ReactOS

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 15:45:37 -0800, T wrote:

On 02/18/2016 02:34 PM, philo wrote:
NT 3.51

I didn't get along too well with 3.51, but I adored 4.0

I think the all time best was NT5.0. I absolutely loathed NT5.1 and all
of its successors.

--
Johnny B Good

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 17:57:57 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/18/2016 05:47 PM, T wrote:
On 02/18/2016 02:34 PM, philo wrote:

http://toastytech.com/files/95browsing.html

Great Link :-)

And for those annoyed by Mozilla, there is also Ice Weasel




I may fire up one of my antique machines just to give it a try.


As to NT3.51 I never used it other than for demonstration purposes on
one of my antique machines.

For the little I saw of it, it worked fine...the older NT 3.1 which I
also fooled with ...locked up often.


As to NT-4...I did not want to leave it, but the USB support of Win-2000
forced me to abandon it.

The developers weren't above 'borrowing' useful features from the dos
based OS line. In this case, the "improved" USB handling came from
windows "Monumental Error", the only redeeming feature of that ill fated
PoS.

NT5.0's desktop GUI, to my mind, looked like it was based on windows
95's uncluttered and efficient use of desktop real estate (none of this
nonsense, introduced with win98, of having to stretch a folder window
full width on an 800 by 600 pixel or larger display just to see its
useful status information) when configured to display each folder in its
own window to emulate that most efficient method of desktop working (the
"Untidy Desk") typically used by the more productive office worker.
There's a valid reason for the phrase, "A Tidy Desk is... the sign of a
"Sick Mind". :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On 02/19/2016 03:52 AM, Johnny B Good wrote:



snip

The developers weren't above 'borrowing' useful features from the dos
based OS line. In this case, the "improved" USB handling came from
windows "Monumental Error", the only redeeming feature of that ill fated
PoS.

NT5.0's desktop GUI, to my mind, looked like it was based on windows
95's uncluttered and efficient use of desktop real estate (none of this
nonsense, introduced with win98, of having to stretch a folder window
full width on an 800 by 600 pixel or larger display just to see its
useful status information) when configured to display each folder in its
own window to emulate that most efficient method of desktop working (the
"Untidy Desk") typically used by the more productive office worker.
There's a valid reason for the phrase, "A Tidy Desk is... the sign of a
"Sick Mind". :-)




The NT 3.51 or Win3x GUI was pretty easy to use,
but the Win95 GUI was a very user-friendly experience.

My so called computer career started back in the punch card days
and eventually I got so sick of working with computers, by 1982 I swore
I'd never touch one again. Except for a DOS-based inventory system I had
to use at work I stuck to my guns and did not own a computer again until
1999 when my (now) wife gave me her outdated Win95 P-1 to fool with.

It was safe to say at that point that my computer knowledge was zero.

It was easy to connect the cables and turn it on but when I looked at
the screen I was clueless. Then I saw the "start" button and thought
....maybe I should start here.

By clicking on every possible item in every possible menu I soon figured
things out and thanks to people such as Ken Blake on Usenet
within six months not only could I use Win95 but I started repairing
computers for friends and giving technical advice.

IMHO, the GUI of Win2000 and Win98 seemed hardly different from that
of...easy to use...Win95.

When XP came out, things were different and I did not like the new look...
but was happy to find that with a little tweaking I could get that old
familiar GUI back. Even Win7 could be easily tweaked.


Win8 however was different and out of all my friends who got new
machines I only knew *one* person who liked it. I had to install "Start
8" on dozens of machines. One woman I know was literally in tears before
I did so.

Other than having Win8 in a virtual machine simply so I can use it for
reference, I never used it.

Also have a Win10 installation on "real hardware" it did not work
properly in a virtual machine...and for the little I've used it ...seems OK

What I hate most however in all newer operating systems
is the loss of the advanced search functionality of Win9x -- NT5

I really hate the way it's been dumbed down to the point of uselessness.


That said, there is a lot I like.

