Microsoft will rest its jackboot on Windows 7, 8.1's throat on new Intel CPUs in 2018 – not 2017 Stand well back: Microsoft has had a bright idea. Rather than royally screwing over people running Windows 7 and 8.1 on new Intel hardware, it's just going to give them a rough ride instead. In January, Microsoft said it would only offer software updates for "security, reliability, and compatibility" fixes for Windows 7 and 8. …
This is the kind of person that works in a basement.
Nope. In a purpose build loft conversion with windows on all sides. The total ceiling-to-window ratio is ~ 74%. It is often referred by my colleagues as the "Crow's Nest" or the "Superstar Destroyer bridge". Light and air. From all directions.
It is trolls who hide under bridges and in dark moldy basements. Ones like you sir (*)
Disclaimer - the last time I had a Windows machine in the house on real hardware was 1997. The last time I had a VM used in work for purposes different than "customer test" was in 2001.
Years ago I slip-streamed a CD with added SATA drivers for XP.
But still, MS attitude to Win 10 smacks of desaturation. They developed USB for NT4.0 and then decided not to release the SP. I tested the beta USB stack on NT4.0 and it worked with Win2K drivers (if you made the OS report as if it was Win2K, stupid Driver designers looking for an OS version instead of a capability, at the time MS dev advice was to look for the capability you needed, not specific OS strings. I guess few people listened or they not have to skip Win 9 ...)
Then you are either a programmer, or someone who ONLY uses the Internet, in which case you would be just as well off with a $50 tablet.
For everyone else, which based on current usage rates is 90% of the population? They have programs they bought their PCs for that ONLY runs on Windows. Everything from audio/video creation to SMB tax software, there is literally tens of thousands of pieces of software that are mission critical to people's daily work that do not run on your OS and thanks to the hostility of FOSS to proprietary software never will.
So you might as well say "replace your computer with an onion" for all the value of your statement because without the software required to get our work done? Your OS is useless to us. there is a reason why MSFT can place spyware in their OS and adware on the lockscreen and Linux gains....zero percent, its because of the network effect and the simple fact your OS doesn't run what the vast majority require to do their jobs.
"there is a reason why MSFT can place spyware in their OS and adware on the lockscreen"
Inertia and sunk cost. So two reasons, then. The tipping point is different for everybody but -based on their recent behaviour- there is no fucking way windows 10 is getting on any machine in my domains, even in a VM.
As you say, there is a lot of stuff that is only available for windows. It's been the dominant system for lazy bastards for the last 20 years; with a whole planetfull of programmers tweedling away and producing solutions for various problems. And then there's all the custom software written for business and/or to get things done. That's the situation now.
Things change; but one thing that doesn't change is a constant cost/benefit equation on the part of the user. For quite some time now, Microsoft have been releasing products for the shareholders, at the expense of the customers and there's only so long and so hard you can do that. Business is all about maximum milk for minimum moo, so it'll be interesting to see if Microsoft have upped their yield or have set the herd running for the horizon. For me; I wandered out the gate and was an outside cow for windows 8; but the W10 shenanigans has me over the horizon and still accelerating.
And Microsoft hasn't even started invoicing yet. I genuinely don't know what will happen then; but am waiting with interest to see. S'pose I should say that you couldn't pay me enough to have that crap on my system; but yeah you probably could. It wouldn't be on a work computer, though. I don't know what the future will hold; the exact power of inertia; or whether my low opinion of my own species is justified and people will bend over and take it. The only thing that I can absolutely guarantee is that there will be no money from me to Microsoft paying for a W10 lease. Ever.
"and thanks to the hostility of FOSS to proprietary software never will."
Rather ignoring that some of the most expensive proprietary desktop software was written for OSs like SGI IRIX and then ported on to Linux.
If mission-critical software is only available for one OS then the mission is in a perilous position BTW
Funny that only cowards replay, but I can torpedo your argument with one simple phrase..."Tivoization".
With that one simple word added to GPL V3 the great unwashed RMS absolutely DESTROYED any hope Linux had for mainstream adoption. Don't take MY word for it, go look up the numbers...GPL adoption? Falling like a rock and has been doing nothing but drawing a falling bullet graph since...wait for it...GPL V3 and "Tivoization". BSD, MPL, pretty much all the licenses EXCEPT GPL has been growing, why is that?
