Windows 10; Is the tide turning into praise?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
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Still, it looks like Windows 10 is having no problems smashing Linux in terms of adoption and as such keeping it in the obscure corner known mainly to the more avid computer and technology users.

If Linux is to ever break out into the mainstream, then it needs to have a sort of ‘breakthrough’ moment that really shows it is ready to replace Windows in every possible way. Chances are a rather good chunk of current Windows users still do not know it exists or still think of it as that OS reserved for nerds.

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Windows-10 represents the latest incarnation of “corporations seeing just how far they can go.” (And, who can blame them?)

The necessary laws simply don’t exist yet. We still live in a happy little world in which any information which can possibly be collected about you “is fair game,” and therefore … in the eyes of certain corporations at least … “absolutely necessary” to be collected.

“Yeah, we’re protecting you from yourself.” Or: “We’re helping government agencies enforce the law.” Or: << fill in your own chosen excuse here >>.

We can’t exactly fault Microsoft for doing it, because everybody else is doing it, too. And they will keep doing it, will keep pushing the limits, until the Law finally forces them to do otherwise. (Or, until the disastrous consequences of their Folly are revealed … and let us all earnestly hope that that doesn’t happen, because the scope of the disaster will be incalculable.)

The simplest thing to do is to “vote with your feet.” Don’t buy Windows-10. Hell, don’t buy Windows at all.

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I’m a firm believer in allowing people the freedom to get what they want. Obviously I personally disagree with the direction Microsoft is going and believe it will lead to disastrous consequences, but I’m certainly not always right. At any rate, like sundial, my chosen course of action is to no longer use Windows and occasionally express my opinion on the matter when the opportunity presents itself.

As I understand it negative feelings in regards to corporate philosophies such as Microsoft’s tend to garner more hostile responses from people, typically of the hacking and virii type. Personally I do not condone such actions and feel that, if anything, it only makes the problem worse which is to say it provides companies such as Microsoft an excuse to tighten ‘security’ and further reduce the options their userbase has which actually has the opposite effect that the hacker or protester likely intended.

In the end if disastrous consequences come to be then ultimately that is what the world wanted even if they didn’t know it when they asked for it. If that is what the world wants then that is what the world gets. Of course, who am I to stand in their way.

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You can’t really avoid Windows at the moment when a solid majority of productivity apps. not only do not work on Linux, but do not work well on WINE either.

That’s one of the major things hampering Linux adoption outside of obscurity and its legacy reputation of needing arcane console commands. It’s getting better, but people aren’t going to move to Linux until they can be sure their apps. can as well.

Sure you can replace the Windows application with the Linux equivalent (more likely than not a FOSS app.), but they’re usually not near as powerful.

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Unfortunately and that’s precisely what puts Microsoft in a position to make such aggressive moves.

For those of us in the market for a new or used system there’s always OS X which, as I understand it, is actually quite good for artists, although not particularly budget friendly. Most major software distributions support Mac and its user friendliness is on par with Windows and perhaps surpasses Windows in the eyes of many of its users.

OS X is Unix based and developed by Apple who ensures that OS X will only ship on systems of very specific hardware specifications. OS X is generally less buggy than other operating systems because it doesn’t need to be as versatile in terms of the hardware that it runs on which frees the developers to focus more on fit and finish as opposed to compatibility.

The free Linux distributions run on the widest variety of hardware compared to any other operating system which is probably why these distributions might feel less user friendly than others. The developers have to spend a lot of time developing and updating software and drivers for virtually every piece of hardware out there from Raspberry Pi to physics focused super computers.

Linux distributions often tend to put enhanced focus on the user’s privacy. The KDE Fedora spin, for instance, ships with encryption software that integrates with the default e-mail application, KMail, and file browser, Dolphin, which give you the option to encrypt emails before you send them or any file or collection of files on your computer. Of course when encrypting e-mails the recipients must also have the decryption key in order to access the contents.

