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from the Operating-System-a-la-"Mode" dept.
Windows 10 S is going to become a "mode" rather than a separate "version" of Windows. And it should be able to be disabled for free:
With the next big update to Windows 10, version 1803, Microsoft is making some big changes to how it sells the software to OEMs. The biggest casualty? Windows 10 S—the restricted version of Windows that can only run apps from the Store—is going away.
Currently, Windows 10 S is a unique edition of Windows 10. It's based on Windows 10 Pro; Windows 10 Pro has various facilities that enable system administrators to restrict which software can be run, and Windows 10 S is essentially a preconfigured version of those facilities. In addition to locking out arbitrary downloaded programs, it also prevents the use of certain built-in Windows features such as the command-line, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux.
For those who can't abide by the constraints that S imposes, you can upgrade 10 S to the full 10 Pro. This upgrade is a one-shot deal: there's no way of re-enabling the S limitations after upgrading to Pro. It's also a paid upgrade: while Microsoft offered it as a free upgrade for a limited time for its Surface Laptop, the regular price is $49.
[...] Brad Sams of Thurrott.com writes that, for Windows 10 version 1803 (codenamed "Redstone 4"), this is changing. According to leaked documents provided to Microsoft's partners, with version 1803, Windows 10 S will be a mode of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Education, and Windows 10 Pro, rather than a distinct version. Switching Windows 10 Home S and Windows 10 Education S to regular Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Education will be free; switching from Pro S to Pro will continue to cost $49.
Can Windows 10 Pro S be downgraded/upgraded to Windows 10 Home?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 07 2018, @03:32PM (6 children)
You can argue that Stupid people probably should be running Windows 10 Stupid, but the effect becomes circular. Increasingly, you won't just be able to hand someone a program you wrote and expect that they will be able to run it. You will have to have your program published through the Microsoft Store, incurring whatever restrictions and fees they may impose, and otherwise sucking Microsoft's dick.
Good luck getting them to upgrade, because a single marketing campaign can convince average people that they should want Windows 10 Stupid because security, and electrolytes and things.
I don't see the problem here. If these people are that clueless, then they really should be running locked-down computers, and paying handsomely for the privilege too. If users are too lazy and dumb to shop around, then they *deserve* to be taken advantage of.
Remember the old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it". That's exactly how users are.
I'd like to see a world in the near future where you have 3 choices for computing: Windows 10S (or its successors), a similar version of MacOS that's also locked-down tight, and then Linux (which doesn't have any serious hurdles to installing it, like now basically). I'd really like to see what the users pick, given two proprietary and locked-down platforms where they can't even write or run their own programs, and one that they have to install themselves (quickly and easily, with a USB stick) and that gives them total freedom. Which one are they going to pick? My money's on the two locked-down platforms, and I won't feel the least bit sorry for those users.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday February 07 2018, @08:10PM (5 children)
I like the contrast. But...
By then the locked "tablet" style hardware won't run Linux and/or the users data will be locked into cloud accounts. Of course completely hypothetical but don't underestimate their sliminess and greed. And then we have the user who has been reduced to a consumer who has been trained and conditioned by the media circus to buy the "best" products which will always be those with the deepest pockets such as Apple or maybe Microsoft if they get their shit together (ha!). At that point Linux would have to be a flawless experience with a consistent UI, easy to use API's, and minimal command line interaction so the consumers can cope (again; hahahahahaha!).
Here's hoping x86 stays open and Risc-V or some other open CPU platform matures to the point where it can replace x86 and then Arm (could be years or never).
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 08 2018, @01:11AM (4 children)
I'm not underestimating their sliminess and greed, but I don't think it's really necessary (at least for the OS vendors). That's why I want a hypothetical future where the users aren't prevented from switching to Linux by anything other than their own laziness and ignorance. In that scenario, the proprietary OS vendors will still be winning, because the users just won't switch, no matter what. That's my point here.
