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With DaaS Windows Coming, Say Goodbye To Your PC As You Know It (computerworld.com)
Ostracus shares a report from Computerworld, written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Microsoft is getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft Managed Desktop. This will be a "desktop-as-a-service" (DaaS) offering. Instead of owning Windows, you'll "rent" it by the month. Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take. It avoids the latency problem of the older Windows DaaS offerings by keeping the bulk of the operating system on your PC. But you'll no longer be in charge of your Windows PC. Instead, it will be automatically provisioned and patched for you by Microsoft. Maybe you'll be OK with that.
Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years. Microsoft Managed Desktop is the first move to replacing "your" desktop with a rented desktop. By 2021, I expect the Managed Desktop to be to traditional Windows what Office 365 is to Office today: the wave of the future. Or maybe tsunami, depending on your perspective. I'm not happy with this development. I'm old enough to remember the PC revolution. We went from depending on mainframes and Unix boxes for computing power to having the real power on our desktops. It was liberating. Now Microsoft, which helped lead that revolution, is trying to return us to that old, centralized control model.
Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years. Microsoft Managed Desktop is the first move to replacing "your" desktop with a rented desktop. By 2021, I expect the Managed Desktop to be to traditional Windows what Office 365 is to Office today: the wave of the future. Or maybe tsunami, depending on your perspective. I'm not happy with this development. I'm old enough to remember the PC revolution. We went from depending on mainframes and Unix boxes for computing power to having the real power on our desktops. It was liberating. Now Microsoft, which helped lead that revolution, is trying to return us to that old, centralized control model.
It seems to me that Microsoft managers don't have a reasonable vision of the eventual results of their recent ideas for the future.
If Microsoft tries to charge a monthly fee for an operating system, eventually 1) Nations will all gather together and try to buy Windows from Microsoft. That would be cheaper than paying monthly. Or, 2) Nations will gather together and contribute to ReactOS, a free operating system that runs Windows programs.
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (August 4, 2015)
We no longer have a usable Windows operating system. We can't go to customers and tell them their computers are not secure from outside access.
Because of the Windows 10 spyware, customers have been delaying buying new equipment.
Nothing would drive the PC extinct faster than Microsoft trying to control the OS in a worse than Apple.
Linux FTW
There's no way Microsoft will go into ordinary consumer. Instead Microsoft will go into enterprise consumer which is already happy paying sums of money into Microsoft since forever.
And the consumer version will have morr ads and data mining
Microsoft has been getting away from the old-style desktop model for years now. Just look at Office. Microsoft would much rather have you rent Office via Office 365 than buy Microsoft Office and use it for years...
Open source software zealots have been hoping for an "opening" for years. I guess this will be it.
Question is: Do they have anything that comes close to what Microsoft has created over the decades? I doubt!!
Who knows, I might be Ok with a lobotomy too, after it's all over. But it's the strapping me down to that operating table that is completely another matter altogether.
They cant be serious. They would have to remove quite a few more IQ points to get even the lobotomized version of me to go along with this.
It seems to me that Microsoft managers don't have a reasonable vision of the eventual results of their recent ideas for the future.
They aren't targeting corporate users they are targeting the mass market idiot consumer, because pioneering by the videogame industry through mmo's, and apple and other phone companies building walled garden appstores for their phones, and steam doing the same thing. They will get it all in the end because the average citizen is tech a illiterate moron.
Software companies can sit in their office and "release" the software via the net, and keep part of it on servers in their offices. Before high speed internet penetration was everywhere, the only way they could get paid was by shipping you the entire software physically or they wouldn't get paid.
The internet allows tech companies to force policies on ignorant consumers because the literate consumer base cannot hold them accountable. You'd need physical proximity to the business for your anger and discontent to effect company policy. The free market is dead and has long since been so, the internet removed any last bit of consumer power consumers had. Welcome to the silicon valley dictatorship driven by idiot half of the consumer buying public.
George carlin said it well about humanity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Extending that model, your apps will come only from the languishing Microsoft Store, where they'll make a commission on it. As the Surface becomes popular (as yet another Chromebook) you'll be tempted into convenience. Like Google/Android and Apple/iOS, Microsoft is trying to know you without selling you a phone. They lost that battle.
They're also hurting from the loss of Wintel, and looking at juicy new ARM CPUs to undercut the vicious cost of Intel/AMD CPUs, believing that competing devices based on ARM are cutting into their sales-- with tolerable performance.
Microsoft is feeling very threatened, and with good reason. Their Windows Beta program, oops, I mean Insider program, has started to backfire on them. It's almost impossible to do good QA when you don't control the hardware architecture. Hell, Apple still has problems when they DO control their architecture.
Windows in businesses won't care much because they're already moving into cloud-based applications that hurt Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and others are killing them and I'm sure they'd love to get some of that revenue back (as if they ever had it).
Ultimately, the Linux-ification of Windows will not produce Linux. It will produce Windows.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Better be coming too, or every OEM will go down with this ship.
Ain't this basically what ChromeOS and ChromeBooks doing?
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
By then 100% of devices will no longer have a regular headphone jack so that will be great too. Who could ever have imagined a future so bright?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
For the first time ever, Microsoft employees will be forced to actually eat their own dogfood. They will realize finally that their software is completely unmanageable. They will revolt or quit in droves. It will be an unmitigated P.R. disaster. Hundreds of millions of people will give up on desktop computing altogether. Microsoft will single handedly kill their own golden goose and then flail about for someone to blame when the stock prices begin to plummet. Google will eat their lunch with cheap hybridized Android "desktop replacement" devices.
We no longer have a usable desktop operating system! The Windows OS is spyware. Linux as a desktop operating system has gotten worse every year, not better. Why? Those who develop Linux desktop systems insist on doing their own thing. They don't cooperate.
AMAZING QUOTE from this story of 2 years ago: The number of Linux distributions is declining. "In 2011, the Distrowatch database of active Linux distributions peaked at 323. Currently, however, it lists only 285."
285 different ways to do one thing!!! "Only" 285? Quote from a Slashdot comment: "You know Linux Desktop is a junk OS from the fact an app may require version 2.5 of a library and another one might require no more than 2.4, and Desktop Linux offers no way around the problem."
Linux has VERY poor documentation. A friend of mine said this perhaps 20 years ago: "It's free but you will spend at least a week getting it to work." So, Linux is NOT free.
This is why some open-source people like Stallman are so fanatical. We have Linux, and no one can take it away from us. In ten years from now when everyone is suffering with DaaS, I'll still be typing away with Linux, free as always.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
> Linux has VERY poor documentation
Not just Linux but a lot of GPL software does as well in my experience. :-(((
Proof: How many man pages actually have examples.
This is one area the *BSDs do better. (Security too, but that's a separate discussion.)
Yeah, it's not like Linux hasn't been my desktop OS for 12+ years or that people who think using "lol" in lieu of punctuation makes them look witty aren't idiots.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This just means that I go completely to Linux for development. Chrome and ChromeOS for storage, email, presentation and business apps. Maybe Mac because I love OSX on a laptop - I'm dropping Office on my Mac because Microsoft wants $250 CDN to upgrade to the latest version and won't continue with updates.
And, after doing all this, I don't feel deprived one bit.
So, why would I pay Microsoft a lot more for the same capabilities?
Somebody, down the road, at Microsoft is going to be crucified in front of the shareholders for pushing us away from Windows and Office.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
This old fart is fucking done with this bullshit.
"Rent-seeking-seeking behaviour", abbreviated "aaS".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What are you talking about? You can easily choose to use another desktop window manager (I use XFCE, there's LXDE, KDE and more), Pulseaudio isn't actually required (see this screenshot: nothing depends on it except the preference manager software and an emulator for ALSA only apps https://i.imgur.com/rIc6Ccx.pn...) and I can remove SystemD using this: https://systemd-free.artixlinu... but honestly Pulseaudio and SystemD have not given me problems, but if they did I know how to remove them. So why complain when you can fix it yourself easily?
This will give me more room on my hard-drive when I replace Windows with Linux. I have changed to Linux on some of my machines already and this will be the incentive to change my laptops to Linux.
The post you are quoting is absolutely correct. and your post does not dispute it or detract from it.
I'm still using Office 2003. on Windows 7 SP1, and yes, the file format converters still work perfectly, both forward and backward. I don't NEED to upgrade, and I don't want to either. I hate everything about the ribbon interface, I use the ALT menus, and don't you dare try to tell me they have replicated the shortcuts because they fucking haven't! Try selecting some precise area of text with arrows and the shift key, then press "ALT - O and then O". Are you looking at the Font Dialog? No?! Exactly. Lies. (on their part!)
I will never update Windows again. Spyware and "telemetry" killed it for me. Windows user since 3.1
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Governments are already on Enterprise and are probably paying monthly now. This is to finally force that on the end consumer.
Clippy: It looks like you're trying to play a computer game. Let me help you with that. Oh wait, you mean you don't want me to send every frame of a game across your internet connection? (Do you realize how laggy that would be? LOL....)
PC gamers are about to be pissed off or extinct.
It's not a protest. It's a means to maintain control. My machine, my software, my data.
If the software no longer works for me, then the only alternative is a different OS.
Move to FreeBSD, it is time. It's like Linux but written by rational adults.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Adobe CS is a terrible example. I have a 7-year old suite that runs fine. And I use it professionally. My last version before that was only a 4 year gap, but that's because I bought 5.5 knowing they'd be going subscription-only soon.
You forgot option 3: Switch to Android. Making a desktop version of Android would not be hard for Google.
This is not for me. I don't like the whole 365 model. It costs way too much! MS wants you to think it is cheaper and you will be current, but it really is all about how they can make more money.
They aren't targeting corporate users they are targeting the mass market idiot consumer,
Unfortunately a lot of people will get roped in because idiots who aren't targeted for this will happily ride along.
I participate in a system that is intended to provide emergency communications via radio, with something that looks like email. I say "looks like" because it isn't, and doesn't obey many of the RFC for email. This system is based on ... Windows. It only runs on Windows 7 now because they haven't figured out how to break it like they broke it on Windows XP. Windows 10 is the preferred platform.
The people in charge of this platform are die-hard zealots for Windows, including every patch and update as soon as it comes out. If you mention that you have disabled Win 10 updates you will be set upon as if you are a bear raiding their honey hive. You will be branded as an outlaw who is setting them up for bots and attacks and personal assaults, even if you are a computer professional who knows how to defend a system against such things without needing Microsoft controlling your devices.
There are REPEATED stories of how Win 10 updates break this system for users, many of whom are providing the gateways between radio and the network. Some of them are unattended, distant sites that can become critical communications resources in a disaster or emergency, and yet it's ok if they crash and burn because Microsoft issued a patch that changes how the sound system works (just one example of failure).
Once Desktop As A Service becomes standard, these folks will leap upon it and cling to it like it's a liferaft and they're drowning rats. It won't matter if they've given complete control of their system on a large scale to a company that does not care if their updates break it, and break it in a way that it cannot recover without significant time and effort on the part of the users. ("Reinstall windows, then reinstall the software ..." is a common "fix". Or just "uninstall and then delete the root directory that contains the software, then reinstall from scratch" is the most common "fix". The fact that the software installs in the root directory of the boot disk isn't an issue for them ... the computer is theirs once you install their software. It has no other use. Oh, "install teamviewer and I'll remote in and fix it for you" is the standard op for minor fixes.)
There are some open-source helpers to this system. You can run a gateway on linux. There's not much to a gateway, after all. It's just a pipeline to the visual basic code now running in the AWS cloud. When you know that the INTERNET side of the "email" system was written entirely in VB you'll understand how Microsoft-locked it is.
They'll be right on board with DaaS. And anyone who wants to participate in that emergency services system will get dragged into the mud with them.
Mentioning mainframes is appropriate, as this is the way mainframes used to be "sold": you didn't buy them, they were leased, and to some varying extent, managed by the vendor.
Switch to Android. Making a desktop version of Android would not be hard for Google.
Cool. A desktop computer with a few "phone" processes that you can't get rid of, just like I can't get rid of them on my tablet. And a "location manager" that runs 24/7.
No, I don't think Android will be the choice of people who flee Windows. I think I'll dig out my old CP/M disks ...
I’m not a typical user, but I’m willing to put up with a walled garden on my iPad. I don’t think of it as a general purpose computer as much as an internet and email tablet. That won’t fly on my desktop, though. And I’m sure as hell not paying Microsoft a monthly fee just to be able to use my computer. That’s straying into the land of batshit crazy to me. I’ve not been a huge Linux evangelist (because I’ve had my share of problems with it that the typical windows user would be completely at sea with), but I’d be happy to recommend it to my friends in lieu of them having to pay $10 a month or whatever to MS.
I am surprised at the number of people still recommending OpenOffice instead of LibreOffice. Open Office is out of date for MS compatibility noticeably clunkier in terms of interface responsiveness and lacking when it comes to features such as change tracking or collaboration, it also updates perhaps once in a blue moon. In short if you use Open Office nowadays you will get a bad impression of open source, I suspect either stubborn favouritism, much outdated knowledge or a certain anti open source intent. To be honest though it is probably the former, but no knowing for real.
I've been using Linux as my *only* desktop since 2003. My PC is my PC.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> Proof: How many (LINUX) man pages actually have examples
FTFY
--I'll back you up on that. But there are only so many resources out there that the average distro has to provide man-hours. They rely on end-users for bugreports, so maybe the best way to add an example to a manpage would be to submit a bugreport to upstream and let it trickle down. Any takers or better suggestions?
