Is Unix immune from all the hazards of Microsoft Windows?

[Bozo_D...@37.com]

If Unix ran and supported as many applications as Microsoft does under Windows, would there be a BSOD?

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Sunday, 16 September 2018 01:33:58 UTC+1, Bozo_D...@37.com wrote:
> If Unix ran and supported as many applications as Microsoft does under
> Windows, would there be a BSOD?

No, every distro would have its own colour SOD.

Owain

[Peter Moylan]

I have two computers in this room. One of them is rarely used, but I
need it for a couple of applications that will only run under Windoze.
But it is painfully slow to start up. There are so many bells and
whistles that there is hardly any processor power left for real
applications. No doubt some of those applications are busy deciding what
colour to use for the Screen of Death.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Sunday, 16 September 2018 16:49:30 UTC+1, Peter Moylan wrote:
> I have two computers in this room. One of them is rarely used, but I
> need it for a couple of applications that will only run under Windoze.
> But it is painfully slow to start up.

I've just got a new PC with a SSD and Windows 10 and it starts up wonderfully fast.

It's a shame only one in ten websites can be reached due to a bug in Windows 10 DSN client, and I think Adobe Reader takes up more disk space than the entire LibreOffice suite, but it does come with Candy Crush so that'll appeal to corporates ...

Owain

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

On Sunday, 16 September 2018 22:42:11 UTC+1, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:
> On Sunday, 16 September 2018 16:49:30 UTC+1, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > I have two computers in this room. One of them is rarely used, but I
> > need it for a couple of applications that will only run under Windoze.
> > But it is painfully slow to start up.
>
> I've just got a new PC with a SSD and Windows 10 and it starts up wonderfully fast.
>
> It's a shame only one in ten websites can be reached due to a bug in Windows 10 DSN client,

If there's a bug it's not in Windows. I've never had the slightest problem
with DSN. The Internet is my oyster!

>and I think Adobe Reader takes up more disk space than the entire LibreOffice suite, but it >does come with Candy Crush so that'll appeal to corporates ...
>

Adobe is nowt to do with Windows. Other pdf readers are available.
All Adobe applications should be kicked to the kerb!

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, September 16, 2018 at 7:07:15 PM UTC-4, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:

> Adobe is nowt to do with Windows. Other pdf readers are available.
> All Adobe applications should be kicked to the kerb!

Oo, don't let Tony hear you say that! He's a Photoshop addict.

[Tony Cooper]

Evidently, you are not a user of Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom.
While they are not the only apps that do what they do, I don't think
you will find many that will argue that they are not the best apps for
what they do. There are those who use other apps for the same
purposes, but most do so because they either have an almost-comparable
app that came with their OS or because they don't need the full
features offered by Adobe so an "almost" suffices.

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

[Tony Cooper]

I would prefer to be considered to be a proficient user of Adobe
Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, but acquiring the skills to use the
full potential of each can be addictive.

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Monday, 17 September 2018 00:07:15 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> If there's a bug it's not in Windows. I've never had the slightest problem
> with DSN. The Internet is my oyster!

Small piece of grit surrounded ...

Fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, bug fixed after several reboots. Dunno why that happened.

> >and I think Adobe Reader takes up more disk space than the entire LibreOffice suite,

> Adobe is nowt to do with Windows. Other pdf readers are available.

And duly installed :-) Along with Libroffice, VLC, Firefox, etc. You might ask why I'm running Windows at all and I might agree with that. 95% of what I do is available cross-platform, but that 5% that pops up occasionally means Windows is irreplaceable at the moment (and has been for 20+ years).

Owain





Owain

[Jenny Telia]

On 17/09/2018 04:45, Tony Cooper wrote:

> I don't think
> you will find many that will argue that they are not the best apps for
> what they do.

Beware of recommendations that use a double negative construct to sing
the praises of an app. They are not to be taken without a pinch of salt.

P.S. Adobe bloatware is used by people who do not understand software.

P.P.S. If I were a serious photographer, I'd not highlight the use of
Photoshop as one of my skills. It is the ironing board of people who
cannot do proper washes.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 9/17/18 6:40 AM, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:

>> If there's a bug it's not in Windows. I've never had the slightest problem
>> with DSN. The Internet is my oyster!
>
> Small piece of grit surrounded ...
>
> Fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, bug fixed after several reboots. Dunno why that happened.
>
>>> and I think Adobe Reader takes up more disk space than the entire LibreOffice suite,
>> Adobe is nowt to do with Windows. Other pdf readers are available.
>
> And duly installed :-) Along with Libroffice, VLC, Firefox, etc. You might ask why I'm running Windows at all and I might agree with that. 95% of what I do is available cross-platform, but that 5% that pops up occasionally means Windows is irreplaceable at the moment (and has been for 20+ years).

Some (probably not all, maybe not even most) Windows programs can be run
on Linux machines using Wine.

Perce

[Peter Moylan]

I have OS/2 installed on my main computer, but Windows on my laptop to
handle that 5%. The laptop is much more powerful, in terms of hardware
specifications, than my rather old main computer, but a lot less
powerful in terms of what the user sees.

My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows 7 was
such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade to Windows
8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8 was not much
better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're told that one
should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of Windows, but in the
last decade the even-numbered versions have been just as bad. I will
probably switch to Windows 11 once Microsoft works out how to fix the
design flaws in Windows 10.

The catch is that Microsoft always expects us to upgrade the hardware
when we install a new release. If you buy a new computer then you do see
an improvement. If, instead, you stay with your existing hardware then
you will see a degradation in performance. Windows 10 is very much
slower than Windows 7, but most people don't see that because they have
moved to faster hardware.

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
final version for ever and ever, amen!

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:49:45 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
> final version for ever and ever, amen!

I wonder when they'll actually finish it.

