Windows market share 57% in the U.S.?

[RonB]

https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/03/07/windows-losing-market-share-us-historic-low-57/

At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows market
share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess that Windows
11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12 might come
support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3. Something called
the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR7KqCbnjfw

The slow death of Windows?

ChromeOS now at over 7% market share? Why?

--
"Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good."
-- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

[Joel]

RonB <ronb02...@gmail.com> wrote:

>https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/03/07/windows-losing-market-share-us-historic-low-57/
>
>At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows market
>share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess that Windows
>11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12 might come
>support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3. Something called
>the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for them.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR7KqCbnjfw
>
>The slow death of Windows?
>
>ChromeOS now at over 7% market share? Why?

Win11 is a quality upgrade, not really different in its guts than
contemporary Win10, although it's beginning to progress more as the
widely used OS. The only complaint I have is that it's typical
Microsoft bloatware, massive storage and RAM needs. Which is why I'll
likely be back to Linux, in a matter of years.

--
Joel Crump

[RabidPedagog]

On 2023-11-04 8:30 p.m., RonB wrote:
> https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/03/07/windows-losing-market-share-us-historic-low-57/
>
> At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows market
> share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess that Windows
> 11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12 might come
> support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3. Something called
> the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for them.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR7KqCbnjfw
>
> The slow death of Windows?
>
> ChromeOS now at over 7% market share? Why?

The Snapdragon X Elite is apparently kicking the ass of the M2 and even
beats the latest Intel processor, all the while using a fraction of the
power. It is indeed a very interesting little chip according to its
benchmarks.

--
RabidPedagog
TG: @RabidPedagog
Galatians 6:7

[rbowman]

On Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:30:01 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:

> At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows
> market share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess
> that Windows 11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12
> might come support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3.
> Something called the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for
> them.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/
worldwide

Windows 11 isn't taking the world by storm. I wouldn't call it a dog but I
don't see a compelling reason to go to it either. It's pretty much the
same as far as I am concerned.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2349-windows-11-performance/

There isn't much difference in performance either. I wonder how much of
the market share is demographics rather than Windows users switching to
Mac. I doubt I will ever buy a Mac. I'm too entrenched in the Windows/
Linux world and some of the tools I use are either not available on Mac or
when you read the installation instructions they sort of wish you good
luck but don't call us.

[RonB]

Yeah, that interested me. No wonder Intel and AMD stock prices were dropping
last week. I wonder how quickly Linux Mint could come out with a version
compatible with that CPU. I like low power chips. Cooler.

[Tyrone]

On 11/4/23 10:24 PM, RabidPedagog wrote:

> The Snapdragon X Elite is apparently kicking the ass of the M2

Read those stories again. Yes, it beats the M2, which is an 8 core CPU
that was released in June 2022. The M2 is the low end of the M2 family.
The X Elite is a 12 core CPU. So wow, a new 12 core CPU beats a 17
month old 8 core CPU.

The X Elite is very slightly faster than the M2 Pro (also 12 core) which
was released 11 months ago. So again, big deal.

But the M2 Ultra of course kicks its ass. The M2 Ultra is 24 CPU cores
and 76 GPU cores. There is nothing from Qualcomm to compete with that.

Plus, the X Elite is not even available yet. It is vaporware.
Meanwhile, the Apple M3 was just released and is available now. How
well do you think the X Elite will compare to the M3 Pro?

Not to mention that when X Elite laptops actually arrive late NEXT year,
the Apple M4 will be just around the corner.

Ooops.

[vallor]

I'm guessing WINE (and proton) won't work on these processors,
so Linux pc gamers will probably stay put...I'm guessing.

Subject changed to make it more Linux-y.

--
-v

[RabidPedagog]

On 2023-11-05 12:03 a.m., rbowman wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:30:01 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>
>> At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows
>> market share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess
>> that Windows 11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12
>> might come support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3.
>> Something called the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for
>> them.
>
> https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/
> worldwide
>
> Windows 11 isn't taking the world by storm. I wouldn't call it a dog but I
> don't see a compelling reason to go to it either. It's pretty much the
> same as far as I am concerned.

It _is_ better than Windows 10 though. Windows 10 is/was shit, no matter
what anyone says.

> https://www.techspot.com/article/2349-windows-11-performance/
>
> There isn't much difference in performance either. I wonder how much of
> the market share is demographics rather than Windows users switching to
> Mac. I doubt I will ever buy a Mac. I'm too entrenched in the Windows/
> Linux world and some of the tools I use are either not available on Mac or
> when you read the installation instructions they sort of wish you good
> luck but don't call us.

I think that a lot of people are moving to the Mac because the hardware
is reliable and updates don't have a good chance of bringing your system
down the way the Windows ones do. I've had Windows 11 updates make my
computer unbootable on a few occasions, but I have yet to have anything
remotely similar happen on the Mac. However, Macs have a guaranteed
obsolescence through a user's inability to upgrade the machine in any
way. That is one place where PCs are still a better option.

[RabidPedagog]

I knew that I would be a fan of any CPU which uses less power, has
greater battery life and doesn't require a fan. The M1 experience has
made it that even periodically hearing a fan doesn't feel right.

[RabidPedagog]

Except that the Snapdragon allows a person to continue using Windows,
with its huge software library. Also, who's to say Qualcomm won't create
an Ultra or Max version of the X Elite?

[chrisv]

Tyrone wrote:

> The X Elite is a 12 core CPU. So wow, a new 12 core CPU beats a 17
>month old 8 core CPU.
>
>The X Elite is very slightly faster than the M2 Pro (also 12 core) which
>was released 11 months ago. So again, big deal.
>
>But the M2 Ultra of course kicks its ass. The M2 Ultra is 24 CPU cores
>and 76 GPU cores. There is nothing from Qualcomm to compete with that.

You could have a thousand cores, and it won't do 90% of users any good
at all, over a quad-core.

--
"Some Linux users were very much against the idea of choice if people
did not choose Linux." - some thing, lying shamelessly (but no one
can quote it lying)

[chrisv]

vallor wrote:

> Tyrone wrote:
>>
>> Not to mention that when X Elite laptops actually arrive late NEXT year,
>> the Apple M4 will be just around the corner.
>

>I'm guessing WINE (and proton) won't work on these processors,
>so Linux pc gamers will probably stay put...I'm guessing.

I think that x86-64 will be a competitive choice for many years to
come. Less performance/watt, certainly, but that's not the end of the
world, if you're plugged into the wall.

--
"One [jpeg] was quickly replaced once I noted the EXIF data." - some

[Tyrone]

The point is, "the X Elite is kicking the ass of the M2" is a great
headline, but it is meaningless when you look at the facts. Notice how
Qualcomm is very careful to just say "the M2". No mention of the M2 Pro
or Ultra.

Apple is still WAY ahead.

