Quote:
Originally Posted by
Liranan
It's obvious you don't really understand Linux.
Linux wass not made to replace Windows, it was made as a separate OS that has become the (invisible) dominant OS in the world. Linux runs on over 90% of all appliances, ranging from routers (100% market share), fridges, phones (Android), PC's and servers (close to 100% market share). Linux offers stability that Windows can't, which is why any serious server or uses Linux and no mainframe maker would dare consider Windows.
When it comes to desktop use on the other hand Linux is lacking in certain area's and the most glaring problem Windows has is with proprietary Windows programs as developers refuse to port their programs to Linux. Adobe claim that the reason they don't port to Linux is because Linux users won't pay for software. Steam proves them wrong so it's, most likely, 'encouraged' by M$py money.
It's a stolen Unix, pretty much. It just continues in other Nix steps, offering a cheaper alternative to Unix.
There are plenty Windows servers, kiosks, payment machines, banking machines/ATM, etc. Not saying it's good or terrible. Who ever makes them always has some reason why they choose Win or Lin or Unix or go custom altogether.
Most Intel machines are running Linux anyway, in the ME spy hardware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
enorbet2
ping JackCY - I apologize for the link to an older review on Porteus that mentioned a download feature (build iso on-the-fly) that has been deprecated. However ieverything else is true and current such as lightweight plus speed and their packaging makes any addition to base system trivial. I don't keep up very often with Porteus, Slax, Salix, or any of the other Slackware derivatives since Alien Bob's Live Slack. With Syslinux and PXE boot plus persistence and all the boot options it solves portability as well as semi-permanent and permanent usage. It's by far the best Live Distro I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
Regarding Linux and older nVidia on laptops I have a Thinkpad T61 with a Core 2 Duo and nVidia Quadro and Live Slack boots with the contained nVidia proprietary driver, wireless is immediately activated and available and everything works "right out of the box".
You are mistaken that nVidia Linux drivers weren't available in 2007. They were available by 2000 and even had drivers for OS/2 in 1997. I know this not from some list but because I had OS/2 by 1993 and still have a running copy today and began using Linux in 1999.
I am particularly curious to have you name some of these Windows-only apps to which you have alluded. Can you list a few please?
No problem, I'm just positing for anyone else reading along or in future, I know it's pretty normal with how Linux changes things get lost in time and new pop up. Which is good and bad at the same time.
Some apps are listed above.
But lets say the most obvious issues I've had in the past were with no decent C++ development studio IDE with visual debugger. Sure later there was QT studio, no idea what's it called precisely but it came with QT and targeted at developing QT apps. CodeBlocks may be still used nowadays, I've used it at the beginning on Windows but it just doesn't have the VIsual Studio kind of wide and advanced features. Netbeans, Eclipse, crash after crash on Linux, rock stable on Windows, hopefully they patched it by now, especially Netbeans was horrible. Total Commander as listed above, any alternative?
And then I may occasionally use apps such as Adams Car,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSC_ADAMS,
Quote:
SUSE ES 11 SP4
SUSE ES 12 SP1 RH EL 7.1
RH EL 7.3
(1) Please Note that the 2012 product releases of most MSC Software products was the last release that supports the 32-bit Linux platform as well as the 64-bit UNIX hardware platforms including IBM, HP, Sun, and Intel Itanium.
But it depends what you can get your hands on, so if you get a Windows version, that is what you have. At least my install is simply "setup.exe" I don't see any Linux binaries to run setup.
Of course Adobe and 3DSMax etc. sure they have free alternatives, some are fine I guess 3DS is not as difficult to replace unless one has crap ton of plugins and scripts and what not for it, but with Photoshop as much as it's a crap app in some ways Gimp doesn't come close yet and I've tried other as well. Corel died long ago, acquiring other software and specializing, leaving Photoshop to reign unchallenged for what it is used today, well about everything. For painting... probably wouldn't use it, but for image editing, it's fineish as fine can be.
The problem with Linux is that there are too many flavors, most paid ones are server use only/mostly leaving the only Nix based OS that is solid, updated, supported and here to stay is MacOS variants. But then MacOS is again a hybrid kernel. Linux needs 1 distribution that is backed up and supported by a big company, just like Android and such. There can be 10 million, and probably are, Linux distros user supported, all nice and dandy but not a single one stands out or has software support from other major companies, again leaving it up to free coders to fill in the void. In 10 years, maybe, if games swap to Linux in a 50:50 way at least then the user base will move for sure as long as the Linux drivers get better, which has taken both NV and AMD decades and AMD is still not there and from seeing how NV does compared to AMD in benchmarks, they have a long way to go as well. If you know benches of new DX11/12/Vulkan games Win vs Linux on recent drivers and hardware share them I'm curious and have been asking for ages but all Linux sites just seem to test Linux drivers vs other Linux drivers and forget to compare vs Windows the #1 competitor when it comes to drivers.
I think I will just wait until all hardware supports virtualization fully and properly, then use QEMU or what it was can run each app in what ever container with what ever OS it needs. But unless you have server hardware this options is still out of reach for mortals.
