The online racing simulator
**Read this before you buy Windows Vista**
(116 posts, started )
Quote from Christofire :Don't bother with all that. Get VMWare's server/player and download one of the pre-installed virtual machines. There's a few distributions available (e.g. ubuntu), and it's the easiest way to try it. If you don't like it your WinXP install will be as it was.

Surely the easiest way would just be a Live CD?
Quote from Christofire :Most of the things I use my computer for could be done on Windows 95 - does that mean I should go and dig out the old CDs and reinstall it? If you don't want Vista, don't buy it. I don't see the point of complaining about it.

the problem is that ms is dropping full support for xp right away just to push vista down out throats which is a more than shady business tactic

Quote from spookthehamster :Surely the easiest way would just be a Live CD?

not everybody can take the constant whirr of a cdrom drive ... that alonw would be enoug to put me off linux for all eternity
Quote from Christofire :Most of the things I use my computer for could be done on Windows 95 - does that mean I should go and dig out the old CDs and reinstall it? If you don't want Vista, don't buy it. I don't see the point of complaining about it.

I seriously thought about putting 98SE back on my PC when I last reinstalled XP, what changed my mind in the end was mainly compatibility, networking and the lack of plug and play. In the last 9 years Microsoft have offered me nothing new which I want, AFAIK Vista is just the standard NT with the only major change being it's all rendered in 3D.
Quote from Shotglass :the problem is that ms is dropping full support for xp right away just to push vista down out throats which is a more than shady business tactic

I hadn't heard that little snippet. It's not the most customer-friendly decision to make, but again I can see a reason for it.

If WinXP has fundamental flaws that mean each month a new round of patches need to be released to shore up the OS for another week or two, and Vista has fixed these fundamental flaws, then carrying on supporting XP would be flogging the dying horse. From product development point of view it wouldn't make sense to work on something that you're going to can in the next few months, but it does suck from the customer point of view.
#80 - Jakg
its keeping support for XP until 2012 or 2013, btw
#81 - SamH
There's got to be some legality in failing to support a product that's firmly within warranty - MS didn't stop selling XP over the last year. Far from it.
i was talking about full support which includes full direct x support to me
ms gradually decided to strip all true advantages (eg winfs) vista had to offer over the years of development and now theyre trying to push it down every gamers throat with dx10 all while making all id engines ridiculously slow

and now there arent any fundamental flaws in xp ... at least none that arent in vista as well basically vista is the slowest .x update thats ever been in development
That's a key issue, there are important stability and security fixes in XP over previous Microsoft O/S releases, plus many extra useful features and hardware /software support. It comes with plenty of other junk I wish it didn't have, I'd switch back to 2000 for the clean interface if it wasn't for compatability and security issues.

My friend also has Vista, he says it's great because it just works. Great, XP works already though...

Vista doesn't seem to offer much except eating up 15 times more HDD space than XP. Of course all will be revealed when I get around to installing it but I don't have a positive outlook on it.
Quote from Shotglass :i was talking about full support which includes full direct x support to me
ms gradually decided to strip all true advantages (eg winfs) vista had to offer over the years of development and now theyre trying to push it down every gamers throat with dx10 all while making all id engines ridiculously slow

and now there arent any fundamental flaws in xp ... at least none that arent in vista as well basically vista is the slowest .x update thats ever been in development

DX10 has supposedly been reworked to reduce the instruction count and speed up the engine. Having tried vista betas and the full thing this weekend (not on my computer ) it works, it does the job as well as XP does. I can't say that I noticed it being much slower than XP is on my computer (which isn't a top-level gaming rig).

Have you had any experience of Vista? I admit I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but the reported differences should make it more secure than XP, easier to use than XP and if/when the canned features come in you'll see the functional benefits.

Until then, either buy it or don't. It doesn't make any difference to me. <leaves thread>
Looking at Kubuntu/Ubuntu it seems the difference is one uses the KDE and the other GNOME, what's the difference?
Quote from ajp71 :Looking at Kubuntu/Ubuntu it seems the difference is one uses the KDE and the other GNOME, what's the difference?

They're just different GUIs. I prefer KDE, but I know people who prefer Gnome.
#87 - arco
If it was up to me which OS should rule the world, it wouldn't be neither XP, Vista or Linux. It would be BeOS. I've never been so impressed by an OS as when I first tried it years back. Excellent filesystem, speed and API.
Is there any way of getting Linux drivers for my Philips sound card and Netgear network adapter? Otherwise Linux is pointless to me.
btw is there a global equalizer for linux ? the kind you get with any sound card driver in windows these days
Quote from Shotglass :btw is there a global equalizer for linux ? the kind you get with any sound card driver in windows these days

I had my speakers on the wrong input channel

Will go and try it again
#91 - arco
Quote from ajp71 :Is there any way of getting Linux drivers for my Philips sound card and Netgear network adapter? Otherwise Linux is pointless to me.

Check if your soundcard is supported here.
What Netgear adapter or what chip does it use?
You can always try and download a LiveCD and see if you sound card/network adapter works there. It will usually autodetect all supported hardware and load the drivers for you.
^^ I tried the Ubuntu Live CD but it didn't pick up my network adapter

EDIT - it's a NETGEAR WG311v2 802.11g Wireless PCI Adapter
#93 - arco
#94 - arco
Quote from Shotglass :btw is there a global equalizer for linux ? the kind you get with any sound card driver in windows these days

Dunno about global equalizer, but most media players have built-in equalizers.
I use Amarok for my music listening.
Tried the sound again, still no luck.

EDIT - thanks for the link to the network thing but I'm afraid it's all completely over my head. Seems that even from a CD Linux has huge potential just a shame that hardware companies have little interest in supporting it, maybe some day when there are drivers for my setup which even an idiot can install I'll try Linux again. Getting Linux was far less painful than reinstalling XP, the entire OS was probably about the same size as the updates needed to make XP work and it was far less painful than trying to get the bloody automatic updates crap to work until I hit the brick wall of not being able to get online easily, I could live without sound but without the web my PC is pretty useless.

*sulks back to Windows*
Quote from ajp71 :Seems that even from a CD Linux has huge potential just a shame that hardware companies have little interest in supporting it, maybe some day when there are drivers for my setup which even an idiot can install I'll try Linux again.

*sulks back to Windows*

I just spent 90e for a new modem (old pci crap wasn't supported in newer kernels and it was really the time to get rid of it), but that's a small price if I don't have to lose my nerves with Windows again
Quote from arco :Dunno about global equalizer, but most media players have built-in equalizers.
I use Amarok for my music listening.

i have to use some pretty extreme equalization to get rid of the stupid riaa lowpass built into the inputs im currently forced to use so i usually have to use 2 equalizers chained together
#98 - arco
Quote from Shotglass :i have to use some pretty extreme equalization to get rid of the stupid riaa lowpass built into the inputs im currently forced to use so i usually have to use 2 equalizers chained together

Found this one: http://www.ludd.luth.se/~torger/brutefir.html

Seems pretty advanced though, so I hope you understand it.
jeez 2hrs later i finally got my windows running again ... the sabayon grub installer messed up my mbr pretty darn good

thx ill take a look at it as soon as im interested in trying linux again ^^

**Read this before you buy Windows Vista**
(116 posts, started )
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