Microsoft's only choice to move forward is to throw the Win32 baby out with the bathwater. And that brings us to the introduction of Windows 10 S.
Windows 10 S is just like the Windows 10 you use now, but the main difference is it can only run apps that have been whitelisted to run in the Windows Store. That means, by and large, existing Win32-based stuff cannot run in Windows 10 S for security reasons.
To bridge the app gap, Microsoft is allowing certain kinds of desktop apps to be "packaged" for use in the Windows Store through a tooling process known as Desktop Bridge or Project Centennial.
The good news is that with Project Centennial, many Desktop Win32 apps can be re-purposed and packaged to take advantage of Windows 10's improved security. However, there are apps that will inevitably be left behind because they violate the sandboxing rules that are needed to make the technology work in a secure fashion.
"A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser. For security reasons, Microsoft is not permitting desktop browsers to be ported to the Store."
Related Stories
Citrix has launched an application specifically aimed at Windows 10 S, and thus published in the Windows Store, which makes it possible to run Win32 software even if it's not available in the Store.
Source: Softpedia
related stories:
Microsoft Knows Windows is Obsolete. Here's a Sneak Peek at Its Replacement.
New Windows 10 S Only Runs Software From Windows Store
Microsoft Windows is back on ARM:
Just shy of a year after announcing that Windows was once again going to be available on ARM systems, the first two systems were announced today: the Asus NovaGo 2-in-1 laptop, and the HP Envy x2 tablet.
[...] The Asus laptop boasts 22 hours of battery life or 30 days of standby, along with LTE that can run at gigabit speeds. HP's tablet offers a 12.3 inch, 1920×1280 screen, 20 hours battery life or 29 days of standby, and a removable keyboard-cover and stylus. Both systems use the Snapdragon 835 processor and X16 LTE modem, with HP offering up to 8GB RAM and 256GB storage to go with it.
Lenovo is expected to announce a similar system in the coming weeks.
Also at The Verge, Engadget, and TechCrunch.
Previously: Big Changes Planned by Microsoft - Windows 10 on ARM, Laptops to Behave More Like Phones
Windows 10 PCs Running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 to Arrive this Year
New Windows 10 S Only Runs Software From Windows Store
Microsoft Knows Windows is Obsolete. Here's a Sneak Peek at Its Replacement.
New App Allows Win32 Software to Run on Windows 10 S
Intel Hints at Patent Fight With Microsoft and Qualcomm Over x86 Emulation
Google published a "Chrome browser" app in the Windows Store on Tuesday, but it simply opened up a Google Chrome download page in the default Windows browser. Most users would then have been able to download and install the Chrome browser, except for the minority of Windows 10 S users who are restricted to downloading Windows Store apps which must use the EdgeHTML rendering engine rather than Blink. Microsoft was not amused at the stunt and removed the "app" from its Store later that day:
Google published a Chrome app in the Windows Store earlier today, which just directed users to a download link to install the browser. Microsoft isn't impressed with Google's obvious snub of the Windows Store, and it's taking action. "We have removed the Google Chrome Installer App from Microsoft Store, as it violates our Microsoft Store policies," says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.
Citing the need to ensure apps "provide unique and distinct value," Microsoft says "we welcome Google to build a Microsoft Store browser app compliant with our Microsoft Store policies." That's an invitation that Google is unlikely to accept. There are many reasons Google won't likely bring Chrome to the Windows Store, but the primary reason is probably related to Microsoft's Windows 10 S restrictions. Windows Store apps that browse the web must use HTML and JavaScript engines provided by Windows 10, and Google's Chrome browser uses its own Blink rendering engine. Google would have to create a special Chrome app that would adhere to Microsoft's Store policies.
Most Windows 10 machines don't run Windows 10 S, so Google probably won't create a special version just to get its browser listed in the Windows Store. Google can't just package its existing desktop app into a Centennial Windows Store app, either. Microsoft is explicit about any store apps having to use the Edge rendering engine.
Related: Microsoft Adds Store App-Only Restriction as Option in Windows 10
New Windows 10 S Only Runs Software From Windows Store
Microsoft Knows Windows is Obsolete. Here's a Sneak Peek at Its Replacement.
First ARM Snapdragon-Based Windows 10 S Systems Announced
New laptops are drawing upon features/attributes associated with smartphones, such as LTE connectivity, ARM processors, (relatively) high battery life, and walled gardens:
This year's crop of CES laptops -- which we'll define broadly to include Windows-based two-in-one hybrids and slates -- even show signs of a sudden evolutionary leap. The long-predicted PC-phone convergence is happening, but rather than phones becoming more like computers, computers are becoming more like phones.
The most obvious way this is happening is the new breed of laptops that ditch the traditional Intel (and sometimes AMD) processors for new Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm. So far, we've seen three of these Snapdragon systems announced: the HP Envy x2, the Asus NoveGo and the Lenovo Miix 630.
Laptops with lower-end processors have been tried before, with limited success. Why is now potentially the right time? Because these systems aren't being pitched as bargain basement throwaways -- and in fact, they'll cost $600 and up, the same as many mainstream laptops in the US. Instead, they promise some very high-end features, including always-on LTE connectivity (like a phone) and 20-plus hours of battery life with weeks of standby time, which also sounds more like a phone than a PC. The tradeoff is that these Snapdragon laptops run Windows 10 S, a limited version of Windows 10, which only allows apps from the official Microsoft app store. That's also similar to the walled garden of mobile OS apps many phones embrace.
[...] There's another take on phone-laptop convergence happening here at CES. Razer, the PC and accessory maker, always brings one or two inventive prototypes to CES, such as last year's triple-screen Project Valerie laptop. The concept piece for CES 2018 is Project Linda, a 13-inch laptop shell, with a large cutout where the touchpad would normally be. You drop a Razer Phone in that slot, press a button, and the two pieces connect, with the laptop body acting as a high-end dock for the phone. The phone acts as a touchpad and also a second screen, and it works with the growing number of Android apps that have been specially formatted for larger laptop screens or computer monitors.
Related: Symetium Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for a "Smartphone PC"
Maru OS: an Android ROM that Turns into Debian when it Senses Connected PC Peripherals
What Are Must-Have Specs for a Laptop in 2017?
ARM Based Laptop DIY Kit Ready to Hit the Shops
Windows 10 PCs Running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 to Arrive this Year
Microsoft Knows Windows is Obsolete. Here's a Sneak Peek at Its Replacement.
Samsung to Give Linux Desktop Experience to Smartphone Users
Samsung Shows Off Linux Desktops on Galaxy 8 Smartphone
First ARM Snapdragon-Based Windows 10 S Systems Announced
Snapdragon 845 Announced
Qualcomm Joins Others in Confirming its CPUs Suffer From Spectre, and Other Meltdown News
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday May 11 2017, @12:44PM (24 children)
One of the things that blocks Desktop Bridge use is "Your app generates code." How does Microsoft expect to port Visual Studio to Windows 10 S, say, for use in completing programming homework assignments?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:02PM (15 children)
"Buy new Visual Studio Online Cloud Edition for your student, just 10$ per student per month".
(Score: 5, Informative) by Pino P on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:24PM (2 children)
10$ per student per month
Over the expected life of a laptop, the price of required subscription services such as that could pay for the price difference between a laptop that ships with Windows 10 S and a laptop designed specifically for GNU/Linux, such as one from System76 [system76.com], ZaReason [zareason.com], or ThinkPenguin [thinkpenguin.com].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:23PM (1 child)
Which doesn't matter. If your school board gets a kickback from Microsoft (or more likely a Partner to provide deniability) they will mandate Microsoft and you will use it. Why do you think the utterly obsolete TI 84 was a required purchase so many years and before that an older model? Students are a captive audience.
