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Windows 12 in the wings

Just my observations, I don't work in the sales department of any computer company or anything, but from I've seen, the "home desktop" is getting rarer. Plenty of desktops are still sold, from workstations to the massive gaming market (and it is huge), but the modern equivalent to the Dell Dimension 2400, a basic, barebones mainstream desktop with no fancy GPU or features, seems to be pretty uncommon, in contrast to the 2400, which you can seemingly find everywhere...
Such a system does exist, but the market's going mobile, there's no denying that.
 
Yes, that is what I said. I was referring to the consumer desktop market, not workstations or gaming desktops. Sorry if that was unclear.
 
No, what's always ridiculous is you constantly bashing Windows when there are currently about 600 Linux distros out there. That's what I call a crap shoot. I'm currently running W11 on 2 laptops and 2 desktops with no major issues.

Crap shoot? No, it's called free choice and an open market. Having hundreds of available Linux distributions means that there's more likely than not that one of them fits your needs in how you want your system to operate. Even if there's not, you can make your own Linux setup and audit everything that goes into it since all of the code is open. And just because there are hundreds of distributions, doesn't mean Linux isn't advancing. Distributions all use the same software and updates for individual packages are constantly being pushed upstream and trickle down to everyone.

With Microsoft, you're locked into a single vendor that has no direction, no idea what they're doing and use the end user as a product. The only thing holding Windows together is duct tape, chewing gum and hopes and dreams since they fired virtually all of their QA and testing department back at the end of Windows 7 and instead rely on Windows Insiders and the general public to do the testing for them. That has gone absolutely splendid for them, and by splendid, I mean terrible. Windows 10 has been a perpetual dumpster fire of hideously broken major updates after major updates. Windows 11 is in the same boat, except they stripped out more features just because, and made it into a Mac OS clone. Really surprised Apple hasn't sued them for trade dress.
 
I find it halarious that Windows users bring up dependency hell and don't mention DLL hell that went right back to MS Windows 3.x. For example some programs would not install/run if a curtain version of visual basic DLL, of which there was three iirc. was not install on your system.
 
Difference there is that nowadays you’re fine one you get visual c++ and all that on your system. And most installers will sort that out automatically nowadays. Admittedly I’m not sure how this works on Linux, but assuming it’s similar to Debian packaging on jailbroken iOS through cydia, you’d have to add additional repositories if a dependency isn’t on a main one?
 
You seemed to imply mid-towers were not regular desktops. Well, they really aren't. I prefer towers over straight desktops.
 
Like the difference between an old school “desktop” that’s flat/horizontal and a standing tower? I was talking about towers the whole time, sorry.
 
I'll buy a laptop when one comes with a 27" screen and full-travel keyboard. I've had laptops before and got rid of every single one of them, starting with a Grid. They're not made for humans--they're made to get humans to contort themselves from comfortable positions into pretzels.
I got a tablet; I've occasionally used it as a remote terminal, but not much else. Typing on one is the pits.
My take is that laptops are a way to sell e-waste for incredible amounts of cash. How many laptops can be upgraded with a new motherboard?
 
There were some older DELL AIO's that fit that description, like the XPS M2010 system... I think its 21" not quite 27". But it DOES have a full size keyboard.

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I find it halarious that Windows users bring up dependency hell and don't mention DLL hell that went right back to MS Windows 3.x. For example some programs would not install/run if a curtain version of visual basic DLL, of which there was three iirc. was not install on your system.

ERROR, you need MSVCRT32.DLL version 4.5.36.21 and you have version 4.5.36.20, entry point _lollergaggers_D3A521C not found. Try reinstalling the application.

Linux does have dependency hell issues as well, but they're generally easier to work around. Often times, it's just because an application is looking for a specific file name of a dependency, and you can just make a soft link to the different named one. You can use "ldd" in bash to figure out what a binary is needing. If it's a problem with the application itself, since the source is available, you can fix it.

