Posted on 06/21/2006 11:08:30 PM PDT by Lexinom
Our household needs a new computer system. Your ideas/suggestions are appreciated!
I realize some of this may not be possible, but here's a list of what we would like:
* This computer should boot quickly, in a matter of a few seconds. * This machine should not attempt to "help" with everything, or offer "tours" * This machine should do exactly what I, the user, command it to, immediately, and without trying to help. * No extras should be loaded. * The CPU should be able to last for 20 years or longer, and the drives should be redundant (mirrored). * It should be possible to boot into a bare-bones "DOS" mode, with NO GRAPHICS, no pre-emptive multitasking, etc. * It should be quiet. * Nothing besides the bare bones operating environment /operating system should ever be loaded unless I expicitly install it.
Here is what we do NOT like:
* A machine that takes more than 15 seconds to boot (inexcusable with today's hardware). * Extreme speed i.e. lower CPU lifespan. 1-2GHz should be MORE than sufficient. * Noise from fans. * Extreme graphics - no games. * Extraneous unwanted programs that come with the O/S - bare bones only. * Commercial/marketing stuff loaded onto the system. * An operating system that tries to "help" with everything. * A machine that refuses to turn off instantly but second-guesses user commands. When I say "off" by flicking the power switch, I MEAN NOW, not thirty seconds from now.
Any thoughts?
Get a computer that puts the hardware and monitor in sleep mode after so many minutes, then leave it on all the time. Zero boot time, and very little power usage. The rest I leave up to others.
LOL! That is the best attitudinal synopsis of Windows I've read to date :-)
Everything you've suggested is excellent. I will review it all. Thanks a million!
(yes I know the 20 years and 15 second boot times were absurd - at least now with current thinking and practice).
You didn't probably shake and move your computer a lot at home, but probably had to do so to get it to the business and then you had to plug things in and out of it left and right, which breaks down the computer...and the HD! :)
Any newer windows cheapy computer on up does that these days.
Some programs don't function well with the power option though. Usually those are the ones involving CD/DVD utilities.
A LOT of programs don't seem to like these power options. It has never worked on this particular system. And Windows has certain limits, like (according to a Microsoft employee I spoke with) some 2,000 GDI handles available globally. If one program has a leak, you'll run out of these graphical interfaces - that's when the Start Menu and icons begin showing up as black squares. Reboot is the only recourse.
VPN can get slow over time, as well. Unsure of cause. Speeds up after reboot.
At work, on a top-notch dual proc, I typically have to reboot once a week - still not bad, however.
Reboot is nice because it "wipes the slate clean", so to speak. I'm honestly not sure why we can't just have a default "virgin desktop" image on the harddrive loaded linearly (with option for "full boot"), similar to the hibernate/restore functionality. That *should* only take a couple of seconds to load - not 0:30-2:00. Oh well, what do I know?
Philosophically I also disagree with the prevailing notion that it is the OS' job to handle tasks like drawing. Something handling drawing is no longer a Disk Operating System, but rather an operating environment (like XWindows, in all its various flavors). Microsoft subsuming discrete products into the "OS" got them into big trouble a few years back. *Nix does it correctly, with GNOME, KDE, and others treated as a discrete layer on top, not an integral organic part.
Dependent modules can be loaded as needed. For example, if I'm tying a letter, I don't need network connectivity if I have a local printer. The network module should be loaded and initialized when I need it - when I launch FireFox, or the simple "mail" program. With Unix's "mount" and "dismount" framework, that could work quite well, but I'm not a Unix expert.
That is why I laid out the idyllic requirement "should boot in a few seconds." If things were laid out this way, individual programs may take longer to start, but getting to the point when you could actually decide which program to run would be fairly trivial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveCD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LiveCDs
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php
Anyway, thanks for writing your story here. Amazing.
I've looked over most of the suggestions posted here in the comments and come to my own conclusion of what you could do.
Buy a Mac with an Intel processor, and install all the OS's you want to try out until you find one you like. Mac OS, Windows, Linux... They all play on the Mac hardware.
Just keep in mind that when you're done playing around and know what OSes you want to keep on the drive, format the the disk and install the OSes you want from scratch. Configure them carefully, and you should be done.
(Investigate Parallels: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/ )
I don't think that fits the definition of "a few seconds", though - I hear "a few" and it sounds to me like he's shooting for under ten seconds, and preferably under five. My guess is that he's ideally looking for something that will take about as long to boot as a VCR.
The hardware is from Newegg.com, and includes:
Whether or not the so called power off button actually turns the power off should be settable in the BIOS.
The Ubuntu server edition really only loads the basic operating system. It doesn't even have a GUI interface to load.
You must have a bit of a strange household, however, to want to use such a system for household use. I built this box to use as a dedicated network router.
No I don't remember it, but some friends have reminisced about it. It sounds like a great system for its time.
I use (or used) the system in question for web browsing and programming. My wife uses it for web browsing. Now we use this laptop, which is falling apart (funny how that isn't a problem on the 23-year-old machine).
Excellent advice re: hardware and OS. Thanks!
That's SWEET! That "DSL" acronym is getting a lot of mileage! :-)
"A few seconds" is an unreasonable idea - with present thinking an practice. It is completely reasonable, however, with present hardware capabilities, given a static "virgin desktop" image of memory/virtual memory streamed immediately from the HD to RAM - similar to hibernate/restore. Consider that old, outdated home computers, with approx 1/20,000 the processing power of present hardware, could load a simple DOS and dump the user to the command prompt in about 5 seconds. Surely an operating system 20,000 times as complex could achieve comparable performance...
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