We are past the stage where the OS has become the virus

[mvanthoor]

Not to mention the vast majority of chess engines where the author only provides Windows exes ?

If someone pops up and says - if it is open source, compile it yourself - 99% of users don't know how to do that, and don't want to either.

And then there's that. I spent a massive amount of time finding a list of engines in the lower ranges (1400-1700) when first testing Rustic Alpha 1 that were actually stable enough to finish a 200 game match without issues (crashing, time forfeits, illegal moves....) It got better when I looked for engines in the 1700-1900 range, but still not great. I've been looking at engines that supply Windows-binaries. Almost all engines supply Windows binaries, a part have binaries for Linux, and most don't have any for Mac. (Mine also doesn't at this point.)

If I would need to compile engines myself (and do research when the build script doesn't work out of the box), it would take even more time to create the gauntlet lists.

Now that Alpha 2 has an 1810 rating, I need to go and look/test for engines in the 1800-2000 range for the next version.

[flok]

Not to mention the vast majority of chess engines where the author only provides Windows exes ?

If someone pops up and says - if it is open source, compile it yourself - 99% of users don't know how to do that, and don't want to either.

Well, the vast majority (99%) of users probably pick stockfish anyway...

[flok]

Btw., this kind of backup also works nicely in case of disk failure, or if Windows just fries itself.

Haha yeah. Just this morning someone I know sent two pictures: one at around 9 o'clock that windows wanted to update and a few hours later that that apparently went wrong and a message was shown that windows could not repair itself. And this is not the first time I've heard a horror story like this.
Most of my friends run Linux (like myself) and I never hear this with Linux, never. Not even the ones that like recompiling kernels for silly reasons.

Also: I would find it a bit disappointing if I switch on my computer and first have to wait for hours (apparently) for it to do an update that I cannot schedule myself. Sometimes you just want computer just to quickly boot (problematic anyway with windows due to the virusscanner slowness) for a quick google maps lookup for example.
Don't begin about "I leave my computer 24/7 on anyway" as, well, that uses electricity which is still difficult to obtain without damaging the environment.

[Milos]

Btw., this kind of backup also works nicely in case of disk failure, or if Windows just fries itself.

Haha yeah. Just this morning someone I know sent two pictures: one at around 9 o'clock that windows wanted to update and a few hours later that that apparently went wrong and a message was shown that windows could not repair itself. And this is not the first time I've heard a horror story like this.
Most of my friends run Linux (like myself) and I never hear this with Linux, never. Not even the ones that like recompiling kernels for silly reasons.

Also: I would find it a bit disappointing if I switch on my computer and first have to wait for hours (apparently) for it to do an update that I cannot schedule myself. Sometimes you just want computer just to quickly boot (problematic anyway with windows due to the virusscanner slowness) for a quick google maps lookup for example.
Don't begin about "I leave my computer 24/7 on anyway" as, well, that uses electricity which is still difficult to obtain without damaging the environment.

Oh god. Book example of observational + survivorship bias.
You know there is a thing on Windows called fast reboot, in addition to sleep and hibernation. You are so clueless about Windows that the whole comment looks like caricature. What was the last Windows version you tried, Windows 95?

[flok]

Btw., this kind of backup also works nicely in case of disk failure, or if Windows just fries itself.

Haha yeah. Just this morning someone I know sent two pictures: one at around 9 o'clock that windows wanted to update and a few hours later that that apparently went wrong and a message was shown that windows could not repair itself. And this is not the first time I've heard a horror story like this.
Most of my friends run Linux (like myself) and I never hear this with Linux, never. Not even the ones that like recompiling kernels for silly reasons.

Also: I would find it a bit disappointing if I switch on my computer and first have to wait for hours (apparently) for it to do an update that I cannot schedule myself. Sometimes you just want computer just to quickly boot (problematic anyway with windows due to the virusscanner slowness) for a quick google maps lookup for example.
Don't begin about "I leave my computer 24/7 on anyway" as, well, that uses electricity which is still difficult to obtain without damaging the environment.

Oh god. Book example of observational + survivorship bias.

Haha yes, exactly that I see with all comments in this thread about Linux

You know there is a thing on Windows called fast reboot, in addition to sleep and hibernation. You are so clueless about Windows that the whole comment looks like caricature. What was the last Windows version you tried, Windows 95?

