Ramcourse

Thanks for answering! I think I'd like to try BWC's improvements, because I've been looking at upgrading my machine with some new parts, and its performance is still (mostly thanks to the lightweight OS) pretty good. It beats the pants of several colleagues' modern laptops, for sure. Specs: Intel P45/ICH10 chipset E8400 processor @3.00 GHz 4.5 TB in 2TB HDD+2TB HDD+.5TB SSD disks <== SSD might be better off if I could switch to AHCI, can't figure out how to though GeForce 9400 GT <== candidate for upgrade, but nothing current seems to have W2k drivers Assorted peripheral crap. I understand that you're not allowed to give a direct link to a repository, but are you also disallowed to tell me what search terms to use?

I've been happily running W2k for many years, and although I tried out newer operating systems, I've always slaked a sigh of relief when I put back my W2k image after a months' attempt to get the new stuff as functional, smooth and quick. I've been toying with this setup for years, tweaking and re-tweaking, and I considered myself pretty computer-savvy Then I came here, and I found out I don't have a clue about my favorite operating system. I read very exciting developments, with kernel extensions, ported updates, and very good in-depth advice on getting the impossible done. I love it, I'm simply in awe. However, there is a problem: I can't place most of the information I read. I understand there are multiple kernel extensions. I'm all for extending the kernel capabilities of my OS, but there seem to be multiple extensions available, which are incompatible with each other (and with certain other mods and updates?) and of which it's unclear to me whether they are drop-in, fire-and-forget, stable extensions which make my install more capable, or whether these are Frankensteinian hacks which work in only very specific circumstances and will brick my PC if I don't make the Elder Sign every 13 minutes. I appreciate the knowledge, the skill and the effort invested, but for me it is unclear what exactly is happening under the hood. I get tantalizing views of possibilities I had not dared dream of when browsing BlackWingCats blog, but the translations are so bad that I can't be quite sure of what he says (except that it's awesome!) and none of the download links seem to work for me (could be Google Translate). It seems that people on this forum seem to have no such problem! Likewise, there are roll-ups that incorporate tweaks that make them incompatible with later versions of the same roll-ups, as far as I can tell. There seem to be roll-ups of updates, which do or do not incorporate kernel extensions, core extensions, and which are -naturally- incompatible with other improvement packages. Frankly, I'm pretty lost. I've tried to get an overview, and so far I'm failing. Every answer I get, begets two new questions. Is there an overview of all these projects? And, perhaps, a way to find out how to mix and match these projects?

Hi, I'm a mechanical engineer from the Netherlands, and until I came across the information on this board I thought I knew my way around computers. I'm here mainly to ask some [hopefully not too-dumb] questions, because it doesn't look like I'll be able to contribute much knowledge...