Vista to SUSE 11.4 to Windows 7 oh my...

[eakinj]

I've been working in computers for almost 20 years, I have been doing this since 1982 on a TRS-80's through apples to IBM clones to today. Long before computers was a career path. So when I have a weekend like this I just about want to climb a toward and start shooting (lol)

So Friday I've had enough with Vista on my laptop. I pulled out a brand new un open copy of XP (which sadly is SP2 that'll mean something more in a minute) so I go to install it and Xp can't see the SATA drive. ****! So I go online to see what the hell I need to get this to work, I find all these message board posts which are 90% sarcastic stupid comment that give no help. So I finally found out you need to run the Raid driver when installed xp.. Fine, on a hunch I grab my Dell XP with SP3 thinking maybe I can switch them out in the install (hey it was worth a shot) so i ended up just installed XP from the dell disk and got into windows.

THEN every single driver that Toshiba's site directed me to failed. For my model it had showed it with Intel Wireless (it's not) all sorts of wrong stuff. This moved into Saturday morning and me finally just having enough I put in my SUSE 11.4 dvd and installed Linux on the mf'er. it worked like a friggen charm. It hauls ass on the toshiba as well where Vista just .... well it was vista... slow and crap.

Today i unboxed my new HP, and now running windows 7 on it and enjoy it. Couple big differences I have found on this version of 7 opposed to on my other win7 machine is that on a lot of apps I have to right click and install as administrator which i don't on the others. just one of those things i guess.

It amazes me though how frustrating this tech still is even after all these years. Thinking back though to Windows (2?) when it was literally just a file manager with a list no real gui to speak of, i guess things have more forward.

But still the more I play with Linux the more I'm really feeling to pull to move over to that platform. Too bad Audition doesn't work on there

This new win7 machine is probably going to become my recording studio pc, so I can finally start focusing on getting some music done and out. Thankfully my current work contract is going longer i may be able to maybe even move up to protools, (du nu du!)

weeee

any other IT pro's out there?

[PowerTube]

Yep. I've been in IT since ("officially") 1997. At home and at work I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, plus I have VirtualBox loaded and running Windows XP, Windows 2000, SimplyMepis, Ubuntu, Damn Small Linux (DSL), Puppy Linux, and FreeDOS.

I skipped Vista entirely because I suspected that it would go the way of Windows ME, which it did.

EDIT: Have you ever played with Beryl? It's beyond amazing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWignRTadFs&feature=fvst

[eakinj]

Yeah Vista was a turd but it came on the laptop. I'd been itching to get rid of it for a while. Beryl looks looks pretty interesting. I'm just getting back into the Linux world, I used to run Mandrake and Sun OS. but never used them much. Now I'm looking to get out of the MS universe as much as possible.

[javert]

Before and during my studies I worked in tech support and later as a systems administrator. I'm glad I tried it out before I started my studies, because it made me realize that money isn't everything. The job payed really well (this was back in the late 90s) but it was boring and annoying as hell. I get angry when people ask me for help with their computers now - I just hate wasting my time on it.

As for Windows and other operating systems, I've pretty much tried them all. I've been using linux on my main computer (which runs some heavy simulations) at work for many years, but I've got Windows installed on my laptops and my computer at home. I actually like Windows 7, it runs pretty smoothly. Linux has come a long way in terms of usability, though. I remember installing a Slackware back in '95 when I was in high school - it was not user friendly! With a distribution like Ubuntu, most people can use linux now, and I can't remember the last time I had driver problems, which was a huge problem with linux in the past. My girlfriend even used it for a while, but she missed Photoshop and couldn't figure out how to use Gimp, so she eventually switched back.

[javert]

I never had Vista installed on anything either...

[eakinj]

Before and during my studies I worked in tech support and later as a systems administrator. I'm glad I tried it out before I started my studies, because it made me realize that money isn't everything. The job payed really well (this was back in the late 90s) but it was boring and annoying as hell. I get angry when people ask me for help with their computers now - I just hate wasting my time on it.

