Best Version of Windows?

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Oziphantom
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Oziphantom »

koitsu wrote:So Linux is the best version of Windows? 'k.
Not even close ;)
tepples wrote:Or, more rigorously:
Wine on X11/Linux is probably the best environment for running Windows applications once Windows 7 sunsets, particularly on desktop or laptop hardware that Linux supports and FreeBSD does not.
Reminds me of the OS/2 warp days, its a better Windows 3.1
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slembcke
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by slembcke »

koitsu wrote:So Linux is the best version of Windows? 'k.
LOL, the these sorts of threads. I don't care which version of Windows is the best one if it's not the latest one since there's no point in trying to keep old versions running when MS really doesn't want you to. I had a bad enough experience with Windows 10 that I installed Linux again and found it to be pleasant and usable experience over a 4 month experience. (This was full time use during work hours, and split with OS X at home) Then again I've always considered the best version of Windows to be not Windows, so take from that what you will. :roll:
Last edited by slembcke on Sat Aug 11, 2018 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Fisher
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Fisher »

A friend used to say: "The best Windows version is the one wich have a penguin as mascot." lol!

I had a nice experience with win9x back in the day. It started to fail when I finally could get an internet connection. It really pushed the OS hard!

XP was nice, but once I had kids I just became tired of restoring/reinstalling every week or so.
Then I tried Linux. It was hard at the beginning, but now it's nice and smooth!
The PC in question is used for trivial things only like websurf, video watching, etc. No specialised things like video or picture editing.
I used to do small programming on it when I was at university, but after that just some shell scripting wich is a great upgrade to who used to use .bat files!
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Hojo_Norem
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Hojo_Norem »

Just to be the second person to mention ReactOS :wink: , the latest alpha version that was released late last month is now capable of hosting it's own build environment. ReactOS can now build ReactOS...

Apparently it could in the past, but that was when the kernel was full of hacks to make things work. After the removal of those hacks it's taken until now for development to have progressed to the point where ReactOS's workings are sufficient to run their build software.

I think ReactOS is one of those strange projects where it probably started off with people saying "good luck to ya!" to the devs trying to get the project off the ground. It flounders for a while with little real development until it gets to the point where enough 'stuff' is working that more people start to get interested, users and devs.

Now ReactOS has the starlings of a emulated DOS VM from which parts will hopefully develop into a compatibility layer for 16bit applications... hopefully on 64bit. Even though the majority of the kernel is targeting XP/Server 2003, there are already compatibility shims in place that allow some Vista/7/8.1 software to run.
Insert witty sig. here...
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Banshaku
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Banshaku »

Until support is over, for now the best version is Windows 7. The only issue is when you need to reinstall it and windows update take days to update it (remember doing that once). I would return to 7 but this is one step I want to avoid for now. 10 is working, when the telemetry service and super fetch doesn't decide to grind my hd for laugh or something.
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Fisher
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Fisher »

Banshaku wrote:windows update take days to update it
When I worked at a computer repair shop, we used WSUS Offline Update.
This allowed the PCs to be delivered with most, if not all updates installed in a couple of hours instead of days.
There may be other/better solutions, but that's what I know and it was pretty good back on the day.
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Bregalad
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Bregalad »

Hojo_Norem wrote:Just to be the second person to mention ReactOS :wink: , the latest alpha version that was released late last month is now capable of hosting it's own build environment. ReactOS can now build ReactOS...
Looks promising ! However I really don't care if it can build itself, that's really the last of my concern. I'm more concerned as if it is actually usable, and if it is in the same state as earlier Linuxes.... we will have to wait quite a lot of time before it gets fully usuable. By then 128-bit programs are going to be obsolete, and any electronic machine is going to turn into a spying machine that uses AI to try to manipulate people's feelings and taste to sell them as much shit as possible.
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koitsu
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by koitsu »

Fisher wrote:There may be other/better solutions, but that's what I know and it was pretty good back on the day.
dism.exe combined with Microsoft Update Catalog to download the KBs. Both are official Microsoft tools/things, thus no third-party reliance. This is how I've maintained my own Windows 7 installation for several years now (for XP, I used the third-party tool nLite, which was wonderful -- the W7+ compatible nLite is completely awful). I have a single script I maintain (not taken from the Internet), slipstream.bat, that applies all the updates in a particular order (the order does matter). This also includes adding several drivers (good examples are USB 3.0 drivers, AHCI/SATA drivers, chipset INFs/drivers, and NIC drivers).

This methodology "might" work for Windows 10 (documentation implies it), but the fact remains Microsoft really doesn't give a sh** what anyone thinks any more, end-users or businesses:

* https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ating.html
* https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ponds.html
* https://www.askwoody.com/2018/patch-lady-my-response/

If you care about this sort of thing, i.e. aren't sure whether or not to apply a KB, askwoody.com (and his Twitter account @woodyleonhard) is the best there is. In general, my patching methodology involves waiting up to 1-2 months before actually applying KBs due to Microsoft's recent-ish track record of adding telemetry or outright breaking things. It just so happens that's the same model that Woody tends to advocate.

I can't believe I'm saying this (esp. because I've met the guy twice -- did not particularly impress me, while Gates was actually super nice and highly technical), but I actually pine for the days of Steve Ballmer running the place. There was at least, under his rule (and Gates' rule), a semblance of understanding that for businesses alone, sane/proper updating and stable updates were important. With Nadella, I believe the motto is "we'll do whatever we want, you're our guinea pigs", even to businesses. It's the wild west with Nadella.

Anyway...

