M’Lady!

People are freaking out about Windows 11. It has ads in it and is clunky and slow, particularly when you try to "upgrade" an older computer to that operating system. People have complained that it is too cloud-oriented, for example, default searching online, when you want to search your hard drive. Others claim it is too invasive - tracking your usage and online movements in a similar manner to your smart phone.

All I can say is, "Ha-ha! I’m still using Windows 7 Ultimate, thank you! Bought and paid for!" Of course, it is no longer supported, but "support" with software these days usually means invasive updates (at a time not of your choosing) that install bloatware and spyware and disable your adblocker.

I am still using an older version of Chrome, too, which gleefully reminds me it is outdated, every time I start it. Of course, the new version of Chrome won’t install on my ancient Toshiba laptops, which is fine, as I disabled updates ages ago when Chrome decided to block adblock plus (itself outdated) so I still can surf the Internet, largely ad-free. Microsoft hates this one simple trick!

But what about malware and spyware and hacker attacks? The software companies implore us to enable automatic updates on the basis that they will protect us from evildoers. I still have an old copy (which no longer updates) of Microsoft Security Essentials and it seems to work OK. If some new "bug" should appear, I guess I would just toss the computer in the trash or just reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows. Oh, how I love having install discs for all my software which I own - bought and paid for - some of it over 25+ years old!

But of course, I realize this will not go on forever. You can drive your old 1960’s car on the road, but unleaded gasoline will eventually erode the valve seats and an engine rebuild is in order - at which time, you’ll probably upgrade to Holly fuel injection or maybe just park the damn thing as a garage queen and 4,000lb paperweight and buy a new Honda to drive around. Upgrades are inevitable, it seems. I no longer write BASIC code on a PDP-8 or an Apple ][ computer. Times do change.

But with any luck, maybe I will be dead before I am finally forced to upgrade from my ancient software suite. We did buy a "Chromebook" on the advice of a reader. It is OK, I guess - more of an elaborate smart phone than a laptop. You don’t run programs, you run "apps" - and many of these require payment on a monthly basis or have intrusive advertisements. Everything is in the cloud - you will own nothing and you will be happy - and the powers-that-be will track every damn thing you do, too!

Sometimes, the tracking is off and often in hilarious ways. We have gone entirely wireless, using our smart phones as hotspots for our lone television or our hoary old laptops. Since the AT&T hub is in Atlanta, we get lots of ads for businesses in Atlanta, and our phones seem to believe we live there. YouTube, last night, had ads for Canadian companies and US companies, showing ".ca" website domains! The man has no idea where we live - and I like it that way.

Other than that, it works as well as the wired solution - perhaps not suited for gaming or 4K resolution, but it gets the job done and is entirely portable, too. It is also cheaper than having a cell plan AND a DSL or cable modem or fiber optic or whatever hardwire solution people use these days. A lot less hassle, too!

Speaking of which - I am off-topic here - my neighbor told me that AT&T notified him that they are pulling the plug on his landline this year. He either needs to migrate to all-cellular or to a VoIP solution via his internet connection (the latter I did long ago, before we went all-wireless). The "twisted pair" copper line analog switched system of Great-Grandpa Alex is going away, in favor of packets of digital data batting about the ether. What took so long? It is the end of an era but will go by unnoticed.

People today - particularly young people - don’t even make phone calls, which is one reason I think we are all estranged from one another these days. They never experienced sitting in the kitchen talking on THE phone (which had a 10ft cord on the handset and a dial) talking for hours (it seemed). It’s after 5! The long-distance rates go down! The irony of that era was that it was often cheaper to call cross-country than to the next county! 60 cents a minute - sometimes a buck or more! Boy was Dad pissed when he got the phone bill!

But then again, Dad was pissed about a lot of things.

