Windows 10, From a Linux User's Perspective

Phoronix features today a review of Windows 10 that's a little different from most you might read, because it's specifically from the point of view of an admin who uses both Windows and Linux daily, rather than concentrating only on the UI of Windows qua Windows. Reviewer Eric Griffith finds some annoyances (giant start menu even when edited to contain fewer items, complicated process if you want a truly clean install), but also some good things, like improved responsiveness ("feels much more responsive than even my Gnome and KDE installations under Fedora") and an appropriately straightforward implementation of virtual workspaces. Overall? Windows 10 is largely an evolutionary upgrade over Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, rather than a revolutionary one. Honestly I think the only reason it will be declared as 'so good' is because Windows 8/8.1 were so bad. Sure, Microsoft has made some good changes under the surface-- the animations feel crisper, its relatively light on resources, battery life is good. There is nothing -wrong- with Windows 10 aside from the Privacy Policy. If you're on Windows Vista, or Windows 8/8.1, then sure, upgrade. The system is refreshing to use, it's perfectly fine and definitely an upgrade. If you're on Windows 7 though? I'm not so sure. ... Overall, there's really nothing to see here. It's not terrible, it's not even 'bad, it's just... okay. A quiet little upgrade.

Comments

My big hope

[smittyoneeach]

My big hope is that this version's Environment Variable easter egg is buried under a few more layers of indirection.
With each new version, one must spend several extra minutes figuring out where the Double Secret Super Duper Advanced Don't Try This At Home Brutal Power User Steel Cage Death Match Of Dh00m dialog is located, merely to set the PATH.
Sure, I'll get modded 'Flamebait' for this, but seriously: quit kicking me in the groin, Redmond.

Re:My big hope

[Anonymous Coward]

My big hope is that this version's Environment Variable easter egg is buried under a few more layers of indirection.

With each new version, one must spend several extra minutes figuring out where the Double Secret Super Duper Advanced Don't Try This At Home Brutal Power User Steel Cage Death Match Of Dh00m dialog is located, merely to set the PATH.

You're kidding, right?

Hit the Windows key, type the first couple letters of "environment" (on my machine "env" is enough) and hit down arrow a few times to select "Edit the system environment variables" (or "for your account", whichever tickles your fancy). Hit Enter.

This has worked reliably ever since the search feature got built into the Start menu in Windows 7.

If remembering that PATH is under "environment variables" is too hard then searching for "path" will actually work just as well.

Re:My big hope

[thebjorn]

Win + Break gets you to the link for 'Advanced system settings'. Works in at least win7, 8, 8.1, 10.

Re:My big hope

[bmo]

Because that's intuitive.

Settings, even "advanced system settings" should be in the control-panel.

It's like Windows is following the Gnome crowd. "Let's hide configurations, because letting the user adjust the workspace to his work is confusing!"

*spit*

--
BMO

Re:My big hope

[Skuld-Chan]

Learn to powershell?:

To read a variable:

Get-ChildItem Env:
or
$env:Varname

and to set

[environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Var","Value","User/Machine")

evening doing this from cmd.exe isn't all that hard - in fact its just like ms-dos was:

SET variable=string

Then

echo %variable%

Seriously - this hasn't changed in 34-35 years.

Re: My big hope

[cyber-vandal]

Until you reboot and then it disappears smartass. Next you'll be telling us to update autoexec.bat

Re: My big hope

[nctritech]

Brilliant. Someone hand me a thesaurus and I'll find plenty of reasons why a search bar for finding your bearings in an unfamiliar environment is incredibly fucking stupid. You have to wonder who the genius at Microsoft is that thought this was such a wonderful idea. Joe User who hasn't ever heard of System Restore will not be able to find it when he searches for "fix my computer," but he'll certainly find the "I am from Microsoft and your computer is virus infected!" people promptly thanks to Bing(TM).

Re: My big hope

[bjs555]

I'm not sure how well known it is but there is "God Mode" for Win 7, 8, and 10. To get God Mode you create a folder on the desktop and rename it as described below:

1. Go to the Desktop
2. Right-click and select New Folder.
3. Right-click on the New Folder and select Rename.
4. Change the name of the folder [just copy & paste the following string]: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
5. Open the folder and you will find every setting/utility under the sun organized into a sensible menu that you can browse through without knowing what name to type into a search bar.

Re:My big hope

[w_dragon]

Try searching for 'windows update' that way. On my Win10 box it doesn't show. If I search in the main screen of the control panel it still doesn't show even though it's right there on the fucking screen! Somehow they managed to royally screw up search in this release.

Re:My big hope

[ultranova]

It's like Windows is following the Gnome crowd. "Let's hide configurations, because letting the user adjust the workspace to his work is confusing!"

It is. Microsoft and Gnome are marketing to companies. And companies want to treat their employees as interchangeable cogs. That means the desktop needs to be non-configurable in any meaningful way, to ensure any user can be dropped in front of any computer and be instantly up to speed without having to learn anything. So as far as Microsoft and Gnome are concerned, personalization is a bad thing.

Re:My big hope

[benjymouse]

Type

[Start] e n v

Win 10 responds with
"Edit environment variables for your account"

Type

[Enter]

Still works

Re:My big hope

[TheRaven64]

Intuitive is always a red herring in UI design. There are two far more important attributes:

• Is it discoverable?
• Is it consistent?

