What the hell can I do with Windows2000?

I've been a Unix weenie since 1986, but just for giggles the other day, I installed Windows2000 on a machine at home. I don't intend to do anything serious with it-- it's absolutely a toy machine for a toy operating system.

Specs: 1.6GHz non-HTable P4, 512MB SDRAM, GeForce FX 5200 w/ 128MB vram.

I've got the 'Dawn' demo already, but what else can I do with the thing? It's not worth spending money on, and I don't bother with warez games. Suggestions?

To be honest, 2k isn't even that great for games. It's for when you want more stability and performance than XP, but are too stubborn to use a *nix.

use it as a spam zombie

minesweeper?

>>1

Whatever you use unix to do is probably a good start...

I can't believe people respond to such a weak troll.

This is the stupidest thread on this board yet.

>>1
toy operating system
And you are a toy Unix hippy for thinking that.

what else can I do with the thing?
You'll want to start with a powerful command line and a good set of utilities. Get textutils, binutils, etc. compiled for Win32 (not necessarily Cygwin, but the Cygwin version is ok too), then get MinGW and the configure environment MSYS (again you can get the Cygwin version of GCC and all but it's not necessary), then install Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Apache, MySQL, and start toying and let's see if you can notice what's good about WinNT.

>>2
2k isn't even that great for games
Because it doesn't have gay colorful themes? Win2K shares the same core with WinXP, only it has less bloat. Games actually run faster and I have yet to see any game that's dependent on the very few, secondary new NT API functions added to WinXP.

>>5
Well said

>>6
Well said

If you are like me, you still include some Microsoft Windows use in your work or habits.  Not that I am particularly keen to disclose this information about myself.  But it's true and I needed to air it before I make my point.

As I finished watching a DVD movie on my Windows system, I decided to press the drive button and forgo the formalities of stopping the program, ejecting the disk, closing the program etc.  With my Linux system I don't get nearly as much pressure to follow specific tasks.  My mistake.  I could not get my disk to eject, nor did the program continue to respond.

No big deal, I've had similar issues with Windows dozens of times.  I just open the task manager, choose the silly DVD player application and end the task.  WRONG!   Instead, not even task manager worked.  I kept telling it to end task.  I was stuck.  My DVD drive would not release the disk, the software would not listen to me and close.  And Windows would not allow me to do anything anymore including rebooting! 

Then all of a sudden, about three minutes into this fiasco, my DVD drive opens!  I quickly grab the disk, close the drive, and flick the surge protector.  I breathe a sigh of relief then start scratching my head in amazement.

Wait you say, what's all this got to do with blaming an OS?  I have to take off my sweater and drink something cold to chill before writing further.  You see I don't experience this with Linux for several reasons.  I can get to them in a moment.  But let's put this into perspective okay?

I have a Microprocessor in my system that can easily handle over 120 million instructions per second.  If you like to get real geeky with me, consider this.  The Intel processor I'm using is able to calculate the SuperPI number crunching benchmark to one million digits in about 100 seconds.  It takes my Pentium 4 system less than two minutes to figure out this benchmark, and the Pentium 4 is notoriously bad at FPU calculations.  On a bad day, this beautiful system can do some very serious powered thinking, and at speeds that even ten years ago NASA didn't have in their control rooms.

But, the very same system can not "think” through the decision to release the freakin' DVD drive without locking up for three minutes?  How's that possible?  The answer lies not with the hardware but the Operating System that drives the hardware. 

Today, I think some very good, robust hardware is slave to OS issues that had 20 years to get refined and resolved.  For example, failures and execution response errors should not need to take a full three minutes to process.

"failures and execution response errors should not need to take a full three minutes to process"

Even with the wait states, my system taking three minutes to figure out that "gee there really is no DVD disk in the drive any more and I should give control back" is unacceptable.  It's unacceptable code driving my reasonably powerful computer. 

With Linux, hardware components are not slaves to the application functions. Thankfully, these things are nicely divided and kept isolated. The result is that a person actually runs the computer - rather than the other way around.

I am finding that it is not just big enterprise hardware that needs to be emancipated, but that regular users like myself, sitting at home trying to do work while sipping coffee also need our systems emancipated!  Look, there's a good reason why 7 of the 10 fastest super computers in the world run Linux.

Well, it is most likey because based on FLOP/MIPS and FPU calculations it would take a lot more hardware to get the same results using the alternative.  And more importantly, none of those true and awesome super computer geeks are going to allow an Operating System to embarrass them by taking longer to calculate the opening of a drive door than performing exponential number crunching.

So, tomorrow I plan to write over the Windows hard disk partitions with something that actually incorporates the processing power -- Linux. 

