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Windows 10 Review

anandtech.com

146 pointssinak248 comments

Windows 10 pushed me to Linux.

I spent the last few years slowly but surely weening myself off a dependence on Microsoft tools (at home anyway). I switched my dev environment from VS/C# to Python/Komodo. Email from Outlook to Gmail/Thunderbird. Stopped using IE a decade ago or more. The idea behind it was to make sure I wasn't really bound to a particular platform.

The last few times I tried Linux, I'd either end up with Windows withdrawals, or some game/app I forgot about that I still used, or the kids would complain (or wife) and would end up back on Windows. This time, I've kept another machine running Windows on it, but my primary machine I installed Mint 17.2 on it, and no dual booting.

Things I'm missing - Can't play Witcher 3 (but apparently a native version is coming soon), and I'll probably miss out on SW: Battlefront. However a bunch of other games I play have native Linux ports, in particular Kerbal Space Program. I went a little nuts and buy a brand new gtx 980ti that might not get stretched as much as it could by switching platforms.

Things I'm enjoying - The font rendering seems nicer? Maybe it's imagined though. Komodo IDE runs way better under Linux than Windows, I have no idea why. I like the fact that my time investment in learning Python is paying off because a lot of the support tools/background tasks are written in Python. Especially good is now being able to see open source/dev projects that in the past I would skip over looking at because hey - no native Windows port.

It's been a couple of weeks since I switched now, and no regrets yet. Thanks Windows 10.

What didn't you like about Windows 10?

Same thing I really didn't like about Windows 8. Ads on my desktop, in an operating system I paid money for.

In particular Toyota car ads in the music app.

I did like the UI improvements, the notifications system etc, that switching between new/old apps didn't feel jarring anymore.

I think the kicker was the github project calle dunfuck windows 10 or whatever it was, where you ran a bunch of batch scripts to remove/kill off the monitoring services, and I just didn't want to have to worry about that.

Also the fact that on my other machines, the nagging to upgrade to windows 10 is constant, I had to go find/remove some random windows update patch from June/July to get rid of gwx.exe.

edit: lastly, the licensing terms of the operating system itself, IANAL, and I couldn't tell what rights I had to the o/s in the future.

To be fair, the music app isn't the operating system, just something that comes with it. You are not forced to use it - and you didn't pay for it so it being ad supported is practically normal.

Did you pay for Windows 10?

I didn't pay for my Linux install and it has zero ad-supported junkware.

Wasn't there a big bru-ha-ha when one of the big linux gui distros added amazon crapware by default?

There was.

It was just one distribution of many (Ubuntu), just one version of it in fact (Unity Ubuntu, Xubuntu or Kubuntu or whatever is Gnome Ubuntu called didn't include it) and it was not only possible (unlike in Windows 8 and 10) but also rather easy to remove.

There was, and as a result a lot of people shitcanned that distro, and said incident left an indelible black mark on the vendor's reputation.

No, the Windows 10 upgrade was "Free", but I was talking specifically about Windows 8 with regards to ads in the O/S.

The music app comes with the O/S, and is the default registered music player, for all intents are purposes, it's part of the O/S, and it's ability to inject ads into the start screen (as well as the Games widget, and Store widget doing the same thing) are just more of that.

There isn't any "ads" in the music app. Don't know where you saw this, but it wasn't in the built-in Music app in Windows 10.

Are you referring to live tiles? I think they can be disabled.

Why you use Windows music/video player when it sucks ? VLC can do the work much better and not show ads.

So you didn't like the Windows 10 privacy issues so you moved your mail to Gmail. Makes sense!

> Ads on my desktop, in an operating system I paid money for.

I am guessing you are talking about free apps on the store. Do you think that paying for an OS give you rights over third parties apps?

It's not like MS is paying each developer on the store each time you download a free app. How would that be sustainable?

> In particular Toyota car ads in the music app.

Which music app? Xbox music and Groove Music don't include ads.

Vista pushed me to Mac OS. And then I went from .Net/Visual Studio to Objective-C/Xcode and making apps instead of websites. So much happier now. (but that was in the days of IE6)

For me it was Windows XP. What did it for me back then was the introduction of product activation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Product_Activation). Having as my primary workstation a computer that Microsoft could remotely disable at any time for any reason wasn't a very appealing prospect. Linux was much rougher on the desktop then, but it was good enough and has only gotten better. I still have a Windows partition, but I only ever use it for playing games, and with Steam's Linux support improving I find myself using it less and less even in that limited capacity.

For a company that used to understand that its success depended on developer mindshare, Microsoft has done a really remarkable job over the last 15 years turning Windows into a platform that seems laser-focused on the goal of making developers want to use almost anything else.

C and C++ dev on Windows is a pain on the ass. On my GNU/Linux, I can use pkgconfig to get the lib dependences, and cmake could grab the deps very well. On Windows, I end doing ugly things to get the dependencies working...

I only had that experience with projects that use autoconf for build configuration, usually these are tied very closely to UNIX-like platforms. Most libs that use cmake to setup the build files can be integrated well on Windows (most likely because the author choose cmake exactly for this reason to be easily usable across platforms). But that's more of a problem of Linux isolationism than Windows' fault (basically the modern version of the bad old days when everyone was on Windows and all you got to build a project from source was a bunch of Visual Studio project files).

But even with cmake there's no standard place for third-party libraries to be installed on Windows. There's no /usr/lib and /usr/include analogue. So if I'm writing software that uses a third-party library I either have to bundle it into my source tree or hope there's an installer for it, burn the default installation location into the build system, and hope the user compiling my code has not overridden the default location. (I know some installers like Qt will make a system environment variable to say where their libraries are, but that's not particularly nice if everything did that.)

In my case I needed libapr, and as far as I can tell there is no installer for it, so I wound up just saying "drop a compiled copy of libapr into this location in the source tree" into the build instructions since I did not want to redistribute it with my source.

So yes, I dearly wish for something like a working pkgconfig on Windows.

> There's no /usr/lib and /usr/include analogue

I would argue that it is a good thing to not rely on /usr/lib or /usr/include even on Unix. It is a pain for when a dev who is jumping on the team specially when the dependencies are not documented. The make-dependency error-install-make cycle is very annoying.

I usually try hard to not link against 'installed' libs but instead directly compile external dependencies from source as part of my project. That way I don't need to have different libs for different build configs or VStudio versions. CMake can import sources from locations outside your source tree, and these source locations can be relative to your project (e.g. on the same directory level). That way you don't need any global system settings, or centralized locations, everything can be relative to your project. I actually prefer this also on OSX or Linux.

Add Python to the list. If you're using 64 bit versions it becomes a nightmare. I do have to remark that finally Microsoft did something about it and released a special version of MSVC to solve part of the issue, but for some modules it still is challenging to get everything working correctly.

Activation itself is a one-time thing. What you're probably thinking of is Windows Genuine Advantage, later renamed Windows Activation Technologies[1]. This is far more insidious. To wit:

   WGA consists of two components:

   an installable component called WGA Notifications
   that hooks into Winlogon and validates the
   Windows license upon each logon and an ActiveX
   control that checks the validity of the Windows
   license when downloading certain updates

I've mentioned this on HN on a number of occasions, and the community here seems totally nonplussed about it. People just don't seem to care that this software "validates" each time you log in.

However, I think this ongoing check only started with Windows XP SP3. I have a Windows XP SP2 installation in a VM. I don't allow Internet access at all for it, I copy anything I need to a shared directory. It has stayed activated for quite some time without complaining and without needing the Internet for anything.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage

>Having as my primary workstation a computer that Microsoft could remotely disable at any time for any reason wasn't a very appealing prospect.

Unless you're normal, ie not wearing tinfoil hat.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for this. The "MS can remotely shut me down!" anti-Windows argument has always felt like FUD to me.

Can anyone here who owned a legit copy of Windows actually say that this happened to them, or to someone they knew?

I don't think they shut you down, worst that can happen is setting your background to color black and "THIS WINDOWS IS ILLEGAL" message. And that can be usually sorted out with one phone call.

> Not sure why you're being downvoted for this.

Because there's a way to communicate the point without casting aspersions on the commenter.

They're being downvoted because they used the phrase "tin foil hat" which should be a bannable offense on all discussion forums. It's only used to delegitimize other people without having to put forth effort into forming a counter argument.

> Can anyone here who owned a legit copy of Windows actually say that this happened to them, or to someone they knew?

I can almost say. I had a genuine Windows 7 license in 2011 that I used for gaming. When I'd turn on the machine, it'd give the scary "this copy may not be legitimate" message at boot. When I'd enter the product key, it wouldn't work. I could push through that message, but every 10 or so minutes I'd get a pop-up screen I couldn't ignore that said "this copy may not be legitimate" and I'd have to enter my key that should work that doesn't, or hit "ignore for 10 minutes."

So, Microsoft didn't remotely deactivate it, but they, through their error, inconvenienced me such that I got rid of something that was a $300 value (it was Win7 ultimate, 32 and 64 bit licenses. I got it for free by hosting a Windows 7 launch party. So it's the most genuine Windows you can get.)

I'm a case study of "DRM provides no advantage for legitimate users, and occasionally inconveniences them." Of course I'm just an anecdote, but you asked!

Yep, it happened to me: twice.

First time, I had an HP laptop with Windows XP Pro OEM in 2006. All worked fine, but one day out of the blue it told me that my copy of Windows wasn't genuine. I don't know what caused it & reinstalling Windows over the top from DVD didn't fix it. I seem to recall Windows then kept shutting down after 2 hours, so backing up my data before a reformat was extremely difficult. Once I reformatted & did a clean reinstall, it worked again.

