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Right now, Microsoft is inspiring horror stories with "forced upgrades" and/or incessant nagging to upgrade to Windows 10. Yet more horror stories are being generated with the invasive "telemetry", and the personalized advertising found within the OS.
In recent weeks, the wife has complained about the Windows 10 nag. She runs Win7 Home Premium, and got the nag until I "fixed" it. I run Win7 Pro in my virtual machines, and I don't get the nag. I got the telemetry updates, but not the nag.
Those of us over a certain age remember the original separation between enterprise grade Windows NT (NT3, NT4, Win2000) and the consumer grade Windows (Win 1, 2, 3, 3.11, 95, 98, 98SE and Millenium) until they were joined together with WinXP. With WinXP, we saw the same OS used for consumer and enterprise, with advanced features enabled in Pro and Enterprise, and the same features disabled in consumer versions.
So, here we are today, with MS trying to phase out Win7, and force feeding Windows 10 to the world.
Going forward - is MS also going to force feed Win10 to the professional/enterprise world? Or, will they send the consumer and enterprise OS's down divergent paths? Are we going to see insecurity built into the consumer line of products, and better security and features built into the professional lines?
What does the future hold? Any guesses?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Saturday December 26 2015, @12:40AM
They want everyone on Windows 10, which will eventually just become "Windows", a rolling release that's ad/subscription supported and does most of the work "in the cloud". Computers will be little more than wireless high-speed terminals connecting to the Redmond mainframe which controls all the user's data and does most of the computation. Security will actually improve (like it did with Apple's iOS devices), privacy will obviously be non-existent--it essentially is already but at least a Windows 10 machine still works offline.
That's my prediction anyway, drawing a line into the future based on their recent trajectory.
For the nonce use something like Destroy Windows Spying [github.com] to remove the telemetry and other malware. You'll have to run it every time Windows updates itself which is becoming more frequent. It's a losing battle though since MS ultimately controls the OS. I myself will be sticking with Windows 7 and that'll be the last version of Windows I ever use as I don't see MS reversing these trends or even halting their progress towards what I can only describe as a hellish techno-dystopia. Thankfully we have Linux and BSD which will exist forever. Now we just need a completely open hardware platform to run it on to get away from Intel/AMD who are committing the equivalent of MS's abuses but in silicon.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:52AM
Another useful anti-malware tool is the GWX Control Panel [ultimateoutsider.com], which in recent releases has added a monitoring mode to check for other Windows components quietly re-enabling the Win10 downgrade after it's been explicitly disabled by the user. It's like Spybot's monitoring mode, except that it's for malware from a multibillion dollar company.
(Score: 2) by N3Roaster on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:52AM
Little did we know at the time that Pretty Sammy was a documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/v/GRoC2wGZMBY?start=231&end=446&version=3 [youtube.com]
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:57AM
I don't believe your prediction.
Because its just too easy to switch to Linux these days, and with LibreOffice doing just about everything, 99.44% of every office workload can be run on Linux just fine.
Custom windows application? Yeah that's a problem, but not an insurmountable one. You can run those in VMs
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @02:17AM
Well, here is my story. I myself use ThinkPads for the last *teen years so no issue here. Yes, sure, it's Linux.
A year ago I bought a modern laptop for my girlfriend with Linux preinstalled. It took me 48 hours to get it right mostly because of wrong drivers and reminded me of win 98 nightmare. But I won, and she is happy, and the laptop is rock solid.
She is my wife now and I just bought a laptop for her kid. Remembering the experience, I bought a windows laptop this time (yeah, I've read the reviews) with a plan to put Linux on it myself. The problem with the previous one was it was just too new and Linux drivers did not catch up yet. This time I bought a two years old one and thought it would be easy. Fat chance. It still took me 24 hours. The thing was fighting me real hard. Eventually I had to get a different bios on it and only then it worked or so I hope it will - it's a new year gift for the kid.
I am so glad I've 3 old ThinkPads and hope to just keep upgrading them for the rest of my life.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday December 26 2015, @03:24AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @03:40AM
Actuallty, they don't. Maybe games.
But not your average business custom app.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Saturday December 26 2015, @03:46AM
Actuallty, they don't. Maybe games. But not your average business custom app.
Maybe five years ago, not today. Even Photoshop uses 3d accerlation, modern browsers use gpu acceleration, and these days there's not a whole lot left that doesn't use something. So I'm going to ask again: How does your approach handle this, seeing as how the big stereotype is that Linux 3d driver support is comical.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday December 26 2015, @04:49AM
Well, I do all my development in Virtual machines for isolation purposes, and because I can move entire machines between worstations simply by copying VM files.
I've not noticed any issue with 3D, or with anything refusing to run. Now obviously I can't speak to all applications.
