Microsoft Windows 7 or 8.1 users on Intel Kaby Lake or AMD Ryzen CPUs will not be able to download Windows updates.
Microsoft announced some time ago that new silicon as the company called it back then would not be officially supported on Windows 7 or 8.1.
This meant basically that only Windows 10 would support Intel's, AMD's and Qualcomm's new processors, while Windows 7 or 8.1 would not.
This does not mean that Windows 7 or 8.1 won't install on machines running these new processors, but that Microsoft (and the manufacturer) won't offer any form of support for those devices.
A new support page on the Microsoft website suggests that users who run an unsupported processor on an older version of Windows -- read Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 -- won't be able to scan for or download Windows updates anymore.
Users will get the following error message when they run the scan:
Unsupported Hardware
Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows and you won't receive updates.
It looks like I'll be moving to BSD or Linux sooner than I planned.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:20AM (4 children)
With all of the poison pills shoved into W7 and the telemetry updates, you should be using offline patching tools anyway. BTW, those still work.
The microcode drivers are a bigger issue. I think there are some working ones for intel but not sure about AMD despite the lack of "official" support.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:24AM (3 children)
Good news for corporate users also - looks like WSUS should be fine as well - https://www.ghacks.net/2017/03/17/microsoft-blocks-updates-for-new-cpus-on-windows-7-and-8-1/#comment-4190380 [ghacks.net]
Still, glad I already quit dealing with Microsoft for personal use.
Generating slipstreamed custom installs for newer hardware support is an annoyance.
Maintaining a monthly updated list of pre-install patches needed to allow first Windows Update run to complete in less than 24 hours was absurd.
Getting into arms race with MS over spyware installs in the base OS was a goddamned farce.
The license agreement saying "We can and will look at anything on your computer or visible on your network for any reason we see fit" is fucking Kafkaesque.
Fuck you, Microsoft. Fuck you right in your stupid goat-ass. Keep working at getting users to migrate away.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:59AM
I wanted to mod you kick ass Tenacious D awesome! But, I had to give an insightful.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @08:06AM (1 child)
"We can and will look at anything on your computer or visible on your network for any reason we see fit"
It only recently crossed my mind: If there are fully updated Windows machines on my network, how much can Microsoft deduce about my Linux machines? Anything I make visible is shared with Microsoft, sure, but are they able to deduce anything else? Microsoft has the resources and the skill to really give my boxes a working over, if they decide to do so. Presuming that I could keep Microsoft out of my machines is akin to presuming that I can keep the NSA out. They are already inside my network, after all.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Monday March 20 2017, @10:39AM
Most people's networks are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. If you assume a hostile machine inside your security perimeter, ask what resources are open to casual inspection. Got an open file share with guest access? Homegroups count! Got a networked printer/scanner that keeps a document cache? Use your imagination from there.
Now then, before putting on the tinfoil hat, what MS is actually *likely* to do with this all-access pass they're granting themselves?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/30/windows_10_wi_fi_sense/ [theregister.co.uk]
(at one point "accidentally" set on by default - potentially a massive security issue for some users)
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/05/microsoft-disables-wi-fi-sense-on-windows-10/ [krebsonsecurity.com]
(discontinuing wifi sense took entirely too long)
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/26/microsoft_renamed_data_slurper_reinserted_windows_10/ [theregister.co.uk]
(Hey, with this data you've got a very good start on social graph for your users. Easily monetized, and oh yes they're using it)
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/03/windows_10_privacy_defaults/ [theregister.co.uk]
(and here's where I said "What the fuck?" this is only part of the license language that I had some issues with. It has since been modified at least twice, but ... no longer my problem, at least for now.)
That license language makes any software it covers unusable when situations of client/attorney confidentiality come up. Period. There may also be issues with HIPAA or other confidentiality laws.
Even if later edits to the license terms ease up a bit ... and even if one believes that MS will always act in a benign fashion with their data collection at all times, keep in mind that regular diagnostic data [crash dumps, usage statistics collection, performance metrics, etc.] can include random memory/file dumps, which puts us back to being unsuitable in cases where data confidentiality comes into play.
Take all of the above, grab your tinfoil hat off the rack and ... it's easy to start getting freaked out. Microsoft's historical abuses of their position are legion and legendary. If you really want the list, start with the Halloween documents and get back to me if you want more.
Let me say it again, fuck them sideways with rusty railroad spike.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:31AM (23 children)
You should still be able to run Windows 7/8.1 in a VM on the newer processors. That should handle most of the headaches of the switch. My personal way of doing things is look for a linux native app, try running the Windows app in wine, then fire up the VM if both of those fail. I haven't booted it in over a year though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:48AM (22 children)
Been meaning to ask this for a while now but never felt motivated. I've never run a VM. I know what a VM is, I've used Windows since the 3.1 days, used Unix since 82 or so, was a sysadmin for a couple years, have code in the Linux kernel (couple of drivers).
That said, what are steps 1-5 of setting up and running a VM on either a Linux box or a Win10 box (I've got both).
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:59AM (11 children)
Install the virtualbox package from your distro's package manager.
Fire up virtualbox.
Create an empty Windows VM.
Install Windows on it.
Profit!(?)
Seriously, if you can install Windows on a real box you can install it on a fake one just fine. Just remember that virtual disks start out taking up zero-ish space and only grow as necessary, so don't set a low size value for them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:57AM (5 children)
Will windows based CADCAM run in a VM on Linux?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:23AM
Almost guarenteed. Pretty much everything will run in a VM, including many of the high-end games. The only place you run into problems is where software insists on talking directly to the hardware, which is fairly rare these days.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @08:03AM
Will windows based CADCAM run in a VM on Linux?
Depends, name your poison...