>>7
Why go to the trouble of when he already has a complete production-quality operating system to do that with?

(Personally, I think LAMP servers (Linux/Apache/MySQL/Perl-Python) are toys as well.. They might look okay if you're doing something that's poorly thought out, and believe 'The Advertnet will Provide!' when you have scaling/reliability issues ... *cough* Web2.0)

I've been in >>1's situtation before.. Professionally I don't really have anything to do with Windows, so I installed it on a spare machine to 'see what everyone was raving about'... It was the crippleware and nagware that made me loose interest. Dressing Windows up in Open Source clothes just to make it useful seems besides the point too..

>>8
you have been using shitty dvd player program.

>>10
He's right. In general, the shittiest apps are written by6 clueless windows programmers.

It also could have been a freak accident. Those happen under Linux too.

Even with the wait states, my system taking three minutes to figure out that "gee there really is no DVD disk in the drive any more and I should give control back" is unacceptable.

Technically, UNIX should shut down a lot faster. It doesn't though, probably for the same reason Windows can take a long time to open your DVD in that instance: it's playing safe and waiting for processes to terminate.

Hardly excusable, but hardly exceptional either.

>>10-12

http://reallylinux.com/docs/blameos.shtml

Haha.

I'd be embarrassed to publish something like that under my own name. I used to scribble the same shit when I was teenager.

I've got an answer to my own question: I've since remember there's the GPU general programming systems, like NVIDIA's Cg.

Lookit http://www.gpgpu.org/ ... It takes a bit of ferreting around to find the example demos, but almost all are released to run out-of-the-box on Windows. (oh noes those linux makefiles giving you nasty looks..)

You're a weirdo, >>15. Of all the reasons to use windows, that's one of the most niche/trivial/irrelevant I've seen.

If you want to know why people use windows, it's quite simple: the applications.

>>16
I mentioned it was a toy machine..

Actually, my day-job could probably get into using programmable GPU systems as brute-force engines.. although I don't think anyone would want to use desktop PeeCees in place of nicer hardware. :)

This thread has nice trolls, but they are ineffective as they are longer than the trollee responses.

Problems with CD drives are usually related to a problem in your IDE controller or cable.

Perhaps the Windows driver is too stupid with it and is hard to recover if the drive's behaving unproperly, I won't deny it, but I see the following big advantages over Linux:
* They are always automatically mounted. Having to configure this if you distro doesn't provide it is gay shit.
* You can frigging eject the drive while it's still in use. Linux bites.
* You can frigging eject the drive, see the serial number written on your pirated CD, put it back, and proceed the installation. Linux is stupid enough not to be able to proceed even though I've reinserted the same CD.

* You can frigging eject the drive, see the serial number written on your pirated CD, put it back, and proceed the installation. Linux is stupid enough not to be able to proceed even though I've reinserted the same CD.


truth got told

>>18
* They are always automatically mounted. Having to configure this if you distro doesn't provide it is gay shit.

Yes, you are right. But users that are new to Linux try distros that already mount CD drives, usb, etc. automatically like Ubuntu or SuSE. They don't install Slackware, Gentoo or other. At least most of them.

* You can frigging eject the drive while it's still in use. Linux bites.

Can you tell what "big advantage" there is when you can eject a drive that is still in use? If you ask me that's the dumbest thing you can ever do? Yeah, lets eject the CD drive to make the program go wild and bash errors into your face!! Then it hangs up and we need to CTRL+ALT+DEL. THATS COOL!!!

* You can frigging eject the drive, see the serial number written on your pirated CD, put it back, and proceed the installation. Linux is stupid enough not to be able to proceed even though I've reinserted the same CD.

Well, the only things that use serial numbers are games, programs and some other minor stuff (correct me if I'm wrong).
1. Games (for most of the time) only support Windows.
2. You don't need to pirate programs on Linux. There is (again for most of the time) equivalent software you can get.
3. Ever thought of writing the serial number on paper instead of the CD? Or you could have it saved in a text file?
OK, as >>19 implies, it is true BUT it is not an advantage.

Another thing is that you have the posibility to mount you stuff wherever you want. On Windows you have to use drive numbers like D, E etc. THE SYSTEM CONTROLS YOU and that's simply wrong!

You should control the system and not the system you.


>>1
If you have something to do that can't be done on *NIX OSs use Windows (...or OSX). The only thing for you on Windows is to learn something that you need for the specific OS or to play games that don't support Linux. Period.

linux is gay

Linux isn't gay.

What's gay are all the idiot advocates who think it's The One True OS (TM).

If you have something to do that can't be done on *NIX OSs use Windows (...or OSX).
OSbuttseX is a *NIX OS. Not a very good one I'll admit, but still.

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