Apparently my double-entendre joke ("So Linux is the best version of Windows? 'k") flew over the heads of everyone. It was tongue-in-cheek, meaning it was half truth, half jest: I guess I'm the only one aware of this (this is not for desktop, but it's their proposed OS for IoT-esque devices, and almost certainly going to be used in upcoming XBox products). Scared yet?

But really, the problem with Windows isn't the kernel (that seems to be getting better all the time), it's everything else that makes up Windows on the software side that makes it a Sad Panda. The part that's hard for all of us to stomach is that it doesn't have to be this way -- and we know that from 25 years of historical experience with Windows versions.

ReactOS has historically been a complete joke, but in the past year or two, has *massively* undergone positive changes and is becoming an actual, real contender. I follow it on occasion -- and don't tell anyone, but I secretly have my fingers crossed that it continues down this avenue because it just might be what I end up running someday.
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tokumaru
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tokumaru »

Banshaku wrote:The only issue is when you need to reinstall it and windows update take days to update it
You can download updated ISOs with the updates integrated, so you don't have to go through this. These are obviously unofficial, but they work perfectly fine. You can make your own ISO using free tools, if you're suspicious.
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TmEE
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by TmEE »

koitsu wrote:ReactOS has historically been a complete joke, but in the past year or two, has *massively* undergone positive changes and is becoming an actual, real contender. I follow it on occasion -- and don't tell anyone, but I secretly have my fingers crossed that it continues down this avenue because it just might be what I end up running someday.
I am really hoping by the time XP is no longer usable, ReactOS has become something really nice, I don't really want to go to the world of linux and likenesses lol.
jmorgan1993
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by jmorgan1993 »

My personal favorite will be Windows 8.1.
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tokumaru
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tokumaru »

Something really creepy just happened to me on Windows 10... The Microsoft Store and several apps (Calculator, Photos, etc.) refuse to open. They start to load, but before they display anything they just close. I can't find any fix for it, and apparently it's an issue that goes way back to 2014 judging by online searches. No thread about this problem reached a consensus on what the solution is. I tried a few things and nothing worked.

This was after an update, and this is what I have the most about modern software... Everything is fine, but an update comes along and breaks stuff. It happened to me on Linux before, and now on Windows 10. Is a reliable OS too much to ask for?
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koitsu
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by koitsu »

tokumaru wrote:Is a reliable OS too much to ask for?
Yes, assuming the maintainers or software developers of the OS and/or its applications are a) young, b) inexperienced (read: do not know why it's a Bad Idea to do Thing X due to lack of history), c) doing "bare minimum" work (i.e. "ship it" mentality), or a combination of any of these. Doesn't matter if the OS is free or commercial -- we're seeing a pretty distinct downfall in the quality of both OSes as well as software applications in general. But answering honestly and personally: no, it's not too much to ask for (and this is why I tend to stick to "older" OSes, "older" programs, "older" things).

I think partially it can be blamed on the huge influx of programmers introduced in the last ~20 years, and partially on the fact that we've lowered the bar by making technology (and programming) "so easy" that nobody bothers to learn things at a lower level nor care to ask "is this a bad idea?" (instead the driving force is "code it/release it, worry about the effects of that later" -- bad mentality). Ask a 20-something programmer if they know anything about Xerox PARC and what was actually going on there in the 70s/80s. Hell, ask them if they know what Doug Engelbart was most famously known for (answer if you don't know). I've been seeing a lot of people "re-discovering" things we already knew or did in the 80s/90s, and when asked "you mean like {thing} from 30 years ago?" they go "huh?" or "that's OLD" and then become defensive. The goal is no longer "understand technology and improve it gradually, really thinking deeply about things, and involve people who have more knowledge and historical experience or at least ask them along the way", the goal is "I LIKE TO DO THINGS WITH COMPUTERS" (yes, somehow the statement is the goal), to which I always say "right". It also explains why we have a huge influx of awful programming languages in the past 20 years -- they're less about introducing real improvements, but more about trying to reinvent the wheel because they didn't like how {other PL} did something, all while pushing wasteful things like excess abstraction (often being "make all the things objects!"). Get guys like Luca Cardelli involved, not Rob Pike or Guido van Rossum. Anyway...

When it comes to Windows, it's sad, because the kernel itself continues to get better every OS release. It's all the "other crap" that makes Windows what it that's getting worse. Windows would run just fine without the "Microsoft Store" or some kind of weird apps. Some Linux distros (ex. Ubuntu) are beginning to do the same thing, shoving more and more "junk" into the system by default rather than just keeping the OS (and the GUI) bare/simple and letting people essentially own/use what is designed.
Oziphantom
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Oziphantom »

Is all comes back to Apple.

the modern push to update every year, comes from them. They use their marketing skills( the only real skills they have) To convince people that the yearly updates make them more innovative, better, smarter etc. The problem is Apple can't actually maintain their yearly updates, iOS updates are getting to be a joke, macOS also. But Windows has been lagging with everybody jumping aboard the "innovation train" so they have needed to follow suit. However MS has mostly been able to keep up, just a 0.00001% flaw when you have 200,000,000 = 2,000 people see it.

I trust you have done a sfc repair?
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gauauu
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by gauauu »

tokumaru wrote: This was after an update, and this is what I have the most about modern software... Everything is fine, but an update comes along and breaks stuff. It happened to me on Linux before, and now on Windows 10. Is a reliable OS too much to ask for?
Just this week, my windows 10 updated itself, and now I can't get any sound out of my laptop speakers (I have to plug in headphones or external speakers). Windows 10 is where linux was a few years ago, where stuff just randomly breaks ALL THE TIME.
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