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Windows 8 Tells Microsoft About Everything You Install
musicon writes "According to Nadim Kobeissi, Windows 8 is configured by default (using a new featured called Windows SmartScreen) to immediately tell Microsoft about every app you download and install. This is a very serious privacy problem, specifically because Microsoft is the central point of authority and data collection/retention here and therefore becomes vulnerable to being served judicial subpoenas or National Security Letters intended to monitor targeted users. This situation is exacerbated when Windows 8 is deployed in countries experiencing political turmoil or repressive political situations."
While SmartScreen is enabled by default, it's possible for users to turn it off. Also, it's worth noting that Microsoft is hardly alone in this regard, given the rise of app stores over the past several year. (Not that it exculpates this behavior.)
At the rate Microsoft is going, they might as well add a "Windows 8 opt-out feature."
I like your vision of a privacy-invasion free world.
Don't want to be videotaped? Don't go outside.
Don't want to be wiretapped? Don't use a phone.
Don't want medical records in the wild? Don't go to a doctor.
Visionary indeed.
No you won't. Quit trolling for +5.
No need to get the same information twice and you get to smear your competitor...
Look, I'm just a regular user, albeit more technically capable than the vast majority, but not a developer, sys admin, etc., and it's starting to look more and more like it's time to consider making the move to Linux.
This private company invasiveness seems to be growing in parallel with government invasiveness, and I'm not happy about either, but at least I can choose one, for now.
If you are going to blame Microsoft for what third party software does on your computer, then you can't also blame them when they start to track and address such problems. With things like EAs Origin, Steam, etc, what you do on your computer is no longer just your business. At least Microsoft lets you turn it off.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Don't all app stores do this? Otherwise how would they target ads to you (google) or own your balls (apple), or both (facebook)?
It seems from the MSDN link this can be avoided by simply not using Internet Explorer, as if you needed another reason not to
Honestly, if my Steam library ran on Linux I'd switch today...
Dear Microsoft, don't try to be apple, we already have apple and you'd just be playing catch up and alienating your current customer base to try and get a customer base that already despises you more than your current one.
... to build an app that fakes the install of programs? In other words, overwhelm MS with hundreds of false install notices to them. As certain programs become 'of interest' to certain parties, we add that program to the list. Eventually, the information would become useless and would be abandoned.
Or am I missing something?
How do you people thing virus scanners work?
Also, it's worth noting that Microsoft is hardly alone in this regard, given the rise of app stores over the past several year. (Not that it exculpates this behavior.)
Can't compare this. If I download something from the Play Store, I know Google knows I install that app. After all I have to log in using my Google account, and use their app to download from their store. Afaik they do not know what I install from third-party sources, like alternative app stores. Nor do they have any right knowing that.
Apparently MS monitors what you install from third-party sources. Without telling you, and without asking explicit permission. That's simply evil. They have no business knowing what I install from third-party sources. The fact that this data is stored in some foreign country (the US is a foreign country to me, and some 95% of the world's overall population) with notoriously poor privacy protection only helps making it a lot worse.
Also, it's worth noting that Microsoft is hardly alone in this regard, given the rise of app stores over the past several year.
Come on. This is just excuse-making - sure in any given app store the store owner knows what you downloaded - by definition they had to for you to download it!
But here aren't we talking about a more general notion that ANY application installed from anywhere is known by Microsoft? When you use the Amazon app store on Android, does Google know what you have? When I use Cydia on a iPhone, Apple doesn't know what applications I install from there... on the Mac I can use the app store but if I get applications from elsewhere Apple doesn't know about those either.
Just because App Stores exist does not give Microsoft the right to track every app installed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's wrong with sticking with Windows 7 for now?
It's not like Windows 7 is automatically obsolete as soon as 8 hits the market.
App stores will know everything you download from them for the same reason any other retailer would, you bought it there so there is a transaction record. This is tracking and sending to Microsoft information about EVERY application you download outside of their eventual marketplace. Apple doesn't know that I downloaded Handbreak from their site but with this Microsoft would, or to put it in a way that could cause an issue, Apple doesn't know that I downloaded LOIC, but Microsoft would. That is why it becomes an issue over and above something like the Mac App Store.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"While SmartScreen is enabled by default, it's possible for users to turn it off."
And this is what's wrong with this setup. Debian has popcon, which is a survey of what you use and how often you use it, and you can participate by having a cronjob send off the file.
http://popcon.debian.org/README
But it's not a privacy concern because it's opt-in.
If this equivalent of popcon on 8 was opt-in, this thread wouldn't be here.
--
BMO
Have you used Windows 7? Only marginally better than Vista. I actually miss XP. OMG, Did I really say that?
IE has done something similar for a while now with every program you download. MS is just moving it from IE to Windows so that users of ALL browsers get the same technology. To be fair I don't know if IE sends the same data that Windows does.
Regardless you can turn this off along with the other privacy-imparing features in Windows during the first run setup.
There's no indication that Microsoft themselves keeps track of which individuals downloaded/installed which programs.
The issue this article seems to propose is that somebody could sniff the network traffic between yourself and Microsoft to grab the SmartScreen data and see what you'd installed when Windows contacts MS to see if the file is marked as safe/unsafe/unknown.
If they're in a position to do that, wouldn't they theoretically be in a position to have potentially snooped on the download of the software which is triggering the SmartScreen traffic? (Depending of course, on where in the network their sniffer is at.)
The only valid complaint seems to be that Microsoft is using a known-insecure version of SSL for the website all this data is sent to. If they fix that, I'm not sure what reasonable issue would be there.
I would argue that for the average user, SmartScreen is a useful feature and having it turned on by default (assuming MS is tracking individual user downloads of software for some nefarious purpose) is a good thing.
While I am a linux user already, a friend of mine recently said something along these lines. He then qualified it with something like:
"But then, linux probably won't have AAA games until windows 9. Now it seems to me that every other version of windows sucks (2K/XP, Vista/7), and the version after it is just fine. So I'll probably continue using windows if 9 doesn't suck. At least, until windows 10, which will suck. I'll probably switch then."
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Did you check if it doesn't run with wine? You'd be surprised how much it has improved recently.
Cell phones and the like have been doing this for years. I may be wrong but I'm fairly certain Mac OS tells Apple about anything installed through the app store at a minimum. Frankly Microsoft will aggregate this information and use it to find out what causes thinks like crashes and system instability as well as malware and the like. For those kinds of uses I don't see a problem.
Potential abuses come in terms of using it for marketing purposes and if it can be subponead or requested by law enforcement and used to invade your privacy. Microsoft could resolve the privacy issues by abstracting the data with a simple hash of some kind so that your data can't be tracked back to you. In and of itself the concept isn't a bad one.
