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nitehawk · #1876 Post by **nitehawk** » Mon 18 May 2015, 17:41

Colonel Panic wrote:
starhawk wrote:That's a very good reason indeed to ditch Vista altogether
My current computer came with Vista, and I've kept it on a 100 GB partition, so I'd like to put the opposite case here, i.e. the case for keeping it if you can spare the space on your hard drive.

I know Vista has a bad reputation, but I've found that if you install the latest service pack (the current one is pack 2) and get rid of the sidebar thingy which holds the clock, it works fine, at least as well as Windows 7 does when I use it at my local community centre.

(Even Microsoft admits that the sidebar has serious vulnerabilities, as they say here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/gadgets
)

I've also disabled the Aero theme, which although pretty is heavy on resources, and used the Vista Basic theme (which looks good enough to me), and also installed the Rainmaker system info monitor (similar to gkrellm in Linux) to replace the sidebar.

For security purposes it also helps if you don't use Internet Explorer or Outlook on Vista too, but even though it's an old OS now there are still plenty of good browsers which will run on it.

@ colonel Panic
Oh yes indeed,..we are certainly (as the Texas saying goes, where I was raised): "We are both cut out of the same piece of leather".
I do indeed wish to preserve my installation of Vista,..as it is useful for many things,..and I also customize it exactly as you do.

@Burn_IT
I also agree,..but not many of us have the hardware (or computer reqirements) or even desire,...to upgrade to Windows 7. However,..you're right, in that it seems to be the most popular windows since XP,....but the idea is (among many windows fans),..that Vista will do most things that Windows 7 does. Since Vista came with this lappy (that my dear retired electronics tech brother gave to me for last Xmas)...I am not thinking of trying to upgrade.
But yes,..Burn_IT,...I hear that Windows 7 is the most popular. But I will stick with vista on this older (but goodie) lappy for now.

wboz · #1877 Post by **wboz** » Mon 18 May 2015, 18:26

Windows Vista SP2 is fine as an OS. My Lenovo came with that, upgraded while in school. I like Windows 7 better, but the improvements were not must-haves over Vista.

Have recently been wondering how to speed up that old Lenovo. It's my only Windows machine and I like having at least one, primarily to manage my iPhone. Unfortunately ...

1) As a 32 bit install it can only recognize 3+ gigs of RAM. How to get past that roadblock?
2) The 5400 rpm HDD is super slow and probably the second biggest performance hog. But migrating to a SSD is SO hard on a laptop because you can't connect a second drive. Would reducing the paging file help?
3) The ATI Radeon graphics chip doesn't appear to help much at all. On or off, speed is about the same ...

mikeb · #1878 Post by **mikeb** » Mon 18 May 2015, 18:44

point 2 and the rest...vista is so painfully gross in the way it does things it makes any drive appear painfully slow...it was a sick joke designed to sell new hardware. Service pack..oh yes...that DOUBLED hard drive access speeds...it was soooo bad at first...its still crap.

Windows 7 is magnitudes faster...sorry on a lenovo x60 s it ran like a good XP setup...vista was time to make a hot drink fiasco just for it to boot.
MS had to redo the whole job properly or face loosing major custom and they managed it fortunately for themselves.

If you put concrete in the back of a sports car it will tend to run slow.

Vista is shiny...well you need something nice to stare at

mike

Burn_IT · #1879 Post by **Burn_IT** » Mon 18 May 2015, 21:51

I was just making sure that should anyone have the choice, they go for Windows 7 rather than Vista even if it costs a more. If Vista would work W7 will better.

Hardware support is not a problem. I run W7 on hardware that is only supposed to run XP. I never even consider Vista except possibly for drivers if the device does not have 7 drivers. Even XP drivers work if needed though W7 does have excellent driver support.

I use this T43P and my Dell C840 every day with W7.

mikeb · #1880 Post by **mikeb** » Mon 18 May 2015, 22:00

I was just making sure that should anyone have the choice, they go for Windows 7 rather than Vista even if it costs a more. If Vista would work W7 will better.

Seconded..was just casting my vote. I would not like to see someone losing out...If you have to run a recent version of windows, 7 is the one... perhaps thats why they play it down and refuse it a service pack...they got it right which is not good for business.... means finding ways to persuade users away from it again... but in terms of software its a winner.... and yes...a pentium 3 was able to run it ok...though an dual core atom with 1GB is nicer thats hardly a 'power system'

I was getting boot times similar to a streamlined XP and not disimilar performance in spite of the much larger installation size that seems the default for anything from the last 10 years.

Mike

Burn_IT · #1881 Post by **Burn_IT** » Mon 18 May 2015, 22:09

The Dell is a 2.5GHz P4 not P3 and the T43P is Pentium mobile M 770 2.13 whatever that is.

mikeb · #1882 Post by **mikeb** » Mon 18 May 2015, 22:12

me? no I was able to run windows 7 on a pentium 3.... not recommended but shows how much lighter it is. A P4 should be fine and dandy...

mike

Burn_IT · #1883 Post by **Burn_IT** » Mon 18 May 2015, 22:15

Both run as well as XP if not better.