Underneath the bonnet {hood} a lot looks like Windows 95. I'm sure I've seen the screensaver bug I saw on Saturday somewhere else ... two decades ago.

Owain

[Peter Moylan]

They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will
have to respond to the user dissatisatisfaction.

They could probably fix many problems by removing some bells and
whistles, but Microsoft has maintained for many years now that bells and
whistles have a higher priority than performance.

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

On Monday, 17 September 2018 16:41:57 UTC+1, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 18/09/18 00:49, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> > On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:43:35 UTC+1, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> >> My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows
> >> 7 was such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade
> >> to Windows 8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8
> >> was not much better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're
> >> told that one should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of
> >> Windows, but in the last decade the even-numbered versions have
> >> been just as bad. I will probably switch to Windows 11 once
> >> Microsoft works out how to fix the design flaws in Windows 10.
> >
> > You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as
> > the final version for ever and ever, amen!
>
> They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will
> have to respond to the user dissatisatisfaction.

Say wot now? I'm really not sure that there's much dissatisfaction going
any more. There are a few dinosaurs such as yourself growling in their
caves but I'm not seeing anything like the howls of protest past versions
evoked.

>
> They could probably fix many problems by removing some bells and
> whistles, but Microsoft has maintained for many years now that bells and
> whistles have a higher priority than performance.
>

They have, in truth, made most of the bells and whistles optional by
now. If you elect to bypass Cortana and run independent from an
MS account as I do it's really a sweet ride as long as you're not
attempting to run it on a steam powered valve filled machine!

[Peter T. Daniels]

Home computers aren't made for computer engineers like you who want it to
be a mainframe that does nothing but respond to your 0's and 1's inputted
on punch cards.

[occam]

On 17/09/2018 17:41, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 18/09/18 00:49, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:43:35 UTC+1, Peter Moylan  wrote:
>
>>> My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows
>>> 7 was such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade
>>> to Windows 8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8
>>> was not much better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're
>>> told that one should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of
>>> Windows, but in the last decade the even-numbered versions have
>>> been just as bad. I will probably switch to Windows 11 once
>>> Microsoft works out how to fix the design flaws in Windows 10.
>>
>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as
>> the final version for ever and ever, amen!
>
> They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will

> have to respond to the user dissatisfaction.

Ahem, Win 10 was a free update for most Windows users. As soon as you
give something away (rather than charge for it) 'user satisfaction'
becomes a mute issue. There is no other choice for Windows- take it, or
leave it.

I do not understand one thing. You say you still use OS/2, the IBM OS
which never worked properly? For that reason alone Bill Gates wiped the
floor with OS/2, and IBM eventually went out of the PC business (and not
before time). Yet you claim that an OS released in the late 80's works
better for you than Win 7? (The last version of OS2 was discontinued in
2001 - are you sure you do more than emails and spreadsheets?)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Monday, September 17, 2018 at 2:27:29 PM UTC-4, occam wrote:

> Ahem, Win 10 was a free update for most Windows users. As soon as you
> give something away (rather than charge for it) 'user satisfaction'
> becomes a mute issue. There is no other choice for Windows- take it, or
> leave it.

Not to *mention*, a moot one.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 9/17/18 2:27 PM, occam wrote:

>>>> My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows
>>>> 7 was such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade
>>>> to Windows 8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8
>>>> was not much better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're
>>>> told that one should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of
>>>> Windows, but in the last decade the even-numbered versions have
>>>> been just as bad. I will probably switch to Windows 11 once
>>>> Microsoft works out how to fix the design flaws in Windows 10.
>>>
>>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as
>>> the final version for ever and ever, amen!
>>
>> They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will
>> have to respond to the user dissatisfaction.
>
> Ahem, Win 10 was a free update for most Windows users. As soon as you
> give something away (rather than charge for it) 'user satisfaction'
> becomes a mute issue. There is no other choice for Windows- take it, or
> leave it.
>
> I do not understand one thing. You say you still use OS/2, the IBM OS
> which never worked properly? For that reason alone Bill Gates wiped the
> floor with OS/2, and IBM eventually went out of the PC business (and not
> before time). Yet you claim that an OS released in the late 80's works
> better for you than Win 7? (The last version of OS2 was discontinued in
> 2001 - are you sure you do more than emails and spreadsheets?)

What about OS/2 "never worked properly"?

OS/2 was sabotaged from within by sales people from one of IBM's own
divisions telling people and store managers that OS/2 was about to be
abandoned. I visited an Egghead Software store a few days before the
announced release date of OS/2 Warp 4, thinking that they might have
already received their stock and might be willing to jump the gun. They
told me that the IBM people had told them that OS/2 was being
discontinued, but in fact on the official announcement date there was
their stack of OS/2 Warp 4 packages. That was some time in '95 or '96, I
think, so long before the death blow was administered in 2001.

Imagine how long a Ford dealership would have been allowed to keep going
if it were telling undecided customers that Lincolns were junk and that
the brand was about to be discontinued -- or vice versa, for that matter.

Perce

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2018 08:39:38 -0700 (PDT), spuorg...@gowanhill.com
wrote:

Backwards compatibility, innit?
Keeping familiar features from the past.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

Upgrade to XP (or a linux distro - Mint seems favourite for MS refugees)

--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[occam]

In 1992, I sat in the same office as an ex-IBM employee, inside the
European Commission. Out of some misplace loyalty to his ex-employer, he
wanted to install OS/2 and show everyone how much better it was than
Windows 3.1 (?). Every attempt was foiled. He could not run the thing
for more than 15 minutes without something going wrong. IBM was by that
time already a condemned entity, being fuelled by marketing momentum
rather than anything else. Good riddance.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

How come I was able to keep using OS/2 until 2001, and its successor,
eComStation (an enhanced OEM version of OS/2) until about four years
ago? Even then, the only reason I gave up was that there were no drivers
for newer hardware. I guess there was really no good reason to update my
hardware other than to be "with it": I could have kept going with the
old hardware and eComStation 2.1, and everything would have continued to
work as well and as fast as it always had; with no added bloatware there
was no real need for a hardware upgrade.

