Bye bye Windows

[Sapient]

As some of you may know, I'm one of the few developers who continued to use Windows as a primary OS. I often sang the praises of MSVC++, proudly continued using my hotmail.com email address, and I once owned a Zune! And even though I browse the web with Chrome, I search it with Bing. So this next part may come as a surprise: I'm quitting Windows for good!

After using my Windows 7 laptop for 3 years, it suddenly decided that it is not a genuine activation of Windows, and refuses to accept the Product Key when I re-enter it. I called MS support and the guy on the other end hung up on me twice very deliberately.

This problem all started when the BIOS came up saying "Serial Number Not Found" -- so I figured maybe HP would help. Of course they wouldn't do jack unless I ponied up $45 per month for some kind of ongoing support service fee.

So now that Windows is locking me out of my completely legit copy of Windows 7, and refusing to do anything to rectify the situation, I feel that I have no choice but to switch operating systems. I gotta say I actually liked Windows 7 a lot, despite my disdain for their "Genuine Advantage" strongarm tactics. But this overzealous copy protection regime and restrictive you-own-nothing license, combined with their ridiculously poor customer support has finally pushed me over the edge.

In short, I'm going to install Linux and never buy from HP again. One of the things that kept me from doing this in the past was not having a good place to back up all my files. But now that you can easily zip up a bunch of files, encrypt them, and upload to Skydrive or another free hosting site, I guess there's nothing standing in my way now.

[zookeeper]

Even if I continue using Windows myself, I'm always glad to hear people switching away from it.

[Anonymissimus]

Well, your last wesnoth C++ commit lies somewhere way in the past so it doesn't really matter...

You better expect a hell of problems when installing a Linux on an HP laptop...such as it sometimes not booting for unknown reasons, not working hardware pieces etc. It seems to me that laptops, and especially HP ones, are designed for the OS they came with. You aren't supposed to throw it away and install something else, no no. Mobile computers are use-it-a-few-years-and-then-when-it's-broken-buy-a-new-one gear. You should probably more blame HP than Microsoft for your problem.

[doofus-01]

Well, your last wesnoth C++ commit lies somewhere way in the past so it doesn't really matter...

Ooh, ouch! Burn!

It seems to me that laptops, and especially HP ones, are designed for the OS they came with. Mobile computers are use-it-a-few-years-and-then-when-it's-broken-buy-a-new-one gear.

Well, my originally-Windows-XP Dell laptop has had Linux on it for about 8 or 9 years now (*knock-on-wood*), and it's certainly not due to any "tech-guru" skills on my part.

[Dugi]

I think that you might like this. It worked perfectly when I had a similar problem.
Anyway, as a person who uses mostly Linux, I can only congratulate you for choosing to start using Linux. Linux sometimes has problems to work on newer hardware and with nVidia video cards, but on 3 years old stuff it should be fine.

[artisticdude]

It seems to me that laptops, and especially HP ones, are designed for the OS they came with. You aren't supposed to throw it away and install something else, no no. Mobile computers are use-it-a-few-years-and-then-when-it's-broken-buy-a-new-one gear. You should probably more blame HP than Microsoft for your problem.

Amen and ditto. I've currently got a second-hand tx2 HP laptop (2010 model, IIRC) that runs Windows 7 just fine and hasn't melted or blown up (yet), but every Linux distro I've ever tried to install on the thing has completely failed to work with either the graphics card or the network card, despite hours troubleshooting and messing with drivers and whatnot. I also had a 2007 HP Pavillion Slimline back in the day, and right after the 1-year warrenty expired the motherboard died. Come to find out, that particular model was equipped with an inadequate fan that caused the motherboard to overheat, conveniently just after the warranty had expired.

In short, I'm going to (...) never buy from HP again.

Needless to say, I'm totally with you there.

I'm generally not a fan of Windows as an OS, but I have to say that Windows 7 actually isn't that bad, Microsoft's outrageous DRM notwithstanding. Now Windows 8, on the other hand... And yes, I too have had some really crappy experiences with the MS customer service reps, who generally seem to be less knowledgeable about computers than I was when I was ten years old.

[Sapient]

Thanks for the warning. I may hold off on the migration until I'm prepared to buy a new laptop. But I'm done with Windows. That part I am not backing down on.

Anonymissimus - you're right. It never really had much bearing on my contributions, unless you count one or two Windows-only bugs I fixed. In fact I'd say it was more of a hindrance because once support was dropped for the old version of MSVC++ I never really got it working with the newer versions and eventually stopped trying. I'd like to think that I've still been giving a little bit to the community in other ways since then, and may do so in the future as well, so I hope you don't mind if I keep calling myself a developer.

[Anonymissimus]

I've currently got a second-hand tx2 HP laptop (2010 model, IIRC) that runs Windows 7 just fine and hasn't melted or blown up (yet), but every Linux distro I've ever tried to install on the thing has completely failed to work with either the graphics card or the network card, despite hours troubleshooting and messing with drivers and whatnot. I also had a 2007 HP Pavillion Slimline back in the day, and right after the 1-year warrenty expired the motherboard died. Come to find out, that particular model was equipped with an inadequate fan that caused the motherboard to overheat, conveniently just after the warranty had expired.

