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I mentioned in a recent thread that I have a Windows 10 machine that failed to install this month's set of patches. It has very little reason to fail - Windows 10 1709, which came out in October, was clean installed barely a month ago, and I haven't installed any software on it other than the Nvidia ION driver it needs and VLC--it's in a very clean state. The machine is hooked up to a projector and is used only for watching videos - whether it's streaming from across my LAN (nothing is stored locally) or streaming from YouTube.
Why it fails to install an update when it's still in such a clean state, I don't know. However, this machine never managed to upgrade itself to Windows 10 1703, so it had been running 1607 since it came out. A few months ago, that started failing to install monthly updates, and knowing that it wasn't able to update to 1703 (without starting over), I waited patiently for 1709 to come out to do a clean install. The fact that it's now running into problems so soon after it's been wiped/reinstalled was the last straw for me. To be fair, I have Windows 10 running on at least half a dozen other machines, both physical and virtual, and none of those have tested my patience as much as this one has.
Last night I've had enough and installed Lubuntu 17.10 on it - it's rated as one of the better low-overhead distributions of Linux (that also has a decent desktop environment). The machine is old - it's an Acer Revo R3610, with some Atom CPU and 4GB of RAM. While it's good enough for its purpose (playing video), it did take Windows 10 some time to get going, especially after a cold boot, so I felt it was important to install a distribution that's not so resource-hungry. It performed better when it had Windows 7.
Long story short: I was impressed with how everything "just worked". I copied the ISO to a USB stick with Rufus (which makes it bootable), and was up and running within 20 minutes. It picked up both video and audio on its own, the NIC, and even the wireless adapter (which I don't really need). Out of the box, it sees the network share that contains my media library. There's some built-in app that plays AVI, MP4 and MKV files without a hitch, so I haven't even bothered installing VLC. There's a version of Kodi for Linux (which I hadn't reinstalled on Windows while it was running 1709), and it's indistinguishable from the Windows version - bonus, it performs much better than the Windows version ever did. The task manager (or whatever the equivalent is called) hasn't shown the OS using more than about 700MB of the 4GB of RAM.
If regular updates for this distribution are as problem-free on this physical machine as they are on the virtual machines I had been tinkering with, I think I'm going to manage to squeeze out more mileage from this machine than Windows was going to provide.
I guess my point, if I have one at all to make, is this: Microsoft, get your act together.
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dandy72 wrote: I guess my point, if I have one at all to make, is this: Microsoft, get your act together.
They have been working on it, but it's their act, not yours. Nor it's mine.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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nads said this will be the last version of windows...
nobody thought he meant it that way.
RIP: yet another microsoft product.
(OK, not dead yet... they're doing the death by 1000 cuts.)
Installing Signature...
Do not switch off your computer.
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I agree. I've had the same positive experiences with Ubuntu. My main machine is still Win10 however, since I'm so often do dev work and I'm so use windows after all these years.
ubuntu amazingly simple to install and just start using and everything including wifi just starts working properly on all types of old h/w too.
I have had a couple of things that are odd though. I get warnings to update then try too and it doesn't want to update. But overall, it's an amazing system and especially considering it is such a huge open source project.
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I use Fedora Linux quite a bit for various things, and honestly it is quite user friendly. I still use Windows for most things (as NVidia drivers for Linux suck), but Linux is on several other systems I own.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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The only Linux I ever tried was mint...
... and I was very surprised/pleased about:
a.) How easy it was to Setup
b.) How good W32 Software including an interbase SQL Server worked by the help of wine.
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We use Ubuntu at work, among other OSes. I find it less intuitive than Windows, but that may simply be lack of practice with it. (Most of my work is in the Windows environment.)
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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And there are a number of flavours of ubuntu, a very ight weight one, called xubuntu or some such, and one thats really like windows I believe. (Been a while since I played with it)
Anyway, yes, it is a good distro and for an engineer very easy to get to grips with. You can for example just switch out the entire kernel for another (you can build a kernel specific to your hardware for example) and back up the entire OS by just copying a directory.
Microisofts reaction with the OS is interesting. It is free, now called IoT (bundled up with the other two OSs, the old mobile and the phone one I seem to recall), and even the old NT version doesnt force you to run the exhaustive tests on your drivers before getting them signed.
I wonder if Microsoft are desperate and are trying to push their OS into places typically dominated by Linux? They are going to have to try a lot harder though, as you say. They really arent winning the race.
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dandy72 wrote: I guess my point, if I have one at all to make, is this: Microsoft, get your act together.
To be fair there are several parts and Microsoft only has control over one of them.
1. Machine
2. Operating system.
3. Your updates to hardware and software.
Prior to this point you were relying on Microsoft to make it effort free. And expecting that thousands or tens of thousands of different platforms would work of which yours is one.
Now it is entirely up to you to both make sure updates occur and that your machine continues to work. Certainly be easier if Microsoft could individually support your machine but not very cost effective. There is probably one or more services in your local area that would charge you for the same service so one can see what the cost actually is.
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You're not telling me anything I don't already know. I've been using Windows for nearly 30 years.
Updates generally work fine on most of my systems. They've also worked great on this one particular machine, in the past. But somewhere along the way, they've dropped the ball, and barely one month into a clean install, patches start failing again on the very first Patch Tuesday this instance of the OS has ever seen. They've done better, on this particular hardware combination, in the past - that's all I'm saying.
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It's a long way to the top.
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He's on a HIGHWAY TO .... 
Farewell.
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Hard Times[^] indeed.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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What a great way to live though.
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JustWatchLittle wrote: but his human groove is hard to reach.
Well said sir!
RIP ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Sir!
RIP
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... as what he painted into the sky.[^] What other type would anyone expect to fly around with one of those planes?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Well, this belongs in the SB
Really? In grade school we used to practice this particular motive on the chalk board.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: he could at least say they were eyes
or headlights. you have so many more options at your disposal with boobies.
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Is the pilot's name Richard, and is he very tall, by any chance?
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Then it was something like his family crest? Maybe, but those pilots tend to be the short jockey type. I tried to sit in a Tornado [^] once and felt like a cork in a bottle.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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When I was sat in the pilot's seat of a Concorde I noticed a distinct lack of headroom. Luckily, I didn't have to fly it. They must have used shorter pilots for them. I really miss the Concorde. 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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