Reply With Quotei'm using windows 8 upgraded from windows 7, it dual boots with ubuntu quantal upgraded from ubuntu precise.
currently, to boot windows 8 i have to do:
c
set root=(hd0,msdos1)
chainloader +1
boot
it used to have windows on the boot menu.
on first install, video worked "ok", but installed ati official drivers anyway. initial impression was that it boots kind of quick. and that i hate metro.
i ended up researching start bar replacements for a while, none of them being very great. stardock had one, but it just emulated metro in a smaller place, and had the same annoyances with search having to specify files/apps/blah
generally speaking, with windows i have terrible problems with rearranging windows. i only have 1920x1200 resolution - but even that is probably on the "high" end... and i'm constantly rearranging windows due to lack of space. the same
bug still exists, that as you boot focus will randomly disappear, which had been an issue since XP.
chrome works about the same as in linux. it feels slightly faster than windows 7, but still not as fast as linux. i'm using a proxy server to a better connected host with the larger initial tcp window size, so i go about searching to see if i can enable support for that - and it seems that alas, no i still cannot. tcpdump shows 8k initial window size, versus linux defaulting to 14k.
playing movies is about the same as linux.
copying files on the other hand, over network, seems to still be an issue with multiple simultaneous file copies, or accessing data as stuff is being copied over - i get network transfer speeds of 105mb/sec, but single hard-disk can do 170mb/sec. copying two files at once, slows down to a crawl.
at the same time, during my testing, i had a hard-drive failure, and shifted the file server from openindiana with zfs to linux with lvm/btrfs, which surprisingly seemed to not quite cope as well. (rma'ed hard-disk, same model, seagate 3tb from seagate 1tb on windows, both bench around 170mb/sec)
overall, i'm still struggling to get used to windows, it still doesn't include virtual desktop support built in, but there's an external program to allow such - but it's painfully slow when you have lots of windows open, which is normal for me. in linux i'm using notion window manager, which feels a LOT faster.
there's also still no inbuilt ssh, having to again use an external program - in this instance putty, which surprisingly still doesn't support ecdsa keys.
load times for applications seem slightly faster for applications, but games still take ages to load. can't compare against linux, as linux doesn't support games. (starcraft 2, borderlands 2)
the task manager isn't really any better than the old one. i don't know why some people like it. it still seems harder to use than top. i've had a few weird crashes of applications, and at least two random reboots of the computer while not at it. at least one was some kind of forced windows update, which i thought i'd told to not happen automatically. although i do remember something prompting me it wanted to reboot, not sure for what.
over time, things got a little better. stardock fixed their start8 application to have a more windows 7 interface, but you still can't drag searched documents to skype. and you don't seem to be able to do "open file location" either. you can do properties, and cut and paste and open folder that way. but it's over-complicated.
one curious thing i noticed, is that even though i don't have ipv6, i can use ipv6 in windows (but not linux). and windows ping will even do it by default! where as in linux you have to do ping6.
from further exploration it seems there is some kind of tunnel service than windows makes use of, to a nearby ipv6 relay.
overall, i'm not really impressed, but it doesn't bother me too much, and i've been meaning to go back to linux for more stuff, but i'm kind of hoping that linux fixes their issues soon.
currently with my linux i don't have good video card support, as i have a radeon hd7850, which isn't supported using open source drivers, and the binary drivers don't work with recent linux version. the ubuntu kernel doesn't support usb on my gigabyte P motherboard (before Z were around), and my self-compiled kernel (3.6.0) and xorg (recent) isn't compatible with the current binary drivers. so i had to downgrade. i found the ubuntu precise kernel with downgraded X to work, kind of, but has some screen corruption issues. i can also apparently not use the fglrx module, and have a more recent kernel, but with slow scrolling, and some kind of flickering issue.
i made an attempt at using the new ati drivers that just came out, but that's not working otu so far. i've been meaning to take another look at it - but just prior i'd upgraded the windows drivers, with no issues at all.
i'm also wondering if windows will ever add support for tcp fast open. one of the reasons i've been wanting to use linux 3.6 and newer is to play with tcp fast open, and i realised that windows may never support it
so my current solution is to just keep linux for non-desktops, and do my tests from headless linux hosts, and virtual machines. i was doing virtualisation under openindiana before, but i thought i'd try doing it on a shared desktop, but that seems to create even more complications with xen and linux.
overall, it seems to suffice as a basic skype/games/word/vnc/putty/movies client, and my main outstanding problems are with dragging files to skype, copying multiple files over network at once (the pause/unpause thing is annoying but necessary! with linux it's not necessarily a lot better, but you can stick a sleep on the beginning)
i also have a feeling that putty connects slower to remote hosts than ssh. but i can't easily measure it. i have no idea if putty is making use of hardware acceleration for ssh, but it shouldn't matter for interactive sessions.
just today my start8 expired, so now i'm wondering if i should pay money for it, or try and find something else.
Originally Posted by deanjo
