Dead-Lands

there are ways to aquire legit versions of things

I hate windows 7.

First, the UAC is not stopping viruses or trojans unless they're really weak and it's not worth all the irritation for that.

I have third party antivirus and it always protects me and is entirely transparent UNTIL something happens. Then it catches it, tells me "hey we caught this," and I say say "thanks," *thumbs down for a kill*. It's way better. I use Avast Free right now and it's great.

Second, the 64 bit version requires that all drivers be signed or it won't load them. The 32 bit version doesn't care but the 64 bit version requires it. Basically this forced me to install the 32 bit version thus negating most of the point of Windows 7.

Third, you can't manually arrange icons in folders in Windows 7 anywhere but on the desktop. This is a feature windows had since windows 3 and they decided to take it out now for no reason. For a long time they had it so that auto arrange was the default setting but if you WANTED to manually arrange icons they would let you and remember icon placement. I've grown accustomed to this feature and I won't part with it. I'm prepared to go to a Gnome linux shell rather then lose this feature.

Forth, all the icons in windows 7 are HUGE. In XP if you want a click to count you have to click on the ACTUAL icon. Clicking on the white space does nothing. I like this because it means it's really easy to drag and drop things into full folders because there is always lots of dead space. However, in windows 7 you basically have to go one level higher in the folder and drop it on the folder icon because it's almost impossible to drop it on white/dead space in the actual folder. Suppose the idea is to have every folder auto generate a picture/video/icon preview in tile form and they found it convenient to have space prepared by default. That sort of thinking is at best sloppy. The whole interface feels less sophisticated now. It's like some ghetto bligged Caddy that gets 2 miles to the gallon and corners like garbage truck. Sure, it "fly"... but it's also f'ing useless now. Good work MS. Morons.

Fifth, Homegroup network function is redundant and inferior to the existing sharing system. If you wanted to make it easier to share you should have provided a better wizard for sharing and managing shares. Creating a whole new IP6 paradigm that isn't backward compatible is just idiotic. It's also WAY less reliable and far less flexible.

Sixth, the control panels are a god damned mess. Everything was moved around for no apparent reason... and in most cases the set up is less logical then the old set up. It's like having a maid go through a room full of work... and "tidy up" everything such that everything is in the wrong order, lost, or just thrown away.

Seventh, the OS is full of unnecessary legacy pointers. For example, Windows 7 got rid of the documents and settings folder and replaced it with the "users" folder. Now what's the difference? There isn't one. The folder is exactly the same it just has a different name for no reason. To retain compatibility an invisible redirection is maintained in the C drive that points calls for "documents and settings" to "users". The OS already had a bunch of these... most of them maintained in registry. But now they're all over the file system. If they had just left it alone they wouldn't need the redirections.



Now, the OS isn't all crap. It's great for OEM machines where all the drivers are signed and it's especially great for laptops because it loads very quickly and comes out of hibernation like a champ. However, custom systems are screwed and desktops are poorly served by the OS.


After playing with Win7 on my home system I resolved to switch to Linux. I've generally settled on Ubuntu. I've tried the Gnome and KDE versions. KDE looks like it makes most of the really annoying mistakes that Win7 made... such as no manual sort for folders and giant bloody icons. So I'm going with Gnome unless someone else has a better idea.

Anywho... f' Microsoft. Those of you who remember know that I've defended them in the past and god knows I'm a good customer. But I'm tired of being crapped on. In the past I could always get around and bypass the annoying crap. But they took that away with windows 7. So f' em' in the eye with a rusty cock. I'm done.

Apparently, Wine is pretty reliable these days with nearly any emulation. So what more do I need?

1. UAC can be disabled

2. Interesting...my experience with Windows 7 has been ideal it would seem. I installed, and it runs, case closed. I have a custom built PC like I've been making for years and years, so I debunk your comment about custom built PCs as I am using the 64bit version. If your retort is that it should be more universal I can not dispute that, but driver support for older systems is always sketchy and is performed by the manufacturer anyway. M$ isn't writing all those drivers.

3. I don't use that feature as you apparently do

4. I don't have problems copying files and folders around like you seem to be having, so I'm not sure what would really help you out here.

