Posts by Arkeo

Windows 11 needs an XP SP2 moment, says ex-Microsoft engineer

CEOs making the same mistakes?

Nadella (and many others) need the Gelsinger treatment.

Ex-White House cyber, counter-terrorism guru: Microsoft considers security an annoyance, not a necessity

A one word solution: Debian.

Make Redmond angry by setting up Windows 11 with a local account

Re: why rush to w11?

To "spite" M$ I installed Ubuntu on my desktop and Fedora on my laptop. I was really, badly fed up with W11. 7 was great, 10 good enough, but 11? OneDrive should be considered purely malware. Or a virus. Or both.

Teens used encrypted chats to recruit for 'violence as a service' murder ring, Europol says

Encryption?

I bet they were using WazzUp, not Signal... Yep, *very* encrypted chats... /me facepalm self

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

Re: And now for the downsides of having to deal with geeks such as these:

Keep thumbing me down please!

This attitude goes up to the Kernel devs themselves (wanna talk about how Rust rules and C sucks?).

Keep proving me right, please!

I think you're missing the point here: if you need DarkTable

1- you've got a DSLR and know what that means

2- you're familiar with RAW and the workflow

3- you have the necessary knowledge to move that workflow across different apps

The GIMP will *never* be an alternative to PS because it doesn't *want* to be one. It's not like LibreOffice vs. MS Office, where compatibility and familiarity are the main (only?) issues. I've been using Linux for the past 21+ years or so and I still can't understand GIMP. Maybe I never gave it enough time, maybe I'm just stubborn (no I'm not, I always find new and exotic things to do with bash, in Slackware times I recompiled my own kernel as soon as a new version was available) or maybe the GIMP's UI is not meant to be a migration for PS users. I don't care, because other apps, now that my Nikon has been stolen and I don't have to deal with RAW or HDR composites, suit my needs.

But keep one thing in mind: GIMP is as much a part of Linux as is GNU. After all, what does GTK stand for??? Excluding KDE, almost ALL other UIs on Linux exist *because* of GIMP.

I don't use it, I don't understand it, but I acknowledge its importance well beyond the Photo Editor itself.

Re: Linux alternatives

For my needs Photoshop stopped being useful at version 7. Which I could run on Linux with Wine, BTW. When forced back on Win, Paint.NET was a no-brainer (but still, no PS7). Now Pinta, but still, not even remotely on par with PS7.

Yes, PS7 is one of those program versions that set a milestone, like Word 5.1 (if you had a Mac in those years) - everything before was pitiful, everything after was bloated and insane.

Re: Linux alternatives

>> What price Windows 11 / 12 now?

Sadly it's free most of the time (to lure users), or about 20 USD for a totally new license. It's an OSaaS, so the initial price doesn't really matter anyway. Nadella will make you pay for everything else, most of which you don't even want or need...

And now for the downsides of having to deal with geeks such as these:

stick Sid on it & STFU.

Welcome to Linux. Where even "should I name it *.jpg or *.jpeg?" can get you banned.

It's the End of Windows

Not just 10.

From 11 on Windows is no longer an OS, it's a service. OSaaS. Fundamentally wrong in every possible way.

If you've been using any kind of PC/Mac over the past 15 years or so you'll be comfortable enough on Linux. Starting with Ubuntu, you don't even have to know what a terminal is. Ubuntu (in all of its flavours) is intended to -and can- be used without even ever seeing a bash terminal, not once. Just like MacOS, which is BSD/Unix with a very comprehensive GUI layer on top.

Back up everything and give your distro of choice a go on your real hardware (including printers, scanners, etc), not on a VM. Be patient. Google (well, UDM14) all the things which are unclear. Give it a couple of days. Some apps will be more familiar than others. But they basically all work the same way.

No subscriptions, not bloatware, no AI, no ads - your computer and its OS are yours again.

Enjoy...

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

Re: and the familiar Windows experience they know and love."

Maybe someone on MS board could consider a Gelsinger manouvre... What's wrong with my spelling of manouvre??? Oh yes, that's W10.

Re: and the familiar Windows experience they know and love."

This is gonna backfire, badly. Give it a couple more months... It's idiotic.

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

The mouse!

On the new CopilotMouse, which will require either a SCSI cable or a Threadripper inside said mouse, Copi(ng with it) will lead the pointer toward buttons which make more sense than everything else, like on the right display you try to answer a meeting call but the pointer will move to the left screen positioning itself to allow Edge & Bing to become your default browser/search.

