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How Microsoft Built, and Is Still Building, Windows 10
An anonymous reader writes with this Venturebeat story about how Windows 10 is different from previous versions because of the way it was designed, including 15 public preview builds, and how much work is still being done. Windows 10 for PCs arrived two weeks ago. Thankfully, we don't need to wait years to say this will be a Microsoft operating system release like no other. The most obvious clue is not the fact that Windows 10 was installed on more than 14 million devices in 24 hours, that you can get it for cheap or upgrade to it for free, nor even that it ships with a digital assistant and a proper browser. No, the big deal here is that Microsoft is turning its OS into a service, and that means as you read these words, it's still being built. For the next few years, we'll be getting not just Windows 10 updates and patches, but new improvments and features. This is possible because Microsoft built this version very differently from all its previous releases.
since it's a service now we'll get to pay annually again and again instead of buying it once and having it 'til we're sick of it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The content of your emails, your voice, your browsing history, everything you do with your PC is uploaded to Microsoft (and a copy goes to NSA too, of course). Every antivirus software would label Windows 10 as a spyware if it weren't made by Microsoft. And no, you cannot turn it off completely, Microsoft's bad faith is proven by the fact that the default settings are all anti-privacy, not to mention that you cannot be sure that a closed-source OS does what it says:
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
>>...and I knew I could trust them.
This part is especially funny, in light of the recent Ars Technica article about how Win10 continues to send stuff to MS, even after you tell it *not* to.
Trust, it's a two way street...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Actually the "datamining crap" you are referring to has been present since at least Windows XP if not earlier. Much of that data is what is used to help build compatibility shims that allow older applications to continue to run on newer OS versions. Also how else do you think that Microsoft has been able to gather data about the most popular screen resolutions, how much the start menu is/isn't used, etc?
Other data (such as stack traces from crash reports) are often sent to the 3rd party developers in an attempt to identify the underlying cause of the crash and fixed it if it is the result of a software bug.
Enterprise users can disable the reporting entirely via group policy or have the reports forwarded to their own internal server for private use. It is only the home editions that can't completely disable the crash reporting and telemetry features.
Really? Linux can do this? Right. So here we have Mr. Linux and he can setup groups and all of a sudden the "freetard" ring gets one build and the "It's GNU/Linux damn it" ring gets a different build, and the "I still want to run the 2.3 kernel" ring gets an older build? No, Linux CAN'T do that. In fact, Linux is decentralized and is made up of distros and forks and all and has no central control. It is ridiculous to claim that Linux can do this.
No, Mr. Linux (AKA Linus Torvalds) doesn't set up the groups. He is interested in just kernel stuff. Also, it is because of the decentralized nature that allows Linux the flexibility to do this for over a DECADE before windows finally caught up.
Mr. Debian, Miss Ubuntu, Mrs. Fedora, Mr. Arch, and Mr. Gentoo make their respective groups. They set up the rings of development.
For example, Mr. Debian has Unstable, Testing, and Stable rings for his development systems. He also runs security updates for his previous Stable platform for at least a year. He is slow and methodical, but he has some of the most stable systems in the world
Miss Ubuntu likes Mr. Debian's ideas but thinks they are too slow and just repackages and improves on the Unstable and testing branches with some of her own packages and repositories for flair. But she also realizes the need for a long support build to go with her rapidly evolving six-month builds.
Mrs. Fedora helps out her husband Red Hat by releasing test builds of the latest and greatest stuff. She packages up a build every 6 months and supports it for a year. She only supports the last two builds and will not support a long term release... her husband will do that for her with his product.
Mr. Arch and Mr. Gentoo have a different approach. They run with the latest and greatest all the time and it is up to the individual users to know when to update their components.
Well no, it's called slashdot (/.) but you do know where that comes from right?
Well I do, but you might not - it was intended as a joke to make the site name hard to read out, i.e. h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-org.
Really? Linux can do this?
Yes, any asshole can do it at home.
So here we have Mr. Linux and he can setup groups and all of a sudden the "freetard" ring gets one build and the "It's GNU/Linux damn it" ring gets a different build, and the "I still want to run the 2.3 kernel" ring gets an older build? No, Linux CAN'T do that.
Who told you that? Of course it can. I can do it right here at home without even needing a distribution to do it for me. I make my own packages, using the same tools the distribution maintainers use. I put them in a directory, or in a web-accessible directory on another host, and add one line to sources.list or one one-line file (maybe two lines, comments are good) to /etc/sources.list.d/ and bango, I get debian twiddled with my own packages.
It is ridiculous to claim that Linux can do this.
Unless, of course, you have any experience with Linux. Then you've probably done it yourself, and you know how easy it is to do.
You can do the same thing trivially with gentoo with overlays. You create your own tree, overlay it onto the official tree, and bango. You get whatever you put into your tree. I presume you can do the same with rpm-based distributions, but I hates them my precious, so I use something else.
If only you knew anything about Linux or Unix, you might have something useful to add here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"