@r000t
Well I agree, but Linux is bearable with an HDD. Windows is simply not.

@matrix @r000t IIRC Linux's been optimized for slow HDDs so that system ONLY ever touches disk if really needs to or if it has no other choice, most stuff is happening in memory, this is probably not only because of slow HDDs but also because iowait is costly even on SSDs. I'd imagine windows just reads/writes to HDDs directly without much of a buffer in memory.

@hj @matrix @r000t consumer windows has an artificially restricted disk cache of min(2GB,system RAM/4)

@hj @matrix @r000t Windows is an absolute plague on bottlenecked system

It WILL use all of the CPU and HDD writing to 100% for tens of minutes at a time on boot up with absolute disregard to the fact that if it's a good idea or not

@coolboymew @matrix @r000t @hj You practically have to have a gamer rig just to do more than check your e-mail (on Outlook), surf the web (on Edge), or do some word processing (on Office)...

@LoliHat @hj @matrix @r000t yeah, actually kind of ridiculous. At work we have older shit laptops at a passmark score of 1000 or so. Absolutely unusable, even on a fresh install. Considering the background updates and such (windows updates has also been an absolute resource hog), it's miserable

There is no reasons why it's such a miserable experience even on older hardware. There is 0 scaling whatsoever

@coolboymew @matrix @r000t @LoliHat i'd imagine because most modern windowses, especially starting 7 are just same old XP or Vista with bunch of shit stacked on top of it with no real upgrade to the "backbone" of it. plus really neat technical shit is locked out for home users to make businesses pay for expensive loicense.

@hj @LoliHat @matrix @r000t pfft, "pro" version is basically just the normal version but with a few features unlocked. That's it

@coolboymew @matrix @r000t @LoliHat i'm talking Windows Server Enterprise shit. Pro is still home version.

@hj @LoliHat @matrix @r000t the problem with this is that it's actually genuinely not intended to be used as a home OS. I believe you can't do half the shit you'd normally do. If you attempt to play video games on it, I heard it's difficult

@hj @matrix @r000t @coolboymew Even with Windows it wasn't too bad. It was with Wndows 10 and the full transition in their software from "you buy it" to "you perpetually lease it" that they started to target older systems with "upgrades" that intentionally destroyed the old operating systems.

@hj @coolboymew @LoliHat @matrix @r000t Nothing gets written from scratch anymore. We just make new interfaces that generalize over older libraries, each of which have a web of dependencies that solve problems for use cases that no longer exist, and that nobody actually understands anymore.

So long as it runs on our $3,000 workstations and the next line of $1,500 laptop, it's fine.

@EffreyJepstein @matrix @r000t @coolboymew @LoliHat no it's quite the opposite - people write too much stuff from scratch because people who can fix old stuff are no longer here and no one else wants to fix it.

@hj @matrix @r000t @EffreyJepstein @coolboymew I know people who make a lot of money due to the fact that practically no one else still working knows many of the legacy systems & languages that much of our infrastructure relies on.

@LoliHat @matrix @r000t @EffreyJepstein @coolboymew yeah and other people want to get rid of them by making new stuff that replaces old stuff. Like, instead of improving original Control Panel from back in Win 95 microsoft started making "New" Control Panel, to the point where in newest build of Win10 they hid away some of the elements of the old one even though new one barely functions.

@hj @matrix @r000t @EffreyJepstein @coolboymew Oh, I'm not even talking about modern systems like Win 95. I'm talking about stuff from the 60s and 70s, used languages (assuming they were sophisticated enough to use such a high end thing) that no one has written anything new for almost half a century, and are still running major infrastructure like for example nuclear powerplants.

@LoliHat @hj @EffreyJepstein @matrix @r000t

Imagine Nuclear Powerplants running on Java, running on Windows Server

@coolboymew @matrix @r000t @EffreyJepstein @hj Thankfully back then they didn't have the luxury of bloat, bad code, or wonky peripherals.

@coolboymew
They do.
@matrix @EffreyJepstein @hj @LoliHat

@hj @LoliHat @coolboymew @matrix @r000t I would hardly call the settings app something that was actually built from scratch. It suffers from the same layering problem I described, it's built on top of Window's existing settings system and defers to the control panel (or even worse, regedit [worst of all, group policies]) when it fails to do what it's supposed to do.

However I do agree, making the existing system work, but better, is a much preferable solution to gluing different solutions together.

@LoliHat @matrix @r000t @EffreyJepstein @hj @coolboymew RETVRN TO TRADITION

@coolboymew @matrix @r000t windows has weird concepts of what good ideas are, like "restarting 3 times during upgrade" or "taking 40 minutes for a simple upgrade" are good ideas in microsoft's book.

As for using up CPU and HDD, linux will also almost lock up if you do something hdd-intensive, especially if something happens on root drive, but generally it's much better.

It's still absolutely incredible that if you run out of disk space linux might throw some errors but windows goes completely apeshit - everything crashes and recovering system might take... some time, for it to calm down.

@hj @matrix @r000t

>Taking 40 mins of a simple upgrade

Mac OS has stolen Windows idea as of late too

What's really lovely is that I recently learned they have a function in the activity monitor to tell you if you need to upgrade ram soon. Yellow chart means you might need to upgrade soon. Red chart, you need to upgrade

What's lovely about it is that you need to throw away the entire thing to upgrade

Oh also, Mac OS also goes apeshit if you run out of space

@coolboymew @matrix @r000t @hj "Upgrade" in Apple-speak is buy our lastest hyper-expenstive stuff that will last a year until you have to buy even new stuff to be cool...

@LoliHat @matrix @r000t @coolboymew also apple upgrades are kind of install-new-OS thing.

For me 40min upgrade was Uprading 2018 build of Win10 to whatever the fuck newest build is, not 7->10, not 10->11, just regular windows update albeit just somewhat slightly bigger.

@hj @LoliHat @matrix @r000t No, Mac OS updates actually takes a while now. I have no idea if they ever had them, but they do have updates that needs a reboot where you watch the thing on a black screen for 10s of minutes

@hj @matrix @r000t @coolboymew Destroyed a system of mine doing that. Good thing backups are a thing.

@LoliHat @matrix @r000t @coolboymew luckily i don't have anything to backup there, i don't use w10 for anything except games, it only has bare necessities. But I expected it to explode, wipe all drives and fry my cpu and gpu. Hopefully it only had like... 8 problems after upgrade.

@hj
@coolboymew @matrix @r000t
Linux tends to recover better from a HDD being slammed unless the HDD is physically dying. It's not uncommon to still be able to remote into a system where the HDD and CPU are maxed from compiling something for example.

@hj
I might have to get my hands on an old 7 and 10 build to test it out because I don't generally remember Windows being this slow. Maybe it's just my rose tinted glasses.
@r000t

@matrix @r000t please do. All I can say is that I used to have an EEEPC that was pretty much unusable with windows (extremely long boot time + unbearably slow when using) but adequate on linux.

@hj
I'm not sure how to do it objectively though. Maybe some small C program that makes a ton of small files and folders and randomly reads them. First order of business is getting the older builds.
I used to have one too with XP on it. I don't remember much but I remember playing Far Cry and Flatout 2 on it and that was quite laggy.
@r000t