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Windows 7 Enters Its Final Year of Free Support (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Windows 7's five years of extended support will expire on January 14, 2020 -- exactly one year from today. After this date, security fixes will no longer be freely available for the operating system that's still widely used. As always, the end of free support does not mean the end of support entirely. Microsoft has long offered paid support options for its operating systems beyond their normal lifetime, and Windows 7 is no different. What is different is the way that paid support will be offered. For previous versions of Windows, companies had to enter into a support contract of some kind to continue to receive patches. For Windows 7, however, the extra patches will simply be an optional extra that can be added to an existing volume license subscription -- no separate support contract needed -- on a per-device basis. These Extended Security Updates (ESU) will be available for three years after the 2020 cut-off, with prices escalating each year.
Eat a stinkpickle!
Do they really just want to piss off everyone who ever used them? ESCALATING pricing, do they need the extra money or is this just "encouraging bravery" type bullshit? Fuck that. Someone will pirate the updates now.
You idiots in Redmond have forced me to never again consider giving you any money.
Newly retired General Kelly here, disregard, someone got ahold of my launch codes but I reset them. Windows 7 is perfectly secure, unfortunately everything is still on XP and Trump is running fortnite servers on it all now. Good luck!
As a Win7 user that will be a decision at EOL.
Well, it's a non-starter. I'll probably stop using computers soon.
Of the OSes that come with any sort of support Windows has gone batshit insane with Windows 10; Mac OS has been crap since 10.7 with constant kernel memory leaks, not to mention apple doesn't actually provide support; ChromeOS is a non-starter because it is just a browser and any sort of commercially supported Linux got infested with systemd.
And I sure as hell will run systemd-free Linux or FreeBSD but will not enjoy it. The days of the computer as a creative device you had control over are over.
I'd rather take my chances with "unsupported" Windows 7 (been running with automatic updates disabled for years) then allow that MS spyware garbage on my networks and risk updates that break. Nothing will change next year except maybe more computers running Win 7 inside VMs.
Telemetry should be OPT IN, not opt in. If MS can't even respect my wishes then I can't respect their forced downgrades.
--
NEVER mix business with pleasure; your business will get fucked over by someone who enjoys the pleasure
The last line reads..... "It will be painful, time consuming, disruptive, expensive, and absolutely necessary."
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
MS Exec #1: Our users love Windows 7 and say it actually works relatively well. How should we proceed?
MS Exec #2: KILL IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE!!! Then replace it with a bloated garbage OS that nobody wants.
MS Exec #1: Genius. I'll have our best people get right on that.
I posted this comment to another Slashdot story today about Intel: Intel is insufficiently managed. (I misspelled "incompetent".)
Intel has been insufficiently managed for many years. (My opinion.)
Sorry, I've had nothing but trouble with Win10 and when I've put in bug reports they've been ignored. Cap that off with forcing me to login with a Microsoft ID and the various emails telling me how I can earn points.
Adios!
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
ERROR in my parent comment above: I'm tired. I need to take a nap.
There are many ways in which Microsoft is insufficiently managed, also.
I posted this before:
Some of the many, many stories:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)
Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)
Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)
Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)
There is no way to justify Microsoft managers operating the company like that. If Microsoft had paid $100,000,000 for negative advertising, it wouldn't have gotten such extremely bad results, in my opinion.
With Windows 10 not being a viable replacement to 7 due to forced updates and telemetry there is going to be an unprecedented amount of people using Windows 7 after the deadline. It will be bigger than the end of XP. There is certainly going to be more wannacry style attacks due to the amount of sitting ducks that are going to be created. Microsoft could easily prevent this but they will instead risk world security for a few billion extra dollars. In a sane world legal action would be taken to force Microsoft to make a fit for purpose successor to Windows 7, but Microsoft enjoys money too much and can bribe their way out of it.
As seeing how the the Win10 laptops I've bought over the past couple of years have never given us any option other than to set the systems up or login with a Microsoft ID.
Maybe you can login without an MS ID if you load from a disk/over the Interwebs, but not from the prepackaged machines I've seen.
Incidentally, the Acer is now running Mint and the HP is now running Ubuntu. The Lenovo is my daughter's and her college just provides Visual Studio so we're stuck there.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Last Windows that doesn't bother you about updates.
What am I going to do to get the guide updated? After all, Media Center is the only roll your own option for a DVR that plays protected content that has a reasonable cost. TiVo is an option but you get some huge one time fee or a monthly bill forever.