There’s also the most recent entry into the desktop OS market, Google’s Chrome OS which ships on the rather budget friendly Chromebooks. Honestly I don’t know much about it other than it’s actually a breed of Linux. Unlike OS X, though, Chrome OS was designed specifically to work mainly with Google’s on-line services so instead of using software such as MS Office or Libre-Office to create and edit documents you would use the Google Chrome browser to log in to your Google account and use their on-line in-browser document editor.

P.S. Personally I’m currently running the Fedora 22 KDE spin, Fedora calls their alternative desktop releases “spins,” the main Fedora image uses Gnome rather than KDE. As much as I like the Plasma 5 desktop for KDE I mainly use the LXQt desktop environment which is really easy on the hardware, only uses about 300-400 MB of RAM which is useful for my lower spec system.

Honestly KDE Plasma 5, Cinnamon and Mate probably offer desktop environments that’d be at least somewhat more familiar to Windows users. Xfce and LXDE/LXQt have that similar menu system too, but being lightweight they often take a little bit more fiddling to get working the way you like.

Linux Mint ships in both Cinnamon and Mate flavors while Fedora has spins for Gnome 3, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, KDE/Plasma 5, Xfce and probably others. Ubuntu has a variety too in addition to also, primarily, shipping with the Unity desktop environment which seems to be a love it or hate it type deal. Ubuntu with different desktops has a different name, for instance Ubuntu with Unity is Ubuntu, but the Ubuntu image that ships with KDE is called Kubuntu.

P.P.S Landing on a Linux install can be confusing with all the different options. You have distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, etcetera which generally ship with different combinations of default software such as email clients, web browsers and text editors.

Then you have desktop frameworks and environments. There are two major Linux desktop frameworks, Gnome and KDE. Gnome is centered around the GTK libraries while KDE uses Qt. Gnome, best I can tell, has a wider variety of desktop environments such as Gnome3, LXDE, Unity, Xfce, Cinnamon and Mate while KDE has Plasma and LXQt (the KDE port of LXDE.) Linux software utilizing a graphical user interface is usually written for either KDE(Qt) or Gnome(GTK.)

You can usually run software written for one in both, but you have to install the required libraries. So if you’re running KDE you need to install the Gnome libraries in order to run an application written in GTK and vise versa.

Plasma 5 has a lot of nifty effects and is extremely customizable, however this customizability makes it more complicated to customize because there are so many options. Gnome is generally less complicated, environments based on Gnome3 such as Gnome3, Unity and Cinnamon are some of the least complicated. Mate is actually a fork of Gnome2 because a lot of Linux users weren’t happy with the simplifications made for Gnome3.

DISCLAIMER: I am by no means an expert on Linux, this is just some of what I’ve been able to ascertain while shopping around for a different OS myself. In the future I’d like to graduate to Arch Linux which is probably the most versatile distribution, but itself starts out without a graphical desktop environment and only a command line interface from which to build upon.

Aside from that, as far as web browsers are concerned, I like to use Firefox with the uBlock Origin and NoScript plugins. uBlock Origin blocks ads, which speeds things up considerably considering my slow connection, and NoScript is pretty useful for security purposes and utilizes a white list style method of blocking JavaScript on websites. NoScript can be found at https://noscript.net
I use uBlock Origin in my Android Firefox too, but unfortunately NoScript is not yet compatible. I use the Nightly builds of Firefox for Android because the stable Firefox Android appears to only be available on Google Play which I do not use. I read Google’s terms of service and didn’t care for it.

On a more personal note, along the lines of what Ace said in regards to having limited options other than Windows. I’ve found that when you do not agree to the majority of terms of service agreements around you there are a lot of sacrifices that need to be made.

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The first major update has been unleashed and leading to mixed reviews.

In some cases, various apps. within Windows 10 are now snappier. On the flip side, some argue that their machine (which got slower with Win10) is now even slower and for the unfortunate few, a machine made totally unusable.

