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My ideas about operating systems...


Roostron

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Greets to all!

First off, let me say that I absolutely LOVE this forum! Finally, I'm finding a group of like-minded people who appreciate retro OS'es, and enjoy wringing every last bit of performance out of "obsolete" software.

I guess I don't have a "main point" to make here, just wanted to share a few personal ideas and experiences... and maybe get a discussion going about what other people see as the current state of computer OS'es, and why they still use older OS'es.

I personally see computer science as being in it's infancy - I've envisioned what computers SHOULD do as compared to what they currently do... and my conclusion is that they are SORELY lacking in many ways. Adding new "skins", fancy icons, better help pages, and other "tacked on" interface fluff is not going to fix this, the Nth patched-over beautified OS variant from Microsoft (the only company ever named after it's founder's... well, nevermind!) will not fix this. The solution to bloat and software complexity is NOT more bloat and software complexity... I'm personally of the opinion that the mainstream OS vendor (Microshaft) is writing software in order to create a market for faster/bigger/more expensive hardware... and "building in" as many bugs as possible, in order to sell newer OS variants as they create them (insuring themselves a profitable future!).

I don't see this situation changing until OS'es become less "application centric" and more "data centric". The data is "the thing", after all... the very reason we use computers. We don't go and buy a new machine so we can see the pretty new Word startup logo and application button bar... or to read endless help files on how to use the latest Excel commands... we buy computers so we can create, manipulate, and exchange DATA of various types. The faster, easier, and more application-independent (and ultimately, more OS independent) we can achieve this, the more satisfied we will be with our computing experience.

I like Windows 98SE because it allows me to tailor my OS the way that I (in it's capital form) want it to be. I have a NATIVE MODE underlying DOS command line interface (God's own interface!) that allows me to strip out all the GARBAGE that I don't want in my OS and applications, and I know that I can get a MINIMALLY functional, reliable, compact, and efficient OS on my desktop that won't require a 10,000,000 GHZ processor and half the world's RAM to run at a halfway decent speed. I don't want an OS that is there for the OS'es sake... I want a simple, reliable system that I can COUNT on every time I open a document for editing, or a browser window for net research, or to write a piece of software. When I go into a graphics editor to view a piece of pr0n, I don't want a 5 minute application bootup time followed by 3 "tips" windows that need to be shut down... I just want to right-click the file in explorer and see a little thumbnail that I can click on to get full-screen wanking-good imagery. When I go to a webpage to research the latest embedded systems and electronic components, I don't want to be greeted with "Download this font" or "Viewable only with Internet Exploder V2306.5" or stupid "plugin" downloads that will crash my browser during the install process. In short, I want an OS and applications that will provide the MINIMUM of hassle in order to get to what I REALLY want to do - work with the DATA that I'm interested in.

I've tried pretty much every OS variant out there, in terms of mainstream desktop "consumer oriented" operating sytems, and so far Windows 98SE is the only one that really fills my needs.

Questions? Comments? Hate mail?

I look forward to it all!

Roostron

Edited by Roostron
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Spot On! Excellent!

M$ thinks that a computer is build to enjoy the OS, without installing your software of choice. I can say that personaly I never use a single app which comes with Windows, except mplayer2.exe and "Find".

If M$ produce intentionaly deficient OSes in order to boost hardware sales (which is more than a possibility) it's goind to backlash them in the face one day or another.

Welcome to the board!

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true that, man. who needs some overly decorated desktop environment with tons of bugs that requires a 15gb partition minimum (No operating system should require this) and takes up 80% of 512mb ram (or whatever) and a fast processor, or a super dumbed down, un-customizable operating system that uses all it's own standards and has a very low degree of hardware customization or even operating system customization when you can get great performance and efficiency out of 500mb of disk space and uses up 8% of 16mb of RAM on it's own and could possibly run on a 66mhz i486 processor, if you needed it too. think about this with a 137gb hard drive and a Pentium 4 and 512mb RAM. put that in your fancy Vista/OSX computers and smoke it! even linux usually requires a minimum of something like 128mb RAM, 1.5gb hd, and Pentium 3 (maybe) unless it's command line

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Totally agree with you. It's nice finally to meet some non ignorant like minded computer people. in a vast expanse of people with the disease "Must upgrade Hardware and Software ever month, brought to you by the Balmer Brainwashing division"

Currently with my family PC we have a P3 - 1Ghz 512MB RAM and 128MB video card, running Windows 98 and Ubuntu. With Ubuntu it has something called Compizfusion on, this is a total Blitz over aero(there are some nice videos around demonstrating it), and Vista Aero needs something stupid like 2.4Ghz Dual Core, 2GB RAM 512mb video card, even then it could run slowly, it's just complete bloat-ware.

