New Computer - I want some form of Linux with XP on the side...

[Steve A.]

Steve is a pretty knowledgeable Windows user.

I have been crashing Windows systems for over 25 years now but I am not sure that is something to brag about.

I've been planning to write an article titled "The Death of the Personal Computer." It was really cool how we could customize our programs and interfaces which started off in the 80's and reached high points with Win 95/98 and Win2K/XP. Win2K and WinXP were a lot more powerful but to customize your programs you either had to dig deep through the menu structure to find the item you wanted- and then remember how the hell you got there if you wanted to go back later. It was so much easier to edit an INI file. (In fact why not have an INI file which corresponds to all of your settings in Options or Preferences and have a push button interface to have the registry compile those settings?)

The real danger to the idea of a Personal and Personalized computer is not Windows but the mobile operating systems and their apps. While a Windows program might have a Preferences window with thousands of options an Android app might have a dozen- or even less. I love Opera Mobile on my Android tablet but under Settings there are only 9 items. Fortunately one is the addition of an Exit button which I think should be mandatory for ALL Android apps. "Hit Back twice to exit" in most cases does not actually close the app and take it out of RAM. You could get the same results by clicking your heels three times.

To add insult to injury Windows programs are now trying to emulate apps with a very simple interface with very few choices to customize it to your taste. (This actually started several years ago when Windows programs tried to emulate Mac programs and deviated from all of the standards Microsoft had set for the menu bar: File, Edit, View, Tools, Help. And Microsoft itself deviated from those standards with Office 2007 and its accursed Ribbon instead of a menu bar.)

Older versions of Windows were aimed at content creators as well as content consumers but starting with Vista they are aimed primarily at content consumers. Google has not encourage content creation as you can find thousands of blogs linked to a particular article or blog post. And when I search for more information on a subject discussed in a newspaper article or blog post all I usually find are links to the same article.

Google itself has dumbed itself down. While you used to be able to search for articles or web pages by specifying a range of dates, under Advance Options you now a choice of anytime, past 24 hours, past week, past month and past year. I blame that on Facebookization where the only current activity is relevant. We have threads here at MEF that have gone on for years! On FB your timeline is sorted by the time and date of the original post and not by that of the most recent comment. (Imagine how that would be here at MEF or any of the other BBS-style forums.) Facebook is the KING of non-personalization- you have a limited number of options to select from and with every major rewrite of FB code they usually reset all of those options to whatever offers you the least amount of privacy. In the Golden Days of Windows application programming you could not get away with ANY of that crap!)

But I digest...

Steve Ahola

[bob p]

> Older versions of Windows were aimed at content creators as well as content consumers but starting with Vista they are aimed primarily at content consumers.

you've said a lot with a few words. it explains why the user interface is being stupidificated. (W). content consumers are chasing simple portable devices that don't have much more functionality than storage and playback of audio and video, and basic phone/text capability. i looked at the iPods and i Pads and thought, "Gee, this device doesn't do very much. I can't imagine how it would be useful."

The devices aren't for any sort of serious use -- how can the be when they don't even have a keypad? it's obvious that the providers expect that the user is going to be willing to accept what's placed before them and that they'll be content with whatever that content may be. that's quite a revealing concept. the 4G device is not a tool as much as it is entertainment. What amazes me is that while this market is constantly expanding, the PC market is collapsing. why? because people don't really want computing devices that help them to do meaningful work.. they're brain-dead zombies that only want devices that give them non-stop access to content. the 4G device has liberated the couch-potato from the couch, so now they can wander the streets like zombies. seriously -- how many people have you seen crossing the street who don't even look up to check for traffic because their eyes are glued to a 4G screen? around here it's the norm. it's really BAD on the college campuses. total connection to the collective, with total disconnection from the real world environment. people are more interested in the content of their borg appliance than the real world around them. it's actually quite sad.

