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On January 14th, Windows 7 reached its official "end-of-life," bringing an end to its updates as well as its ten years of poisoning education, invading privacy, and threatening user security. The end of Windows 7's lifecycle gives Microsoft the perfect opportunity to undo past wrongs, and to upcycle it instead.
We call on them to release it as free software, and give it to the community to study and improve. As there is already a precedent for releasing some core Windows utilities as free software, Microsoft has nothing to lose by liberating a version of their operating system that they themselves say has "reached its end."
Also at The Register and Wccftech.
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Free Software Foundation Demands That Microsoft Release Windows 7 as Free Software
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A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:14PM (10 children)
And yet the Chromebook is a walled garden. So much for choice. Even Windows doesn't go that far, and it isn't run by an advertising company looking for more ways to mine your data.
Chromebooks are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Unless you're into surveillance capitalism.
And why should Google get to curate anything? Do you trust them that much? Even Apple and Microsoft are now seen as less evil. WAY less evil.
Also, back in the 80s, people mostly bought computers and operating systems separately. I know my first 3 computers were without a disk operating system - I bought those separately, and only one was from Microsoft. There was no restriction on what you could buy at retail, and most people bought from retailers.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:45PM (9 children)
By the very early 1990s, DOS, then later Windows was bundled with the hardware and preinstalled for your convenience. By 1993 for sure. By 1995 you got a CD tailored to the OEM. By about 2000 you didn't even get a CD anymore.
Chromebooks are a
prison campwalled garden, but not as bad as an iPad.You can root your chromebook, with Google's blessing. Even install different firmware to boot non UEFI and unsigned boot loaders, if you really want to go that far.
Granny's (my mother in law's) first computer in 2006 was an old Win 95 machine loaded with Ubuntu. That worked fine for years. Later we got her a Dell mini tower PC that had Ubuntu pre-installed from the factory. When that was too old, we tried out a chromebook. She loves it.
Some people love their iPads. Even make love their Windows 10 some people do.
A chromebook that offered turnkey install of Linux applications strikes me as a toe-in-the-door way to introduce people to applications that are native to Linux. I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing. It's a pretty easy upgrade from such a chromebook to a Linux distribution with a Chrome browser and the same Linux apps. (but minus Android -- modern chromebooks also run android apps)
Of course "crostini" is not a released feature for chromebooks yet.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 30 2020, @07:01PM (8 children)
Nope. Most people in the early 90s bought their computers from local retailers, not OEMs. I was buying bare-bones PCs until the mid-2000s, when I just bought laptops with Widnows pre-installed. So no, retailers (unless you went to a big box store) weren't selling the OS with the PC unless you asked for it. They still don't.
And you most certainly could buy retail CDs of Windows with a new computer in the XP era. Bought a copy in the mid-2000s for some video hardware that required it at work. If you bought it at the same time as the computer, you got the OEM disk; if you bought it after, you got the retail disk, but it was most definitely available on CD in the 2000s.
You could still order a disk set from HP for Vista computers, and this started in 2007, so your memory is either faulty, or you only frequented Best Buy and Dell.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 30 2020, @10:44PM (7 children)
I won't disagree. I was a Mac-only guy until 1993.
In 1993, our PCs came with MS-DOS, and floppies so you could re-install it. In that time frame, I noticed that Windows was beginning to come preinstalled on PCs that our customers purchased. By Windows 95, as I recall, all PCs came with it preinstalled. Nobody installed Win 95, at least not consumers.
But I would be happy to learn of any information about this which is missing in my knowledge. I never got into PCs. They were just furnished for me at work, and I wrote code for them, as well as for Macs.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @12:21AM (6 children)
Even in the Win95 era, most people didn't buy their PCs from big box stores with Windows pre-installed. There was a thriving local 3rd party computer assembler industry that sold bare-bones PCs so you could install whatever you wanted. They were hundreds of dollars cheaper than the big box retailers, could be ordered with whatever parts you preferred, and you then installed whatever you wanted in it.
Even today there's a store chain that sells PCs without Windows installed. It's not a law. They offer 12 different pre-assembled barebones systems, or you can custom order what you want without an OS, or you can order a computer with Windows OEM.
Just that most retailers don't want the hassle of selling anything that isn't simple that a sales droid can sell off a shelf without knowing what works well together.
If you live in a decent-sized town you should be able to find a place selling barebones systems and computer parts so you can build your own.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @04:49PM (5 children)
Gateway 2000 is maybe an example of what you are describing. But these gradually declined and pre-installed systems gradually arose. There wasn't one magical day when everything flipped. It was a gradual process. By 95 that process was underway.
Also, a bit of friendly advice. Just FYI. It turns out, it is not a good idea to use peanut butter as a substitute on the heat sink for cpu thermal paste. Who knew?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @06:16PM (4 children)
We ordered a Thunderbird cpu, along with motherboard, etc., and the machines always arrived DOA. For the 6th, just give me the CPU and I'll assemble it. Turns out they didn't know that you needed to have the heat sink attached even if you powered it up for just a few seconds.
Showed them how to use very fine silicon sandpaper to remove any oxide on the heatsink, then spread some heat sink goop on it with a business card, then remove all but the smallest visible trace with the business card. Thing worked just fine.
Guy assembled computers as a sideline, powered up without a heat sink, then called me to ask me what to do because Windows wouldn't boot. I explained that the newer parts of the chip were really heat sensitive, but it would run DOS games all day really really fast - that he had turned his chip into an 8086.
Now in theory peanut butter (smooth) might be able to work - if you put the whole motherboard in oil. Run it hot enough and you can fry donuts and still not fry the cpu. It's the nasty hot spot that kills it. A lower temperature, distributed evenly, isn't so bad, but the sharp expansion of just one area ... not so good.
Back when Matrox was starting out, I stopped by their early production "facility". Lots of video cards undergoing a nasty heat bake to make sure they wouldn't fail in use. The shipping doors were open to keep the rest of the place kind of tolerable on a summer day.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @07:16PM (3 children)
If you put it in oil, you won't be rewarded with the smell of peanut butter cookies prior to the meltdown.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @08:31PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @10:40PM (1 child)
I seem to remember that from long, loooooong ago on the green site. Like early 2000s. Styrofoam cooler. Mineral oil. The cold side of air conditioner coils and the motherboard both went into the mineral oil. It seemed to work. Or so they said. But for how long, or how well, who knows.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 31 2020, @11:05PM
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