Control/command-x/c/v for cut/copy/paste are discoverable and consistent: if you got to the edit menu of any application (visible by the default on non-braindead UIs and the starting point for finding any command), then you will see the icons next to it telling you what the shortcut is. Now that it's discovered, it's consistent everywhere. Except in terminals if you're using control instead of command, because terminals need control-c for interrupt and so break the good UI, but on a Mac it's the same in every single application including the terminal.

In contrast, most of the Windows-key-plus-modifier combinations can only be discovered by reading the documentation. There's nothing that a user is encouraged by the UI to click on that tells them about what these modifiers are (though I vaguely remember that Windows 98 had a 'show desktop' icon in the start bar that told you about windows-d in the tooltip).

Intuitive implies that you are meant to use your psychic powers or some innate knowledge to find how the UI works. Good UIs do not work that way, they make it easy for people to learn and then they allow the user to apply the knowledge everywhere. If someone complains about a UI not being intuitive, then it's a good hint that they don't know anything about HCI.

Re:My big hope

[AmiMoJo]

So, when you opened the "user menus", by which I assume you mean the start menu since that's the only one after you boot up, you didn't notice the search box or the flashing cursor that was placed inside it waiting for your input?

In fact, on Windows 10 the search box is now in the task bar. It's huge, impossible to miss, right next to the start icon. I actually disable it because I'm expecting my apps to be there by default. I'm sure that's why MS put it there, to make it blindingly obvious and impossible to ignore.

Re:My big hope

[flink]

My big hope is that this version's Environment Variable easter egg is buried under a few more layers of indirection.

With each new version, one must spend several extra minutes figuring out where the Double Secret Super Duper Advanced Don't Try This At Home Brutal Power User Steel Cage Death Match Of Dh00m dialog is located, merely to set the PATH.

Since Windows XP (and maybe 2000) up through Windows 7, you could just right click on Computer in Explorer, select Properties..., and click the "Advanced" button, and click "Environment Variables..." button. Yeah, it's perhaps too many steps, but they haven't changed the route to get there significantly in 15 years.

Windows 8/8.1 was bad?

[__aaclcg7560]

Honestly I think the only reason it will be declared as 'so good' is because Windows 8/8.1 were so bad.

I thought the Windows 8/8.1 desktop was no better or no worse than the Windows 7 desktop. Of course, I banished the Metro interface five minutes after installing. Then again, I never bother with the GUI on Linux, as the command line is always excellent.

Re:Windows 8/8.1 was bad?

[shoor]

There is a learning curve, but I went through that in the 80s on unix systems before X-Windows came out. I've forgotten a lot of things, though, if I need them, it's not hard for me to google to be reminded. (But even that is only because I've got the sense of it already in my mind. I don't know how easy it would be for a newcomer to find out how to do some of this stuff by googling.)

I admit I actually don't know much about what modern guis and file managers can do, so maybe I'm missing something. Can they dive down through a directory tree finding every file that's older than x but newer than y? or every file that has a suffix jpg, or list them sorted by size or time? and then do something with them? tar them off to an archive or move them or rename them (jpg to jpeg for instance? or change every capital letter in the name to lower case?) And if they can, what's the learning curve for that?

I will say that as a command line guy I hate spaces in filenames! There are workarounds, like changing the IFS in the environment, but it's ugly.

Re:Honestly?

[jedidiah]

A lot of actual Windows users thought that the UI in Windows 8 SUCKED. It's not just Linux users. Win8 was like Vista. The fact that there is even a Win 8.1 is an artifact of how badly genuine Windows users reacted to Win8.

Pretending that this is just the complaints of Linux users is extremely disingenuous.

No Privacy Policy

[kilgortrout]

"There is nothing -wrong- with Windows 10 aside from the Privacy Policy."

And apart from that, how did you enjoy the play Mrs. Lincoln!!!!

Re:No Privacy Policy

[dbIII]

"There is nothing -wrong- with Windows 10 aside from the Privacy Policy." And apart from that, how did you enjoy the play Mrs. Lincoln!!!!

Connected with that is the bandwidth sharing.
The bittorrent thing is acceptable in World of Warcraft because they inform you about it on the screen and provide a box to tick to turn it off. MS noticed that Blizzard is sending out patches that way, decided to copy it but decided to remove the things that makes it acceptable.
It's a pretty big deal in places where users have data limits and uploads count to those limits.

Re:No Privacy Policy

[umafuckit]

But with these data slurping practices, and their haughty arrogance about it, this is not going to fly in anywhere that matters, ...

Where it really matters is at Joe end user. It's the millions of Joes out there running Windows that gives it its user base and makes it "the standard." Joe mostly doesn't care about the data snooping (he uses Facebook anyway). However, Joe does like the fancy new features: the nice Weather and News icons on the task bar. The way Win 10 integrates with his other devices, etc.

Mostly agree

[EdwardFurlong]

Although you can make the start menu smaller than what is shown.

Re:Honestly?

[The Real Dr John]

The UI is truly awful with the random flat, single mono-colored tiles and windows. As mentioned in the article, there really is no benefit to upgrading from Windows 7. If games start to make good use of Direct X 12 there might be a reason to switch, but it really isn't an upgrade in most respects.

Finally

[jbmartin6]

“Overall, there's really nothing to see here. It's not terrible, it's not even 'bad, it's just... okay. A quiet little upgrade.”

Cue choir music and white spotlight! This is the way it should be! I've often observed, people use applications not the OS. The OS should make it easy, simple, fast, etc. for people to use their applications in the way that they want. No more, no less. When the OS gets in the way, it is a fail. The best, and best selling, versions of Windows were the ones that moved closer to this principle than their predecessors.

