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Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

helgeklein.com

251–260 of 296 posts

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#251
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux can have crappy font rendering. I can also have gorgeous font rendering. I would mess around with some live distros to see what you prefer. This is how my comment looks to me (on linux): https://i.imgur.com/wvruFyX.png

It looks very bad tbh. This is how my comment looks on Mac for comparison. Uploading to imgur to test if there is compression in play here. https://i.imgur.com/hSirmx6.png

Not bad for me on Fedora 36 Wayland, 2x scaling and no hinting, like God intended.

https://imgur.com/a/ZFTwW6A

This is as good as macOS' rendering as I've ever seen on any other machine, and I'm really fastidious about my fonts. It's really easy to achieve:

1. Install Fedora

2. In GNOME Tweaks, disable font hinting. Looks good only on HiDPI screens, this is why it's not default. If you're not on Fedora, change all fonts to Noto because they're much higher quality.

3. Optional: copy the Windows and macOS fonts to avoid the crappy "lookalike" replacements. The screenshot above uses Verdana straight from a Windows 10 installation, which is exactly what's requested by HN's stylesheet.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#252
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retina display is at least 200% or more scaling, right? You're comparing hires text rendering to lowres. Screenshot is 2x bigger because browser doesn't know about pixel density and scales it 2x by default. It does the same to those low res screenshots so they look normal sized on 4K but they're blurry because they're being image scaled. See: https://johankj.github.io/devicePixelRatio/ If you see more than 1 at 100%…

Yes retina display is 2x. But saying a display is 4k doesn't tell anything about its pixel density or scaling. I look at the original commenters screenshot at 50% browser scaling but it's still blurry. I guess there is an element of image compression there. On the other hand; from my own experience (I own linux, macos and windows pcs) on the same display Macos text rendering is much more sharper and pleasant to look…

> Yes retina display is 2x. But saying a display is 4k doesn't tell anything about its pixel density or scaling.

I mean with fractional scaling where 1 But more to the point you can't easily display those screenshots with different fractional scaling without pixel grid misalignment.

> On the other hand; from my own experience (I own linux, macos and windows pcs) on the same display Macos text rendering is much more sharper and pleasant to look at.

On hires displays (devicePixelRatio >= 2) you're probably just comparing default fonts. And on lowres display (devicePixelRatio = 1) OSX is much much worse than Windows's Cleartype, it's not even a contest.

Linux was always able to be as good as Windows on lowres displays, just was held back by patents, so the Freetype defaults used to suck, and you had to configure it yourself for the full effect.

Idk if it's any better nowadays, 4K display are so cheap and ubiquitous that I really don't get why anyone would buy anything else, except I guess gamers. But with all those AI scaling technologies (FSR 2.0 etc.) hopefully 1440p is on the way out.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#253
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree here. Font rendering in Linux is across the board noticeably worse than macOS. I still can't quite understand why.

Agree with what? That's not the original point. The original point was that Linux font rendering "doesn't come close to Windows or Mac" . You're all shifting the goalpost. Nobody is saying that fonts on a retina display on OS X do not look better than fonts on a non-retina display on Linux. What we're disputing is that fonts rendering on Linux is so bad that it's "uncomfortable". Now we may have a discussion as to wh…

I have a 2012 MBP and two other machines running Linux. I'm not talking about retina displays at all (I don't have one). The rendering difference is noticeable. "Uncomfortable" is exactly the word I would use.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#254
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux still has horrible font rendering, which makes web browsing uncomfortable. It doesn't come close to Windows or Mac. Fonts often appear soapy, kerning is off etc.

Linux can have crappy font rendering. I can also have gorgeous font rendering. I would mess around with some live distros to see what you prefer. This is how my comment looks to me (on linux): https://i.imgur.com/wvruFyX.png

That screenshot is not very good at all, and I'm on Linux myself. You're just a few tweaks away from better rendering.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#255
post #146
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kerning on your screenshot is very chunky. In particular look at the kerning on the lower case r’s in your screenshot. The r is given way too much horizontal space particularly to it’s right, especially so in the word “crappy”.

AH, that's because I'm using a monospace font for editing, normal pages use the normal font: https://i.imgur.com/otqaSTa.png

It's not even the right font, unless you're using custom CSS. The Hacker News stylesheet calls for "Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif", and your PC renders a serif font instead. Something's wrong with your fontconfig setup.

What's your distro?

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#256
post #3

Is there any way to block connection to these sites with DNS or something?

Install free Comodo Internet Security. Disable DNS cache service so that all your apps resolve DNS themselves (can only be done via the registry, change the service's startup type from 2 (auto) to 4 (disabled)). In CIS, create a new group for all files under c:/windows. Create a rule denying all in/out requests to that group. Create a rule allowing only DHCP and NTP requests (255.255.255.255:67 and :123) for svchost.…

take it with two tablespoons of salt if someone who avoids the onboard ping tool claims there are no ill effect of blocking all network connections of OS components except DHCP and NTP. This recommendation will cripple windows features and your enjoyment may vary. (breaking updates, breaking crls, breaking active directory integration, breaking office integration, breaking push notifications, breaking companion app integration, ... and so on)

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately running your own DNS isn't an option in every context. Not to mention, 3MB is nothing, it shouldn't struggle with that.

Is blocking on a DNS level even sufficient? I'd imagine there are hard coded fall back IPs involved at least sometimes.

A lot of IOT devices (including smart TV's), completly ignore DNS

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#259
post #254
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux can have crappy font rendering. I can also have gorgeous font rendering. I would mess around with some live distros to see what you prefer. This is how my comment looks to me (on linux): https://i.imgur.com/wvruFyX.png

That screenshot is not very good at all, and I'm on Linux myself. You're just a few tweaks away from better rendering.

Willing to be wrong of course, I suspect that what I'm seeing and what others are seeing are quite different.

Perhaps there's a component of how the LCD is presenting it involved? to me my font is extremely uniform and sharp with no bleeding or blurring.

What tweaks do you have? I used to run X11 and ran the gamut of x11 based font rendering tweaks (example of how my old machine looked: https://i.imgur.com/J9biJsW.png )

But with sway/wayland I have much less ability to change things.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#260
post #255
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AH, that's because I'm using a monospace font for editing, normal pages use the normal font: https://i.imgur.com/otqaSTa.png

It's not even the right font, unless you're using custom CSS. The Hacker News stylesheet calls for "Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif", and your PC renders a serif font instead. Something's wrong with your fontconfig setup. What's your distro?

I'm using Archlinux and/or Gentoo.

Fontconfig is working fine but Verdana is a Microsoft font and Geneva is a Apple font.

My font fallback for sans-serif is DejaVu Serif.

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