[Tyrone]

On 11/5/23 8:10 AM, chrisv wrote:
> Tyrone wrote:
>
>> The X Elite is a 12 core CPU. So wow, a new 12 core CPU beats a 17
>> month old 8 core CPU.
>>
>> The X Elite is very slightly faster than the M2 Pro (also 12 core) which
>> was released 11 months ago. So again, big deal.
>>
>> But the M2 Ultra of course kicks its ass. The M2 Ultra is 24 CPU cores
>> and 76 GPU cores. There is nothing from Qualcomm to compete with that.
>
> You could have a thousand cores, and it won't do 90% of users any good
> at all, over a quad-core.

Actually, it is down to 57% of users. Times have changed and Windows is
no longer the king of PC land.

[Tyrone]

On 11/4/23 8:30 PM, RonB wrote:

> ChromeOS now at over 7% market share? Why?

Because it is used in schools where it's very low cost is attractive.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-05, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:

> On 2023-11-05 12:03 a.m., rbowman wrote:
>> On Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:30:01 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>>
>>> At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows
>>> market share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess
>>> that Windows 11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12
>>> might come support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3.
>>> Something called the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for
>>> them.
>>
>> https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/
>> worldwide
>>
>> Windows 11 isn't taking the world by storm. I wouldn't call it a dog but I
>> don't see a compelling reason to go to it either. It's pretty much the
>> same as far as I am concerned.
>
> It _is_ better than Windows 10 though. Windows 10 is/was shit, no matter
> what anyone says.

What little I've used of either, I don't see much difference. Whatever the
reason, Windows 11 is not setting the world on fire. In business,
especially, the market share of Windows 11 is at about 8% whereas Windows 10
is at about 80.5%. It looks like one of the biggest reasons is the arbitrary
hardware requirements, especially the TPM version requirement.

>> https://www.techspot.com/article/2349-windows-11-performance/
>>
>> There isn't much difference in performance either. I wonder how much of
>> the market share is demographics rather than Windows users switching to
>> Mac. I doubt I will ever buy a Mac. I'm too entrenched in the Windows/
>> Linux world and some of the tools I use are either not available on Mac or
>> when you read the installation instructions they sort of wish you good
>> luck but don't call us.
>
> I think that a lot of people are moving to the Mac because the hardware
> is reliable and updates don't have a good chance of bringing your system
> down the way the Windows ones do. I've had Windows 11 updates make my
> computer unbootable on a few occasions, but I have yet to have anything
> remotely similar happen on the Mac. However, Macs have a guaranteed
> obsolescence through a user's inability to upgrade the machine in any
> way. That is one place where PCs are still a better option.

Even when Windows updates work, the booting two or three times to "finish"
the update is a pain.

[RonB]

Fortunately my Optiplex 3020m runs cool enough that I almost never hear the
fan. But, of course, it's not running at M1 speed. Fast enough for me,
however.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-05, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:

That's kind of what I was thinking. The X Elite is just the first in the
line. It hasn't been thoroughly vetted yet, but I'm guessing it will do fine
and newer versions will follow. I'm more interested in how well Linux will
do with it (or something similar as anyone can develop ARM chips).

[RonB]

The M3 just came out. I'm pretty sure the Qualcomm press release came out
before the M3 line was announced.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-05, Tyrone <no...@none.none> wrote:

I guess so. I've tried ChromeOS. Actually I've tried Linux running on
ChromeOS machines. ChromeOS, itself, is too limited.

[RonB]

It looks like overall, the adoption rate of Windows 11 is a bit better (24%)
while Windows 10 is "only" at 71% two years in for Windows 11 (this is
market share for Windows vs Windows, not overall market share, which is
going down for Windows). This article seems to lament the lack of Windows 11
adoption, and gives it this "rousing" recommmendation...

A shame really because despite all its flaws (and there are a great many
of them), I think Windows 11 is a pretty decent operating system: fast,
feature-rich, and most importantly of all, stable. Yes there are lots of
issues about data sharing and privacy, and the lack of full customization
is pretty irksome, but it's a long way from being one of the worst OS
Microsoft has released.

https://www.pcgamer.com/two-years-after-launch-windows-11-adoption-is-still-waaaay-behind-windows-10/

"Despite a lot of flaws ('a great many of them')," "pretty decent," "lots of
issues about data sharing and privacy," "lack of full customization" and "a
long way from being one of the worst from Microsoft." So what would it have
to do to be "pretty bad?"

Well, I guess it's on to the Windows 12 crapshoot.

[candycanearter07]

On 11/5/23 12:11, RonB wrote:
> On 2023-11-05, Tyrone <no...@none.none> wrote:
>> On 11/4/23 8:30 PM, RonB wrote:
>>
>>> ChromeOS now at over 7% market share? Why?
>>
>> Because it is used in schools where it's very low cost is attractive.
>
> I guess so. I've tried ChromeOS. Actually I've tried Linux running on
> ChromeOS machines. ChromeOS, itself, is too limited.
>

ChromeOS is miserable to use.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

[RonB]

On 2023-11-05, candycanearter07 <n...@thanks.net> wrote:
> On 11/5/23 12:11, RonB wrote:
>> On 2023-11-05, Tyrone <no...@none.none> wrote:
>>> On 11/4/23 8:30 PM, RonB wrote:
>>>
>>>> ChromeOS now at over 7% market share? Why?
>>>
>>> Because it is used in schools where it's very low cost is attractive.
>>
>> I guess so. I've tried ChromeOS. Actually I've tried Linux running on
>> ChromeOS machines. ChromeOS, itself, is too limited.
>>
>
> ChromeOS is miserable to use.

Agreed. I tried it because I thought it would be a good platform for Linux
with with inexpensive machines that had a long battery life. I got the long
battery life, but the price of the overhead (ChromeOS) was too steep.

[RabidPedagog]

On 2023-11-05 8:10 a.m., chrisv wrote:
> Tyrone wrote:
>
>> The X Elite is a 12 core CPU. So wow, a new 12 core CPU beats a 17
>> month old 8 core CPU.
>>
>> The X Elite is very slightly faster than the M2 Pro (also 12 core) which
>> was released 11 months ago. So again, big deal.
>>
>> But the M2 Ultra of course kicks its ass. The M2 Ultra is 24 CPU cores
>> and 76 GPU cores. There is nothing from Qualcomm to compete with that.
>
> You could have a thousand cores, and it won't do 90% of users any good
> at all, over a quad-core.

I agree with this. I can't imagine people needing the "Max" or "Ultra"
versions of processors unless time is of the essence in editing video or
compiling a program. The basic version of those processors is remarkably
fast for pretty much any task.

[RabidPedagog]

They said the M2 because the M3 hadn't yet been unveiled when they
delivered the news of the X Elite's performance. The M3 is not looking
like much of an improvement over the M2 though.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-05, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:

I was reading an article where they said Apple didn't compare the M3 to the
M2, but rather to the M1. Which would seem to indicate the speed increase
wasn't as impressive generation to generation.