There is currently at least one more OEM version of OS/2. I have seen
the names "ArcaNoae" and "Blue Lion," but I am not sure whether they are
one and the same -- or maybe one is the company name and the other is
the OS name.

I do have a Windows computer to run some specialized programs that run
only on Windows (no Mac version either -- not that I would ever consider
incarcerating myself in the Apple prison), also a Laptop that came with
Windows but now dual-boots into Linux as well.

My wife's and my desktops run Linux.

Perce

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

Yup, Arca Noae the company, Blue Lion the OS. now officially known
as ArcaOS 5.0, all yours for US $109 (personal) or $229 (commercial).

[Quinn C]

* Peter Moylan:

> On 18/09/18 00:49, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:43:35 UTC+1, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>>> My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows
>>> 7 was such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade
>>> to Windows 8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8
>>> was not much better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're
>>> told that one should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of
>>> Windows, but in the last decade the even-numbered versions have
>>> been just as bad. I will probably switch to Windows 11 once
>>> Microsoft works out how to fix the design flaws in Windows 10.
>>
>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as
>> the final version for ever and ever, amen!
>
> They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will
> have to respond to the user dissatisatisfaction.

But they can call it Windows 10.1248.

--
The notion that there might be a "truth" of sex, as Foucault
ironically terms it, is produced precisely through the regulatory
practices that generate coherent identities through the matrix of
coherent gender norms. -- Judith Butler

[Snidely]

Peter Moylan speculated:

I'm running W10 on 2 machines that were built for W7, and I don't think
I've seen a loss of performance (except for losing drivers for an older
camera). This machine is a laptop, and the other is a desktop at work,
and at least one had physical limitations on how much RAM I could add.

On the other hand, I was quite happy with W7, so perhaps I'm not in
your league at assessing performance.

My biggest problem with Linux distros is that if you wait too long to
upgrade, you might as well find another disk, do a fresh install, and
eventually access you old data as a spare disk.

Oh, and having different installs disagree on what the Desktop should
do with ALT-TAB. Switch to the next window? Switch to a window
selector screen? Switch to a window group selector screen? Switch to
something I've probably buried in my darkest memories?

/dps

--
Killing a mouse was hardly a Nobel Prize-worthy exercise, and Lawrence
went apopleptic when he learned a lousy rodent had peed away all his
precious heavy water.
_The Disappearing Spoon_, Sam Kean

[Snidely]

spuorg...@gowanhill.com submitted this idea :

Very different under the bonnet than W95. No 16-bit code, plenty of 64
bit code, code running at different privilege levels, different file
system, different paging design, etc, etc, etc.

Everything from 2000 on is NT5, not DOS-with-GUI.

/dps

--
"This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away be excitement,
but ask calmly, how does this person feel about in in his cooler
moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on
top of him?"
_Roughing It_, Mark Twain.

[Snidely]

Monday, Kerr-Mudd,John quipped:

"Upgrade to XP"? That collection of security bugs?

/dps

--
The presence of this syntax results from the fact that SQLite is really
a Tcl extension that has escaped into the wild.
<http://www.sqlite.org/lang_expr.html>

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2018-09-17 15:41:54 +0000, Peter Moylan said:

> On 18/09/18 00:49, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:43:35 UTC+1, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>>> My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows
>>> 7 was such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade
>>> to Windows 8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8
>>> was not much better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're
>>> told that one should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of
>>> Windows, but in the last decade the even-numbered versions have
>>> been just as bad. I will probably switch to Windows 11 once
>>> Microsoft works out how to fix the design flaws in Windows 10.
>>
>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as
>> the final version for ever and ever, amen!
>
> They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will
> have to respond to the user dissatisatisfaction.

I had to read that last word three times before seeing what was wrong with it.

>
> They could probably fix many problems by removing some bells and
> whistles, but Microsoft has maintained for many years now that bells and
> whistles have a higher priority than performance.


--

athel

[occam]

On 18/09/2018 10:38, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2018-09-17 15:41:54 +0000, Peter Moylan said:
>
>> On 18/09/18 00:49, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>>> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:43:35 UTC+1, Peter Moylan  wrote:
>>
>>>> My laptop was responsive enough when it ran Windows 7, but Windows
>>>> 7 was such a disaster of an operating system that I had to upgrade
>>>> to Windows 8 when it became available. It turned out that Windows 8
>>>> was not much better, so that forced me to accept Windows 10. We're
>>>> told that one should always avoid the odd-numbered versions of
>>>> Windows, but in the last decade the even-numbered versions have
>>>> been just as bad. I will probably switch to Windows 11 once
>>>> Microsoft works out how to fix the design flaws in Windows 10.
>>>
>>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as
>>> the final version for ever and ever, amen!
>>
>> They've said that about previous versions, too. Eventually they will
>> have to respond to the user dissatisatisfaction.
>
> I had to read that last word three times before seeing what was wrong
> with it.
>>

In my reply to Peter, I went even further and corrected his typo before
inserting my text.

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

It's faster though; and doesn't require 20G of hard drive.

[Snidely]

Just this Tuesday, Kerr-Mudd,John explained that ...

Well, sure, it's faster for your machine to be pwned, too.

/dps

--
Rule #0: Don't be on fire.
In case of fire, exit the building before tweeting about it.
(Sighting reported by Adam F)

[Tak To]

On 9/17/2018 11:39 AM, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:
> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:49:45 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
>> final version for ever and ever, amen!
>
> I wonder when they'll actually finish it.
>
> Underneath the bonnet {hood} a lot looks like Windows 95.