I've had variable success running some of our CADCAM software in VMs, biggest sticking points
1. OpenGL support: it's usually borked to varying (and unpredictable) degrees, so there are limitations you'll have to discover for yourself when running the software in a VM, these limitations might be the deal breaker (e.g. can't simulate and display the design in 3D on the screen that you want to send to the CNC mill).
2. Getting the software to consistently access the usb dongles/protection keys for some of our packages (so much so, that in one case to debug the issue I ended up running a less than kosher version of the main software we had a license for in the VM, the software itself worked reasonably well, the copy protection mechanisms however..)
Try running it, YMMV, but if you want my opinion, and I say this as someone who has been using and administering Linux systems since '93, I'd not bother and just stick with running your software on native hardware (which is what we eventually had to do @work, manglement got the Win7/Win10 bug..and got a bit 'annoyed' at our intransigence).
VMs are fine for a lot of things, you might get lucky and your software may work fine in one, but in our case there were too many things which borked to make it usable so we stuck to running it on native hardware, considering the fact that, thanks to the software requirements, the graphics cards alone in our current CADCAM workstations cost more than the previous complete workstations they've replaced..
Hell, even on my active home network of mainly Linux boxes (9 desktops, two laptops, one netbook, two thin clients), two of them still run Win7 and XP natively for CAD and DAW software which I can't get to function properly in any VM I've tried.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:07PM (2 children)
For best results you want:
1) A CPU with Intel VT-d or AMD IOMMU, both of which are forms of "directed I/O" which allow a hypervisor to give exclusive access to a given PCIe device to a single VM
2) A separate dGPU, one which is *not* being used to drive your monitor
3) The know-how to configure this feature, called "GPU Passthrough."
I've never gotten to try this myself but have seen youtube demos of the process, including one where a machine had 3 GPUs, a big beefy i7 something or other, and made TWO "virtual gaming machines" on it while reserving the onboard IGP for the host OS's use.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:45PM
For best results you want:
1) A CPU with Intel VT-d or AMD IOMMU, both of which are forms of "directed I/O" which allow a hypervisor to give exclusive access to a given PCIe device to a single VM
2) A separate dGPU, one which is *not* being used to drive your monitor
3) The know-how to configure this feature, called "GPU Passthrough."
Looks promising, and I'd love to try this @work, but I'm sure the PHB won't release the funds (he begrudges spending money on our critical production systems, yet will still go out any buy fscking Macs that we don't fscking well use...however, it might be an idea to try this the next time I 'reshuffle' my home systems (my firewall needs more memory and CPU/cores, so my current CAD/CAE box is an obvious candidate).
I've never gotten to try this myself but have seen youtube demos of the process, including one where a machine had 3 GPUs, a big beefy i7 something or other, and made TWO "virtual gaming machines" on it while reserving the onboard IGP for the host OS's use.
I'll have a look, cheers.
(sadly I missed out on getting my hands on a fully working but minus the hard disks 32 core system a few weeks back which might have been ideal for this for the princely sum of 30 USD..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @09:52AM
I have this setup.
It's amazing and I love it. A lot. Too much, perhaps :P
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:20AM (3 children)
Yeah, you just lost me on step 1. Which VM? Should I install it on Windows or Linux? What do I look out for?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:37AM (1 child)
He just said virtualbox. Since the whole point of the exercise is to avoid Microsoft's shiny new policies, you should install it in Linux. There's nothing to look out for, step 1 is literally the same as installing any other package from your package manager.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:33PM
Ahhh, didn't get virtualbox was the name of the package, thought it was a generic term.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driven on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:24AM
Here is an illustrated guide (probably one of many):
http://askubuntu.com/questions/187424/install-windows-7-through-virtual-box [askubuntu.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:32AM
"Just remember that virtual disks start out taking up zero-ish space and only grow as necessary, so don't set a low size value for them."
Depends how you set it up, but yes, i would recommend adding a dynamic virtual HDD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:06AM (4 children)
1. Install VM software (VMware, VirtualBox, etc)
2. In the software, create a virtual machine (there is usually a wizard)
3. Start the created VM and install an OS to it, either from a disk or from an image
4. ???
5. Profit
In other words, just get the software and try it. The only thing you need is OS installation media or its image. Even if you mess up, it's very easy to delete the VM and start over. And unlike the reinstalls directly on the hardware, you can keep using the PC as usual while doing it :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:45AM (1 child)
step 3) is what most people dont understand: you can either connect the real physical dvd drive with install media to the new virtual maschine to install -or- if you have iso image file (file ending in .iso) you can "insert", as in select the iso file, to be "inside the virtual dvd drive of the virtual maschine and let the vm boot from there and then go thru os install setup.
its awesome!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:58AM
Also, you can download ISO files directly from Microsoft now, so no worry about any viruses added by parties not Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:51AM (1 child)
And unlike the reinstalls directly on the hardware, you can keep using the PC as usual while doing it :)
Won't this use up the Internet activations associated with your product key, instead forcing you to make a phone call, wait on hold for several minutes (payable per minute to your phone provider), and explain your use to a representative in a low-wage country with a thick accent for several minutes (likewise payable per minute to your phone provider)?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:49PM
Won't this use up the Internet activations associated with your product key
IIRC, you can use Windows (at least Win7) for up to a month without activating it. So you could fiddle around, wipe and reinstall until you're satisfied (if that word can be used with a Windows installation), and activate only once.
Then you back up the activation token [alternativeto.net], so you don't have to activate it ever again (or as long as your virtual hardware doesn't change).
(Or you could just crack it, cause activations are bullshit, and you should be able to use the software that you paid for without begging for permission.)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:29AM (4 children)
Been meaning to ask this for a while now but never felt motivated. I've never run a VM. I know what a VM is, I've used Windows since the 3.1 days, used Unix since 82 or so, was a sysadmin for a couple years, have code in the Linux kernel (couple of drivers).
