor and 2gb of ram. I lent him an old 80gb laptop drive and a Ubuntu 16.04 DVD to load on the drive. So now he can switch from XP to Ubuntu by changing the drive caddy. He's been using Ubuntu about 80% of the time of late. He is finding that not having to wait for a firewall and anti-virus programs and all those other programs that like to have a 'foot' in the door 'just in case' you call it up - those add up and suck up system resources needlessly. Ubuntu loads up and is ready in about 30 seconds - the XP install is 3-4 years old best we can remember and it takes about 4 minutes to load up! Checking with system resources shows there are on average 55-60 resident programs. He should clean it out but does not! Oh well. I'd like to respond to some of these points. First, target audience (or who is using the OS). I agreed a while ago that lack of certain apps makes running linux not possible, for a certain (small) set of users; photoshop, quickbooks etc. No argument there from me. But photoshop (and the other apps you mentioned) are business-y types of apps, the vast majority of people that have computers (familys, personal usage) are not running those apps. All they need is firefox, a media player, and maybe an email client if they're using pop/imap. But now ask those family users to install something; with linux you open your software center and type in the name; with windows you download some dodgy app and pray it won't mess up your computer too much. I've converted several family members to linux and my maintenance of their machines has dropped to zero (other than a brief "ssh" into the machine and a "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" to upgrade ALL their software, at once... or whatever). But as an IT Pro myself, linux has software or features you can't run on windows (or very easily). I don't maintain such a list on my desktop just in case I get into a discussion about this. But how about ZFS? Enterprise class file system which is incredibly powerful. Snapshots, synchronization, deduplication, compression, "better raid" than raid. Then there is a ton of command line tools; ffmpeg (record video, live stream video to a server, slice it up, convert between formats), rsync (securely (over ssh) copy files over the network/internet, but only copy the bits that are different between source/dest); a ton of standard unixy tools to search for files, content inside of files, replace content in files etc etc. Text editors (vi/emacs), real file managers (allowing you to securely browse files on a remote computer; not just using the samba protocol). How about apps for security? Encryption is built right in. My home directory is stored on an encrypted partition, when my computer boots it just asks for the password and it's unlocked. Windows, you need to download or buy an app for it, and you don't know what the guys who built it are doing. With linux, it's part of the kernel source code, anybody can view it and audit it. You're point about finding replacement software is invalid too; I mean yes, I understand you won't want to do that, but that's the wrong way to look at it. If my sister switches from linux to windows, she will have the same problem (she uses a linux only program for her pictures, for example, and it doesn't run on windows). So that's not a linux problem, it's a person problem. As for cheap/shoddy linux software; I guaranteee you there is more junk out there for windows than there is for linux. There are entire websites dedicated to worthless junk. And there are sites that even link to the sites hosting the junk. Most of that junk contains spyware or interfaces that look out of place. And on linux, we've had an "app store" since 1996 or before that even. You open synaptic (debian based systems like ubuntu) and just install it. For sound: Can you send/stream audio from one machine to another machine over the local network (without the use of some crazy program built specially to do it?). That's just one advantage of pulseaudio. ALSA is not some problem case either. If you want bit-perfect playback on linux, you open up VLC (works on windows too, great media player) and set your driver to ALSA). That's not anymore trouble than doing the same thing on windows using JRiver/WASAPI or VLC/WASAPI. I haven't tried the sample rate change you mentioned, but neither do I have any music of that high quality. Editing a text file is not a horror either, if that's what it comes down to. (Unless of course your text editor is the windows 95 era notepad that they still ship with windows 7 and beyond ) Microsoft Word is also a joke, in my opinion. Granted, I'm not a big document publisher, but I'll take a style based document editor any day of the week. Latex figured that out years ago. Excel... OK, it's probably the best spreadsheet available these days in terms of feature count; I've never noticed any shortcoming with Calc from LibreOffice, and I work with a data science guy who only uses excel; we send/save/open files with no issues. Let's move on to printers. On windows you get a 160 meg driver that comes with a set of programs that look like junk and don't fit in in terms of user interface (they don't use standard windows controls); samsung, I'm looking at you! You get scanning software installed, photo editors, fax drivers, and the whole ball of wax; which you didn't want or need because it's all junk and you already have other programs installed for those tasks. (Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but Samsung, HP, Epson, all seemed to trash my system with junk when all I wanted to do was get my printer to print a page). On linux; you install cups (the printer system) if it's not already installed. Most (all?) distros come with cups installed unless the point of the distro is to be as small as possible, or is highly specialized. Then you browse to printers, click "add", find your printer from the list if it's not already automatically selected, and hit "next". Done. A printer specific driver (called "ppd") is a few Kbs. Sharing a printer is also drop-dead easy; on windows, last time I tried it using SMB printing, it always failed unless the 2 systems's users/passwords were identical. Mind you, I didn't try hard to fix it since my sister was ready to move to linux anyway. Linux has had system wide support for printing any document to PDF files, for years (again, probably early 90's). Any program that could print, could use the "print to pdf" feature that is part of the linux printing system. Does windows do anything