Microsoft Announces Windows 10 Pro for Workstations | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Announces Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

blogs.windows.com

81 pointsrbanffy168 comments

Will this address the absurd automatic updates/reboot "feature"? I've had the experience multiple times where a step away for a few minutes and come back to a blank desktop, even during the "active hours" period. This is especially infuriating when I do most of my work in a vbox slackware VM and win10 is just a host that I want to stay out of the way; instead I lose my entire current state. This seems like a major defect for either a "Pro" or "Pro for Workstations" version

Has anyone found a reliable way to disable automatic reboots for Windows 10 Pro? My registry mods have all eventually stopped working.

I set the group policy to ask the user before installation and never had a problem. It still wants to reboot after you install the update, but since it only installs the update when you tell it to it's effectively manual control.

I seem to recall there's a way to do this with group policy editor. I'd expect this to be more supported/proper than via the registry. But I can't remember where in group policy the setting is found, and am purely speculating at its reliability.

For reference, this SO post has the steps: https://superuser.com/questions/957267/how-to-disable-automa...

Thanks. Would happily pay $5 for someone to write a current-Windows UI for enabling and disabling this.

Rebooting your computer daily will do the trick. Either shut it down at the end of the day, or give it a reboot. It will do its thing and leave you alone for the next 24 hours.

Before you downvote me, which many of you have done already for some reason, please keep in mind that this advice actually works. It's not my decision to have things work like this. That's on Microsoft. But it does work, and is legitimate advice.

Sounds like a Windows 98 advice...

It works this way in Windows 10. I do not approve of it, but it does work and is the simplest way. Just turn your computer off at night and Microsoft will be happy.

I didn't

Problem: I do not like that the computer reboots automatically.

Solution: Reboot computer manually.

It's simple fact that Windows needs to reboot to install updates. Does it suck? Yes! Is it a necessary part of life if you choose to use Windows? Also yes.

People seem to complain about Windows rebooting outside of their control. This fixes that problem, and it's not like most people need their computer to be on when they're asleep anyway.

I get around this by having my machine back up to our NAS each night and shutting down when finished. Cuts down on the power bill too.

It's also a part of life on my Macs, just not as often since it seems like they don't get updates as often as my Windows machines.

Macs don't reboot without you taking an action if you have automatic update installation disabled. You have to click a button to apply the updates after which it will reboot. But it tells you this in the dialog where you agree to apply the updates. Windows just applies them and reboots when you're not actively using the machine.

I wasn't responding to that, I was responding to the part about "OS needs to reboot to install updates" being a part of life - it definitely ain't just a Windows thing.

Anyway, I'm glad that Windows restarts for me when I'm sleeping and I wish my Macs would do the same. It's pretty easy to avoid having it restart at the wrong time - you just go into the Settings and tell Windows what your active hours are. They let you enter a time range of up to 18 hours.

The problem is that windows will at some point start ignoring your active hours. This seems to happen if you put it to sleep after you're done working, so it's always sleeping/hibernating while outside of the active hours. This understandably pisses people off.

My PCs wake up and perform the updates. Maybe that's the problem with laptops when they're not plugged in or something but I have not experienced it.

Except for us crazy individuals that need the computer on for uninterrupted data processing. I have Windows only software that can take two weeks to complete a dataset. There is no intermediate data backup, so if the job is killed, I have to start over. My only reliable option has been to keep it off the network.

You're not a regular end user. The Microsoft way is for you to get the more expensive license so you can use group policies to adjust this behavior.

...which is kind of why people are upset. Things that were possible, i.e. total control over when PC's install updates and how they do them, are now not unless you pony up for a more expensive license. We're not talking Bitlocker or anything here, we're talking control over the system.

I agree it's not a typical use case, but it was an understood use case for a very long time. My only real beef with Windows 10 is the overly aggressive update system.

I understand and agree that it's bullshit. But for normal end users it works fine.

And part of me does think that I prefer the majority of the clueless end users to be forced to update. Having to support outdated operating systems and browsers is pretty horrible. And making it harder for botnets to spread is also a pretty good thing.

But yes, there should just be a simple setting. Sadly there isn't so we're left to resorting to shitty workarounds.

