THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Well I thought I would just post here about my feelings for Ubuntu and haw they have changed since those first few frustrating and failed attempts to dual boot.

Yes it is bloody annoying that you should, 15 years on, be able to achieve that very easily. Yes it appears you get a Ubuntu dual boot menu when you only used to get a Windows one. Yes this SHOULD mean it would NOT matter which order you installed them but something tells me otherwise.

The truth is the more I use Ubuntu the more I like it. Yes every now and then I think of something I would want to do in Windows and look up the Linux equivalent. Yes GIMP is driving me nuts and is really badly designed interface and not intuitive at all that is despite the fact I DO like it and am aware it is powerful.

The truth is that now it is running it is painless and no more locks ups occur and yes i STILL have not got the ATI drivers installed but unless Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Need for Speed appear on Linux I will not really care much.

Also the and truth is that in Linux, or Ubuntu, if something goes wrong with it I can have it up and running again in a matter of minutes, an Open Source and FREE Operating System?!

This is despite my love of the Windows 7 interface and being by far the BEST version of Windows EVER released EVER, yes it is the 25th March 2013 and I AM AWARE Windows 8 is out and I call it Windows H8!

The odd thing is my stab at the Linux lot recently is closer to the truth than I first realised?! I will reiterate...

This is good...very good. There is only a couple of things to work on and one is kicking AMD's butt! The other is some tinkering with the GUI. The last and most important is probably out of their hands and that is that Linux is supported by the gaming community...

It does not have to be many just, say, three of the big players would be enough to start a tidal wave of adoptions to Linux. For me if I could have the games I play the most on here (Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Need for Speed, X Reunion, Flaming Cliffs 3 Oh OK I have not got that last one...YET)

Now I am an old veteran at this but have been out of it awhile. So you could argue that I am a beginner when I started this but am an old veteran when it comes to seeing it through?!

I was unfamiliar for the most part with Ubuntu and knew my way around Windows and yet out of these TWO Windows has been a bloody headache. I chose my C: drive as the swap folder when I installed Ubuntu. This now looks like a mistake and I seem to lose my Windows installation after that, though it appeared to be there.

Other than that Windows seems to have an insistence, by all accounts, on throwing its toys out of the pram if it is not on the C: drive?! Umm STUPID! Hmm I wonder if the £2,000 Windows Server edition, or whatever its cost these days, has this issue? STUPID!!

So out of Ubuntu overwriting some Windows files or Windows just refusing to plaay fair, despite the humongous cost compared to Linux, lol, Ubuntu has been far easier to work with and this is BACK TO FRONT!!!

This realisation has been an utter shock to me, it really has and likely why and over time I kept putting it back on my laptop...BECAUSE I CAN?! When i finally got Windows 7 on my laptop my games and files had GONE and it would not connect to the Internet?! Ubuntu fecking did this from the DVD BOOTING?!?!

Result? Windows can feck off!!

The very meaning of an Operating System is so that you can Operate your .... SYSTEM!! Instead Steve Ballmer sees it as an excuse to meddle and feck about with users to sweep up any loose change his customers till possess! Nice. It does not matter that we may lose vital, important or sentimental files in the process they will continue to change things so that they can TIE you down to them and put up brick walls to everyone else.

To be honest they have been at that a very long time and probably the reason Bill Gates walked away from Microsoft. That was my immediate feeling when there was talk of him walking and still my feeling today.

It seems that military tactic to dominate everything and destroy all others many are under the impression that this is how it works in business. I have known for sometime that it is not...

The trouble with war is that you build bigger weapons that the other guy until one day you both have the weapons to annihilate each other so no one can win...

...what has happened in the world today is that businesses have been so focused and destroying their enemies and contempt for their own customers that the customer base is now saying FECK YOU!! In other words no one wins!

Ooh but wait! Linux is free and a very decent PC can be built for reasonable money today!! The last time I built a rig it was an SLI Rig with 2 x Gigabyte GEFORCE 6800GT cards Denovo Keyboard Proper Laser Mouse, Lacie Monitor Raptor RAID 0 drives the complete works and at £3,500 a steal?! *Cough-cough* Yes OK I went a bit mental and it was not the first time and was not the last and I dare say I will do again one day.

That was one of the first SLI systems built in the UK and it was something like 8 weeks before Custom PC Magazine (an good and unbiased magazine back then before Bit-Tech infiltrated) did an feature on it.

When I think of what I could build today for under £1,000 it boggles my mind. My eyes water and I am chomping at the bit.

The odd thing is I can look at Geforce 660 cards and Radeon HD7790 and HD7850 and think no?! I want a Radeon HD7970 or a Geforce 680. Seem a bit much? Well actually I am the kind of person that would have, 5 years ago, said 2x 690s or 2x7990s?! I kind you not! I was originally thinking or RAID 0 SSDs for my next rig?!

When I think about all this technology and how people make statements like SSD Raid 0 not worth it as it is temperamental I cannot think why. How can it be that nearly ten years on RAID 0 is even harder to do than when I FIRST did it?! Someone at Scan (www.scan.co.uk) told me that!

Or is it just Microsoft and Windows?

I stated not long ago that Linux has a perfect opportunity and that was because I was angry with Microsoft. Angry as they had RADICALLY changed the next iteration of Windows that only served to show that they cared not for their end users and only after the money trail! What is more is it is not even FINISHED!!

Even more bizarre was a guy locally I know who makes his money working on people's PCs told me on the phone that he has played around with Windows 8 and that it was FANTASTIC and far better than Windows 7?!

