Pegritz on: Computers.

[oneirophrenia]

Who the fuck cares that Apple it switching to Intel chips? Apple is the world's most annoying company. Their products are extremely good--I love OS X to pieces, and their hardware is oftimes really impressive--but disgustingly overpriced and the company itself is chaired by a complete fucking asshole whose ego makes Bill Gates' seem no bigger than St. Francis of Asissi's. Whatever Apple wants to do with Intel doesn't mean shit to me, and shouldn't mean shit to anyone, because Macs will still be overpriced and I'll never own one.

Linux! Linux is a great little software package that makes for a great, secure server solution. But, hey, Slashdot geeks? Linux will never compete with Microsoft or Apple in terms of desktop solutions. Linux is too fucking complicated for most everyday users, period. And there just isn't enough productivity software for it. C'mon, people...OpenOffice can't hold a candle to MS Office for Windows or the Mac. And audio software? Try to find me even a half-decent .wav editor and I'll be amazed. I'm planning on building a Linux file server for my house this summer, but to use it for anything else is...well, pointless.

Windows "Longhorn" is basically just going to be a cheap, PC-based knockoff of OS X. WindowsXP with a few extra bells and whistles stolen from Tiger. The end. Am I excited about it? No. I was excited about XP because, well, XP was such a gigantic improvement on allllllllllll previous versions of Windows--but Longhorn is just going to be XP with some databasing features and a couple of GUI tweaks. Whoop-a-dee-doo.

You know what the greatest OS of all time was? DOS. Period.

And the greatest computer system? The TRS-80.

Discuss.

Comments

[imightbegaye.livejournal.com]

What the...when the hell did TI have a machine that ran at 3.3MhZ?

[imightbegaye.livejournal.com]

Jesus. When did that thing come out? That must have outperformed every other computer for like 5 years.

[mirvana.livejournal.com]

I love it when you talk nerdy...

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Hey, baby...wanna come over and play Zork on my C-128? Yes. I said C-128, not 64, 'cause I am a Bad Mutha Fucka.

[pallmalls.livejournal.com]

Oh, please. Derek, you do not want to start playing this game.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

C-128 is as high as I go, and I'm fully aware that you can beat my ass into the ground when it comes to an oldskool-off! :) I've long since realized that there isn't a thing on earth I can do that ANYone on earth can't do better.

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

Geeks care. Everyone's crapping themselves over this Apple news, esp. Apple people. Why? First of all, Apple's been PPC for 10 years. Secondly, we have the opportunity here to involve crazy hacks which will allow my beige box to run OS X. And that, in the famous words of Mz. P. Hilton, is hot. And while Steve Jeorbs (yes, that's what I call him) does have a very large ego, without it, I think Apple would be no more. It's a benefit to them. (Oh and P.S.: Just coz it don't mean shit to you... doesn't mean it shouldn't mean shit to anyone. Personally, the little force-switch-backed Mac geek in me is hopping around like a ADD child without their Ritalin and a heavy dose of cherry kool-aid mixed with crack. However, I feel this sentiment was more a standard of your Pegritzian prose rather than perhaps your true feelings)

Linux doesn't have to be difficult. I tell you, check out RedHat. That's friggin' easier than installing Windows. And cheaper to boot! Sure it's not "hardcore" enough for most nerds, but I'm willing to bet you that anyone who runs Windows, with a small learning curve, could use RedHat. I use Ubuntu (based of Debian). It's more nerdy than most, but still spectacularly easy to use. As for OpenOffice, that's the fault of the OO people. They've never properly ported it. It runs on what? Java in Windows and X in OSX? That's like molasses in January.

As for Longhorn, well, it's a lost cause. All the cool stuff that was going to be in it was stripped out in the last tests. It's going to be XP 1.5. Microsoft is floundering right now. They've got the PR machine out and about trying to keep their portion of the mindshare, but people who know the business ain't buying it. We'll see what happens though... in oh... 2006? 2007??

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

That's basically my opinion as well. I run Ubuntu (which you might want to try as well... it's a great Debian-based distro) and really like it. The only reason I have my dual boot system is for the occasional gaming. My only big issues with Linux is that their BitTorrent client is sort of ass. Beyond that, a-OK.

However, A's getting a little sore and pondering Apple over Linux. Why? Recording music. He wants to start recording music and GarageBand is, so far in his research, one of the best, if not the best, product for small-time recording at the price point. So, we may be a three OS household once more.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

GarageBand IS really decent...if somewhat limiting--but only from a seriously professional standpoint. I'd say if Andrey wants to get into music, then GarageBand is a great place to start--but so is Renoise (http://www.renoise.com).

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

I tell him about that. He's been messing around with stuff for years (and is a very good guitarist if I can say so myself) but hasn't found anything he's exactly happy with. He's primarily a Linux guy though.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

He'd better abandon all thoughts of doing music on a Linux box, because as far as I can tell the only Linux music software in existence is a handful of media players and maybe two or three next-to-useless .wav editors. On the other hand, there's TONS of music software available for OS X--and it's really good--but, personally, I still wouldn't use a Mac for audio editing. There's even better music software for PCs...but this is just my own personal preference, as I've worked with PC audiosofts for ages, and I know them backwards and forwards.

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I'm about to start digging around to find some really basic mixing software. I'm actually going to make some progress on nerdlust (in the form of a podcast) so I'm going to need to do some basic editing. Fun times!

And yeah, that's what he discovered with Linux. Nothing... basically. As far as I know he's not doing anything recording-wise right now and I'm not sure what he did in the past. We'll see.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Best recording stuff EVAR:

For the Mac:
Logic 7
GarageBand (best to start with this one, as it's cheaper and, honestly, just about as good!)
Reason 3.0
Ableton Live 4.0
Renoise
All Native Instruments synths and stuff

For the PC:
Cubase SX 3
Sony Acid 5.0
Ableton Live 4.0
Renoise
Sony SoundForge 8.0
Adobe Audition
All Native Instruments synths and stuff

As you can see, there's a lot of overlap, but I list slightly more PC stuff just because it's what I use.

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the list! Which of the PC ones do you think will be easiest? Really all I'll need to do is add some mp3s here and there and edit some .wav audio from a mic, then save it all as an .mp3. Suggestions?

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Best PC ones:
Sony SoundForge 8 and Acid 5.0 for basic editing
Adobe Audition for extra cool noises
Renoise for assembling loops and songs
and the Native Instruments stuff for extra synth sounds. NI synths are VERY complicated, but have really good presets that can be tweaked in a few million ways very easily, so you don't even need to worry about the more advanced stuff--they're still great right out of the box.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly, O my brother: I decided to see what all the hype was about and installed Linux myself on an old machine just to give it a fair shot, and was pretty damned impressed. I myself have no use for Linux aside from file serving because...well, there just isn't any software that *I* find useful for it. I wouldn't say that Linux is particularly easy to install for a general consumer, but for geeks like us? Fedora has to have one of the best install methods ever.

[imightbegaye.livejournal.com]

I don't see why you would not want to use it, except if you have some specific software that you want to run that can't run in Linux.

Which consists of pretty much everything I use a computer for that doesn't relate to programming or content-serving. It's pretty much completely devoid of usable/useful creative tools, and of course your entertainment options are limited. I'm a huge freeBSD fan, but there's very little reason that I can see for running a *nix variant at home, unless you do a lot of programming or content serving.

[imightbegaye.livejournal.com]

If the "surf the web/do e-mail/word processing" group is a majority, why did Web TV fare so badly? Wouldn't you just buy some sort of net appliance rather than a computer?