Comments by "Paul Frederick" (@1pcfred) on "Question: Why Do Windows PC's Get Slower Over Time?" video.

+sinephase To a point people should not need to know how to manage their OS. The OS should know how to manage itself. You can run a live Linux session in RAM now and if you are happy with the defaults, then Bob is you uncle too. My best uptime for a live session to date is 96 days before I needed that flash drive for something else. All I did was boot it up and it ran. This application must give Microsoft nightmares unetbootin.github.io because all you need to do is point, click, and shoot.
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LordAnubis0909 I have been running Linux for 21 years now. I am more than satisfied with the software selection. To me Windows is just awful, and I have no idea why anyone uses it. OK I've some ideas, but no valid ones really.
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+marlb0r015 Even with a lot of running processes Linux remains responsive. Up until when you run out of RAM. Now precisely how Linux manages to do this I've no good idea. I suppose the kernel task scheduler is just better than anything in Windows? Windows really is built as a single user system, and Linux is built from the ground up as a multi-user system.
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Joe Vijay What Linux does today it will do 10 years from now. By then you'll probably want a new computer. Just because it will start to take too long to compile software on a 10 year old PC. Although I used my last PC until it was 14 years old. But I knew for the last few years that I was going to upgrade someday.
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talas attila Actually there is a bit more to it than you are willing to admit. That darn OS, as you refer to it, should be under your control. With Windows that is far from the actual case though. Now if you are willing to cede your liberty, that is your choice, but I will consider you a stupid end user for having done so.
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DJ Jesus.He Died for your spins Some sites have backup power generation facilities. I built a data center for the NYC financial district, and believe me when I say they were not taking any chances. Their battery room is the size of a basketball court, and that is just to tide them over until their 3 diesel generators the size of freight locomotives kick in. Although Google Maps will tell you that place is a "law Office" today. So it is a rather sensitive facility. Like I said, they're not taking any chances. heh
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marlb0r015 Yes Windows popularity is largely due to predatory business practices. With a healthy dose of market inertia thrown in at this point too. Finally Microsoft was in the right place, at the right time, and got extremely lucky. IBM certainly harbors considerable ill will towards Microsoft to this very day. Having been burned by them twice before. It really is no coincidence that IBM is one of the leading investors in Linux. They say it is because they double their money they invest, but I honestly think it runs deeper than just that. Indeed few know as much as IBM does about the computing industry. So there is a better than fair chance that IBM knows more than you do. They did create the PC after all.
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talas attila No I have used Linux on many different computers over the past 21 years. Although my last PC was 14 years old before I retired it from use. It still ran most applications OK, but it was getting a little slow compiling code. It was a rescue rig. Some poor Windows using bastard broke it, and then I got it, and fixed it by installing Linux on it. Which is the main way I get PCs anymore.
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talas attila change stupid for ignorant then if that makes you feel any better.
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Jean Kuhl-Cuomo The myth that Linux is developed by people in their mother's basements is nonsense. In fact even Microsoft contributes to the Linux kernel. Their code is crap, and had to be completely rewritten, but they are still hardly operating in their mother's basements. The bulk of Linux is developed by companies that could buy, and sell Microsoft before their morning cups of coffee. Names like IBM, and Intel come to mind. I will not tout Linux as a Windows replacement ever either. Linux is a Windows alternative. Microsoft replaces Windows regularly, and that never adds up to much. When CERN was shopping around for an OS to use with their particle accelerators they developed Scientific Linux. Heck in the Googleverse you're using Linux right now. Because they sure don't do Windows.
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John Obmar Yeah Linux does all of the tasks you mention reliably with no troubles. The PC I am on now is 7 years old now too. I bought it a few years ago at a senior center sale for a dollar. They broke it. I have a few more programs on my PC than what you mention. A couple games too. It can play music, or movies. The Desktop Environment I use is a lot like Windows was. Except it is stable. So no BSOD. But other than that, it works just like old times Windows did.
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sinephase With so many conflicting versions of shared libraries I am amazed Windows works at all. With Linux each distribution builds the distributed binaries for that particular distribution. So everything works together. With Windows the binary executables come from all over the place, so that option really is not available. Some distributions even take it a step further and the end user can tune all of their binaries for their specific machine. So in about a day you can have a full system with every binary built optimized to your particular CPU. Windows has to cater to the lowest common denominator though.
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+DJ Jesus.He Died for your spins There are Linux machines that have run without being rebooted for more than 5 years.
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Scott McDonald If you think Linux is getting slower then you do have the option of building a custom configured kernel. Doing that should pep things up a bit for you too, if you configure the kernel correctly.