But the goal here has little to do with education users, they are just the foot in the door. Look in your living room at your XBox and see the future Microsoft has planned for you. I have been posting the same thing for a decade now and nothing since has made me any but more more sure of being correct. Next all home users get the DRM hammer. Devels will still have the Pro / Enterprise editions because the corporate world is nowhere near being ready to let go of win32. But eventually they will get the hammer dropped, Pro will be eliminated and only Enterprise edition will retain 'legacy' features and it will require Software Assurance so Microsoft won't care since they will be raking in so much cash from it. Devels will either work for a big corp on Enterprise or get a "Developer Edition" that will require the sort of background checking console devels endure, meaning you WILL be incorporated. And the devel tools made available to all but the most pricey options (sold to maintainers of legacy corporate code) will only generate the new managed code, no new win32. Finally the login, which is already a Microsoft account unless you are corporate or try hard, will merge with the XBox and you will need a Live subscription because the PC will just be an XBox in a different form factor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:25AM
A windows PC is already an Xbox in a different form factor, because if you're doing most anything other than gaming with it, you're using the wrong tool for the job.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:35PM
Just wait until you want to release a commercial application. You'll wish you had developed using something more platform neutral.
Just as with a drug dealer. Don't be tempted by the addictive sweet drug.
Just as with a politician. Don't be tempted by their promises. (I'll lower the deficit, increase spending, eliminate taxes, and pay off the national debt!)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:54PM (10 children)
No, not every article has to be about women being excluded from programming…. Before I get into that, I also noticed that Google Chrome won't work under Windows 10 S, not because of an arch or ABI/API change but because of Digital Restrictions Management, when this article was in the submissions yesterday. Is it time for another anti-trust lawsuit to remind M$ why that's not cool?
This seems to be the first actual step I've seen from the “misogynerds” in tech to exclude women¹ from programming, and I'm certain M$ was not even intending that. Mostly certain, anyway. Who knows. All I know is how I learned programming, and that was with a computer that booted into a BASIC interpreter, back before the IBM AT architecture became popular.
However, it couldn't be effective without the part feminism (and their sexually abusive white knights) plays with their “misogynerd narrative.” What follows is pure fantasy on my part, because a woman would never install GNU/Linux or a BSD since it's been all over the news for years that installing any of those OSes will get you raped and sexually harassed by incels.
Engage fantasy! Locate U+261B (“☛”) for the tl;dr section.
If you're an adolescent woman and you have Christian parents, they'll very likely disapprove of your going anywhere near the family computer, and you probably will get sticker shock looking at one of the machines Pino P linked (that 15" System76 model looks soooooo tempting though). Therefore, it would behoove you to purchase a Computer of One's Own. The best thing to get right now is a refurbished laptop. There are decent machines to be found on Amazon for $200–$300 that would be perfect for perhaps going the whole nine yards and learning how to compile a Linux from Scratch (of One's Own). If not, Gentoo or a BSD will suffice because fuck systemd.
Having obtained a Computer of One's Own with money easily earned from 40 some odd hours × $8/hr working a summer job for 2–3 weeks (first job, can only get 15 hrs/wk), an adolescent woman will then be able to learn anything she desires about programming with tools freely available to her. She will be able to read over the source code for any part of even the operating system and compiler toolchain itself! She will be empowered to experiment and make change and scratch any itch! This is a machine that she truly owns and is truly empowering.
Buyer beware! Here comes M$! If she buys a lapto^Wdevice running the newest iteration of Windows 10, she can forget learning anything about programming that M$ feels it's not her place to learn. She'll need to cough up a monthly or annual M$ tax. I remember being young once too, and money can get tight very quickly. Will she still feel that coughing up the M$ tax is worth it, or might this push her into a less expensive hobby? Maybe she'll take up something M$ thinks is more a woman's place, such as sewing. Everybody needs clothes, and by the power of my artificial dilemma, she'll probably just opt to get a sewing machine instead.
What a huge success for M$ and misogynerds everywhere! Yet another woman turned away from programming by proprietary software, SaaS (OperatingSystem aaS? Future Windows: Operating System Ass. Very apt, except it probably won't include the Ubuntu subsystem, so it won't be apt at all), and vendor lock-in!
Disclaimer: Yeah, I give a shit, but I guess if you're an assigned male, you have to engage in sexual abuse and exploitation of women to be somebody feminism approves of [soylentnews.org], unless you run Linux or a BSD since those are icky and only used by incels, unless you've appropriated and raped the female form instead of an actual woman, so I doubt I'll ever make it as an assigned male feminist.
¹ Actually, this will have more of an impact on minorities, but since when did feminism give a crap about minority women? There was something about intersectionalism, but I couldn't hear it above the sound of white upper-middle class womyn-born-womyn who didn't have the time to wait for somebody to speak on the behalf of minority women before marching on Washington. Oh well, at least feminists acknowledge that was problematic.
☛ tl;dr! Free software is feminist software (or would be if they'd just can the “misogynerd” thing already). Closed source proprietary software, SaaS, and vendor lock-in-lock-down are artifacts of the patriarchy.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:01PM (1 child)
No, not every article has to be about women being excluded from programming…. Before I get into that,
But apparently every kurenai comment does.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:45PM
She bit her tongue a few times in recent days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:23PM (1 child)
I want to be a misogynerd! That sounds way cooler than "Mr. President", or any of those other stupid titles. I'll bet most girls can't even spell misogynerd. Thank you kurenai.tsubasa, whatever the fuck you are! You're an inspiration.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:43PM
You're welcome! One small nitpick. Here's GamerGate: A Closer Look At The Controversy Sweeping Video Games [forbes.com] by Erik Kain of Forbes. Please reference section 2 under “Interlude - Definitions:”
The same forces behind the "Gamers are Over" campaign have batted about plenty of labels to describe their opponents in recent days and weeks. "Gross nerd" evolved quickly into "Misogynerd" which is a super convenient way to label a large and diverse group of people as both icky nerds and misogynists.
While I don't have a primary source here to demonstrate its usage, I'm confident that womyn-born-womyn are able to spell “misogynerd.”
Also, you shouldn't refer to adult females as “girls,” because that may trivialize them. For more information, please see In & Around Language: Girl vs. Woman [thecrimson.com] by Valeria M. Pelet of The Harvard Crimson. However, a potential rebuttal to the second-wave feminist idea that referring to a grown woman as a “girl” is inherently insulting may be found in the pilot of the 2015 series Supergirl [wikipedia.org] wherein Cat Grant dubs Kara “Supergirl,” to Kara's initial chagrin. At the same time, being a fictional woman like Xena and Captain Janeway, Cat Grant may be instead be acting as a tool of the patriarchy, having been written by men for men. So, it's complicated.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by idiot_king on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:03PM (5 children)
You are clearly repurposing the plight of literally billions of women over the years to troll for comments. Misogyny and sexism are NOT jokes, and they are NOT tools to be used by people like you to gain leverage over others.
Please don't be so vain, or at least transparent, about it.
The usual rule applies here: places like 4chan are for trolling, not SN. Keep it there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:04PM
The usual rule applies here: places like 4chan are for trolling, not SN. Keep it there.
Ha! You must be new around here.
Freedom of (legal, that won't get the site shut down or the management arrested/sued) speech is the rule here.
So don't STFU. Say whatever you want. But understand that the moderation system generally does a pretty good job with the trolls.
Browse at +1 or +2 and you'll never see it.
I'm not a fan of trolls, but they have as much right to be here as you. Given your attitudes toward silencing speech you don't like, I'd rather read a troll post.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:14PM
You are clearly repurposing the plight of literally billions of women over the years to troll for comments.
Where did I do this?
Misogyny and sexism are NOT jokes, and they are NOT tools to be used by people like you to gain leverage over others.
Who am I gaining leverage over?
What about this quote from a feminist [wikipedia.org]?
All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive.
Who is using the issue of rape to gain leverage over whom here? That is a feminist talking about my own goddamned body.