5. File sharing took a little tweaking for me to setup, but that is because its not in legacy mode by default. I successfully access shares on my Windows 7 box from an XP machine and I can even get to my Samba server share from my PC. So a good blend of environments at my house.

6. They added the quick search box which rapidly finds anything in that "god damned mess" for you in a flash. If you try to find things manually, it just takes some poking around and getting familiar with the UI again. Should we still be using the same Windows 3.1 interface just because everyone was comfortable with it? No, they organized it in a way that does make sense once you learn it, and if you're lazy just use the search.

7. I suppose they did this because "Documents and Settings" doesn't really describe exactly what it contains. Users is an accurate representation, but following your model of changing anything is bad then they wouldn't be allowed to change anything at all.

Windows-bashing... Linux-toting... KDE discussion... it's like you guys are intentionally trying to bait me into this thread!

Ha that is awesome that you are thinking ubuntu cause you did defend winderz quite a bit. No complaints here I recently made the switch cause I didn't see the reason to keep going with the ms anymore

well I gotta respond with my feelings bout 7 as well

1. UAC is as useless in 7 as it was in vista, meaning that for my parents, brothers and inlaws I set it to the max, and for me I turn it off. You'd be supprised by how many things my relatives don't install, or think about installing with that on. It's not about preventing viruses, it's about making sure people who are computer stupid realize what they are doing. Yeah they added a slider, it's pointless and should either be on for novice or off for everyone else

2. Haven't had any problems with drivers, as everything was already made for Vista by the time I got 7. If people don't have 7 specific drivers, Vista drivers work too, since 7 and Vista use the same changed driver model. If people haven't gotten on board with that yet, and the hardware is old, yeah it wont work. But I haven't had any issues with any of my drivers, my brothers drivers (he has two computers) my wifes computer, or my dads computer. I've installed 7 on 5 different things and never had a single missing driver issue

3. I guess I've never even bothered with arranging things, I either want them in alphabetical, size, or date order and thats it

4. you can change that, they are huge aren't they?

5. Homegroup is a breeze if you are talking 7 to 7, never bothered with anything else. It's vastly superior to xp sharing that would randomly stop working.... drove me crazy

6. HENCE GODMODE. Don't even bother with ever using the control pannel, put the god mode icon somewhere and just do all your controls from there. It's nice you type "display" in the search bar and every possible setting that has to do with display shows up. But on a side note, the control pannel is the same as Vista

7. Yepp legacy pointers, same as Vista, for backwards compatible programs, so things can be compatible with programs that where written by short sited programers, people who had things point to "C:\doc and settings\all users" instead of "%UserProfile%"

Sounds like you came from XP instead of Vista. 7 is what Vista should have been from the start. And vista is like a slightly better ME (it really is better as eventually it was usable, and ME was always trash)

The most noticeable difference of 7 from xp is 64bit support, and netbook support. Both vastly superior in every why over xp that it's best forgotten.

Plus I like PC games

Yup, 64 bit is the main reason I'm on 7 now (plus wife is a teacher so I got it cheap). XP 64 just wouldn't work with my hardware, so I was forever chaining my 64bit proc to only run at 32bit! That's a lot of wasted potential!! So the only option for fixing that is 64bit 7.

And I love games too.

True. It's a minor irritant.


No, you don't understand. I have compatible 64 bit raid drivers. They work just fine on vista. The issue is that Windows 7 WILL NOT load them because they're not signed. It's not that they're not compatible. It's that it REFUSES to even try if they're not signed. Now, the 32 bit drivers aren't signed either but windows 7 doesn't need signed drivers if it's the 32 bit version.

Does anyone know why that is? I seriously don't know. It seems entirely arbitrary to me.


Of course. But not using Homegroup. Which was my point. Homegroup is redundant and inferior.


That's another thing I hate. They took away my Run command.


ehhh... Not really. Everything in those folders is either documents or settings.

The folder structure is the same and everything. They just had to change the name of a folder though and now they have to leave a hidden legacy redirection there for decades just so they could feel better about themselves. *facepalm*
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Hulk smash.


No... it's totally compatible with vista and it's actually compatible with windows 7 as well. It's just that it's not signed so the OS refuses to even try to use them. If you can boot the OS, you can change the registry so it doesn't do that anymore. And then you can install unsigned 64 bit drivers on windows 7. But you can't do it during install. Which means you can't install the 64 bit os on a raid card with unsigned 64 bit drivers. Very frustrating. It's completely compatible. It's just not signed.


