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Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

answers.microsoft.com

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Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#11

Post by topbanana »

skorgu wrote: post #9
zenlot wrote: post #8

Seems that author is confusing Microsoft Windows 8.1 with the Lenovo stuff which it ships along when you buy a laptop with the pre-installed software. And because of this reason I didn't bother reading other parts of the article. Though, I have been using FreeBSD as a base for 10+ years, Linux at work and with the arrival of Windows 8.1 I have switched to base of 8.1+Hyper-V+FreeBSD as a VM. This perfectly works on t…

You might want to read a bit further, he does go on to attempt to install vanilla 8.1.

I'll save you the effort. Shock horror, he has to download a wifi driver.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#13

Post by AlyssaRowan »

Lancey wrote: post #6

I respect the writer's persistence. I got a new Acer laptop with Windows 8.1 on it and decided to give it a shot. I already had a live USB ready to go but decided I'd see how much I could work on Windows before getting frustrated. Not long apparently. Once the setup process started asking me for an e-mail address with no option to skip I gave up and put Linux Mint on it. Keep doing your thing, Micro$oft.

Check the bottom of the screen (you may have to look carefully). You're looking for something like Sign in without a Microsoft account (not recommended) -> Local account - there's a similar flow when creating a new user.

It is there, but it's (obviously deliberately) hidden behind one hell of a UX antipattern. I guess they want people to use Microsoft accounts more than they want people to be able to use Windows.

And Microsoft accounts are still stuck using only 16-character passwords (!), and I'm not completely clear on what does and does not get 'synced' - if it's my %AppData%, I don't trust SkyDrive, so that's definitely out.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#14

Post by rikkus »

I made the move in the same direction some years ago and, yes, there are always problems, but IME a missing or broken driver is common with a fresh install of Linux OR Windows.

I've often had to download a network driver (both WiFi and wired Ethernet) separately and get it onto the machine via physical media, bluetooth or IRDA.

As for software updates: Yes there's a load of Lenovo crapware and yes it's best to just do a clean install. I'm writing this on a T430s which I did a clean install on. I then installed the Lenovo software I actually use:

  Power management driver
  Active protection system (I replaced the DVD drive with a SSHD)
  Fingerprint recognition thing
The OP says they install Ubuntu and all is well, but Ubuntu is going to be wanting software updates just as Windows is - it's just that it doesn't have separate crapware asking for them separately.

The lesson when it comes to installing an OS is: Be prepared. Either be somewhere where you can download your NIC (or WiFi NIC) software separately and get it onto the machine (it's too often NIC drivers that are missing, which is pretty much the worst thing to be missing!) or get them downloaded first, after finding out what's in the machine.

As for the developer account thing: I don't know why that is, but it annoyed me too. They should really not do things like that. They should also stop the push to get everyone to log into VS using a Microsoft account, as that's plain annoying.

Finally: "I start Subleme[sic] Text , download some npm packages and started writing code ."

Installing Sublime text, npm (and npm packages) on Windows is just as easy as on Linux.

With .NET becoming easier to work with in Linux, I'm now considering a move back to Linux on my laptop, so perhaps I'll write an equivalent article on attempting to move the opposite way.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#15

Post by rikkus »

Tepix wrote: post #4

I had to install Windows 8.1 Pro in order to use the Kinect v2 SDK. Boy is it annoying. The worst part is if you want to use Skype - don't use the version of Skype that comes bundled with Windows! It forces you to change your Windows login into a MSN login and will only run while in the foreground (fullscreen). Total crap! I had to change my login back to a local login and then download a "normal" version of Skype th…

Yes Skype is pretty horrible, but at least they did what they should have done and continue the desktop version.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#16

Post by rikkus »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #10

I had experiences very similar to those of the OP. After almost 20 years with Solaris or Linux as my primary OS (with a brief interlude using OSX), I bought a Lenova Yoga 2 Pro and I thought I'd try using Windows as my primary OS. Two motivators: Windows had at the time better HighDPI support than Linux, and since I use Vagrant for everything anyways, I thought I could get the best of both worlds. That experiment did…

"Emacs & the CLI are second class citizens on Windows"

I haven't used Emacs on Windows, but Powershell is the best shell I've used (I used to use zsh on Linux). There's also console2 and conemu if you want to avoid the built in cmd-derivative, which is rather unpleasant.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#17

Post by rootdiver »

topbanana wrote: post #11
skorgu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to read a bit further, he does go on to attempt to install vanilla 8.1.

I'll save you the effort. Shock horror, he has to download a wifi driver.

The issue is not about the WiFi driver, i can live with that but when my wp8 phone is getting in my way of downloading the driver, its just wrong, really wrong. Its like it is saying to me "You don't know what you are doing, let me fix this for you".

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#18

Post by jkot »

topbanana wrote: post #11
skorgu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to read a bit further, he does go on to attempt to install vanilla 8.1.

I'll save you the effort. Shock horror, he has to download a wifi driver.

For Linux user it is sort of shock. Also why that thing has 230MB? Even 10MB would be too much.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#19

Post by jkot »

bebna wrote: post #5
luxpir wrote: post #2

Impressed by the writer's dedication to putting spaces both before and after punctuation. Also nice to start to read from Linux natives being confused with Windows. Oh how the worm has turned! I've a foot in both camps, but any serious computing happens on Linux. With the exceptions of Excel and some niche Win-only software I work with.

As someone who uses sc[1][2] (basic desc: spreadsheets in console with vi-like controls), I don't understand why someone would use switch to windows (as in reboot), just for Excel. Don't gnumeric and libreoffice fill all your typical spreadsheet needs? [1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699 [2] https://github.com/dkastner/sc

Even MS Excel runs just fine on Linux.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#20

Post by Macha »

bebna wrote: post #5
luxpir wrote: post #2

Impressed by the writer's dedication to putting spaces both before and after punctuation. Also nice to start to read from Linux natives being confused with Windows. Oh how the worm has turned! I've a foot in both camps, but any serious computing happens on Linux. With the exceptions of Excel and some niche Win-only software I work with.

As someone who uses sc[1][2] (basic desc: spreadsheets in console with vi-like controls), I don't understand why someone would use switch to windows (as in reboot), just for Excel. Don't gnumeric and libreoffice fill all your typical spreadsheet needs? [1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699 [2] https://github.com/dkastner/sc

I can't speak for everyone obviously, but I have plenty of lecturers that insist on .doc/.docx handups and after an incident where a basic document (as in headings, page breaks and paragraphs as the only formatting) written in Libreoffice ended up in a 5 column layout on Word for no explicable reason, I'd rather just write them in an application that I know will show the same when the lecturer opens the file as when I open it.
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