Microsoft, can you please hash this data to protect peoples privacy and still serve your otherwise legitimate needs?
I'm pretty sure most Linux distributions could easily track everything I have installed as well if they wanted too...
apt-get and yum
Sure you can manually compile some application from its tar.gz, but the vast majority of people use the package managers, which can all easily be tracked if they aren't already.
You know, I've been resisting Linux all these years, but with the current direction of Windows development and greater Linux game support (Steam, etc.) I may make the switch yet...
You sound like me about 5 years ago, when Vista was supposed to be Microsoft's hot new OS. I figured the way that was going, I might as well go Linux now and get over the hassle of switching. Long story short I spent 3.5 years on Linux as my primary desktop before I gave up the fight and switched to Win7. If you want to try Linux go right ahead, but if you're just think Win8 is a dead end I suggest just buckling down with Win7 and see if Microsoft comes to their senses. There's plenty time and being 64 bit I think it's even more of a stayer than XP, that and SSD support were really the only two "must have" features of Win7 for me. I expect the coming decade to have even less such "must have" features.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Right, use Chrome as the example of a privacy-conscious application... it's not like it sends not only every URL you type in the location bar, or knows and pre-fetches every possible combination of the URL while you're typing it, or anything. It doesn't take URL's you're typing and try to suggest search results for those words either, no sir! And it definitely, definitely doesn't let Google store and analyze all of that information against your account, should you happen to be logged in to Gmail or anything.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Um, check the date on that blog post. March 22nd, 2011.
This was a feature added, by default, to Internet Explorer 9.0. It is a part of the browser. If you are running Windows 7 and have updated to Internet Explorer 9.0 then it is already doing this. All Windows 8 does is have Internet Explorer 10 installed by default.
Olds for nerds?
Is Windows 7 really that bad? I spent about 10 minutes customizing it and find it to be a much better experience than XP. The only thing that chews my balls is the lack of an included utility to password-protect .zip files, but aside from that, I can't think of anything I really dislike about it.
I'd like to point out that this is the first story in recent memory that points out the problem for US users directly. While having a company monitor your activity is certainly non-optimal, the bigger problem comes in light of recent US cases involving subpena by the US government. How a company will use one's information can be argued. We have direct, documented proof of how the US government has been using this information.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
I used to be a die hard Mac guy until the early 2000s when I realized none of the games I wanted to play were available for Mac. So I switched to XP and never looked back. Now I am on Windows 7 and it works for me, but like many 8 scares the hell out of me. I want my task bar, I don't want a tablet GUI, and now this. Will I switch to Linux in the immediate future? Nope. But I won't be "upgrading" to 8. And if MS doesn't see the light and fix it before 7 is no longer supported, then I'll certainly look to Linux. Prior to Windows 8 I would never have considered that. I could probably be forced to get used to the GUI, but privacy issues are a big deal to me.
The first one is a poor comparison. Outside is not a private space in the same way that your computing hardware should be.
I know M$ is considered the axis of evil round here, but the would of linux is not entirely free from this kind of thing http://popcon.debian.org/
(although popcon is anonymised)
Yeah, agreed wtith below, I believe youare very much alone on this. Used windows 7 since beta and since day 1 it was better then XP. Its like comparing windows 98 to ME - cosmetically similar, but not even close to the same experience. So the question really is, have YOU used Windows 7?
Ethically it is hard to support any company which obviously has zero respect for user/consumer rights.
Steam is configured to report back to Valve about every app you download+install on it, and every time you launch an app, and there's NO way to opt out. (Well, you can switch it to offline mode, but that will prevent multiplayer and updates).
In order for Microsoft to kill rogue software they have to know something about what you're installing. SmartScreen is Microsoft's attempt to implement this kind of malware prevention, just like the age-old send error report features lets Microsoft know about programs that crash into the operating system's area.
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
If a user opts into enabling the SmartScreen Filter, application downloads without established reputation result in a notification (see below) warning them that the file may be a risk to their computer.
Sorry to disappoint, but Steam also takes the installed applications on your PC and returns it to the mothership.
look up published stats on steampowered if you don't believe me.
I hate to say it, but Steam is the same DRM/spyware only with better, friendlier marketing spin behind it.
when you choose to "opt-out"? What am I prohibited access from for turning it off? Is this like the "Windows Genuine Advantage" malware where you cannot update/patch unless this is turned on? Or is it like the little dialog that pops up when an app crashes asking if it can send details to HQ?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Does anyone remember the controversy (one of many) about Windows 95 when it would do the same thing? When you went to register it, it would supposedly tell Microsoft what programs you had installed. When I got my Win95 machine in December 1995 I watched carefully to see what it did. The phoning home and telling them what you had installed was voluntary, and the only program that Win95 could accurately detect was MS Office 95. It couldn't detect any of the DOS games I had installed, nor did it seem to recognize the 3rd party email apps, etc I had installed.
If you want to use Chrome without sending that stuff to Google it's really easy. Go into the settings and click on Privacy. Uncheck everything. Done.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Hello Mr. Strawman.
Don't want to use a product that invades your privacy in some way? Don't use a product that does that, or use it but turn off that "feature", or firewall it.
No need to go from there to 'Don't go to a doctor'.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I just checked my installation and it was already turned OFF.
I Installed Win8 two days ago. You just have to answer installation questions correctly I guess.
$100 on iOS and Android having the same feature. Not that I like it, but why the Windows-only bashing?
I don't have a sig.
Sorry to disappoint, but Steam also takes the installed applications on your PC and returns it to the mothership.
look up published stats on steampowered if you don't believe me.
Uh, Steam _ASKS_ whether you want to allow it to upload that information when it picks you for the hardware survey.
It also crashes when it tries to find that information on Linux, so you're totally safe if you run it in Wine.
The "Windows SmartScreen" referenced in TFA is nothing of the sort.
/. editors to generate traffic to their blog.
This is an IE9 feature, which would not be a huge surprise to find is still there in IE10. TFS links to an 18-month-old article talking about it in IE9. Not Windows 8. There is nothing to back up the wording used in TFS or TFA. It's a good feature I have enabled on my parent's machines for their protection, as it's one more layer against malware downloads.
The ONLY things this feature touches is executables which are downloaded from the Internet using IE. Install from a DVD? Download using Chrome/Firefox? USB drive? Copied from another disk? Compiled yourself? None of those things gets "sent to Microsoft".