Bindee · #1884 Post by **Bindee** » Mon 18 May 2015, 22:59

Xubuntu core mini desktop review on TheRegister.

Colonel Panic · #1885 Post by **Colonel Panic** » Tue 19 May 2015, 18:52

nitehawk wrote:@ colonel Panic
Oh yes indeed,..we are certainly (as the Texas saying goes, where I was raised): "We are both cut out of the same piece of leather".

I like it! Another way of saying the same thing is; "Great minds think alike."

nitehawk wrote:I do indeed wish to preserve my installation of Vista,..as it is useful for many things,..and I also customize it exactly as you do.

@Burn_IT
I also agree,..but not many of us have the hardware (or computer requirements) or even desire,...to upgrade to Windows 7. /B] However,..you're right, in that it seems to be the most popular windows since XP,....but the idea is (among many windows fans),..that Vista will do most things that Windows 7 does. Since Vista came with this lappy (that my dear retired electronics tech brother gave to me for last Xmas)...I am not thinking of trying to upgrade.
But yes,..Burn_IT,...I hear that Windows 7 is the most popular. But I will stick with vista on this older (but goodie) lappy for now.

I agree here too. If Vista went wrong on my computer I'd probably replace it with a Linux distro (just as I replaced Windows XP with Zenwalk 4 on an older computer I had), or maybe with PC-BSD, a new version of which has just been released according to Distrowatch.

I wouldn't bother with Windows 7, and I don't think 10 will run on this machine.

Mike Walsh · #1886 Post by **Mike Walsh** » Tue 19 May 2015, 20:37

mikeb wrote:point 2 and the rest...vista is so painfully gross in the way it does things it makes any drive appear painfully slow...it was a sick joke designed to sell new hardware. Service pack..oh yes...that DOUBLED hard drive access speeds...it was soooo bad at first...its still crap.

Windows 7 is magnitudes faster...sorry on a lenovo x60 s it ran like a good XP setup...vista was time to make a hot drink fiasco just for it to boot.
MS had to redo the whole job properly or face loosing major custom and they managed it fortunately for themselves.

If you put concrete in the back of a sports car it will tend to run slow.

Vista is shiny...well you need something nice to stare at

mike

Michael, Michael, Michael..... Ooh, you are cynical, old son.

Going right to t'other end of t'scale.....I've finally managed to do something I've been trying to do for months and months. I've finally got ChromiumOS to install to, and run from, a USB flashdrive. I found out where I was going wrong; syntax again...

'dd' seems to work far better writing to a flashdrive when you simply specify /dev (in this case sdh).....rather than a partition (sdh1); doesn't seem to like that. It's a bit disconcerting, though; using 'dd' from the terminal, there's absolutely NO indication of what's going on; the only way I could tell summat was happening was by watching the little LED on my external Seagate flash, as the system was reading from it!

That, and the fact that I had an extra '/' where I shouldn't have had one; doesn't help...

I used 'fat32' rather than ext3/4 (following advice from 'HowToGeek'; Chris Hoffman does know his stuff, I'll give him that; I've used a number of his workarounds this last 12 months or so), although I'm sorta wondering whether ext3 would work; there was lots of stuff about searching for ext3/4 partitions during the boot-up procedure. Since upgrading the single-core Athlon64 to the dual-core X2, and upgrading the BIOS (loooong saga..!), I get to see the full boot-up procedure in all its gory detail. *Sheeesh...*

And the verdict? You'll laugh at this; after all the attempts at getting it to run, I'm kinda left wondering why I bothered. The whole thing is, of course, basically a browser...period. You do everything online. Still, that was the whole point of the ChromeBooks in t' first place, after all...

I still think I prefer ETP's 'Chromebook' Pup! Anyway, I've got plenty of spare flashdrives; I'll leave this on there, now it works, and have the occasional 'play around' with it...

Regards,

Mike.

mikeb · #1887 Post by **mikeb** » Tue 19 May 2015, 21:05

Cynical...nah just as is...a quick factual rendition of vista vs 7.
7 is a nice usable long term system for newer hardware.... vista is not.
Its in my 'use one day ' list.... still dragging my feet using windows 2000 rather than XP.

There is something vaguely geeky perverse about installing an operating system using dd... like its an accident waiting to happen...one slip and bye bye your prized system.

Anyway this is the distro fever thread and i don't belong here....

mike

James C · #1888 Post by **James C** » Wed 20 May 2015, 07:04

Still running a couple of installs of Stella..... solid,stable distro.

A bit conservative but never had a problem with either install.

http://li.nux.ro/stella/

Code: Select all

[james@localhost ~]$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 4.0.4-1.el6.elrepo.i686 #1 SMP Mon May 18 10:59:36 EDT 2015 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

mikeb · #1889 Post by **mikeb** » Wed 20 May 2015, 09:02

How many are used on a daily basis...each machine has one default that is and one windows for those fun moments here.

So yes... what other distros are the default system..I am assuming people use their computers to actually do something?

mike

rokytnji · #1890 Post by **rokytnji** » Wed 20 May 2015, 15:34

Anyway this is the distro fever thread and i don't belong here....

