windows 8

[Vortex]

Hi muttonhead,

And I don't have to enter any validation codes or call someone on the other side of the planet to get permission to install my operating system for the tenth time.

Why not to try a freeware backup tool? A backup of your system partition will preserve the activation information. A restored backup does not require online \ offline activation.

[muttonhead]

Muttonhead, you have stated my frustrations with Windows better than I could.
I have done a little research into Assembler programming in Linux and have found the road very difficult.
As far as I know BogdanOntanu has the only Assember that will work on Linux.
It is a pleasure to do email and browsing in PCLinuxOS as I do not have all the windows flying up
in front of my face all the time. I have a two way firewall in Windows and I don't let anything through
without my approval. Still a complete switch to Linux would be a tremendous hurdle.
Nothing is ever easy

I use gas and NASM under Linux and they both work great.  I have used fasm before and I'm going to go grab a copy of it tonight.  Just today I was using JWASM and it's a very cool assembler - so you have LOTS of assemblers to choose from under Linux.  There are also some very good assembler books for Linux.  Jeff Duntemann just came out with his NEW Assembly Language Step-by-Step version 3 that skips DOS and is all Linux.  He uses NASM.  Wrox sells a book that uses all gas code and it pretty good.  There are others as well.

I just got so sick and tired of the Microsoft mess that I decided to jump ship.  It took a while, but I got there.  YOU CAN TOO.  Force yourself to find and use Linux alternatives to whatever software that you need under Windows.  If there is not alternative, consider taking some open source code and modifying it to do the job that you need done.  Just try to hang with Linux as much as possible and only revert to Windows in life-or-death cases.  Pretty soon you'll get you Linux sea legs and it'll all be good.

YOU CAN DO IT.

[muttonhead]

Hi muttonhead,

Why not to try a freeware backup tool? A backup of your system partition will preserve the activation information. A restored backup does not require online \ offline activation.

Howdy Vortex!

Oh, I used Ghost until I ran into problems with SATA and then I switched over to the method of booting up in Linux with the Windows drive as a secondary drive and using dd and then Clonezilla to clone drives.  That was pretty good and free.  I wanted to stick with Linux tools since I knew I was going to go ALL Linux/BSD eventually.  Now I only need Windows at work to run things like parameter setting communication software for motor inverter drives and CNC Servo drives and PLC ladder code editors and the like.  I'm also the defacto plant IT person and I get to fix everyone's desktop, all of the laser printers, and if I'm good I get to play with the AS/400.  I even now use Linux tools to work on the Windows machines.  If I get one that nobody has the admin password to, I just boot up ophcrack and let the rainbow tables do all the heavy lifting.

Windows makes my skin crawl so I got myself as far away from it as I could here at the house.  If I run into a web site that I need to access in something besides Firefox, I can borrow my wife's Inspiron 14 with Vista on it, or go out into the shed with a flashlight and find the XP/Vista drive that I buried in there for my Thinkpad.

[muttonhead]

oops, I see that I side stepped that closing quote tag there.  My bad.

[ecube]

Muttonhead, you have stated my frustrations with Windows better than I could.
I have done a little research into Assembler programming in Linux and have found the road very difficult.
As far as I know BogdanOntanu has the only Assember that will work on Linux.
It is a pleasure to do email and browsing in PCLinuxOS as I do not have all the windows flying up
in front of my face all the time. I have a two way firewall in Windows and I don't let anything through
without my approval. Still a complete switch to Linux would be a tremendous hurdle.
Nothing is ever easy

while using asm on linux is more difficult compared to windows, quite a few assemblers work on it none the less, for instance fasm works on it, and has alot of nice examples for gtk+ etc...nasm works on it, but nasm is ugh... Jwasm works on it, which is a Masm clone.