That said, what are steps 1-5 of setting up and running a VM on either a Linux box or a Win10 box (I've got both).
Buzzard's instructions for Windows are spot on. You can also use VirtualBox on Linux [virtualbox.org].
If you're looking for something more full-featured:
Xen [xenproject.org] works nicely.
KVM [thegeekstuff.com] is also an option.
Or, assuming you have a spare box for a bare metal hypervisor [wikipedia.org], you can even get a free license for VMWare ESXi [vmware.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:45PM (1 child)
nobody was talking about installing virtualbox on fucking windows. the whole point of the question was how to use some slaveware on linux, ffs.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:40PM
nobody was talking about installing virtualbox on fucking windows. the whole point of the question was how to use some slaveware on linux, ffs.
Actually, OP requested steps to install on Linux or Windows:
For the record, since you appear to only be semi-literate, I didn't give any instructions for installing on Windows.
If you're going to attempt trolling/flaming, you could at least direct your moronic drivel at the right person. I could point you at the post you were likely aiming at, but I''ll leave that as an exercise for you.
I do feel pity for you, since you're either not so bright, new to this sort of thing, or both.
I'm betting on both.
Toodles, honey!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:11PM (1 child)
Buzzard's instructions for Windows are spot on.
I think my fellow AC was trying to point out when spittle-flecked rage overcame him that The Mighty Buzzard only posted instructions for Linux host / Windows guest, whereas you seem to think those instructions are about Windows host. (Note that "for Windows" isn't terribly specific, so I'm inferring from context.)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:34PM
I think my fellow AC was trying to point out when spittle-flecked rage overcame him that The Mighty Buzzard only posted instructions for Linux host / Windows guest, whereas you seem to think those instructions are about Windows host. (Note that "for Windows" isn't terribly specific, so I'm inferring from context.)
I suppose that could be the case, however I only mentioned that in passing.
I stand by my comments.
I'd add that other AC might benefit not only from some remedial literacy classes, but also from anger management counseling as well.
I still feel sorry for him. It's really too bad.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:32AM (2 children)
If you put a human in a pot of boiling water, it will try to climb out. If, however, you put it into a pot of lukewarm water and slowly heat it up, the human will boil to death because it doesn't act upon a gradual change. Makes a tasty soup!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:01AM
Speak for yourself. If there's no fish in it, water don't hold my interest very long.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:20AM
Every year hot tubs look less attractive to me, but I'm just not ready to switch to cold showers even though I hear they are better for your skin. I've tried cold showers a few times, buy they still felt crude and unfinished. I'll switch to cold showers fully when they have the ease of use, bubble baths, and comforts that I'm accustom to in the hot tub. Until then, back in the pot I go.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:32AM (41 children)
Funny, that's what I thought too, years ago. Ubuntu 10.10 was my preferred operating system despite it being behind the times, and always Just Worked™...until it didn't. Firefox started hard-crashing with no warning (and no post-mortem, the window would just disappear with no kind of error message or confirmation) and reverting to earlier versions of Firefox or reinstalling the OS didn't correct the issue. I couldn't apt-get anything because of dependency issues, changed or obsoleted repo locations, and unresolvable deprecation problems (come on, this is APT, not RPM!). This all played out over a few years on the exact same hardware, by the way.
"Long-term stable," my ass.
So I tried different distros. Only two, and the both sucked. Mint had a catastrophic GRUB failure during install, and that's not something I'm willing to give a second-chance (actually, it did later install, and crashed and glitched frequently). I tried Xubuntu and found it to be horribly slow considering it was marketed as a "faster" version of Ubuntu.
This all by the way was on a P4 Dell Desktop with 2 GB RAM, not exactly the state of the art, but definitely workable. And Windows 7 didn't exhibit any unusual problems, so I settled with that until I scrapped that machine.
Recently I built for the first time in awhile a more modern machine. X64 i3-6300, Asus Republic of Gaymers Mobo with onboard Intel graphics, 8GB Patriot RAM, and unremarkable WD SATA drive. For Linux, Ubuntu Gnome Flashback on the latest LTS release is good enough but a lot of my favorite effects are missing from CompizConfig-Settings-Manager. And I'll get around to throwing that Linux drive back in whenever I get around to it, because I have Win7 on this drive and in my system now.
But anyway, the point I was trying to make before all that yammering was that an older version of Ubuntu became unusable on my plebian box despite having been an LTS release, and sure, I could have taken the time to get it working, but those are a class of problems I call "fiddling," and I'm too lazy for fiddling. You can extend fiddling to the physical world as well. What isn't fiddling is swapping out and calibrating a new part of an existing larger system. What is fiddling is troubleshooting a ground fault or deviated value in complex circuit by painstakingly swapping out all components until you have isolated the faulty one, but even in small parallel circuit boards that can be difficult, and in the case of compound failures, often impossible. So sometimes you just want to swap out the whole board, or in this case, the OS.
Mediocrity for the win!
(Score: 2) by http on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:13AM (3 children)
Well, that's what you get for using Ubuntu, which is based on debian's testing branch - which debian explicitly says is not suitable for production use.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:16AM (2 children)
Forgot to mention I also tried Debian stable, which had no features at all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:40AM
But was the lack of features stable?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:47AM
Common -- they support MRI machines [debian.org]. You can't complain it lack features, just because your hardware costs less than $2 million.
(Score: 3, Informative) by magamo on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:58AM (1 child)
I hate to break it to you, but Ubuntu 10.10 wasn't an LTS version. 10.04 and 12.04 were, but not 10.10, 11.04 or 11.10
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:18AM
I started with 10.04, but went downhill from there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:04AM (3 children)
So you tried Ubuntu, then tried Mint (based on Ubuntu) and Xubuntu (self-explanatory), and in another comment, mention you also tried Debian (which Ubuntu is based on)? I can almost see a pattern here...
