No more Microsoft or Apple products or services

English Open Chat
#1

My good friend came over my home earlier this night with his Dell XPS 15 notebook PC running Microsoft Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium Service Pack 1. I gave him my old Iomega eGO PLUS portable 500 GB Super Speed USB 3.0 hard disk drive. It comes with an Iomega Encryption Utility loaded on a virtual CD. He has to use the Iomega Encryption Utility in order to encrypt, lock, and reset the drive so that he can access it like a normal 500 GB portable hard disk drive.

It crashed his PC.

He can not boot into safe mode to uninstall it.

What’s my point?

I stopped using Microsoft Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 myself several weeks ago. I also stopped using Microsoft Office 2010 32 bit Professional Plus Service Pack 1. Ever since I stopped using Microsoft products and services and I made the switch from that platform to OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed GNU/Linux, my life has been a lot more affordable and enjoyable. Everything works right out of the box with my System76 Lemur Ultra Thin (lemu4) notebook PC and OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed GNU/Linux. I have saved a tremendous amount of money although I have spent an inordinate amount of my personal time by making the switch from Windows 7 64 bit to OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed. My productivity has gone way up and I am able to get real work done without it costing me a fortune to pay for every piece of software code that I need to use or worrying about malware, BSODs, and gradual degradation of PC performance over time typically associated with Microsoft software products.

In short, my quality of life dramatically improved by using OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed GNU/Linux!

How about you?

What are your stories that you wish to share with this community?

I made my final decision: I am not going to purchase Microsoft Windows 8 Pro 64 bit Upgrade for $39.99 USD. I am going to spend the $40 USD by purchasing a 32 GB Class 10 SDHC card this weekend. I need to use it with my Canon PowerShot A710 IS 7.1 megapixel digital camera. I only have a Pro Max 2 GB SD card and it is not big enough to store many pictures. At least I will know that it is fully compatible with my PC and digital camera and it won’t cause any problems for me once I get it.

I got my OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" 9.3 mm SATA-III 6 GB/s 25 nm toggle synchronous MLC NAND FLASH 120 GB Solid State Drive two days ago. Tomorrow, I will get my JacobsParts 2.5" 9.5 mm Super Speed USB 3.0 disk drive enclosure in the early afternoon. I plan to build my own external Super Speed USB 3.0 SSD. I am going to use YaST 2 -> Expert Partitioner -> dm-crypt/LUKS and I will format it using the /ext4 file system and encrypt it using AES CBC ESSIV:SHA-256 bits at 256 bits 14 rounds and SHA-1 hash algorithm. It will slow down the performance of the OCZ Vertex 3 SSD quite significantly because it will become incompressible data, but confidentiality and integrity are paramount to me.

I will not transfer my existing VM Ware Workstation 9 64 bit guest virtual machine with Microsoft Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 onto my new external SSD. I plan to install Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit GNU/Linux and Red Hat Fedora 17 64 bit GNU/Linux on it so that I can play with different and popular GNU/Linux distributions at very high speeds and performance. Or, I will leave it formatted and encrypted, but it will remain empty for a long period of time. It’s up to me to decide what I will do tomorrow.

As for Apple, they are just as bad as Microsoft. Vendor lock in, digital rights management, encryption, restrictions, limitations, closed source and proprietary hardware and software, etc. They perfected how to make the most money from their overly hyped and super expensive products and services for years.

No thank you very much!

System76 strikes the right balances and compromises. I like the company a lot. Their products are compatible with other GNU/Linux distributions including RPM based distributions because they use open standards. It’s quite terrific. I will continue to support System76 in the long term future.

OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed is the best GNU/Linux distribution that I have tried in a very long period of time. It has put an end to my merry go round distribution hopping habit.

#2

On 27/10/12 04:16, wellywu wrote:
> In short, my quality of life dramatically improved by using OpenSuSE 64
> bit Tumbleweed GNU/Linux!
You ought to get out more

#3

Yeah, this is true. I’m a home body. I like to stay at home most of the time.

Anyway, OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed was the best switch that I made in 2012. It definitely is superior to Ubuntu and Windows 7.

#4

On 27/10/12 06:46, wellywu wrote:
>
> Yeah, this is true. I’m a home body. I like to stay at home most of the
> time.
>
> Anyway, OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed was the best switch that I made in
> 2012. It definitely is superior to Ubuntu and Windows 7.
>
>

You commented in a different thread that you were planning to use windows 8
Sometimes it can take some time and experience to finally settle on
something. I’m not sure Tumbleweed is the best choice, but I’m glad you
like it. So long as you are prepared for the fact that it’s a completely
different ‘kettle of fish’ than anything windows has to offer.

#5

One thing that you should know about me is that I make do make final decisions rather haphazardly. I like to waffle quite a bit especially late at night when I should be sleeping.

Windows 8 Pro 64 bit is released and not a lot of users have commented about it that much. It’s mostly the technology journalists that make their living that have published most of what we know about Windows 8 so far.

