what to do with win2k?

[gttommy]

Firstly, I'd like to welcome myself to MURC - WOOHOO!

Today, while I was downloading the Win2k SP4, I noticed that winxp seems to be promoted much more heavily than win2k. So I googled and after reading articles like these:

Win2K Is Ending—VARs Need New Alternatives Now

Hi, I'm SP2 and I'm Moving In

I decided to cancel my download (i'm using Star Downloader, btw) and contemplate whether its time to move on to XP. I've used XP on my comp a few yrs before and didn't really like it. The special affects, pretty little pictures and what other "spoon-feeding" features didn't appeal to me. Win2k, on the other hand, isn't so bloated.

Should I just do it and remove/decrease the bloat so that it runs like win2k to get better support? Am I just too cynical about XP???

Regards
Tommy

[Lizzard[MPE]]

downloading of programs? ive never heard of such things.

[Jessterw]

Save for a few aggressive "features" of XP, you can easily change various settings to get it to a Win2K-like state. In my experience I've found it to be just as stable and usable as 2K once all the bloat has been whittled away, and there is the nicety of having an OS that will be supported for a few more years (or more depending on MS getting Longhorn finished).

Regardless of any cynicism, XP is just as good as 2K, just with some unwanted features that aren't all that hard to get rid of or hide.

[dbdg]

I'm still Win2k and have yet to find a real reason to spend £160 for the upgrade.

I've even had two threads on Murc asking if there was any point and the general consensus was don't bother. I'll probably upgrade closer the time to Unreal 3 coming out.

[Nowhere]

If it works for you, why bother? Oh, and the thing about total ending of support and necesessity of moving is BS - what MS means is that they won't release any new features (such as windows firewall...but they didn't planned to anyway), but all needed security patches will still be there for a long time.

@Lizzie: you know, I've heard about service pack downloading

[TransformX]

Win2k is probably my last Microsoft OS. The future as I currently see it for me, is FedoraCore.

[Gurm]

Describe this "FedoraCore", and then explain how it, unlike every other move away from Windows, won't make all my programs stop working.

-------------

The simple answer for XP is that if you aren't struck by any of its new features... and if you aren't using brandy-spanking-new hardware... then there's no compelling need to upgrade. In my house, it's a necessity since Win2k requires you to log out in order for someone else to login and do anything, meaning that all my downloads would be cancelled when Julie wants to use the upstairs computer to check a phone number or order something from Land's End.

[Nowhere]

Win2k is probably my last Microsoft OS. The future as I currently see it for me, is FedoraCore.

Why postpone this?

Describe this "FedoraCore", and then explain how it, unlike every other move away from Windows, won't make all my programs stop working.

-------------

The simple answer for XP is that if you aren't struck by any of its new features... and if you aren't using brandy-spanking-new hardware... then there's no compelling need to upgrade. In my house, it's a necessity since Win2k requires you to log out in order for someone else to login and do anything, meaning that all my downloads would be cancelled when Julie wants to use the upstairs computer to check a phone number or order something from Land's End.

Ahhh, you don't trust her?
And it's sad how one can be tied to particular applications (seriously - those are so specialized needs that there aren't any good equivalents?)

[Gurm]

Why postpone this?

'Cuz right now whatever this Fedora thingy is sucks?

Ahhh, you don't trust her?

Not that, she wants her own desktop, her own Outlook files separate from mine, her own everything. And that's not so much to ask for, really. She also wants it to be the same upstairs and down, so I've got the folders synchro'd over the network.

And it's sad how one can be tied to particular applications (seriously - those are so specialized needs that there aren't any good equivalents?)

I'm not "tied". I'm pragmatic. I know how to use Photoshop. I don't want to try to learn how to use something else that probably sucks anyway. And if it has suddenly STOPPED sucking, it's going to be so phenomenally DIFFERENT that I'm not going to want to bother.

Plus, I kind like games. Y'know - those things that ONLY work under Windows?

[Nowhere]

'Cuz right now whatever this Fedora thingy is sucks?

Agreed. Ubuntu OTOH...
Seriously...yeah, it has some problems, but I like it...though I'm beginning to be terrified because I suspect it starts to be some ideological thing or something...this RMS fella posseses powerfull indoctrination capabilities

Not that, she wants her own desktop, her own Outlook files separate from mine, her own everything. And that's not so much to ask for, really. She also wants it to be the same upstairs and down, so I've got the folders synchro'd over the network.

Ubuntu has powerfull means to do it

I'm not "tied". I'm pragmatic. I know how to use Photoshop. I don't want to try to learn how to use something else that probably sucks anyway. And if it has suddenly STOPPED sucking, it's going to be so phenomenally DIFFERENT that I'm not going to want to bother.

Plus, I kind like games. Y'know - those things that ONLY work under Windows?

I, OTOH, kinda like trying different approaches (but I can afford to try, I don't have any serious work to do with it), sometimes it's rewarding (Muine for example).
And...what do you mean no games?! What about Tuxracer, BZFlag and Scorched3D?! (uhmm...I mean...UT2K4, ET, Doom3 )

But Seriously...yeah, sure, that's a problem - but I'm keeping win2k after all (and perhaps, when in few years 2k becomes truly obsolete, consoles will mostly take over, seeing as even MS is pushing them; I'm console type anyway, just that recently on tight budget so no current generation machine at hand...). And anyway recently I don't game almost at all...

