Deleted SUSE, installed Vista x64

[ToyotaNSaturn]

I'm a big SUSE fan. It has a complete distro with all the fixins'. Change the main software update repository to Packaman's site, and you'll easily have all the codecs, players, etc. Very nice. I even got the wireless to work a-ok.

But on bleeding-edge laptops, it's just not fun. SuSE 103. on my Inspiron 1720 worked fine, but absolutely refused to go into power save mode. Plus SUSE felt sluggish on it. I'm thinking it's the 2D video driver, but I didn't feel brave enough to play with that.

When using SUSE 10.3, I forced a suspend to RAM, but it didn't go 'down' properly so I had to power the whole thing off. Powering it back on, I couldn't boot in to the Vista installation. I wasn't a happy camper as I has work to do. I decided to wipe Suse and put another Vista installation on the thing as I figured that Vista would install it's own boot manager. I was right. After the Vista install, the initial partition booted properly.

So I now have a dual boot of Vista Home Premium 32-bit and Vista Ultimate x64, each on their own disks. This should make some die-hard Microsoft fan boi's happy. You know the ones...the ones who demanded the floppy disks from the I.T. guy so they could upgrade from DOS 6.2 to DOS 6.21, then again to DOS 6.22...

I'll still be using PC Linux 2007 and SUSE 10.3 via VMWare, but not on the bare metal. I'll revisit the issue when the suspend feature finally works as it should. As for Vista, the suspend feature only started working with the October performance update. Before that, it was just as painful as Linux.

 

[carlprop]

So how does Vista 64 bit compare to those of the rest of us that don't have CPU's to take advantage of it?

 

[SrDriver]

Had this same issues with various distributions of Linux and Vista.

Bought a new NVIDIA card and in Linux enabled the 3D Drivers and all now works at it should.

ATI is now offering more and more support for Linux and Windows Drivers are improving.

I have ran PCLinuxOS in the past and am now running the Gnome version of Linux Mint and am loving it. It was sluggish but when I shut off the eye candy, very fast!

Linux Mint has virtually all the codex files you need!

 

[BarkerMan]

What does Vista do that I need to have over XP? I tried it but could not get drivers for my instrumentation devices and my pen plotter and my A/D converter and my temperature probes. I have written drivers for XP and it's pretty straight forward. I've tried it for Vista and my debugger won't work. Also I can't cross-link to existing 32-bit libraries. I also can't get my linker to work. This all seems like basic stuff for an operating system and it's all missing. I hear from a development house that is Microsoft BFD certified that they get no answers from Microsoft even though they have one of those expensive support contracts in place and have had it for 10 years. They don't even get answers about when such details will even be addressed. The one positive value Microsoft always brought to the table was that new releases of operating system always protected your investment in legacy code. I understand that they had to stop this to take advantage of current hardware developments but they also did not bring basic development tools along with the update to Vista. This is why I am switching from all past languages to Java for development. Now instead of having free time to read a book at night for pleasure I’m studying for the Certified Java Developer certification. Everyone I know is cutting the cord with Microsoft.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

To answer your question, directly, none.

I've played with XP x64...IMO a much nicer XP than the 32 bit version. Video seemed quicker & more fluid, VMWare seemed faster, etc.

The laptop came with Vista home 32-bit. So I just installed another "different" OS on the second drive. I setup another Inspiron 1720 for my job with XP and it was hard finding certain drivers as Dell doesn't offer all the XP drivers for this system. I'm thankful for laptopvideo2go.com, they made my video driver headaches a thing of the past.

I do have to agree with you about Java. For a long time I poo-pooed java as a pig. But some of the more recent apps I've used have pleasantly changed my mind, namely Spark and OpenFire. I setup a secure chat system at work for a workgroup of folks under SUSE 10.3 x64. Seamless & very robust (to borrow a MS word)! And both the products are Java based. I'm impressed!

 

[BarkerMan]

Another good development invironment if you're not going to do device drivers and stick with web apps is Ruby on Rails. Both RoR and Java are better for developers than MS ASP stuff.

It looks like Vista has caused a lot of developers to start looking around and may be the push they need.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: carlprop
So how does Vista 64 bit compare to those of the rest of us that don't have CPU's to take advantage of it?

So far, I haven't seen any difference in anything. Applying 53 patches & driver updates took longer to install and reboot twice than the actual installation.

So far, not much to talk about. Which is surprising to me as XP x64 was noticeably better right from the start when compared to the 32 bit version.

 

[Jethro]

Ready to put SUSE back on it, yet?

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Well, I put Fedora 8 x64 on instead

What's the equivalent for the system admin tool for Fedora/Red Hat? I'm familiar with YAST in SuSE, but not Fedora.

 

[simple_gifts]

vi. lol

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

vi LOL!

Yes, I still use that! Just used it today actually. Some old HP-UX habits die hard...