xcomcmdr wrote on 2022-10-17, 19:15:

I use Gnome 4 on the latest Fedora, and it's really superior to anything from the past. The best user experience by far !
I was a Xfce fanboy. Not anymore.

Gnome 2 is the classic desktop metaphor. Since Gnome 3, focus has been on looks and design, to the detriment of usability. The problem wasn't the desire for change, but the destruction of what was, in my opinion, the peak of the professional Linux desktop experience. Even Linus Torvalds agreed:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds- … design-failure/

I broke down, and upgraded my old aging Fedora install on my desktop. Simply because my old F14 comes with ancient X versions that don't contain all the fixes to make Intel 3D really work well. And yes, things really do work better on the graphical side.

But with F17 comes gnome3. And I knew I'd have trouble, but also knew that most of the worst crap could be fixed with extensions, and I'd used 3.4 on my laptop enough to know it should be all somewhat usable.

Notice that he said F17 (Fedora 17). It was the end of an era.

If you've never tried Fedora 14 with its Gnome 2 desktop, I would highly recommend the experience, even if you won't run it once. It's far more polished than anything I've seen in the last 10 years.

I tried to make a Gnome 3 theme to try and bring some of the design aesthetic back, but there are features missing from Gnome 3 that make it impossible. See here for my GitHub release, although it doesn't work right with the most recent releases of Gnome 3, you can get an idea of how it used to look from the screenshots.

https://github.com/gnome-themes/clearlooks-f14

I was ready to run back to FVWM or OLWM screaming since they seemed to get into a change for change sake jerkoff contest.

In OS land, everyone's free to choose their own hill to die on. 😁

Much of a muchness in the end.

As far as WM/DEs are concerned I always thought Cinnamon managed to look contemporary without being too much like GNOME3 despite being forked from that. That said I'm pretty OK with using MATE as well, that is also a decent update to GNOME2.

I'm also perfectly content with Xfce when resources are an issue, it's perfectly functional.

KDE though, just NO. I haven't used since.. RedHat 6 I think. I used it with RedHat 5.0/5.2 but then switched to WindowMaker. I know KDE came a long way and Plasma looks nothing like KDE1 but I still don't want to go back there..

I already used Gnome 2 in the past, and preferred Xfce.

I began to use Gnome 4 without any intent to keep it, or being aware that it was the default on Fedora. I wanted something recent, but not Archlinux, not Ubuntu, not Slackware, not Manjaro, not Linux Mint...

I got used to it and really like it. If I had known that it was Gnome, I would have avoided it. At all costs.

But... Nowadays, Gnome 2, Plasma, Xfce, seem so much slower to use. Too much actions for simple things (Xfce, Gnome 2), too much settings everywhere (KDE/Plasma).

I really like the modern Gnome way of doing things. Yes, it is very different. But it's also very efficient. It's slick, fast, lean, and mean.

I successfully installed Windows 98 on an Asus P5E3 WS Pro workstation motherboard.
This is an absolute beast of a Windows 98SE machine and it was very tricky to install.

I paired it with the following hardware:

- Radeon X850XT PE (PCIE)
- Philips SonicEdge 5.1 sound card (for gameport support)
- DualCore E7600 (3.07GHz)
- 8GB DDR3 RAM

The board uses an X38/ICH9 chipset and while it does have an IDE port, it's not bootable. So i had to set the SATA ports to IDE compatibility mode and use a SATA DVD drive to boot my Win98 install media.
I used ICH9 drivers from here and slipstreamed them into the install CD. Then I installed Win98 and after the first reboot, I installed PTCHSATA and PATCHMEM to get it to boot with SATA in native mode and 8GB of RAM.

The system was running very well with that combination, I didn't experience any crashes and the X850XT also worked flawlessly after installing the ATI 6.2 drivers.
But there was one last problem left: Getting networking to work (for connecting to my NAS via SMB1).
The integrated Marvell chipset (88E8056) doesn't have native 98SE drivers, but Marvell provides NDIS2 drivers for those ("DOS NDIS2 Driver for Yukon Devices").