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Once again, thank you, and all who have contributed to the open source movement to provide us with an alternative to profit-driven corporate overlords. History will be most kind to your work...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Proof: How many man pages actually have examples.
This is a problem for people who learned to copy-paste from StackOverflow instead of learning to read documentation.
Of course, it's also a problem of programmers not knowing how to create a proper interface.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It won't even be a managed desktop. Is Microsoft going to bring the system back up when it goes down? Ultimately it will be exactly the same as Windows 10 except with monthly licensing fees.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That will be the day I use DaaS, if you go for this replace the second 'a' with a 's' in my subject because that is what you are.
Will I guess Linux as a desktop may happen soon with this. So lets count for the future:
1. Mobile has a monthly fee with net limits
2. Monthly fee for home internet, maybe limited
3. Now a monthly fee for a PC you bought yourself
This is worse than paying taxes and all you are paying for is to allow people to spy on you. At least with Linux or a *BSD you can lockout spyware. I am sure DaaS will be so locked down even Apple will get jealous. Fun future we are heading towards, I almost miss dialup.
will see a significant increase in Linux, macOS and may actually BE the death of the desktop.
Ironic that the folks who helped bring the desktop to the masses would also be the ones to kill it off. :|
All in the name of greed.
There is exactly ZERO chance I will ever " rent " my operating system and cede what little control I have :|
left to someone like Microsoft. I keep my drawing tablet ( Wacom Studio Pro / Win10 ) offline because I
don't want it updating / breaking anything. Will be impossible to do with a Managed Desktop that is required
to check in on a monthly basis to see if you are still " allowed " to use your computer
Once implemented, I'm pretty sure we're seeing the final days of Microsoft. The smart ones will start selling
their stock off as soon as possible.
This kind of shit is precisely why I won't do Office 360 or any of that other SaaS bullshit. It only encourages more of it.
My computer is mine. Wholly owned by me and used as I see fit. There's no way I'd pay for the privilege of using someone else's desktop environment.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
We no longer have a usable desktop operating system! ... Linux has VERY poor documentation. A friend of mine said this perhaps 20 years ago: "It's free but you will spend at least a week getting it to work." So, Linux is NOT free.
Linux mint's install is pretty painless. My mom uses it all the time. It's not hard. I have it installed as well. If AOL was still around they could send out DVDs. Of course DVDs aren't as common these days, but usb sticks are not hard either.
About the only way to make it easier is to have Walmart sell install media for the cost of the media. The problem is Walmart doesn't want to sell something that people might have problems with. It isn't worth their risk.
Fundamentally the thing that stalls Linux as much as anything is the fact that there is no large organization handling tech support, because that costs money. The only solution I see to this would be for the government to pay to support the most common versions because it is in the public interest. Republicans would go ape shit over the idea, but you want widespread adoption of linux, well, someone needs to do the tech support and hand holding till it reaches critical mass, and that costs money.
The whole Google productivity suite is right there when you log in. I think it's okay for kids (don't get me wrong, the Google drive is fabulous and the spreadsheet has its place). I can understand trying to get experience in that model. But personally, I like having software and data locally. Also, putting your data on another company's servers lets them get a really solid grip around your balls/profit.
It sounds like prime target to a good ol dose of amplified distributed denial of service attack.
..this is worse, way worse.
Whatever. If this creates a smoking hole in the ground, someone will take up the slack. Linux maybe. Or MacOS.
Corporations will buckle and give into this. It's inevitable. Removes one more bit of drudgework, from their point of view.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
As I remember it, the PC revolution was slow and stumbling. PCs took a long time to get to the point of really being useful in larger office settings. Sure, it started off popular in small businesses that had no computers previously, or on the desk of execs who otherwise had no terminals, but for places that used mainframs the PCs took a long time to take over. You really had to wait until the 386 era before things started to be more useful for actual work.
I have been using Redhat then Fedora since about 1999. When Gnome went nuts in v3.0, I switched to the Xfce desktop. Once it is set up nice, most Windows users would have little difficulty using it. But getting it "setup nice" does take some work.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
This *will* cause my move away from Windows. Fuck rental, fuck their percieved authority, and fuck their super high horse.
Those of us from many years before it was even a concept, those of us good with money, have always hated it.
In Australia, buy an $800 cell phone, get a $20 per month cell plan, total 2 year cost $1240. But you could always get the phone free! with a plan, only $80 per month ... or $1920.
And so on and so forth. Applications, gaming, etc, it's all 'just rent it' and it stinks when the option for people with a clue to pay outright, disappears.
There's 0% chance of me ever paying for Windows as a service.
I hope this isn't the direction Firefox is going.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
It's pronounced just like DOS. And I don't want anything to do with it, just like DOS.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
There is a long tail of specialty distributions that hardly anyone uses, and then there are four or five options that people use. Here they are with a rough popularity score:
91 Ubuntu
18 Debian 18
6 Red Hat 6 (higher if CentOs is included)
7 Mint
3 Suse
1 Manjaro
You see the top four is what almost everyone uses.
Most of the others are based on one of these anyway, so if you learn about Debian-like Linux systems, you just 80 different distros. Plus they are all Linux, of course. Often I don't know or care which distro I'm using at the moment. A paper towel is a paper towel is a paper towel, regardless of brand. In many ways, Linux is Linux, regardless of distro.
You've spent perhaps 20 years learning Windows, then re-learning it differently every three years when Microsoft redoes it. If you learn Linux in a week, that's about a thousand times faster than you learned Windows.
For the first few years I used Linux, I frequently referenced a Unix book from the early 1980s. Everything in the book still worked the same 20 years later. I have scripts my mom wrote 30 years ago which still run fine on my Linux machine today. No need to forget what you knew and learn completely different every few years like you do with Windows.
There will be lawsuits by the hundreds, if not thousands, when your "managed desktop" causes downtime in excess of the EULA, or if, in your case, an emergency cannot be managed properly because the damned computer went down for an update, and one or more people die as a result.
I imagine emergency services will be told to buy redundant systems so that computer "A" can update while computer "B" maintains services - or something along those lines.
If Microsoft want control of your desktop, they can damn well pay for the consequences.
I will run Win 7 as a guest under Debian until the heat death of the universe. If I'm ever required to run software that will only run under Windows Managed Desktop, it too will run in a VM. I'm learning a lot about iptables these days.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
285 is really stretching it. This is a list of "all" Linux distros, that covers everything from x86 to Arm and even Risc and PowerPc processors as well as BSD distros. Most of the distros are just repackaged versions of two or three main distros with not much more than a new theme added. Very little is different after you pass the first few.
The fact is that Windows has suffered for years without any competition. The fact that they can make a turd sandwich and you'd eat it is why the OS has not gotten noticeably better.
Personally I still don't get the issue with windows updates. Yes I know you can have it update at night, then wake up to needing to reboot and install more only to have to leave for work before you can check your email and then come home to have to click another checkbox that takes another length of time at least as long as a full install before you can use it. All because NTFS still has no reasonable way to deal with inodes in memory. Seriously, no other OS has that problem. Right now I have windows install on a disk that won't upgrade because of circular dependency issues. You know the problem you claim Linux has, which it doesn't because installing concurrent versions of libraries is done all the time for all kinds of software.
I don't feel like reinstalling windows because my Linux system works so well, and doesn't have all those issues. Unless of course your talking about not being able to run really expensive proprietary software that you need to buy and relicense every couple of years.. so what.
once more into the breach
corporate users are already "renting" windows AND office, per seat and per month or year, via volume license agreements. this "new" and "innovative" approach is to get the small businesses and home users on the same page...
apparently, we're still not buying new computers (with new windows licenses) often enough.. add that to the decrease in the market due to mobile.. microsoft is starting to strangle its dwindling customer base, to squeeze out every penny they can, just like cable and satellite tv providers have been doing since the netflix generation took off.
the writing has been on the wall for a decade. microsoft toyed with a subscription-based windows 7 in a couple small markets back then. combine with secure boot (where microsoft holds the keys) to lock people out of their hardware.. the push towards "apps" and subscription office.. on top of forced updates... and boom. you have subscription windows going to be forced on everybody.
they did not lie. windows 10 IS "the last windows you'll ever buy" --- because the next one will be rented, not purchased.
fuck microsoft. long live linux and bsd.
How does a constantly updating OS manage it's network quota on a limited bandwidth dictated by the "National Broadband Plan" that says cellular speed is good enough.
If Microsoft tries to charge a monthly fee for an operating system, eventually 1) Nations will all gather together and try to buy Windows from Microsoft. That would be cheaper than paying monthly. Or, 2) Nations will gather together and contribute to ReactOS, a free operating system that runs Windows programs.
And now back to reality: people will continue to bitch and moan about Windows and Microsoft, but take no meaningful action to help themselves. Then they will be shocked, SHOCKED, when Microsoft continues its predatory monopoly abuses unabated.
ReactOS will never be a viable Windows substitute. Ever. A HUGE advantage Windows has over even Linux is its platforms. MFC and ATL, Terminal Services, Internet Explorer/Shdocvw.dll, VB6 runtime, etc will just never be implemented. While it may be binary compatible, the software backend just doesn't exist. And if you are ok with Windows sans everything that makes Windows Windows, then you can just move to Linux or something else just the same.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The day that happens I will scrub Windows in whatever version it comes and run ALL my family's computers on Linux. GET a grip, Microsoft
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
I bought 5.5 after 6 had been announced, so I got a box with 5.5 discs, and an upgrade code to 6.
It also had a version 4 disc "to assist 32-bit users to transition to 64-bit".
So I got 3 versions for the price of 1, no way Adobe is going to get more of my money - I can continue running them in Win 7 (as a guest under Debian when this hardware craps out).
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
We no longer have a usable desktop operating system!
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Whether or not "we" have a usable desktop operating system depends on your definition of "we". All desktop operating systems have strengths and weaknesses, but I've found Kubuntu to work wonderfully for everyone I've switched to it.
Your corrected topic sentence should be, "We no longer have a usable Windows operating system." We can both complete agree on that.
The rest of your posting seems to be a drunken rant, so I'll leave it alone.
What everyone here seems to fail, and it is tagged as such right at the very top of the article, is that this isn't journalism. This article is one person's opinion piece. That is it.
This entire thing, this article, something that has gone fucking viral all day in every goddamn tech site that I visit, is nothing more than an oversensationalistic bullshit opinion piece.
It is a click-bait viral article to drum up views to get advertising dollars, and all you fell for it.
None of the Xaas offerings have this kind of liability. Best case is maximum damages of that month's service costs times two... which comes to you as a credit against future invoices.
The sales people will all say they take on certain liabilities and all that sounds so great for the people listening but when you look at the contract details... the only benefit you have is that you can cancel the service and stop paying almost whenever you want. All true liabilities stay with you.
And isn't DaaS = DEVICE as a service? Not desktop. Couldn't they say WaaS or MSaaS? I think it's a marketing thing to ride HPs coattails.
No, I fucking won't.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Once again everything comes back to your net connectivity. Sadly where I live for half the year it is crap, thus any remote desktop solution will be crap. What I can say might be interesting is the idea of a local site desktop emulator in house. My GF and my parents, who are snow birds and only use their machines for emails and Facebook, are poster children for a thin client, but I would not have one do to gaming graphics issues and response time.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Oh hell, it's worse. I've actually been told "You can look at the code." Of course I can. I just don't want to invest half a friggin' year to figure out how to use the software.
The title of this article and the ComputerWorld article are misleading. If you read the original ZDNet article that is being linked to, you will find that this is just Microsoft trying to take a piece of the DaaS market. This will be offered as an additional service, primarily intended for enterprise users. Not your desktop at home.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-got-a-new-plan-for-managing-windows-10-devices-for-a-monthly-fee/
You wouldn't stand for a walled garden on the iPad either, if you had to pay for it monthly.
I think the rent-is-the-only-option approach and the walled garden approach are fairly orthogonal. The comments about Joe Idiot consumer not caring are wrong too. People hate recurring fees, especially when they've gotten used to not having them.. Just ask any online news source.
It's really too bad they didn't use "A Software Service."
Just when you thought Windows can't get any worse they pull this out. I'm not weeping I'm chuckling.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
so network down = system may fall into an limited mode where you can't
log in to a wifi network that needs an web page to get on?
Can't login into an 3rd party vpn
can't install drivers
Microsoft is going to have to tiptoe through a minefield to avoid this royally backfiring.
First, MS will have to contend with Windows 7. They can yell "support ending in 2020" all they want, but there are no shortage of people who couldn't care less. If MS decides to update-bomb Win7 and prevent it from running, lawyers will be tripping over themselves to tell MS that they're in breach of contract.
Next, nobody else who makes OSes update at a cadence charges for those updates. OSX hasn't charged since 10.11 or something like that. Android and Linux have never charged (money, anyway). For Apple, the OS is a means to an end for selling hardware. For Google, Android is a means to an end for advertising and data harvesting. For Red Hat, Linux is a means to an end for support contracts. For free Linux distros, Linux is a means to an end for self fulfillment. Microsoft can't seem to turn Windows from "a product" into "a means to an end", yet they're trying to play by the same rules. It just doesn't work that way.