I don't think so. The W95 series died with WME. You
might have been more correct had you say Windows NT,
which was older than W95 anyways.

> I'm sure I've seen the screensaver bug I saw on Saturday somewhere else ... two
> decades ago.

What screen saver bug?

--
Tak
----------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Tak To ta...@alum.mit.eduxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------^^
[taode takto ~{LU5B~}] NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

On Tuesday, 18 September 2018 17:21:49 UTC+1, Tak To wrote:
> On 9/17/2018 11:39 AM, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:
> > On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:49:45 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> >> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
> >> final version for ever and ever, amen!
> >
> > I wonder when they'll actually finish it.
> >
> > Underneath the bonnet {hood} a lot looks like Windows 95.
>
> I don't think so. The W95 series died with WME. You
> might have been more correct had you say Windows NT,
> which was older than W95 anyways.
>
> > I'm sure I've seen the screensaver bug I saw on Saturday somewhere else ... two
> > decades ago.
>
> What screen saver bug?
>

More to the point ... screensaver? Nobody uses screensavers these
days (well nobody who counts)!

[Tony Cooper]

What *do* those here use? I use the Windows blue background, a large
family group photo taken the last time we were all in one place, and a
third-party calendar app on my primary screen, and the blue background
and photo on the secondary screen.


--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

[Peter T. Daniels]

I liked having a variety of screensavers. I never did get the flying
toasters, but there was one that mowed the screen in horizontal swaths
from top to bottom, and there was one that eventually covered it with
cartoon kitties (you could also get doggies), but the ones I ended up
with just put graceful curves in changing colors on a black background,
or showed the time (in a vast variety of options) bouncing slowly around
the dark screen.

W10 just goes dark, and when you wake it up (if it's been a long time) it
shows you some art photo of a landscape or whatever. Every so often it asks
if I like the photo, and some day it will tailor my selections to match my
tastes.

Unrelated to my desktop background picture, which currently rotates through
all the stamp images in my folder of stamp images, each one for 60 seconds.

[Quinn C]

* occam:

My friend in the European Patent Office wrote me back in 2003 that he
couldn't open my pdf at work, because the pdf version wasn't supported
on OS/2, so he would have to look at it later at home.

--
It gets hot in Raleigh, but Texas! I don't know why anybody
lives here, honestly.
-- Robert C. Wilson, Vortex (novel), p.220

[Snidely]

Tony Cooper was thinking very hard :

But that's your desktop, not your screen saver ... or I am
misunderstanding you.

BTW, my boss is one of those who has a slow-motion slide show on his
desktop. His pictures of Yosemite make me feel as small as your
pictures do.

[Tony Cooper]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2018 00:45:24 -0700, Snidely <snide...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Tony Cooper was thinking very hard :
>> On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 09:40:13 -0700 (PDT), Madrigal Gurneyhalt
>> <purpl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tuesday, 18 September 2018 17:21:49 UTC+1, Tak To wrote:
>>>> On 9/17/2018 11:39 AM, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:
>>>>> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:49:45 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>>>>>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
>>>>>> final version for ever and ever, amen!
>>>>>
>>>>> I wonder when they'll actually finish it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Underneath the bonnet {hood} a lot looks like Windows 95.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think so. The W95 series died with WME. You
>>>> might have been more correct had you say Windows NT,
>>>> which was older than W95 anyways.
>>>>
>>>>> I'm sure I've seen the screensaver bug I saw on Saturday somewhere else
>>>>> ... two decades ago.
>>>>
>>>> What screen saver bug?
>>>>
>>>
>>> More to the point ... screensaver? Nobody uses screensavers these
>>> days (well nobody who counts)!
>>
>> What *do* those here use? I use the Windows blue background, a large
>> family group photo taken the last time we were all in one place, and a
>> third-party calendar app on my primary screen, and the blue background
>> and photo on the secondary screen.
>
>But that's your desktop, not your screen saver ... or I am
>misunderstanding you.
>

Yes, it's my desktop. Not a screen saver. What I meant - to be more
explicit - is "What do people here have on view on their monitor
screen when they don't have an app open?".

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/09/18 04:27, occam wrote:

> I do not understand one thing. You say you still use OS/2, the IBM
> OS which never worked properly? For that reason alone Bill Gates
> wiped the floor with OS/2, and IBM eventually went out of the PC
> business (and not before time). Yet you claim that an OS released in
> the late 80's works better for you than Win 7? (The last version of
> OS2 was discontinued in 2001 - are you sure you do more than emails
> and spreadsheets?)

What do you mean, never worked properly? It has been my primary OS for
about the last 20 years, and it works just fine.

It's true that sales of OS/2 were damaged by two factors: incompetence
of IBM management, and dirty tricks by Microsoft. The dirty tricks began
when Microsoft took the development stream of OS/2 (which was at the
time a partnership between IBM and Microsoft) and renamed it Windows NT,
in gross violation of the partnership agreement. But the real dirty
tricks started when Microsoft tied up computer vendors, and told them
they would be punished if they marketed systems with OS/2 installed.
That was the beginning of the "Microsoft tax", where all IBM PC systems
had to be sold with Windows pre-installed, with payment to Microsoft for
that installation. That meant that anyone who wanted a PC running OS/2
had to pay for the installed Windows, and then delete Windows in order
to install the system they really wanted. Some of us were willing to do
that, for the sake of having a superior OS, but the majority didn't.

So why did OS/2 survive anyway? Mostly because of its object-oriented
desktop, which is so much more user-friendly that its competitors.
Microsoft still hasn't caught up, because of its lack of vision. But
Linux never caught up either. Even after these many years, OS/2 users
still stick with OS/2 because there aren't any plausible competitors.