Women are underrepresented in programming jobs, and that does make me sad. However, the approach feminism has chosen, which is to lay the blame for this problem at the feet of half the planet's population (over 3.5 billion and counting) and only their feet makes me livid. When feminism also seeks bathroom laws and to paint every trans woman as a bathroom rapist in the media, that makes me an excessive amount of rage. Not only is the problem my fault, it's even more my fault because I'm trans, and I don't count as a woman anyway to feminists. Not only do they reduce my body to a piece of “leverage” as you put it and a sexual object, but they have the goddamned fucking gall to tell me what I'm thinking as a sexual object and to tell me what my sexual orientation is over all demonstrable evidence of actual people I've bumped nasties with in bed.
Unlike “male feminists,” I'm not posting for the purpose of luring womyn-born-womyn in for sexual assault. I'm not talking about the barriers womyn-born-womyn face in programming careers because I think it'll get laid me. I am attracted to men exclusively, thank you very much. And it frankly pisses me the fuck off that feminism gives these goddamned assholes who have devoted so much time and energy to throwing every other assigned male in a programming job (including trans women like me, and yes, this has happened to me PERSONALLY, FACE TO FUCKING FACE) under the fucking bus a pass when they are out committing actual fucking rape-rape or whatever the fuck you want to call it.
Look dude, I don't need to recount every last incident I've had where I've endured sexual harassment and even molestation from womyn-born-womyn. Nobody would want to read it, and if my post up there is tl;dr, holy shit!
And here's Microsoft!!!!!!! Here's fucking Microsoft! If a woman has a copy of Windows 7 installed or even Windows 8, I can help her install a Python environment so she can get started. Once Microsoft is done with their shit, if somebody wants to learn programming, they WILL need to install Linux (or BSD or whatever) if they cannot afford the M$ tax. After my ex-parents threw me out (which they likely would have done anyway if I'd been cisfemale and insistent on learning something like programming), there is NO FUCKING WAY I would have afforded a M$ tax, especially a goddamned SaaS subscription!
Do you have any fucking idea what kind of barrier to entry that will create? Do you?
NO YOU DON'T. YOU DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ACTUALLY SOLVING THIS PROBLEM, DO YOU?! ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS GO BACK TO THAT QUOTE FROM JANICE RAYMOND AND ACT LIKE I'M THE GODDAMNED PROBLEM HERE, JUST BECAUSE I'M NOT BEING A FUCKING SEX OBJECT FOR YOUR HUNNIES!
But you know what? I don't try to do anything about this problem any more other than bitching on SN. You know why? Because of rapists like the one we had a story about the other day I linked to have convinced YOU that anybody assigned the male gender at birth NO MATTER WHAT FUCKING BODY PARTS THEY HAVE, NO MATTER THEIR LIVED GENDER who programs computers is a rapist. It does not matter how many of you goddamned feminists/white knights are PROVEN IN COURT TO BE RAPISTS. You have convinced the world that ANY assigned male who is upset about being reduced to HER (the assigned male's own) body parts, and not even her actual body parts, THE FUCKING BODY PARTS YOU JUST PRESUME SHE HAS must be the problem. And if they want to help, THEY'RE EVEN MORE OF A PROBLEM.
SO FUCK YOU.
(Score: 4, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:40PM (2 children)
I'm not done yet.
Do you even remember the bad old days when if you wanted to write an application for Windows 3.11, you needed to buy a $500 or $1,000 (1990s dollars to boot) book set and compiler?
How fucking ignorant are you? This is that all over again, but it's even worse. Because of Digital Restrictions Management and UEFI lockdown, there's going to be no DJGPP this time around! Do you even know what DJGPP is? If not, you can go fuck yourself, because you're not qualified to be in this discussion.
And look at you. You're running through the exact same goddamned script that feminists and white knights run through. Here's a person who's been victimized by sexist policies and even molested who is angry at being blamed for the lack of female computer programmers TO HER FUCKING FACE IN REAL FUCKING LIFE. Here's a person whose access to medical care has been fucked with before by feminists as revenge for something that was caused by OBAMACARE! I HAVE TO DRIVE OVER 300 MILES ROUND TRIP TO SEE A DOCTOR BECAUSE OF FEMINIST TRANSPHOBIA. Here's a person who IS a woman, BUT DOES NOT COUNT AS A WOMAN IN YOUR SOLE JUDGEMENT.
But nope, here's the projection!
You are clearly repurposing the plight of literally billions of women over the years to troll for comments.
Apparently, somebody setting up a fake porn company and deceiving women for sex is a better person than I am!
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And fuck you. And how many women have you raped lately? How many pussies have you grabbed lately? Why don't you try grabbing my pussy (because if you saw me you'd think I have one) so that when you feel an overgrown clit instead I can just knee you in the junk!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @05:29AM
There are PLENTY of articles on this site about feminism. Why does it have to be brought up in this article? This one is about walled gardens, wouldn't it create better discourse to stay on that topic?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday May 12 2017, @02:59PM
You said you weren't going to talk about gender stuff, spent one paragraph on the technical question, then rambled for 8 more about gender stuff.
Just because we don't want to hear you turn every conversation into one about gender doesn't mean we actually disagree with you, either.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormreaver on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:50PM (6 children)
How does Microsoft expect to port Visual Studio to Windows 10 S....
That's easy: there is one set of rules for them, and a different set of rules for everyone else. And yet another set of rules for those able to pay the appropriate bribes.
It's really best to just cut your losses and move to Linux.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by https on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:27PM (5 children)
Alternate approach that skip the intermediate step of cursing pulseaudio: go straight to BSD.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:37PM
pulseaudio? what year is this? to think I was convinced that cursing was all about systemd nowadays?
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:05PM (3 children)
I have no idea why you're badmouthing Pulse Audio, as it has been the single best audio system ever created. Every single one of my audio problems went away with its introduction. ALSA was supposed to fix Linux audio, but its promise never materialized. It was, at best, marginally better than OSS.
Without Pulse Audio, Linux sound management is wretchedly terrible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:57PM
To this day I still have PulseAudio problems. Every single time my desktop machine reboots, I have to go in a re-tweak the audio out settings to the correct out port (Line-out in my case, instead of the default headphone port). Yes, there's a difference and a reason not to use headphone out, but some developer somewhere seems completely ignorant of it.
Its possible it may not be PulseAudio's issue, but the problem started when PulseAudio became the default sound system.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
If my audio is acting weird (noise, drop-outs), I fix it by removing pulse audio.
To be fair, that is considered a bug [archlinux.org], but my hardware appears to support mixing though ALSA anyway.
I have found two difficulties with this:
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:35PM
- Broken ALSA Drivers [freedesktop.org]
But if you check the bug report, it was closed WONTFIX because the version of Fedora it was reported on reached end of support. Maybe no new comments were added because the driver was fixed in the kernel.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday May 12 2017, @05:46AM
I don't think you'll have to worry too much about it. What the article is saying is that Redmond has decided to drop its Win32 permanent cash cow for the same fantasy pipedream that failed the previous 18 times they tried it. They can't keep pushing this insanity forever, at some point they either have to revert to common sense, or see their market share evaporate as people move to a platform whose maintainers haven't had their brains eaten by worms.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday May 11 2017, @12:48PM (11 children)
OK, they kind of skipped a few steps of this [soylentnews.org], but yes, that's the plan.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:45PM (10 children)
Indeed, you got it. This was utterly predictable. Everybody's jumping on the "walled garden" bandwagon, because they want to carve out their niche and make it harder for users to bolt and change systems. Everything needs to be locked down and under central control.
All TFA's fretting is a bit of smoke and mirrors -- about old .NET stuff and Win32 and my favorite quote: "systemically bad end-user and IT organizational habits of keeping old versions of apps around rather than move into newer licensing models and newer versions of the apps." Sure, there are very legit security concerns with the older stuff, but people don't upgrade because they don't WANT "newer licensing models" that cause them to "rent" software instead of buying it. They don't want to be forced to upgrade to a new version of software with a different UI when it doesn't have any new features they want and the old version works perfectly well -- but of course software companies want people to upgrade, because otherwise you don't sell as much product.
