Oolite Bulletins

Remember that old ideal of the paperless office? Apparently, my local council has gone 'paperless' - what could possibly go wrong?

You're just one Windows Update from Hell away from the street lighting being set to Seattle time, and all road signage changed to <choke> Comic Sans ...

No, please... not Comic Sans! Seattle time I could deal with, but Comic Sans... <sobs>

The one department I've had e-dealings with uses two-part authentication - a unique reference (five-digit number), and a PIN (my birthdate).
The latter can be changed, but must be in dd/mm/yyyy format (including strokes). I doubt whether many users will bother to change it.

Thread derailement at its best

<grins> Yeah... it's traditional hereabouts!

Cody wrote:

No, please... not Comic Sans! Seattle time I could deal with, but Comic Sans... <sobs>

That gives me a game idea - let the RNG decide which font to use!

<shudders> Bloody RNG! <grumbles>

Talking of fonts - which fool created a font wherein some lower-case letters are taller than upper-case letters?

There are several programs that claim to disable the Windows 10 update nags. I've tried one of them, 'GWX Control Panel', and it works well.

Nevertheless, I tried up turning my Windows 8.1 desktop into a Windows 10 computer. The results were . . mixed. On the good side:

- the upgrade went surprisingly flawlessly, and with a surprisingly small number of idiotic messages (you know, misleading ones or ones that tell you falsely - as in the update to Windows 8 - that you are 'almost there');
- nearly all of my programs worked just as before, without re-installation (amazing!);
- the computer was more responsive than before and RAM use was slightly reduced.

On the bad side:

(1) Windows had inconsistent title bars, and this really jarred (well, that and that some of them had ugly icons).
(2) Styling the title bars and taskbar how I wanted seem impossible. (Result: hard-to-read ugliness.)
(3) The new expanded (i.e. pop-up) notification area seemed ugly.
(4) Settings remain divided between the old Control Panel and the new 'settings'.
(5) I was worried about privacy, and/despite installing applications to deal with this - and at one point a message popped-up saying that Windows was removing malware, by which I think it meant: a program I had installed on purpose.
(6) The 'Classic Shell' program worked, but made finding the aforementioned 'settings' hard.
(7) The installation created, without asking me, a recovery partition.
(8) Especially because of the aforementioned worries and problems I did not like lacking control over Windows Updates and did not like the fact that Windows 10 is what Linuxers would call a 'rolling release'. For I did not like the idea that I would have little control over whether my computer became something other than what I wanted and a privacy nightmare.

1, 2, 5, 8 were what most motivated me to do what I did, viz., destroy the aforementioned recovery partition, and the Windows partition, and restored Windows 8 from image backups. I look forward to the day when Linux will do everything I need.

I write all this here partly to get it off my chest, but also in case it is informative for anyone.

UK_Eliter wrote:

I look forward to the day when Linux will do everything I need.

Just out of interest, what doesn't it do for you?

<grins> ED?

UK_Eliter wrote:

I tried up turning my Windows 8.1 desktop into a Windows 10 computer.

I've dragged my old machine out of the cupboard, hence the update problems. I intend to upgrade it from W7 to WX before the free offer expires - if its components can handle it, that is. They're mostly five/six years old, but the HDD is pushing ten. Spinning rust rattles on - do SSDs endure to that extent, I wonder?

Good luck, Cody. As to SSDs: I wouldn't trust a SSD to endure ten years or fairly constant, moderate use - and after ten years of sitting idle I think a SSD might forget its data. Still, SSDs are more robust (well, at least some of them) than they used to be. There'll be studies on the web about such things.

Smivs, here's what I have trouble making Linux do. It's mostly a matter of not running (natively) some applications.

- Run Microsoft Office 2013 or at least work work near-faultlessly with Office documents.
- Run VueMinder Pro or an equally good calendar programme.
- Run something like Stardock Fences, which I find essential. (I did find something like this in, I think, KDE, but it was buggy.)
- Be less buggy and glitchy and sometimes ugly on the desktop environment front (though admittedly some DEs work better than others, and one can customise).
- I worry too about bad graphics performance.

Some of these problems would be at least partially solvable by buying an expensive, powerful computer and running Windows applications fairly seamlessly (hence the expense and power) in virtual machines. Also, Crossover - the paid version of Wine - has its sights aimed on Office 2013. Moreover, Libre Office's ability to handle Word files has improved in recent years. Also, I may be limiting myself by more or less restricting myself to Mint Cinnamon.

I think that when I have more money - and here I will save money on programme licenses! - I might go for the powerful-computer-plus-VM (and a bit of Wine) option.

UK_Eliter wrote:

Good luck, Cody.

I'm kinda looking forward to the process - though I expect it'll be the source of much profanity!

Cody, my experience has been that Windows 10 requires slightly less processing power and slightly less RAM than Windows 8, and it's widely reported that Windows 8 requires less RAM than 7 (because of the way libraries/dependencies are handled, I think), so Windows 10 should be lighter (in many respects, anyway) than 7.

UK_Eliter wrote:

Smivs, here's what I have trouble making Linux do. It's mostly a matter of not running (natively) some applications.

- Run Microsoft Office 2013 or at least work work near-faultlessly with Office documents.
- Run VueMinder Pro or an equally good calendar programme.
- Run something like Stardock Fences, which I find essential. (I did find something like this in, I think, KDE, but it was buggy.)
- Be less buggy and glitchy and sometimes ugly on the desktop environment front (though admittedly some DEs work better than others, and one can customise).
- I worry too about bad graphics performance.

Some of these problems would be at least partially solvable by buying an expensive, powerful computer and running Windows applications fairly seamlessly (hence the expense and power) in virtual machines. Also, Crossover - the paid version of Wine - has its sights aimed on Office 2013. Moreover, Libre Office's ability to handle Word files has improved in recent years. Also, I may be limiting myself by more or less restricting myself to Mint Cinnamon.

Yeah, Office is the big bug really. As you say LibreOffice is now rather good with Microsoft documents - I get quite a few and they all render OK although maybe not exactly as intended. I accept that compatibility is not yet perfect.
I don't use any calender software so can't really comment or recommend anything there I'm afraid.
Stardock Fences! Yuck! Or rather Yuck! to the thought of a desktop full of icons. The beauty of a distro like Mint is that it is so easy to access stuff you don't need all that clutter, and there is the panel for the few things that really need a 'quick launch' facility. My desktop has two icons on it (and TBH one of those is not really necessary). And of course you have multiple desktops available which is an indispensible feature in my opinion.
I've been running Mint 17 Cinnamon for a good while now, and have seen no bugginess of any sort, no glitches and the graphics all run fine (with an old nvidia GTX 550 card).

Smivs wrote:

Or rather Yuck! to the thought of a desktop full of icons.

A desktop full of icons? Yes, yuck indeed! My desktop has three galaxies and a comet - no icons!