Page 4 of 5
Posted: 10 Aug 2015, 15:09
by fohat
Muirium wrote:
I much prefer USB to the lunatic mess of shitey random ports that preceded it.
USB cleaned up a lot of physical mess.
You are totally right, I was just whining.
And I particularly like the way that backwards compatibility is generally respected or acknowledged.
Now if there was just a way to screw them down securely when you did not want them to jiggle or move .....
Posted: 10 Aug 2015, 15:12
by 002
I'm sure I read somewhere that most cables these days are purposely not lock in because of the drama caused when some gumby bastard tripped or walked through locked in cables and dragged all the hardware off the desk?
Posted: 10 Aug 2015, 17:33
by SL89
So i updated my work machine manually, and it broke things as i said.
But with my home machine, I waited for the automatic update. Nothing broke, same model PC, same everything.
I likewise disabled all the tracking and BS and thus far the home machine has been nothing but nice.
I still may go fulltime to Linuxland or build a new Hackintosh, but this works for now.
Posted: 10 Aug 2015, 17:42
by Compgeke
I upgraded my desktop, spare laptop I use for OBD II testing, brother's desktop and brother's laptop and none had issues other than video drives needing to be reinstalled on the nVidia graphics. Might just be luck, but I've had no issues at all.
002 wrote: I'm sure I read somewhere that most cables these days are purposely not lock in because of the drama caused when some gumby bastard tripped or walked through locked in cables and dragged all the hardware off the desk?
One thing I'm used to with screwed cable is either being able to pick up the tower by the cable or the cable ripping the port off the expansion cards\motherboard. One downside I see with USB is when it breaks off it still tends to screw up both the computer and cable side.
If you really want locking USB though, you could invest in a POS machine. I know the IBM (now Toshiba) machines have a locking USB port used for scanners\cash drawers\etc. You can even pull 12 or 24V power from 'em.
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 16:00
by Gregor1985
I installed Windows 10 and my
laptop and sisters
tablet, and nothing good happened. I had to reinstall on Windows 8.1
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 16:02
by 7bit
You should have installed Debian 8.2!
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 17:08
by XMIT
For what reason exactly? The old version still serves me well on my work system.
Code: Select all
$ cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 7 \n \l
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 17:09
by 7bit
Code: Select all
cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 \n \l
.
.
.
.
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 17:25
by scottc
I'm afraid to upgrade anything critical to Jessie. I expect great systemd-related pain...
Re: July 29th Windows 10!
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 18:11
by SL89
I'm in the process of leaving windows 10 right now and going to Debian full time.
I do not like how updates are handled, or how you can't turn off things like Edge or Cortana. They both are 'disabled' but still keep running in the background.
Also despite having 8gb of ram on this system my usage is constantly at about 25% and its all system stuff like windows and Intel things.
I wanted to like it but it's really rather poor performing even on hardware under 6mos old.
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 20:26
by XMIT
Code: Select all
$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 24737256 24110068 627188 0 1513620 12403180
-/+ buffers/cache: 10193268 14543988
Swap: 0 0 0
Of the rest, the biggest offenders are Virtualbox, the Chrome browser, and Thunderbird. Oh, and pulseaudio - stupid pulseaudio.
SL89 wrote: I wanted to like it but it's really rather poor performing even on hardware under 6mos old.
::shudder::
Have desktop PCs even gotten faster since 2011? I guess we have DDR4 memory now.
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 20:42
by Muirium
Yeah, Moore's law ain't what it used to be, in Intel's hands anyway.
I for one really look forward to Apple's A series processors coming to the Mac. Those are still getting faster by leaps and bounds, with no slowdown in sight. And I'd quite like 24 hours of solid battery life on my next laptop. I don't virtualise, dual boot, or even run much in the way of old software on this one. The last processor architecture shift was a good one, what's to say there won't be another…
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 22:59
by Halvar
Intel has made quite a good progress in the last 5 years as far as energy consumption is concerned. If you look at Intel-based tablets or even notebooks, they're almost on par with ARM now despite having to be compatible to a 30 year old instruction set.
What keeps Windows slow and energy-inefficient is the compatibility with the old PC programming model, programs and services keep sucking processing power all the time. Windows 8 / 10 "modern apps" and iOS are much better in that respect. Linux and MacOS probably aren't.
If you aren't happy with the performance and especially energy consumption of Windows 10 on modern hardware I don't think that using Linux will help you much.