Just someone (successfully) using a combination of inflammatory wording and gullible/lazy
Where do we find companies that have respect for user/consumer rights, because I would be happy to use their products and services.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
You must have a username to download apps from Play. Google can track everything you do, yet no one really complains. Apple is even worse. Microsoft will probably be opening their own app store soon enough.
Isn't that equivalent to the answer of 'If you don't want Windows SmartScreen to tell Microsoft about your installed apps, go into Privacy and turn it off.'?
It would seem to me that the point the parent was making is that Chrome's data reporting habits and this new one in Windows 8 are effectively the same. Both are enabled by default, and both report data back to their 'owners'. That both have an 'opt out' to turn them off really doesn't differentiate or describe either one as awesome with regards to privacy.
I think the reactions here are a little off base. First, SmartScreen is not a "new" technology, the only thing that is new is that it checks reputation for individual files as well as sites. Did we have similar articles about how Chrome/IE/Firefox/Safari is 'tracking' everything I do with its URL filtering technology? Maybe. Frankly I didn't care much for that idea either, but SmartScreen is the same exact approach taken to the file level: reputation-based file checking. Many antivirus and application gateway vendors are taking the same approach.
Secondly, it only applies *downloaded from the Internet*. There's nothing to indicate EVERY installed app is 'tracked', files downloaded from the Internet are checked against MS's reputation system. (Yes I know, almost everything is downloaded from the Internet). We see the start of this technology with the warnings that come up when a downloaded file is executed.
Third, I saw no indication that any specifics about the application such as application name (yes file name likely has this information), installation directory, what changes it makes to the system, etc. are transmitted. It likely is more along the lines of "hash xxxxxxxxxxxx downloaded from IP x.x.x.x, size x, type MSI'. Yes, MS will no doubt have a whitelist of known hashes for known application installers, so yes they probably will collect some sort of data from this. Now what really will happen with the data I can't say, but this isn't a case of MS building in overt 'tracking' technology any more than it was when Google's browser did it. Here's the FAQ on SmartScreen: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/smartscreen-filter-frequently-asked-questions#
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Great point,
Sorry to disappoint, but Steam also takes the installed applications on your PC and returns it to the mothership.
.. along with info on when you launch the steam apps, when you log in to steam (by definition of logging in) and even your settings in the games.
And to the OP, CHECK that the steam games works on Linux before you wipe windows. The Steam app works for me, but none of the 4 games I have.
Just firewall it off.
That's not reliable when MS can change the source port and the destination IP and port or bundle it in the update process in some messy way.
You forgot a few good ones:
Don't want your purchases tracked? Never purchase online and always pay in cash.
Don't want your network traffic monitored? Don't pay for internet service.
As a side note, I don't see how the other replies to your post missed the sarcasm. It's not often you hear/read the word "indeed" without it.
Just firewall it off.
What's such software worth if you have to explicitly firewall parts of it from doing stupid things.
Actually heavy firewalling Windows is necessary to keep it secure. Necessary but sadly not sufficient.
It would be a pretty weak primary English speaker's vocabulary which didn't include at least familiarity with, if not active use of, "exculpate". It's a high school level word at the most.
The world moves on. You can't live in your sheltered world forever. One day, you'll buy a computer that comes with Windows 8, and Windows 7 drivers aren't available for it. Then software comes out that requires Windows 8 or later. You would have a hard time living with Windows 2000 today. The same thing will happen with Windows 7 in a few years.
It's a feature where where you download random programs from the internet and install them, windows checks if it's known malware.
That actually seems a useful feature, one I wish my parents had on their machine!
New PC's won't come with Windows 7, they'll be shipped with Windows 8.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Is like putting in dvds a lot of screen time with warnings about piracy. The ones that really does piracy don't get it, and get a user better experience (or in this case, privacy), while the people that don't have to "pay" it.
You know, Steam knows not only every game you install, but also every time you play it. That's an even greater intrusion into your privacy, so why aren't you as worried about it?
>>> It's called "downgrade rights"
Please tell me more. I have a Windows 7 PC but suppose it dies five years from now, and I need a replacement. I goto staples, but a Win8 PC, and then what? How do I downgrade it to Windows 7? It isn't on stores shelves anymore (and frankly I don't want to pay for Windows twice... once for 8 and again for 7).
Please educate me and everybody else.
thx
You should have a license key for Win7 and install media; use that to reinstall it in 5 years.
At worst, you may have to burn a copy of the install DVD if you don't already have one. I had to do this with my Inspiron laptop, it has a key, but Dell didn't ship media but they include a method to burn it from a "recovery" partition.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
The amount of information leakage from windows and applications is quite alarming.
BROWSER:
In particular the change to combined URL+search bar in IE9 has a particularly nasty behavior. ctrl+e is supposed to perform a search with your current search provider so if I type ctrl+e then 'test' it sends that to google or whatever.
ctrl+l is supposed to allow the user to enter a URL not search yet the only difference is it attempts to lookup/connect and if that fails assumes it is a search term so if you put in a hostname for a local intranet site even if it contains query parameters with private information that gets leaked to your search provider! It seems quite intentionally designed to cause information leakage.
The only option I know to change this turns off the search feature completely.
Host of other browser things for phishing/smartscreen, certificate recovation, scanning..etc are obvious in their need to send information and can be toggled thru software options.
OFFICE:
The other day I was in office and every time I tried to cut and paste something I inadvertently was triggering the translation feature this was sending portions of my document to Microsoft to be translated simply by highlighting text... The way it was done it is so much of an automated gesture thing it was virtually impossible for me to navigate thru the document without accidently tripping it off even after trying not to. I turned off all translations - it was driving me nuts.
The networking location awareness service continually leaks data to Microsoft and whenever you connect to a network the only way to change this is via registry hacks.
I'm not against the existance of features which require coordination over a network or central databases to work however it must be made clear via central configuration to the user what is happening and in all cases they must have the option to disable any functionality that calls home either locally or by group policy.
Disabling these features must not unecessarily punish the user by unecessarily crippling a subsystem in retaliation.
Well I guess you could use Linux/BSD etc to avoid companies if you find they are ethically opposed to your wants and needs. Or you could "not give a shit" and use Windows 8, iOS or whatever flavor of control tickles your scrotum. Idealism is not an easy burden to bear, just look at what its done to poor Richard Stallman!
For me at least, it is not that I find anything actually 'bad' about Win7 (outside me not being able to find a lot of things since they moved around the control panel again)... I just find it doesn't do anything new over WinXP to justify the higher hardware requirements. Thus it is only 'bad' in that it is more expensive to run, which of course is nullified if one is talking about new purchases.
