Freesound Forums

Oh, wow! There is at least one person in the world that recommends it, then.

I hesitate to say it, but you’re not going to find a lot of privacy using Microsoft products. Microsoft have belatedly realised that people are not going to walk into PC World and plop down £179.99 for a disc which they insert into their personal computer to install an operating system. They lost their power in the tech industry by taking it for granted, and they want it back.

Nowadays, personal data is the currency of computing. It’s effectively a means of ‘monetisation by stealth.’ I try to explain this to people who complain about Yahoo or Google collecting their details when they’re doing a web search or using emails: you’re using a free service, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and although you might not be paying in pounds sterling or dollars of some description, you’ve therefore got to sell yourself.

For privacy in desktop operating systems, you can really only go for the Linux family. I’m an Ubuntu fanboy, but the truly elite members of the colander hat club would do better still with Debian, which is completely noncommercial. There was a furore about Ubuntu bundling search facilities for third-party services which, needless to say, sent data to those services, but it’s very easy and obvious how to disable them; I mean, I did.

The problem comes with the Internet, on which you can and should not expect any privacy. I wonder if there would be a market for a subscription-only Google-like service in which you pay a monthly fee, or GB£0.25 or so per use, to completely stealth out your use of that company’s web index or email facilities?

But I find most people’s concerns about privacy go straight out the window when they are asked to cough up some hard currency, just as their desire for better public services or state protection of the environment suddenly becomes less important when it is suggested that they pay higher taxes.

</epic-ramble>

toiletrolltube wrote:
If I was just using a computer to access email, internet, word processing, fine, but unfortunately it comes down to my audio software. And running windows in a VM is not an option, unless IOMMU works as I hope, then that would be great, but I haven't looked into it that much. But I digress.

Well, I have ‘produced’ exclusively on Ubuntu thanks to Ardour, a myriad LV2 plugins and all kinds of other good stuff since I got back into making music. Granted, though, that’s not for everyone.

I just want my OS to STFU and do what I want it to do, it's not that hard.

Don’t we all. BBC Micro Model B anyone?

I’m not drunk (I don’t drink) but I’m currently listening to Purity Ring, so I’m experiencing a similarly heady effect.

Well, Win 10 is just the latest in a long line of products for a consumist society - which extends far beyond software and hardware, by the way.
But software and hardware are a fantastic example.

Microsoft had it easy in the old days when they were competing with DOS. Credit to them: they brought computing to the masses. And, in the context of sound processing and music making, we KNOW the difference that makes.
There were people making music on computers in the days of DOS. Sure they were. And even before that, people made music on Spectrums and other now obsolete machines. But windows was a game changer - it made computing easy. Suddenly things were just 'click, click', 'plug and play'.
You could use a computer and make great stuff even if you were not a computer nerd.

I think windows peaked with 98 / XP and then went downhill from there.
Why?
Because they were no longer trying to solve problems and improve a product by bringing in functions that the users wanted - they were trying to generate sales by pushing a product that contained only marginal improvements that would not improve the experience of the general user.
I mean, once you got XP that does everything you need, why upgrade?
This movement lead to aberrations like Vista.

A good way to push the OS is to bundle it. It now comes installed in most new computers that you buy in shops. Of course, you can uninstall it and put something else in - but that costs you money, time and possibly hassle. So people are likely to stay with the installed OS because it is easy.
There are many other techniques that Microsoft and other companies use to push their products. Lets face it: where do you go when 99% of the people in the developed world own an computer and 99% of those computers are already running windows? Somehow you need to persuade (or force) these people to upgrade, so you can continue to generate sales.

What did mobile phone companies did when everyone already had a mobile phone? They invented smartphones. And then 3G, then 4G, and so on...
Lots of stuff that you did not need and now you seem to not be able to live without. One cannot go to have a shit anymore without checking his emails and at least 3 stupid photos on facebook...
Nobody reads the newspaper in the toilet anymore!...

I stopped upgrading when I got a computer that did what I wanted. I am now many versions behind in Windows. But my computers still does what I want it to.
I am now at a point where I will be limited in some of my music software - the new versions no longer run in my version of windows.
Is it time to take another leap?
Maybe not. My computer still does what I want, and I am nowhere near to exploring all the functionalities of Ableton Live, Reason and the other DAWs and plugins I already have.

Some people take pride in having all the latest gadgets and softwre versions. As a bedroom musician, I find that upgradintg to the latest version of windows is a sure way to get your midi controller and or audio-interface to stop working.

Or maybe I am just making up excuses and the reality is that I am becoming old and set in my ways.
Whatever.

toiletrolltube wrote:
James, I can't complain and should get more involved. Like: hey Linux Audio people, I really like this Windows software, please make something similar for Linux. Anyway, I'm a hopeless Sonar nut, and Jack is a bit weird.

Purity Ring sound quite nice thanks, not what I'd normally go for, but I appreciate it.

