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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

591–600 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#591
post #47

Still reading the article, but early on it says: "Also, is it weird that I still remember the specs of my first computer, 22 years later?" My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1, 1.78 Mz Z80 with 16 KB RAM. That was 48 years ago. Is it weird that I remember that?

IBM PC XT 5150 4.77MHz, 640KB, no, not weird at all :)

The 5150 was just an "IBM PC" not an XT, but still... I think we're talking about the same thing.

I still have mine! 4.77 MHz 8088, 8087 math coprocessor, CGA graphics card, 5.25" floppy (360K, double-sided, double-density), 20 MB Seagate hard drive (I believe the motherboard has newer ROM chips to support that), AST SixPakPlus expansion card to bring it up to 640 KB RAM and a Parallel Port, a Serial Port, a Game Port, and a Real Time Clock (so you don't have to type in the date and time every bootup.) At one point I had a Sound Blaster as well, which was nice. The floppy drive and the hard drive each have their own controller cards so there's almost no more room for expansion! The motherboard also has the keyboard and cassette (!!!) port. I get an error code about the cassette port so I doubt it would work but I never had the equipment to try it out anyway.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#592
It's still not quite there yet, for me. A lot of older games (which I'm a big fan of) won't run well or at all - and support for Nvidia is still not great.

If I could get within even 10% of the performance I get on Windows, and know I could safely choose to play some old 2000's game or something that just released just fine, I really wouldn't mind. But it feels like a roulette wheel and some important game I wanted to play just may not work, or may run terribly.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#593

There’s a lot of odd things said in this article. Like “no more file explorer hanging”, “no more waiting for the start menu to open” - is this something that actually happens to people? Perhaps on very old hardware I could see it, but it’s not my experience at all. Lots of weird emotional and very biased parts to this article. But it’s just gonna take off here anyway because it’s a switching to Linux article which is…

These are real things and they happen on very good hardware. They are even acknowledge by Microsoft. The explorer issue is from waiting on for a response from network drives that the explorer thinks exists or tries to find. The start menu I'm not sure, but I get the issue from time to time and I think its because of some background process hanging the UI or something.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#595

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

> There is no pattern to when Esc does/doesn't work.

Its non-deterministic, as if developed with LLMs....

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. There's a guy that has written their own version of explorer that's so fast in comparison to the built-in, that you'd think they were cheating somehow because of everyone's experience with explorer. And someone has written an IDE for C++ that opens while Visual Studio i…

> version of explorer that's so fast https://filepilot.tech/

I've tried this a few times. Windows 10. Downloaded the 2MB file, double-clicked on it, and nothing happens. Same thing when I tried it a few months again. Put it in a command prompt and no output of an error.

I'm starting to worry I just launched something malicious.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. There's a guy that has written their own version of explorer that's so fast in comparison to the built-in, that you'd think they were cheating somehow because of everyone's experience with explorer. And someone has written an IDE for C++ that opens while Visual Studio i…

> version of explorer that's so fast https://filepilot.tech/

$250 for a version with updates past a year? yikes

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#598

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them. Agree 1000% and recently Steam Community Support pissed me off so I am now looking into GOG (I have my first GOG game now and playing it), Epic and Luna. In fact, the GOG game I got was free through Luna ironically. Even more ironic, the excellent Heroic game launcher lets you mark the game to show up in Steam…

While you _can_ use their launcher, you don't _have_ to. Once you buy the game, you can just download the installer and run it to install on your box. If you want you can save the install package somewhere if you think you'll enjoy the game for years to come and don't want to be dependent on GOG.

I also found out that they have quite a few fairly recent games. Maybe not the top-10 big budget (however they partner with RedProject so they do have Cyberpunk) but they have plenty of solid indy games from 2015 - 2020, and some more recent.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#599

Wow gun to head and everything. Glad he survived the transition. More seriously, editing is either a lost art or click bait headlines are more important than ever. The title is very immature.

lol! Sorry about the clickbait. Everyone's doing it nowadays, and I wanted to follow. Gonna think of a better title next time

For what it's worth, personally I thought your writing style and sense of humor was excellent, and my favorite part of the post.

I also appreciate you giving me an updated copy of the "Microsoft is a corporation" meme, as the one I have downloaded seems to become outdated each time a new Windows update comes out.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does this all the time, though, and seems to get a free pass here. I have four Macs in my home, and they are cut off at Ventura (for the 2017 iMac), Monterey (for the 2014 Mac Mini and the 2015 MacBook Air), and El Capitan (for the 2014 iMac). They are all stuck at 3, 4, and 5 major OS versions back. Nobody really seems to complain about this, though.

I think Apple gets a pass because they're a luxury product. For the record, even though Apple has some really impressive hardware, this is one of the reasons I'm not very big on Apple. People praise their phone's longevity all the time, but I think this is crazy. I could be running a 13 year old computer right now and it would work fine if I had Linux. Smartphones don't really have options for this due to the market…

> I think Apple gets a pass because they're a luxury product.

No they aren't. They've just convinced everyone that they are.

I've seen people meme about Android being for people who couldn't afford an iPhone when the fact is that a flagship Android costs just as much as an iPhone.

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