The ironic thing about this, from my perspective, is that Windows and MS DOS owed part of their success from the generic "IBM Compatible" model that emerged in the 1980s, which allowed free exchange of software that didn't have to conform to particular hardware specs. IBM encouraged freer exchange, but Microsoft came to dominate the software market. Yet MS at least tried to remain a somewhat open platform. This is a little different, but now Microsoft (following Apple, Google, etc.) is now trying desperately to "lock down" its platform and require everyone to go through its policies.
Heck, the whole Chrome thing feels like a flashback to 1998. Are we going to have the browser/Netscape lawsuit against Microsoft monopolizing tendencies AGAIN?!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:53PM (1 child)
Oh, obviously I forgot to mention "money" -- I guess I didn't say it because it seems obvious that's what the "walled garden" model really is for at its heart, despite talk about security and standardization and updated protocols and whatnot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:13PM
If I wanted Walled Garden I'd go Apple, they do it much better.
Microsoft needs to release a version of Windows that supports VR and AR in a way that actually augments people. It's hard to get enthusiastic about crippleware that's also spyware. Leave the lock-in market to Apple.
I'd be interested in a Windows OS that lets me easily manage multiple virtual screens and 3D areas of arbitrary size. No need to buy many huge screens, just get high res VR/AR goggles.
Not interested in yet more crippled phone style crap.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:55PM (2 children)
Are we going to have the browser/Netscape lawsuit against Microsoft monopolizing tendencies AGAIN?!
Nope. All MS has to say is, "You can install Chrome any time it meets our standards."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:39PM
Just to note: what you say was true of Netscape back in the day too. Anyone could download Netscape (or get a CD in the mail, I guess?) and install it. The issues in the original case were various, but one of them was about manipulating APIs to favor Internet Explorer over 3rd-party browsers.
(And by the way, I don't *really* think we'll see such litigation again. I just think it's an ironic historical parallel here, because obviously Microsoft probably wants to restrict Google's marketshare with Chrome, just as it was trying to do with Netscape. But given how these walled gardens now operate elsewhere, I doubt there's much anyone can do about it. There would need to be monopoly suits against a bunch of the big players, since Microsoft is here just trying to play "catch-up" in this particular kind of bad behavior.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:34PM
Yeah. The lawsuit will go forward right after Google allow Internet explorer on Chromebooks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:59PM
Are we going to have the browser/Netscape lawsuit against Microsoft monopolizing tendencies AGAIN?!
Nope.
By the time this is over, if it gets that far and the dice roll in Microsoft's favor, they'll have too many tentacles in the infrastructure to be able to do anything about it, since so many computers will be irrevocably hard-locked to Microsoft software and possibly too lobotomized in all the wrong ways to be able to run anything else. Court orders may get around that, but there's plenty more. For instance, they'll be holding everyone's data hostage in one way or another ("break us up? I'm afraid that will lead to incompatibilities and probably severe data loss in cloud migration, your honor..."), so all three branches of government will have businesses and private individuals begging them not to let their critical data and baby pictures be wiped out by this.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:30PM (2 children)
But, Linux? If all the adjoining gardens are walled, what happens to Linux? Are we going to be walled in too? Will there even be a gate for us to come and go through? Will we be trespassing if we go through the gate?
Alright, more seriously, I've been bitching for years about Microsoft maintaining that stupid-assed "legacy" crap. Linux does legacy so well, that you can run Linux on machines that Microsoft will puke on. It ain't fast, and it ain't necessarily pretty, but it runs faster than painfully slow, and a simple elegant desktop has it's own beauty.
But, unlike Windows, Linux doesn't bend over backward to maintain decades old exploits, so that people can run un-maintained applications.
Face it - if an desktop/laptop app is maintained, it's already upgraded/updated to 64-bit computers, long, long ago. The unmaintained applications have probably been dropped, and if the app had any real use, someone else has written a drop-in replacement. 32 bit applications have never been able to use a 64 bit machine, or a 64 bit OS's security benefits. Every single 32 bit "legacy" application in use today, is a huge security hole.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:33PM
More like walled out from our own hardware.
Microsoft (and other walled garden conspirators) to the open source world:
"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:43PM
That was my 1st thought as well when I saw "Win32" in the summary.
These days, if you have an old Windoze-only app to run, your chances of getting it running under a supported version of MICROS~1's OS are lower than just using WINE under Linux.
Just get (gratis and libre) Zorin OS (an Ubuntu derivative that ships with WINE).
Zero cost and less bullshit to put up with.
...and, as you say, will run on old hardware.
...and if you can't find a native Linux app to do your task these days, you must really be an edge case.
Linux [and] un-maintained applications
With Open Source, if you keep/get an old version of a distro and build a fat binary of that old app (all the dependencies compiled in), you can keep running it forever.
Your options with FOSS make MICROS~1's stuff look like the bastard stepchild that it is.
if the [unmaintained] app had any real use
There are too many written-once-and-abandoned Windoze-only apps with instances of those still in service (e.g. for machine shop gear where the equipment vendor has folded his tent) to dismiss them so easily.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:48PM
Nah, Microsoft is only jumping on it 10 years afterwards when everyone is trying to get off....
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:08PM (42 children)
The tail does not wag the dog.
Good luck with your business model - trying to sell a desktop/laptop OS to the crowd that actually really only needs a smart phone for their "computing needs". People who require actual computers - business, developers, science, engineers, gamers, government - well we'll find another OS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:33PM (1 child)
If the OS comes from MS and the apps come from the MS Store and it won't run anything else, any security issues can only be laid on MS's doorstep. Wonder what some smart (non MS) lawyers can make of that?
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:34PM
What does Microsoft, or any organization, actually get sue'd for bad security? Has it happened to Apple and their walled garden?
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:44PM (17 children)
Or continue using Windows 10 beyond EOL with more and more hax on top to close leaky ports. Like with XP :D
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Demose on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:18PM (16 children)
Actually, I think they'll stick to Windows 7. Consider that people patched Windows 98 SE so they could keep using it throughout the early 2000's despite Windows 2000 being around. People still might be hacking away on Windows 98 for all I know.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:56PM (5 children)
I'm sure there are people SOMEWHERE still using Windows 98. They're probably not doing a lot of web browsing, but some dedicated business computer that has some archaic software that works best on a pre-XP system is likely still out there. I'd imagine most of the reasonable people have since moved such things into a VM, but there's no doubt people are still running Windows 98. Oh, and probably some retro gamers.
By the way, if you really want to get it going in a VM, here's a detailed guide [dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com] that came up in a quick internet search about Windows 98 use. Just looking at photos of the installation dialogues for Win98 again makes me feel slightly ill...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:38PM (4 children)
I still use Windows ME at work. It runs on an oscilloscope - the only one in our lab that can do 5GHz. Needless to say, we don't connect this to any network, and we NEVER let our IT people know about it, lest they install their remote management software and brick the thing.
Ironically, we use it more often to transfer data from floppy to USB drive, since it has both those slots. You see, the logic analyzer is even older, and only has a floppy drive...
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:27PM (1 child)
yes, as i've gotten older, i find i have more of a floppy drive than a hard drive...
(NOT just a 3.5 incher, ladies, oh yeah, a full 5.25 ! ! !)
the seek time is atrocious, the heads are always crashing, and i can't tell you the last time i could fetch my cache...
it is hell waiting for final depreciation and the recycle bin...
8^)
(Score: 3, Touché) by choose another one on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:30PM
get off my lawn. 5.25 is not a "full" floppy. Not even close. 8inch all the way...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:05PM (1 child)
LeCroy?
Back in the day at sci.electronic.design, John Larkin would tell us about his dealings with Walter LeCroy and how that dude was a slimeball in his business dealings.
In picking M$'s software for his stuff, he demonstrated poor insight WRT technology as well.
My Tektronix scope ran Linux.
(I discovered via floppy use that they didn't even license VFAT/LFN from M$, so no Borg stuff at all.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:47PM
Agilent has plenty of shit that runs Windows and they continued the tradition with Keysight. LeCroy scopes are pretty spiffy shit though, you could only wish you had one.
