[X] My Assistant

And the funny thing is that people will still say that Linux distros and the BSD's are somehow inherently less stable.
It's as bad as Apple loyalism.
Peer reviewed code in the linux kernel catches these kinds of things months before they get pushed out into the more public-facing linux distros like Debian stable and Ubuntu (which always use tried and tested builds and gives them around three months of time for testing before new releases, not accepting any new changes to programs except for bug fixes during those months).

Oh, and you can choose when you want to update. In Ubuntu, you can turn off automatic updates, which actually turns them off, and in Debian there is no automatic updating by default. Most other distros follow the Debian example.

I really wish that Software & Game devs make programs work for linux, I would so happily run away from M$ so fucking fast. I want to but I have too many things I
relay on in windows that I can't really afford to switch sady.

After seeing that WinHlp32 support would be dropped (I'm pretty sure it was dropped from the start but oh well (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sleep.gif) ) while looking into the newest Windows 10 patch, I checked my laptop and saw that an attempt to open a hlp file (I still have one around) would bring me on Internet on a Microsoft page explaining the support is dropped, even though I forcefully installed WinHlp32 support before.
So I forcefully installed support again.
But since I haven't installed the latest patch yet, I will probably have to forcefully install it again if it get disabled again and reinstalling still work.
You like me being forceful right Windows 10
The M in Microsoft stand for Masochistic OS and Programs right?

I really wish that Software & Game devs make programs work for linux, I would so happily run away from M$ so fucking fast. I want to but I have too many things I
relay on in windows that I can't really afford to switch sady.

What programs (that aren't games) do you need?
I've gotten pretty good at finding alternatives for pretty much everything else.

Also, emulation of consoles is pretty much my fallback for games. There are lots of good emulators that have linux/unix support, and a backlog of roughly 40 years of games, of which at least 35 of those are of good quality (early 80s onwards for me, with a couple of exceptions for earlier ones).

Oh, and for games, I've found I don't really need them. I know that people will say "lol you're rationalizing your decision" and all of that, which is a fair criticism, but I really haven't missed new games too much since DLC and pay-to-win have become so prevalent in the industry.

Most older games that I liked for Windows will work in Wine (some of them take a little hammering to get going, though). Also, WoW, Skyrim, Witcher 3 all work in dev builds of wine. Overwatch as well, with a few more patches.

Only windows games I really play with any regularity are SWBF and SWBF2 (the old ones by Pandemic).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 10 2018, 03:07

What programs (that aren't games) do you need?
I've gotten pretty good at finding alternatives for pretty much everything else.

Also, emulation of consoles is pretty much my fallback for games. There are lots of good emulators that have linux/unix support, and a backlog of roughly 40 years of games, of which at least 35 of those are of good quality (early 80s onwards for me, with a couple of exceptions for earlier ones).

Oh, and for games, I've found I don't really need them. I know that people will say "lol you're rationalizing your decision" and all of that, which is a fair criticism, but I really haven't missed new games too much since DLC and pay-to-win have become so prevalent in the industry.

Most older games that I liked for Windows will work in Wine (some of them take a little hammering to get going, though). Also, WoW, Skyrim, Witcher 3 all work in dev builds of wine. Overwatch as well, with a few more patches.

Only windows games I really play with any regularity are SWBF and SWBF2 (the old ones by Pandemic).

I have a rather old keyboard and mouse set up and the drivers only really work on windows. I've gotten so used to being able to use the hotkeys with them that I don't really want to change. Besides that I do play the latest major games, I wish I could be happy with just the basics but I've become to spoiled for some ot the features of windows that I can't just leave them behind.

What hotkeys do you use?

You do realize you can remap or bind everything right?

This post has been edited by Pillowgirl: May 11 2018, 01:47

I have a rather old keyboard and mouse set up and the drivers only really work on windows. I've gotten so used to being able to use the hotkeys with them that I don't really want to change.

What keyboard? What mouse?
Are these 'multimedia keys?' or just keyboard shortcuts?
Most of the time, with USB devices, things that require special drivers in windows work 'out of the box' in linux unless they're wireless networking cards. Even weird hardware like my old USB video capture card (which took about seven hours to find a working Windows 8 driver for, since the OEM of my card wanted me to buy a newer one) worked out of the box on my linux system.
And you can remap every single key on the keyboard in software on a linux system unless they get intercepted by the BIOS (which is only a thing on integrated laptop keyboards).

Besides that I do play the latest major games

Well, breaking the gaming addiction is hard. I understand. :(

I wish I could be happy with just the basics but I've become to spoiled for some ot the features of windows that I can't just leave them behind.

Which features?
Basically never having to restart has been a big plus for me. As has the incredibly versatile shell.
Last time I used Windows, I had to install cygwin because the windows command line (and powershell) were driving me crazy.

What hotkeys do you use?