Also noted that, in another article, they say the Snapdragon X Elite
bench-tests faster on Linux than on Windows.

https://beebom.com/snapdragon-x-elite-vs-apple-m3/

[chrisv]

Tyrone wrote:

> chrisv wrote:

>> Tyrone wrote:
>>>
>>> But the M2 Ultra of course kicks its ass. The M2 Ultra is 24 CPU cores
>>> and 76 GPU cores. There is nothing from Qualcomm to compete with that.
>>
>> You could have a thousand cores, and it won't do 90% of users any good
>> at all, over a quad-core.
>
>Actually, it is down to 57% of users. Times have changed and Windows is
>no longer the king of PC land.

I was talking about users in general, not Windows users. Although I
suppose the "many cores" makes sense for anyone running off a battery,
to optimize energy consumption.

[RabidPedagog]

On 2023-11-05 1:00 p.m., RonB wrote:
> On 2023-11-05, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:
>> On 2023-11-05 12:03 a.m., rbowman wrote:
>>> On Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:30:01 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>>>
>>>> At least in March, according to StatCounter by Global Stats, Windows
>>>> market share had dropped to about 57%. I had no idea. I can only guess
>>>> that Windows 11 is another Windows 8/Vista/Me dog. Apparently Windows 12
>>>> might come support a new ARM chip to compete against Apple's (now) M3.
>>>> Something called the Snapdragon X Elite. We'll see how it works out for
>>>> them.
>>>
>>> https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/
>>> worldwide
>>>
>>> Windows 11 isn't taking the world by storm. I wouldn't call it a dog but I
>>> don't see a compelling reason to go to it either. It's pretty much the
>>> same as far as I am concerned.
>>
>> It _is_ better than Windows 10 though. Windows 10 is/was shit, no matter
>> what anyone says.
>
> What little I've used of either, I don't see much difference. Whatever the
> reason, Windows 11 is not setting the world on fire. In business,
> especially, the market share of Windows 11 is at about 8% whereas Windows 10
> is at about 80.5%. It looks like one of the biggest reasons is the arbitrary
> hardware requirements, especially the TPM version requirement.

I was actually fixing up my sister-in-law's laptop yesterday and had to
break the news to the poor (literally) woman: you'll need to install
Linux on this machine if you intend to use it past 2025. It uses a 7th
generation Intel processor, so Windows 11 won't work without circumvent
the TPM requirement. Since she can barely afford to breathe, she'll be
holding onto that thing, broken fan and all, with Linux all the way to
2035 with Linux.

>>> https://www.techspot.com/article/2349-windows-11-performance/
>>>
>>> There isn't much difference in performance either. I wonder how much of
>>> the market share is demographics rather than Windows users switching to
>>> Mac. I doubt I will ever buy a Mac. I'm too entrenched in the Windows/
>>> Linux world and some of the tools I use are either not available on Mac or
>>> when you read the installation instructions they sort of wish you good
>>> luck but don't call us.
>>
>> I think that a lot of people are moving to the Mac because the hardware
>> is reliable and updates don't have a good chance of bringing your system
>> down the way the Windows ones do. I've had Windows 11 updates make my
>> computer unbootable on a few occasions, but I have yet to have anything
>> remotely similar happen on the Mac. However, Macs have a guaranteed
>> obsolescence through a user's inability to upgrade the machine in any
>> way. That is one place where PCs are still a better option.
>
> Even when Windows updates work, the booting two or three times to "finish"
> the update is a pain.

I'm not going to argue that. It's definitely a pain in the ass. My wife
actually had the issue yesterday in trying to help out her sister with
her financials. Since she never does her updates because she rarely uses
the computer, she was forced to do them when she finally did turn it on.
She was working on a complicated spreadsheet when it blue-screened and
took a half-hour to log back in because it was completing the update
process.

[RabidPedagog]

Yeah, I read those articles too. As a result, the fact that the Elite X
handily beats the M2 is all the more impressive since the M3 doesn't.

[chrisv]

RabidPedagog wrote:

> chrisv wrote:
>>
>> You could have a thousand cores, and it won't do 90% of users any good
>> at all, over a quad-core.
>
>I agree with this. I can't imagine people needing the "Max" or "Ultra"
>versions of processors unless time is of the essence in editing video or
>compiling a program. The basic version of those processors is remarkably
>fast for pretty much any task.

It's mostly only specialty apps that are multithreaded.

[RabidPedagog]

Yeah, I figure that the people doing video editing and image
manipulation on the Macs also use the specialty apps which support such
a thing. For everyday people though, the Ultra or Max versions of the
processor probably won't provide much of a benefit for their use.

[rbowman]

This definitely a 'it depends' situation that depends on the use case. If
the primary thread is utilizing 100% of a core, there is your bottleneck.
It may be offloading tasks to other cores but it's still limiting out.
There's no free lunch.

Other than bragging rights for many users 24 cores is like buying a Dodge
Hellcat. One of the few people to really use a Hellcat was that guy that
was running dark and losing cops. I don't know if they ever caught that
one. There have been several piople that outran them for a while but were
caught. At 200 mph you can even outrun a helicopter and a lot of the
light planes cops use. However, 95% of the Hellcat owners are sedately
driving down to the market for more beer and Cheetos.

[rbowman]

On Sun, 5 Nov 2023 16:59:59 -0500, RabidPedagog wrote:

> They said the M2 because the M3 hadn't yet been unveiled when they
> delivered the news of the X Elite's performance. The M3 is not looking
> like much of an improvement over the M2 though.

Apple better hope China doesn't decide to grab TSMC for the general hell
of it. Even the Arizona fab line TSMC put on hold will be a 4 nm line if
they ever complete it. The 3 nm pland are pushed out even further.

Intel may have the last laugh.

[rbowman]

On Sun, 5 Nov 2023 16:59:03 -0500, RabidPedagog wrote:

> I agree with this. I can't imagine people needing the "Max" or "Ultra"
> versions of processors unless time is of the essence in editing video or
> compiling a program. The basic version of those processors is remarkably
> fast for pretty much any task.

Video editing is one of workloads that will really benefit. I don't know
about training simpler ML models. The full on TensorFlow training needs a
few of those $40,000 Nvidia GPUs and enough power to light a small town.

[vallor]

On 6 Nov 2023 00:16:41 GMT, rbowman <bow...@montana.com> wrote in
<kqqpj9...@mid.individual.net>:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _
$ lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 43 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 64
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-63
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
Model name: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32-Core Processor

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

And from nvidia-settings:

Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
CUDA Cores: 10752
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Here's a nickel, get yourself a real computer." ;)

Seriously though -- will there ever be the same gaming environment
on Macs as found on Windows or Linux pc's?

--
-v

[Branimir Maksimovic]

Almost all are multithreaded now.

--

7-77-777, Evil Sinner!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/branimir-maksimovic-6762bbaa/

[RonB]

I'm guessing the 2025 date will be extended as the majority of Windows users
will probably still be using Windows 10 still. I don't know how many times
Windows 7 support was extended.

