My litmus test for whether Windows is finally fixed is whether of not it’s possible to install it without Candy Crush, but unfortunately without killing the network and applying a registry patch as far as I know it can’t be done.
See: http://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
I don't work there, but I've heard Microsoft is more like a federation of organizations than one giant consistent, cohesive team.
For example their phones have extremely complicated DRM that makes everything slower (and reserves tons of memory and even affects things like camera) because of their movie and music business.
https://mspoweruser.com/rejoice-windows-users-candy-crush-is...
I didn’t notice because my Windows 10 image is out of date, presumably getting the latest ISO would fix the problem.
UPDATE:
Sigh... you are correct. Fresh install, Win10 Pro, same garbage.
I've heard that Microsoft account sync the start menu layout, so it might come from your previous install.
I'm using Win10 1903 fresh install (local account) and I haven't get candy crush tile ever.
i'm still always confused why somebody creates two versions and label them 'as business' and as home use.
Spreading disinformation in 2019 is despicable itself.
- Microsoft already handles data from competitors in other portions of their corporation. If it was discovered that Microsoft and / or GitHub actors were acting in bad faith with private repositories, that would immediately erode the trust of their Azure platform.
- Most projects are more than just the code. It's often build toolchains, pipelines, and other specific knowledge around said code.
Code is cool, but they could already know everything every company in the world is doing.
I don't think they're abusing the trust put into them, we'd know by now.
They'd also probably be blown to smithereens by governments and other corporations, through lawsuits.
Developers, developers, developers.
When they stopped singing that, they nearly failed. Now they are back. It doesn't include being nice to end-users.
- Github Sponsors with donation matching for some limited time period
- Github Pro which based on browsing user profiles a surprising amount of folks have bought into
- Github Package Repositories.
- Github Pipelines.
Generally I have been waiting for Github to start sucking but it has only gotten better imo.
I have been a pretty big Gitlab fanboy for a while so it’s weird to harp on Github’s progress but they’ve done a good job flipping the script.
Not a statement either way, but AFAIK everyone who has the Student Pack[1] gets the PRO badge. I have it and I haven't spent a penny on GitHub (though my employer has).
https://mspoweruser.com/rejoice-windows-users-candy-crush-is...
What's you new litmus test?
I installed Windows as early as last month (in a VM) and still got Candy Crush. This is probably because my ISO image was not fully up to date.
I was not aware of this change but it is greatly appreciated. I can no longer modify the parent comment but if dang or anyone else with permission wants to please feel free.
No need for a new litmus test, though solving the problem of Edge opening MSN ads after updating would probably buy some goodwill.
https://i.imgur.com/zDWo4Hb.png
Very sad.
Candy Crush is pure garbage.
In other words developers (and their employers) are customers while users are a product or resource to be exploited.
1) Tablets aren't the only "post-PC" platform. Most of the leisure computing is done on smartphones when it would have been done on a laptop or desktop 5-10 years ago.
2) If we're considering tablets to be PC replacements, we should expect their sales trends to be along the lines of PC sales. People keep PCs a lot longer than smartphones, so we should expect people to keep their iPads a lot longer than their phones too.
3) Tablet sales have absolutely not collapsed [1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-...
See the recently revealed iPadOS: https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/
Nothing. They use apps on their Linux phones, or happily use any OS that runs a browser since everything is web based today. Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline.
The only people remaining dependent on desktops (or laptops) will be office workers, and I'm pretty sure they don't care about DirectX so much, so replacing those with Linux seems very doable, it's just the question if companies care enough. Last I checked, even office 365 worked on Linux.
Somehow I doubt Android is what Linux Desktop evangelists imagined. At best this is moving the goal posts significantly.
> or happily use any OS that runs a browser since everything is web based today.
Apparently that doesn't include Linux, despite it being free, not having invasive telemetry, and not having ads in the application launcher.
> Oh and for gaming there is consoles of course, which crushes the PC gaming market in pretty much any discipline.
And yet Steam is a ridiculously huge money maker and people are buying more PC games than ever.
> The only people remaining dependent on desktops (or laptops) will be office workers
Incorrect, but let's entertain your fantasies anyway.
> I'm pretty sure they don't care about DirectX so much, so replacing those with Linux seems very doable
Then why hasn't it happened? You think companies like paying licensing fees to Microsoft?
Consider that there are good reasons people do not use Linux Desktop instead of just assuming they're all idiots.
You must be confusing Android with a desktop OS. It's mobile so they don't fall into the desktop category at all. Which was exactly my point: they simply don't need a desktop OS anymore.
> Apparently that doesn't include Linux
That reads like you're looking at some statistics that show that 0% of desktop users run Linux. Care pointing to it?
> And yet Steam is a ridiculously huge money maker and people are buying more PC games than ever.
So? It's completely overshadowed by the console market, not even including mobile games here.
> Then why hasn't it happened? You think companies like paying licensing fees to Microsoft?
You're asking why it hasn't happened yet in reply to me using future tense.
But let's put aside that pretty much everything you said was deliberately besides the point. Why it hasn't happened yet is pretty simple. Companies weigh the cost of switching vs. The cost of just keep paying for Windows (so no changes, no initial setup cost, no training, ...). That's gonna be cheaper for quite some time but eventually everything will be in the cloud so there is less and less reason to keep up a huge and complicated windows domain network with software rollout and other brain damage. You might keep a basic AD in place for user management that the web services talk to but that's it. Funnily enough my current and previous employer is still on win 7 because of the frequent messups you read about regarding 10, and how even in a corporate environment it's near impossible to disable all telemetry. I'm curious what they'll do at 7's EOL.