I'm not saying you necessarily would have had better success with any other distro, just that if you're trying to get away from an issue with one distro, the best strategy might involve trying another distro that is not intimately related. I'd recommend Arch (if you can live with systemd as default, other inits available but unsupported), but there are others who would swear by Suse, Fedora, or something else. (I'm assuming Gentoo (my current poison) and Slackware need not apply.) The point is not one of these in particular, but that any of them would be much less likely to share common faults with Ubuntu than the other options you tried.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:23AM (2 children)
When I'm ready to fiddle then I'll run Slackware and/or BSD, while touching upon SELinux for that paranoid user experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:36PM
Sounds exciting, keep us posted with the feelings.
(Score: 2) by ragequit on Monday March 20 2017, @03:37PM
Actually, my go-to is Slackware. 14.2 (w/KDE (FUCK Gnome)) has been running flawlessly so far.
The above views are fabricated for your reading pleasure.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:36AM (2 children)
Mileage varies. Depending on the alignment of the stars, how the old woman throws the bones, whether you've been laid recently, whether you'll ever get laid again . . .
I attempted Linux several times, before it "just worked". After at least half a dozen failures, I downloaded the then-current Suse Linux, and it installed itself with zero glitches. Of course, in my case, I had finally made the decision to go Linux because Microsoft didn't support my wireless, and I had read that a couple of Linux distros did.
Bush was fresh in office at the time. With Trump there now, the timing may be good for another EF attempt. Skunk season is starting too - if it fails again, try to hit a skunk, see if the smell helps.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:38AM (1 child)
When Xubuntu 12.04 was 6 months old, I put it on everything; AMD desktop, Dell mini 9, 32-bit Via C7 Eden, Intel P4, Intel i3.... It didn't matter, it ran perfect on everything. But now I'm starting to see the repository rot and software get slower just like EF saw on 10.10. I've switched the file server to FreeBSD, but I still don't have a solution for the laptop, desktop, media center, and the 32-bit web/email/MySQL server. I don't have the spare time to tinker anymore, so my options are quite slim.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:52AM
I have to look up when I stopped using Ubuntu. It was around the 12.0 release. I was forcing the TV I was using at the time to work in 16:10 mode. Upgrade only let me choose the 16:9 and 4:3 modes it actually advertised :P
Currently using Mint. Don't like it. Plan to try Slackware (And FreeBSD -- I like it, but take way too long to configure stuff).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:35AM (4 children)
Hey so ethanol, where can i get those buffalo burgers in or near Long Beach? Remember, you promised to tell me.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:08AM (1 child)
I don't live in Long Beach. Get 'em in San Diego at Stone or any burger joint in North Park. But those are Bison, rather than Buffalo, burgers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:31AM
Alright, Bison. I don't have enough time to drive to San Diego on this trip. Maybe next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:37PM (1 child)
This was a fairly simple easy Google. [google.com]
They even give a top recommendation.
Jim's Burgers, 3639 E 7th St, Long Beach, CA (@ Euclid Av.) [googleapis.com]
The Google-phobic who use a proxy server will get results that are a bit less useful.
archive.li's server is in the Netherlands. [archive.li]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @05:34AM
Too tired now, i'll look into it later, but quickly looking i don't see any buffalo/bison in their menu.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:47AM (13 children)
The Linux flag wavers can get pissed but the simple fact is there is zero point in Linux on the desktop because if they are one of those users that Linux often touts, the ones that ONLY surf the web, use email, etc? They are much better off with a tablet as they are more secure, easier to use, and don't have any driver issues or any of the other BS you get running a Linux desktop. And if they are one of those that require Windows for the programs they need/want? Well it makes absolutely no sense to pay for a copy of Windows to run in a VM with worse performance and more bullshit than just running it on the hardware just so you can say "I run Linux".
So there just isn't a point in running Linux on the desktop, not when you can get Android tablets for less than $100, its just pointless.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:55AM (3 children)
Umm, most tablets run Android/Linux these days.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:23PM
Umm, most tablets run Android/Linux these days.
and the iThingies, don't forget them, they run some sort of fscked-about-with BSD under all the ooooh shiny!, buts shh, don't tell anyone..
In fact, the only tablets I've heard about which don't run any sort of Unix/Linux derivative are those Surface things, and I've not seen one IRL...
Personally, If I had to use one, I'd rather have a tablet running an OS with Unix rather than VMS lurking in it's DNA, but as I hate the fscking things in general, I'll stick with my netbook for 'portable computing' (Dual boot Win7/Kali).
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday March 20 2017, @03:48AM (1 child)
And they have no driver issues, no upgrade treadmill, and no bullshit like systemd which Linux has in spades again making Linux absolutely pointless on the desktop. BTW if you are gonna claim Android, a proprietary OS owned by Google [arstechnica.com] then you might as well claim all those other proprietary devices like TiVos and those embedded OSes on routers because hey, they don't have diddle shit to do with the four freedoms or anything else Linux actually stands for, but all that matters is the kernel...right?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday March 20 2017, @04:01AM
You are the one complaining about the Linux desktop. If you were worried about the four freedoms [gnu.org], you should have specified GNU/Linux. Or, given your specific complaint, Systemd/Linux (not sure how much of the GNU userland systemd tries to replace).
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:57AM
A tablet operating system's window management policy is on the whole less flexible, in many cases allowing only one window to be visible at a time. Want to read a document in half the screen and write a review in the other half? Too bad.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:28AM (3 children)
You're so full of shit it hurts, where to even begin. Sigh.