I sort things in folders like most people do with the desktop. It's very helpful when you're dealing with photos or sorting certain documents. You move the ones you want to deal with over to the side of the folder. In windows 7 you can't do that. You have to move them to an entirely different directory. In cases where there are dependencies and links you can't just go moving things to different directories because then other programs/files can't find them anymore. The genius of the manual sorting is that it allowed file system transparent custom organization.


I don't think you can change it. Understand. The difference is that on XP you have to click on the actual icon picture to register a click. In 7 there is a big white area around every icon that will also register a click.


XP sharing works fine so long as you have static IP and don't use computer names. My computer for example is "10.0.0.2" The issue is that if you use the computer names you really need a WINS server to keep track of the computers. That's fine if you have a windows server to handle WINS but without it the OS halfasses WINS lookups. They're generally too slow and not very accurate. So on private networks without WINS servers I just go straight up IP. That is bulletproof. It works 100 percent of the time.

It's a cute easteregg but that doesn't make up for the control panel being worse then XP.


Well. I think a better way to retain compatibility is to not change things that don't need to be changed. Changing a folder name for no benefit is bad judgment.

I've had all three. I have XP on my desktop, Vista came on my laptop, I upgraded it to Windows 7.

I like windows 7 on my laptop but I tried windows 7 on my desktop and it was a horror show. A horror show.


Can't Wine play them all pretty well? I thought Wine was getting pretty flawless with PC emulation.

Plain-vanilla wine, or are you referring to something like Cedega? I haven't dabbled with either in a few years, so it's possible they've had some kind of breakthrough. Though with games being pretty DirectX10 heavy these days, I doubt it.

Then again, maybe so. I'll try to remember to give it a try sometime.

In this particular case I would keep tabs on the manufacturers website for an updated driver as I am certain you are not alone.


As what I am doing works, I don't really mess with it and can't really comment on Homegroup.


Windows+R = Win. Seriously, who clicks start then run? If you're in a remote situation where you can't do this, then I'm pretty sure there is a way to readd this, but as I haven't had that problem I haven't looked up how. Windows+R fixes 100% of the people who don't know any better as I am positive anyone remoting better damn well be able to figure it out.


Rhaythe will certainly know best of us here, but last I knew it could only handle DX9 emulation at best in Cedega. Additionally, emulation by its very nature adds overhead and error to the process. So even if it works, it is likely to cause horrible framerates or randomly crash.

I'm looking into KVM right now. Apparently there was some breakthrough on the linux side of emulation (KVM, Xen, etc) that allows for OpenGL hardware acceleration for client machine images. I don't know if that translates to DirectX 'hooks' or not, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

Apparently, the openGL emulation runs at around 87% the effeciency of a native install. That really ain't bad.

I'm still hoping that one day I will be able to make an NW virtual machine that is fully loaded with all of the NW games already so we can just play. However, I think I will have more success with my Steam clone first.

That could work if this acceleration thing pans out. I'll let you know. If I have a decent experience with it on my writing laptop, i might wipe out my Alienware one and put the same thing on there just so we can play with the image at NW and see how successful it is.

Maybe you can come over Friday. We'll play some Greed Corp and poke and prod at this thing. The wife will be away until later in the evening, so you and I can yank out a pizza and geek out.

So Vista and 7 both enforce driver signature the same way, which is either a signed and install or nothing. There's a tool to override that

Changing desktop icon size is as easy as ctrl+wheelmouse scroll. But I guess Microsoft is now forcing you to have a keyboard and wheelmouse so I can see why that could upset you

I like the little box around the icons too, it actually makes it easier to click on small things like laptops and netbooks

And yeah, if you are using static IP's networking is cake in all OS's. But if you are not, or are working with novice players, xp sucks it would randomly demand different levels of security access and everyone had to match, and none of the defaults ever worked very well. Homegroup works fine no issues blah blah nothing to do, I like it better than XP and is more consistent with it's permissions. But thats just my opinion with how I do my networking

The "run" bar (whatever that is you type in) works just as good. Sure you can't type cmd and a command prompt opens, instead all command prompts, from the basic, the VS200x version, the python version, the perl version, the Cygwin version, etc come up instead. Which to me I like better anyways. I love that bar in fact cause I can type any prog I want and never have to look for it in the Programs part of the task bar, I never go past the first page of the windows button, can get to everything from there, less clickety.

