I'm back! Hell of a war story for ya'll

[psyjax]

Don't know if you guys noticed my relative silence in the forum's lately but I recently aquiared a new computer. A PC! *gasp* Psyjax running a PC!!! Ya, it's my toy   , know thy enamy and all that.

Not a replacement for my dual G4, just a fun computer to tinker with. I partitioned the harddrive and have a small 5GB assigned to Win98SE (ugh!). The rest is given over to RedHat linux 8 That being 35GB or so.

Here are my impressions of the modern PC coming from a Mac Zelot's perspective (mind you, I haven't fully owned a PC since the old 486, though I have used them extensively up to this point):

First off PC's are cheep when you build them yourself. I put mine together from midrange parts to end up with a relatively up to date system. The CPU was about 400 total, and the rest of the periferals and software I bought ran it up to about 700. (speakers, keyboard, ram, a couple of games, etc.) So, theres a good thing.

I was ready to install my OS's. At this point I was ready to find out what it is I pay for, when I get a Mac. I mean 700 bucks for a 2100+Athalon XP, 256MB of DDR RAM, GeForce 4, man, how can you beat a price like that?

First off, let me just point out that the hardware design on the PC feels ancient. It is ancient, hasen't really evolved since the early days, at least the layout. Booting the sucker up feels like your turning on a Model T.

First thing's first, I will install windoze (as I understand it, it likes to be first on a dual boot setup). I needed a bootdisk... why you can't just boot off a CD is a Windoze quirk I will never understand.

So I dug out my old IIsi box and rumaged around and found a box of dusty old diskets. Just touching one of those archaic little suckers made me wince. Years of I/O errors, coruptions, compressed files divided amongst them, yuck.

In any case, I got on my roomates PC and made a bootdisk from bootdisk.com, started the comp. up and loged into the CD, typed Setup and off wen't the windoze installer. Pice of cake right? Wrong!

Boot from a CD in the Mac and the best installer in the world comes up. Windoze is not this. First off it assumes it's going to work and gives you very limeted choices of what to install, most notably there is no way to avoid MSN or IE being vomited onto your HD.

In any case, my first install attempt crashed the installer. reboot from blue screen. My second attempt went all the way thrugh except that for some dumb ass reason it had created two drive partitions one FAT16 one FAT32!

May I say that filesystems for windoze are idiotic at best, excruciatingly confusing and obtuse at worst.

Reboot from disk, FDISK, Delete, Format for large drives. Run setup, ok it installs all the way again. My fav. thing about the installer is this dialogue that says if this is takeing to long reboot. HAHAHAHAH! WTF, the os dosn't even know if it fucked up?

Ok so I'm in! Windoze boots fine... and it's, it's.... 16 colors and 640x480. hmmmmmmmm....

Oh yes! That's right, I have to manualy install every single fucking driver for every ity bitty component I have. Motherboard driver, make sure windoze realizes it has an AGP slot, pice of dumb shit. Anyway, while installing my Mobo drivers IE crashes takeing windoze down. Now everytime I reboot it trys to update the system and hangs. Can't get out of the vicious cycle.

Reboot from disk, Format c: re-install. This time I put in IErradicator, remove IE and install all my drivers. After some trial and error getting them to work, Windoze 98SE is up and running. A total of 3.5hrs. It's sooooo easy to use! YAY!

Win98SE is more unstable than OS9 ever was. Sorry, it's just plain true. A bit snappir here and there, but crashes all the time for no reason. None the less, it get's the job done for what I use it for. Old DOS games, and some new stuff the Mac dosn't have yet. It was nice to be able to dig up gems in the bargain Bin.

I installed CodeWarrior, and toyed with some Win32 programming. What a dumb API. That's all I have to say about that.

Ok, now on to a real Man's OS! RedHat 8. I decided to Defrag windoze. This took for ever, and I was surprised to see, that even a freshly installed system speckled the HD with data. It was all over the place! I have never seen a Mac, after being used for years, have this extreme fragmentation. Jezus.

I used FIPS and cut the disk in two.

Worked fine. But RedHat 8 in, set the BIOS to load the CD and finaly a modern, fully featured, easy to use installer booted up. All wen't well till I got to the partitioning part, it still considered that the new partition was a windoze partition and woulden't install on it. So I had to use Druid to manualy configure the ext3 stuff. Only a minor headache, luckely I'm familiar enugh with Linux to set up a swap and boot partition.

What else is there to say, it recognized all my hardware. (except my geforce 4, I had to select the driver from a menu). In no time I was up and running. BTW GRUB is an awsome bootloader!

I emidiatly gravitated to KDE, it feels soooo much better than GNOME. I love it, Linux is the closest thing to OSX on a PC. It's not as well designed, and has more than a few rugh spots, but it's lightyears more advanced than windoze.

I installed Kdevelop, and was impresed. Very nice IDE. It ws fun toung some classic ANSI C stuff. Funny thing was, running linux for a while made me wan't to programm!

I have programed on Mac's for years, but now I feel this incredible drive to programm for linux. Any suggestion on where to start? Are there any good C graphic librarys APIs that are well documented. My current project is a neat graphical rogulike game, and it would be awsome to be able to port it to all the sytems.

Well, that's that. Linux is the bomb. But GUI wise, OSX still ownz.

So what do I pay for in my Mac? Simply, quality, ease of use. Assurance that my computer will allways do what I tell it to do. Is it worth it? 100% . I like all computers, but the Mac is still my fav. If apple goes under, I wont ever touch a comp. again.

