@ChickenLadyLovesLife@dvdnet62 Not as such. I mean it is but its drivers are 25 years out of date now. YellowTab Zeta is out there too which was updated a bit but is still ancient.
But there is Haiku. Bigger, slower, more complicated, but it does a lot more.
As I recall, Gasse was offered something like $440 million for BeOS by Apple and he turned them down. Not sure it would have made any difference in anything by this point, but at least Objective-C wouldn’t have been littered with classes with the “NS” prefix.
Yeah, BeOS was awesome. I remember a coworker showing it to me in 1996 - he also taught me how to wow the c-suite with giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases, a parlor trick that has served me well over the years.
CEO, CTO, CFO etc. In a '90s Internet startup like the company I worked for, the “C” really stood for “clueless”.
giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases
Over-normalization is a database thing - a simple example of normalization would be a “People” table where instead of having the “Salutation” field just contain text like Mr, Mrs. etc., you have a separate “Salutations” table with all the possibilities listed and keyed with an ID (usually just a sequential number), and then the “People” table stores a Salutation ID for each entry instead of the actual text. It’s a valid and standard thing to do with database design, but it can be taken to extremes where absolutely every possible trivial thing that can be normalized is, producing an overcomplicated mess that is extremely difficult to work with programmatically.
Printing out this over-normalized mess of a database on multiple sheets of paper which are then taped to the wall is utterly useless.
How is a database a trick?
The printout is the trick - it fools the bosses into thinking you’re doing something amazing and productive when you’re really just fucking around. It only works on the technically incompetent, of which there was no shortage in '90s Internet startups (or today).
I have Win 11 Pro. I had Starfield ads on my lock screen for a while. I also had those search recommendations, but that’s it. Now I have nothing. Maybe it’s related to EU?
Vista sucked for sure, but Windows 7 was pretty great IMO. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the shit that’s Windows 10 because Steam stopped supporting 7.
EU should force a choice for all new PC. What OS do you want to run? Windows, Linux or Android? Then you would be able to see real competition in the OS market.
Maybe something like the raspberry pi OS chooser. In the best of worlds you have everything installed and just choose in the boot menu what to run.
Some manufacturers allow you to get a refund for pre installed windows if you feel like sitting on the phone for hours. Something about a lawsuit involving Microsoft and anticompetitive contracts with the manufacturer not allowing the distribution of other operating systems.
I’ve seen a story about someone who got a refund for their dell laptop but it was slow, and the support staff was rude about it during the process. They stated things like the Microsoft software is free and why would you want to remove windows anyway, passing him from department to department. It’s often $60-$80 depending on the version of windows etc.
Edit: I should clarify it might only be a US thing, I’ve heard people in France having some luck.
It’s always better to go that route. I also understand having hardware requirements and not being able to find a version of those models with Linux installed.
I like what system 76 is doing but I don’t think they really have competition in the US market right now. If you don’t mind a clevo and you live in the US I’d recommend them.
i mean it’s annoying but how is it disgusting?
it just shows recently opened files/software mixed in with stuff you open frequently, it’s not an ad section or anything.
but yeah i have disabled it on all my machines, because I’m not using it + disabling it adds two extra rows of pinned apps…
Windows 10 LTSC FTW!!! I just installed it and wow is it snappier and devoid of nearly all of those annoyances. I have no idea if productivity apps are affected by its stripped down nature but for Steam gaming it’s perfect. I get less lag spikes on steamVR.
I haven’t trusted Windows in years. This is just for gaming. I have a physically separate hot swappable Optane SSDs for Linux and Windows Gaming.
For those who will winge at me for not just switching to Linux. During this process I gave a concerted effort to give Linux a go and chose Manjaro KDE to try for steamVR gaming. It sucked. Once I had worked out that it was a permissions issue (It’s always a fucking permissions issue under Linux) and just ran it under the root account, there was extremely high latency for the VR compositor to HMD display. Completely unusable as it made me sick and that’s usually very hard. I tried X11 and Wayland. Direct and Non Direct output modes. No success.
I was using Manjaro KDE and ended up switching to Pop OS because Manjaro would never work right with my GPU. Pop OS has worked very well out of the box though.
I chose Manjaro KDE as one of the SteamVR requirements is KDE Plasma. It’s required because it has a DRM function to allow SteamVR to take ownership of the DisplayPort.
A quick google search says that PopOS is Gnome based. But KDE can be installed over it? I might give it a go.
I’m using StartAllBack (paid software), it replace the start menu with a Windows 7 like one, and brings back the pre Windows 11 taskbar, it has no ads and good customization. There’s also Open Shell that is free and Start11 that’s also paid.
You mean that distro people use to pretend to be a hacker/security researcher. It’s just hardened Debian with a few tools installed. I’ve set something like that up in an afternoon tbh.
Don’t take it personally, it’s just a direction I haven’t seen many researchers/pen testers use. I’ve seen most run it on a virtual machine or a second computer and modify Ubuntu/Debian to better suit their needs and a primary computer/os for business transactions etc.
I can’t speak for hackers but from anecdotal evidence it seems like they can do their work on most systems but hacking hardware is just easier on Linux in general.
Unfortunately for many, even in this day and age, there is not much choice. I main linux but also keep Windows on my PC as there are still tines when something will only work in Windows. Usually work related or gaming (VR in particular for me) and in fairness its increasingly rare.
Many other users aren’t motivated to change. For Microsoft, its a bit like boiling a frog - if you turn up the heat slowly the frog just puts up with it. That’s what Microsoft is doing to its customers - a slow constant enshittification, seeing what it can get away with. Try something and it causes outrage? Don’t worry, just undo it and just try again in a few years! Many are already used to no privacy and being sold as a commodity that they don’t even question it happening on their own personal computer.
My parents have been asking me to do this for multiple years at this point, I need to make sure I do it next time I visit (they’re on win 10 though so it could be worse at least)