Actually, they are great machines. The new Surface Book is very compelling. I've put some time in on the 2 and 3.
They are pricey, like Apple is. You pay for some great design. Microsoft upped it's game with the Surface series of machines. They offer a user experience on par with, but different from Apple. Good times for people into great hardware.
I'm probably going to get a Book to go with my Mac. Travel is one of the reasons.
My Lenovo is a tank. Fast, rugged, but heavy and bulky too.
That one will probably become the Prop d3v machine, like the old T60 was.
Yeah, yeah, you know me, I don't actually want the MS user experience. Or should I say only as far as the hardware provides in this case. Actually getting any work done with a Windows OS is all but impossible. However it looks like I will have to be travelling with one piece of software that is strictly Windows only
I use it a lot for similar reasons. So, I optimize it all and have few worries. Might be making another job change. Linux could play a bigger role. If so, great!
Anyway, lots of non developer types will and do appreciate these things. I see people moving off Mac OS because of the Surface. That is notable.
If you have to go Windows only, A surface is a fine device to do that with. Highly recommended on that basis. Hyper V works great. Put your favorite Linux in there, full screen it and nobody has to know.
I've done the VM thing with Virtual Box and VmWare, works but always brought issues of it's own. Never tried Hyper V, may be a better way to go on a Windows machine I guess.
Mind you I just discovered Babun http://babun.github.io/ a streamline way to install and use cygwin. With that the Sublime or Atom editor and a few other odds and ends we might be in business.
About "the trend" (toward having smaller computers without cd/dvd players, I guess you have to make sure that you get one with an OS already installed, and worry about how you would do a re-install later. At this point I am not sure what my next step is going to be)...
New Win & Mac computers generally provide a restore partition that allows repair or replacement of the OS. Rebooting to the restore partition, gives options to repair/restore without need of an optical drive. Removing cd/dvd drives allows portables to be lighter in weight and desktop units to become more like Brix and Mac Minis. You do pay a price for miniaturization (a bit of a loss in capability).
You can purchase USB-based DVD drives (they are as cheap as $19 U.S. at NewEgg) for those times when optical solutions are needed.
For those people in the situation of having bought a computer where the recovery information is stored on a hidden (or visible) disk drive partition, be advised that one of the most common failure points is the disk drive. If that happens, it's good bye recovery options.
These computers always come with a utility to make restore disks, but in my experience people rarely do it. Bad thing is those restore disks will almost always include all the original bloatware/Smile ware/trial ware. Microsoft may allow you to download a plain, OEM install .iso if you provide a CoA number. If so, that's the way to go.
Disks may not be around that much longer. Some motherboard manufacturers have started using flash drives for driver "disks".
I do not use optical disks at all now, for anything at all, unless there is no other option.
This year, I did need to restore a OS on a machine with a failed HDD. I just fetched an ISO from Microsoft and did an install. I burn those, and dont care too much what happens.
These days, if someone has a product key, loading the OS is not generally the worry it once was.
When I get hardware, I toss the driver disks the moment I have current downloaded. Most stuff I need is on a USB drive in various forms, and that drive is bootable.
an OS that "Just Works". criteria:
- Free
- SimpleIDE
- Network
- Printer
After you get the "Just Works" OS installed, then the capability to fine tune could be a plus.
I didn't read all four pages of posts, but I suggest a look at Linux Mint 17.2 MATE. Its like windows without the problems. It does have different issues, but these are usually fixed fairly quickly. It doesn't have the crappy GUI that tried to make you PC into an IPone like ubuntu and window currently inflict, its just the plain old desktop without the built-in spyware. I use it for everything these days.
Microsoft has been working hard in this area and may have proprietary code on the solid-state harddisk that doesn't tolerate a legacy MBR boot, or Linux's transistion to new alternatives.
Are you saying that Microsoft now has some sort of control over the SSD market and the units that are being produced? You must be pretty well connected to have some insider information like that.
