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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

I've been using OS X since 10.2, though I keep a Windows box around for games. I also feel that OS X has become less stable and performant in recent years, and every now and then I spin up a Linux distro on a spare hard disk just to try it out.

These experiments rarely last very long, and almost always end because the video/graphics support is just so terrible. I have yet to find a reliable way to play videos without horrible screen tearing.

But I don't know what alternative there is. Windows' experiments with Metro was a disaster. PC-BSD has some really nice features (I love ZFS and use it on my fileserver) but has the same issues with hardware support, especially graphics hardware support.

I fear for the future.

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I had the same complaints wrt video tearing, however in very recent distros (F21+) the issue has largely been resolved.

In non-composited environments, tearing would happen unless a hardware overlay used.

In composited environments, tearing would be inevitable because the compositor would use a nonsynchronized back-to-front-buffer copy. This has largely been replaced with a synchronized buffer flip, so that there is no tearing at all.

The one remaining issue I have is with fullscreen Firefox videos. These get "direct" output (they skip the compositor) but don't use a hardware overlay, and therefore tear. There are a couple solutions for this that I'm playing with.

All video tearing problems I had on my laptop were solved with the TearFree option of the intel driver: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel#Tear-free_video

Which would be great, except I have Nvidia graphics.

I play Steam games on my 4 years old machine(ati graphics card, Athlon processor) on Ubuntu 14.04. The only issue i had was font disappearing in Civ and Democracy 3. Just waiting for Skylake to upgrade.

I wonder if you have tried the Win10 preview.

Windows 10 is essentially what Windows 8 should have been, or at worst, 8.1. It's quite usable. The ugliest thing in Win10 is the Store, integrated into the Start menu. The Store is filled with junk apps and outright scams. Microsoft refuses to fix these issues. In fact, I reported a fake Dropbox app that listed "@Microsoft Corporation" as the publisher. MS wrote back to say the app was fine, and if the developers were lying, I should just leave a review.

The result is that for many things you might type into the start menu, you get offers to install scams on your PC. Idiotic.

> In fact, I reported a fake Dropbox app that listed "@Microsoft Corporation" as the publisher. MS wrote back to say the app was fine, and if the developers were lying, I should just leave a review.

Or the other form of support: post to Twitter/HackerNews/etc. and light a fire that they will quickly need to put out...

AFAIK, there's no way to link to the Windows Store, just the phone store (which is marginally better). I've written Satya and the PM in charge of the store. Many devs are in contact with them about it. There's even a third party report on how bad the situation is, and in August, MS announced they were cleaning up and published reportapp@Microsoft.com, which seems unmonitored.

It's so bad that Netflix required three takedowns for the same publisher before MS decided not to allow scam "official" Netflix apps. The second hit for Facebook is a scam (FB has no way I found to report stuff if you don't have a FB account - lame for security.)

I'm betting that some high level people at Microsoft have a bonus tied to "number of apps published". That's the only way this crap makes sense. Even unpaid 14yr olds would do s better job cleaning up the Store. It's far worse than Android Marketplace ever was.

Windows 8 wasn't all that bad. Relative to Windows 7 it was just two steps forward and two steps back. For all the Metro haters: the core workflow to launch applications (winkey + number keys or winkey + search + enter) is still the same as Windows 7.

Windows 8.1 improved things a bit by identifying some scenarios where Metro was unnecessary and keeping it out of the way. So relative to Windows 7 it's now two steps forward and one step back.

I've used the Windows 10 preview and early signs suggest that it's going to be two steps forward from Windows 7.

Windows 7 is my preferred modern OS. For a time in work I was using a windows 8 machine and I found it bafflingly bad. What were the 2 steps forward you mentioned? I'm curious. In my experience it was just 2 steps backward, period.

There's big ticket improvements for performance [1] and a huge step forward for multiple monitor support [2]. I've given third-party multiple monitor utilities the boot. Multiple monitor support in Windows 8 is squarely in "good enough" territory.

There's smaller improvements too, like the new Task Manager [3].

There's also mundane stuff like rejigged NTFS this and that [4].

Client Hyper-V is a welcome addition.

etc. etc.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/07/reducing-runti...

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-wind...

[3] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/13/the-windows-8-...

[4] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/09/redesigning-ch...

Thankyou for a very informative response! My reaction to that stuff.. 1. Good! 200Mb of extra free memory, but big whoop! (when you have 16 gb) 2. Dont care. I never use multiple monitors, cus I only have one set of eyes. 3. Basically the same stuff as before arranged differently (they have just moved some stuff from msconfig into task manager) 4. That does seem like a good improvement

One thing I had heard was that game performance was better on windows 8 and 8.1 compared to 7. Though after looking up some benchmarks investigating that, it does not seem to be the case. There are some differences either way depending on game/graphics card but they are very minor anyway.

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-gaming-perform...

I kept using xp until 7 came out. This is also what industry did. So I'll probably wait until they bring out another one aimed at industry.

"There's big ticket improvements for performance"

Unfortunately, the improvements were negated by the lame ass UI, which thankfully Microsoft will be ditching.

"Windows 8 wasn't all that bad"

That's funny, because ALL of the non-technical regular people that I know of hate windows 8. A lot of them downgraded to Windows 7.

Must be lots of windows fanbois here, otherwise I'm not sure why I got downvoted. Really, they may not want to hear this, but Windows 8 really sucked. Microsoft knows it, and that is why they're running away as fast as they can from it.

No justification for the downvotes? I'll chalk it up to fanboism.

LOL, more downvotes? That's bad form.

Are you new to the Internet? Replying to yourself 3 times in a row complaining about downvotes = downvote magnet.

Yeah, kind of new to this. Not to the internet though.

If the core workflow was actually the same, then businesses wouldn't have been so loathe to upgrade to it. From what I've witnessed, few people launch their primary applications through text search - they prefer shortcut icons, whether they be in the menu, taskbar, or desktop.

This isn't necessarily true. Like so many things, perception is reality. People oftentimes do things out of fear--in this case, fear that their old workflow isn't the same--rather than rational conclusion.

Shortcuts on the desktop and pinned applications on the taskbar remain the same. The new start screen permits shortcuts. All the existing avenues are still wide open.

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