But realistically the clueless "normal" end users who should update automatically don't know about group policies and aren't going to use them, not even by mistake.

You'd be surprised. A user who is annoyed at their computer shutting off while they're gaming because they kept it on for a few days will Google. Find some instructions and blindly follows them. Then they forget about that because they went back to their game. Fast forward a few months and their computer is part of a botnet and we're all worse off.

^ Exactly. If you don't make it user friendly, especially Windows users will track down a user-unfriendly way to do whatever they feel they need to do. Now you've got end users playing in your registry and group policy, to accomplish a thing that should've been doable with a dropdown select.

I used to regularly see advice shared around that if you got an SSL warning in Chrome when trying to visit Facebook, to just type "DANGER" in the keyboard, and everything would work again. I believe Google changed the workaround after a while because it was never intended to be used as a way for people to dismiss critical warnings without any real understanding of the risks.

I believe they changed the keyword to "badidea".

> And part of me does think that I prefer the majority of the clueless end users to be forced to update. Having to support outdated operating systems and browsers is pretty horrible. And making it harder for botnets to spread is also a pretty good thing.

So make it updatable without a system reboot? Why does Windows need to reboot for standard security updates? Hell, most times when Windows says I need to reboot, simply restarting the service(s) that have been updated accomplishes the same thing.

It's not like Microsoft doesn't have control over the entire codebase. Unix applies security patches all the time without restarting, and has for a decade. Why can't MS make this work? TBH, to me it feels like good old laziness. A system reboot has been the go-to to address Windows' lack of stability and quality since freaking 3.1. Reboot reboot reboot, that's all MS ever has for a solution.

> So make it updatable without a system reboot?

Even better, solve the problem Apple solved 5 years ago and make reboots seamlessly return to the pre-reboot state (or at least try).

I've been impressed with that actually, works very well.

I have deactivated the auto update restart logic by gpo policy (locally) and just hit escape on the update summary when it's done downloading.

Now they just blue screen it every month and it does the update when you're forced to restart it.

Really pathetic considering I had windows 8.1 pro on it before with 3+ months uptime and no need to restart beyond 3rd party software requiring it or drivers/hardware.

They bluescreen it? Or maybe the drivers are different (or your hardware is broken)? I see no regular bluescreens on Windows 10 devices.

On both my windows 10 systems (one is a Dell T7910 which is fully supported, the other a vaio ultrabook) they exhibit this behavior so I find it difficult to correlate that to hardware or drivers.

> I have Windows only software that can take two weeks to complete a dataset

What kind of sadistic monster wrote this?

Bet you $5 it's an R script.

R isn't Windows-only.

Some modules are windows only, I've seen many R pipelines that can only run on windows. Azure has capitalized on this.

Where advice would you offer to someone with long-running R-Scripts? Spark?

Spark and EMR spot instances for sure.

This is a prime use case for a workstation and it's hard for me to believe that Microsoft didn't expose better control over updates.

More than a few times, I've come to work, wiggled my mouse and been greeted with a blank desktop. It's soooo frustrating that I need to spend the first 15 minutes of my day launching applications, loading projects, digging up notes, etc... when it was all arranged perfectly just a few hours ago. Windows can figure out my likely work hours. How hard would it be for them to pop up a reminder that the machine will be rebooted overnight and give me some options?

On top of that, after the reboot, Microsoft reinstalls all the bloat that I removed -- money, bing, xbox, groove, contacts, email, weather, maps, news, and others. All of them have bugs, all consumer resources, and all probably make my machine less secure.

Oh yeah. On top of the fresh bloat it also reset lots of registry entries and other hidden features. Not a fan of that.

Very true. When I see things like the contacts app reappear, I know it's time to go through the privacy settings because Microsoft invariably resets many of them.

It's absolutely not the best tool in the world, but this one helps me a lot: https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/

You have summarized the exact reason(s) why I will not use Windows for the foreseeable future even though I do like Windows 10

Those exact issues finally got me to drop Win10 to run Linux on the desktop for the first time in most of a decade, and to not have Windows running on any of my machines for the first time since... god, 1992 or 1993? Something like that. Even the Win8 crapfest didn't make me abandon Windows. 10's bad.