[Calum]

you might as well not have bothered having windows on there and just put linux on there instead! you could dual boot between say red hat and debian, or freebsd and slackware.

no need for windows if you already have a fully working mac!

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
you might as well not have bothered having windows on there and just put linux on there instead! you could dual boot between say red hat and debian, or freebsd and slackware.

no need for windows if you already have a fully working mac!

Ya, as I said. I only put it on there to run some games I never had the chance to play before.

I don't have enugh RAM for Wine yet. And I got the PC to tinker with, I wanna become an l337 Linux hacker  

[choasforages]

play around with NetBSD for a while. it is really fun to mess with as long as you have patience and the purpose for messing with it is to learn.

[Fett101]

quote:Originally posted by psyjax v6.9 /Dave: Mac Zealot:
CPU was about 400 total

I hope you mean the CPU and Mobo. Still.. steep for PC's.

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: Fett101 ]

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Fett101:


I hope you mean the CPU and Mobo. Still.. steep for PC's.

[ December 13, 2002: Message edited by: Fett101 ]

I mean the whole CPU unit. Case, Ram, VidCard, HD, etc.

[flap]

The CPU is the processor.
Although 'CPU' is sometimes used to refer to the whole box.

[TheQuirk]

I'm going to have to take Windows' side here: you were installing Windows 98, an OS from 1997, on an almost 2003 computer. Come on man - can you install Mac OS 8 on a new G4 and expect it to work? I'm just preaching reason!

Also, you can boot off of the CD now (in mE and above, I think). BUT, the installer is still crap (ever seen an XP install? ugly shades, and you can only click "next" millions of times).

[Zombie9920]

He should've at least installed Windows 2000 Pro if not XP(which is way better than 2K). The NT OS'es aren't nearly as unstable as those trashy Win9x OSes. I'd have to say that you were nuts for even thinking a 9x OS would be stable and is anything like what you are used to.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

[Annorax]

Nope... 98SE is about right... Anything newer than that and he would have to deal with his computer actively cooperating with m$..........

[Pissed_Macman]

quote:Originally posted by TheQuirk:
Come on man - can you install Mac OS 8 on a new G4 and expect it to work?

Actually I think you can. I dont know, though. Guess I've never really thought about it.

[jtpenrod]

quote:I have programed on Mac's for years, but now I feel this incredible drive to programm for linux. Any suggestion on where to start? Are there any good C graphic librarys APIs that are well documented. My current project is a neat graphical rogulike game, and it would be awsome to be able to port it to all the sytems.

There are several ways to go. There's Qt Designer that's incorporated into KDevelop, there's Glade, for doing GNOME programming, and then there's my favorite: FOX        Started out with Qt Designer, but never went back after giving FOX a go.

Definitely download GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool. This is a most essential reference for doing any sort of serious Linux development, as this will allow you to write apps that'll run on more than one distro. You should also get this as well: GCC-HOWTO. It helps to know how to use the compiler      
_______________________________________
Live Free or Die: Linux

Their fundamental design flaws are completely concealed by their superficial design flaws.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]

[Kintaro]

quote:Originally posted by psyjax: plain 'ol psyjax:


Ya, as I said. I only put it on there to run some games I never had the chance to play before.

I don't have enugh RAM for Wine yet. And I got the PC to tinker with, I wanna become an l337 Linux hacker    

Its good to see you back.

After reading your article, it makes me wonder what the Anti-Apple people are smoking, and your TestBox is twice as good as my *main* PC.

But what makes PC's cheap is brand diversity, most bios's are shitty... But Im more impressed that you Like Red-Hat 8.0 (Every body does).

Well you where away I switched away from Windows Completly. But I will never get a Mac unless i know im not paying for a properitry OS (I have been reading much of stallmans stuff).

So Greogry Suvuallian was right, Unix sucks!
We should all be using Linux!

I also understand Linux making you want to program... Its what made the person who Wrote Haloween II (You know; the leeked document). resign from Microsoft and make an Open Source organization.

Anyway, one thing about your article, other then the fact its about to be submited on Slashdot is that on the bottom Line WINDOWS SUCKS ASS!

[Kintaro]

quote:Originally posted by choasforages:
play around with NetBSD for a while. it is really fun to mess with as long as you have patience and the purpose for messing with it is to learn.

NetBSD shits me, im to used to Linux/Bash, it wont let me use the UP ARROW to redo commands and stuff. Linux is better anyway... If psyjax thought Windows 98 SE had a bad installer he should see NetBSD.

(Actually i like it but its just nowhere near as good as Red-Hat 8.0, and who said it has better proformance, if it has... PROVE IT!)

Im pissed of with BSD people in a sence that they think, crap os = proformance, Linux is better. Linux is free (as in freedom you knobs who think otherwise).

So eat my nans muff BSD users.

[Kintaro]

quote:Originally posted by flap:
The CPU is the processor.
Although 'CPU' is sometimes used to refer to the whole box.

Yes like in a Perkin Elmer 7/32 Mainframe, there are big racks with "CPU1" written on it, and "CPU2"

They have lots of core memory (Retro).

Sadly i cant find a Unix or a C Compiler for it, I do have a book of Machine Code Instructions for it, it currently sits in my dads shed. (The size of his "shed" is the equiv to a Unix Junkies uptime). And its a fucking huge shed compared to your Suburban Lawnmowerhouse.

But yes, I have some seriosly "Retro" computer systems at home.