Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: Gnome on 1 May 2005, 13:16
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Ok, I'll keep this simple.
Last night I was transferring stuff of my fileserver that is being transformed into a webserver (Linux/Apache) to my laptop (the only box of mine with a burner).
On the laptop (XP, 2.5G CPU, 512Mb ram, 7200rpm HDD, fastest graphics in the house (but can't remember what exactly), I had Trillian and Netscape 7.2 running, as well as a windoze explorer window. That was all.
The server (Mandrake 10/Gnome, 300Mhz CPU, 190 MB Ram, Nvida Geforce 2 (IIRC) w/ 32Mb ram, several older slower 5400(?) HDD's) was ul'ing the files to the doze box, transferring files to a couple of 'staging areas', doing a file search, handling some printing and also had Mozilla running (but idle).
The doze box was really sluggish under it's load. 25-30 seconds for an IM to send on Trillian, and maybe another 5-10 seconds for the screen to update. Going back to the web page displayed behind the IM window - anything up to 30 seconds, and anything up to another 20 for the page to respond to input.
The Linux box, otoh, was at most 5 seconds to display anything. Starting a new task was a bit slow, but the disk activity was high so that would, I expect, cover the very slight sluggishness.
So.. Why is my new expensive machine running XP so much slower than an old pile of junk I was considering dumping?
Windoze XP? :thumbdwn: :fu:
Linux? :thumbup: :D :thumbup: :D...
I went to linux for the server because of stability and security. I'll probably switch the laptop over to it because of that and, having tried Knoppix out on it, SPEED!
[Oh, and before anyone asks - my nick was given to me due to my physical characteristics in '91, and does not relate to the Gnome desktop)
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Good for you, using Gnome rather than KDE, is this for speed too? I've found KDE very slow almoast Windows slow.
I've found Windows slow for compresing fills and also renaiming files on FAT32 partitions. Linux can rename a file in less than a second on my FAT32 partition but Windows takes fucking ages. But I have found the Windows boots quicker than Linux in general.
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I've found Windows slow for compresing fills and also renaiming files on FAT32 partitions.
Compressing files is limited by CPU; not the file system. In that case, your beef would be with something like WinZip or WinRAR, not actual Windows.
Gnome, is your problem caused by hard drive lag? What you described is exactly how my computer acts when I'm transfering large amounts of data across the network, or defragging.
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Compressing files is limited by CPU; not the file system. In that case, your beef would be with something like WinZip or WinRAR, not actual Windows.
FAT32 is very inefficent and Windows XP has built in ZIP support - I don't have WinZip or WinRAR. When I rename a 500MB file on my FAT32 drive form Linux it takes less than a second when it takes 5 miniutes from XP.
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Windowsxp is mainly slow becuase you have to defrag after a fresh install. Also theres many useless services running..like "Messanger" All the eye candy can make it slow as well, but that's not the problem with your specs.
XP's ram management isn't great becuase by default it doesn't unload cached dll's in the memory. All can be changed by simple tweaks.
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Good for you, using Gnome rather than KDE, is this for speed too? I've found KDE very slow almoast windows slow.
I've never compared them. I think when I had Mandrake 9 a year or so back on another machine, I mainly used KDE. This time round I used Gnome by default... Hmm, might explain why some small monitoring apps (like one, think it was named Simsomething or something like that - would give a small display that would let me monitor network speed and cpu use and some other things I could choose.
I've found Windows slow for compresing fills and also renaiming files on FAT32 partitions. Linux can rename a file in less than a second on my FAT32 partition but Windows takes fucking ages. But I have found the Windows boots quicker than Linux in general.
Yup, I've also found that Linux takes longer to boot. But... I don't boot Linux anywhere near as often, so over time I'd spend far less time booting Linux than doze.
I'm not sure what filesystem the laptop is on. Whatever comes with XP.
I've found that doze can be incredibly slow on some of the simplest of tasks.
But IME it still beats Linux for installing software - except that, again, you have to do it far more often with doze (and redo it, and redo it, and redo it, and redo it...)
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XP's ram management isn't great becuase by default it doesn't unload cached dll's in the memory. All can be changed by simple tweaks.
I don't expect to be running it long enough to need to worry about tweaking it anyway.
I've had enough of fixing and tweaking doze. Once I figure out how to get Homeworld running happily under Linux (and maybe a few other games), bye bye doze. And if Trillian can run under Wine, shouldn't take to much to get Homeworld playable..)
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Gnome, is your problem caused by hard drive lag? What you described is exactly how my computer acts when I'm transfering large amounts of data across the network, or defragging.
