Graf Zahl

I had the bad luck that back in the day my boss persuaded me to install ME over 98 at my workplace. It was the worst mistake ever, stability of the system went down the drain after the downgrade.

But maybe not rotten apples! :P

Yes, sure - but back then it was uncommon for home computers to have sufficient power to run the game, so it was often run at the university or the workplace where more powerful systems were available.

And if you fight fire with stubbornness and ignorance you just get burned alive. The way you act will achieve nothing. All it will mean is that nobody that counts will take you seriously and dismiss your views.

With "airheads" I mean those people on the left side of the spectrum who think that communizing big corporations will solve all problems. The entire notion is foolhardy and while the immediate result is very desirable the follow-up effects are definitely not. If you start dissolving those big "monstrous" corporations the aftereffects will be catastrophic. These corporations have customers that depend on their services. Eliminate the big corporation and all their customers may be left hanging with no way to continue their business operations, eventually ceasing operations as well and creating a domino effect where the entire economy will crumble. The only way to fight them is to provide alternative services that are more desirable to use. So in terms of Windows vs. Linux that means that the kind of discussion you and Gustavo were having over multiple pages are utterly destructive for your cause because any serious business person won't say anything more than "Why should I bother with these idiots?" and go back to Microsoft or Apple.

No. It's more like if they stop providing their services a lot of things will break down - just like total chaos would ensue if all gas stations were closed. For example, do you have any idea how many jobs indirectly depend on Microsoft because they provide the backbone for their employers' internet operations? That's their core business after all. Windows is just a legacy product for them that has lost a lot of its former importance. No, they do not have a monopoly on that, but it is enough that taking them out of business would be a major problem. To be blunt, some of these left wing airheads really have no clue how the world works and what economical dependencies exist. Remove one building block and large parts of it will start to crumble. Yeah, back then it was definitely more fun, especially working in game development. It was a lot easier to get something good on a small budget than it is now.

I tried such a thing in the early 2000's. It played like shit so it got canned very quickly.

The main issue with Vista was that it was the first release with a new driver model. This had the unfortunate effect that upon release a lot of hardware had problems with it. By the time these got ironed out it wasnt really any worse than 7. UAC had to be disabled, though, to make the system usable.

Zandronum is far too old to support any of MBF21. Even in GZDoom you need 4.7.0 to get a fully working implementation. Good to finally have some test material, though. :)

Generally too expensive and too locked down. I also got the same trust issues with Apple than with any other big corporation, if not even more. The spyware issue is normally grossly exaggerated by those with an agenda. It's also that many of those newfangled "social" features many users seem to value won't work without sending some data around. I'd be far more concerned about Apple here. While it is fairly well documented what data gets sent to Microsoft, with Apple the situation is a lot less clear and I have that nagging suspicion that they engage in a lot more surveillance to 'protect' their systems from 'improper' use. The main issue is that the bean counters cut down on QA costs which clearly showed in some buggy releases.

How about blzut3? He seems to be a levelheaded individual who just happens to use Linux. Yes, these also exist and are normally easy to discuss with. But you are right that it is inevitable that one of these FOSS absolutists will come along - with zero clues what professional computer users need and often that harebrained notion that all software should be free, never mind that this won't work because it'd drain the entire industry of its money.

"PipeWire is a server for handling audio and video streams and hardware on Linux.[2][3][4] It was created by Wim Taymans at Red Hat.[5][6] It handles multimedia routing and pipeline processing.[7]" So clearly a professional. "unprodessional" would be people who let their own bias get into the way of how they develop software, the most obvious result being ignorant of users' needs. You can witness that a lot with hobbyists.