Windows 10 or so? Somewhere in March 2020 I worked in it on a daily base. As a developer.

I know about fast reboot etc. And I also know that you're advised to regularly (once a week or so - there was this patch-tuesday thing if I remember correctly) do a full reboot to let it perform all those updates.

So, what else "am I wrong about". The virusscanner? Are you sure I'm wrong about that?

Please be more specific as your reaction now reads more like a "let's make fun of him to hide that he has a good point".

[Milos]

Windows 10 or so? Somewhere in March 2020 I worked in it on a daily base. As a developer.

I know about fast reboot etc. And I also know that you're advised to regularly (once a week or so - there was this patch-tuesday thing if I remember correctly) do a full reboot to let it perform all those updates.

So, what else "am I wrong about". The virusscanner? Are you sure I'm wrong about that?

Please be more specific as your reaction now reads more like a "let's make fun of him to hide that he has a good point".

Advised by whom? Btw. "patch Tuesdays" are once a month not once a week, was that really an honest mistake?
You obviously worked on a corporate machine that was set up quite strictly by the central administration. And you obviously don't have a clue about Windows administration or how to do even basic settings on the machine.

And then you blame Windows for things set up by lazy (and stupid) admins, gee.
Did you even have admin rights on that machine you used for "development"?
You know, even on centrally managed machines you can set updates to be performed whenever you like, you can delay it as much as you like, you can set "virusscaner" (you don't even have a clue about setting and managing MS antivirus) intrusions to the minimum to be absolutely unnoticeable.

90% of Windows user problems come from bad centralized management that companies do and clueless users that can't set up their machines even when they have admin rights.

My Windows machine reboots in virtually 10 seconds, even after update that never takes more than 1 minute. Even though it's a centrally (and very tightly) administered machine, I am still a root on it, and can do whatever I like despite whatever control tools MS provided and central admins are using.
You can very easily override enforced global policies, you don't even need to dig into registry for this. Virtually all is doable with gpedit. But ofc one needs to have a bit of knowledge, not just be a dumb Win user and then complain. Or simply just a linux fanboy whose amount of knowledge of linux vs win system is like 100:1.

[flok]

Btw. "patch Tuesdays" are once a month not once a week, was that really an honest mistake?

Yes, honest mistake. It's been a while since I worked on windows (beginning of 2020).

You obviously worked on a corporate machine that was set up quite strictly by the central administration. And you obviously don't have a clue about Windows administration or how to do even basic settings on the machine.

Both assumptions are incorrect.

Did you even have admin rights on that machine you used for "development"?

Yes.

You know, even on centrally managed machines you can set updates to be performed whenever you like, you can delay it as much as you like, you can set "virusscaner" (you don't even have a clue about setting and managing MS antivirus) intrusions to the minimum to be absolutely unnoticeable.

I know all of that yes. Altough I don't run windows on my own computers, I have used quite a few of them. At "driver-development level".

My Windows machine reboots in virtually 10 seconds, even after update that never takes more than 1 minute.

I believe that is that "observational bias" you spoke about earlier.

Or simply just a linux fanboy whose amount of knowledge of linux vs win system is like 100:1.

No, that is definately not correct.

Correct me if I'm wrong of course, but your reactions feel a bit "argumentum ad hominem". Can you please tone down it a bit?

[Ras]

If I would need to compile engines myself (and do research when the build script doesn't work out of the box), it would take even more time to create the gauntlet lists.

Come on. I remember a new user here, Pi4Chess, who was initially asking for Raspi ARM Linux binaries, and who said he wasn't a programmer so that he wouldn't know how to compile. It didn't take many explanations, and guess what, he pretty much compiled everything that would even run on a Raspi. For someone who is a programmer, that would be even less of an issue. At least not for the vast majority of engines because they are written in C/C++ so that there is a proper compiler already installed by default, and you don't have to download some LTS-distro bypassing, nightly compiler toolchain.

Most of my friends run Linux (like myself) and I never hear this with Linux, never.

Even if something should go wrong, I still have Timeshift set up as safety net so that I could roll back bad updates. Not that I have needed this so far, but it's nice to have in place, and I can just apply updates without thinking.