Truly amazing...

Silicon, stars, and sulfur make Apollo's unlikely legacy

Warp

As a Trekkie, I can tell you that you can't actually reach Warp 10. Ever.

It's supposed to be a curve, can't remember the English term, where 10 equals infinity. So you could go 9.9999999999999 but never 10. Despite some Trek movies/episodes that showed otherwise.

I believe Asimov said that the biggest problem when writing SciFi is that it *has* to make sense. Reality, on a daily basis, doesn't.

Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows

"Backup. Backup again."

Thank God I'm not the only one, I was starting to believe I was going nuts: 4 backups, either on encrypted LLVMs or if not possible everything's compressed in a 7z file with a 42 character password (yes, 42). Ever since I lost 4GB of music on my original iPod (remember those?) my very 1st commandment is "Redundancy is Everything, with a remote (but not Cloudy) option as well".

Re: No Bedrock choice without KDE!

KDE is the worst DE of them all, on a clean install I don't even have Qt installed *at all*.

Re: My choice for a decade

I didn't mean it that way. There *are* unfortunately some things that M$ Orifice can do and LO can't, but nowadays it's mostly collaborative stuff designed to lock you in. From a pure functionality perspective LO current is basically Office 97/98 (sorry, Mac & Win versions had different denominations) upgraded for the XXI Century.

With Mint there shouldn't be any problems. And if you're comfy with a root Terminal there's always Debian testing/Sid...

Re: Hm...

And Sid is better than Ubuntu anyway...

Re: My choice for a decade

Totally missing the point. If your wife *needed* M$ Orifice she just needed it, period. Especially with all the new features, designed to lock you in, you should have fixed her Windows install *in the first place*. Then explored alternatives. You got it backwards man...

Re: My choice for a decade

Did you notice that most of us "happy Mint users" are writers? I'm a novelist myself, started with OO on Win7 a looong time ago. With Mint I can forget the OS and focus on my work. At 45 that's alright with me, the OS disappears and I can focus on my job. Best OS since System 7.1.2 with M$ Word 5.1: the OS was basically invisible, Word 5.1 got everything to get your job done, the laser worked exactly as expected and Mint is the only Distro that just does that, it b****y works. I can even swallow Flats instead of Debs as long as I get to to do what I *need* to do.

Disenchanted Windows user? Pop open a fresh can of Linux Lite

Start with Mint. Pretty straightforward. Aesthetically pleasing. Forget about snaps or flats or debs and all the other crap we argue about. Just give it a try (and be amazed by how all your hardware, printers/scanners included, just work *immediately*!).

If I'm wrong shame me publicly here on El Reg! ;)

USB + ISO + Ventoy

Try any distro you want! :)

Re: Screwing the Pooch

>> In which parallel universe does that make sense?

None. We already got .deb and Synaptic. *The Best.*

>> What have they done to mess that up? Whatever it was, it goes all the way back to early Ubuntu and that should have been a warning flag.

Nope. It was Debian's fault when they decided not to include proprietary drivers/binary blobs into the distro. It was a sinking ship and thankfully they realized it. But Debian still gives you Firefox ESR even on Sid. I mean, I run *beta* on my phone and my workstation and my laptop.

Paradoxically Ubuntu has tried to make things better by making them worse (snaps?!?). This is all on Debian. I wonder, are those guys living in some Jupiter moon or actually here on Earth in 2014???

Re: An old days "update" today.

And Mint, for now, runs just perfectly without flats as well. My Mint install is pure .deb, it works perfectly and I hope Lefèbvre will consider this for future releases. Otherwise there is still Debian. I * love* Cinnamon, not the the smell, just the DE. So Clement, why flats?

With Asmi 24.04, Ubuntu's never looked so snappy (without the Snaps)

Classic Macintosh System had that one nice not-so-little square in every window. Good Ol' Days...

Re: Mint and Flatpak

Thanks for the info! I honestly didn't know... I got Mint Edge on an HP ProBook, just for testing it before moving completely away from Win, and the funny thing is, being a little old-school, when I noticed the update icon with the orange dot I'd simply fire up a root terminal and apt upgrade the whole thing. As it turns out I didn't have any flats (or snaps) installed, so removing the whole flat "infrastructure" (3 or 4 deb packages) wasn't such a big deal. As for installing new stuff there's always Synaptic, or apt install. Never even opened the update manager.