[Steve Conner]

I guess now wouldn't be a good time to reveal that three-quarters of my posts to MEF over the last year (including this one) have been made with an iPhone.

Apple's stroke of genius was to make a device that did what Joe Public actually wanted, namely consume content and play dumb games on the bus.

[blindboybenton]

Hi

Ive been a linux convert for the past 4 yrs. I use Linux mint 12 with Libra office. Does my needs . Easy to use too

BBB

[bob p]

It is ironic that creating a device that streams the boob-tube on-the-go and allows people to play dumb games on the bus is all that it takes to become the world's most successful corporation. That doesn't say much for us as a species now does it?

* Not posted from my iPhone.

[ReadyTeddy]

My current home computer has Ubuntu 64-bit and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Neither OS has eaten the other.

[Steve A.]

One of the things I like about Win7 is that they finally fixed the directory tree. In XP, if you were in the My Documents folder and pressed the "Parent" button, you would end up in "Desktop", whereas it should be your home directory, because that's where the My Documents folder lives. Windows hardly uses the home directory, so most people would never notice. I never noticed until I started using Cygwin.

In 7, the Parent button in Explorer finally does the same as "cd .." at the command prompt. There are about a dozen other annoying "features" that MS fixed too, like renaming "Documents and Settings" to "Users".(

Everybody tells you to store your data files on anything but the boot drive. If possible don't install new programs on the boot drive. So with XP I had been redirecting "My Documents" to "E:\My Documents" and everything worked peachy keen. With Vista and Win 7 I have been able redirect most of the files to "E:\My Documents" but some of them end up in "Steve\My Documents." I don't want ANY Steve folders since I already know my own name!

With Win XP there were some files that ended up in "Documents and Settings" on the C: drive but I had no problem moving them where I wanted them. (Try it with Win 7 Home Premium and you will find yourself blocked by the OS. They AREN'T system files so why is Windows so possessive about them? [BTW I did find a program or reg patch that adds "take ownership" to the right click menu and right now I am running it in a DOS window.]

I like a plain and simple file interface with no fancy shortcuts like Libraries or Steve. Give me a filepath not flowers and roses! One big problem is that the "real" file path name for something in Steve folders is incredibly long and with a ridiculously long name for an MP3 file and the folder that contains it you can exceed the 128/260 character limit.

You receive a "The specified file or folder name is too long" error message when you create a new folder or a new document in a document library in SharePoint Portal Server or in Windows SharePoint Services

Windows 7 might work well for other people but it doesn't work for me and it makes a lot of my tasks more difficult. It would help if there was a standalone 3rd party program that duplicates the 2k/XP file search feature- I can't be the only person longing for the old search box. ["Everything" is a great global search utility but I haven't figured out how to get results from just one drive or folder.]

Steve Ahola

P.S. My biggest gripe about Win 7 is that it insists on giving me special views for whenever it finds audio or video files in the folder. I go through each hard drive and specify that I want a straight file listing with details that I can select, yet Win 7 keeps reverting to the view that it thinks I should like.

[Steve Conner]

I think the "Steve" "folder" is actually a library. Libraries are one feature of 7 that I certainly don't like.

If it were me, I would move the whole "Users" directory to another drive using a NTFS junction (symlink for Unix weenies) Move the Users Directory in Windows 7 however it's only fair to point out that I haven't personally tried this on 7.

[blindboybenton]

Hi

I use mint. But ubuntu has more driver support. Im not a lover of the desktop that it gives you. so look at KDE ubuntu
Download a load of them and run on a cd/dvd to see what you like the most

BBB

[Steve A.]

I think the "Steve" "folder" is actually a library. Libraries are one feature of 7 that I certainly don't like.

If it were me, I would move the whole "Users" directory to another drive using a NTFS junction (symlink for Unix weenies) Move the Users Directory in Windows 7 however it's only fair to point out that I haven't personally tried this on 7.

