Kinda like dealing with Microsoft Office… You can’t find anything in that “new” toolbar design because so many options are grouped together in ways that don’t make any sense. I’m so glad I never had to actually use that garbage even though I did enjoy the older versions.
It’s been a long time since I used Windows myself, however one of the big reasons for switching was the inherent instability. At once point I was developing code in Visual Studio and constantly loading/closing quite a few different programs to test things out. Windows just didn’t seem to handle memory-recovery and I would have to reboot every week or two (usually because of the whole OS locking up). In comparison, I run a variety of software on my linux machines which can involve anything from testing code in multiple browsers to image editing to 3D CAD drawings. Sure that tends to drain the memory but when I close something I get that memory back. I’ll frequently get down to the last 100K of RAM, close a couple programs that may be holding large caches (Firefox really hates me having hundreds of open tabs), and then I’m right back up and running again. Reboots may occur about every 6 months.
I have to support other people using Windows at work, which reminds me how much I’ll never go back to it. My biggest frustration is that Microsoft is constantly changing things. Hell you can’t even directly reach the control panel any more, you have to run searches to find the specific item you want. Want to check the settings of a certain printer? Good luck, that doesn’t seem to be available in the right-click menu any more. It’s just all these idiotic changes making it difficult to actually use or maintain Windows. Why should I have to google how to find something when everything used to be under the control panel or a right-click away?
Heh sorry about that. There’s also a zfs conversation going on where I had suggested disabling the ‘dedup’ option. I’ve never heard of dedupe being used in the context of the shell history, so yeah, I got confused.
I only include it because pretty much every guide on zfs setups recommends disabling it these days. I don’t believe it’s anything I’ve every had to use despite several drive crashes over the years.
I think this is the only change I’ve made that affects my history… It simply ignores multiple copies of a command when you repeat it multiple times, making it easier to up-arrow through the unique things I’ve executed.
A lot will depend on your preferred workflow, and since you mentioned SolidWorks I assume that means you prefer a more GUI-oriented approach. However as an alternative, if you are comfortable with more of a programming approach, you might look in to OpenSCAD. Most things are done from a more primitive standpoint in how you create each part of an object, but I like having the direct control over every aspect.
So you’re not simply trying to delete old emails based on the date they were sent to you? It might help to know where these dates are located, if in the subject line or in the body. And is consistently a straightforward date like “2024-02-11”, or are you also trying to look for vague references like “Feb 11”? That might make a difference for how the question is answered, however a quick google search suggests that the FiltaQuilla add-on will support regular expressions in the message filters for addresses and subjects, while “Expression Search / GmailUI” adds expressions for body searches.
The core of Ubuntu is built on Debian, but the maintainers create a lot of their own packages based on the latest versions of software available. So for example both distributions have a version of Python available, but the one in Ubuntu might be the very latest release while the one in Debian may be several months old because it goes through more testing. I like to compare their usage to the difference between using Ubuntu for a desktop computer (where it’s not the end of the world if something breaks) to using Debian for a server (where you absolutely need rock-solid services that will never fail you). And of course Ubuntu and Debian are not your only choices, there are even other distributions which are based on Debian or Ubuntu, several distributions based on Redhat, and plenty of others which are completely built in other ways. If you really want to learn the nuts and bolts of it, check into the Linux-from-scratch project which walks you through building your own system completely from compiled source code.
Now the desktop environment is a whole different thing, and Linux gives you a lot of choices there too, from very lightweight desktops that could run on a twenty year old computer to much heavier desktops with a ton on features which require more modern hardware. The nice thing about desktop environments is you’re not stuck with just one. You can actually load up several and choose which one to load when you log in to the desktop, then later on dump the ones you don’t like. So the important thing is finding a base OS you like first, then everything on top of that can be changed as you learn more about Linux.
Something thing to keep in mind when getting started is to manage your expectations. You’ve spent all this time using Windows so you already know where everything is – for Windows. In a lot of respects you are going to be starting over from scratch, learning new ways to install software, get around the desktop, and doing simple things like changing your settings. Don’t get discouraged, you’ve done this before, you can do it again.
One way to cope with the initial frustration is to start out loading up something like VirtualBox on your Windows desktop, and installing a linux distribution there. Then you can play around, take your time to find a desktop that’s right for you, and learn how to actually DO things in linux that you already do daily in Windows. That way you eliminate the pressure of trying to figure out how to do everything at once.
Another reason to start with a virtual machine is that there are a LOT of possible linux distributions to choose from. There are also quite a number of different desktop environments to choose from. It pays to take a bit of time and play around with different options to find out what you like. You also need to decide if you want something running the cutting-edge releases, or if you prefer stability with slightly older software. For example, Ubuntu is a good choice for the absolute latest releases but can introduce bugs that the devs refuse to fix. On the other hand, Debian (which is actually the base system that Ubuntu is built on) only releases slightly older software that has been tested over the past few months. However in all cases, you will always get immediate patches for security issues.
As already mentioned, any old computer laying around is a viable candidate for Linux. Until last year I was running internet-facing web servers on 1GB of memory and a single core. If you have something built in the last 20 years it will work for your purposes. Hell my desktop is someone else’s throw-away because under Windows they considered it “too slow to get email or browse the internet”. I use it for writing arduino code and building models for my 3D printer.
Heh I figured as much, it was just on my mind because I saw an article yesterday that the OS/2 archive is being shut down soon. It was one of my first attempts to escape Windows but it never quite made the cut.
Haha and now you know exactly WHY they do that! The manufacturers were more than happy to let people keep believing SATA3 drives would be faster than SATA2 drives until they started facing public backlash and the costs of returns, but they still try to bury it in the fine print.
Keep in mind that any transfer speeds on the box are also going to be best-case scenarios, for read access only (because writing takes longer than reading even on an SSD). The numbers I found on reviews are generally going to be more real-world conditions including a combination of simultaneous read/write operations. Personally I don’t trust anything except what I can get in my own installations because everyone’s hardware and software are different, but if you decide to do your own testing make sure that it disables cached operations during the tests or you’re not doing anything but checking the speed of your RAM.
As I mentioned in my previous post below, even in theory a spinning platter is not going to reach anywhere near 5Gb/s speeds, not even 1/20th of that. You can google the specs as easily as I can, but a 4TB WD Blue drive is only 5400rpm which seriously hampers its speed, limiting it to about 175MB/s (bytes, not bits).
The 4TB Seagate Ironwolf is another slow drive at only 5900rpm, but does manage to creep up to about 190MB/s transfer speeds.
You didn’t mention which one is your 4TB drive, but the speed of the slowest drive is going to dictate your top transfer speeds. No matter how you slice it, you can expect a long wait to transfer 4TB of data. If you want more speed, you can get better performing 7200rpm drives, but you won’t see any substantial increases until you move into a multi-drive RAID. I would recommend a minimum of 5 drives, but for comparison I have eight 18TB drives set up through ZFS as a raidZ2 configuration (similar to RAID6) which gives me a sustained transfer rate of around 450MB/s. If you need faster, you really have no choice but to upgrade to SSD.
You didn’t mention if this is a HDD or an SDD. If it’s a HDD, you will never even reach SATA 2 speeds, although you should be able to saturate SATA 1. Realistically you might be able to push around 200MB/s on newer HDDs but that’s assuming nothing else gets in your way.