But surely the Linux box - which has slower drives and was working them harder than the drive in the doze box should have suffered this more?
I expect that is the cause - doze was handling the drive poorly and loosing huge amounts of CPU time to manage what should've some sort of stream to the disk, while the Linux box was happily chugging away, occaisionally looking up in and asking in a mocking tone "Is that all you want me to do?"
(Actually, I get a image of #5 from "Short Circuit" with the regular "More data please" after churning through a ton of books, unable to be sated by mere human input - guess he was running Linux as well?)
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But I have found the Windows boots quicker than Linux in general.
Sure Linux takes longer to boot since Linux draws a sharp distinction between apps and the core OS. Win incorporates apps into the OS. It boots faster, and that's a good thing since Windows users do it so often. :D
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On second thoughts I think it depends on the version of Windows you use. Windows 2000 and previous versions take ages to boot but Microsoft decided to make Windows XP a boot a lot faster by using a techinique they called pre-emptive booting. This involved arranging the system files on the hard disk in the correct boot order on the first boot after installation or a major change to the system. This means lots of files can be load into memory very quickly if not at the same time, while before the hard disk had to go and find each file one after the other. This is my understanding anyway.
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This involved arranging the system files on the hard disk in the correct boot order on the first boot after installation or a major change to the system.
ABSOLUTE RUBBISH!!!
You cannot honestly expect us to believe that mickey$loth has actually managed to properly organize system folders in a logical order, can you?
Isn't that some sort of major sin as far as they're concerned or something? I thought their system fiels were supposed to be either scattered in one illogical mass of folders, or one huge mess of files dumped in one directory, with nothing even bordering on logical or organised, or even remotely sensible.
And you expect me to believe that they actually have decently (or at least something pretending to approach decently) set things out for a change?
Absolute bollocks.
[wanders off muttering about people with silly ideas]
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ABSOLUTE RUBBISH!!!
You cannot honestly expect us to believe that mickey$loth has actually managed to properly organize system folders in a logical order, can you?
Isn't that some sort of major sin as far as they're concerned or something? I thought their system fiels were supposed to be either scattered in one illogical mass of folders, or one huge mess of files dumped in one directory, with nothing even bordering on logical or organised, or even remotely sensible.
And you expect me to believe that they actually have decently (or at least something pretending to approach decently) set things out for a change?
Absolute bollocks.
[wanders off muttering about people with silly ideas]
Actually I think XP boots faster because it loads the neccessary services needed to show you the login screen first. Windows 2000 would load all of the background services before showing you the login screen, therefore making it seem a lot slower.
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XP boots much slower than 2000 becuase of all of it's useless services
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ABSOLUTE RUBBISH!!!
You cannot honestly expect us to believe that mickey$loth has actually managed to properly organize system folders in a logical order, can you?
Isn't that some sort of major sin as far as they're concerned or something? I thought their system fiels were supposed to be either scattered in one illogical mass of folders, or one huge mess of files dumped in one directory, with nothing even bordering on logical or organised, or even remotely sensible.
And you expect me to believe that they actually have decently (or at least something pretending to approach decently) set things out for a change?
Absolute bollocks.
[wanders off muttering about people with silly ideas]
Not not the folders but the order of the information on the physical disk surface.
e7ement,
You're the first person I've heard say that, have you run Windows XP and 2000 on the same hardware before?
I don't agree with Microsoft on many things but I do in this instance.
Booting
When a computer boots, many things have to happen, such as the initialization of devices and a wide variety of system functions and services. Several important changes have been made in Windows XP that dramatically reduce the time it takes for this initialization process to complete.
These changes include the following:
Improvements to the Boot Loader
Improvements to the boot loader and to a number of key drivers have made them much faster. Registry initialization is also faster, and many manufacturers have dramatically reduced the time taken by their BIOS prior to running the operating system.
I/O Can Be Overlapped with Device Initialization
Using Windows
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Windoze XP does boot fast, but I can only laugh at the idea it's because of any special file arrangement or such. Just look at file table using any defragmenter and you'll notice that the windoze partition has thousands of fragmented files after a couple of days since the last defragmentation - even though it was run with optimizations such as placing the files in order of last access.
On the other hand, the boot-up time on Linux depends on what distro, software and services you use. Many "regular" distros seem to come with a huge load of unneccessary stuff to make sure they run on as many systems as possible, as well as a kernel that has support for everything. My Suse 9.3 takes maybe a minute to boot up, when I tried Gentoo, it took about as long as windoze to get to the point where the login screen appears. I didn't have KDE load automatically so I can't say for sure but judging by the time Suse takes to get to the same point where Gentoo stops in text mode, it's pretty fast. Too bad I couldn't get anything else working properly on Gentoo so I switched back to Suse.