What hardware was supported or not time ago, depended on what distro with what Kernel. This monolithic design has some major drawbacks but Linus probably never abandons it, we will have to wait for his demise first.
Next is the divided window manager/GUI and the need for apps to either be compiled to install them or have a package in this or that distro, where as with Windows I can download an app and it will work on Win95 and Win10 the same if it's a 32bit, or later Win when 64bit. With Linux one has to be lucky to find the app for the specific Linux distro, in the package mess, with the specific GUI being supported. Sure variety is nice but a unified interface as well where an app would work on any Linux distro with ANY GUI even text mode could hell be done for the minimal machines. But that's just not in the cards for Linux to get more unified any time soon.
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So far I have here to test:
lubuntu desktop+alternate (debian-ubuntu), mint-cinnamon+mate (debian-ubuntu), manjaro-xfce (arch), puppy-slacko+xenial (debian-ubuntu-slackware).
Puppy-slacko... out, they can't be bothered to include all languages, not gonna scout the internet to manually install, a bad sign for any distro being too "raw". Not yet implemented, not automated messages, well nice to notify the user, but not useful. Couldn't even detect the right monitor resolution.
665MB used RAM... damn so much for a minimal distro. No install option anyway, moving on. Firefox 38.8, what a joke, this distro is dated dead. Won't show support for even H264 and so on, which worked just fine everything except VP9 in Firefox latest on Win10. Goodbye Puppy-slacko.
Puppy-xenial, resolution detected immediately just fine. UI looks way more modern and usable. 823MB used. Well that's almost as much as a full blown Win10 Pro 64bit. So much bloat in the apps. At least it has an install option and so on. Palemoon web browser, at least it's more up to date some Firefox clone can play everything same as latest FF on Win10. No Vsync, really? Come on. Probably already managed to break it in 10min not even trying, firefox won't install. And the GUI choices made, ... Goodbye another dog.
Mint-cinnamon, 434MB used, no joke, that big a difference, no hassle, starts and done, no need to configure stuff and get some resolution working or anything. With Firefox open, used RAM? 647MB, yeah lower than both Dogs and that's with Firefox open and using a fancier GUI. I still think the rendering of GUI is slow as hell and Vsync may not be on hard to tell, latest v57 Firefox. But, checking drivers, first errorm, failed to download repository information, well there you go, typical Linux mess. But hey shows GPU and CPU update options so lets give it a go. Oh yeah this machine is done unusable when installing things, goes into a crawl. Seems the process scheduler is as pathetic as in Windows, nothing special here to see. Can't even switch desktops back to see what's going on with the updates. User interaction... move mouse wait a minute. Faster to reboot than to wait for it. 433MB RAM used on next boot, so it stays low it's not a fluke. Although it probably is reporting garbage when it comes to RAM, 427MB used 770MB free, that's 1193MB and not 2047MB, yeah Mint you're stealing RAM somewhere and making apps report trash. 613MB in htop shows, all rest shows 439MB right now. Probably same memory hog as Puppy, just better at hiding it. 75MB free RAM in top just installing NV and Intel driver update... mmm... Linux... what the hell? Even Win10 doesn't do such horrific memory usage and it's actually much better than older Win except Win95-ME+2k-XP. Maybe Mint stole some RAM for it's live session? That would explain where so much RAM has gone. Still even after driver update it's like watching 30fps slideshow dragging windows in Linux as always, do they ever render at least 60fps Vsynced? Maybe I'm just spoiled from Windows where drivers have been fineish for ages and GUI renders fast and synced. So far Mint seems usable and the GUI is decently made and thought out unlike most Nix based systems I've seen. Well it did not survive me pulling the USB drive out, puppies did. Don't matter I need an install anyway, just a curiosity.
Relaunch, 413 used, 812 free. Seems Vsynced but laggy compared to Windows. No H.264 in FF again, driver update, ... still no H.264. Well in that case Puppy-xenial was actually better and had a fully working Firefox clone. But wait, really? VP9 supported but H.264 not? LOL, since when? Lets test that out. Oh well, right now it's in crawl just trying to play a video. And it's locked up, just like that, ...Linux, stable it makes me cry a Win95 might be stable more than this. And yes that was on stock clocks and volts this time, no OC. My guess is it either died internally or locked up because RAM got all used and HDD won't make even mouse move. Still Win10 Pro no problems like this at all, it "just" works, didn't have to install any drivers, nothing, just let it update itself and that was it, plays all videos fine except 1440p60 from YouTube in H.264 drops frames for some reason. But 1440p30 is alright. Well now it plays in Mint without driver updates, but oh man is it bad, VP9 software decode, what the hell Mint? Just add H.264 hardware decode support out of the box, everyone else sensible does for decade+. Even the H264 plugin in FF is installed, so what is going on here Mint... Manually installing codecs via Mint GUI, why is it not installed already by default in 2017 I don't know, there almost not an app that doesn't use videos in some form these days. Error after error trying to install it, Linux typical. BUT now FF shows H.264 supported, sadly also VP9 which will probably take preference and kill video performance, should be configurable in FF hopefully still to force it to not prioritize VP9. Yeah VP9 is default, gotta manually dig to switch it off because Mint enables the slowest on earth VP9 software decode instead. And the memory just gave out it's full and whole thing froze again. Mint... doesn't look good at all, waaay worse and bloated as hell more than Win10. Playing the same video on Win10 right now, still 700MB free left, 700MB wait just jumped to 747MB, so yeah somewhere around 700-750MB free and no lock ups. 769MB... What is Win10 doing I don't know but I will take the free RAM thank you.
