Just to Piss Tetge Off

[03_SONIC_BLUR]

Because I can piss Tetge off a little more, here I go

[Tetge]

Your speeds are impressive. I'd be more jealous if it were not for the fact that even with my slow u-verse speeds, downloads are almost always throttled to less than then my speed is capable of. On the other hand, the capped upload speed is an irritant, but, only when uploading youtube vidoes, which I do not do all that often. I do not know if youtube has a cap on how quickly one can upload but it seems to accept all the speed that I get, so, it should be quicker if I had more upload speed. But, u-verse still kicks butt on the DSL that I had for many years, and the bundled price is not too bad.

[03_SONIC_BLUR]

When downloading movies, 6 gig or more, I am seeing throughput of 11 to 12 Mbps

[Tetge]

When downloading movies, 6 gig or more, I am seeing throughput of 11 to 12 Mbps

That is a long way from the 112mbps that your test shows. But, then again, I have never really understood the relationship of the tested numbers to real world results. I do not download movies but I recently downloaded the Linux Mint 16 MATE RC pretty quickly compared to my old DSL days. It still took about 10 minutes to get the .iso, but, I can live with that. No one knows how long it would take with your blazing speeds.

[Tetge]

After reading a very favorable review by a reviewer who seems to know what they are talking about when it comes to various Linux distros, I just downloaded the Xbuntu-13.10.iso which is 842MB, and it took ~7 minutes, at an average of 2.08mbps. I will put the .iso on a spare USB3.0 stick and see how Xbuntu looks as a live boot. I am always looking for a traditional desktop look and a clean version of Linux, which is why I have sort of settled on Linux Mint MATE, as it seems to get as close as possible at this point. But, I keep looking at other options, since I have been playing with Linux now for a lot of years in the hope of ditching Microsoft completely at some point, so it is sort of a hobby (like taking down weak, unsuspecting Terminators from stop lights with the 5.0 slug). And, W8/8.1 has strengthened my resolve as I hate it, and, yes, I am ashamed to admit that I do have a legit version of W8 Pro in my possession since I have been upgrading my systems lately and I needed an OS that I could get activated. So, why not give the latest MS OS a try? But, I am not using it since it made me ill, even after I immediately upgraded it to W8.1. I can deal with W7 at this point as it still can be tweaked to behave like traditional versions of WIndows, but, sooner or later, MS will churn W7 away (say goodbye to XP soon!) and I will be forced to either run W8 or some other OS entirely. It would have been nice to download the Xbuntu .iso in a little over a minute if, indeed, your connection could actually do that. But, 7 minutes is not impossibly slow since I still remember dial up.

[03_SONIC_BLUR]

Generally, throughput is about 10% of the carrier rate. The carrier rate being displayed in the speed test

[Tetge]

Generally, throughput is about 10% of the carrier rate. The carrier rate being displayed in the speed test

I figured as much, but, many sites still throttle, at least at times. And, the carrier rate is not even always correct, since it can vary from test to test, and, u-verses told me recently that for some reason unknown to the tech, tests were showing higher than the actual rate at times. It seems that there is little truth in anything when ISP's are involved, but, still, it is better than dial up was. Now, I need find a spare USB3.0 stick and try Xbuntu. I would buy more USB 3.0 sticks but I see that the next version of USB will be 2X as fast as USB 3.0. I already get snappy live performance using USB 3.0 and 2X that will put it on a par with hard drives, so I will have to be patient and not invest in too much USB 3.0 stuff. It will be nice when I can have a really responsive OS on a USB stick, but, of course, I will have to upgrade my MB's to ones that support the new USB standard. And, DDR4 ram is also being introduced, and it is allegedly significantly quicker thanb DDR3, so, perhaps the desktop computer is not quite dead yet? But, I digress on a rainy day while my chicken soup brews..................

[Tetge]

Just a note to say that I put Xubuntu onto a 500GB external solid state USB 3.0 drive and booted it up as a live trial and it was very nice and refined and smooth. And, it also ran very snappy from the USB HD, with no noticeable delays or hesitations. Of course, I had to use the terminal and run alsamixer to unmute my 5.1 Creative card's surround sound, but, this seems to be the case with all the Linux distros. It always made me crazy that I could never get 5.1 surround sound to work, but then, after years of searching, I finally found the easy, run alsamixer, solution. But, Xubuntu is, as far as I could see from an hour or so of playing with it, a very nice distro and the desktop is traditional enough to suit my tastes. I dislike the unity desktop of Ubuntu almost as much as I dislike W8. So now I know that there is a viable alternative to Linux Mint MATE. However, since both are based on Ubuntu, it is not surprising that they are similar to some extent so there is little to be gained with a switch from Mint to Xubuntu. And, as usual, I am impressed with how good Linux is getting on a plug and play basis. It works and it is stable. However, it still is a windows world since many big hardware players do not bother to support Linux. For instance, I can control my H80o Corsair hydro cooler via software under Windows but, Corsair does not have such software for Linux. This becomes important when processing HD video since programs put all 8 cores of the CPU to the wall, and that makes heat. In Windows I can peg the fans on the radiator while doing video processing, and, although noisy, the CPU never gets close to dangerous temps. Even the other components on the MB stay cooler that they would if the fan speed stayed at the default quiet setting. So, this is a fairly bad knock on using Linux. And, there are others still, as, it remains, as I stated, a WIndows, world.

[03_SONIC_BLUR]

Funny how the businesses that make a profit can afford a little tech and a bunch of marketing to dominate the world

[Tetge]

Thus far, getting in bed with Microsoft has been kind to a number of, it's only Windows world, and, not only that, only a current version of Windows (unless it is too new) world, players. But, desktop, free, Linux, still advances. For instance, for the first time ever, all I did was click the install button and Xubuntu actually successfully installed the Nvidia driver. I did not have to blacklist the generic driver or restart X or run code in the terminal, and, the one click install actually worked perfectly. I don't play any games that require advanced video properties nor do I have any 3-D, but, being able to use the proper driver is always nice, when it works. So, Linux continues to get more and more refined in terms of plug and play and also configuration. Still, many of the hardware folks do not support Linux, and this can still create issues.