I guess it's time to investigate how to get guide updates....
Major Geeks has a link to a stripped version of Windows 10. Updates might be a problem, or maybe thye can be downloaded and installed manually. I'm thinking about it. After all, no Store and no telemetry isn't all bad. https://www.majorgeeks.com/fil...
Anyone know of a WEPOS hack for win7? To this day WinXP is still getting updates with the WEPOS reg key hack.
Linux, here we come!
(no, seriously, that's exactly what we're doing with our few remaining Win 7 PCs, replacing them with Linux blade servers)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
NO industry will stop support, i wont and i know enough to keep it healthy for a long long time after and im not ever gonna fucking use a phone operating system that spies on me as my os ...OH and that DLL that you hard coded ms ips to spy ....EDITED THE FUCK OUT
Trump is running
Yeah, right
I had two a few Windows programs that I still ran regularly so I ran them under a W7 VM. One of them came out with a native Mac version of their program and I decided to stop using the other one (cost $700/year) as I found two free alternatives from my online brokers. So I removed Parallels from my system and deleted the VMs. And I'm Windows-Free.
ERROR in my parent comment above: I'm tired. I need to take a nap. There are many ways in which Microsoft is insufficiently managed, also.
Do you mean inefficiently? Or do you mean they need more management? You really should take that nap right about now.
OSX is shit, AND, the only way to get it is by purchasing horrendously overpriced crap hardware.
Even if you really don't like the hardware (which is mostly not overpriced), you can always build a hackintosh...
I still think OSX is nicer than even Windows 7, in many ways.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Each year of EOL patches will cost more than the last. Escalating. Increasing per year. Basic word, sorry you can't understand basic shit, but it's not my problem.
They're screwing their longest-serving user base and with 10 as bad as it is, we are gone forever. Escalating.
Well, it's a non-starter. I'll probably stop using computers soon.
Of the OSes that come with any sort of support Windows has gone batshit insane with Windows 10; Mac OS has been crap since 10.7 with constant kernel memory leaks, not to mention apple doesn't actually provide support; ChromeOS is a non-starter because it is just a browser and any sort of commercially supported Linux got infested with systemd.
And I sure as hell will run systemd-free Linux or FreeBSD but will not enjoy it. The days of the computer as a creative device you had control over are over.
Really sad if you think about it.
The article neglected to say when Windows 7 users should turn off updates to keep from being fucked over by Microsoft intentionally crippling our systems and or transforming them into a platform for serving up Microsoft malware.
Should we do it now? Wait a few months? Wait till Jan 13th? When is the next dismiss this window and your doomed "security" update coming?
With each new computer we buy, less and less applications are installed on it You ain't going to need it.
- Santa brought a new Windows 10 laptop for the family
- I spent 10+ hours
- uninstalling HP crudware, twitter app, facebook app, other privacy defeating apps
- uninstalling default apps we won't use,
- uninstalling Office 365 trial ware,
- uninstalling other trial ware
- disabling phone home from different apps
- disabling bad features from the system tray like tablet mode on a non-tableable laptop
- Disabling remote desktop
- Installing Office 2016 (no 365 subscription at $10 a month)
- unhooking one drive and other cloud services
- Installing a simple printer driver
- Getting it on our local network
- Getting Firefox, Chrome browsers - Edge long term viability looks bad
- And best of all - Never had a Microsoft Store account - No need. It's a computer and not a phone/tablet and forget about me buying an app from the store with a gift card or credit card.
It's a lame OS where instead of everything running as root ala Windows 95, Windows 10 gives each app access to all parts of the machine.
No, I don't want you and you and you apps to get at the camera or microphone
Hey Firefox and Chrome, a soft switch to prevent camera/microphone access is something which will be broken
Can I get a binary with no camera/microphone support not just a software switch?
Two way video conference/chat in a browser? No. Call my cell phone for voice only.
Ship with things turned off, no telemetry, no tracking and no apps which demand access to my list of contacts.
The sticky part is, vs the mac I use at work, the Windows 7 I used before, Windows 10 is like the least dirty shirt of all of the dirty shirts I own. None of them respect user privacy, prevent tracking, ...
p.s. Microsoft Teams is FaceBook tracking for work. Forced to check it twice a day. Start it, read messages, close it, kill processes then repeat at 3Pm in the afternoon.