You are not a REAL Linux user either

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

A real Linux user's review: do you honestly think I'm going to install Windows on my computer?

Linux isn't about choice any longer.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former long time Linux user, lately I've felt that I've had much less choice than ever before.

I primarily used Debian. When installing Debian 8, I didn't really have a choice about which init system I wanted to use. I got saddled with systemd. After experiencing some problems with it, I wanted to switch back to sysvinit. Sysvinit isn't perfect, but at least it worked for me in the past. But after reading how to do this, it sounded like a very bad idea to me. Most likely I would have ended up with a broken installation.

I looked at using a different Linux distro, but there too my choices were limited. Most of them have switched to systemd, too. The ones that didn't are unusable for other reasons. Slackware is stuck in the 1990s. I don't have days to spare to configure my system so it's just barely usable! Gentoo is another option, but I don't have a week to waste waiting for the basic software to compile. In practice, I don't have much choice at all!

It isn't much different for the desktop environments. Recent versions of KDE and GNOME aren't all that different. KDE 5 isn't as outright awful as GNOME 3 is, but it isn't a desktop environment I like using, either. It's bloated, and has never felt natural to use. The other desktop environments, like Xfce or the many window managers, end up providing an environment that's too stripped down to be useful. In practice, I don't have much choice at all!

It's the same for web browsers. One option is Chrome (or Chromium). The other option is Firefox. Firefox looks and feels almost exactly like Chrome, except it's a lot slower and uses way more memory. Opera still exists, but the newest version is basically just a skin for Chrome. Seamonkey, Dillo and some of the other Gecko- or WebKit-wrapping browsers are way too limited for real use. In practice, I don't have much choice at all!

With modern Linux, I now get to choose between broken and unusable. Or I get to choose between bloated and slow. Or I get to choose between a bunch of options, all of which are equally shitty. I have "choice", but only in theory. In practice, I just get fucked.

Re:Linux isn't about choice any longer.

[serviscope_minor]

Dillo and some of the other Gecko- or WebKit-wrapping browsers are way too limited for real use. In practice, I don't have much choice at all!

Define real use? I use a mixture of Dillo and Firefox. If it works on Dillo I use it, if it doesn't, I paste the URL into firefox. Slasahdot works perfectly on Dillo, but the way. Hell, nevermind beta, I skipped the whole slashdot 2.0 thing and am still happily using the incredibly snappy "classic".

I actually use Dillo a lot for work. It turns out most tech and documentation sites work fine on Dillo.

Re:So, in other words, stick to Linux

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

I'm always amazed at how people gloss over the worst in Microsoft's products. These things are proprietary beasts of which the users have little to no real control. [...] On Microsoft Windows your pretty much just screwed the moment Microsoft dictates a change you don't like.

That's so true. That's also why I use a Mac, because Apple is not at all like Micros- Posted from a Mac mini. Get your own Mac mini today! -oft and will always leave me in control of my device.

I've only encountered one problem with 10

[msobkow]

The one problem I encountered with Windows 10 is my Linux box could no longer print to the network printer. Sure enough, sharing had been disabled by the upgrade. But even when I re-enabled sharing of the printer, Linux couldn't print to it. Linux could find it. Linux could connect to it. But it would get stuck trying to spool the document and never show up in the print queue under Windows 10.

I opted for the obvious (and easy) solution of moving the printer to my Linux box, but not everyone can do that, especially with a truly shared printer in an office. Though, to be fair, print servers really should be running Linux in the first place. They're more reliable.

I couldn't believe how much crapware I had to disable with Windows 10, though, especially from the menu. WTF would I want an "XBox" account tile for when I don't own a gaming system of any kind, much less one susceptible to the "red ring of death"?

On the bright side, all of my commercial databases seem to run just fine. Even Cygwin hasn't given me grief yet.

Re:Honestly?

[cheater512]

If game devs were smart they'd start using OpenGL more heavily so their success of their game was not tied to Microsoft's ability to not screw up a OS release.

Wanting to play a game isn't really a great reason to upgrade your operating system, especially if the downsides are fairly crippling (thinking about 7 -> 8).
It is however a smart move by Microsoft to artificially refuse to backport DirectX to previous versions.

Win10 with Classic Shell

[sl149q]

Windows 10 with Classic Shell is an even better Windows 7 than Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell. Both are a better Windows 7 than Windows 7.

I did give the Windows 10 "start menu" a bit more of a try out than the Windows 8 one. A full ten minutes (nine minutes longer!) Then installed Classic Shell and got back to work.

Re:Honestly?

[CharlieG]

One major advantage over 7 (although 8.1 had it - but who wanted 8.1)
Multiple magnification settings

Win7 allowed ONE windows magnification setting for all screens (100%, 125%, 150%). Win10 allows you to set it per screen. Useful if you have one High DPI screen (my laptop) and one standard DPI - the second monitor in my case.

Other than that? No huge difference. Some things are faster (just as they were in 8.x). The first machine I upgraded was on 8.x, and couldn't wait to get rid of that pig. Then I upgraded the laptop that has the high DPI screen, but right now, my main boxes are still on Win7...

Re:Honestly?

[arglebargle_xiv]

From TFA:

Windows 8 era Start Menu replacement apps like ClassicShell and Start8 seem to retained perfect compatibility with Windows 10

With all this need to install third-party addons to undo the crap that the vendor has put in, it's almost like using Firefox.

Re:Honestly?