Sheeit, anyway, my Tektronix 2246 [barrytech.com] is a waveform digitizer with a motherfucking CRT. Get off my lawn!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:44PM (7 children)
This branch of the conversation makes me wonder how many understand the differences between Win9x and WinNT.
Win9x lacked ANY kind of security. I mean, quite simply, there was no security. A password to login, that was it. FAT file system, easily read by any operating system. Nobody owned anything, because, anyone with the sole login password owned everything.
NT3 was little better, but already Microsoft was giving SOME thought to security. NT4 was an improvement. W2k was the successor to NT4, and it was largely indistinguishable from WinXP. XP was built directly on top of 2K.
WinME was a bastard brainfart, in that it tried to incorporate NT security with the same tired Win9x ease-of-use nonsense. This is the one version of Windows that I actually paid for, and it was a huge suck and blow combined.
XP, for all it's faults, was a damned good OS for it's day. It evolved with service packs up to SP2, then became Longhorn. which was a good looking system. But MS screwed the pooch, and morphed Longhorn into Vista, which sucked ass again.
Anyway, everything since XP has had security built in. In many cases, the security has been poor, but it was security all the same. WinNT has little relationship to any common or uncommon form of Win9x.
Now that I've rambled through all the Win versions, I'd like to state that Win7 is the best thing MS has to offer today. Except, they're not offering it, are they? Win8 sucked hard, then Win10 sucked the earth into a black hole. Fek - I simply can't understand why people are so gullible as to install Win10. People should be abandoning MS in droves, leaving MS to pander to big business.
I can't wait for Win11 and 12 though. We'll get to see what's on the OTHER SIDE OF A BLACK HOLE!! Imagine, first being sucked into the black hole, then something sucks even harder, and pulls you throught the black hole!! These are exciting times!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:47PM (4 children)
*sigh* typo
"It evolved with service packs up to SP2, then became Longhorn."
That should have been SP3, not SP2. SP2, in it's first iteration, was the one that screwed many AMD machines. The AthlonXP, especially, was sent into an endless reboot cycle if you installed the first version of SP2.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:55PM (3 children)
Concerning Win10, people have no choice, because they're not even basically competent with computers. Have you watched the average user? They are clueless; they are as lost, if not more lost, on Windows as on a decently set-up Linux. I have my father on a simple Xfce desktop--think "Ubuntu 7.04 style Gnome 2.x setup" here--and he's able to function well enough, but he's completely out to lunch on Windows 8 and 10, and has difficulty with 7.
Most people can't operate their way out of a paper bag. My first job involves a lot of tech support, and I cannot tell you how many people don't know what the start menu is. Or that the internet does not live on their computer. Or that the browser is not the OS, and the desktop is a separate thing and is not, itself, on the internet.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:33PM (2 children)
I set up an elderly (over 75yo) family friend with an older Laptop running Mint KDE (17.3, I'll eventually upgrade it to 18.x but 17.3 is working fine now with KDE4.10). He used to use Windows at home and work, probably XP and 7, respectively. I took 30 minutes to give him an orientation course, and everything's been working out great for him except a weird issue with it forgetting his WiFi password which I finally fixed thanks to a little googling. Since then, I haven't heard from him about it in many months. It "just works". And with KDE, the learning curve from WinXP/7 to that was very, very low. In its default configuration, it's like a more-sensible version of the classic Windows interface, without all the stupidities that Windows has, especially the horrid organization of programs in the Start menu. I don't even want to think about how it would have been trying to get him running with Windows 8/10.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 12 2017, @03:24AM
Yeah Plasma has really been impressing me as of 5.9 (and 4.10, on Debian Jessie). The defaults are still garish and ugly, but it's the most Windows-like desktop environment and the only one besides Xfce that doesn't treat you like an idiot. Gnome feels like what I imagine trying to whack off with oven mitts on is like.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by unitron on Saturday May 13 2017, @03:41AM
Since then, I haven't heard from him about it in many months.
Check and be sure that's true, and he's not just not mentioning it because he doesn't want to bother you anymore.
He's in the age range where he's got a dwindling number of contemporaries to monopolize his time, so a visit would probably not be amiss, regardless of reason or excuse.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday May 12 2017, @10:37AM
It's probably because Windows 10 is the only OS with the Edge browser and the Edge browser is the only browser that supports 4K video playback on NetFlix. Newer DirectX versions are only supported by Windows 10 (no new games). MS dropping support for updates on Windows 7. Not to mention almost all consumer hardware comes with Windows 10 pre-installed.
Don't get me wrong, I think Windows 10 is about as bad as Windows ME or Vista. If Windows 10 didn't have the telemetry bullshit, would people still bitch as much? Now that they brought the start menu back it's really not that much different to me. Besides, if you ran Windows Update on Windows 7 in the last year or so before they turned off the updates, you have all the telemetry updates anyway. Might was well be Windows 10.
Just an FYI this new huge update they pushed through Windows 10 really fucked up their Edge browser on NetFlix. I have to reload the page two or three times now because I keep getting "Whoops something went wrong error H7353 (or some shitty error code I looked up that tells me nothing). NetFlix works flawlessly on Chrome, but only at 720p. I really wish NetFlix and Chrome would at least support 1080p.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:00AM
Try to buy, say a laptop without that crap pre-installed and you will discover the answer. And if you want to go for a free OS then I can bet that some hardware incompatibility issue creeps up, the usual suspects are graphics, WiFi and ACPI.
Most people are to incompetent to realize their computer problems is mostly a Microsoft issue and they don't have the means to escape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:44PM
Yup, using Win98SE with an 11x17 copier/scanner/fax that still works great, including both the input sheet feeder (even flips double sided pages) and the output sorting trays. The ThinkPad talks to the device over local ethernet and has been loaded with a driver for PNY usb sticks to get data on and off. Full Acrobat 5 (from before Adobe started to really suck) is set up to call the scanner and generate pdf output. This computer has never been online.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:01PM
I used Windows 2000 until I could not longer get drivers for it. In my opinion of Microsoft OSs, it was the high point of simple yet functional, before the bloated crapware that XP and everything after has become.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:41PM (17 children)
Good luck with your business model - trying to sell a desktop/laptop OS to the crowd that actually really only needs a smart phone for their "computing needs". People who require actual computers - business, developers, science, engineers, gamers, government - well we'll find another OS.
No, you won't. Quit your ridiculous grandstanding. You're going to buy and use Windows S whether you like it or not. All these people you cite, especially scientists and engineers nad government people, don't actually choose their computing platform, it's chosen for them by corporate IT departments, and they're going to choose Windows S because that's what the Microsoft salesman recommended to your IT department head over a round of golf, right before he gave him some box-seat tickets to the Superbowl. The gamers are going to use Windows S because that's what all the AAA games are going to continue to run on. And businesspeople will never give up Microsoft Office no matter what, and of course it's only going to work on Windows S in the future.
People and businesses have already proven that they prefer the SaaS and rental models, as seen with modern Adobe products like Photoshop, and that they prefer to get apps from a walled garden, as proven by the iTunes store. Developers all seem to prefer Microsoft environments from what I've seen (aside from some malcontents who like Linux, but most of the Linux devs these days have abandoned desktop Linux and switched to Macs), and all the engineers I've ever met like Windows, and gamers especially are very hard-core Windows fans. (US) Government is tied at the hip to Microsoft, and that's never going to change.
If there's ever any really serious resistance to MS domination, it'll have to come from somewhere outside the US. From what I've seen, it sure as hell isn't going to come from Europe, because they're all too happy to just send all their money to Redmond instead of nurturing their own companies. Last I heard, the famous Linux installation in Munich was being converted back to Windows after Microsoft set up an office there and had some "talks" with the Mayor.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:52PM (4 children)
My company is strictly windows 7 only.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)
Good luck with that. Win7 is nearing EOL, and it also doesn't even run on the latest hardware (though some 3rd party came out with a patch for that, for now...). Sooner or later, your company is going to be forced to change: the software will have massive security problems, or 3rd-party software you rely on won't work on it, or you'll be looking on Ebay for old hardware to run it on because new hardware won't, etc.