Are you saying there are more "Linux users" that only surf the web? Actually usually the users that are more knowledgeable tend to do more on computers. You really think a random tablet is more secure, really? Without having any idea what kind of security policies are in place and even if it spies on you like so many lovely pieces of proprietary software do these days? Easier to use you say... when you get a new gadget, you need to learn to use it, it makes little difference whether you learn GNU/Linux or some lame tablet thing. And drivers, eh? Are you aware that Linux runs from phones to supercomputers, unlike any other operating system? Thought so... The only BS I see so far is some hairy card carrying windoze luser spouting random crap at people here. Also, almost all computers you purchase these days come with a mandatory windoze license so it's not like most people haven't got one already.
And obviously you don't even mention freedom, the number one point of using GNU/Linux. Do you realize you seem as unbiased as North Korea you retarded fucker?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:55PM (2 children)
Yeah i find this attitude perplexing, especially on a site where users are presumably more technical. Linux is superior in every way for the technical user. Its development tools are superlative. Every layer is robust enough to handle the most intensive tasks in the world. You can optimize your system down to its foundation and not lose performance to malware/spyware. And for me best of all is you can keep peeking under the hood and learning as you go. The heuristic opportunities there are endless, and you never run into a wall where you have to pay more or take a course or sit on the phone for hours talking to some fellow in India who has less clue than you do.
And that's for technical users. Non-technical users can finally breathe a sigh of relief that Norton/McAfee have finally stopped bugging them and that MS itself has stopped hitting them up for money. Everything just works.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
The explanation is the usual one, follow the money. Hairy is a MS guy through and through.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! -- Upton Sinclair
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:52PM
Poor Hairyfeet! I have a nice warm blankie and cup o' hot chocolate for him! This is only a relapse, he'll get over it as soon as the next Micro$oft patch comes out. But it does look like he has taken to hawking tablets for a living, rather than attempting the impossible, fixing Windows machines. Not much call for fixing tablets, especially when they are already "fixed".
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:53AM
No the answer for the casual web surfer and emailer is a Chromebook. Costs less than an iPad and has a full keyboard and long battery life. The OS is just about unbreakable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:51PM
you're a fucking idiot and no one trusts your opinion. everyone i know uses Gnu+Linux, great grannies and all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:18PM
Used to see this guy at the Linux Mint forum regularly.
After switching to Linux, this (now retired) architect used FOSS exclusively. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [linuxmint.com]
...and with the folks who use tablets, there's an 80something percent likelihood they're running Linux.
It's been that way for years and years.
In that same time span, the presence of Windoze on handheld thingies has been under 4 percent and continues to dwindle.
Given a choice, folks avoid M$.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 20 2017, @07:59AM
I have to point out that most tablets are Linux. Well, Android, but Android uses the Linux kernel. Basically it's open source. Except, what few people realize is, your phone/tablet/whatever running Android generally belongs to the telco or whoever provided it. Unless the device is rooted, the device belongs to the supplier, not to the end user. If the device belongs to the supplier, then no, the end user cannot deem the device as "secure". The one exception to that rule, seems to be Apple's phones. They claim that they can't recover files from their phones, so maybe the device really does belong to the end user. Except - walled garden.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:14AM (8 children)
Sounds like you need to go into this stuff in a little more depth...I believe the children refer to this process as "git gud n00b."
Seriously; Arch is *easy.* Slack is a pain because it has no dependency checking, but there's something very soothing and old-school about it. Gentoo should run fine on that hardware, though it's OCD personified. FreeBSD will probably work fine too. The disadvantage of a curated solution like *buntu is that it *is* one-size-fits-all.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:24AM
I switched to Ubuntu 16.04 for the one-size-fits-all-NFW-will-I-run-windows-10 aspect.
So far, so good. Not wild about a couple of things. Interface needs tweaking. For all intents and purposes it replaces Windows except for Windows only games. I have dual boot for that.
IMOHO I cannot see why anyone now can't switch to linux. Except AAA gamers.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday March 19 2017, @08:54PM (6 children)
No, slack is LESS of a pain because it has no dependency checking, and because it 'lacks' a lot of other misfeatures as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:09PM (5 children)
There is a thin line between elitism and masochism, Arik :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday March 20 2017, @09:28AM (4 children)
Automagical systems are masochistic but I don't see them as "elite" in any way.
I've spent a lot more time troubleshooting problems with such systems, than dealing with the 'problem' they are purported to solve.
When you take into account the relative amount of time spent using such systems, this looks REALLY bad. I've probably used Slack or similar systems about 98 hours for every 2 hours I've spent trying to use rpm or deb based systems, conservatively. And I've had one or two very minor issues of that nature with Slack, so easily solved they don't really stick in my head. On the other hand, as little as I've actually wound up using them, I've had occasion to spend many hours trying to repair the messes these things cause 'automagically' when they fail.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 20 2017, @04:26PM (3 children)
We've had different experiences then I guess. I've been using various flavors of Linux since 2004, starting with Gentoo (think about that one a moment...) and have had less than half a dozen package manager foulups, all of them within the first 4 or 5 years of that timeframe and most of them my own fault for screwing around with things I shouldn't have been. I like Slack, in that it's a kind of "set it and forget it" system, but I can get the same feeling and then some by using FreeBSD.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday March 20 2017, @05:23PM (2 children)
The world is broad enough to allow for that I guess. ;)
"I've been using various flavors of Linux since 2004, starting with Gentoo (think about that one a moment...) and have had less than half a dozen package manager foulups, all of them within the first 4 or 5 years of that timeframe and most of them my own fault for screwing around with things I shouldn't have been."
