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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."
(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.