Now, I don’t advocate mixing operating systems and alcoholic beverages (who knows what you might compile), but if you’re a die-hard gamer like me, you might be interested in the non-alcoholic Wine for Linux. It claims not to be an emulator, but it pretends to be Windows enough to be pretty useful. Basically, it’s a Windows compatibility layer, allowing you to run Windows applications in Linux. It’s not perfect, of course, but it actually works fairly well for running games in Linux, which should hearten any gamer stuck with making do with Unreal Tournament on Linux (I know there are other games, but even so, the selection is pretty limited). However, all is not perfect with Wine, as I’ve found.
Randomosity at its randomest
Tag Archive for 'Windows'
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I’ve been using Windows Vista on my laptop for a couple months now, and I have to say it’s pretty awesome. A lot more so than I ever thought it would be, especially considering the anti-hype it was given leading up to and shortly following its release. Contrary to the claims you’ll usually find, I haven’t had problems running games, all the drivers are there and up-to-date (even for graphics), the UAC doesn’t bug me about every single thing, and finally, it doesn’t crash every five seconds.
However, as much as I love Vista, I have come across a few really, really annoying things. Some are directly tied in with the operating system, others are just by-products of incompatibility with certain software or hardware, and still others are just personal peeves. Luckily there aren’t many, so I’m sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for a solid Microsoft-bashing. I don’t cater to fanboys (or fangirls, for that matter).
NTFS is the file system of choice for Windows operating systems based off the NT kernel. It’s popularly used in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, among others. It replaced FAT32, which was used by previous Windows and MS-DOS operating systems, such as Windows 95 and 98.
Why use NTFS? Well, there are plenty of good reasons, such as metadata and larger file sizes. FAT32 limited filesize to 4 GB, but it’s nigh-unlimited in NTFS. However, FAT32 has a bonus over NTFS in that it is easily read by other operating systems, such as Linux and Mac OS. Both other operating systems can only read NTFS partitions, so special software or drivers must be installed in order to give write access. That’s really the only advantage, but it doesn’t beat the 4 GB filesize limit or the 32 GB partition limit inherent in FAT32, making NTFS the all-around better choice if you just use Windows.
For some strange and inexplicable reason, I decided to install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in Virtual PC 2007 on my computer today. I think that qualifies me as pure geek, considering both applications (dating from circa 1993 for you non-geeks reading this) are useless for any reasons other than nostalgia.
Amazingly, despite a few hitches related to corrupted disk image files, I got both installed and running near-perfectly. I had to manually install mouse and CD drivers for DOS and some network stuff for Windows, but after all of that, I could do everything from playing Oregon Trail (seriously!) to browsing Wikipedia from the comfort of Internet Explorer 3.0. I even managed to dig up a copies of MS Office 4 and SimCity Classic for Windows and Norton Commander for DOS (to make it a bit easier navigating DOS). It’s kind of amazing what kind of old software you can find online, although most of what I’ve got installed on that virtual machine is probably semi-legal. WfW 3.11 may be ancient, but it’s made by Microsoft, and they’re notorious for disliking illegitimate software. Then again, while installing this version of Windows, I was told that it was all right (!) if I didn’t have my registration key handy. Fancy that.
Anyways, I still don’t quite know why I did this, since it caused me some grief when I ran into rather interesting errors and lack of memory (easily fixed through some settings in Virtual PC). I think it was more because I could do it that I did do it. Anyways, I won’t bother posting exactly how I got everything working, but I suppose I could if anyone wants me to. Just leave a comment if you feel the need to run abandonware in a virtual machine.
I used to like the Mac vs. PC ads on TV. They were funny at first. Now they just seem kind of…mean. Upgrade nightmares? Too many versions of Vista? Those are pretty low blows if you think about it.
For one thing, upgrading to any new operating system is painful. Newer OS’s require newer hardware. That’s a fact of life. I mean, it was the same way going from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. There are still many Mac users with OS 9 who couldn’t afford to upgrade to OS X due to–gasp!–hardware limitations. The funny thing is that if you lack the hardware necessary for Vista, you can simply buy new components and upgrade your existing PC. Can’t do that with a Mac. You’d have to buy a whole new one, and Macs aren’t exactly cheap.
The other bit about multiple versions of Vista is also kind of silly. The commercial for that one claims that Mac just has one version with everything. Windows does too: it’s called Ultimate. Of course, an upgrade version of Ultimate costs about $259 to the $129 OS X upgrade, which is quite a difference, but when you consider that you can install Vista Ultimate on any type of computer you want that has the hardware support (as opposed to OS X, which you can only install on those expensive Macs), as well as the extra features Ultimate packs (such as BitLocker hard drive encryption), I think it’s worth the extra cost.
Don’t get me wrong, Macs are good computers. But you can’t really compare them to PCs like Apple does. I could probably tear apart their points pretty easily, but that would be petty and I don’t want to waste my time. I’ll just suffice to say that my PC “just works” fine as it is. And it plays games. No such thing as a Mac gamer, is there? I rest my case.