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talas attila Switch Windows with heroin and your comment reads the same. I just figured I'd point that out.
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talas attila That's just the thing. You're not climbing it your way. You're climbing it with whatever Microsoft says you're climbing it with. You've really no say in the matter either.
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talas attila Not only did you not cut the pig's throat, but you also did not cook the meat either. So enjoy your case of trichinosis that comes along with your Happy Meal. Fire up another anti-virus program, maybe it will help you out some, after the fact.
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Chickenbeek There's no such thing as cleaning your PC with Linux. Not unless you absolutely need the disk space. It is because of the OS too. The system should be designed so it never gets into a messed up state. This is the extent of the administration I do on my PC aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade whenever the mood strikes me. Although someday the repository for this release will cease to be maintained, and I won't even do that anymore. So far the longest I have ever kept an install was 8 years, then that computer catastrophically failed due to a bad power supply. I did manage to pop the hard drive out of it, and it booted in another system I assembled out of spare parts I had lying around. But by then it was so out of date it was no longer supported, and fixing it all by hand would have been too much trouble. So at that point I opted for a whole new PC. That was my choice.
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John Obmar Linux offers users choices in the UI they use. You can run any Window Manager, or Desktop Environment on any distribution, if you know how to do it. X Window is a client/server network service, so that enables it to do a variety of things Windows simply is incapable of doing. But all of that takes some getting used to too I suppose.
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Chickenbeek Linux is really easy to get started with today. If you have a PC that can boot off your flash drive, and an empty flash drive, all you need is this, http://unetbootin.github.io/ and choose a "live" image. Live images run in RAM, so they do not install anything on your PC. When you shut the computer off it is like nothing ever happened. But while it is running it is pretty much like a Linux install. So it is a great way to get a taste of Linux without actually committing much to the process. A try it before you buy it kind of a thing. You do need an empty flash drive though. Well, you can run live a session off a DVD drive too. But they're pretty slow. Be warned that live distributions often have an install option too. If you choose that the OS will install on your system's storage media. Sometimes it is just an icon on the desktop. So if that is not what you want to do you need to be somewhat careful. That should be easy enough not to get in trouble with though. The install program won't just start copying files, or anything like that. You can cancel. Although you can also resize partitions, and make new ones, and do dual installs. If you ever want to.
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Chickenbeek Windows is such a sad joke of an OS that I ended up with an Acer laptop because it has a defective HDD in it. Windows could not detect, or repair the damage itself though. Well I used Linux utilities to mark the physically damaged sections of that drive, then I installed Linux on it. Problem solved. That laptop went back to Acer 3 times to be repaired too. So it wasn't just me that could not fix it. Finally the owner of it wanted nothing to do with it anymore. I can't blame them.
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sinephase Out of the mouths of ignorants. Massive range of hardware support? Are you joking? Windows runs on Intel, and like one ARM chip. Linux runs on dozens of hardware architectures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux-supported_computer_architectures I can compile, and run code on Linux that was written in the 1960s. Although honestly the oldest software I've ever personally ran on a modern Linux system was written in 1985. It was a nice clone of the Battlezone game though.
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***** Linux is not UNIX. Linux is UNIX-alike. Alike enough that it can run software that was written to run on UNIX. UNIX was released in 1969 too. I happened to have known the fellow that wrote it. We grew up in the same town. Dennis used to speak at our local LUG occasionally too. Although by then he lived in Berkley Heights. Which was a town away.
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Jean Kuhl-Cuomo My experience with Linux has been different than yours. If it has not happened to me in 21 years now then I guess what you are talking about will happen much later. Maybe there is something else going on?
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Richard Golden I got a net cam working on a laptop here. I only used some program that displayed the video from it. I never tried audio with it though. I've never owned a remote net cam. I've looked at a couple, but never actually bought one. Sometimes I like to just play with hardware. But I've really no use for a net cam, so hard for me to justify getting one.
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Scott McDonald Like I said, build a custom kernel, and remove everything you do not need. With Linux you certainly have that option. If you need it, then it is not bloat either. When I built a custom kernel for my CNC machine that runs on Linux I left out the sound drivers, because I did not need them. Although I suppose I could have simply blacklisted the modules too. I know more about the Linux kernel than Phonytex ever will.
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Scott McDonald More widespread? 7.5 billion smartphone users think you're wrong!
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Scott McDonald You're sure the poor memory management is Because of Linux? Because I have run X Window on Linux without the Java application layer in 22MB of RAM.
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John Obmar You must be a time traveler. Because Ubuntu has not even been around for 12 years yet. By now I'd think you'd have moved on to a higher quality Linux distribution than Ubuntu too. Canonical's agenda kind of gets in the way of producing such a thing.