Thanks for the information! I wonder if it will work with W7 Home Premium which is the 7th Gutless Wonder of the World. Now that I took ownership of the Documents and Settings folder I am able to look inside it and see that the file path for the Steve folder is much shorter than it was with WinXP as I recall. The attached picture shows the actual directory structure [C:\Documents and Settings\Steve]



While uploading that picture here I was reminded of another quirk in Vista and W7: when dragging and dropping a file to another folder you have to be really careful where you place the cursor or it will end up in a subfolder instead.

To upload a picture here I usually first copy the picture in its existing location and then when the Browse window opens here I paste it into the active folder and then select it and click OK. Although it creates a duplicate file it sure beats navigating around to get to its original location.

With XP it was really easy to paste the file into the active folder but with W7 I need to scroll horizontally and often resize the window to get far enough to the right to have the Paste option in my right-click menu. Not that big of a hassle but sometimes the file is not displayed in the listing until I click on Refresh. Geez- I just used a Window function to copy the file and you would think that it would be aware of that without having me click on Refresh (something that never happened with XP.)

Steve Ahola

[bob p]

If it were me, I would move the whole "Users" directory to another drive using a NTFS junction (symlink for Unix weenies)...

IMO the "weenies" are the guys who give a new name to an old concept, and then act like they created something new. MS is *famous* for doing this.

What's the point of creating the term "NTFS junction" if the reality is that it's just another word for symlink? Part of the reason that I hate microsoft is because they do not embrace the concept of consistency from one release to the next. File locations get moved, and they give the same entity a different name every time that a new version of windows comes out. Under Win95 they called a simlink a "shortcut." Now it's an "NTFS junction." Sheesh.

Steve, instead of re-learing Windows all over again every time they come out with a new release, it might be less work for you to focus on learning linux. The RedHat File System Heirarchy Standard (FSH) was created a long time ago, it's created consistency in terms of what types of files are stored in what locations, and it solved many of the problems you're complaining about.

[Steve Conner]

Bob, I count myself as a Unix weenie, I've been using it since the 90s, when I helped the university research group I was a member of to move our building simulation code base from Solaris to Linux. 1.5 million lines of Fortran. I wish you had seen the spew of error messages the first time we hit "make".

It was a huge success. By the time I graduated, not only was every new machine we ordered a PC running Linux, but we were installing Red Hat on the old Sun workstations to avoid paying the Solaris maintenance fee. Linux was cool then, but it has come on in leaps and bounds ever since. The biggest difference I notice is that you hardly get driver troubles, the office suite works, and you get 3d graphics and video.

I was pretty surprised when I found out NTFS had symlinks. The history of DOS and Windows could be thought of as a process of turning into Unix through a series of more-or-less unpleasant kludges. It started with bolting Beame & Whitesides TCP/IP onto DOS and pretty much got worse from there. I don't know what undocumented system kludge requires the use of these "NTFS junctions", and maybe I don't want to.

I thought 7 was Microsoft's best OS yet, not the best OS ever. My experience is with the full version, 7 Ultimate or whatever it's called, as that's what our corporate IT department supplies on all new machines, and requires you to run to get network access (hence my sudden interest in virtual machines )

[bob p]

Sorry for being unclear. I know you're a unix-weenie Steve C. I should have been clear that was encouraging Steve A. to give a little more attention to Linux, as even though he knows Windows inside and out, he's got a lot of bruises on his head from beating it against the wall.

[Steve Conner]

Oh well, I guess I should have known better than to get involved in a Windows vs. Linux debate. The different OSs all have their strengths and weaknesses, and everyone has his or her favourite.

Steve A., what sort of "content creation" do you use your machine for? Would it be realistic to change to Linux? I always thought audio and video production was Linux's weakest point.

[überfuzz]

Interesting!

I mainly use my computer for C/C++ with different APIs. I never got a liftoff on Windows, just doesnt cut the cheese. :-/ ocationally a play games, then i boot in Windows 7, works like charm.