Yes, but an important factor is what they do with it. What are Microsoft's plans for your data? With Steam, there is much les of a chance of the data being used against. It is only reporting data on their games, and it's mostly for their social features to tell others what you are playing at the moment. They already have a list of games you bought. Whether you've installed it or not at that point is not very important. The fact you cannot opt-out is no good, but the data doesn't have much malicious capabilities in the first place.
On the other hand, Microsoft being in the know when you are installing any app, especially "incriminating" ones such as TrueCrypt or Tor. If someone were to obtain the list from Microsoft, they could see what software you have, possibly what version, and they can then use that to compromise your system (unpatched holes and whatnot). Steam's data however would be a much more complicated and fruitless attack vector.
I'd like to add you lose certain features when doing this, such as the ones mentioned in grandparent, but most people seem to ignore that it is in fact a choice. Those features rely on the data being transmitted. If you don't want to send data, but want the features; tough tits.
....so does every iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android out there. But its only bad because Microsoft is doing it because we know Apple and Google do no evil...snicker.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I hope you realize Windows 8 has a the taskbar that behaves just like Windows 7. I am running W8 RTM and it haven't missed 7 one bit. I actually using 8 a bit more.
The major difference it the "start screen" takes up the whole screen instead of 1/8 of the screen. You can still hit start and then start typing, etc... And you can use Tablet apps on your desktop if you like them. Some of the apps from the App Store are games, etc... SoulCraft actually lets you use the 360 gamepad, etc...
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ooYKE4F-c&feature=player_embedded
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/30/smartphone_spying_app/ -- It sure stinks, but somebody's got to sniff it!
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Great point,
Aside from being completely wrong.
Steam knows which Steam games you run on your PC, but it does not sneak around monitoring other programs without permission.
Hmmm, Steam is basically an online store. How do you expect it *not* to report to Valve? Like, you do know that Amazon and EBay know about all the stuff you buy through them, do you?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Rant Mode Activated!
NO ONE HAS TO "SWITCH" OS any more than they have to "switch" browsers. OS and browsers don't get jealous of each other!
You can run all the different OS your computer will support in a variety of ways. Multibooting is easy. VMs are easy to use, and if you like you can boot into your choice of "primary OS" then host others in VMs on that OS. You can also boot from the hard disk of your choice where your BIOS offers that option.
It's easy. I'm fucking ancient (over 50) and only began seriously using PCs at age 40. Today you have choices out the proverbial wazoo and most of them are free.
I don't get this "switch" bullshit. I load whatever OS _serves_me_ as I prefer. If I need a particular one for business or school, I load that and use it for that task only. Computers are tools.
That said, if all you do is game just stay on Windows and don't bother with anything else because you don't need anything else.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And I'm not convinced it was used correctly. Given the definition ("to clear from alleged fault or guilt"), typically I would expect the subject of exculpate to be an entity rather than the behavior itself. "Not that it exculpates them for this behavior." A better choice might've been "absolve".
I assume you don't install punkbuster to play your steam games? All of these anti-cheat programs are scanning your PC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punkbuster
Now it seems to me that every other version of windows sucks (2K/XP, Vista/7), and the version after it is just fine.
It seems to me that this is a poor urban legend. Windows 2K was probably the best Windows ever and Windows 7 is just a bug fix release of Vista.
Yikes, I don't miss XP at all. I don't miss the ritual of installing a bazillion anti-spyware/malware application. Changing all my settings and appearance to be the way I like it. Don't miss that at all. Installed Win8 on my main development machine yesterday and all the settings came over from RP, sweet.
Try to avoid corporations and deal with non-profits and the like. You don't get screwed over if there's no profit motive.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Nope, not just discovering. I've used computers since my C64 in the mid 80s. I'm on a computer all day at work and most nights at home - probably far more than is healthy. But I've been a gamer ever since I first saw Space Invaders, and so my home computer is always built for gaming. A good gaming machine can do most other computer related things just fine. We have a PS1, PS2, PS3, Wii, miscellaneous Gameboys, etc., but mainly my son uses those. Give me a keyboard and a mouse to control games any day.
Aside from being completely wrong.
Steam knows which Steam games you run on your PC, but it does not sneak around monitoring other programs without permission.
I kind of corrupted the ACs point, he was indeed saying that Steam was snooping around the system and reporting the other software (which I think is true). And various anti-cheat software is even worse, monitoring running applications.
My argument was more along the lines of if Steam applications : Steam platform = Windows applications : Windows platform, then steam's monitoring is much worse that windows's
No, it isn't. Windows 7 is the best version of Windows ever put out. Yes, there are some new things to learn with how things are done, but nothing that is outrageous.
Apple would also know all your installations and the iOS environment
Yes, because they RUN THE APP STORE.
That's so obvious that anyone would EXPECT it.
Not only that, but it's on smartphones which inherently are much more locked down than desktops.
do you really think they are only doing this to "make sure you have a good experience?
They are doing is because after you buy an app you have to have some way to download it from a server. Therefore they have to know who you are.
It also means you can download the app again onto any other device because it knows you bought it already.
What is not obvious, where Microsoft is off on a new path, is that if I download an app for my laptop from some website Microsoft is told about that too (as I understand it). Apple doesn't do that if I download on app from any random website for my Macbook, and Microsoft has not done that before in Windows (that I know of).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Finally protection against unauthorized rootkit installation by MAFIAA companies!
Or does it not include everything?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
In actually, I always make perfect sense - now is a great opportunity to scrutinize all of your past disagreements with my posts and find where you were flawed. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Linux distros don't track software I build myself. Linux distros don't track downloads from mirror sites. Linux distros don't track downloads from my local cache server. Linux distros don't track rpm files I install myself.
Linux distros probably don't even track individual downloads from their main server.
Downgrade rights, re-use old licenses, buy Windows 7 retail... plenty of options for people that do not want Windows 8 on a new PC.
Why, just last week I installed Windows 98 on a PC and I'm fairly sure that hasn't been available on new PCs in quite some time.
I assume you don't install punkbuster to play your steam games?
No.
And none of those programs are sending details of all my installed apps to Valve to put up on their web site. The original claim is still completely bogus.
I'd actually argue that that's for the better. The standard "encryption" mechanism for PKZIP-compatible zip files is atrociously weak -- breakable in a matter of seconds with off-the-shelf software. Better to not provide it at all, and thereby encourage people to go find something that will give them real security when they need it, than to ship snake oil.