Umm... ESCALATING? Do you mean free patches for a full decade, with a free upgrade path to the fully supported next generation of the OS, along with constant pleas to upgrade off your decade-old OS for the past several years? With *optional* extended support available for a fee for that small percentage of users who are unable or unwilling to relegate their decade-old to the dustbin of history?
Face it, OS technology moves forward, and unless you are still using Windows 1.0, this should not be a surprise to you.
If there was a better version of Windows to be purchased I would buy it and be happy about spending the money. So would a lot of other users.
The problem is Microsoft has neglected to release a viable replacement.
Actually if you understood how telemetry works then you wouldn't need to add any additional software. You know that right?
or greater.
I bought Win2k to avoid that, and found out I had an SP3 edition (which if I remember correctly had cd keys that didn't work on SP0 discs, either!) And as a result the click-wrap licensing for it was basically the XP one with all the obnoxious BSA door kicking acceptance that XP and later had/have.
I use TrueOS - formerly PC-BSD, which is FreeBSD+Lumina. I very much enjoy it, and have full control on it. Only thing I miss - having WiFi enabled on the thing, but I make do w/ the ethernet connection
And does the company that developed the software certify that their software is supported under TrueOS?
Nice toy operating system you have there. When are you going to switch unix?
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
you mean free additonal bloat and lower and lower quality with each release, with added spyware and bugs.
Microsoft is moving backwards, pal.
OS Technology? pfft, you mean more eye candy and bloat. hardly "technology"
[...] Technology? pfft, you mean more eye candy and bloat. [...]
And Inflate-A-Bras. Oops, wrong story.
It's awesome right out of the box. It does everything I want. It runs my code IDEs and compilers, I can play games on it, I can use almost any software, including VMs with almost any OS. I wouldn't waste 5 minutes turning off the telemetry. Do you think anybody at Microsoft has time to look at it except in aggregate form? No, they do not.
Best solution for a new laptop: Install a fresh copy of Windows 10 Pro over whatever crap the manufacturer has put on there. Windows Update the hell out of it. Defender is fine...any money spent on anti-virus is a waste. For crying out loud, this is a Ferrari compared to anything before.
Yeah, I liked Windows 7. Use the hell out of it until the machine it's on goes belly-up, and then get one with Windows 10. It's the best one yet.
I've been using Windows Media Center since the 90s to record free to air tv programs.
I'm wondering if anyone else out there has used or is using Windows Media Center. If so has anyone found better alternatives?
Windows 7 was the last OS which came with Windows Media Center, otherwise I'd probably have just upgraded the system.
MacOS isn't a toy OS and of course, neither is Windows 7. Details?
The main reasons I use Windows being Microsoft Office, several games that aren't available on the Mac (some that don't have console ports available at all or they are not as good as the Windows version e.g., Unreal Tournament Windows vs. Unreal Tournament Sony PS2, the PS2 port has limited control options using a DualShock 2 PS2 controller), and especially Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 as a home MIDI sequencer and audio recording studio (upgraded from using Cakewalk Home Studio 3.0 all the way back since Windows 95)... well, it turns out reading up on the latest that Cakewalk Pro Audio was superseded by a few versions of SONAR (including audio effects, plugins, and soft synths... I didn't need those yet) before the eventual transitional transfers from Twelve Tone Systems/Cakewalk Music software to Roland, later Roland to Gibson, and then from Gibson to Bandlab as part of a Gibson bankruptcy restructuring. Whatever? I don't really have an immediate need for a partial local machine/partial cloud based hybrid user experience from what I can tell from reasearching the the Bandlab free/give-what-you-want version of Cakewalk, so I will be looking for a new recording studio or digital audio workstation software in the future. Thus, the eventual loss of Cakewalk as a standalone application means one less reason to use Windows for a future machine that may not still run the legacy Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. (CWPA otherwise has no nuisance online activation and can be validated using the CD key as part of the software purchase.) That means if I am forced to use a Windows 10 machine, it had better be able to run Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.03 since I already know that one must Run As Administrator so the Staff Font can properly load. Otherwise, forget it. Relevant to games, I will sacrifice the few Windows games since I still have a working PS2. (And, it doesn't matter that I am not a professional musician with releases and don't have a production label, the Windows userbase includes the home musician.) And, don't discount that the Windows 7 machine can also run as a local-only/offline machine, for as long as it still runs.
