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Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 8:45 am
by puppetworx
Ever since Windows 7 SP1 came out Windows Search has been broken on my machine it's a well documented problem which is simply ignored. Last week Windows Backup and Restore failed for the second time in 5 months because of a bug which makes it do a full backup instead of an incremental backup from one 1TB drive to another, once that happens I have to format the backup and then wait 10+hours while it creates a new backup. Last night it crashed during boot totally at random. I started Startup Repair, no errors found but the machine did start. The machine took roughly 5 minutes to start and was hardly responding to commands - I ran System File Checker, no problems. I eventually managed to open msconfig and start in Diagnostic Mode - still unresponsive. Computer now unusable and my system hard drive backup was unusable because of the backup failure last week. I didn't fancy the endurance of reinstalling Windows 7 especially when half of the 'features' don't even work.

I downloaded and installed Fedora 15 in no time; it looks amazing, has tons of software which I am already using anyway and is hopefully just as stable as I am led to believe. If I really need a Windows program I'll use a virtual machine. I'm one of you now, hail linux.

tl:dr;
I just ditched Win 7 for Fedora 15 in about half an hour,
and not a single **** was given.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:22 am
by BlackStar
Fedora and stable are two words that don't go together. Fedora is a bleeding-edge distro with lots of untested software. If you want stability, you need something like Debian (most stable), Ubuntu LTS (long-term releases, mostly stable) or Red Hat (commercial).

Fedora is great in its own way but prepare to be dissapointed. Sometimes it manages to give the illusion of stability but it will go haywire as soon as you try to upgrade to the next version.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:32 am
by bthylafh
What he said. Don't expect stability from Fedora, or indeed that everything works.

CentOS is another option if you want to stick with a Redhat-derived distro.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:56 am
by Derfer
Microsoft doesn't fix these user experience bugs in between OS release cycles. You have one shot of getting a fix for this stuff, windows 8, and that's only if you complain about it during the brief window of beta testing where they actually listen to suggestions. All and all I'm fine with windows until I hit one of those little ancient bugs they refuse to fix that drive me insane.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:11 am
by wibeasley
That's a lot of failures in a short amount of time. Are you sure done of them are related to an underlying hardware problem? I'd run MemTest tonight to have some assurances.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:51 am
by JustAnEngineer
I'm not sure that I understand why you're blaming the OS for what is probably hardware instability.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:00 am
by Fragnificent
Yeah I've never had any of the problems you mention with Win7, and yet, amazingly, I have had some of them while trying to use Ubuntu several times. Linux is not ready yet, as much as everyone including myself, likes it, and the idea of it. :) Have fun trying to install stuff. ;)

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:50 am
by puppetworx
Noted on Fedora and stability, I am pretty fresh to Linux as you can tell.

I've not ruled out hardware as the cause but so far it seems unlikely. First thing I did was check temperatures, run memtest+ and then SpinRite the hard drive with my Users folder and Windows Temp Files on and all came back clean. Once I get all my data safe I'll see. So far so good though.

Despite that my major annoyances (broken features) have been present for too long and I'm done with Windows. I've been hugely impressed by install time. I can't get a system ready for use this fast with Windows. A few lines in the terminal and you're golden.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 12:00 pm
by Skrying
Windows is far more stable in my experience than any distro of Linux I've tried. It's not even close to be honest. I tried running Ubuntu but at the end of the day I needed too many of the new features and all of those are ridiculously unstable.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 12:02 pm
by just brew it!
JustAnEngineer wrote:
I'm not sure that I understand why you're blaming the OS for what is probably hardware instability.

Dunno...those issues don't necessarily sound like they are hardware problems to me (though they could be).

I'll second (third?) the recommendation to go with Debian, Ubuntu LTS, or CentOS if you want a stable Linux platform though. Bleeding edge distros like Fedora and non-LTS Ubuntu not only tend to be a bit half-baked, the security updates also stop coming after only a couple of years.

If you enjoy checking out all the latest and greatest stuff, and are OK with using something that's essentially a rolling beta, then yeah Fedora (or non-LTS Ubuntu) is fine. But I wouldn't personally run it on a system I depend on for real work.

