Tech Corner

[MaloK]

Loll, I have used the latest Cinnamon and nothing is keeping me from going to that, besides...

I'm a Windows Wizard and my job wont let me off it. None of the software involved has a Windows port and every linux version left me deceived.

The best deep analysis tools are nonexistent in linux. And most of the time I saved them with windows. A dos program saved a unix more than once with a simple memory test that unix is not even able providing today.

But I admit If you are used to windows, Linux Mint Cinnamon will bridge that gap and even if linux is not really as bloatless as said... Still bring a clean install with a significant idle cpu load.

The era of the 0% activity cross the board is over on all platforms.

 

[anewbie]

These days they are all just tools of the trade and TBH there is no better or best. I quite like Windows 11 - of course not the ads but it doesn't bother me enough to shell out for the enterprise version so I can get rid of them completely, and now you can have embedded Ubuntu its even easier when using the CLI. And powershell doesn't care if you use / or \ and even recognises commands like ls (but you still have to use Windows style switches). For servers I have been Ubuntu for a long time (although at work its predictably all RHEL) and Mint for desktops. Obvious choice because I was quite early onto the Debian bandwagon. I went off Apple because I lost a couple of Macbooks to the famous fried GPU issue which Apple persistently denied existed.

I honestly don't care what you put me in front of, and my personal storage is set up so that I can be up and running with all my own stuff within minutes on any OS. My only constraint is that I need WIndows for Photoshop and Lightroom - and I never replaced my last Macbook when it committed suicide.

I don't like windows for a lot of reasons from file systems to memory management. I also don't like ms heavy handed push to the cloud and collection of data. Also i hate the gui interface and lack of information on error 'code'. It is fine for playing games but for me that is about it. I certainly won't use it for email or anything 'private'. Of course i also won't use my cell phone for banking or anything critical (but i do read email) beyond phone calls. The various shell for windows are ok and a lot of the basic bsd commands are there if not advertised but it is at best crude.

Tidbit windows tiny tcp buffers (for years) really hurt internet usage - of course these days after years and years of complaint they finally increase the default which I think was under 10k but i dont' remember any longer. Apple also for years had tiny tcp buffers esp in the iphone which (I think) couldn't be tweaked). Really hurt streaming - though also after years of bad streaming performance they finally increased it. Corporate America is great for suing people over adhoc intellectual rights but are incredibly stupid in many ways. (Apple is particularly awful - they frequently sue small family run companies that 'infringe' on names of apples even if these companies existed for 30 years before the first mac).

 

[MaloK]

So after 5-6 hours of copy, I went checking on it , and the cache buffers where empty and everything was flushed and hdd activity at 0.

I open explorer and the source drive had disappeared from the system... oh noooooooooooo, not that... I connected it on another machine and it sure hang at bios detection multiple times.... But after a lucky super slow startup was detected in windows... As a member of a lost array it showed up as bad but that's normal. I put it in the freezer for about 40 minutes.

Reconnected it on the original raid put it on it's left side instead of flat and restarted the copy... it goes trough slow down and knocking per moments... yishhhhhh... But the copy is proceeding and the losses are minimal.

So the first or second generation of WD reds are to take with caution, this raid had a lots of reading per year but I never really erased anything there, so this not very encouraging. Since they where on light uses.

I hope the pro are better than that. 6 years is not that much... And last week they where showing good with no intervention required.

Scary... But the most important is done, the rest I'll consider it as a bonus.

 

[MaloK]

All done and back online, total damages:

1 cartoon
5 series episodes
4 movies
3 documentaries

No loss on personal stuff. That's good enough for me.

 

[jaylach]

For those looking at Windows 10 end of life on October 14th, 2025 and your system is not compliant for Windows 11 here is an article I wrote ages ago as to installing on unsupported hardware via registry hacks. Actually I've installed 11 twice on my main. The second time it allowed the install with a disclaimer I had to accept that MS was not responsible for later issues...

I do NOT know yet if this still works.

View topic - Installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware • Computer Haven

Computer Help in Plain English, specializing in novice users

computerhaven.com

 

[MaloK]

The thing That trows me off Linux the most is the complete absence of advanced trouble shooting tools. At any level... To a ridiculous extent... You have to be confident they are doing it right...

Loll

You get replies to copy your data to another drive and copy them back to do a defrag.

Most of my testing is done with Cinnamon and that is as bloated as windows... So customers going to the new platform have a similar experience... loll. But as a core it sure is able to cope with the advanced stuff.

But in real Life scenarios I boot a WinPe OS to go modify a unix misconfiguration in a txt file.

