PureBasic Forums - English

ok, my brother got Linspire 5-0 for his birthday, didnt like it too much, and sent me the CD. i should have known after he passed it up, it was bad.

First of all, i had a 20 GIG hard drive with a few tiny errors on it i used for just storage, and then i tried to put Fedora 4 on it, CRASH. Tried Linspire, CRASH. why does windows allow some errors but Linux wont? borrowed a hard drive from our IT guy, and guess what? CRASH. my Dual Xeon processors just dont seem to work with it. Neither will load after installing AT ALL. ot it might be my NVIDIA 6800 ultra extreme 256 meg card.

i take it to my home PC, an AMD 2800 with 1 gig of RAM, and a 256 meg NVIDIA, and it finally installs. however, it runs soooo much slower than windows. I also download PB Linux, and install it, and PB wont run one bit. i cant find the IDE on the new beta version.

how on earth did such a diffucult operating system ever get sold? i thought linux was supposed to be cleaner and faster than windows? on my home PC i have XP Pro with absolute minumum install, and a good FX 5600 NVIDIA 256 meg card. my other computer at school is dual XEON with 3 gigs ram, and a NVIDIA 6800 ultra extreme 256 meg card. i thought linux was going to be faster than imaginable on my school computer. im really disappointed. any suggestions?

I've only played with Linux via a bootable Knoppix CD. Can't say I like the
OS either. Too many options for just about everything. Simplicity is best.

Install Windows 98.

Do you think this is funny? I use it!!!

Did you try to format the HD? Maybe that's the problem.

Abut Linux being slow, well, I think It's not that slower than winXP. But definitively it's a lot more complicated if you aren't used with it (my case).

Sorry, I didn't help you after all...
But soon someone smarter than me will.

> Install Windows 98.
> Do you think this is funny? I use it!!!

I'm getting really sick of Win XP at the moment, it's getting terribly slow for
me lately for some reason. Even opening folders takes about 5 seconds.
So yeah, I was considering just re-installing Win 98se again. But, there's
two things stopping me:

(1) No support for NTFS, which I need for video capturing of large files.
(2) No System Restore, which I've come to depend on with XP lately.

I know Win ME has System Restore, but does it support NTFS? Anyone?

Win ME doesn't support NTFS. But I think it's got more bugs than 98SE, anyway. :roll:

Why do you need the system restore so often?

> Why do you need the system restore so often?

I like to use it before installing apps, so after testing I can roll back to a
clean state if I don't want to keep them. Keeps the Registry clean.

But, I guess it's not really that important. The speed of 98se compared to
XP on my hardware is amazing... but I can't get by without NTFS. And
let's face it: XP doesn't really do anything more for me than 98se does.
All I do is web surf and code mainly... XP is a massive overkill for that.
(I only use it because my Dad bought it for me so I can help him via
Remote Assistance, but we ended up using UltraVNC instead -- LOL!).

You can keep your registry clean if you back up it before installing any app. And if you want NTFS just because of compression, use winzip or record everything on CDR's. Or wait till Windows VISTA, maybe it's better than XP.

> You can keep your registry clean if you back up it before installing any app

Can you recommend any freeware Registry backup app? And will they delete
any entries that were added AFTER the backup? That would be essential.

> if you want NTFS just because of compression

No, it's because FAT32 only supports files up to 4 GB in size. With video
capture, I need 13 GB per file per hour -- only NTFS can do that. (There
are ways to split the files into 4 GB segments for FAT32, but I'd rather not
at this time).

> Or wait till Windows VISTA

Hehehe, that'll be even slower for me than XP, look at my system specs.
And like someone said in an Aussie PC magazine: why do I need VISTA
just to surf the web and write some documents? Just so I can see a lens
flare when I open a window? So true!

Oh yeah: VISTA = Virus Infections, Spyware, Trojans, Adware. Hehehe.
And no, that's not mine, I saw it somewhere and think it's great!

LOL ...

That will improve performance!

Anyway, you can cheaply upgrade to an AMD a get a better video card

That will sure make a diference...