The second time, I had a MS BizSpark membership via the Association Of Software Professionals, and was testing my software in Windows 7 VMs. 8 months later, my Windows 7 claimed it was non-genuine. I enquired with Microsoft, and they said my business shouldn't have been eligible for BizSpark because it was more than 3 years old, so they'd cancelled the BizSpark membership & blacklisted my Windows keys without notifying me. I would've preferred if MS verified my eligibility upfront.

I switched to Apple as a result. I know, it's another proprietary OS and tied to one hardware vendor, but at least in 9 years it has never locked me out of my data or my machine.

> Can anyone here who owned a legit copy of Windows actually say that this happened to them

Yep. Just recently my windows 8.1 installation deactivated itself and I had to call in an talk to a person to get it reactivated.

Well, activation hickup is not even close to "remote disable". It's an annoyance, sure, you have to call some support person, but it's not a 'self destruct' option.

I just don’t like it on principle. Why would I voluntarily offer potential control of my machine to somebody else? My software is mine.

MS (or anybody else) doesn't get to violate first sale doctrine[1] simply because they don't trust their customers. Once consideration has changed hands for a copy of Windows, MS loses all control. The customer can do anything they want with their copy, except for a few areas covered by other laws (i.e. distributing another copy would make the customer liable for copyright infringement).

If Microsoft is disabling a legitimately purchased copy of windows - or accessing it without the authorization of the owner - that could be a violation of the CFAA (or other laws; ask a lawyer).

Trying to say the customer somehow authorized all of this by throwing a contract of adhesion at the customer after the purchase has been made is almost certainly not binding, and is explicitly illegal in some jurisdictions. It's patently not a contract as it lacks all of the required elements.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

>> I switched my dev environment from VS/C# to Python/Komodo.

I could have followed that statement if it was ... to IntelliJ/Java.

I am the family IT guy. Years ago (Windows 2000 era, very young kids) I got tired of maintaining Windows and declared that I would no longer support it. We've been all Linux and Mac since then. For a while, we were Linux only.

I will double down on your anecdata, since that is my story as well.

Linux pretty much solved the "where are all my apps" problem. If we can just figure out the "why doesn't my graphics card work" problem, we'll be set.

What graphics card are you using, and what distro? To state the obvious, if you're using Nvidia then you'll want to install the proprietary driver, whereas with AMD you'll want to keep the open-source driver as default, because Catalyst isn't that stable.

I use both AMD and Nvidia on Ubuntu. For both GPUs, every OS upgrade is a toss-up as to whether things will work or not.

Some issues I had last month with ubuntu linux: 1. When I plug my UHD monitor, linux tries to use 4k@60hz, but my video board does not support this, so no video signal. 2. tried to use latest intel video drivers, so I had to upgrade first ubuntu 3. after upgrade no more GUI, only text mode 4. solved the GUI issue, no luck with the wrong resolution/refresh rate. 5. using xrandr command line I can set 4k@30hz. 6. using black magic I can set 4k@50kz. 7. a couple of days ago the mouse cursor had disappeared (mouse still working). Random advices from the internet did not work, had to reboot 8. cannot set mouse speed from the system settings, I have to do it from the command line with some visual parsing of xinput commands.

This is all I remember now :)

Reminds me of when I used to use Windows. I'm just glad I don't have any of these problems with Linux. Seems like no matter what OS you use, there's always some hardware configuration that the OS has problems with.

That has been my experience with Windows since 8.0. I have had drivers fail on updates, and video stutter problems. Getting my card to work on Ubuntu was comparatively easy. Also, the basic hardware features like bluetooth worked much better under Ubuntu.

My solution to this problem is to run Windows in a VM, with a graphics card passed through to it. That way I can run (and test!) games and other apps I still need every once in a while without dual booting.

I use qemu/kvm, with OVMF for the firmware to get around some VGA problems, and pass a discrete card to the guest while using the integrated intel graphics for the host. It requires CPU and motherboard support, but those aren't too uncommon on newer hardware.

I didn't realise you can use direct hardware access in a VM! (Other than HDD)

That'd be pretty good

You can, but only on AMD GPUs. Nvidia GPUs have this disable unless you buy very expensive "cloud" model.

Yeah I ran into that wall 2 weeks ago. I tried to switch to Linux for the host and run my Windows 8 VMs in VMWare on Mint. After fighting with the nvidia drivers at install for a bit I got it working but VMWare using dual monitors is super slow on nvidia (780 here) in mint: the windows in the guest VM were drawn as if it was done by a single core on half the speed, instead of on the GPU. Single monitor, no problem.

Had to roll back to windows for the host to make the VMs work nicely. A bummer, considering moving away from Windows takes that first step and I now have to stick around for longer. Perhaps next year...

Not true, you can work around this. I'm running a 970 gtx in a vm. See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768

Didn't know you could do it either. And the security aware (paranoid) part of me screams loudly when reading this. ;-)

The IOMMU hardware ensures security of the VM's raw device access while the VM is running. The only significant security risk I'm aware of is if the VM has a chance to update some firmware (like an option ROM) on the device you give it access to, which may enable it to do evil things when the host system next reboots.

Not all new hardware provides IOMMU. For instance, the i7-4770K does not have the VT-d extension, which is Intel's version of IOMMU. [1]

[1] = http://ark.intel.com/products/75123/Intel-Core-i7-4770K-Proc...

Right, Intel's an ass about product segmentation. But most hypervisors don't offer the option of doing any sort of PCI passthrough without a functional IOMMU, so they're not accidentally exposing anyone.

It would be sensible for hypervisors to require IOMMU for all PCI passthrough, but it looks like Xen allows it without IOMMU for paravirtualised guests:

"VT-d Pass-Through is a technique to give a domU exclusive access to a PCI function using the IOMMU provided by VT-d. It is primarily targeted at HVM (fully virtualised) guests because PV (paravirtualized) pass-through does not require VT-d (altough it may be utilized too)."[1]

[1] = http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/VTd_HowTo

This is pretty much the preferred cure from what I've gathered. If you can build a PC with two GPU's (or merely one PCIe and one integrated), you can game, use Photoshop nearly natively.

But as you have said, it's not as straighforward as I'd like. I haven't tried it yet but it's nice seeing others having success.

Are there any up to date guides and best practices for this?

Interesting!

This could work with two nvidia based cards ? And when the VM isn't On, the host could use the main GPU ?

Someone share more info about this!

Two different nvidia cards should work, but I don't think it's possible to do it with two cards of the same model.

You can't switch a GPU between host and VM without rebooting, you have to assign one GPU to the VM through kernel boot options, which will hide it from the host.

A lot of people also just use a dedicated (Nvidia/AMD) GPU for the windows VM for gaming and heavy duty things, and only use their onboard Intel GPU for the linux host, which is sufficient for normal usage if you're doing all your gaming through the VM anyway.

See my post above for some links with more info.

I believe it should be possible to use two cards of the same model, using pci-stub instead of blacklisting the driver. I've never gotten it to work, but I also think it should be possible to move a card from the guest back to the host (though that might require some more work on the kernel and/or other components).

http://vfio.blogspot.com/ is a good guide for setting it up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/2z2y7h/gpu_pa... is another fairly concise guide (a little out of date though).

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768 is the main point of discussion for it - too much to read through entirely, but the top posts include a lot of info, and it contains a lot of valuable information on quirks for specific hardware if you search. Some of the stuff is outdated though (eg the kernel includes a lot of the patches now), and it's targetted at Arch, but most instructions should apply to any distro.

Another key point is, you need VT-d/IOMMU support on your motherboard and CPU, which isn't universal (only in the last few generations of intel CPUs, with some excptions that don't support it. And motherboard support can vary between OEMs). Check https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aryg5nO-kBebdFo... to see if others have had any luck with your hardware, or before making any purchases.

Much appreciated, I'm definitely saving this!

Thanks for the extra reddit link which was definitely more in layman terms.

Do you know if it is viable to run Windows 8 in a WM for minor Photoshop and Illustrator work if you only have integrated graphics (Intel HD 5500)?

I recently switched from OSX to Linux on the new Dell XPS 13 and I'm not sure if I should stay with my current dual boot setup, use a VM or get rid of window completely and invest time in learning Gimp and Scribus as alternatives.

If you've only got Intel graphics, you can use the even cooler GPU sharing that they've implemented for Xen and KVM: https://01.org/igvt-g

I'm running Windows 7 as a Xen guest using Intel GVT-g on my i3-5005U (2C4T, HD Graphics 5500) for the past week now. I've pinned 2 vcpus each to both Dom0 (Ubuntu 15.04) and DomU and use both simultaneously in a dual monitor setup.

I can't comment about Photoshop or Illustrator as I have no experience using those programs, though I do a fair bit of work with PCB CAD tools: OrCAD, EAGLE. I haven't ran into any major issues thus far. Media playback works fine btw; mpv does not report any skipped frames when playing 1080p webm files downloaded from Youtube with youtube-dl.

Could you post some links to this information or have you written a howto? I've never heard of a setup like this.

I was doing some research for making a similar setup and stuck with these two:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2z0evz/gpu_pa...

http://vfio.blogspot.fr/2015/05/vfio-gpu-how-to-series-part-...

Or search for "windows vm gpu passthrough" on your favorite search engine, there may be more.

Be careful with GPU passthrough in general; you are giving Windows in that VM direct memory access. [1] In the last year or so, a group was able to overwrite Xen (in order to get additional privileges outside the VM) by merely being given GPU passthrough. [2] Even if you aren't using Xen, PCI passthrough necessarily entails the in-VM OS getting direct memory access which more or less spoils any security separation between the in-VM OS and the host OS.