I installed those via the Add Hardware wizard, but all I could do was ping 127.0.0.1 and that was it. I couldn't get a network connection to the outside world and couldn't figure out why.
After a while I vaguely remembered that the NDIS VXD had problems on modern CPU's with more than 2GHz so as a last resort before giving up I patched my Win98 CD with this patch:
https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

AND IT WORKED.
I am so happy now. What an overkill machine. Absolutely unneccessary to run Windows 98SE on this. I did it, because I can.

schmatzler wrote on 2022-10-18, 19:41:

I successfully installed Windows 98 on an Asus P5E3 WS Pro workstation motherboard. This is an absolute beast of a Windows 98SE […]
Show full quote

I successfully installed Windows 98 on an Asus P5E3 WS Pro workstation motherboard.
This is an absolute beast of a Windows 98SE machine and it was very tricky to install.

I paired it with the following hardware:

- Radeon X850XT PE (PCIE)
- Philips SonicEdge 5.1 sound card (for gameport support)
- DualCore E7600 (3.07GHz)
- 8GB DDR3 RAM

The board uses an X38/ICH9 chipset and while it does have an IDE port, it's not bootable. So i had to set the SATA ports to IDE compatibility mode and use a SATA DVD drive to boot my Win98 install media.
I used ICH9 drivers from here and slipstreamed them into the install CD. Then I installed Win98 and after the first reboot, I installed PTCHSATA and PATCHMEM to get it to boot with SATA in native mode and 8GB of RAM.

The system was running very well with that combination, I didn't experience any crashes and the X850XT also worked flawlessly after installing the ATI 6.2 drivers.
But there was one last problem left: Getting networking to work (for connecting to my NAS via SMB1).
The integrated Marvell chipset (88E8056) doesn't have native 98SE drivers, but Marvell provides NDIS2 drivers for those ("DOS NDIS2 Driver for Yukon Devices").

I installed those via the Add Hardware wizard, but all I could do was ping 127.0.0.1 and that was it. I couldn't get a network connection to the outside world and couldn't figure out why.
After a while I vaguely remembered that the NDIS VXD had problems on modern CPU's with more than 2GHz so as a last resort before giving up I patched my Win98 CD with this patch:
https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

AND IT WORKED.
I am so happy now. What an overkill machine. Absolutely unneccessary to run Windows 98SE on this. I did it, because I can.

Nice. I find 775 systems are crazy fast. X38 is pretty obscure

775 systems with DDR3 memory are even more obscure. You can get those usual DDR1/DDR2 multi-purpose boards for a few bucks easily, but not DDR3.

I bought the board for SLI experiments until I got a real nForce 790i. I'm glad I didn't throw it out. It's much better than the garbage Asrock Dual VSTA I had lying around.

schmatzler wrote on 2022-10-18, 19:41:

After a while I vaguely remembered that the NDIS VXD had problems on modern CPU's with more than 2GHz so as a last resort before […]
Show full quote

After a while I vaguely remembered that the NDIS VXD had problems on modern CPU's with more than 2GHz so as a last resort before giving up I patched my Win98 CD with this patch:
https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

AND IT WORKED.
I am so happy now. What an overkill machine. Absolutely unneccessary to run Windows 98SE on this. I did it, because I can.

I solved my NDIS.VXD problem with Windows 98 on a Core 2 Duo by copying the updated file from Windows ME. I don't know which is better, the patched one for Windows 98 or the newer one from Windows ME. If you have any problems, at least you now know of an alternative version to try.

I have the P5K3 Deluxe which is DDR3 ... maybe it was a common thing that impeded adoption, though 775 had it's day before DDR3 appeared, but it seems that base clock won't push real far on DDR3 boards, and RAM that really let them let rip was late in coming. So wanting to do a system that really wrings out a quad, I'm putting the P5K3 Deluxe on server/utility duties and building a P5N-D with DDR2 as a hotrod. I might give the P5K3 a reprieve if a high multi quad drops in my lap for cheap, but it seems it's not great for pushing them.