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Windoze XP does boot fast, but I can only laugh at the idea it's because of any special file arrangement or such. Just look at file table using any defragmenter and you'll notice that the windoze partition has thousands of fragmented files after a couple of days since the last defragmentation - even though it was run with optimizations such as placing the files in order of last access.
It depends on the file system, I've had my 40GB hard drive for over a year now and it still doesn't need defragmenting and it's 35% full, my FAT32 on the other hand is 60GB patition (the rest is Linux) on an 80GB hard drive is only 15% full and it needs defragmenting quite often.
I would imagine that the system files required to boot are in boot order starting from the boot sector onwards and for this reason they're only moved when a major change is made to the configuration When this happens Windows rearranges them in correct the boot order after a few boots, this is why Windows took a lot longer to boot after I installed SP2 but it speeded up after successive boots. Oh and these Windows XP's boot speed optimisations don't work with FAT32 file systems because they rely on special features that NTFS has and FAT32 simply doesn't have.
On the other hand, the boot-up time on Linux depends on what distro, software and services you use. Many "regular" distros seem to come with a huge load of unneccessary stuff to make sure they run on as many systems as possible, as well as a kernel that has support for everything. My Suse 9.3 takes maybe a minute to boot up, when I tried Gentoo, it took about as long as windoze to get to the point where the login screen appears. I didn't have KDE load automatically so I can't say for sure but judging by the time Suse takes to get to the same point where Gentoo stops in text mode, it's pretty fast. Too bad I couldn't get anything else working properly on Gentoo so I switched back to Suse.
This is the problem with comparing Windows to Linux. Windows is Windows and Linux is just a kernel. One Linux distrobution can be better (or worse) than another.
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I think that everybody should use Linux, regardless of their needs. Because I am the supreme ruler of the universe and I don't think anybody should be allowed the use Windows. Neophytes.
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Alot of people use Windows due to Buissness reasons, but want to use Linux/Mac/Etc. Also, you are giving Linux a bad name.
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Easy !!!
Couse Windows Sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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e7ement,
You're the first person I've heard say that, have you run Windows XP and 2000 on the same hardware before?
Yeah. I'm talking about xp on a fresh install with no tweaks. Sometimes takes as much as 2 minutes, even when you see the desktop you can't do anything for more than 30 seconds.
after you mess with registsy, services, and msconig you can make XP boot very fast.
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Yes but I've found it slow after a major reconfigureation like installing SP2 and a fresh intallation would probably be worse. But after a few boots or even a defrag I've found it graduly speeds up. I can't remember the boot speed when I fist bought my machine but it was faster than my old p200 so I wouldn'tve noticed.
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For bootup, XP will show you the desktop first after you log in. This appears fast, but everything else is still starting so you can't use it. 2000 waits a bit before showing you the desktop, and it's usable sooner.
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That's why I included the amount of time it took before the desktop became usable, when I tested Windows XP and Vector Linux, in this thread (http://www.microsuck.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9010&page=4&pp=25) :D
Don't worry Vector Linux won the race, I don't think Redhad would win though.
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/me sings "my (Slackware) system boots faster than Aloones supper-fast XP system"
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Ok if you're going to stoop this low I'll come and join you. :D
Vector Linux Rules!
Slackware rules!
Lol Windows XP boots faster than Redhat. :D
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Slackware and Vector Linux boot faster than Windows XP, and I'm pretty damn sure they're not the only GNU/Linux distros that do.
What about FreeBSD, anyone?
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I would imagine Gento Linux (http://www.gentoo.org/) would kick, Vector Linux, Windows XP, and slackware into orbit.
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So would I.
I built two (Beyond,) Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) systems (compile _everything_ from scratch (well ya just follow the instructions in the (e)book), quite an experience), and I remember I was amazed at how fast it booted. But I didn't have feck all installed.
I don't think I've built my last LFS system yet.
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Since we're on the topic a boot speeds, I'm gonna do a test. My FreeBSD 5-Stable vs WinXP SP2. I'll see how long it takes, from power up to get to the desktop, and load Firefox 1.03. When the google logo appears in Firefox, I'll stop the timer.
I'll knock of three of four seconds from my FreeBSD boot time because I have to log in and so 'startx' after booting.