To be clear, I don't think very many people are likely to have to deal with this as a security problem. I just think its appropriate to be aware of the power/danger inherent in the seemingly benign nature of GPU/PCI passthrough.

[1] = "you can use PCI passthrough to assign a PCI device (NIC, disk controller, HBA, USB controller, firewire controller, soundcard, etc) to a virtual machine guest, giving it full and direct access to the PCI device" (http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/XenPCIpassthrough) [2] Sorry, I can't find a link.

this is not true in general.

my setup passes through a discrete PCI-Express graphics card to Windows running under KVM, and the card is restricted to address space allocated to the VM using the motherboard's IOMMU.

You are correct that it is dependent upon whether your motherboard has IOMMU [1]. Nevertheless, given the following paragraph, then it seems to be the reverse: it is generally unwise to willy-nilly give out PCI pass-through, unless you have confirmed that your hardware has IOMMU.

Xen documentation explicitly states how to determine whether you have IOMMU on your hardware.[2] The hardware listed here [3], while out of date, conspicuously notes, for example, that "Core i7...most "K" versions don't support VT-d", which, according to Intel [4], means that the i7-4770K, for example, does not support IOMMU (VT-d). This tells me that if you are concerned about this issue, then you must check your hardware, even if it is new hardware.

[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU

[2] = http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_PCI_Passthrough#How_can_...

[3] = http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/VTdHowTo

[4] the i7-4770K probably lacks IOMMU because it would negatively affect performance on a CPU that is sold as a near top-of-the-line CPU for gaming, which generally excludes most virtualization use cases.

edit: formatting

Biggest hurdle I found moving to other OSes were bunch of NTFS formatted external hard drives with TBs of my data. How do you use them from *nix/Mac? On Mac NTFS were readonly unless you install 3rd party stuff but even then there were several problems sharing on network. Reformatting dozen hard drives to new file system was just too much work.

Last year I bought a Synology NAS w/ 12 TB (9tb usable) and copied most of my data to it. So data wasn't a problem. Bonus now is I can use NFS!

On Linux I use NTFS-3G[0]. Never had a problem.

[0]http://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source-ntfs-3g/

NTFS on GNU/Linux was rw without any issue from years ago.

I have a big partition with my user data on a NTFS partition that I shared across Windows 8.1 and Kubuntu 15.04 without any issue. The only problem that I could have is that if I unplug the computer on Windows, I need to reboot on Windows to mark it-self as safe, so Linux can mount it again without any warning message.

What is the closest equivalent of visual studio+c# in the linux world? I.e. A high level language that can be used for a breadth of applications (web site, desktop app, console, etc) and a very rich IDE which helps a lot in term of auto-complete/debugging/discoverability? To me the IDE is at least as important as the language.

At the time I started thinking about making that change, I don't think I had a good answer. I started using Python, and Python Tools for Visual Studio, and thought, this is fucked, because I love this tool, and it's tying me to Windows still, so I consciously made the decision to switch out my dev tool to Komodo. I don't love it. It's got nothing on PTVS, but it runs on Linux really well.

For a decent dev tool under Linux - what about MonoDevelop? VSCode looks ok, but I haven't tried the Linux version, but apparently you can do C# development in it.

I'm not really up to speed with C# dev these days, last job I had which required C# was 2009, and since then I really haven't done much serious development in it (It's 95% Delphi professionally, and Python for my own stuff)

Edit: I wanted to re-iterate, I absolutely love Python Tools for Visual Studio. Those guys have created (what I have found to be) the highest quality python development tool I have experienced. The downside is it requires Visual Studio. If they can take what they have added to VS, and re-produce that in VSCode.... Wow, I would be very happy.

For python, try Pycharm. There's also community edition, which may or may not be enough for you. Another step up is Intellij Idea, which supports everything that all the other language-specific products together.

For a nice Delphi alternative, try Lazarus (http://www.lazarus-ide.org/). Like Delphi 7, but with more features. Documentation could be better though.

I would say IntelliJ in one of its different incarnations (PyCharm, RubyMine, WebStorm, etc.). Of course, it's not specific to Linux, but that's a nice advantage.

If you're willing to switch from c# to something else: python or Java, although for desktop apps it may not be as good (I used to work on PyQt apps and did not found it lacking though.)

As for the IDE Intellij IDEA rocks and has a community edition.

I have the same problem as you and the closest thing i have found is scala and intellij. But I dont really like scala as i find it messy also there is nothing out there that is as good as wpf with mvvm.

Eclipse or IntelliJ and Java/Groovy. I can't believe I wasn't using Groovy earlier, it's fantastic.

Java + NetBeans, IntelliJ, or Eclipse. This isn't the land of Microsoft, you have a choice of IDEs. I happen to prefer NetBeans, though recently I've been turned on to IntelliJ and that's been growing on me. I've never really liked Eclipse. But you know what? That's me. You might have different tastes. What's really nice is if you use Maven to manage your builds, your team members can use whatever IDE they want and everything works together. It's a great world out here!

Jetbrains IDEs are awesome, you should give them a try. And they are several ways to get them for free : communitiy editions, student editions, beta versions or even if you own a popular Open Source project they'll give you a complete commercial version for free.

QtCreator and C++ aren't bad. At least you get the designer for laying out your GUI a la VS

MonoDevelop for .NET stuff (http://www.monodevelop.com/), QtCreator for C/C++ (http://www.qt.io/ide/).

IntelliJ IDEA + Kotlin. Kotlin is created by JetBrains themselves and is very easy for C# devs to pick up and can be used anywhere Java would be used.

Same here. I decided to stop playing video games cold turkey and what I did was grab an Arch Linux iso and follow the beginner's guide.

Much more decent.

I think the only actual Windows app I still really need is Total Commander. I know there's lots of commander apps available for just about any platform, but I've used Total Commander for... 15 years? I know it inside and out; even a small change at this point would be jarring. :(

well, I don't use it, but it's marked "platinum" on wine[0] so you may not miss it

[0] https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

Windows commander (As it was called back then) was the first piece of shareware I've ever registered, back in the 16-bit Windows 3.1 days, which is just as long as I've been using it as well :)

Impressively, it is still under active development.

"Double Commander" is a very complete open source re-implementation in QT, and they are targeting all 3 major platforms with it. There are a few quirks that will be noticeable for anyone that's nimble with Total Commander, but the keybindings and even the menus are just about the same, and if that's what's keeping you on Windows -- the benefit of the linux ecosystem will greatly outweigh those small nuisances.

I don’t use either personally, however Krusader seems like a pretty good alternative.

http://www.krusader.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krusader

The font rendering on Linux is so much nicer than on Windows, especially on web fonts. I use Windows at work, and it drives me crazy how bad the font rendering can be sometimes (and yes, I have used the cleartype tweaking tool, thanks).

The font management (installing and enabling) isn't so nice. I don't know how it is on Windows, but on GNU/Linux it even comes down to editing dotfiles containing snippets of XML in your home directory to enable or disable certain fonts or rendering methods.

Gentoo partially solves this by having eselect fontconfig.

All I had to do was extract the font files into ~/.fonts/.

Installing and enabling fonts is pretty much just dropping them into a directory fontconfig knows about.

Now as far as disabling certain (installed) fonts or switching rendering methods, specifying particular rendering methods for particular fonts, or specifying replacements for fonts you don't have installed or don't want to use -- those things do require editing XML dotfiles. But as far as I know, they can't be done at all on Windows (at the user or system-wide level; I think applications can do them for themselves).

> The font rendering on Linux is so much nicer than on Windows, especially on web fonts

I actually like the other way around. I don't like the font rendering on Linux... not even in Firefox.

> The font rendering seems nicer?

While I agree that it is better than the font rendering in Windows[1], I suggest that the font rendering is "different", and opinions will vary considerably about which is better.

You may be interested to know that there are patches to the font handling libraries (fontconfig, freetype, cairo) that used to be known as "infinality"[3], but are now maintained by bohoomil[4]. With these patches, you can actually select (with environment variables) various rendering options, including emulation of ClearType and several other rendering styles, including a customizable FIR filter and detailed control of the hinting.

Warning: Messing with fontconfig is far more complicated than it looks. Use these patches at your own risk! That said, I do like the results[5].

[1] The modern ClearType rendering, not the pixel-snapping, over-hinted[2] stuff used previously

[2] http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.h...

[3] http://www.infinality.net/blog/

[4] https://github.com/bohoomil/fontconfig-ultimate

[5] http://i.imgur.com/wMWmNKt.png

Windows pushed me to Linux, and Linux pushed me to OSX.

I use to think OS X "just worked" until I tried it my self. I'm not going to waste my time writing about the horror story that is OS X, but this HN thread is a pretty good summary:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395

I don't see how people can use that and tout it as superior to anything, even Linux. I can understand the use of a macbook, but I'll never understand why people use OS X.

SW Battlefront can run on linux, thanks to Wine. [1]

Wine can be a pain to use, if you're not comfortable enough with linux. But know that it's possible. I had the game running fine, only with some minor annoyances (like a very long loading time). But it was years ago, you might find a more recent version of Wine which runs the game smoothly, almost out of the box.

I just wanted to encourage you. Keep learning linux, keep toying with Wine, and you'll be able to play this game (and others) ;)

[1] https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

Edit : I realized you were probably referring to the newest SW Battlefront... My bad. Well, it still applies somewhat : Wine will be able, eventually, someday, to run this upcoming SW Battlefront.