Pretty much the same here.
Didn't the laptop come with an XP installation CD or so ? That might be the only chance to get a working OS onto it.

Anonymissimus - you're right. It never really had much bearing on my contributions, unless you count one or two Windows-only bugs I fixed. In fact I'd say it was more of a hindrance because once support was dropped for the old version of MSVC++ I never really got it working with the newer versions and eventually stopped trying. I'd like to think that I've still been giving a little bit to the community in other ways since then, and may do so in the future as well, so I hope you don't mind if I keep calling myself a developer.

I didn't mean to criticize you, just stating that wesnoth doesn't loose a windows dev because of this in my opinion. You can let your countless valuable forum contributions speak for you, you know.
Personally, I never got wesnoth to build in an amount of time that satisfies me no matter what system I use, so I'm doing just build system maintenance most of the time.

[Dunno]

And even though I browse the web with Chrome, I search it with Bing.

That's hardcore, man!
I'm myself a fan of Mac OS but frankly, anything other than Windows is a good choice

[AI]

I'm myself a fan of Mac OS but frankly, anything other than Windows is a good choice

I don't think you've tried OS/2.

[Elvish_Hunter]

After using my Windows 7 laptop for 3 years, it suddenly decided that it is not a genuine activation of Windows, and refuses to accept the Product Key when I re-enter it. I called MS support and the guy on the other end hung up on me twice very deliberately.

That's refined marketing: he's trying a subliminal way to sell you Windows 8!

Even if I continue using Windows myself, I'm always glad to hear people switching away from it.

I'm using both Windows and Linux as well. Looking for an updated distro that I could install on my secondary system, I was recently impressed by Xubuntu: a nice GUI that resembles Gnome 2 and doesn't require much horsepower. I'm thinking about installing it.

You better expect a hell of problems when installing a Linux on an HP laptop...

In my case, I tried booting Ubuntu 12.04 from a pendrive on my Acer Aspire 7560G. It started on the first try.
However, some time ago there was a regression in the 3.0 kernels that made it booting only in text mode. It was fixed with the 3.2 kernels.

Amen and ditto. I've currently got a second-hand tx2 HP laptop (2010 model, IIRC) that runs Windows 7 just fine and hasn't melted or blown up (yet), but every Linux distro I've ever tried to install on the thing has completely failed to work with either the graphics card or the network card, despite hours troubleshooting and messing with drivers and whatnot. I also had a 2007 HP Pavillion Slimline back in the day, and right after the 1-year warrenty expired the motherboard died. Come to find out, that particular model was equipped with an inadequate fan that caused the motherboard to overheat, conveniently just after the warranty had expired.

In case that anyone is interested, currently my AMD CPU has a temperature of 48 °C (118 °F). Not bad at all on July.
Believe me or not, but before buying my notebook one of the first things that I checked was the size of the fan openings...

Didn't the laptop come with an XP installation CD or so ? That might be the only chance to get a working OS onto it.

Most of the laptops nowadays aren't supplied with a CD or DVD. You need to burn your own DVD using the supplied program, or rely on a rescue partition.

[Anonymissimus]

Looking for an updated distro that I could install on my secondary system, I was recently impressed by Xubuntu: a nice GUI that resembles Gnome 2 and doesn't require much horsepower.

Yeah, they're impressive, but the issue with these secondary Debian derivatives ("mainline" ubuntu being the primary one) are that they tend to work even less well with the hardware or at all, and they're not so long-term-supported. I have Lubuntu myself but it's not working that great.

[Svistwarrior273]

Looking for an updated distro that I could install on my secondary system, I was recently impressed by Xubuntu: a nice GUI that resembles Gnome 2 and doesn't require much horsepower.

Yeah, they're impressive, but the issue with these secondary Debian derivatives ("mainline" ubuntu being the primary one) are that they tend to work even less well with the hardware or at all, and they're not so long-term-supported. I have Lubuntu myself but it's not working that great.

Maybe Ubuntu is 'derivate' of Debian, but it is also (imho) much better in all ways.

[Anonymissimus]

Maybe Ubuntu is 'derivate' of Debian, but it is also (imho) much better in all ways.

-The complete ubuntu family is generally much more unstable than Debian.
-Hardware components tend to not work correctly or not at all with much higher probability than with Debian.
-Even the "lightweight" ubuntu derivatives tend to consume much more system resources than Debian, which can run with things like 16MB RAM or so.
-Debian is, in its heart and soul, an open source source project, while the ubuntu family is mainly driven by a company.

Ubuntus are solely just much more user friendly.

[lipk]

-Hardware components tend to not work correctly or not at all with much higher probability than with Debian.

Eh, that really depends on which component are we talking about. In my experience, for example, Ubuntu is pretty much the only distro which can properly handle 3G sticks.