Category: Compgeeky

…about Ubuntu

/sarcasm on

I just looooove the upgrade functionality!

/sarcasm off

*heh*

Besides the “breaking” of various configuration files that happens almost routinely whenever an upDATE occurs (though less and less in recent months), that’s NOTHING compared to an upGRADE from 8.04 to 8.10.

Killed my nVidia graphics drivers. Dead, dead, dead. Not only were the drivers for my nVidia GeForce 6100 gone, but the config file for my monitor had been consigned to the bit bucket as well. No listing for it in 8.10, where 8.04 (lately updated, granted) had a config file for my monitor. Try 800X600 resolution on a monitor with a native 1680X1050 resolution. *yech*

Soooo. in HUGE MODE, nav’ed to Terminal and used apt-get to REINSTALL the lame-o drivers for nVidia that Ub untu reluctantly makes available. Used them to get a sensible display resolution set. THEN I could actually get to the Synaptics Package Manager to easily reinstall EnvyNG (which downloads and installs much better drivers than Canonical does).

OK, a few hoops to jump through. Notaproblem, but would be for “Aunt Tilly” you know? (Of course, “Aunt Tilly” would probably not attempt upgrading from one version of the OS to another *heh*)

Still, not as bad as most version upgrades I’ve done on Windows computers, but still irksome. A “Favorite Thing”? Notsomuch.

Well, I never did get around to installing the UNofficial Windows 7 beta (really offically late alpha) in a VM. Now, I need to reinstall VMWare Server, after a kernel update seems to have fried things (oh, the joys of “almost ready for Aunt Tilly” Ubuntu). Why? Well, because I need my WInXP, Win2K, Win98 and various other ‘nix-flavored “computers” running in VMs and because… I just downloaded the official Windows 7 Beta from Microsoft, and it’s only good through August (although I hear rumors there’s a way to kil the kill switch, I will NOT be attempting any such thing).

I did get a few of “page not loading” errors before I finally managed to get MS to cough up the download. Slow. Took 1.5 hours for the measly 3.15GB. *heh* And that’s another thing that kinda surprised me. I waited until tonight to download it. Microsoft announced that only 2.5 million downloads of the beta were being offered. Where was the demand?

Of course, I do NOT want to put it on a machine we’d need for daily use here at twc central, because Microsoft is waffling (so what else is new?) on its official release date for Windows 7 and because, well, it is beta software. Well, you can hardly blame ’em after the (well-earned) beating Microsoft has taken for Vista. (I’m still pulling out hair I can ill-afford to lose over Vista’s finicky networking. You try to get 64-bit Vista talking with 64-bit XP. The Microsoft Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder patch that does an OK job making 32-bit XP computers visible to Vista computers is… 32-bit, and–so far–does NOT do the job with 64-bit XP computers I’ve tried it with [naturally] as the only “nearly-MS-approved” method, since a 64-bit version of the patch seems to be AWOL. Thanks, Microsoft. Yeh, yeh, I’ve downloaded the source code from Microsoft to build it for “other operating systems”, but… .)

Well, maybe I ought to just slap another compy together and see if the system requirements listed (1Ghz processor, 1GB RAM, etc.) by Microsoft will really run Windows 7. (My bet is NOT. MS consistently understates basic requirements, enticing folks who shouldn’t attempt to load an OS to do so, but maybe the zebra can change his stripes. And yes, I mangled the old metaphor because it sometimes seems that shrink wrap betas, bait and switches and other increasingly prevalent MS tactics shopuld deserve some stripes, at times. *heh*)

Anywho, I have through August to test this out, so I may just put it on the back burner for a while and concentrate on more pressing tasks around here. Yeh, that’s probably a Good Idea, what with all those Resolutions staring me in the face every day. 🙂

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Note: Downloading the Win7 Beta requires having either Silverlight installed on your Windows box or Moonlight, an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight for Unix systems on your ‘nix box. Using Moonlight was not a happy-making thing on my Ubuntu box, and since I prefer burning ISOs outside VMs anyway (“anyway” because I need to reinstall VMWare Server, you recall), I used a 32-bit WinXP system to download and burn the 64-bit Win7 beta. But. Methought to meself, “Self, better d/l the 32-bit as well,” so went through that super-frustrating experience on my Ubuntu box using Moonlight. Succeeded, but not w/o losing some more hair…

That said and done, here are some direct download links that may work. No promises, and do scan these downloads for malware as you would ANY download.

32-bit Windows 7 Beta direct link

64-bit Windows 7 Beta direct link

Note also that you must visit the Silverlight disenabled Microsoft site to obtain your product key. Oh, you also have to have a Microsoft Live ID. Use a throwaway email address for that, if you wish.

Oh, and (another tagalong) Why Windows 7? The version number Windows 7 calls itself by is Windows version 6.1 (Vista was 6.0). An explanation at the Windows Vista Blog gives some reasons, and if you believe all that jazz, I have some nice bottom land I’d like to sell you (only I’d rather not mention just what it’s on the bottom of).

Long ago, I stopped being flabbergasted by folks who have no idea what their operating system is. Some, when asked, will respond “Microsoft” or “Word” or “Microsoft Office” (or just “Office”) or “Internet Explorer” or some random word/phrase based loosely on “Windows” or variation of whatever program they use most often, usually just whatever came installed on the computer when they bought it, and they’re usually obstinately vague about whatever version of that most-used program is. Most don’t know (seriously–I’m not kidding here!) any difference between whatever web browser or email client they use (not that they know what email client they use) and their operating system.

And they don’t really care, as long as things look familiar, they can type and mouse and click to get wherever their stubby lil brains can manage to go on the internet using whatever browser they have been trained however poorly to use (usually by default Internet Exploder, but more and more often now some other browser, installed by a friend or relative who is simply tired of being bothered by a naif who gets in trouble using Internet Exploder).

So who really needs “upgrading” to Microsoft’s latest-greatest OS offering?

Microsoft will claim more than 300 million installations of Vista since its release, but most of those are consumer PCs sold through retailers and direct distributors. According to a recent survey by ITIC and Sunbelt Software of more than 700 senior corporate executives, only 10 percent had deployed Vista on their desktops, whereas 88 percent reported Windows XP as their primary client OS.¹

Most software and hardware works well enough with XP, and software that won’t you probably don’t really need anyway. WinXP 64-bit, for those who have made the move to 64-bit computers, is as stable as Win2K (M$’s best overall OS to date, IMO) and more nimble, less hardware demanding, than Vista. Not that Vista is a particularly bad OS, but why retrain for a new OS (with new, not always better and often more obscurantist ways of doing things) that is far more demanding of hardware when an existing OS is just “good enough”?

That’s probably one reason so many folks who’ve bought one of those new comps with Vista on them have called on techie friends or paid some tech to “downgrade” ’em to XP, and it’s certainly a big reason why nearly 90% of computers used in businesses still use XP. (Another reason many have downgraded or kept XP is likely just that they can’t handle the learning curve Vista requires them to climb–a learning curve that is in some ways steeper than simply switching to a modern Linux distro with a nice Windows-like GUI.)

Continue reading “CompGeeky: OSes, Browsers and Word Processors, Oh My!”