OT ish Slow Windows

[Tim Streater]

Every time I fire up my Mint VM (about once a month) it spends 20-30 minutes downloading stuff.

[The Natural Philosopher]

very relevant. It demonstrates that where stability and speed matter, you don't pick windows

[Davey]

We are talking about installing a different operating system, so I fail to understand what you mean by that. Any sensible operator has any important files backed up already, and why would installing Linux fail to connect you to the internet? Of course half the software would not be recognised, but any new software required is free, in both senses. Firefox and Thunderbird, the Mozilla programmes, are the same on either platform and will transfer directly, importing your old profiles, and LibreOffice understands Word and Excel and other Windows files. I see no problem.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The curious thing is that these w9ndows fanbois are using exactly the arguments I used against linux when I ran win98 on my desktop.

10 years later, linux has now advanced to the stage where those arguments are simply outdated.

[Bod]

You must have a very low download speed then....yes?

[Davey]

I don't use Mint, so I have no comment. Ubuntu runs updates every few days, but I am online every day, so it isn't a problem. Updates take place in the background anyway, I only know they have finished when I see the balloon pop up. And yes, I can review and disable any update I don't want. I can also do it selectively from the command line, but I am happy letting the auto. system do it, under my control.

[John Rumm]

Indeed... its almost laughable how many times this thread repeats itself, with the fanboys failing to understand that *they* are frequently one of the reasons their pet technology it not currently ruling the roost. All that technical nouse, and yet they can't answer a simple question, but instead decide that berating the asker for not doing it their favoured way.

Those that highlighted that MS are a great marketing organisation actually hit the nail on the head. They make sure that they sell a consistent product and message, and that all the manufacturers pre-load it.

If it is not pre-loaded on your new hardware then its not relevant - game over.

Google have demonstrated how you get a non MS OS in to the hands of jo public with Android, an Apple with IOS.

[J.B.Treadstone]

Yes. When you take into consideration /all/ aspects of computing, Linux is by far the most used OS. It runs 68% of the Internet servers, runs routers, runs onboard automobile computers, Smart TVs, smart phones, supercomputers (95%), avionics, etc.

[bert]

In article , David Lang writes

One of the things that slows it down is all the crap software that insists on setting up scheduled tasks to check for updates at system start up or user log on and then every hour afterwards. Defrag software is contained within Windows.

[Richard]

Really? Is LibreOffice able to handle Excel VBA files without any issues?

[bert]

In article , Davey writes

I'd like to try Linux on my old laptop which currently holds a screwed up version of XP. How do I find and implement a source copy.

[Tim Streater]

3.5Mbps - not so slow. Mind you, the VM is only getting one core so that may hinder it. I only run the VM to test my software anyway so ultimately it doesn't matter.

[whisky-dave]

nds me about the time Michael Dell was asked by an Apple fanboy if the perc eived problems with Vista had made Apple more of a threat. His reply was al ong the lines of 'Apple have less than 2% of the PC market so aren't even o n the horizon'

but Apple have a far higher share of treh market than that, it's closer to

14% last I heard. Most PC users don;t have them by choice either they are s uplied to them.

we use dual boot syatems and do use linux Fedora I think.

uld a neophyte wish to get involved with an operating system with such a sm all user base.

For the same reason a person might take up runing the 100 metres very fast few people do that too. There are lots of things few people do, but that sh ouldn;t restrict anyone from not thinking about doing something. I complain about our IT guys most do, but if tehy didn't know linux or unix or Apple OS or windows they wouldn't have a job here.

[bert]

Which is how MS-Dos came to dominate the market place. It was a condition of the dealer's licence that no other operating system would be loaded on the same PC. At the time there was quite a good graphical system around called Gem. Light years before Windows.

[Richard]

[bert]

In article , Bill writes

Don't worry my Toshiba is equally stupid. Bright red circle when in standby, very small dull red light for recording virtually invisible. Blue circle when on and blue lettering for display information again virtually invisible.

[Tim Streater]

Course I can't answer a "simple" Q about Windows. I have no intention of *ever* being able to do so, either. At least, not someone else's question, at ant rate. I had to delve into some of it to port my software to Win7 and was less than impressed.

It's certainly never been preloaded on any machine I've ever bought.

And, in Apple's case, with OS X. They sell about 15 million Macs a year, which is not peanuts.

[bert]

In article , Richard writes

And which of the myriad versions do I require for a 32 bit with a pentium 4 processor?

[bert]

It's all down to applications. Most of the world uses MS Office and has a lot of investment in documents. They didn't got o Office because it was the best product but because everyone else did. They used to say no-one got fired for buying IBM. We have been through an era where you could equally say no-one got fired for buying MS. The risk of incompatibility is major deterrent to change.

Even if the Linux advocates were right, the only thing you get from pissing in the wind is a wet leg.

[bert]

The big plus about UNIX (where every command looks like a mis-type) is that the operating system is essentially invisible to the end user. Well it was designed by a telephone company.