Microsoft then is going to face the ire of developers everywhere whose software is dependent on people paying their Windows bill. With Apple largely ignoring the professional market from a hardware perspective and Windows now requiring its own monthly fee, is Adobe going to sit idly by and watch their market get super shaky? Is Autodesk going to start relying on iPad users? How about a whole lot of niche software that runs doctor's offices and law firms and point-of-sale terminals? Are they going to just sit back and watch their call centers flood with customers being informed that they now have a new "Windows bill" to pay? It's only a matter of time before someone files a lawsuit...and in such a situation, it will be highly unlikely that MS will find a sympathetic judge when it is likely that everyone who still writes desktop software will be on the not-MS side of that one.
Finally, with so many government offices running Windows, it is only a matter of time before recurring Windows payments ends up on a desk of someone who is able - and willing - to legislate. MS isn't a Silicon Valley darling anymore; they're IBM, they're Xerox, they're Oracle - a massive company that is heavily entrenched, and can keep going so long as they are able to keep themselves out of the court of public opinion. Outside of maybe Washington state, legislation happening on the topic of subscription software likely won't go their way. While it might be wishful thinking, I wouldn't put it completely beyond the realm of possibility for Adobe and Autodesk to make their software run on Linux out of spite.
no.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Desktop Linux has a couple of problems but none of them are as severe as most people think. I've been around the development scene for a while now and I've gained some insights which I'd like to share. 1. Any sort of game editing tools are just a complete afterthought to the developers making Linux games. Don't expect the modding community to make much when they have to become programmers to edit games on Linux. 2. QT is a terrible API, far too bloated/too much kitchen sink in there to quickly get an application written in a few lines of code. I already learnt C++ I shouldn't need to learn how QT wraps OpenGL just to write GL code. 3. GTK completely sucks for Object Orientated Programming. Sure you can call it from Objective-C or C++ bindings, but there's no way to connect GUI callbacks to signal handlers without writing tons of boilerplate code. The entire point of having an IDE such as glade is to avoid unnecessary boilerplate code. GTK has completely failed to provide this. (A quick solution would be to extend Glade to allow connecting call backs to class methods in OOP Languages e.g C++/Obj-C) 4. GNUstep has completely failed to provide a web browser, or binding for a browser, as well as any desktop configuration tools. No point running a MacOS-alike/NextStep clone if you can't configure sound/video/networking and can't integrate with the other desktops/have other desktops integrate with you. 5. Lots of little converter applications/middleware tools are missing. This is easy enough to fix but the APIs need to be improved. It shouldn't take more than 5 mins to create a small application that creates a notebook of text.
linux works with secure boot and antitrust laws will stop MS from locking it out.
I couldn't agree with you more
I just wish my job weren't so windows dependent but I ultimately use Office 2003 whenever possible (in rare situations I have to access some silly excel file with so much formatting the file format converters don't work on it)
The easiest way around that, in my experience, is to install Office 2010 (the least obnoxious "modern" version) in sandboxie in windows 7 (note you'll need to have at least one Office 2010 app installed conventionally for the sandboxed apps to work right; I use Outlook 2010 natively because that's a bump up from Outlook 2003 unlike all the other apps)
and in the future, when you can't run windows 7 natively anymore, just use virtualbox on top of whatever OS you have being wary of available/allocated ram (oddly I've found vmware to not work too well with office 2003 as compared to virtualbox)
That would be ChromeOS, which already has window dragging support coyly tucked away in developer options. Also now runs Android apps and full Linux distros (in a vm in a container, how's that for paranoia).
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Microsoft tried to introduce the "rented os" idea almost 20 years ago. Windows XP was initially intended by to be leased by the year after which it would die if you didn't pay the annual tithe. focus group user reaction was so massively negative, Micro$oft shelved the idea, but the genie (and greed) were out of the bottle; just lurking long enough for sheeple to accept the idea of own-nothing pay-per-all. Given the success of social media, I guess we're all more than happy rolling over and forking over our lives and wallets.
Proof: How many man pages actually have examples.
This is a problem for people who learned to copy-paste from StackOverflow instead of learning to read documentation. Of course, it's also a problem of programmers not knowing how to create a proper interface.
Sometimes you'll run across programmers also not knowing how to write documentation. Protip: If somebody's looking up a man page, they want to know what it does, and how to use it. They do not want pornographic explanations of how it works in the most obtuse and esoteric language you can manage.
Clippy: It looks like you're trying to play a computer game. Let me help you with that. Oh wait, you mean you don't want me to send every frame of a game across your internet connection? (Do you realize how laggy that would be? LOL....)
PC gamers are about to be pissed off or extinct.
There's already migration among PC gamers to Linux. Honestly, this whole thing comes off as painfully tone-deaf and likely to cause mass migration to other OSes outside of businesses which could possibly write the increased costs off on their taxes.
can we get WSUS for homes then? or small business that does not have an sever?
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...
Seriously. If you're one of the three people here who haven't read it, go and do.
I'm already not using windos anywhere and haven't for over a decade, except at work where it is (sadly) still the standard. If they seriously move this way, I will campaign hard at work to move the default desktop to something else.
I have high hopes that they did it too late. The monopoly is not as strong as it used to be, for many people windos is just the default, they could use something else if they cared. A few single-platform apps are the reason holding them back, and of course, sadly, games.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"You know Linux Desktop is a junk OS from the fact an app may require version 2.5 of a library and another one might require no more than 2.4, and Desktop Linux offers no way around the problem."
There are about ten different ways in which you can run different versions of the same library on the same system. Absolutely not a problem. True, however, that many of them require you do know the system and be comfortable with the CLI. That is a no-go for ordinary users.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is a problem for people who learned to copy-paste from StackOverflow instead of learning to read documentation.
True, but - a lot of "modern" solutions are basically built to work like that. I'm doing some hobby stuff in a Javascript framework right now (not my choice, the only tool available for this job) and doing copy-paste is literally the only way to get things working because there are so many virtually identical ways to get to the same goal and none of them are explained anywhere or make an intuitive sense that the fastest and only reliable way to get it working is to go through teh stackoverflow solutions until you find the one that works for your particular combination of patchwork bullshit.
Entire generations of coders grow up being copy-paste people not because they are lazy, but because their ecosystem supports this as the most viable way.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Twenty years for me. Linux was crude back then, but never as bad as early versions of Windows, not even close. And never locked up or needed reboot, just like now. And relatively easy to update, remember the rpmfind days? (Still exists actually.) Star Office was the office suite and Navigator was the browser. For many people, the mailer too. KDE was largely unknown and the Gnome guys were just getting started on their successful jihad to force KDE into full GPL and their less successful struggle to build a usable desktop after that. Even then, you could get by with Linux instead of Windows. I did. Sometimes there would be difficulties, PDF had not yet displaced .doc for business communication so that sometimes caused issues. But nothing remotely close to the major issue of having to put up with Microsoft and its insecure, unstable excuse for an operating system.
Twenty years later, here we are. Two decades of being able to escape any time they want, and we see with something between horror and amusement, all those Microsoft victims still huddling in squalor in the Windows dungeon. Stockholm syndrome or what?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Perhaps it will *finally* be the year of the Linux desktop. Yeah right!
If Microsoft goes ahead with this? That's likely--a lot of people use MS pretty much because it's the OS their computer came with. I don't think DaaS systems will sell to anybody who isn't a large business--meaning that the OEM market may decide to go with a Linux flavor instead--and odds are that any small business started after Microsoft makes this brilliant move will stay with either Linux or macOS if they get big, so basically Microsoft is betting that its current Enterprise customers will stay forever...or they just don't see the OS market as one they care to stay with.
They will just write the eula in their favor so they get a free out of jail card.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
My main use case nowadays doesn't work in a virtual machine - playing games. ON silly or old hardware. And I hope the Linux trolls don't try telling me that GPU pass thru is a useful or working feature, when none but the most expensive and newest graphics chipsets are supported properly. Mobility Radeon 3470 running Skyrim at native resolution at 40+ frames per second on a dual core with high-res textures. No updates / malware. That's how I like my Windows, fast and lean.
They keep publishing lies about how bad Windows 7 is for gaming, but my personal extensive experience with going backwards and forwards comparing Windows versions on the same hardware, with the same games, every time i fix, borrow or scrounge a new machine, goes as far back as Win 3.1, as far forward as August Creator's Update, and hardware-wise, I still have a P2 Toughbook, the above mentioned Qosmio Classic, and an i7-based GTX 1070 rig. My experience is consistent: On most hardware, Windows 7 beats the rest. It's faster than Vista, and faster than 8.1, on the same hardware, across AMD and Intel CPU's, and across AMD and nVidia GPU's using the same games and settings. 8 and 8.1 are much, much faster than 10.
Anybody benchmarking anything different must be cheating, or there's some hobbles in the updates since the i3, i5 etc. were released, aimed at forcing Windows 7 stalwarts to upgrade, similar to the Intel / AMD "un-optimizing" compiler Intel created a few years back.
This last bit sounds a bit paranoid, but Intel are usually considered less evil than M$ and look what they did with their compiler!! (it sent AMD CPU's through a longer version of the same program on the chip instead of using faster built-in microcode extensions on the chip, to slow down the competitor when running code generated using the Intel compiler!)
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
How on earth can we keep proprietary data, trade secrets, etc. on a Windows machine that would obviously have to connect to the Internet most of the time?
Right now I have a Win 10 laptop for all proprietary designs that has been on the Internet only 2 times.
One was as new to update Windows just prior to
Loading my 3D CAD design program on it. It will NEVER go on the internet or any other network every again.
What possible reason would I ever have to use anything beyond Win 10?
True, but - a lot of "modern" solutions are basically built to work like that. I'm doing some hobby stuff in a Javascript framework right now
It's extremely frustrating. It's not a matter of laziness, but rather incompetence.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
About as free as the food you get in prison.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The mass market no longer buy PCs. They are content consumers they buy Apple and Android. They use smart TVs, smart phones, smart tablets because they are dumb and just want their computer to do simple things for them. The power PC user will absolutely tell M$ to go fuck itself, what is that Hitler one, on yeah with a pineapple pointy end first.
So M$ is basically driving down a one way street with a brick wall at the end and accelerating. They watched their mobile phone crap die because people hated what they were doing and thumb in bum, mind in neutral, they just keep going straight down that path. They simply can not be told and are not listening to what a pack of cunts they truly are.
So now the shift will occur, obviously Android is killing it on content consumption devices and Apple is doing is doing better in spite of themselves with selling you privacy, rather than selling your privacy. SteamOS (steam was kind of dopey no distributing FOSS on steam to promote steamOS) and Linux winning everywhere except the desktop. Playstation of course well they're a bit slow and are sort of going nowhere.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You know how there are several different ways of learning, right? Some learn by reading a book, some learn by doing, some are inbetween where seeing a few examples will make it click how things work together.
Imagine you are learning a foreign language, and you get an instruction the equivalent of "I before E except after C", that's all good - but why not continue the line with "So it's thief and tries, but receive."?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I hope they keep going with more and more spyware as a service functions, to the extreme. People will not wake up and make a stand until there is a disaster. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the sheeple. Things will have to get much worse before they get better. Until then, you can be sure, there will be no Windows 10 machines anywhere in my company or my family.
"it will be automatically provisioned and patched for you by Microsoft. Maybe you'll be OK with that."
:)
No, I won't. Lots of people won't. Thankfully I'm not required to use Windows for my development work for a long while now, so I only use Windows in VBox (mainly for Office, and for the very occasional Windows development tasks) and have switched to Linux for many years now. I have one Windows laptop at home though, but mostly because of laziness and since it can run putty quite OK
But back to the point, for average users who can afford the monthly/yearly fees this probably will be OK - until some automatic update bricks their "rented" OS, which will inevitably happen. Why wouldn't it, it was just yesterday that I had to help someone (a typical average user) with a bootlooping Win10 - which by the way has become completely borked after restoring a previous "working" state and I had to reinstall the whole thing. As a developer you can't afford such issues, and we would need more control, not less. While this "rented" Windows might still have a version with more control, centralizing updates and charging monthly fees will most definitely not make me want to use Windows as a main dev platform, that's for sure.
The only way I'd like to see regarding Windows is for them to make its updating process much more reliable and with the possibility of much more control (not necessarily set as default, but being available and usable), and to make it - at least the versions that would follow the current Home and Pro - completely free, with MS trying to figure out other ways to make profit (which they kind of already do, just take a look at their Azure numbers).
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
guess you never heard of snap and flatpack . linux totally solved the library problem.
Additionally, Crostini promises to open it further even without switching the operating system into an unlocked mode
Let me know when the supermajority of new Chromebook models support Crostini. Right now it appears to be limited to select high-end Chromebooks. I don't want to see it stay limited to the high end because if it does, it's more likely to become one of those things that Google abandons three years later for lack of use, like Google Reader and Chrome apps in Chrome for Windows, macOS, and GNU/Linux.
Geez, it's in the first line of the article:
"Microsoft is getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft Managed Desktop. This will be a "desktop-as-a-service" (DaaS) offering."
And it'll be up to a court to decide liability. Nothing in a EULA or even arbitration clauses can remove your right to sue. If someone else assumes the decision-making power over the uptime of your emergency services comms gateway (e.g. the PC mentioned above), they can assume the responsibilites, too.
Judge: "Let me make sure I understand this. Your company decided that the emergency services comms gateway would shut down to complete updates at 2:17am on the 10th ?"
MS Lawyer: "Yes, your honour"
Judge: "During the wildfire?"
MS Lawyer: "My client didn't know about the wildfire"
Judge: "Did they not think to ask? Why not use a - what do they call it?"
Prosecutor: "A dialogue box, your honour. It presents a question and the ability to answer 'no' or 'yes'."
