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from the tears-were-shed-across-the-land dept.
Microsoft continues to phase out Windows 7 and 8.1:
Out with the old, and in with the new. Microsoft yesterday stopped providing Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 licenses to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), including its PC partners and systems builders. This means that, as of today, the only way you can buy a computer running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 is if you can still find one in stock.
Two years ago, Microsoft stopped selling Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows 7 Ultimate licenses to OEMs. Now Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 are also out of the picture, leaving Windows 10 as the only remaining option, assuming you want a PC with a Microsoft operating system.
This is Microsoft's way of slowly phasing out old operating systems. The Windows Lifecycle chart for sales doesn't have an end date for Windows 10, since that operating system doesn't have a successor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 02 2016, @01:20PM
Thanks for writing that--I've been on linux exclusively since 1999 so the world of Windows seems like a parallel universe to me now. A lot of the Windows vs. Linux discussions I've seen over the years have tended to be FLOSS zealots vs. Windows shills & apologists. So it's nice to get an honest, non-hyperventilating read on how things stand with Windows now.
This one bit did strike me. I didn't realize how bad boot times for Windows still are. My linux systems have booted to the desktop in 11 seconds for the better part of a decade. Perhaps loading all the adware/malware/virus scans/3D effects that comes in Windows systems is the difference? I ran Gnome as my desktop for years, but when they tried to push 3D effects at the same time Ubuntu was pushing Unity, presumably to keep up with what Microsoft was doing, I switched to XFCE and haven't looked back; that has been such a blessing to my productivity, really, in that in Linux if you don't want to take it, you can leave it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Wednesday November 02 2016, @02:02PM
I think it wasn't so much adware, which I keep my machine clean of, but rather the sheer size of all the code that needs to be loaded in a Windows system. I run a *lot* of applications. To give you an idea, I have a 256GB SSD which only contains the Windows 10 core, boot and applications I use. It was so full 6 months back that I had to use drive compression on pretty much everything to avoid running out of space. Now, I did have my Documents / etc folders there, but only because by then I had given up moving them to other folders because windows was such a twat about it. I did move as much out of the folders as I could to reduce their waste of SSD space.
Being a dev, I also tend to run things like SQL Server, Perforce Server, etc - a bunch of things that need to boot at runtime and slow the whole thing down. To be fair, I could reduce those startup processed a lot better on Linux than I can on Windows. Honestly, both can do it, it's just more work on Windows.
My current Linux boot, a Ubuntu 16.04 on an SSD boots so damn quick it's amazing. That said, it is just a basic desktop with zero extra services running. I *do love to see it come up though* :D
To my mind, the main reason my Windows system takes longer to boot now is just the sheer amount of apps I run, by choice. If I loaded Linux up with the same level of dev tools, it would take about the same amount of time to boot.
I like them both. I use them both. Hell, I'd use BSD if it didn't mean needing another big investment in time to learn, and IOS if it didn't mean owning Apple hardware.
UI wise, my main machine is a Quad core i7 with 16GB RAM so running Unity really is a non-issue for me. I like Gnome, and KDE, and can run XFCE or even Enlightenment if needed, but I usually need a little more power than the low cost UIs provide. Hell, if I'm on Linux there's a chance to am compiling some c++ code that wants QT running for me to test it (or similar) so it's a moot point.
Use what works for you I say, or what you love :D