The Unoffical Techie Thread - Mac Users Are Still Welcome :)

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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 5:25 am

@ Ex

In another post yesterday you said:

Quote:

I am seventeen but have been messing with Windows since I was four. I remember Windows 3.1. I remember Windows 95 when I loaded from floppy disks on a machine I put together myself when I was five

I am amazed at your breadth of expertise. However your depth of experience seems to cut quite a few corners.
eg as a long term industry player, I find that not many computers are sold without an operating system. Certainly not in my country at any rate. I would not buy a computer without an OS, and I certainly wouldn't sell one either. That in no way disputes the buyer's right to have a choice of OS.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 2301

I use Windows, Linux, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, Solaris and Mac at my job, and I think they ALL have a valid place in the market, and they all have things that suck about them. It all boils down to what the end users wants to do.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 21 Oct 2006 Posts: 35

Reading this from Ubuntu Linux and feeling great!

I dual boot with winblows yes, just that I don't use it except when I need to use AutoCAD.

Too bad there's no good replacement for that one yet, and may never be...

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:18 am

@ Afferbecklauder

Ty. My father saw it fit to expose me to a variety of things to see what my "knack" was, which later turned out to be problem-solving. In any case, the PC in question was just a bunch of spare parts bought at a pwn shop. If I remember correctly, it was two 32MB SIMMS, a Baby-AT mobo, an 80486DX processor, a parallel and serial port on a PCI card, a 1.5 GB HDD, and a NIC. I remember learning the names of most of the internal components of the PC that day although I learned the specifics a couple years later. As for me saying that having no OS was a choice, I am simply saying that if you don't wish to have Windows as an OS, a lot of vendors allow to have a clean partition instead of an OS for a reduced cost, (i.e. www.cyberpowerpc.com). I will admit, I have heard that dealings with lesser known manufacturers haven't gone quite well. I also know that most vendors that offer business models offer these things.

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:41 am

salempc wrote:

I dual boot with winblows yes, just that I don't use it except when I need to use AutoCAD.

Too bad there's no good replacement for that one yet, and may never be...

Have you tried qcad? As I understand it qcad uses the same file format, so one would assume it does much the same thing (Although not being a regular CAD user, I can't say for certain. If you do give it a go, I'd be interested to hear how it stands up).

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:30 pm

I should be getting my new laptop this week with vista. I will be able to compare my experiences with xp versus vista and be able to make my own opinions. I think I can view it from the position of someone trying to switch from Linux to vista and see what I can do. Although, I expect that Dell has everything integrated so I would see too many initial problems. I'll have to install some programs and do some tech work on it.

Then I'll wipe the driver and install Linux.

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:31 pm

Doc

You had me worried for a minute there! Laughing

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:40 am

I think I've weighed in on this before . . . . But I'll Bite again. Laughing

First off I started my son off on his own computer when he was two. It was a windows 2K machine that had all of his movies on it and he started them using the mouse. We then moved to some simple Reader Rabbit point and click games. He got his first laptop when he was four. I had loaded Edubuntu on it for him and there were no problems in switching. He is now six and works with either XP or Edubuntu depending on what he is doing. Unfortunetely my brother got him going on Age of Empires and so he has been spending a LOT of time on the Xp game machine.

so @Ex I have no problem with you considering yourself experienced in using computers and OS's. By the time my son is 17 I'm sure he will have a lot of experience also.

However you have yet to experience the joys Shocked

of supporting users with computers. This is a whole other dimension. Any new OS will have a few quirks. One of my recollections with a switch to WFW was a mouse problem that was causing random lockups. While I did fix the problem try explaining to a client that the five hours you want to charge him for are because of a cheap mouse.

Currently the quirks in Vista way outnumber any potential gains. Try googleing " the longest suicide note in history " to see some informative and funny articles about Vista. In short the whole purpose of this OS is to implement DRM at the Hardware Abstraction Layer, or pretty close, so that the user is locked in to using approved DRM. I wont go into my opinions of that here. Suffice to say that a lot of the performance and functionality of the OS is sacrificed for that goal.

Personally I prefer to use Linux. My current flavor is Fedora simply because I was able to get the high def audio working on my laptop. Prior to this I was running Ubuntu. While there are a lot of reasons to prefer Linux over windows, and vis-a-versa, in the IT world I find the ability to roll my own device very useful. Look at it this way, Windows is an all you can eat buffet where you have to eat all of it and Linux is an Al a Carte menu. This way I can create a Linux appliance that does what it is supposed to and nothing more.