Judge: "Ah, yes, a dialogue box"
MS Lawyer: "Only a small percentage of people have their computers in use at that time. It causes the least disruption."
Judge: "Tell that to the dead firefighters and their families. In fact, tell it to 999 when your house is on fire. I find for the plaintiff. Case closed."
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Because I much prefer the rolling release cycle, nor having to add PPAs to get software (the rolling release cycle removes this need in the first place). There isn't a need since almost every package is in Arch to some extent.
You fucking assholes Microsoft. You make shit operating systems, then charge people for the right to use them? Where is the value? Where is the privacy? I own my PC. You don't. Windows 7 is my last operating system from microsoft, and you will pry it from my cold dead hands. DaaS? Who do you think you are, approving and dissaproving on what "I" want to use on "MY" pc. I am not your employee. I am not your contractor, i do NOT have to change the way I use my PC to make sure YOUR profit margins are fat. Fuck you and your cloud "your PC is on OUR domain, so we control it completely, oh and please pay us" you can shove it up your fucking ass.
Fuck you Microsoft. Fuck you forever.
> you must have a pretty awesome mom if she wrote linux shell scripts...
She is awesome, thanks. She wrote them for Unix, all the same utilities and most of the same conventions are on Linux.
> I wish there were some stuff to make the transition from Windows hell to Linux easier
Are you the type who enjoys fiddling with the registry? For most people, the switch is transparent. Chrome and Firefox still look and work exactly the same. Facebook is no different, Google Docs is exactly the same.
If you enjoy fiddling with the OS itself, Linux is very different and much easier. It's all about combining simple parts that are reused all over the place. One such simple thing is "everything is a file". Reading or searching your hard drive sectors works exactly the same as reading and searching a text file, because the bare drive is a file. Each partition is a file. A network connection is a file, an email is a file, even your keyboard is a file, which can be read like any other file (though slowly, unless you're a very fast typist). To search ANYTHING you can use the "grep" command. That'll search your drive sectors, it'll search your email, it'll search whatever because grep searches files, and everything is a file. That makes it much easier to learn because for example there is one tool that searches everything. There is another tool called "sort", which sorts - anything. You don't have to learn how to sort different kinds of things with different programs.
That's why the uproar about systemd - it's not a simple, small tool that can be used with other simple, small tools to build whatever you want, to whatever level of complexity you want. Like Microsoft Office, systemd is a big, complex thing with a lot to learn about it. Very not *nix style.
If you read the referenced article, it references another article which seems to pretty clearly indicate that this is designed for the Enterprise. As a manager of a large number of corporate desktops, this actually sounds like a good idea. Keeping users updated and running is a pain and requires expensive tools and expertise. You are welcome to it, Microsoft.
This is not for your personal PC. Let's face it, Microsoft isn't completely stupid. They aren't going to put themselves on the hook for managing and supporting hundreds of millions of desktop computers used by people like your mother.
Aka shareholder pressure for "annuity" businesses must have been the driving force for a decision like this.
ReactOS doesn't even boot on real hardware. Well, maybe something from 2004. But it won't boot on any recent hardware. Even the ReactOS people recommend running it in a VM.
While I don't disagree on people not wanting to pay for their OS as a service, I really doubt it's going to be ReactOS that they'll try to switch to. More likely than not it's going to be Linux with wine and/or an older version of Windows in a VM for legacy windows applications.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Very few shit, unless AR/VR/DX12 needs the latest OS.
You can code according to year 2000 APIs and still get anything done.
People only need new APIs if they are too lazy to code their own features.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
We no longer have a usable desktop operating system! The Windows OS is spyware. Linux as a desktop operating system has gotten worse every year, not better. Why? Those who develop Linux desktop systems insist on doing their own thing. They don't cooperate.
AMAZING QUOTE from this story of 2 years ago: The number of Linux distributions is declining. "In 2011, the Distrowatch database of active Linux distributions peaked at 323. Currently, however, it lists only 285."
Meanwhile, out here in the real world, macOS chugs along, privacy-focused, nary a subscription plan in sight...
285 different ways to do one thing!!! "Only" 285? Quote from a Slashdot comment: "You know Linux Desktop is a junk OS from the fact an app may require version 2.5 of a library and another one might require no more than 2.4, and Desktop Linux offers no way around the problem."
Linux has VERY poor documentation. A friend of mine said this perhaps 20 years ago: "It's free but you will spend at least a week getting it to work." So, Linux is NOT free.
And what do developer use? Windows Enterprise? Then use that geeks.
Windows works without a key, no need to even pay for it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
There is another alternative: Big app developers will realize MS mistake and start investing in native Linux versions (Ubuntu or Fedora seem to have the biggest corporate backup).
I have 2 Windows 10 PCs because: laptop with i7-7700HQ where intel "forbids" IGP drivers (I think I go into windows 2 times/month); the other is a tablet where Ubuntu is inconsistent (1st standby is good, 2nd does not turn on the backlight).
Gaming? Win7, ever since Win10 update disrupted my iRacing practice (aug 2016 ????). Might still go with 8.1.
HTPC: Used win8.1 for 1 year until I found how to stop tearing in xubuntu (but I haven't tested 3D and 5.1 support).
Do big companies really want to be in a situation where they have no control over their PCs anymore (and risk having x number of lost man-hours of productivity because Windows updated itself and broke critical software the business relies on for its needs? Or because a backhoe took out the fiber link and now things aren't working?
There might be a free, well sort of, no payment required version like spybook, aka FB , Google . MS will need to cater to less affluent users with lite versions and/or advert / spy ware.
I see, so a consumer who doesn't need a computer to do whizzy things, just email and web surfing is somehow dumb for not getting a PC with rocket engines and fighting the OS for the sheer thrill of not being labeled dumb by...errr...you.
rtb61 (opens new computer store, first Potential Customer comes in): Hi ya, want to buy a computer.
PC: Well, I don't know, I just need a device to do simple things, a bit of email, and I like to see videos of cute kittens.
rtb61: You want this BambleWeenie 4000, it has AI to predict your wants and needs, an Intel MultiStroke Engine of Power, 500 JigaGobs of RAM, just enough to run the latest Microsoft Software.
PC: I don't know, I just want something simple to use.
rtb61: Errr....you one of those dumb users who doesn't know what a machine like this can offer you?
PC: Not until I walked in here....
rtb61: Hey...where ya going? Come back!!! I, G-d-of-Thunder-Computation, command you to come back.
PC: (at door) Yeah, well, have fun with your BambleWeenie, I'll go find a store that will sell me what I want.
Sure - Why not put Gnome on it and call it Ubuntu?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Stack overflow is a fine resource and many programmers use it. However if you are copy-pasting code from stack overflow without understanding it, you suck at programing and should change. Documentation isn't *that* hard even for illiterates.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You may want to rethink your point about needing to resort to wizardry. These days I see a lot of posts and comments detailing long and complex instructions for Windows on how to control updates, disable telemetry, or hack around one non-tested patch or another. And you need to keep up, since every other month MS changes things and old instructions are obsolete.
As for Linux... sure, for some obscure stuff, but not for basic OS functionality like updates.
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
Cool. A desktop computer with a few "phone" processes that you can't get rid of, just like I can't get rid of them on my tablet. And a "location manager" that runs 24/7.
Ah, I see you've used the Microsoft Surface hardware too!
Who is forcing you to pay? Windows 10 is free.
Not legally, no.
Even if MS will probably not be liable, some C-Level's balls will be in the crusher for something like this.
In other words, C-Levels will start looking for alternatives, because they enjoy their balls petted, not crushed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What keeps Linux from becoming a gaming platform isn't even anymore software support. With Unity and UE4, it's never been easier for small studios to develop for Linux in parallel, even if their primary market is Windows.
The actual problem today is drivers for consumer hardware periphery. You have a programmable mouse? Consider yourself lucky if you get it to work as a two-button mouse, let alone actually find a way to program those extra buttons. Flight sticks? Steering wheels? Head tracking device? Programmable keyboards? If there is a driver (I'm not even hoping for a configuration tool at this point anymore) so they at least work in their minimum configuration, it's haphazardly slapped together, woefully out of date and at best in a state of "existing" to be able to tack "Linux support" onto the box. Last update approximately at first shipping date.
This is what keeps Linux gaming down these days. Certainly not software support. Log into your Steam account on Linux and be amazed just how many games you own that would run smoothly in Linux.
If you could control them...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well... it works for consoles somehow...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I have to run Chinese software so I can actually be free in my own computer, the transfer to Bizarro-World is complete.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And another happy nodejs user...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I may ask, who does tech support for Windows?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is the best analogy I have heard in a long time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, I never understood why wanting simple tools to accomplish the tasks you are interested in makes you 'dumb'.
Working at a university, I have seen engineering students (undergrad and grad) almost entirely switch over to OSX. It really seems to have taken over for Linux on the desktop.
Whether the OS runs certain things isn't that important to the user, especially if he doesn't even notice anything of it. That's the developer's problem.
So the larger question is whether what the user actually wants from the OS is dependent on the things that only Windows can offer developers. The things you mention here are all services you find mostly in high level office applications, something few people will need at home. MFC/ATL are great for developing business applications, but I can't think of many consumer grade applications that rely on them so heavily that they MUST be used. Same for VB. Terminal Services are, again, more suitable for office/professional applications and far from consumer grade.
What you omitted here, and what is probably the ONLY thing I could think of that would have an impact on consumer level software is the haphazard support of .net in mono. But even that's at a "good enough" level by now.
What's left is drivers for consumer hardware (multi-button mice, programmable keyboards, dedicated gaming devices) and AAA-games that don't rely on Unity and UE4 for their engines. Aside of this, I can't really identify a lot of things missing for software that private consumers would use.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Its probably worth noting this is why the Mac is kind of viable these days. Drivers are a no brainer, it's the closed garden , and while the gpus are generic anemic laptop , unity and unreal are both well optimised so as long as the graphics are dialed back for laptop gpus , it'll more or less run without difficulty. As a result a lot of AAA stuff does seem to make it to Mac nowadays. Oh you won't hey 180gigafps 4K but the crowd that demands that where never buying macs anyway
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The problem is current desktop os's arent setup this way, they are geek toys designed for people who do have those skills.
That's why managed devices work, 99% of users will be better off with such devices. There's only a very small percentage of people who are technically literate enough to run complex systems on a public network.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Let me see, Linux since 1994 in my case? Sure, I also have Windows for gaming, but as soon as Win7 goes out of service, gaming is the only thing I will be doing on Windows and it will get exactly the network access needed for that, nothing else. For the occasional use of MS Office, I will use a Win7 VM under Linux with no network access.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
States are corporations are not going to be a problem for MS, they have a budget for software expenses. The problem is home user, who might be tight on money at any given month or just be unwilling to spend. Tell me, if you can't continue to use an opsys, because you can't find money for it, what are you going to do, stop using your computer altogether until next payday? I don't think so.
But I'd like to own the hardware that I bought. And decide what to run on it and, even more, what not to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I may ask, who does tech support for Windows?
The guy who keeps phoning me from India to tell me I have a windows problem?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
Congratulations, you've found a niche operation which because of your specific hardware is more complicated on linux than windows...
On the linux boxes i have with hp and dell raid controllers, simply replacing the failed disk is sufficient - it rebuilds automatically so long as the new disk is the same size or larger.
How about a niche operation which is harder on windows than linux - disabling telemetry...
The windows instructions for this seem to involve lots of registry edits etc, for linux disabling telemetry is either not necessary at all or in some cases simply opting out from something during installation.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Having the "phone" processes is worse than all the network listening services desktop windows has (eg smb, rpc) which serve no purpose on 99% of desktops too?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I usually agree with that but this time there is something different.
People hate paying... seing a monthly bill reminding you you are paying this every month... they might get onboard at first but after a few months of paying... they might get frustrated and leave.
I mean I can think of my mother having issue with windows all the time... calling me for help... I can garantee you that when windows gonna fail she will remember she paid for that for the last 2-3-5... months and Microsoft isn't there to help her... she's gonna stop paying I can garantee that.
I guess a lot of people will be like this.
I also have Windows for gaming, but as soon as Win7 goes out of service, gaming is the only thing I will be doing on Windows
I already have more AAA titles on Linux than I have time to play and a PS4 in case that somehow isn't enough. So this is a Windows-free zone, there is never a reason to run Windows here. It's also a great time to be a professional artist or musician on Linux. Sure, some tools are immature but some are awesome. I just discovered Liquidsynth and its galaxy of LADSPA plugins. And JACK. And Lillypond, mmmm nice. And there is Krita, best in class for digital painting, Blender, competitive with Maya for professional 3D modelling but thousands of dollars cheaper ($0.00) and Inkscape, already the best SVG editor and well on its way to being the best object drawing program. All for free, and all getting great new features every few months. It's like Christmas all the time. Now I'm getting into Vulkan+OpenCL, with a view to running softsynth on the GPU. It's like, Vulkan was made in heaven to suit this application. Sure, you can get things on Windows that Linux doesn't have, but these days the reverse is true just as often, plus you get the stability, security etc etc, all for no money down and none per month. Well, I also spend money when I want to. Steam gets money from me, and Humble Bundle. Sometimes I donate to projects, it just feels good.