Interesting; you gave up on Linux 1.5 years ago after trying it for 3.5 years; I switched from XP to Linux Mint exactly 1.5 years ago after twelve years of dabbling with Linux and determing that it had finally evolved enough to be suitably idiot-proof for an MCSE like me (I repair Windows PC's for a living - as I have for almost twenty years - and get served with a daily reminder of why I made the switch).
Really? Underrated? Score one for the -1 Disagree posse. Good thing I've got more karma than God, sucka-ducks.
Uh... "underrated" means they modded you up, dude.
How long's that chip been on your shoulder?
#DeleteChrome
I don't believe you, or you are just doing It wrong. It appears there are openjdk packages for Ubuntu.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java has all the info you need.
For debian it is no more than launching aptitude and selecting the openjdk jre package. I can't imaging it is harden on Ubuntu.
My choice is Linux
Then your employers should probably find someone else, or you should hire assistants to deal with support calls.
The most valuable thing about Windows is that everyone uses it. If some 50 year old lady has a problem the 45 year old next to her might have a solution, or the 18 year old intern might. With linux, every problem becomes your problem, you installed it, you suffer the consequences.
For an end user, especially an end user who is either cheap or ideologically driven the time wasted figuring out how to do any given thing in linux is a worthwhile learning experience, for everyone else the difference between 100 dollars for an operating system versus 2 hours of lost productivity (not per day, total) for an employee and you pay the 100 dollars for an operating system they know how to use.
This is, by the way, the prime criticism of windows 8, no one knows how to use it and the first time you want to log off or restart you'll waste an hour trying to figure out how, so right there every copy of windows 8 without anything else is half way to being a waste of money.
non-working Software on Linux
It's not that linux doesn't have equivalents for just about everything that isn't a custom job, it does, there are even a lot of tools for things you just can't do easily on windows. But if your billing software is on windows, your accounting software, your payroll, your calendering, your ...... suddenly you've asked them to incur a significant expense to try and get new software. The vast majority of custom small business programmers work in .net and windows, it's quick it's 'good enough' and they don't port to linux because it's not worth the effort.
The main reason an end user would switch from linux to windows is games, even if you can get stuff running under wine it's never as good as native dx 11 support, and yes, lots of big titles work reasonably well if not perfectly, but lots of small titles don't, and then you're SOL. If a game patches you could easily be stuck waiting for a fix and so on. Unless you are really strongly ideologically driven, or really poor, linux isn't really worth the effort for home users.
I can: Windows explorer
I wouldn't know, because my 1.5 year old Mac won't even run the latest versions of WINE, without having to pay Apple for an upgrade to my OS, an upgrade that makes my computer more tablet-like and for all I know might de-stabilize the system.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I mean it really skipped the "desktop" and went right to phone and tabet devices. Next is consoles. Then of course consoles will kill PC's so it will be moot right?
Can you give me some insight as to why you switched from Linux to Windows 7 ? (...) So you reasons for Switching from Linux to Windows 7 might enlighten/teach me.
Well, like I said I managed to use it for 3.5 years so there was no deal breakers that I can point to, it was more the death of a thousand stings. A few off the top of my head:
1. Very often you want one or two new features in one application, but due to the nature of distros and dependencies, the lack of backports and my unwillingness to start compiling and dealing with those dependencies myself you often end up upgrading your distro - in my case every six months with another Kubuntu release. This almost every time leads to a) some kind of unexpected issue or b) some applications doing some major UI rework or some other change I didn't really ask for. With Win7 I feel that I can install practically any application without making changes to my "system", unless that application is running all is working as before.
2. Despite all that is said and done with WINE gaming on Linux requires a lot of tweaking, even if Steam should come to Linux a lot of games is built around DirectX that won't run natively. Ultimately it's a lot easier to run games made for Windows on Windows and where you know all the shitty issues is due to shitty games and not WINE bugs. A major part of that is that WINE has regressions, old games can suddenly break and waiting for a patch to fix the regression can take a long time. I think my record is about half a year unless you went back and installed an older version in a side-by-side arrangement.
3. The kernel is rock stable, but as I was on KDE at the time I was balancing between a working but almost abandoned KDE 3.5 and a buggy KDE 4.x, the kernel is rock stable but everything on top isn't nearly of the same quality. There's only so many times you can hear that the next 4.x+1 release will/has fixed everything before it sounds like the boy crying wolf. In my experience a lot of open source people say "it works" when they mean "it sorta works, with lots of tweaking". For better and for worse I find Windows troubleshooting much quicker comes down to "it works" or "it won't work" while on Linux you end up way down in the nitty gritty details and never really concluding. There's a ton of technical detail available but it's just not navigable and it's a huge time sink.
4. The various Linux chat clients have a mediocre interface to MSN, basic chat works but the rest is usually wonky. Which is kind of annoying when you want to talk to people there, who won't switch because they all use MSN. Same goes for browser plug-ins besides flash - that one worked more or less. The Citrix client was only a major pain to install. Usually something can be tweaked but on Windows this just works. It's not Linux's fault that MSN is using a proprietary protocol they're reverse engineering poorly, but like arguing whose blame it is doesn't solve the problem. It might not be a problem with Linux, but it's a problem trying to use Linux.
5. Almost all the good open source software is also on Windows, if you want LibreOffice and Firefox and whatnot you can run those. And you get the full selection of Windows software when that's not enough and those obscure Windows-only pieces of software you could never replace (I have two) run natively instead of dealing with WINE or a VirtualBox. I'd put it another way, start switching applications and if you run out of Windows-only applications then you can switch to Linux, it should be the last step in going open source not the first step.
In short, I ended up with long list of like tiny annoyances, and I couldn't really list any big pros. Yes it's free but if I take into account all the time I spent trying to fix little annoyances it just didn't pay off, not to mention I deal enough with IT stuff that doesn't work at work. The final straw was a borked upgrade, like if I need to do a clean install now I'll go Windows. Those installs usually last me years if I don't install any crapware.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Personally, I think the feature works really well. Especially against the "Padded Fresh! Just for You!!" fakeAV malware trojan files out there today.
In fact:
Norton Does it
Panda Does it
many of the antivirus firms are doing hash based reputation scanning.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
In Capitalist Amerika, servers monitor YOU!
I bet these admins have some great server monitors^W^W monitor servers...
There is a difference between an app store keeping track of what I have downloaded (and installed) from said store versus the OS keeping track of everything I've installed. The fact that it can be disabled is good, but still inadequate because how many users will even know to go in and disable it.
A better approach would be like many linux distros do and default the tracking to "no" and ask the user whether they would like to turn it on (along with what happens if they say "yes").