Just for the record: I have had more technical issues with my Mac at work than I ever had with my private Windows PC. That story that Windows is a stability nightmare seems to be a fairy tale all those Linux users tell each other when sitting around the camp fire to boost their egos. :P

And you should keep in mind that supporting old, long obsolete hardware is not free. I'm sorry for the people that cannot afford anything better, but us developers do not have infinite time to support such old hardware because we do not have it anymore to test our software on and also need to prioritize our time. I think these days OpenGL 3.3 is a reasonable system requirement because aside from vintage GL 2 hardware from the early 2000's the only systems not capable of supporting it is 3 or 4 generations of ancient Intel laptop GPUs. Yes, it may suck if you are stuck with it, but the choice would have be to either have an editor as it is now or have none at all.

WTF are you trying to say here? Is is no longer allow for reasons of politeness to point out that a certain code base has issues that make it difficult to work with?

Interestingly, NVidia's NVRHIlibrary does not use AMD's allocator wrapper. In any case, the version of the allocator we were using was ancient, so I updated the file. Maybe it works better by now.

Define "people on Linux". The devil's in the detail here. At my workplace nearly all Linux work happens either in VMs or remotely via command shell on a server. There's few people who run it on 'bare metal' as their system's driver, and those few do it because they don't want to use Macs but need a functioning POSIX environment. So, if these people have the ability to do the same stuff from a Windows machine with its far more robust GUI environment and better software ability, they'd do it in a heartbeat. That'd be one Linux machine less every time it happens. Now imagine this reaches a critical mass where companies like Canonical lose their funding. Suddenly the biggest commercial drivers behind Linux desktop development would be gone. Do you really think the hobbyists with their unprofessional attitude towards system development will be able to fill the gap? I don't. But then Linux will just become a server OS. These machines will be remotely maintained via command shell and do not have any desktop needs. I admit it's a bit far-fetched and surely not something that will happen on short term, but considering how poor Linux/Desktop's user retention is, it is surely not impossible. Where should that system come from? The current supporters of such a platform have amply shown that they are incapable of doing it right because they either do not understand the needs of commercial developers or intentionally want to make life hard for them for their ideological cause.

... and obviously, if that gets done it will have the magical effect that many users who are dissatisfied with Windows but do not want to deal with how this currently works on Linux may actually switch. So it'd be win-win.

That doesn't help the next person who wants to work with that code. The code is bad, so it is not optimal to work with.

TBH, this is something that normally needs to be handled on the application side. All the system can do in out of memory situations is trying to swap out stuff and depend on heuristics. The client normally knows better which resources can be safely evicted and which can not. Of course all that becomes a moot point if the allocator in some drivers is broken and does not return a failure but instead locks up the system.

IMO Linux sucks for two reasons: 1) The insanity of how software distribution works and 2) The insanity of considering the entire GUI question user and not system space. Of course Linux's biggest problem is not the OS but a community that's an utterly toxic cesspool of people who prevent change so that they can remain sitting on their ideologic high horse and don't give a damn that they help selling out the entire world to Microsoft and Apple.

It's funny how these things always get dug out while totally ignoring IBM's marketing blunders. They tried the same stunt as Sony with Betamax or Philips with Video 2000 in the video market: They tried to use the system to increase their own hardware market share - something Microsoft could easily counter as a pure software company - just like VHS in the video market the final decision came down to broadness of hardware support.

@ducon Normal users rarely get such errors under Windows. Unlike Linux where I frequently see strange stuff appear in "Technical issues". But like Gustavo you are exhibiting some severe insider bias here. The general public does not care what some technically experienced people can do with Linux. They want a system that *just* works.

Then maybe it is time to think about how to make it easier for such people to get along with Linux. Oh, I'm sure it will never happen anyway.

You should ask yourself why no systems come preinstalled with Linux then. I remember that 15 years or so some sellers tried that here in Germany but they were basically eaten alive for selling their boxes with such an 'unproductive' operating system. You exhibit typical insider bias here. It all looks fine to you so you extrapolate that it should be fine for others, too. Well, it is not! Gamers may be a driving factor, provided someone manages to release a Linux distro that addresses the problems the system poses to binary-only distribution which is particularly important for games. But wanna bet that this will then become some specially configured Linux version that's incompatible with what is currently available? No, I am implying that the attitude of the entrenched Linux community is playing directly into Microsoft's hands.