If you'll allow me a moment of self-advertising, my company sells a version of Wine called CrossOver. It has a user-friendly wrapper, so you have less fiddling to do with files and command lines. We contribute all of our improvements back to the Wine project and are the largest force driving Wine's development (check out the email addresses in the Git log). Working on Wine is my full-time job. Even if you don't end up using it, purchasing our product directly helps improve Wine :)

Question: Doesn't Wine take away some of the performance as opposed to play the game natively on Windows?

Yes, for many games, but not for all. Older games tend to run at full speed, more modern and cutting edge titles tend to run at a 20-50% framerate reduction. Even some modern games run at full speed. It really depends on the game.

> Things I'm missing - Can't play Witcher 3 (but apparently a native version is coming soon), and I'll probably miss out on SW: Battlefront.

That's the one single reason why I keep Windows 8.1 on my HD. Over the last 3 years I've used Windows for maybe 13-14 hours in total. Fortunately, more and more games come out on Linux, too. And some games run pretty good in Wine. Fallout 3, for example, runs faster on Linux (with higher settings) than it does on Windows. Even though I updated everything, disabled pretty much anything that could run in the background and don't have much installed.

I can't even imagine how Windows can still be the preferred OS for gaming nowadays. Using Windows is a pain in the butt, and so is playing games on it. The whole OS by default wastes precious resources those games could use, and it gets worse with every new version. On Linux I'm the only person who tells the OS how and when to waste the resources.

Windows 7 thankfully pushed me to linux, when i bought a 'student edition' from digital river to upgrade from xp for 39 euro. As it turned out, this win7 key i got from digital river only could be authenticicated, when the iso had been installed over a pre-existing xp-installation. I never installed xp again, so now i have a win7 leftover for some games that pops up a screen every 30 min, which tells me that the system is not sure wether it's genuine or not.

I can leave that window open and it doesnt steal focus. But how stupid is that to sell such a version anyway. First i need to install xp, and then i need to install win7 over it. Why? That was when i realised i need to get out of this.

Somehow i heard Linux Mint would be easy for people that are sick of windows. Installed like a breeze. I had to move out. Like if you don't live with your parents anymore. Windows = Dad. Macos = Mom. Don't misunderstand - both are nice, and so i am nice to people that use these systems, while nonetheless probing sometimes wether they don't have any desire to live on their own a bit more. Most of them somehow appreciate my tales of freedom, but at the same time feel they can't deal with their life without Mom washing their clothes and Dad telling them when they should be home. Often this goes hand in hand with a severe adobe or visual studio addiction - they make the most perservant drugs - and are often a necessity for survival, which is a shame. I reserve a warm place in my heart for those people and think well of them. But that aside - now i had my own shitty apartment and needed to do everything for myself. First it was hard and i needed Wine. I totally wrecked it two times. But freedom. No more eula accept clicking without having read it was enough for me to continue.

I now can change the scrollbar gfx of the whole system by editing a dead simple png file. Nobody cares. I can install, backup, delete and setup anything like i want, without permission from anybody. I also don't get shouted at every imaginable occasion that 'Hey, you! Did you know you are using Linux(tm)(r)(c) <accept> <ok>' - instead, the system is able to shut up about itself and to get out of the way as much as i want it to get. That is so much beyond priceless - and this translates into a quality of life that is only comparable with having your own garden near the house you've built yourself while tasting your own brewed beer with best friends in the sunshine of a late summer afternoon.

And everything linux is searchable on the internet, which runs on it. I keep in mind to also care about the people that made this possible, in humankinds brightest collaborative effort so far. They all shall be remembered, their names encarved in granite, and i acknowledge their immense contribution to humankind. Kudos to them that made this possible, including all other free operating systems contributors, from all the GNU, BSD, Plan9, riscOS, templeOS and others.

So, from 2011 to now, i experienced about 5 distros, and currently have settled on manjaro with xfce. The next time i might try real archlinux as a main system maybe? The hardware support is amazing actually. I plug stuff in, it instantly gets recognised and usable without any further ado.

I had an Ipad for a short time, i wanted to wipe it to factory settings and upload some pdfs to read - how foolish of me. First it needed a superspecial cable. Then, this Ipad could not be acessed as a simple usb storage device. Wtf. Who built this and why? Finally after the factory reset it did not boot anymore and demanded i connect it with a windows or mac that had itunes installed. Haha. No. But it also makes me sad that such electronic things exist which demand such utter nonsense from me that i won't fulfil for them.

I have, to make this clear, no bad feelings for anybody that earns money to live by working for microsoft - may they live well. Then i am sometimes remembered by force of what a wierd microsoft business corporate world system this 'windows' is oozing out of every corner, when i _have_ to use it for work in special situations, and it feels totally backwards to use it. It's like entering a room where tv is on and the people in it all obsessively want a deeply involved discussion with me about the running show. Well, thats my story with this..

For all the negativity, I really like Windows 10. I had been using Windows 8.1 and consider it to be one of the worst desktop operating systems I've used in the last 10 years. That's partially why I like Windows 10 so much. They fixed so many of the backwards ideas that came with 8.1.

That being said, I mostly use it as an entertainment consumption device these days. I have a PC that I use solely to play games and watch shows. My every day computer for development is now a Macbook Pro with OS X and all the nice posix-like tools included.

I think that's one of the bigger long-term issues Microsoft might be facing. It seems in the last 5 years or so there has been a fairly large exodus of developers from Windows to Linux or OS X.

Do you find it superior than Windows 7 as well? In what ways?

The improved multi-monitor window management (snapping to any corner of any monitor, variable width snapping, 1-click to snap another window to the other side, etc) is the best I've seen on any OS.

Powershell and cmd are so much nicer to work with now with many of the features you'd expect from a modern terminal. Still lacking compared to some competitors, but much nicer than ever before.

Some of the Universal apps are actually quite pleasant to use now that they can be rearranged freely like any other window. I've been using the Mail app as my main mail client and the Office apps instead of the Office desktop suite since the tech previews and haven't really found myself missing much.

There are some genuinely great improvements in Windows 10. If only it also had sensible defaults and a better privacy policy...

> The improved multi-monitor window management (snapping to any corner of any monitor, variable width snapping, 1-click to snap another window to the other side, etc) is the best I've seen on any OS.

I'm mostly neutral on this because I don't really use window snapping, and I very rarely use Windows as it is (KDE's multi-monitor handling is OK, probably not the best, but it works well enough for me). That said, I do feel Windows 10 is a moderate improvement over 7, but I still wind up using DisplayFusion since I like its taskbar features better.

The 6-pixel "snag" point between monitors (top and bottom) is infuriating to me, and I've yet to find a registry fix that actually works to get rid of that nonsense, neither can I find any obvious settings for it. Any suggestions?

So I just decided to do a bit more sleuthing, and it turns out this is a known issue that may not presently have a fix:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_win...

Bummer.

   I had been using Windows 8.1 and consider it to be one of the worst
   desktop operating systems I've used in the last 10 years.

Why?

It's Windows 7 with a few improvements. I'm vaguely aware that there's this "Metro" stuff that people dislike, but aside from dismissing the 'start screen' when you reboot - and there may very well be a configuration setting to bypass it and go directly to the desktop - you otherwise literally never have to deal with it.

My biggest issue was the metro stuff; mostly the default apps that would open in full screen mode.

Opening a PDF or an image in a new Windows 8 installation was always a frustrating surprise.

The start menu was confusing, and anytime you'd go into a metro-type application it was jarring.

Ah. I guess my experience was different because I installed apps that I preferred over the built-in ones and found a start menu replacement.

Wow. Sounds like Microsoft really nailed the experience on that one. Step 1: replace everything with something else.

I don't know what you mean.

There are pre-installed apps on OS X, Linux, and Windows. If you don't care for the pre-installed ones, you can install ones that you prefer. Same with the kind-of default 'controls' like the Start Menu, or the Dock, or what various Linux distros call their equivalents.

Windows 8/8.1 is Windows 7 with a few improvements and some "Metro" stuff that you can almost entirely avoid.

Needing to replace the start menu, which is an integral part of the desktop manager hardly qualifies as a standard practice for a consumer-grade operating system.

I found the shipped state of Windows 8 unusable as a power user so I needed to replace it as well. I consider that a complete failure.

   Needing to replace the start menu, which is an integral part of the desktop
   manager hardly qualifies as a standard practice for a consumer-grade operating system.

And I find the OS X Dock to be an utter abomination. I took advantage of the power I have to install software and installed a replacement.

   I found the shipped state of Windows 8 unusable as a power
   user so I needed to replace it as well.

Good on you.

Though, I still don't understand what the comment I was replying to meant by, "Step 1: replace everything with something else."

> Though, I still don't understand what the comment I was replying to meant by, "Step 1: replace everything with something else."

If you have to replace things like the "start menu", the built in pdf reader, the built in settings app, etc. etc. all because of the same UI design flaw it starts to feel like you are fighting with the OS to get to the level of productivity with which you were previously accustomed. If you feel the need to have to do that, then something is wrong with the design of the OS. Obviously this is a subjective opinion that can differ for each individual, but considering the horrible adoption rate of Windows 8 it seems likely that this is an opinion shared by many.

Objectively, forcing apps to run in fullscreen mode can be a huge waste of real estate for large computer monitors. The gestures required to summon the "charms" bar and the app switcher are completely unintuitive and awkward for a desktop UI. Things like that make far more sense for mobile devices, but it appears like Windows 8 tried to combine mobile and desktop UIs in a confusing, frustrating, an inefficient way. It's quite telling that these were major design errors as Windows 10 backtracks from that philosophy almost completely.