If M$ wants to keep track of the service patches I've downloaded from them and installed, that's fine. If they want to keep track of every other piece of software I've installed, whether downloaded (legally or not) or purchased, well, that's none of their business.
If the product is the near monopoly, your pretty fucked.
So your little quip has no meaning.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I was actually thinking the same thing. If you choose your computing platform specifically for games, it's like choosing your car specifically for how the stereo fits.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Are they still using the 'put the password in the file header and don't actually encrypt anything so you can just strip that part of the header out with notepad and read the file anyway' method? I remember "decrypting" .zip files many years ago with nothing but Notepad....
It's the "get off my lawn" syndrome. People absolutely hate change and this is one example of it. They've been running on XP for so long now that changing to anything, even the best thing since sliced bread, would still be met with resistance.
This isn't to say that all change is good, but neither is it inherently bad. It's just that humans are creatures of habit.
. . . assuming M$ is still installing that ADVAPI.DLL for their perusal and enjoyment....
Hell, I gave up on Windows as my desktop back when 95 came out and started trying to control the environment. It doesn't mean you're stuck with one OS though, you can boot into a second partition for a game or run them in a virtual machine in full screen. (which I've done) I've been lucky to find nearly every game I've wanted in the Linux form after a period of time. Though, I switched to OSX as my desktop a year or two ago for the game and app support, and it worked nicely.
It all depends on what you want to do, really.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Helping an old friend set up her new PC (an HP with Windows 7) and finding that I could not do things that I take for granted (file operations) and that I was precluded from making any meaningful changes. I just transferred her files installed Firefox and OpenOffice.org and threw in the towel! If Windows 8 is even worse, I'm not going to touch it either.
I am quite happy with Ubuntu!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I used to run Windows on my home computer until I decided to switch to Linux full-time in 1998. Mostly RedHat and Fedora. I was fortunate that I could also run Linux on the desktop at my work, and I did so until 2009. That's when our new director put his foot down and pretty much pushed me to run Windows at work.
I have to say, Windows is a dumb desktop. Microsoft may have updated the bells and whistles, but it's still painful to use. Inconsistencies everywhere, making a very strange user interface. Applying updates is hard. Functionality I just expected to be there was missing, but you could "easily" get add-ons by buying expensive software or getting the "premium" edition of Windows.
I switched jobs two years ago, and glad to say I'm running Linux at work again, with the occasional (about monthly) boot into Windows to use a videoconference client that requires Silverlight.
So there's another side of the story for you.
I wonder how exactly you'd want to download games or updates for games without necessarily requesting that file from Steam's servers and thus letting them know that you're downloading that game.
This is entirely different from an OS sending a list of all applications that you install, regardless of where they were downloaded from and what services the OS provides for them (read: none for the vast majority).
Where do we find companies that have respect for user/consumer rights
In the past.
Not many, to be sure, but some where such. The old Nokia, for instance, the one before Kallasvuo.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Seems pretty straight forward... I found both of the installation instructions in less than 30 seconds total.
prerequisite: apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk .jar files to automatically open in the Java Runtime in the future, and this step (Step 5) will not need repeating if you were to download Minecraft again and open the file on the same user account on the same computer. However, for each individual computer user/account, this process would need repeating on each individual account that is to play Minecraft. java-default.png
1. Download Minecraft for "Linux/Other" from www.minecraft.net/download download-page.png
2. To do this, right click on the minecraft.jar link on the download page, click "Save Link as" (in Firefox - other browsers may word this differently), and navigate to your desktop folder as illustrated. Then click Save to save it to your desktop. save-to-desktop.png
3. Right-click on the file and select "Properties"
4. On the "Permissions" tab, check the "Allow executing file as a program" checkbox, as illustrated. permissions-execute.png
5. On the "Open With" tab, select "OpenJDK Java 6/7 Runtime" (depending on the version you have installed), and click "Set as Default" in the bottom-right of the window. This will cause all
6. That's it! Just double click the minecraft.jar file on your desktop to start up the game! The Minecraft Launcher will work the same way as Windows or Mac from here on in.
[source https://yogscast.com/showthread.php?42194-How-To-Installing-Minecraft-on-Linux-Ubuntu%5D
[source http://askubuntu.com/questions/141073/installation-of-openjdk-7%5D
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I also recently endured the switch from Windows 7 to Linux while taking a course at university. We were required to alter the kernel for class projects, so I figured I might as well get some user experience time in while i was at it. I chose Ubuntu since that seems to be the prevalent distro, and the herd is never wrong!
Anyways after about 2 days i ditched Ubuntu, the global menu absolutely sucks. Installing a new X-window manager absolutely sucks. I then went for Kubuntu since all i really wanted was an escape from that awful menu. I know i could have just installed an older version of Ubuntu, but why should I have to?
Kubuntu and Ubuntu alike boasts an update feature. A feature which consistently broke my install every time, on both distros. Half downloaded, half installed updates littered my drive, eventually breaking the updater itself.
The command "sudo bash" became my friend because so many little problems needed fixing from the commandline, in a tiny text window with a format 30+ years old? Why is that?
Lack of proper support for non-Us keyboards actually locked me out of my PC one morning when the damned thing decided it wouldn't recognize my password anymore. I had to hack it by switching the drive to my main desktop and manually edit the passwd to reset.
From a user perspective Linux is like wrestling a wild beast you know will kill you if you slip up just once. Don't force it on people who doesn't have the time for the learning experience it is to find and fix the little problems. Those people need to be productive.
... whatever
I can hear the crowd now...
"but it's a gameZ1@! gamEZ r kewl!"
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
... until the browser can't pull up webpages because it's for the newer versions, or the license key for the browser is suddenly invalid because the browser maker invalidated it due to expiration.
or due to no more patches being made for the browser, it's hacked and your mothers organs are sold through the internet without your knowledge.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
They're known offenders.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Yeah, I understand that, but some of my clueless clients still use it and are too computer illiterate to understand the complexities of advanced programs like 7zip and Winrar, and I'm having a hell of a time getting folders I encrypted through Winrar/7zip in Win 7 to open properly with the Windows XP default extraction tool. Not the end of the world, but a bit of a pain nonetheless.
Anyway, as for the negatives listed above, I understand the problem with upgrade costs. Personally I held onto my XP machine until it was time to upgrade and then bought a 7 machine, so the cost wasn't an issue. I'm not a programmer so I can't speak to the guts of the OS, but it took me all of one afternoon to figure out what was different in terms of the UI, and I was up to full productivity pretty much right away. More, actually, because everything runs a hell of a lot faster. (Oh, and the built-in speech recognition is as good, if not better, than Dragon Naturally Speaking, so if you use voice recognition Windows 7 almost pays for itself right there.)