Skrying wrote:
Windows is far more stable in my experience than any distro of Linux I've tried. It's not even close to be honest. I tried running Ubuntu but at the end of the day I needed too many of the new features and all of those are ridiculously unstable.

Support for bleeding edge hardware can still be a little dicey, but it is a lot better than it used to be. Support for older hardware is actually *better* in Linux than in Windows, since many hardware vendors didn't bother to write Vista/7 drivers for their legacy stuff.

I've actually been quite impressed with the stability of Debian and Ubuntu LTS. As long as you're not trying to use a bleeding edge GPU, I'd say the stability is at least as good as Windows (probably better). And if you include security in the equation, it isn't even close; Linux wins hands down. (And yes, I know part of that is due to the fact that it is simply of less interest to the malware people, since it has such a small installed base.)

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 2:58 pm
by DeadOfKnight
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32-bit

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 3:07 pm
by bthylafh
There's no reason to stick with 32-bit unless your processor won't do 64.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 3:53 pm
by just brew it!
bthylafh wrote:
There's no reason to stick with 32-bit unless your processor won't do 64.

Yeah, 32-bit is soooo 10 years ago! :lol:

All kidding aside, I agree there's almost no reason to install a 32-bit OS (Windows *or* Linux) these days, unless you're running old hardware which lacks 64-bit capabilities or have really old Windows apps with 16-bit installers (and for this case you could just use a VM).

64-bit Windows and Linux both support the running of 32-bit applications. It is true that 32-bit device drivers aren't supported, but that's not much of an issue on the Windows side (since old 32-bit XP drivers don't work on Vista/7 anyhow) or on the Linux side (since the vast majority of drivers are available in both flavors).

With the 64-bit Flash plugin issue finally settling down on the Linux side, the last argument for running 32-bit Linux on 64-bit hardware has gone away.

(Not to mention the fact that I now consider 4 GB of *usable* RAM to be the bare minimum for an enthusiast or power user system... both my home and work primary desktops now have 8 GB.)

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 4:19 pm
by bthylafh
just brew it! wrote:
(since old 32-bit XP drivers don't work on Vista/7 anyhow)


Not entirely true. I ran the 32-bit Win7 beta and at least temporarily was using the WinXP 3Com driver. You can also use WinXP video drivers with 32-bit Vista and 7, though with Intel stuff that /only/ works on Vista.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 4:28 pm
by just brew it!
bthylafh wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
(since old 32-bit XP drivers don't work on Vista/7 anyhow)

Not entirely true. I ran the 32-bit Win7 beta and at least temporarily was using the WinXP 3Com driver. You can also use WinXP video drivers with 32-bit Vista and 7, though with Intel stuff that /only/ works on Vista.

Heh... I stand corrected. This sort of flies in the face of the claim that "there's no reason to run 32-bit" any more though. Still, it's an oddball situation that should not affect very many people. If you really need to run that old hardware for some reason, hook it up to an old 32-bit XP system, or run Linux; use a 64-bit OS for your new builds.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 5:41 pm
by DeadOfKnight
Well I just keep the 32-bit version on my keys at all times for troubleshooting purposes. I suppose 64-bit would work just as well but if I'm ever helping someone without the hardware to support it then it will be useless.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 5:53 pm
by JustAnEngineer
x86-64 has been in wide use since 2003. Get with the program, already. :lol:

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 5:58 pm
by just brew it!
DeadOfKnight wrote:
Well I just keep the 32-bit version on my keys at all times for troubleshooting purposes. I suppose 64-bit would work just as well but if I'm ever helping someone without the hardware to support it then it will be useless.

If you're still supporting people on older hardware, it makes sense.

JustAnEngineer wrote:
x86-64 has been in wide use since 2003. Get with the program, already. :lol:

Makes sense for new installs on hardware that supports it. If you're supporting legacy systems, YMMV.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:11 pm
by notfred
Skrying wrote:
Windows is far more stable in my experience than any distro of Linux I've tried.
I think you are misusing "stable". Linux in any format is absolutely stable, if you don't mess with it what works keeps working and what doesn't work keeps not working. My experience with Microsoft OS has been that whilst more may work up front, small changes in one area tend to cause big issues in another area, that's why I ditched them and went with Linux several years ago. Various distros of Linux have various things that may be horribly broken for you, but at least it is consistent across machines.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:43 pm
by just brew it!
Yes, Linux seems to have the concept of modularity down, to a degree that Microsoft could never match. I suppose the fact that much of it has been developed by a horde of volunteers has made that a necessity -- if all the pieces were as inter-dependent as they are on Windows, Linux would've never gotten off the ground.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:44 pm
by swaaye
I like Linux on my network hardware and my servers but I dunno about the desktop experience. I give the various distros a shot occasionally.