Said the mutant Slax DNA Puppy Breeder.

You make me grin on a regular basis, bro.

I am debating internally to give a Tiny Core Linux install a go.
I am inundated with hardware from my wasteful City administrators.

.I am assuming people use their computers to actually do something?

I have a table in the motorcycle shop that is just for dudes to play on with all kinds Linux setups that are
will occupy them while they wait on me to fix their bikes. Just to play with their heads. No Windows.

mikeb · #1891 Post by **mikeb** » Wed 20 May 2015, 15:40

Hmm sounds like you heading into being a PC recycler rather than mike furkler.... its big business over here.

I have a table in the motorcycle shop that is just for dudes to play on with all kinds Linux setups that are
will occupy them while they wait on me to fix their bikes. Just to play with their heads. No Windows

so the tougher the job the more they devolve from bikers into geeks then?
Though the picture of a biker cyber cafe/bar is not such a bad one

I liked DSL though knoppix is a tangled nightmare if you got into the system.

The mutant Lucid/Slax is behaving well now...on it as we speak...I am allowed to distro hop as long as the families machines keep ticking over nicely.

mike

Colonel Panic · #1892 Post by **Colonel Panic** » Wed 20 May 2015, 19:26

I've just installed the latest version of Mint Debian (2.0, codenamed "Betsy") with the Mate desktop and it's pretty impressive apart from the trouble I also have with a number of distros on this machine in getting the network started up when I first log in.

I am one of those who likes Mint's default look although I know some people find it too staid and conservative.

Mike Walsh · #1893 Post by **Mike Walsh** » Wed 20 May 2015, 22:16

mikeb wrote:There is something vaguely geeky perverse about installing an operating system using dd... like its an accident waiting to happen...one slip and bye bye your prized system. mike

Yah; I'll go along with that. It's a 'dodgy' way of doing it at the best of times..! Unfortunately, Hexxeh's instructions on his Chromium O/S website only gives instructions on how to install via 'dd'; I don't think there's much choice, actually, as the install itself is in the form of an .img file.....and none of the normal installers will even recognise it.

I cheated, slightly; I used Hexxeh's install instructions, but his most recent build is from 2013; so I hopped on over to arnoldthebat's world-of-whimsy:-

http://arnoldthebat.co.uk/wordpress/chromium-os/

The download link on his site does at least take you to a page where you can get the brand spanking-new, bleeding-edge daily builds.....this one was only built on the 15th of this month.....just five days ago.

There are Linux specific instructions; hell, it's a Linux-based system, after all.....but you kinda get the impression it's mainly intended for Windows users to 'try out' before deciding whether or not to buy a ChromeBook.

I'd love to know what the hell it's done to my flash drive, though; I've never seen so many teeny, tiny partitions.....somewhere between 12 and 14 in total (and half of those are labeled as 'unknown', according to gParted!) And this is a mere 4 GB flash drive.....

Mike.

mcewanw · #1894 Post by **mcewanw** » Thu 21 May 2015, 04:07

Trying Bento sushi vivid, which is based on Lubuntu I think. EDIT: Well, website says it is actually a Ubuntu Openbox Remix.

http://linuxvillage.org/en/2015/05/bent ... 1-and-rc2/

This particular bento iso is cutdown 475 MB download which doesn't contain any office suite, uses latest Midori 0.5.9 browser (I think) and latest Ubuntu15.04 (I think). I'm on DebianDog at the moment so can't check these details other than Bento webpage online.

For my own record, which may be useful to someone else:

I am booting using grub4dos from my /dev/sda2 where I have my menu.lst file that includes entry below. I have the bento iso as below on the fourth partition of the same drive.

# This example requires you to extract vmlinuz and initrd.lz from the bento live-cd iso and put them in subdir /bento-sushi-vivid on hd0,3 (/dev/sda4)
# Also had the bento-sushi-vivid-rc1-with-resolvconf-x86_64.iso stored in /bento-sushi-vivid on /dev/sda4
# Could be altered to suit the use of different partition and storage folder location for the bento iso etc
# Can add the word "persistent" just after boot=casper if wanting to use pre-prepared casper-rw save file or save partition with casper-rw name
# Haven't tried persistent use yet but worked when I tried same with Lubuntu

title Frugal bento ubuntu sushi vivid
root (hd0,3)
kernel /bento-sushi-vivid/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/bento-sushi-vivid/sushi-vivid-rc1-with-resolvconf-x86_64.iso splash --
initrd /bento-sushi-vivid/casper/initrd.lz

William

mikeb · #1895 Post by **mikeb** » Fri 22 May 2015, 05:31

I'd love to know what the hell it's done to my flash drive, though; I've never seen so many teeny, tiny partitions.....somewhere between 12 and 14 in total (and half of those are labeled as 'unknown', according to gParted!) And this is a mere 4 GB flash drive.....

yes weird.... does it make yer manhood bigger?
actually never feel comfy doing mad partition table stuff to flash..did lose one that way.

mike

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