This type of complaint needs highlight the fact that "design flaws" are a matter of course for any major operating systems. Without doing that, it comes off as a fairly one-sided, myopic point of view.

Plenty of people hate the built-in components of OS X like the single Menu bar, the Dock, the Finder and lots of other things. That's why there have always been apps to (attempt to) replace them (unfortunately, Apple typically doesn't give you the same degree of control that Microsoft does).

Apple has also back-tracked on many things in OS X, like finally (finally!) giving people the ability to resize a window by any edge or corner (after years and years of telling everybody that having only "one true way" of doing it was somehow better. Just like "one mouse button" was better for everybody until it wasn't. Just like so many things with Apple. They seem to be fond of buttons with no text and just an icon these days. And I've seen a ton of people complain about it. Unfortunately, that would too difficult to replace with a third party app.)

The OS X Dock is the crappiest integral part of OS X and I'd love to replace it, but it simply cannot be done properly because Apple is the only one allowed to access a certain key API (the one that changes NSScreen.visibleFrame).

I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me, agreeing with me, or just providing additional commentary. I think OSX got some things right (cmd tab/cmd tilde behavior, app install/uninstall, spotlight), and other things less right.

Ultimately, I'm primarily a linux user who does cross platform dev so I end up dealing with everyone's crap (linux included, I'm looking at you X11).

When you call something a complete failure without also mentioning that other OSes are also considered complete failures by the same standard, it seems a little one-sided.

You have to add and replace all sorts of things to make OS X usable. Apple just added the ability to resize a window by it's edges a couple of years ago! And there still is no tiling. And the finder still sucks. But it's got the all-important Unix underpinnings and it's not from Micro$oft.

This can often apply to Linux, too. So every major desktop OS requires replacing stuff here and there. Not sure what conclusions we can draw from that, though.

The conclusion that you can draw from this is that the person I was replying to has no point.

It is true that this can apply to Linux as well. There are plenty of distros available that package as little as possible or provide choice during initial installation.

That is where I know that Linux wins over everything else. A huge number of applications, where there is always at least 1 good alternative. Microsoft and Apple can't compete on choice.

Don't you have to deal with Metro when the control panel applet or app you need is Metro-style? I have to see that screen when I hit the Super key to search for an application by name.

Control Panel accessed from the desktop in Windows 8 is the normal Control Panel from previous Windows versions.

Tried searching for control panel in the start menu and it launch the desktop control panel for me in 8.1

If I remember right it's because the Metro app was called "Settings" but the control panel still existed as well. I would always just do Win+E then click on the control panel icon in the ribbon.

I was trying to uninstall something and I hit the Super key and started typing "programs" and up came some Metro app that showed a few apps sorted by size. It didn't show all installed programs. For that I had to find the old Add/Remove Programs control panel which has a regular desktop interface.

IIRC, some settings were only accessible through the metro settings and not the normal control panel. (user config maybe?)

My "screw this" moment was when I discovered you needed an internet connection to play Minesweeper.

You don't. It works without internet. As Minesweeper is simply a program you can use the old one in Windows 10.

The Windows Store version does, IIRC.

> there may very well be a configuration setting to bypass it and go directly to the desktop

You're right, there is. The ability to configure this was one of the updates in 8.1 from 8.0 and was included presumably because of so many complaints in user feedback about it forcing you to click through the metro screen to get to desktop on every reboot.

These comments are always like this, but the 'aside from XXX its not bad!' is different every time, and writing off a horrible user experience like solitare not being in a freaking window is not a minor thing. Its a huge fucking annoyance

True - and every operating system has these little niggles that are huge annoyances to some people - c.f. the person who switched to Linux because one version of Minesweeper in Windows needs an internet connection.

But if solitaire not being in a window leads one to the conclusion that the solitaire-containing version of Windows is one of the worst desktop operating systems a person has used in the last 10 years - or that it's indicative of a horrible overall user experience... well then I think one is being at best hyperbolic, and at worst complaining about something that would get a person run out of a discussion about any other operating system - after you're given a selection of about a hundred different solitaire programs to try.

>True - and every operating system has these little niggles that are huge annoyances to some people - c.f. the person who switched to Linux because one version of Minesweeper in Windows needs an internet connection.

That was what 'caused the "screw this" moment', i.e. it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

So you don't mind that when you right click on something the contextual menu appears at the bottom of the screen, far far away on a 4k display. Or that if the system wants to tell you something, instead of a discreet notification on the bottom right of the screen, a big banner will cover half the screen while you are in the middle of something.

This system was full of moronic design decisions, only some of which have been reversed in windows 10.

Win8 wasn't properly finished. Vista failed but it was a massive change from Xp and they couldn't, I believe, tailor it properly. Win8 was a reactionary attempt at following multidevice OS / smartphone UX trend with the new found creativity of Metro, but really it felt like a demo, things were too big, too frail, too crude. Win10 doesn't convey that for me, they took the nice elements of Metro design language, adjusted and integrated them into a flat win7 UX.

From looking for front end jobs for the last few months, so far as I've seen, everyone not running C# is on a Mac

I haven't seen anyone at all running Node or Angular/React using a Windows environment

That's a very big long term problem for MS

> I haven't seen anyone at all running Node or Angular/React using a Windows environment

This is what we run in part of my company...

I don't see any issue with developing in NodeJS in Windows (except compiling native bindings and Visual Studio issues with long paths). Microsoft is incorporating more and more plugins in Visual Studio to help web developers. It is just a matter of time.

Their tooling is definitely pretty great, but the hard part is winning people back over if they somehow feel jaded. I think gaining loyalty once isn't as hard as trying to re-earn it. But people often love the underdog.

Windows an underdog? Please tell me another joke.

Owning the majority market share in general does not exclude it from being an underdog within a smaller subset of users. Now how that subset is defined is another issue altogether.

Obviously not but communities such the .NET one using React or Angular is underrepresented in HN.

That's just your filter bubble then. About half the developers I know personally run Windows, and only about 20% of them do C#.

FWIW, node.js and most frontend tooling (like webpack, gulp, etc) works excellent cross platform. It's very easy to build a frontend dev setup that works great on Linux, OSX and Windows without any hacks or testing if you choose to fully depend on Node for scripting. Use NPM scripts that call .js files instead of using .sh files and you're basically there. Node's somethingSomethingSync API is great for scripting anyway (plus, any frontend devs can now hack on your automation as well, without learning bash).

So there's good advantages to scripting your stuff in JS anyway, and an extra bonus is that you can be quite sure that everything will work out of the box on any platform. Node's cross platform support is really that good.

Well that might be because you are only looking at web development jobs. There's more to software development than making websites. Anyone making drivers/firmware will probably have to work on a Windows machine since a lot of hardware need to be compatible with Windows. The whole gaming industry is purely Windows. Most engineering software are written to run on Windows. Any "internal tool" in non-tech enteprise will probably be written for Windows.

C/C++ are still some of the most used language in the world, and a significant share of all c++/c software have been written on Windows machine.

My experience of Windows 8 is good, it is a little better than Windows 7.

But my experience of Windows 10 is so bad. The Edge browser is full of bugs, crash often, slow. Windows 10 itself is also full of bugs, these bugs are reported in the two days after the releasing of Windows 10, but most of them are still not fixed yet now.

   these bugs are reported in the two days after the releasing of Windows 10,
   but most of them are still not fixed yet now.

It was released a month ago. Does any operating system have that kind of turnaround?

Yes. You are right. But it was refreshing to see microsoft releasing patches for 10 within days of its initial release. I hope they maintain the momentum in future also.

I am on ubuntu (gnome ubuntu). Sometimes, I have a crash report. In general, the same day or the day after, I have an update of the component causing the crash.

That seems like a recipe for regression nightmares.

Do these fixes go into 'main' and get pushed out immediately to all Ubuntu users?

Or are you on the bleeding edge?

I am on Ubuntu gnome LTS. This is half bleeding edge ;-)

My two cents:

- My notebook battery (X220) lasts ~60% less than before

- USB 3.0 port working as a 2.0 one

- The upgrade process failed with my Office 2013. It is constantly trying to install some package when I go to the Outlook search box and never finishes successfully. Microsoft Answers solutions don't work (as usual).

- The metro widgets are not minimalist, they are incomplete. Now it takes three clicks to connect to my VPN instead of just one (starting from the same place)

- I can't easily disconnect the Windows updates.

- I was lucky not following the recommended express settings, I feel owned by Microsoft.

The good things? UI responsiveness and multiple virtual desktops. I am seriously thinking about downgrading to Windows 7 or buying a Windows 10 "certified" notebook.

I know this is going to sound like gratuitous snark but it's crazy that "multiple virtual desktops" are considered a plus in 2015. It's quite telling about the fact that Windows is not a developer platform anymore.

Virtual desktops have been a free download since the last century. Very few people use them, so there was never much point in shipping them with the OS. Not sure there is now.... https://www.brandwatch.com/2015/08/react-why-thousands-of-pe...

And the idea that Windows is not a developer platform is extremely ill-informed....

The sysinternals virtual desktops free software is highly buggy (crashes on creating new desktop many times when connected to external monitor needing a reboot), hogs memory, never worked well with the Windows 8.1 start menu, never worked well with Windows Store Apps and Alt-Tab. I am glad that virtual desktops are now natively supported.

Mmm, Desktops v2 seemed to work OK, though I never tried it in Windows 8. And there were always third-party alternatives. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881

I am glad that virtual desktops are now natively supported.