You do realize you can remap or bind everything right?

This exactly. It sounds like an assumption of incompatibility has been made here without a verifying stage.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 11 2018, 03:15

What hotkeys do you use?

You do realize you can remap or bind everything right?

What keyboard? What mouse?
Are these 'multimedia keys?' or just keyboard shortcuts?
Most of the time, with USB devices, things that require special drivers in windows work 'out of the box' in linux unless they're wireless networking cards. Even weird hardware like my old USB video capture card (which took about seven hours to find a working Windows 8 driver for, since the OEM of my card wanted me to buy a newer one) worked out of the box on my linux system.
And you can remap every single key on the keyboard in software on a linux system unless they get intercepted by the BIOS (which is only a thing on integrated laptop keyboards).

Well, breaking the gaming addiction is hard. I understand. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

Which features?
Basically never having to restart has been a big plus for me. As has the incredibly versatile shell.
Last time I used Windows, I had to install cygwin because the windows command line (and powershell) were driving me crazy.

This exactly. It sounds like an assumption of incompatibility has been made here without a verifying stage.

My keyboard has these macro keys to the side that I use, there are 18 in total, some I use for simple tasks like just opening a program others I've bound to more complicated AHK scripts. But the drivers to get them to work are really crappy, they're legacy as the keyboard isn't developed anymore, it's a non rgb K95 (I just tried looking and I couldn't even find the windows drivers lol). As for the mouse well I've been going back and forth. Finally got a replacement so I got a G903 now. Which as far as I know doesn't have any Linux drivers either.

Besides that, I use the people's space on win10 a lot. I use clover as my explorer (Basically a google chrome interface for it. I'd have no clue if there's something similar for linux) and for some fucked up reason at college we all have to use Visual Studio Enterprise. I tried asking but they just said "It works". I'm also not sure about Adobe programs I saw that some could work with wine?

It's also been a bit of me being a lazy ass like you said assuming that everything would be incompatible. And honestly most of the time I don't really know what I'm doing, I'd in no way shape or form say I'm an expert in any of this stuff. I just know some things.

My keyboard has these macro keys to the side that I use, there are 18 in total, some I use for simple tasks like just opening a program others I've bound to more complicated AHK scripts. But the drivers to get them to work are really crappy, they're legacy as the keyboard isn't developed anymore, it's a non rgb K95 (I just tried looking and I couldn't even find the windows drivers lol). As for the mouse well I've been going back and forth. Finally got a replacement so I got a G903 now. Which as far as I know doesn't have any Linux drivers either.

Heh, I thought when you said you had an old keyboard you were being serious. I'm using one from 1987 right now.
Anyway, Google shows a driver for the keyboard for linux.
[github.com] https://github.com/ccMSC/ckb
Not that it looks like it's actually necessary for the keys themselves to work. Just for LED's (Which IMO are overrated anyway, but obviously I can't speak for everyone). It says RGB, but I believe it would work for non-RGB ones too.

The G903 appears to just be a standard human input device class mouse. If it uses a unifying receiver, there is software for linux that handles configuring them. It shouldn't have any problems.

Besides that, I use the people's space on win10 a lot. I use clover as my explorer (Basically a google chrome interface for it. I'd have no clue if there's something similar for linux) and for some fucked up reason at college we all have to use Visual Studio Enterprise. I tried asking but they just said "It works". I'm also not sure about Adobe programs I saw that some could work with wine?

A lot of adobe stuff works in wine; you might need a VM for it to work perfectly with the most recent versions of photoshop and the like. Flash player is perfect in Wine, though. And there's native flash besides that. Older versions of PS (CS4, maybe 5) work really well, too.

Visual Studio is the bane of my existence. I do have a VM because of that in my college courses. I think they choose it because it's the path of least resistance.
I've met the same arguments when trying to figure out why we're using VS.

As for file managers, there are dozens. I know for a fact that MATE desktop's Caja has tabs, as does Thunar from XFCE. I believe GNOME 3's Nautilus does too, but I don't recommend GNOME 3. I'm assuming tabs are what you are referring to?
Screenshot of Caja (with my own theme.)
(IMG:[i.imgur.com] https://i.imgur.com/NdXyUBh.png)

It's also been a bit of me being a lazy ass like you said assuming that everything would be incompatible. And honestly most of the time I don't really know what I'm doing, I'd in no way shape or form say I'm an expert in any of this stuff. I just know some things.

Yeah, getting started with linux/unix is a... different experience if you're only used to Windows. It makes a lot more sense in my humble opinion, but it's definitely not without a learning curve. It took me a long time to discover how useful the manual pages (the 'man' command) could be. But googling my problems eventually was able to let me solve most of my problems (basically all of the non "running windows software in linux" questions). And it's made me computer literate enough that at this point I can sometimes fix problems without help by reading the error messages and thinking critically.