Mint-mate, 313MB used, 797MB free, so again hiding some used RAM somewhere, 488MB used in htop. A bit ligher than cinnamon. When other sites reported it being the other way around. Hard to tell with this Mint RAM stealing and hiding. No Vsync but it feels snappier moving windows around. Drivers installed still no Vsync...
But mate seems a little more usable, oh oh, nope, it doesn't, Firefox bigger window lags when dragging, H.264 not supported? What the hell? Now it's slowly dying when USB has been pulled so I can copy Mint Cinnamon onto it again to check the Firefox on that one again.
Lubuntu, 201MB used, 1227MB free RAM. 333MB in htop. Proper resolution but no Vsync. Everything in FF supported no need to install codecs etc. Sadly VP9 also enabled so it will prioritize the software slow decode VP9 instead of fast hardware decode H.264 by default. Guess what though, the CPU is hammered playing 1440p VP9 but it actually runs smooth and this particular video I couldn't get to run in Win10 1440p hardware H.264 smooth because it was failing to HW decode at 1440p it would only do 1080p for some reason, probably GPU doesn't support more than 1080p decode, odd, dated GPU. And now the CPU shows around 50-80% load that's not bad at all, lets see 4k
So far Lubuntu seems fast, faster than Win10 for videos in FF. Yeah no chance 4k24, but 1440p24 works in VP9 without killing the CPU or running out of RAM, still RAM left to use. No Vsync but it's snappy, fast, seems fine out of the box. In the lubuntu task manager playing 1440p24 in FF still shows 869MB used out of 1996MB of course elsewhere it's only 217MB free shown. Lets see what it does with FF playing video while updating drivers, so far no problem running fine. No lock ups no crash, 68MB free and on we go play next video, still going, dropping frames here and there but keeps on going, now it's smooth again, the driver install is taking ages though. Ha, just finished. Still no Vsync. Videos play fine 1440p24 VP9. Sad to see this one go, but on we go to Manjaro. Again doesn't like the USB to be pulled away which is not surprising when the RAM usage was so low it didn't load it up to RAM.
Manjaro, booted with non free drivers localized and all, no Vsync, 370MB used 117MB free RAM. 22% used in task manager that's around 450MB, sometimes it's laggy though when a window is first dragged after some time. v56 firefox but that's not so bad. Again everything supported in FF including VP9. Resizing windows is a pain the limit to drag is tiny 1px or something and window snapping was better on some previous distros. 1440p24 VP9 runs fine as it did on Lubuntu. 50% RAM use, CPU 50-80% about same. This and Lubuntu seem the most hassle free, no idea what was up with Mint maybe it just doesn't like to run live or the Cinnamon and Mate are truly killing performance. And... here we go it locks up shortly after switching from 1080p fullscreen video playback in FF. RAM 50% so it's not that. CPU 100% though. Well what can I say as much as this PC used to be unstable, after installing fresh Win10 it didn't lock up on me once because I would overload it with these common apps and tasks. Let's try the free drivers now. That seems like a faster boot, no lag yet, 352MB used, 417MB free and the free app is reconfigured heh, odd, 562MB used in htop, 21% used in task manger that's 430MB. Do my eyes fool me or is this the first Vsynced lag free, seems like it. FF everything supported including VP9 again, but the playback seem a little worse with these free drivers, 50% RAM usage, and tends to drop frames a little more as CPU runs with higher utilization 70-90% instead of 50-80%, unfortunate. It can read hardware sensors, nice. ISO is outdated, have to DL almost 700MB of updates, they need to make their ISOs up to date, built daily not monthly+. The proprietary drivers can be set to Vsync enabled by knowing to enable force composition pipeline which doesn't even have any Vsync in the name or description so good luck computer unsavvy people to know about it. And both free and non free drivers versions lock up doing update and watching a video, so... Linux super stable and awesome? Where does that come from? I'm not seeing it first hand. Certainly not as trouble free as Windows can be, if everything is just right, then yes Linux is fine, but, something a little in a way that it doesn't work with well, done, no warnings, no messages, no attempts to recover, just locks up and user interaction dies. Installed these lock ups should go more or less away and on a machine with plenty RAM I'm sure others think I'm nuts, but try a low RAM machine, with live distros that try to show you the OS in it's greatness live without installing and you will see just how bad it can get.
Update done: failed to commit transaction, invalid or corrupted package: expecting package name here? me too, there is none, Linux...
Just installing updates with nothing else running at all beside htop and task manager, the RAM gets all used and machine goes into crawl, by crawl I mean it locks up and you wait and wait before even a cursor can be moved long time later. On Win10? No problem with installing updates at all, not like this by a mile.