Well, I was running WinXP Pro for a while. I like it. It doesn't have the funky tools of Unix, but it's pretty good for a Windows OS. Not too many crashes and such. However, my computer is old: 200 mhz, 96 ram, 6 gig hard drive. XP simply took up too much of it. So I'm back to Win98. It takes up much less room and is much faster, although it is noticably crappy in comparison, now that I'm back from XP.

Apart from that, I'm once again pulling an all-night programming session to complete an assignment for tomorrow. An easy one this time. A binary search thingy which can load and save files to play with, has a help function, blah blah blah. I only have two functions left to write.

I think its time for an upgrade or, if you're as smart as I think you are, a new PC

After being with 2000 for a month and a half, I'd hate to go back to 98. I'm getting XP this weekend though;)

This piece of crap sucks. It keeps filling up the ram. Yes, I need a new computer, but first I need a job that will hire me for only two or three days a week, as all the rest of the time I'm at classes or such. Then I might try OSX.

What RAM? Theres non there

Ive been using win2k pro with the cygwin tools (http://www.cygwin.com) .
Makes the windows command prompt actually worth something :)

I'm on 2000 advanced server and it's a workhorse of an operating system. Microshit did a good job with this one.


Peace

Well, I got sick of Win98 very fast,a nd I'm back on XP Pro again. The problem is that I have a dodgey copy from a friend. I tried installing Warcraft 3, and it needed DirectX 8.1 or later. To install DirectX 8.1, I needed to get the XP service pack from Micropoo, and their update system decided my XP Pro has a pirate key (which it does). So no service pack, no DirectX 8.1, and no Warcraft 3.

Anyone got any ideas?

I installed 8.1 from a CD from a magazine.

Any, if you get it on, what makes you think you can play Warcraft 3 with that machine :confused:

Apart from my OS troubles, my computer handles most things very well. It can't handle modern first-person shooters and such, but it should do ok with Warcraft 3.

You sure? Its got a worse spec than my old PC and that struggled with Worms 2 :bugeye:

Well, I just got DirectX 8.1 from Tucows, so that's one problem solved.

My computer had no problems with Baldur's Gate 2, which is the last game I tried on this computer. So I'm hoping it does ok. I'll find out some time soon I guess.

Screw it. Time to look at getting a new machine and running Linux on it.

I'm on that mission too Adam, running linux boxes.

Presently though I don't have anything in the ways of ASDL and the like, so I can't run a full time server.
If I was to run a server it would definitely be running a *nix system with just commandline to keep it empty of all that GUI junk. (This is okay when you've got a system taking external loads.)

Eek. I love GUIs. Even Linus Torvalds, who developed his stuff all command line, uses GUIs all the time now. It's easier for me.

It's totally dependent one what you want the system for.
GUI's are good if you've got the system stat's for it, but if you haven't then you have to run at a minimum.

That means stripping your processor of all that "Remember where the cursor is, display the cursor, animate it's movement" which is where most of those crashes you talk about originate.

Like Windoze 98's statement during install about "Multi-tasking". Yes you can do two things at the same time as long as you allow each one to load individually. (otherwise the system hangs as it ties itself up with threads.)

Windows is good for Gaming because people have forced the compatibility (if they kept programming the DOS system then it might have been compatible with linux's), Perhaps using a spreadsheet or writing a document, but when you need a box up 24/7 then you should be running something at commandline so you free your processor up.

i.e. FreeBSD/OpenBSD or another Linux Flava

Well, I'm very happy that more and more people are programming in OpenGL, and even the big games workshops are coding for Linux these days. Things will get better.

hell yeh, windows 2000 is a freaking workhorse, it does not die and when it does it recovers pretty well.

it is not to bloated which is why i freaking hate xp, cuz xp has to many things which i think arent that important well for dev work anyway and just take up space.

Oh and the other thing is i wrote some code which used the win2k api and then loaded that onto xp and the bloody thing didnt work, so because of that i switched back to 2k i think they may have changed some of the api calls, but yeh if u into MultiMedia then xp is good stuff but purly for work 2k is just 2 good, if ms keep going like this .... well i was gonna say they could make a packet but they already have :bugeye:

Hey Adam,

i was like you as well back at uni, a heavy duty advocate of linux and no one could tell me otherwise i probably had a good reason though cause back then 2k wasnt around and NT , oh dont tell me about service packs and the issues which that caused :mad:

Learning and using linux/unix is very important cuz it shows you how things work and getting things to work is fun in linux, i remeber stuffing arond with linux getting samba to work setting up a little webserver with my own configurations and stuff, setting it up as a gate way and writing scripts and stuff, but after a while, well when u start working you just wanna come home from work, after a day of configuring & or coding systems on unix or linux to a system which you can just click dail up networking and connect to the net :)

You dont wanna have to do more configuring just to get on the freaking net because for some stupid reason ppp decides not to work again, thats why now at home i just use 2k, and if stbility is an issue no one can say anything about 2k's stability.

But yeh keep stuffing around with linux it is fun specially during uni where u can show u friends cool stuff, but unless your one of those dudes which are hard-core to da max nix guys most people grow out of it and just use windows.

I'm not really a huge fan of Linux, I find it very messy and user-unfriendly. But I'm just SOOOO pissed off with Windows at the moment. Windows is crap, Linux is a bitch. I think I will write my own OS when I get better at this stuff.

yeh give it a go, i did and got as far as getting the system to boot and print out hello world, as in the computer booted of my program and printed hello world and thats all it did.

if i can find the website i will give it to you i have it here somewhere, the code to do it was there and pretty easy to uderstand but configuring and getting stuff to compile was a bit of a hoe so once i got that working i couldnt be stuffed truing to get user input and stuff like a command prompt.

but writing and OS is a major task maybe u can do that for a finally year project, and if u dont finsh it but get part of the way there you would probably have learnt and know more things then people actually working

Yep, I have been considering doing an OS for my final project. That would be one hell of a thing, if I could develop one that works. If I do, one thing I must do is include some sort of instructions for beginners. A beginner can't use linux.

Originally posted by Adam

Anyone got any ideas?

Try to get the enterprice edition :)

Why dont you just turn off all the unnecessary shit in XP then Malisha? XP doesn't have to be as bloated as it is off the shelf.

you can always check out www.tweakxp.com to find ways to make it faster. And yes, there are ways to make winxp not as bloated as you claim. :)