>>>> https://www.techspot.com/article/2349-windows-11-performance/
>>>>
>>>> There isn't much difference in performance either. I wonder how much of
>>>> the market share is demographics rather than Windows users switching to
>>>> Mac. I doubt I will ever buy a Mac. I'm too entrenched in the Windows/
>>>> Linux world and some of the tools I use are either not available on Mac or
>>>> when you read the installation instructions they sort of wish you good
>>>> luck but don't call us.
>>>
>>> I think that a lot of people are moving to the Mac because the hardware
>>> is reliable and updates don't have a good chance of bringing your system
>>> down the way the Windows ones do. I've had Windows 11 updates make my
>>> computer unbootable on a few occasions, but I have yet to have anything
>>> remotely similar happen on the Mac. However, Macs have a guaranteed
>>> obsolescence through a user's inability to upgrade the machine in any
>>> way. That is one place where PCs are still a better option.
>>
>> Even when Windows updates work, the booting two or three times to "finish"
>> the update is a pain.
>
> I'm not going to argue that. It's definitely a pain in the ass. My wife
> actually had the issue yesterday in trying to help out her sister with
> her financials. Since she never does her updates because she rarely uses
> the computer, she was forced to do them when she finally did turn it on.
> She was working on a complicated spreadsheet when it blue-screened and
> took a half-hour to log back in because it was completing the update
> process.

My next to youngest son has a fast game computer. It literally takes about
ten minutes to boot into Windows (partly because he has a lot of stuff
loading at startup). None of my kids ever want to turn off their Windows'
computers because of slow boots and getting stuck in the updates cycle. They
just try to keep them running forever. But eventually (it seems) Windows
forces an update.

[rbowman]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2023 02:30:16 -0000 (UTC), vallor wrote:

> "Here's a nickel, get yourself a real computer."

So, what do you do with that Threadripper besides usenet :)


At the moment mpstat shows all eight of my cores hanging around waiting
for something to do.

[chrisv]

Branimir Maksimovic wrote:

> chrisv wrote:
>>
>> It's mostly only specialty apps that are multithreaded.
>>
> Almost all are multithreaded now.

Desktop apps? Could you provide some article on the issue? I'm not
saying that you're wrong, but if I'm to be educated, I'd like more
than one source.

[RabidPedagog]

Not likely. You'd first have to make sure the old games run properly, so
that gamers would have access to the enormous library. Linux managed it,
MacOS did not. The fact that Apple also solders the storage and the RAM
will ensure that people can't upgrade and they already don't support the
use of any GPU other than the one they provide.

[RabidPedagog]

On 2023-11-05 10:24 p.m., RonB wrote:

< snipped for brevity >

>> I was actually fixing up my sister-in-law's laptop yesterday and had to
>> break the news to the poor (literally) woman: you'll need to install
>> Linux on this machine if you intend to use it past 2025. It uses a 7th
>> generation Intel processor, so Windows 11 won't work without circumvent
>> the TPM requirement. Since she can barely afford to breathe, she'll be
>> holding onto that thing, broken fan and all, with Linux all the way to
>> 2035 with Linux.
>
> I'm guessing the 2025 date will be extended as the majority of Windows users
> will probably still be using Windows 10 still. I don't know how many times
> Windows 7 support was extended.

I honestly don't believe that they'll extend Windows 10 support past the
original ten years. Of course, the fact that they locked recent machines
from upgrading to 11 might force them to, but we will see. Apple has
gotten away with much worse, so Microsoft won't be required to
accommodate anyone.

< snipped for brevity >

>> I'm not going to argue that. It's definitely a pain in the ass. My wife
>> actually had the issue yesterday in trying to help out her sister with
>> her financials. Since she never does her updates because she rarely uses
>> the computer, she was forced to do them when she finally did turn it on.
>> She was working on a complicated spreadsheet when it blue-screened and
>> took a half-hour to log back in because it was completing the update
>> process.
>
> My next to youngest son has a fast game computer. It literally takes about
> ten minutes to boot into Windows (partly because he has a lot of stuff
> loading at startup). None of my kids ever want to turn off their Windows'
> computers because of slow boots and getting stuck in the updates cycle. They
> just try to keep them running forever. But eventually (it seems) Windows
> forces an update.

I don't personally get too bothered by the Windows update process
because I am generally up to date with it all. However, like I've said,
major updates can render the machine unbootable and it's happened a few
times already. The biggest issue I have is how Windows Update wants to
push driver updates for the integrated GPU. What AMD and ASUS offer
users of this particular machine works fine; what Microsoft offers
doesn't, even though it's supposed to be the same driver. People using
this particular machine complain about it all the time on Reddit. On the
other hand, Microsoft does a good job of delivering every other driver
update.

[candycanearter07]

At least, they don't force a complete update usually (excluding the
extreme push to upgrade to win10 from 8)

[rbowman]

https://gimhana-ds.medium.com/how-firefox-and-chrome-use-process-and-
threads-f58f478561f0

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/excel/
multithreading-and-memory-contention-in-excel

Don't read too much into multithreading. I've been using POSIX pthreads
for over 20 years. Back then it was a single core processor. Using threads
can clean up the logic. For example if you are doing asynchronous reads
from a socket you can spin off a thread and block on the socket. When you
do read data you can pass it to another thread.

The alternate is to have a main event loop that checks if there is data to
be read, checks if it can writte data, do whatever other tasks need doing.
Node.js, a widely used web server, does this. Other web servers are
multithreaded. Threads do require careful handling of semaphires, locks,
and so forth or you can block completely, and require the use of thread
safe library functions.

Multicore architectures means the primary thread, which only runs on one
core, can offload threads on other cores as described for Chrome. You have
to be careful with the primary. If it does too much and completely loads
the core managing other threads it can negate any advantages.

[DFS]

On 11/5/2023 9:03 AM, Tyrone wrote:


> Actually, it is down to 57% of users.  Times have changed and Windows is
> no longer the king of PC land.

Sez who?

[RonB]

On 2023-11-06, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:
> On 2023-11-05 10:24 p.m., RonB wrote:
>
>< snipped for brevity >
>
>>> I was actually fixing up my sister-in-law's laptop yesterday and had to
>>> break the news to the poor (literally) woman: you'll need to install
>>> Linux on this machine if you intend to use it past 2025. It uses a 7th
>>> generation Intel processor, so Windows 11 won't work without circumvent
>>> the TPM requirement. Since she can barely afford to breathe, she'll be
>>> holding onto that thing, broken fan and all, with Linux all the way to
>>> 2035 with Linux.
>>
>> I'm guessing the 2025 date will be extended as the majority of Windows users
>> will probably still be using Windows 10 still. I don't know how many times
>> Windows 7 support was extended.
>
> I honestly don't believe that they'll extend Windows 10 support past the
> original ten years. Of course, the fact that they locked recent machines
> from upgrading to 11 might force them to, but we will see. Apple has
> gotten away with much worse, so Microsoft won't be required to
> accommodate anyone.

I think if it comes down to losing market share or extending support,
they'll extend it. I think Windows 11 (and the threat of ending Windows 11)
is already moving people to Macs (if the changing market share numbers tell
me anything).