And that's just my personal entertainment PC. I don't know how people who have to actually do work in that environment don't throw their machine off a balcony, or quit and go somewhere that lets them use a different OS. It's infuriating. I'd go nuts dealing with trying to be productive in Win10 5 days a week.

its in group policy to not initiate a reboot if a user is logged in.

my guess is microsoft doesnt care about people who dont read the documentation.

AFAIK, the machine reboots no matter what if the update has a deadline that's reached.

I get what you are saying though.

not true, must be talking about different policies.

>Always automatically restart at the scheduled times = disabled

>No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations = enabled

>Delay Restart for scheduled installations = enabled

>Reschedule Automatic Updates scheduled installations = disabled

never had a reboot since.

How about a server version of Windows?

That would work, but it's a complete joke that he'd need to go that route to get a 2 week job to finish.

Does this happen if you buy windows machines on something like azure? Granted, I'd start looking into *nix alternatives to that software after the first reboot.. but I understand I live in a different world than a lot of buisiness which are all windows all the time.

I suspend or lock my machines when I "finish" with them so that I can resume where I left off when I come back. Many people, especially developers (which makes up a large part of the audience here on HN), do this. Your "strategy" doesn't work for us.

Are we back in 1998?

I'm always surprised when I meet a developer (or anyone really) that still shutdowns his/her computer each day. What about hibernate or sleep?

Funny thing about Windows, they promise since XP that "this time updates will no longer require a reboot". And they never deliver.

I'm surprised that developers use Windows as their daily driver to be honest. My gaming machine which runs Windows shuts off daily. My work laptop with Linux just sleeps.

If you choose to use Windows, you will have to reboot frequently.

Get this is OS X too these days during the early hours. Computer wont even be idle I'll literally be typing and suddenly my apps will start closing left and right as OS X has decided its time to update/reboot.

Classic example of Metrics Driven Design, if you start scoring a team's performance on how many people update to the latest version then the methods of forcing an update become more and more intrusive. No wonder Apple always boasts such great update percentages for iOS, the thing practically bullies you into updating, I had a 4S for a long time and had to dismiss multiple nags a day to update and threats to delete apps to make space for the precious update.

That only happens if you tick all the boxes in the app store preferences window. And that's not the default. So you had to tick it.

It is by default I'm actually sitting on a fresh install as of a week ago on my work machine.

It probably retains a legacy setting if you updated but this is straight from Apple. I never even knew that preference box existed.

It will actually both make a notification popup on "turning on automatic updates" which then directs you to a settings panel where you manually have to check the box.

Mine is a fresh install of the same vintage.

What the hell setting do you have enabled where OS X does that? It doesn't even tell me about updates, I have to go check them manually in the App Store (which segfaults about half the time)

I just disable the windows update service under "Services" and re-enable once every two weeks (and run the Windows Update GUI to click "search for updates" or what's it called) to keep everything up-to-date. Has worked without problems for the last year.

Same here. I've found that all the other registry and policy methods eventually stopped working for me whereas disabling the update service has worked reliably for 9+ months.

They should just copy a linux distro. Mint would be a good one. Have a little icon that tells me when I'm out of date, then I can click it and update at my convenience. I think iphone does this, right? To operate their OS? So it is possible to make this work for "normal" users, whomever they are.

Mint can't auto-upgrade, so I don't think they're a good example...

No- it tells you when you need to upgrade so you can do it manually. That's the point. (Sorry for the late reply.)

> > Has anyone found a reliable way to disable automatic reboots for Windows 10 Pro? My registry mods have all eventually stopped working.

Yes. https://www.udse.de/en/windows-10-reboot-blocker.

A little program that runs in the background and continually changes the time window when updates would be allowed to exclude the next period.

Like you I run VMs and they don't always cleanly shut down when Windows decides to do its thing... no problems since installing the above. I've set it up on my parents computer, my wife's, and it works on them all.

Thanks. I will try this.

Downgrade to the better Win7, or use Linux as host and Win in a VM.

Sounds like you haven't used Win10 for more than a week. Win10 is quite good, but there are a few annoyances.

Honest question... In what ways is 10 markedly better than 8.1? I was auto upgraded when 10 came out but got fed up in short time and rolled back.

Smaller footprint. Better stability. Nicer drivers (although i'd like to use my own unsigned drivers from time to time).