I my self have 2 computers which have a 4MB OS with no need for a hard drive(though obviously I do need one so iv got a 7gb in one and a 1gb in the other[the file sizes are incredibly small]), containing a Vector art program, Bitmap program with Alpha transparency, a complete programming language which allows you to create full multitasking WIMP programs.

I'm upgrading the other family PC running at 600Mhz to a 1Ghz processor at the minute and putting 98 on it so I can use it for my assignments for when I return to university.

Edited by RedTrac
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Thanks for the rant; I enjoyed it.

I'm personally of the opinion that the mainstream OS vendor (Microshaft) is writing software in order to create a market for faster/bigger/more expensive hardware...

As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much fact.

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What I like with the Vista saga is that XP users are now in the same boat as w9x users.

XP users used to call us idiots for staying with w9x, told us to buy more ram and move to XP. Today it's them who are the "idiots" for not moving to the latest windows to date while they are resisting pressure against non-sens bloat.

The need for a "different aproach of computer use" and for "rethinking OS desing" is totaly artificial and yes, probably put upon us to sell more hardware and also to give a pretext to sell a new OS.

M$ wanted to create something new and different so that we would buy it. That was not bad in itself, except that it came with a technical regression so patethic, discouraging and sad.

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If i could setup 2 systems with exact same hardware, then go nuts and tweak the s*** out of both, i would only need to do half as much tweaking on xp as on vista, because on vista i would 1st have to disable all the new stuff that is enabled on default that is not needed for the average joe anyway.

So what, well 1st of, how many of vista buyers do you think have SSD drives? Sure you say but the popularity will take off eventually.

You go explain Mr.Smith that he should buy a SSD disc for system disc because its faster, and also tell him he could get a hddrive at 10x + the size and still very fast 1TB hdd. SSD is enabled by default of course, adds latency to boot, and has system priority. How stupid is that per general usage.

Then to list a few there's UAC of course, Online gaming problems still occuring because of Vista's api and whatnot, fact that audio latency in vista is totally way off by several ms, compared to xp, im not taking up even the hardware vendor issue as i can relate and support that, but it doesnt matter for joe, because after he is done paying for a new pc with his quadcore cpu and 4gb+ram and SSD discs and realizes he also needs to get a new printer,scanner, camera, he kinda thinks why am i even bothering with this looking at his wallet.

So eventually then he sits down and thinks he is going to have a nice night of gaming on his uber l337 pc, and then he tries set his trusty old CRT which he luckily could keep in vista, to 120hz, and he gets msg he is stuck at 100hz what soever. Getting annoyed by that he tries a loned LCD, and kinda think isnt this blurry? And then thinks of XP and that he could tweak write combining and further gets a realization that hey, no can do.

All well and good so far of course, no problems what so ever.

So his mother comes along with some photographs she wants printed out, and sure enough he has a new printer supporting vista so no problem.

Still kept his old crt tho, and then when he starts printing out pictures they are all some what, blue, red, green (strike what suits you), and looks like crap to be frank. Then he starts thinking, and hey it must be something about the printer color profile. After further fiddling he founds out his kick a** once upon a time 2000 euros worth crt color profile is not supported in vistal. Luckily its out again with his Visa, and voila a spanking new 24" lcd monitor stuck at 60hz, which sure is nice btw. I could continue but cba atm.

I had vista tweaked down to nothing, it cant compare to xp yet. im sure it will get there, but it aint there today.

Vista needs shaving and thank god for nuhi.

Edited by TranceEnergy
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Hello

I also think this is a great site for all of us computer users. I use win98se almost everyday, depending on what

computer i am using at the time. Half of my computers are 98ters, the others are xp's I like both operating

systems. This computer can easily run windows xp, but it flat out smokes on windows 98 and it has a prescott

cpu, known for running hot, well running windows 98se it's a little cooler and faster than xp. I know i had xp

on it for a long while. Anyways i think this is a great site :lol:

thank you.

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What I like with the Vista saga is that XP users are now in the same boat as w9x users.

XP users used to call us idiots for staying with w9x, told us to buy more ram and move to XP. Today it's them who are the "idiots" for not moving to the latest windows to date while they are resisting pressure against non-sens bloat.