Linux already has minimal command line interaction for any decent distro like Mint, as long as you give it some decent hardware it doesn't have driver problems with (stay away from Nvidia). APIs aren't an issue for end-users, just programmers, and the lack of a flawless and consistent UI is the tradeoff you get for something that's free (and Free), at least for now. To make a car analogy, it's like a world where you have a choice of some proprietary cars from Apple and Microsoft, which are somewhere between expensive and obscenely expensive, with the expensive one having a wonky and ugly interior layout, and the obscenely expensive one having a beautiful interior but that's not that functional, and both require expensive regular service. Meanwhile, you can get a car for free that has several different versions, all running the same engine, and the interior designs vary wildly between the models, but all of them work OK (if not great), but have some odd quirks and some things aren't consistent. Also, if you don't like anything in your free car, you can get all the engineering plans for it and cheaply 3D-print your own alternative part designs. Finally, the expensive cars have fancy marketing campaigns to convince you to buy them, while the free cars don't. Given all this, 95% of car buyers will buy the expensive ones.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday February 08 2018, @09:35PM (3 children)
Here's a Linux FTW story. Have a glove box here at work that runs on DOS on a P3 mobo with ISA I/O cards. It prints batch reports for it's vacuum oven by dumping raw ascii out the parallel port to a printer. Printer (old deskjet 940c) stopped working and I had to figure out what stopped working. Printer? Motherboard? Cable? So my first issue is to try a new printer, the backup an HP laserjet 1320, test the printer and it's backup that didn't work (pointing to cable or motherboard). Run to the electronics store around the corner and pick up a new centronics cable, same deal, not the cable. So I plug the 940c into my little Intel NUC running Mint via USB and before I could do anything Mint detected and installed the driver. Already far ahead of Windows 10 and 7 which I didn't even bother to try and use with such an old printer. Printed a test page and the 940c spat out a test page. Okay plugged in the 1320 via USB and again, Mint detected and installed the driver in seconds. It to printed a test page. Now I needed to test parallel. Take out an one of our used Dell Optiplex 755 (core 2 duo) I bought for its ability to run Windows XP and to my surprise it was still running Linux mint from my testing. Plugged in the parallel cable and setup the printers and the 940c spat out garbage and the 1320 didn't do a fucking thing. So my spare somehow had its centronics port go bad. Setup FreeDOS in virtualbox, copied the machine software over and dd'd the image to a CF card and booted it on a spare P3 system. Hooked the 940c to it and it printed.
Might have not completely solved the issue yet but Linux helped me figure out what was wrong in no time whereas with Windows, you're stuck with old drivers that were left to rot and most likely dont work on newer Windows kernels. Wheres in linux they can keep on being ported to newer kernels so long as somebody does the work.
Linux is 95%+ desktop ready.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 09 2018, @04:27PM (2 children)
Might have not completely solved the issue yet but Linux helped me figure out what was wrong in no time whereas with Windows, you're stuck with old drivers that were left to rot and most likely dont work on newer Windows kernels. Wheres in linux they can keep on being ported to newer kernels so long as somebody does the work.
Actually, this isn't *quite* right, as far as your story: Linux doesn't have printer drivers in the kernel, aside from extremely generic LPT and USB printer class drivers which really only handle those physical interfaces. Linux uses CUPS for printing, which does everything with PostScript, and for non-PS printers, uses "filters" to convert PS to something the printer can read, and it also uses PPD files which are just text files that describe the printer's capabilities. In short, once a printer is covered with CUPS, it doesn't matter what the kernel does, and there's nothing that needs to be done to keep printers "updated"--just don't remove those files. It's really pretty simple, unlike Windows where it seems every printer needs some gigantic "driver pack" full of bloated code that hooks into Windows printing subsystem, and of course has to be changed when Windows has a major version change. The downside, of course, is that with Linux you don't get the fancy integration, where the pop-up printer dialog has extra tabs for things like looking at ink levels, cleaning the heads, and other proprietary features. I'm not sure how MacOSX handles it, though, since it also uses CUPS.
Generally, Linux is a lot better with drivers because the drivers are maintained as part of the kernel, and get updated automatically whenever the kernel changes its interfaces (if the drivers are merged and aren't kept separate as some vendors like to do), and also because the drivers are generally very generic, covering classes of devices, or specific chips instead of every little vendor that uses a ABC123 chip in their device making their own different and buggy driver. Windows has gotten better over the years about this, copying Linux's way of having pre-installed generic drivers for some popular things.
Linux is 95%+ desktop ready.
Linux is 100% desktop ready if you consider Windows and its crappy UI to be the bar to beat, and don't worry too much about perfect compatibility with Windows applications (which, after all, you're not going to get on Mac either, but that doesn't seem to be a big negative for Mac lovers). Unfortunately, Linux is in a way going backwards and getting worse for desktop use, because of so many distros pushing the shitty GNOME3 desktop.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday February 09 2018, @05:17PM (1 child)
I think I was talking about all hardware in general. But yes, the print drivers just work.
Not so much the OS itself but its entire ecosystem which is equally important. We have most of the important software running but there is still a huge hurdle for developers to overcome in terms of switching and there are still gotchas and command line scariness which prevents it from growing. Then the fact that there is no equal to Active directory. And no, some crap about kerberos and LDAP servers isn't an equivalent to AD by a long shot. Linux has most of the major pieces in place but missing key components that make it a true Windows killer (which is the first goal and then off to reclaim the *nix devs who jumped ship to OSX). Until the big commercial software companies starts to use the platform or god help me for saying this, switch to web/cloud platforms, we wont ever see Linux on the desktop in any mainstream capacity because those few apps that are a must have will immediatly stop any such attempts to switch.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 09 2018, @05:30PM
or god help me for saying this, switch to web/cloud platforms
This is exactly what's happening, and is pretty much the only way Linux on the desktop will become a normal thing. It's already the reason Linux desktops make good sense now for many simple home users, including two friends I set up with Linux laptops: when almost everything you do is through a web browser, and the only other things you do are playing music or videos, or maybe a little very simple document editing, Linux works just fine, without all the hassles that come with Windows 10. It's in businesses where they have various specialty applications plus AD, Outlook, etc. where there's a big technical problem with switching.