The answer is simple, RMS has made "Linux is a cancer" into a true phrase by going out of his way to attack a single company that didn't follow his "spirit of the GPL". Companies aren't gonna risk dealing with software where they could be openly attacked and get tons of negative PR because one guy decides that it doesn't matter what the license agreement actually SAYS, only his interpretation of it...wanna guess who writes the billions and billions of dollars in software used around the world daily? It ain't RMS, its corps.
What was Linux adoption rate 20 years ago? Less than 2%, 10 years ago? less than 2%, now that MSFT has literally turned their OS into spyware? Drumroll....less than 2%. You can make excuses all you want but you have been giving your product away for decades and gotten exactly nowhere, no matter how big a stinker MSFT puts out. That isn't "inertia", that is the fact that the software people want to run? Don't run on your OS and thanks to RMS hatred of corps never ever will.
Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Pro Tools, more than 90% of the triple A games that come out every year, Quickbooks/Quicken, without these and thousands of others? Again you might as well be telling users to trade their OS for onions, because your OS and an onion would be equally as useful for them getting their work done.
According to Wikipedia (yeah I know) linux uptake has been inching upwards steadily and last year there was a jump upwards to 3%.
@kb you do have some valid points; but there are several factors that you're not taking into account:
♦ Microsoft have never gone this far and the results aren't in yet. I'm typing this on a W7 machine, for example; so count as a windows user in the stats; but -to repeat- W10 is absolutely not in my future; nor that of anyone I do maintenance for. We're not counting as linux stats because of the aforesaid inertia and because W7 exists and is currently working. But jumping ship is absolutely going to happen at least in 2020, if not before (if MS raises the volume on their harassment campaign, for example).
♦ (The big one) Microsoft haven't started charging yet. People will put up with a lot for free stuff; but whether the majority are willing to put up with a surveillance device that they have to pay for remains to be seen. Also remaining to be seen is how Microsoft are going to deal with payment defaults...the surveillance alone is enough for me; but having an OS that will shut down and remove all my work tools if I have a bad month would also disqualify itself for suitability. Either one is enough for me; but how the public reacts to the combination (in July?) is going to be interesting to watch.
♦ Free software is getting better all the time. Until quite recently the available software has been fairly primitive in comparison to Windows offerings; but this is less and less the case. There's Openshot; Libre Office; Linux Mint; the 2.92 version of Gimp and so on; all of which have made great strides of late. The pending 2.92 Gimp version, for example fixes 2 "showstopper" (for me) issues and will make it (again, for me, YMMV) a useable alternative to Photoshop. Photoshop is better and I miss it dreadfully; but the price is too damned high (I did try the subscription; but the "It's Adobe Time, bitch, your computer will work for us for the next 10 minutes; irrespective of what you're currently trying to do on it" is not something I want on my machine. And there's also the "one bad month and your work tools get withdrawn" thing; which I'm not prepared to accept...but that's a separate rant). Where was I? Oh yes; free software is finally getting to a point where there is a pretty viable alternative for almost anything anyone wants to do; and that hasn't happened before.
♦ The large software packages you mention...is purely a function of market share. If enough people take up linux -and there are fewer barriers and better reasons to than ever before- then those packages will be ported because the companies will have to.
I can't claim to be a typical user; but -while I'm showing up as a Windows user currently- I'm slowly duplicating my setup, function-by-function into a linux VM. Got until 2020, probably, so there's no rush. So I'll be popping up on the beardie side of the statistics at some point in the vaguely near future; and I'll be taking a bunch of people with me. Moreover, I won't be fixing W10 machines except by formatting them (not that I do a lot of that these days). Last year's jump in the statistics was a bunch of people formatting all the things. My approach is slower and more cautious (not to mention lazier) but the end destination is the same. I know I'm not the only one with this attitude; but don't know to what extent.
Hard to say what the future will hold; but I would expect linux market share to increase; with another rise when Microsoft start charging and probably another one in 2020 (or earlier) when W7 runs out and people have to decide which way to jump; with a steady increase throughout that time as the non-early-adopter types like myself finally get off their arses and do it.