Eventually Linux will come up with a desktop paradigm based on the OS/2
ideas, but probably not within my lifetime. Microsoft never will,
because it lacks vision.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Richard Yates]

Complete clutter:
www.yatesguitar.com/misc/desktop.jpg

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 9/19/18 11:08 AM, Richard Yates wrote:

>>>>>>>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
>>>>>>>> final version for ever and ever, amen!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I wonder when they'll actually finish it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Underneath the bonnet {hood} a lot looks like Windows 95.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't think so. The W95 series died with WME. You
>>>>>> might have been more correct had you say Windows NT,
>>>>>> which was older than W95 anyways.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm sure I've seen the screensaver bug I saw on Saturday somewhere else
>>>>>>> ... two decades ago.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What screen saver bug?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> More to the point ... screensaver? Nobody uses screensavers these
>>>>> days (well nobody who counts)!
>>>>
>>>> What *do* those here use? I use the Windows blue background, a large
>>>> family group photo taken the last time we were all in one place, and a
>>>> third-party calendar app on my primary screen, and the blue background
>>>> and photo on the secondary screen.
>>>
>>> But that's your desktop, not your screen saver ... or I am
>>> misunderstanding you.
>>>
>> Yes, it's my desktop. Not a screen saver. What I meant - to be more
>> explicit - is "What do people here have on view on their monitor
>> screen when they don't have an app open?".
>
> Complete clutter:
> www.yatesguitar.com/misc/desktop.jpg

I think you could make good use of Stardock Software's "Fences" and
arrange those icons into some sort of logical groupings.

Perce

[Richard Yates]

But I never use those icons anyway. Pure laziness. They are there
because I forget to, or just don't, uncheck 'add a desktop icon' when
I install something.

Of course I could download 'Fences', but it would probably just sit on
the desktop as another icon (maybe with a Fences fence around it).

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

I have a photo from the 2016 World Argentine Tango Championship
and absolutely nothing else.

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

You do realise that a simple right click on the desktop gives you the
option to not show any icons at all making it irrelevant whether you
uncheck the 'add icon' or not?

[David Kleinecke]

You are dealing with ideas that interest me. But I have not
been able to locate any forum where they are being discussed.
Do you know of any?

Is it possible for you to explain in a few sentences what
those OS/2 ideas that you prize are?

[bill van]

I have perhaps 800 to 1,000 photographs -- mainly visually interesting
land- and cityscapes --
that I downloaded from a photography group back when I paid for access
to a news server.
My operating system changes the picture every five minutes.

bill

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Tuesday, 18 September 2018 17:21:49 UTC+1, Tak To wrote:

> What screen saver bug?

In the flying text screensaver, you type something in but it appears with a doubled letter when the screensaver actually plays.

Owain

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

The flying text screensaver is not available in W10. You'd have to import it
from a previous version so if it's the same bug you saw 10 years ago it's
probably because it is in fact the same bug you saw 10 years ago!

[bill van]

Do you think that's why they spell chili with two els over there?

bill

[Tak To]

I remember that somewhat differently. Microsoft devised
a pricing scheme for pre-installed DOS (and Windows) that
was based on the total number of machines made by the
manufacturer, regardless of how many copies were
actually installed. I think the court eventually ruled
against MS.

Also, I believed that the OS/2 and NT teams worked
separately. IBM made the error that demanded the
OS/2 be written for the crippled 82086, and that
it must be DOS compatible. OTOH, NT was designed
from the ground up to be hardware independent and
with no compatibility baggage. Many ideas were
borrowed from VMS.

IIRC, the OS/2 kernel was vulnerable to runaway device
drivers whereas the NT was not. I would have to dig
through a pile of journals to recover the details.

[Peter Moylan]

On 20/09/18 11:06, Tak To wrote:
> On 9/19/2018 11:04 AM, Peter Moylan wrote:

>> That meant that anyone who wanted a PC running OS/2 had to pay for
>> the installed Windows, and then delete Windows in order to install
>> the system they really wanted. Some of us were willing to do that,
>> for the sake of having a superior OS, but the majority didn't.
>
> I remember that somewhat differently. Microsoft devised a pricing
> scheme for pre-installed DOS (and Windows) that was based on the
> total number of machines made by the manufacturer, regardless of how
> many copies were actually installed. I think the court eventually
> ruled against MS.

That was in the early days, when Windows ran as a DOS application. The
later development was when Microsoft supplied Windows to retailers at an
attractive price provided that the retailers guaranteed that they would
not sell PCs with any other operating system preinstalled. Those who did
not agree to that got Windows at a higher price. Microsoft also put
pressure on companies that developed device drivers for their own
products, by withholding development tools from anyone who produced
device drivers for other OSes.

A court eventually ruled against them for that, too, and as I recall it
a huge fine was imposed. However, one of the US presidents (Bush?) was a
friend of Bill Gates, so the court ruling was overturned by executive order.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Wednesday, September 19, 2018 at 11:14:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:

> A court eventually ruled against them for that, too, and as I recall it
> a huge fine was imposed. However, one of the US presidents (Bush?) was a
> friend of Bill Gates, so the court ruling was overturned by executive order.

That sounds pretty unconstitutional. I'd believe it if you'd said it was Trump.

[Madhu]

* Peter Moylan <pntohs$d5g$1...@dont-email.me> :
Wrote on Thu, 20 Sep 2018 01:04:25 +1000:

> On 18/09/18 04:27, occam wrote:
> It's true that sales of OS/2 were damaged by two factors: incompetence
> of IBM management, and dirty tricks by Microsoft. The dirty tricks began
> when Microsoft took the development stream of OS/2 (which was at the
> time a partnership between IBM and Microsoft) and renamed it Windows NT,
> in gross violation of the partnership agreement.