like that yet? I know Word can export to pdf, but last I checked you needed special software to do this on windows if you wanted system wide print-to-pdf. Then there are some pretty awesome revision control apps like Git/Mercurial. Mercurial does work on windows, but Git not so much IIRC. How about performance? No contest, linux wins hands down. It boots quicker, apps are snappier and open quicker. One of the biggest advantages of linux? I'm in control of my computer. With windows, you take what Microsoft shovels and you hope it doesn't hurt too much. I could go on... but honestly, I don't think I'll change your mind anyway Edit: couple more: Yes, linux sometimes requires you to use a text editor to edit files for more advanced features. But the files are all in one place (/etc), heavily documented with comments in the files, come with "man pages" (a manual you view on the command line). And windows, well they don't ship a "regedit.exe" utility for fun, and i'd pick a text file any day over using regedit. Have a couple machines in your home, but only want to download system updates once and share them across all computers? In linux, you open the configuration file and tweak it; on windows, no such luck (though this may have changed with win 10??) unless you're using a domain server. Edit2: another one (see now you've got me started ) linux you can change anything and absolutely everything. Want a full feature desktop environment? KDE. Want a small simple desktop with just a menu and task bar? Can have that too. You can make it look like anything. With windows, apparently those stupid ugly windows 8 rectangles are our new friend. Blech. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jul 18, 2016 14:13:08 GMT -5
Obviously we have VERY different needs here However, I think the low end "family users" you talk about, the ones who only do web browsing, e-mail, and video, will probably end up with a tablet - either Windows or Android (or perhaps an iPad). And any who are a little more serious ARE the prime audience for apps like Quicken, and Quickbooks, and Dragon. And the next level up are going to be serious users who DO really need serious apps like Photoshop, and Illustrator, and Microsoft Word. I agree that Linux has its place - and that it may well (arguably) have better enterprise features than Windows. If I were personally setting up a web server, I would probably run it on Linux rather than Windows. And I agree that, at the developer level, it has much better software revisioning, versioning, and tracking support. However, as a "business workstation user" - not being able to run the Adobe suite - well - is a deal breaker (because there are no viable Linux alternatives). I also agree that MS Word is bloated and overly complicated, but Open Office and Libre Office really aren't up to doing a 500 page book with headers, footers, and a TOC. And Latex, while it was great for precise typographic control, was miserable for organizing long documents. (I seem to recall it's audience being limited to academics with lots of time to spend; I haven't tried it in years.) I've written long documents in both Word and InDesign - and I wouldn't want to do it in Libre Office, or Open Office, or Latex. And, from the end-user side of things, you can take a course in how to use Word at any library or community college... and there are hundreds of books about it. There isn't nearly that much peer support or documentation for Linux stuff. As for printing, most modern printers support the network directly, so I haven't shared a printer by machine in years. But, yes, Acrobat Reader, THE standard PDF printer, has been standard on Windows for years (I think they changed it in Windows 10). And Windows has always come with at least one browser included (now two). As for audio...... Apple has the best support, with full UAC1 and UAC2 support built in. And, once you select WASAPI in Windows, you get all your sample rates without Windows resampling or otherwise altering any of them. It's trivial to select WASAPI as your output mode (you get three choices; two of them will work just fine). I've heard of users figuring out how to get bit-perfect rendering at specific sample rates in ALSA... but I've never heard a clear set of instructions on how to avoid reasmpling with ALSA at all sample rates. (And I have no interest whatsoever in streaming audio from one machine to another - at least until I can get it to play bit-perfect on one machine.) As for device support.... I can tell you that VERY few audio devices that require drivers have Linux drivers....... (And a lot will never have Windows XP or Windows 7 drivers; but EVERY new thing that comes out will almost certainly have a Windows 10 driver.) Incidentally, I do agree that Windows text editing is pathetic..... but my favorite shell program (Total Commander) has a nice text viewer. And EditPad is an excellent (and free) text editor. Finally, to be honest again, I think Microsoft's support of Windows sucks.... but there is a little of it, and a lot of people use Windows, so there are people to ask. I don't know who your relatives would turn to for help with their Linux computers if you weren't there and they needed to update something or something went wrong..... (Do they actually have that long command to do updates memorized? Or did you write a custom script for them?) In short, I really don't think that Linux is a good choice for most END USERS..... especially if they don't have someone who is familiar with it and committed to supporting them. And, from the audio viewpoint, virtually all of the "good" player programs are either Apple or Windows - or both... but NOT Linux. HOWEVER, I think this thread was about whether to upgrade to Windows 10 or not..... I'd like to respond to some of these points. First, target audience (or who is using the OS). I agreed a while ago that lack of certain apps makes running linux not possible, for a certain (small) set of users; photoshop, quickbooks etc. No argument there from me. But photoshop (and the other apps you mentioned) are business-y types of apps, the vast majority of people that have computers (familys, personal usage) are not running those apps. All they need is firefox, a media player, and maybe an email client if they're using pop/imap. But now ask those family users to install something; with linux you open your software center and type in the name; with windows you download some dodgy app and pray it won't mess up your computer too much. I've converted several family