Obviously MS would love to start charging for every month's use of Windows, but even with a 'buy ten years for the price of five!!' offer, its going to go down like a bag of cold sick with a LOT of users.
I suspect that - for anyone MS thinks has any choice - it's never going to happen. That leaves them with the costs of supporting an OS with a shitload of baggage and rapidly declining income.
At what point do they decide that porting the real cash cow - MS Office - to Linux makes sense?
A recent laptop that came with Win 10 needed to run W7 Pro (not Win 8, 8.1 or 10) for a particular piece of vertical market software. They wiped out Win 10 and installed Win 7 Pro. OOPS! No W7 drivers available for the graphics or USB hardware. No problem. Blow away the new Win 7 install (it had not yet been activated) and install Mint 17.3 64 Bit, then spin up a VM and install Win 7 on it. TAH-DAH! No more problem.
The lesson? Not allowing/providing support of new hardware under W7 is a bad strategy that is having unintended consequences.
> What was Linux adoption rate 20 years ago? Less than 2%, 10 years ago? less than 2%, now that MSFT has literally turned their OS into spyware? Drumroll....less than 2%.
Linux was the core of more than a billion of the most personal of computers last year. This is about 3 time the total of PCs and laptops combined.
Rank . . OS . . . . . . . . . 2015 units . . share . . .2014 units . . share . . 2013 units . . share
1 (1) . . Android . . . . 1,168.8 M . . . . 81.3% . . 1,062 M . . . . . 78% . . . 767 M . . . . . 65%
I'm very tempted to respond to your comment, almost line by line since I think that you are wrong/misguided in so many ways. It's early on Sunday morning though, so I'll only try a little stab:
"... either a programmer, or someone who ONLY uses the Internet,.."
You're wrong, so wrong. I'll leave it to other people to explain why, if they want to. The fact that other people could easily explain why, even though they don't know me, says a good deal about your limited outlook. (I've just noticed: "limited outlook" is not a sly joke, it just happened.)
" .. that do not run on your OS ...", "... the software required to get our work done ...", ".. Your OS is useless to us ...", "... your OS doesn't run ..."
I believe this is a rhetorical technique called 'othering' and in your case it seems to indicate some kind of bunker/siege mentality. There is no 'my OS' involved here, it's all in your head.
"... software that are mission critical to people's daily work that do not run on your OS ..."
That's because they haven't been written/developed to run on Linux.
"...thanks to the hostility of FOSS to proprietary software ..."
I'm running proprietary software, written and supplied for Linux, on my Linux box. It works. One item of said software needed me to buy a licence afer the free trial period, but I didn't bother because it wasn't 'mission critical'; I was only playing with it out of mild interest. Another item cost me about £10 for a lifetime license, which I paid for because it's so useful.
As I understand it, the APIs and inner workings of FOSS are fully documented and freely available to anyone who has any interest in them, for the purpose of developing proprietary software to use with them. How can this be hostility? You may have misunderstood what 'FOSS' means.
I'm too tired to deal with the rest of it so please forgive me if I don't bother.
@kb
Your icon is well chosen. It applies to your understanding of the issue.
Firstly, There's lots of S/W that provides for everyday uses - including A/V creation.
As to your SMB accounting argument, I can only assume that you're very young. Those of us who've been round the block a few times remember running SMB accounting on the likes of SCO Unix boxes before Linus had ever set finger to keyboard and when the best use of a M/S operating system was to run a terminal emulator to connect to said boxes. It may be beyond your imagination but that's how it was.
The real problem lies with very specialised S/W where the vendor has gone out of business or which were written to commission and the source was never provided to the customer. Worst of all are those that drive some external piece of H/W such as industrial machinery or medical instruments. In many such cases the S/W is limited to specific releases of Windows. Not only can the software be moved to non-Windows platforms, it can't even be moved beyond XP.
Now let's consider your comment about the hostility of FOSS to proprietary S/W. Yes it exists and no, it's of little consequence. Any OS is simply a platform. You can run nothing but FOSS on it if that's your religion. Alternatively it's there for any proprietary developer to build anything they want on top and that's what happens. This Linux laptop of mine can - and does - run the same Informix RDBMS software that I've supported on servers for big businesses. It could equally well run DB2 and, should I ever lose my marbles, Oracle. All proprietary databases. And if you'd pull your head out of your arse long enough to look around you'd find that your beloved Microsoft has realised that if it can't beat them it has to join them and ported SQL Server to Linux as well.
