Technology

Software incompatibilities and version lock, that’s so commercial software 📂 

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Last night when I was doing one of those Zoom chats with John Wolcott and the Pine Bush gang we started talking about how problematic commercial software is and how you can get stuck with files that are hard to access once you upgrade your computer. Ever since I’ve been running Linux I’ve never had that problem – old software can usually be re-compiled on modern machines as source code is available and most Linux apps use well documented and fully open file formats. 

Computers by Malvina Reynolds

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Computers, computers, computers wherever you turn.
Those chips are so loaded with hot information
You’d think they would burn.
Some of it’s factual, actual,
Some of it’s made of thin air.
Whatever gets in a computer
Stays there.

You can put almost anything in there that comes to your mind.
The programmer gets lost in the shuffle, the scuffle,
The dope stays behind.
Some of its factual, actual,
Some of it is double-faced.
Whatever gets in a computer
Isn’t erased.

Our lives have been fed to computers, every thought, every dream,
Everything that we’ve bought that has rusted or busted
Or split at the seam,
Every up, every down,
Every howl, every glimmer of luck.
When something gets in a computer
It’s stuck.

The stuff that we have in our heads is a different affair.
We’ve hoarded and sorted, amended and bended
And let in the air.
But computer banks grow like a cancer,
They can always produce a wrong answer
And they never are troubled with doubt.
And once you get in a computer
You never get out.

The stupidity of sluggish Windows Update 💻

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I don’t use Microsoft Windows much. But when I do use it, the thing that is most noticeable is the enormous security and features updates that take forever to update. Literally, it took my laptop 25 minutes of unusable time complete with multiple reboots to get working the other day, meaning I would have missed my Zoom meeting if not for my phone.

In Linux, all updates can be done in the background using apt-get or a similar package manager. Linux doesn’t require reboots during updates, nowadays even kernels can in many cases be hot swapped. Most other software and libraries can be updated in the background. Yes, every two years there are big distribution updates for Ubuntu which often require a single reboot to load the latest kernel and features but it’s not usually mandated right away, and the reboot is just an ordinary reboot with no delays.

The windows update process really should be faster, requiring less files be downloaded for patching bugs and should occur in the background. The windows infrastructure should be redesigned to allow libraries to be updated behind the scenes without reboots and if a library has breaking changes, it should only require you to restart that app. Likewise, windows should tell you exactly what is updating during system updates, not keeping you in the dark – maybe hide the real technical information but at least give you a much better idea what is happening in the background (patching the security bug that could xxxx) along with estimated time, percent done and progress.