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Author Topic: I Don't Do Windows  (Read 47943 times)

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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #280 on: January 24, 2012, 02:08:20 PM »

If only there were some standard, universally-understood system that used precious metals to indicate three different tiers.
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Brentai

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #281 on: January 24, 2012, 02:22:30 PM »

Maybe Standard, Silver and Gold, but "Bronze" is really tough to sell to people due to its perception as sort of a consolation prize in our fucking overcompetitive country.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #282 on: January 24, 2012, 02:25:39 PM »

That's the general idea.  I prefer to think that people buying goddamn ZFS for Mac are less likely to fall for that stupid shit than the average Starbucks customer, but maybe that's wishful thinking.
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Classic

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #283 on: January 24, 2012, 02:36:41 PM »

If you wanted a logically consistent answer for it, bronze isn't an element.

But it's probably actually a combination of all of the other reasons.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #284 on: January 26, 2012, 10:48:37 AM »

I've heard nice things about BtrFS, but there *are* bugs... and no proper fsck (its fsck can't fix errors yet).

Per Phoronix, we're apparently just about there.  And Oracle is, for once, not completely worthless to the open-source community.

...hell, we've just about got enough here for an FS threadsplit, but a lot of it's tied up with my general griping about my last Ubuntu upgrade.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #285 on: February 07, 2012, 08:26:46 AM »

Kubuntu loses Canonical support, will now be volunteer-only.

Well, I'm going to stick with the damn thing as long as it's usable.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #286 on: February 08, 2012, 11:38:34 AM »

Win8 "consumer preview" due 2/29.

The 250GB drive I keep Windows on is getting a little tight and I've been thinking of sticking a new HD in.  If people say the Win8 preview's any good, I might try it, but really I like Win7 and do not care for the thinking behind Win8.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #287 on: February 29, 2012, 10:03:52 AM »

Win8 "consumer preview" due 2/29.

...anyone wanna try poking it with a stick?
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sei

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #288 on: February 29, 2012, 01:44:29 PM »

Gnome2 and Gnome3 won't update titlebars without window resize when using compiz. This is annoying as fuck when using tabbed programs, like text editors and browsers.

Cinnamon, thankfully, doesn't have that problem. Tragically, as with Gnome3, Gnome-Do runs like utter shit in Cinnamon. Have fun mashing your hotkey, trying to get it to open, and inserting key-presses/characters in the current focus. The new Mint menu isn't responsive enough to compensate, though there's significant functionality overlap.

Frustrating. Best bet might be to try using a Gnome2 setup without VirtualBox.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #289 on: March 01, 2012, 08:10:24 AM »

More on Win8.  Boy it sure does look a lot like GNOME3.

Oh and also per page 2 they've remapped most of their Start key shortcuts.
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TA

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #290 on: March 01, 2012, 05:13:00 PM »

More on Win8.  Boy it sure does look a lot like GNOME3.

Oh and also per page 2 they've remapped most of their Start key shortcuts.

What it looks a lot like is Windows Phone 7.  Which is an awful interface for a desktop environment.  If GNOME3 ripped that interface off, then GNOME3 is controlled by stupid, stupid monkeys.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #291 on: March 02, 2012, 07:23:06 AM »

Yeah, that's pretty much the trend.  (We've been talking about it for awhile, but it's a giant dump thread, so I can understand people not keeping up.)  Current desktop GUI designers all seem to have contracted a horrible disease where they think a 24" screen controlled by a mouse should behave the same way as a 4" touchscreen.  Apple, MS, GNOME, and Canonical (the company that makes Ubuntu) have all fallen prey to this general stupidity.

My desktop of choice, KDE, has managed to avoid it so far, but given that there's a KDE tablet now I'm concerned that KDE 5 will follow the trend.  (Maybe by then Cinnamon, the project to make GNOME3 behave like GNOME2 that Sei was just mentioning, will be ready for prime time.  Or maybe I'll have to switch to Xfce or LXDE or something.)

