[JackA]

On Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 1:07:04 PM UTC-5, Angus Kerr wrote:
On Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at 10:33:14 PM UTC+2, geoff wrote:
On 5/11/2015 7:41 a.m., Angus Kerr wrote:
I chucked Windows 8 off my wife's laptop because of the kindergarten
looking interface.

Kindy-looking applish interface not the best reason to chuck Win8 -
install ClassicShell and you can have any UI look you like, way back to
Win95 style.

Plenty of other reasons to chuck Win8 though, apparently.

And you don't feel at all hamstrung by your Linux choice apparently. Do
you keep up with the current SOTA on your 'work' machine, to see if
there is anything that you are missing out on ?

geoff

Look, Linux was a massive learning curve. But that was in 06 when Linux still had some driver issues with wifi and 3g. But I stuck with it because I suddenly realised what an idiot Windows had turned me into. Back in the days of DOS, I could do anything with a one liner command. Windows made me stupid and fearful of a command line interface.

Audio with Linux was another thing entirely. But it wasn't all bad, because that learning curve co-incided with children and babies and nappies and a general sleep deprived memory hole, where I remembered nothing between about '04 and '10. So I had the time to fiddle with Linux and get my knowledge up to scratch, and I wasn't really recording and playing in a band, just composing and doing my own thing...

My work PC is Windows 7. I'm not using audio stuff, just the general office things. I'm a bit of an OS slut and a tech junkie, so I really enjoy new experiences, and what I enjoy about a Linux distribution is that all your apps are already installed when you install the OS. If I want a multimedia distribution, I choose say Ubuntu Studio, and within 20 minutes of installing it, I'm up and running and all my multitracks are running in Ardour. The last Windows PC I set up for audio was a nightmare. There was one stupid CPU fan app that crashed ProTools and made it totally unstable. Took me a long time to find that little bug.


-- That's why I refuse to upgrade, unless there is absolutely something I need, but generally not. Most people use computers for entertainment only.

I like M$, such as with DOS, you could directly access hardware for blistering speed results, even video. However, standards (compatibility) for video were slim, even with VESA trying to help. Anyway, accessing hardware was way below the operating system, and if things ran foul, the operating system could not recover and froze or crashed. M$ knew they had to put an end to that, made them look bad, so rather than directly access hardware, M$ provided interrupts and standards, you (programmer) used them, so the OS remained in control. Granted, another level slowed things down some.

Jack


My main beef with Windows is that Microsoft treat their paying customers like criminals. I paid for 3 legitimate Windows XP OEM licences when I built up my 3 machines. When one of the motherboards failed, I got the total runaround when trying to activate the repaired machine. I thought to myself, the software pirates don't get treated like this, why me? I paid the money......

This latest licencing model of theirs does not bode well. What do you have to do, rent the OS? Well, in the good ol' USA, anything that makes money has got to be good.

Back to Linux though, nowadays, everything is really slick, I hardly ever have to use the command line, and can click my way through......

And of course, I have divorced myself from vendor lock-in of Digidesign.
Although, I do still have a doorstop Digidesign 002 Rack gathering dust..
My 2c.
-A.