The same is not so easy in Windows, especially with proprietary DLLs. If multiple applications are using the same shared DLL, and require different versions of that shared DLL with different entry points and functions, and there's no common version that has all of those, you're basically hosed. It used to be very common in the Windows 9x era for virtually everything, but now it's really only a problem in .NET framework crap. Microsoft says that each version within a branch is backwards compatible, but that's not the case many times. I've had applications require .NET 4.5 and refuse to install or run if you have the updates for it installed, which changes the version number to 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.8, etc.


I'll buy a laptop when one comes with a 27" screen and full-travel keyboard. I've had laptops before and got rid of every single one of them, starting with a Grid. They're not made for humans--they're made to get humans to contort themselves from comfortable positions into pretzels.
I got a tablet; I've occasionally used it as a remote terminal, but not much else. Typing on one is the pits.
My take is that laptops are a way to sell e-waste for incredible amounts of cash. How many laptops can be upgraded with a new motherboard?

I don't think such a beast would ever exist. Closest thing I can think of are the custom briefcase PCs, where a full gaming setup is shoehorned into a large steel briefcase and the lid is used to house the monitor. I guess with a sufficiently large briefcase, you could get a 27" or even 32" monitor to fit.
 
Difference there is that nowadays you’re fine one you get visual c++ and all that on your system. And most installers will sort that out automatically nowadays. Admittedly I’m not sure how this works on Linux, but assuming it’s similar to Debian packaging on jailbroken iOS through cydia, you’d have to add additional repositories if a dependency isn’t on a main one?
Are you sure about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell

Mind you I am not or ever been an IT tech.....
 
Yea, "gaming rig" is literally what kids call desktop computers these days.
I've never heard anyone (nope, not even people my age) use the term 'gaming rig' to refer to ALL desktops. On the other hand, my older brother's RGB-infested beast of a computer tower used primarily for gaming is, well, a gaming rig.

PC part manufacturers know a good chunk of gamers build their own PC's so many of the parts one can buy nowadays have the 'gamer' aesthetic to them - I think that's also where a lot of the 'gaming rig' terminology comes from.

Aside from the lack of RGB lighting (thankfully!) the new desktop we just built to replace my ThinkPad definitely has the 'gamer-y' aesthetic to it - but I'm not a big gamer so I hesitate to call it as such. I think "my Windows 10 box" may be more appropriate, to differentiate it from my P4 OptiPlex of course...
 
I’ve never ran into any DLL issues beyond missing visual c++ really.
 
This Windows vs. Linux debate is always tiresome to the rest of us whenever and wherever it pops up. How many times do you suppose that someone has abandoned their favorite operating system and chosen yours because of the arguments you make? You could probably count them on one hand with fingers left over. Here, I'll say what everyone wants to hear: I admit that your operating system is better than mine. That makes you a better, smarter, more virtuous, more attractive, funnier and sexier person than I am. Feel better now?
 
Funnily enough, what drove me to freenix was much less arguments for it than the fact that MS made it very, very, very clear with Win8/10 that all the things I liked about XP were going away, I was stupid for liking them, and they didn't want people like me around anymore. I'd go back in a heartbeat if they'd just give me back the options to disable all the stupidity, but all they're giving me currently is the middle finger. Well, here's hoping that ReactOS is oneday ready for primetime, next year in Jerusalem...
 
An OS driven by AI ?

I have enough trouble keeping stuff going after I 'accept' the latest Windows update. At least I have a chance of uninstalling the update, or Googling to see if anyone else has similar post-update problems.

With an AI-driven driven OS there would be no two systems in the world even remotely the same. If the AI sees you do a lot of, say, photo-editing, then it will twiddle and tweak your system to be 'better' for that task. If you are making music it will apply a different set of tweaks. If you use your PC for a range of different tasks you will have thousands of different lines of code than anybody else.

Microsoft will of course say this is because the PC is being optimised to your specific personal requirements, but I bet there won't be an opt-out option like I would really require.

How will IT departments do software audits on machines that are all different ?

And if it is a subscription-only OS then I'm out.
 
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