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well I got Win 10 on the 29 July
and mostly working fine

did find a few little things but should be corrected soon hopefully

so for me overall Win 10
works fine
Edge is faster then old IE11 and smoother

happy bl

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Windows 10 Forced Updates Causing Endless Crash Loops

"The patch in question is KB3081424 (ironically enough a roll-up of bug fixes) and during its update process affected users find it fails and triggers the message: “We couldn’t complete the updates, undoing the changes.” Undoing them results in a mandatory system reboot, but as soon as the user logs back on Windows 10’s update process kicks in and tries to install KB3081424 again.

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me here, but since Windows 10 updates cannot be stopped KB3081424 tries to install over and over again which leaves systems caught in endless reboot loops."

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Windows Central on how to fix common upgrade errors

The article is about fixing errors, but the comment section is full of people talking about how Windows 10 is messing up their productivity and their machines (the type of people who are usually big Microsoft fans) :spin:

By the way, the reports are there are also major issues being reported by those using Microsoft’s own Surface tablets (which were specifically designed to be Windows devices).

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I wonder why microsoft try to stray away from OSs like XP and 7. People and companies loved those OSs and so did their users. Granted they had their flaws just like anything else does, but at least the good things outweigh the bad in those OSs, but what I’ve heard about 10, the bad is outweighing the good. I hate it when stuff gets scans and the likes. Call me a conspiracy theroist or a tin foil hat wearer, but I’m a guy that wants my own stuff to be my own, i don’t like people looking into my house from the windows, I don’t think I would enjoy Microsoft doing the same thing. It is just like the NSA and the phone call scanes, it was none of their business and to the best of my knowledge a violation of the 4th amendment. People need to stay out of other people’s business, and that means sticking to older OSs then fine by me.

There had to be a catch why they made windows 10 ‘free’, because in reality nothing is free.

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Here, have a tinfoil hat, for you and your cat! :wink:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]394077[/ATTACH]

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Windows is losing patrons. That is the fact. Every OS is fine for common use. None are more appropriate for the average user. The price point will prevail in the end. Open will win in a growth based system at growth maximum. The more competitive OSs have been the ones that accommodate environmental factors. Pluses and minuses of usability are generally irrelevant. OSs that upset sensibilities are not likely to be the ones that thrive. Microsoft has been producing mostly duds since XP.

Gaming is moving to Linux. That will hurt Microsoft even with the XBox in the market. Then consider the impact of SteamBox… a real computer with a light OS, like in the DOS days. It’s going to be glorious.

It’s not bright to upset the sensibilities of ones patrons when there is a perfectly usable OS that doesn’t… and is at no cost. That is the bleak situation that Windows is under. The company is at growth maximum and they are using underhanded tactics to maximize profit. They are not going to pull out of this without some serious restructuring. Maybe their new CEO will have the stuff to do it, but I doubt it. More and more they are being judged as insecure and subjugating and they are still concentrating on that short term bottom line. They don’t extrapolate far enough into the future to see what they are doing wrong. That’s their problem.

Here are the questions that one should be asking. How much R&D went into Windows 10? How much did they put into producing it? How can they afford to make it a gratis upgrade? Is Microsoft appeasing its patrons or it’s stockholders?

I’ve seen Linux adoption double several times. The most used OS on the planet is Android and Linux powers the internet for the same reasons. The developers are free to develop it with the development being the bottom line.

The truth is Microsoft is churning out crap because they just don’t have their priorities straight. Vista, Windows 8 and Windows 10 are perfect examples.

This releasing broken IPs and then fixing it to passable is going to damage Microsoft even farther.

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@DinoRexChris: You don’t see construction workers and engineers barging into your house whenever they want just to see how they could improve upon their design.

Likewise it is explicitly illegal in the states for the government to start rummaging through your house whenever they please. Probably because it would take no effort at all to abuse that power. Oppressive regimes around the world use such to bully, intimidate, imprison and otherwise eliminate political rivals.

P.S. The American forefathers who wrote those original laws, and who had experience living under tyrannical regimes, didn’t think it would be safe to give the government search and seizure powers and then simply say it wouldn’t be abused. They knew the temptation to abuse that power was too great.

