Disable Windows 10 Tracking

Thank you for the kind words. :)

Linux is free. Do you mean to imply that Linux is nothing more than an advertising/tracking platform? I pay for cable TV, so I guess I'm not the product there right? Oh wait, even though I pay the real money comes from being able to direct my eyeballs at ads. The world is not that simple, and I keep seeing people parrot this exact line at everything. It is applicable in some cases and not in others, so don't whip it to death.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Windows-...

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Windows-...

Windows is not gratis and has tracking.

GNU is gratis and has no tracking.

It's not just software tying a machine to XP but the hardware. A particular card may not have a 7 compatible driver. A penny-pinching executive will look at the very long number that is the cost of upgrading and decide to stay on XP and just replace parts (hard drive, monitor, etc.) as they break. Which may not be the smartest thing in the long run.

I can see 7 lasting longer than XP as it's the last OS built primarily for traditional Win32 (Desktop) applications. 8 and 10 are transitioning to an OS for managed code and virtualization. If you have a legacy application you'll get the best experience on 7 (or XP, or Server 200X). All of the improvements to Windows are meant to make C# based programs work better. There isn't much to gain by upgrading an older codebase to the new OS.

Of course people whose primary business is creating software think nothing of upgrading. To everyone else, writing new software is an expense. If the software you have does everything you need it to do, you're not going to rewrite it unless there is something to gain.

However, I think the issue we're talking about here is what Windows 10 is actually doing right now. If Windows 10 is in fact hoovering up huge amounts of potentially sensitive data and sending it home without the user being aware of and agreeing to it, that is of concern whatever the privacy policy says and deserves to be publicised.

I've run into this before many times. Binaries for proprietary apps, from 20 years ago, will probably still work today on Windows 10 if they didn't do anything too crazy or need low-level system functions (e.g. disk defragmenters). I don't think the same can be said of proprietary apps on Linux; there, the vast amount of diversity is also its greatest weakness and apps tend to have these massive (version-locked) dependency chains attached to them.

This works if you:

- Ship all your dependencies yourself (the distribution-provided dependencies can't be relied upon to stay compatible)

- Spend a lot of effort keeping your app and its dependencies working with the surrounding desktop environment (even when shipping your own libraries, IPC protocols, configuration mechanisms, and interoperability behavior are all unstable)

- Expect that your users will be technically proficient enough to deal with the inevitable breakage, and

- Can afford to spend the extra resources to use the inconsistent and often poorly documented/implemented/designed OSS application libraries that are available.

For the record, people on OS X / Windows package a VERY SMALL NUMBER of shared libraries with their application, if they use any at all.

The majority of application requirements are met by stable system APIs.

This is very different than having to ship the entire dependency graph above the syscall/libc level.

You're a software developer in a particular, small segment of the industry for which tooling is available, not "most people".

> That the kernel, libc and other APIs are actually quite stable

The kernel and libc are not enough to meet application developer requirements, not by miles.

This is why any usable Linux desktop relies on a massive set of fragile packages that have to be managed via a package manager in lock-step to maintain compatibility across the entire dependency graph.

That, in turn, assumes that everything participating in that dependency graph can be rebuilt (and patched) by the package maintainers, at-will, to maintain compatibility across the entirety of the graph.

If that doesn't work for your software, your only choice to is to ship your own large set of incompatible dependencies, and spend a lot of effort keeping those working with the surrounding distribution-managed dependency graph.

> ... usability is greatly enhanced by being able to configure my system the way that best suits my workflow and without OS features that think they're holding my hand and helping me but only get in my way of doing actual work?

That's a different metric of "usability" than the metric most people apply (and benefit from).

I tried using Eclipse on Ubuntu Linux and some how Ubuntu stuck in gimpy scrollbars that almost worked.

I was really impressed with the first betas of KDE, like wow, a good desktop was possible on Linux. However, since then things have just gotten worse. What you expect to have happen on Linux is that the font metrics are all screwed up and there are just zillions of things wrong with the UI that never get fixed or get substituted with other problems.

Confront Linuxers with this, and they sound like Scientologists, they completely deny there is a problem... And that is the problem. If Linux hardcores would admit the GUI sucks, maybe somebody ould try to fix it.