>< snipped for brevity >
>
>>> I'm not going to argue that. It's definitely a pain in the ass. My wife
>>> actually had the issue yesterday in trying to help out her sister with
>>> her financials. Since she never does her updates because she rarely uses
>>> the computer, she was forced to do them when she finally did turn it on.
>>> She was working on a complicated spreadsheet when it blue-screened and
>>> took a half-hour to log back in because it was completing the update
>>> process.
>>
>> My next to youngest son has a fast game computer. It literally takes about
>> ten minutes to boot into Windows (partly because he has a lot of stuff
>> loading at startup). None of my kids ever want to turn off their Windows'
>> computers because of slow boots and getting stuck in the updates cycle. They
>> just try to keep them running forever. But eventually (it seems) Windows
>> forces an update.
>
> I don't personally get too bothered by the Windows update process
> because I am generally up to date with it all. However, like I've said,
> major updates can render the machine unbootable and it's happened a few
> times already. The biggest issue I have is how Windows Update wants to
> push driver updates for the integrated GPU. What AMD and ASUS offer
> users of this particular machine works fine; what Microsoft offers
> doesn't, even though it's supposed to be the same driver. People using
> this particular machine complain about it all the time on Reddit. On the
> other hand, Microsoft does a good job of delivering every other driver
> update.

I know about the forced driver updates. That kept happening to my wife with
her old HP laptop. It had issues with the nVidia chip and the solution was
supposedly to install the newer driver, but Windows wouldn't let us install
the newer driver, so we couldn't fix the issue. I would disable the nVidia
chip and just use the Intel chip (it had both) but the update would always
"fix" that issue and the BSODs would come back.

But even if everything works right, the update process is incredibly
convoluted and slow — at least compared to Linux. I guess if you regularly
work with Windows you're used to it.

But this reminds me, her old HP had a nVidia GPU in it (and an Intel one).
I'm going to boot into it with a Live Linux USB and see what drivers it uses
for the GPU (I'm guessing both). Then I'll check to see if I can install the
proprietary nVidia driver.

[RonB]

They still try to trick you. My wife's computer will come up with a Windows
11 upgrade nag, and they make it look like you're only choice is to accept
it or choose "install later." Fortunately my son was there the last time it
did this and he pointed out the "escape hatch."

[RonB]

On 2023-11-07, RonB <ronb02...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2023-11-06, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:
>> On 2023-11-05 10:24 p.m., RonB wrote:
>>
>>< snipped for brevity >
>>
>>>> I was actually fixing up my sister-in-law's laptop yesterday and had to
>>>> break the news to the poor (literally) woman: you'll need to install
>>>> Linux on this machine if you intend to use it past 2025. It uses a 7th
>>>> generation Intel processor, so Windows 11 won't work without circumvent
>>>> the TPM requirement. Since she can barely afford to breathe, she'll be
>>>> holding onto that thing, broken fan and all, with Linux all the way to
>>>> 2035 with Linux.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing the 2025 date will be extended as the majority of Windows users
>>> will probably still be using Windows 10 still. I don't know how many times
>>> Windows 7 support was extended.
>>
>> I honestly don't believe that they'll extend Windows 10 support past the
>> original ten years. Of course, the fact that they locked recent machines
>> from upgrading to 11 might force them to, but we will see. Apple has
>> gotten away with much worse, so Microsoft won't be required to
>> accommodate anyone.
>
> I think if it comes down to losing market share or extending support,
> they'll extend it. I think Windows 11 (and the threat of ending Windows 11)
> is already moving people to Macs (if the changing market share numbers tell
> me anything).

Err... Should have been "the threat of ending Windows 10..."

[RabidPedagog]

On 2023-11-06 8:55 p.m., RonB wrote:
> On 2023-11-06, RabidPedagog <ra...@pedag.og> wrote:
>> On 2023-11-05 10:24 p.m., RonB wrote:
>>
>> < snipped for brevity >
>>
>>>> I was actually fixing up my sister-in-law's laptop yesterday and had to
>>>> break the news to the poor (literally) woman: you'll need to install
>>>> Linux on this machine if you intend to use it past 2025. It uses a 7th
>>>> generation Intel processor, so Windows 11 won't work without circumvent
>>>> the TPM requirement. Since she can barely afford to breathe, she'll be
>>>> holding onto that thing, broken fan and all, with Linux all the way to
>>>> 2035 with Linux.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing the 2025 date will be extended as the majority of Windows users
>>> will probably still be using Windows 10 still. I don't know how many times
>>> Windows 7 support was extended.
>>
>> I honestly don't believe that they'll extend Windows 10 support past the
>> original ten years. Of course, the fact that they locked recent machines
>> from upgrading to 11 might force them to, but we will see. Apple has
>> gotten away with much worse, so Microsoft won't be required to
>> accommodate anyone.
>
> I think if it comes down to losing market share or extending support,
> they'll extend it. I think Windows 11 (and the threat of ending Windows 11)
> is already moving people to Macs (if the changing market share numbers tell
> me anything).

I think the synchronization experience is having the biggest effect.
People like how a Mac connects to and configures their iPhone, their
AirPods and anything else they bought from Apple without any kind of
hassle. Their laptops working properly, having great battery life and
having excellent performance despite that are fantastic selling points
too. Don't underestimate how happy people are to move away from x86-64
and Intel.

In my case, a Linux distribution will not detect the discrete GPU
automatically if and only if I don't set up power management to use the
standard Windows way of doing it. ASUS has an optimized way which keeps
it on integrated all the time and uses the dGPU only if absolutely
necessary. Linux doesn't seem to see the dGPU in this scenario.

[rbowman]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2023 21:33:45 -0500, RabidPedagog wrote:

> I think the synchronization experience is having the biggest effect.
> People like how a Mac connects to and configures their iPhone, their
> AirPods and anything else they bought from Apple without any kind of
> hassle. Their laptops working properly, having great battery life and
> having excellent performance despite that are fantastic selling points
> too. Don't underestimate how happy people are to move away from x86-64
> and Intel.

otoh, I don't have an iPhone, iPad, AirPods, or any other Apple merch
except an elderly iShuffle. I don't think I'll drop a few thousand to join
the apple core.

[Philipp Ludwig]

He probably can’t, because it is not true. For example,
all the crap that runs on nodejs/electron/python is
single-threaded by design.

[Philipp Ludwig]

Linux already runs on the M1 Macs and the snapdragon family
of processors is very common in Android phones.

[RonB]

My nephew sent me a cast-off iPhone SE. I installed a new battery in it, but
I don't really use it. It is active on a free FreedomPop account, but I
don't think I've made a test call on it in three months. I don't hate it, I
like the size and I almost eclusively use a flip phone. I've also got Pixel
smartphone, I use it to play pinochle and to take picturews with it. Very
rarely do I talk on it. I guess I'm not the target audience for
synchronizing my phone to my computer. The iPhone wants to connect to the
Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but I won't let it.