Not all XP users called you idiots. I guess most (at least here) were rather wondering how you could stay on such an unstable OS but now that you don't have to install crap on windows (remember when we _had_ to install quicktime and realplayer [G2] ?), it is clear the OS was not unstable only a bit less tolerant to problems but that's it.

In fact, most people prefering xp over 9x could as well use 2000. For example, I need an NT-based system to run some software which has existed for years but never ran correctly under 9x (ocaml). And I don't think the kernel patches here would suffice as this software could take advantage of features that are not even yet in vista. ;p

By the way, Vista has a bigger problem than its speed or requirements. It's sometimes hard to find things (not simply speaking of the search function that does not find any file with 'a' in its name when you know there are but rather that depending on whether you're using Aero or not, some settings as the font smoothing one do not appear in the same place !) and some eye-candy are ridiculous (I'm not the only one stating that).

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Not all XP users called you idiots.

You should have seen all the endless fights we had on long blocked or trashed threads here. :ph34r:

On only on this forum but anywhere you went tere was always someone telling us "upgrade to XP and get a life."

Vista sort of stopped that.

The most shocking with Vista is that we couldn't imagine that an OS could still slow down a computer with the hardware we have today.

On modern hardware the difference of speed is minimal betwen a tweaked XP and w98++ (with suitable drivers).

But Vista succeed in making 2 years old PC not strong enough to run it!

Vista's lack of performance is uneven and random. It's not like everything is slower. Some tasks can go pretty fast, while other would be abnormaly slow for a top-end computer.

And it seems that every one has its own little problem. For example here, the OEM gadget calculator is showing a system error! And we can't even watch DivX movies properly.

There are tons of things to be said about Vista. But everything reminds me of what we said about XP and what we said about XP is still there, unadressed in the new version.

These sort of complains about XP (like bloat, slowliness etc) that we now have again with Vista were eclipsed in XP by the huge improvement in system stability from wME and w98 and also by the huge security issue that was the true new nightmare. Today, nothing is large enough to hide Vista's size on disc and the plethore of other absurdities!

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Not all XP users called you idiots.

You should have seen all the endless fights we had on long blocked or trashed threads here. :ph34r:

On only on this forum but anywhere you went tere was always someone telling us "upgrade to XP and get a life."

I was maybe not there when XP was released but I've since seen several similar threads. I simply did not take part in the trashing. ;)

I guess that people who where simply not pro XP and against 9x did not take part in the trolling. You don't usually see the point of take the time to write a balanced post in such situations. ;)

Vista sort of stopped that.

Well, Vista is not only much heavier than XP (especially since there's been so much time between XP and Vista that XP resource usage became hard to notice on curent computers) but it also cost much much more (and is more annoying [not hard] to pirate) so I guess tons of people who were following microsoft like slaves now have to think again.

The most shocking with Vista is that we couldn't imagine that an OS could still slow down a computer with the hardware we have today.

On modern hardware the difference of speed is minimal betwen a tweaked XP and w98++ (with suitable drivers).

But Vista succeed in making 2 years old PC not strong enough to run it!

Vista's lack of performance is uneven and random. It's not like everything is slower. Some tasks can go pretty fast, while other would be abnormaly slow for a top-end computer.

I'm under the impression we are having a problem that last surfaced with 9x : very bad drivers and oem software or in fact software in general. XP has been saved because it inherited the NT5.0 drivers but vista forced a rewrite.

I'll give my mother laptop as an example. It is an acer which is about 8 months old. She didn't want me to modify anything, she didn't want to get away from the default configuration. However I've been forced to use it so I had to do something.

First, the battery-life was baaad. Basically I thought that the new laptops with all their new power-saving technologies (anyone followed the recent linux kernel developpment ?) should get a much better autonomy. This simply wasn't the case. Battery lasted between 90 and 120 minutes. I changed two or three settings and autonomy increased by at least 30 minutes. However some of my changes were constantly overwritten by an oem software. I finally removed that from startup (5 .exes, 3 or 4 services) and made my changes. The battery now lasts at least 150 minutes with //improved// (!) performance, a 25% to 30% improvement. It took me about 3 minutes.

To sum up, we had a *big* manufacturer unable to deliver proper applications and apparently knowing nothing about laptops.

Then, nod32. Everybody knows nod32. It is a simple, inexpensive, efficient, lightweight antivirus scanner.