Not taking sides because I really don't care.
But I think the accounting software argument was more along the lines that it's harder to switch to Linux because there isn't a Linux version of your already existing accounting package.. Your options are either import x years of data and hope nothing gets lost or stick with what you know even if that means windows too.
I think that was his point, but as I said, I don't care.
It's an operating system, use what works for you. If you care that much about what someone else is using you need to reevaluate your priorities in life.
I dispute your analogy !
Most home users that don't play Windows based games unless they are Facebook games could easily switch to Linux Mint.
Libre Office may not be the all singing dancing software that MS Office is but it is certainly good enough for most home users.
Mozilla Firefox covers the Internet browsing and VLC covers Music and Video's !
As a home user what else would they want to use a PC for, remembering that more than 50% of Windows users are Home users !
The biggest issue for MS will be if Home users actually realize that there is an OS out there which is free, more efficient on resources so able to work great on low end Laptops and PC's which can do all of what they want !
I think that is one of MS's biggest fear - Luckily for them at the moment they are unaware, so user base will take some time, especially with MS Fan boys rubbishing everything except the Data slurping Win 10.
But as time moves forward other OS's possibly Linux variants will take user from MS as soon as users realize what MS is actually doing and that nothing they ever do will be private.
The only issue is how quick this will happen, I really doubt that Win 10 will take off in China or Russia no matter how much MS insists that the USA security services will not be snooping on Win 10 users !
"As a home user what else would they want to use a PC for,"
Well quite a few will want RAW photo development and video editing. No point in having that DSLR or HD video camera otherwise.
There's a number of good solutions for Linux - I use Darktable and Kdenlive
Ah, right…
So all the document processing I do at work, image manipulation, video editing, MP3 encoding, poster production, etc, etc...under Linux…
...isn't really taking placing place. I'm actually using Windows but taking LSD in the process to make me think I'm using Mint Linux.
That explains the flying pink bunnies.
I'm not a programmer either but I assume that's the LSD at work again.
Hear hear. Finally some with a brain to stand up to all these basement dwelling Linux users...!
You're absolutely right. I only bought my PC so I can pay for my yearly subscription to the latest anti-virus software - which is Windows ONLY, to run my anti-malware Windows ONLY software too, not to mention my RegCleaner tool, "Smart" disk defrag software (which gives me something to sit and watch for 4 hours!). See we have more entertainment software than you too Linux users. *checkmate!
My life just wouldn't be the same on any other OS without knowing I am fully protected from system slow-downs thanks to my Advanced System Snakeoi... sorry "System Care" software too.
Why would these penguin loving morons want to run Windows in a VM on "THEIR" crappy Linux OS, when they can just do what I do, and run all this quality software on a real Windows OS, and get a real rig to feel as fast as a VM in the first place?!
I can't wait to upgrade all my Windows pc's to Windows 10 as soon as they let me out after my lobotomy has been given the thumbs up.
I never liked w7. It was raved about because it was better than vista. No. An OS remembers where you opened the window. W7 doesn't. It is not an OS. It has never been an OS in my mind. Vista was the warning. Shite windows & no positioning,
A week, I've spent, trying to get my wench's PC back into playing games. We're behind a wsus DC. My games machine - all updates ok. My laptop - none since Feb (but 100% up to date). Her machine is doing an amy.
"It is not an OS"
In 1987/88 when I was working for DEC I had a stack of Ultrix manuals on my desk. I have a distinct memory from that time of reading Dennis Ritchie's opening statement in Volume 1:
"Unix is not an operating system. It is an I/O multiplexer"
Now it was a long time ago, maybe my memory is faulty, so I wonder if others can recall this from the original AT&T documentation set.