On 2016-02-18 2:20 PM, Peter Köhlmann wrote:
Slimer wrote:

On 2016-02-18 10:28 AM, John Q. Public wrote:
Slimer wrote:
On 2016-02-18 9:55 AM, John Q. Public wrote:
Slimer wrote:
On 2016-02-18 9:13 AM, John Q. Public wrote:
Slimer wrote:
Linux as a whole makes me sick

The why do you obsess on it so much?

I wasn't the one who originally posted this thread into a Linux
newsgroup. Feel free to remove your group from further posts.

No one said you did. I asked why you obsess on it so much.

Considering how damaging it is to computer hardware, I feel the need to
alert computer users in general about the threat.


But that's a lie.

All negative statements about Linux are automatically lies.


When coming from filth like you, absolutely.

You are a racist swine, and you have done nothing but lying in COLA

Absolutely. Hey look, a website dedicated to Peter the Klöwn's lies:
http://www.usenetklown.co.uk/


--
Slimer
OpenMedia & EFF Member / Conservative Party of Canada, IFAW, PETA &
Mozilla Supporter

On 2016-02-18 4:30 PM, T wrote:
On 02/17/2016 02:58 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/16/2016 10:34 PM, /less wrote:
Try the live cd, it's fun!
http://distrowatch.com/
http://www.reactos.org/



Don't waste your time, I tried it and essentially it's a pre-Alpha
Windows 2000 clone


Almost nothing works

1+

It is a complete stinker

Trying to make an open-source version of Windows is probably not even
worth it. Improving Linux should be a priority but I would rather they
simply come up with a new system which works in a completely original
way that is faster, more stable and more intuitive than whatever is on
the market. Windows is the everyday system, OS X is the system of those
who don't want to be bothered and Linux is simply a cheap copy of those
two. There's no reason for a company not to decide to create a new
operating system which they think might serve customers better than the
first two rather than just emulate it.

--
Slimer
OpenMedia & EFF Member / Conservative Party of Canada, IFAW, PETA &
Mozilla Supporter

On 2016-02-18 4:34 PM, T wrote:
On 02/16/2016 10:10 PM, John Q. Public wrote:
BTW, Windows 10 is more of a store than an operating system. Be prepared
to pay rent soon.

Chuckle. Can't disagree with that.

For the time being, we are only speculating. They might force a
subscription fee on us or they might allow us to keep it for free. I am
leaning towards the latter and very strongly doubt that we'll be seeing
a monthly fee on anything EXCEPT very old hardware.

--
Slimer
OpenMedia & EFF Member / Conservative Party of Canada, IFAW, PETA &
Mozilla Supporter

On 2016-02-18 4:37 PM, T wrote:
On 02/17/2016 10:32 AM, Slimer wrote:
Linux is like a Chrysler car; if it is anywhere near something better,
it breaks down and leaves you stranded on the highway.

I remember those days. My dad owned an auto parts store.
Chrysler owners had to bring their old parts in to compare.

I bought a Jeep Patriot because I was convinced that Chrysler owners'
problems were generally the result of poor maintenance. In comparison, I
maintain my cars beautifully and know that I don't deserve any problems.
That said, my Jeep has had ball joint problems which are simply
inexcusable considering they needed to be changed at about 45,000km for
the first two and 65,000km for the third. Considering that these things
should last about 200,000km, I can't find a suitable excuse for the
manufacturer. I have only sparingly used it since it reached 72,000km
and exclusively drive my BMW 428i nowadays.

That said, I have been a Linux shop for over 15 years.
It has its problems, but not as you describe. So
there is an interesting mystery to solve!

What processor and chipset are you using?

Core i7 4710HQ and whatever a MSI GT72 laptop bundles as a chipset.

Did you try with a Live DVD/USB first?

I did and was impressed that all of the hardware worked out of the box
with kernel 4.4. However, I hadn't bothered to test the automatic
display turn off function (I had no reason to suspect that it would
freeze) nor the sleeping and was disgusted to find that it still has
such issues.

What distro did you try with?

Sabayon.

