Computer General Discussion Thread

[Minoa]

Celerons also still exist, along with Atoms. The latest of the latter uses the Tremont microarchitecture: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... Ids=202684

[Cisairse]

Apple may finally be moving away from Intel soon. Supposedly they'll be announcing Apple-designed CPU based Macs at WWDC this month.

[Valentine Z]

I will have to admit that I don't really know much about this aspect, so I would like to ask as a general question, not for my homework on hardware (that's out of my league, I am doing Artificial Intelligence and Data Science stuff).

Anyway, my question: Usually, you need to restart or shut down your Windows computer every few days, or even every day to "clean up", as I heard. I also heard that Mac OS and Linux/Ubuntu don't really have this problem (you can leave them on as long as you want without impacting performance). Any idea why? Is it because of the way they use the hardware and the resources?

At least, that's what I heard, of course. Not sure if it is completely true, or something.

[Minoa]

I do not know what makes sense to keep the computer running for long periods of time, since there is only so long that a human can continuously stay awake. Unless it's a long 3D model render, in which case, there is no specific limit due to everyone’s software and hardware setup being different (even on macOS, where one user could use Microsoft Office but the other uses LibreOffice), and that’s before the fact that I modified Catalina to remove the news app for health reasons, and also to make them stop nagging me about iCloud.

[Valentine Z]

I do not know what makes sense to keep the computer running for long periods of time, since there is only so long that a human can continuously stay awake. Unless it's a long 3D model render, in which case, there is no specific limit due to everyone’s software and hardware setup being different (even on macOS, where one user could use Microsoft Office but the other uses LibreOffice), and that’s before the fact that I modified Catalina to remove the news app for health reasons, and also to make them stop nagging me about iCloud.

I would say it's more of curiosity, because the maximum I would let my computers run for is maybe 2-3 days (as with my recent project on getting the NS Stats of 200,000+ nations, which took around those number of days).

In my school, I generally see Macs running Windows on Bootcamp, to render some CAD model overnight and you always have those "DO NOT TOUCH" sticky notes, or notepads on them. My curiosity will be more on how different Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu are from one another, specifically in terms of "Do you need to restart to make it run faster again?"

I might have heard that Ubuntu machines are good as servers because they excel in the area of not needing to restart or shutdown, i.e. having minimal downtime.

[Cekoviu]

I do not know what makes sense to keep the computer running for long periods of time, since there is only so long that a human can continuously stay awake. Unless it's a long 3D model render, in which case, there is no specific limit due to everyone’s software and hardware setup being different (even on macOS, where one user could use Microsoft Office but the other uses LibreOffice), and that’s before the fact that I modified Catalina to remove the news app for health reasons, and also to make them stop nagging me about iCloud.

being able to stay on for long periods of time is mostly useful for servers and high-intensity computation, which i imagine is part of why linux tends to be popular for those purposes

[Minoa]

I do not know what makes sense to keep the computer running for long periods of time, since there is only so long that a human can continuously stay awake. Unless it's a long 3D model render, in which case, there is no specific limit due to everyone’s software and hardware setup being different (even on macOS, where one user could use Microsoft Office but the other uses LibreOffice), and that’s before the fact that I modified Catalina to remove the news app for health reasons, and also to make them stop nagging me about iCloud.

being able to stay on for long periods of time is mostly useful for servers and high-intensity computation, which i imagine is part of why linux tends to be popular for those purposes

Yeah, I the question was about desktops, but Linux systems do hold up well as servers, because the big servers demand high mileage between maintenance. Especially with banks.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Whooppeee a new version of Edge. The browser I don't like, don't use, and don't want on my computer but can't remove.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

being able to stay on for long periods of time is mostly useful for servers and high-intensity computation, which i imagine is part of why linux tends to be popular for those purposes

Yeah, I the question was about desktops, but Linux systems do hold up well as servers, because the big servers demand high mileage between maintenance. Especially with banks.

Even the server version of windows is always easy to crash.But Linux has another advantage. We can customize its kernel freely.I heard that the performance of windows will decline after a long time because all software can add self starting services to the system. But few software will delete it after uninstalling.
Why-hasnt-Microsoft-been-able-to-solve-the-problem-of-Windows-getting-so-slow-after-about-a-year-of-use

[Minoa]

Whooppeee a new version of Edge. The browser I don't like, don't use, and don't want on my computer but can't remove.

And is why I have had to resort to NTLite to rip it out. it may be a while before we decide to adopt Windows 2004 or the one after that.

