Shhh! It's us, Microsoft. Yes, it's 2020. We're here with a new build of Windows 10 Happily for those still reacting negatively to sunlight after New Year's festivities, the new version of Windows 10 Microsoft has flung at Fast Ring fanboys and girls was a tad on the muted side. And, of course, thanks to the exciting way in which Microsoft is now handling the Windows Insider program, there is no guarantee …
Telemetry, broken File Explorer search (since 1909 and insider releases, and MS totally failing to do anything about even though they've known about it since at least September 2019), forced updates (pausing is NO substitute for full control), more telemetry, complete lack of testing by MS (1809 and other problems), an uncustomisable Start Menu (thank goodness for OpenShell!), Explorer random crashes (ok, so that one's been around for ages but THEY STILL HAVEN'T FUCKING WELL FIXED IT!), updates that reset various things I've set up...
...shall I go on?
I feel your pain, but Home Edition was a silly experiment that we still feel to day... How many flavors of Vanilla do we need? How many builds of Vanilla?
I'll only say that networking for Home Edition was fscked... to dredge up any other bad memories would cost me at the pub or the shrink.
"I'd rather burn Windows 10 with fire and go back to a fully supported Windows 7, thank you very much!"
and Khaptain asked: "Why?"
Answer: TOO MANY REASONS TO LIST HERE! But I'll start with these:
a) 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE FLUGLY UI design with "The Metro" "The Start Thing" UWP and "The Settings": and all of that "change because *WE AT MICROSHAFT FEEL* in spite of what customers actually want"
b) The Spyware and The Adware built into the OS.
c) The Store
d) The MIcrosoft Logon - able to track you WHEREVER you are online, or ON! YOUR! OWN! COMPUTER! for that matter! If they haven't already leveraged this, they will at some point.
On a related note...
recently I swapped in a new hard drive for a relative's older laptop, with Devuan Linux and Mate. It originally came with Vista. The performance benefits alone are worth it, but at least the system will NOW be maintainable... And the owner of this computer is a "content consumer", and it took only a short time (read: a few minutes) to re-learn to use a Mate desktop vs what was set up before in Vista. Lots of "thank you" responses. Data files and settings were preserved when possible. I copied _everything_ that was in C:\Users into the new file system, just in case.
even e-mail settings were just copied because the windows system was using thunderbird...
(ok remind me why people are actually USING WNIDOWS 10 again?? Because someone like ME hasn't come along and converted them over to Linux, right?)
"Because someone like ME hasn't come along and converted them over to Linux, right?"
Oooh, this feels like deja vu...
At least (as far as I remember) Eadon only used caps in his "EPIC [insert Microsoft thing here] FAIL" sign-offs, and none of the juvenile AOL emphasis stuff.
I don't know what edition it is, but my podiatrist's office is using XP -- standard themed taskbar/Start and everything -- at least in the exam/treatment rooms.
If they have a data breach, just imagine the horror: someone might just find out my shoe size, weight and BP and body temperature at each visit, and how many warts I've been having treated and how many visits it's taken so far. (Their card payments unit is a little, independent unit so I'm not worried about anything useful getting stolen.)
Local branch of a national 'discount' supermarket chain, all their tills are XP pro based, and then there's their WLAN....'secured' by WEP (but hey, as I've a tribe of furry little overlords to feed, if the IT parsimony of the supermarket chain helps keep down the cost of the cat food they peddle that my overlords currently deign to eat, who am I to complain?...and only use cash when shopping there)
They're lucky the locals populating the nearby housing are mostly knuckle draggers, junkies and pensioners, had the place been a wee bit closer to the local college, things could have been a bit more 'interesting'.
Thanks for the reminder regarding supermarkets...
The "self checkout" stations at our regional hypermarket** chain also run XP, I think (or possibly something even older like 2000; could have just been an NT / 2000-like theme). Not sure about the staffed checkouts.
** Hypermarket: full supermarket + department store. More food and less merch than a (former glory) Kmart, and regional, not national like Walmart.
My wife's HP laptop just did what I take was a pretty major Windows 10 update. Can anyone explain why this should take hours, and why every update requires a complete reboot?
This machine has been an endless battle from Day One, and still has significant issues with BBC I-player, but only at home, and only some times of the day - with a fibre connection and a series of different routers and mesh systems.
Obviously some of the problems lay at the feet of HP, but when I reboot with a Linux USB the performance issues disappear so Windows has to take the lion's share of the blame.
And that's ignoring the overall user interface...
I presume you're referring to the feature updates, e.g. 1803 -> 1809.
They can be rolled back, but MS like to assume that if you've stuck with the new-fangled build for 10 days you clearly like it and/or it's working correctly* and so the old build goes away**.
* for certain definitions of "correct"
** or, at least, the option to roll it back does. I think the files loiter for a bit until you clear them out, but not certain.
If you've not given Wine another chance recently, you should consider doing so. It is by no means certain to work, especially if the code in question is buggy or uses some outré API call. But it's gradually gotten _much_ better, in my experience.
Though I can sympathize with the daunting nature of such a transfer. My mother was stuck on Windows for years because she needed to run a particular bit of payroll/accounting software for her husband's home business. Only solution was for him to retire. After he did that, Linux worked well for her. That solution is not open to everyone.
And before the immediate impulse to down vote this suggestion... hold on a minute and work with me on this - someone needs to make a Linux GUI that looks and works exactly like Windows 10. There, I said it.
MS appear to be integrating more and more Linux into Windows. Lets start at the other end and meet in the middle? All the underlying system advantages of Linux, without anyone even realising it's not Windows! Even better if existing Windows applications and games etc can run transparently and seamlessly without any extra end-user complexity at all.
One computer to rule them all.
I'm guessing XP installs are probably increasing again as the retro gaming thing takes hold, the tech equivalent of having a record player. I just built myself on XP machine, not what I am using to post this BTW. I managed to source all the choicest components like a Pentium 4 with hyper threading, at 3.2 Ghz it real flies, well glides maybe, the 3.4Ghz ones go for stupid money so I settled on the 3.2, same for the graphics card I managed to get the second fastest Nvidia AGP card GTX 7850, again the the 7900 go for alarmingly large amounts of dough these days.
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