Listen, I respect Linux users settling for the operating system and
being convinced that it does an excellent job. However, I will tell you
very honestly that after 21 years of tinkering with it from time to
time, I've lost all hope that it will become my everyday operating
system. I am content with Windows and will remain so. However, as you'll
see in my signature, I believe in open-source projects and causes and
contribute to them regularly. To me, that's a good compromise.

--
Slimer
OpenMedia & EFF Member / Conservative Party of Canada, IFAW, PETA &
Mozilla Supporter

On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 04:47:28 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/19/2016 03:52 AM, Johnny B Good wrote:



snip

The developers weren't above 'borrowing' useful features from the dos
based OS line. In this case, the "improved" USB handling came from
windows "Monumental Error", the only redeeming feature of that ill
fated PoS.

NT5.0's desktop GUI, to my mind, looked like it was based on windows
95's uncluttered and efficient use of desktop real estate (none of this
nonsense, introduced with win98, of having to stretch a folder window
full width on an 800 by 600 pixel or larger display just to see its
useful status information) when configured to display each folder in
its own window to emulate that most efficient method of desktop working
(the "Untidy Desk") typically used by the more productive office
worker. There's a valid reason for the phrase, "A Tidy Desk is... the
sign of a "Sick Mind". :-)




The NT 3.51 or Win3x GUI was pretty easy to use,
but the Win95 GUI was a very user-friendly experience.

It was but my regard for MSFT's 'windowed' OSes had been rather soured
by my experience with the win3.11 MSDOS's "Add-On-Feature" designed for
office users. This jaundiced view wasn't helped any by the (at the time)
outrageous RAM and disk requirements of such a "Bloatware" product as
windows 95.

When I did finally decide to 'give it a whirl' a year or two after MSFT's
massive spend on "Advertising Without End", it was the finished win95osr2
release I went with (I have a vague recollection of briefly trying out
the unfinished version that came supplied on something like 17 or 22
floppy disks).

What finally persuaded me to allow my PC to automatically boot into
windows as my UI of choice was the fact that I could fire up a dos music
module player application called "Inertiaplayer" (actually iplayer.exe)
in a "DOSBox" window and actually play these music files without the
horrendous stutter experienced when I had tried this under windows 3.11.
Finally, here was an OS that could 'properly' multitask from the GUI
without the need to reboot into DOS.


My so called computer career started back in the punch card days and
eventually I got so sick of working with computers, by 1982 I swore I'd
never touch one again. Except for a DOS-based inventory system I had to
use at work I stuck to my guns and did not own a computer again until
1999 when my (now) wife gave me her outdated Win95 P-1 to fool with.

It was safe to say at that point that my computer knowledge was zero.

It was easy to connect the cables and turn it on but when I looked at
the screen I was clueless. Then I saw the "start" button and thought
...maybe I should start here.

By clicking on every possible item in every possible menu I soon figured
things out and thanks to people such as Ken Blake on Usenet within six
months not only could I use Win95 but I started repairing computers for
friends and giving technical advice.

IMHO, the GUI of Win2000 and Win98 seemed hardly different from that
of...easy to use...Win95.

On the face of it, the *appearance* of those desktop environments when
all set to 'Classic mode' and configured to open each folder in its own
window, are almost identical. However, under win98 you couldn't reduce a
folder window's size to the extent possible with win95 and win2k without
losing sight of valuable status information.

Wn98 was needlessly inefficient of desktop real estate plus, it also had
an annoying Punishment Algorithm[1] that kicked in whenever you had the
temerity to try and delete large amounts of data files where it would
lock you out of file explorer for anywhere from 2 minutes to 'forever' -
if you regained access, it would be an extremely sluggish responding
version of explorer - the work-around was to log out and then log
straight back in again.

Without trying a win95osr2 install into a VM, I can't recall whether it
had the same intelligent auto sizing algorithm of folder windows that
existed in win2k (and removed from its idiot son successor, winXP) which
made navigation of the file system such a joy.


When XP came out, things were different and I did not like the new
look... but was happy to find that with a little tweaking I could get
that old familiar GUI back. Even Win7 could be easily tweaked.