The distinction actually makes sense when talking about, e.g. Android versus GNU/Linux. Android uses the Linux kernel, but it doesn't use GNU tooling. Contrast to what are typically referred to as "Linux distributions", which do use GNU and are thus usefully distinguished as GNU/Linux. The GNU part actually makes a practical difference if you're a hacker.

But you couldn't be more wrong about Windows being somehow objectively worse than OS X or Linux.

Well, you can't put "objectively" in front of your opinion and call it a day. That's not how this works. I make my living writing software in C++ and there's nothing,absolutely nothing that gets close to performance ,comfort and tools of Visual Studio. I would also subscribe to the idea that Windows "just works" and any linux installation I had so far also just works, if you disable automatic updates - my only bad experience was always with updates breaking stuff, sometimes leaving me with a terminal input because the gpu driver wouldn't start anymore. But hey, YMMV and I wouldn't want to call one or the other "better".

Is Photoshop a AAA title or enterprisey crap? How about all other common software that many, normal people use daily that doesn't run under Wine?

Dont know about your grandmother- could be grace hopper, so the granny scale doesent say much.

The reasons why users are there is they sub-conciously disagree with the core philosophy of linux. Not everyone wants to become a comp sience major and learn.

Microsoft is making simple to use software for a society of specialists that accepts that not everyone has to learn everything and still should have the ability to delete his systes-core files. Windows is not here to stay because M$ is good , but because open source never challenged them.

I've used Windows and Linux since 2006.

I've yet to understand what makes Linux a better development environment. When I have a choice (or barring other factors, like the portably-sized Linux VM I'm using for a personal project, which would probably be much bigger if a WIndows VM), I use Windows for development.

Can you elaborate on what makes Linux a better development environment? Most Linux tools run fine on Windows (though I believe Git is perpetually behind on Windows; I personally prefer Mercurial, for other reasons, which doesn't have that problem), and I think Ruby is also usually behind as well, but I can't really think of anything else. On the other hand, Windows has Visual Studio exclusively. If it's about the command line, Powershell has so far sufficed for development purposes(and sometimes pleased), though I'm much better in bash.

Linux is not a good platform for games. Steam does a good job at improving the current state, but it's far from ideal. For many people it matters, and expressing their sentiment is far from being FUD.

Allot of them aren't natively ported by rather use middle ware like the one offered by Transgaming which is no more than an optimized version of Wine.

Not to mention that many of the "AAA" titles will have either a much higher system requirement for Linux or outright just not support hardware which is supported on Winodws.

For example Borderlands The Pre-Sequel doesn't supports AMD cards at all on Linux and has double the minimum requirements of the Windows version.

So sorry while Linux gaming has come a long long way it's still not something that you can call viable for "Gamers".

If you only play old titles and indie games you are probably fine tho...

Yes, thanks to Steam, gaming experience on Linux is better than before. That's said... my favourite games like Grand Theft Auto, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Wolfenstein are unfortunately Windows (and consoles only) games.

Maybe one day Square Enix/Bethesda/Rockstar/etc will port their games to Linux, and untill that day happen, I'll stick with Windows for gaming :D

I'm not talking about the features; the license restricts usage by company size.

What kind of free software is that?

(And no, I didn't read the license, I don't know either way.)

> Devices may only be distributed if all Google Applications [listed elsewhere in the agreement] ... are pre-installed on the Device."

>The phone manufacturer must "preload all Google Applications approved in the applicable Territory ... on each device."

>The phone manufacturer must place "Google's Search and the Android Market Client icon [Google Play] ... at least on the panel immediately adjacent to the Default Home Screen," with "all other Google Applications ... no more than one level below the Phone Top."

>The phone manufacturer must set "Google Search ... as the default search provider for all Web search access points."

>If device owners hold down the physical “Home” button or “swipe up” from a digital home button or navigation bar, such actions should trigger Google Search.

>must provide access to a “collection” of 13 Google apps (Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Drive, YouTube, Gmail, Google+, Google Play Music, Google Play Movies, Google Play Books, Google Play Newsstand, Google Play Games, Google+ Photos and Google+ Hangouts).

How is that not "rammed down your throat" ?

Or do you really think Android users are "voluntarily installing" Google Play Newsstand?

I got gmail rammed down my throat pretty hard when I needed to install an app from the play store on my Android phone... Google search was also front and center on the home screen.