Try running Windows XP now for serious business use; it's really impossible. Win7 is going to be like that before long; it's already a decade old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:04PM
Windows 7 * Service Pack 1 January 13, 2015 January 14, 2020
2020, so a little more then 2 and a half years left for MS to pull their heard from their forth point of contact.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)
My company is strictly windows 7 only.
My company is Linux/BSD only. And buying microsoft WILL get you fired.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @04:45AM
You must not do CADCAM.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:45PM (5 children)
You're going to buy and use Windows S whether you like it or not.
The salesman is having a hard time selling Windows 10. Which EVEN GIVEN AWAY FREE for well over a year,as well as force-installed on every new computer OEM, not to mention all the DIRTY TRICKS Microsoft used to SWINDLE people into installing it - has barely reached 28% market share. No don't fucking kid yourself that suddenly they're going to be able to convince IT departments to buy their shitware which has zero support for legacy apps and probably even less than zero support for specialized apps and hardware.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:41PM (1 child)
You're fooling yourself. IT departments have this little problem of inertia called software. We can all think we have absolute control over our networks but the software which does the actual work dictates the platform. I'd love to switch my shop to linux, BUT: our ERP is windows only, CAD software windows only, and machine specific software windows only. Not to mention the fact that everyone NEEDS office because that fucking salesforce plugin for outlook is absolutely necessary.
We can pretend we can shed the chains of MS but the inertia behind the platform is so great that it's cheaper and easier to bend over for redmond. The golden age of computing is dead and the open computer platform in its death throes. I weep for our children. "Dad is it true you were once allowed to run any computer program you wanted to and freely create your own?" "Yes, my son. The good ol days they were. Compilers as far as the eye could see."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @05:42AM
"What are you talking about? I can still run any software I want. I just go into the store, pick something I like, and click install?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:26PM (2 children)
There's a big difference between home/personal computing and business computing, and this divide seems to be growing. As LordTAW elaborates here, businesses are sticking with Windows because of enormous inertia (and also laziness IMO; they should be pushing their vendors to make Linux versions and having experiments to try switching some functions to it, but that decreases short-term profit so they don't). But on the consumer side, there's now several choices: Windows, Mac, Linux, tablets, and cellphones. Consumers are moving more and more to the latter two exclusively. Those that still want a more serious computer for various reasons (screen size, ability to do "real work", etc.) are basically stuck with Windows or Mac. They're not using Linux except for people like the ones on this forum. Macs are expensive as hell; you can get a Windows laptop for $200 or so now, and you'll never see a Mac that cheap ($1k minimum I think). So some of the richer people might get a Mac, but everyone else is going to get Windows. No one's getting Linux; several companies tried marketing desktop Linux directly to consumers years ago and they all failed unfortunately: Lindows/Linspire, gOS, etc. So basically, MS can do whatever it wants here, because while the market seems smaller (due to some people dumping PCs and just using tablets), they have a lock on the portion of the market that wants a "real computer" and either can't afford or don't want a Mac. So adopting the walled-garden approach actually makes sense here, even if a bunch of people complain; what are they going to do, switch to Macs (which is largely the same, just more expensive)? They're not going to switch to tablets because they just can't do the stuff PCs do (and they're limited the same with with app stores). And they're not going to switch to Linux because.... well for the same reasons they haven't switched before now, whatever those reasons are (it's for "geeks", it's not mainstream, they never heard of it, it's not advertised/marketed to them, everyone else uses Microsoft so I should too, "it's too hard", "who do I call if I have a problem?", "I can't buy it at Walmart", etc.).
Now of course, getting a bigger share of a shrinking market is generally seen by MBAs as a bad thing, but the market isn't going to shrink that much: almost everyone needs a computer, and many of those aren't going to be satisfied with a phone/tablet, and Apples aren't going to ever have low-end offerings. And by adopting the walled-garden app store model and preventing software outside this venue, they'll get a huge cut of all software sold for that platform, just as Apple does with their iTunes store, which is much more than the cut they were getting before, which was 0%. They weren't making much money on consumers before anyway just with Windows licenses. Even if this move alienates some users, they'll be making far, far more from the ones who remain so it should be much more profitable overall. Plus they can increase revenues even more by forcing ever-more adware on these machines, to sell users more crapware, and also selling their private information to other companies thanks to the spyware baked-in.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54AM (1 child)
I've been using Microsoft os's since I was six. I would like to try a Linux, but there are so many to choose from and they all have different problems. Also from what I can find out, none of them will run any of my CADCAM software, the using of which is pretty much whatI do. So really, unless I change careers I'm stuck with Microsoft.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:12AM
There are some CAD software used on IRIX, HPUX, SunOS etc.. old but it was the best at the time. Maybe you can get it running using emulation (because computers can do that really good now).
And there's some BSD/Linux versions.
I think it boils down to how professional it needs to be and the exchange of files.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:07PM (2 children)
That hasn't been true for me for almost 20 years. Every computer I've owned, every team I've equipped, every platform call I've made. And the more things live in the cloud, the more that becomes so.
Windows lock-in is such a distant memory, in fact, that whenever I hear assertions such as yours (which is increasingly rare as the years go by), I feel like I've stepped through a time warp to 1998.
Look, FLOSS these days is as robust, if not more robust, than closed source. The tech support is better, too, because you can always find good discussion with actual experts online, for free, than you could ever get from a top dollar support contract from closed source whatever, who nearly always arrogantly tell you they don't support that feature or that flaw might possibly be patched 6 months to a year from now, if the company deems your reported issue worth fixing. The heck with that, with FLOSS, modify it now, how you want, and share your modification with the community.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:09PM (1 child)
Obviously, I was generalizing. Not *everyone* is going to use Windows S; Macs are still around, for instance, and not likely to go anywhere. And there've always been people that never used Windows at all.
But the point is, if you're working in a corporate or government job, you're most likely going to have to use Windows S in the future, or find another job (or none at all). I've been waiting for almost 2 decades now for Linux to become a viable alternative, and I've been using it myself for most of that time too, but I don't see it happening, in fact I see things getting worse, not better. I remember when a lot of devs used to use Linux on their desktop/laptop machines. Not any more; now they've all switched to Macbooks. I sure don't see any major corporations or governments adopting it en masse, and instead, Munich Germany, a famous adoption case, (last I heard) gave up on it and is switching back to Windows.
Of course Linux is better than Windows; this has been true for at least a decade now. But it hasn't gotten much 3rd-party software support from places like Adobe or Autodesk (things that you can't do with a web app), which is essential for business adoption, and businesses haven't pushed it because they're too comfortable with MS Office/Outlook/Exchange/AD/etc. One problem for MS is with family/home computing, where it does seem like a lot of people have either abandoned PCs altogether, or are just continuing to use their ancient XP/7 PC (possibly "upgraded" to 10 back when it first came out and was forcing everyone to upgrade), and have instead bought tablets for their regular web-surfing, Youtube-watching uses. But that doesn't help Linux-on-the-desktop much, except for keeping IE from becoming the de-facto browser standard again.
Right now, I'm the only person I know who runs Linux on the desktop without some kind of VM, except for 2 friends who I set up with some old laptops running Mint KDE (who are both non-technical people and are humming along just fine with them, without having to ask me for anything for many months now; the only support calls were right at the beginning of this experiment for some minor issues and that was it). I just haven't seen any increase in desktop Linux usage at all, and in fact a backslide since the mid-2000s or so. Personally, I blame Gnome3 some of this; it just isn't a good UI for either new users (Windows converts) or for serious techies. It's slow, buggy, non-configurable, works completely differently from Windows and Mac, but somehow it's the "standard" for all of desktop Linux because so many distros have adopted it. It's not helping Linux adoption, and in fact is working against it. The only bright spot is that it's easier than ever to use desktop Linux full-time now because things have mostly gotten mature, the hardware support is great, and so much stuff has moved to the web (even taxes), and IE is dead with Chrome now the leading browser. So it's there for anyone who wants to free themselves from the monstrosity of modern Windows, but it just isn't getting much uptake.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:42PM
I always take a throwaway laptop with linux and use that instead of the work machine they want me to use. I am far more productive with vim and my macros and settings and tools than it's worth quibbling with the bureaucracy that you have to hack through to get the same setup. I thought a lot of linux people did the same, not so much because I.T. dept.s are so hostile to linux anymore, but because traditionally they always have been.
