Well, so here I am, trying to install PHP and MySQL so it works on IIS.

Except, of course, it doesn’t.  At all.  Or at least, not that I can work out.

And the solution?  A Linux installation under Virtual PC, of course, what else?

So, which distribution?

Well, I started on Slackware.  So off to the website and then - can’t get onto any of the mirrors.  BitTorrent time.  GetRight doesn’t like it, so µTorrent’s back.

I’d forgotten how well it works.  215K.  So many Windows applications like this would be about 10MB, take four or five minutes to load up and use twice the resources just to display the main page.

If you’ll remember, a while ago I had a bad experience with Windows Vista Service Pack 1, release candidate 1.

Well, it certainly seems that Microsoft did quite a bit of work following that release candidate.

Since SP1 isn’t yet available via Windows Update, so I had to go through the standalone installer route (I’ll tell you where to get them later).  But first let me give you a little bit of background as to why I decided to give it another go.

Vista was starting to run really slowly.  REALLY slowly.  In fact, nearly a month after removing the release candidate of SP1, it was again unusable.  Fortunately for me, I’d backed the machine up with Norton Ghost (disclaimer: that’s an affiliate link, before you ask), so my first job was to back everything up to my external drive.

I then got out the old trusty Windows 98 bootdisk and wiped all the partitions except my clunky Vista install.  I then created a 32GB FAT32 partition and copied the Ghost image files to that.  Then I rolled back to a Vista backup from January 2008 (well, I’m skipping a step - I went back to XP for 24 hours.  I’ll tell you why I decided not to stay that way at a later date).

The installers took a long while to download, and the installation took about an hour.  It was fairly straightforward: next, next, next, next, ok, I agree, etc.  And even though it said not to run anything during installation, it didn’t complain about Spider Solitaire

So what’s the outcome?

Not much has changed, except I have a solid computer again.  It does feel slightly faster - not much, I have to admit: the short time I spent back on XP felt faster for a while - but it does feel more reliable.

Most of the actual improvements - UEFI support, cryptographic improvements,

But file copy performance?  Seems a bit quicker, but then I usually use Directory Opus anyway, and I suspect some of those improvements will be in Windows Explorer.

As for the numerous minor tweaks made, and delays they’ve removed, I suspect they all go towards a psychological feeling things are working quicker - and they certainly seem to be to me - so it’s all good.

So the verdict?  No marks for RC1, but for the full release - I’d say seven out of ten.  Maybe it didn’t have all the performance improvements they were touting, but it’s worth the time and effort.

If you want to get hold of the standalone installers yourself, you can download the five-language standalone installer for 32-bit or 64-bit Vista (they’re 434MB and 726MB respectively, and cover English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese), or the all language version, again available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions (these are 544MB and 873MB).  Alternatively, if you’ve got a lot of PCs in your firm that will need updating, you can get the installer discs - there’s a 544MB ISO image for 32-bit PCs, as well as a 1418MB DVD ISO for both 32 and 64 bit versions.

The other day I downloaded and installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate.

Big mistake.

What had been a very reliable, happy computer, turned into a crash-prone bug monster.  Windows Explorer didn’t start properly (no response from the start menu, system tray or task bar); when killed and restarted with Task Manager the system generally had about four or five minutes before locking up completely.  And disk usage was through the roof - it reminded me of the classic “swap of death” that plagued Windows 3…  until it seized completely, of course, with even the mouse pointer frozen to the screen.

After about my seventh or eighth reboot, without being able to actually use my computer, I decided to uninstall the service pack.  Which, without being able to get to control panel very easily, was a bit challenging.  Eventually, I restarted in safe mode and used system restore to get it back off.

This doesn’t bode well, I’m thinking.  Microsoft have already released a “release candidate refresh“, which apparently solves only installation issues. Well, ironically, I didn’t have any issues installing - I just downloaded the offline version and it sat there and did it; it’s only after it was installed that the problems started.

I don’t remember a service pack causing a problem before XP service pack 2, which completely destroyed the installation on my fiancee’s computer, necessitating a nice clean re-install.  I’m hoping that SP 1 doesn’t do the same for Vista.  But I’m by no means convinced that it won’t.

Oh, and before you ask, I have now gone back to non-SP1 Vista.  And everything is running along very nicely again, thank you very for asking.

I remember running OS/2 Warp 3 back in 1994, on the most powerful machine in the company - a 486DX running at 33 MHz with 8MB of RAM - and really enjoying the experience.  And actually using it in anger to do proper work with as well, using the Windows 3 (blue) edition.

The one I bought off eBay is the red one - no built in Windows 3 layer - but it works nicely for me (using FreeTCP, of course).  What is fairly timely (or was, a month ago) is a second round of petitioning from the OS/2 World site to open source OS/2 to be sent to IBM.  Sure, there is still development on OS/2 - Serenity Systems continue to develop eComStation, and have recently issued version 2.0 release candidate 4 - and there’s still a few great OS/2 download sites around as well.  You can still get all the fixpaks and the device drivers from IBM’s ftp site (not available on the website any more), there’s still hobbes (although sadly leo seems to have disappeared), and that’s about 6GB there for your downloading pleasure (or otherwise, depending on your inherent level of patience…  if you’re using Windows, I recommend FTPSync, by the way - not updated for ages but works fine on Vista.)

Virtual PC Guy has an excellent guide to installing Warp 3 in Virtual PC 2004 - in Virtual PC 2007 there’s nothing much changed, except turn hardware-accelerated virtualisation off before you start.   And of course, you can get Firefox for OS/2 quite easily (much easier than IBM Web Explorer, Netscape 2.02 or Netscape 4.61, none of which I was able to find).

A few quick open source links for you today.  First up is darrelljon’s excellent post to the Ubuntu forums, listing Linux distros by size (my favourite of which is Damn Small Linux, personally).

Then there is The Inquirer’s guide to free operating systems. Told with their normal humour and satire, of course.

Finally - and saving the best to last - there’s the new Open Source Living website, which lists a lot of open source software in a nice, easy to read interface. It’s nearly all quality stuff, though no doubt there will be one or two missing bits and pieces as it’s still very new, so suggest your favourite piece of open source.

Anyway, a belated Merry Christmas to my readers, all both of you, and a happy new year!