As for Windows and other operating systems, I've pretty much tried them all. I've been using linux on my main computer (which runs some heavy simulations) at work for many years, but I've got Windows installed on my laptops and my computer at home. I actually like Windows 7, it runs pretty smoothly. Linux has come a long way in terms of usability, though. I remember installing a Slackware back in '95 when I was in high school - it was not user friendly! With a distribution like Ubuntu, most people can use linux now, and I can't remember the last time I had driver problems, which was a huge problem with linux in the past. My girlfriend even used it for a while, but she missed Photoshop and couldn't figure out how to use Gimp, so she eventually switched back.

I worked at Sun Microsystems and one of the Java developers I have the honor to hang out with was curious what my back ground was. I had been brought in as a grunt for a pregnant lady and when they found out I was using MS at home they had me do support for their in house marketing team for the "new" firewall they had in production (PDF 100, which flopped) I expressed an interest into getting into unix and get got me a copy of Sun OS for PC, I had been installing it on sparc stations so I had some experience with it before trying it at home. It still was a pain in the ass. Then I was told about Slackware, I never did get a successful install of it to run. I think I still have the 15 cd's that came in the package, slackware took kit, and all that.

I've been looking to get into something else, but for the life of me this is about all i'm good for. and i have car payments and house payments so i make good money doing it. I spent the last five years (before getting the boot) doing IT at a hospital. Rarely did I run into true tech issues, 90% of it was human stupidity or just simply worn out hardware. For the record ER doc's and nurses play hell with equipment. Ive had to replace so many 4250's over the last five years because someone kick the shit out of the one and I had to go in at 3am and replace it.

ahh the good ol days lol

[javert]

Hehe, I hear you. Not easy to make major changes in your life when you've got house, car, kids, a lawn that needs mowing and so on

I had almost forgotten about that PC version of SunOS. I had that too - our servers were Sun computers and I just had to try it out. I think I even payed for it. For a while I was administrating a couple of ancient HP-UX machines as well.

[Cliff]

I started out in the early 80s on Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81s (branded as Timex in the States), then moved on to a Commodore VIC-20 and finally a Commodore 64, though I always had GAS for a TRS-80 and then an Apple II. This was all for game programming work. After an absence of a few years, I got back into using computers as purely a user in a desktop publishing environment, where we used Macs. What was new for me was this was the first time I'd used a computer purely as a tool without thinking about how it worked. I was pretty impressed with Macs at the time for DTP (must have been early 90s).
I got back into professional programming around 96-97 on Windows 95, then in 2000 went into game console development, but using Windows boxes as hosts. I think Visual Studio under Windows is the best dev environment I've used.
Since 2007 I've been using Linux at work (Suse). It's absolutely rock-solid, and very powerful. I'm not really an OS expert - I just use the OS as a platform for software development. The downside of Linux for me is that the software dev tools are really poor compared to Visual Studio on Windows.
At home, I've used a laptop dual-booted with Vista and Ubuntu. I liked Ubuntu, 'cause it was easy for an idiot like me to use. Once the laptop burnt itself out, I bought a Mac for the first time a couple of years ago. I'd always thought they were overpriced and underspecced compared with PCs, but the OS is so much better that the thing just flies along. OSX is built on top of Unix, so you have all that flexibility if you need it. And everything just works . It even ships with a free dev environment that rivals Visual Studio - I've used this to develop GPU apps for the Mac, plus three-quarters of an iPhone app - it's as good as the Xbox developers kit.
So anyway, if the software you need is available for Mac, I'd definitely consider getting one.
(And agreed, I hate having to setup computers - spent a very fruitless Friday evening trying to sort out my daughter's Android pad thingie so it would download anything at all.)

[javert]

There are two things I don't like about Macs: 1) the Apple tribe thing, and 2) they seem to be way overpriced for the hardware they're based on. But Apple is doind a lot of things right though. Their products seem to be really userfriendly and, if you like the look, quite aesthetically pleasing.

[Cliff]

1) I know what you mean.
2) A bit overpriced, but I think the slicker OS makes up for this in most common uses. (Won't help with actual number crunching grunt or high-end game graphics, of course.)
I don't really care about the look, but the aesthetics certainly helped convinced my wife this was the right one to buy .

[eakinj]

My issue with Apple is the company. I'm an old II user and once Woz was gone there was no more love for that line. My IIGS I bought instead of a car is now on my shelf collecting dust, but at least it's got a cool Woz signature on the front (sarcasm)