[arglebargle_xiv]

As mentioned in the article, there really is no benefit to upgrading from Windows 7.

Sure there is. They're only going to be doing security maintenance on Windows 7 from now on

Perfect! That means they won't be able to fsck it up any more with "features" and "enhancements" ("I know, let's send all your private data to Microsoft!"), you'll just get the standard Windows that works as it should and be left in peace to run the apps you need in the way you want them.

Not very good at Windows, this reviewer

[RR]

First, he complained about the download. I anticipated this problem, downloaded the ISO on Windows 7 with Microsoft’s stupid downloading program, and burned a DVD/USB. Problem solved. Also, you can buy Windows 10 OEM media in stores.

Then, he complained about the updater not having a clean install option. It’s not obvious, but there’s an option somewhere in the installer to “Keep nothing.” This does a clean install.

He did not complain about tying the Windows account to a Microsoft account. It’s possible to make a local account not connected to a Live.com, and it’s more obvious how to do so than in Windows 8.

Then, he complained about the hybrid Start menu. That can be resized.

Other than that, I guess the review was okay. I liked the part about the Hi-DPI experience.

Re:Honestly?

[amiga3D]

In other words....it's stable. That's actually a great reason to stay with 7. As with almost any OS it's best to wait a while to upgrade because it's almost always going to be screwy at first. The exception being Vista which sucked so hard almost anything would be better.

Gnome and KDE were doing so well

[ras]

I was so chuffed when Gnome and KDE beat Windows at its own game. For years they had been lagging behind Microsoft, mostly mimicking the look and feel of Windows. KDE 4.0 gave us a hint of what was to come - it was a mess. With Gnome 3 we had clearly pulled ahead of Microsoft, producing a complete clusterfuck of an interface in long before Microsoft got their own clusterfuck to the market with Windows 8. Finally, we were setting the pace and Microsoft was following!

But things move quickly, and open source is falling behind again. Right now we are in the "ouch! that hurt phase" and fixing the mess created by the last fad. Microsoft has pared down the Vista "wow, we virtualised the 3D pipeline so everyone wants to watch ponies dancing on a spinning Icosahedron while their windows open" to something that almost always runs faster than Gnome and KDE in Windows 10. In the mean time people who preferred to use Gnome to get shit done rather than watch ponies retreated to Gnome flashback, or whatever it is called today. But, sigh, in a flash of recent inspiration Gnome made flashback depend on the 3D graphics as well, meaning you can no longer debug someones desktop using a frame buffer protocol like VNC, effectively ensuring that in some cases it isn't possible to get any work done with it, at all. Just fucking wonderful Gnome.

Unlike poor Windows users, Linux is all about choice, and so putting up with a window manager that removed features with with each iteration while managing to run slower at the same time (awesome effort, boys!) is some ways my own fault. But the reality is the choosing the right thing from the many choices Linux offers you is hard work, hard work that Windows users are spared. I tend to compensate by sticking like deranged limpet to what I used yesterday. Kudo's to Gnome I guess, for finding a way to force me off my rock.

Now I have a new rock: LXDE. While it may be true Microsoft has moved faster than KDE and Gnome to produce something todays GUI fashion Nazi's just love, if paired down, fast, and just get out of my fucking way is the benchmark, LXDE entered that race long before Microsoft knew even existed, and they now beat Microsoft at it hands down. Saying Windows 10 beats Gnome and KDE in speed as this review does is just plain dumb. Gnome and KDE haven't yet twigged they event that think they are competing in was abandoned last year, at the latest. Microsoft, to their credit did twig, and now they have Windows 10.

Re:Honestly?

[epyT-R]

From win7 to win 8?
1. loss of custom window metric adjustments, font sizes, and colors
2. loss of classic desktop (eg win2k/xp)
3. forced color schemes (2:1 brightness ratio prevented darker configurations)
4. fullscreen start menu was distracting and irritating to use compared to a simple menu.
5. dwm locked window updates to 60hz (win8.0, was fixed later)
6. dwm broke a ton of easily fixed backward compatibility with programs that used ddraw to change modes etc.
7. metro apps were (and still are) useless on the desktop. ugly and clunky too
8. unified search was compromised, forcing users to go back to dir filename /a/s in a command prompt
9. This is a big one for me: removed technical information in stop errors. If stop errors prevent the system from booting, it makes diagnosis a lot harder.
10. two control panels. with windows 10, it's worse because some needed options for the desktop are in one while others are in the 'classic' vista era panel.

Re:More responsive than Gnome and KDE

[jones_supa]

This is actually a big deficiency for Linux. All of the big desktops (GNOME, KDE, Unity) are really choppy and laggy.

Another Linux User's Perspective

[tannhaus]

I've been a linux user since 1997, except for a couple of years when I ran OS X (10.5-10.6). I started out on Redhat (a couple of weeks with slackware before that, but too short a time to count), then went to OpenSuse after the second Fedora release and migrated to Linux Mint 17.1 because I found too many annoying bugs in the most recent release of OpenSuse. I'm strictly a desktop user and was waiting for the rise of the Linux desktop like everyone else, but always kept a version of Windows on dual boot because A. It usually came with the machine and B. "just in case".

Yesterday, I installed Grub Customizer and switched my default boot to Windows 10. It is, to me, the best version of Windows they've managed to come out with. I happen to love the start menu. I did away with all my icons I normally put on the desktop and, instead, they reside in the start menu. The privacy issues seem to be no better nor worse than you get from Apple, but the OS seems to finally be as good as what you'd get from Apple.