Granted, Windows 10 needs a HUGE LOT of tweaking to get optimised results (horrible horrible bloatware and privacy shit). You also may need a bunch of tools to get it to your liking. But when it is tweaked to your liking, it runs smooth. An i3 on SSD boots to desktop within 15 seconds.

Turn on metered Internet. This is supposed to disable automatic Windows Update downloads. I have not tested this personally.

Tested and it works, as long as you haven't finished downloading and applying the updates.

This happened to me last night. I was so pissed this morning. I got used to making sure I never left things on over a Tuesday night because they do updates, but this caught me on a Thursday.

Hopefully this will be the year of the Linux desktop......

There are currently two great options for running Linux and still having a productive desktop experience. One is ChromeOS the other is Win 10 with Linux subsystem and an Ubuntu image. Been using both for a little while now and they are really nice.

Running Linux on Windows 10 won't help you with this problem.

Agree. I like the Win linux/Ubuntu, but I also really like VirtualBox. Kinda tough on the battery but it gives me a lot to play with.

Go into Services, stop the Windows update service, then disable it. I did this a year ago and have never had a random reboot.

I've had mixed success with this method. It works for a while but every couple of months I'll find my computer restarted and the service has been mysteriously re-enabled.

Users are asking for features, not for yet more editions of Windows. Editions are merely a way to charge for those features and I don't think they are a good way to do that.

Editions create barriers. They make you work around missing features that would force you into buying a much more expensive edition, so you learn to live without those features or replace them with other operating systems and free software.

Agreed, there should only be Ubuntu.

> Agreed, there should only be Ubuntu.

You should better present your reasoning at https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/

Or Microsoft could use a pricing model that doesn't drive customers away needlessly.

Away to where?

You mean the year of the Linux Desktop Workstation?

Some will use Linux or Mac or a cloud based solution where possible (such as for GPGPU), but by far the most popular alternative to the latest and greatest Windows is some older, lesser Windows that doesn't create excitement or lock-in.

Not at all around the enterprise customers I work with.

No Macs in sight, other than some shared machines for iOS development, GNU/Linux is left for server development and everyone else is on Windows per IT policy..

And when I happen to attend a GDC related event, there are only Windows and OS X devices on sight.

Some of those Mac laptops are actually running Windows.

As I said, by far the most popular alternative is an "older, lesser Windows", which is almost synonymous with "enterprise".

I think Microsoft makes some great software that isn't getting used as much as it could be.

Microsoft had been testing my patience for a while, but Windows 10 was the straw that broke the camels back. I no longer support or use Windows and am a happier/healthier person for it. Ya'll should try it too!

Microsoft is not a good faith actor in the software world, at all. All the "open-source" push they have been doing of late to stem the tide reeks of the 90's... and what frustates me the most is people are so apologetic for them and seem to have forgotten how anti-FOSS they were and are.

The three E's still apply. Don't be fooled.

For those of you who are pragmatic, the place to start is by replacing your AD servers with Samba4. You can then at least get it off your servers even if you still have to support Windows users.

I wish I could do the same but I don't have the time to relearn everything from scratch. Did you use any specific resources in transitioning from windows to linux?

It really depends on what you do, what you work on. System administration is very different, as is GUI development. Other things aren't that different and a lot of back-end, devops-ish, trendy stuff is cross-platform.

I sort of like to play with everything: virtualisation, websites, desktop development. Which is why that's quite a lot to learn, and not a trivial exercise without a GUI.

In fact if it wasn't for the disaster that windows 10 has become, I would rather stay in the MS environment. Visual Studio/.net/C#/VB.net are a treat, and I am concerned I won't find tools and languages that are that integrated and polished in the linux world.

About desktop development, you will need to consider your clients. If you develop for Windows clients, then probably you'll be better off running Visual Studio, even if inside a VM. If you develop for other platforms or write code that does not depend on Windows API's, you are pretty much free to use anything. Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ etc don't change between platforms.

The bulk of virtualization is the concepts - virtual networks, disks etc. You can learn a new UI rather easily.

I am not sure what is the situation on .NET web development for other OSs, but I keep hearing Microsoft is doing a great job with that.

