Most people know me as a Linux and/or FreeBSD guy, and they are right. I use openSUSE and FreeBSD most of my time. However, I am not a fanatic who tries to solve everything using a single OS and I am curious as well. Most other operating systems I use are running in virtual machines, but I also have two computers: a Windows desktop and an old MacBook Pro. Both received a major software upgrade during the weekend. Or did they?

Windows 11

While Microsoft promised that the Windows 11 roll-out will take a year with most users receiving it only next year, my desktop received the possibility to upgrade just three weeks after release. I have many applications that proved to be problematic during earlier Windows updates. My main application is Capture One, a photo editing software. There are also many audio applications, traditionally even more sensitive to any kind of change in the operating system: Ableton Live and software synthesizers from Native Instruments, Expressive-E, Cherry Audio, and others.

I took a big breath and started the upgrade process. It went perfectly well. There were a couple of reboots and that’s all. Well, maybe a bit more. Once Windows 11 was installed, there were many updates available for it, and as I have an AMD Ryzen-based system and many of the updates were AMD-related, I quickly installed all updates as well. Once the installation and updates were ready, I started to test and clean-up the system. I deleted many of the freshly installed applications and cleaned up the start menu. After testing if the most critical applications still work, I did a disk clean-up to remove temporary files, the previous version of Windows and so on.

Out of all my Windows updates, this was the least drastic and problematic. Of course, there are some visible changes in Windows, but luckily not too much. I moved back the start menu to the left. Most of the changes made the whole system more logical, and much of the chaos around configuring Windows is resolved. Best of all: an already extremely fast machine now feels even faster.

MacOS Monterey

A couple of years ago I bought a MacBook Pro. I hate Apple products for many reasons: they are very expensive, and as a technical user I find that they are not too flexible. Still, there are quite a few people who like Macs and even would love to run syslog-ng on them, so I mostly bought my MacBook Pro to test and compile syslog-ng on it. However, just like any of my other devices, I use it for music too. I have a Moog software synthesizer running together with Garage Band, and I also use it for TIDAL, as out of all my TIDAL-capable devices, this one has the best headphone amplifier. :-)

The upgrade to Monterey was not so smooth. When I first started it, it was a 2.5GB download, but the installation failed. My second attempt had a 12.5GB download and while it was a bit slower, it was successful. I must admit that I did not notice any changes after the OS upgrade, but that’s no wonder: the look and feel stayed the same and I do not use the apps that changed.

I tried the Moog synth and a few more apps and they worked just fine. However, homebrew breaks with all kinds of strange errors. As it is needed to compile syslog-ng, I will investigate it, but that’s something for next week. Now I enjoy the long weekend and use my MacBook Pro only for music.

What’s next?

Windows 11 has WSL 2. It means that Linux is practically running in a virtual machine and behind a NAT. WSL 2 provides close to native performance, so I will try to figure out if I can run an externally available syslog-ng server inside.

On the latest MacOS I’ll most likely reinstall homebrew from scratch, and then check if syslog-ng still compiles and works.

• macos
• tidal
• planets