Ray
Not well-connected at all, just deeply concerned with Microsoft's attempts to create a defacto-standard file system that encrypts the hard disk. Linux is not in the development loop. A BIOS that favors Windows can be a very mischevious thing.
The makers of hard disks have enjoyed a partnership with Microsoft for a long time and the boot interface can easily be made to perform in a legacy mode or switch to an enhanced proprietary mode without either MS or the hard disk makers telling the world it is so.
Linux plays catch-up with whatever Microsoft does and Linux does not have any favored partnership position with hardware makers. Linux tends to create value in the oppositive direction by enduring support of legacy devices, older 2nd hand machines.
In short, you never know what new feature might arrive in the mix on a Windows platform.
++++++++++++
Anyway, I find the BRIX very appealing. I dont' really need another computer at all. But the price point and the add on of a SSD has begun to interest me enough to consider getting one.
++++++++++++
And, the MBR may not be an issue at all. I do NOT have any USB3.0, but it just could be that the USB3.0 has some snags in using a USB as a surrogate boot hard drive.
So what hapened with this? Did the Brix live up to its unfortunate name?
This isn't the Brix thread. This is the "searching for a free OS that works like Windows" thread.
The Brix I have is fine. No problems at all and excellent performance/cost ratio. Linux just seems to have on again-off again issues seeing Windows computers on a LAN.
Yes, my Gigabyte "looking for a free just works OS" Brix box is living up to, and maybe surpassing its name. For an initial $99 investment, I got what I was looking for.
Now I am going to start trying out the xxxBSD and derivatives of UNIX. Somewhere somehow...
(Easiest) Mac ——-> Windows ——-> Linux ——-> BSD ——-> UNIX (Most challenging)
From what little I have read, those OSes are heavy into requiring you to compile your own binaries from source code.
Unlike Linux that often has repositories that offer tons of ready-to-go software, you are going to spend quite a bit of time and effort with a cross-compiler.
Actually the xxxBSD architecture is supposed to be a step up from Linux in performance, but I fear you have crossed the Rubicon into the land of serious profession programing.
I played with FreeBSD a few years ago, I played with PC-BSD a few years ago. I think it was when 9 first came out. With that release they were working very hard to make it easily installable...you know, like Windows
It was pretty close at that time, now 10 is the mainline and 11 is coming soon.
I should try it again sometime when I get the itch to try a new distro.
With it like other things being less popular, it will have fewer options in the software repositories.
I believe it is a popular choice for NAS servers and also has good security features...maybe use it as a firewall/router on the front of your network?
What a stupid (mostly) list of 10 difference between Linux and BSD:
1) Mostly correct but "The GPL attempts to prevent the distribution of binary-only source." is way off the mark.
2) ...the Linux kernel is mostly controlled by Linus Torvalds... Ultimately yes but Linus has a lot of trusted subsystem maintainers who do the bulk of the work in deciding what is in or out. Even Linus cannot deal with the incredibly rapid rate of change of the Linux source.
4) "BSD is what you get when a bunch of UNIX hackers sit down to try to port a UNIX system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a UNIX system for the PC." Perhaps. Who cares? As long as the thing is posix compliant.
10) "From the left to the right we go from the least PC-savvy users to the most PC-savvy users."
Mac ——-> Windows ——-> Linux ——-> BSD ——-> UNIX
Really? Most savvy developers I know use Macs! I'm sure there are very savvy users of all those systems who know them inside out. Perhaps you won't find many grannies surfing facebook or kids playing games on BSD or UNIX. So what?
Sometime in the 00's, a friend and I setup FreeBSD to make a sendmail front end for Exchange. We did it, because putting Windows right on the net didn't sit well with us.
Installation, sans graphics toys, was easy. The common infrastructure type software was there, and it too was really easy. "sendmail, mysql, firewall, etc..."
If you want a working desktop with a lot of nice things, that's some work, but not too much work. When you get it done, it's likely to work well. Never had a bit of trouble with that server. It just worked, but it was whittled down to a few specific purposes too. Little to go wrong.