Jerry you was obviously very pissed, mate?! Exactly which bit was you on about? How if you have not got a touch screen monitor the tiles things is crap and a wast of space? Or that you do and most of the programs, software and apps are NOT designed for touch screen?! Did you take a payment from M$ to say that?!

No it was a rush to get it out because of the tablet market and that is what it was for, it should NEVER have been released for the PC at all in my opinion. Also I buy Micro Mart Magazine a week ago as it refers to another release called Windows Blue?! Oh but guess what...I see the word 'tablet' amongst the first couple of lines of text and I flick straight over the page!

Anyone else notice that they are WAY over-priced for what you get?! Tablets I mean?!

I hate the Intel Ultrabook idea and thnk they are way over-priced but forced between Ultrabooks and Tablets it would be Ultrabooks all day long...

...but you have SLEEKBOOKS now! An AMD CPU that has a powerful graphics chip built into it than can play the latest games at fairly good resolutions! In just two months the AMD CPU, sorry APU, code named Richland will be released and this will be more powerful still! This will be called the AMD A10-6800K for the top of the line desktop model and AMD A10-6700 or 6500 for the laptop model.

Now the AMD A10-6800K sound like the perfect tool to match up with a Linux PC!! If AMD get their thumbs out of their proverbial arses that is?!

Low cost, all in one CPU/GPU that uses less power and added to this the talk that the GCN graphics core to be placed in the new generation can do regular computational tasks which offsets the fact that the CPU side only has FOUR CORES?!

Or there is the mouth watering prospect that IF the get around to a die shrink you can have an 8 core APU?!?!

Or better still a motherboard with a twin FM2 socket so 8 cores and Crossfire GCN?!?!

Then there are the improved Piledriver cores and the Steamroller cores?! Oh and Jaguar?! Oh and likely GCN2?!?!?!?!

...

What?! Where am I?! ....Oh yeah I was typing out a post about...

What?! Where am I?! Who are you?!

LMAO!

Seriously though and later in 2013 and into early 2014 it is, or at least I bloody hope it is, going to be quite interesting and VERY EXCITING?!?!

If a twin socket FM2 is EVER releases i will but it, or bloody hope to, IMMEDIATELY!!

Back to the point and the conclusion...

...never ever in the history of Linux OSs have they EVER been able to see the whites of M$ eyes before!! Now I am going to suggest and likely put in place a couple of Ubuntu installations on computers belonging to friends.

Now let us see if it catches on?!

ARE INTEL BULLYING PARTNERS? OH DEAR!

Well this is worrying I must say and I think I am going to have a cross-over going on here with another bog subject?! Hahaha!

Right I read an article on the Tech Report that cited a series of rumours spreading around the Internet that there CPU, which is also my namesake, Intel Haswell has an issue with USB 3.0 Devices.

Many were thinking that this would be sorted out in time for release but it seems the talk is that Intel has requested to partners to accept (or sign in blood) the issue PRIOR to receiving the CPUs (or otherwise they will not bloody get any?!)?!

Wow! Shoot yourselves in the foot why don't you?!

The odd thing is I am reading some interesting things about AMD and some deals it has going on and seems to be like the proverbial 'Phoenix Rising from the Ashes' at the moment.

I also wonder whether nor not many motherboard manufacturers have been party to something happening too as there are whispers of new AMD boards with USB 3.0 and able to take AMDs Jaguar, Richland and any others besides. Maybe there are going to be TWIN APU motherboards using the FM2 socket, I mean how damned cool would THAT be?!

As well as Intel allegedly stating this, which to me suggests that have been side-swiped by AMD on their blind side and taking it out on board manufacturers as they did not see it coming, I have also read that it is to go running to Apple too?!

Hmm tell take signs there of something in the works that Intel does not only HATE but has it running scared?!

EDIT: LINK: http://techreport.com/news/24441/report-intel-haswell-suffers-from-usb-3-0-issue
(SORRY FORGOT THE LINK, LOL) END EDIT

I think I am going to witness something very soon that even I did not actually foresee happening after the Bulldozer launch but will be over the moon if I am right.

Intel and Apple sitting in the tree, K..I..S..S.. lol well two really nice companies getting together there, they deserve each other!

Indeed this is what I was searching for when I came across these things as I sense there is ... something brewing. I was trying to find out even more about these 8 core Jaguars and the FX CPUs and APUs likely, or not, to arrive between the beginning of April and December 2013, or even January 2014, when I stumbled across these two snippets of information.

I cannot recall a time when I have seen Intel quite so animated and rude/crafty with its partners, or indeed just being jack blunt?! Really I can't!

So if these two things I read about turn out to be true then Intel must have found out some news (ooh and how did they do that then?) that they not only did not expect but certainly did not want to hear.

There has also been a flurry of reports about the SLEEKBOOKS too with Richland inside and one in particular was a HP Envy Laptop, hope the Envy line is better than this UTTER CRAP DV7 I am currently using lol?!

As a long standing, now, proponent of HP, except this one, I was intrigued to see that as normally I do a search for their Envy lines when there is a new APU and I did this with Llano and then Trinity and they were always the last one to find any data on releases with AMD APUs inside so this was VERY DIFFERENT INDEED!

But if a strange one yu might think after all you should realise that I should want the Intel Haswell to succeed?!

WHY? I hear you ask!

Well I did say it was my NAMESAKE!

NAMESAKE?

Well my surname IS HASWELL!!

LMFAO!!!

Well I do want it to be good of course but I also want AMD to catch up too. Only I might just get more than I had hoped for?!

If so this will be very good indeed for all of us and a great deal sooner than you would have orginally guessed, or I should say 'I GUESSED'!