This is an alternative history. If I remember the history we studied in
schools, microsoft hired dave cutler and the cmu goons to scuttle the
mach and "design" NT

[Peter Moylan]

If you'd asked me that some years ago I could have pointed you to the
OS/2 newsgroups, but you know what happened to newsgroups. There are
mailing lists -- I run a few myself, for the software I distribute --
but those are for specific interests, and tend to stay on topic.

IBM once published specifications for the object-oriented approach, but
I no longer know where to find them. Searching for "presentation
manager" might find relevant things.

> Is it possible for you to explain in a few sentences what those OS/2
> ideas that you prize are?

Mostly it's little things that you only notice when you have to do
without them. Simple example: suppose you have a frequently-used program
that you want to keep a pointer to, on the desktop or in a "useful
programs" folder or something like that. To do this, you have a choice
between creating a shadow or creating a program object. A shadow is the
same sort of pointer that Windows provides. A program object is more
flexible because it has its own settings: whether it's to open
full-screen, windowed, or minimised; what the working directory is; what
sort of data files are associated with it; whether it's scheduled to run
periodically; perhaps some parameters; etc. It's not unusual to have two
or more program objects for the same executable, with different parameters.

There are many context-sensitive menus. For example, if I want to open a
folder view of a specific directory, I just click on the "Drives"
object, and a menu opens with a list of the disk volumes. Click on one
of them and a submenu shows the top-level directory, and so on down to
the subdirectory I want. That gets me to where I want to go in about a
second. Doing it the Windows way takes many seconds. If I want a command
prompt I click on the "Command prompts" object, and I get a choice of
OS/2 window, OS/2 full screen, 4OS2 window, and so on. (The DOS and
Windows shells don't get much use these days, but they're still there
for anyone who likes playing ancient games.) I can add to the menu if I
wish, for example to add a command shell that opens in one specific
directory.

(By the way, my drives object includes drive H, which is actually mapped
to directories on two other computers. A convenient way to move stuff to
and from the server machine under my desk. (The other computer is an
OS/2 file repository in the USA.))

Because object classes can be subclassed, a suitably skilled programmer
can add desktop extensions. One that I use often is called DragText. If
I see some text, on a web page for example, that I want to keep, I can
highlight it and drag it to the desktop (or any open folder), where a
data file will be created. Or I can drag a complicated arithmetic text
string from a text file, and drop it on the calculator I wrote, which
will evaluate the expression. Just this year someone introduced a new
kind of folder view, which combines some aspects of the traditional icon
view and tree view. I can open any folder in that view if I wish.

One very valuable (to me) extension lets me click once on the desktop,
and I get a menu of the programs I want to get to easily (some on the
top-level menu, most in submenus arranged by category). It adds what the
Windows Start menu would have done if it had had a better designer.

If I'm in a command-line shell, and I want to open a GUI view of the
current directory, I just type "oo ." where oo is an "open object"
script, and the dot parameter means "current directory". I could equally
well have typed "oo firefox".

That's just a sample. Basically it's about user convenience. There's not
a lot that you can't do with any other OS, except that every other OS
does it in a more roundabout way.

[Peter Moylan]

I don't know the exact mechanism used, but Trump has proved that it's
possible for a president to bypass the "separation of powers" rule if he
wants to.

[Bozo_D...@37.com]

No I didn't realize that, but it's not that simple either, first of all you have to be in a browser to covers up the desktop, then you have to know how to display and "Show the desktop", which means you have to know what and where the Task Bar is, and how to right-click on it to display a list with "Show the desktop", and click on it to "Show the desktop", but which means the browser you were on and everything else will suddenly disappear, and then you have to know enough to right-click on the desktop to select VIEW and UN-check the option that says "Show desktop icons", but which means all the desktop icons you depend on will suddenly disappear, and then you can't even find the icon to re-display the browser you were just on, which means you have to right-click on the desktop and select VIEW again and re-select "Show desktop icons" to find the effing icon to resume whatever you were doing before you made everything disappear and oh so tidy. It's a lot easier just to leave all the clutter exactly where it belongs, on your desktop, in your living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, and revel in the knowledge that you know exactly where everything unsightly and untidy is than it is to make everything disappear and house beautiful while you lose-your-mind and kill-your-wife trying to find everything again.

[Peter Moylan]

On 20/09/18 13:33, Madhu wrote:
> * Peter Moylan <pntohs$d5g$1...@dont-email.me> : Wrote on Thu, 20 Sep
> 2018 01:04:25 +1000:

>> It's true that sales of OS/2 were
>> damaged by two factors: incompetence of IBM management, and dirty
>> tricks by Microsoft. The dirty tricks began when Microsoft took the
>> development stream of OS/2 (which was at the time a partnership
>> between IBM and Microsoft) and renamed it Windows NT, in gross
>> violation of the partnership agreement.
>
> This is an alternative history. If I remember the history we studied
> in schools, microsoft hired dave cutler and the cmu goons to scuttle
> the mach and "design" NT

Yes, they did the bits that made NT distinctively NT, but if you
searched hard enough through the executable code you could still find
some OS/2 copyright notices.

[RHDraney]

On 9/19/2018 10:36 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> If I'm in a command-line shell, and I want to open a GUI view of the
> current directory, I just type "oo ." where oo is an "open object"
> script, and the dot parameter means "current directory". I could equally
> well have typed "oo firefox".

And if you wanted to find Maria "Tootsie" Conlon, you could use the
acronym "oo romantic toenails"....r

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Wednesday, 19 September 2018 23:22:02 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> The flying text screensaver is not available in W10.

It's "3D Text" and it definately came with Win 10 as this is a factory new install. And it's still buggy!!

Owain

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

That sounds like a classic case of a bad workman blaming his tools
to me. Just saying!