But I'm going to try Asmi, even though it's not green on black (sorry folks, I'm a Son of The Matrix) it sounds like the Debian we never had...

CLIs are simply wizard at character building. Let’s not keep them to ourselves

Not sure...

...but it seems to me that you have a grudge against distractions (and I totally agree) - but I remember writing my first short stories on a Macintosh Classic with Word 5.1 (I think). No CLI whatsoever. It worked just fine and it still does (not the actual HW & SW, I mean the principle).

I vaguely remember when I had to write something on a terminal, I think I was on Slackware back then. Then came Debian, Ubuntu and Mint. And I don't have to worry, or write scripts, for anything. It just works. Like that old Classic running System 7.1

And BTW, emacs and vi/vim suck. Even nano sucks. When I need to I usually just "sudo gedit", almost like on a *real* Mac from the 90s...

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Re: I know the future

Isn't that the present already?

The Nuclear Option

Apple will buy North Korea as a totally owned subsidiary and will move all of its production there giving Kim Jong-Un a seat on the board (plus an oversized prototype of the next iPhone NKE, Nort Korea Edition, which will be totally red, including the display, and will sport a yellow star instead of the company's logo on the back - and will have a life-long battery life by implementing radioactive material decay as power source) and of course, implement Siri nation-wide as the only interface of the iPhone NKE given that the screen is all red.

"Hey Siri, how do I launch an ICBM loaded with a nuclear warhead targeting Tokyo?".

Remembering the time Windows accidentally sent Poland to the bottom of the sea

Never. The Euro-zone alone (smaller than the EU) has at least 3.

China really spans 3 time zones but only follow one for the whole Country.

Re: Rome or Vatican?

Of 825 vs. 58+ millions... It's absurd, having to click around to find Rome and every OS always selects the Vatican. 0.44 vs. 1,287 square kilometers...

Rome or Vatican?

This is a thing I've seen on every version of Windows and MacOS and every Linux distro: if you click on Rome to select CET time zone and locale it always selects Vatican City first, Rome after a few clicks around the neighboring pixels. I mean it's not like Rome is the largest city in Italy by size and population right?

Linux has nearly half of the desktop OS Linux market

So many replies, my apologies but I could'n read them all! :)

That being said I think that the problem with Linux and privacy conscious users i not the kernel "per sé" (yes, it needs that accent), but Google's total control of Android and Chrome and Chrome OS. I don't trust Google, simple as that. My Lenovo Chromebook is a wonderful and very light travelling companion. It just works, and that's great.

So does my HP Ryzen 7 with Sid (and MATE). It also weighs about 700 grams more than the Lenovo Chromebook. And it doesn't have a touchscreen.

TL;DR - I think it's all about the way you feel about privacy. And Google doesn't guarantee you that, it's its own business model that requires it. Debian, Slackware (my first distro) and many others do not profit from your data. That's the real difference. You might dislike my choice of MATE or any other DE, but that doesn't undermine the commitment to privacy of FOSS software (like Firefox).

Cheers fellas! :)

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

Dude, do you run HTTPS Everywhere? I get half a dozen "continue to insecure HTTP" msgs everyday from reliable commercial websites which I won't mention, partly because after clicking OK the URL appears to be secure anyway, but I'm not a network guy so maybe I'm missing something.

Anyway, I'd give XP a try just for fun. But I'd never access my Credit Card or Online Bank on it, that's for sure!

Re: Really?

I guess you're right: neither me or any of my customers had any virus, and it was during the IE6 Maximum Infestation Era. All it took was installing Firefox and the then brand new M$ own Anti Virus Tool (or whatever it was called back then). Of course, Firefox was pretty much shoved down their throats, but that's what being a BOFH is all about, ain't it? ;)

Re: Really?

Care to elaborate on that?

IE: Why is my Mint as (non) secure as my Win10/11 laptops?

Thanks...

Eat up, Windows 11 users – this is your last non-security preview update for the year

Re: Not switching until...

Your sarcasm aside, that's a feature I actually didn't know about. Thanks for sharing...

Re: WINDOWS 11 is NOT ready for main streams use....