But it could be said that I don't know what I'm talking about because I've never run a Windows server because the software isn't free. :)

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:03 pm
by just brew it!
swaaye wrote:
I like Linux on my network hardware and my servers but I dunno about the desktop experience. I give the various distros a shot occasionally.

But it could be said that I don't know what I'm talking about because I've never run a Windows server because the software isn't free. :)

Linux's forte is still on the server side, but the desktop has caught up from a technical perspective. Windows' advantage on the desktop these days is mainly due to inertia -- there's a chicken-and-egg issue where many commercial software vendors still aren't willing to port to Linux because the installed base isn't big enough, and the installed base is growing very slowly because people can't run the commercial apps they're familiar with.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 10:47 pm
by kc77
puppetworx wrote:
I'm one of you now, hail linux.


Welcome aboard. :D

Second or third the Ubuntu LTS/Deb option. 64 bit is probably a good idea. Although there's some rare video codecs (Intel Video 5), and a certain Genesis emulator I like (Yes I play Streets of Rage...so what). But other than that you're golden. If you run into issues just holla. Although since it's your first time using Linux... just use it for now until you feel comfortable. Then start screwing it up...lol Welcome the the dark side.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:00 pm
by StuG
I work with Linux all the time at my work. I want to like it so much, so so much. But, whenever I use Windows things just work. Everything is laid out in an easy format and things are generally intuitive. If Linux ever worked properly for me as an OS maybe I would be happier with it. I always seem to run into hardware incompatibility, features not working as intended, or wishing I had all my of computer games on my work space area.

At the end of the day, I never have a reason to permanently change. :(

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:05 pm
by just brew it!
StuG wrote:
I work with Linux all the time at my work. I want to like it so much, so so much. But, whenever I use Windows things just work. Everything is laid out in an easy format and things are generally intuitive. If Linux ever worked properly for me as an OS maybe I would be happier with it. I always seem to run into hardware incompatibility, features not working as intended, or wishing I had all my of computer games on my work space area.

At the end of the day, I never have a reason to permanently change. :(

Which distros have you tried? As noted above, bleeding edge distros like Fedora that have frequent releases are sometimes a bit half-baked.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:13 pm
by clone
.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:16 pm
by StuG
just brew it! wrote:
Which distros have you tried? As noted above, bleeding edge distros like Fedora that have frequent releases are sometimes a bit half-baked.


I have tried Ubuntu (the last 3 release distros), Mandriva, CentOS

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:27 pm
by just brew it!
StuG wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Which distros have you tried? As noted above, bleeding edge distros like Fedora that have frequent releases are sometimes a bit half-baked.

I have tried Ubuntu (the last 3 release distros), Mandriva, CentOS

I've been quite happy with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS; no major issues. Haven't tried Mandriva. CentOS is probably a good choice if you are setting up servers, but sub-optimal for a desktop system.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:47 am
by puppetworx
Given the recommendations I'm going to dual boot and then switch to Ubuntu 10.04 x64 over the course of the next few days. I'm really enjoying Fedora 15 x64/Gnome 3 but have noticed a few bugs/incompatibility - Occasional screen artefacts in Gnome 3, gPodder doesn't start, xGuest doesn't start. They aren't significant issues but I'd rather not spend the time troubleshooting and switch to a more reliable and supported release.

Most importantly though I can use all my regular text editors, journalling software, browsers and other software. Backups (fwbackups) are easy. Getting a system use ready is crazy fast using repositories - so much so that it makes me cringe thinking of having to install Windows ever again. I'm becoming a total Linux fanboy.

Re: Come at me Microsoft

Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 3:40 am
by Bensam123
Your drive can be dying without getting bad sectors. Everything you're pointing to sounds exactly like a hard drive death in motion. I'd try swapping it for another.