Sunday, February 21, 2016

Dumbed Down OSes

Modern operating systems like Windows 10 and all smart phones have been dumbed down to the point where they work great if you're dumb and terrible if you're not.

My Chromebook won't let me do anything without installing and more likely buying some app from the app store. There is no GUI even for something as mundane as renaming a file. I regard ChromeOS as crippleware, with little more functionality than a browser. Forget about any utilities such as FileZilla that other desktops run. The Chromebook is basically a browser, period. Google has gone to great lengths to cripple their product and "protect the user from himself."

Windows 10 likes to hide things from the user. When I tried to shutdown Windows 10 today, it told me to Please wait and Do Not Turn Off the Computer. Doubtless it was uploading all the spyware-data it stole from me to Microsoft's marketing department, so that Microsoft can sell the data to advertising firms. But there wasn't enough bandwidth available, so the process got stuck and was still going on an hour later. I defied Microsoft and restarted the computer anyway, because I wanted to run Linux, which I like, as opposed to Windows 10, which I distrust and hate. All Windows 10 is, is Spam, Advertising, and Malware all rolled into one big, nasty ball and prettied up to look like a smartphone. However, we have to go with Windows 10, because it will continue to be supported in the future, whereas Windows 7 will not. My plan is to use Windows 10 about 1% of the time, and Linux 99% of the time, until such time that I can dispense with Windows altogether by replacing the few apps that only work on Windows.

The only reason I continue using Windows is ACDSee and Call Clerk. Once those applications support Linux, I'm done with Windows forever. Krita is starting to get pretty good as an image editor, and can do a lot of important things that ACDSee never got around to doing, so perhaps I will not buy any future versions of ACDSee. As for Call Clerk, I might have to discontinue my land line service in order to avoid needing to use it. I doubt Call Clerk will ever be ported to Linux, because landlines are on the wane, and with it the market for Call Clerk.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Install VirtualBox by Oracle on your Linux side and then install your favorite Windows OS (I still prefer XP). I run ACDSee and a few others this way.

igor said...

VirtualBox sounds interesting, and I may use that in the future. ACDSee I've found I can dispense with to an extent by using Krita in Linux. Krita has a somewhat difficult user interface compared to ACDSee, but it's powerful. I spent over an hour trying to figure out how to change the color of the Fill tool yesterday, and ultimately did not find out how, despite Googling for the answer. Apparently, Krita wants the Fill tool to always fill with one single color, and prohibits changing that color. ACDSee, on the other hand, has no fill tool at all.

Unknown said...

I use Krita version 2.8.5 on Linux Mint 17.3 64bit.

1. To change the Fill Tool color select from the "Advanced Color Selector" on the right side of the main window. After the selection it will change the color in the fill tool -OR-

2. Select the Fill Tool and then hover over the area you want to fill. Right click on that space and a color wheel will appear. Select a color, right click to remove the wheel and then left click to fill the space.

igor said...

Thank you, Alex. I am adding that info to my notes. I figured it out myself this morning, but now I have notes for future reference -- and it may help another visitor, who knows? I have posts dating back several years that people still reference and comment upon.

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