10 is ok, mostly... 7 didn't have any worth mentioning, maybe once in a while while playing Solitaire? Can't quite remeber any more (btw, The Best Windows Ever, so of course short-lived), 11 is a constant push to subscribe to online services you didn't ask for in the first place and for which you may already have better alternatives (Office 365 vs. Office 2021, but with the OneDrive malware caveat, because the Windows OneDrive is just an app that you can uninstall, the Office 2021 OneDrive is malware, pure & simple).

I don't mind the occasional stupid ad while doing unimportant stuff, see the Solitaire example above, but when I found out that after installing Office 2021 Pro I automagically became a OneDrive (malware) subscriber/addict, and I ended up having a mix of Documents local and in "da clouda"--WTF man? It took me a day to sort things up and properly back up everything. *These* kind of things should *never* happen. Maybe, absence of vertical taskbar aside, my grudge is more with Office than with Windows... In 3 weeks I'll try a clean install and see whether this problem can be avoided--because once it's installed and self-configured there's nothing you can do except plug in an external drive and copy your Docs from both local & remote locations, and then uninstall the whole damn thing...

Re: Not switching until...

Didn't know about OOShutUp and ExplorerPatcher -- I never use the Start menu on 11, I just search, that's how useless it has become. I'll give them a try.

Re: WINDOWS 11 is NOT ready for main streams use....

Windows 11 has taken the title as the latest iteration of The Worst Windows Ever. It's just like Windows 10 was seven years ago.

Sorry to disagree, but seven years ago, just like now, TWWE was and still is 8.0 :)

Not switching until...

...I get my vertical taskbar back!

Current laptop upgraded to Win11 (total unmitigated disaster, ads everywhere) + Office 2021 Pro (total unmitigated disaster, it comes with its own version of OneDrive which defaults *all* your folders in your Home directory to save in "da Claud", and it doesn't tell you it's doing so *and* there's only one option: uninstall the whole Office suite -- mind you, I'm not talking about 365 but Office "proper"). Next laptop arrives today with Win10 Pro and you'll have to pry it from cold dead hands -- this Win11 one is getting a backup and a mojito (*wink wink*).

Why I love my Chromebook: Reason 1, it's a Linux desktop

I've got one, a foldable Lenovo powered by an AMD A9. It *is* great and it cost me about € 150 last summer, but I've been using Firefox since the Beta days and Chrome is simply... horrible. I'll either sell it or try installing Mint on it. SABENA. Such A Bad Experience Never Again.

Weighing the less mainstream Ubuntu remixes: Including China's Kylin

Re: Thank you, Mr Proven

Wow, very nice! I missed it when it was published -- a very fascinating read...

Hi, I agree -- there's been a paradigm shift when GNOME 3 came out. They wanted something extremely vertical, Apple-like, now they have and it they have to live with that (GNOME 3 does *not* even have a Desktop, because so it's been chosen by the gods and we mortals can't say anything about it, for goodness' sake).

And as you said a Win95-like experience is by no means a 'plus'... I've been following Enlightenment since its very beginnings but never actually used it, I *do* hope to try it out and be pleasantly surprised! :)

Re: Thank you, Mr Proven

The Nemesis of the Linux world, everyone reinvents the wheel, *every single time*... :(

Re: Thank you, Mr Proven

I agree, 11 is a total disaster, but funnily enough Liam mentions 7 and 10, the best versions since the NT days... When time comes for an upgrade I'll spend a couple of extra days trying out different versions...

BTW, I only have little familiarity with KDE, but between Kubuntu and Neon I'd go with Neon, plain vanilla, no strange stuff installed...

We tested all the Ubuntu remixes for resource usage so you don't have to

Re: The future, so unpredictable

I believe that in 9 years I'm gonna be dead, so I don't worry that much :)

Re: Localisation

Strangely enough, Android works much better (with GBoard) -- everything is in US English, time is set to 24 hours, and I only need to long-press space to switch input between EN, IT or ES...

Re: Localisation

You're right, although I never tried English/UK myself (does it have am/pm for ex?)... I defaulted to US English since System 7.1 on a Classic, way back in '92 I think... But my point is fairly simple: all this "locale" stuff makes things much more complicated, especially for bi or tri-lingual users -- ie, keyboard layout, GUI language, date and time should be separate settings, easily modifiable by the user...

Re: Keep it up fella!

Mint DE (Debian Edition) is not bad... Cinnamon + Debian current, it works pretty well, at least for me... :)

Nice modern desktop, the most stable kernel you can get AND all of the drivers! :)