Windows 11 Warning - Hand Microsoft The Keys to Your Life

Autopano giga and associated software made by kolor.com. It's for stitching images into a sphere and then making an immersive online spherical tour of, say, a room in a hotel or a whole restaurant or outside, a bit like the view on streetview.

 

I recall Ulead PhotoImpact which was great. I didn't delve too much into its resources but it did what I needed - sharpening and optimising for online use. I now use Gimp on ubuntu and Inkscape.

According to my search preferred search engine;

GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.

 

Zen,

I just spent 15 minutes typing a long and detailed reply to you. Then I must have hit some arcane key,....... and the whole thing disappeared. Gone. With no idea how to possibly retrieve it.

Gawd, I hate technology!!!

---OGN

 

I type long posts on Wordpad then copy&paste into the reply box.

 

As I type a post which is relatively long, periodically, I will 'right click' and 'select all' and 'copy' so if it gets lost, I just need to hit 'paste' and continue writing.

 

I won't! I abandoned that pathetic parody of an OS 8 years ago. I had a dual boot for a short period of time but then I completely kicked it out of my computer and made it a 100% Linux machine, that includes the filesystems. The most are XFS, only the system drive is ext4 but some day I'll change that to XFS as well, if I don't forget.
I used to be a Windows sheep for almost 20 years but after I read an article that M$ are planning to kill Windows 7 and then saw the TOS of Windows 10, I knew the day to gain digital freedom had come.

That is part of Windows 10's TOS and of 11's as well, only nowadays this part has been shoved so deep into the TOS, that you'll have hard time finding it, but it's still there. I had no intention of giving them this personal data, so I moved to Linux, even though it was hard at the beginning because of some problems.



If you don't know what the security code means, I'll tell you: if you know the card holder's name, the expiration date, the card number AND that security code (which is on the back of the card and is always 3 digits), you can drain any bank account without its owner's knowledge, without needing to know the card's PIN code and the owner can't do sh*t about it bc the owner has already agreed to these TOS, since they have installed CrapOS.

Nowadays I don't even need CrapOS cuz all the games I wanna play (including DX12 games) run just fine on Arch Linux, with a single click in most cases. Not to mention the crystal clear and loud sound quality - something no Windows version can brag about.

Microsoft do whatever they want with my own computer.
With Linux I do whatever I want with my own computer.

So why on Earth would any sane person keep using that... thing?

 

In agreement with the last post you can join us Linux users . I just love Linux Mint.

 

I've been using Linux Mint for about 8 years. Linux Mint is called a "Distribution" as it includes MANY software programs built-in that are installed all at the same time - much more than uSoft provides - using a single .iso file downloaded from linuxmint.com that is written onto a thumb drive (I use a 4GB USB-2.0 thumb drive, bigger than 4GB is fine). Then you boot the computer using the thumb drive which reads from the .iso file and writes the files to the target (to be boot drive). During installation you can use the default settings if writing to a blank drive or modify the existing partition(s) if desired.

I use Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon on my primary drive (250 GB Samsung Nvme M.2 solid state drive (SSD) which is a LOT faster that a Serial ATA (SATA) SSD. I also have a 120 GB regular SSD with an installation of the newest version of Mint: v21.1. When Mint 21 gets upgraded to Version 21.3, I will gradually migrate to 21.3 after I make sure that all the programs still work. Sometimes, Version upgrades regress some of the software dependencies such that non-default software fails to work until a Mint guru finds a way to fix it.

The software I have added to the default installation:

FreeFileSync 10.24: Synchronize two disks or folders to compare contents and make them identical (user files only - don't try to use with system files) Can be downloaded free from FreeFileSync for Linux, Windows, MacOS. source code.

Gparted: Partition Editor, Partition Formatter, Very powerful
Downloaded and installed using Synaptic Package Manager from Mint repositories

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program
gThumb: Image manager, Thumbnails, etc.
xsame: Flatbed scanner controller for old Canon scanner
Chromium Browser: Linux equivalent to Chrome Browser
Downloaded and installed using Synaptic Package Manager from Mint repositories

I am not a software programmer, but I was able to find a 'routine' online that allows for connecting an iPhone directly to a USB port on my Linux Mint PC and allows the Linux file manager program to access and copy the photos from my iPhone to my Linux Mint PC.

Many others software programs are available !

 

Useful stuff maelstromaz,
Is a thumb drive the same as a flash drive or a memory stick?
I've got a new linux iso on a memory stick but can't get it to run. I'd like to boot it up instead of my main disk, so I can check that all dependencies that I need, still work.

 

Thumb drive is older name for a flash drive and memory stick. Has a USB connector. About the size of a thumb.

Almost always, in order to boot (start up) a PC from a memory stick, it requires going into the BIOS by pressing the F2 Key or the DEL key right after pressing the power on the PC. Once in the BIOS, find the 'Boot Menu' and select the memory stick. Then press 'Save and Restart'. The words vary depending on the PC brand and BIOS brand.

 

Mint is one of many Linux distros . Most are free to download, use ,modify, ect . If anyone hear is not a Linux user, but wants more info. Let this forum know. I would avoid Ubuntu as it was purchased by Microsoft. Ubuntu Studio was not and I also like it.

 

I don't think ubuntu was purchased by microsoft.

from Microsoft Buys Canonical And Shuts Down Ubuntu Linux OS

 

That article is dated in April 2015, more that 7 years ago.

 

Yeh, the takeaway from that article was that it was an April fool's joke.

Canonical still owns Ubuntu.

 

Tried Windows 11, rolled back to 10. Main complaint was Taskbar. I like mine at the very top. So it's no go. Wait and see what Windows 12 (or whatever name it is) comes out. Bit like Vista and other versions, the not very good ones.

 

If I had a dollar for every God damn time I had to decline a windows 11 'upgrade'...

I could probably afford a Whopper meal. With bacon and cheese and two little fucking apple pies that taste like burnt fries...

Ahh, remember when you could get a Whopper for two bucks on Wednesdays?

Around when Windows wasn't a nagging little bitch to operate.

 

there's a program called abelsoft windows eleven privacy fix which closes win11 privacy holes - cost $10

 

Any workarounds for Windows 10/11 issues are temporary at best. I went down this rabbit hole multiple times. Stripping Windows background services and telemetry crap only to have a forced update break everything and install more Microsoft garbage.