Yes, "The Look" but not "The Feel". :-(



Win8 however was different and out of all my friends who got new
machines I only knew *one* person who liked it. I had to install "Start
8" on dozens of machines. One woman I know was literally in tears before
I did so.

Other than having Win8 in a virtual machine simply so I can use it for
reference, I never used it.

Also have a Win10 installation on "real hardware" it did not work
properly in a virtual machine...and for the little I've used it ...seems
OK

What I hate most however in all newer operating systems is the loss of
the advanced search functionality of Win9x -- NT5

I really hate the way it's been dumbed down to the point of uselessness.


MSFT's attitude seems, with the advent of win98 and winXP, to have been
one of, "The consumer doesn't deserve such ease of use features, they're
only consumers after all and such features would simply be wasted on the
likes of them.".

Sadly for the users, MSFT don't seem to think that we matter either due
to the sub 1% of the market we represented to their bean counting
marketing department.


That said, there is a lot I like.

Speaking for myself, I'm afraid that there's only ever been a growing
list of deficiencies I *don't* like. :-(

[1] The problem seems more a 'Feature' than an 'accidental bug'. After
several years of facing this 'Feature' when clearing out gigabytes worth
of temporary files from my customers' win98/win98SE desktop/laptop
computers, I finally got round to taking the precaution of firing up
"WinTop" in an attempt to discover "Just exactly what was 'Hogging the
CPU' whenever a shedload of files had been deleted." (it wasn't possible
to launch WinTop once the system was in this state).


Surprise, surprise! *Nothing whatsoever* was hogging system resources to
account for the virtual standstill. I was forced to conclude that this
behaviour was 'By Design' in order to discourage the consumer from
cleaning out years old temporary files to help give their PC a 'New Lease
of Life'.

When, in 2004, I was forced to give up win95osr2 when a major hardware
upgrade revealed the 1GB ram address wrap-around bug, I did briefly try
win98SE as a possible alternative (I had already discounted winME and
WinXP as candidates due to their '****tiness'). The trial was 'brief'
because that 'excess files deletion punishment algorithm' proved to be a
far bigger annoyance that I had hoped would be the case in practice.

I was on the verge of giving up totally with MSFT product and going over
to a Linux distro at that time. I'd almost forgotten about the win2k pro
option and only tried it as a "Last Chance Saloon" option to stay with
MSFT as my OS supplier.

I'm glad I did try it. At the time, installing win2k was an act of
desperation for which I had little hope of it being the solution to my
problem. When it rebooted into the desktop at the end of the installation
process, I almost fell off my chair in surprise at seeing the nice clean
lines of a GUI with the all too familiar look and feel of windows 95osr2
appear. I'd discovered, rather belatedly some might say, the joys of the
one and only epitome of desktop UIs ever produced by MSFT.

The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the fact that MSFT were
doing their best to deprecate its use in favour of their current 'Money-
maker' winXP. I guess pressure from their corporate customers helped to
retard MSFT's efforts at 'Deep Sixing' it. I managed to get another 11
years use out of it before a major hardware upgrade last April finally
put paid to its viability as a windows OS. That's when I finally made the
jump to Linux, relegating any MSFT windows installs to VirtualBox VMs. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:18:02 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:


It was but my regard for MSFT's 'windowed' OSes had been rather soured
by my experience with the win3.11 MSDOS's "Add-On-Feature" designed for
office users.


Are you thinking of Windows for Workgroups 3.11? Please note that that
was different from Windows 3.11.

"Windows 3.11 was released on November 8, 1993. It did not add any
feature improvements over Windows 3.1; it only corrected problems.
Microsoft replaced all retail versions of Windows 3.1 with Windows
3.11 and provided a free upgrade via their web site to anyone who
currently owned Windows 3.1." (quoted from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x#Windows_3.11)

On 02/19/2016 08:18 AM, Johnny B Good wrote:

snip



The NT 3.51 or Win3x GUI was pretty easy to use,
but the Win95 GUI was a very user-friendly experience.

It was but my regard for MSFT's 'windowed' OSes had been rather soured
by my experience with the win3.11 MSDOS's "Add-On-Feature" designed for
office users. This jaundiced view wasn't helped any by the (at the time)
outrageous RAM and disk requirements of such a "Bloatware" product as
windows 95.

