Upcoming release

[Rachael]

Graf still has a point.

But I am still gonna stick with Windows 10, for now.

Also - I don't like the metered connection thing because if you go troubleshooting your network the setting goes away. And - you can't set that for wired (ethernet) networks.

[dpJudas]

I'm running Windows 10 (with updates enabled) on my PC. As Microsoft backported the spy stuff to Windows 7 and 8 anyway, I see little reason to avoid it. The UWP part can be effectively removed (unpin it all from the start menu), which leaves only Cortana/Search integration. I'm lucky there as Denmark is too small a country for them to support Danish, so for now that part is also gone for me.

There are a couple of things in favor of running Windows 10: better console window, a built-in Ubuntu Linux, better hi-dpi support, pinnable Explorer folders, and Direct3D 12. Nothing big that would make me upgrade if I'm happy with 7 or 8, but honestly I see relatively little difference between the 7 I came from and 10 in daily usage. Maybe mostly that the theme got rather ugly (fillrect for the loss!). Seeing 7's glass theme for 5 years had gotten me quite tired of the old one as well.

[Rachael]

I "tested" Windows 10 on this computer before I actually installed it.

At the time I was in Sweden, so I decided to just go ahead and install it in Swedish. I knew enough of it to get by and I was able to change my personal user account to English, anyway.

Surprisingly enough, that was enough to disable Cortana completely. I didn't mind it one bit.

I'll just change my language settings back to Swedish again before I do the Anniversary update - so that Cortana stays gone.

One more reason why I forcefully disable updates is because in USA, I literally *do* have a metered connection. The limit is pretty big (for now) but that's enough to watch your bandwidth. It's not worth downloading 100mb per day just to keep the people in Redmond happy, especially when that 100mb could be going to Youtube videos and steam downloads, instead.

[dpJudas]

My Windows is using the en-US language pack, but my regional settings are set to Danish. That is apparently enough to get it to disable Cortana. Maybe there's also a registry setting or something that can force it off. I mostly want it gone because the thing it adds on the taskbar is just too ugly!

[Rachael]

Agreed.

My taskbar is filled with - well, things that I am doing, not useless features I don't want.

[Gez]

And - you can't set that for wired (ethernet) networks.

That's a bullshit restriction from Microsoft. I have an actual metered connection (internet access via satellite) and a PC which doesn't have a wifi card is connected to the satellite's "modem" box via ethernet.

[Rachael]

This is among the reasons why I don't mind doing extensive tweaking to the operating system to make it operate the way I want it to. This hardware is owned by me, it should at the very least go by my rules, not the rules of some software developer who doesn't know me and is 2,000 km away.

I'm hoping Microsoft learns from this, and either reneges on their decision to make Windows 10 the final Windows product and produce something better, or they add back in the customization options that were quite present even in Windows 8.1 and never broke anything anyway. And before someone says "not doing updates is a poor decision" - forcing them is even worse. I shouldn't have to shell out money for half the price of a full Server license just to opt-out of updates.

[Graf Zahl]

I think the problem here is not that they are not aware of this but that they have to sell some magic to their investors. And the entire 'big data' idea that drives all this insanity is something they probably cannot give up and leave behind in the dust where it belongs without irritating their stock owners.

[Rachael]

a built-in Ubuntu Linux

This was my key motivation to upgrading to the anniversary edition of Windows 10.

I don't think my friend had *ANY* idea why I was so excited, and he had no idea what was going on in the screenshots I showed him. >_>

Also -

Code: Select all

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]
"AllowCortana"=dword:00000000

^ Disables Cortana - in case they ever launch her in Denmark. Change it to a 1 or simply remove the entry to reset it.

[dpJudas]

I don't think my friend had *ANY* idea why I was so excited, and he had no idea what was going on in the screenshots I showed him. >_>

The optimist in me is imagining I can use this feature to apt-get install stuff I need sometimes for 3rd party stuff - like having to run that lua thing for the OpenGL extensions gzdoom uses. I actually went to my Mac and brew'ed that thing just to avoid having to run it on Windows.

The cynic tells me that Microsoft left out something fundamental for it to be useful and all it is good for is consuming disk space.

^ Disables Cortana - in case they ever launch her in Denmark. Change it to a 1 or simply remove the entry to reset it.

