Windows Vista Pretty Much Sucks

[PCBONEZ]

PCBONEZ <--- Win2k on my own PCs. ... Does everything I need.
Never got XP and won't unless a legal copy comes in on some old gear.
Eventually hope to be Microsoft free with anything important.
Vista ain't happening here even if it comes FREE.

.

[Bookworm]

PCBONEZ - contact me if you want some help converting to Linux.

The easiest for that conversion is probably Ubuntu/Kubuntu, depending on which interface feels better to you. I use Kubuntu, but they operate much the same way. You can also test them out with the 'Live' versions.

[PCBONEZ]

Thank you. I may.
I've used Ubuntu and Knoppix a little bit. Not much.
I'm collecting parts now to build a Linux Terminal Server, a NAS, and 9 Terminals.

That will be my 'home' system... Ahem...
At home I might be working from any of 3 different places in two different buildings.
Shop, my office, wife's office.
I want -everything- at all three places and laptops won't do it for me.
I change places too many times a day.
Terminal server seems the way to go.
.

[Paul S]

I've tried several versions of Linux. My interests are mostly as a media or HTPC. I would recommend openSUSE or the Ubuntu/Kbuntu/etc. distros for a desktop.

Fedora/Red Hat/CentOS is good, but it seems to need a lot of manual configuring, not what your average user is likely to do.

I also have tried Sabayon. It is full of the eye candy that a lot of people rate a PC on, but adding software to that is rather complicated.

I am deciding which distro to try next. I am thinking about Debian. It is what Ubuntu is based on, so it may not be too different. There is also Mandriva. Most of the other distros are versions of the ones that I have already tried.

[willawake]

i have had good success with centos / fedora

regarding xp/2000 i think xp has more reliable usb support, also xp allows usb sticks to be removed without stopping them.

[Scenic]

semi-off-topic:

http://winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm

http://translate.google.com/translat...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://translate.google.com/translat...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[willawake]

maybe vista inspirat 2 appearance mod is the solution to vista
http://www.crystalxp.net/galerie/en.id.130.htm

[acstech]

Funny, I prefer the old Windows 2000 look. Nice square windows and buttons. In XP, I usually hit the "adjust for best performance" under visual effects, use the windows classic theme, and use the classic start menu.

[PCBONEZ]

Originally Posted by acstech

Funny, I prefer the old Windows 2000 look. ...... use the windows classic theme, and use the classic start menu.

I do too.
To me a PC is a tool first and a toy second.
I don't like a bunch of eye candy crap in there distracting me and slowing down the work.

If I wanna spend all day in a theme park then I'll go to a theme park.

If I wanna watch a movie I'll rent one.
I don't need a bunch of mini-theme-movies built into my OS.

Along that line I freakin' HATE websites that 'force' me to watch some flash movie before I can 'get in' to do anything.
I'm sure they are quite impressed with themselves but they are just wasting my time telling me about it. .

.

[acstech]

Originally Posted by PCBONEZ

To me a PC is a tool first and a toy second.

Exactly! This is where Microsoft completely dropped the ball on Vista. I'm all for improvements to the user interface if they actually speed up my work process. It needs to be fast. Unfortunately Vista took the opposite approach.

The Gnome desktop gets the job done for me. Quick and simple.

Lets see, programs that I use...

Firefox
Thunderbird
Kompozer
OpenOffice
The Gimp
SuperTux
GnuCash
and others, sometimes all at the same time!

Why do I need windows? Oh that's right, playing games.

[PCBONEZ]

Thanks for all the Linux advice guys.
I've looked in to doing this off-on for like 3 years.
Vista marks the time for me to get off my arse and finally JUST DO IT.
That and security update support for W2K runs out in what? 2009? 2010?
[And FYI: XP isn't so far behind W2k on that matter. - It's REALLY time to learn Linux.]
-
The biggest hurdle for me isn't the OS itself.
It's finding Linux programs that do what I used to do with Windows programs.
I'm already learning to use Open-Office to replace the MS-Office functions because it has a Windows version. (Learning and converting files. I have A LOT of files!)


So far as the infrastructure:

I will have one box to be used as a local host web server to try out software [develop] on before I upload it to my actual 'live' web server. [My 'live' server is hosted.]
That one will be Fedora to be consistent with what is on the host's machine to avoid software compatibility problems as much as possible. [I can optionally switch to CentOS or RedHat with this host but if they piss me off then more 'other hosts' support Fedora than the other OS's.]
-
I'd rather just use my own in-house server but I'm a bit rural an there is only one option for broadband here. That option won't allow a home-based web server.
I would have to rent an office somewhere else to go with a fully in-house managed server. - Also I travel. My 'live' server crashing in AZ when I'm in Utah, Texas, Cali, or somewhere else would be a major problem.

For the LTS server I'm still open for the OS.
I will probably try K12LTSP first (because it's easy) and strip all the educational apps out unless they turn out to be usefull.

The actual terminals can be any OS because when I'm in LTS mode they'll boot from the server anyway. The installed OS is irrelevant. [In fact they don't even have to have hard drives.] They will either be dual boot [server vs local OS] or simply not have a local OS.

Also been looking at stripped down Linux versions for a NAS.
It's only job will be file archiving and back-ups.