That ends it for me right there... If I have to master one OS it has to be windows first.

 

[jaylach]

The thing That trows me off Linux the most is the complete absence of advanced trouble shooting tools. At any level... To a ridiculous extent... You have to be confident they are doing it right...

Loll

You get replies to copy your data to another drive and copy them back to do a defrag.

Most of my testing is done with Cinnamon and that is as bloated as windows... So customers going to the new platform have a similar experience... loll. But as a core it sure is able to cope with the advanced stuff.

But in real Life scenarios I boot a WinPe OS to go modify a unix misconfiguration in a txt file.

That ends it for me right there... If I have to master one OS it has to be windows first.

My biggest gripe about Linux boils down to kernel updates as they often kill software already installed. For instance years ago someone gave me a Linux version of Decent 2 which is paid software. Installed and ran fine. Here comes a kernel update and Decent 2 is junk as it will not run under the new kernel. This just does not tend to happen with Windows. Shoot I still run VERY old games on Windows that were put out in the Win 2000/XP era such as Zuma Deluxe and Water Bugs.

BTW, my Linux distro of choice is also Mint Cinnamon. I have it on both a virtual machine and a physical system. If I ever again have paid for Linux software (not likely) I will test a kernel update on the virtual machine before the physical system. I just copy the virtual hard drive. If things blow up I just go back to the copied hard drive file.

Actually there are defrag tools for Linux. You just have to dig through the software repository to find.

 

[seangee]

For those looking at Windows 10 end of life on October 14th, 2025 and your system is not compliant for Windows 11 here is an article I wrote ages ago as to installing on unsupported hardware via registry hacks. Actually I've installed 11 twice on my main. The second time it allowed the install with a disclaimer I had to accept that MS was not responsible for later issues...

I do NOT know yet if this still works.

View topic - Installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware • Computer Haven

Computer Help in Plain English, specializing in novice users

computerhaven.com

I mostly stopped using unsupported hacks because every now and then they close the doors and of course you can't complain because you used an undocumented feature.
What is Windows 11 today (Windows 11 24H2) was going to be called Widows 12 and at the last minute MS decided not to bump the version number.

 

[MaloK]

The latest Cinnamon dist I have replaced the whole intrd whith kernel updates and nothing got broken.

With my minimal uses I still run Vbox and a couple Cad and image posterisers. without harm.

I mostly stopped using unsupported hacks because every now and then they close the doors and of course you can't complain because you used an undocumented feature.
What is Windows 11 today (Windows 11 24H2) was going to be called Widows 12 and at the last minute MS decided not to bump the version number.

When 12-13-14 comes out... What does it really change. You can roll back to working state and leave it for decades...

I understand Linux has a port of my favorite software.. But it's not able to harvest half the corn a blind windows could.

There always been an unsupported version that works. And with a little patience you can run win7 on 13 gen I9 cpus.

 

[MattW]

Zuma Deluxe

I love that game. Great to play if you want to pass time You wouldn't find a good game nowadays that's only 10MB on steam..

 

[seangee]

The latest Cinnamon dist I have replaced the whole intrd whith kernel updates and nothing got broken.

At least the world has moved on. I remember the days of building my own kernels to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a system. Thankfully those days are over.

You wouldn't find a good game nowadays that's only 10MB on steam..

But some of the most fun I had as a programmer was writing embedded systems for ancient hardware - where quite literally every byte saved made a difference.

 

[jaylach]

I love that game. Great to play if you want to pass time You wouldn't find a good game nowadays that's only 10MB on steam..

Actually I have Zuma and others as the originals, not steam. Nice thing about these OLD games is that it is seldom necessary to actually install as you just need to copy over the game folder and use the executable.

Do you still have Zuma?

While I happen to have about 1800 of these games available here are the ones I have active.

LOL! If you happen to like the Windows 7 built in games, such as solitaire, they can also be brought back in either Windows 10/11.

 

[MaloK]

One of my favorite wait time games is sonic spinball on genesis emulation at 512kb, loll..

 

[MattW]

I have Zuma on Steam now, but I do remember having a disc version many years ago. I recognise a few games in that screenshot. When I was a Kid, those games were the saviour when the internet went down. I miss those Windows Vista days. Purble Place was a favourite of mine too. And yes, for those who are shocked, I arrived after the millennium, don't judge

 

[jaylach]

One of my favorite wait time games is sonic spinball on genesis emulation at 512kb, loll..

One of my favorites is Snail Mail. Sigh, I wish I could find a Yahtzee version that used decent logic.