You know I remember reading about how everyone hated the way they changed the control panel in XP. still I don't even bother with that stuff, I either do it from the type bar from the windows button, or from the godmode icon. everything else is to much clickity.

Most games are dx9 compatible.
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It doesn't matter. I should be able to use unsigned drivers.


It's hard to argue the interface is improved by removing the option. You're not trying to do that of course. You're saying it doesn't matter. But I think you would admit that they should have left it there or let people enable the option.

Nothing is gained by changing things against the user's wishes.


That's too bad. Well, I have to hope for more open standards then because I can't use windows 7. It makes me angry just looking at it.
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That tool doesn't let you add the drivers during install.

Seriously. Why require signing for 64 bit drivers?


No. I'm not a fool. You're not listening to me.

Pay attention.

Roll your mouse over an icon. Right click to the left or right of the actual ICON picture itself. That is in the dead space to the right, left, or above the icon. You'll notice on windows 7 that despite not clicking on the icon itself the OS still registers that as the icon. There's a giant square of space around icons that counts. In previous versions of windows you had to actually click on the icon itself for it to register.

See? It's not the size so much as it is that area exceeds the size.


That's great. I have no problem with having it as a feature. I just want to be able to turn it off.

Seem fair? It's the difference between Gnome and KDE. KDE is very much like Vista/Win7 in it's design. While Gnome is very windows XP.


I don't have as much experience with it as I would like. The very notion that it isn't backward compatible however makes it unlikely to get much penetration for several years.


Ah, I am a master of the quick launch. I have a thick taskbar at the bottom and I tend to have about 9 quicklaunch icons exposed at any given time. That means that most things I use commonly are one click away. I also have a second monitor. The primary is for work and the secondary is for things I like to glance at or for storing "buttons"... lots of icons that with a quick double click let me do whatever I want.

I rarely go to the start menu at all unless I want the run command or check out the control panels. Programs are sorted in free floating folders on a secondary monitor.

Okay... some updates:

KVM sucked. I don't have virtualization hardware support on my processor, so it didn't do squat for me. I all but gave up on that.

Virtualbox is beautiful. I mean, absolutely georgeous. Installed it easily (much moreso than KVM) and pointed a new client image at a bit of harddrive space, and boom. Windows 7 installed easily. It even supports 3d acceleration out-of-the-box.

Now, that acceleration is OpenGL-based, but there is a patch out there that migrates DirectX hooks and replaces them with OpenGL ones. So in theory, this should easily get past the DirectX restrictions that have so plagued VM instances in the past. I'm looking forward to trying this out once I get my image updated.


I'll disagree with that statement very emphatically. Yes, KDE is busy these days, but I believe its usage flow is far superior. The "start" menu alone is a vast improvement in my opinion than the Vista/7 version. In addition, the entire desktop has been redone since plasmoids came about. I dont' even have a true "desktop" enabled. I have a few plasmoids thown out there that i do my business through:

http://dev-null-productions.com/stuff/d ... de9.10.png

(PS: Don't mind the text outline. That's an outline I used when writing my novel.)

Compare the layout of a KDE folder to a windows 7 folder. They're all but identical.

I disagreee, but to each their own I suppose. It's just a file browser. If you're sick of Dolphin, then run Nautlius as the window manager. That's what I love about Xorg. Everything's swappable.

Still, if Gnome works for you, then awesome.

Oh I haven't checked everything out and I don't know as much about linux as I'd like.

I'm very used to the XP file browser. Anything that is very similar to it will make me happy. There are certain features that are extremely important to me that were removed in KDE and windows 7. I can't do without them. It feels to me like suddenly changing the rules in English such that the letter U is now silent.

Think about that. How would that make you feel? Annoyed... frustrated... insulted... as if you were needlessly forced to do something stupid.

Suggest another GUI if you think I can do better then Gnome though.

On a side note, how to add the Run back to the start menu:

http://www.blogsdna.com/2040/how-to-ena ... t-menu.htm

Tadaaa

course I always just window+r and never really used this in xp, but if one was determined to add it back, that would be how to do it