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My unscientific boot speed comparison:
FreeBSD 5-Stable/KDE 3.4 - 1:39.13
Windows XP SP2 - 1:26.02
Things to be aware of:
The FreeBSd box required me to login to the console and sype startx to get to the desktop. I stopped the timer when the login screen started up, and started it back up when I entered the 'startx' command.
The FreeBSD machines boots of of a 5400RPM ATA100 drive. The WindowsXP machine boots off of a 7200RPM ATA133 drive
The WindowsXP machine has to load up Avast Antivirus and Microsoft Antispyware at startup. The FreeBSD machine doesn't.
In a few days I will be reloading both systems onto the same ATA133 7200RPM drive. I just got a 3Ware Escalade 7000 RAID controller, and am waiting for a dvd burner to arrive, so I can offload all of my data first. I'll do the same test agian when both systems are booting of the same drive.
Even with all of those things above that make the test uneven, I still think if everything were totally square, hardware wise, XP would still be faster to boot. Take off the Virus software and antispyware software, and XP would only increase it's lead. Sure, you can compare XP to a Linux/BSd distro with some featureless Window manager, but that's not very fair.
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Oh,in case you were wondering, yes, my FreeBSD kernel is heavily modified. Nothing is loaded into it that doesn't need to be.
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Fluxbox has everything!
What does Windows have that fluxbox hasn't?
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Windows has a fully featured desktop, while fluxbox is just a Window manager.
I agree with toadlife, we're comparing Windows XP which has a fully featured desktop with a UNIX version running just a simple Window manager.
Well personally I consider Xfce to be more than a just a Window manager - it's light-weight desktop too, so perhaps my comparason isn't so unfair. :D
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Windows has a fully featured desktop, while fluxbox is just a Window manager.
I agree with toadlife, we're comparing Windows XP which has a fully featured desktop with a UNIX version running just a simple Window manager.
Well personally I consider Xfce to be more than a just a Window manager - it's light-weight desktop too, so perhaps my comparason isn't so unfair. :D
I was just gonna mention XFCE! I tried it out earlier on and it loaded in practically the same time a fluxbox, if not faster. It's absolutely amazing, looks cool and all. Gonna start using it soon.
I used to love KDE, and then I moved on to GNOME. But there's not much need for huge desktop enviornments like that.
And there's stuff in GNOME and KDE that isn't in the Windows desktop thing (well I don't know this. But there better be!),
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That's true KDE (I don't know too much about GNOME) has many features not found in the Windows desktop, like when you place the mouse cursor over a picture file the preview pops up. The choice is yours, I like XFCE because it's a happy medium between a full bloat desktop and feature lacking window manager.
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But surely the Linux box - which has slower drives and was working them harder than the drive in the doze box should have suffered this more?
I wouldn't know; I could never get Samba to work.
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Well, beginning in Spring 2001, I used Windows ME for 2/3 years. I know it's one of the most despised versions of Windows, but for the purpose of this thread, it loaded extremely fast. The fastest load I have ever seen. Of course I had to modify it, and make sure nothing extra loaded in, as it would by default, but from then on, it was exceptionally fast.
Phase2
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yes, XFce kicks ass, and is best.
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Even if Windows is faster than Linux/FreeBSD during the first days after it has been installed, the registry, fragged disc clusters and added startup files will make the OS slower and slower until it one day simply hard locks. I'm currently using Gentoo on 4 comps and It's fast as hell with a stripped down kernel and only installed services. It's another story if you're using distros like Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu and so on. Their kernels are pre customized with extra drivers and they are often hogged with a lot of extra unneeded services.
Well that's one of the things I hate with Windows most; All the required maintainance which the OS needs is sick. You have to defrag your discs, clean the cache, clean the registry, defrag the registry, clean bad application entries. It's pretty necessary if you wan't to keep the OS fast and slim when using the computer a lot. It feels like MS have made the defragger deliberately slow because both OO Perfectdisc and Diskeeper blows it to mars and I haven't seen any big difference in performance with the inbuilt defragger during the past years. Is it really necessary to have like 5 extra third-party tools just keep the OS running? I smell some kind conspiracy/cartell...
In Gentoo I can't really think of anything similar that makes the OS get slower and slower. For me it has gone the other way after making all the optimizations and upgrading the apps + the kernel.
Spyware and viruses are also known to slow down the computer a lot. Sometimes they won't even let you in because of locking the comp just at the boot or login pre-login screen. Personally I haven't gotten any serious hijacks by viruses or spyware but It's been very close too. One day I just got enough after having to repeat that silly process at least once a week. If you still use Windows I and wan't to do like I did back in the Windows days, here's what I used:
Tuneup utilities 2004
Microsoft antispyware
Nod32
Windows update/Windows Auto update/Lose .exe updates
Diskeeper
Except these ones there were other tools that had to assist when some of these ones fails.