I'm sure I'll get a Vista machine in another year or two. My current laptop came Loaded with Vista Basic. That lasted about thirty minutes or so. Just long enough to download the Ebuntu CD's as a matter of fact. I got rid of it because I didn't feel that this generation of hardware was fast enough to run Vista. Considering the fact that it was a new Dual Core Pentium with a Gig of ram that's kinda pathetic.

That is actualy the machine that I use to relax on at the end of the day. For personal use I also run a couple of desktops with XP and I have a programming laptop with a copy of XP and my 17" "Media Center" laptop running MCE. I also run a few P3 based router/servers with red hat and a P4 running a Debian based Scalix server. In short I consider an OS to be a tool to get the job done. When it does it well I'm happy. When it does it poorly I'll either fix it or replace it. And when the OS in question operates as poorly as Vista does and I lose money because of it Then I will complain and shout and scream and kick and all of the associated other behavior that looks so attractive in a guy my age. Laughing

By the way, Welcome to Eater! Read the stickies and get a Mentor. I'm sure someone beat me to that already though. Mostly, stick around and have fun.

And if you want a very cool computer project; take a look at the Linux Media Center project over at http://linuxmce.com/

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:55 am

Once again

Reaper wrote:

Who cares, most people are pretty computer illiterate, would not know what OS stands for and use their home computer or Laptop to either view porn, watch Youtube videos, go on Myspace, illegally download movies/songs and perhaps do some work using excel or word.

A lot of people don't even know what Linux is, or anything outside of your average Mac or Windows OS.

Stroker Thompson wrote:

I also run a few P3 based router/servers with red hat and a P4 running a Debian based Scalix server.

I have no clue what that stuff is.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:06 am

Reaper wrote:

I have no clue what that stuff is.

Simply tools to get the job done. Very Happy

Hey, when did we get the Slashdot channel here anyway?

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:40 am

Vista's basically the same old piss in a different shaped bottle, except this time the price(and the weight) has doubled, and you can't easily get the damn cap off.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:43 am

@ Stoker

Your son sounds like he'll grow up to be in the software part of things. He's lucky that computers were more affordable nowadays. I'm gonna try to dual boot with Linux to see how I like it. I need to know which on is best for internet browsing, gaming, and media playback. If you could enlighten me on this, that'd be great.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:50 am

If you have any necessity to play content from restricted formats (DVDs, MP3, ...) then I'd suggest Ubuntu. If you can easily live with free formats (Ogg/Theora, Ogg/Vorbis, ...) then I'd suggest Fedora.

I use the latter and I actually think it's as easy to use as Ubuntu.
Both provide you with a lot of stuff in their repositories, which should help you to do everything you need.

Also for those distros usually binary-packages of software that is not available in the repositories are available.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:07 am

@ Reaper !

You are really going to have to improve your tech savvy capabilities. If not you will be over run by child prodigies. Get with it lad! Get your mind above the trivia!
Shame on you not knowing all about Scalix servers. They are an essential part of the comkputer ecosystem.

BTW, I never realised this postwhoring was so much fun.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:30 pm

@Ex

Unfortunately your Linux "wish-list" includes gaming and I would never claim that ANY Linux distro is really good enough to run the latest games. I hear Cedega has many advocates in the Linux world but as i'm not a gamer I can't really comment or give advice.

I use Ubuntu for my main machine and Puppy Linux on an old Toshiba laptop to watch films /listen to music whilst I am on the treadmill or rowing machine. The great thing about Linux as i said about 1000 posts ago on this thread- if it doesn't do what you want it to , go and download a new one Very Happy

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:32 pm

@ music man

Damn thats a bummer. I am a very active advocate of PC gaming which is one thing I can say Windows has Leopard and Linux beat at. No API is better than DX10. Have you seen Crysis?

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:41 pm

FWIW, I still say if you must use Windows, fit Windows 2000. It runs faster and more stably than XP, almost anything that'll run on XP will run on it, and if you're just interested in useability rather than eye candy it'll run just as well on an old p500 as Vista will on a dual or quad-core microwave oven.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:17 pm

Crysis?? is that some new undiscovered beat combo? My "gaming" is confined to bubbles and the very occasional game of freecell.