I have to say... I've gotten sick, over the years, of Linux being treated like the red-headed stepchild when it comes to drivers, software and websites. But, just as importantly, I've grown sick of the bugs that continually creep up in the desktop experience. Dilbert stops showing up on the KDE comic applet....search all around...no fixes seem to work....gotta live with it. Can't find an mp3 player that really seems to work, catalog my library, manage the playlists and mp3s on my samsung s3 etc. without hanging or outright crashing... It's the bugs like that which seem to really be in your face on a near daily basis....and they don't seem to be fixed. It's much more exciting to add features than hunt down bugs. I understand that. Some will say that, if I don't like the bugs, then fix them myself. But, I don't want an OS I have to learn to code and help out projects just to make something I can use.... I'm a single parent raising a 7 year old. I just want something I can use and that fits my needs....

Linux Mint has been, by far, the most polished and professional desktop experience I've had in a while. That could be because they've stayed with the same release of Ubuntu underlying it for the last couple of releases. Whatever the reason, I've still found a more pleasing desktop experience in Windows 10.

Re:Another Linux User's Perspective

[rainmaestro]

I've had a somewhat similar experience.

Linux was my full-time OS starting in 2002 (Gentoo for about 8 years, then bouncing between Fedora, Mint and Crunchbang). About four months ago I switched my main PC to Windows 7. I actually like it, enough to keep using it. When my laptop finally needed replacing, I went with an SP3 which has been quite nice (Windows 8's interface actually makes sense on a tablet whereas I hate it on desktops/laptops).

Linux-the-OS is still mostly nice. Linux-the-userland reached its zenith about four years ago and has been declining in quality ever since. I found myself spending more and more time dealing with issues stemming from buggy applications and shoddy drivers, enough that it felt like I was back in 2008 again. NetworkManager loses all my VPN passwords, my USB headset doesn't work properly, video driver quality is getting worse instead of better, Flash somehow manages to keep getting worse, even though you'd think that wouldn't be possible at this point, etc.

Windows 7, meanwhile, just works. The biggest gripe I've had so far is the continued lack of support in Explorer for long paths, which causes issues for my nodejs projects (given that their module dependency system has all the sophistication of a high school midterm project). I can work around that easily enough, though. I'm not a twenty-something with time to kill anymore, I can't spend three days tracking down why my USB headset stops outputting sound when the system volume drops below 20% (unless I launch Virtualbox, at which point it magically works again). I like tinkering when time permits, but nowadays I want my system to just work. Linux doesn't do that right now. I still love the OS, but it is no longer practical for me to use it.

Re:Another Linux User's Perspective

[Viol8]

"my USB headset doesn't work properly,"

Who the fuck wastes a USB port on a headset? You never head of headphone and mic jacks?

Re:Another Linux User's Perspective

[tannhaus]

Ok... Without even delving into the dll issue, I want to point something out:

"I finally decided to try Windows 10 this weekend. I downloaded the ISO with their tool first, and then decided to try the "upgrade" route. Of course, none of my games work any more."

I'd be willing to bet none of those games work in linux, either. That leaves us with two take-aways:

1. You're already a considerable user of Windows, because you've amassed a game library
2. You don't hold it against Linux, as an OS, that it can't play your games.

So, that leaves a double standard where you lower your expectations for Linux, but can't use it as your only OS because it does not fulfill your needs.If you were to look at both, without bias, It seems Linux is the one you'd be railing against.

As far as the privacy issues, there have been many articles that walk through what those privacy settings mean and how to turn them off. Treat it just like you would when you have to hunt down things about Linux online and figure out what to do.

Re:Another Linux User's Perspective

[cavebison]

> I did away with all my icons I normally put on the desktop and, instead, they reside in the start menu.

Wow. I've been doing this since Windows XP.

Also, once you arrange XP's menu in a keyboard-friendly fashion, it acts much like Windows 7's search box on the Start menu... except faster, since you only need to hit the first key of each menu item.

I usually have "Quick" menu, at the top level of Start, with common programs in it, like Photoshop. Whereas, in Windows 7, I have to type "pho" or something, and wait for results, in XP it is simply "QP" (quick -> photoshop) and up she comes.

I'm buying an SSD tomorrow, which will basically make this old XP laptop zoom, and I won't even have to worry about the 4GB RAM limit anymore, since swapping on SSD is pretty quick.

Yep I love my XP and you can prise it from my cold, dead fingers. :)

Re:Honestly?

[ConceptJunkie]

That's a good list of what was awful about Windows 8, and absolutely none of that was needed, or wanted by users.

It seems to me most of the changes in Windows these days are solely to serve Microsoft's purposes and completely ignore the benefits or disadvantages for users. I'm not talking about improvements or whatever under the covers, if performance or robustness is improved, but changes in functionality, and especially UI. None of it seems gears towards making Windows better or easier to use.

Re:Honestly?

[dbIII]

Win10 allows you to set it per screen.

Sounds good, multi-monitor even on win7 sucks in many ways so an effort to improve it in MS Windows is good to see. It's sad that the Matrox add-on for Win2k was so much better for multi-screen support than Win7 and Win8 has built in so many years later. Having a window vanish because it wants to go on a monitor that is not present is annoying as hell. Having monitors present but not in use after a reboot is the same.

Re: Honestly?

[Joce640k]

Yep. OpenGL is pretty shit, specially on OS X.

There's nothing wrong with OpenGL. If it's shit on OS then look to the drivers.