No argument there ;-)

Of course it is Snark. The advantages of Multiple virtual desktops diminish in a multi-monitor environment, which most of the developers use any way.

I would disagree with that. Virtual desktops also offer something priceless: the ability to group applications semantically and reducing the friction in finding said applications (i.e. if I need my browser, I know it's always on desktop 2, I don't have to cycle or anything). I agree that having a multi-monitor is a great step in that direction, but it's not quite the same in my opinion.

Note that Microsoft has offered multiple virtual desktops in the past (in the form of what I think was called Power Toys), but never integrated that in their OS.

I forget to add the inconsistent icons than the worse UX people will notice.

> Speaking of updates, Windows 10 no longer offers a way to disable Windows Updates in the settings page. Pro will let you defer feature updates, but not security updates, and Enterprise versions will offer a long term servicing branch option, but the goal here is to keep Windows up to date going forward.

This is kind of a big deal. I have had Windows Update brake things in the past, and I also have a limited internet connection during the day time. It's disappointing that this can not be disabled, and ran at will, when I am good and ready to deal with the potential screwups.

While I recommend a switch to Linux/Mac, you can make updates behave like Win7 by opening "Edit Group Policies" in the start search. Then look for Windows Updates for the option.

Without this done windows will actually download updates automatically while you are ingame or something else network sensitive, it's so fucking stupid.

Is that setting available in Win10 Pro, or just enterprise?

Enterprise. Pro has the 'delay till we say it's time' option.

Thats wrong. Pro lets you choose not to download it indefinitely with the option I described.

Unless you're implying it auto-downloads after a few weeks, I wouldn't know.

AFAIK you can disable it but it will enable it automatically after a while again, so it's not indefinitely disabled.

> no longer offers a way to disable Windows Updates

While you may be in the 0.01% of users who can intelligently determine which updates to install, consider all the botnets and preventable security exploits that exist because people disabled windows updates.

The entire Windows anti-virus industry thrives mostly because of unpatched machines (also because of earlier Windows insecure by default settings).

So while I don't use Windows, I'm very glad that Windows is forcing the masses to update.

The Microsoft Jackpot game discussed on page 6 is sickening. Why is Microsoft publishing a shoddy free-to-play slot machine game that offers in-app purchases in $200 increments? It casts a bad light on both their store and their new OS.

Almost as bad as making solitare a subscription game....

Which it isn't. It's free to play but ad-supported, just like most other free apps downloaded from online stores.

Nothing stops you from getting a desktop version, or even retrieving the code from an earlier version of Windows.

It has an IAP option to remove ads that you don't see unless you're using features which are new to this version of Solitaire.

I'd prefer it not to have game play interrupting ads obviously (though frankly I've only used it to play Freecell so I haven't seen them anyway), but trying to paint it as a subscription game is ludicrous.

OK, since everyone's saying "now's the time to switch to Linux" - would I be able to switch yet?

Requisites:

1) Adobe Creative Cloud working with no performance loss. Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere are probably the most key elements. 2) 3DSMax and Motionbuilder usable under Linux. I could switch to Maya from Max if absolutely necessary. 3) 99.5% of games playable on Linux, including Blizzard stuff, FFXIV. 4) Unreal Engine 4 and Unity development possible without productivity loss compared to Windows. 5) Evernote and Skype working.

Thinking about it, that's pretty much it.

Would that be doable?

No.

Thanks!

You have named a lot of applications that are native to Windows only. You might be able to get them working on Linux using WINE, but I can tell you from my experience that on Fedora 21 Blizzard games are difficult if not impossible to get working.

I don't have experience wit the other applications you mentioned.

Thanks - worth knowing.

I've never had problems running blizz games in wine

A more appropriate answer is "switch to *nix". I'm in the same case as you, I do engineering and design equally and I also need CC and 3D soft (I switched 3DS for Cinema4D), etc. I use OSX for the design stuff and I have an ubuntu partition via bootcamp. I also have many others Linux and Android machines via virtualbox/vagrant (but those are mainly for dev + UI design).

So, if you're on win, sincerely I'd buy a mac, but I'd also start playing with Linux in another partition. It's been 10+ years since I completely abandoned win. Never looked back.

The cost of switching to Mac seems a bit extreme - for a really high-performance 3D box I'd be looking at whole-number multiples of the cost of my existing workstation, as far as I'm aware. Otherwise I'd be considering it.

While the upfront cost is high Macs hold their value better than any other computer I've ever used and are SUPER easy to resale. So while you pay more you will be able to sell it for way more than a windows computer.

The honest answer: No.

No, but you could switch to BSD by way of Mac OS.

Tl;dr: Yes, with a bit of effort and maybe some compromises. A lot of software/games do have native Linux versions these days, and for those that don't, there is Wine, which does a very good job of running a lot of Windows software/games on Linux, but with has varying levels of success. Check https://appdb.winehq.org to see how well it'll work for things. A lot of it depends on how flexible you're willing to be - there are a lot of decent alternatives for every task on Linux, but if you require specific software it will make things harder.

Blizzard games work very well in Wine with minimal effort (I play SC2 and HotS regularly). FFXIV can take some more effort and can be a bit laggy in busy areas, but I also play it regularly and have no issues playing through raids and endgame content.

More generally, you won't be able to play 99.5% of games, particularly new releases, mainly due to wine lacking DX10+ support. However, most of indie games and a good portion of AAA games are released with native Linux support these days, and wine will run most windows games based on DX9 or lower. Basically, there are plenty of great games to occupy your time on Linux, but if you want to play every new AAA release then you likely be disappointed.

Unity editor was released for Linux yesterday, but still in beta. Unreal Engine 4 editor can be compiled and is usable for Linux but is not officially stable/released yet.

Skype has an official native linux version. The UI is old compared to the Windows version but I don't think it's lacking any significant features.

Evernote is listed as running perfectly in Wine. There are also some unofficial open source clients, and alternatives that have similar functionality. I'm not familiar with this so can't say for sure, but it looks like there should be a number of options here.

The graphics software is likely to be the biggest issue, and is the main area where Linux is still lacking. Maya and Motionbuilder run on Linux. There's no native Linux versions of 3DS Max or Adobe software, and they don't run particularly well in wine (likely to be buggy, slow, or broken for some features). The only likely solution besides dual booting is using GPU passthrough on a windows VM, though this is complicated to set up and very hardware dependent. I made a few other posts in this thread with more info about this.

>One of my favorite features that has come to Windows 10 is the ability to scroll an inactive window. Prior to Windows 10, and assuming you were not running a third party utility which enabled this, in order to scroll a window you had to first select it.

The author might be referring to KatMouse[0] here. It a fantastic little program, always one of my first installs when I roll out a new system.

[0] http://ehiti.de/katmouse/

Another option is: Windows has had built-in support for focus-follows-mouse since at least Windows 2000. (Enabling it means that keyboard input also goes to the window under the cursor, natch. But I prefer that: I find it dramatically reduces the amount of clicking I do.)

Focus-follows-mouse can be enabled by editing the registry, or using a utility such as the (small) xmouse-controls: https://github.com/joelpurra/xmouse-controls.

Yeah, Katmouse, after using OSX, is one of the things I MUST have. Now I need to find a Popclip (osx) for Windows.

I couldn't be happier with Windows 10. I actually went out and bought a windows phone and ditched my iPhone. I might be crazy, but I feel like this is the right direction of the company. They also realized that no one is going to pay for software so they need to make revenue via advertising and premium features.

They also realized that no one is going to pay for software so they need to make revenue via advertising and premium features.

The last few decades of Microsoft's trading history would seem to disagree.

This is why their new strategy seems so odd to me. They seemed to have a solid business model, whose main downside was that as people bought PCs less often they wouldn't sell as many copies of Windows preinstalled on new machines.

They could have compensated by moving to a subscription model for very long term support, which is something they have generally always done much better than anyone else in the field.

They could have used their combined back office/front office/mobile capabilities -- a combination of strengths almost unique in the industry -- to push a more business/professional/power user friendly alternative to just shoving everything into the cloud and reducing software to lightweight apps that are a shadow of what traditional desktop applications have been.

Instead, they seem to be trying to out-Google Google and out-Apple Apple. It's almost like they've given up and now they just dreaming of maybe, one day, being able to take on the awesome development capabilities of those three guys eating Ramen in a parent's basement as they crank out yet another small business app in a couple of months and charge a $19.99/mo subscription for it.

I think plenty of people will pay for good software. I just don't think Microsoft thinks those people are its market any more, and that's sad.

Windows 10 doesn't introduce a new strategy and doesn't involve a new business model. Microsoft is simply offering a free upgrade to earlier paid-for versions, partly to reduce market fragmentation and partly to try to create a market for new Windows Runtime apps distributed from the Windows Store.

Windows Runtime apps and the Windows Store were introduced with Windows 8. However, we now have "Universal" apps that are meant to run on smartphones, tablets, 2-in-1s, laptops, desktops etc, and the Xbox One games console.

I wasn't referring only to Windows 10 with the "new strategy" comments. Microsoft have been pushing away from traditional server/workstation software towards more on-line services, consumption over creation, and mysterious cloudy things for the past few years, with Windows 8 and Office 365 for example, as well as purely cloud-based services like OneDrive. But Windows 10 seems to be the betting-the-farm move on the OS side, with a degree of permanent connectivity and reliance on remote services for some of its basic operations that is new, and a degree of compulsory updating and privacy intrusion that is also far beyond any previous Windows version.

