Creators Update meets its maker: It's 1903 or bust for those clinging to Windows 10 1703

Re: The spport cycle

My amazing Matrox Marvel never got Windows 2000 drivers either :(

Re: Do it our way or not at all

With Linux too? How is that?

why should Windows be any different?

Because MS Windows was always sold not leased, carpenter being paid for his work argument bites back.

You might consider that Apple products are similar to MS but since the latter do not make their own hardware the price for windows is always present even where they pretend it isn't.

Android is free so long as you follow their requirments and linux is free for anyone to build and maintain.

In summary if you sell something then most countries require that it works as expected for a reasonable period, yes for years MS have been able to to dodge but that doesn't mean they are the same as the guys who never took a penny directly.

Windows 10 was never free i.e. open to everyone, you had to have paid MS for a previous version and this change to as a service after the fact was not agreed to.

"I'm still on Win10 - but the swap would be easy."

Luckily, most of my employers systems I need to access remotely are all usable through the web. The only times I must use windows, they supplied a laptop and tablet which does everything else.

My personal usage patterns switched to FreeBSD years ago. So long that I don't even look at Windows-only apps. Maybe I'm missing some wonderful, time-saving, incredible apps, but probably not.

I despise the overly complex way MS are handling Windows and the updates.

But my (possibly incorrect) understanding is that Windows is similar to Ubuntu as you describe. LTSC every 5 years (I think, maybe 3), for servers or you could go with the 6 monthly releases for the latest features. Regardless of which one, there's monthly security patches too.

LTSC is also available for the client too, although I know MS highly discourage use of it for normal desktop usage. (In the past at least Office literally wouldn't install if you were using LTSC on Windows 10 which is fucking mental, but since when were MS sensible in that regard?!)

"3. Things will still work afterwards - both hardware and software"

If you really want, you can recreate the "I'm not sure if my computer will work after this update" feeling by using the unstable release. Although to be honest, the "unstable" release of most distros are usually quite stable...

The amount of times I do need a reboot to fix a problem in my few Linux boxes at work is on a par with Windows

Maybe because...

When we upgrade our Linux boxen, everything usually still works? Not so much with a MS update, it's a bit of a crapshoot whether your system will boot with Windows Uber updates.

I stayed on Mint 17 for way too long, it worked ok, but was having an occasional hiccup coming out of hybernation, took the plunge, did a backup, and slapped 19 on it, with ZERO problems, did a restore and was back up and running better and faster than before, all this on an aging dual core Toshiba laptop, with even older printer and scanner.

I would hate to think what would happen if the same thing was done with Windows.

To put things into context, the link you are referring to is presumably this one - Ubuntu Download

The top entry says :

Download the latest LTS version of Ubuntu, for desktop PCs and laptops. LTS stands for long-term support — which means five years, until April 2023, of free security and maintenance updates, guaranteed.

and the section below that says

The latest version of the Ubuntu operating system for desktop PCs and laptops, Ubuntu 19.04 comes with nine months, until January 2020, of security and maintenance updates.

So you have the choice of a long-term support version for 5 years, or a bleeding edge version that will be frequently updated, you just have to choose which one is more appropriate to your use case. The wording can't really be a lot clearer but you seem to want to take it out of context for some reason.

You might note that the longer-term supported version comes first and for those who know why they might need bleeding edge, can find it too.

Compare that to the bleeding edge versions of Windows and the long-term versions that don't seem to be particularly long at all. 2 years to quote the article for Windows vs 5 years for Linux. This is not my opinion, just plain old facts from the article and the source you misquoted.

Re: What's My Line

or you can type in winver in the search bar.

Re: What's My Line

>Because selecting File->Help->About in an explorer window is very difficult.

No its because you have to do it at all.

With ALL previous versions of Windows, you knew without really looking which version you were running. you only ever had to look to determine which Service Pack level you were running. With Windows 10, MS decided that such obvious signposting was so last century...

However, from a usability point-of-view, I know which systems are running W7 and which are running W10, yet with the W10 I can not tell you without looking which build/version each is running.