Working Comupter

[unicornduke]

My computer appears to work properly now! 

And even faster than it had a month ago.

About two weeks ago, it was running 100% disk all the time, just really awful. Turns out there was an update it was downloading that was very big. But somehow it botched the download and once I tried installing the update, it didn't work. It ran worse.

So I did the thing that I can't remember the name of, but I rolled back the update. Then it worked much better for about 2 hours. Then it started downloading again. So I let it run and run and mostly didn't use it for a while and let it download. Then the day after my second covid shot, I started the update going. It ran from 8am to 3pm to install.

Still was having issues. Turns out there was two more freaking updates that needed to download and install and once I just let that all happen, my computer is finally running at normal disk and normal speeds and honestly a little bit faster than it had been.

why are computers like this.

Comments

[graydon]

why are computers like this.

People generally neglected or refused to update them. Security concerns necessitated turning on automatic updates. The update mechanism does "all the things"; there's no "some things". Thus the updates are huge, lumpy, and fragile.

(It was rhetorical, I realize. But there is a simple answer!)

[unicornduke]

Very true, very true. Just wish it didn't make my computer unusable while downloading.

[graydon]

Utterly reasonable of you!

That's a deficiency of the implementation, not an inherent requirement of automatic updates.

[recently_folded]

I feel your pain. I hate to be that linux person, but the update mayhem was one of the big reasons I gave up on Windows. One too many times I went to do something pressing and instead had to spend three days rolling back, re-installing, waiting to use my own machine, etc. One of the biggest draws of Xubuntu for me was getting to look at what was going to be updated, how big it is, and then decide whether it's going to be now or later. Why computers are like this is, primarily, they don't gaf about users once they've "bought" the product.

[unicornduke]

I mean, I have both a really shitty extra computer for my sidejob work and my work laptop as backups if really needed and all my important things are kept in dropbox. So I never really have issues with something urgent happening and my computer dying. It's just fun stuff so when I want to relax and play some video games and my computer is dead, it's disappointing.

I've thought about Linux but I've decided I'm not that interested in managing my own computer stuff. From what I remember when I did some research is that half of the appeal is being able to edit things in Linux as you like but I don't care for coding. I do a little bit to make my arduino project go and it's fairly frustrating to fiddle with. I'd be concerned about breaking an operating system.

[recently_folded]

Well, I don't get into the guts of my OS so can't speak to that. Basically for me, Xubuntu is like, oh, maybe WinXP: settings I can fiddle with to get things to work mostly the way I want and then software that does the things I want without too much of someone getting in the way and insisting that no, I have to do something simple all weighted down with enterprise features. And a much better update system that lets you review what is on offer and schedule it for later if you need to. I used to have Xubuntu on one machine at the library in amongst the Win boxes (I put it on a donated machine that was so underpowered that it took 20 minutes to boot XP, but "donated" was our budget) and most people never even noticed. All of which isn't to try to convince you, but simply to note that the experience of using it isn't quite the bad old command-line-only days, but rather a pretty usable-out-of-the-box gui.