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

Ok. I'll give it a test when I've got a spare five minutes though I
don't recall any problems from when I was first playing with all
the bells and whistles when W10 first came out.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

Yes. I've been surprised at the extent of the President's ability to
issue Executive Orders.

In the UK, government ministers/departments are empowered by various
laws to make rules, regulations, etc, related to the substance of a
particular law, but, a big BUT, the proposals in the form of a Statutory
Instrument (SI) have to be approved by Parliament. Parliament can say
only Yes or No. It cannot amend an SI, however, the reason for saying No
will emerge during a debate on the SI. The minister/department can try
again taking into account parliament's objections.

It is very rare for an SI to be rejected by Parliament. The framers of
an SI know that it has to get past Parliament so take that into account.

There are two procedures, the Affirmative Procedure and the Negative
Procedure. The Affirmative Procedure requires Parliament to vote Yes or
No. Under the Negative Procedure the SI is given to Parliament and will
take effect after a certain number of days unless Parliament votes No.

There is a procedure for certain emergency situations. It is mentioned
in this description of the SI procedures:
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/secondary-legislation/

In an emergency, certain Acts can allow the government to use the
made affirmative procedure. This brings an SI into effect
immediately and gives Parliament a set time to approve it (normally
28 or 40 days). It stops being law if Parliament does not approve
the SI within that time.

This emergency procedure is only allowed by a few Acts when it's
important for the government to make changes quickly. For example,
to stop an outbreak of foot and mouth disease or to ban a terrorist
organisation.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Peter T. Daniels]

Whenever one of those absurdities has been litigated, he's lost.

Except at SCOTUS, where the books were cooked for him by McConnell.
Merritt Garland, not Neil Gorsuch, should be a Justice.

But it takes time for the lawsuits to proceed.

[Tak To]

On 9/20/2018 1:36 AM, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 20/09/18 05:55, David Kleinecke wrote:
>> On Wednesday, September 19, 2018 at 8:04:31 AM UTC-7, Peter Moylan
>> wrote:
>
>>> Eventually Linux will come up with a desktop paradigm based on the
>>> OS/2 ideas, but probably not within my lifetime. Microsoft never
>>> will, because it lacks vision.
>>
>> You are dealing with ideas that interest me. But I have not been
>> able to locate any forum where they are being discussed. Do you know
>> of any?
>
> If you'd asked me that some years ago I could have pointed you to the
> OS/2 newsgroups, but you know what happened to newsgroups. There are
> mailing lists -- I run a few myself, for the software I distribute --
> but those are for specific interests, and tend to stay on topic.
>
> IBM once published specifications for the object-oriented approach, but
> I no longer know where to find them. Searching for "presentation
> manager" might find relevant things.

Object-oriented is a very general topic and it can be
used to describe many ideas in the presentation manager,
as well as many ideas in Windows GUI for that matter.
Can you be more specific? I especially do not understand
why you say MS "lacks vision".

>> Is it possible for you to explain in a few sentences what those OS/2
>> ideas that you prize are?
>
> Mostly it's little things that you only notice when you have to do
> without them. Simple example: suppose you have a frequently-used program
> that you want to keep a pointer to, on the desktop or in a "useful
> programs" folder or something like that. To do this, you have a choice
> between creating a shadow or creating a program object. A shadow is the
> same sort of pointer that Windows provides. A program object is more
> flexible because it has its own settings: whether it's to open
> full-screen, windowed, or minimised; what the working directory is; what
> sort of data files are associated with it; whether it's scheduled to run
> periodically; perhaps some parameters; etc. It's not unusual to have two
> or more program objects for the same executable, with different parameters.

Many of these features already exists in Windows in that
one can use a LNK file to provide per-invocation
customization of an executable via the command line
and/or the environment variables. Of course one has
to program the executable to look for the per-invocation
data in the first place.

Windows has a scheduler and daemons and batch files are
centrally managed through it. From a management and
security point of view, I prefer this arrangement than
having program objects scheduled themselves.

> There are many context-sensitive menus. For example, if I want to open a
> folder view of a specific directory, I just click on the "Drives"
> object, and a menu opens with a list of the disk volumes. Click on one
> of them and a submenu shows the top-level directory, and so on down to
> the subdirectory I want. That gets me to where I want to go in about a
> second. Doing it the Windows way takes many seconds. If I want a command
> prompt I click on the "Command prompts" object, and I get a choice of
> OS/2 window, OS/2 full screen, 4OS2 window, and so on. (The DOS and
> Windows shells don't get much use these days, but they're still there
> for anyone who likes playing ancient games.) I can add to the menu if I
> wish, for example to add a command shell that opens in one specific
> directory.

I am sure what is it that you want here. In Windows,
programs are selected from a number of places: the
desktop, the start menu, or the taskbar. One rarely
needs the directory browser (Explorer.exe) to access
the programs. Nonetheless, if one wants, one can
type in a complete path into Explorer.exe instead
clicking through the intermediate directories.

And yes, Cmd.exe is just another executable (one that
has a console interface).

> (By the way, my drives object includes drive H, which is actually mapped
> to directories on two other computers. A convenient way to move stuff to
> and from the server machine under my desk. (The other computer is an
> OS/2 file repository in the USA.))

Yes, Windows can mount remote directories and other
o/s and standalone devices can implement the SAMBA
protocol.

> Because object classes can be subclassed, a suitably skilled programmer
> can add desktop extensions. One that I use often is called DragText. If
> I see some text, on a web page for example, that I want to keep, I can
> highlight it and drag it to the desktop (or any open folder), where a
> data file will be created. Or I can drag a complicated arithmetic text
> string from a text file, and drop it on the calculator I wrote, which
> will evaluate the expression. Just this year someone introduced a new
> kind of folder view, which combines some aspects of the traditional icon
> view and tree view. I can open any folder in that view if I wish.