members to linux and my maintenance of their machines has dropped to zero (other than a brief "ssh" into the machine and a "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" to upgrade ALL their software, at once... or whatever). But as an IT Pro myself, linux has software or features you can't run on windows (or very easily). I don't maintain such a list on my desktop just in case I get into a discussion about this. But how about ZFS? Enterprise class file system which is incredibly powerful. Snapshots, synchronization, deduplication, compression, "better raid" than raid. Then there is a ton of command line tools; ffmpeg (record video, live stream video to a server, slice it up, convert between formats), rsync (securely (over ssh) copy files over the network/internet, but only copy the bits that are different between source/dest); a ton of standard unixy tools to search for files, content inside of files, replace content in files etc etc. Text editors (vi/emacs), real file managers (allowing you to securely browse files on a remote computer; not just using the samba protocol). How about apps for security? Encryption is built right in. My home directory is stored on an encrypted partition, when my computer boots it just asks for the password and it's unlocked. Windows, you need to download or buy an app for it, and you don't know what the guys who built it are doing. With linux, it's part of the kernel source code, anybody can view it and audit it. You're point about finding replacement software is invalid too; I mean yes, I understand you won't want to do that, but that's the wrong way to look at it. If my sister switches from linux to windows, she will have the same problem (she uses a linux only program for her pictures, for example, and it doesn't run on windows). So that's not a linux problem, it's a person problem. As for cheap/shoddy linux software; I guaranteee you there is more junk out there for windows than there is for linux. There are entire websites dedicated to worthless junk. And there are sites that even link to the sites hosting the junk. Most of that junk contains spyware or interfaces that look out of place. And on linux, we've had an "app store" since 1996 or before that even. You open synaptic (debian based systems like ubuntu) and just install it. For sound: Can you send/stream audio from one machine to another machine over the local network (without the use of some crazy program built specially to do it?). That's just one advantage of pulseaudio. ALSA is not some problem case either. If you want bit-perfect playback on linux, you open up VLC (works on windows too, great media player) and set your driver to ALSA). That's not anymore trouble than doing the same thing on windows using JRiver/WASAPI or VLC/WASAPI. I haven't tried the sample rate change you mentioned, but neither do I have any music of that high quality. Editing a text file is not a horror either, if that's what it comes down to. (Unless of course your text editor is the windows 95 era notepad that they still ship with windows 7 and beyond ) Microsoft Word is also a joke, in my opinion. Granted, I'm not a big document publisher, but I'll take a style based document editor any day of the week. Latex figured that out years ago. Excel... OK, it's probably the best spreadsheet available these days in terms of feature count; I've never noticed any shortcoming with Calc from LibreOffice, and I work with a data science guy who only uses excel; we send/save/open files with no issues. Let's move on to printers. On windows you get a 160 meg driver that comes with a set of programs that look like junk and don't fit in in terms of user interface (they don't use standard windows controls); samsung, I'm looking at you! You get scanning software installed, photo editors, fax drivers, and the whole ball of wax; which you didn't want or need because it's all junk and you already have other programs installed for those tasks. (Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but Samsung, HP, Epson, all seemed to trash my system with junk when all I wanted to do was get my printer to print a page). On linux; you install cups (the printer system) if it's not already installed. Most (all?) distros come with cups installed unless the point of the distro is to be as small as possible, or is highly specialized. Then you browse to printers, click "add", find your printer from the list if it's not already automatically selected, and hit "next". Done. A printer specific driver (called "ppd") is a few Kbs. Sharing a printer is also drop-dead easy; on windows, last time I tried it using SMB printing, it always failed unless the 2 systems's users/passwords were identical. Mind you, I didn't try hard to fix it since my sister was ready to move to linux anyway. Linux has had system wide support for printing any document to PDF files, for years (again, probably early 90's). Any program that could print, could use the "print to pdf" feature that is part of the linux printing system. Does windows do anything like that yet? I know Word can export to pdf, but last I checked you needed special software to do this on windows if you wanted system wide print-to-pdf. Then there are some pretty awesome revision control apps like Git/Mercurial. Mercurial does work on windows, but Git not so much IIRC. How about performance? No contest, linux wins hands down. It boots quicker, apps are snappier and open quicker. One of the biggest advantages of linux? I'm in control of my computer. With windows, you take what Microsoft shovels and you hope it doesn't hurt too much. I could go on... but honestly, I don't think I'll change your mind anyway Edit: couple more: Yes, linux sometimes requires you to use a text editor to edit files for more advanced features. But the files are all in one place (/etc), heavily documented with comments in the files, come with "man pages" (a manual you view on the command line). And windows, well they don't ship a "regedit.exe" utility for fun, and i'd pick a text file any day over using regedit. Have a couple machines in your home, but only want to download system updates once and share them across all computers? In linux, you open the configuration file and tweak it; on windows, no such luck (though this may have changed with win 10??) unless you're using a domain server. |
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Post by ÈlTwo on Jul 18, 2016 14:40:03 GMT -5
I did forget to mention that I do also run WINE on my Linux boxes so I can run windows programs.