I got into it in '94. I'd been using HP-UX and NeXT but those were expensive systems I could only get a timeshare on, and I wanted something like that on my own machine. I found the local SCO dealer, we got along well and had similar desires on that, and we started experimenting with Linux that would have been in 93, fighting SLS and trying to cobble together the right hardware and software to have a fully supported machine, we were on and off with that for several months. I'm thinking it was like March or April of 94 when we discovered Slackware. Shortly after that he quit selling SCO and started migrating people to Linux.
Anyway I've used all the main families but it's true to say I mostly used them years ago, and hopefully they've matured a bit since then. But I've seen RPM trash installed systems more than once. I've seen Debian go into endless loops installing the same packages over and over until forcibly stopped, and spent hours figuring out how to repair the damage.
I've never once seen Slackware do anything like that. If you install the wrong package you get an error message you can search on to find out what's missing. Install it and try it again. Not that many people will ever see that anyway - you can prevent them at the cost of some disk space (which everyone tells me is cheap) by just doing a full install if you want. But they never bothered me enough to care.
Sure if you do the wrong thing you can cause problems. IIRC one of the times I had an issue with Debian I had actually caused the problem by forcing the wrong thing, but that shouldn't cause such spectacular failure. Forcing the wrong package to install just results in a program that won't run, and it can be easily removed. Not so in a system that presumes to try to track and manage all installed software without needing (or permitting) manual intervention by the owner!
So I honestly think the whole package manager thing, at least when applied to a general purpose distro, is an excellent example of over-engineering, it fixes problems which are so minor and rare as be practically nonexistent, and creates a whole new class of much more serious problems in the process.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:18AM (1 child)
Heh, interestingly enough I've never used a .rpm distro for personal use. Their reputation for dependency hell preceded them. Most of the time I don't use .deb distros either; it's been a long, continuing love affair with Gentoo, with Arch brought in when my hardware isn't powerful enough, and some dabbling in *BSD. Vanilla Debian never broke on me, but I've also always installed these systems from the minimal .iso and frankly the idea of a Mint or Ubuntu type experience (disk in, say Next a lot, wait, bang full system) still feels really weird. You are correct about Slack insofar as the base system is concerned but heaven help you if you start adding stuff outside the tree.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:01AM
"You are correct about Slack insofar as the base system is concerned but heaven help you if you start adding stuff outside the tree. "
I really never found that problematic at all. Between the main site and the user supported sites like slackbuilds it's very rare not to be able to get a binary package for anything substantial, but when that happens it's super easy to deal with, since slack is makescript friendly and the package manager works with me instead of against me I just do a standard install. (Another issue I've had when I try other distros is that they really don't seem to want to tolerate programs installed the standard way, which to me is just stupid, and annoying, why would I want to deal with that?)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:41AM (3 children)
The move should have been made years ago. I moved to Linux about 1.5 years ago and it's my main OS now. I will reboot my Mac to MacOS on occasion when I need something there but that's pretty rare. I have a Windows laptop with Windows 10 on it but I rarely use it these days. Why pollute my soul with Microsoft filth?
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:14AM (2 children)
I too moved to Linux about 15 years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:45AM
I took the dive into linux back when vista came out with it's audio piracy paranoia system.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Monday March 20 2017, @06:36PM
I should mention that I first used Linux in 1993, but it did not become a regular thing until fairly recently.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:20AM (2 children)
It looks like I'll be moving to BSD or Linux sooner than I planned. flamebait response. dont care what you do, or why, its irrelevant to the article. deal.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Dunbal on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:31AM (1 child)
Yet somehow you think that we care that you don't care.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:41AM
Now, Dunbal, it's not AC's fault that he was born an ugly baby, and his parents and grandparents abandoned him. Nor is it his fault that his shoe size is greater than his IQ. He didn't ask to be born that way. Poor little special snowflake - nobody appreciates him - SOB!! Let me get that world's smallest violin, and play him a tune.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:35AM (6 children)
oh right, blame it onnthe CPU: " Tah shitty modern cpus need extra careful attention to be able to run our super cool top notch operating system and we cannot be bothered to make it run on those totally non conformal processors."
no word about m$ not being happy about AMD supporting the linux opensource GPU effort with drivers.
hows this m$ shot across the bow.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:43AM (5 children)
And Kaby Lake? What has Intel done to earn their wrath?
No, I think it's real simple. Microsoft hasn't sold enough Windows 10 licenses (because people don't want Windows 10), so Microsoft is trying to subtly encourage people to buy more Windows 10 licenses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:01AM
Microsoft is trying to subtly encourage people to buy more Windows 10 licenses.
Like they "subtly" tried to get users to upgrade to Win10 before, or how they "subtly" try to force telemetry into Win7/Win8 "security" patches.
Microsoft has all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the skull.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:10AM (3 children)
Intel are Jews. After having been told that it shouldn't have to sink in -- Jews are all about making more money and controlling the Goyim. Now look what Microsoft are doing, compare the two, and let that sink in.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:18AM
Lies. Windows works just fine from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Microsoft are Cthulhu cultists, because everything they do is ratshit insane and would be evil if it were more coherent.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by https on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:03AM (1 child)
It's not often I say this, but the world would be better off without you. Heck, you would be better off without you.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday March 20 2017, @03:38PM
Offended and laughing about it.
This comment might be more impactful if not for the sig.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:08AM
We are MicroSoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. (Attributed to B.G., Gill Bates)
I'm starting to suspect that there may be a keyword-matching algorithm picking footer fortunes... mostly because the alternative makes me a bit uncomfortable [wikipedia.org] :)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:08AM
Buy buy buy some more.
My girlfriend uses a windoze computer. One evening she decided to rent a movie. [I don't condone or support either of these acts.] The kicker is that the movie would not play normally but instead it would every was it 5 or ten minutes freeze for a long time to inform her that she needed a newer windoze version. So lame DRM. And it was a legit pre-installed windoze no less. Micro$oft is full of shit like this. You can always pay more. In fact you must.
