InlikeFlynn Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Win 10 is still irritating me a bit. It's been a couple of years since I last experimented with linux, so maybe is time to look again. Having reminded myself about my previous attempts (linux thread here) I don't have particularly high expectations. I'm afraid I can't help you with the partition issue, however just before we upgraded one of our PCs to Win10 I installed Ubuntu in a dual boot next to windows. I'm very new to Linux andvery taken with it. Eveything just worked from the outset. For most typical domestic and office tasks, Ubuntu performs as well as Win10 and seems a little quicker to load and much faster to shut down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPin Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I post this from a rather old Ubuntu! Can't complain. Things seem to work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steppenpig Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I'm afraid I can't help you with the partition issue, however just before we upgraded one of our PCs to Win10 I installed Ubuntu in a dual boot next to windows. I'm very new to Linux andvery taken with it. Eveything just worked from the outset. For most typical domestic and office tasks, Ubuntu performs as well as Win10 and seems a little quicker to load and much faster to shut down. Yes, I have got ubuntu on a usb stick now, and it is quicker. It's quite surprising, as I remember from the past that booting, and partcularly, shutting down, was rather slow under linux, as it used to write a load of files. I suspect mp3 and DVD functionality won't be so simple though. haen't really tested yet (probably mentioned already, one of my nagging irritations is that many things seem slower on win 10 than on my 5 year old laptop with XP) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikhail Liebenstein Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 I'm afraid I can't help you with the partition issue, however just before we upgraded one of our PCs to Win10 I installed Ubuntu in a dual boot next to windows. I'm very new to Linux andvery taken with it. Eveything just worked from the outset. For most typical domestic and office tasks, Ubuntu performs as well as Win10 and seems a little quicker to load and much faster to shut down. I know this is more technical than most home users would want, but with any install, I would recommend using partitions. For Windows, the basic one is to have a partition for your c drive where most of the OS and applications will go (though some apps do allow you to specify location to another partition/drive) and one for home directories and data. This is particularly key if you have loads of data, eg photos, video etc. In my case I might have 300GB of OS and apps, and that backs up fine to a USB3 drive, but what I don't want to do is back up my 700GB or so of photos every time, I want to do a bit of archiving on the old stuff that doesn't change and back up the more recent stuff. Linux is infinitely more sensible in this regard, and certainly in the past distro were quite explicit in suggesting or requesting sensible layouts: An example might be: A swap partition A /boot partition A / (i.e. root) partition A home partition A /boot/efi partition The advantage of this is that you can back up OS and apps (ie configuration) quickly and also protect data under a different regime. Basically this makes the difference between a 2 hour backup and perhaps a 3 day backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Posted February 10, 2016 Author Share Posted February 10, 2016 Sorry, I am totally lost It is like I want to buy a Chinese hot air balloon for New Year and some idiot at Microsoft is selling me a Eurofighter. I should not need to know any of this for home use, I just want a simple machine, not a brain teaser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Sorry, I am totally lost It is like I want to buy a Chinese hot air balloon for New Year and some idiot at Microsoft is selling me a Eurofighter. I should not need to know any of this for home use, I just want a simple machine, not a brain teaser. So get an ipad if you dont want to know how it works. Your desire to not understand the tools you use inherently limits you and exposes you to all sorts of problems. Deliberate ignorance through choice will get you killed on a building site. It should be embarrassing that you believe you can operate effectively in this manner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 Spoken like a true nerd unable to see the wider world. I find computers incredibly, achingly boring.Do concert pianists have a thorough knowledge of the insides of a piano, the finer points of steel/bronze strings, the choice of woods to construct the instruments, the glues and joints used? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Not to that detail but I very much doubt you'll find a concert pianist who doesn't understand how a piano works, what the pedals are actually doing and so on. Or another example, when you press the brake pedal on the car you've got some understanding of what it's doing to slow the car down, and consequently don't expect the same results in dry, wet, and icy conditions. A computer is a very, very complex piece of kit that needs to be tuned and personalised to get the best out of it. The iPad was invented for people who just want the same basic functionality and not to make use of the rest of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpectrumFX Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Not to that detail but I very much doubt you'll find a concert pianist who doesn't understand how a piano works, what the pedals are actually doing and so on. Or another example, when you press the brake pedal on the car you've got some understanding of what it's doing to slow the car down, and consequently don't expect the same results in dry, wet, and icy conditions. A computer is a very, very complex piece of kit that needs to be tuned and personalised to get the best out of it. The iPad was invented for people who just want the same basic functionality and not to make use of the rest of it. At least on a car the brake pedal is always in the same place. If Microsoft made cars they'd randomly swap the pedals round just for kicks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 At least on a car the brake pedal is always in the same place. If Microsoft made cars they'd randomly swap the pedals round just for kicks. I'll defend having a basic idea of how to use a computer but I won't defend Microsoft's attempt at making the user interface worse with every new version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgul Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Sorry, I am totally lost It is like I want to buy a Chinese hot air balloon for New Year and some idiot at Microsoft is selling me a Eurofighter. I should not need to know any of this for home use, I just want a simple machine, not a brain teaser. Try a chromebook - they're fantastic at doing the 95% of things that most people just want to do. Completely effortless. Of course, they're completely crap at the other 5%, but most people don't get that far. Funnily enough, the biggest problem that people find when using Chromebooks is unlearning kludges that MS force in your way of thinking. Like the requirement for anti-virus etc software - all there, run by Google, it doesn't bother you. Or updating - every now and then (maybe couple of months) it'll update itself and apply the changes on the next boot. No drama - you wouldn't know it was happening. Or backups - okay, they all do cloud stuff these days, but I had a Chromebook go about 2 months