Vista - things to know.

[Evil Elvis]

The only real edge Microsoft has on the desktop anymore is gaming.  If developers actually switched from DirectX to OpenGL, MS would be in real trouble.

Hell, I had my computer-illiterate parents using Ubuntu for a few weeks while I figured out what was wrong with their windows pc.  The only problem/complaint was that Solitaire wasn't as nice.

[Righ]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pysolfc/

[Wasted]

What I am finding annoying atm with Vista is games telling me I need to install directx 9.0c when i have directx 10 installed.  I'm sure there is something I am misunderstanding about the whole thing

[Stephen Zepp]

The only real edge Microsoft has on the desktop anymore is gaming.  If developers actually switched from DirectX to OpenGL, MS would be in real trouble.

Sad, but not true.

Torque has always been "OpenGL over a D3D wrapper", until our latest generation of tech (TGE-A). The market (lack thereof to be more specific) combined with way, way too many OS flavors to support has made linux game support almost a thing of the past...and it sucks. We tried like hell to give linux flavors the same treatment as Mac and Windows, but ironically, no one wanted to actually pay for any games--the majority kept bitching "why isn't this free?", and refused to actually buy any linux games that developers made...

Hopefully it will change. Our latest tech abstracts graphics away from the hardware completely, so it's a matter of a couple of months to write an OpenGL device that plugs in to the framework, but until their is a demonstrable market share to be able to support linux game development, it's not gonna happen in my personal opinion.

[Yegolev]

When did Linux start competing with Windows?

It's been creeping up.  Still a few years away from real competition in the home market but it has long been a contender in the server world.

All my work, except for documentation, is done on Linux machines.

OK, I can see the server arena, but I don't normally think of that since Linux is shit.  Yeah, we use it here and there, but not much, so I was thinking for home use.

[Murgos]

We have a HP-UX soemthing or other (no idea what hardware it's running on) and a Redhat LSF cluster on x86 machines.  Other than login profiles they are identical to the user (me) except that any task run on the Redhat cluster gets done faster.

I don't support the servers in anyway so I have no clue if there are behind the scenes issues with which OS is running.

[Yegolev]

The issue is likely that clustering HP-UX would require a massive bankroll while clustering Linux just requires a trip to Circuit City, just based on my limited knowledge of purchasing.  I would bet a Franklin that you can only run HP-UX on a HP server; that's how the big boys roll, like IBM (I think you can get Solaris for non-Sparc hardware, though, not sure).  You don't actually pay for AIX, you buy a machine to run it and you get the OS for free.  The big (only) advantage of Linux is that it runs on cheapass hardware, so you can parallelize cheaply for things like login servers or what-have-you.

I don't know if I would care one way or another if my corp laptop was XP or a Linux implementation.

[Lantyssa]

Solaris, at least at one time, had Intel builds available.

[Trippy]

Solaris, at least at one time, had Intel builds available.

It still does. Sun sells Opteron machines are their low end server line.

[Yegolev]

There you go, fast track to fame and fortune as a Solaris specialist.  I think we have two Solaris boxen.

[Xerapis]

Ok, so my Vista copy that I bought through Windows Marketplace on 30JAN07 is suddenly telling me that I have 3 days to activate it.

It won't accept my license key, claiming that it is already at use.

I'm about to start breaking things.  I know the flight to Bill Gates' house would be expensive, but I'm willing to bet that geeks all over the world will help with my legal defense fund.

[Furiously]

It's only 4-5 miles from my house....

[shiznitz]

Ok, so my Vista copy that I bought through Windows Marketplace on 30JAN07 is suddenly telling me that I have 3 days to activate it.

It won't accept my license key, claiming that it is already at use.

I'm about to start breaking things.  I know the flight to Bill Gates' house would be expensive, but I'm willing to bet that geeks all over the world will help with my legal defense fund.

I can only laugh at you. XP is still available for $140. Media Center for $110.

[Furiously]

My dad went out and got a copy of Vista for a new computer he just built. (He also got a stick of bad ram - which made things go real slow while I tried to figure out what was wrong.). So I install it finally and Linksys doesn't have any 64 bit drivers for their wireless cards. So - back to the old HD with XP. Definately not ready for prime-time.

[Engels]

Why did he install the 64 bit version? That's for loonies! Seriously, tho, doesn't the Vista install disk offer the two versions? Or did your dad specifically buy the 64 bit distro?

[Strazos]

Neg, they come on different DVDs. Some packs come with both 32- and 64-bit installs on different discs, but that's about it.


Also...is there a reason someone should buy the retail pack over the OEM? Seriously, the price difference is fairly large.

[Furiously]

I'm sure he figured - I have a 64 bit processor, I should get the 64 bit version of the OS.