Don't give these wankers your money or your mindshare. It's not like there aren't any options. My only regret with adopting GNU/Linux as my sole operating system was that I didn't do it earlier. And that was in 2006.
(Score: 5, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:26AM
Unsupported Hardware
Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows and you won't receive updates.
HA ha!
[/nelson] OTOH, don't no updates mean no hidden downgrade to windows 10?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Informative) by number6 on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:11PM (3 children)
Copied from this Slashdot Post [slashdot.org]
How to Install Windows 7 on Kaby Lake/Cannon Lake
New Intel CPUs do support Windows 7, all you need is:
1. A PCIe USB3 expansion card (to get the USB mouse/keyboard working, or use a PS/2 keyboard/mouse)
For Intel graphics support:
1. Download the latest Intel video driver
2. Unpack the driver zip, edit the igdlh64.inf file.
3. Find the latest w7_ line (iSKLD_w7 for skylake, iBXTD_W7 for brasswell, etc)
4. Replace the DEV_XXXX with device ID of your system's GPU (look it up in control panel > display adapter > properties > hardware id)
5. If the latest driver doesn't work, try the second latest, then third latest, so on.
6. Install the video driver, you'll get a unsigned driver warning, ignore it, install it, reboot.
7. Enter BIOS, play with the "Legacy/Compatibility" video setting, the wrong setting will get you a blank or blue screen, the right setting will get you to windows normally.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jcross on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:49PM
Good grief, and people used to complain about Linux being hard to install. How the tables have turned!
Last time I installed Windows (on a VM), I was shocked at how crummy the process design was. It would ask for input, then churn for an indeterminate time, then ask for input again. Contrast with installing Ubuntu, which gets all the info up front, then does the rest of the job by itself. Now if you need to do all this bullshit to get hardware working with Windows, it's about like installing Linux on bleeding-edge hardware back in the day. Granted one could just install 10, but there are plenty of reasons to avoid that, and the alternatives really start to look attractive...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @12:28AM
is this for real?
people who buy the high end new stuff do not know how to troubleshoot it?
And so the instructions are "use a pcie USB3 card" or ps2 connectors?
The rest is for integrated graphics that few actual geeks would use since even discrete video costs $25 for something usually better? i guess i will go back under a rock now
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday March 20 2017, @11:07AM
How to Install Windows 7 on Kaby Lake/Cannon Lake...
So the old joke about installing the Linux virus [gnu.org] has come true...
Basic Installation
Before attempting to compile this virus make sure you have the correct version of glibc installed, and that your firewall rules are set to ‘allow everything’.
(1) Put the attachment into the appropriate directory eg. /usr/src.
(2) Type ‘tar xvzf evilmalware.tar.gz’ to extract the source files for this virus.
(3) ‘cd’ to the directory containing the virus' source code and type ‘./configure’ to configure the virus for your system. If you're using ‘csh’ on an old version of System V, you might need to type ‘sh ./configure’ instead to prevent ‘csh’ from trying to execute ‘configure’ itself.
(4) Type ‘make’ to compile the package. You may need to be logged in as root to do this.
(5) Optionally, type ‘make check_payable’ to run any self-tests that come with the virus, and send a large donation to an unnumbered Swiss bank account.
(6) Type ‘make install’ to install the virus and any spyware, trojans pornography, penis enlargement adverts and DDoS attacks that come with it.
(7) You may now configure your preferred malware behaviour in /etc/evilmalware.conf.
...but in windows.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:02PM (6 children)
I love that Microsoft keep handing Linux opportunities to grab some of their pie. Now if only the various communities can stop reinventing shit long enough to grab a piece...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 20 2017, @01:07AM (5 children)
Gnome 3.x, and to a lesser extent KDE 4.x (and 5.x, though that's FINALLY usable...) have badly damaged the "brand," not to mention the corrosive drain-bamage that is Unity.
I don't know what the hell happened, but I remember a few years after starting Linux in 2004, suddenly things that worked weren't "good enough." Gnome 2.x wasn't good enough, KDE 3.5.10 wasn't good enough, ALSA wasn't good enough, etc. In the mid-to-late 2000s I remember it being almost a golden age for Linux. Then PulseAudio showed up. Then KDE 4.0 was released in a state I wouldn't even call beta. *Then* the Gnome team went full derptard with GTK3.
Then Canonical, the public face of Linux, "Linux for human beings!" themselves, shit all over the deeper meaning of the word "ubuntu," and literally became a bunch of insular elitist coffee-themed hipster jerkoffs. I am not one to throw the term "cultural appropriation" around lightly, but I don't know what else to call the zeitgeist shift at Canonical.
You can still get a good desktop--Xfce is excellent as always, and KDE finally settled down with 4.10 and 5.8--but the odds of someone having a no-nonsense, no-bullshit experience out of the box (assuming all hardware works, which is something that HAS gotten way better to be fair) are lower. If you know what you're doing, and are willing to start from the bare bones, your *final* experience is better than it was 6-9 years ago...but if you don't, in most cases it's worse, Mint being the exception. And even then, as this thread shows, it doesn't work for everyone.
Xubuntu was mentioned several times in this thread. I remember using it when it was pure GTK2, Tango icons and Human-Blue GTK theme, and loving it. It was light, zippy, reasonably friendly and pretty from the get-go, and in general Just Worked. Even full-fat Ubuntu was fine until 8.10 or so or whenever PulseAudio came in and started breaking things, and even then it had a simple, usable Gnome 2.x interface.
I honestly don't know what happened or why. It's tempting to blame the UX/UI folks, but I'm paranoid and am wondering if people like de Icaza and Poettering were brought deliberately to ruin things. Not on purpose on their part, mind, but something like the decision to attach Wheatley to GLaDOS prior to Portal 2.