[Cekoviu]

Whooppeee a new version of Edge. The browser I don't like, don't use, and don't want on my computer but can't remove.

solution: remove windows and install a real OS

[The Cosmic Mainframe]

In order to keep my coding skills up over the summer, I decided to program Minesweeper. It's a fairly simple game, so not super hard to get it to work.

I've also been thinking of getting back on Kattis and trying out some of the harder challenges there.

[Cisairse]

I will have to admit that I don't really know much about this aspect, so I would like to ask as a general question, not for my homework on hardware (that's out of my league, I am doing Artificial Intelligence and Data Science stuff).

Anyway, my question: Usually, you need to restart or shut down your Windows computer every few days, or even every day to "clean up", as I heard. I also heard that Mac OS and Linux/Ubuntu don't really have this problem (you can leave them on as long as you want without impacting performance). Any idea why? Is it because of the way they use the hardware and the resources?

At least, that's what I heard, of course. Not sure if it is completely true, or something.

It's due to updates, actually. Windows's kernel is programmed so horribly that it can't ensure live reloading of kernel-space modules so you need to reboot every update. In fact the "Please close all other programs before <doing this thing>" message you see on Windows is due to the same problem. On Linux (and macOS to a lesser extent) you can just reload modules or keep older executable images in memory without any issues.
In fact in Unix systems you can manually clear the memory cache and "restart" multi-user-target to refresh your userspace programs and running services without having to power cycle the machine. You simply can't do that in Windows.

[Cisairse]

I do not know what makes sense to keep the computer running for long periods of time, since there is only so long that a human can continuously stay awake. Unless it's a long 3D model render, in which case, there is no specific limit due to everyone’s software and hardware setup being different (even on macOS, where one user could use Microsoft Office but the other uses LibreOffice), and that’s before the fact that I modified Catalina to remove the news app for health reasons, and also to make them stop nagging me about iCloud.

My desktop computer is also my server so it never turns off unless I'm moving. I believe my longest achieved uptime was actually close to 11 months.

[Saiwania]

Whooppeee a new version of Edge. The browser I don't like, don't use, and don't want on my computer but can't remove.

It's based off of Chromium now, so its worth a look if you like Google Chrome enough but think Edge might have some unique features to distinguish itself from other browsers. I've read rumors that it has superior privacy controls to Chrome and a few other innovations, but otherwise its pretty identical to Chrome now. Needless to say, it won't be taking #1 in market share.

I think that it is a bit of a travesty that Google Chrome has become too dominant. Its a fine browser for what it is, but I don't want the separate browsers to be too alike. I instead want each to have different merits/features that really distinguish each from the other in terms of pros/cons. Because Chrome has been #1 for so long, there is too much pressure for other browser makers to just copy what they're doing.

I find that almost all browsers load equally as fast/well at this point. And the browser you select as your main, is usually a matter of personal preference or how useful it is in supporting different websites. I'm using the Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox to be able to continue using Adobe Flash until its actual End of Life date before next year.

[The Cosmic Mainframe]

Whooppeee a new version of Edge. The browser I don't like, don't use, and don't want on my computer but can't remove.

It's based off of Chromium now, so its worth a look if you like Google Chrome enough but think Edge might have some unique features to distinguish itself from other browsers. I've read rumors that it has superior privacy controls to Chrome and a few other innovations, but otherwise its pretty identical to Chrome now. Needless to say, it won't be taking #1 in market share.

I think that it is a bit of a travesty that Google Chrome has become too dominant. Its a fine browser for what it is, but I don't want the separate browsers to be too alike. I instead want each to have different merits/features that really distinguish each from the other in terms of pros/cons. Because Chrome has been #1 for so long, there is too much pressure for other browser makers to just copy what they're doing.

I find that almost all browsers load equally as fast/well at this point. And the browser you select as your main, is usually a matter of personal preference or how useful it is in supporting different websites. I'm using the Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox to be able to continue using Adobe Flash until its actual End of Life date before next year.

I find Edge even more pointless now that it uses Chromium, to be honest. There was already Falkon, Vivaldi, and Opera (and let's not forget Chrome itself), all using the Chromium engine and claiming to have a unique feature set that sets them apart.

[Cisairse]

It's based off of Chromium now, so its worth a look if you like Google Chrome enough but think Edge might have some unique features to distinguish itself from other browsers. I've read rumors that it has superior privacy controls to Chrome and a few other innovations, but otherwise its pretty identical to Chrome now. Needless to say, it won't be taking #1 in market share.