I avoided computers (except for games) in the BBC days... or they avoided me.

You can find it here:
http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html

--> exit stage right, with a tip of his colander hat

AlienXXX wrote:
I think windows peaked with 98 / XP and then went downhill from there.

This might seem a bit of a non sequitur, but bear with me: if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to run something other than Ubuntu as my daily driver, it would without a doubt be one of the newer Windows versions — probably 7, on the basis that it is well tested and still supported, but heck, maybe even one of the versions that we are all (myself included) crapping on here.

Why? Well, I don’t share other people’s rose-tinted views of XP; in my opinion it was all downhill from 3.1 onwards. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I found 98 and XP anything but stable. They were plagued with the curse of “But it worked fine yesterday!” Many a time I, or someone else in my family, would boot up our machines to find that something — applications, drivers, etc. — had stopped working for no reason whatsoever. There is also the fact that 98 and XP would become slower and slower with use. Some people’s machines that have been shoved into my hands to fix take half an hour to boot to the desktop and another half an hour to open an application. Seriously? None of the obvious fixes, such as cleaning the cache folder and disabling the useless apps that the system tray attracts like dog turds attract flies, seemed to help. Then there’s the remote security holes, which I don’t think need any introduction.

Generally, every time I have to use Windows, I’m reminded why I don’t. I don’t understand why I have to wait several minutes after the desktop loads for the machine to become responsive, or why I have to open things slowly and delicately to avoid the entire thing freezing solid. Device drivers too. I’ve come to expect to be able to plug things into computers and for them to just work, because the source code for the drivers is out there and compiled into the kernel, and not to have to trawl dodgy websites full of pop-up porn to find something that is probably a Trojan. I think I know which option is more ‘plug and play’. And why am I insane if I expect hardware more than three years old to still be usable on a modern operating system? My Emagic AMT8 MIDI interface and Edirol FA-66 audio interface are doing better hooked up and being used than in a landfill.

I know people are railroaded into using Windows or OS X and often have little choice in the matter. I’ve also got no beef with some of the great music software that runs on Windows and Macs either, in fact I’d love to see some of it ported over; much as I like the open source ethic I couldn’t care less about ‘how Free’ my system is. This is not a Linux evangelism rant. The only thing that does get on my nerves about Win v. Lin is when people claim (not that anybody is doing it here and now) that Windows is more ‘user-friendly’. You can probably tell from the above paragraphs how I feel about that one.

Newer Windowses are better, or ‘less bad’ in these regards, and so if it were a matter of life and death I’d be going for usability and stability and damn privacy. I hope it never comes to that, though.

I'm very unsettled about Win10

Here's why:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/10/06/windows-10-spying/

I'm sticking with Win 7 on my PC machine. It's better than vista and newer than XP (I require full x64 compatibility)

My main machine is Mac OSX 10.9

toiletrolltube wrote:
Headphaze. The only objection I have to Macs (no wait, there's two: it's damned expensive ) is that I can't build it myself. I do understand that it's a better dedicated media production machine (again, only from what I've read).

Both legitimate complaints. Although, it's possible to upgrade certain components on the Macbook Pro. However, Mac Pro (not the newest model) it's mostly upgradable.

In a way we all become slaves to this stuff. Sure, there are many OSs out there and even more DAWs and other music software. But who has time to learn it all?
It is a challange to be anything more than a casual user if you are spread out over more than 3 DAWs.

Many sucessful producers stick to what works, use a single DAW for years and see a change in DAW as a major jump (in the dark).
Operating systems are also a bit like that.
Also, multiple computers, multiple OS machines?... It all becomes too cumbersome.
You can begin to understand why some musicians say - "I love my guitar. I can just pick it up and play.". - And yes, that is the ultimate "plug and play", isn't it? - no OS, no drives, no crashes, no viruses, no incompatibility issues...

Especially when it is just a hobby - something you do after a day's work and after the kids have gone to bed. You don't really want to be learning another OS or DAW or whatever. You just want to sit down and make some music...

Shame I can't play an instrument. - unless if you include humming and table tapping.

AlienXXX wrote:
In a way we all become slaves to this stuff. Sure, there are many OSs out there and even more DAWs and other music software. But who has time to learn it all?

It’s the curse of gear acquisition syndrome. We all like new toys but show me a musician with piles of expensive gear and I will show you someone who more than likely doesn’t make a lot of music. In a way, that’s what I like about being a Linux musician, as much as it is teeth-gnashingly annoying sometimes. Alien is absolutely correct, many musicians prefer to get really familiar with a small number of tools, and that’s because the secret to creative success — in any field — is to get the inspiration/perspiration ratio as low as you possibly can.

toiletrolltube wrote:
I play games with amazing female players (better than me) I just believe gamers don't have gender, just as the mind doesn't in philosophy. There are just good players, learners, and shit heads (in my experience).