Nothing about this seems like something I want as a user, but in this discussion my point is that very little about it seems like something I'd want if I were Microsoft either. It's playing away from their strengths and proven successes, and into the two fields (on-line services and mobile) where they have consistently lagged behind and had their lunch eaten by other big players.

Yes, you're right: Microsoft has been pushing into "mysterious cloudy things for the past few years, with Windows 8 and Office 365". Windows 10 isn't fundamentally different from Windows 8 in that regard: the only new thing is Cortana, which came from Windows Phone, and which is optional.

Apple and Google haven't crossed this river yet because they don't offer versions of Siri or Google Now to PC users.

It's playing away from their strengths and proven successes, and into the two fields (on-line services and mobile) where they have consistently lagged behind and had their lunch eaten by other big players.

Nadella says "Mobile first, cloud first" because that's where the market is going. So far it's doing well with Azure (which is second to AWS) and Office 365 (which is overtaking or has overtaken Google). Both Outlook.com and OneDrive work well. Microsoft also has a couple of dozen apps on both Android and iOS, which makes it more cross-platform than either Apple or Google.

Sure, it has a very long way to go. On the other hand, it has a strong cross-platform strategy with very clear goals. It also has a track-record for coming from behind and beating incumbents (albeit not recently, unless you count Xbox).

reliance on remote services for some of its basic operations that is new, and a degree of compulsory updating

It has run Windows Update for a long time. The only real difference is that Windows Update now delivers both patches and improved features, instead of just patches.

This is a bit ahead of the competition (what's innovation for?) but smartphone users are familiar with having apps updated automatically on a regular basis. It happens almost daily on my Android phone.

We're talking about the consumer branch of Windows 10 here, and most consumers don't want to look after their PCs, even if they had the skills, which they don't.

Otherwise, re the hysteria about "privacy intrusion" see http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-microsoft-is-not-spying-on-y...

PS Wish I could give you an extra upvote for correct use of English in "the past few years". ;-)

It's a relative scale, though. Google Docs, or whatever we're calling it this week, is basically a toy. It's useful enough for what it does, but completely unsuitable for a lot of professional or otherwise demanding work because it lacks so much in both features and usability. Overtaking a toy version of your flagship application isn't particularly impressive.

Comparing Office 365 against Google Docs also seems to be something of an apples-to-oranges comparison anyway. What is the market share of any on-line office suite compared to the desktop Office powerhouse? I can't immediately find recent figures searching as I write this, but based on not-too-long-ago data the answer appears to be tiny.

On the other hand, it has a strong cross-platform strategy with very clear goals. It also has a track-record for coming from behind and beating incumbents (albeit not recently, unless you count Xbox).

I see things rather differently.

For one thing, I don't think Microsoft's cross-platform strategy is strong at all. They seem to be trying to make all devices work the same way, but many of those devices are fundamentally different. The result is all too often the same as a lot of "mobile first" web design: least common denominator thinking and poor usability in many of the environments it's used in. See also: criticism of Windows 8's excessively touch-friendly UI by just about everyone who had a keyboard and mouse on their computer.

As for coming from behind and beating incumbents... I'm honestly struggling to think of good examples of that. The Microsoft history I recall seems to be full of failures, from Bing to successive mobile operating systems. Even the Xbox programme, which you mentioned as a positive example, actually contributed to MS losing billions in its first few years, while today the Xbox One remains far behind the PS4 in current gen console market share.

The only real difference is that Windows Update now delivers both patches and improved features, instead of just patches.

Well, there is that little "you can't opt out" issue.

This is a bit ahead of the competition (what's innovation for?) but smartphone users are familiar with having apps updated automatically on a regular basis.

And in my experience, it's hard to find any of them that actually like it, not least because people keep pushing out updates that change UIs in unwanted ways, cripple performance, or outright break the phone. There seem to be few things that rile my less technical friends and family more than their systems changing (and sometimes breaking) when they didn't ask them to. See also: the failure of dynamically changing menus that were in Microsoft's own Office suite for a while, and attendant tech support nightmares, not to mention the users of web apps and other subscription software taking to Twitter and Facebook to complain every time something important drops out.

As things stand, I don't see this trend lasting as the mainstream option for more than a few years, even with industry momentum and commercial incentives behind it. There's just too much customer-hostile about it both under the hood and in your face. The marketing says you get better security and the latest features sooner. The reality can all too often be substandard software shipped before it was ready because it can just be patched later, frequent rearrangement of UIs that no-one really wanted, uncertainty every time you fire up your software about whether it will work today, and perhaps worst of all, fewer substantial new features, because why bother innovating when your customers are already locked in anyway?

We're talking about the consumer branch of Windows 10 here

We are? As far as I can see, most of what's being said in this discussion is just as applicable to Pro, which means it also applies to power users and most small to medium businesses.

Otherwise, re the hysteria about "privacy intrusion" see

The thing is, I've seen several waves of this. First there were the "It's all good" reviews. Then there were the panic-stricken "Privacy is dead, security is dead" responses. Then there were the rationalising "No they're not" posts like the one you linked to there.

It's true that some of the concerns were overstated. However, it also remains fundamentally true that Microsoft's Windows 10 privacy policy is vague and open-ended in its scope, and that the default Windows privacy settings will send large amounts of data to Microsoft, much of which they would not previously have received, and potentially including sensitive information. It is also likely that many users won't be aware of the numerous settings on numerous screens they would need to turn off to restore previous levels of privacy, partly because it's pretty much all opt-out, and partly because in some cases the installer outright lies (e.g., on the telemetry question).

However, the real debate-ender for me is that even if every privacy criticism were completely fabricated and false today, with compulsory updates and a vague privacy policy there is no guarantee that they won't become true tomorrow. The only reason to trust that it won't is trust that Microsoft won't make changes you don't like. And that's the same Microsoft that has just removed the ability to block updates (something only relevant to power users if Microsoft wants to force an update that the user doesn't want), the same Microsoft that is already relying on absurd levels of complexity and dark patterns to dissuade users from opting out of the existing privacy intrusions in Windows 10, and the same Microsoft that has repeatedly abused the Windows Update process for users of earlier Windows versions in recent months to push out telemetry (essentially, spyware) updates, nagging advertising messages, and so on.

> They also realized that no one is going to pay for software so they need to make revenue via advertising and premium features.

They might want to have a word with JetBrains or Adobe, then...

why I use Windows 10 on my desktop for daily work:

- best hardware support, no driver problems for example with my graphics card or thinkpad dock

- updates etc. just work without any configurations or reading manuals

- Visual Studio is yet only available to Windows, whereas it evolves to the most compelling cross platform development tool (xamarin, universal apps, android and ios support)

- productive cortana search

- fast, even on old hardware

- the desktop is much more faster and fluent than e.g. gnome

- I don't care sending over metrics to Microsoft, this is needed to make software better

- I can see edge evolve

I use linux vms on some severs where I need to scale things. But it has only one reason: fast deployment times because of smaller os images.

I know this may seem petty, but my biggest problem with Windows 10 is that it is ugly. Microsoft: Please bring back window title bar and borders with that lovely flat translucent style.

it's not that petty - having multiple windows open in Windows 8 literally hurt my eyes.

It's hard to switch between them and find what you need when everything looks the same at a quick glance. Goddamn flat design, it's stupid and I can't wait until everyone does another 180 and goes back to a more sane UI.

Now, Windows 10 is supposed to be a bit improved, but it still looks more or less the same as 8...

I agree. It's mixing different styles from different eras (some icons, especially in the device manager thingy feel awfully XP-ish or even earlier period), making the whole thing non visually consistent and quite ugly.

Been a very solid upgrade for me.

I never minded Windows 8.1 as much as most people did. Windows 10 is actually a great improvement over Windows 7 which is something I never thought would happen given the realities of the PC market today. But somehow they managed it.

Kudos.

Why do GUI designers hate sub-menus? Note that the new Start menu doesn't really have sub-menus, it's just one big expandable menu. It falls in this general trend of getting rid of sub-menus and replacing them with less efficient alternatives. It annoys me greatly.

Most users won't use tree strcutures. If you don't give them a flat structure, they won't use it. Look at how many people keep all of their files directly on their Desktop.

Be sure to actually follow the links at the bottom; I found the article layout so subtle that I almost thought it was done on the first page.

> One of my favorite features that has come to Windows 10 is the ability to scroll an inactive window.

That's one of the things that annoy me when using Windows (on someone else's computer). That was fast, Microsoft. Linux had it for a long while already.

Yeah OS X has this for a while as well and you don't realize how awesome it is until you've had it for a while and then gone back to Windows for something.

I am still undecided about Windows 10. I have been running it as my primary OS since release day and while it isn't bad I don't really see any benefit to it either.

Cortana isn't as helpful on my computer as it is on my phone but even then I don't really care about talking to my devices. The most helpful it has been is reminders, being able to say "remind me to call John at 5pm" is kinda nice.

Multiple desktops are very goofy on Windows 10. Not as good as on Linux or even OS X.

Microsoft's built in apps for media are pathetic still.

There are many annoying things also such as uninstall store apps constantly reinstall such as 3D Builder, Get Skype and Get Office. Even after I have Office installed!! Selecting a new Note from the Action Centre can only load the gimped built in OneNote not the full OneNote that is part of Office. Same with clicking the Surface Pen.

The start menu is seriously limited in where I can put things. I can't really personalise it much beyond putting tiles in the designated areas.

Edge is pretty awful with its current feature set.

Basically Windows 10 was released 6 months too early. I don't really understand why they were so desperate to release in July? Surely it would have made more sense to push back to October (Threshold 2 release window) or maybe even into 2016 when they can have a proper v1 version of Edge and more features in things like Groove Music which lacks even basic library management features like editing a songs tags.