It's also interesting, and you will see this with the Windows 10 anniversary update, that Win 10 can have a Ubuntu based bash shell.
Microsoft added the “Linux Subsystem for Windows” starting with the betas a couple of months ago.
Although they claim it's a full shell, I haven't had enough time to play with it to see if that is indeed so.
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Post by copperpipe on Jul 18, 2016 15:04:11 GMT -5
Obviously we have VERY different needs here However, I think the low end "family users" you talk about, the ones who only do web browsing, e-mail, and video, will probably end up with a tablet - either Windows or Android (or perhaps an iPad). And any who are a little more serious ARE the prime audience for apps like Quicken, and Quickbooks, and Dragon. And the next level up are going to be serious users who DO really need serious apps like Photoshop, and Illustrator, and Microsoft Word. Yup, we do have different needs, but I still don't think the majority of home owners or even business users need windows; like you say, most people just need a tablet (an android system, which ironically runs linux under-the-hood!); and for those people, linux is the better option vs windows. A lot of applications are going cloud based too; heck, you can even write programming code nowadays in a web-based development enviroment; all you need is a web browser. Windows's hold on the application monopoly is only shrinking, not expanding. With time, more and more people will be able to switch to linux. I also agree that MS Word is bloated and overly complicated, but Open Office and Libre Office really aren't up to doing a 500 page book with headers, footers, and a TOC. And Latex, while it was great for precise typographic control, was miserable for organizing long documents. (I seem to recall it's audience being limited to academics with lots of time to spend; I haven't tried it in years.) I've written long documents in both Word and InDesign - and I wouldn't want to do it in Libre Office, or Open Office, or Latex. I don't know. I've used Lyx (which is a GUI on top of latex) to write manuals, documents, and tutorials for my software. Very easy to use (it's a WYSIWYM editor), complete with TOC, index, bibliography. I would never attempt that in Word ever again, lyx is 10 times easier. And, from the end-user side of things, you can take a course in how to use Word at any library or community college... and there are hundreds of books about it. There isn't nearly that much peer support or documentation for Linux stuff. Again, not so sure. There are tons of man pages installed with linux software, and you can google for help (like you would for windows; nobody I know has gone to a library in like decades!) and get very detailed instructions. Never run stuck trying to figure anything out. And since most linux devs are open source guys, you can usually talk directly to the software developers using IRC, mailing lists, or google groups. Can't do that with most windows software since it is mostly proprietary and locked behind a corporation; or you pay for support, but mostly you never talk directly to the guys who wrote the stuff. As a software developer, a further benefit is that I can download the code, fix it, write patches, or help debug etc. Granted, very few end users are software developers, but again, it's a whole different world when comparing this particular aspect to the equivalent in windows land. I don't know who your relatives would turn to for help with their Linux computers if you weren't there and they needed to update something or something went wrong..... (Do they actually have that long command to do updates memorized? Or did you write a custom script for them?) Nope, they don't have to execute any of that at all... they can just click on the "apply updates now" button when it pops up (usually weekly). Some of the people I help just ignore the updates though, so from time to time I login to their machine remotely over ssh, then execute the commands for them |
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I just dont have the time or inclination to learn stuff when I need a respite. Marriage, restaurants, raising two 82 year olds, 5 boards to help better my community,,,,,,,,,,,,brother, I dont have time ,,,,,,but I would like a start button,,,,,,he,,,,,he,,,,,,he,,,,,,, 