...yes, I just compared Lennart Poettering to the Wheatley Core.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday March 20 2017, @01:45AM
I kinda of miss running Debian Potato on a VLB 486.
Sure it took some configuring, but stuff didn't break on you either.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Hairyfeet on Monday March 20 2017, @04:05AM (3 children)
The answer to why Linux turned to dogshit is actually really simple...Red Hat. You trace the guys that have shit all over Linux, from the guys that pushed SystemD onto Debian to the UX guys that crapped all over Gnome and KDE to old Larry Potter himself? It ALL comes back to Red Hat. And the reason why RH pushed this shit is also obvious, they give absolutely ZERO fucks about users and desktops and care only about VMs and "the cloud" so that is where they have been dragging Linux by the nose whether the users like it or not. Why do you think SystemD is gobbling functions like Pac-Man? Its because RH's ultimate goal is to have SystemD be the low level OS and "Linux" to be just a flavor of VM on top of the virulatized SystemD hypervisor.
But it doesn't matter anymore as Linux is dead. Its flatline, its going nowhere. You have MSFT putting out an OS that is nothing but malware and they get more users in a single day than Linux has gotten in 22+ years and on mobile? The FOSS guys fell for a classic EEE screwjob [arstechnica.com] by Google who paid lip service to FOSS while they quietly banned all non GPL V2 code and moved all the critical bits behind the playwall. Mark my words by 2021 you will have SecureBoot locking down X86, with full support from Google mind you as they will want to keep their Chromebooks locked down so you have to buy a new unit when they quit updating it, and thee only place you'll be able to run Linux is on maker junk or uber expensive workstation gear...and it'll be your own fault.
Guys like me tried to warn you, tried to get Linux devs to focus on actually competing against the proprietary guys, but nope, all we heard was the same "500 distros reinventing the wheel equals greatness" and devs shitting all over the code when it finally became stable for the "new hotness" that always sent Linux back several years with every system gutted. It was nothing but SSDD and now its over, the days of open cheap X86 is dying and it'll be black boxes all the way down. If you would have gotten even 10%? They wouldn't be able to lock it down but you refused to compete, you just kept up the elitist bullshit and refused to see that freight train bearing down on you. Couldn't happen to a nicer group.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Monday March 20 2017, @05:41AM (2 children)
No real argument from me, and I kinda figure that if Satan actually existed then Lennart Poettering would be the guy to sell his soul for software adoption rates. As for the Linux Desktop Experience going all over the place, eh, that depends - about the time my preferred distro dropped KDE3 support, I swapped to XFCE and haven't looked back. People keep telling me that KDE and Gnome both have emerged from their long, dark nights of usability & stability hell, but fuck 'em until further notice - XFCE just works without the bullshit.
Lol wut? They're doing the stupid for the sake of making system config a one-size fits all deal - and they're being incredibly dumb recreating some of Windows' misfeatures in the process ... with some twists ... but what you're saying here comes out a lot like saying that Windows is a virtualized layer sitting on top of svchost plus the registry. DOES NOT COMPUTE.
Now this is the part where I admit that I should know better than to reply to the mentally ill, but it may be therapeutic for you to be confronted with a few inconvenient facts that are contrary to your worldview.
Assuming I'm reading you right .... and assuming you're not going to hamster like a motherfucker on this one ... lolwut? Here:
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share [statcounter.com]
Not the only possible indicator, but it's a start. Total browser share is a near equal split between Win and Android. If we stop there, your argument could be seen as having a point. But, let's not stop there.
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide [statcounter.com]
Of that roughly even spit, Win10 has slowly risen to ~34% of the visible windows browser share, roughly 13% of total.
Win7 is still way the hell ahead at ~47% of visible windows share, or ~18% of total.
One could argue that these numbers are roughly hot garbage for a proxy for who owns/uses what, but if you're going to do so, please show some kind of references.
I really shouldn't even try to engage with your last paragraph, but ...
Again, depends on what your goals are - getting one software package working across multiple distributions is a very well documented process anymore, and the constant re-inventing of the wheel continues, but standards for basic system libraries, etc. are creeping in even if they're de-facto rather than really formalized.
As for vendor lockdown and linux exclusion? Cannot happen. I cannot see any of the CPU manufacturers playing along - MS is not a useful answer for a lot of big iron users, and Intel/AMD/various ARM manufacturers won't want to cut themselves off from the potential bucks there. As always, a few individual mobo vendors and maybe some systems vendors will play along, but it's not going to screw the ecosystem as a whole. The MS trial balloon with locking down Win8 / WinRT boxes for logo requirements didn't pan out.
On alternate architectures at the moment - what the fuck do you think is the go-to OS for early development and testing on these systems? What's the de-facto shipping OS for embedded systems? Linux, period.
Ya know, I'm done here, this post has already taken too much time.
Hairy, seek help.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:52AM (1 child)
Android is a proprietary OS owned by Google [arstechnica.com] which if you are gonna try to move the goalposts and try to claim proprietary mobile phone OSes that use a Linux kernel, like Routers and TiVos and embedded objects are "Linux"? I'm sorry but you are delusional and I won't waste my time dealing with you. We were talking about desktops NOT routers, cellphones, or your toaster...good day sir.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:45PM
Again I say lol wut? You're the one who brought up mobile so my goalposts are right where YOU set them.
Linux on mobile is still Linux - kernel patches be damned, it's still open source, it's still compatible, and people can and do put full desktop environments on their mobile devices - ever seen Ubuntu for phones and tablets? Hell, I've slackware, debian, etc. pop up places you apparently won't believe even if I provide evidence.
Any rate, I'm reasonably sure you're both mentally ill and a troll - good luck with the rest of your life. Bye!
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.