Configuration was old school simple. Edit the file, restart or refresh whatever daemons are involved, go.
Anyone wanting to roll their own and build a minimal, no cruft, just works fast and clean system, has a chance of liking FreeBSD. If that seems like work to you, then you probably won't like FreeBSD.
Re: Developers and the Mac.
Yeah, tons of them. I've got friends in most of the shiny Internet companies you know. Apple rules the roost all over the place. A few of those companies have ONE PC, and it's to support people running that code and to validate unit tests. They do the test suite so they don't have to run a PC. lol
BTW, the only reason UNIX itself is hard is due to the fact that you will need to compile most software you need. That was the norm when I was running SGI IRIX. System setup was easy, so was networking, filesystems, and so forth. Once the basics got done, the compiler native to the system and gcc were the next order of business.
From there, build a lot of stuff, or go and find it from people who did build it.
There was that great picture taken at a Microsoft developer conference, pretty much all the laptop lids in the audience had Apple logos on them! Wish I could find it now.
I'm all up for installing from source and such. Compiling kernels and building an entire system from source is what I do when I can't sleep
Problem is I find myself juggling Linux on x86 PCs, ARM and MIPS machines. Power PC in embedded systems in the past and hopefully RISC V in the future. Not to mention the cloud servers of Amazon and Google. As far as I know the BSDs don't have anything like such wide platform support. This kind of kills my enthusiasm for spending any time getting familiar with it.
I have turned my PC into a Linux PC using Ubuntu because of this forum (and the hard drive dying). It's not quiet as bad as I thought it would be command line wise, and I got my $25 laser printer talking to the PC, so I am happy so far. I have found Linux very close to the windows experience IMHO
I personally enjoy the command line interface as that is where all the legacy UNIX utilities really help one become savy and powerful. Plus the built-in manuals can be brought up in a terminal for just about any important document.
Knowledge of Linux grows with use.
I think quite a bit of the negativity about using Linux at the command line is just inexperience. If you have to type a lengthy detailed command and get it wrong, the UP and DOWN arrow keys will bring you to it again so you can re-edit. In other words, the more I use the command line, the more intelligently I am using it. But it is a learning curve.
Linux works very hard to have a combination of the computer and the WWW provide all the manuals, HOWTO tutorials, and documentation available through your computer and for free. I realize that this can be overwhelming at first, but eventually it provides much more opportunity to learn and is a huge savings of $$$.
I previously used and really enjoyed an SSD on my EEEpc 701/4G, but I decided to wait quite awhile before getting an SSD for another computer as a lot of factors were 'under development' and there was a huge debate on how to best protect one.
This article claims that 'with 10 year warrenties', there is nothing to worry about. But the Transcend SSD370s I just purchased offers only a 3 year warranty. I will try it out, but remain cautious.
I don't know how much we can trust those health status figures. But at least we get to see if anything seems to be going down hill or reaching end of life.
I just assume the thing could fail instantly at any time and have everything that needs to be is backed up.
Throwing caution to the wind, are we?
I presume that the SSDs that are lowest priced available might be amongst the most problematic. I could have easily paid 50% more for another brand.
And the simple fact is that a wise system builder does try to become informed about the hard disks that they desire to commit their data to.
I'll run a smartctl and fstrim just to see what happens at this point. I have to do some maths to confirm that my SSD is using 4096 byte blocks, then I will do a mkfs on the partition(s) I have established. Do I have mkfs the Swap disk partition?
About the only warrenty that matters in Taiwan is the one week return to the retailer. The longer manufacturers warranty may or may not come through.
