Because Shiny Things Are Fun - The New New Windows v Linux Thread

Originally Posted by foodown I want to know if they have put a good version of bash into this one.

They have the PowerShell, which is at least as powerful as Bash.

Looking at metro ... er ... whatever they call it now, I am flabbergasted.

It's like they had a few guys in the room during the design process who would shout out things like:

"Too intuitive!"

"Not ugly enough!"

"Hey ... you can't do that ... That's taking too much advantage of a large display."

"Don't worry if it's not useful ... we'll just inelegantly slap our old interface in there too, in case users need to ... you know ... do something."

"Too much like Mac!"

I will give them this: the design is original. Unlike their previous ... err ... still-in-use-but-now-secondary UI, this one is nothing like anything that Apple has designed. I don't think that Apple is even capable of anything so god-awful.

What it looks a lot like are things from the past like AOL and Microsoft Bob.

The more I think about it, the more "Modern" seems to mirror concept of the old AOL "shell."

To me, Microsoft's biggest problem is that they can't leave the user-interface alone.

But, it seems, neither can Apple.

I don't think that software designers are really comfortable with the notion that, when we pick up a portable device, we're conditioned to expect it to work a certain way, and when we sit down at a laptop or desktop device, we effortlessly switch our expectations. Yes, this does mean that software designers have to cope with "two targets," but I don't think that's any big deal.

I stopped bumping my MacBook up at Snow Leopard. Didn't do Lion at all (I was working with Apple at the time and therefore could see a good part of the release-date bug list ... ...), and probably won't do Mountain Lion either. (P.S.: "Eventually, fellas, you're gonna run out of cats!")

I kinda think that the operating-system user interface ought to by-and-large be "the great constant." I don't like to re-learn things.

For the most part I heartily concur. Changes are welcome, but not just for the sake of change, Nor for the sake of mere conformity to some arbirtary standard. For instance - When desktops actualy have touch screens, some changes might help us to take advantage of that fact. But until most ( say *most*) of them have touch screens, they need to not be turnig the whole operating system on it's head, but rather adding some "touchscreen" features without changing the rest of it unduly.

Even using an android pad, or telephone, I appreciate the effort on the part of the programmers to make it work as much as reasonably possible like the same programs on a desktop, or laptop.

Likewise, I have appreciated the efforts that I have observed on the part of programmers to use "conventions" of Dos in Windows, or conventions of Windows in Linux, or conventions of Unix in all of the above.

Inovation is very welcome, and should be encouraged, but if it is going to be used readily by a wide group of people, it will move more smoothly if there are some aspects of it that remain familiar.

Dave McM

The windows 8 metro apps do not work now, though my internet has no problem.
I am not sure why?

Originally Posted by future_computer The windows 8 metro apps do not work now, though my internet has no problem. I am not sure why?

Why don't you ask on a Windows forum?

Windows is kewl. My cousin uses it for steams. Linux is upsetting, my dog hates it and my dog died early. 100 years from now: I don't want to think about reality, none of this mattering, because I have to still be alive by then. Something told me so, my ego.

And windoze still sucks in a hundred years

My cousin uses it for steams.

Mine, too!!

One super cool thing about Windows: My trusty XP CD.

Because Windows Vista, 7, and soon to be 8, are so undesirable, and therefore not adopted like Microsoft may have hoped, the Windows XP CD (Yes, it's a CD) that I bought in 2001 has lasted me for nearly 12 years now, and it still runs some new software. (It ran just about all of it up until this year.)

I payed $120 for it, which makes the cost to me about $10/year.

Strangely, Slackware has cost me more than this, since I buy a shirt with each new release. Sure, Slackware has been updated a little more than once per year in that time, and each release has been an improvement over the last, but cost is cost.

So, in my case, Windows has been cheaper than Linux.

It doesn't work out that way when you look at it in dollars per hour of use, or when you consider that being a Slackware user directly lead to a new career in UNIX systems engineering, thereby paying inestimable dividends ....

Still. Even if it is because of the creating company's inability to make a good successor, I feel like I've really got my $120 worth from that XP Pro CD.

The first computer that I installed it on was a Pentium MMX 233MHz ... The last non-virtual one was an Athlon XP 2.2GHz.

Also, Windows is way crazy fast and has a very small memory footprint ... When you install version 3.11 along with DOS 5.0 on a Core i7 3.2GHz; Fastest, most lightweight OS I've ever run ... except for FreeBSD 3 on the Alpha architecture ... that was pretty damn fast.

Originally Posted by foodown Also, Windows is way crazy fast and has a very small memory footprint ... When you install version 3.11 along with DOS 5.0 on a Core i7 3.2GHz; Fastest, most lightweight OS I've ever run ... except for FreeBSD 3 on the Alpha architecture ... that was pretty damn fast.

I don't know if I should take your post seriously, or it is a joke, or half and half, but have you really installed 3.11 on i7??? I recently tried Win98 on my Athlon64 3500+ w/ 2GB RAM and it complained that I don't have enough RAM...

Originally Posted by segmentation_fault I don't know if I should take your post seriously, or it is a joke, or half and half, but have you really installed 3.11 on i7??? I recently tried Win98 on my Athlon64 3500+ w/ 2GB RAM and it complained that I don't have enough RAM...

Yes, but DOS couldn't boot on its own; I had to use LILO.

Windows 3.11 is wicked crazy fast on a new machine. I only gave it one 256MB DIMM for memory; I don't know if it could have used more, but I figured that 256MB was plenty, since my hard disk back in the old 3.11 days was only 40MB.

In case anyone's wondering, this was 100% legal, as I used installation media that I purchased myself about 20 years ago.

I wonder if it's even possible to boot CP/M or Xenix on a new box ...

You guys know that you can run Windows 3.11 in DosBox,... right?!?! No need to waste a whole machine on a psuedo-OS (It's really just a fancy GUI for DOS) that can fit on the average SD card with room to spare...

Originally Posted by JaseP You guys know that you can run Windows 3.11 in DosBox,... right?!?! No need to waste a whole machine on a psuedo-OS (It's really just a fancy GUI for DOS) that can fit on the average SD card with room to spare...

Yeah, but there's nothing like seeing it run native, loading to icons before your enter key fully rebounds from being pressed to issue the 'win' command.

Originally Posted by segmentation_fault I don't know if I should take your post seriously, or it is a joke, or half and half, but have you really installed 3.11 on i7??? I recently tried Win98 on my Athlon64 3500+ w/ 2GB RAM and it complained that I don't have enough RAM...

The reason for this is that the "memory size" API which it used returns a 32-bit result. It literally was not designed for the possibility of encountering this amount of memory, because the processors of the day could never do so. Quite a few legacy applications had a similar problem. And, one day, the problem in a different incarnation will surface again, when 256-bit processors are using nearby galaxies for storage.