10, a losing proposition

Lucifer Morningstar wrote:


Try Solaris.

I used Solaris for years at work.

*******

This VM has been in a saved state since
2007, since it doesn't have a Tulip driver, and
without a network driver, I have no easy way
in and out. I guess I saved state, and never
went back to finish the project.

https://s14.postimg.org/3s5kusa29/solaris_from_2007.jpg

A swing and a miss.

Generally, if the I/O doesn't work on a VM,
that pretty well dooms it. No driver, no fun.

Paul

Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:39:06 -0500, wrote:

I'm still with 7, on both my desktop and laptop, and likely to remain
so. When 8 came along, I thoroughly checked it out, and concluded, not
for me. With 10, I've repeatedly asked, if anyone could give me one
good reason to give up 7 for 10, and so far nobody has. Reading this
group, I feel I've made the right decision. My 3 biggest concern are
that 10 : (1) updates when it feels like it, where 7 updates only if
and when I want. (2) Didn't I see that adverts were inbedded ? (3) 10
must naturally consume more system resources and HD.

On that last point I find 10 needs less resources.
I have Windows 10 running on a Pentium 1.6 with 1 GB RAM and
it is able to do some useful things like play youtube full screen.

What have you got for a video card ?

Sometimes video gets help from hardware acceleration.

Adobe Flash was hardware accelerated. Since HTML5 (Youtube default)
uses different video CODECs, the browser might or might not be using the
GPU for those.

Another thing a video card does is scaling. With a recent enough
hardware card, the video decoding is "window sized". Then when you
request full screen, the hardware scaler inside the GPU, scales
the pixmap up for free, to the full size of the screen.

If that function is missing on a video card, if the video card
is too old, it takes around 40% of a Pentium 4 to do the
scaling function on the CPU instead.

Sometimes the CPU had a little help with this, which
is why when people benchmark video playback, the computing
load can vary from box to box by a factor of 10. One guy can
have a CPU running 10% and enjoying video, another
can have a CPU railed doing the same thing and the video
is stuttering and dropping frames.

Paul

On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 23:52:12 -0500, Paul wrote:

Lucifer Morningstar wrote:


Try Solaris.

I used Solaris for years at work.

*******

This VM has been in a saved state since
2007, since it doesn't have a Tulip driver, and
without a network driver, I have no easy way
in and out. I guess I saved state, and never
went back to finish the project.

https://s14.postimg.org/3s5kusa29/solaris_from_2007.jpg

A swing and a miss.

Generally, if the I/O doesn't work on a VM,
that pretty well dooms it. No driver, no fun.

What, no console connection? Doesn't every VM at least have that by
default?

On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 19:38:04 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:

I found M$ "end of support" to have little to no effect of the usability
of the system. Eventually, there'll be compatibility problems, but it
takes 2 or 3 years before that happens. IIRC, I used Win2000 for more
than 3 years after M$ end of support.

I totally agree. There are things that will push me to move away from an
OS, but Microsoft support isn't one of them.

BTW, I still read M$ and think "M-string", because of BASIC variable
names from the eighties, where $ after the variable name means a string
variable.

I do the same. M$ is pronounced M-string.

Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 23:52:12 -0500, Paul wrote:

Lucifer Morningstar wrote:

Try Solaris.
I used Solaris for years at work.

*******

This VM has been in a saved state since
2007, since it doesn't have a Tulip driver, and
without a network driver, I have no easy way
in and out. I guess I saved state, and never
went back to finish the project.

https://s14.postimg.org/3s5kusa29/solaris_from_2007.jpg

A swing and a miss.

Generally, if the I/O doesn't work on a VM,
that pretty well dooms it. No driver, no fun.

What, no console connection? Doesn't every VM at least have that by
default?


What I recollect at the time, is initially I was looking
at bringing in source in floppy-sized loads. But the
evidence I see in that VM now, it looks like I got the
CD working, and brought something in via the CD perhaps.
But then the next item was a compiler. I don't know
if there was a gcc or a g++ or whatever in there.

I don't even remember what that environment uses for
package management. There's nothing wrong with
compiling from source (Gentoo is like that), but you
do need a basic set of tools on the installer CDs to
grease the rails.

It was a question of how much more work I was willing
to do, and to what end. With what I got so far, I
got to look at the GUI again. But using a cross-platform
browser in there, is going to be no more exciting
than on any other platform. And I don't have any
specific software for that platform to make
it worthwhile to continue with the experiment.

*******

Now that you mention it, there is serial port emulation.
With two ports on the PC, I could loop a character stream
back into the machine and send stuff to the VM that way.
But that wouldn't be a lot of fun for a large file transfer.