Anyway, the one time I used a MacBook running MacOS Snow Leopard, I found that many UNIX-like shells were built into the OS installed on that MacBook. For exploratory testing purposes, but I didn't have to use or write any shell scripts: sh, bash, ksh, csh, and zsh were all available from a Terminal command line. The shells differ in their script command sets, but that was five different UNIX style scripts available for the user. Noteworthy is that I've also used the Mac (Classic system 7) version of Performer during my college years, and the one feature Performer didn't have that Cakewalk did have was drag and drop notes in staff view to compose note by note, (instead of live playing or step recording a MIDI sequence). Thus, one could write a song in Cakewalk and play it incrementally, OR they could play it live and edit it, or they could step-record by note value and duration per keypress of a MIDI keyboard/controller. By now, Mac probably has several other music software packages available, but the Mac could still do MIDI when I used it and I expect it can still do MIDI sequencing at the minimum.
Mac is more expensive, of course, but it's a ready-to-run option vs. any attempt at Linux or FreeBSD. (Sorry, but back when I tried 4.4. BSDLite, installing certain applications or apps required going back and reinstalling dependencies not immediately called for until an error occurred requiring a dependency, and the KDE implementation was overall rather incomplete. Not much of a fun experiment, I reverted to the twm window manager for command line practice and a few low-color palette games... but still used Windows seriously.)
Anyway, I want to use a computer and have everything mostly just work, even though I did software QA testing for years. If anything, being aware of accepted design issues, deferred issues, and won't fix issues in the soft
Know any Linux distros from 2009 that run on modern hardware and still supported?
http://saveie6.com/
TrueOS is a buggy shitfest the first two or 3 times I tried it a few years ago.
If you are going to do FreeBSD at least do something stable and supported. It does require you to go to /usr/ports to get your GUI though
http://saveie6.com/
My PC is a 2014 era i7 4770K. It ran Windows 7 originally, 8.1, and now 10 Pro.
I can assure you that Windows 8.1/10 are remarkable faster and lighter. Especially once you turn the BIOS off and put on UEFI mode on an SSD. What took 35 to 45 seconds takes 6 seconds on Windows 10 because it doesn't do bios 1981 emulation bullshit when it loads the operating system.
Spyware? MS released what they collect. You can even download a tool to take a peak. It is just telemetry data on crashes,event logs, time spent on programs, battery and CPU life for apps/programs, and no keystroke logger. The only time this is exposed is when you use Cortana as duh, Cortona needs to see what you typed uploaded. All are random ID's not tied to your MS ID for them or anyone to see.
Your cell phone is far more evasive and tracks EVERYTHING WITH your Gmail or AppleID.
http://saveie6.com/
easy for rolling release distros like Gentoo and Arch Linux.
If you want a more apt example then there is Debian "Wheezy".
The main thing about Linux is it never fully supports modern hardware anyways, not that you really want TPM and other anti-user hardware to actually work as our corporate overlords intend.
Slackware, and from long before 2009.
Nice shilling. I don't want them collecting anything from my PC. I don't give a shit if it's truly anonymised. I want full and total control of what runs on MY computer, full and total control of what it send out to the 'net and full and total control of what it updates and when.
Fuck MS and fuck you.
Dude.... That is the same old argument, everytime MS decide to retire a version of Windows. When they retired XP, it was all "I hate Microsoft", "Why are they doing this to me?", "They only want my money", "Microsoft is the worst".... And then people will eighter switch away from Windows, or just jump on the next version of Windows. You cant keep on using old Windows versions for everyday work, that has been retired. All I am saying, is that you need to stop bitching old arguments, move to Win10 or switch to a different choice in operating systems. For me... I switched in 2016, because I retired my used computer at that time. And I thought that it was only 4 years more of using Win7. So I switched to an alternative. Mostly because I never game on my everyday driver. And I have been telling everyone that Win7 will end it's life in 2020. So if you for some magical reason have come across one of those posts, in wich I explained that I have switched to a different operating system, then you have been presented with these facts. Please stop with these old and tried arguments. You have been warned by both slashdot and other places. And now that it is on it's door step, then you start arguing.... Let me guess.... 5 years from now, you are running Win10 and are happy with it.
