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Windows 10 Anniversary Update: the Best New Features (theverge.com)
A year after the release of Windows 10, Microsoft is gearing up for Anniversary Update, the first major update to the company's desktop operating system. Ahead of the public release of Anniversary Update on August 2, Microsoft provided media outlets with the Anniversary Update, and their first impressions and reviews are out. The Verge has listed the big changes Windows 10 Anniversary ships with. From the article: Windows Ink: Windows Ink is without a doubt the best part of the Anniversary Update. It's essentially a central location to find built-in or third-party apps that work with your stylus. You can use the new sticky notes to note down reminders, and they'll even transform into true reminders as Cortana understands what you write.
Microsoft Edge extensions: If you're a fan of Chrome extensions, then you'll be glad to hear that they're heading to Microsoft's Edge browser. The Anniversary Update brings support for extensions, and it's now up to third-party developers to fill the Windows Store with their add-ons.
Cortana improvements: Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana, debuted on Windows 10 last year, and the software maker is bringing it to the lock screen with the Anniversary Update. You'll be able to ask it to make a note, play music, set a reminder, and lots more without ever logging in. Cortana is also getting a little more intelligent, with the ability to schedule appointments in Outlook or options to send friends a document you were working on a week ago.
Dark theme and UI tweaks: You can switch on what I call even darker mode in settings, and it will switch built-in apps that typically use a white background over to black.Other improvements include things like Windows 10's ability to set your time zone automatically, and opening up of Windows Hello, the biometric feature to apps and websites. Additionally, the Xbox One is getting Windows apps. The Verge adds, "It feels like a promise that was made years ago, but it's finally coming true with the Anniversary Update. As Windows 10 now powers the Xbox One, Microsoft will start rolling out an update to its console to provide support for Cortana on Xbox One and the new universal apps." Microsoft is also adding Bash, the Linux command line to Windows with the new update. It's an optional feature and users will need to enable it to use it. Users will also be able to "project to PC," a feature that will allow one to easily find a PC to project to from a phone or another PC. There's also a new Skype app, and syncing of notifications between PC and phone is getting better.
Going by the reviews, it appears Windows 10 Anniversary Update is substantially more stable, and has interesting new features. You can read the first impressions of it on ZDNet, and review on PCWorld.
Microsoft Edge extensions: If you're a fan of Chrome extensions, then you'll be glad to hear that they're heading to Microsoft's Edge browser. The Anniversary Update brings support for extensions, and it's now up to third-party developers to fill the Windows Store with their add-ons.
Cortana improvements: Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana, debuted on Windows 10 last year, and the software maker is bringing it to the lock screen with the Anniversary Update. You'll be able to ask it to make a note, play music, set a reminder, and lots more without ever logging in. Cortana is also getting a little more intelligent, with the ability to schedule appointments in Outlook or options to send friends a document you were working on a week ago.
Dark theme and UI tweaks: You can switch on what I call even darker mode in settings, and it will switch built-in apps that typically use a white background over to black.Other improvements include things like Windows 10's ability to set your time zone automatically, and opening up of Windows Hello, the biometric feature to apps and websites. Additionally, the Xbox One is getting Windows apps. The Verge adds, "It feels like a promise that was made years ago, but it's finally coming true with the Anniversary Update. As Windows 10 now powers the Xbox One, Microsoft will start rolling out an update to its console to provide support for Cortana on Xbox One and the new universal apps." Microsoft is also adding Bash, the Linux command line to Windows with the new update. It's an optional feature and users will need to enable it to use it. Users will also be able to "project to PC," a feature that will allow one to easily find a PC to project to from a phone or another PC. There's also a new Skype app, and syncing of notifications between PC and phone is getting better.
Going by the reviews, it appears Windows 10 Anniversary Update is substantially more stable, and has interesting new features. You can read the first impressions of it on ZDNet, and review on PCWorld.
That's like the third story about Microsoft today. How much are you getting to promote this piece of crap?