Don't miss Windows a bit. I do have a Windows 10 laptop but it's been off for months. I have a Macbook too, also off. Those machines just don't give me anything I actually need or use. I used to end up with a spare Windows drive every time I bought a new desktop, I thought maybe keep the disk in case I actually need to boot Windows on the Linux workstation sometime. Never happened. I eventually end up formatting those. This isn't an issue any more because it's more satisfying to order the parts and build exactly what I want with the satisfaction of no Windows tax. Wetted my appetite with a Piledriver, then a Ryzen box, now speccing out a serious Threadripper monster. 16 or 32 cores? Hmm, decisions decisions. Life is good in Linux land.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I can live without email, online shopping, streaming video, social networks, and (gasp!) even slahdot.
I have two current consoles and I pay no monthly fee...
I also don't even look at a game if there is a monthly fee associated with it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
WINE actually seems to be quite good now.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'd love people wanting to enrich my documentation when I don't have anyone else and my documentation comes from my own hand which has no context of 'new to the software'.
A problem I have faced when I did get multiple documentation contributors is that they'll sometimes just keep rewriting each other's stuff back and forth, as they have a difference in opinion on how to be more clear. Ultimately, a side is going to be selected and someone will be unhappy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Yes and no. Yes some will cut and paste but most times reading the man page seems to be vague on purpose. One example that comes to mind is when I was setting up a DHCP server and needed that 3 of the four NICs to serve each their own subnet. Setting up one NIC was no issue. No examples could be found on the net with multiple NICs and the man pages may as well not have existed. After a day of trial and error a working configuration was had. It could have been done in under 10 minutes if 1) an example was given or 2) if the man page explained how to designate multiple interfaces. Stupid because the main issue was how to delimit multiple variables. Was it a comma, a space or another character. Looking back a lot of wasted energy that experience or StackOverflow solves.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Ok, I will give you DesktopaaS. VMware invented and has been using it longer than HP DeviceaaS by about 3 years.
As for the EULA... critical things like your example usually rest on contracts between companies; not big Corp and end user. MS wouldn't be involved in that suit.
The Emergency Services company would be the one in hot water. Just because they outsourced part of their solution to a 3rd party doesn't alleviate them from the responsibility and accountability. And the judge will say exactly that.
Look at Data Center contracts, the details will show you just how little of your core business risks they assume. Most of it boils down to the fact that downtime can be at anytime as long as it totals less than a set of hours in a year. Also, downtimes caused by outside factors don't count (ie: fires, malicious employees, etc). It basically says "If everything is working as it should, then we won't have less than X hours of downtime a year. Else, all bets are off. And we will credit you back up to this amount."
time to give Windows DaaS Boot!
On Linux I am forced to include everything including the kitchen sink out of necessity because it's the only way to guarantee my software will work properly across the most number of distros and configurations of Linux.
My build system simply builds packages 'natively' for each of the distributions (rpms, debs). I don't have to bundle everything and the install experience is painless to the users. Meanwhile software developed and distributed as a binary tar.gz that includes all kinds of libraries mean you go your own way with things like openssl and I don't want to deal with updating it or trusting you to keep it updated.
I have VMs across distros dating back nearly two decades and virtually none of them even newer Linux distros only a few years old can install or update software because the repositories for these versions have been long since pulled.
If a user does something like selects Fedora 16 and fails to migrate, then you should not feel any need to help them. They should know there are specific distributions designed for that (rhel, suse, centos).
If you're a hardware vendor the one and only chance you have is getting your code into mainline AND waiting for it to filter down into all distros which can take years because there is no usable pluggable driver model for Linux
There's some truth to this, though mitigated through targeting the 'enterprise' distributions and also mitigated by sticking to standards in USB or bluetooth for at least those devices. Under windows even I don't see most accessories having drivers these days. PCIe adapters of course still have to contend with this...
Case in point the other day suffered a single disk failure in intel fakeraid RAID1.
Intel RST is crap and it's all Intel's fault. Intel chose to do the worst of both worlds by using the software raid, but then horribly restricting it...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Switch to Linux! https://linux.com/
I will agree with this, the lesson is not to avoid Linux for RAID, it's to avoid Intel RST(e) in all it's forms.
You want hardware raid? Go with PMC, Broadcom/Avago/LSI.
You want to use the cheap integrated Intel storage chip with RAID? Use software raid and do not dirty it by trying to use the 'RST'-compatible hacks.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Can't it be both?
#DeleteFacebook
Every thing you just listed is implemented at least in Wine or other libraries (freeRDP). If ReactOS doesn't have them, they easily have access to them.
Of course, I'd say from a practical perspective, Linux+Wine would be a more practical choice unless things *dramatically* change. Of course if I were in these same shoes around 1993 or so, I'd be skeptical that Linux would get anywhere serious either.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Fedora would be a huge mistake to recommend to big app developers.
That will cause a lot of complaining about how quickly support is aged out for distros, and they would complain about having to update every 6 months to potentially major changes.
Ditto for Ubuntu, without the more specific Ubuntu LTS, and even then that's more aggressive than they were used to.
SLES/LEAP and RHEL/CentOS are going to be more usual lifecycles for most third party software developers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Funny, when I went to do a recording of my Windows desktop for the first time, I chewed through several crappy ones and wasn't able to get good result until I stumbled across OBS.
Then when I went to linux, OBS was there too, so I didn't even have to research. I wonder if your journey to CamStudio was also painful and you've forgotten or just got lucky by doing it first.
On remote desktop, to be fair the paradigm is generally X forwarding over ssh, which works pretty automaticaly. I know, detached sessions are a deficiency with that strategy. For detached sessions, I actually favored xpra over VNC as it blended the best of both worlds, but couldn't bring myself to be satisfied with remote applications (not just Linux, I cringe when someone makes me log into Microsoft Remote Desktop as well).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The "agreement" will have an arbitration clause. The one for Windows 10 does.
You effectively no longer have the right to sue a major corporation.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
True, but - a lot of "modern" solutions are basically built to work like that. I'm doing some hobby stuff in a Javascript framework right now
It's extremely frustrating. It's not a matter of laziness, but rather incompetence.
It's both. Even if you're copying pasting from somewhere, you should understand what that code does. Personally, I've never been able to just copy/paste, I usually need to modify what's there, often significantly. If all you're doing is copying/pasting, odds are you're not creating anything new.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I use linux as a gaming platform. I have 100s of titles to choose from on steam. What few titles i want that are not there run fine on wine (ok so only one title, Eve online).
Also gaming mouse/keyboards etc work out of the box for me, on linux. So yea think your a bit behind the times on plug and pray. It really is mostly plug and play. Including bluetooth stuff, game controllers, etc.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
"In 2011, the Distrowatch database of active Linux distributions peaked at 323. Currently, however, it lists only 285." 285 different ways to do one thing!!! "Only" 285?
The vast majority of those are variants by hobbyists who package their own selection of apps and wallpaper. You can ignore them.
A friend of mine said this perhaps 20 years ago: "It's free but you will spend at least a week getting it to work." So, Linux is NOT free.
It is free. It does not cost any money and that is what "free" means in this context, nothing to do with time spent. Anyway, I have spent a week getting Windows to work and set up as I want it, with Gotchas! every step of the way; only the fact that PCs are sold with Windows pre-installed saves Joe Public from having to go through that - if he ever succeded in installing it at all.
I have a very small corner of OSS where I am an expert. It is really complicated to fully understand and requires multi-domain knowledge. You are probably looking at 3+ months of reading code to just understand how it works. However, thankfully, it just works so nobody but maintainers need to do this. It is safe to copy-paste.
Most modern systems are just like that. "Copy-paste" is a normal and rational response when you have no reasonable expectation of becoming an expert. This isn't 80s anymore where it is possible to know most of everything IT. Today the best you could do is to know how to vet what you are copy-pasting.
"I tried this 'Linux' thing and now of of my programs work!"
If you're going to say "well the average person just uses it for Facebook and Email", then they'd more likely go to ChromeOS, which I guess, is technically linux, but is just as locked down as Windows by design.
Good thing I basically never use windows.
On the other hand one of the reasons I never have to leave my Linux machine is that most apps now are cloud. So my machine is almost like a thin client, and I pay for many of the cloud apps I use (at least the business ones). Regardless, I enjoy "owning" my own desktop OS from UI to source.
Like in the cloud world, businesses will probably be fine to pay for this (begrudgingly but they will) assuming they get regular updates and it improves security. Businesses will improve their cashflow and Microsoft gets recurring revenue (everybody kinda wins). Consumers won't though, either through lazyness, cheapness or just ignorance. The first time a consumer tries to boot their PC and it says "type in new credit card number to boot" they are going to throw it out the window. I wonder given Microsoft's Linux push whether they plan to develop some sort of "lightweight consumer Windows" that sits on a Linux kernel. It would reduce the maintenance costs (community kernel support) and give consumers something cheap that still bears the Windows brand name.
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
As lawsuit happy as the US the example is weak at best. If you buy software that clearly includes that functionality you'd have a hard time making a case for liability in that scenario; about the same as if they sued Ford because the vehicles they used didn't have sufficient range (but did have the range advertised).
The VB6 runtime, MFC and ATL are runtime packages included with applications you install. SHDOCVW is most certainly implemented on ReactOS.
It seems like you don't understand how Windows works underneath. ReactOS runs Windows drivers too. So all that obscure hardware will work with ReactOS in time as well. ReactOS uses lots of code from WINE for the usermode stuff. The kernel is getting there. They do need help with stuff like the cache manager (the one in the NT kernel is still far better) but they will get there.
I admit, the last time I tried to convert to Mint has been about a year ago, maybe by now the drivers have caught up. The software support was pretty good back then already, actually, some of the older titles that refuse to work in Win7 (even on compatibility mode) work perfectly in Wine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nobody solved the library problem. The requirements are self-conflicting. Everyone wants stable dependencies and security updates that apply everywhere with one update. Today we are migrating towards stability with containerization, pretty soon the pendulum will swing the other way when billion of containers have outdated libraries and have lost their maintainer.
or ChromeOS most people looking for a PC now are just looking to pay bills and browse the web. I recommend a chromebook or a monitor and chromebox. No complaints yet.
You can make any win10 into "no updates until I want them" by simply disabling windows update service.
Doesn't get rid of spyware however.
Linux right now is an operating system build by and for programmers. The user experience hasn't been a priority, because the more technically minded a person is, the less of a UI is needed or even desirable. When Windows 95/98 came out, I used the Windows 3.1 progman program manager for years because I hated the start menu. When Windows 10 came out (after I had long since abandoned my faithful progman), I downloaded a start menu replacement because I hated the new tablet-esque interface. Programmers and technical people want their computers to do what /they/ tell it to do, not for the computers to try and tell you what you want.
Linux fills that role, and fills it well. The reason why there are hundreds of distros is that the programmers and technical base Linux started with resist the dumbing down required for end users. And they violently resist any changes that smack of the computer telling /them/ what to do. For Linux to replace Windows on the general user's desktop, a couple things needs to happen. A distro needs to make sure it can cater to both sides. It needs a dumb person's UI /and/ a UI for power users. You need both in one distro because, culturally, Linux needs to continue to service the power users. Without the power users, you won't have the technical base of people to help the idiots. I;m not sure you can really combine the two goals effectively any more. And secondly, it needs a lot of money. No programmer in his spare time is going to write a UI for idiots. It's not going to happen.
I will do everything in my power to take back ownership of my PC and my company's PCs every single time this sort of thing happens.
Have people other than microsoft marketing wankers and game makers specifically paid to limit their games to win10 only actually tried to peddle the lie that win7 is worse for gaming than win10?
It's patently better. It doesn't randomly break because of updates, it doesn't need multiple workarounds just to match win7 performance on the same hardware, and it has much better support for older games.
So unless you have a need to run a small handful of games that MS paid to make win10 exclusive and that aren't yet out on 7 on the clause of "timed exclusive ran out", you should be running win7 for gaming.
Sounds like you understood the solution, you weren't just cutting and pasting. That's great.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah but I'm trying to be polite here, come on!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why does your startup system include a caching DNS server?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Not sure i agree. Its great that we will soon be able to buy any of the prebuilt systems without ever having to pay the microsoft tax. options currently are limited to bulding your own system or the much much smaller range of systems available without an os.
Welcome to software communism, where everything is owned by the central power and the people own nothing.
I've never looked that seriously at linux or Mac for the desktop, but now I will.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
> Most of the stuff may work, but something less common such as ifconfig was deprecated in favor of other tools.
Ifconfig is actually a good example. I remember about 10-15 years ago I started to sometimes use "ip" and the other tools because I read that ifconfig was being deprecated. Mostly I still used ifconfig out of habit, though. A few weeks ago I something arcane with ifconfig on a CentOS system and got an error message saying I needed to use "ip" instead. So there was about 10-15 years during which you could use either one.
I recall a conversation on the Linux kernel mailing list. Somebody submitted a patch to remove some code related to some old hardware, because it was kinda in the way and probably nobody used the old thing with modern kernels anyway. Linus replied "are we sure nobody is using it?" Does anyone on the list know of anyone who could still be using this? If we have someone using it, we'll keep it in." Compare the "courage" of removing the headphone jack from Apple products.
That's what I was thinking. What's left of the desktop these days - besides legacy Win32 apps that can't run anywhere else? Even Microsoft's own apps are moving to the web. But if they can milk a steady revenue stream from corporate users to enable you to run some desktop app or other that they still need, there's a business in that - I guess. If nothing else, though, this implies that the 'new' Windows desktop is DOA. Or at least, Microsoft thinks so - and those wedded to the old regime, well they just haven't figured it out yet.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Maybe the fact that Ubuntu superficially resembles Windows in some ways makes it popular among people who have spent many years on Windows.
