Valery_V (imported) wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 9:33 pm
It turned out to be a problem for me to find the appropriate drivers for my scanner and printer
There is same problem for newer versions of windows, actually. Older devices are no longer supported, and old drivers no longer work - so the issue is kinda double-sided here
Reasonable summary Racerboy, especially since both Unix and Linux mostly use the GNU (Gnu's Not Unix) utilities and so on... For the most part Linux has replaced Unix as an operating system, as most of the old Unix vendors have gone under or gotten away from that field....
I actually use KDE for 99% of my computing and feel much more comfortable in the GUI than the command line... However it is good to be able to get under the hood when needed...
fhunter wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 3:13 pm
There is same problem for newer versions of windows, actually. Older devices are no longer supported, and old drivers no longer work - so the issue is kinda double-sided here
That is one of the BIG advantages of GNU/Linux, they very seldom drop support for old hardware, there used to be a promise in the kernel source code that they would continue support for any hardware that had evidence of continued use... I haven't done a kernel compile in a while, but last time I did, they still had support for things like MFM hard drive controllers.... (remember when twenty MEGAbytes was a BIG drive??? ) I know the utilities for reading / writing floppies are still actively maintained.
There are even distributions that are specifically targeted at older / slower hardware, which may not have all the fancy graphics and big programs, but still have the essentials...
It's also great for special interests - I have a friend that is the creator and maintainer of "Andy's Ham Radio Linux" which is a distribution w/ all the main standard software packages, along with every ham radio package he can find. It's very popular with ham radio folks as it gives them all the tools for computer controlled radio along w/ things like antenna design software and so on.
Arab Nights (imported) wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 6:55 am
So my computer did one of those Microsoft updates. Now the right 20% of my screen is like a permanent search on Microsoft Bing window no matter is I am on Yahoo, Google or whatever. Right now I am looking at red buildings on an island in Sweden whether I like it or not and have for days. Any suggestions how to get rid of it?
Thanks.
Its a new feature Microsoft calls the "Edge Bar". Highly annoying (there aren't enough swear words to adequately express my annoyance!!).
To get rid of it, open Microsoft Edge (web browser) and:
Either go to: edge://settings/edgeBar
OR: Click the three-dot icon in the upper-right of Edge, then click Settings, then click Edge Bar.
Turn off the "Automatically open Edge bar when the computer starts" option. That will stop this monstrosity from coming up every time you restart or log in.
To close the Edge Bar, click the X in the lower right of the screen. Or just restart after you've disabled the above option.
I guess I still have this hangup from my high school computer science class, which was 3 hours a day for the whole Senior year. Our teacher's philosophy was that when the user became confused with your software, stopped, and had to get help, or got frustrated with it, you failed as a programmer.
He would run our software, and if he hit a glitch, you got an "F". It was then either redo it, or take the fail. If you redid it, you could only earn a "B". Fail again, and you could only earn a "C".
"Just because you know 'how to drive it', doesn't mean the users will!" was his motto.
For me, Linux Mint might have looked pretty much the same, and acted the same in many ways as Windows, but it was still frustrating enough, and slowed me down enough, to deem it unusable. I never did figure out how to move a file from a Windows PC on a flash drive to the Linux computer, and then be able to open it and work with the file. Something that simple?
I've heard from several Linux fans (of various versions) that they just cannot understand why Linux has never overtaken Windows, or why so many people insist on using Windows.
Well, after two destroyed laptops, I came to the conclusion that Windows was going to cost me less money in the long run in smashed equipment and went back to it.
Then I got 10 and smashed another laptop!
Then again, in my line of work, laptops are about as disposable as trash bags.
Well I have a big collection of machines, most of which I picked up as 'no longer useful' from windows users...
At home I have a early generation T-9 desktop that I put a used video card into to go from the crappy onboard single monitor to a dual monitor (both picked up as cruft) setup. I'm about to upgrade the spinning disk to a 1TB SSD...
I have a Lenovo T61 on a docking station that I use as an "airgap" machine for running software I don't trust, like Zoom, MS Teams, etc...
At the makerspace where I have a studio, I have my fancy box, another early T-9 in a big coolermaster box, 48GB of RAM, and liquid cooling (hey it was free) and dual monitor setup. It's also going to get the SSD upgrade (at $70 each from Amazon, why not...)
I have another airgap machine there, for the same reason.
I have an ANCIENT Dell laptop that I have MS-DOS 6 installed on, it's virtue is that it has a swappable CD / Floppy Drive - one of our CNC mills also runs on DOS and only has floppies - I want to be able to right programs for it on the laptop instead of having to use the only marginally accessible console on the mill.
I have another laptop w/ a T-5 and a small SSD that I use as my travel machine for when I can't be at one of my main desktops. This machine and the desktops are linked w/ Syncthing so mostly I have the same files on all three machines and can swap between them...
There is another laptop that I have a copy of W10 on, just for use with the few programs I have that I can't run under Linux (such as the programming software for my power chair...)
And then there is the remaining stack of 3-4 functional laptops that are sitting on the shelf w/ no particular use....
Paolo wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 7:07 pmI guess I still have this hangup from my high school computer science class, which was 3 hours a day for the whole Senior year. Our teacher's philosophy was that when the user became confused with your software, stopped, and had to get help, or got frustrated with it, you failed as a programmer.
He would run our software, and if he hit a glitch, you got an "F". It was then either redo it, or take the fail. If you redid it, you could only earn a "B". Fail again, and you could only earn a "C".
"Just because you know 'how to drive it', doesn't mean the users will!" was his motto.
I, a not-that-computerish person, have to register on one or two professional websites in Canada. Somewhere I have picked up that the core point of Steve Jobs was to make the software do the nitty gritty and make the human interface logical and easy. More than Microsoft, those websites must pre-date Jobs. Dealing with them is clunky, illogical and generally a horific experience that I always end up asking for help with.
I feel my mind can be a generalist or detailist, but not both. It takes me a day or two to switch to detailist mode and instantly to switch to generalist. Anyway, because of that I feel like I kind of know where the programmers are coming from. Give them credit - they can come up with some pretty incredible stuff. But the world needs a generalist to make the detailist stuff palatable. One problem is that organizations promote based on skills. So you end up with detailist in charge when you need a regulation human generalist in charge.
Another example that jumps to mind is certain malaware software I use. I think it is great product and terrible human interface. They really need to get 100 real people together and make the software work for them.
WheelyCurious wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 7:41 pm
I have an ANCIENT Dell laptop that I have MS-DOS 6 installed on, it's virtue is that it has a swappable CD / Floppy Drive - one of our CNC mills also runs on DOS and only has floppies - I want to be able to right programs for it on the laptop instead of having to use the only marginally accessible console on the mill.
You may want to look into floppy emulator hardware (there is hardware from gotek or hxc ones (https://hxc2001.com/ ), that go in place of a floppy and can take usb stick or sd card with floppy 'images'). So - CNC gets the floppy emulator, and you just write images of required floppies on a usb stick. Price should be under 100$
.
) I know the utilities for reading / writing floppies are still actively maintained.