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One major point in this thread in general is that while a lot of people (including myself) maybe willing to concede that such EULA clauses are standard issue now and will not raise conspiracy allegations as a result. The fact remains that Windows 10 is being reported to have a lot of functional problems and other bugs that is preventing the optimal use of the machine it is installed on.

Compared to the other issues, any ‘spying’ concerns would rank near the bottom (especially since it’s been reported that various tracking features and other things like Cortana can simply be turned off).

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Issues aren’t really in common focus until they begin to interfere with function in the home. People would allow cameras in their bathrooms if there were no foreseen consequences. Privacy isn’t really the issue in all honesty. The concerns are more about the ability to live ones life uninterrupted. Subjugation leads to interruption. By then, the only recourse will be a change of OS.

There is a phenomenon in modern business where one business adopts a questionable policy for competitive advantage and others follow suit to remain competitive. This is the runaway train that is causing many of our economic woes. It’s also driven us to the instability we are experiencing. Survival instinct is preventing startups from being the turnover to novel growth. The trade off is sociopathy.

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@Ace: The problem here is that you’re not really thinking about the future, in my opinion. Now I’m not trying to get political, but this is a good example of what I’m saying here.

When President Roosevelt instituted the Social Security act he said that your social security number would never be used as a form of identification. Obviously that wasn’t true, the social security number is widely used as the primary means of identification these days. That doesn’t mean it was a conspiracy to deceive the American public into something they didn’t want. I believe Mr. Roosevelt truly believed in not using the social security number as a form of identification, it was only that his successors did not feel the same way on the subject and used the tools he gave them in a manner that he, himself, did not see fit.

The same applies here. Say the CEO of Microsoft says that this data they’re collecting will only be used to improve the functionality of their products, will be stripped of any personal information that could be used to identify you and will only be investigated further if it is believed that there is a legal need to do so. Satya Nadella, the current CEO of Microsoft, may truly believe that, but that doesn’t mean his successors will feel the same way. Say the next CEO and/or the CEO after that decide to take things further, to a degree that you would disagree with today.

You say, well then at that time I’ll just stop using their product, but they will have already collected terrabytes, maybe even exobytes, of your presonal information and it will be too late.

And yes, apparently one can turn off a number of these data collection aspects of Windows 10, but the options to do so are buried deep. So while you and I may be able to root through the system menus and turn them off the vast majority of Windows users who lack technical skills will not be able to do so. Like I said before, I’m not really concerned about my own privacy, I’m more so concerned about everyone else.

I understand if you don’t want to discuss this issue if it’s just not your cup of tea, there’s nothing wrong with that. However; I believe there are serious implications here that concern everyone, even those of us with nothing to hide.

@Blonder: People are usually not willing to give up huge swaths of rights, but they are willing to give up little bits of their rights. Typically you just take things a little bit at a time until eventually it’s all gone.

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I don’t discuss the issue with you because it seems you’re more interested in talking politics and conspiracy theory (with at best a tenuous connection to Microsoft) rather than software.

If you don’t believe in following the forum rules on discussion, then the administration does not have an obligation to allow your account to stay active.

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“Oppressive regimes around the world use such to bully, intimidate, imprison and otherwise eliminate political rivals.”

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The only problem is that this is a private forum run by CG Cookie, not the public square. There are plenty of websites where you can discuss the political implications of anything and everything such as Politico or some Reddit board.

Again, try to avoid going off on this type of tangent, just because it’s the off topic forum doesn’t mean it renders thread titles as meaningless words on a screen.

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I wasn’t talking about the mods or the forum rules I was talking about your comment.

Moreover I’m not going off topic here. This is a thread about issues people have with Windows 10, I wouldn’t think that on that subject we should ignore the most glaringly obvious issue.

How should one discuss such a thing without pointing out the parallels it has with other events in history? Historically only governments have had the power to enact such broad invasions of privacy so discussing the subject naturally requires one mention something that has to do with a government.

If we were discussing spaceflight should I refrain from mentioning NASA because it is a government organization?