The other aspect here, is back when I started that
little project, all I had was VPC2007. Now I run both
VirtualBox and VPC2007 (just not at the same time), and
if I was starting over again today, I'd be doing it in
VirtualBox. And that would be emulating yet another
network interface, which may or may not have drivers.
So rather than reach for a serial cable, it would probably
be time to switch VM hosts. I might get lucky and
discover a match on drivers.

Paul

On 12/21/2017 4:25 PM, Paul wrote:
mike wrote:

But I've received a TON of bitchy responses from others
in the newsgroups.

Speaking of responses, how did your "free upgrade" attempt
to Win10 by Dec.31 go ? Did it activate ?

Paul
Did 4 laptops. Went without a hitch. We'll see if anything
crops up later.

On 12/21/2017 4:25 PM, Paul wrote:
mike wrote:

But I've received a TON of bitchy responses from others
in the newsgroups.

Speaking of responses, how did your "free upgrade" attempt
to Win10 by Dec.31 go ? Did it activate ?

Paul
one more tidbit.
I've been disappointed by the amount of disk thrashing
that win10 does, especially during updates.
I ripped out the laptop drive and replaced it with a SSD.
According to task manager, the average disk response
time went down by a factor of several hundred. Updates
have become much more tolerable.

Good, then go to the 7 group & stop the BS here.

Well I'm always open to new things, in case there's a good reason to
go to 10 that I may have overlooked.

Already regularly in the 7 group.

On 21/12/2017 21:57, Johnny wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:39:06 -0500
wrote:

I'm still with 7, on both my desktop and laptop, and likely to remain
so. When 8 came along, I thoroughly checked it out, and concluded, not
for me. With 10, I've repeatedly asked, if anyone could give me one
good reason to give up 7 for 10, and so far nobody has

Cut!

There is no reason to give it up for 10.

Windows 10 is the worst POS I have ever seen.

I used Windows 7 for years, but gave it up because I knew Microsoft was
going to end support.

I moved to Linux Mint, and would never think about using Windows 10. It
just amazes me why people put up with Microsoft when they don't have
to.


https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3458


sigh What is the best advert for using Windows? Just follow the
bickering between Linux advocates about "which distro..." "what
release..." and let them shoot themselves in the foot. That plus no
coherent support of any sort in the linux "community" of hillbillies.
It's like taking advice on best hooch from inbred mountain folks.

On Sun, 24 Dec 2017 13:15:21 +0100, Ann O'Nyme
wrote:

On 21/12/2017 21:57, Johnny wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:39:06 -0500
wrote:

I'm still with 7, on both my desktop and laptop, and likely to remain
so. When 8 came along, I thoroughly checked it out, and concluded, not
for me. With 10, I've repeatedly asked, if anyone could give me one
good reason to give up 7 for 10, and so far nobody has

Cut!

There is no reason to give it up for 10.

Windows 10 is the worst POS I have ever seen.

I used Windows 7 for years, but gave it up because I knew Microsoft was
going to end support.

I moved to Linux Mint, and would never think about using Windows 10. It
just amazes me why people put up with Microsoft when they don't have
to.


https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3458


sigh What is the best advert for using Windows? Just follow the
bickering between Linux advocates about "which distro..." "what
release..." and let them shoot themselves in the foot. That plus no
coherent support of any sort in the linux "community" of hillbillies.
It's like taking advice on best hooch from inbred mountain folks.

+1


KenW

On Sun, 24 Dec 2017 09:54:41 -0500
Wolf K wrote:


Cut!
I was once on a Linux newsgroup. I had installed SuSe, and had
created two users. When I tried to change some setting for User 2, it
disappeared. I got no help, just hee-haws at the stupid Windroid who
dared to attempt Linux.

I was called a Windroid troll almost immediately when I first posted to
a Linux newsgroup, but found out there were only a few people with that
attitude. The majority of Linux users are willing to help a new user.

I post to alt.os.linux.mint and will be glad to help any new users.
Give the group a try, and I think you will be surprised at the help you
receive.

On Sun, 24 Dec 2017 09:54:41 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2017-12-24 07:15, Ann O'Nyme wrote:
On 21/12/2017 21:57, Johnny wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:39:06 -0500
wrote:

I'm still with 7, on both my desktop and laptop, and likely to remain
so. When 8 came along, I thoroughly checked it out, and concluded, not
for me. With 10, I've repeatedly asked, if anyone could give me one
good reason to give up 7 for 10, and so far nobody has

Cut!

There is no reason to give it up for 10.

