Why I dont use XP

[preacher]

I bought a new computer, which is usually a good thing, but unfortunately it had windows xp on it. I had never used xp, but I had heard that it wasnt nearly as bad as winMe. I decided to try it. After the basic configuration, I was greeted with a stupid annoying dog who dumbed every sentence down and made it seem like the people who buy this type of pc are mentally retarded(only half true). After spending 10 minutes looking for a way to turn the annoying little bastard off, I decided to do what I call "Spring Cleaning", which is where I go to the control panel and delete all the programs that I will never use. I look under add/remove programs, and to my surprise, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer arent listed. Give me a break. If i dont want to use their bloated half ass proprietary crap, i shouldnt have to. its wasting space on my hard drive. Next I had to get rid of all the desktop icons. Being a linux user, Im not a fan of desktop icons and wanted to delete all but the My Computer and trash, but NO. Instead of me being in charge of whats on my system, microsoft is in charge. So at this point I decide to give xp one more chance. I restart the pc, and guess what greets me. the damn mother fucking talking dog. I turned my 1.8ghz P4 loaded with Windows XP home off more than 2 weeks ago and am currently looking for a "Man's" OS, Im thinking either OpenBSD, or Solaris 8. Some of us just arent meant to use MS products.

[Heru]

XP is lovely isn't it?  I think there is a way to kill that dog, I just don't remember how.  And of course you can't remove IE; MS has made so that if you did you wouldn't have a functional XP system anymore.  And don't let the upcoming SP1 fool you, all it lets you do is hide MS software and use something else in place of them, it still will not let you uninstall IE or WMP.

If your going to go with either OpenBSD or Solaris, go with OpenBSD.  OpenBSD is open source, compatible with Linux, and free.  I personaly think that if you're going with a BSD that FreeBSD is a better choice though due to it being easier to install and having more software for it natively.

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: Heru ]

[hoojchoons]

I think that the worst thing about M$'s new OS, is the integration of the Win32 API into the NT kernel, in order to provide a more "stable" and friendly choice to end users. If M$ really wanted a stable operating system, they should definitely stick with the NT kernel which, as far as I'm concerned, was far more stable than the "good" old MS-DOS.

[Calum]

there's an easy way to kill the talking dog, you make a DOS startup floppy, boot with it in the drive, then type "format c:".
Let's see that fucking dog recover from that one!

The dog is a failed part of the ill-fated "Microsoft Bob" program, an alternative GUI for windows 3.1. This system was aimed at complete dumbasses, and tried its best to be totally different from MacOS. It was a total bomb, which is why hardly anybody remembers it. Rather than actually pay a designer, though, Microsoft have been using elements of Microsoft Bob in their office and systems software ever since.
to find out more:

here's a boring advert for Microsoft bob
here's an alarming revelation about Microsoft Bob
Here's some guy who thinks Microsoft Bob was a good idea
and here's a picture of that fucking dog in his original habitat!

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Ice-9]

There is a solution for everything that's not 2000 or XP.(http://www.litepc.com)
Too bad they suspended development for 2000/XP.
IEradicator works for Win2K up to SP1 though!

[Calum]

hey, good point, but can't you still install winXP on a fat32 partition?

and what would be the correct procedure if you had an XP machine and you wanted to wipe the filesystem off leaving only free space?

[dishawjp]

Haven't had to work with XP yet, though I've been told that I'll be down... err... upgraded to XP at work in a few months.  Hell, I've just about learned to live with Win98 as a workstation and soon it'll be XP.  We have a new IT director who must be on the M$ payroll.  Got rid of our good Sun and Digital AlphaVAX servers and converted everything to Win2k servers.  No more SunOS5 or OpenVMS.  Of course now the network is down regularly.  If I didn't still have access to my personal RedHat6.1 server I think that I'd go totally nuts.

As broken as the Win9x OS's are, at least they were still essentially DOS boxes and could be beaten into relative submission through DOS and regedit.  This new XP looks to be even worse than WinNT.