I am mostly web these days and all my tools work pretty well under Windows (even though the last time I did it I used Cygwin because it was well before the Ubuntu on Windows thing).

Savings on server hosting caused me to start using Linux. Then making every possible mistake when following tutorials caused enough exposure to actually learn something.

I would say you just have to spend some time in linux. For example, get a $5-$10 vps from Vultr or Digital Ocean, and start hosting things and experimenting. Or start trying out different distros in a vm like virtualbox.

As a matter of fact, one of the best things I did was distrohop like a madman. It forces you to learn the intracacies of various distros. I also try hard to spend time in whichever distro I'm supporting at the moment. For example, if I'm supporting a mostly debian environment, I would prefer to be running Debian-derivitave as my daily, or at least have a VM of it I'm working in daily. The same for Suse, CentOS, etc.

I used to make new guys install arch, because it taught them the underside of linux without being quite as bad as gentoo/slack.

Document your knowledge as it progresses. Take notes. Compare commands in Windows you are used to and find the equivs.

I actually plan to eventually release some of my own documentation (I use emacs org-mode/asciidoc), but its one of many projects.

In the end, I don't think looking at it as relearning from scratch is correct. You already have the basics down, you just need to shift that knowledge and expand it. For example, I'm sure from Windows you know the difference between Fat16/32 and NTFS. Maybe about FDE with bitlocker. So with Linux, check out ext4, btrfs, zfs. FDE with dmcrypt/luks or aes-loop. You know the folder structure of Windows... so learn the linux layout: http://www.gocit.vn/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Linux-file-sy...

One thing I think helped the most was making comparison spreadsheets. I need something that solves X problem. Learning how to choose the software thats best for you is the primary skill I think that makes someone better, because you have to think about the reasoning for your choices. For example, licensing is important to me, so I would always have a column for license info. Unlike windows, there are many more tools to solve problems so you have to get good at this or you can be crippled by indecision.

Probably the single most helpful resource is the arch linux wiki. https://wiki.archlinux.org/

Also, IRC is still happening for the FOSS community, despite all the proprietary fad chat like slack, discord, etc.

I also think it's very important for you to understand the history of computing and OS's. If you know how Linux, Unix, Minix, BSD, DOS, Windows all came about and how they relate, you have a stronger basis to expand on.

Getting hold of a linux machine is the easy part, between VMs and all the hardware I have, that's not a problem. Learning how to use the OS is the hard part. I did try previously but my attempts were frustrated by the lack of UI (self-discoverability) and the variety of alternative tools to solve the same problem, which also means the documentation is very fragmented. The breadth of acronyms doesn't help either.

I am sure it is just stuff to learn, and I have the feeling I will need to force myself to go all-in if I ever want to do the jump (rather than having a linux laptop on the side I never use). What I wonder is if soneone who has done it before knows of good resources to help with the process.

I literally only have windows for games now. The OS is pushing my patience to the point where I'm considering giving up half my steam library and sticking to MacOS / Linux.

A couple nights ago my PC woke up in the middle of the night and started an update. I had to get up and force shut it down. I don't think there's anything Microsoft can do to reverse the damage now.

I bought a PlayStation 4 and couldn't be happier, and I keep Win7 around for old games.

The "new Microsoft" sucks big time, and they drive the company against the wall - Win10/WinPhone10/Xbone crash.

So you don't want it to update while you're using it. And you don't want it to update when you're not using it.

When, exactly, is it OK for it to update?

If the OS is stable for me I shouldn't need to update.

Stable in your eyes doesn't mean there's no underlying security issues that need fixing.

My machine is used for occasional gaming and nothing else. I would like to update it when I please. If that means it's out of date for a while I don't care, I'll happily click through multiple big red warnings confirming I want this.

When I, the supposed owner of the computer, tell it to.

You can't just "replace AD servers with Samba4". It doesn't even begin to provide the same usability and feature set.

I love the idea. It's just not viable.

Yes, you can, depending on the environment. I've done it in prod multiple times. There are a handful of features that aren't 1to1, but they can be worked around in other ways. In most cases, the people I've seen say this either tried Samba pre v4, or had more complicated setups where it may not apply (for example, cross-forest trusts just recently were prod ready in 4.5.1+), or usually just didn't know their way around linux as much.

