06 Jun
Posted by: John in: Operating Systems, Linux, Ubuntu, Personal histories
Interesting snippet of personal history…
Thing went good till I was browsing the net and was greeted by message Windows is shutting down, Save all your files …
This happened several times whenever I accessed the net and realising that it was a virus, I quickly installed Norton 2003. But Norton did not detect the virus and I realised that the version was too old and did not have latest definitions. Luckily through Google I found out the solution in a magazine and removed the virus using Stinger.
I vowed that I will always used an antivirus and a firewall to avoid such fate. But thing went to square one as the computer became a snail again.
Finally I upgraded my PC’s RAM to 256 MB and had a much better PC experience.
But things did not end there, Windows had the tendency to slow down with time and eventually become a snail in spite of my RAM upgrade. Reinstalling Windows was a routine and a severe backache owing to poor installer by Microsoft.
I have to mention that whenever such problems occured I always swore at my PC and its ’slowness’. It never occurred to me the possibility of the fault of the operating system.
Beetween all I heard of another operating system called Linux…
16 Responses
Rishi
12|Jun|2007 1In my personal experience, Windows is known to slow down because of the way in which it boots up applications before they are necessary (Hence I have 69 Processes running on a computer that initially had 30 when MS was installed).
Original Sin
22|Jun|2007 2256MB ram? In 2007? My mobile phone has more memory. I am no apologist for Windows, but this story reads like “so I had this abacus, and Excelt just refused to install on it”…
Anonymous Coward
30|Jun|2007 3I use Linux. I love Linux.
But I have to say, I thought the exact same thing—256 mb of RAM?! I think I upgraded to that in like 1998.
Amy Brodzik
07|Jul|2007 4256 MB of RAM is plenty for a GUI on Linux, guys…
Linux Junkie
08|Jul|2007 5I too use and love Linux. 256mb is a good starting point, not everyone can afford more. BTW I use 2Gig.
DaGuru
11|Jul|2007 6Its not WINDOWS that is slowing you down. You have some shitty applications installed.
WinXP was released in 2001, so it runs very smoothly with 256mb RAM. It is actually faster than modern full-blown Linux desktops, as Linux’es are designed for 2007 hardware (with the exception of ultra-lite Linux releases like DSL or Puppy)
Edseverripit
12|Jul|2007 7I stumbled upon Linux four years ago out of curiousity and suprisingly, I use it a lot more than what’s on my other HD
Matthew
21|Aug|2007 8So DaGuru…
XP will not run smoothly on 256MB RAM…. ok, let me rephrase that… unless you do a clean install of the OS from MS media (NOT OEM “Restore” Disks) and tweak any possible settings toward your particular hardware, XP will not run smoothly on 256MB of RAM… Win98SE barely ran smoothly on 256MB RAM…
now, my first computer was a Mac Classic II… grayscale monitor, 4MB RAM 40MB hard drive, 14.4 modem… that was a machine! running Mac System 7.5, I had a fully integrated GUI-based OS in 1993 and it flew… (Microsoft’s first fully integrated GUI was XP!)…. Steve Jobs and Woz are my heroes!!!
Taz
29|Aug|2007 9I concur, I’d really like to see how much tweaking is needed to XP “so it runs very smoothly with 256mb RAM”. But then this is a moot point now since even MSFT is encouraging the masses to abandon the “old ways” and embrace Vista…
I struggle to stay productively expedient using our “corporate standard” of the MSFT platform and tools such as MS Office… as the days roll by, should I resist the urge to reboot for respite, my laptop becomes slower and slower… things start to not work “like they used to”… and then a reboot and TADA! like new but only for a few days.
Alas, the corporate giants who “see far” - or at least to their golden parachute - hold me, a unix devotee, a prisoner in a Windoze world.
Matthew
30|Aug|2007 10Taz,
Excellent point about the need to reboot just to make it work “like it used too”… i use XP at work (os x and debian at home) and if i didn’t turn off my computer at work every night, i would be in the same plight… my os x machine usually has uptime of 20 days or more… my debian machine usually has uptimes of 40 days or more… i only reboot os x when i install new software… i never reboot debian unless i need to change out hardware or add ram or something…
power to the people… not to Micro$oft…
Matt
RichLee
18|Sep|2007 11The OP just proves he doesn’t know what he’s doing. How in hell will he cope with tarballs, compiling apps and even the kernel on a Linux box?
Walt
20|Sep|2007 12I use Linux most of the time. My friend had trouble with his computer, P4 with 512mb of RAM, because his kids kept downloading crapware and it slowed the computer to the point it wouldn’t work at all. He was going to purchase a new machine. I told him to wait until I had a chance to fix it. I brought it home and installed Fedora Core 4 on it. His experienced changed greatly! No more slow machine, no more pop-ups (I got him using Firefox) no more crapware. Now, he is a happy newbie!
RichLee
20|Sep|2007 13Walt. That isn’t a problem with Windows; that’s a problem with a) the guy’s kids, b) him not knowing how to set up (I assume XP) with multiple accounts, and c) him not knowing to use Firefox instead of (I assume) IE6. The world has moved on and there is information about how to simply and easily protect a Windows box all over the web, but folks are still choosing to blame MS for their own idiocy. Sure there are issues, but if this lot is the best you can come up with then Ifor one am far from convinced to switch.
…and that’s without going into my personal experience of installing and using linux on the desktop over the last few years.
Rich
Mike
22|Oct|2007 14Rich Lee - the average Linux user only needs to put the Ubuntu live CD in the machine, reboot and select install. The rest happens by itself. I have Ubuntu running faster than xp on my laptop. Ubuntu is in a 10g partition and takes up 3gig of space. xp is in a 20gig partition with a 10gig windows rescue partition. They both have email and calendaring (outlook vs Evolution), Office suite ( office vs OpenOffice), web browsers (Firefox in both)
Yet some how Ubuntu fits in a little space while xp and office have bloated all over the place.
Bye bye microsoft.
Leothelion
27|Nov|2007 15WinXP was first bundled with PCs with only 128Mb RAM, which was a throwback to the days of Windows 95 installed on PCs with 8Mb of RAM!! Swap…swap..swap..swap went the hard drives!
WinXP runs best with 512-1Gb of RAM, it does run on a fast P4 or Athlon with 256Mb if you are just using Office - those modern day multifunction printer drivers will kill it though! Onboard graphics and its dead too!
Vista is a total joke, it needs 2Gb - 1Gb is not enough.
This is all why I switched to Mac recently. My MacbookPro which comes with 2Gb RAM as standard was voted the fastest Vista laptop recently, but I’ve resisted the temptation.
My high-spec PC has been given away and I’ve been downgraded to Compaq P4 2.4 with 512Mb RAM and runs XP SP2 quite happily. It doesn’t run photo apps so I’m getting away with it (I would have 1Gb of RAM usually)
Alan
Alan
Chris
12|Dec|2007 16I fail to see how that is NOT a Microsoft fault. You are saying that IE is broken and if people use it and have problems then they can’t blame Microsoft??
That’s like saying “I bought a car, but the wheels fall off. But it’s not the manufacturer’s fault, I should have known to put on other wheels.” This fails to compute.
Once again, if Windows was any good you wouldn’t need to do all these extra things to protect it. Sounds like flawed technology to me.
-c
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