You know there is a thing on Windows called fast reboot

That was not the problem. Normal Windows boots, where fast boot could help, don't take hours. It's specifically updates because Windows is so badly designed that it cannot update opened DLLs. So instead, it copies that stuff somewhere else, and upon the next boot, before Windows is loaded, it copies the updates in place. Normally, that takes some minutes, but sometimes, non-reproducibly, it may fry itself because MS has largely disbanded the Windows QA, and Windows Home users are now the unpaid beta testers for the enterprise version.

I know about fast reboot etc. And I also know that you're advised to regularly (once a week or so - there was this patch-tuesday thing if I remember correctly) do a full reboot to let it perform all those updates.

Not just that - it's also necessary to even have a working system. Just last week at work, the PDF export of MS Word under Win 10 was totally weird although all my settings were correct. Considering that I was on a game starter OS, I tried rebooting before filing an IT ticket. True to form, it did work after a reboot. The uptime had been about two weeks. That's just ridiculous.

[Milos]

Most of my friends run Linux (like myself) and I never hear this with Linux, never.

Even if something should go wrong, I still have Timeshift set up as safety net so that I could roll back bad updates. Not that I have needed this so far, but it's nice to have in place, and I can just apply updates without thinking.

This is even easier to be done on Windows. And I've never seen a problem on a modern Windows that can't be recovered in a matter of half an hour by even half decently experienced win admin.

You know there is a thing on Windows called fast reboot

That was not the problem. Normal Windows boots, where fast boot could help, don't take hours. It's specifically updates because Windows is so badly designed that it cannot update opened DLLs. So instead, it copies that stuff somewhere else, and upon the next boot, before Windows is loaded, it copies the updates in place. Normally, that takes some minutes, but sometimes, non-reproducibly, it may fry itself because MS has largely disbanded the Windows QA, and Windows Home users are now the unpaid beta testers for the enterprise version.

How often that "urban legend" Win frying itself on update happens per number of users? What is your metric when you claim this happens more often with Windows than with Linux considering their respective amount of users?
Can you actually support those wild claims of "Windows Home users are now the unpaid beta testers for the enterprise version"??? Or that's just a product of your imagination?

I know about fast reboot etc. And I also know that you're advised to regularly (once a week or so - there was this patch-tuesday thing if I remember correctly) do a full reboot to let it perform all those updates.

Not just that - it's also necessary to even have a working system. Just last week at work, the PDF export of MS Word under Win 10 was totally weird although all my settings were correct. Considering that I was on a game starter OS, I tried rebooting before filing an IT ticket. True to form, it did work after a reboot. The uptime had been about two weeks. That's just ridiculous.

Again observational bias. If I just counted how many times something got screwed when I tried to do something very basic under Linux it wouldn't fit into 10k characters.
And I am actively administrating both Linux and Windows machines. And as an admin, I can say administrating Windows is like a 100 times easier than Linux.

[Milos]

Btw. "patch Tuesdays" are once a month not once a week, was that really an honest mistake?

Yes, honest mistake. It's been a while since I worked on windows (beginning of 2020).

You obviously worked on a corporate machine that was set up quite strictly by the central administration. And you obviously don't have a clue about Windows administration or how to do even basic settings on the machine.

Both assumptions are incorrect.

Did you even have admin rights on that machine you used for "development"?

Yes.

You know, even on centrally managed machines you can set updates to be performed whenever you like, you can delay it as much as you like, you can set "virusscaner" (you don't even have a clue about setting and managing MS antivirus) intrusions to the minimum to be absolutely unnoticeable.

I know all of that yes. Altough I don't run windows on my own computers, I have used quite a few of them. At "driver-development level".

My Windows machine reboots in virtually 10 seconds, even after update that never takes more than 1 minute.

I believe that is that "observational bias" you spoke about earlier.

Or simply just a linux fanboy whose amount of knowledge of linux vs win system is like 100:1.

No, that is definately not correct.

So you have admin rights and it's not a globally managed machine.
Well, then the obvious conclusion is that you don't know how to set up updates on Win machine or how to control antivirus. Because both of those issues are virtually no-existent if you are a root on a machine where you have 100% control. And both things are pretty trivial to set up.
So based on what are you claiming you are equally experienced win as linux user/admin? Because you do driver-development level? That has absolutely zero relevance to Windows administration.