Copy-&-Paste and the similar Drag-&-Drop are
application level features. The o/s should not
handle them other than providing the underlying
inter-process communications facilities. In any
case, MS published the protocols and implemented
the functionalities in its own programs and run-time
libraries. Thus, almost all the programs in Windows
support copy-&-paste for plain text and many also
support that for formatted text. Likewise, drag-&-drop
for file objects is almost universal wherever
applicable.

Supporting specific folder views is a matter of
run-time libraries and has even less to do with
the o/s.

> One very valuable (to me) extension lets me click once on the desktop,
> and I get a menu of the programs I want to get to easily (some on the
> top-level menu, most in submenus arranged by category). It adds what the
> Windows Start menu would have done if it had had a better designer.

Underneath the Start Menus in Windows are just regular
folders.

> If I'm in a command-line shell, and I want to open a GUI view of the
> current directory, I just type "oo ." where oo is an "open object"
> script, and the dot parameter means "current directory". I could equally
> well have typed "oo firefox".

In Windows, one can type "Explorer ." in Cmd.exe to open
up the current directory. Not sure why anyone needs
to do that though. Note that "current directory" is a
deprecated concept in Windows. Programs generally do
not look into the current directory for anything.

Btw, Windows also has the PowerShell in addition to
Cmd.exe. While few have bothered to learn this program,
it has an advanced design in which objects, rather than
just plain text, flow in the pipes.

> That's just a sample. Basically it's about user convenience. There's not
> a lot that you can't do with any other OS, except that every other OS
> does it in a more roundabout way.

With due respect, I disagree with your assessment.

[Tak To]

My W7 version works fine.

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 16:41:57 UTC+1, Tak To wrote:
> On 9/20/2018 5:25 AM, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 19 September 2018 23:22:02 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> >> The flying text screensaver is not available in W10.
> >
> > It's "3D Text" and it definately came with Win 10 as this is a factory new install. And it's still buggy!!
>
> My W7 version works fine.
>

I'm increasingly inclined to the view that the 'bug' was actually a
typo but I'll give it a thorough testing later.

[Tak To]

On 9/19/2018 11:02 AM, Tony Cooper wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Sep 2018 00:45:24 -0700, Snidely <snide...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Tony Cooper was thinking very hard :
>>> On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 09:40:13 -0700 (PDT), Madrigal Gurneyhalt
>>> <purpl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, 18 September 2018 17:21:49 UTC+1, Tak To wrote:
>>>>> On 9/17/2018 11:39 AM, spuorg...@gowanhill.com wrote:

>>>>>> On Monday, 17 September 2018 15:49:45 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
>>>>>>> You'll have a job. There will be no W11. MS is committed to W10 as the
>>>>>>> final version for ever and ever, amen!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I wonder when they'll actually finish it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Underneath the bonnet {hood} a lot looks like Windows 95.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think so. The W95 series died with WME. You
>>>>> might have been more correct had you say Windows NT,
>>>>> which was older than W95 anyways.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm sure I've seen the screensaver bug I saw on Saturday somewhere else
>>>>>> ... two decades ago.
>>>>>
>>>>> What screen saver bug?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> More to the point ... screensaver? Nobody uses screensavers these
>>>> days (well nobody who counts)!
>>>
>>> What *do* those here use? I use the Windows blue background, a large
>>> family group photo taken the last time we were all in one place, and a
>>> third-party calendar app on my primary screen, and the blue background
>>> and photo on the secondary screen.
>>
>> But that's your desktop, not your screen saver ... or I am
>> misunderstanding you.
>>
> Yes, it's my desktop. Not a screen saver. What I meant - to be more
> explicit - is "What do people here have on view on their monitor
> screen when they don't have an app open?".

Over the years, I find that I prefer a very dark desktop
background. Currently, on one machine I have several
pictures of dark rainy scenes. On the other are dark forest
scenes. They update at the rate of -- I have to look this
up since I have forgotten the settings -- every 30 min and
15 min respectively.

Both machines are running W7, though different versions.
One has a built-in background changer, the other does not
and a third party one was installed. Oddly enough, the
built-in changer seems to interfere with the power
management setting that turns off the screens automatically
after 15 min of inactivity, and that was why I set the
rate at 30 min. The third party changer works perfectly.

Of the screen savers that I have used over the years, two
stuck in my mind. One "melts" the image on the screen.
The other puts up distortions that look as if a giant
glass ball is roaming on the desktop.

[David Kleinecke]

On Thursday, September 20, 2018 at 8:34:11 AM UTC-7, Tak To wrote:
> On 9/20/2018 1:36 AM, Peter Moylan wrote:

About OS/2. I snipped the whole preceding conversation to
keep this short. It is worth reading.

My interest here is "just what should an operating system
do and why?". There seems to be very little literature on
this subject.

As you might expect, I agree with Tak To on the whole but.
of course, if OS/2 gives you what you want by all means use
it.

Coming from Gnome to Windows 10 feels like little more than
having my GUI completely configured. I have already added
gedit to my setup - I don't like any of the official
Windows test processors. But that is an app level thing.

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 17:36:03 UTC+1, Madrigal Gurneyhalt wrote:
> I'm increasingly inclined to the view that the 'bug' was actually a
> typo but I'll give it a thorough testing later.

No, it wasn't a typo; I checked, deleted and re-entered the text.

Anyway, I've got a nicer digital clock screensaver now.

Owain

[Snidely]

With a quizzical look, Madrigal Gurneyhalt observed:

I had no trouble with it in Win7/8 when using it to show which test
system the monitor was connected to. I'm not sure I have used it in
W10, especially with other people setting them up.

/dps

--
"What do you think of my cart, Miss Morland? A neat one, is not it?
Well hung: curricle-hung in fact. Come sit by me and we'll test the
springs."
(Speculative fiction by H.Lacedaemonian.)