"Unix is not an operating system. It is an I/O multiplexer"
Haven't found the statement being made by Dennis Ritchie but certainly Ken Thomson made a very similar statement so Ritchie saying it would be very plausible
From this article titled "UNIX Implementation" by K. Thompson
http://web.stanford.edu/class/archive/cs/cs140/cs140.1088/lectures/UNIX.implementation.pdf
"
The UNIX kernel is an I/O multiplexer more than a complete operating system. This is as it should be. Because of this outlook, many features are found in most other operating systems that are missing from the UNIX kernel. For example, the UNIX kernel does not support file access methods, file disposition, file formats, file maximum size, spooling, command language, logical records, physical records, assignment of logical file names, logical file names, more than one character set, an operator’s console, an operator, log-in, or log-out. Many of these things are symptoms rather than features. Many of these things are imple-mented in user software using the kernel as a tool. A good example of this is the command language. Each user may have his own command language. Maintenance of such code is as easy as maintaining usercode. The idea of implementing ‘‘system’’ code with general user primitives comes directly from MUL-TICS
".
@David - Ahhh. Multics.
That system has spawned most of the OS's in existence now. I worked with the GE (and then Honeywell/Bull/etc.) team that worked with Multics in the early 1970's Every bit of information stored within the system was identified with a global "memory address". Unfortunately the demands of ACL-like cross-checking at the memory level were very difficult to do back then (processor speed) as well as now. Still think Multics hasn't gotten the respect it deserves.
"A week, I've spent, trying to get my wench's PC back into playing games."
And you're sure that the issues aren't , in fact, those games?
Given that between Win7, Win7compatibility mode, and DOSbox you can pretty much run anything gamey created since the dawn of the PC. or with a different emulator quite a few other platforms as well...
Lemme guess... she likes the dime-a-dozen bargain bin pointy-click "adventure puzzle games" or any other Zynga-type knockoffs?
I was given a W7 laptop, it took me all of about 30 minutes to re-partition it to run Linux. I never looked back. For those rare moments that I actually needed the W7 partition, the nice GRUB loader let me boot there. In my about 2 years of working there, I could count on one hand the number of hours I actually ran W7. I considered it an upgrade from what I was initially given.
After that it was updates that were available easily online to keep everything running smoothly. I even went through a couple of major revisions. Smooth!
I suspect that it would still be OK even a year and a half later, and a couple of major Linux updates. No nag stuff either (see comments there).
right, and theres no solution to that eh?
you could:
1) use an external dvd drive
Connected to the same USB port that it doesn't support? Been there, done that with some Bay Trial systems here, although thankfully the most recent BIOS patch for the MB in question has alleviated that.
Retiring Windows 7 is not a bad idea, provided there is something better to replace it with. Microsoft still does not realize that people are holding out because the user interface in Windows 7 is superior in every way over Win8 and Win10. Most people don't know anything beyond what they see on the screen, and what they see on the screen is ugly and hard to use.
I've just 'upgraded' a cousin's Win7 to Win10 as a sick joke, carefully deleting 'windows.old'. To my surprise and discomfort it works quite well. Sure, I spent an hour on Classic Shell, making it look like XP, shrinking icons and arrows, SpybotAntiBeacon, killing 'Bing', Cortana, and all the other nonsense. Sure we should worry about Microsoft charging in future - but Win10 does seem at last to be more goof-proof than some. If a third party could one-click-bundle everything needed to make 10 look like XP (with a free file explorer that works), I might take GWX Control Panel off other cousins' machines.
Not very well planned. If someone sat me down in an office situation (one that didnt involve developing large projects and browsing javascript heavy websites) and someone sat me in front of a Pi Zero with Raspbian and LibreOffice I'd find it hard to come up with any real data to prove I needed a more powerful machine, or operating system for reasons other than 'compatability'.
.. before most VM providers such as VMware and VirtualBox come up with an emulator mode.
I think Microsoft really has to start rethinking what it is doing here. I get so many requests for migration advice that to me it's evident it has pushed too far. It already sprung a formidable user base leak with Vista, but it appears intend on further opening the gash in the slowly sinking ship.
It occurs to me that (typing this on a W7 Core 2 Duo) older systems are a lot more valuable precisely because they will run Linux, Android, iOS, etc,
You can't stop people installing their own choice of OS, even if it means flashing the UEFI or in some cases changing an 8 pin chip rather than submitting to the BORG Collective.