Because I had been away from computers for many years, after I learned
my way around Win95 rather than moving forward,,,I became an antique
computer enthusiast and went back to all that I had missed.


I took apart and reassembled countless 8088, 286 386 and 486
computers,learned DOS and traced down copies of Win1, 2 , 3.0 and 3.11

As one experiment I installed win95 on a 386 with 4 megs of ram...and
doggone it, it worked quite well...so to me it did not seem bloated.

Within six months of getting that first P-1 I decided to learn Linux as
well and had quite a bit of difficulty at first.
As the years went by I started using it more and more to the point where
I usually have two machines on at a time, Linux and Windows
and just flip back and forth using a KVM switch.

Unfortunately Linux has gone the Windows route and become bloat-ware too
and "happy looking" but useless GUI.

Like Windows, I can no longer perform a useful "advanced search" and
actually had to install an add-on application specific for doing such.

Then, even worse than Windows, If I needed to copy large amounts of
data, the entire system will come to an almost complete standstill!

The only thing that's good I guess is that people are continually
upgrading and my workshop is full of machines others have just given me.
Most are dual core and now I'm even getting quad core machines.

The last time I bought RAM I got 8 gigs for $13 including shipping!




the rest snipped for brevity, but read

On 2016-02-19 11:03 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/19/2016 08:18 AM, Johnny B Good wrote:

snip



The NT 3.51 or Win3x GUI was pretty easy to use,
but the Win95 GUI was a very user-friendly experience.

It was but my regard for MSFT's 'windowed' OSes had been rather soured
by my experience with the win3.11 MSDOS's "Add-On-Feature" designed for
office users. This jaundiced view wasn't helped any by the (at the time)
outrageous RAM and disk requirements of such a "Bloatware" product as
windows 95.

Because I had been away from computers for many years, after I learned
my way around Win95 rather than moving forward,,,I became an antique
computer enthusiast and went back to all that I had missed.


I took apart and reassembled countless 8088, 286 386 and 486
computers,learned DOS and traced down copies of Win1, 2 , 3.0 and 3.11

As one experiment I installed win95 on a 386 with 4 megs of ram...and
doggone it, it worked quite well...so to me it did not seem bloated.

When Windows 95 was released, I had a 386-3 with 4 MB of RAM. My monitor
+ GPU combination also could not go any higher than 640x480 256 colours.
It ran... well enough.

Within six months of getting that first P-1 I decided to learn Linux as
well and had quite a bit of difficulty at first.
As the years went by I started using it more and more to the point where
I usually have two machines on at a time, Linux and Windows
and just flip back and forth using a KVM switch.

Unfortunately Linux has gone the Windows route and become bloat-ware too
and "happy looking" but useless GUI.

Especially with KDE but it has improved with the fifth installment. I
would still rather just use Windows and find it a lot less bloated.

snip

--
Slimer
OpenMedia & EFF Member / Conservative Party of Canada, IFAW, PETA &
Mozilla Supporter

On 02/19/2016 05:58 AM, Slimer wrote:
On 2016-02-18 4:34 PM, T wrote:
On 02/16/2016 10:10 PM, John Q. Public wrote:
BTW, Windows 10 is more of a store than an operating system. Be prepared
to pay rent soon.

Chuckle. Can't disagree with that.

For the time being, we are only speculating. They might force a
subscription fee on us or they might allow us to keep it for free. I am
leaning towards the latter and very strongly doubt that we'll be seeing
a monthly fee on anything EXCEPT very old hardware.


I am wondering what happens after the free upgrade period expires
and the hapless fall for the GWX install. Do they get
a bill and get locked out?

On 02/19/2016 06:03 AM, Slimer wrote:
On 2016-02-18 4:37 PM, T wrote:
On 02/17/2016 10:32 AM, Slimer wrote:
Linux is like a Chrysler car; if it is anywhere near something better,
it breaks down and leaves you stranded on the highway.