Personally, I use CentOS and recommend it for many people (use-case dependent). If been using CentOS and it's ancestors for nearly 20 years.
Pathetic? How dare you dismiss me as pathetic for having a more structured mind and a less flexible memory for pointless, non-intuitive single shortcuts!
The menu and underlined key structure was learned naturally since Windows 3.1 by allowing the computer to instruct me as to which key to press next, to drill down through related options (in menus) by using the underlined letter to enter the next command. They changed the keys rarely, but when they did that, the computer still told you in the same way you'd learned to understand how to get the computer to tell you what you can and cannot do.
It's intuitive, and logical. CTRL - D gives no clue in and of itself what it does, but the "O" in "Format" is underlined, and and "o" in "Font" is too, if you use the ALT access method.
You're a stupid "all change is good stfu old person" low-IQ millennial, how dare you try to detract from the useful discussion about the regression of computing for the sake of stupid people doing jobs they shouldn't be able to get.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
You will have to settle for my virtual mod-points...
+1 funny/ +1 insightful
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
I had Word and Excel 3.0
The menu paradigm has been solid ever since. And can you believe some troll replied to my rant by calling me pathetic because apparently, CTRL-D will give the same damn Font box in new versions. Duh! RACHEL!!! It's one step!! Pathetic!
One step with no clues to it's existence, or links or logic. Press the underlined keys to access the menus, memorize them over time by thinking and doing. Logical. Am I wrong, or are we dumbing everything down and favouring learning by rote over cognitive thoughts and logic?
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
1) Nations will all gather together and try to buy Windows from Microsoft. That would be cheaper than paying monthly. Or, 2) Nations will gather together and contribute to ReactOS [reactos.org], a free operating system that runs Windows programs.
Ok crazy SciFi writer, put the pen down. Nations don't do anything other than subscribe to MS's complete suite of services of which they are already getting perpetual Windows upgrades and paying a monthly fee for each machine.
I'm thinking the opposite. Are there actually any people who use web-based apps for serious day to day work? Which kind of applications? I can't think of a single work-related application type for which the available desktop choices don't outperform any web-based choices by a large margin. For many types of applications such as image, movie, and audio editing there are not even any serious web-based competitors yet, for other types of applications they are abysmal or vendor-lock you in for no reason.
To me the web application hype seems more often about burning VC funding and selling startups rather than creating attractive and sustainable products.
"I tried this 'Linux' thing and now of of my programs work!" If you're going to say "well the average person just uses it for Facebook and Email", then they'd more likely go to ChromeOS, which I guess, is technically linux, but is just as locked down as Windows by design.
No, but a surprising number of programs can be gotten for Linux now, and something like this is probably going to accelerate it--the market share of Windows has been slowly dropping, at least since they had the brilliant idea of Win10, and the main reason Windows manages its ubiquity is that it owns the OEM market.
Microsoft probably has spent too much time with only the Enterprise customers being the closest they get to having to sell to the users themselves, and are forgetting that the OEM market is going to have to sell the computers with the OS. I don't know if you could actually sell DaaS systems to the average person--regardless of what the average person uses their desktop for, I think in general they are not want it to be just a really expensive paperweight without payment of a monthly fee & working internet connection. Do you really think computer manufacturers are going to risk having their sales torpedoed by an OS that may drive customers to nope straight to Apple if a Chromebook won't do what they need? (And while ChromeOS is getting better...because it's so locked down, if it doesn't already do what you need then that's pretty much it.)
Honestly, this is likely to end in some rather horrific PR nightmares for Microsoft, probably legal testing of just how much a XaaS contract can actually waive liability in practice (plus the law changing, not in XaaS's favor), and Microsoft exiting the desktop market in a ball of sewage-scented flames with parts of upper management finding themselves forced out, possibly without golden parachutes.
Because "nobody ever bought a PC just to get on the internet."
This is a Bad Idea(TM)!
Already, there are many that do not like, but will use Windows anyway.
Turn that into a Monthly Subscription Service, and they'll not touch it at all.
Some of us out here simply can't afford to add yet another monthly expense/fee/service charge to our already overtaxed personal budgets!
The Pirates will find a way to bypass things or extend end-of-life on older OSs.
This continued trend to force the monetization of the foundations of computers (personal and professional) is sickening!
The OS should be Free, and the additional programs should cost an affordable amount to license.
We already pay through the nose for internet service and bandwidth!
Geeze, Microsoft! Invest your considerable wealth into yourself, use the vast amount of Interest in it, coupled with corporate license fees to stay in the black, and support your customer base! Without us, you will simple have hungry vultures bleeding you completely to death!
There comes a time when they have to realize: consumers are not willing(able) to pay to replace their tech as often as the Big Companies want them to. Couple that with the "need" to make things that are shoddy, but promise better in the next iteration so they will still sell the current batch, and lead the consumers on until they do it yet again, and you have a customer base that is more than a little "gun-shy" about having to buy all new hardware and relearn something as basic as the OS so they can simply surf the web for cat videos, send e-mail to their gandmas and watch Netflix.
The future is in phones, at least for the mass market.
PCs are for those of us that want to have some real Power to produce something, and Storage to keep it Off the Net! Businesses that want to keep their I.P. in-house and their employees from taking it home with them will still need PCs. Manufacturing and similar industry will need them for a long time. Many are still running OSs as old as Windows 3.1 on core systems (I'm looking at YOU, General Motors!)
It's a real Shame that Microsoft dropped the ball so Hard on their foot when they tried to get into the phone market, or they wouldn't be so desperate to move the Desktop market to a similar model.
It just won't work!
RedHat pretty much did this and much to my surprise, it's worked out pretty well for them.
Even when people move to a free alternative, it probably won't be considered a complete mistake.
I was running CentOS7 and I wanted to do a video capture recording of an application on my screen now on Windows I'd just install CamStudio, pretty much the top rated and I'm good to go, on macOS I fire up Quicktime and off I go. On CentOS it has no built in feature, the closest thing is you can record the entire desktop with ctrl+alt+shift+r on gnome so I went looking for a tool to do it. Kazam rated highly but turned out it wasn't in the repos, ok fair enough, next up was xvidcap.
You don't know about OBS? https://obsproject.com/
Open source, cross-platform. While it is "streaming" focused, you can also use it just to capture without streaming. Much easier to use than fiddling with ffmpeg x11grab scripts.
The mass market no longer buy PCs. They are content consumers they buy Apple and Android.
Not at all. The mass market is saturated with devices. Everyone owns PCs and laptops. PCs are still bought, the difference is the mass market isn't growing for either devices anymore.
Both PCs and phones / tablets will continue to be bought on a replacement basis when the previous device breaks. People just generally don't take their desktop and drop it into the toilet so the mobile devices will forever appear to have higher sales numbers. This has nothing to do with the "market" as in the people who actually use the device.
The actual problem today is drivers for consumer hardware periphery. You have a programmable mouse? Consider yourself lucky if you get it to work as a two-button mouse, let alone actually find a way to program those extra buttons. Flight sticks? Steering wheels? Head tracking device? Programmable keyboards?
I consider myself a fairly active gamer and I can say I have zero of those devices. What keeps me from gaming on Linux is the lack of games on Linux.
With Unity and UE4, it's never been easier for small studios to develop for Linux in parallel, even if their primary market is Windows.
Sure indie developers support Linux, especially since the PS4 is BSD so they can share much of the codebase. But the problem is the non-indie devs. Bioware? Bethesda? Blizzard? Square-Enix?
Flight sticks?
They work. I've tested an HOTAS with the Linux version of War Thunder and while I don't have the hardware for TrackIR on Linux, it is possible to do headtracking on Linux.
Sure indie developers support Linux, especially since the PS4 is BSD so they can share much of the codebase. But the problem is the non-indie devs. Bioware? Bethesda? Blizzard? Square-Enix?
Well, I have to admit, since I don't let the maker of software decide when, how and how long I may use it (aka "always-online copy protection"), this is a non-issue for me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Evolution laughs at your argument. By your logic DNA would only evolve into a singular form of life, killing off all previous forms. Having hundreds of Linux distros is a good thing. You arent ever going to get your average user to use Linux unless you strip it down, remove their ability to break it and in the process break the reason we use Linux on the first place, to empower the user. If you want to reform Linux and bring in the masses start at AOSP, not the desktop/workstation.
Good-bye
Which desktop, if you don't mind me asking? I have tried a lot of KDE seems the most usable. At least you can adjust the mouse wheel scroll speed in KDE.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I do most of my work at the command line. All that I do with my desktop is switch it between my terminal window, my browser, and my email client. I probably launch the GUI calculator once or twice per month. I probably wouldn't notice if 90% of the desktop environment dissapeared.
Since I don't really use the desktop for anything other than switching between those three windows, I've had no reason to switch away from Gnome, which was what I chose 15 years ago.
Who couldn't see this coming when they offered a "free upgrade" to windows 10? Little money grubbers don't want to have to have to produce anything of quality every other OS release, they'd rather have their hooks into you every month regardless of how well the product works. It's really expensive to dump money into developers, they'd make a lot more money if they didn't need them.
But of course everyone is going to shit on this idea here on Slashdot. We hate microsoft (for good reason and we remember our history). We lean libertarian (or at least put up with those guys). This is classic rent-seeking. There's virtually no good angle for why anyone would want this OTHER than the bean-counters at Microsoft corporate. But of course that's our stance. Who would think otherwise. No, I've got no meaningful contribution to this discussion other than the obvious shots in the bucket. But some things need to be said and for some things it just matters how big the mob is.
You know how many times I've had to hear the retarded "average user" argument? Always assuming that because you assume the average person is an utter and complete retard UNTIL HE IS, his wishes and behaviors are the right ones too.
And now you talk about programmable input devices??
Wanna bet that 90% of your "average users" do not even know if they accidentally bought a programmable input device? Including casual gamers.
Anyone who buys those, is competent enough, to have Windows installed too (e.g. in a VM) and use that to program his mouse, then use it like normal under Linux. Or have somebody do it for him.
The real problem is exactly the same as with Internet Explorer 6 versus Opera/Mozilla/Phoenix, back then:
* No company is willing to make a game targeting a fringe group, as the effort is not worth the income.
* And no gamer is that interested in installing a fringe OS when there are no games for it.
What we would need, would be either all the most popular games being playable under Linux *and* with a higher frame rate and comfort, *and* some more to offset effort of switching. Which was nearly the case, as Wine actually allowed many games to be played with higher frame rate. Unfortunately using Wine is a major hassle, as it is in a perpetual broken state, always was, and always will be. Also, frame rates alone are just not enough to be worth it.
Or, a company or open source team would have to make a very popular game that is a Linux exclusive! Which would only work, if it was so awesome that it would be worth the effort. ... Not as unrealistic as you'd think, given that people do actually buy new consoles, just to get a certain exclusive game, and that console makers deliberately use that tactic, proving that it works. /opt." or "First, install Wine." (Fuck you, Steam! There is no Linux version of you! Only a Windows version disguised as a Linux one!), but instead "Download this, and run it, (It will automatically install Linux in dual-boot if necessary, and then the game.) ... You can also just install it via your package manager, if you already use and know Linux." .... No you do not attract anyone to Linux! You attract them to what will be a clone of Windows/macOS by the time it will be the dominant OS! And people will still complain since they still suffer from the inferiority of those OSes. So you will not have achieved anything of what you claim!)
Of course it would have to be properly executed too. So not "Install Linux, the use this complex-seeming set of commands to manually install it into
Unfortunately, false-flag Linux "developers" love to also make their software run under Windows, which kills exclusivity and the motivation to switch. (I'm looking at you, KDE!) Even worse, they try to bring inferior Windows ways of doing things to Linux, in a failed effort to attract even more Windows users to "Linux", killing Linux in the process. (Thanks a fuckin' lot, Canonical! Snap, systemd, desktop environments with "app shops" and monolithic applications, etc
Frankly, the day that Linux will be on every "desktop", is the day, that the last element of the very point that we liked it for, will be dead.
Linux should stay being an OS for actual computer users.
You can use it to make an OS for people that only user apps that happen to use a computer internally, unbeknownst to the user, like with Apple jewelry. But don't call it Linux and don't poison Linux with your shit.
They won't remove the classic licensing options. At least not right away. They're not THAT stupid.
Look at what they did with Office: They heavily push subcriptions because that's what they want but there's still the option of buying classic licenses for the people who want them. They'll probably do the same with Windows. Of course they hope more and more people will go for the subscription model as time goes on.
It'd be nice if there was competition, that is a 99% compatible OS made by a third party. ReactOS is very far away from being that and either improving it or starting from zero it would require a huge investment of money and time to make such an OS.
Microsoft are doing this because they can and they know the vast majority of their customers can't live without Windows so they'll just play along. Adobe had many more competitors than Microsoft and still made their software subscription only...so it seems unlikely Microsoft won't go through with their plan (eventually).
They keep publishing lies about how bad Windows 7 is for gaming
Yeah, I never jumped to win10. Everything on steam runs fine on Win7.
These days, software has to be intentionally bad not to be portable. WTF is a "windows program?"
Now every time the credit card network has a blip, people are going to be installing Linux and WINE so that they can get their work done. And then they'll know the Truth about if they were really windows slaves, or just had been tricked into staying in an unlocked cage.
The simple tools are harder to use, and require lots of knowledge.