PS. And try Scorched3D, it's fun for a while in multi over the net

[UtwigMU]

Screw Ubuntu and Fedora. SuSE is the way to go.

Seriously though: If you need a light desktop for surfing, movie watching, light office and solitaire, Linux is OK. Also hardware support - the only problem I had was getting [M] drivers to work and I had to use USB cable for my Umax Astra 2200 U+S.

As for games, currently I get similar FPS (slower in 1 demo, higher in the lattest clan match) in Enemy Territory, which what I play mostly these days.

Check out the screenies of XP, Hoary and 9.3 side by side.


As per original poster: Unless you need any special features of Windows XP, stay with Win2k. If you have firewall (Kerio), antivirus (Avast) and don't install random stuff, security is not problematic. You can peacefully stay with 2k untill Longhorn comes out and become mainstream (XP drivers will work on 2k) which is early 07 - wait for all drivers and apps to be ported and for Service Pack 1 to come out.

[Gurm]

That site shows EVERYTHING that's wrong with the Linux community neatly in one place.

You have dozens of posts from people going "yeah it looks pretty but doesn't DO much" (an honest appraisal of Linux's GUI) and "but can you install apps?" and "where's the rich copy/paste between apps?" and "can someone point me to a firewall that works like Windows software firewalls do - with incoming and outgoing flow control and graphical rules and alerts when someone accesses the internet?"

And what are the responses?

"You suck!"

"You're a retard!"

"You are a retarded sucky windows ****at!"

Amazing, isn't it? Linux users are incapable of coming up with any GOOD defenses for their chosen OS, and even more incapable of answering the few simple issues that we Windows users have with switching.

[Nowhere]

Well, if you're looking at such individuals as representative...than yeah
(I won't answer the questions because I assume you know those things aren't a problem)

[Jessterw]

That site shows EVERYTHING that's wrong with the Linux community neatly in one place...

Amazing, isn't it? Linux users are incapable of coming up with any GOOD defenses for their chosen OS, and even more incapable of answering the few simple issues that we Windows users have with switching.

The problem is more to do with the FOSS community than the OSS and Linux communities in general. There are far more zealous attitudes within the former, leading to those that support it to foam at the mouth anytime something negative is said (that includes even daring to mention another OS).

Linux users in general are a reasonable bunch that more likely than not, use one or more other operating systems. Linux is a great OS, especially when you use a distro that suits your needs rather than one that the zealots try to lob on you. I really like how Suse is progressing and once we have a company behind the distro that can actually do something with it.

[Gurm]

Well some of you are probably aware of my experiences with Linux and the extreme lack of helpfulness of the authors of the Linux distros. But for those that aren't... here are the Linux distros I've set up in the past few years:

Slackware:

Not even sure which revision, but it didn't have drivers for the 3Com network cards. Had to run down some guy at MIT who wrote the 3Com drivers for Linux distros, he reported that every new 3Com card had a slightly different chip ID. So there was no such thing as a Linux driver that ran "all 3C905 cards" or "all 3c509 cards". That's ridiculous - Windows has had all-including 3Com drivers since the early 90's.

Red Hat 6:

Installed pretty cleanly. Very limited hardware support. Did what we wanted, managed to get a Beowulf cluster running, it ran very well to do the computations we needed. GUI - limited. No complaints - but wasn't for everyday use, either.

Red Hat 7:

I installed this festering shitpile in "server" mode. EVERY SOFTWARE PACKAGE it came with was NOT configured. At all. I had to download, and recompile, EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. The FTP daemon, Apache, MySQL, EVERYTHING. It was ridiculous. I found out later that SOME of it might have been configured if I had bothered to run XWindows. I find this interesting, since XWindows itself wasn't properly configured. *sigh*

Mandrake 9:

This installed fine. It ran fine... until I mistakenly ran the "Internet Connection Sharing" tool inside KDE. That messed up the network, so I tried to turn it off. Uh-oh... you CAN'T turn it off. There's an "off" button in the tool, but it doesn't DO anything. You click it and nothing happens. So I killed the service, and redid the network settings at the command prompt. All was good... until I rebooted. It f***ed up the settings again. Odd, since I hadn't gone into KDE. Looked through ALL the config files, all the .RC files, NOTHING. Couldn't find it ANYWHERE. I uninstalled Smoothwall, so that couldn't be it. Just couldn't find it. So EVERY time I booted that machine, I had to manually reconfigure the entire network, and I couldn't ever run KDE, because that would F*** it up again.

So I logged onto the Mandrake website, went to their OFFICIAL forum, and asked a really simple question - how do I get rid of that tool's settings? Where are they located? Or is there an updated version?

The OFFICIAL response from a MANDRAKE EMPLOYEE?

"You're a retard if you can't figure this out. I'm not going to bother explaining something so simple to you because you're too stupid to understand the answer. Go learn something about Linux and then come back and ask a real question you N00B."

Yeah, that's great. Formatted that hard drive right quick and went with...

Red Hat 8 Beta:

This was... so-so. It ran, it did what I wanted. Most of the quirks with 7 had been eliminated, although it crashed a lot (being beta) when doing anything interesting. The software support was lacking. The automatic installer was laughable. Oh, well.

-------------------

That was it. I gave up on Linux after that. Since the mid 90's I've heard that Linux is "one release away" from supplanting Windows. Here we are, TEN YEARS LATER, and it's still "one release away". That means "never" in secret L-User code.