OpenGL ES was the one chance they had to make a clean start and save OpenGL (IMHO). The original OpenGL had become a maze of extensions and add-on functions.

They blew it. They actually didn't want people to use OpenGL ES on desktops, they wanted us to use one API for desktops and another, different one for mobile devices. Wasn't the whole point of OpenGL to be cross-platform?

PS: And how exactly were we supposed to develop for OpenGL ES when it doesn't run on desktops? Do all the coding on our phones? LOL!

Developer learning curve + ageism

[dbIII]

From watching it over the years it looks like a cycle of losing talent every few years and the newbies learning on the job with the dud versions.

Re:Honestly?

[gfxguy]

I do most of my work on Linux, but have to use windows occasionally. Last year I upgraded my computer for the first time in like 10 years, and decided to skip 7 and go to 8.1 for the Windows booting. So, OK, I don't use it a lot - but after installing classic shell and having it boot straight to the desktop, I don't see what all the whining is about. Every time I upgrade or install Linux, I have to customize it to my liking, too, so it's a bit annoying when I hear that as a complaint from Linux users about windows. I'm glad I get to mostly use Linux, but I didn't see what all the fuss was about - plus it had better support for my ssd and, yes, it seems to run better/be more responsive than Windows 7 or XP.

I've heard a couple of legitimate complaints from power users, but by and large what I see is a bunch of people essentially complaining it's not exactly like it was before.

Re:Disabling the UI

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Why does everyone assume "usable" is a synonym for "works exactly like the WIndows I am familiar with". The Windows 10 UI is perfectly usable, but not if you disable it before giving it a chance. This guy shut it all off on page one! Why review a new OS when all you're going to do is remove all the new features?

It's like Phoronix trying to review Ubuntu by immediately uninstalling Unity and replacing it with KDE. That might be a fantastic idea for a user, but it's gonna make for a shit review of Ubuntu.

From a OSX Users Perspective in Academia

[williamyf]

At work or Academia, I had used all there is to use. DOS, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, Sinix, VMS, Linux, FreeBSD...

At home, it was DOS (3.2, 3.3, 5.0, 6.22) Windows (WFW 3.11, 95, 98, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista) all the way (with a brief innuendo with Warp), until Early 2009, when I declared my switchover to MAC Successful.

Now, Apple forced my hand by not releasing Win7 Drivers for the 2015 13"Air... So, between having a ragtag fleet of machines on Win732, Win764 and Win8.1 64, I'll go 10 all the way.

The fact that I can get Windows 10 Working on a Toshiba Satellite A123 ** (My last windows machine), with an Xpress200m Chipset whose graphics part is based on a chip (R300) released in Aug. 2002, and a processor whose architecture (Yonah T2080) was released on 2006 speaks volumes at the effort microsoft has put in preserving compatibility AND make the OS perform better.

On the same resources, Win 8 will perform better than 7 and Win 10 will outperform them both. It has actually breathed new life into the old machine.

What really interest me is the new powers under the hood. Better performance (as said before), Edge, better included antivirus and security tools, DX12, etc, etc, etc.

Maybe things moved around a lot from what I remember, but is in no way as bad as windows 8, were I had to rip of the virtual machine due to the hotcorners, and wanted to pull my hair everytime I had to use a Win8 machine from a friend without a shell replacement. Besides, if one does not like the interface, one can change it (as they said in the TFA, Classic Shell works like a charm, and I am sure there will be other customization apps in no time), if they removed mediaplayer, there is MithTV or VLC, the app store is empty, so what, is not like I forgot how to download an exe or a msi file...

But then again, I use this only for some games (currently Batman Arkam Origins, and anything that strikes my fancy that Steam has not ported to Apple yet) on bootcamp, and via VirtualBox on raw partition for Visio and Project.

The fact that the upgrade is free sweetens and seals the deal (if I had to pay for it, or had to go through the hoops of the university to get the license key, well....). Yes, there are privacy concerns, and I will deal with them, the same way I dealt with iCloud and all of Apple's privacy invasions, I have the knowledge to do so, and I can relay on my fellow techies when my knowledge fails me.

For me is a welcome upgrade, one that will bring homogeneity to my fleet, along with better performance accross the board, and I am recommending all non-techie friends to upgrade (after updating FW, maxing RAM and putting an SSD, of course), especially from Windows XP. Besides, I already issued them a stern Warning. After march 2016, I'll only answer questions about Win10 or "El Capitan". That will drastically cut the amount of free tech support I must do... ;-)

Welcome Windows 10, you may not warrant a rolling stones theme song, but your low-key entry will make many lives easier...

Suerte a todos y feliz dia.

** Yes, after firmware updates, maxed RAM to 2GB, and put a SATA3 64GB SSD on the puny SATA1 interface of the Xpress200M

PS: For what is worth, I have CrunchBang++ for basic Linux demos to my students in the Toshiba (the machine I carry around in mass transport to class, because, if they mug me, I'll not miss it), and have A few CentOS and Oracle Linux machines for, you know, stuff...

Re:Honestly?

[pslytely psycho]

"It is however a smart move by Microsoft to artificially refuse to backport DirectX to previous versions."

Would an older system even run the newer DirectX? I thought the underlying system architecture had changed enough that it simply couldn't be backported, especially after Win8?

(I am aware that DirectX 11.1 was partially backported to Win7 but not 11.2)

Re:Honestly?