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David Tran Windows has a way of making hard drives deteriorate too.
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dilux I did. I used a GNU third party application.
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***** PC refers to the IBM standard. Windows has nothing to do with a computer being a PC, or not. For a long time PC was just the only platform Windows ran on. Windows did not even exist when the first PCs debuted either. IBM also offered a choice between PC-DOS (IBM's MS-DOS), and CP/M.
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Matt Thompson that bad huh?
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+OptimisticPessimist So far my record is 8 years on a Linux install. Finally the PSU in that system went tits up, and it took the mobo out with it, when it died. But I was able to pop the HDD out of that box, and put it into another one that I built out of spare parts and it ran again. It was a bit choppy. It still ran though. But by then that distro was so old I could not update it anymore. So I decided at that point to upgrade.
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OptimisticPessimist CUPS makes installing printers pretty easy. I have no use for PulseAudio. Overheating CPUs is often caused by failed thermal compound. Be careful applying paste. More is not better. All paste is supposed to do is fill in microscopic pores on the surface of metal. There is not supposed to be a layer of the gunk between the CPU, and the heatsink. A layer just adds a layer of thermal resistance between the CPU, and the heatsink. Which is definitely not what anyone wants. What works is to squeegee the compound onto your CPU with a matchbook cover. Really as thin as you can possibly get it. Clean all of the old crusted compound off thoroughly first too. Compound is supposed to improve contact, not actually make contact. You are not laying bricks with mortar.
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OptimisticPessimist Well if you did not apply the paste then I would definitely check, to see what is going on. Thermal compound is misapplied more often than it is applied correctly. The only way to check is to replace the compound though. Because even if it is done right, as soon as you lift off the heatsink you're up for redoing it then too. Some Intel CPUs came with defective heatsink compound under the thermal spreader too. I believe it was the early i7s that were affected? But fixing those is difficult. I've heard of people doing it, but the process is not for the faint of heart.
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OptimisticPessimist I just checked my i3 upstairs (over ssh) pfred1@giga:~$ sensors Core 0: +31.0°C (high = +89.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) Core 2: +33.0°C (high = +89.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) Seems reasonable to me. I have a stock Intel heatsink, and fan on it.
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Jean Kuhl-Cuomo Device drivers are built into the Linux kernel. Intel writes the drivers for their video adapters, among other things.
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Richard Golden well all of computer administration can be a bit tricky. I would have to write several pages of text to clear you up on a number of points. There is really no such thing as printer drivers in Linux though. Printers have drivers built into them, along with their own RAM, and even a CPU. All an OS does is send data to a printer in a format that particular printer understands. It might be Postscript, or PCL5, etc. You just have to configure the print spooler for your printer, then all of that works. The way that configuration works is you select something called a PPD file, which describes your particular printer to the print spooler. That PPD file is often erroneously referred to as a "printer driver" too. It isn't. But because people are stupid, to keep it simple, we just smile, and nod. Sure, it's your printer driver. Go with it. Gnome was a spite move made by FLOSS zealots because they were butthurt over Trolltech's licensing. But that's a story for another day. :) I started running Linux before KDE, or Gnome even existed. Long before. So I lived through the development of Gnome. Oh, and I use KDE.
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Richard Golden You're welcome for the HP support. I was one of the early users that sent HP a really nasty message about their lack of Linux support. They really came around. Today you pretty much cannot go wrong with virtually any HP printer on Linux. They all work. There is still no printer driver for Linux though. Printers understand languages, like PCL (Printer Command Language). The Linux kernel knows nothing about any of that either. The print spooler handles it. The only drivers involved from Linux are your ports. In the old days there was the parallel port, today printers use USB. Those are motherboard chipset drivers. Your Desktop Environment (KDE, or Gnome) really has absolutely nothing to do with printer operation either. Although DEs can have graphical utilities related to printing. Those are just front ends to the spooler. Here's the best front end to the print spooler http://localhost:631 Works in any Desktop Environment too.
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Richard Golden Couldn't see the scanner, you say? Did you hold the scanner up to the monitor screen? Sorry, I couldn't resist. I have only installed one scanner in Linux, in a Samsung all in one machine. I found a tarball on the net for that machine, installed it, and everything just worked. So I am not terribly familiar with what needs to be done if things don't work. lsusb maybe?
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Richard Golden Look, see, it's your scanner!
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Black Ryan I did? Well if that is the case, you're welcome. Web comments are a difficult format for certain discussions. Not really a suitable forum to release a thesis on. Though some try.
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