Yes, and no, perhaps. Of course I must have spent half an hour scanning over Debian SSD related documentation before running out and buying and SSD. Like "Will it even work at all?", "What weird magic do I need to make it so?". Did not find and show stoppers so I slapped it in and it worked
Now, I gave up following the sad saga of "discard" and "TRIM". Yes ext4 has trim, but no it's not always working/reliable/safe, neither Debian or Ubuntu use the "discard" option on mounting an SSD. They use cron/systemd jobs to run fstrim automatically. It's an endless rabbit hole so I just tried fstrim manually, seems to do something, nothing broken yet.
I don't "commit" my data to a drive. Drives, of any type, are unreliable and bound to fail eventually. As is any other component in the system. Drives and the computers they sit in are expendable. My data is splattered around a bunch of computers locally and on servers on both sides of the atlantic.
Comments
They are pricey, like Apple is. You pay for some great design. Microsoft upped it's game with the Surface series of machines. They offer a user experience on par with, but different from Apple. Good times for people into great hardware.
I'm probably going to get a Book to go with my Mac. Travel is one of the reasons.
My Lenovo is a tank. Fast, rugged, but heavy and bulky too.
That one will probably become the Prop d3v machine, like the old T60 was.
Anyway, lots of non developer types will and do appreciate these things. I see people moving off Mac OS because of the Surface. That is notable.
If you have to go Windows only, A surface is a fine device to do that with. Highly recommended on that basis. Hyper V works great. Put your favorite Linux in there, full screen it and nobody has to know.
Mind you I just discovered Babun http://babun.github.io/ a streamline way to install and use cygwin. With that the Sublime or Atom editor and a few other odds and ends we might be in business.
New Win & Mac computers generally provide a restore partition that allows repair or replacement of the OS. Rebooting to the restore partition, gives options to repair/restore without need of an optical drive. Removing cd/dvd drives allows portables to be lighter in weight and desktop units to become more like Brix and Mac Minis. You do pay a price for miniaturization (a bit of a loss in capability).
You can purchase USB-based DVD drives (they are as cheap as $19 U.S. at NewEgg) for those times when optical solutions are needed.
Did the Gigabyte Brix come without any OS?
dgately
Yeah, it depends on your issues. Hyper V performs well on a lot of what I do.
These computers always come with a utility to make restore disks, but in my experience people rarely do it. Bad thing is those restore disks will almost always include all the original bloatware/Smile ware/trial ware. Microsoft may allow you to download a plain, OEM install .iso if you provide a CoA number. If so, that's the way to go.
Disks may not be around that much longer. Some motherboard manufacturers have started using flash drives for driver "disks".
This year, I did need to restore a OS on a machine with a failed HDD. I just fetched an ISO from Microsoft and did an install. I burn those, and dont care too much what happens.
These days, if someone has a product key, loading the OS is not generally the worry it once was.
When I get hardware, I toss the driver disks the moment I have current downloaded. Most stuff I need is on a USB drive in various forms, and that drive is bootable.
I didn't read all four pages of posts, but I suggest a look at Linux Mint 17.2 MATE. Its like windows without the problems. It does have different issues, but these are usually fixed fairly quickly. It doesn't have the crappy GUI that tried to make you PC into an IPone like ubuntu and window currently inflict, its just the plain old desktop without the built-in spyware. I use it for everything these days.
http://linuxmint.com/rel_rafaela_mate_whatsnew.php
So, where are we? Originally it was OS issues, is it now USB Flash is not seen?
See here, http://www.dodgycoder.net/2014/08/how-to-setup-gigabyte-brix-gb-bxbt-2807.html
Step #3, the system may be looking for the USB drive without giving it enough time to enumerate.
http://www.dodgycoder.net/2014/08/how-to-setup-gigabyte-brix-gb-bxbt-2807.html
Also, Debian on Brix.
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/222145/debian-on-a-brix-lan-card-drivers
Not well-connected at all, just deeply concerned with Microsoft's attempts to create a defacto-standard file system that encrypts the hard disk. Linux is not in the development loop. A BIOS that favors Windows can be a very mischevious thing.