[plover]

You missed a few biggies.
11. Requiring mouse users to use invisible gestures to accomplish some tasks, and ignoring inherent usability differences between tablet users and desktop users.
12. The schizophrenic split between Metro and the desktop extended far beyond the two control panels. Every app remained different.
13. Whatever human interface guidelines were used for Metro were 'fail'. Metro apps still have no consistency in how you access settings or access other features. Mail hides the "sync" button behind a three ... menu, when it was one of the most used features. Some apps have preferences in the up swipe app menu, others have them in the right swipe system menu.

And 10 is no picnic of usability, either. They've tried to unify Metro and Windows, but it's still awkward feeling. Some Metro apps are hard coded to expect the whole screen, not some reduced drawing area shortened by a task bar. The Metro division bar is capricious and untrustworthy. The start menu still covers the entire screen with a handful of tiles; the giant flat list of apps is still hiding and is still lacking folders, and search only helps if you remember the name of an app, not just the task it does. (Example: searching for 'home' does not identify "Grasshopper", a home automation app.) 10 may be more usable than 8, but it's still a whole shit-ton worse than Windows 7.

The problem is that while Metro may have been a good idea on its own, it was not a good idea to mix it with Windows. And Microsoft knew they wouldn't sell 10 copies of a Metro-only platform (but they tried anyway, unfortunately for the 8 people who bought RT) all because some idiot Monkey-Boy deluded himself into believing millions of people were just waiting for Microsoft to save the day with Windows Phone so they could throw away their awful iPhones.

Re:Honestly?

[cheater512]

Yes it's very similar to Internet Explorer which also cannot be backported.

That's the official line from Microsoft anyway. Why a web browser is tied to a OS version is beyond me.
DX to be fair has some interaction with graphics drivers so its slightly more involved, but not much. Graphics drivers work just fine on XP for example, so could the new DX with some work.

Re:Honestly?

[David_Hart]

All our boxes at work are still on 7 and we're hoping they stay there. The big upgrade to Vista years back drove the IT people to their knees. They struggled endlessly to keep boxes that had been stable and working smooth before the upgrade to stay up and running for more than a few mere hours without locking up. When 7 became available it put everything right but we still remember how bad it was. At one time my shop had 13 machines and if 5 of them were working it was a good day.

The problem wasn't Vista. I get that to most users the problem was the OS, but that just wasn't the case. The problem was that Microsoft changed the driver model and device vendors just weren't ready with device drivers for Vista. They didn't believe Microsoft when they stated the release date for Vista and then actually met it. So, older drivers that worked with NT were not so happy with Vista. And even when vendors started releasing drivers for older hardware, they tended to be buggy. On top of that, a lot of vendors just didn't bother. If you wanted a vista capable device, you had to buy a new one.

Yes, there were also problems with users and IT departments getting used to how UAC worked, but once you turned it off those issues went away.

Re:Honestly?

[pslytely psycho]

Don't get the browser thing either, but you got me to thinking. There may be something to the DirectX incompatibility,

I see little difference in GPU's over the last few years, but prior to that it seemed like new hardware got hugely better every few months. My two year old R9 270x is fully compatible with DirectX12, but my previous GPU would not of been. So maybe it's more of a hardware issue than OS issue.

I know, I'm not a tech and I have no idea what I'm really talking about.....so thanks for a polite response to an aging hippy truckdriver who loves technology ......(:

Re:Honestly?

[adhdengineer]

pretty much this.

I installed windows 8 not too long after it came out. I had to as my PC needed a rebuild after an... incident. long story short never short 12v onto the USB 5v rail. I'd previously had a windows 7 install that came from my works MSDN account, so not exactly legit, and windows 8 was 50 quid at the time (i dont mind paying for software when the price is reasonable and 50 quid is just about at the top of that scale.

So i bought windows 8 and installed it on the rebuilt PC. It was ok but it did have some issues with wanting to be a tablet OS on a desktop PC. Once 8.1 came out they'd solved that and i didnt need to move the mouse to magic places to shutdown and i was happy.

I can admit that, at first, I didnt like that the start menu was gone and the new full screen tile layout, but after i'd cleaned it down and put only the apps i use on it i grew accustomed to it and by the time windows 10 was installed i couldnt go back to the small area for the start menu, i had to re-enable the full screen.

all i need to do is tap the windows key to bring it up then click on the app i want and i'm done. I like having the large area for the app and muscle memory means i can move the mouse to the exact place i need without paying too much attention. no scrolling of windows or multiple click into submenus to get where i need

Re:Honestly?

[TheRaven64]

11. Much of the UI became non-discoverable. I'm not sure if the default hiding of menu bars came with 8 or 7, but it meant that unless you knew that the alt button was magic you were unable to access the menus. Similarly, there was no discoverable way of exiting the Metro apps that would occasionally pop up when you accidentally hit one of the magic key combinations - alt-F4 works, but unless you know that that's a way to quit Windows apps, you're stuck.

I didn't realise how truly bad the UI was until my mother bought a new machine that came with Windows 8 just before I visited the Christmas before last. She's been using Windows since 3.1 and, though she's not exactly an expert, she's got more than a passing familiarity with the OS. Lots of things just left her completely stuck. I've no idea where MS found the people that they put in their usability testing lab, but they don't seem representative of users. When my girlfriend bought a new laptop, I persuaded her to buy one that came with a Windows 7 downgrade. It took her about two weeks before deciding that it was worth using, and she was someone who had managed to tolerate Vista for years. She seems pretty happy with 7 (though some parts of the UI suck: anyone know how to set up an ad-hoc WiFi network with Windows Vista, 7, or 8? The network config UIs are completely different in all three and I couldn't figure it out in any of them).