I don't know if I've used anything graphically challenging enough for the
nVidia chip to kick in on my wife's old HP Pavilion 820c, but it's supposed
to be up and working. (See a bit of the information in another post.)
Normally Intel GPUs are all I need. This is what the Pavilion currently
shows (link below). Looks like the discrete feature is up and running. Any
suggestions of what could be used to test this feature?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EpP_aLzyeLoXn7vmZt9tf1_JnGZGICaC/view?usp=sharing

[RonB]

Me neither. Even though I currently have three Apple products.

[RabidPedagog]

If you don't have any of that stuff then supporting Apple is of no
importance. However, I eventually got fed up of buying albums and
watching my music files get corrupted, so I am happy to pay for Apple
Music. Not only is the quality of the default 256kbps music file
superior to what I can encode myself because of Apple's excellent
encoder, but I can opt for the ALAC lossless version at no extra charge
if I choose to. Additionally, all of the ratings I put on the songs
themselves sync to whatever device I use to play them without me having
to do so manually. Therefore, if I choose to listen on my iPhone, on my
PC laptop or on my MacBook Air, everything is consistent much like
ordering a burger from McDonald's in New York City versus the same order
in Mississippi. MacOS also detects my AirPods Pro without the slightest
difficulty, and it seems to understand that I want to switch over to the
iPhone whenever I move from my desk. It just gets it. The best part is
that the "Find My Device" feature of Apple devices actually works, and
if I leave my laptop at work intentionally, my iPhone warns me that I
might have forgotten something. It's a simple feature, but I can imagine
it being a Godsend if you _didn't_ intentionally leave your device
behind and Tyrone decides to take it for himself when you're not around.

For a _professional_ who simply wants to get their job done, I have to
say that there is definitely nothing better than a Mac. Unlike the
competition, everything "just works" as it should.

--
RabidPedagog
Galatians 6:7

[RabidPedagog]

I don't mind the synchronization myself. I also enjoy getting text
messages from my phone on the MacBook while I work. Taking out the
smartphone, even momentarily while I'm in class drives the kids crazy
and they suddenly believe that they have the right to do the same thing.

You could install a demanding video game. A lot of them are available
for free from Steam.

[RonB]

I guess it would be useful for that, but I'm not in the same situation.

I'll have to try that, but I think I'll wait until I make a new partition on
the computer and do a hard drive installation. Maybe later today. (I want
Linux on my wife's old computer anyhow because 1) She doesn't use it and this
makes the computer useful, and 2) She may have something "archived" on it
that she will need in the future, and it will be nice to have Linux
installed in case Windows completely gives up the ghost. For some reason
Windows runs extremely slowly on this computer (almost unusable). I can
clear out crap, get it to work fairly well, then (almost immediately) it
slows back to a crawl. Ever since the first Windows update that computer has
been problematic.

[RabidPedagog]

Windows becomes slow and unusable after a while one way or the other,
but it is especially noticeable if a computer uses an HD rather than an
SSD. I just switched my mom over to Linux Mint (and will complete the
relatively simple process of setting up her printer) when she gets back
specifically because of the slowdown. Windows 10 ran fine for a while as
did Windows 11. Unsurprisingly, a few updates later, it became as slow
as molasses and remained so after the routine SFC (which took forever)
and DISM (which also took forever) were run and the browser's cache was
emptied. I had the option of just putting Windows back on there, but I
didn't see the point as the problem would return, even with an SSD in
there. With Linux Mint, I could install her browser of choice, get her
passwords, get all of her favourites within seconds and guarantee that
it won't become slow as shit, unlike with Windows. The OS is also rather
polished compared to others, so I don't expect her to act retarded and
tell me that "it's not as pretty" as if that somehow matters. I'm
actually looking to install it for myself as well, provided I can be
sure that I can continue limiting my laptop's battery to an 80% charge
and I can guarantee myself the ability to switch over to NVIDIA's GPU
whenever necessary. For the time being, only PopOS seems to do it right,
but I think it's worth a try in Mint.

[RonB]

Apparently something called "tlp" allows you to set the charging limit in
Linux, but the one computer I've tried it on doesn't work. I think because
the cheap (after market) battery I bought for it doesn't have the firmware
necessary to do this. That particular battery holds a decent charge (about 4
or 5 hours), but at about the 40% point (or what it calls 40%) it drops
instantly to 4%. TLP installs, but it doesn't see what it needs to see in
the battery. I may try installing Windows on that particular computer to see
if it can make the battery actually work the way it's supposed to. This is a
computer that I will probably sell anyhow. 12" screen in good condition, but
12" screens are getting too small for me.

[RabidPedagog]

It's not calibrated. That's why applications such as BatteryBar are so
useful in Windows. They let you know what the wear of the battery is, so
you have a better idea of whether it needs to be replaced or not, and
what its true capacity is. You can determine this in Linux too, but most
people don't bother to do it and end up with the situation you just
described. As for tlp, I know that asus-linux.org has an application to
limit battery charging. I've tried it on a PopOS install a while back
and it worked rather well. I just haven't tried it in Linux Mint yet.

> TLP installs, but it doesn't see what it needs to see in
> the battery. I may try installing Windows on that particular computer to see
> if it can make the battery actually work the way it's supposed to. This is a
> computer that I will probably sell anyhow. 12" screen in good condition, but
> 12" screens are getting too small for me.

I'm a fan of 13" and 14" myself. My eyesight's always been wonderful, so
the size doesn't bother so much. The one issue I have with smaller
laptops in general though is that cooling is a lot more difficult. It's
not an issue on a MacBook Air, but it will be on a gaming laptop.

[chrisv]

Well, with browsers, spreadsheets and games being multithreaded, it
appears that I was wrong about only "specialty" apps being
multithreaded.

--
"Smith's words [https://tinyurl.com/Dumb-FSck] are meaningless unless
MS open sources most of their products" - DumFSck, lying shamelessly

[RonB]

For what I do on the E7250, cooling is not an issue. The fan barely runs.
I'm sure that would be different if I was playing games on it.

[rbowman]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2023 14:15:52 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:

> For some reason
> Windows runs extremely slowly on this computer (almost unusable). I can
> clear out crap, get it to work fairly well, then (almost immediately) it
> slows back to a crawl. Ever since the first Windows update that computer
> has been problematic.

How is your C: drive free space? I ran into a situation where the OS would
repeatedly log that there wasn't enough space on the C: drive-- to the C:
drive, of course, making it into some sort of Escher world.

[rbowman]

Probably tl;dr for many in this ng:

https://www.nginx.com/blog/thread-pools-boost-performance-9x/

It's one of the better discussions on how threading can improve
performance. Node.js has a very efficient event loop and I've never pushed
it to exhaustion but it's not the only approach.

[rbowman]

On Tue, 7 Nov 2023 07:46:58 -0500, RabidPedagog wrote:

> If you don't have any of that stuff then supporting Apple is of no
> importance. However, I eventually got fed up of buying albums and
> watching my music files get corrupted, so I am happy to pay for Apple
> Music.

