Yawnies!

[swestrup]

Well, I'm awake again. I managed to get to bed around 8:00 am, and I'm already up, so I guess that counts as my first accomplishment for the day.

Its taking some time to get used to Windows XP. Everything is in colors. The wrong colors. Especially the wrong colors for someone who's color blind. I need a color scheme where I can SEE the color distinctions. And its not like its going to be easy to fix. The customization system ALSO assumes you can see colors perfectly. It looks like I'm going to have to spend hours trolling the theme sites for useful themes, and trying them out. Not my favorite way to spend my time.

I've also already caught XP in a couple of ... I don't know if they're bugs or infelicities. I changed a couple of volume label names, and they refused to change. After I rebooted, they had the new names... Although I just checked, and now they change immediately... go figure. The other is more of a bother. I copied a file off of a (possibly wonky) bit of magnetic media. Now I can't move it, rename it, or delete it because XP claims "some other process might be using it." This state has survived several reboots. As far as I can find out, no process is touching the file, and it has all the same permissions and ownerships as files I can touch. I'm gonna see if I can find and/or use the sysprep tool which is supposed to allow you more file control.

On the positive side, a whole bunch of wonkiness that I was having to deal with from win98 is suddenly gone. I don't crash whenever I move more that 10 meg from one directory to another, and it no longer is stuck on reverse-alphabetic sort for everything. I've also noticed a marked increase in download speeds. Before the upgrade I typically downloaded files at 7-10 KB/s, now I often see 150-180 KB/s. It now often takes longer to install a patch than it does to download it. That alone is a major win. There's also a whole bunch fixed in Windows handling of dismounted and/or unformated devices. The installation was also the easiest so far, with the one exception of having to know too much about Windows domains when it came to configuring the network.

I haven't installed much other than mail and internet clients so far, so I don't know how well my other programs will work on the new system. I suppose I'll find out in the next few days.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

According to my copy, the accessibility shortcut for this is ALT+LSHIFT+PrtSc; or start->control panel->accessibility->display & so on. That sets it to "I'm as blind as a bat", but from there you can back down. Or?

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

If you're in the middle of a transition already, I recommend you check out Knoppix. Burns to CD, you can boot from the CD and when you reboot you're in exactly the same filesystem you left off in, no changes or installation required. I'm running it about 90% of the time now, just booting into 98 for 2-3 apps I haven't found good replacements for yet.

[swestrup]

I have arguments with _sps_ about this all the time, but I just don't find Linux ready for prime time yet. Last time I did a Linux install I needed major help to get it to work, and I do this kind of thing for a living. After it WAS installed, I found myself tearing my hair out in about 10-minutes due to all of the things that I either could not configure, or could not find out how to configure. Large amounts of documentation that said things like "Chapter 3: We need to write this sometime." did not help.
If I was hired to work on a Linux driver, or make kernel mods, it might seem worthwhile to pour through the source to try and resolve these problems. As is, it isn't. I haven't given up on Linux, since I hate microsoft, but I haven't yet recovered from the trauma of the last attempt enough to give it another whirl.

I just installed, and uninstalled firebird for exactly the same reason. If I wanted to dedicate the next few weeks to getting it working the way I want, I'm sure I could succeed. In the meantime Mozilla took me only 20 minutes to setup in a useable state. (And you'll note these use the same code base, only Mozilla has ways to auto-install and configure things, and firebird makes you learn the underlying GUI language...)

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

Knoppix was created to answer these exact criticisms. I've been playing with Linux off and on for about 8 years now, but it hasn't been until very recently that I considered it worth using on anything other than a server. Knoppix was what changed my mind. Sure, there's a lot that's still ugly, but I haven't once had to edit a config file by hand.

Mozilla 1.4 came pre-installed; to bring it up to date all I had to do was sudo apt-get install mozilla...

[swestrup]

Well, you've convinced me its worth a look anyway. We'll see what I think of it.

Knoppix...

[swestrup]

Well, I burned and booted the latest version of knoppix. It got my screen parameters wrong, so I lost the top and bottom of the screen. Could I find ANY way to specify the screen characteristics to the system so it would correct them? Nope. A search of the docs said nothing about the screen or video cards. No configurator could be found on any of the menus, and I eventually gave up. So Knoppix also fails the base usability test.

Re: Knoppix...

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

ALT-F2 reveals the kernel 'cheat codes'. That should definately be documented, but it's right in the middle of the traditional developper's blind spot (i know it so it must be obvious to everyone) I had similar trouble when I first started, mostly due to using a 11-yr-old monitor that was getting flaky. Anyway, the line I used back then to boot:

knoppix vga=normal screen=800x600 xvrefresh=80

If it's any consolation, it's run without a hitch on every system I've tried *other* than that one...

Re: Knoppix...

[swestrup]

Actually, the distro did make it clear about the cheat codes. They just didn't work. The problem wasn't the resolution, it was the video timings. The top and bottom of the screen were missing at ALL resolutions.