The makers of hard disks have enjoyed a partnership with Microsoft for a long time and the boot interface can easily be made to perform in a legacy mode or switch to an enhanced proprietary mode without either MS or the hard disk makers telling the world it is so.
Linux plays catch-up with whatever Microsoft does and Linux does not have any favored partnership position with hardware makers. Linux tends to create value in the oppositive direction by enduring support of legacy devices, older 2nd hand machines.
In short, you never know what new feature might arrive in the mix on a Windows platform.
++++++++++++
Anyway, I find the BRIX very appealing. I dont' really need another computer at all. But the price point and the add on of a SSD has begun to interest me enough to consider getting one.
++++++++++++
And, the MBR may not be an issue at all. I do NOT have any USB3.0, but it just could be that the USB3.0 has some snags in using a USB as a surrogate boot hard drive.
This isn't the Brix thread. This is the "searching for a free OS that works like Windows" thread.
The Brix I have is fine. No problems at all and excellent performance/cost ratio. Linux just seems to have on again-off again issues seeing Windows computers on a LAN.
The thread I started about the Brix is here:
http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/162642/cheap-new-computer
Now I am going to start trying out the xxxBSD and derivatives of UNIX. Somewhere somehow...
Ray
(Easiest) Mac ——-> Windows ——-> Linux ——-> BSD ——-> UNIX (Most challenging)
From what little I have read, those OSes are heavy into requiring you to compile your own binaries from source code.
Unlike Linux that often has repositories that offer tons of ready-to-go software, you are going to spend quite a bit of time and effort with a cross-compiler.
Actually the xxxBSD architecture is supposed to be a step up from Linux in performance, but I fear you have crossed the Rubicon into the land of serious profession programing.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-differences-between-linux-and-bsd/
It was pretty close at that time, now 10 is the mainline and 11 is coming soon.
I should try it again sometime when I get the itch to try a new distro.
With it like other things being less popular, it will have fewer options in the software repositories.
I believe it is a popular choice for NAS servers and also has good security features...maybe use it as a firewall/router on the front of your network?
Every year or so, when a new version comes along, I try that. Never had any luck.
1) Mostly correct but "The GPL attempts to prevent the distribution of binary-only source." is way off the mark.
2) ...the Linux kernel is mostly controlled by Linus Torvalds... Ultimately yes but Linus has a lot of trusted subsystem maintainers who do the bulk of the work in deciding what is in or out. Even Linus cannot deal with the incredibly rapid rate of change of the Linux source.
4) "BSD is what you get when a bunch of UNIX hackers sit down to try to port a UNIX system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a UNIX system for the PC." Perhaps. Who cares? As long as the thing is posix compliant.
10) "From the left to the right we go from the least PC-savvy users to the most PC-savvy users."
Mac ——-> Windows ——-> Linux ——-> BSD ——-> UNIX
Really? Most savvy developers I know use Macs! I'm sure there are very savvy users of all those systems who know them inside out. Perhaps you won't find many grannies surfing facebook or kids playing games on BSD or UNIX. So what?
Installation, sans graphics toys, was easy. The common infrastructure type software was there, and it too was really easy. "sendmail, mysql, firewall, etc..."
If you want a working desktop with a lot of nice things, that's some work, but not too much work. When you get it done, it's likely to work well. Never had a bit of trouble with that server. It just worked, but it was whittled down to a few specific purposes too. Little to go wrong.
Configuration was old school simple. Edit the file, restart or refresh whatever daemons are involved, go.
Anyone wanting to roll their own and build a minimal, no cruft, just works fast and clean system, has a chance of liking FreeBSD. If that seems like work to you, then you probably won't like FreeBSD.
Re: Developers and the Mac.
Yeah, tons of them. I've got friends in most of the shiny Internet companies you know. Apple rules the roost all over the place. A few of those companies have ONE PC, and it's to support people running that code and to validate unit tests. They do the test suite so they don't have to run a PC. lol
BTW, the only reason UNIX itself is hard is due to the fact that you will need to compile most software you need. That was the norm when I was running SGI IRIX. System setup was easy, so was networking, filesystems, and so forth. Once the basics got done, the compiler native to the system and gcc were the next order of business.