Is it a replacement for all situations? No. For many though? Yes. Of course there are other options as well, such as FreeIPA, etc.

Samba roadmap: https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Roadmap

I don't need this. What I need is a legal way to acquire Windows 10 Long Term Support Branch. Basically Windows 10 without all the crap. No metro, and no feature updates whatsoever, just security updates, and supported for 10 years. Sort of like a Windows version of RHEL, if you will.

Now that is something that I want.

To play a numbers game, I'd pay $500 for that if it came with HyperV and the possibility of creating VMs for development with no extra licensing cost. Maaybe $700.

You are getting close to a MSDN license

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/visual-studio-profes...

Well $539/yr is not quite the same as $500 for life. Plus, MSDN software should only be used for development, using it e.g. as a workstation would technically be a violation, albeit one that is unenforceable. And yes, I am aware that if you install it in the first year, it will continue to work long after your MSDN license has expired.

My interest is not in "getting it", or "keeping it working", but rather doing everything 100% legally, not through loopholes. Otherwise I might just as well get a Windows 10 LTSB MSDN license key for $25 from people who illegally sell MSDN keys on reddit.

However, I am pleasantly surprised that there is a MSDN tier that only costs $539/yr instead of the $10000/yr (!) it used to cost. Also, apparently now MSDN is available for anyone, previously you had to enter into some kind of business contract with Microsoft, it wasn't available to individuals.

Nah you don't need to renew it. You pay $1200 upfront and it comes with a bunch of license keys, each allowing multiple activations, that you get to keep even if you do not renew the subscription. Renewal is only if you want a key for future versions of windows (Windows 11?), which there won't be according to Microsoft. The catch is that the license prevents you from using it as a main/production machine, it's for dev, testing and demo only.

Yes, see my rather extensive edit.

It's only $539, though. The cheaper MSDN tier seems to include LTSB according to the product matrix.

Which tier are you refering to? I thought VS Pro was the cheapest option.

Ah, it's cloud subscription vs standard subscription.

This is the proper link: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/pricing/

So it's $539/yr for cloud vs. $1,199/1st yr + $799/2nd yr for standard.

Also on the same page we can see the differences:

> After the subscription expires, can use the software that was available during the active subscription term (“perpetual” use rights)

For standard it's YES, for cloud it's NO. It seems to be enforced, because lower on the page:

> Must connect to the Internet to check license status at least once every 30 days

For standard we have NO, and for cloud we have YES.

So unfortunately, you are right. It's $1,199 (more or less), not $539.

In your link the "Software for dev/test" is blank for cloud subscriptions. It comes with TFS licenses but I do not believe it comes with Windows licenses, even for the period of the subscription.

Is this still working without activation after 90days? I'm still on 7 but I'll have to leave it behind somewhere towards the end of the year.

If there was no current UI, you wouldn't have the Settings app. Sure you want Control Panel back?

LTSB actually comes with the settings app, though I don't want to use the settings app anyway. For the record, I am using LTSB, I just wish there was an easier way of getting it.

I thought you said 'no metro'? Doesn't that mean Windows 7 UI?

It comes with all the libraries just as regular Windows versions do, e.g. metro libraries are included. If you are so inclined you could even provision Windows Store on it (caveats apply).

But doesn't come with metro programs, with the exception of the settings app. E.g. the photo viewer is the one from Windows 7, not the Metro one. No Windows Store (unless you go out of your way to install it, etc).

Signed, same for me. I sure as hell won't upgrade my Win7 machine until I can have a Win10 that doesn't load me up with ads (I paid for the OS, no need to annoy me), phones home or installs applications I did not explicitly request and consent!

>doesn't load me up with ads

Unclick some textboxes, better yet use one of the myriad scripts to do it for you

>phones home

Like Windows 7 since they backported all the telemetry to it?

>or installs applications I did not explicitly request and consent

Like Windows 7 bloatware? Uninstall it

> Unclick some textboxes, better yet use one of the myriad scripts to do it for you

Will be reset after the next Windows Update

> Like Windows 7 since they backported all the telemetry to it?

Better hope that's a joke?!