ago - I just got them a spare while I repaired it and all the data etc just appeared when they logged in, as if by magic. It is amazing, though, the number of people who'll complain about the interface being different - even where they only use the browser and that is the same - yet when MS throw an entire UI change on us, as they do every couple of years, people by-and-large put up with it.d Anyway, it is very close to an ideal internet appliance - turn it on, it works. You don't worry about how it works. Now, I'd be the first to admit that chromebooks aren't for everyone, but they are actually an ideal solution for the many of us with modest requirements. I've got about 3-4 in the house, everyone has accounts on all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecrashingisles Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Funnily enough, the biggest problem that people find when using Chromebooks is unlearning kludges that MS force in your way of thinking. Like the requirement for anti-virus etc software FIFY. Chromebooks are fine if you mostly just need a browser. They're like a tablet in the form of a laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stormymonday_2011 Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 At least on a car the brake pedal is always in the same place. If Microsoft made cars they'd randomly swap the pedals round just for kicks. MS are not above adding and removing pedals entirely between releases. They are also not above deprecating 'features' saying they are likely to be removed in later releases only for you to find them still there a decade later. Thus you can end up in the bizarre world where some software features written 20 years ago still works while other software released only a year or two ago often breaks on an upgrade The most annoying thing about Windows is that it does not come with a conventional technical product manual or user guide of the sort you find on old mainframe systems. Instead you have to wade your way through acres of help panels, msdn articles, knowledge base updates etc. These change all the time and MS is not above deleting them at the most inconvenient moment The error handling and reporting is pants too. There is no simple text log, messages are frequently either meaningless, ambiguous or cover more than one type of failure and to interpret some simple dumps etc you often need to download additional software etc. When you add in that Tower of Babel that is the Windows Registry it is hardly surprising that many consumers find MS Windows intimidating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Gaming is a big use of my computer for me, if it wasn't I'd chuck Windows in a flash. As it is I'm not sure what I'll do in the future, moving to any new version than Windows 7 seems really, really unappealing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Spoken like a true nerd unable to see the wider world. I find computers incredibly, achingly boring. Do concert pianists have a thorough knowledge of the insides of a piano, the finer points of steel/bronze strings, the choice of woods to construct the instruments, the glues and joints used? There is nothing that comes close to the complexity of a computer that users are so pig ignorant they think they can operate without any understanding, or that gaining any somehow makes them less of a person. I find it baffling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knock out johnny Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 There is nothing that comes close to the complexity of a computer that users are so pig ignorant they think they can operate without any understanding, or that gaining any somehow makes them less of a person. I find it baffling. But surely that is down to being sold the lie of the GUI being the solution to all one's problems (computing wise) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgul Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 FIFY. Chromebooks are fine if you mostly just need a browser. They're like a tablet in the form of a laptop. Yup. and 95% of the time that is what is wanted. It is funny, though, how people think of software. People can't seem to cope with the fact that to get new software you go into the 'install software' part and press install - they seem to be committed to the traditional (MS) way of trawling through possibilities, downloading something from the internet which may or may not work (in the sense that it might be virus ridden, or might require funny dependencies which aren't easy to resolve), and which may well require payment. Chromebooks are 'internet white goods' simple - while everything might well run in the browser, from the point of view of my mum in her 70s she wants to edit a photo, she runs the photo edit 'software', if she wants to send an email she uses the email 'software' - and she never ever has to worry about updates, backups, anti-virus etc - and, frankly, why should she. If you often do more on a computer then you'd consider the limitations to be farcical - but a larger number of people use computers basically within the browser than use computers with 'software'. You might well use a computer in a complicated way, with 'software' - but you're becoming the minority. [i use Chromebooks probably 80% of the time - real computers are used for specific applications (software development and numerical analysis), but I value the simplicity of Chromebooks the rest of the time] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Hm...sounds like i should get one for the bac and pinch her laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mooncat69 Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 +1 for Chromebooks. They just work and the battery life is great. I'm a developer by trade, but when I get home I don't want to nurse a computer or put up with Microsoft's constant updates Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spyguy Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 Yup. and 95% of the time that is what is wanted. It is funny, though, how people think of software. People can't seem to cope with the fact that to get new software you go into the 'install software' part and press install - they seem to be committed to the traditional (MS) way of trawling through possibilities, downloading something from the internet which may or may not work (in the sense that it might be virus ridden, or might require funny dependencies which aren't easy to resolve), and which may well require payment. Chromebooks are 'internet white goods' simple - while everything might well run in the browser, from the point of view of my mum in her 70s she wants to edit a photo, she runs the photo edit 'software', if she wants to send an email she uses the email 'software' - and she never ever has to worry about updates, backups, anti-virus etc - and, frankly, why should she. If you often do more on a computer then you'd consider the limitations to be farcical - but a larger number of people use computers basically within the browser than use computers with 'software'. You might well use a computer in a complicated way, with 'software' - but you're becoming the minority. [i use Chromebooks probably 80% of the time - real computers are used for specific applications (software development and numerical analysis), but I value the simplicity of Chromebooks the rest of the time] My big bet at the mo. is that all corporate stuff is going to move to be within a brower. All business stuff will just have a web front end - and Im betting on Bootstrap/html5/css. The backend is going to be something other than MS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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