After being gifted an iShuffle I found I couldn't just copy MP3s to i but
had to install the Windows version of iTunes, Let's just say it was a
painful experience with a counter-intuitive piece of crap (iTunes, not the
shuffle).

[Relf]

When iShuffle & iTunes came out,
it felt like a sewer pipe had broken
& it was dripping all over me.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-07, rbowman <bow...@montana.com> wrote:

She was using about 200 GBs of a 1 TB hard drive. I'm going to give Linux
about 200 GBs of that space.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-07, rbowman <bow...@montana.com> wrote:

I don't know anything about Node.js, except I have to install it to run
'Afterwriting. It seems like a lot of overhead to run a very small CLI
application. (I'm guessing it's kind of like having to install .NET to run a
small program in Windows.)

[RabidPedagog]

Yeah, I never liked how early Apple devices basically required you to
use their own software to do even the simplest thing. The worst part is
that if you copied your music to that device, copying it back required
special software because Apple thought that such a thing would be no
different from theft.

[rbowman]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 00:07:59 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:

> I don't know anything about Node.js, except I have to install it to run
> 'Afterwriting. It seems like a lot of overhead to run a very small CLI
> application. (I'm guessing it's kind of like having to install .NET to
> run a small program in Windows.)

Node.js embodies the V8 Javascript engine and can be used fpr a lot of
things, one of which is executing a Javascript program. In other words if
helloworld.js has one line

console.log('hello world!');

node helloworld.js
hello world!

so I assume Afterwriting is a Javascript app and node is being used to
execute it. Typically you would also be using any number of packages
installed with npm (Node package Manager).

While that works a more common use of node is to create a web server. Same
deal, you're executing Javascript. The npm universe is huge. There are a
number of frameworks like Express, Koa, Neteor, and Sails that help to
organize the structure and work in templates like Handlebars.

I prefer Express since it is non-opinionated. You see that term often in
the literature usually in criticism of a very opinionated framework. It's
just like it sounds. They can be 'my way or the highway' like dealing with
a bunch of liberals.

Come to think of it, an interesting study would be the political leanings
of developers as it effects the software they produce.

[rbowman]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 00:04:59 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:

> She was using about 200 GBs of a 1 TB hard drive. I'm going to give
> Linux about 200 GBs of that space.

That should be plenty. I've got 479 GB of a nominal 500 GB left after
subtracting the other noise with 376 GB free and I install a lot of stuff.
What I don't have though is a lot of pictures, videos, or music.

[RonB]

Thanks. Now I know a little more about Node.js. It seems to work well for
'Afterwriting — which mostly is web based. You can use it online, or
download it and use it offline in your browser, or use it in the Terminal.

https://afterwriting.com/

It just converts scripts written in Fountain-Mode format to screenplay
formatted PDF documents. I either call it from Emacs or with a shell script.

[RonB]

On 2023-11-08, rbowman <bow...@montana.com> wrote:

Same here. So my small SSDs don't usually fill up very fast.

[-hh]

On Monday, November 6, 2023 at 11:22:23 AM UTC-5, DFS wrote:
> On 11/5/2023 9:03 AM, Tyrone wrote:
> >
> > Actually, it is down to 57% of users. Times have changed and Windows is
> > no longer the king of PC land.
>
> Sez who?

Apparently, Tyrone's making that claim, based upon StatCounter data which shows that
Windows is no longer 95%+. Here, its being reported as 57% of domestic (USA) desktops.

Tyrone did point out that Chrome has made inroads in education, where its ~7% now, but
it is also informative to look at a longer timescale thusly, to detect other potential trends:

<https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america/#monthly-200901-202310>

YMMV but at 30% share, it certainly looks like it is BSD Unix* ... who's taken out the biggest bite.

(* - also known as OS X or MacOS).


-hh

[candycanearter07]

They probably didn't want to normalize copying your friend's library
with their tech.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

[Relf]

Re: iTunes, 2005

candycane:

> They probably didn't want to normalize
> copying your friend's library with their tech.

2005 Apple hadn't anticipated 2017 TikTok, that's for sure.

[RonB]

I think Apple is just a control freak company. Their choice. For a short a
while they allowed Apple II clones. Controlling the hardware makes writing
the OS a lot easier.

[candycanearter07]

Yeah, but the copying/copyright thing could also be their excuse.

[Joel]

RonB <ronb02...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I think Apple is just a control freak company. Their choice. For a short a
>while they allowed Apple II clones. Controlling the hardware makes writing
>the OS a lot easier.

Apple's OS family is, no more, their own creation, than Android is, to
Google. Only Microsoft has its own complete OS, although with open
source this is entirely academic, since the different components are
freely shared with each other.

--
Joel Crump

[rbowman]

On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 06:33:56 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:

> I think Apple is just a control freak company. Their choice. For a short
> a while they allowed Apple II clones. Controlling the hardware makes
> writing the OS a lot easier.

Control also makes generating profits easier, for example the way Apple
wants a slice of everything going through the Apple store. Nice work if
you can get it.

[DFS]

On 11/9/2023 10:58 AM, Joel wrote:

> Apple's OS family is, no more, their own creation, than Android is, to
> Google.

These English lessons will continue until you get it right or, more
likely, flunk out:

"Apple's OS family is no more their creation than Android is Google's."

Zero commas required.

[Joel]

You can't tell me shit, DFS. I know how to write.

--
Joel Crump

[DFS]

You do not. FAIL.

[Joel]

DFS <d...@nospam.com> wrote:

>>>> Apple's OS family is, no more, their own creation, than Android is, to
>>>> Google.
>>>
>>> These English lessons will continue until you get it right or, more
>>> likely, flunk out:
>>>
>>> "Apple's OS family is no more their creation than Android is Google's."
>>>
>>> Zero commas required.
>>
>> You can't tell me shit, DFS. I know how to write.
>
>You do not. FAIL.

I'm a superstar on Twitter. Are you? Or are you mostly proud of your
trolling in COLA? Commas in writing give separation to phrases.

--
Joel Crump

[DFS]

On 11/9/2023 12:37 PM, Joel wrote:
> DFS <d...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
>>>>> Apple's OS family is, no more, their own creation, than Android is, to
>>>>> Google.
>>>>
>>>> These English lessons will continue until you get it right or, more
>>>> likely, flunk out:
>>>>
>>>> "Apple's OS family is no more their creation than Android is Google's."
>>>>
>>>> Zero commas required.
>>>
>>> You can't tell me shit, DFS. I know how to write.
>>
>> You do not. FAIL.
>
>
> I'm a superstar on Twitter.

heh! Did the superstar comb his hair today?

Like I said, your parents must've told you 8x daily how "very, very
special you are Joel!"


> Are you?

There are no superstars on Twitter (or X as they now call it).

> Or are you mostly proud of your trolling in COLA?

exceedingly

> Commas in writing give separation to phrases.

Yes, but you misuse them so badly I'm compelled to correct you. Are you
by any chance a product of Baltimore public schools? That might explain
it.