> Like Windows 7 bloatware? Uninstall it

Windows 7, to my knowledge, does not come with Candy Crush, and also does not install games with Windows Update.

The settings are not reset.

It's not a joke: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/01/microsoft_backports...

Uninstall apps you don't want or use a script to do it for you: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10

> Faster file sharing: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations includes a feature called SMB Direct, which supports the use of network adapters that have Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capability. Network adapters that have RDMA can function at full speed with very low latency, while using very little CPU.

Interesting to see file copy speeds mentioned. "Drag-and-drop" file copy has a known bottleneck that other methods (robocopy, copy-item, etc) do not have, and I wonder if this improvement will improve all copy methods, or just "Drag-and-drop".

Also interested in the security considerations for having DMA (Direct memory access) to a remote PC for SMB. Presumably this would be for authenticated users/sessions. Yet SMB has been a recently-leveraged protocol for ransomware attacks.

SMB 3 hasn't been part of the ransomeware attacks. It was SMB 1. SMB 3 can use RDMA and is insanely fast. I'm not sure how SMB over RDMA is supposed to work on a workstation, though. It's only been used for file servers and clusters at this point.

It won't make a damn bit of difference for a lot of users. Most of the horrible performance I find for windows file copies (and git/svn checkouts etc) is due to MFT contention in the filesystem rather than the network layer. This is for the "average user" scenario rather than fileserver however. This apparently hasn't gone away with ReFS either but I haven't personally tested it.

Why would a filesystem have to know about a network interface's ability do do RDMA? Shouldn't the kernel use it when it makes sense and leave the filesystem to be concerned with files?

RDMA can speed up a lot of things besides remote file access.

The goal here appears to be avoiding involving the main CPU, letting the network adapter write directly to arbitrary memory.

Currently, DMA allows network adapters to write to a ring buffer in memory, and the free space remaining is transmitted in TCP packets as the window size. This ring buffer is limited in size, requiring the CPU to copy data to other memory locations.

Will RDMA be giving network adapters the ability to write directly to any memory location, instead of just the ring buffer? Does it include memory-mapped devices - does this technology let you remotely access the memory space mapped to a USB webcam?

Another version of Windows... they really should consider reducing the amount of versions instead of increasing it

Same with linux distros. Variety is unproductive.

Counter argument, variety is choice, choice is freedom.

(not strictly true, you could have only the illusion of choice and freedom, and other arguments, I mean I've written essays on choice...)

Choice is tyranny!

http://www.economist.com/node/17723028

Control your versions, you must!

Variety is choice, choice is freedom, choice is tyranny, choice leads to the Dark Side.

PS: In the case of companies selling many different versions of the same product/service, choice can be used to confuse consumers.

Most distros are geared to different things like Arch Linux is bare-bones...etc. You are correct that there are plenty of distros where the main difference is the default desktop environment like cinnamon or kde and that isn't super helpful and fractures the community.

You mean like Windows versions...

> Arch Linux is bare-bones...etc

No, it isn't. But I get the general idea.

The commenter's point was that it comes bare-bones. There is very little installed on a stock Arch installation. Unlike a distro like Ubuntu, Mint, etc., which are some of the most common desktop distros and come with a large variety of packages, Arch's install file is shockingly small, and the base packages themselves are very limited.

The default Arch install is about 700Mb. How is that shockingly small? If you do a minimal install on most distro's you'll get something similar. Probably less, as Arch bundles all it's packages together and you can't chose to, for example, not install the dev packages.

I use the OS myself, so I'm not hating on Arch linux but the misinformation spread about Arch is crazy.

Linux isn't a single company though.

There are around 25 different editions of windows 10. It's very difficult to know what you need to buy. And when you read their... licensing white paper... it quickly becomes clear that you can't legally affordably use any of them for a lot of normal usecases.

You get the one that comes with the device you buy. All other cases your company has departments that can figure it out.

Linux distributions are created and maintained by different organizations, and they differ, not in what they are able to do, but in how they accomplish it. Microsoft is a single organization creating artificial strata within a single product. Both lead to a confusing array of choices, but while the diversity of Linux distributions is an organic outgrowth of Linux's licensing, leading to competition for users and maintainers which drives changes and innovation in the resulting products, the Windows stratification is completely artificial and does nothing to drive change or innovation, instead simply increases user confusion only in order to capture pricing flexibility in the market. I'm sure it's profitable for Microsoft to do this, but as a user, it's incredibly frustrating. Luckily I am able to choose not to deal with the Microsoft market-shaving licensing morass anymore, and I can spend my mental energy thinking about what I'm building, instead of choosing which licensing strategy is most cost-effective, and constantly worrying about compliance.