Then we have the UI which is an inconsistent mess. Different styles all over the place.

So reading all this you would think I hate Windows 10 but I don't. I am disappointed with it as is but I am still using it over Windows 8.1 although it is more because it isn't worse than 8.1. At least not enough so to fall back to it anyway. It doesn't really give me anything amazing over 8.1 though.

I should add that I am not a Windows Store app user. I fucking hate how bland and limited most store apps are. There is no simple way to store app settings in a transportable way such as an ini file on a pen drive, for that you need to stick with old Win32 portable apps. For a tech professional/power user store apps are horrible.

Can you elaborate on multiple desktops? That was the one feature for which I was going to do the upgrade.

My biggest issue is I can't right click on the title bar of an app and send it to another desktop. I have to open the Task View and move it that way. Not very user friendly.

This is what annoys me too. And you can't drag around the windows when in expose like Gnome or OSX let you do.

Nope. It is a rather gimped implementation sadly but that is pretty much true of Windows 10 in general. Lots of good ideas about 30% implemented.

You're right in saying that it would have been a better release if they'd waited for Threshold 2, but that's different from saying it would have been better to release it then.

July 29 hit the back-to-school sales market, and Microsoft must have calculated that OEMs would sell more Windows 10 PCs than they would have sold Windows 8.1 PCs.

So Windows 10 didn't have to be technically perfect, it just had to be more marketable than Windows 8.1, which it is.

The move to continuous updating helped, of course. Microsoft wouldn't have been able to release Windows 10 in its July 29 state if that had meant committing to shipping it in the same state for several years.

Regarding the virtual desktops: They sadly remain useless since you can't have one program occupy multiple/all desktops. Any program can only ever be on one single virtual desktop.

really? You can't open 2 browser windows and put them in different desktops?

yes you can. Maybe he/she is talking about the same window instance?

Yes. That.

Try Dexpot - still the best virtual desktop manager for Windows :-)

Wow, that makes it "useless"?? Sounds like a very esoteric and unusual working style to me.

I agree. i3 does not really have that capability and lots of people (myself included) are very happy with it.

i3 is what I run in linux, and the user flow for it vs 'virtual desktops' in a more conventional desktop are too different to compare like that.

Some window managers on linux describe this as "sticky windows".

If someone has programs open for multiple different tasks, and also runs a [ chat program/music player/calendar/email watcher/network monitor/temperature monitor/generic note-taking program/etc.etc.etc. ] on a second monitor (or if one's monitor is big enough, on some empty space there), then there is no reason whatsoever to use virtual desktops right now.

This is due to the inability to keep watch on any of these "global state" programs without switching between desktops, since the user now is forced to actively switch to look at them, instead of just being able to look to the left.

Is that still esoteric and unusual to you?

I don't know win 10, I use xmonad. There, virtual desktops are 1 per monitor by default. It sounds like what you are saying is that windows virtual desktops span all of your monitors. Is that right? If so, I agree that is lame.

Thanks for asking that, the confusion people had with my complaint makes sense now. Yes, Windows 10 virtual desktops spans all screens attached. You can't just switch per-screen; and there are no sticky windows.

(Although windows that do not have taskbar entries do stick around, like rainlendar, or dumeter.)

OK, I get it. I misunderstood what you were complaining about.

I won't insult you by asking "Why would you ever want that?", because we all have our reasons. But, you have to realize, most people don't do this. So, useless to you is still pretty useful for most people.

We have to use Windows because tools such as Solidworks, Altium Designer and a gaggle of other FEA, CAM and engineering tools pretty much leave us no options. For everything else it's a VM running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

The combination works really well on beefy development machines with three large monitors, tons of memory and multiple (4 to 5) hard drives.

This actually is a really nice environment to work on because you can seamlessly choose which tools work best on which platform and optimize your process accordingly. For example, I can use Excel under Windows to prepare data to then export into a PostgreSQL database using Python on the Ubuntu virtual machine. Really slick.

I also use a Windows 7 machine with multiple monitors and Linux VMs for development. I also mount a number of Samba folders from a separate Linux server and generally have an ssh terminal open to it as well. Agreed that it's a nice environment. Basically the polish of Windows without sacrificing the power^ of Linux.

^I'm sure most or all of what I do in Linux could be done in Windows, but like most developers I'm far more familiar with *nix tooling than Windows equivalents.

For web development being on linux is just natural. I feel it is the right choice.

On HN when someone says "development" it is usually taken to mean "web development". Let's not forget there are worlds outside that domain, like embedded software and hardware where being on Windows makes a lot of sense due to the tools.

Totally. I did mean web development now, but previously I was an electrical engineer, so I've definitely spent some time with Altium. :)

Windows 10 is just another example of the trend in all operating systems. It came out a little more buggy than what used to be considered acceptable. New features are added that are unpolished and made at the expense of privacy or usability. Even thou people hated Vista, under the hood there was a lot of technical improvements to be happy about. Windows 10 really is just hinging on directx 10.

Sadly this trend is there with Apple as well. No one really uses the family ipad2 anymore since we upgraded to ios8.

I think I just witnessed the day Hacker News died. This thread is appalling, much like the article. I'm no Windows apologist, but the article was a ramble about windows 8 with a paragraph tacked on the end, and the comments here are even less relevant.

Yes, Windows 10 does do more with your data than any previous version of Windows, but that is not always a bad thing.

Really? What a blabla article, with no investigative journalims. Have they analysed the encrypted (SSL) data traffic to dozens of domains? Of course not. Such a soviet kind of operating system isn't well regarded in the land of the free(dom). And there are no reports that more than 10 recent Win7&8 updates ship with many spy&tracking features. An unheard offensive tactics that shows Microsoft evil attempt.

   Really? What a blabla article, with no investigative journalims. Have they
   analysed the encrypted (SSL) data traffic to dozens of domains? Of course not.

Has anyone, or is this just FUD?

I recently got a Mac - I'm typing this in OS X, so how does Windows 10 compare to OS X, out of curiosity?

Linux certainly wins on this point, though. Unless Ubuntu has telemetry?

It does, sort of. http://www.zdnet.com/article/shuttleworth-defends-ubuntu-lin...

It did.

Yes that was a really stupid move, thankfully they seem to be changing this to opt-in rather than opt-out.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/03/ubuntu-make-amazon-produc...

Use a firewall and watch the traffic. As the traffic is encrypted you cannot see the raw data but the various domains.

In iOS, Android and Ubuntu Linux the phone-home feature(s) can be easily deactivated, that's the point.

    As the traffic is encrypted you cannot see the raw data but
    the various domains.

iOS, Android, and Ubuntu also encrypt the telemetry traffic for the same reason: security.

Just like Windows.

If they didn't encrypt it, then anyone on the same network - such as the Wi-Fi at your local Starbucks - could see your OS and programs phoning home.

This is not some evil Microsoft conspiracy: it is the cost of doing business.

   In iOS, Android and Ubuntu Linux the phone-home feature(s)
   can be easily deactivated, that's the point.

Can you disable every phone-home feature on those OSes?

Which features can't be disabled on Windows 10?

I'm legitimately curious because I have Windows 7 and am contemplating the upgrade.

Funny that you say that - even Russia doesn't want Windows 10 as the OS for government institutions because it's so intrusive: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...

> Such a soviet kind of operating system isn't well regarded in the land of the free

Land of the free? have you been living under a rock? "Land of the free" where everything you do is being spied on by a government agency funded with your tax dollars.

It's a blog.

Windows 10 impressed me, but overall, I miss those POSIX-like conventions.

I miss how in OS X, I can at least open up a terminal and go to shop. cd / mkdir / tmux / vim

I'm disappointed by the call homes.

The lack of a package manager. Chocolate GUI is kind of a joke. Even Synaptic could queue multiple packages back in 2000.

MSFT promised an SSH client. It's nowhere to be found.

Overall, I'd rather fork over the cash and get a POSIX-like environment with OS X. If not, Fedora and Ubuntu are so featureful.

They explicitly said that the SSH stuff would not be ready in time for the Win 10 launch when it was first announced.

>The lack of a package manager

maybe soon?

http://www.howtogeek.com/200334/windows-10-includes-a-linux-...

The thing is OneGet isn't a package manager, it is an automated installer.

It is as shitty as the unity interface from ubuntu.

But for stupid zealotishs reasons people will develop a Stockholm syndroma and will find the new UI un/correct according to the terrorists kidnapping them.

I still think the Windows 7 UI was one of the best desktop UXs made to date... Windows 10 is less annoying with the stupid web search disabled. WTF would an application with a start menu entry not come up before a web searched term, ruins the UI... At least Unity does/did better on that.

With it disabled, my workflow is mostly the same.. apps I use the most are pinned to the dock/taskbar, and anything else I hit the meta/super/win key, then type what I want and hit enter. It pretty much works everywhere (except osx).

Win 7 was excellent. It was the OS with the best defaults and features out of the box (even now, but specially for the time). Very little fiddling around was needed.

Win 8 made me switch to OSX. No regrets, but I miss Win 7 sometimes.

A review? Umpteen billion lines of code, vast new features, privacy issues, tens of thousands of man hours ... and this "reviewer" cannot get past the GUI.

I thought the review was extremely detailed and got into many aspects of the OS outside of the GUI. Details of DirectX12 and graphics performance in general, comparisons across a number of performance metrics with Windows 8, details on all the major built-in applications, info on new wifi features, data syncing, new login options... and those are only the ones that immediately come to mind.

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