And here the cynic would say they probably will have disabled that registry key by the time Cortana reaches Denmark.

[Rachael]

Despite not being officially supported, I managed to get an X server running on Windows, and am in the process of configuring GZDoom to run on it. Needless to say, this is pretty awesome stuff - it isn't perfect, but by gosh it's more than Microsoft has ever done for Linux since Linux ever became a thing. I bet even Torvalds is surprised.

This is going to help immensely with launching apps on Linux. It isn't a truly native environment, but for what it's worth, it works pretty well. It reminds me of coLinux that I used to use, which was basically vmlinuz ported to Windows to use the Windows API.

If you need an X server, you can use this one here: http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ - simply execute "export DISPLAY=:0" in your bash environment, and you should be able to run gui apps. You'll have to configure hardware acceleration through mobaxterm, and it is limited.

Firefox on Ubuntu on Windows

firefox-ubuntu-windows2.png (640.8 KiB) Viewed 1668 times

[dpJudas]

Ah, I missed the part about you already having it running on your machine. I don't think the anniversary edition has been pushed to my computer yet. Pretty cool you got a Firefox in X11 running there.

[Major Cooke]

I think the problem here is not that they are not aware of this but that they have to sell some magic to their investors. And the entire 'big data' idea that drives all this insanity is something they probably cannot give up and leave behind in the dust where it belongs without irritating their stock owners.

So Microsoft is forced to do some of its stuff, but Apple just does it to milk the dead money cow until it's bone dry...

And apparently, installing windows on a mac is quite a bit more difficult when a friend of mine tried it than before.

[Rachael]

So I was not successful in getting ZDoom to run on the Win10 Linux environment. First off, there's GCC errors on the latest version. Downgrading to older versions fixes those errors, but it segfaults (I am guessing because it uses operations not yet supported by LXSS). I guess we'll just have to see. I'm hoping Microsoft makes some sort of official support for X11 and some audio driver. ZDoom did not like that I had no audio driver available and pulseaudio refused to run inside Linux, even when setting a Windows server.

[Graf Zahl]

I think the problem here is not that they are not aware of this but that they have to sell some magic to their investors. And the entire 'big data' idea that drives all this insanity is something they probably cannot give up and leave behind in the dust where it belongs without irritating their stock owners.

So Microsoft is forced to do some of its stuff, but Apple just does it to milk the dead money cow until it's bone dry...

And apparently, installing windows on a mac is quite a bit more difficult when a friend of mine tried it than before.

Let's be clear: The entire 'modern' Windows thing was Ballmer's idea to become like Apple - with the vendor lock-in and everything it entails.
But as it is - once out the crap is hard to contain. Any attempt of blatant backpedaling will be met by investor skepticism.

Windows 10 has sure done its mistakes, for be the one that outright kills it is the automatic driver updates. I simply cannot afford this on my working machine.

But with Apple it's an entirely different story. It is very clear from how they run iOS and iTunes what the company's philosophy is.
iOS is the most locked-down OS currently in wide use - the lock-down is mostly justified with security, but ultimately it's to have total control over how the phone gets used. If something happens which Apple does not like - it gets blocked. If people want to install stuff, it has to be approved by and bought through Apple. And if possible anything bought through Apple is locked to Apple devices. Best example: iBooks. Anything you bought there can't be transferred anywhere else. Back in 2007 this strategy was essential to break the mobile carriers' stranglehold on the market, but this more and more turned into a means to control the users. And the same methods are now gradually being rolled out on the Mac as well. They have to move carefully or they'll lose so they take away this freedom piece by piece. I think they cheered when Microsoft tried the same thing. Well, too bad for Apple that Windows users didn't fall for this scheme.
Last but not least, yes, Steve Jobs started this, but ever since Tim Cook became CEO it gradually got worse, coinciding with ever rising developer obstacles, the most grating of which is that Apple is moving away from open standards towards homegrown solutions.
And of course: Despite everything Windows is a relatively open platform, it was no problem for hardware vendors to implement Vulkan without any involvement of Microsoft and making OpenGL as flexible and up-to-date as possible. Not so on macOS where Apple controls everything. Again, it's a different side of the same coin: Just like trying to monopolize its users, they are also trying to monoplize their developers, trying their best to prevent platform independent code to be written. 'Modern' Windows tried the same, we all saw where it ended up: A highly unattractive platform for development!