Posted: 05 Oct 2015, 23:44
by Muirium
OS X's a beaut on modern hardware. In fact, it's not even sluggish on my 9 year old Mac Pro, at 4k. Despite the fact Apple doesn't even support that old machine any more!
It'd be refreshing for the PC guys to see Microsoft do to its OS what they did to Internet Explorer with Edge. Wouldn't exactly count on it though. Windows 8 and 10 are radically re-skinned, but seem to share the same churn-happy guts of Windows 7 behind the surface.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 04:11
by XMIT
Halvar wrote: If you aren't happy with the performance and especially energy consumption of Windows 10 on modern hardware I don't think that using Linux will help you much.
That's a very broad statement.
Linux systems allow one to go in with a scalpel and remove anything that isn't important. My workstation uses a tiling window manager and many services are disabled. There is very little between applications and the CPU. If anything I get higher performance on Linux systems thanks to the kernel's aggressive use of a RAM cache for disk accesses.
On a laptop the largest consumers of power are the display, CPU, and wireless subsystem. Modern kernels have quite good for modern CPUs and their power states. Power consumption should be quite good as well.
I'll leave it to AnandTech, etc. to compare power consumption. Using a dual socketed workstation this frankly isn't a concern. I can't go much under 100W at idle.
Fortunately the employer pays that electric bill.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 12:58
by sth
XMIT wrote: Halvar wrote: If you aren't happy with the performance and especially energy consumption of Windows 10 on modern hardware I don't think that using Linux will help you much.
That's a very broad statement.
Linux systems allow one to go in with a scalpel and remove anything that isn't important. My workstation uses a tiling window manager and many services are disabled. There is very little between applications and the CPU. If anything I get higher performance on Linux systems thanks to the kernel's aggressive use of a RAM cache for disk accesses.
On a laptop the largest consumers of power are the display, CPU, and wireless subsystem. Modern kernels have quite good for modern CPUs and their power states. Power consumption should be quite good as well.
I'll leave it to AnandTech, etc. to compare power consumption. Using a dual socketed workstation this frankly isn't a concern. I can't go much under 100W at idle.
Fortunately the employer pays that electric bill.
yes - even with a floating wm my normal RAM usage with 10-15 tabs of icecat, 4-7 urxvt windows and sometimes mpd is usually under 2GB, and that includes my window manager, lemonbar, pretty compositing and all daemons running behind the scenes. my cpu is usually around 10-20% per core (and usually only 1 core at a time above 15%). if i was running gnome or KDE it would probably be at least another GB on top of that just to be doing things i dont need, or doing those things i DO need in an ineficcient, gui-happy way.
if i was running windows, i'd probably be closer to 3.5-4GB used up by the time i had all my programs running.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 14:04
by Halvar
I'm running Windows 10 on an Atom Z3740 1,3GHz tablet with 2 GB of RAM, and it's more than enough for simple browsing, watching photos and videos, reading etc. CPU is at 2-3% in idle, and that's with the CPU even running slower when it's in idle state for a while.
XMIT wrote: That's a very broad statement.
Yes, you're right, too broad a statement in its generality, but the context here was this:
Also despite having 8gb of ram on this system my usage is constantly at about 25% and its all system stuff like windows and Intel things.
This is definitely not normal, and it should be as easy/hard to find out what causes this as it would be with a similar problem on Linux (open process manager and have a look). Especially, I wouldn't expect it to be something that can't be turned off (if it's something unwanted).
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 18:07
by SL89
As I said, a lot of what was chewing up resources were cortana ~11% to 16% of my RAM at any given time, despite being 'off' in every way possible. Perhaps my attempts to hobble it increased its usage as it was trying to phone home.
But after jumping to Debian 8.2 with XFCE the same use case (almost app for app) is now <13% of my RAM with the same amounts of tabs, extensions and other apps running.
Intel modules seem to be non existent as well. So between losing Cortana and the tiles and random stuff that I thought was disabled in windows but really wasn't I've gotten ~15% of my ram ultilization down. In W10 I also notived that even tho the RAM usage was high, the CPU utilization was generally very low, but every so often it would spike spike spike and everything would drag ass.
So far the only thing I'm missing on Debian is a linux driver for a USB to VGA adapter, and tbf it's less of an issue as I'm u sing XFCE's spaces more efficiently then I was using the similar setup on W10.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 18:11
by Muirium
Microsoft's just mining bitcoins on your computer. You did read that far into the EULA, right?