Back in 2016 I got a different machine, because the one I used, had served it purpouse. It was then, an 6 year old machine and it had become too noisy to be able to use. It was an laptop. So I got a different laptop, and because I knew about EOL on Win7 in 2020, then I decided to switch to Linux full time. Shure I had an advantage, wich was that I have been running Linux on and off since 1995. So I was quite used to how it works, and switching was to me, something without any issues at all. Back in 2016, I was thinking that once we hit 2019, then we would begin to see people panicking. And we would see all sorts of posts were people bitch about MS. And then again.... I am really sorry that I fail to see the reason why it may give anyone a legit reason to bitch about MS this time. Shure... When XP had EOL, then it was actually understandable, as it was the first time. Yet to me, it just looks like people have failed to learn from the past. I am sorry that any software will get old and too hard to service after some years. I am sorry that Win7 is not new anymore. Heck. It is 10 years old, and to my knowledge, even 10 year old Linux distro's are too old to be kept serviceable. Do I bitch when my Linux will reach EOL? Heck no. I will do a complete backup, install a new version and restore my data on that installation. Bitching about an 10 year old Windows? Give me a break. You have been warned by Microsoft for the last 4 or 5 years.
Nice toy operating system you have there. When are you going to switch unix?
Maybe when the graphical interface stops being shit? Seriously, Linux as a kernel is very good but it fails on everything else that describes a good desktop.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I stopped updating my Windows 7 Pro about 3-4 years ago after extenuating failures updating. Only Windows Defender gets updated. It works, no problems. And I hope it will last for the next 10 years saving me from a fresh MS tax.
I've never much cared for the heavyweight desktops myself, but more lightweight ones like XFCE have proven more than adequate for my limited needs. (I'm comfortable with the command line, but for those who may not be, YMMV.)
Nonaggression works!
The problem is actually another.
As example, for me the biggest of them is the lack of general consistency, on average each application is drawn in a different way, behaves differently to do the same actions (copy/paste? anyone?) and is installed differently (when the installer works or when they have an installer). Of course as a developer I sooner or later find a way to make it work, but in Windows I simply use the installer (which usually only fails in really unusual cases) and the applications behave consistently in generic things like copy / paste, open files and so on.
P.S: That goes for Windows 7 and earlier. Windows 10 was down the drain in terms of consistency and stability.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Bullshit. Computers as device for creative people are better than ever. Maybe not for writing "programs" but why would we want to do that when there are professionals doing that for us? By the way programmers are not creative people.
Billly Gates wrote :-
I can assure you that Windows 8.1/10 are remarkable faster and lighter. Especially once you turn the BIOS off and put on UEFI mode on an SSD. What took 35 to 45 seconds takes 6 seconds on Windows 10 because it doesn't do bios 1981 emulation bullshit when it loads the operating system.
So you really are Bill Gates then. I had thought your name here was just a joke.
BTW, I don't give a shit how long my OS takes to load, I rarely turn my PC off. That comment is addressed to systemd fans too BTW.
I ran the free upgrade tool to take my Windoze 7 laptop to Windoze 10. The upgrade itself was fine but the laptop would never stay on for more than 24 hours without hanging afterwards, requiring a full power cycle to remedy and how loooong does that windoze 10 boot sequence take? WOW!. I've stuck Fedora on it now instead and use the MATE desktop - I'm really happy with the result, it took me a bit of work to get PopcornTime 3.10 working but otherwise all good. Boots like a charm, great interface, does everything I want and doesn't track what I'm doing. Bye bye Micro$oft, I won't miss you!
>/dev/null 2>&1
.... Let me guess.... 5 years from now, you are running Win10 and are happy with it.
Let me guess : in 5 years time, if you are running Win10 you will be having to pay for it by rental, otherwise left entirely behind with updates and be force-fed with nagging and adware crap. And you won't be happy with it.
I'll start with Ubuntu and Fedora. Seems like a strange question, all of them do, with the exception of distros that have been dropped.
I don't care about your karma, I don't care about what's hip. --Weird Al
That's comparing Apples to Oranges. Linux upgrades are free, there's not a huge barrier to upgrade linux. Yes, Microsoft had "free" upgrades to Windows 10, but officially that is over, and is only still working because they haven't shut it down yet. They never promised all future versions of Windows 10 will be free, and most expect for them to require a subscription to upgrade once the older Windows versions (7, 8.1) are EOL.
Another difference with Linux is if you hate the upgrade your current Linux distro has, you can say screw them and find a different Linux distro that you do like. You can't say screw Microsoft and find another Windows distributor if you really do need Windows, you'd be stuck with Microsoft and force to upgrade to something you hated. Of all the Linux vs Windows debates, this point seems to not get made a lot. Yet it's the main reason I use Linux, I've switched my favorite linux distro 3-4 times in 10 years due to hating the direction my previous favorite was going. Linux = Freedom, nothing more, nothing less.