I heard rumors that Ubuntu now supports Skylake, in fact some variants of power saving turn off the older MMX, SSE2, SSE3 etc areas of the chips precisely because they are power hogs.
The Atom does this already and simply emulates instructions natively rather than trying to have all the silicon there when only 30% gets used most of the time.
This is a bit déjà vu, like when IBM slowly switched from hardware and software to business systems in the broadest sense.
Microsoft has some stuff people still want. Apparently SQL server, and that dreadful office suite.
What they dont want, is Windows. They suffer it, they tolerate it, they live with it, because that's what the code they need to run, has to run ON.
If the code runs on android and windows, they pick the android product in spades.
The desktop workstation is in decline and so is in the end Windows. Nearly all the generic apps that you need on a desktop are there on a linux or OSX desktop. All that is left is a rump of specialised apps that are 'have to haves' for niche industries.
And you can run virtual machines for those if you have to.
I seriously dont see where Microsoft can go from here.
Its a legacy thing, these days.
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"Then there's just about everybody who backs up a mobile phone"
Well I can tell you we have no problems backing-up mobiles and there isn't a WIndows PC or Mac in the house. Just need the right app and Samba, NFS or even bluetooth.
I give you that if the manufacturer of a device is so shortsighted as to only provide a Windows solution there might be a problem. Doesn't worry me I found a way round everything I need and indeed more companies are providing Linux access anyway. MIcrochip for example even though older versions of their software work perfectly with wine
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"Joe Public is going to do this?"
Not apparently in your sad philosophy. No they're just WIndow's fodder with no ambition, desire for change or self-improvement. Your way is just more of the same Microsoft pushing everyone into their way of thinking, their proprietary protocols, their new ways of siphoning off your cash and driving you mad.
What a defeatist view. Joe Public has somehow managed to cope with phones and tablets with different OS/UI Masses of information is out there and readily available these days for anyone with enough drive to seek it. Wonder who bought all those Raspberry Pi ?
@kb
Once again, you've got the right icon for your attempt at argument.
Let's recall that the Windows interface was modelled on those that were around at the time running on top of Unix. W3 was much improved by having HP's New Wave running on top of it and it was in part that that contributed to W95 (if anyone noticed HP had copyright labels on W95). And frankly it was 95 that finally got the interface right having borrowed even more from CDE. In fact I'm quite happy to agree that the 95 interface hit a sweet spot that no Unix GUI I remember from that time had managed.
Since about 2K the Windows interface, in my view, has been going downhill. Unix-like systems, OTOH, by never having a specific GUI tied into the guts of the OS (the earlier comments about how limited the Unix kernel was are directly relevant) were free to explore alternatives. So KDE, for example, has taken the W95 idioms and built on them with such features as multiple workspaces. No Linux or Unix user need to be tied to a specific user interface; we feel really sorry for you poor Windows users, stuck with whatever mistakes MS have made this time round.
And that test-based interface you sneer at? Quite often I use KDE to throw up a terminal screen so I can use it for those tasks where no GUI is quite as slick or where I need the world's best text editor.
In terms of user interface I have the best of both worlds. I have choice.
And that test-based interface you sneer at? Quite often I use KDE to throw up a terminal screen so I can use it for those tasks where no GUI is quite as slick or where I need the world's best text editor.
I can remember the days of Slackware on floppies where the main reason to get XWindows up was to have more command lines on one screen, and because Unix platform and UI are decoupled, quite a few command lines were not even local but exported from servers somewhere else in the world.
This lead fairly rapidly to escape codes for command lines and terminal window headings so you didn't accidentally do something terminal to a live server (following the adage that experience is something you acquire AFTER you need it :) )..
If you think that the Facebook Oculus is somehow gonna save Windows from itself, then your pretty delusional. If they really believe that BS about that one Mac not being able to this the pixels 'round as needed. Then they too are delusional. Either way VR will not save the PC from its ultimate fate.
"Its a legacy thing, these days."
Those of us who've been around long enough have seen various things come and go. Everything that seemed that got displaced had seems to be here to stay. Those who can't visualise Windows being displaced in that way are those who don't have a long enough perspective. To be blunt, not only can I see Windows being displaced in relatively short order I can also see the beginning of the end for Linux.
