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Retiring Tucows Downloads

tucows.com

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Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#151

Post by Marsymars »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #119
arkitaip wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like native desktop development has stagnated a lot in the past 10 years. But Electron and other frameworks have enabled hundreds of desktop software that are basically web tech based.

And all those frameworks add so much bloat. Windows Calculator now consumes 12 MB of RAM. Sure, 12 MB is nothing when systems have 8+ GB, but if you think about the fact that it hasn't really changed much since Windows 3.1, you have to wonder why it takes a couple orders of magnitude more memory without having significantly more functionality. I bet if DOOM were to be written today, even using the same assets, it wou…

For Doom, you don’t have to guess! There are half-dozen source ports that are still under active development - some of them have fairly high system requirements in terms of CPU/GPU/RAM for advanced graphical features, but they’re generally much smaller than 2GB in size. e.g. GZDoom is 16 MB, not including the game assets.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#152

Post by max23_ »

ai_ja_nai wrote: post #20
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #7

Wow, nostalgia, it's been years since even hearing about Tucows. Tucows was a huge part of my childhood from 10 to 18 years old. Good run and great early repository for software. Thanks Tucows.

I remember downloading GetRight download manager from there. Aeons ago, truly Internet 1.0.

Same, download manager used to be a must-have app in the early internet days.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#154

Post by velosol »

benbristow wrote: post #127
cogman10 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding windows defender by default has gone a LONG ways in fixing windows.

Well Windows 7 (and Vista?) had it by default but it was pretty useless. Basically a user-friendly GUI to the firewall with very basic anti-virus. Microsoft released Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) which was the precursor to what we see now built into 10. It’s come a long way.

Back in the XP days it was a veneer on GIANT AntiSpyware which as I recall was viewed as a separate component to anti-virus back then. As things evolved you saw combined firewall/anti-spyware/virus/adware from companies like Norton/Symantec and as you note MSE was really MS's anti-virus entry in Vista & 7.

Nowadays 'anti-virus' subsumes all those products into one unified thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Defender#Beta

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#155

Post by legends2k »

faitswulff wrote: post #149
rzzzt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, ahem, had to look into this as a matter of intellectual curiosity -- there is an archive file in the "DOWNLOAD OPTIONS" section which holds the .scr Windows screensaver file: https://archive.org/download/tucows_71077_Sung_Hi_Lee_2 (On another note, .scr-s are just renamed .exe-s, and it was a highly questionable choice to download and run those in their heyday as well.)

> it was a highly questionable choice to download and run those in their heyday as well I never let that stop me! I was going to have my realistic fish aquarium screensaver, come hell or high water. Besides, I could always reformat. I had that Windows XP serial key memorized, after all!

That's exactly me, you described there!

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#156

Post by philsnow »

philsnow wrote: post #146
MisterTea wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the walnut creek days of ftp.cdrom.com. Many an id demo and FreeBSD isos downloaded. Before that I knew of them from actually buying their CD's in the mid 90's before we had the internet.

ftp.cdrom.com was the fastest slackware mirror for me for all of my teen years. this reminds me of poking around on my ISP's shell server to find warez drops other people had put there. ... now I can smell magic: the gathering cards for some reason.

whoops, gg guys, dinner's ready

+++ATH

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#159

Post by lmm »

gruez wrote: post #79
strictnein wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Plus you'd have FTP sites that would mirror a variety of sources too. Now Chrome has removed FTP support completely.

Is there any meaningful difference between a ftp server and a http server with directory listing enabled?

FTP had better support for doing server-server transfer - you could start a receiver on machine 2 and then trigger a transfer from machine 1 to machine 2 without using your own bandwidth. I guess you can achieve the same thing by doing curl on machine 2 in a screen session or something, but it feels a lot less elegant.

Re: Retiring Tucows Downloads

#160

Post by anonymousiam »

Tucows is still a domain registry. (See: https://tucowsdomains.com)

In my experience, they are one of the shadier ones, but maybe they are all bad these days. For example, if a rare domain (E.g. any three-letter .com) is registered with them and about to expire, instead of releasing it as they should, it will be held for auction.

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