Learning how to compile programs was also pretty useful, but I didn't start doing that for a pretty long time after I started using linux distributions. Package managers are pretty useful and fully featured.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 11 2018, 21:35

"What was the last thing I thought?"

"What was the last thing I thought?"

Har har. Very clever.

I can't tell what year my keyboard is made in.

Adding the GNU FreeFont to my Windows XP and setting FreeSerif as default font for Firefox allowed me to see a certain message posted by another user.
Yet some characters, that used to be displayed as boxes with 6 hexadecimal characters in them, now are just invisible, though it seems I can copy-paste them within the browser to see them (but I need to know they are here).
I guess there wasn't a perfect solution.

edit:

@dragontamer8740: Thanks.Traded GNU FreeFont for GNU Unifont.Quality is a bit lower, but consistency is better, it allow me to go back to default Firefox font, and no characters are invisible (or I didn't meet characters with that condition yet).
Still, knowing that fonts file formats are universal (all OS), I feel like programs (browsers, and Firefox for me in this case) that "randomly pick another font that has the missing characters from the main font" should give better options to pick fallback fonts when needed.
Even if luck make it not too obvious on modern OS, it's still a hazard, sort of.

This post has been edited by uareader: May 20 2018, 13:14

I can't tell what year my keyboard is made in.

Most of mine either have stamps on the plastic moulding, or a sticker stating the manufacture date (on IBM boards mostly).

Plastic stamp mouldings usually look like this. In this pic, my guess is it was made in July of 2010, and it was mould #3 that it was made from. Sometimes on keyboards they are on the inside of the case.
[i.stack.imgur.com] (IMG:[i.stack.imgur.com] https://i.stack.imgur.com/1CaBCl.jpg)

Adding the GNU FreeFont to my Windows XP and setting FreeSerif as default font for Firefox allowed me to see a certain message posted by another user.
Yet some characters, that used to be displayed as boxes with 6 hexadecimal characters in them, now are just invisible, though it seems I can copy-paste them within the browser to see them (but I need to know they are here).
I guess there wasn't a perfect solution.

Try GNU Unifont.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 18 2018, 21:15

Even M$ themselves decided against using Qualcomm's ARM CPU in the their future low-cost Surface tablet lineup. That settles it. M$'s "Always Connected PC" initiative is doomed to fail, adding to the list of past failures by M$: Windows Phone, UWP, Windows Store, Zune, Games for Windows, Kinect, Groove Music, Windows Live OneCare, and Windows Vista.

This post has been edited by hujan86: May 20 2018, 06:39

why are displayport to hdmi cables so fucking iffy? Most of them don't go past 1920x1080p and I need an expensive 4k one to drive my widescreen monitor.

why are displayport to hdmi cables so fucking iffy? Most of them don't go past 1920x1080p and I need an expensive 4k one to drive my widescreen monitor.

Because you need a powered signal converter, and why the fuck doesn't a 4k monitor have a dp port, i would expect that from a TV not a monitor.

why are displayport to hdmi cables so fucking iffy? Most of them don't go past 1920x1080p and I need an expensive 4k one to drive my widescreen monitor.

Well, I only have a 1920x1200 monitor, but the cheap one I bought at walmart works fine.
And I use it instead of a normal displayport cable because my laptop is the ONLY displayport device I have and I have a DVI KVM switch.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 24 2018, 07:04

Well, I only have a 1920x1200 monitor, but the cheap one I bought at walmart works fine.
And I use it instead of a normal displayport cable because my laptop is the ONLY displayport device I have and I have a DVI KVM switch.

Because you need a powered signal converter, and why the fuck doesn't a 4k monitor have a dp port, i would expect that from a TV not a monitor.

I'm powering a 1080x2560 widescreen monitor, and only comes with hdmi ports. It could be seen as a TV I guess. I use displayport already for my main monitor which is 2560x1440x. I got a more expensive cable and this one does work just fine.

I'm powering a 1080x2560 widescreen monitor, and only comes with hdmi ports. It could be seen as a TV I guess. I use displayport already for my main monitor which is 2560x1440x. I got a more expensive cable and this one does work just fine.

I believe you mean 2560x1080, unless it's in portrait rotation.

Thought for today:
Hewlett-Packard has really gone to shit quality wise. I miss their old test equipment and their awesome build-quality calculators. And IMHO the HP-28S and HP-48GX are among the best calculators ever made.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 27 2018, 04:57

I believe you mean 2560x1080, unless it's in portrait rotation.

Thought for today:
Hewlett-Packard has really gone to shit quality wise. I miss their old test equipment and their awesome build-quality calculators. And IMHO the HP-28S and HP-48GX are among the best calculators ever made.

Nope. It's side ways I use it for my chat so I can see the whole list.

Going to go back to windows 8.1 today. Anything I should do with my fresh install?