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 18:37
by SL89
Muirium wrote: Microsoft
was just mining bitcoins on your computer. You did read that far into the EULA, right?
FTFY
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 20:18
by andrewjoy
Windows 10.
Good system , useful feature , super fast , steals your data!
However 99% of the data collection can be turned off.
Apple does exactly the same with spotlight in OSX
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 20:23
by XMIT
On a more serious note, for OS X, I found this guide helpful:
https://github.com/drduh/OS-X-Yosemite- ... vacy-Guide
For Windows 10 I saw a similar guide around and then misplaced it. Argh. This looks promising:
http://pxc-coding.com/portfolio/donotspy10/
Never install the new version of a big name consumer OS the first day! I usually give them a few *months* so all the issues can be shaken out. This includes Mac OS, Windows, and Android. It would include iOS if I had any iOS devices.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 20:25
by SL89
Apple, Microsoft and Google are all in the same arena with regards to privacy.
That being said MS just dropped this:
https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us ... rface-book
Even Mr.Mu can probably get behind that shiny new toy.
Regarding XMIT's privacy protocols i used these:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comm ... ing_in_w10
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comm ... 0_privacy/
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 20:35
by SL89
And they are working on getting the privacy stuff built into
Tron
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 22:15
by Muirium
SL89 wrote: Apple, Microsoft and Google are all in the same arena with regards to privacy.
Nope. I'd love to see Google adopt Apple's privacy policy!
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/apple- ... cy-policy/
Nope. The Surface is a flawed concept not because of its hardware but because of its software. Trying to be all things to all men is the very definition of compromise. In a world where we're all already using multiple devices, in the form of phones! I'd like to see them get the reason for its ongoing flop, and to do something else entirely. But that's a tall order for a software empire that's still only dabbling in hardware. So much easier to keep tweaking the form factor, while the platform never takes off.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 22:23
by SL89
That privacy policy sounds no different then the Blackberry ones, or the Google ones for that matter. Apple just knows how to market what is already in front of people right back to them.
I was talking mostly to the hardware, I'd hardly consider the Surface a flop either way. I am no apologist for these monoliths, but all of them are slowly inching away from user choice into a very 'all things to all men' approach. Even you have to admit Apples new toys strike the same chords as the Surface and it's ilk. iPen? iPad Pro? come now, the monoculture is right around the corner
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 22:35
by seebart
Apple is best at PR and the hippest of the lot. Apple is the best at making you Apple users believe your data is 100% safe and that you`re buying the best hardware and need to pay top $$$ bucks for it. Microsoft seems clumsy and dorky like a old bunch of nerds too obsessed with their own software to keep up with Apples smooth PR. Google is the combination plus the ultimate joker; the biggest single data collection in the world and they don`t give a fuck cause you`re either taking part or you`re Apple because M$ is too lame like some old uncle although they do release good software. Google will never adopt anything from anyone anymore, they`re way over that point in a bad way. Google is like a giant snowball full of data and profit going downhill...but it still keeps going and getting bigger.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 22:42
by SL89
Right on.
Posted: 06 Oct 2015, 22:43
by Touch_It
Compgeke wrote: I upgraded my desktop, spare laptop I use for OBD II testing, brother's desktop and brother's laptop and none had issues other than video drives needing to be reinstalled on the nVidia graphics. Might just be luck, but I've had no issues at all.
002 wrote: I'm sure I read somewhere that most cables these days are purposely not lock in because of the drama caused when some gumby bastard tripped or walked through locked in cables and dragged all the hardware off the desk?
One thing I'm used to with screwed cable is either being able to pick up the tower by the cable or the cable ripping the port off the expansion cards\motherboard. One downside I see with USB is when it breaks off it still tends to screw up both the computer and cable side.
If you really want locking USB though, you could invest in a POS machine. I know the IBM (now Toshiba) machines have a locking USB port used for scanners\cash drawers\etc. You can even pull 12 or 24V power from 'em.
HA. I work on POS systems for a living. I see/use these ports daily. Red is for receipt printer. Green is for pin pads. (For the POS systems I work on.) Cash drawer connects to the receipt printer.
Posted: 07 Oct 2015, 08:45
by sth
yeesh, that 'hinge'
