

Windows, that's a step too far - gpmcadam
http://robmanuel.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/fuck-you-windows-thats-step-too-far.html

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valuegram
While I don't necessarily agree with the way Microsoft has this setup, they
aren't preventing you from backing up. They're preventing you from using THEIR
software package to backup to an external drive. You can use any number of
free or paid alternatives, just not the one that's built into the Windows OS.

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jnbiche
Forget running Photoshop on Wine, or dual-booting. Run Windows XP within
Virtualbox on Linux, and set it to "Seamless" mode. XP is lightweight and runs
well on Virtualbox, although you may want to use the 64-bit version of XP if
you'll be doing a lot of work with Photoshop. And under Seamless mode, it's
almost as Windows apps are running natively on Ubuntu (or whatever Linux
distro). I've not run Photoshop on Virtualbox (although I know others do
successfully), but I regularly run a number of relatively complex Windows
applications (such as Office) in this manner as part of my job. And it works
so much better for me than Wine, or dual booting.

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oliwarner
Completely agree. If you're in Ubuntu and need to get work done in a Windows
app, do it in XP on VirtualBox. It's the right way.

Nlite your XP install down so it's "wather thin" for extra credit. I can be in
Ubuntu one second, load up my VBox image and three seconds later I'm sitting
at a usable XP desktop. Photoshop (et al) are fast but most importantly
they're reliable and stable.

Wine does work for some things (games mostly) but you lose any sort of
guaranteed reliability.

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peterwiese
Why not win7?

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oliwarner
Two reasons: I don't own a license for it and based on my preview testing, I
don't need it.

I don't boot an instance of Windows for the Windows experience, I'm doing it
so I can load another application so I can get things done.

Plus XP's Minesweeper and Sol are much better... For much the same reasons.

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jack-r-abbit
WOW. That is a lot of anger just because Windows doesn't have a built in SSH
client (which I probably wouldn't use anyway... PuTTY is tops) and his version
won't back up to a NAS (but there is other software to do that). Haters gotta
hate.

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berdon
Did Windows go too far or did you not go far enough in properly selecting your
machine upgrade? The differences between Windows and OSX run deep but it isn't
Microsoft or Apple's job to tell you about them.

I will agree that Microsoft's rope-a-doping with feature deplete Windows
variants is very rude and off putting.

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nsxwolf
This is why I prefer the "Just Works" philosophy of the Mac (and it's a
philosophy, not a guarantee of problem-free operation) to what I call the
"Just Have To" philosophy of Windows.

Complain that you can't do something on Windows, and someone will come along,
call you a name, and inform you that you can indeed do that... "You Just Have
To" install this, configure that, tweak that. Eventually you've got a list of
those things a mile long, and good luck to you if you ever switch to another
machine.

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paulgb
Funny, I've resisted switching to Apple products for the same "Just Have To"
philosophy in the other direction.

"You want to maximize a window from the window manager chrome? No problem, you
Just Have To install (some app). What do you mean you don't want to pay $10 to
be able to maximize a window, it's only $10, don't you think programmers
should get paid?"

By comparison, Windows 7 "just works" for my needs, which is essentially
providing a shell around Chrome and PuTTY.

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taude
So true: I've paid for window managers, Finder replacements, and clipboard
managers for OS X as everything is an upsell. I still like my Mac, though.
This entire article could be said about any of the OSes and XYZ features.

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ecaron
I read this on a day when I'm about to head home and install Windows 7 on my
new machine, because Ubuntu12/Mint13/Fedora17 all crash on the hardware
because of known bugs with the modern hardware that haven't been fixed yet and
I don't have a PhD in kernel development to fix it myself.

There's just something cruel in the world for reading this and being reminded
of why I've dreaded the install I'm about to do.

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taude
Wait until Time Machine Fucks you. (Written on my Mac)

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abrown28
Apple: double clicked on the title bar.. nothing happened clicked on the green
button.. window scaled vertically but not horizontally edit a text file and
forget to save with .html extension.. try to change it in the file browser. it
doesn't work.

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keithpeter
"I have no idea whether I'll be able to pull off living in Linux world and
still do my work - I haven't had to do any photoshopping yet and the thought
of Gimp or trying to get Photoshop to work under Wine is a bit daunting."

VM? Dual boot?

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noobiscus
Actually I think (for me at least; also a web dev that does unix based stuff
but also needs photoshop), the lower-friction route is to run Windows as the
native OS, and virtualbox the linux install. (I'm also these days of the
opinion that this is actually a better solution than cygwin)

Basically the unix bits are (far) less resource hungry than Photoshop...

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keithpeter
"Basically the unix bits are (far) less resource hungry than Photoshop.."

I had never thought of it that way round!

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jcmhn
There was a short window about 10 years ago where OSX was the best unix
workstation, no contest. But cygwin is really good these days, so good that
the Apple premium cost and batshit insane vendor make it a non-starter.

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AdrianRossouw
in no way does cygwin make windows a unix workstation.

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jcmhn
bash, ssh, screen, rsync, cron, gcc, perl/python/ruby, X, and excellent
terminal emulation.

Treat cygwin as just another unix variant and it will go pretty far. Windows
native apps and virtualbox are guaranteed to cover any missed requirements.

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kungfooey
Why didn't you just buy a big ol' honking external monitor and hook that up to
your Macbook?

I develop on a Macbook Air, and that works quite well for me.

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gpmcadam
To clarify, I'm not the author of the post.

But yes, this was what I thought. A nice monitor for ~£200-300 and you don't
have to change a thing about what you do, assuming that for on-the-go, the 13"
is just fine.

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vilepickle
Childish rant is childish.

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naich
Never thought I'd see the Ginger Fuhrer on Hacker news.

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computerslol
That was silly.