Given that support is crap - It is very pretty.

[Samwise]

If developers actually switched from DirectX to OpenGL, MS would be in real trouble.

In theory you can run 3D applications on Linux with OpenGL, but in practice, very few Linux distributions seem to include even a very basic working OpenGL implementation, much less all the wildcat extensions.

[Ironwood]

Vista :  Things to Know.

1 - Avoid it.
2 - See 1.

[Xerapis]

Gawrsh, Y'all are so helpful these days.

[Evil Elvis]

If developers actually switched from DirectX to OpenGL, MS would be in real trouble.

In theory you can run 3D applications on Linux with OpenGL, but in practice, very few Linux distributions seem to include even a very basic working OpenGL implementation, much less all the wildcat extensions.

I don't really see this as a big problem.  Most people tech-savy enough to run linux can figure out to type something like 'sudo apt-get install opengl'.  Having out-the-box video driver support has been a much bigger problem. 

Ubuntu's gone a long way to bridging the gap between power-users and normal users for linux.  Newer versions do very well at detecting your hardware, and have built-in support for most nVidia cards.  Even ATI has stated that they're going to support open drivers now.

[Lantyssa]

Gawrsh, Y'all are so helpful these days.

You should have asked our opinion before purchasing Vista on a whim.  Then we could have helped.

[Kitsune]

There are Linksys drivers for Vista 64, just not from Linksys.  Seems that their hardware is just rebranded from other manufacturers; while trying to get a friend's wireless card working I discovered that the people who'd actually made the card had Vista 64 drivers on their site.  Downloaded, installed, worked fine.  Linksys, meanwhile, was still listing the drivers as unavailable.  All they had to do was put a link to the drivers on the page, but apparently that was too much work for them.  Fuckers.

As for weird validation problems, Xerapis, I haven't heard of anyone coming across anything like that.  Call Microsoft, they'll help you.  Seriously.  I realize that in this day and age, calling for support is usually such a bad idea as to be laughable, but any time I ran across problems validating XP license codes, the Microsoft folks were actually helpful and sorted it all out.

[Xerapis]

It happened right after I installed Windows Updates.  Apparently it detected some piece of hardware on my system for the first time.  After the install and reboot, it decided that my hardware had changed drastically enough that I had to re-activate Windows.  So it invalidated my product key code and product ID so HELPFULLY.

9 emails later, I finally got a new product key code, which was all I had asked for from the beginning.  Really pisses me off.

And I'm in South Korea.  Calling Microsoft service here is rather less than useful, as their English skills are mediocre at best.  And I'm not paying the overseas rate for cellphone calls any more than I was going to pay $59 to email Windows Vista tech support directly.

[TheWalrus]

Thanks and sorry. My dad read a description of this problem to me the other day but I refused to believe it until your story.

[Xerapis]

On the plus side, now that I can actually turn my computer on and off again without worrying about not be able to get back into Windows...

I was able to transfer my computer to my brand new Antec 900 case.

~insert glee here~

[Xerapis]

Just because I have to share....

[Trippy]

Are those 120mm fans up front?

[Kitsune]

Yes.  The entire case is basically built from fans.  Good if you need that much cooling, but my tastes run more towards the P180 series.  A solid monolithic case, dignified yet menacing.

[Xerapis]

Don't forget the orgasm-inducing 200mm fan on the top :)

[Trippy]

Yes.  The entire case is basically built from fans.  Good if you need that much cooling, but my tastes run more towards the P180 series.  A solid monolithic case, dignified yet menacing.

Yeah I doubt I would ever at this point in my life build a computer that needed that much cooling but I do like the idea of a 120mm fan up front for noise purposes. Most ATX cases can only fit an 80mm or 92mm fan up front.

[Big Gulp]

I really haven't run into any issues with Vista yet, and I'm still on fairly old hardware (2Ghz AMD64, ATI X850, 2GB RAM) and running it with all the bells and whistles on.  I like the OS quite a bit once I disabled UAC, which is a pain in the ass if you're knowledgeable enough to avoid the common infection pitfalls.  Gaming takes a wee bit of a hit, but I figure that's to be expected since this thing uses more resources, and besides, I'm not really gaming on the PC very much any more these days.

I tried the latest version of Ubuntu (Feisty, I think?), but Creative still hasn't released drivers for the X-Fi, so I'd be without audio, which is unacceptable.  Although it has to be said that for the first time Linux has apps that I wish were on Windows, namely Beryl and Amarok.  Still, those aren't worth switching over considering the numerous problems I'd have with Linux in the missing application department.

[Sky]

I used the p180 in my last build and took out the middle drive rack to put in a 120mm intake. GPU still gets a bit hot...but it's an overclocked 8800gtx, soo....