"Why Chromebook Pundits Are Out of Touch"

[ApK]

Originally Posted by jj2me

I want to rescind my off-topic apology earlier in this thread, asking about Chromebook password avoidance:
[...]
after experiencing what "off-topic" really means.

For the record, I looked up all those Yoda quotes on my Chromebook.
(Running ChrUbuntu, but still...)

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by ApK

For the record, I looked up all those Yoda quotes on my Chromebook.
(Running ChrUbuntu, but still...)

Hey, we're in good company, ApK. Have you seen David Foster Wallace's footnotes?

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Besides, what's wrong with having to look up a few nouns?

I've been tapping my finger on those words on my monitor for 10 minutes now, and nothing comes up.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by jj2me

I've been tapping my finger on those words on my monitor for 10 minutes now, and nothing comes up.

Ah, I see we've been reading the title of the thread incorrectly all this time. Your monitor, for example, seems to be all out of touch.

Graham

[jj2me]

Originally Posted by Graham

Ah, I see we've been reading the title of the thread incorrectly all this time. Your monitor, for example, seems to be all out of touch.

Graham

So we were on topic all the while! I missed seeing that. I need to re-instantiate my apology.

[frahse]

Well, I had thought to bring my wife, the real expert, into the fray about commas and such, but she is off busy doing church things, and after spending some hours last night up on a ladder at the church, I really don't want to draw any more of her attention.

Still I can make some pithy and definitive statements.

1. The Chromebook uprising against the traditional PC , MS and Apple will continue.
2. The power and capability of Chromebook will continue to grow and expand.
3. My wife has one already and I am only waiting for a better machine to make my purchase.

4. A new Star Wars movie, Episode 7, actually the start of a Trilogy is due out Dec 18, 2015. I am sure the ghost (force) of Yoda will appear on occasion.

[Sregener]

Okay, now I understand why some of you are so excited about Chromebooks not having updates like PCs. I rarely use a Windows 7 laptop in my house, but I fired one up today to do a little streaming. Program after program interrupted everything to insist it needed an update. I agreed to all of them and waited for them to finish.

Then I was ready to turn off the laptop so we could have dinner. Pressed "Shut Down." A blue screen comes up telling me there are 33 updates installing and I am not to unplug my laptop or power it down until they all finish. 30 minutes (!??!!?!?) later, they finish. That is unconscionable! When I tell my laptop to shut down, I don't want to be held prisoner for a half hour.

Reminds me why I love Macs so much. They never do that to me. And when there are updates, at least it has the decency to ask before holding me hostage.

[eschwartz]

It's not that you like Macs; you just hate Windows.

Whether it's Mac or linux, any distro including ChromeOS, they are all the same in that they aren't Windows. Control-freak updates are a special Windows thing.

[Kumabjorn]

Windows actually tells you that updates are available and asks if you want them installed now or wait until you shut down. Only if you haven't used the computer for a while, something like a week I believe, will it behave as described. Not that it's an excuse, I still think it should ask if it's convenient or not. Could have something to do with security updates perhaps.

[afv011]

What I find very annoying is the Windows modal dialogs for the updates. You're watching a movie on your PC, and suddenly you have a box on your screen asking you if you want to update Java or whatever, blocking the movie (or whatever you are doing) at that time. Very frustrating.

[forsooth]

Originally Posted by Sregener

Okay, now I understand why some of you are so excited about Chromebooks not having updates like PCs. I rarely use a Windows 7 laptop in my house, but I fired one up today to do a little streaming. Program after program interrupted everything to insist it needed an update. I agreed to all of them and waited for them to finish.

Then I was ready to turn off the laptop so we could have dinner. Pressed "Shut Down." A blue screen comes up telling me there are 33 updates installing and I am not to unplug my laptop or power it down until they all finish. 30 minutes (!??!!?!?) later, they finish. That is unconscionable! When I tell my laptop to shut down, I don't want to be held prisoner for a half hour.

Reminds me why I love Macs so much. They never do that to me. And when there are updates, at least it has the decency to ask before holding me hostage.

You may set Windows parameters to behave same way.

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

It's not that you like Macs; you just hate Windows.

No, I pretty much hate Linux, too. The software dependencies that make you hunt for packages you don't even know the name of drove me to distraction. I'm sure they've made improvements in the last five years, but it was a nightmare for me. And I'm a technical power user, with extensive OS experience going all the way back to DOS. I even did mainframe OS testing for a couple years.

I like Macs because they are almost zero work, and they just keep going.

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by forsooth

You may set Windows parameters to behave same way.

No doubt. But 30 minutes spent updating (not downloading)? And not for a new version of the OS, just patches and other "critical" updates? Insanity. Only new OS X versions take that long to install. Even if I did it all manually, that's frustratingly long. I'd be happy to use a system that did updates quickly and seamlessly in the background to avoid those kind of delays.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Sregener

No, I pretty much hate Linux, too. The software dependencies that make you hunt for packages you don't even know the name of drove me to distraction. I'm sure they've made improvements in the last five years, but it was a nightmare for me.

There are vast improvements in the last [insert number you like here] years.
It depends on what you are trying to do.
Nowadays the vast majority of software I use is in repositories, so there is no hassle at all.

The only packages I depend on that I do not get from repositories are Vim, which I like to compile myself and Calibre that I update every week.

Just yesterday I reinstalled my home system to the new Linux Mint Petra [16] KDE flavor Release Candidate.
I was up and running within one hour, including migrating my Firefox setup (passwords, history, plugins, the whole nine yards), migrating my mail setup and Calibre (again including all plugins, settings, libraries [that I keep outside my Home directory]. Most of the software I use regularly is there, I will install everything else when I need to. One of reasons I did not update existing install was that I wanted to get rid of lots of installed programs that I do not use.
Everything worked straight out-of-the-box. Even the Wifi driver that I had to tinker with in previous releases, because the chipset was freshly introduced one.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by kacir

There are vast improvements in the last [insert number you like here] years.
It depends on what you are trying to do.
Nowadays the vast majority of software I use is in repositories, so there is no hassle at all.

The only packages I depend on that I do not get from repositories are Vim, which I like to compile myself and Calibre that I update every week.

Just yesterday I reinstalled my home system to the new Linux Mint Petra [16] KDE flavor Release Candidate.
I was up and running within one hour, including migrating my Firefox setup (passwords, history, plugins, the whole nine yards), migrating my mail setup and Calibre (again including all plugins, settings, libraries [that I keep outside my Home directory]. Most of the software I use regularly is there, I will install everything else when I need to. One of reasons I did not update existing install was that I wanted to get rid of lots of installed programs that I do not use.
Everything worked straight out-of-the-box. Even the Wifi driver that I had to tinker with in previous releases, because the chipset was freshly introduced one.

Ha! you beat me to it!

90% of what most people will be doing can be installed straight from the Update Manager GUI, no need even for the command line. No hassle involved, just click to install.