I think that it is a bit of a travesty that Google Chrome has become too dominant. Its a fine browser for what it is, but I don't want the separate browsers to be too alike. I instead want each to have different merits/features that really distinguish each from the other in terms of pros/cons. Because Chrome has been #1 for so long, there is too much pressure for other browser makers to just copy what they're doing.

I find that almost all browsers load equally as fast/well at this point. And the browser you select as your main, is usually a matter of personal preference or how useful it is in supporting different websites. I'm using the Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox to be able to continue using Adobe Flash until its actual End of Life date before next year.

I find Edge even more pointless now that it uses Chromium, to be honest. There was already Falkon, Vivaldi, and Opera (and let's not forget Chrome itself), all using the Chromium engine and claiming to have a unique feature set that sets them apart.

Also ungoogled-chromium, which is the only Chrome version anyone should ever use.

[Saiwania]

I have to say, 2004 has been the worst version or "feature update" to Windows 10 in a long time. Nothing but glitches/problems as of late. Updates that hopefully fix some if not most of it can't come soon enough. Screen flickering in terms of brightness on my end, and for another machine I oversee 2004 breaks printing unless you go out of your way to find a hotfix via Microsoft Update Catalog that breaks something else.

To avoid the current debacles, it is worthwhile to perhaps purposely not upgrade from 1909 or earlier until another month or so, if not using a Windows 10 version until its "End of Life" before updating to a newer major version of the OS.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... ws-10-2004

[Cisairse]

I have to say, 2004 has been the worst version or "feature update" to Windows 10 in a long time. Nothing but glitches/problems as of late. Updates that hopefully fix some if not most of it can't come soon enough. Screen flickering in terms of brightness on my end, and for another machine I oversee 2004 breaks printing unless you go out of your way to find a hotfix via Microsoft Update Catalog that breaks something else.

To avoid the current debacles, it is worthwhile to perhaps purposely not upgrade from 1909 or earlier until another month or so, if not using a Windows 10 version until its "End of Life" before updating to a newer major version of the OS.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... ws-10-2004

The regularity of these bad updates pretty constantly reinforces my belief that I made the right choice in going for Windows Server instead of Windows 10.

[Vassenor]

I have to say, 2004 has been the worst version or "feature update" to Windows 10 in a long time. Nothing but glitches/problems as of late. Updates that hopefully fix some if not most of it can't come soon enough. Screen flickering in terms of brightness on my end, and for another machine I oversee 2004 breaks printing unless you go out of your way to find a hotfix via Microsoft Update Catalog that breaks something else.

To avoid the current debacles, it is worthwhile to perhaps purposely not upgrade from 1909 or earlier until another month or so, if not using a Windows 10 version until its "End of Life" before updating to a newer major version of the OS.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... ws-10-2004

Really? 2004 is stable on my machine.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

I have to say, 2004 has been the worst version or "feature update" to Windows 10 in a long time. Nothing but glitches/problems as of late. Updates that hopefully fix some if not most of it can't come soon enough. Screen flickering in terms of brightness on my end, and for another machine I oversee 2004 breaks printing unless you go out of your way to find a hotfix via Microsoft Update Catalog that breaks something else.

To avoid the current debacles, it is worthwhile to perhaps purposely not upgrade from 1909 or earlier until another month or so, if not using a Windows 10 version until its "End of Life" before updating to a newer major version of the OS.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... ws-10-2004

Really? 2004 is stable on my machine.

It is giving me a lot of grief. Everything is slower and more temperamental.

[Minoa]

This is why I am sticking to the September updates. They have a service life of two years and a half in Enterprise.

[Saiwania]

Why does "Windows 10 in S Mode" exist for certain new products? Are there many people who'd genuinely enjoy only being able to browse the web with Microsoft Edge or to only be able to install from the Windows Store with all other normal executables and programs from third parties blocked or disabled?

[Cisairse]

Why does "Windows 10 in S Mode" exist for certain new products? Are there many people who'd genuinely enjoy only being able to browse the web with Microsoft Edge or to only be able to install from the Windows Store with all other normal executables and programs from third parties blocked or disabled?

No, I'm pretty sure it's for security purposes. Plenty of people can't be trusted with the ability to run arbitrary executables without destroying their computer in a week.

[Minoa]

When one is so familiar with computers, it is easy to assume that everyone will know to spot a shady executable from day one. However, S Mode has a lot of problems, such as the Edge and Bing lock-in: that could easily lead to yet another antitrust showdown between Brussels and Redmond, with Cupertino already facing hot water with allegations over how they treat their developers.