Agreed; and since both Windows 7 and 10 are already pretty darn stable, it's hard to imagine how they could make it substantially more so in a way anyone could notice.
You're probably aware, but others reading your comment may not be. Microsoft back-ported all the fancy Windows 10 spying to Windows 7. To continue using Win7 without the spyware, you'll want to run a tool such as 'Destory Windows Spying' to cleanse the system.
* http://dws.wzor.net/
Windows now runs Linux binaries. Just install the damn underpinnings if you want to. Nothing's stopping you. You can run an entire Linux DE now naively under Windows which is effectively the most complicated desktop application your computer's likely to execute.
If you don't understand the significance of this then it's not Microsoft's problem.
I took the plunge and upgraded my last and more important PC this weekend, 'cause I don't want to be on the hook to pay $199 for a new Pro license when something forces me off 7.
I swear I'm not a shill; I bitch regularly about Microsoft because my job forces me to bear with it. But I was pleasantly surprised how well the in-place upgrade went. Nothing broke, even my old copy of Office 2003 (from my cold, dead hands...) The only thing the upgrade removed without asking were a couple of 3d-party diagnostic utilities like speccy, which doesn't bother me in the slightest. Even Steam fired back up without a hitch.
Now, about that ugliness. You don't have Aero transparency or rounded edges, but with Classic Shell and WinAero Tweeker, you can do a lot to make 10 more livable. A right-click on the taskbar can make Cortana go away, and ClassicShell separates Windows programs from Metro Apps in separate sub-menus, so you never have to look at them if you don't want to. Also, you do NOT have to use a Microsoft/Outlook cloud account. With this kind of setup, it's pretty much the same Windows as before.
Finally, I haven't tried this yet, but there's Spybot Anti-Beacon to address the "phone-home" issues that might be nagging you.
So, here's an idea to grab Windows 10 while its still free with the least risk. Shop for an SSD upgrade, like a 1TB Samsung Evo because damn it's gotten cheap. Clone your precious Windows 7/8/8.1 drive to the new SSD, remove it, set it aside. Then, perform an in-place upgrade as described here on the clone. Try it out. Something go wrong? Hate it? Swap back your old drive; clone again, do what you like. Your old build is safe and sound.
But here's the thing: according to the article, you have effectively retrieved/reserved your free Windows 10 license to use... whenever. If you want to try again in a few months, you can take a blank SSD and download/build Windows 10 from scratch, Microsoft will recognize your PC signature (assuming you haven't changed you mobo) and license you (just skip the part where it asks for a key). In the mean time, however, your old Windows will still work for as long as you want to keep it.
There. Assuming Microsoft doesn't wimp out and extend the deadline, you've just pocketed a $150-200 license for free to use any time you want.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
https://www.cygwin.com/
> What is it?
>
> Cygwin is:
>
> a large collection of GNU and Open Source tools which provide functionality similar to a Linux distribution on Windows.
>
> a DLL (cygwin1.dll) which provides substantial POSIX API functionality.
No need to accept Microsoft's half-assed implementation. With Cygwin, you get the whole kit+kaboodle. bash and various other shells. X Window client and server, Firefox, mutt, sendmail, whatever. Even gcc, so you can build from source. And it's free. If the PHBs at work insist, you can buy support from Redhat, who publishes it.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It's effectively a Linux syscall emulation layer + ELF loader, and Ubuntu running on top of that.
So kernelspace is entirely Windows (including drivers, filesystem support etc), but it presents Linux kernel ABI to the userspace. So userspace is just regular Linux. So there's no special "knowledge" between the two parts, aside from the ABI.
Filesystem is effectively shared, with a mapping system in place (Linux "partition" is in reality just an NTFS folder, while Windows drive letters are exposed as mount points in Linux).
Because the implementation sits directly on top of the NT kernel, side-by-side with Win32 (and not on top of it, like Cygwin does), it can efficiently provide proper semantics for things like fork().