Tech Smartly

First and foremost, I have a contact page set up for those who wish to contact me. You can use it to send in  what you think I should write next, questions, tips, spelling mistakes, and things you feel you should point out to me. As what will happen with all blogs that get tons of email, there will be a point where I will not have enough time to reply.

Now, let me start off by saying that I don’t think my computer has ever felt more violated. My computer was in the worst state I’ve ever seen it since getting blue screens of death from the creative drivers (I still haven’t quite solved that problem). I don’t know what made me think it was a good idea. I’ve been starring at the same desktop ever since when XP came out, sometimes changing my wallpaper. If my eyes were a CRT monitor, the start menu would have been burned into my eyes by now. I guess my excuse is that I was getting bored at looking at the sae scenery all the time. At least now I know it’s better just to download a theme. It is important to mention that I used the Vistamizer program, which may have had issues with my computer. However, what happened to my computer after restarting was terrible, almost unmentionable. I wish I had screenshots, but I couldn’t bare to have my computer stay like it was long enough for me to take some. It all comes down to 4 things.

• It’s terribly slow.
• It’s ugly!
• Too many processes were running.
• It changed my stuff and didn’t revert it.

It’s terribly slow

Now of course, this is quite a heavy task. Maybe even Vista itself would be faster than what my computer was. However, I have a very powerful computer. It can run Crysis on high at a smooth framerate. So why does my computer have to slow down so much just to handle all the effects? When I right clicked, it took half a second for the computer to do whatever it was doing. At least I got to see a pretty circle while I waited! When I use normal XP, I don’t see any cool looking circle, I just see a menu pop up almost as soon as I click. How dare I decide that functionality is better than staring at a pretty circle!

It’s ugly!

Wait, what is this? It’s ugly? Yes, it is quite ugly! The transparency doesn’t look nice, especially with things in the background. There were a few miner graphical glitches. The taskbar colors did not look nice. It just did not work well together. It’s not just because I’m not used to it, it’s because it’s actually ugly. I wouldn’t be able to stand using it after a while. Even the default windows setup is better than what I experienced.

Too many processes were running

I realize that there needs to be a lot of stuff going on to deliver the vista experience on windows. However, when I find myself looking at new things running in the system tray, I do not like this. Maybe I was hoping for too much, but when I use a computer, I don’t want too many programs running in the background. On top of that, there were perhaps many other processes happening in the background. However, I didn’t look because I wanted to change back to normal windows so quickly.

It changed my stuff and didn’t revert it

The first thing I noticed is that I had a new desktop wallpaper. The second thing I noticed is that my files were spaced farther apart. Fair enough. I didn’t really mind this at all. In fact, it looked OK, and I didn’t have any problems with it. The problem I did have, and still have (since I can’t be bothered to fix it), is that when I uninstalled everything, it didn’t change back to what it was originally. All the icons are still as spaced out as ever, and the order that it was has ben destroyed. Not only that, it set the desktop wallpaper back to the default. I had a nice Firefox wallpaper that I can not find anywhere which I found through stumbleupon. How am I supposed to get that back? I’m sure I can find it through enough googling, but why should I have to spend quite a bit of time just to fix what Vistamizer changed?

Now this is only one opinion. For some people, Vistamizer might have worked perfectly. In fact, another vista pack could work better than vistamizer did for me. I don’t know until I try all of them (the popular ones at least). However, until then I think my computer wants a rest, especially through what it has been through.

It seems like every time I write something new, I make a new category. Hopefully the category making process will slow down as I run out new stuff to talk about, and pool in more knowledge in the categories I have already. I hope I’ve reached that point, as I’m running out of new stuff to write about.

Now, I’ve written about my experience with Mandriva, which explained what thoughts about it. Unfortunately, I’ve been using windows. To say there are no games in Linux is a lie, but I don’t think it’s far from the truth. There are plenty of great games, including Battle for Wesnoth, as well as many other games that I’ve played. There are even companies that port their games to Linux, such as id, who allow Linux users to switch files allowing their games to run. As far as I know, not very many people do this, and Linux is often left in the dust when it comes to popular games.  I know there are people who will point out how it is possible to play many games using, and I will probably look like a fool when I mention a game. However, the fact that I have to wrestle with wine just to get a game running does not help at all when it can be done much more simply on windows. I’m not going to try cedega either, if I already paid for windows. I can not use Linux as much as I want to.

