A Linux User's Perspective Of Microsoft Windows 8

[Kano]

@Otamay

The way you mentioned works since ages, most likely since win95 or nt. If you want to use Linux on the same box you have to get rid of suspend 2 disk (hibernate in ms speach) which is default now, same way for cmd then: "powercfg -h off" - i never looked for a menu to find that, much faster that way. Btw. mac filtering is pointless. It is just a waste of time to enable it, mac adresses are always shown in traffic so in monitor mode you see that without problems. As you can change the mac within seconds thats no security improvement. Better enable only wpa2+aes(ccmp) with a longer passphrase.

[disi]

Oh, come on, if you are smart enough to have a MAC filtering router and use it then you are smart enough to http://is.gd/Uz6rx6
Normal lusers (see what I did here?) that fit the Windows friendly framework thing have normal (insecure yeah) routers that accept any MAC, so they don't ever have that problem.

I often use the arp cache, so I don't have to touch the computer/printer/server etc. at all. Given you are on the same link
ping blabla
arp -a
Those are basic DOS commands.

[Pallidus]

windows 8 0day exploits being sold.


that is why I don't run ms not because of some fancy ass gay interface

[uid313]

windows 8 0day exploits being sold.


that is why I don't run ms not because of some fancy ass gay interface

You don't think Linux have 0-day exploits too?

[Pallidus]

You don't think Linux have 0-day exploits too?

and they get fixed after they are found


can you say the same about windows?

fuck proprietary software man

I GOT HACKED BECAUSE OF ADOBE FLASH BY SOME UKRAINIANS

I wrote a letter to adobe and shit and they ignored the shit out of it

a month or so after

"critical security in flaw discovered"

[uid313]

and they get fixed after they are found


can you say the same about windows?

fuck proprietary software man

I GOT HACKED BECAUSE OF ADOBE FLASH BY SOME UKRAINIANS

I wrote a letter to adobe and shit and they ignored the shit out of it

a month or so after

"critical security in flaw discovered"

Well, everyone knows that Flash and Java is vulnerable piece of shit software that always gets hacked and fixes are late.

Flash exists for Linux too, and you can get hacked too if you run in.
You might be interested in NoScript extension or FlashBlock.

[zeealpal]

And another part: if some non-technical user will try to reinstall windows, soon they got stuck with half of devices failing to work properly. Because installing drivers in windows isn't really friendly and could be hard enough. Especially granted poor quality of some drivers and/or their installers.

While I've found Linux is generally quite good at this, Windows 8/7 have been generally fine when I've had to install them. Often all I needed to install was the sound card driver and GPU driver, which I just downloaded the driver for... and install.

OC XP is hell to install now days, as it has so little support for any new hardware, but then again its 11 years old (7 for later releases) I doubt a 7 years old Linux installer would work nicely out of the box either.

[ChrisXY]

OC XP is hell to install now days, as it has so little support for any new hardware, but then again its 11 years old (7 for later releases) I doubt a 7 years old Linux installer would work nicely out of the box either.

On my last two notebooks Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (The most recent installation medium legally available) has had no drivers neither for ethernet nor for wifi.

My new one's hardware:
03:00.2 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 0a)
04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6235 (rev 24)

I think most of the rest of the hardware was ok with drivers from windows update once I got an internet connection.

And about GPU drivers... For windows neither the intel driver from the intel website nor the amd driver from the amd website worked and I had to install the outdated enduro package from the notebook vendor. Maybe that has been resolved with catalyst 12.11, at least I could update to the 12.11 beta without an issue.

Windows drivers often don't "just work" in my experience. I have seen someone plug in some DRM dongle into an up to date windows 7 machine and the driver installer from windows update made it go into the bluescreen loop...
It has these problems even though it is the most used operating system in the whole world and you pay actual money for the support. I think in comparison linux does remarkably well on consumer hardware.

I think I will - as a secondary system - install Windows 8 rather than windows 7 prof over home premium in order to use more ram than 16 gb.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...mits_windows_8

[zeealpal]

Maybe I just got lucky? Both my laptop/desktop had wifi working out of the box, and it downloaded my ethernet driver for me and that worked.

I do agree that a up to date Linux distro does seem to work the best on a number of things (especially when I had my older mobile phone, and needed USB tethering, that only worked on ubuntu, not windows)

[lorinkundert]

I use Windows 8 at work. If you're using Windows 7, you might as well continue using it.

Windows 8 have the new Metro UI (also later called Modern UI) which is designed for touch interfaces.
It's probably alright for tablets and smartphones but it really is unsuitable for a desktop or a laptop.

I think the Metro interface in Windows 8 decreases usability and makes using the computer cumbersome, annoying and frustrating and kills productivity.
Windows have no start button, no start menu, and now features a fullscreen start screen instead which makes the brain do a context switch and lose focus which messes up the work flow and reduces productivity.

If you're going to use Windows 8, then I can strongly recommend Classic Shell which is a free, open source software that gives you a start button and a start menu and makes Windows 8 feel and behave more like Windows 7. This makes Windows 8 more tolerable and less frustrating.

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

You are right about the productivity, I used it for 2 weeks along with a Windows 7 machine and at the end of the 2 weeks I did about 35% less work, there are simply far too many extra steps to do something that I can do in 7 with one or two steps.