Going Windows!

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lipk
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Going Windows!

Post by lipk »

I've been a passionate Windows hater ever since Vista stopped working on my computer. However, Microsoft now gets a chance to prove me wrong as I decided to take advantage of my MSDNAA membership and loot all the awesome MS software - for free!

I'm mostly out of touch with the Windows world, though, so I ask for your advice: which Windows and Visual Studio versions do you recommend?
Anonymissimus
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Anonymissimus »

Yeah, every single day someone ditches one of these horrible *nixes is a good day. Not only do they hardly ever work well or at least at all, no, you need decades to grasp how to do even the easiest things! Windows is the best!

As for the Visual Studio versions, I generally recommend MSVC 2008, for wesnoth at least. I found the 2010 version to be slow (UI and wesnoth compilation) and unstable. The 2008 one on the other hand is fast. 2006 is no longer supported, and 2012 not yet AFAIK.
As for the windows versions, starting with vista, Microsoft introduced more and more DRM stuff, the confusing "virtual store", and they need *a lot* more system resources than xp (especially RAM, even much more than recent ubuntu versions), so you may not want to go for the newer versions.
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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lipk
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by lipk »

Thanks for the suggestions!
As for the windows versions, starting with vista, Microsoft introduced more and more DRM stuff, the confusing "virtual store", and they need *a lot* more system resources than xp (especially RAM, even much more than recent ubuntu versions), so you may not want to go for the newer versions.
XP? Well, frankly, I'd rather use something that's still supported... besides, this is a pretty new machine I have, I'm not sure I can get XP drivers for it.
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zookeeper
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by zookeeper »

For me 7 has worked marvellously. Never crashes unlike XP which I ran previously, although there was also a complete hardware update involved so that's surely part of the reason. If your machine is newish then you very likely have >=8gb of memory in which case that wouldn't be a problem.

My only major gripe was some very annoying features of the taskbar, which luckily were remediable with "7 Taskbar Tweaker" (and a bunch of other tools too, I'd imagine).
Anonymissimus
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Anonymissimus »

lipk wrote:XP? Well, frankly, I'd rather use something that's still supported... besides, this is a pretty new machine I have, I'm not sure I can get XP drivers for it.
Support for xp ends on 08.04.2014...
AFAIK xp doesn't support more than 4GB RAM (so you probably would "waste" some), and more importantly; I had to use a driver diskette (3,5', do people still know these :P ?) when installing the last time for instance, since the installation CD didn't support SATA hard disks. But if you download a new version from MSDNAA, I guess it will have newer drivers.
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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lipk
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by lipk »

Support for xp ends on 08.04.2014...
Oh, my bad. Anyways, internet tells me that that XP and nVidia Optimus don't mix well and I'm also well beyond the 4GB RAM limit.

I decided to go with Windows 7 + VS 2008. Thanks for the input guys!

Hopefully I won't have trouble with the DRM... I have a valid license, after all :wink:

EDIT: Okay, Windows 7 refuses to install... I'm starting to feel that this will be short encounter...
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Anonymissimus »

lipk wrote:EDIT: Okay, Windows 7 refuses to install... I'm starting to feel that this will be short encounter...
Hm, in which way or why ? It doesn't make any sense to provide it for download if one isn't allowed to install it, does it ?
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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lipk
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by lipk »

Hm, in which way or why ?
In several ways without telling why :lol2: There were some problems with the BIOS/UEFI setup, and after I sorted it out, the installation aborted halfway with a generic something-is-wrong-but-I-won't-bloody-tell-you-what message. I thought it might have been Ubuntu's EFI partition that confused Windows, so I went for double or nothing and gave Windows the whole drive. It works now (I'm writing this on Windows, actually), but it's rather funny that the installer still chokes on anything more complicated than wiping the whole hard drive.
Anonymissimus
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Anonymissimus »

Hm, great it works now.
On installing my xp/some Linux combos I always did the partitioning with xp and installed the Linux afterwards; the ladder is much better in adapting to the former than the other way round; so such an error error doesn't surprise me much.
No idea about the BIOS successor though, is partitioning no longer handled by the OS installers ? I would try doing it as above in any case.
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
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lipk
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by lipk »

Finally got around cloning and compiling the repo. VS looks impressive so far, besides the poor syntax highlighting. +1 Windows dev from now on!
No idea about the BIOS successor though, is partitioning no longer handled by the OS installers ?
Yes it is, but the MBR is gone, so there isn't one global place to install the bootloader to anymore. It's instead put into an EFI partition. I suspect that Windows doesn't like anybody else having such a partition on the disk, that's why the installation failed, but it's just a wild guess.
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Iris
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Iris »

lipk wrote:+1 Windows dev from now on!
That’s excellent news! Does it mean we’ll finally get a fix for the non-ASCII path issues and the mysterious graphic corruption bug that only seems to affect some users?

And maybe a proper guide for compiling with VC++ that doesn’t result in impossible crashes like it did for me on XP?
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
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lipk
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by lipk »

That’s excellent news! Does it mean we’ll finally get a fix for the non-ASCII path issues and the mysterious graphic corruption bug that only seems to affect some users?
Perhaps, although I'm not famous for fixing bugs :P
And maybe a proper guide for compiling with VC++ that doesn’t result in impossible crashes like it did for me on XP?
I'm afraid I won't be able to help on that since I followed the "official" guide and it worked fine.
Max
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Max »

lipk wrote:I decided to go with Windows 7 + VS 2008. Thanks for the input guys!
you should really give vs 2012 (express) a try. it finally features highlighting, intellisense works almost all of the time (even on classes that are based on complex boost template stuff), supports basic refactoring... feels close to e.g. working with the eclipse java editor.
Anonymissimus
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Re: Going Windows!

Post by Anonymissimus »

Max wrote:you should really give vs 2012 (express) a try. it finally features highlighting, intellisense works almost all of the time (even on classes that are based on complex boost template stuff), supports basic refactoring... feels close to e.g. working with the eclipse java editor.
And what about
-stability ? 2010 often crashed when doing something with git while it's open, such as reverting changes.
-speed ? 2010 compiled pretty slow compared to 2008 (I didn't measure it objectively...) and the gui flees slow.
projects (BfW 1.12):
A Simple Campaign: campaign draft for wml startersPlan Your Advancements: mp mod
The Earth's Gut: sp campaignSettlers of Wesnoth: mp scenarioWesnoth Lua Pack: lua tags and utils
updated to 1.8 and handed over: A Gryphon's Tale: sp campaign
Max
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Joined: April 13th, 2008, 12:41 am

Re: Going Windows!

Post by Max »

can't say much about vs2010, just tried it once. i did a quick benchmark with the same project (probably half the size of wesnoth, but extensive use of boost) between vs2008 and 2012, both compile/link speed and speed of resulting executable where pretty much the same. vs2012 runs quite stable, no crashes so far. on the other hand vs2008 crashes once in while (probably related to running it on windows 7, haven't had any issues on XP).
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