• 0 Posts
  • 507 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 16th, 2023

help-circle
  • So, Windows is harder to use you say. And “incompetent” users should stick to Linux?

    That’s a take that would have been absurd many years ago. I personally am willing to do things the hard way for some benefit, so I have a Windows PC for gaming. But all my other systems are Linux systems, laptop, workstation, or embedded. However Windiws is supposed to be the easier choice.

    I’ll even grant that Windows PITA is mostly not deliberate action by Microsoft. It’s mostly letting vendors be their crappy self and messing up the experience, with a bit of windows driver model incompatibilities breaking hardware support abandoned by vendor, but kept alive Linux side.


  • Main issue is the inconsistent drivers naturally included in Windows update and just how many things demand you install a weird vendor specific driver, with the steward of what should be a generic Winfows driver sometimes breaking things for other vendors, and/or neglecting the Windows update vintage of their driver.

    Architecturally, the Windows driver model should be saner, but for most random devices I have better luck with Linux in how drivers are maintained and supported over time.


  • I found it relatable because just last night same thing happened in my windows boot, but all of a sudden it decided I had no wifi adapter, even though it worked fine in Linux and hadn’t broken in Windows before. I see it indicating an error in device manager, found a “guide” that specifically called out that device manager error that suggests rebooting the router, because people writing websites troubleshooting guides are morons. The driver model has some weird behaviors that make device behavior more convoluted.

    In Linux, generally it either loads and works or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t, you absolutely need a fixed driver or the hardware has a problem. In Windows it can absolutely not work and you go through some weird things, end up with exact same driver and version as before but suddenly it actually works…






  • There was also the prolific serial to USB components. The market was flooded with perfectly functional clones. Prolific deliberately broke support for clones, penalizing a ton of people who had no idea.

    When people did too good a job cloning some of their chips, they made the driver break even their own chips.

    Of course, in this case the vendor got their stuff into the standard Windows driver without even needing users to download anything…

    The ultimate effect is that our datacenter just uses Linux laptops because in practice serial adapters for Windows are just too unreliable unless we try to be supply chain detectives for the cheap little serial adapters we buy.







  • Well that screenshot was accurate for Gentoo circa 2005, it’s just the worst choice for ease of install, with Linux graphical installs provided by suse, mandrake, and redhat from the 90s.

    Fair point could be made that the out of box experience was sorely lacking and you pretty much had to configure;make install most software you actually wanted…


  • That’s a good point, also if you can compare like to like conditions and what the data does if you exclude teen drivers. Also if you can identify incidents related to bald tires and brake failures that wouldn’t apply.

    Also would be interesting to compare human augmented driving miles to full autonomous miles. With the automated emergency braking/collision alert/lane centering assist. Anecdotally was teaching my teen to drive. Suddenly a car pulls out right in front of us, zero warning. If that happened to me, with experience on a formerly normal car, I’m pretty sure I would’ve wrecked. However my kids reflex to swerve triggered the cars “evasive steering assist” and did an action movie worthy maneuver, avoiding going off into the ditch and returning just right into the lane after getting around the other car.

    Thing about autonomous driving is that it seems to get the stupid easy stuff wrong in dangerous ways, but if you have a demanding precise maneuver to make, it has a better chance once that maneuver is needed.


  • The challenge is one approach only needs to modify the transit infrastructure. The other means having to tear down and build new commercial and residential properties and force people and businesses to relocate in order to have a vaguely sane transit system. My area desperately wanted to do transit but even with rather significant hypothetical funding, they could only service about 10-15% of typical trips. They’ve settled on a plan that is much less money, but only serves like 5% of trips. To go with that plan, they are making restrictions around zoning to force mid density mixed use construction only, favoring one of the two chosen transit corridors.

    They are trying but just people are distributed very awkwardly for mass transit.