The status quo is fine by me, though. I'm happy with most people trapped in Windows while our jolly FLOSS subculture hums along, getting all the real work done. The former provide a much easier target for nefarious parties than the latter, so they draw most of the criminal intent; it's sort of like the old joke about the two friends who run into a bear in the woods, whereby the one friend says to the other he doesn't have to out-run the bear, just him. It's also job security if your use of FLOSS makes you much more productive than the Windows guys, because when it comes time to downsize you have a better chance of survival if you're more productive than the other guys in the department.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)
No, it's not necessarily your IT department "pushing" that. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to kick the Microsoft addiction right in the nads. Except for The One Application. The One that our business is 100% dependent on. The one that ONLY runs on Windows. The one that has no rational alternative. (no, not Office.)
Your IT department is just as hamstrung as you, thanks to a developer who won't give me a platform-neutral version of its' software.
So I pay Microsoft. Unwillingly.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:34PM
Don't forget the part where that One Program (which is also closed source but would take years of in-house development to replace and has no credible competition in the market) has some crazy bug which you've reproduced, documented, and brought to the attention of the vendor repeatedly.
If you're lucky, a couple feminists will blame you for that bug personally, sabotage the things the software actually does right, throw you under the bus to the rest of the employees, nearly get you fired, and tell you that if they'd hired a woman to do your job instead, that bug wouldn't exist. And you didn't even have any say in purchasing that software. :(
Bonus points if you're me and the only reason you took that job as a man instead of as a woman was because you were intimidated by feminists out of transitioning to living as a woman “full time,” which would mean using the women's room, a place feminists had already warned you away from entering as a “crossdresser” on pain of charges for attempted rape. I wish I was exaggerating. :(
I think I'm going to log off and go cry myself to sleep now. :(
(Score: 1) by Noble713 on Friday May 12 2017, @08:08AM
I live and work in Asia, but am pretty experienced with US military IT nightmares. Nightmares like laptops with 4GB of RAM that is at 85% usage after booting Win7 because of McAfee and other security stuff, so you can't even browse a SharePoint portal and edit a PowerPoint simultaneously without the system running like a dog. Last year I started a business developing new hardware and software for some specific government uses, marketing specifically to developing countries. I'm developing everything for Linux/BSD, trying to use ARM64 across the board too. One of my selling points is "You don't want to keep using all that Microsoft /Intel shit. It's all backdoored by the NSA.... And probably China too. Buy my hardware packages, software is included, you're mostly paying for training /support, and the apps run so efficiently you won't need to do a hardware refresh for ages. "
Innovation will absolutely come from this region, which lacks the calcified Wintel IT infrastructure of the US. Like most users here, I've moved off of Windows entirely. CAD is definitely Linux's great limitation (FreeCAD still pretty rough, I miss Autodesk products) , but I know an older version of DSS Catia runs under Wine. I think it's the version that was used to design the Eurofighter Typhoon, so it should be more than capable enough for most people's needs.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:34PM (3 children)
If it can run on walled garden hardware.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:13PM (2 children)
If it can run on walled garden hardware.
Good luck with that business model. When you lock everything down you assume all responsibility for your product - and when it fails to do what the consumer needs it to do they just don't buy it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
They will, seeing how gaming consoles sell like hot cakes compared to the vastly superior desktop platforms running open hardware.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:06PM
Desktops are not vastly superior to consoles, as far as games are concerned. They are better for an experienced user, but much worse for a less technically inclined one. And they cost far more too - just the video card in this PC costs more than a complete console.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:08PM (5 children)
It amazes me that Microsoft could make a browser worse than Internet Explorer, and an operating worse than Windows 10. Anyone that can should get off Microsoft products as soon as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:00PM (2 children)
It'll always run Dban Boot-And-Nuke... The best cure for Windows.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:57PM (1 child)
DBAN stands for Darik's Boot and Nuke. Saying "DBAN Boot and Nuke" is like saying ATM machine.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:18PM
Similar to how the NT in Windows NT stood for "new technology" yet the boot screen of Windows 2000 read "Built on NT Technology."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
I also like that they're intentionally killing my main reason to use windows at home now:
My steam library.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:35PM
Check back to my posts from when Windows 8 was released ... saw this coming then. Steam seemed to get it as well, but they haven't pushed Steam OS as an actual desktop OS as much as they should have. Maybe now they will. They're effectively at Microsoft's mercy until they do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:18PM (7 children)
Microsoft trying to repeat their great success, Windows RT.
Seriously, from what I read, Windows 10 S is all the things people hate about Windows 10, with the last remaining bits of what people want removed.
Listen up, Microsoft. Want your market majority back? Drop the entire Windows 10 UI, take the few good part of the kernel (mostly bugfixes, some DirectX stuff), and rebase them on top of Windows 7. Then call the result Windows 11. No, it won't be a competitor to IOS, but you already failed in that market, but you will be able to get back into the market you are losing now: The desktop and gamer market.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:13PM (6 children)
Windows RT? No, they they tried this once before even RT. Anyone remember Windows NT for DEC Alpha/MIPS/PPC? One of the big reasons that flopped was because you couldn't just install and run common software programs. You had to have a special version compiled for that platform, and that often came with a huge price if one even existed.
Not exactly the same thing since it wasn't locked down, but from an end users point of view it was quite similar. Why would anyone want an Alpha NT workstation if it can't run Doom? Alpha users were better off running Digital's Unix anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:28PM (4 children)
guess again. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:50PM (3 children)
Do you even know what that is? No, you don't. It is a translation layer that rips apart x86 binaries and builds something that Alpha can sort of run. How well do you think that worked? Well enough for some big programs, but you could not expect it to work 100% of the time. It might choke on some weird piece of code, or the application might make some high level assumption abut an x86 environment that wasn't true here. Device drivers? Nope. Not to mention that from day one the Alpha was a pure 64-bit CPU, and translating crappy 32-bit code like this would not magically create code that took full advantage of the Alpha architecture. FX-32 was a band-aid at best.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:55PM (2 children)
Expecting a program compiled for one architecture to work on a completely different one is one of those things that laypeople may expect but is insane.
I thought we had a lot of programmers here on SN? We're not seriously surprised about this, right?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:37PM (1 child)
Tell that to Linus Torvalds. The DEC stuff worked well enough that Transmeta thought they could succeed. As far as I know the cpus worked, they just didn't perform well enough.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:51PM
Sometimes chips have the ability to emulate other architectures built into their instruction sets (or at higher levels) but a native compilation of the program will always perform better.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:36PM
AFAIR, non-native apps were binary translated.
I ran Quake on my Alpha workstation. That's better than Doom, right?
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:22PM (24 children)
A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser
I can see people will hang on to their existing legacy Win versions instead of "upgrading" to the new one which won't run their personal apps or their apps from Microsoft competitors.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:33PM (23 children)
When your laptop finally breaks, you'll need a new laptop. Because an OEM Windows license is tied* to an individual motherboard, if you want to run Windows on said new laptop, you'll need a new Windows license. The speculation is that Microsoft would discontinue Windows 10 Home in favor of Windows 10 S, yet keep the price of an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro less than the price difference between an entry-level major brand laptop that ships with Windows and an Apple, System76, or ZaReason laptop.
* At least legally even if not technically.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:35PM (13 children)
No it is not...
You are fully entitled to replace your motherboard and keep the same Windows license.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:58PM (3 children)
You are fully entitled to replace your motherboard and keep the same Windows license.
