Windows, that's a step too far | Hacker News Reader

Windows, that's a step too far

robmanuel.blogspot.co.uk

12 pointsgpmcadam30 comments

While I don't necessarily agree with the way Microsoft has this setup, they aren't preventing you from backing up. They're preventing you from using THEIR software package to backup to an external drive. You can use any number of free or paid alternatives, just not the one that's built into the Windows OS.

Forget running Photoshop on Wine, or dual-booting. Run Windows XP within Virtualbox on Linux, and set it to "Seamless" mode. XP is lightweight and runs well on Virtualbox, although you may want to use the 64-bit version of XP if you'll be doing a lot of work with Photoshop. And under Seamless mode, it's almost as Windows apps are running natively on Ubuntu (or whatever Linux distro). I've not run Photoshop on Virtualbox (although I know others do successfully), but I regularly run a number of relatively complex Windows applications (such as Office) in this manner as part of my job. And it works so much better for me than Wine, or dual booting.

Completely agree. If you're in Ubuntu and need to get work done in a Windows app, do it in XP on VirtualBox. It's the right way.

Nlite your XP install down so it's "wather thin" for extra credit. I can be in Ubuntu one second, load up my VBox image and three seconds later I'm sitting at a usable XP desktop. Photoshop (et al) are fast but most importantly they're reliable and stable.

Wine does work for some things (games mostly) but you lose any sort of guaranteed reliability.

Yeah, I've actually got an Nlite-ed copy of XP I've burned that I could use, and I almost pulled it out when I first installed XP on VirtualBox, but I've been so happy with vanilla XP on Virtualbox on Linux Mint that I've not felt the need to dig it out. But if you have less than 4 GB of RAM or so, and you plan to run something like Photoshop on XP via Virtualbox on a Linux host, it would probably be a good idea to use Nlite.

Why not win7?

Two reasons: I don't own a license for it and based on my preview testing, I don't need it.

I don't boot an instance of Windows for the Windows experience, I'm doing it so I can load another application so I can get things done.

Plus XP's Minesweeper and Sol are much better... For much the same reasons.

I run Photoshop on a VBox on my Ubuntu laptop and it works perfectly.

WOW. That is a lot of anger just because Windows doesn't have a built in SSH client (which I probably wouldn't use anyway... PuTTY is tops) and his version won't back up to a NAS (but there is other software to do that). Haters gotta hate.

Did Windows go too far or did you not go far enough in properly selecting your machine upgrade? The differences between Windows and OSX run deep but it isn't Microsoft or Apple's job to tell you about them.

I will agree that Microsoft's rope-a-doping with feature deplete Windows variants is very rude and off putting.

This is why I prefer the "Just Works" philosophy of the Mac (and it's a philosophy, not a guarantee of problem-free operation) to what I call the "Just Have To" philosophy of Windows.

Complain that you can't do something on Windows, and someone will come along, call you a name, and inform you that you can indeed do that... "You Just Have To" install this, configure that, tweak that. Eventually you've got a list of those things a mile long, and good luck to you if you ever switch to another machine.

Funny, I've resisted switching to Apple products for the same "Just Have To" philosophy in the other direction.

"You want to maximize a window from the window manager chrome? No problem, you Just Have To install (some app). What do you mean you don't want to pay $10 to be able to maximize a window, it's only $10, don't you think programmers should get paid?"

By comparison, Windows 7 "just works" for my needs, which is essentially providing a shell around Chrome and PuTTY.

So true: I've paid for window managers, Finder replacements, and clipboard managers for OS X as everything is an upsell. I still like my Mac, though. This entire article could be said about any of the OSes and XYZ features.

Touche. I suppose it is use case dependent. My observations are of a developer desiring to work in a unix-y environment.

It isn't a "Just Works" thing, it's an "I'm experienced with this" thing. I've used Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, Red Hat (back when it was free), etc - I'm still most comfortable in a Window's environment and to this day still struggle with Mac's peculiarities. Why, oh why, can't I right click on something in finder and click copy/cut in the context menu?

I never noticed that until you pointed it out. Odd. I've always used Cmd-C/Cmd-X for that.

I read this on a day when I'm about to head home and install Windows 7 on my new machine, because Ubuntu12/Mint13/Fedora17 all crash on the hardware because of known bugs with the modern hardware that haven't been fixed yet and I don't have a PhD in kernel development to fix it myself.

There's just something cruel in the world for reading this and being reminded of why I've dreaded the install I'm about to do.

Wait until Time Machine Fucks you. (Written on my Mac)

Apple: double clicked on the title bar.. nothing happened clicked on the green button.. window scaled vertically but not horizontally edit a text file and forget to save with .html extension.. try to change it in the file browser. it doesn't work.

"I have no idea whether I'll be able to pull off living in Linux world and still do my work - I haven't had to do any photoshopping yet and the thought of Gimp or trying to get Photoshop to work under Wine is a bit daunting."

VM? Dual boot?

Actually I think (for me at least; also a web dev that does unix based stuff but also needs photoshop), the lower-friction route is to run Windows as the native OS, and virtualbox the linux install. (I'm also these days of the opinion that this is actually a better solution than cygwin)

Basically the unix bits are (far) less resource hungry than Photoshop...

"Basically the unix bits are (far) less resource hungry than Photoshop.."

I had never thought of it that way round!

There was a short window about 10 years ago where OSX was the best unix workstation, no contest. But cygwin is really good these days, so good that the Apple premium cost and batshit insane vendor make it a non-starter.

in no way does cygwin make windows a unix workstation.

bash, ssh, screen, rsync, cron, gcc, perl/python/ruby, X, and excellent terminal emulation.

Treat cygwin as just another unix variant and it will go pretty far. Windows native apps and virtualbox are guaranteed to cover any missed requirements.

Why didn't you just buy a big ol' honking external monitor and hook that up to your Macbook?

I develop on a Macbook Air, and that works quite well for me.

To clarify, I'm not the author of the post.

But yes, this was what I thought. A nice monitor for ~£200-300 and you don't have to change a thing about what you do, assuming that for on-the-go, the 13" is just fine.

+1 Buying a notebook with such a huge screen seems to miss the mark. I couldn't even believe that there a such huge notebooks out there.

Childish rant is childish.

Never thought I'd see the Ginger Fuhrer on Hacker news.

That was silly.

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