I must say, after using Linux, it is quite hard to go back to windows. I’ve been having several problems with it, and after using Linux, it seems worse than I ever thought it was. Here is a list of 5 things that I dislike:

1. It Crashes.

This may come as no surprise to many people, but it has become more apparent now. I have not had a single unrecoverable crash when using Linux. Sure, stuff crashes in Linux, but it doesn’t bring down the whole system. I’ve never had to reach for the power button for Linux. In windows, a lot of the time, I have to hold it down as windows is no longer responsive at all. What I find even worse, is that there is something that is causing seemingly random blue screens of death. In-game, occasionally when I shoot my gun, BSOD. I jump, BSOD. When I run on top of a bucket, and a sound plays because of that, BSOD. I’m browsing on the internet, and I get a BSOD. Something is causing it, and I don’t know what. Maybe it’s a driver that I have, but I have a lot of drivers for my printer, my sound card, etc. Meanwhile, Linux chugs along, happily oblivious to the fact that during the time windows is running, it crashes all the time. It doesn’t have to be a blue screen of death either. maybe it could just lock up and be totally unresponsive. Whatever happens, I have to reach for the power switch.

2. It’s so bland.

Sure, XP is old, but Vista is just not worth upgrading to. Vista also breaks games, and I have other things that I would like to say about Vista, but I’m talking about XP. After getting compiz working on Mandriva, it’s quite bland to look at. There was a comment about how people waste their time getting compiz working on my post about Mandriva. But it does give everything a certain zing to it. It feels more alive, for lack of a better term.  Spinning around my cube, using all my desktops to best effect, the closing and opening animations, it all helps to give it that oomph that XP - and Vista - doesn’t have.

3. It costs money.

There are so many different versions of Vista, with the highest price being at 400 dollars for ultimate. For an upgrade, it’s still 260 dollars. It’s hardly worth spending 260 dollars for a new interface. What if I want to use my 64 bit processor on windows? I already bought XP once, why do I have to buy it again for 64 bit XP? In Linux, if I find that there is not enough support for 64 bit, I could easily install 32 bit. What if I don’t like Mandriva? I can download another distro, like OpenSUSE, or Kubuntu. I have the freedom to try and see if I like it. I still am at times baffled at why some people pay money for things that they could get for free, like 7zip and winzip. It certainly proves the words of wisdom ” you get what you pay for” wrong.

4. Security.

What can I say? Windows is less secure that Linux, and I think that the recent PWN to OWN contest results speak for themselves. There are things like Plug and Play, MICE, and leaving DCOM on. there are so many flaws in XP. Although things have been improving with Microsoft changing several things such as enabling the firewall with service pack 2, more flaws are being found all the time. It’s obvious that Linux is built to be much more secure than windows. Instead of relying on security through obscurity, you can see the Linux source code. Any problems can be much more easily spotted. Not everyone is out there trying to infect other people, and the open source community is more driven to help than other communities that I’ve seen. If the code can be seen, people can tell the developers the problem.

5. All those little things that bug me.

After shutting down Linux when I was finished using it, I switched to windows to play some games. The first thing I noticed when I logged in was those little balloons that pop up near the taskbar. I read it, and it said I had inactive icons. Come on now, really? Is it really so important to tell me that there is some stuff I haven’t clicked on the past couple of days? Not only that, if you miss the little X, instead it opens up whatever window is associated with it. I don’t need some little balloon popping up displaying some useless info. Almost every time I see one of those, it’s not worth reading. Secondly, there is too much stuff on the start menu. I don’t need to see my network places, my recent documents, setting program access and defaults, my documents, etc. All I really need is the stuff on the left, the programs that I use the most. There are also many little things, things that I notice day to day that are frustrating and annoying. So maybe I am nitpicking, but after something like 5 years, it starts to become glaringly obvious what is wrong.

So after all of this negativity towards Windows, why am I still using it? Here is a list of 1 thing that I like:

1. Support for games and other programs

There are so many  games out there. Call of duty, Crysis, Portal, and many others. There are also programs like photoshop, and steam, which I use a lot. This is what my computer is sued for mainly. Unfortunately, under Linux there is no native support, except for id software and Epic Games. If I can’t use these sort of programs, then I find it hard to switch. Let me tell you something: if there was native support for all these games and programs, I would uninstall windows from my hard drive. Despite how much I like the open source movement and Linux, it’s just not convenient. Am I supposed to start up Linux, do some surfing, perhaps play battle for wesnoth, then restart my computer to use photoshop and play games? Not only that, I use steam all the time, and it has to be running so my friends can talk with me, and ask me to join their games.

2. There is no number 2.

There is only one thing that keeps me from using linux. If this issue was solved, and almost every game had native support, I wouldn’t even be writing this article. I would imagine that if this issue would be fixed, there would be so many more people using linux. This is why I don’t use linux.