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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

#21

Post by kweinber »

I recently switched from a 15" macbook to a lenovo windows 8.1 laptop after 10 years of mac/linux for my daily driver.

I live with Windows as the base install and virtualbox linux (arch + ubuntu).

I am so glad to be free of the Mac... My hardware is upgradeable again, the touchscreen is a real innovation, Excel opens instantaneously and when I want Unix, I use the linux vm, I am not tempted to use the strange halfway house that is the mac unix cli/packaging system with ports/homebrew on its back.

windows 8.1 is a bifurcated experience, but they tried to do something new... it feels like Apple desktop engineers only really do truly new stuff in desktop hardware (smaller, lighter, glue and solder) ... the software is pretty but way behind Gnome, KDE and Windows...

I was the biggest MS hater you could be 10 years ago.... now it is Apple that seems like the bad guy that isn't innovating now...

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#22

Post by TheBeardKing »

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.

Anecdotal, as is this whole thread, but I have off and on experience with Linux, starting with Red Hat around 2001, several different distros, laptops and PCI wifi cards, and I don't remember ever having to separately download a NIC driver. In Windows, however, I have had to do this several times. I fully feel the author's frustration that in 8.1 Windows doesn't include their OEM's drivers. That's not to say the driver world of Linux is just peachy, far from it, but at least I can start connected to the internet to begin troubleshooting my issues.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#23

Post by V-2 »

rootdiver wrote: post #17
topbanana wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

While I agree it's ridiculous, Apple imposes a limit of 100MB for cellular downloads - http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/18/apple-increases-over-the... - so even though it's a more reasonable figure, still a showstopper for obtaining your 230MB wi-fi driver.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#24

Post by dhimes »

I'm in almost the same position as the OP. I bought a toshiba s55 with Win 8.1 as a travel rig because my eeePC just wasn't able to handle the load any more. The Toshiba doesn't fit as well into an airline seat, but it is a very nice setup. I use Linux Mint in VirtualBox (my main work machine- the one I'm on now- is also Mint but as a native install.

In short, I'm quite pleased with win 8.1. I like the tile stuff ok. VBox with Mint is fast enough for development work (no usb 3 support yet). But for the first time in years I can confidently print and scan and really get full use out of my hardware.

The drawback is crapware. I apparently downloaded something called Pokki which isn't really a virus (some people might have a use for it) but which is pretty hard to get rid of (maybe not for Win types but it took me a while). I don't think they tried to be malicious- everything was in an easily discoverable folder and their website tells you where it is, the just have an auto-start process that you have to delete after starting in 'safe mode.'

Other than that it's fine. I follow the same security practices: I have an admin account that I don't use very much but I use for installing 'global,' trusted software like vbox and Office (Libre/MS). I do my work under a non-priviledged account. Etc. Oh, and I did use the Norton virus thingy, just in case.

Overall my experience with Win 8.1 has been positive.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#25

Post by fsniper »

I'm actually fascinated with the lastest comment on that page from klkvsk:

"Anyways, blame Intel and N-7265 wifi adapter you have in your laptop, not Microsoft. Windows does have a generic driver that works well most of their adapters, but seems like not all of them. That's a question for Intel, why is it not compatible."

This is just Linux guys' (me) scripted answer for people trying linux for the first time who has wifi problems. Things are really inverse now.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#26

Post by V-2 »

rootdiver wrote: post #17
topbanana wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

By the way, some sources say that the download cap has already been increased somewhat for Windows Phone (from 20 to 50MB): http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-lift-20mb-download-l... - still nowhere close to 230MB, to be sure.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#27

Post by gygygy »

kweinber wrote: post #21

I recently switched from a 15" macbook to a lenovo windows 8.1 laptop after 10 years of mac/linux for my daily driver. I live with Windows as the base install and virtualbox linux (arch + ubuntu). I am so glad to be free of the Mac... My hardware is upgradeable again, the touchscreen is a real innovation, Excel opens instantaneously and when I want Unix, I use the linux vm, I am not tempted to use the strange halfway…

lenovo... lol

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#28

Post by realusername »

I sadly had the same experience as this guy. I guess when you are a standard user browsing the web, everything works fine on windows, but if you are a web developer it's just a nightmare.

There is always something to install which is not there, I have to install tons of drivers, Putty, WinCSP, a decent terminal (cmd.exe is just unusable), WAMP, python, various python libraries, perl, node.js (lots of front-end tools needs it now), Cygwin (otherwise it's impossible to do anything with the base programs), wget.exe, 7zip, notepad++ (the built-in notepad does not handle newlines properly), git, setup bash aliases, emacs, Firefox ... (the list can be expanded).

So yeah, you can code on Windows, but you are basically fighting with the system all the time to install everything you need.

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#29

Post by egeozcan »

I got a brand-new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed from a local manufacturer in Turkey (Actually it says "Grundig" but it's assembled by Arçelik[1]), as a present. It had an i5 and an SSD so I decided to give it a go as a mobile workstation (I'm the kind of developer who likes his large monitors a bit too much). The installation was single-language and I wanted it to be English, so I re-installed from the dedicated partition and there I could choose English. Installation took quite a few restarts and at least an hour. During this time, most of the messages I received were really vague ("Your computer is being reset" with a looping load animation doesn't help me see the progress). After it finished, I went on to update it to Windows 8.1. Here's a summary of my experience: http://imgur.com/a/Qr49N ("Something happened". Wow!)

Please note all those pre-installed apps in the background of the last picture, which you can't get rid of unless a) you remove them one-by-one and clean registry manually or b) download a fresh copy of Windows from Microsoft but then you lose some drivers for some reason and need to hunt for them.

After tweaking, restarting, deleting stuff, modifying registry and so on, I could finally install the 8.1 update.

That's why I'm so excited about .NET going full cross-platform (I've been developing primarily on Windows since nearly 10 years, mind you).

[1] http://www.grundig.co.uk/Pg/AboutGrundig

Re: Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux

#30

Post by zamalek »

jkot wrote: post #18
topbanana wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is probably 10MB worth of driver, and 220MB worth of crapware. If you install a fresh copy of Windows those hardware vendors are going to try their damned hardest to get their crapware back on to your machine.
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