It is the complicated tools that claim to be "smart" and to make things "easy" by doing the work for you; you didn't want to choose your own kitten videos, anyways, choice makes life hard.
You might be a bit confused about why they run a different version, or what the differences are.
I think I read somewhere that all those runtimes aren't allowed by Microsoft to be run in an OS that's not Windows. It may be a technicality but it will surely be brought up in court should ReactOS ever pose a threat to Microsoft
Stop adopting new paradigms, then. Linux gives you choice, why do you hate yourself? Why do you choose what you hate?
I'm still using xfce4 as the desktop. They haven't even updated the "about" window in 6 years.
If you don't want to manage versions... just stay in the garden. It doesn't have walls though, to trap you in; if you want people to manage that stuff for you, it is up to you to only install things through the package manager and not sideload or compile and install by hand.
A partial illiterate might be able to look the symbols up in a book. It might take all day, but they can often manage.
But this problem is worse; aliteracy. They know how to read, but they refuse. It makes it seem to them that it is impossibly hard not to copy/paste.
You can't run a library, it doesn't have the right entry point.
First of all this is simply not going to happen otherwise MS is looking at the same issues they had with their browser and will end up in court because if you sandbox let's say VMware or Citrix inside desktop as a service there is going to be problems. I happen to be friends with Mark Russinovich who runs Azure for MS as a MS Techfellow and he told me this can't happen because of the way OEM licenses are attached to COmputers you purchase and to deny updating your OS in regards to potential security vulnerabilities is sucide for an OS company. He told me that DaaS is more geared for Corporate and Government environments to allow them to compete in the VM market.
Don't be surprised if it automatically backs your home directory up to the cloud, re-installs the OS, re-installs the apps from the walled garden, creates links to your cloud data, and tells you to be happy now.
Also, don't be surprised if it does that after every unclean shutdown, or whenever the telemetry doesn't get through to the mothership for n minutes.
By meaningful action are you suggesting that people choose something else or demand that government forces MS to keep to it's old business model?
People have choices. I use windows for one game and that's just because I like to mod fallout and now fortnite. Other than that, I use linux for everything.
M$ tried something like this is Australia and in various countries in Africa with limited success but tit was never very popular.
People like to think that they "own" the copy of Windows that came with "their" computer.
This new attempt looks like an attempt to replace the data center with M$ taking over the support roll even more.
Execs can look at it as a small increase in the M$ license tax that they are already paying that could be made up by IT layoffs.
Though it could be good for Linux if they carry it too far as people may again balk at a monthly charge to use "their" computer and finally consider alternatives.
Screen recording works out of the box for me with KDE in Debian. I really can't see how a home user would stumble upon CentOS. It also worked fine in Arch, Kubuntu, and even OpenSuse when I tried it many years ago.
Also, you think it's strange to need to have a password to remote into your desktop? As far as copying your config file, I've never done that. In fact, RDP worked fine in KDE in Debian with no configuration from me (at least going to windows from Debian.)
I fully concur, Kubuntu works fine for all 'normal' users.
I've bought a licence for Softmaker Office and it works at least as good as MS office.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
No thanks, the spying of W10 is child-play compared to what Google does.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I imagine emergency services will be told to buy redundant systems so that computer "A" can update while computer "B" maintains services - or something along those lines.
Who is this "emergency services" who will be ordered to buy and run duplicate systems, and how will these duplicate computers know that one should update while the other does not? Who pays the VOLUNTEERS who are using their own money to run these systems to provide this redundancy?
If Microsoft want control of your desktop, they can damn well pay for the consequences.
That's the funniest thing I've heard all month. Maybe all year. Maybe also the stupidest.
I will run Win 7 as a guest under Debian until the heat death of the universe.
Goody for you. What happens when the software that is providing emergency communications no longer runs under Win 7 and/or cannot get enough hardware control (or performance) while running under a VM, because the useful idiots toeing the Microsoft line provide code that won't run otherwise? You are irrelevant. You're brilliant and you'd never provide your time and money trying to help other people in distress. A lot of people are more generous, and they'll be roped in.
If I'm ever required to run software that will only run under Windows Managed Desktop, it too will run in a VM.
You have no concept of the problem. Your copy of the software running under Win 10 in your VM crashes and burns because of a mandatory update to the DaaS OS. How nice.
I'm learning a lot about iptables these days.
Iptables is irrelevant.
Having the "phone" processes is worse than all the network listening services desktop windows has (eg smb, rpc) which serve no purpose on 99% of desktops too?
Tell me which program to run on my tablet to disable "phone" and "location services", similar to the "local services" manager on Windows where I can disable just about anything.
If you know the right two services to disable you can even stop the "mandatory" Windows 10 updates, and even though there's a "don't check for updates" option on my tablet I was forced to update the last two times. Windows beats Android for this level of control hands-down.
Email. Gmail or outlook online provide everything I need, and I can use the same software on every device.
Writing documents- the full desktop apps are better than google docs, but being able to leave something in mid stream on my work PC, pick it up from my home PC, and go back to my work PC without thinking about it is more important than those extra features. Especially if its a shared document.
Writing presentation decks- same.
The only local apps I use day to day are git, IDEs, and compilers. ANy management job which isn't actively developing could easily get by with nothing but webapps.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Windows users mostly fall into a few buckets:
1 - "It's what came on my computer"
2 - "I have to use it run run $importantApp"
3 - "I'm a gamer, so I have to run Windows"
So it's either just what happened to come with the PC, or it's a necessary evil to run something users care about. They can go to a rental model and virtual none of these people will move. Yes it will suck, sure, it's pretty evil, but the masses will just go along with with. Sheeple will be sheeple.
I liked windows 3.1 well enough, though I usually used DOS.
I jumped ship to linux around Win98. Windows 95 I ignored because I could run all the apps in Win3.11 with 32S extension, but then around 98 the fad of checking the version in the app started, and I jumped ship.
Never regretted it, never had problems using business apps.
If you're looking for a UI that's similar to the Windows 95/98/XP era, then you probably want KDE. To me, the most important advantage of KDE is that it's highly configurable. I can setup the UI to work pretty much however I want, not least of which is changing keyboard shortcuts.
It seems like we're cycling back to mainframes, timesharing, and leased enterprise software. Soon someone will discover that home computers are powerful enough to do everything from a personal computer that fits on a desktop! There will be no more need to rely on expensive data centers run by white-coated sysadmins. And you won't even have to worry about timeshare bills.
I will run Win 7 as a guest under Debian until the heat death of the universe. If I'm ever required to run software that will only run under Windows Managed Desktop, it too will run in a VM. I'm learning a lot about iptables these days.
Cracking up lol here. I run Windows 7 as a guest under Debian at home so I can continue bookkeeping with Quickbooks for now. I also have a Windows XP machine with a bunch of awesome, incredibly useful, perpetually licensed software installed to it that I use daily and keep backed up with CloneZilla. At work, when Windows 7 goes EOL next April, we're switching from an SBS 2011 server to a Synology NAS (more functionality than SBS) and users will get Linux desktops, except for the CAD guys who will have to use Macs since they are stuck in that AutoCAD subscription racket.
I"m sure I have that Mandrake Linux CD around somewhere.. shoots
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
It takes some serious effort to actually make something Windows 10 only.
Challenge accepted!
I only wish I had the time for games (I don't think I've spent a significant amount of time on gaming in a decade)
I made the decision years ago to buy an i7 laptop without discrete graphics in exchange for 2 extra cores which was the trade-off at the time for discount laptops (which I of course don't really need but my thinking is that an overpowered processor in a laptop which never breaks a sweat is more likely to last longer and run cooler; whereas I never really play games)
well, I suppose when you need more hardware in the future, if you want to use windows 7, you might be able to find windows drivers for them even if they are not obvious - that's what I did with that laptop above I bought in 2014, it wasn't legitimately supported by win 7 (it came with win 8) though by googling hardware id's, I found compatible drivers for just about everything in that hp
I mostly prefer win 7 for having perfect office 2003 + AHK support
Window dragging support PogChamp. Oh it's tucked away in developer mode
Because Google management isn't yet sure they want android devices to be full computers. Control freak Google views that as possibly giving users a way to be less dependent on Google's services, maybe ultimately consuming less advertising or feeding back less telemetry. But on the other hand they know that many users want it, and those who want it tend to be thought leaders. And it's maybe a great way to bang another nail into the Microsoft coffin. So some powerpoint team at Google is conflicted. The solution is, implement it and put it out there for QA, but do not make it official until some PHB committee comes down the mountain with a grand vision.
Yes, it's stupid, and par for the course in network effect monopoly land.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
'nuff said.
Point being you can do updates whenever you want this way. Simply re-enable the service.
It's still shit, but it's a lot less of a shit than it is if you just let it go on auto.
Desktop unified hosting service. The abbreviation would be phonetically close to "DaaS".
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
"Instead of owning Windows, you'll "rent" it by the month." No I most certainly will not. My PC runs an OS I own and control. It always will. This is the biggest fuck you to the pro-user Microsoft has ever contemplated. I shunned Windows 10 on principle due to reduced control and implanted telemetry. There will never, ever come a day when I rent an OS. I hope this scheme fails big, and fails fast. Give us a supported version to replace Windows7, or just go die in whatever way you see fit, MSFT fucktards.
I remember reading something a long time ago at how Linux devs often shyed away from having their programs produce error messages, because "the Unix user should already know everything" (I guess that includes having psychic powers), or some such elitest bullcrap. Granted this was close to 20 years ago, and a lot has changed scince then, but I wonder how much tech snobbery is still around which continues to foul up Linux's chances of overtaking M$ in the desktop market?
Writing documents- the full desktop apps are better than google docs, but being able to leave something in mid stream on my work PC, pick it up from my home PC, and go back to my work PC without thinking about it is more important than those extra features. Especially if its a shared document.
Office 365 provides this, including real-time collaborative editing, and you don't have to lose the functionality of the desktop applications. As someone who works on documents for a living, having been forced to use Google Docs, I feel it's a really poor substitute.
Breakfast served all day!
...It's the year of Linux on the desktop (for me).
This is just the push I've been waiting for.
Requiem for the American Dream
it wont matter how outdated it is thats the point of snap and flat packs. there entirely self contained. people complane about not being able to uses there packages that never updated on a new point release but thats no different then trying to run a legicay windows program.
And 95% of office workers in the world use a subset of what I just mentioned. The number of people who use heavyweight software like video editing or photoshop is maybe 1% of the office world.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
And when the AutoCAD folks require SolidWorks, what will be your answer? It's only available for Windows at the moment.
We don't need that. If they do that, we'll start seriously evaluating other .dwg file format based alternatives like LibreCAD or something. Our furniture drawing needs are quite simple.
And macOS (X)?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
There are many advantagesWindows 10 over its previous versions, but problems and bugs have also been reported and still counting, many users are still wondering if make an upgrade or not.
Yeah, you're right. I'm pretty far behind on consoles these days -- my newest console is an Xbox 360. When I bought that, I think I got a few months of Xbox Live for free. But I was never tempted to pay for it once it expired. Again, I'm not the usual target audience, so it was easy to resist paying a monthly fee to have little kids swear at me and call me a faggot while I played games. But for most people, that's just part of having the console.
I know plenty of people who pay monthly fees for cable, netflix, hulu, hbo, high-priced cell service, Amazon Prime, ... . I restrict myself to hbo, and only because I find that I use it frequently. People are totally down with paying monthly fees for things. I think most of them will just shrug their shoulders and pay if MS tells them there's now a monthly fee for Windows.
it wont matter how outdated it is
https://www.cvedetails.com/ disagrees with you. The concept of packaging local dependencies has been around forever and always leads to the same problem: now there are a bunch of places to go and fix a vulnerability and some of them never get fixed. See: OpenSSL.
Of course the fix to this is to centralize dependencies, which leads to broken software. The only way to address both is active package maintenance and diligent patching. Of course, that's easier said than done, which is why people are always looking for silver bullet solutions.
My G25 racing wheel works perfectly with all its buttons and pedals. jstest shows a funny LONG line of results, everything is working, except the feedback (rumble thing). And it works out of the box, no downloading of anything. You can use it on games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 from Steam or Speed Dreams just fine.
Manufacturers can support linux or just release the specs if they want. YOU the consumer are supposed to do your homework before purchase, YOU can't blindly buy something that doesn't work with your OS, there are even devices no longer working in modern windows that do work with Linux.
Hint: Most reviews at online shops include people saying if it works with Linux.
BTW The absolute minimum a mouse would work is 5 (not 2) buttons (Left, Right, Middle, wheel up and wheel down). Guess what: the extra buttons in my Logitech gaming mouse also work, i use them all the time as forward/backward in browsers no configuration was needed for those buttons to work. Those would be button 6 and 7. There is also a couple more you can use to change DPI in real time, again, no driver or software needed, they just work, but these can be remapped as well!
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Here's your brownie point for taking a phrase too literal:
(b)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If by some accounting error I find myself to be a billionaire one day, I'll spend a good part of it on bribing the browser manufacturers into including at least one actual programming language. Not an abomination.
And whoever thought but using JS on the server side - death is too good for him.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There is nothing lol about the near unavoidable MS spyware in W10.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
In Soviet Amerika, Windows controls you!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't remember seeing that anywhere in the licensing?? Further, the runtimes exist for the use of 3rd party software; Microsoft can't realistically control what platform 3rd party software runs on. If it were a problem, it would be equally a problem with WINE, and for that matter, Windows in a VM.