I’m fairly sure that this battle of the sexes in gaming only began with online play and male players getting all sour grapes about being beaten by girls. I’ve never understood it how game journalists act like ‘female gamers’ are a new and weird thing. I wouldn’t have got into video games in the first place if the three sisters who lived next door hadn’t introduced us to their NES far back in the mists of time.

Getting back to the original topic, just thought I would say that I recently spent many, many hours trying to figure out why (and work around) my media editing workstation kept getting DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION exceptions (a blue screen of death) after upgrading to Windows 10. I tried everything imaginable but finally stopped short of trying to run WinDbg to see which driver was crashing because I couldn't get the system to run long enough (or with my wireless networking PCI card when in Safe Mode) to actually do it (nor did I have any patience remaining to actually find and install WinDbg anywhere). I finally just ditched it and went back to Vista, which I never particularly liked, but it runs well on that machine. This was definitely the right choice.

My conclusion from my experience is that it is probably not a good idea to try to upgrade a machine that is more than 5 years old to Windows 10, or if you plan to do it, make sure that *all* of your hardware has new drivers available from the manufacturer specifically for Win10. That especially includes the motherboard's integrated components.

Other than that, I was actually liking Windows 10 almost as much as Windows 7, more than Vista, and (why bother saying it?) *much* more than Windows 8*. But I'm posting this from an XP machine that is 10 years old and still doing exactly what I need it to do, and doing it well most of the time (though it is starting to develop some instabilities, and I can't use it for video editing). If I were going to upgrade to new hardware, it would definitely be running Windows 10. BTW, I had a secondary boot to Ubuntu Studio (another variant similar to AV Linux, I suppose), but never used it -- Cool Edit Pro and Analog Box 2 won't run on Linux, nor will Sony Vegas. Now I'll just use a live Ubuntu boot CD if I ever need to run some good linux-based tools like gparted, etc.

And while I'm at it, I'll also advise folks to avoid ever choosing Microsoft's "ReFS" (Resilient File System) over "NTFS" due to the empty promise that it is much easier to recover from crashes. But sorry, this has nothing to do with Windows 10 and is more about Windows Server (since 2012).

zimbot wrote:
Now I'll just use a live Ubuntu boot CD if I ever need to run some good linux-based tools like gparted, etc.

Thanks for the extras.

I've stashed away a VHD built from my XP Laptop in case it dies... it can be reborn immortal as a virtual system, somewhere.

I think I lost my final enablement code for CEP 2.1 once I got past all the beta-testing I did for them, and I've never gotten it to work anywhere except on this laptop. Well, I also used to have it working on an NT 4.0 DAW that died years ago, where I had a Yamaha SCSI CD Burner that CEP could use. It might be fun to resurrect that system long enough to get a VHD of it, but it would be a lot of work.

Anyway, that disk burner capability in CEP 2.1 would let you do just about anything, if you knew what you were doing -- though you had to set your breaks and track markers at multiples of whatever CD's require (can't remember the units now). I even set up a CD with a hidden pre-track (start at the beginning of the first track, and then rewind -- and you find your way back to the hidden stuff). None of the other disk burners I've found would do that. Adobe simply threw away that entire feature when putting out their first edition of Audition. I can understand why, but -- dang! We were promised an license to the first Audition version, and I probably threw that one away since Audition was such a step backwards.

So I think I'll keep this XP system around in one form or another for a long, long time.

lol, I uninstalled it after a week. I really shouldn't have posted that last night, was so drunk. Just wondering what others think about the privacy stuff and totally forgot to mention it.

TLR this thread. But have had issues with Win security since the beginning. *cough, hidden administrator account with no password SAM hex hive hack* (you know the one that Microsoft refuses to patch in a factory install)

M$ won't touch my new rig. The poor new egg (pun) might get sick on wasted cycles.

Y'know he's a bit prissy, he doesn't like inefficiently coded bloat kernels. My new baby is a rich kid and not good for that.

There is a fruitcake in your bathroom,
...it has been there for two years.

Please do your chores more often.
Hugs and kisses,


(Mom) xoxo

I started reading. Then I read long. Then tl;dr.
So, I'm sorry if someone already mentioned this, but I love windows 10. Everything works perfectly and it's one of the smarter OSs I've seen in a while (of course, not comparing it to any smartphone OS).

afleetingspeck wrote:
I started reading. Then I read long. Then tl;dr.
So, I'm sorry if someone already mentioned this, but I love windows 10. Everything works perfectly and it's one of the smarter OSs I've seen in a while (of course, not comparing it to any smartphone OS).

You're constantly being monitored though. Data-mining is big with Win 10

That is the only downside

window 10 is awesome it makes easy to work.. we can say it is combination of window 7 and window 8

The only Windows that use now and i like it is Windows 7.For other things i use Linux Ubuntu.