Re: Honestly?

[TheRaven64]

Since OpenGL 3, GL ES has been a subset of OpenGL, so you can run a GL ES program on any compliant OpenGL implementation. The main difference in the initial GL ES release was the half-precision floating point type, which was not widely supported in hardware on desktop GPUs.

Re:Honestly?

[TheRaven64]

The IE thing makes more sense. They rewrote a lot of IE to use the new 2D text and graphics compositing APIs, so they couldn't backport it without either maintaining two distinct rendering paths or backporting a load of system library code.

The Direct3D thing is more silly, as OpenGL drivers on Windows XP expose all of the functionality from the hardware that Direct3D does on newer systems.

Re:Disabling the UI

[dbIII]

Why does everyone assume "usable" is a synonym for "works exactly like the WIndows I am familiar with"

Because Win8 with hidden offscreen controls may have sounded "fun" to a marketing guy on cocaine but rendered the thing not usable without strenuous workarounds and guesswork.
eg. Get to "Services" by a right click on desktop to being up screen resolution, then click in the "control panel" name in the location bar, then go to "Admin tools" then "Services". That's many times quicker than doing a search (once you have found the offscreen control - how fucking stupid?) and direct access via the windows menu has completely gone. Or you could remember a pile of key shortcuts - maybe we need to bring keyboard templates back as was used in the WordPerfect for MSDOS days?

IMHO it is a broken UI for anything more than casual use after somebody else (who has had to steer through the frustrating bullshit) has set it up for you. That is theoretically fine in a static environment where you have MS Word 2013 forever, and only use that, email and a web browser but that is going to fail the reality test in a year or two when the user is going to need other software and need some things changed. We've spent so many years going from a simple glass typewriter idea to a device with many uses to be able to go back to something limited to a very small number of choices presented in a very limited GUI. It is a huge step backwards. Even my 5+ year old phone has more applications than could be readably represented on the "Metro" GUI, let alone a desktop computer.

My upgrade experiences

[DrXym]

I've "upgraded" 3 machines to Windows 10, two were on 8.1, another on Windows 7. Of the 8.1s, one was a docking tablet with a fair amount of supplementary drivers, the other was a laptop which had a vanilla 8.1 installed on it.

The laptop appeared to upgrade ok but upon rebooting was excrutiatingly slow and unresponsive. It kept asking for permission to run an activesync exchange app or somesuch and neither Windows Update or Edge could connect to the internet even though Firefox could. I suspect that the machine had family safety turned on in 8.1 and it fucked up on the upgrade. In the end I reverted to 8.1. I might turn off family safety and try again.

The docking tablet upgraded fine but the drivers for the keyboard and touch pad are botched. I can't type certain keys on the keyboard and after a while it goes completely haywire. I'll probably live with it for a week to give Lenovo a change to produce a new driver and if they don't I'll revert to 8.1 there too.

The only one which worked relatively well was the Windows 7 desktop which migrated and booted back up in a good state. But even here there are glitches - some of my tiles look like they've been cut in half and shifted over. All my software works and the desktop experience is good even though the start menu still has a lot of room for improvement. I also discovered that Win 10 has a setting (enabled by default) that allows Microsoft to stuff promotional tiles into your start menu which is annoying.

Overall I'm not impressed at all with Windows 10. It was released prematurely as far as I'm concerned. From an administration point of view, it's also more of a burden because now there isn't just a control panel but also now a settings and clicking a button in one often leads to the other. It's a mess for configuration. None of the administrator tools seem to have gotten any attention either so they're not high-dpi aware for example which means they look blurred on a high density screen.

Re:Honestly?

[goarilla]

9. This is a big one for me: removed technical information in stop errors. If stop errors prevent the system from booting, it makes diagnosis a lot harder.

In addition to his, you now have to "enable safe mode" on a running system before you can use it (http://www.7tutorials.com/5-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-8-windows-81).

Re: Honestly?

[Joce640k]

OpenGL 4.1 was the first version with full support for OpenGL ES 2.0.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There will never again be a revolutionary OS....

[dablow]

...Not unless there is some revolutionary paradigm shift in Computer Science.

OS since Windows XP (or OSX) have pretty much hit their "peak" in terms of balance, usability and stability.

Since Windows XP (or OSX) the user experience has not changed much (although there have been significant changes under the hood).

I remember the days when a new OS required new hardware to run all the new goodies that where added (Think Win3.1=> Win95, Win95=>Win 98SE, or from Win98=>WinXP upgrade).

Since WinXP, all we have really seen is incremental, evolutionary changes that get implemented not only with major OS releases but with patches and service packs (and whatever the OS maker refuses to implement gets covered rather quickly by 3rd party software makers).

I expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future.

bull shit

[superwiz]

maybe from a linux user's perspective or even a win 8.1 user's. from a win7 user's perspective, win10's UI is a clear regression.

Re:Honestly?

[iampiti]

Someone here commented that they'd worked at Microsoft and that they'd done internal user testing of Win 8 and people hated. Of course we all know that management pressed on anyway.
Of course I can't ensure anything of this is true but sounds believable to me.
I agree with other comments that say that most changes to Win 8 and 10 were exclusively to the benefit of Microsoft

Re:Honestly?

[cheater512]

Everyone put your hand up if you want the Windows 10 kernel with the XP Interface?

It would sell like hotcakes!