ReactOS will never be a threat to Microsoft because it's simply too far behind in terms of what it supports, and they've already had their adventure-in-court to prove that their code is entirely original and independent of Windows.
Right now React's goal is compatibility with Server2003 (which is basically an updated XP). Microsoft hasn't even bothered chasing down the plethora of XP variants now circulating (nor the more-recent Win7 variants), and under the hood these are both the real thing and complete, while React still has a lot of holes (tho it's rapidly improving, by leaps and bounds in the last couple versions. It's now a reasonable substitute for XP on middle-aged or older hardware, if you're doing the usual consumerish stuff and not specialty work.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Sounds like to me you need to go back to a fidonet like system.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Well, that's where I went... need a newer OS than my trusty XP? Win10 is Not It; the damn thing gives me hives. While I've had no luck with WINE, otherwise PCLinuxOS has become the "new stuff" setup. The price is right and it hasn't tried to subvert ownership of my PC.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Actually, there is a near clone of Windows and the likely hood of people switching to it is low.
But then, why rent from Microsoft when you could rent from a competitor. MS is certainly not going to block you from using wps brand (wps.com) or other alternative to MS Office.
Since most remote interface is going to be browser based, why not use Android and skip MS altogether.
Oh!!! by the way, I use Linux (Fedora for Gnome and SUSE for KDE).
I use Libreoffice with the ribbon (yeah, a ribbon interface).
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I agree with what you said. I've been in computers for 48 years now. Used MS since the early 80's. But that said, the first day they implement the Daas system, i will turn off my computor. Install ReactOS and go on down the road. I have had it with the idiot running MS. I don't like him or his policies. I have 2 computers with W10 and 2 with W7. One of the 10 also dual boots to Mint Linux. And one of the 7 also boots to ReactOS. Nice thing is The ReactOS runs on the old machines and new machines both quite nicely. I may be 65 but still love to game and that is the ONLY thing stopping me from full blown linux all the time. But if they implement the final nail in their coffin Daas, I will do it anyhow. And I am not alone. I believe a lot of business and countries will also follow suit. Many people and places are really tired of the shit from MS and their attitude of "Screw you, we don't care what you want. You'll take what we cram down your throat." Yes some sheep will accept that. There are always some sheep and always will be. But I don't believe that will include most people. Hell who knows it may force a a group of very smart people who have a ton of money to write a new OS that will run over MS like a steam roller. Crazier things have happened.
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
DaaS boot.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I think Linux is starting to win as IT guys like me are sick of MS pissing on our parade. Each time a client who has no absolute dependency on a particular Windows application needs to update their PCs we are switching them to Linux. I am also replacing all my clients who use SBS and need a new Server with ClearOS and very few are having any need for anything different and they are liking the reduced costs.
As far as I am concerned MS are just a cloud provider now, so good luck to them.
The update fiascos we have had with Windows 10 over the last 18 months have actually made clients anti Windows 10 and for teh small clients I deal with the idea of paying a monthly subscription for Windows 10 is an absolute no-no!
Martley, Near Worcester UK.
The Smartphone rules the world today...
The Windows 7 and Windows 10 usage has drifted within 5 % of each other since Windows 10 first launched. The idea that a majority of people are not buying Windows 10 because of spyware concerns is far fetched, and I suspect there is little empirical evidence to back it up.
If customers believe that there is value in paying a subscription for their operating system they will do it. But it will be limited to the developed, first world nations. Governments, on the whole, aren't going to care what Operating System their citizens use.
All this does leave a door ajar for a competitor to walk through, but let's be honest: There is no practical competitor for Windows 7/10 for the home market. ReactOS looks like a clunky mess from 15 years ago.
-Gel214th
Who is this "emergency services" who will be ordered to buy and run duplicate systems, and how will these duplicate computers know that one should update while the other does not? Who pays the VOLUNTEERS who are using their own money to run these systems to provide this redundancy?
The same emergency services that force volunteers to take mandatory certificate classes to do things like firefighting.
Emergency comms are no different. Certification after certification. Background checks, including financial.
And yes, there are problems getting smart people to become volunteer responders. It is getting winnowed down to whackers.
Strange thing is thje people forcing this on volunteers have no idea why.
So yeah, the orders will come down that you have to have a computer running Windows as a service if the powers that be decide to make it so.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I admit, the last time I tried to convert to Mint has been about a year ago, maybe by now the drivers have caught up.
What drivers were you missing? It's been since the oughts that I've had a driver issue with Linux - in fact now I've had better driver support with Linux than Windows.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And 95% of office workers in the world use a subset of what I just mentioned. The number of people who use heavyweight software like video editing or photoshop is maybe 1% of the office world.
My video editing, sound editing and Photoshop needs are taken care of in fine fashion by my Mac.
So anyhow - as the least common denominator we are supposed to use what you demand? Sorry - in the LCD world, yuou are going to have to get used to doing your work on a smartphone. Perhaps one of those cheap Chinese ones. THey save everything you do.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I usually agree with that but this time there is something different.
People hate paying... seing a monthly bill reminding you you are paying this every month... they might get onboard at first but after a few months of paying... they might get frustrated and leave.
Exactly this! My wife threw a fit when I told her about Adobe Creative Cloud. Even with my academic discount. Purchase is a one time fee, and rental is forever. Even with a lot of new versions, it's just easier to handle the concept. And until they decide to kill my version of the Creative Suite, I'll be on it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I’m not a typical user, but I’m willing to put up with a walled garden on my iPad.
FYI - iOS is not a walled garden. Windows and Android users just like to say that. I can and do write for it, and you could use what I write - not that you would, but you could.
They are just a lot more careful on what they allow in their app store. That's a good thing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The same emergency services that force volunteers to take mandatory certificate classes to do things like firefighting.
Nope. Running a radio gateway is nothing like firefighting. It requires a ham license, but if you think the FCC is going to force people to buy fully redundant hardware to run a radio gateway you're nuttier than a loon. If you think that buying fully redundant PC hardware is going to solve the problem, then sit back and watch as both systems choose to update at the same time, installing the same broken patch that makes the systems crash. Redundancy bought you nothing.
Emergency comms are no different. Certification after certification. Background checks, including financial.
Excuse my French, but you are full of shit. There are no background checks of any kind, much less financial, and no certification other than a basic amateur radio license, required to operate the gateways I am talking about.
Now, maybe you think the problem I was talking about is internal to a government communications facility which is paid for by tax dollars and operated by "certificated" people, but I thought I was pretty clear in the description that it was nothing of the sort.
And yes, there are problems getting smart people to become volunteer responders.
It's not "volunteer responders". It's building a communications infrastructure using completely volunteer resources. Those resources can be 1000 miles away from the emergency and the operator may not know it is going on. He's not a "responder".
Strange thing is thje people forcing this on volunteers have no idea why.
Your comment is so devoid of context as to be useless. What is the "this" you think you are referring to? Use of Windows and the demand to keep them updating automatically? Well, they have an idea why they do that, they're just wrongheaded about it and ignoring the consequences of their decisions. Most of them don't care that it is so ridiculously stupid to require a production computing system, ANY production system, to update automatically. Their only concern is that YOUR system might get hacked into and something bad happen to YOUR system, and they don't want you to have the right to judge the risks and take your own protective measures outside the "one size fits all" Microsoft update cycle.
So yeah, the orders will come down that you have to have a computer running Windows as a service if the powers that be decide to make it so.
Yep, that's what I was talking about when I said people would get roped into it.
It's also a great time to be a professional artist or musician on Linux. Sure, some tools are immature but some are awesome. I just discovered Liquidsynth and its galaxy of LADSPA plugins.
Are you referring to FluidSynth?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Just check in. Plenty of space for managers in our new DaaS offering. What could go wrong?
Gorgeous chick with a short skirt - just sign right up here. We'll take care of everything! No problems!
Devil in disguise.
The same emergency services that force volunteers to take mandatory certificate classes to do things like firefighting.
Nope. Running a radio gateway is nothing like firefighting. It requires a ham license, but if you think the FCC is going to force people to buy fully redundant hardware to run a radio gateway you're nuttier than a loon. If you think that buying fully redundant PC hardware is going to solve the problem, then sit back and watch as both systems choose to update at the same time, installing the same broken patch that makes the systems crash. Redundancy bought you nothing.
Well okay, but I don't know what that had to do with what I wrote. I was writing about the ARES, Ares level 2 and ARES level 1 certifications. Then there is the CERT classes https://www.ready.gov/communit... , and their 8 extra modules, SkyWarn http://www.cert-emcomm.net/sky... . Then we go down the FEMA rabbithole. https://training.fema.gov/is/c...
Emergency comms are no different. Certification after certification. Background checks, including financial.
Excuse my French, but you are full of shit.
Oh you poor poor sad man. Try to get into our center without a background check. Allow the evidence..... Here is a pdf from York County ARES Races emcomm group. It is typical of most. http://www.w3hzu.com/content/e....
Here is the relevant text
1. Applicants must undergo a Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Record check (no cost). This is Criminal Record only, not a financial check. Minimum age for this application is 18. YOU must request a background check via PATCH using the following link: You fail, you simply do not get in.
Next up the Red Cross, who do have a financial background check http://www.redcross.org/local/...
In this case, the relevant text is:
Background checks have been part of the American Red Cross volunteer process for many years. After the hurricanes of 2005, mandatory background checks for employees and volunteers were instituted. Red Cross continues to affirm our accountability to the American public. The background check initiative will help us achieve a more efficient and safer work environment for our employees and volunteers.
There are many more links if you care to Google.
You wrote with great assurance and authority:
There are no background checks of any kind, much less financial, and no certification other than a basic amateur radio license, required to operate the gateways I am talking about.
You are wrong. You are not even wrong. I have had many background checks in my situation as a technical advisor to an emergency communications group. Required even. Certifications likewise. It makes for a problem with volunteers with time, as well as many do not like the instant "thanks for volunteering, but we think you might be a criminal or a pedophile". The tests used to be sent in by the agency, but were changed to the individual being investigated to try to help with the falloff in volunteers. The idea was that if you flunked the background investigation, you could just keep it to yourself, instead of having the whole town hear about it through the grapevine. It isn't working, probably because volunteers don't like that in addition to all of the certifications..
Seriously Obscufant, do a little background searching before you embarass yourself, and compounding it witth scatological insults just makes you look pretty bad.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Did you not notice Microsoft's "embracing" of Linux and "open source"?
Did you not notice MS's acquiring of GitHub?
The apparent plan is to remove a vast majority of options from the masses so that they are the "easiest" option in town!
Easier to pay a little thru the nose at first, as "painless as possible - so you don't notice, until you are ADDICTED!!!
Then, when virtually no choices remain, you have no choice. You are locked in, and doomed to remain a (battery in the matrix).
Well, okay, a little dramatic, yet you get the point. Right?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Interesting. I knew I could develop for ios (I think I need the $99 dev kit to do it, though?) and use an app I created myself, but I hadn't actually given much thought to whether or how someone else could use that app without going through the app store. I have an app idea in the back of my mind, but it's pretty far down on the list of things I should be doing...
Drivers for various gaming hardware. Extra buttons on mice, programmable buttons on keyboards, head tracking devices, programmable flight sticks and steering wheels, game controllers...
Someone suggested programming them in a Windows VM (which by itself isn't a given to work, by the way), unfortunately some of them don't retain their programming (fully) in the device but do rely on a separate program to function, which, again, does not exist for Linux.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here's your dunce hat for not realizing that linking computer code is 100% detail-oriented and pedantic. If you thought it is OK to be sloppy in this problem domain, guess what? It means you have no way of even knowing if it bit you.
Oh, and grandpa, you don't need a CLI. That's just a higher performance tool that experts choose. An idiot beginner would use a GUI tool.
My bad. I didn't realize that /. comments are source code. Probably for Skynet. That explains a lot.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There are REPEATED stories of how Win 10 updates break this system for users, many of whom are providing the gateways between radio and the network. Some of them are unattended, distant sites that can become critical communications resources in a disaster or emergency, and yet it's ok if they crash and burn because Microsoft issued a patch that changes how the sound system works (just one example of failure).
For those unattended sites, I think it is already grossly negligent to run them on some OS that does automatic updates without consent of the user. For future installations, that leaves only Windows 10 LTSB as reasonable choice in the Windows world.
If that is unavailable due to licensing restrictions, any sane organization that runs critical infrastructure has to move to something else. And even Linux is only the easy way out:
I had job interviews where the interview partner said "we have this specially certified OS for that purpose, you would have to work with it". Note that knowing said exotic system was not a prerequisite for the job. There were few enough people familiar with it that the employer would have been willing to pay for the training.
C - the footgun of programming languages
... paying monthly for the OS and also for the carrier that demand a fee for you to connect at a decent speed with Microsoft servers... AAAnd of course, Netflix, Microsoft and Youtube are on separate plans. You can't buy a plan with them all. Just PERFECT!
hmmmmm .... i run linux on two pcs and one partition of a third, windows is for steam games only, but i have a few hundred of those ... a rented desktop ?
eeuuhh ..... as in "we are microsoft so we will tell you what to do, and basically up your ass because we leave no alternative ..."
but piracy ... right, that's a masterplan to lure in the elderly and their laptops, whoever came up with that would be fired if i were CEO but something tells me for some reason the mass will fall for it
RENT an OS on a PERSONAL Computer ? so i have to stop gaming when they drop support for windows 10 because no way in seven hells and heavens am i gonna rent an OS, LOL OL OMFG el-MAO square
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?