I remember those days. My dad owned an auto parts store.
Chrysler owners had to bring their old parts in to compare.

I bought a Jeep Patriot because I was convinced that Chrysler owners'
problems were generally the result of poor maintenance. In comparison, I
maintain my cars beautifully and know that I don't deserve any problems.
That said, my Jeep has had ball joint problems which are simply
inexcusable considering they needed to be changed at about 45,000km for
the first two and 65,000km for the third. Considering that these things
should last about 200,000km, I can't find a suitable excuse for the
manufacturer. I have only sparingly used it since it reached 72,000km
and exclusively drive my BMW 428i nowadays.

That said, I have been a Linux shop for over 15 years.
It has its problems, but not as you describe. So
there is an interesting mystery to solve!

What processor and chipset are you using?

Core i7 4710HQ and whatever a MSI GT72 laptop bundles as a chipset.

There should not be any problems here. Nothing weird or
bizarre.


Did you try with a Live DVD/USB first?

I did and was impressed that all of the hardware worked out of the box
with kernel 4.4. However, I hadn't bothered to test the automatic
display turn off function (I had no reason to suspect that it would
freeze) nor the sleeping and was disgusted to find that it still has
such issues.

What distro did you try with?

Sabayon.

Listen, I respect Linux users settling for the operating system and
being convinced that it does an excellent job. However, I will tell you
very honestly that after 21 years of tinkering with it from time to
time, I've lost all hope that it will become my everyday operating
system. I am content with Windows and will remain so. However, as you'll
see in my signature, I believe in open-source projects and causes and
contribute to them regularly. To me, that's a good compromise.


Hi Slimer,

21 years doing computer consulting myself. Almost 50
years more or less in electronics.

Yes, computers are tools. Use whatever works for you. Linux
is so light on Apps that most folks can't use it even if they
wanted to. Quick Books is a deal killer. GNU Cash is very
good, but no one knows how to use it or wants to learn. No
CPA can figure it out either. They just tell you to
get Windows and Quickbooks. (Had some customer with Apples
and Intuits Quickbooks abomination for OSx that got told that.)

Never heard of Sabayon. Have you tried Fedora? Red hat
has some incredible programming chops. Plus an active
Bugzilla to complain to.

This one is my favorite:
https://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/#downloads

You can actually install the Live DVD/USB to another
flash drive as a full install and start using it
as a full version. (Start with a 16 GB stick. USB3
is faster the hell. Make sure your USB3 ports a bootable first.
Always a pain in the ass.)

I have used my stick on perhaps 40 customer laptops now without
issue. (Getting UEFI to boot is a pain in the neck at times.
I just have to temporarily switch to Legacy Boot.)

Open Source always makes me wonder why someone who develops
for free does a better job than someone being paid to do so.
It is not always the case and there are some shining examples
of the opposite (Qoppa, Cim Trak). Open Office (pre Apache)
and Wine (not Wine Staging, they fix things) are bad examples
of Open Source that won't fix anything.

I love the fact that I can write directly to the developers
of Open Source and 90% of the time get things fixed. M$
on the other hand, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

-T

I drove GM cars for most of my life. When I got my first
American Made Subaru, I was really ****ed. I LOVE Subis.
All these years and I find out I really love to drive too.
And the stinker is reliable for once. AND! I don't leave
oil stains on everyone's driveways. (Pontiac proves that
oil can leak through solid metal.)

On 02/19/2016 01:26 AM, Johnny B Good wrote:
On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 15:45:37 -0800, T wrote:

On 02/18/2016 02:34 PM, philo wrote:
NT 3.51

I didn't get along too well with 3.51, but I adored 4.0

I think the all time best was NT5.0. I absolutely loathed NT5.1 and all
of its successors.


I think Windows started going to hell when their old VAX folks
left/retired.

I can remember putting folks with stability issues on NT
and if the software ran under NT, problem solved.

On 02/19/2016 07:24 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
Are you thinking of Windows for Workgroups 3.11? Please note that that
was different from Windows 3.11.

WFW 3.11 was a thing of beauty. I used it exclusively over
Windows 3.11, even when networking wasn't involved.