From there, build a lot of stuff, or go and find it from people who did build it.
I'm all up for installing from source and such. Compiling kernels and building an entire system from source is what I do when I can't sleep
Problem is I find myself juggling Linux on x86 PCs, ARM and MIPS machines. Power PC in embedded systems in the past and hopefully RISC V in the future. Not to mention the cloud servers of Amazon and Google. As far as I know the BSDs don't have anything like such wide platform support. This kind of kills my enthusiasm for spending any time getting familiar with it.
https://twitter.com/AustenAllred/status/558029756277743616/photo/1
This was the first hit. Old and probably not the one you were thinking of, but still pretty funny.
http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/28/microsoft_ceo_steve_ballmer_uses_apple_mac_for_presentation/
Actually, this seems better than devoting a whole PC to exploring FreeBSD. And it might involve less of a struggle for installation. (Dare I try?)
https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/arm/Cubieboard
Knowledge of Linux grows with use.
I think quite a bit of the negativity about using Linux at the command line is just inexperience. If you have to type a lengthy detailed command and get it wrong, the UP and DOWN arrow keys will bring you to it again so you can re-edit. In other words, the more I use the command line, the more intelligently I am using it. But it is a learning curve.
Linux works very hard to have a combination of the computer and the WWW provide all the manuals, HOWTO tutorials, and documentation available through your computer and for free. I realize that this can be overwhelming at first, but eventually it provides much more opportunity to learn and is a huge savings of $$$.
This thread got me motivated to try the latest in SSD devices in Linux. I purchased a Transcend SSD370s 128Gbyte.
It seems only fair that I mention that there are installation issues with SSDs that need to be addressed in ANY OS.
For instance, this thread mentions "Don't let Windows kill your SSD by defragmentation," and there are a lot more specifics.
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/ssd
I previously used and really enjoyed an SSD on my EEEpc 701/4G, but I decided to wait quite awhile before getting an SSD for another computer as a lot of factors were 'under development' and there was a huge debate on how to best protect one.
This article claims that 'with 10 year warrenties', there is nothing to worry about. But the Transcend SSD370s I just purchased offers only a 3 year warranty. I will try it out, but remain cautious.
Firmware updates for a Samsung EVO require burning a CD and booting it, so that's not going to happen any time soon.
I don't recall having to tweak any BIOS settings to get SSD working.
This EVO has a 3 year warranty, isn't that the same as old hard disks?
I do occasionally do a health status check with smartctrl: I don't know how much we can trust those health status figures. But at least we get to see if anything seems to be going down hill or reaching end of life.
I just assume the thing could fail instantly at any time and have everything that needs to be is backed up.
I presume that the SSDs that are lowest priced available might be amongst the most problematic. I could have easily paid 50% more for another brand.
And the simple fact is that a wise system builder does try to become informed about the hard disks that they desire to commit their data to.
I'll run a smartctl and fstrim just to see what happens at this point. I have to do some maths to confirm that my SSD is using 4096 byte blocks, then I will do a mkfs on the partition(s) I have established. Do I have mkfs the Swap disk partition?
About the only warrenty that matters in Taiwan is the one week return to the retailer. The longer manufacturers warranty may or may not come through.
Now, I gave up following the sad saga of "discard" and "TRIM". Yes ext4 has trim, but no it's not always working/reliable/safe, neither Debian or Ubuntu use the "discard" option on mounting an SSD. They use cron/systemd jobs to run fstrim automatically. It's an endless rabbit hole so I just tried fstrim manually, seems to do something, nothing broken yet.
I don't "commit" my data to a drive. Drives, of any type, are unreliable and bound to fail eventually. As is any other component in the system. Drives and the computers they sit in are expendable. My data is splattered around a bunch of computers locally and on servers on both sides of the atlantic.