It is sad, to me, that "kids these days" will never experience the bittersweet experience of talking on the phone with your high school girlfriend for an hour or more, sometimes saying nothing at all, for minutes at a time. Phone calls were intimate which might be one reason why our ADHD Aspergers PTSD generation is so afraid of them. It is, in a way, the same when Grandma got her first cassette tape answering machine and was too nervous to record a greeting message. That would be too prideful! Announcing yourself like you were the Queen of Romania! Even worse, she was scared to leave a message as well. "Hello! Is this thing recording?" Young people today are the same (even older people) - refusing to leave a message and just assuming you’ll call back using caller ID. I guess the generations are not so much different after all.

But I digress...

I decided to order a copy of LINUX - the Red Hat version, which came in a collection of seven DVDs with little or no instructions. I have one laptop that I bought cheap for parts but was able to get to work with Windows 7. It runs OK, but I can’t install my ancient version of Chrome on it, as only the latest version is available online. I tried Opera, but it seems even clunkier than Explorer. So I thought it was a good candidate for some experimentation with UNIX.

Well, the experiment hasn’t gone well so far. LINUX might be a swell operating system for industry or for banks of servers, but it isn’t ready for retail prime time. The install procedure scans the computer and them bombs out, claiming the PCI interface is whacked as the BIOS is saying one thing and the hardware another ("Expecting 16" it says). I searched online and the only two options are to update the BIOS (good luck with that) or "press e" and change the boot instructions to disregard the issue (warning: may be unstable). Problem is, I cannot find the place where I am supposed to press "e",

Obviously, I will have to research more. Or maybe this computer is just too old.

What is clear to me is that, despite what online LINUX fans claim, it is hardly a ready-for-primetime operating system for retail users. I mean, I’ve used UNIX before - at the Patent Office back in 1987 (yes, it is that old!) and I am somewhat adept at assembling computers and playing with software. It still is a pain-in-the-ass to convert a computer to LINUX. I am sure that once it is installed it works great, but it is not a mere matter of slapping in the install disc and hitting ENTER.

Why, for example, do they not sell LINUX computers with the operating system pre-installed? I mean, if LINUX is so great and Windows sucks so badly (and it does) why don’t they have laptops and PCs for sale at Walmart with LINUX pre-installed, right next to the Chromebooks and Windows 11 systems? Seems like a no-brainer to me. If everything the LINUX mavens claim is true, then some entrepreneur out there would put together such a system and sell it. And since LINUX runs faster on less hardware, you could undercut the competition on price.

Alas, it seems that even LINUX fans and tinkerers install the O/S on a partition on their existing Windows PC - and switch between the two, or operate one or the other as a virtual machine - or have one machine running LINUX while another runs Windows or Mac. It seems that at the retail user level, LINUX is limited to hobbyists and tinkerers.

Which might be the appeal. In the early days of the PC, it was only hobbyists and tinkerers. And I say this going back to the days of CP/M systems and mini-mainframes. I programmed quite a few of those, including a weird Olivetti machine that had a two-line red LED dot matrix and a built-in thermal printer. Those were weird times. Anyone else out there who wrote code for a TEKTRONIX graphics computer? It had a phosphorous screen that kept everything on it until you "wiped" it for a fresh screen, It was an oscilloscope with a PC built-in. We stored programs and data on large tape cartridges that had a thick aluminum backing plate.

Back then, the pain of experimenting and learning the arcane features of each machine was a way of gatekeeping. I made friends with my bosses when they discovered I actually knew how to use that new machine they bought, but never got around to programming. In the IBM-PC era, it was much the same early on - we built our machines from parts and installed DOS on our 20 Meg hard drives. It was a small club of nerds and no one else was allowed in.

Sadly, I think the same is true of LINUX. There is a core base of fanboys who preach the religion, but don’t want anyone else to actually join. The Holy Mass shall be said only in Latin! Lay people may watch, but not understand or participate.

And if I was a younger man, I suppose I would invest the time and energy in learning all of this stuff. But frankly, I don’t have the time and energy left - and my personal processor and short-term memory are somewhat on the fritz as well. I’ll keep playing with LINUX, but I suspect I won’t get far with it, nor will Mr. See find it of much use.

Maybe I will dust off that Chromebook and break down and pay $5.99 a month for Quickbooks online.

Ugh!