For the LTS I'm camping out waiting for a good deal on a particular dual Xeon board I've decided on (already have CPU's/Memory/drives/case) and actively looking for a deal on a PSU that will safely handle that MoBo with 5 or 6 drives (room for more drives later).
The PSU needs to be at least in the 650-750 watt range and have the power on the correct rails. [And be less than $75 if possible.] The PSU is turning out to be a bigger pain in the ass than finding a motherboard that does what I want. The PSU's I've considered and researched are either known to have crap caps or they are short on amps on either the 12v or 5v rails. - So I'm left looking for a better PSU that will get a preventative recap.

The web server will be built on an Intel SE7210TP1-E Motherboard.
I wanted at least one 64-bit PCI-X slot and to be able to have the RAID controller as the only thing significant on it's PCI bus, and otherwise be a standard P4 board.
Needs to handle MySQL and all that other server garbage so I don't want the drives on a busy PCI bus.
- Parts for that one are all here except the caps I'm waiting on to overhaul the PSU for it. (PSU for that one wasn't so tough to find.)

.

[grss1982]

Originally Posted by acstech

Funny, I prefer the old Windows 2000 look. Nice square windows and buttons. In XP, I usually hit the "adjust for best performance" under visual effects, use the windows classic theme, and use the classic start menu.

AMEN TO THAT!!!!

That's actually the first thing I do.

Also anybody ever saw a torrent about Windows XP Performance Edition (WARNING: warez!!!) Its supposedly installs by the default the Classic Desktop and Classic Start Menu. Maybe this could be done using Nlite.

[bgavin]

I have my XP unattended install CD set up to install the Classic desktop by default. Since the Administrator settings become those for the Default User, this sets the whole machine to Classic mode.

You can do it easily with a few documented Registry tweaks.

[Bookworm]

pcbonez - for the NAS, I'd suggest looking at something like Slackware or Gentoo. They're a lot easier to install extremely stripped down.

LTS - the client machines can also run a bit faster if you give them either flash memory for swap (which will die eventually), or a small hard drive with a swap partition.

[PCBONEZ]

Originally Posted by Bookworm

pcbonez - for the NAS, I'd suggest looking at something like Slackware or Gentoo. They're a lot easier to install extremely stripped down.

LTS - the client machines can also run a bit faster if you give them either flash memory for swap (which will die eventually), or a small hard drive with a swap partition.

Thanks for that.

I have a bunch of 10 and 20 Gb drives with no home I was going to use in the clients just for dual boot in case I need Windows.
I didn't know adding a local swap partition would be helpful.
Now I do.

[zandrax]

@ pcbonex: I know three nas oriented distro.
- Naslite: a really stripped down linux distro to turn any pc into a server. The simplest are free while the more advanced ones (e.g. raid or more protocols support) require a fee, though low. Not my favourite choice given its limits.
- FreeNas: it's FreeBSD based, very complete and powerful. Never tried so far, I can't give you any suggestion apart from reading the FreeBSD Hardware Compatibility List.
- OpenFiler: a linux distro built by a professional Nas hardware manifacturer; perhaps the real alternative to FreeNas.

A 4th choice is SME Server, a CentOS derivate intended to be a server distro and, among its options, it can be a nice nas (supports raid and all protocols except Appletalk). I instaled this one on a VM but stopped after a couple of days because I was tight on time and I never understood how to enable its internal Cifs server.
If you like the DIY approach, you can start installing a base Debian, Slackware or Gentoo, then add and configure all packages you need.

Zandrax

[PCBONEZ]

Thanks Zandrax,
I read about the first three a couple of months ago and figured I'd look again a little closer to build time to see if anything new happens with them.
I hadn't seen the 4th yet.
For the NAS I got my hands on a complete (less drives) Tyan dual Taulatin system in a 2U chassis. Went that route for the PCI-X slots not the CPU's. NAS shouldn't need much CPU. Probably refit into an ATX case because this particular 2U is 30" deep (front-back) and I dunno where I'd put it.
- It's PSU needs swap or recap,,, *&%$#@&$# Fujhyyu's.
.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by acstech

Funny, I prefer the old Windows 2000 look. Nice square windows and buttons. In XP, I usually hit the "adjust for best performance" under visual effects, use the windows classic theme, and use the classic start menu.

Guilty as charged. I do the same thing immediately after installing. Windows 2000 was the last of the M$ greats....

[Per Hansson]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Guilty as charged. I do the same thing immediately after installing. Windows 2000 was the last of the M$ greats....

Me too, I've actually taken the time to find and install Windows 2000 Advanced Server on my computer, it supports the 8GB of RAM plus 4 CPU's (it does not regard a Intel Quad as one CPU, but four separate)

However it is still limited to running applications a max of 2GB in size since it is a 32bit OS, (just like XP 32bit and Vista 32bit) therefore I shall be switching to XP x64, but it does not feel right!

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic85224.html

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic90831.html

One thing that bugged me extremely much when I switched from 2000 to XP is that the mouse acceleration is not the same, I have enhanced precision enabled and the speed slider on max but it still moves waaay to slow

In 2000 I had it one notch above the middle value and acceleration on low

If you search around this is a very common issue that is not possible to solve in XP, at all, ever
I am getting used to the speed in XP now tho, but it still bugs me, I miss dialog buttons and so on still after 3 months

[grss1982]

BUMP!!!

Its old, but was the article below ever discussed here??

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9590_22-6...ml?tag=nl.e540
Quote:

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP’s 35 seconds.

Vista’s performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1–much lower than XP’s SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

WTF!!!!???

Anyways where is this mysterious XP Service Pack 3??? Its been four months!!!