Good luck finding a replacement motherboard for a laptop years after its discontinuation.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Friday May 12 2017, @03:00AM
eBay?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @04:58AM (1 child)
Laptops are for casual users.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday May 12 2017, @12:22PM
Then what is for users who want to get work done during the commute to and from the office or during cross-country travel?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:46PM (8 children)
Read the license sometime. An OEM license is bound to the motherboard hardware ID and ends when it does. In theory, but after looking at the rest of the theory it becomes obvious it ain't the whole story.
By the book if your motherboard dies the entire Windows install becomes trash, only fit to salvage your data from. Another OEM license is explicitly forbidden from being used to activate a copy already activated. If you let it to to "Not Genuine" status it is still a no go, that too is explicitly a forbidden use of an OEM license. The only thing that might save you is a full retail license and if you have Win7 it is a hard thing to find these days with eBay flooded with counterfeit copies from China that will fail activation. Btw, the "Get Genuine" program copies are gimped as hard as OEM but tend to cost as much as full retail, avoid. You can't even use an upgrade since you aren't currently in Genuine status. In reality we all know you can do the phone activation routine on the original code and it works. It just isn't by the book and Microsoft knows it in the bowels of their system and can bone you at will, especially if you are a small business. You would fail a BSA audit and would be liable to give them thousands of dollars if you don't just salvage the data and drop a fresh Dell on the desk.
Corporate accounts are exempt from this mess because of Corporate Edition, another subtle message to get with the program. Your Microsoft Rep is standing by to take your call!
WINE doesn't need a license and is by far the preferred upgrade path if your apps work with it. The number that do is growing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)
The versions I have read say that you can tie it to the component of your choice. For desktops, I usually select the case.
Of course, I am now technically in violation of the licence because I moved an old XP installation into a new case (board, disk, video card and all).
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:06PM
Perhaps that was so with XP, but that is ancient history.
See Can I transfer my windows 7 to a new motherboard? [microsoft.com] for the authoritative answer, Because it doesn't really matter what your license text says, it only matters what Microsoft Policy says since they are bigger than you are, are a convicted predatory monopolist and have far more lawyers than you do. Which is why it is best to avoid dealing with them entirely, to the maximum extent you can manage.... predatory monopolist and all sometimes forces the issue. Good luck buying accounting software that doesn't tie you to them or the even more Evil Apple... or the ultimate horror of putting your entire existence at the mercy of a Cloud based system's continuing or being suddenly bought by greater Evil.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:02PM (2 children)
An important wrinkle:
If you are running wine and require the visual c++ redistributables for an application, OR directx, OR any other microsoft built application, module, or library, you are, by the click through license you accepted during install, required to have a valid microsoft windows license in order to operate that piece of software. As such, unless you are able to install with wine and NOT need any of those support modules (which is very rare nowadays, at least 1-2 apps will demand a visual c++ runtime that doesn't have emulation in wine.) then you are in violation of a microsoft license/copyright and in theory the BSA could come fuck with you just like with a bunch of undocumented copies of windows (notice I didn't say 'non-genuine'.)
A few million dollars to push full time development of wine would go a long way to remedying this licensing issue, but in the short term, wine installed windows apps need to be carefully audited to ensure they avoid running afoul of microsoft submarine licensing.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday May 12 2017, @12:21PM
you are, by the click through license you accepted during install, required to have a valid microsoft windows license in order to operate that piece of software
Where is the text of said license published on the web?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:30AM
Set it up as a virtualization and full disc encryption + firewall. Whenever there's a "visit". There's nothing to find.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @05:01AM (2 children)
You can still buy windows 7 at microcenter. I just got another one a couple weeks ago.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday May 12 2017, @12:19PM (1 child)
That might work until mid-2020.
But after then, Microsoft will cease security updates for Windows 7, and intruders will inevitably discover and use a forever-day vulnerability to turn remaining Windows 7 PCs into botnet zombies. How will everybody else defend their networks from DDOS attacks from this sort of botnet?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:33AM
Virtualisation and firewall. Whenever it's p0wned, reset.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:44PM (8 children)
Don't think so. My laptop is a Mac. Which is running, among other things, VMWARE. My desktop, likewise. VMWARE on both in turn is hosting Windows XP, completely isolated from the network in both cases. I am fairly confident that because of this, all my win32 apps will continue to work into the indefinite, but far, future, regardless of how I upgrade my Macs. It'll continue to gain the benefits of faster and faster processors, as will all the win32 apps running within it. I've never had to upgrade past XP. The only real trick to keeping XP solid is to keep it away from the net, which I do. The XP image is fully backed up; it's completely recoverable, which I have verified as I have moved from older Macs to newer Macs.
There hasn't been anything actually new I needed to run under Windows since XP came out. Perhaps there will be something in the future. Can't imagine what at this point, but perhaps. It'd have to be both fabulously interesting and have no Mac equivalent. Seems.... unlikely.
That would be interesting to watch. From a safe distance. 🙅♂️
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:59PM (4 children)
you have a mac with vmware that's running windows? you couldn't have made a more disgusting pile of slaveware shit if you tried. congratulations, you are a gigantowhore!
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:17PM (3 children)
Sure I could. Did, in fact: Running two different distributions of linux under VMWARE, too. Just didn't mention that as it wasn't to topic, but seeing as how you've brought how deep the pile is into play, I'll roll with it.
It all runs very smoothly. Even with all of the OS's running at the same time. Great fun, and a highly productive environment to work in, bouncing back and forth as needed, sharing files, etc.
But I am sorry you're not having nearly as much fun as I am. 😉
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:00PM (2 children)
"Even with all of the OS's running at the same time."
I've daydreamed about that. I work with some troglodytes, and they work on crap equipment. I'd like to bring my laptop in, prop it up, and boot to Linux. Anyone looking over my shoulder will recognize immediately that it isnt' Windows. So, I offer to run Windows for them. Five different versions of Windows, at the same time, all of them running faster and smoother than the Windows on their machines.
Of course, the trogs wouldn't even begin to appreciate that. Firing up a Mac clone at the same time might impress a couple of the more knowlagable, but I'm not even sure of that.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @05:03AM (1 child)
How's it handle OpenGL?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 12 2017, @02:20PM
Proprietary Nvidia driver, with the Nvidia GL rendering works fine for me. I know, if I were the complete Lunix nut, I'd refuse to install the blob. But, the blob works for me, and I've never yet found a real reason to distrust it. Given a few stories similar to Intel's history, I would learn to distrust Nvidia, but so far, I'm good with it.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:03PM (1 child)
an OEM Windows license is tied* to an individual motherboard
My laptop is a Mac. Which is running, among other things, VMWARE.
I imagine very few Macs ship with an OEM Windows license. Those that do would come from an obscure value-added reseller, not from Apple.
There hasn't been anything actually new I needed to run under Windows since XP came out. Perhaps there will be something in the future. Can't imagine what at this point, but perhaps. It'd have to be both fabulously interesting and have no Mac equivalent.
I guess it depends on what you consider "equivalent", particularly for things like video games. For example, would you consider Dr. Mario "equivalent" to Tetris? Or Overwatch "equivalent" to Team Fortress 2?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:35PM
Yeah, I have no idea. I purchased my XP licenses long, long ago, when XP was actually a thing for Microsoft. My Macs aren't new, either. Newest is a 2009 12/24 core, 64 GB 3 GHz desktop. I'm happy with it. Which is a good thing, because I wouldn't buy one of Apple's current Mac Pros, they don't suit me at all. Supposedly they're going to do something better, but I'm not holding my breath.
I don't play video games on desktops or laptops at all. I have a couple full size stand-up arcade machines – I used to design the gaming hardware, and I've written sound code and game code for them in various combos at various times. I've worked for Centuri, Bally-Midway, and a couple of boutique firms, one of which was really a Bally-Midway twig of sorts. Crazy place. I've also got most of the consoles, at least the recent ones. Basically, I prefer a dedicated platform.
My idea of "playing" on my computers is a long session – coding, listening, more coding, more listening – with my SDR application. [fyngyrz.com] Or fooling about with my macro language. [github.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:57PM
🙅♂️
I'm sorry, I don't understand. Does anybody here speak emoji?