Maybe the best thing is either dual booting or using VMware/VirtualBox

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:03 am

I want to share a few words on games for Linux. Of course most companies don't care for that market, only very few commercial games exist, like Doom 3 or Unreal Tournement; and some older ones which have been ported a couple of years back by Loki Games, like Descent 3 and Civilization: Call to Power, but there are also quite some good free games.

I don't mean little cute stuff like SuperTux (Mario-clone), Wormux (Worms-clone) or Pingus (Lemmings-clone), also not geek-stuff like NetHack (which I actually like to play from time to time), but real games, with kinda good graphics and stuff.

Planning stuff and doing it:
Warzone 2100, this was once commercial but has since been published under a free license. It's a nice real-time-strategy game with good graphics.
Battle for Wesnoth, is a turn-based strategy-game. It plays in some fantasy-world, so I guess you could compare it with Heroes of Might & Magic.

Killing things:
Nexuiz is a shooter, pretty much like Unreal Tournament.
Another shooter is OpenArena. As the name suggests it's based on the freed Quake3-engine.
A shooter of a different kind is Tremulous, since it also involves strategy. It's team-play only, since you have to build up a base and defend it, while attacking the enemy's base.

Building stuff:
Much less stress is caused by LinCity NG, a free SimCity-clone, or the free "The Settlers"-clone Widelands.

Fast cars and bitches:
For people who like racing there also are some nice games, Torcs for example, which features a variety of tracks and cars, and even quite good physics. I think you might compare it to Race Driver.
Friends of games like TrackMania, or the much older Stunts, might like ManiaDrive.

Red Bull gives you wings:
If you like Flight-Simulations you might want to take a look at FlightGear. For FlightGear there's an extensive collection of maps, more of less covering the whole world, which can freely be downloaded from the official website.
People who prefer games like the good, old Wing Commander: Privateer, fighting and dealing in outer space, might get happy with VegaStrike.

Well, that's it so far. I'm sure there's more games out there, but that should do for now.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 8:53 am

And I don't see Call of Duty 4 anywhere there.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 9:06 am

I don't know if it's available for Linux, and anyway, it's not free. In my previous post I concentrated on games that are free software, to point out that there are good games that are free (as in speech, not as in beer).

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:49 pm

Well there are a range of good free games for PC as well (to name a few)

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (FPS)
America's Army (FPS)
F.E.A.R. Combat (Multiplayer) (FPS)
Flyff (Flight Simulator MMO)
Silkroad Online (MMO)
Rappelz Epic IV (MMO)
Rakion Chaos Force (MMO)

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:03 pm

@Ex:
Regarding gaming, if you already own a Windows licence, you might as well stick with it for games. Cedega works in most cases and is always in development, so constantly improving, (I don't know if it supports DX10, but I don't play games because of how they look) but essentially you'd be paying for something you've already got.

However, I'd highly recommend you do use Linux (As a dual-boot). Now I'm used to it I can't be bothered with the hassle of Windows for anything except playing the odd Windows-only game. All modern distros have Firefox and Konqueror in their package repositories, so they're all equally matched for browsing. I'd say (K/X)Ubuntu is easiest for media playback, although I believe the tools for installing codecs that it uses are also being used in Fedora now (I might be thinking of Mandriva).

Since you're tech minded, once you get the hang of Linux (especially the command line) you'll find it a load easier to just "get things done" than on Windows. Once you find your way around the desktop and the media software I recommend you find a good book/tutorial on Bash (the command line shell).

As a final point, some games on Linux you should definitely check out:
Battle for Wesnoth
Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid
Blob Wars 2: Blob and Conquer (currently in development)
Nethack
You can also play most OpenGL Windows games on Linux, you'll need to have a look on Google for the game's Linux installer.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 17

Just to add this to the debate, according to The Register Microsoft are planning to release Windows 7 aka Vienna in H2 2009 as Vista has somewhat flopped.

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 9:42 pm

I used XP professional after it came out and have been using Vista since January 07.

Until XP SP1 xp was a PITA to use (upgrading from win98) since half my hardware wouldn't work etc etc. However after SP1 XP was a rock solid OS that for what I did (gaming and baiting) it usually did well.

The only issue I have had with vista is the 64 bit version has the (x86) program files directory which some products hate using (Adobe CS2 I'm looking at you) Once drivers start catching up and a service pack akin to SP1 comes out vista will be a decent operating system. The problem with MS is that they hyped it until you believed it would raise your pets from the dead, please the wife and go to work for you so you could sleep in all day

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