Only one more year to move over to Linux. I guess I need that kind of motivation, after all...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not apples to oranges. I am a user who likes the way things were in 2009. I love gnome2. Can I get an Ubuntu 9.10 CD to load on a modern Ryzen 2700x with an rtx 2060 GPU? Windows 7 offers that and yet I see is whining and legal threats .
Also Windows 10 was free. What I did was upgrade so Microsoft had the keys to my CPU and motherboard then downgraded back. I waited for awhile long after the free upgrade but was licensed. I moved after I was ready. That is on you if you refused.
Also you're confusing Microsoft 365 with Windows. Windows is free to low cost. The other is for Office and business services like Cloud storage, Skype conferencing, teams, etc. You are free not to subscribe.
I am not a fan boy and use multiple oses. But I like to not support ancient stuff.
http://saveie6.com/
They removed too much functionality for me to even want to make the step to 10 on my primary machine. My workflow depends on being able to change the look and feel fully (Windows 95 style) which they removed support for. Changing color themes and font styles isn't enough control for me.
The telemetry of 10 just makes it even less appealing.
Linux is great, but sometimes I need a Windows machine. Just not the newest Windows :/
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
If you are including the religion of Marxism, then I agree with you.
To your personal horror, I must remind you that capitalism is also a type of religion... >:-)
(And if you do not believe me, pay attention to how most people advocate capitalism with the same religious fervor of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc etc etc)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
No, the problem is the fanboi automatically justifying everything their favorite company does and chastising anyone who disagrees.
Companies love useful idiots like them. They'll buy the biggest turd in the pile and call it gold.
Personally I think these people need to be evaluated by a medical professional. There's something wrong in that unable to critique brain of theirs.
Believe me, I know how it works & in ANY form - my program I noted interferes w/ telemetry in ads, botnets, malware, phishing mail malicious links, malscript (pretty much you NAME it) to stop them from being threats (or communicating back "to mama" (C&C etc.)).
* As far as it going on in OS? They all do it (MS, Ubuntu, Apple) but @ least Linux stays OFF when you tell it to...
APK
P.S.=> I've been securing & programming computers probably BEFORE YOU WERE BORN pal - so don't even TRY your bs in "lording it over me"... apk
See subject & I did same in June 2018 & GLAD I did, continuing a self-actualization journey of mine per Mazlow's "hierarchy" by INSTANTLY porting & Make a Wheel https://isc.sans.edu/forums/di... that I use everyday (per that "New Year's Resolution" article's premise):
APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces & dl)
APK Hosts File Engine 10++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://hosts-file.net/?s=Down... (DL link @ bottom)
Soon 4 MacOS (just got a NEW Mac-Mini to port it).
APK
P.S.=> I, practically "poster child for Windows" on /. is saying it: Linux does ALL I NEED (great devtool in FreePascal + Lazarus IDE's like Delphi's Object Pascal) & I'm going to HATE turning off a KDE Plasma KUbuntu LTS 18.04 setup to do the MacOS port (& I may LEAVE Linux for it - we'll see - "part of the journey" to SELF-ACTUALIZATION - right? RIGHT!))
Log in to your router and blacklist all Microsoft sites.
There you go - no more Windows 10 updates.
If you should happen to want an update or two, then remove Microsoft sites from the blacklist until you are done.
I agree: it was horribly buggy - especially the updates system, which after updating, left me unable to boot to the OS. But after the latest iteration of TrueOS - which I bought from OSDisk - I found it just fine. They've stopped the updates, and I just use what's there
It's a joy to use in contrast to Windows 10 - I have 2 laptops, one w/ that, and the other w/ TrueOS. I find that the bulk of stuff I do can be done on TrueOS, and the Windows thing is there just in case I have to use a Windows software for something
What software? The only software I run in TrueOS is the stuff I downloaded via the AppCafe. The stuff that TrueOS itself included in the install package. What's not to work?
What a stupid false equivalence you've drawn.
Package management systems are a better method than any windows installer. Im loving Arch's system currently.
True, but that's only if the desired application (and the desired version) is available on your Linux distribution. As an example, more than once I had to try to install GIMP from source (to be able to have the latest stable version), and more than once the result was "slightly disastrous".
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You're confused. Actually running, Win 8 and 10 are each progressively slower on my PC. Who cares about initial load? Irrelevant when computation is slow when I'm working! My computer loads ANY OS faster than greased snot out of sneezing elephant anyway with my super duper solid state disk.
Windows 7 is by far the best performing when getting work done.