But I haven't had any problems with the 3d drivers on my AMD Linux machine running either linux VMs or Windows VMs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Geotti on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:03PM
Hello traveller and welcome to 2015,
You seem to have missed a lot in your cryogenic sleep, but here's a quick rundown of what has happened in the past years [reddit.com].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SDRefugee on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:54PM
But what I think will happen, if too many of us move off Windows, to Linux, is the government, which is already well down the "1984" rathole, will just start making life tough for those who don't "suck on the MS teat".. I supported/used Windows in my day (and night jobs) since Windows 3.11, but when I retired I decided I was done with that.. Oh I still get roped into helping friends/neighbors/family with computer issues. I'm trying to wean most of them off of MS products and onto Linux, and have a fairly good track record with that.. Several neighbors who bought new systems on Blackfriday have already had Windows 10 removed and Linux installed, at their request.. I have several more queued up for the week after newyears.. FUCK MICROSOFT AND THIER WINDOWS X....
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Saturday December 26 2015, @03:31AM
Only if you completely misconstrue what "security" means. There's no expectation of security when the user does not have the master key to his own safe, but some company and its friends and affiliates do, and can come in surreptitiously and at any time, and deposit/withdraw anything without any notice. This is as insecure as it gets. As for the third-party malware, there's absolutely no reason to think the situation would improve. The problem is, micro$oft does not give a shit. Its #1 goal is to abuse its users, so what if 10% of that abuse is done by someone else? They save as much by cheating us out of their taxes.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday December 26 2015, @09:44AM
What has AMD done? Can you name one example? Because all I've seen them do the past few years is embrace the four freedoms [amd.com] and open all their software to the community.
As for MSFT? They will either change or they will die, simple as that. The fact they are trying to force Win 10 (which is giving plenty of business to guys like me to disable the MSFT infection, thanks Redmond) shows that they are desperate and Windows 10 is gonna end up their third flop in a row,and when this inevitably fails? My guess is Nadella will "explore other opportunities" (translate you are fired, pack your shit and git) and the next guy will bring "the return of classic Windows" which will be....drumroll...Windows 7 with a few extra bells and whistles.
Because the spying bullshit is out of the bag, its hit the MSM and YouTube which means I have little old ladies coming to me thinking Windows 10 will listen in to their phone conversations and hand out their CC numbers. When it reaches that point, when the crazy conspiracy shit is reaching the little old ladies? Yeah stick a fork, its over, hit the lights on your way out. Windows 10 is really not gonna go any higher, those that wanted it have it and the rest don't, so its either accept its a flop and move on or the big OEMs left will end up getting together and backing some flavor of Linux as the default install as I'm sure they are seeing sales of systems with Win 10 tank just like they did Windows 8.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:31PM
Intel has a hardware backdoor / vnc server in VPro/AMT.
Pulls from frame buffer.
Don't know about AMD. Some of their chipsets have remote management, some do not.
With intel it's all of them, and remotely re-enableable.
They want to catch men who like young girls.
This is a feminist world.
A cunt state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @01:26PM
>Thankfully we have Linux .... which will exist forever.
Systemd
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @05:05PM
I am so hipster that I have been tinkering with FreeBSD for 10 years: just in case GNU/Linux goes too mainstream.
Did not expect systemd, but looks like my tinkering is going to pay off with a more stable, secure desktop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @06:56PM
There have been a number of end runs on open software going on. Only time will tell if the forks will show that openness sees this all as damage suckessfully routes around it.
opensolaris -> illumos
Java -> openjdk
Openoffice -> libreoffice
Mysql -> mariadb
Firefox -> palemoon
Thunderbird -> fossamail
Debian -> devuan
So there's presidence and the wishes of a stong or corporate minority need not have control over the future of a project even if they control the existing infrastructure and brand assets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @08:35PM
For folks who want something a bit more mature, antiX [freeforums.org] has been around since 2006.
It was originally spun off of MEPIS.
It's on the list. [without-systemd.org]
It will run on just about anything. [google.com]
Since MEPIS' chief developer abandoned that project, to fill that void, anticapitalista and the antiX guys have spun off a distro that is bulkier[1] than their main, lightweight, effort.
That is called antiX MX.
The 2nd release, MX-15, was just announced after they did some development releases to wring it out.
Both of these use sysVinit and are compatible with Debian software repositories.
[1] antiX once tried a DVD-sized ISO and got a lot of grief from users.
The devs have gone back to a CD-sized ISO.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @02:37PM
I may be forced onto Windows 10 eventually myself, but for general computing I'm more and more using Linux anyway. If I get a computer with Windows 10, it'll be strictly for gaming and using particular programs that won't run under Linux. In instances where I have a choice though, I'll have it set up on a linux box - and that includes games.
However Windows 7 will be the preference until the matter is forced. (And a choice between Win 8 and 10 is still a forced matter towards 10... oddly enough.)