IT... Computing....

[PluMGMK]

Maybe you could whip up a Linux distribution with optimized i486 packages and the interface customized to look and work like Win3.1

[Reese Riverson]

It's a shame that Crucial is basically going to be gone now. The RAM prices are getting way out of hand over this AI craze. I saw how insane it was recently from when I helped Neo out with his new computer parts selection from Microcenter.

[PluMGMK]

I remember Dad telling me RAM was expensive back in the day, but then it got really cheap just as I started building PCs myself. So that trend has gone backwards now? Fantastic…

[Reese Riverson]

Steve with Gamers Nexus just dropped a video about this, this morning:

[neo]

New Computer

[Reese Riverson]

Well, I may as well post the specifications since I helped him pick out the parts for this system with another friend in our group while in VC with Neo.

So first off, we kept his GPU from his previous system so he could take it to Microcenter for them to install, as they've built the system for him:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
• MSI - X870E-P Pro WIFI
• Crucial 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-6000 RAM kit
• AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT
• Samsung 990 EVO 2TB
• Lian Li - Lancool 217 Mid-Tower case
• Corsair RM850x 850 watt PSU
• be quiet - Pure Rock 3 CPU Air Cooler + Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet

[Fifo]

be quiet

No you be quiet!

[Reese Riverson]

No you be quiet!

Why no sir, you are the one who has to:

[neo]

My computer is very quiet, and also very cool.

[PluMGMK]

Nice specs guys!

Steve with Gamers Nexus just dropped a video about this, this morning:

Well that's an alarming and sobering watch…

[PluMGMK]

A little bump to add this graphic relevant to the above discussion:

Source: https://nitter.net/jatinkrmalik/status/ ... 13618887#m

[Steo]

I didn't know about the RAM prices going insane again. I built my computer a year ago before this happened I guess.

Also kind of relevant to mention here that I started doing a cyber security course. A friend recommended it ages ago, but for some reason I never got around to looking into it until now.

[Reese Riverson]

Yeah, It is rather insane for these companies to buy up so much hardware they really can't even use right now. A lot of it due to datacenters not yet built, or the lack of power infrastructure in place for them.

Only ones that really seem to be making the profit are those producing the actual components.

[PluMGMK]

Just saw a provocatively-titled video called "Windows is DYING":
Sounds like Linux is becoming a bit more mainstream as people are getting more and more fed up with Microsoft's AI and telemetry nonsense… It's not a new problem though – there's a reason I haven't used a non-enterprise version of Windows as my daily driver in over ten years! It just seems to be getting a lot worse, and conversely Linux is getting better…

I do feel bad that my mother's laptop is using non-enterprise Win11 though I managed to get it set up without a Microsoft account back in 2022, and thankfully it still seems to be working fine…

[Master]

I think one thing that's helped when it comes to making Linux more palatable is better cross-compatibility with Windows. I think Valve's efforts with the Proton software have definitely weighed Linux more favourably when it comes to considering switching over.

Granted, it's not like Microslop are helping on that front what with their..."helpful" additional features.

[dr_st]

Sounds like Linux is becoming a bit more mainstream as people are getting more and more fed up with Microsoft's AI and telemetry nonsense… It's not a new problem though – there's a reason I haven't used a non-enterprise version of Windows as my daily driver in over ten years! It just seems to be getting a lot worse, and conversely Linux is getting better…

They've been saying this for almost 20 years now, although the reason changes every couple of years... I still remember the cool video from 2007 that showcased Vista Aero vs Ubuntu Beryl desktop compositors, the latter looking considerably nicer. Both have been somewhat discontinued now.
Here's the video, BTW:


With that said, after people have been saying "it's going to collapse any day now", one doesn't believe it will eventually happen, and then one day it does.

I do feel bad that my mother's laptop is using non-enterprise Win11 though I managed to get it set up without a Microsoft account back in 2022, and thankfully it still seems to be working fine…

Professional is usually good enough. Yes, it comes with the same junk as Home by default, but you can disable automatic updates, and there is group policy that you can use to control various other things. You can disable Copilot, and most telemetry stuff (not all of it is worth disabling).

At some point, users might start to expect their personal AI assistant. Then Linux desktop developers will have to scramble to put one in.

[PluMGMK]

Oh yeah, I remember Beryl. That was beautiful, but I guess nobody was interested in maintaining it…

Anyhoo, I just read an Irish Times article on the state of Schleswig-Holstein dumping MS365 in the interest of sovereignty, and other places in Europe considering following suit. But again I thought it was old news that governments in parts of Germany had been switching to FOSS solutions…

[DaveRattlehead]

Just a vent here...
W11 being the biggest piece of crap AGAIN!!!

During the last week my computer freezed at least 4 times in just a couple of days. Deactivating an option seemed to work, but now it turns out that the latest Windows 11 update completely messed up the boot process. It takes almost an entire minute to boot up properly. It's a shame that none of the programs that I work with run properly on Linux because my aversion to Windows has increased exponentially over the last couple of weeks.

[Reese Riverson]

Well, I've finally found the culprit causing me issues for my office computer, which apparently is a faulty SSD!


See, this is an issue I've been spending over a year trying to diagnose, because there was no BSoD, no tracible errors to research. Everything appeared like a graphics card or graphics driver issue. Since the system would more or less "lockup" graphically in a weird way.

By weird, is where YouTube videos would look frozen, or turn into a slide show, but the audio plays perfectly like nothing's wrong. Sometimes switching browser tabs around would update pages where you can still technically use it. The clock on the taskbar is frozen visually. Some elements would stay on screen and not go away, like part of a context menu, but the computer is never fully locked up. As proven with Youtube and Discord because when Discord also visually "locks up", I can still send messages and screenshots.

Sometimes it was once a month, or once every few months this would happen. I've tried check disk, and even the windows system repair commands via command prompt in Windows 10.

I've even did fresh graphics card driver installs, even different graphics drivers. Which seemed like the issues became more frequent once I messed around with the graphics drivers. I even updated the BIOS on the system, swapped out RAM, and everything. I've had the issue almost happen daily to being problem free for several months. Problem came back again pretty much daily again.

I was wanting to downsize the office computer anyway with an upgrade, so I got a Minisforum MS-A1 machine. I wanted to do a fresh install of Windows on it, and just take my second SSD out of my desktop and put here since most of my data with documents, music, art work and all were there.

But I still wanted to copy some stuff off the main SSD onto there to have the remainder. This is when I discovered that the primary drive had issues...

This kind of error, popped up on a lot of things. Which lead me to check one other thing...

The quick scan found nothing, but a full scan shows a different story... and of course, this is the last point it reached before things visually locked up again, and me sending myself the screenshot on Discord.


So I'm led to believe the SSD's failing, even though the health status was still showing good, and I had no critical errors in the S.M.A.R.T. data that I could tell of... everything just showed fine, until I started copying everything off, which led me to trying to do a deeper dive here.


I think the next thing I want to do is pull that SSD, do a full scan through another machine, get the results... then do a complete wipe, and rescan it and see what the state is. At this point there's enough for me to never trust this drive again. It's definitely an odd experience for me.

I was too stubborn to do a simple Windows reinstall because I wanted to figure out the issue.

[Hunchman801]

That's interesting, especially because the visual lag was apparently the only symptom you experienced, right?