How can it be profitable to do and not lead to innovation? Do you know how corporations work?

When you don't really have competition, the more profitable strategy is to make licensing complicated so that customers end up paying more. Innovation is only more profitable when you have solid competitors.

There is an important difference.

Linux distributions represent the efforts of different teams to make the best systems for their particular niche. With Windows, on the other hand, a single organization develops a single system (the canonical good version), and from that they create various worse versions by applying limitations in different combinations to the good version.

Will my Windows 10 Workstation still give me ads for Minecraft and Candy Crush?

I paid for Windows 10 Pro and had to spend time removing all the adware they push. It's extremely unprofessional.

It's annoying, sure, but I unchecked a couple checkboxes once and haven't thought about it since.

dear microsoft,

would you kindly consider going easy on the buzzwords?

> Performance is a very important requirement in this new world of fast paced innovation and we will continue to invest on Windows 10 Pro for Workstations to enable Windows power users to maximize every aspect of their high-performance device.

http://lurkertech.com/buzzword-bingo/dilbert-buzzword.jpg

> ReFS (Resilient file system)

Not new? Maybe it's now available for boot drives during installation? But I just formatted a hard drive to ReFS on my normal W10 Pro install.

> non-volatile memory modules (NVDIMM-N)

Ooh that's interesting, is that the software support for the upcoming Optane DIMMs?

I'm not completely sure, but I'm assuming that this means instant complete hibernation, without having to write to disk?

It sounds like it's just regular Windows 10 with a few new device drivers and a different default filesystem.

Just remembered doesn't OneDrive only support NTFS right now?

If that's the case, could you create a small NTFS partition and host it on there?

IIRC it just requires the location you select for it to store the onedrive folder at to be on a NTFS partition

Will existing W10 Pro license holders be able to use this? Or is it the deluxe++ version for more $$$?

The people who need this are people with multiple CPUs, doing CAD/CAM, professional video rendering. If you are doing these things, you are likely paying for some high dollar licenses for special software anyway, and can afford to pay more for your OS to have special features supporting this. I don't think mere mortals need this version, however ReFS looks intriguing, but there may be other ways to have it too.

If the entire UI still locks up when performing simple tasks, they may have prioritized the wrong problem.

Would you mind expanding a little on what simple tasks are locking up the UI for you? This is something I haven't experienced before.

What the hell happened to Microsoft cutting down on all the SKU's?

Why not just sell these features as add-ons in the Windows store or something? I guess if the code's not modular enough and it has to baked in might be a reason...

For workstation use my primary complaint is the anti virus kicking in on file creation / IO. Would ideally like a locked down windows where having an anti virus was not a requirement. Even the windows subsystem for linux is not immune from the antivirus, checking out large git repositories is painfully slow since the antivirus is getting pounded the whole time.

Avoiding "another other version" issue I'm hoping that this Workstation version will dispense many of the software limitations .vs the server, thus should be a benefit to many pro-user types especially developers.

Opteron??????

"comes with unique support for server grade PC hardware and is designed to meet demanding needs of mission critical and compute intensive workloads."

Bingo!

(ref: https://vimeo.com/12112636)

meanwhile here I am on W10 Pro on my workstation which I can't update because main windows partition has 30GB and apparently 5GB of free space was not enough for update and can't use other partitions to update it

if I didn't need SDL Trados Studio I would be done with Windows, after recent update switched from MS Office to Libre Office and can't complain so last produt from MS I use is W10 Pro

open a command prompt as "admin" (run as admin), and type:

powercfg -h off

this will give you your total ram amount back in extra disk space. You'll lose hibernation support.

thanks for good idea, though it seem it was using only 1/3 of my already small RAM

If Microsoft ever makes a software that doesn't hang, I will stop using Mac on the same moment. I swear.

Do you love seeing that bouncing beach ball?

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