Here are also some tips to improve XP performance:

- MyComputer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance - Visual (set it to best performance)

- MyComputer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance - Advanced -> Virtual Memory (create a 32Mb swap file on C: and if you have another HD create on it a 396Mb swap (min and max the same))

- MyComputer -> Properties -> Advanced -> StartUp Recovery (disable Automatacally boot)

- MyComputer -> Properties -> System Restore (all off)

- MyComputer -> Properties -> Remote (all off)

Go to the ScreenSaver properties -> Power Options -> Hibernate (disable it.... you'll recover 512Mb on HD)


Last but not least DEFRAG the Hard Drives !!!

PB wrote:Can you recommend any freeware Registry backup app? And will they delete
any entries that were added AFTER the backup? That would be essential.

Ashampoo UnInstaller.
Before install something it inspects your current system configuration.
After installing it asks to save the log.(very small usually, 3kb).
I have used it 'cause it does what it says very well. The only thing negative i had to point was the time.(Sometimes is boring to open the prog, select the setup file and bla, bla,bla)
Ha!, and its free, just aks you to register in the site for free to receive the serial number.

> [VISTA] will improve performance!

LOL, how? According to "Microsoft Watch" it requires 2 GB of RAM and a
dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6 ghz and 1 TB of hard drive space. Now
explain how that will improve performance for me?

> Anyway, you can cheaply upgrade to an AMD a get a better video card

Assuming one has money to spare... I never really do. Besides, my
motherboard is ancient and can't upgrade to anything better than what's
in there (so I've been told many times).

As for your tips, I've tried most of them, to no avail:

"Best performance" for visuals doesn't speed up anything at all. Still get
slow opening folders. Maybe my hard drives are the problem? They're
fairly new though, one is 5400 RPM and the other faster (can't remember
its speed).

My swap file is not on my C (boot) drive; it's on the faster drive.

I have automatic rebooting disabled for errors.

System Restore is ON, but only for drive C (system). I guess I could turn
it off, but dunno. Can it be turned off until I want to make a snapshot,
then turn it on temporarily to create a manual snapshot? I'd be happy
to do it that way, but it probably doesn't work like that. I'll give it a try
though, and see.

Remote all off -- what do you mean by that?

Hibernation -- This is on but that doesn't affect runtime speed, it only
kicks in when I choose to hibernate, doesn't it? Besides, I used to have
it off and it didn't make any difference to performance.

Defrag -- I've never seen this to help. I've done it, but boot times and
general runtime of Windows is still the same. No noticeable improvement.

> Ashampoo UnInstaller.
> Before install something it inspects your current system configuration.
> After installing it asks to save the log.(very small usually, 3kb).

Yes, but what about files and Registry entries created by the installed app
AFTER installation and DURING its runtime? It's these that uninstallers can
never catch and remove... whereas System Restore CAN because it's a
"blanket" Registry restorer (much like Norton Ghost).

PB wrote:> [VISTA] will improve performance!

LOL, how? According to "Microsoft Watch" it requires 2 GB of RAM and a
dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6 ghz and 1 TB of hard drive space. Now
explain how that will improve performance for me?

Microsoft seem to play fast and loose with their OS requirements. I'm currently running an AMD64 2400+ (single core), 512 meg RAM, GF4 TI4400 MyVivo (old), 160 gig hard disk and the beta of vista was no slower on this machine that xp was. The install only took a gig or so.

So, I question "Microsoft Watch's" assertion of "2 GB of RAM and a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6 ghz and 1 TB"

Going from past experience, when they go gold with vista and have removed all the debugging code, the requirements should drop even more.

> I question "Microsoft Watch's" assertion of "2 GB of RAM and a dual-core
> CPU running at 4 to 6 ghz and 1 TB"

I'm just going by what they said. They were referring to a best-option
install, but still, even a "minor" install of VISTA sounds pretty hefty.

On a side-note, the following pic has just reinforced my need for System
Restore and my lack of trust of "install watcher" apps... this is an actual
screenshot of Ashampoo's own Uninstaller app that I just installed to give
a try -- I didn't like it, and went to uninstall it... and look what happened!
I'm so glad I made a Restore point before installing it! The irony of this
is beyond words. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I have Linux running great on a 9 yr old 200Mhz Pentium notebook (and several other computers). Unless you are prepared to do some reading then stick with Windows. Think of it like being in a prison - if you are all nice and cosy, but still locked up/in, then ok. Moving to Linux is like breaking out, it ain't easy but once you manage it then you are FREE