I don't know where it goes from here.  I'd like to think that the designers will get over this stupidity and we'll be back to desktops behaving like desktops in a couple years.  But I don't know.  It's entirely possible that, in the long term, desktops will fade and tablets and phones will replace them -- not now and probably not in the next five years, but maybe in the next ten.  If that's the assumption and the long game, then yeah, I can see why the devs would want to converge on a single codebase rather than maintain one that's going to go away.

But I think there'll always be a place for bigger screens and external input devices.  Maybe not a keyboard and mouse as we know them, but something quicker and more convenient than typing with your thumbs.
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Brentai

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #292 on: March 02, 2012, 11:44:27 AM »

I don't even like the touchscreen interface for phones all that much.  The Blackberry trackball was so much better for a lot of things; ideally they'd start making things with both, but it's kind of awkward to determine where the ball should go thatswhatshesaid.

I think the "desktop touchscreen" idiom is in anticipation of the tablet replacing the traditional PC, but that wil speculation isn't really panning out; tablets and PCs actually exist pretty comfortably side-by-side.  In particular, the tablet is wildly inappropriate for office use, and that's where Microsoft is losing the plot hard; non-technical corporate use is where it still makes most of its money and maintains a pretty comfortable lock, and if they start to take a direction that makes THAT segment lose interest (which they already have with the fucking Ribbon) then they might as well fucking quit the PC market and just become a game company.
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TA

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #293 on: March 02, 2012, 12:05:55 PM »

The thing that bugs me the most about Windows 8 is the home screen.  I mean, yes, the Start Screen sucks, but more the design mindset that leads to that being your home screen.  Any computing device has kind of a "Default" place to be, a context from which other things originate.  On Android, that's the home screen.  On all prior versions of Windows, that's been the desktop.  On Windows 8, it's the Start Screen.  That's where everything originates, and where everything returns.  "Desktop" is just an app within that.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #294 on: March 02, 2012, 12:27:26 PM »

I don't even like the touchscreen interface for phones all that much.  The Blackberry trackball was so much better for a lot of things; ideally they'd start making things with both, but it's kind of awkward to determine where the ball should go thatswhatshesaid.

Yeah, fiancee just got a BB yesterday and the first thing she said was how much she liked the nub.  I used it briefly and it was pretty smooth.

In my experience I like touchscreens, but I still don't have a smartphone.  Should get one one of these days, at least to learn how to develop for Android.

I think the "desktop touchscreen" idiom is in anticipation of the tablet replacing the traditional PC, but that wil speculation isn't really panning out; tablets and PCs actually exist pretty comfortably side-by-side.

I think it's entirely too early to say it's not panning out.  The trouble is that, judging by the reviews, there have only been two good tablets -- predictably, Apple's and HP/Palm's -- and the latter got smothered with a pillow before it had a chance to catch on.

Brad used to use an MBP as his primary computer; since then he's gotten a full Pro, and replaced the laptop with an iPad.  Dude's a statistical outlier, but he's hardly unique; I think there'll be plenty of people in the coming years who have a desktop at home and a tablet in a backpack.

There's an appeal to replacing laptops with tablets, as tablets may be "good enough" for most of what laptops can do, and they're more portable.  And keep in mind that laptops have been outselling desktops for the past few years now.

In particular, the tablet is wildly inappropriate for office use, and that's where Microsoft is losing the plot hard; non-technical corporate use is where it still makes most of its money and maintains a pretty comfortable lock, and if they start to take a direction that makes THAT segment lose interest (which they already have with the fucking Ribbon) then they might as well fucking quit the PC market and just become a game company.

Yeah, I can't imagine a single corporate office actually switching to Win8, never mind that most are just getting around to 7.

But I'm not really sure that's what MS is going for with this.  Win7 Phone is, by all accounts, pretty great, but selling abysmally.  MS is trying to enter into the tablet and phone market; the desktop seems to be an afterthought this generation.