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I think we have a winner for the boot-race.
BeOS (5PEMaxEditionV31b1), which I just installed onto another disk, booted for me in 11 seconds, and took about 3 seconds to become fully-functional, a grand total of 14 seconds.
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yes, XFce kicks ass, and is best. i would watch yourself though guys, if you suggest it's better than windows, you might fall foul of some of the wild moderators roaming these parts at the moment!
XFce sucks. Windows blows. It's all about Fluxbox, man,
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yes, XFce kicks ass, and is best. i would watch yourself though guys, if you suggest it's better than windows, you might fall foul of some of the wild moderators roaming these parts at the moment!
Calum, that was completely uncalled for.
You should re-think your arguments, instead of Making Ad Hominem attacks on other members.
Good Day.
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I agree with skyman here, Calum you shouldn't have said that even though I agree with you that XFce roolz and Winbloze drulez.
Orethrius,
I can understand you wanting to get back at Calum but there's no need to insult our nation as a whole. You're not just leaving just because you don't get on with a member here are you? :rolleyes:
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There no need to generalise an entire nation or GUI here.
And fuck, leaving this forum only makes things worse, because you're letting someone win.
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XFce sucks. Windows blows.
so mature, i like how you back yourself up with hard evidence, moron. It's all about Fluxbox, man, and I'm beginning to see why we seceded from your bloody arrogant nation.
MY nation? you fucktard! when did you secede from scotland? pillock. learn some history before you go mouthing off at people round the world in typical USA style. What the hell? I'M picking on YOU?
and once more, it's a breach of the forum rules. you and your ilk continue to prove that you think you are above the forum rules. That's rich. Thanks for blending your insinuations into as MANY threads as possible.
what the fuck? go and fuck yourself, moron, what's the big deal and why have you got such a problem? you are going to disappear right up your own ass if you're not careful. did you know that people who spend their time pissed off die younger?
If anyone needs to know why I'm not posting here anymore, that'd be it right there.
GOOD BLOODY BYE.
:mad:
oh i'm so scared. one less moron to worry about in these forums, now if only he'd leave the planet too...
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Calum, that was completely uncalled for.
You should re-think your arguments, instead of Making Ad Hominem attacks on other members.
Good Day.
i made no attacks. i simply stated my opinion, based on my observations.
don't tell me what not to say, or what to think.
you should wait until somebody actually makes an "attack" before responding to one.
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I agree with skyman here, Calum you shouldn't have said that even though I agree with you that XFce roolz and Winbloze drulez.
agree as you will. i attacked nobody, and anybody who values free speech will NOT support this bigot who seeks to tell me what to think and say. You do not support free speech if you indeed think the above.
Orethrius,
I can understand you wanting to get back at Calum but there's no need to insult our nation as a whole. You're not just leaving just because you don't get on with a member here are you? :rolleyes:
i cannot understand his bigoted idiocy, however his pathetic "patriotic" nationalistic insults are all too common for my taste, and sadly i have seen too many examples of this pathetic level of attitude to claim i no longer understand it.
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Thread uncrapped. Quit fucking threads up. If you want to say some bullshit to somebody PM them. This goes for everybody.
thank you for reporting it, but I was not going to trash it because some people want to talk shit to eachother.
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another one in the eye for free speech.
If you want to delete my perfectly legitimate replies to other people's libel against me, then you should also delete their original comments, since they break the forum rules at least as much as i do.
I protest against this persecution by certain forum moderators, and i demand to know what is being done about it.
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beos rulez! max v3 starts up always in less than 15 secs on a celery 500 with 9GB hdd. beos makes my old computer seem fast! and new! and fast!
Mr X
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beos rulez! max v3 starts up always in less than 15 secs on a celery 500 with 9GB hdd. beos makes my old computer seem fast! and new! and fast!
Mr X
heh.
Yea I installed it on another harddrive a few days ago and it booted in 14 seconds, far faster than Slackware.
It seems like a very high performance OS but the default setup, at least, has a sorta win98 feel to it.
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sfgdfgdgdfgdsgsdfgas,fgsadkf
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sfgdfgdgdfgdsgsdfgas,fgsadkf
Yeah, I can see how that might slow down Firefox. You realise that you can just go to about:config and set fgsadkf to false and fgas to 42 to rectify the situation though?