FreeDOS 1.2 - Hackdot

Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by fsiefken on Monday December 26, 2016 @09:12PM (#13260857)

Jerf, I understand your point. I compare it on functionality, for example compare the load times of for example Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with Word for Windows 6.0 on an old Pentium 1 or 486 with say 8 MB of RAM with Windows10 and the earliest Word version you can get running (or use Wine on Windows). You could say, test them both on SSD drives or HDD drives and allow them 4GB. For a more fair comparison you could use Windows98SE with Office97 and Office97 on Windows10. I think the previous OS's are significantly faster. Once I triplebooted my Mac to Ubuntu, OSX 10.6 en WindowsXP on SSD. WindowsXP was a factor faster to "use", write some office documents, browse the internet etc.

But in a sense you are right, Windows 10 is running very fast on the latest intel proc and SSD here. Still once in a while I get annoying slow downs and it does seem a little bit slower then what I could remember from the speed Win 3.11 was running on HDD on the Pentium I. But the programs were less featured then as well. LibreOffice Writer 5 starts in 7s on SSD here.. I thought Office97 Word was a bit faster on 98 or XP back then... but these are memories from almost 20 years ago, maybe I do see the past as to rose-colored. To test this I have to define what I exactly was comparing to what - general speed of usability or the exact same programs under different OS's with the exact same hardware. On both accounts it might very well be much faster with previous 16/32bit and less featured software.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by nxc18 on Monday December 26, 2016 @10:51PM (#13261177)

I recently installed office 97 on my Surface 3 (not pro, so think atom processor) on a lark. It is extremely fast (no waiting for anything at all, ever).

Now, even modern office is surprisingly fast on desktop, despite having lots more features. We can talk about performance on the desktop all day, but if you want to see the real perf regression, look at all these web apps running in the browser - they are absolute nightmares unless you happen to have a very nice machine to use them with.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by amiga-workbench on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @12:20AM (#13261436)

I can barely scroll a few pages down on Facebook before my X201 starts getting sub-1FPS. This infinite scrolling crap is never done right.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by terminalcommand on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @02:31AM (#13261802)

Another fellow x201 user here. The bottleneck of our computers are definitely the CPU. After putting an SSD it felt fast for a while. But now especially whilst browsing I get irritated a lot. I can't decide whether if it's pure psychology or a need for more performance.

I am an avid Debian user for many years, lastly I used FreeBSD for a couple of months on the x201. Now, I'm using ElementaryOS.

With Debian iwlwifi was a problem, did not work reliably. FreeBSD was a lot of hassle to work with -with no network manager being present etc.-, but driver support was excellent. ElementaryOS is currently working like a charm.

Another tip besides installing an SSD is to enable multicore support in Firefox.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by Quenz on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @08:07AM (#13262886)

> enable multicore support in Firefox

Why isn't this enabled by default on detection of multiple cores?

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by brianwawok on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @09:50AM (#13263408)

FF has never been multicore. So many plugins are not thread safe. I think they are slowly rolling out multicore as plugins fix.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by dom0 on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @07:08AM (#13262663)

Don't worry, many CrapScript sites don't even run properly on a 4 GHz Intel machine.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by digi_owl on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @08:39AM (#13263052)

The best thing i did for staying sane while browsing was to install noscript on firefox. Not sure how it will work now that Mozilla is "reworking (gutting?) Firefox extensions to make room for pr tab processes.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by roryisok on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @06:34AM (#13262589)

I installed office 2003 on my hp spectre, alongside office 365. Word 365 takes 5-7 seconds to fully load, but word 2003 just appears as soon as you click the icon. The load time is instant. And with the compatibility pack for 2007 / docx files it does everything 365 does

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by vacri on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @12:13AM (#13261408)

Win98SE took four and a half minutes to boot to usability. It crashed so often, than I timed it to see how much time I was wasting. Unfortunately I can't remember the system specs, but it was a pretty run-of-the-mill pc of the day, neither light- nor heavyweight.

Other versions of windows, I couldn't tell you. Have used everything from 3.11 to 10, skipping 8. Never felt the need to time them.

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by amiga-workbench on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @12:18AM (#13261429)

I've got a Pentium II system on my desk running off a cheap CF card that boots in a minute. What was your setup like hardware wise?

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Re:FreeDOS 1.2 by vacri on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @12:33AM (#13261479)

I honestly can't recall. Probably a PII. My 4.5 minutes is 'time to usable desktop', not 'time to login / visible desktop', since W98 was visible long before you could interact with it (that interaction was usually "load up that game again, dammit!"). It also used a hard drive of the day, not flash card. I don't recall having much in the way of shovelware installed that might slow it down, but maybe I did?

Sorry, as anecdatums go, I realise this one is pretty poor quality.

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