Just a quick question for all you experts on this forum... I do need to run some Windows software.  it's my job, not a personal preference.  Do any of you have direct experience with the Lindows OS?  Is it possible to have a good, stable, reliable and rational OS (without having to use a WINE emulator which I've heard can be slow and sometimes unreliable) that will allow me to run software written for Windows?

Oh, about icons.  I just have 4 on my Win9x boxes.  Main (was my computer), DOS (to open more command line windows), Deleted (was recycle bin), and Network (formerly network neighborhood).  I do everything else from the command line.  Have 70 or so .bat files in a pathed \batch directory open programs and stuff.

If this is posted in the wrong place or I've stepped on any toes, please cut me a litle slack.  it is my first post here.

[Calum]

hiya, welcome to the forums, don't you find DOS a little stilted though? i suspect the emulated DOS you can expect n yr new XP computer will be even more so.

[voidmain]

Where'd the damn reply button go?  Anyway, you don't need to use any stupid M$ format/fdisk utility to wipe out your drive.  Linux comes with better ones.  When you stick your RedHat (or any other distro) CD in and boot, you can blow away and recreate the existing partitions however you want.

[Calum]

okay, i've just never done it that way, that's all. i have a mate with a fucked copy of winXP. his registration has run out, even though he has paid for it, and he just wants to get it off his machine and put a dual windows98/mandrake8.2 install on instead. Do you mean this can be done purely from the mandrake CDs? he is not to tech literate, so the dual boot thing may be the sticking point. I was going to give him a DOS boot disk and a disk with some dos utilities for formatting and partitioning, along with the mandrake CDs, should i not bother confusing him with the DOS disks?

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
okay, i've just never done it that way, that's all. i have a mate with a fucked copy of winXP. his registration has run out, even though he has paid for it, and he just wants to get it off his machine and put a dual windows98/mandrake8.2 install on instead. Do you mean this can be done purely from the mandrake CDs? he is not to tech literate, so the dual boot thing may be the sticking point. I was going to give him a DOS boot disk and a disk with some dos utilities for formatting and partitioning, along with the mandrake CDs, should i not bother confusing him with the DOS disks?

Well if you are going to dual boot then the general rule of thumb is to install Windows first, then install Linux because Windows has an inferiority complex when there are other things on the drive.  In that case you could boot from your Windows CD and blow away the partitions, recreate on the size you want for Windows and leave the rest of the disk for Linux.

If Linux were the only OS to go on the drive then you wouldn't need the other stuff.  In fact you "could" do it with Linux but I would suggest forgetting it until after you have Win* installed and you know what to do from there. Sorry, didn't realize you were dual booting...

[Calum]

yes, well installing linux would be simple, even for him (this guy has never installed an OS, so maybe he's a punter    ) anyway, his XP installation may be NTFS, so would installing from win98 CD actually work? not sure, which is why we need to use either DOS partitioning tools, or linux installer, so maybe you know if a win98 install can overwrite an NTFS one? or does anybody else?

[voidmain]

You should be able to delete the "unrecognized" partition (which is NTFS) during the Win98 install, or with a boot disk as you originally mentioned.

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

ta!  

[Ctrl Alt Del 123]

With you being a Linux user, I find it hard to believe you couldn't do some of the tings you stated. Usually Linux users are knowledgeable people who know their shit, and since you claim to be one, jesus, did you really use the product at all or make this up?

To remove the dog, CLICK ON HIM, and he will greet you with some options, click the one that says "Turn OFF animated character". Not hard to do.

Removing some MS middleware: you didn't mention it, but you will soon. To uninstall Windows Messenger (the worst of all MS's middleware) go start > run > type in RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove and hit Ok.

So far, you can't remove Windows Media Player and it's a bitch to remove IE, however, they both combined are about 4 MB big, they don't take up much space.

By default, XP has NO desktop shortcuts whatsoever except for the Recycle Bin. But since I think you have an OEM copy from your PC manufacture, they have added all kinda crap. Just right click your desktop > properties > go to the Desktop tab > click the "customize button"

brb