What they dont want, is Windows. They suffer it, they tolerate it, they live with it, because that's what the code they need to run, has to run ON.
Actually, there is little suffering or tolerance required. Most people don't give it a second thought, they are not people who think a great deal about IT matters, they don't need to. They don't give a shit as long as they can run their apps and browser.
It's a mistake to assume that every computer user is like a Register reader.
Because there are so many things you can do on a Windows Pc that I cant on a Linux or Mac, people who know me that have little experience of IT are always asking me if I can do this or that, so to get some of my life back I have decided I will move to one of the latter just so I can say (No can do)
Because there are so many things you can do on a Windows Pc that I cant on a Linux or Mac
Ooooh, a challenge! Can I play?
Errr.. nope. Other than using overpriced software with proprietary, yet pretend open file formats, nothing spring to mind, sorry. Oh, wait, waste a lot of CPU cycles on antivirus software!
Did I win (well, anything other than derision)?
:)
Shock report: People doing 9-to-5 just want to keep using what they are using and not be served the Windows beautified interface "change is good, it's for you best, you will like it, we have also complexified and re-styled/flattened/recolored it a bit for your amusement" bullshit. Film at 11, after Trump!
Windows 7 "mainline support" ended over a year ago. And - and this is the important bit, so I'll type it slowly - that date was published at least 5 years ago. Anyone who bought a PC in the last 5 years and chose to install Windows 7 on it, can't claim they weren't told precisely when it was going to become obsolete.
Which is the main reason why I opted for 8.1, when I bought a PC about a year ago - it gives 3 extra years of support life. And you know what? I don't regret it one bit. It's a very nice OS. And, I've learned, I don't give a toss about the start menu.
Mainstream support for Win 7 ended in January of last year.
Win 7 will run "as is" on Skylake and beyond but won't be getting support for the advanced features of Skylake and beyond --- and this comes as a surprise to the geek because?
In 25 years, Linux has been unable to claim more than a bare 1% share of the desktop. The decline of the desktop market as whole isn't helping.
Win 10 is a purely commercial OS without the faintest taint of ideological purity or political correctness, running programs and drivers distributed under any terms you could name without a whisper of protest.
Thank god.
I have five subscription services installed, perhaps 50 or so core FOSS apps and utilities, 250 MSDOS/Windows games, shareware apps like mIRC, and another 50 or so Windows productivity and hobbyist apps acquired from other sources ----
including a small but growing number of "Universal" apps from the Windows store. It all "just works" and I have long since made my peace with user agents like Cortana.
The geek vastly underestimates the range and depth of the program library available for Windows, and also the convenience and utility of the Windows OS itself.
@westlake - I don't know what you;re on rattling on about 'political correctness' with regard to OS's, but if you want an OS you can do what the heck you want with it, go BSD* - or there's a similar one, with only minimal rules you have to stick to if you wish to use it, that you may have heard of, called Linux. You know, the one that's behind most of, well, everything, these days, aside from those that painted themselves into a corner with Windows.
I switched to Linux years ago due to its convenience and utility, and I'm simply interested in what my PC can do for me with least bother and hassle. Linux was the least hassle option. And despite many years of development of both OS's, Windows with a megacorporation aggressively pushing from behind, which OS is STILL least bother and hassle? Linux. Which OS are friends of mine slowly but surely migrating away from (either to Linux, Mac OSX, or, erm Android)? Why, that'd be Windows.
Now, why might that be, do you suppose?
Win 10 is a purely commercial OS without the faintest taint of ideological purity or political correctness, running programs and drivers distributed under any terms you could name without a whisper of protest.
I hope this kind of dross is being written by a paid grassrooter sitting in a warm office in the Redmond Complex, pining for a warm cup of coffee.
So come July when the free upgrade deal for Win 10 expires, is the MS malware going to stop downloading gigs of install files to my laptop?
Possibly. Possibly not. I suppose it really depends on how well the nagware and the gigadump has taken. You may see a slight variation in that it may start nagging you to buy a copy, something like they did with WGA on Windows XP if you had a naughty install.
I expect that the next stage would be the imposition of subscription charges, though exactly how, when and how much is open to speculation.
