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Microsoft's Get Windows 10 App, KB 3035583, Reappears (infoworld.com)
An anonymous reader shares an InfoWorld article: Once again, Microsoft has unleashed the GWX Kraken, with no explanation and no description. The latest KB 3035583 appears as a "Recommended" optional patch for Windows 7 and 8.1. Those with Automatic Update turned on and "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates" checked -- the default settings -- will see the patch as a checked, optional update, and it will be installed the next time Automatic Update runs. If you previously hid KB 3035583, it's now unhidden. I'm sure there are a dozen people on earth who still have Auto Updates turned on, "Recommended updates" checked, and who haven't yet accepted Microsoft's kind invitation for a free copy of Windows 10. This one's for them. In late March 2015, Microsoft released the first version of KB 3035583. Described as "Update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1," the patch immediately raised eyebrows. In April of last year, a German researcher named Gerard Himmelein, writing at heise.de, figured out that Microsoft was sneaking a Windows 10 upgrader onto Win7 and 8.1 machines. Life for Win7 and 8.1 customers since then has degenerated into Win10 whack-a-mole.In some other news, Chinese news outlet Xinhua reports that plenty of users in China are unhappy about Microsoft's push to get them to mandatorily upgrade their Windows OS. "The company has abused its dominant market position and broken the market order for fair play," Xinhua quoted Zhao Zhanling, a legal adviser with the Internet Society of China, as saying.
Honestly? Get real. 99.9% of the people who are having Win10 shoved down their throats don't even know what Linux is, let alone would even consider switching to it as a desktop OS. I work with it daily and even I don't have Linux as a desktop OS at home by choice for a variety of reasons, and don't have it as a desktop OS at work per corporate policy.
And 98% of those people who had Win10 foisted on them don't really mind after the initial getting used to it period. One of the people I work with is one of the biggest technophobes you'd ever meet. One morning several months ago, she came in and was practically in tears after accidentally agreeing to the upgrade, and then almost lost her mind when she asked me if there was some easy way to go back to Windows 8 and I had to tell her no. A week later she's telling me how Windows 10 is just as good or perhaps even a bit better and easier to use than Windows 8 and she's glad she upgraded.