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Comment by bullen | Hacker News Reader

My old 6600 from 2016 is still running fine, I replaced the SSD (Intel 400GB to X25-E 64GB that will last 20 years minimum), the RAM (Micron to Samsung from aliexpress before the price hike... got 8 sticks of 16GB for $40 a pop for backup) and even the old trusty monitor (Both Eizo 5:4 matte VA; mercury tube to led, with f.lux/redshift the blue light is ok).

But with a 3050 upgrade from the 1050 and later 1030 (best GPU for eternity if you discount VR) I had in it it's good for another decade. If a game comes out that does not run on it I wont play it... simple as that... 150W is enough. So far only PUBG stutters, what a joke of bloat and poor engineering that game has become...

Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.

YMMV but recommendation is still: do not buy new X86 hardware; do not use new OS/languages.

Build something good with what you have right now.

Make it so good it's still in use after 100 years.

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> Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7

Windows 7 doesn't have compressed memory (ZRAM). Doesn't support TRIM for NVMe SSDs. Doesn't have WSL. Doesn't have ISO mounting built in. Doesn't have HDR, variable refresh rate, etc...

Are those really improvements though.

RAM maybe wears quicker if compressed?

NVMe will break long before a good old SATA drive.

WSL... lol

ISO you can do with daemon tools for free...

Displays are good enough at 60Hz 5:4 matte.

WSL is an excellent Micro-Soft technology.

> NVMe will break long before a good old SATA drive.

What gave you that idea?

> RAM maybe wears quicker if compressed?

Is this serious? The rest of your post seems serious, but that's such a silly idea.

> What gave you that idea?

If you run Windows 7 on it then it sure will!

This person has said that 1gb/s ethernet is as high as networking will go because of power constraints (yes obviously 2.5gb is common and a 10gb networking card is $25).

They have said that DDR3 RAM causes mouse stuttering and that a 2011 atom is the best CPU that will ever be made. Unfortunately I think they are serious.

The better statement is 'Win 10 improved nothing directly user-facing over Win 7'. Sure, there are several technical improvements under the hood, but those are completely detached from what the user actually sees and experiences, and there's no real reason we couldn't have the Windows 10 technical improvements with a Windows 7 UI, other than Microsoft being the abusive parent that it is.

I'd still disagree but UI changes are far more subjective with approval. The start menu in 10 is a lot more customizable vs. Windows 7 which I think is a good thing. Task View (virtual desktops) were added in 10. Task Manager is so much better, that one is probably objective.

> The start menu in 10 is a lot more customizable vs. Windows 7 which I think is a good thing.

I installed Open-Shell day 1 when I got Windows 8, and continued with that on 10, since the new start menu did not convince me, so I can't really vouch for that. I don't see a need in having tiles and such in my start menu.

> Task View (virtual desktops) were added in 10.

Never used it in Windows. On my Mac I use it to put individual apps in full-screen, so they're easy to switch to with 3-finger swipe. Then again, I have three screens, so the demand for more desktop space is close to zero on what would be my Windows machine.

> Task Manager is so much better, that one is probably objective.

Technically a Windows 8 addition, but I'll give you that one. I'll have the old task manager back if I could get the old photo viewer back though. I can manage with the old task manager. I couldn't manager with the Win10 Photo app, and had to install Irfanview to get a usable picture viewer (at least before I went to Linux).

> I don't see a need in having tiles and such in my start menu.

Tiles are gone in Windows 11.

But this is exactly my point. Some people were so happy with how Windows XP worked but things are so much better now. It's repeating again where Windows 7 is the new XP.

Things are better, but it's a case of two steps forward, one step back. We got a new task manager that was actually good, and lost the photo viewer that was good. We got good taskbar search, right in the start menu, and then lost it again. We got DX12, but also got more telemetry than ever. We got an actually decent Windows update (it even grabs drivers for you and is pretty good at getting it right!), and we lose the ability to disable them (without really getting in there). We apparently lost tiles again, even though some people might still want them, and we also lost the ability to left-align our start menu, until the noise got so loud that even Microsoft couldn't ignore it.

Things may be better, but saying that Windows has gotten better, without a comma and a but, or an asterisk, is disingenuous. Much better is a matter of opinion, and one I don't share. Where things have gotten much better is Linux.

I have fedora xfce running beautifully on a 2011 i5 Mac mini. Replacing the hard disk with modern SSD was all it took to get it running at acceptable speeds where interacting with xfce is roughly instantaneous

> Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.

You had me up to this point. The problem is that there are actually quite a few improvements under the hood over those upgrade paths, but they are unfortunately hidden under all of the bullshit. I was an early adopter of Windows 11 specifically because of their efficiency core support over Windows 10 when I upgraded my CPU.

You need to look at the cost of improvements, and they overshadow all progress.

I'm going linux with TWM (desktop with design look from the 70s) on ARM because M$ is clearly not thinking about the long perspective.

We need a stable platform to build quality software.

And that's saying alot seen how linux is deprecating libc after very short time and the legacy joystick API is not being compiled into modern kernels anymore.

Stability is way more important than bells and whistles.

You can use IceWM instead of TWM; it's almost as lightweight and much more stable.

Also, if any, CTWM (with the welcome screen disabled) can be as good as TWM but with better features (sticky menus and the like).

I don't like the look of IceWM but I will check out CTWM!

Edit: TWM is less cluttered and less features is actually more here...

Yep, I like TWM on design too, but both CTWM and IceWM can be equally configured.

On CTWM, you can straightly import the TWM config modulo some slight error on a single line (if any). Once you set profer TTF fonts for it (by default they might look huge on smaller screens), you are done. Set the sticky/persistent menus (on a laptop/netbook it's a godsend) and you are done.

Maybe you would like to disable the startup screen (-W flag for the 'ctwm' binary) or some obvious option in the man page in order to be put at ~/.ctwmrc or ~/.twmrc.

For sticky menues you need to just put

     StayUpMenus

at ~/.ctwmrc

Just copy the content from your former ~/.twmrc file and append that on top.

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