The MS apologists always trot this amazing statistic.. so why has Linux not gone mainstream desktop?
Because MS subsidise OEMs to have it on their products. Try and sell/advertise a Linux machine as a mainstream OEM and you will not be able to compete on price; and price/spec ratio is what sells.
Yes, there are Linux laptop suppliers about on the Net, but you won't find one in Currys or Tesco; and if you did you would see better value in buying a Windows one that you could wipe and put Linux on than the offerings with Linux pre-installed . More Windows users for the statistics.
The general public do not see Linux in the shops and , even if they did, I'm sure the salesmen would be on more commission to sell MS stuff and warn them that they can't have MS Office or Grand Theft Auto (or whatever, I remember OS/2 machines being sold in Rumbelows years ago).
Then you have the corporate users who must surely outnumber Joe Public in PC sales... the job-holder has no choice what desktop he is given.
What happened when those nice Linux netbooks came to market? MS Saw the danger and insisted on their own, higher spec machine to compete.. those in the know bought those and wiped Windows and installed Linux, those not in the know preferred to buy them because of the higher spec. More Windows Users in the statistics. And how do they count that 2% ??
I heard from a relation this week (he is running Linux at home) and he was privy to a conversation between a so-called 'expert' helping retired folk with computing problems and the elderly owner of a laptop. The upshot, after 30 minutes or so of trying to solve a software problem with Windows , was to tell the guy it was no good, he'd have to buy a new machine !!! When my relation said 'What about putting Linux on it?' the 'expert' said he'd never heard of it!
Lack of Public awareness; no price competitive machine in mainstream retail; that's the barrier to Linux Desktop use.
Because MS subsidise OEMs to have it on their products. Try and sell/advertise a Linux machine as a mainstream OEM and you will not be able to compete on price; and price/spec ratio is what sells.
Actually there is a problem that ordinary folk associate Linux with socially inadequate bore-nerds with bad personal hygiene. A tux penguin t-shirt can make a norm suddenly getting an important message and will have to run because there's a sudden emergency at home.
If Linux advocates were less Jeff Albertson then it would help a great deal.
I write this as someone who uses a standard corporate issued Windows machine, with its AD and group policy etc, but operates it mostly in Linux Mint in a VMware Player VM.
Having to make sure the nagware doesn't take over my PC is the last step.
The only thing I am interested (a bit) that won't run under WINE would be Visual Studio but there are good C# IDEs under Linux so I can write complex applications.
Mint by the way is... well mint!
I run several machines on different OSs, and just use whatever runs the tools I need. Linux for most of the work stuff, but Win 7 or 8.1 for some data acquisition and processing programs for which I haven't (yet) found a solution under Linux. The kids and missus also work with the Win 7 or 8.1 boxes.
My only gripes with Win 10 have been the nagware and the spyware. The nagware (probably?) ceases when you install it, but the spyware then becomes an issue. If there is an easy solution to block that I might well install win 10. If I cannot find a solution, I will not upgrade. I know alternatives for the few Windows programs I need are currently being developed, so this is a viable option in a few years time. If a subscription-only revenue model for an OS is introduced, that OS is out.
MS is free to choose its revenue model. I am free to choose an alternative
Due to MS and it's habit of not supporting it's older products I have to run a Win 7 instance.
Win 7 is the "newest" MS desktop OS where it is still possible to install and the (MS) software needed to develop for Windows Mobile 6.x.
Yes, 6.x is an old Mobile OS, but it still has a big foothold in the rugged mobile device market (still some new rugged kit released running 6.5) & lots of companies have developed software that runs on it
Some of the legacy software I have to support runs on 6.x, & so to deal with any enhancements in that software, I need to have a dev & test environment where I can still write and deploy 6.x code.
As an aside, no tools provided to migrate 6.x software to mobile 7, so with no easy porting either write new version for 7 or support 6.x code as long as possible, small companies with few staff essentially forced the keep 6.x code running route as lack of resources to do a 7 rewrite in commercially viable timeframe..
MS sort of learnt from this as with mobile 7, it was possible to migrate to mobile 8, but they do have a history of making software migrations difficult / randomly killing off once heavily promoted development areas (waves at Silverlight)
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