I just don't get what inspires the Windows 7 hate. I can't think of anything that overtly sucks about it, anyway.
Where do we find companies that have respect for user/consumer rights, because I would be happy to use their products and services.
RepRap/equivalent, Arduino/equivalent, and the firearm industry.
Yup, that about covers it...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm a Mac and iOS user, but I don't see why anyone should really freak out over this. Apple knows each every single app you load your iPhone or iPad (as well as all apps you download through the App Store on the Mac), yet no one I know of is concerned by this "invasion of privacy". If and when they start tracking private data within the apps, then I'd protest.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
I actually find 7 to be to be reliable and stable. I do wish that file management were more powerful and convenient (thought having grown up in the days of DOS, I have no problem doing what I need via the command prompt), but otherwise everything I want to run works, it doesn't crash, and the 64-bit version is snappy and responsive, and my PC is pre-i5/7 architecture.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
You mean the OS that, by default, blocks you from running content that isn't blessed by Apple? Yes, you can download apps from sources that aren't the App Store - but they still have to be signed, otherwise, it either will refuse to run or lie to you and say that the app is "damaged" and you should "drag it to the trash."
I'm running apple's mountain lion and this simply is incorrect. If you right click on an application it will run it if it is signed or not signed. It warns you the first time it is not signed then it shuts up. You don't need to disable gate keeper.
the previous versions of the OS warned you the first time you ran anything from the internet. the new one avoids that warning if the app is signed. if it's unsigned it warns you and refuses to run. If you don't know that you can right click rather than left click to run it, then perhaps it's a good thing it refuses to run it. But if you do know to right click then it will let you do it then stop warning you.
What's good about this is that it reduces the number of warnings you see and only flags the ones that might matter. it does not keep warning you once you approve it.
Additionally apple is going to behavioural sandboxes which will let you approve the app to run as you expect but not do things you don't expect. These will grow int he future. This will let you approve more and more dubious apps. Thus this expands the freedom to use "untrusted" sources.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes. Yes it is that easy.
Sometimes I wonder, what if we just forget about the whole privacy thing.
Even more, not forget about it, but go completely the other way: record everything, make everything a matter of public record. What you ate for lunch, what Mitt Romney put in his tax records 10 years ago, what the mafia boss gave to your elected representative last month, what you were watching when you masturbated in your bed last night.
I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea, yet I can't help wonder. The problem right now is now the loss of privacy, but the selective loss of privacy - that certain people know certain things about other specific people. What if everybody could know everything about everyone - nothing hidden, nothing closed, everything 100% open, everywhere, all the time.
This would solve a number of issues with democracy, for sure. It would be the end of hypocrisy in the public sphere (because, well, everything would be public). It would certainly reduce a lot of crime and transform justice as we know it from an evaluation of opinions to an evaluation of facts and data.
One issue I see is how certain corporations could then correlate certain information and extract meaningful data - but they already do this in many instances, and if it were all in the open, anyone would be free to do the same thing, this information would not be secret. And well, the amount of data would dilute any one individual among a sea of data.
I don't know if it's a good idea, as I mentioned, or if humanity is ready for this. We've had some de-facto privacy since the dawn of civilisation, when larger groups gathered and built cities, but previously to that time those living in small villages and members of nomadic groups knew everything about each other, so I think we are mentally equipped to deal with others knowing a lot about ourselves. It has been impossible to share it all in larger groups until now, but the technology is here, and some are obviously ready to use (and abuse) it for their own ends. Why don't we bypass those abusers and remove their incentive by allowing everyone to have access to all of it?
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
I agree. I cant fathom how someone who reads slashdot couldnt follow those simple instructions. All our computers are linux and minecraft was super simple. My seven year old set it up himself.
It's just a mistake in genkernel's timeline. 2K is one of the alternating good releases; the bad release between it and XP is Windows ME, which genkernel seems to have edited out from his or her memory entirely. (And it's pretty universally considered to be absolutely awful.)
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
WinXP was Microsoft's very first operating system worthy of not being called a turd.
Windows Vista had some good ideas, but was a terrible (horrible, vile) implementation.
Windows7 seems to have fixed a lot of the aggravation that was Vista. It's the new XP.
Windows8 looks to be worse than vile. You cannot pay me to abuse myself with it.
We'll see what Window9 will bring, but at the current rate it will not redeem Microsoft.
--Udo.
Doesn't always work. I tried installing XP on a new Lenovo Laptop and couldn't get half the drivers to work. They design new chipsets not to be backwards compatible with different OS.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
While I'm a big Linux advocate (read "Microsoft hater"), I do not think there is harm in this as long as there is an option in the installation program to turn it off. Debian provides such a feature known as its "popularity contest" to determine which packages are the most popular. You can choose to either enable or disable it at install time. If you decide to change your mind later, you simply install/uninstall the popularity-contest package. If it is an opt-in choice like Debian's popularity contest, I don't see why it's such a big privacy issue so long as Microsoft doesn't mislead people by saying it helps to prevent malware infections such as viruses and trojans. After all, it's merely a way to submit information about installed applications to Microsoft and does nothing to prevent such infections.
I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
Really? This is a top privacy threat Nadim? This post reminds me of the 1970's racial discrimination hidden under the guise of rational criticism on other fronts. We each get a limited amount of bandwidth to capture other people's attention on important issues and this doesn't seem like it meets the bar. I don't disagree with the observation that it would be better to surface app tracking by Microsoft as an opt-in choice with end user benefits and a clear use and retention policy. But what about all of the privacy issues which result from the lack of anonymous remailers or the problem with ISP's logging everything. Wouldn't the app downloads and all other unencrypted traffic be accessible from the ISP already? And what about web bugs that allow surrepticious tracking in web pages? Your criticism is valid but seems like it is distracting from more important issues. Let's get Cryptocat working in browsers without a plug-in. How about surfacing criticism regarding what ISN'T available to enable that to work today? -Matt
Every layer is a chance to stop, slow, or at least detect an attack. Throwing out any layer of security simply on the basis that it can be bypassed is a bad idea. On that basis, we shouldn't make use of user accounts, firewalls, IDS/IPS, AV, digital signatures, SEH, DEP, ASLR, or pretty much anything else because everything can be bypassed.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Long story short I spent 3.5 years on Linux as my primary desktop before I gave up the fight and switched to Win7.
Interesting. What were you fighting that made you want to switch back to Windows? I haven't looked back since I discovered Mandrake (I'm on kubuntu now). Were you using Gnome, or a server distro for a desktop? Either one would exlain it (I hate Gnome).
