GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode [LWN.net]

GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode

Posted Nov 13, 2012 13:04 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576)
In reply to: GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode by boudewijn
Parent article: GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode

Wow, so Windows isn't completely immune to problems when your hardware fails?

Well it's a good think Linux runs tickety-boo when your disk starts returning bad data.

(PS:
>All was well -- except that Windows 7 couldn't install the majority of its crucial system updates because it couldn't install them over locked files. But every reboot iteration helped a little there, and I got it up to date.

I imagine many people here don't have direct recent experience of Windows Update; suffice it to say that the above is a major exaggeration. Windows does indeed still have the crazy file locking semantics and has no equivalent to ksplice, so some updates will still require a reboot, but this talk of 'reboot cycles' is a tired old canard. The only Linux distribution I have recent 'desktop' experience of is Ubuntu, and that pops up 'reboot required' reminders somewhat more often than Windows does.)

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GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode

Posted Nov 13, 2012 13:31 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

No, my hardware didn't fail Windows failed. The disk wasn't actually broken, Windows 7 was broken.

And no, Nye, I did not lie about the windows update problems. I did not exaggerate, let alone majorly.

It was exactly as I described. On starting the laptop after unboxing, the update center informed me that it needed to install a few dozen updates, and I said Ok. Then it informed me that it needed to reboot, and I said Ok. Then it tried to apply the updates, failed, and on showing the desktop told me it had crucial updates to apply I said Ok, and it asked me to reboot, and I said Ok -- rinse and repeat until Windows was satisfied.

GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode

Posted Nov 15, 2012 19:24 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I use Windows a lot and can confirm that Windows Update works like this - sometimes I will find an update fails, and can only be applied by requesting the update on a freshly booted system (sometimes in Safe Mode), and then rebooting again.

OS X (10.7 Lion) is pretty painful for me at the moment because my Macbook Air WiFi goes mad man times a day - usually turning WiFi on and off, or rebooting, or power cycling the WAP, will fix it. I resorted to installing a driver from previous OS X version just to improve the WiFi. Ultimately I think it's that OS X doesn't like working with my Asus WAP (RT-N10), which works fine with a couple of iOS devices, some Windows laptops, etc. There's a 150 page thread on the Apple forums about this WiFi issue with Lion.

Ironically enough, I got this WAP because of an iPad 3 having WiFi problems with a WRT54G running Tomato.

Macs are quite nice in some ways as a reasonably sane Unix environment that also has nice software you can buy if you want, plus a lot of open source software - but in my experience the Apple WiFi support is truly awful. I suspect Apple only tests with their own Airport WAPs.

GNOME 3.8 to drop fallback mode

Posted Nov 15, 2012 19:27 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

On 'the disk didn't fail' - I recently found Windows had 'deleted' the hal.dll file required for boot. I replace the hal.dll but it got removed again. It turned out to be that the disk was failing silently, without visible read errors in the logs - I replaced it with an SSD and it's been fine since. So in this case it was a disk failure, but on the surface it looked like a Windows failure.

If you are having unexplained file corruption, it could be a RAM error as well, of course.