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Prank Windows XP simulator

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Re: Prank Windows XP simulator

#51

Post by dm319 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #41
dm319 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darn I wish I'd come across Linux before. I was starting university and my Amiga A1200 was just too incompatible with everything. I spent ages weighing up a powerbook with the shiny new OSX or a Thinkpad T40 with XP. In the end I was most impressed with the reliability of the ThinkPad, but those years spent fighting XP when I could have been using Linux - I regret! When I discovered Ubuntu 9.04, I felt like my love o…

Linux and OSX weren't that great in the early years. And XP was one of the best Windows, minus a few glaring holes. Some of which could be patched over with third-party apps and some completely missing, like a modern terminal. Bottom line, XP was about the best there was just after the turn of the century, assuming you were safe behind a NAT and smart enough to use the new Firefox rather than IE in the coming years.

Yes, and that was my assessment at the time. XP wasn't bad, but it got so bloated with, I think, SP2. I got frustrated that things would go wrong with it, and I could never find a definitive explanation online to fix it. There were usually webpages with 10 random things you could try in an attempt to resolve it, and weirdly I discovered that same community was still present for Win10. For years using XP I felt I never personally advanced in my ability to use a computer, whereas I feel my time on Linux has been a journey. But you're right, things may not have panned out of I'd either gone for OSX early on or Linux might have been not quite ready for me at that time.

Re: Prank Windows XP simulator

#54

Post by MarkusWandel »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #41
dm319 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darn I wish I'd come across Linux before. I was starting university and my Amiga A1200 was just too incompatible with everything. I spent ages weighing up a powerbook with the shiny new OSX or a Thinkpad T40 with XP. In the end I was most impressed with the reliability of the ThinkPad, but those years spent fighting XP when I could have been using Linux - I regret! When I discovered Ubuntu 9.04, I felt like my love o…

Linux and OSX weren't that great in the early years. And XP was one of the best Windows, minus a few glaring holes. Some of which could be patched over with third-party apps and some completely missing, like a modern terminal. Bottom line, XP was about the best there was just after the turn of the century, assuming you were safe behind a NAT and smart enough to use the new Firefox rather than IE in the coming years.

In those days, the basis of comparison for Linux was established Unixes, first and foremost Solaris. As a free hobby version it was already very desirable, and it was in the process of acquiring the performance and reliability that ultimately made it displace all the existing Unixes. So in that respect it was definitely great.

Where Windows won out at the time is that no end of essential proprietary software ran only on it (or perhaps also on Mac OS) and Linux was locked out. For example, if you wanted to use Garmin mapping software to download from your GPS, or use most printers, scanners, webcams. And of course a lot of web sites only worked on IE6 which looked poised to take over the way Chrome has now.

How times have changed. Most gadgets "just work" in Linux now too, the desktop environment is great (and here I refer to Mate, not the ongoing experiment that is Gnome 3), and the whole thing mostly just serves as a device driver for a web browser anyway.

In my personal opinion, too, the high point of Windows was Windows 7 since it first came with all the common device drivers so stuff would "just work" without the driver hunt dance. Windows 10 works pretty well - I have it on my work machine. But my mom was recently given a Windows 10 machine, and I set it to be as scrimpy with data as I could ("metered connection" and the last aggressive updates). Where, with her limited habits, she used to use around 500MB of data per month (email and very light browsing) she now comes in at 2.5-3GB, forcing a higher tier of mobile data (she's on an LTE gateway - lives in the countryside). Not great. Here Linux wins again in an old school way - it took some serious tweaking under the hood to get it to not consume data constantly i.e. not only not auto update, but not even download the updates and not even constantly download the index of available updates. Opinions vary on the wisdom of this, but it is of course behind a NAT firewall with all unnecessary services turned off. And using zero bytes per month that weren't asked for.

Back to the Windows XP topic. Her Windows XP machine is in the process of giving up the ghost after all these years and while I had her half converted to Linux/Mate, the Windows 10 machine is just more convenient, mostly because it is faster than my leftover laptops.

Re: Prank Windows XP simulator

#55

Post by MarkusWandel »

dm319 wrote: post #51
mixmastamyk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux and OSX weren't that great in the early years. And XP was one of the best Windows, minus a few glaring holes. Some of which could be patched over with third-party apps and some completely missing, like a modern terminal. Bottom line, XP was about the best there was just after the turn of the century, assuming you were safe behind a NAT and smart enough to use the new Firefox rather than IE in the coming years.

Yes, and that was my assessment at the time. XP wasn't bad, but it got so bloated with, I think, SP2. I got frustrated that things would go wrong with it, and I could never find a definitive explanation online to fix it. There were usually webpages with 10 random things you could try in an attempt to resolve it, and weirdly I discovered that same community was still present for Win10. For years using XP I felt I neve…

A complex Linux setup - I run a 3-seat multiuser setup on a massive old gaming box that uses too much power constantly to be worth running otherwise - can certainly deliver bang-your-head-against-the-wall frustration. Such as when the binary Brother scanner driver installs without any missing dependencies, and only much googling finds that you need to install some 32 bit libraries that it doesn't mention not being able to open. Or when the multiseat setup that I use is casually broken by update to the gdm greeter, with no plans to fix it again (luckily lightdm works). Or if you try to use a Bluetooth headset...

However, I have not encountered the following, which has so far twice happened in Windows 10: Some hexadecimal error number that IT doesn't know about, Microsoft denies would ever happen, and the anecdotal discussions on the internet offer 10 different kinds of voodoo that will fix it for sure, except that none of them do (you can tell just from the number of different things they tell you to try). At least with Linux the rabbit hole goes all the way down; if all else fails you can dig in the source code.

Re: Prank Windows XP simulator

#57

Post by anthk »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #41
dm319 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darn I wish I'd come across Linux before. I was starting university and my Amiga A1200 was just too incompatible with everything. I spent ages weighing up a powerbook with the shiny new OSX or a Thinkpad T40 with XP. In the end I was most impressed with the reliability of the ThinkPad, but those years spent fighting XP when I could have been using Linux - I regret! When I discovered Ubuntu 9.04, I felt like my love o…

Linux and OSX weren't that great in the early years. And XP was one of the best Windows, minus a few glaring holes. Some of which could be patched over with third-party apps and some completely missing, like a modern terminal. Bottom line, XP was about the best there was just after the turn of the century, assuming you were safe behind a NAT and smart enough to use the new Firefox rather than IE in the coming years.

Blaster. Sasser.

In parallel: Knoppix, KDE3.

Re: Prank Windows XP simulator

#59

Post by pragmatick »

xwx wrote: post #38
MiddleEndian wrote: post #10

Unfortunately, if you bring your cursor to the top of the screen there's a message (in Firefox) and an X (in Chrome) that inform the user that they are in a full screen webpage.

This happens if you press F11. If you click the balloon that says "Start the prank" instead then you won't get this issue, at least in Firefox.

Cannot confirm - it just takes a while to show. You can still press Esc which is what most users might do when panicking.

Re: Prank Windows XP simulator

#60

Post by MayeulC »

xwx wrote: post #39
MayeulC wrote: post #28

This just made me realize how great Tetris could be to build up muscle memory for vim keys: I recently arranged my directional key like that on a separate layer (just got an ergodox).

Not quite the same, but you could check out https://vimsnake.com/

Thank you,that one seems quite good too, and more portable!
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