Recently, 23 public schools in Baltimore had ZERO students reading or
doing math at their grade level. ZERO?! The black teachers aren't much
better than the black students.

Anyway, if all you're gonna do is argue and deny, I'll quit the free
lessons. It's just Usenet after all.

[candycanearter07]

And, of course you don't have to worry about third party apps/solutions
overtaking popularity.

[DFS]

On 11/9/2023 12:37 PM, Joel wrote:
> DFS <d...@nospam.com> wrote:

> Or are you mostly proud of your trolling in COLA?

Did you ever see my Ode To GuhNoo/Linux Crapware?

====================================================
A is for "advocate", who freeloads the code
Their shameless hypocrisy we do like to goad
Each Monday am it's Windows they boot
Free software means nothing in the face of big loot

B is for bash, they call it a shell
New users are flummoxed and shout "What the hell?"
Bourne Again Shell is it's formal birth name
It's now 23 years old and still POSIX-tively lame

C is for chown, a most geeky task
Watch the NFS files or it could bite your ass
If it throws an ENOMEM and you know what that means
You should take a long break from your grimy green screens

D is for distro, a pile of crap code
They multiply like roaches and they're free to download
You can try 1 a day for the rest of your life
Some geeks prefer it to having a wife

E is for ext4, an extended filesystem
It waits to write data - it delays allocation
4 is the safest with journal checksumming
If 5 has no fragments the geeks won't stop cumming

F is for Fedora, a "community" distro
What I want to know is why they do Spin it so?
They say "Freedom. Friends. Features. First." is their slogan
But the software they give me comes deep from their colon

G is for GNU, a kernel-less mess
The founder eats toejam, in public no less
They say they want software which respects your freedom
But they won't endorse Slackware - that surely is real dumb

H is for Hurd, a long-delayed kernel
The struggle to code it has become eternal
The most inner layer of Hurd is named Mach
The junk heaped around it is just GuhNoo crock

I is for inode, they keep your files ordered
If they run out your hard drive just might be slaughtered
inodes don't store filenames, or data, in fact
ls -i? find -inum? huh? What crap

J is for JACK, a sound API
Or is it a daemon? Pick one and say why
Whatever you choose is the actual meaning
The crapware is still in the middle of weaning

K is for KDE, a once-proud desktop
But lately here now it's reverting to slop
They added plasmoids and widgets galore!
And just turned it into a new open sore

L is for Linux, a horrid platform
If it's on your computer you're just not the norm
You tinker and toy and waste all the day
"Why?" is the question but no one can say

M is for manpages, so-called documentation
5 minutes with them and you'll know frustration
getpid and setsid will become your new friends
You'll slit both wrists open before reaching the end

N is for netbook, upon which Linux fails
The people cried out "We want Windows for sale!"
The return rates were high, and for very good reason
Lunix slop always was and will be out of season

O is for open source, they say you should read it
But only 1 in 1 million really does need it
If it looks just like pages of gobbledygook
You're sane and you're normal and not some Linux kook

P is for package, a collection of bytes
Before you install it you must have the rights
It will only install with the correct dependencies
If you know what this means you have Lunix tendencies

Q is for Quit, though they really mean Exit
Exit means Exit so why don't they fix Quit?
If Quit doesn't Quit and the app doesn't leave
Click Shutdown and reboot the Windows CD

R is for Reiser, a murdering man
He killed, hid the body, then quickly he ran
Five-O caught him squirming in Momma's downstairs
He lied and he weaseled and avoided the chair

S is for segfault, you will see it often
One might even greet you as soon as you login
A dereferenced NULL pointer is one common cause
It's another of the slopware's innumerable flaws

T is for text files, they config the crapware
They're scattered all over, but who really knows where?
.bashrc is hidden, while bashrc is not
The difference is unclear - it's hidden by .dot

U is for Ubuntu, an ungodly mess
Its developers are crappy and need to confess
The forums are filled to the brim with complaints
It freezes so much it would test all the saints

V is for vi, a ridiculous text editor
You'll have better luck evading a creditor
Some say use Vim, that it's quite an improvement
Or so that's the claim from the geek in the basement

W is for women, who really hate Linux
They don't know and don't care how much Tux really sux
They want to be treated with respect and humanity
Is that too much to ask of the man-child community?

X is for xargs, a CLI piece of crap
I'd much rather suffer a flubbed spinal tap
If xargs is "more safer and easy to use"
Why is my poor Grandma so scared and confused?

Y is for YUM, just another install tool
25 package managers? Lunix looks like a fool
None of them gives you the options you want
The hobbyist developers were just trying to flaunt

Z is for zombie, a process that won't die
Your crapbox may have thousands - nobody knows why
Kill the parent process and the zombie could live on
Kill the parent crapware and inspire this alphabet song...
====================================================

heh!

[RonB]

And you can remove whatever apps you want from your store, cutting out
the competition — so long as you have a "viable" excuse.

[Joel]

DFS <nos...@dfs.com> wrote:

>>>> You can't tell me shit, DFS. I know how to write.
>>>
>>> You do not. FAIL.
>>
>> I'm a superstar on Twitter.
>
>heh! Did the superstar comb his hair today?
>
>Like I said, your parents must've told you 8x daily how "very, very
>special you are Joel!"

Actually, my parents are/were pretty cool people, I was a gifted child
to be sure, but I have a slightly old soul, the schizophrenia is just
a component of what I had to overcome in life.

>> Are you?
>
>There are no superstars on Twitter (or X as they now call it).

OK.

>> Or are you mostly proud of your trolling in COLA?
>
>exceedingly

OK.

>> Commas in writing give separation to phrases.
>
>Yes, but you misuse them so badly I'm compelled to correct you. Are you
>by any chance a product of Baltimore public schools? That might explain
>it.

I grew up in Montgomery County, think due north of the White House.

>Recently, 23 public schools in Baltimore had ZERO students reading or
>doing math at their grade level. ZERO?! The black teachers aren't much
>better than the black students.

I can't speak to that.

>Anyway, if all you're gonna do is argue and deny, I'll quit the free
>lessons. It's just Usenet after all.

Your lessons are Eurocentric.

--
Joel Crump

[candycanearter07]

On 11/9/23 15:42, RonB wrote:
> On 2023-11-09, candycanearter07 <n...@thanks.net> wrote:
>> On 11/9/23 10:40, rbowman wrote:
>>> On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 06:33:56 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think Apple is just a control freak company. Their choice. For a short
>>>> a while they allowed Apple II clones. Controlling the hardware makes
>>>> writing the OS a lot easier.
>>>
>>> Control also makes generating profits easier, for example the way Apple
>>> wants a slice of everything going through the Apple store. Nice work if
>>> you can get it.
>>
>> And, of course you don't have to worry about third party apps/solutions
>> overtaking popularity.
>
> And you can remove whatever apps you want from your store, cutting out
> the competition — so long as you have a "viable" excuse.
>

And you can avoid some bad press if someone sideloads something
controversial.

[RonB]

True. But I'm guessing the profit motive is the biggest draw for Apple.