Bears noting, of course, that corporations ARE actually a perfect place to try and make inroads in phone/tablet sales right now, as BB is on the decline and Apple is just beginning to gain a foothold.

The thing that bugs me the most about Windows 8 is the home screen.  I mean, yes, the Start Screen sucks, but more the design mindset that leads to that being your home screen.  Any computing device has kind of a "Default" place to be, a context from which other things originate.  On Android, that's the home screen.  On all prior versions of Windows, that's been the desktop.  On Windows 8, it's the Start Screen.  That's where everything originates, and where everything returns.  "Desktop" is just an app within that.

An interesting point.  GNOME 3 doesn't have a damn desktop at all -- actually, it does, but you can't put anything on it, which is really even worse than having the program launcher be the "home" screen.

I'm not sure that the paradigm shift is an inherently bad idea from a usability perspective (have you seen the shit lusers slather all over their desktops?), but as a power user I want my damn desktop, and I want my launcher to be a small, quickly-navigable rectangle in one corner of the screen.  I sure as hell don't need those icons spread out across an entire 1920x1200x24" screen, covering up whatever the fuck I was doing before I opened the launcher and making me train my eyes (and pointer) from one corner of the screen to the other.

Again, great for a phone, but not so sensible for a desktop.
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sei

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #295 on: March 02, 2012, 04:32:56 PM »

An interesting point.  GNOME 3 doesn't have a damn desktop at all -- actually, it does, but you can't put anything on it, which is really even worse than having the program launcher be the "home" screen.
Gnome desktop lets you place icons on it via Nautlius. It'd be okay, if you could hide the fucking file menu.
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sei

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #296 on: March 03, 2012, 03:50:44 PM »

Tragically, as with Gnome3, Gnome-Do runs like utter shit in Cinnamon. Have fun mashing your hotkey, trying to get it to open, and inserting key-presses/characters in the current focus.
This was half-wrong. Gnome-Do works well enough, with Cinnamon, provided one doesn't include <Super> in the key-combo used to open it.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #297 on: March 05, 2012, 09:08:43 AM »

I've seen a couple reviews of the Win8 beta that really gushed and said it was great.

But they were by tablet users.

Haven't really seen anything from people trying to work it on a desktop yet.

EDIT: Ah, The Reg.

Quote
The problem isn’t so much Metro, which by itself represents some good thinking about touch device design. It’s Microsoft’s insistence on inserting Metro between us and what we want to do – and at times Metro is spectacularly inappropriate.

But over at Redmond, the Metro team appears to be completely out of control, like the Red Guard during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. They’ve sent the educated to the countryside to dig trenches, and for good measure broken their spectacles. Nobody seems to be able to say no to the Metro Guard, it seems, for fear of punishment. But welding this immature and inappropriate smallscreen UI into the everyday Windows experience is being carried out in a quite totalitarian fashion.

[...]

The problem with Metro in Windows 8 is one of policy rather than execution. At the end of the day Metro is like one of those funky widget layers like Dashboard or Yahoo! Widgets or like a lockdown launcher, like At Ease. But the Maoists have dictated that this ephemeral layer must become the new shell.

In other words, the exact thing I've been saying since I saw the first preview pics.
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Thad

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #298 on: March 14, 2012, 08:49:31 AM »

The Reg likes Server 8 a lot better than Regular 8, and touts its focus on standards.

Quote
Microsoft's newly found openness means that no one is forced to use Windows 8 for administration. What's more, Windows Server 8 is a versatile and feature-rich backend for non-Microsoft client operating systems. Whether your business chooses Linux, Windows, Apple or BYOD client deployments, the case for Windows Server 8 as the backend is easily made.
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Brentai

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Re: I Don't Do Windows
« Reply #299 on: March 14, 2012, 09:29:30 AM »

Amazing what happens when you finally realize you're no longer the de facto standard for everything.  Can't wait for Apple to fall from grace, since I can't really fault their hardware quality.
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