Windows 10 is the worst POS I have ever seen.

I used Windows 7 for years, but gave it up because I knew Microsoft was
going to end support.

I moved to Linux Mint, and would never think about using Windows 10. It
just amazes me why people put up with Microsoft when they don't have
to.


https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3458


sigh What is the best advert for using Windows? Just follow the
bickering between Linux advocates about "which distro..." "what
release..." and let them shoot themselves in the foot. That plus no
coherent support of any sort in the linux "community" of hillbillies.
It's like taking advice on best hooch from inbred mountain folks.

Aw, it ain't quite that bad. I like Linux Mint, but the programs I like
don't have Linux versions. If I wanted to do only email, browsing, a bit
if minor image tweaking, and writing, I'd use Mint a lot more than I do.
Which is not at all right now. Libre Office/Open Office is just an MS
Office clone, sort of, and I much prefer WordPerfect, especially since
will handle MS Office files just fine. There's an image processor which
is sort of a Photoshop clone, and suffers form the latter's excess. The
two or three things I occasionally want Photoshop for are done more than
adequately by an ancient copy of PS Essentials (I think the name has
changed since then).

I install the latest Mint version about once a year, try out the latest
programs or versions thereof, and go back to Windows.

I was once on a Linux newsgroup. I had installed SuSe, and had created
two users. When I tried to change some setting for User 2, it
disappeared. I got no help, just hee-haws at the stupid Windroid who
dared to attempt Linux. Later, I rashly expressed a wish for some
standardisation, so that ordinary folks would find Linux _at least_ as
easy to use as Windows. NB the emphasis: I naively assumed that the
Linux "community" wanted to do make a better product than Windows. The
vituperation that spewed at me was astonishing. I played tit-for-tat for
a while, got bored with that game, and unsubscribed.

Wow, a good Wolf K post. I'm stunned.

What you're describing is what most of us who showed any interest in
Linux experienced as well. The Linux advocates regularly lie and claim
that amateurs are welcome and that they are well-supported by the
community but the opposite is generally the reality. Also, it's quite
shocking how often people will claim that Linux is superior in every
way to Windows all the while providing anyone with a slight interest
with a product that is CLEARLY inferior in every way except for
security. Graphics performance is much worse, proper hardware support
is lacking and there is a mind-boggling lack of consistency that
drives many people out the door and back onto Windows or Mac OS. It
_does_ provide you with a better default experience
(post-installation) and will definitely be a lot more secure if you
don't plan on purchasing additional software, but those of us who can
afford to do us will be way better served with Windows.

Again, good post.

On Sun, 24 Dec 2017 11:46:16 -0500, Doomsdrzej wrote:

Wow, a good Wolf K post. I'm stunned.

Come on, he's not that bad!

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:39:06 -0500,
wrote:

I'm still with 7, on both my desktop and laptop, and likely to remain
so. When 8 came along, I thoroughly checked it out, and concluded, not
for me. With 10, I've repeatedly asked, if anyone could give me one
good reason to give up 7 for 10, and so far nobody has. Reading this

Well, windows no longer crashes for me, though most of the prior crashes
were probably because of bad memory, which I replaced.


group, I feel I've made the right decision. My 3 biggest concern are
that 10 : (1) updates when it feels like it,

You can prevent this with noreboot.exe , though for the last two
updates, it has politely requested 1) update now) 2) set a time 3)
later. I think later can be implemented by rebooting.

where 7 updates only if
and when I want. (2) Didn't I see that adverts were inbedded ?

I don't see ads except AVG advertises its own upgrades.

(3) 10
must naturally consume more system resources and HD.

When I replaced my bad memory I got 8 gig in place of 4, which mostly
has helped Firefox. Less so if at all Windows.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 22 Dec 2017 14:49:05 +1100, Lucifer
Morningstar wrote:

On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 15:39:06 -0500, wrote:

I'm still with 7, on both my desktop and laptop, and likely to remain
so. When 8 came along, I thoroughly checked it out, and concluded, not
for me. With 10, I've repeatedly asked, if anyone could give me one
good reason to give up 7 for 10, and so far nobody has. Reading this
group, I feel I've made the right decision. My 3 biggest concern are
that 10 : (1) updates when it feels like it, where 7 updates only if
and when I want. (2) Didn't I see that adverts were inbedded ? (3) 10
must naturally consume more system resources and HD.

On that last point I find 10 needs less resources.
I have Windows 10 running on a Pentium 1.6 with 1 GB RAM and
it is able to do some useful things like play youtube full screen.

But being Lucifer you have extraordinary powers.