Windows Rant
Basil Chupin
blchupin at iinet.net.au
Sun Jul 11 11:34:35 UTC 2010
On 11/07/10 18:51, TopBot . wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 8:15 AM, NoOp <glgxg at sbcglobal.net
> <mailto:glgxg at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>
> <rant>
> I stopped supporting Windows for my clients six months ago but still
> maintain Win for my relatives et al. Performing what would be simple
> changes in Ubuntu on WinXP brought home why I stopped supporting
> paying
> clients.
>
> 1. My brother had an old 700Mhz Sony PC with 348Mb of ram & I
> decided to
> give him one of my faster 1.8Ghz/1Gb recycled machines. Figured it
> would
> be a simple swap of the hard drive (similar to Ubuntu); forgot
> that you
> need to do an reinstall in-place of Windows to get the drive to
> work in
> new hardware. One week later he *finally* has the machine.
>
> The process involved reinstalling WinXP(Home) over his existing
> install (data was preserved), reinstalling all new security upgrades &
> drivers for SP3, retesting, rebooting about a bazillion times,
> retesting, rebooting, etc. Overall it was a complete PITA.
>
> 2. In the process of upgrading my brother's system, my
> 2.4Ghz/512Mb test
> machine died. The death of the machine was apparent as it had had
> thermal shutdowns etc. When the machine died I pulled the ram & other
> associated parts as usual. I then realized that the ram would work
> in my
> son's Sony PCV-RX770(UC) that had previouly been running with only
> 512Mb
> of ram.
>
> I pulled the machine, brought it over to my test bed, added another
> 512Mb of ram from the the dead 2.4Ghz recycled machine for a total of
> 1Gb, fired it up and updated Ubuntu 10.04. No issues. I then tried
> dual
> booting to WinXP(Pro)...
>
> The machine wouldn't boot to WinXP in normal mode. It would only boot
> to Safe Mode. After several hours of messing about with it, I finally
> put the machine back in his room & reconnected the original
> keyboard and
> wireless mouse; the machine booted in WinXP just fine. Pulled the
> machine and brought back to my test bed & the machine wouldn't boot in
> WinXP again (just would keep rebooting). Brought the wireless mouse &
> keyboard to the test bed & it booted just fine. Note: he uses the dual
> boot to run his iTunes & a few Win specific games. The issue was that
> WinXP didn't have the necessary drivers to run a simple USB
> keyboard and
> PS2 mouse... amazing eh?
>
> So, to all those that complain about Ubuntu/linux not working with
> hardware xyz, keep in mind that it's not just Ubuntu/linux that have
> such issues. A simple mouse/keyboard change in WinXP(Pro) prevented
> Windows from booting into normal mode.
> Further, we become accustomed to having the luxury of pulling a hard
> drive in Ubuntu/linux and swapping into another machine with out
> issues.
> If you've ever had the displeasure of trying the same on a Windows
> machine you'll know what I am talking about.
>
> Disclaimer; one of my specialties a few years ago was maintaining and
> supporting Windows machines. I reckon that you could classify me as a
> 'Windows Expert'. I could fix nearly any system (including eradicating
> viruses without reinstalling etc). So I'm not unfamiliar with the OS,
> nor bashing it overall. I'm just pointing out that sometimes we forget
> how difficult it is to make simple hardware changes in Windows,
> and how
> easy it is in Ubuntu/linux.
>
> My apologies to the list for the rant, but it's things like this that
> make me appreciate Ubuntu/linux daily. I deal with bugs/issues in
> Ubuntu/linux daily, but that is primarily because I choose to do
> so (via
> this list). And yes, followups should probably go to the 'sounder'
> list...
> </rant>
>
>
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>
>
> I've had similar problems when swapping my hard drive or even the
> monitor (it wouldn't even go into safe mode on any other monitor) with
> my dual boot windows xp while my Ubuntu worked just fine.
Ummm, let's not getting all excited and carried away here..... :-)
You just swapped in another hard drive and "Ubuntu worked just fine" -
and without having to make any alterations to fstab (as a for-instance)?
XP won't even let you change the colour of your underwear without
wanting to be "authenticated" again. But stating what you did about
Ubuntu, me thinks is kinda going a tad overboard :-) .
I must say that this was the case some time ago, but no longer. All to
do with UUID I think. But then I am more wrong than right... :-( .
> +1 for linux.
As a general and accurate comment: totally agree - +x to the power of n
for Linux OS.
BC
--
Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
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