At least, it used to. Version 3 which seems to be designed for vista suddenly got much slower and started to show a quite surprising behaviour. For instance, yesterday I downloaded burrrn under k-meleon and vista. It is about 1.5MB, packaged with nsis, probably old bzip2 compression. You would imagine that scanning it would be no problem and that this step would be hardly noticeable. However it took more than 20 secondes to complete (which is in fact the time it took me to disable the live scanning), frozing both kmeleon and explorer (the file was being downloaded to the desktop). bzip2 may be slow to expand but it does not take 20 secondes to extract 1.5MB ! Of course, I wouldn't state this if it were an isolated case.

As for the surprising behavior, it is memory use. Not how much is being used but how it is. I'm often running process explorer in order to discover why is the hard disk so active (because it basically reduces battery life, make the laptop hotter, noisier and less responsive). Last week I saw a strange graph : it seemed that except a spike, there were no I/O accesses (procexp monitors I/O in general, not only disk I/O). The reason was in fact that the graph had been scaled and that the spike was a 400GB/s I/O, making all other accesses meaningless !

And it seems that every one has its own little problem. For example here, the OEM gadget calculator is showing a system error! And we can't even watch DivX movies properly.

Gadgets are written as javascripts I think. Maybe with VB but still script. I never understood why, this is probably the language you don't want a program running for hours to be written in as it's inefficient, unsafe and unreliable !

Note that osx does the same. And linux too, though it uses python which is a little less bad (not better ;p).

With regards to reading divx, hum, let me think. Maybe because of the 10-15% load under idle ?

You needed to only have 75MHz under XP to get the same results ( http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm ) and Pentium Pro at 200Mhz when 95 OSR2 was released (I have one).

There are tons of things to be said about Vista. But everything reminds me of what we said about XP and what we said about XP is still there, unadressed in the new version.

These sort of complains about XP (like bloat, slowliness etc) that we now have again with Vista were eclipsed in XP by the huge improvement in system stability from wME and w98 and also by the huge security issue that was the true new nightmare. Today, nothing is large enough to hide Vista's size on disc and the plethore of other absurdities!

I don't fully agree. When XP was released, some people (including me) complained about Luna. I still have some magazines discussing how you loved it or hated it. However I could stand the Luna theme. I preferred the Olive version to the Blue one and preferred other styles (thanks DA !). In Vista's case, I just can't stand it and I'm far from being the only one thinking this (basically all of my friends who tried vista) (and don't think I can't get used to it ; I run win/nix shells, xp's explorer, litestep, windowmaker, kde, gnome, xfce, plan9's...). And nobody can tell there are interface improvements in Vista. So I have more to reproach to Vista that I had to XP in fact.

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You know...

I think they are not testing their laptop and PC before launching them on the market.

I mean they don't test even a single one before commercialisation and industrial production.

They pass the hurdles to the retail seller who has to tell clients "Yeah, with Toshiba laptops it's always like that and if you take Asus you will get the same kind of problems...".

And it's the same with Vista. They manage to show Bill Gates a desktop with no BSOD, then go ahead.

How come they epected that the first tech-savvy user will not immediately notice abnormal HDD activity?

Both at software and hardware maufacturers there is a total lack of care and professionalism.

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Wow, Philosophy and Computers all in one thread. I have to jump in on this one.

It seems to me that when someone “invents” a widget and the profits from this widget make this someone the richest person in the entire history of the human race. Then perhaps this person is overcharging for this widget.

That said, when 98 came out I finally achieved my first fast, stable machines. And 98se was even better. I became much more productive in my work with this OS.

I used Photoshop 4.0 until 7.0 came out because nothing in the intermediate versions could make my photos any better. I doubt that Word 2007 will make me a better writer than Word 97 has. Will a Vista Quad Core give me a better chance of recording a hit record than my 98se PIII? I don’t think so.

This was the dilemma of the big computer companies. If everything is working fine what will make people buy new machines and software. And so the endless upgrade path with the fast end of service was invented to keep people buying and buying and buying.

I never have been a good little consumer. I don’t buy something because everyone says I should. If my 98SE/BX motherboards ever blow out maybe then I’ll get something more modern. But so far they haven’t so much as hiccupped so it could be awhile.

The International Space Station uses a 386 SX because it’s time tested proven technology. If it’s good enough for NASA then it’s good enough for me.

But I am open minded enough to realize XP sp3 is a fine OS and I have it on one of my computers.

Edited by Sysdll
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There is a reason for using the 386 processor as opposed to anything "better". Because of the lower density on the chip cosmic rays are less likely to cause "jump-overs" between transistors. Wouldnt do to have the computers having epileptic fits

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