Free Martian Whores!
> Don't want to be videotaped? Don't go outside.
and hope they haven't pointed an IR camera at your house
How about this - if you don't want browsers to track you with cookies then don't send cookies to the server!
I won't deny that different people have different priorities. For some, being able to play all the very latest computer games is their primary consideration when getting a new computer. (and frequently their motivation for upgrading to a new computer) But I think too much emphasis is placed on games by too many computer users. I consider my computer a multipurpose tool - productivity, entertainment, communication, research, organization, etc. And for me at least, I'm not willing to sacrifice all the rest to optimize any one of these. (that's why I suggested he get a console and a computer) For me, games are just a part of the "entertainment" category above, a small fraction of how I use my computer, and certainly not the all-important one.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I installed Windows 8 earlier this week at work. I don't explicitly remember seeing *anything* about SmartScreen. Based on this thread I checked the settings, and it was not turned on.
I'm not sure what I did to make SmartScreen disabled, but there is probably a choice in the installation process which prevents it from running.
That's BS, I wonder where they got that idea from. Sent from my iPad
Really? I certainly don't expect to be recorded by the government everywhere I go! They love the argument that it's not a private space; it makes them feel justified in trying to spy on everything.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
remember kids, apple is the new microsoft.
now, let's look at this like the critical nerds we all are.
debian had this earlier than anyone else! popularity contest anyone? but it was opt-in.
then microsoft had windows update, which send all that anyway still opt-in. apple followed closely with they update thing, not opt-in anymore.
then apple went gold with itunes on mobiles, and android (and everybody else) followed. you stopped having privacy or even owing your stuff.
then apple decided you still had too much freedom and now they have the same on desktops.
meanwhile ubuntu being the evil linux followed suit and made popularity contest opt-out.
and why is people now being chocked that microsoft is just following the crowd?
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4063
I hear you, and $20 wouldn't bankrupt me of course. But Macs are already too expensive, just on principle why should a still-new computer require me to pay more money to run simple programs? WINE is basically a necessity for Macs because the software selection is so poor. If it was an obscure program I could understand that it might have wonky program requirements that aren't really Apple's responsibility, but WINE is probably one of the top 5 or top 10 programs that Mac users end up using.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
A) There is no standard IDE and the SDK is nonexistent -- App developers generally don't feel welcome or like they can easily 'get their legs'.
B) 'Developer' support sites are overwhelmingly oriented to system coders, and these sites pretend that all coders are the same.
C) The GUI environment fluctuates greatly from distro to distro, and within each distro, and every 18-24 months.
C1) The chaotic state of GUIs prevents the user experience from 'gelling', making the systems feel disjointed and even unidentifiable. (That's right, most people could not identify a "Linux Desktop" if their lives depended on it, which to me signifies that "Linux Desktop" is a apparition experienced by techies.)
C2) Just try doing phone tech support for a GUI app on Linux, for a living. I have and with non-techie customers the overhead and disorientation factor is too high.
D) Most PCs are now laptops, and Linux power management still sucks. Hardware support lags in general, partly because the Linux Foundation has ignored the role it has to play in helping consumers identify compatible equipment. The smart thing to do would be to start a hardware certification program for OEMs and license a special Linux-compatible logo to them.
D1) Shall I describe how popular distros handle mirroring and dual-displays, combined with events like wake and sleep, on my 2006 and 2009 vintage laptops? Actually, its too frustrating to go into here.
E) App packaging and management is still in a bad way. It has to be both intuitive for the consumer (they can download a file or use a CD if they wish) and flexible for the author (packaging for independent distribution ought not to be a high-wire act that leaves you with only the most sparse set of APIs to work with). Work on offering the best of both world instead of cramming everything into a huge repository because many things simply won't fit in there.
F) "Linux Desktop" proponents keep telling us to sit tight because web apps are the future. That cop out doesn't even work in the smartphone market. So stop pushing thick clients in place of personal computers; that is a shameful bait-and-switch.
G) Apps still sell the systems to a large degree. A,B,C and E are the most direct causes for the dearth of top-tier apps.
"No OS or desktop is perfect" -- indeed -- but what we know of as "Desktop Linux" is a non-entity for the average consumer. There will be no real advance in mindshare or marketshare until most of the above are changed for the better. A distro like Ubuntu would do well do follow my advice, and while they're at it remove the overt association with "Linux" itself... people who like and support the OS should be coding apps for "Ubuntu" not "Linux". It seems to work for Android.
No, steam reports back all the software on your system. This is how they provide a list of common software on their analytics page. Almost every steam user has bittorrent, flash, adobe reader, etc. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
Now, why wouldn't Valve get subpoenaed for the same reasons TFA claims MS would?
Linux is ready for desktop use, I have not used Windows for 3 years and I donot see any point to use windows any more considering the secure-boot nonsense and etc..
http://fedora.12.n6.nabble.com/Fedora-causes-laptop-to-overheat-td2406515.html
I've had this experience myself with the RHEL-family distros (RHEL6, Fedora 16, CentOS 6). On some models they don't seem to run the system fans correctly, the kernel generates a lot of CPU temperature warnings, then the system stops working (sometimes permanently). Actually, I think this problem holds for most Linux distros that are not based on Ubuntu (which runs fine on the same systems).
Yeah, but the comparison here is wine vs windows. I don't think you can run your entire Steam library on OS X either.
Plus, Linux would run fine on a mac, so the actual issue here is OS X, though that's beside the point.
I know a lot of Mac users, not one of them even knows what WINE is, let alone uses it.
Most Mac users who need to access Windows software in one of two ways: Boot Camp or virtualisation (Fusion, Virtualbox, etc).
I can only speak for myself, but the HP TouchSmart I bought in May this year has an ATI graphics card that was recognised by one system component and wasn't by two others. If it had not been recgnised at all, things would work, albeit without hardware acceleration. But things being as they were, I got non-working applications and error messages instead. Although I managed to figure out what went wrong, and got that fixed in the other two components (all three components had a hardcoded list of PCI IDs, and my device's ID was only present in one of them), I think that qualifies as a "pain" nonetheless.
Because steam anonymizes the data soon after collecting it? As mentioned in the page you linked to "participation in the survey is optional and anonymous".
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
To be fair, XP is still 11 years old. However, I bet it would still install fine on any laptops that are no more than 7 or 8 years older than XP. I would expect the same from Windows 7 - it will still probably work great on any new hardware made in the next five or six years. I wouldn't expect it to still run on all new hardware when its 11 years old.
Doesn't Windows 7 do this already?