I don’t know if I will upgrade or if I will stop using Windows altogether yet. I’m waiting for a decision leading to a letter of acceptance to Montclair State University to determine if I should continue using Windows 7 or if I will upgrade to Windows 8. That might take until late December 2012 for MSU to make a decision. My application is incomplete and I need my community college undergraduate transcript to be submitted before it can be considered. MSU does not have any plans to support Windows 8.

I want to upgrade, but I don’t know all of the problems involved in doing so. Right now, I need my disk drive enclosure so that I can build my external SSD and then I can transfer my vmware folder to it. If VM Ware Workstation 9 64 bit works with Windows 7 64 bit guest virtual machine, then I can consider upgrading to Windows 8 Pro 64 bit. If this does not work, then I have to troubleshoot the problems involved. OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed upgrades the Linux kernel to the latest stable release quite frequently. This means that I will have to use an unofficial third party patch for VM Ware Workstation 9 64 bit to make it work regarding the vmware kernel modules. This is a major pain in the ass, but I’m willing to tolerate it because workstation is so advanced compared to Oracle VM Virtualbox in terms of features and performance.

I plan to stay up all night long tonight while I wait for my Amazon package to be delivered to my home. If everything I described works well enough, then I will upgrade.

I want to see what Windows 8 Pro 64 bit offers in terms of new features on my System76 Lemur Ultra Thin (lemu4) notebook PC. It is a very different kettle of fish, but I’m prepared to swim through the currents.

I have until January 31st, 2013 to make my decision before this special low upgrade price disappears forever. That should be enough time for MSU to make their decision, but I want to try Windows 8 Pro 64 bit today to scratch my itch. I’ve been reading that the Release Preview is nothing like RTM in terms of performance and stability.

The other part of me wants to stick with GNU/Linux and avoid Microsoft altogether. OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed works right out of the box with little fuss. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. However, I like to break things that work only to fix them up later on. I’m a tinkerer at heart and I like to mess around with new technologies.

To be quite honest and truthful, I doubt that MSU will offer me support for GNU/Linux. They don’t even have a Linux or BSD team on campus to help faculty, staff, and students if they run into a problem.

I used to be the Help Desk and Support Technician at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ. I know when stuff breaks and I have to fix it somehow. When I break hardware or software, I can usually fix the problem quickly.

I imagine that Windows 8 Pro is the same. My understanding is that Microsoft has not fixed the upgrade process problems. Some Windows XP, Vista, and 7 users are reporting that the upgrade process fails even if their PCs and software pass the compatibility check because they are given invalid activations or product keys for Windows 8 Pro 64 bit. They are also reporting that the payment processing system is unavailable or it does not process their payments correctly which means that they can’t use Windows 8 Pro 64 bit upgrade yet.

I sure as heck know that Microsoft is working with its partners to investigate and resolve these problems right now. I just hope that these problems don’t affect me by this afternoon when I am ready to upgrade myself.

#6

Windows 8 Pro 64 bit requires WDDM and I will need to install Microsoft DirectX 9 or higher to get the advanced graphics features and performance.

VM Ware Workstation 9 64 bit with a GNU/Linux host keeps telling me that the 3D graphics hardware acceleration is not available. I can’t use Windows Aero in Windows 7 right now because of this bug. VM Ware does not say when they will offer this support for GNU/Linux hosts yet. It is only available for Microsoft Windows Vista and 7 users running Windows 8 or GNU/Linux using OpenGL 3.0 and MESA 8.3 or higher as guest virtual machines. This means that I would probably run into a problem when I try to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro 64 bit. I am expecting the hardware and software compatibility check to highlight these issues. The problem is that it is up to VM Ware to fix these problems for their GNU/Linux customers.

So, the decision to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro 64 bit might not be within my grasp after all based on my careful research into this matter.

#7

My Microsoft Windows 7 64 bit guest virtual machine is busted. It keeps saying that I can not power it on because it can not connect to a peer. So, I deleted it permanently.

Now, I am not using Microsoft Windows anymore. I have the option of re-installing everything from scratch which will take me about 4 - 6 hours of hard work today. I might skip doing this altogether.

I am going to delete my Microsoft Office 2010 32 bit Professional Plus Service Pack 1 bottle that I installed using Codeweavers CrossOver for Linux 32 bit version 11.2.1. Not all of the office software products work like Info Path and Share Point. These are the premium office products that are found with professional plus version. They don’t work just yet.

I have found LibreOffice to be a suitable alternative. It works perfectly.

Free libre open source software just works right out of the box. Closed source, proprietary hardware and software does not work. This has been my experience with GNU/Linux thus far.

#8

I am free of Microsoft hardware and software products and services now!

Yipee!

None of that **** worked well on OpenSuSE 64 bit Tumbleweed or Ubuntu 12.04.1 64 bit LTS anyway. I had too many problems with getting Microsoft products to play nicely.

Now, I am a big believer in FLOSS. It just works!

Success!

#9

Hi all

I dual boot my machine with Windows 7 still. Why? Because of the games. I use windows exclusively for games and Linux for everything else. I don’t think Windows 7 is a bad operating system, not at all. But I prefer UNIX and I like idea of open and free software!

Now that Steam is getting ported to GNU/Linux there is a chance that the games market will expand onto Linux but is still to be seen. It is an interesting development nevertheless.