As for the average home desktop user, you're not seriously expecting your mom to go ahead and download and install Ubuntu are you? As long as most OEMs still exclusively sell machines with Windows preinstalled, there really shouldn't be anything surprising about the fact that most people use Windows. We already see some of the larger ones offering machines with Linux though, and with the desktop keeping to lose relevance and everything moving to the web I wouldn't be surprised to see this getting more prevalent over the next decade if Microsoft doesn't get their act together regarding Windows. It currently looks like they're cutting costs in that department, normal users seem to get the beta versions now so they could cut down their QA.
> Seems to me that DirectX is the last remaining barrier to finally getting the majority of the Windows user base to migrate to Linux.
To which my point was simply "you are very wrong". As far as I can tell, you agree that there are a lot more barriers to moving to Linux from Windows than just DirectX (again, if that were true why haven't office workers moved? Oh yeah, lots of other reasons!).
So what exactly is the point you're trying to make?
Obviously there's gonna be special software in certain fields that's going to be around for quite a while, like the pharma example from this other reply, but even there the point was rather that upgrading from the XP version is too expensive....
And ultimately the question is at which point maintaining or even improving Windows becomes economically unfeasible. With Windows 10 being "the final Windows" there was already a big shift in paradigm. Microsoft is very busy expanding in the cloud/SaaS business, so it's not like they don't see how Windows might lose relevance over time. This in turn sends signals to software vendors who still make software that requires desktop machines.
Ok, in this scenario, why would I choose Linux? Linux is literally irrelevant if "all you need is Chrome" (among the more dystopian futures I can imagine for computing, btw). Chrome is the platform then and everything is just a Chromebook. In this scenario no one reaches for Linux, they just buy some horrible proprietary locked down no-user-serviceable-parts thing like they do with phones and personal computing is declared dead.
I don't buy that that is true anyway. People have been predicting the death of desktop PCs for a long time too and it still hasn't happened. Cloud is just the latest in the thin-client/fat-client cycle of hyped up computer industry bullshit as far as I'm concerned.
You're obviously not a PC gamer. The question of console vs PC is still widely debated, with no clear winner. At least to me, they both have their own uses. There are things that are much better on a console than a PC, and vice versa.
In terms of graphical computing power, there's no debate. All the current-gen consoles will get absolutely demolished by a 3-year-old mid-grade gaming computer.
The only things a console will beat a PC on is the upfront price of the machine (which ends up being meaningless as the console game stores don't have the killer sales Steam is known for) and exclusives. If you prefer a controller over mouse/keyboard, you can use a controller on a PC. If you prefer to game on a 50+ inch TV rather than a monitor, you can either plug your computer into your TV, or use a SteamLink, or get the SteamLink RPi app.
I'm hoping the rumors about Win10 eventually supporting all Xbox games natively are true.
PC overtook console gaming in terms of revenue over five years ago. There's a vastly more players on PC nowadays.
https://www.pcr-online.biz/2014/04/25/pc-games-have-surpasse...
Oddly, this is the factor that underlies most of my personal beefs with both Microsoft and Apple. What's wrong with my wifi? At least I can look in journalctl on linux. My laptop doesn't have enough screenspace - I can use i3wm on linux. I want double-click to include '*' and '/' and ':' in a "word", hey I can change xterm config. I want left-mouse-button to start a selection, and right to continue it, and middle-mouse-button to paste, and I want F2 to paste, X11 can do that. I don't want the focused window to pop to the top? Can do on Linux. There's so many things that Windows and MacOS make the decisions for you and make it very, very hard to do otherwise that really cramp your style on a basic level.
> journalctl, i3wm, xterm config, non-standard mouse configurations
The versatility of Linux is frequently touted as its best feature, a feature that 99% of humans don't care about, and would confuse that same 99% of people.
People are used to what Microsoft and Apple imposed on them. For better, or for worse, they honestly couldn't give a damn about being able to do stuff like that. Their style is the Apple style, or the Microsoft style and, most importantly, the no-terminal style.
Linux is the perfect desktop for developers. It hits all the wrong checkboxes for end-users.
1. The argument that a Linux desktop won't fly because people do so damn many things that a Linux desktop just can't do is false. 2. Windows and Mac really push you hard into a single style of interacting with your computer.
This is precisely the kind of condescending bullshit I'm talking about.
> People are used to what Microsoft and Apple imposed on them.
A convenient fantasy for Linux Desktop evangelists to soothe their egos.
And to configure the said trackpad, I have a nice GUI allowing me to define dozens of mouvement, triggers and response events for whatever application. No need to study the obscure documentation of xinput or whatever, if you're even successfull to find it on the web, only to dicover the possibilities doesn't go over of what you were able to do 10 years ago, which was very basic, e.g single tap, double tap, 2 fingers tap and that it. Last time I checked, 3 fingers swipe was not even registered.
Desktop interface of Linux computers feels like outdated copy of Windows. XFCE and LXDE looks like windows 95. Gnome, Mate and Cinamon never made it past 2008 and KDE is buggy as hell and a mess to configure.
And most desktop application feels like they have been made by a company going broke before being able to polish the interface.
With MacOS, you have the best of both world: a standard nix system, with a nice interface, a repository system (brew, macport) and polished commercial applications from an app store or from the wild.
Linux is good for niche applications: server, embedded systems, and a few specialized distro like kali or tails. For regular desktop application, that's still functional, but without the happiness.
Most of all, it looks exactly like it looked last year. That's a feature.
(Of course, I don’t play much and I didn’t bother to benchmark. It probably is still worse than native in many cases. But hey, glitch free and fast enough for me. Was very surprised to see games with Denuvo running great.)