Today, for some reason, I just had to put my EVGA GT440 back together. It's a long tale, took it apart years ago because the fan went gummy, wouldn't move... been sitting, waiting for a new fan.. kept looking for them on eBay then rabbitholing and forgetting what I was actually on there for, or not being real sure that what was on offer was a good part. Then several times I tried remodelling other fans to fit, unsuccessfully. Sometime last year, I had an effort to pull the fan apart, and couldn't get the hub off without using more force than seemed sensible. Couldn't find anywhere to oil it. Drilled a hole in the back, carefully, still wasn't sure I got to it, put some oil on, still stiff... left it sitting around... picked it up and fiddled with it months later... hey it's looser! ... so dotted oil on it again a few weeks ago, and left it, then did it again a few days ago, and seemed to be spinning freely again.. So applied power to fan, whooosh.. seems good, put another dot of oil on and taped over the hole, put it back together and it's awaiting in system testing. Repasted etc of course.

Finally converted my C64 from NTSC to PAL. Why, oh why did I wait 35 years to do this?!? I should have done it much sooner... At last, I have proper colours 😀

schmatzler wrote on 2022-10-18, 21:19:

775 systems with DDR3 memory are even more obscure. You can get those usual DDR1/DDR2 multi-purpose boards for a few bucks easily, but not DDR3.

I bought the board for SLI experiments until I got a real nForce 790i. I'm glad I didn't throw it out. It's much better than the garbage Asrock Dual VSTA I had lying around.

There were a lot of late 775 boards with DDR3 (P45/X48/790i) I have a good number of them, you know what's even more obscure . .Socket 775 with working USB 3.0 on board ..I have exactly one board that can do it a Gigabyte EP45T-USB3P which as it happens is a DDR3 board too.

P45 and X48 could also come in DDR2 at stupidly high speeds, such rock solid boards for OCing.

Thought I had USB 3.0 on my XFX 750i board, until I went to plug something into it and realised it was external SATA 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-19, 01:58:

Thought I had USB 3.0 on my XFX 750i board, until I went to plug something into it and realised it was external SATA 🤣

Don't feel so bad about it. eSATA USB combo ports actually are a thing.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-10-19, 02:03:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-19, 01:58:

Thought I had USB 3.0 on my XFX 750i board, until I went to plug something into it and realised it was external SATA 🤣

Don't feel so bad about it. eSATA USB combo ports actually are a thing.

Yes for the exactly 6 devices made to use it, at which point it was relegated to the electronic device museum who promptly disposed of it in the trash.

eSATA was something no-one wanted, asked for or used. (I guess there may have been a few misguided individuals who did use it until they realised USB was simply better supported)

I've plugged USB devices into a port backwards once. There was a spark and the computer shut down, but survived. It happened another time with a mouse, although the peripheral did not survive.

I also remember those ESATA/USB combos. They were really weird. I was never a fan of ESATA. I never understood how you were supposed to power the devices, where you were supposed to put it *safely*, etc. SATA was never designed for use externally, and it showed. I'm glad we have USB3 now. It only takes three rotations of the plug to get it to fit, but at least most devices are bus powered and come in a protective shell.

eSATA wasn't such a bad thing. The extremely stiff cables without a reasonable power supply scheme were.
There was an eSATAp "standard" with 12V & 5V, though, but that wasn't very much used.

I'm one of those misguided individuals using eSATA occasionally for 2.5" SATA HDDs/SSDs needing 5V only. (The 5V coming from the USB part of a combined eSATA/USB port.)
Really useful for older systems with USB2.0 only which would be the only solution for external drives besides opening your case for directly connecting them to a SATA port each time otherwise.
There were also a few drive enclosures with USB2.0 & eSATA. As an intermediate step towards USB3 this wasn't that bad.

eSATA was intended for external storage that wouldn't or couldn't do well with USB 2.0, specifically high-performance/large-capacity HDDs - single and multiple - and optical drives. I used it extensively in the days of USB 2.0 and had nearly a dozen enclosures that used it.

I remember how awkward USB 2.0 was. It was so much faster then USB 1.1, and we were all grateful for that. But it was still very slow at large transfers. Then USB 3 had those weird wide connectors and multiple "versions".

I bought a bunch of 16GB USB 2.0 sticks cheap ... and I'm sorta regretting it... I swear I could burn 4 DVDs quicker than filling one of those.