Apps range in size drastically, from a handful of KB up to many hundreds of megs (I haven't seen any over a gig yet, but I expect they exist already or will soon). Remember that this OS supports full DirectX for gaming, and unless the game developers choose to downsample all their high-res textures or something, the RT version will be close to the same size as the x86 and x64 versions (the only difference being the size of the compiled binaries).
On the other hand, the Surface also supports doing stuff like mounting removable storage into the root filesystem, or creating symlinks to removable or network drives. If you want to expand the available storage, even for apps (which is not officially supported), that's possible with a bit of effort.
The Surface comes partitioned with a 3.5GB recovery partition, which can fully reset the device including drivers, OS updates, full volume encryption + losing the recovery key, and people running amok with Admin permissions (assuming they don't mess with the recovery volume itself). The iPad, last I checked, still required the use of a real PC if something goes drastically wrong and it needs resetting. It can handle typical reset scenarios just fine, but can't be used to downgrade (or so I'm told; that may be wrong). I don't know if the iPad even supports installable drivers, either (although on the Surface RT, they must be signed by MS so hopefully not *too* much harm would occur from them).
The Surface also comes with the standard suite of Windows admin tools, including the Management Console and the Disk Management snap-in for it. You can modify the partitions if you want to. You could even back up the recovery volume to a USB storage device or NAS (the device supports booting from USB, not sure about NAS) and then remove the recovery partition and extend the main volume to fill its space. You can also mount a removable storage device, such as a microSD card or USB Mass Storage volume, into the root filesystem. Can an iPad do anything like that?
[Open]Suse is another good distro if you want a great KDE experience. I realize it's losing ground slowly (it used to always be in the Distrowatch top three; it's current at #5) but it's still a solid distro. They do a lot of customizations to KDE as well (far, far better than Kubuntu does; I can't speak as to Mint though).
K3B is easily the best disc burning software I've ever used, although these days that's pretty irrelevant (I put my install media on bootable flashdrives now). Okular is an excellent viewer app, and incorporates hilarious items such as "respect DRM [on PDFs]" as a checkbox item. Amarok (sp?) was an amazing app on KDE3. It was shit in the early days of KDE4, but has come a long way towards redeeming itself. Konqueror is probably still my favorite filesystem browser of all time. Dolphin is crap, though, or was last time I tried to use it. Kate (KDE Advanced Text Editor) is good enough that, when working on Windows, I often install the Windows port of it (http://windows.kde.org) rather than use some other editor.
I do think it's odd that the summary implies that Linus is trying KDE for the first time, rather than being a returning user, and doesn't point out the fact that he's specifically trying it out again now that v4 is mature.
Actually, even the low-hanging fruit isn't enough. Malware is an illegal business; engaging in it has risks. Hypothetically, if I could write the code for an OS X botnet worm at no cost (say, an evening of my own time), and earn $10 for each Mac infected, or spend $500000 (say, a government project) developing something equivalent for Windows, the Windows option is by far the better one even though OS X is the low-hanging fruit. Once you've managed to infect 50k more Windows boxes than OS X ones - which will happen quickly if your malware has good ability to spread at all - you've come out ahead by targeting the much more expensive (difficult) Windows. That's the simple fact of why market share matters to malware.
Of course, if you're already going to break the law by putting out the one version, you'd probably go whole hog and put out both versions (in this little sample). Maybe you wouldn't, though, if doing so increased your risk of discovery by more than the 11% extra cash you'd take in.
You can copy link addresses and paste them into a text window, rather than just opening them in the browser. It's a bit messy, but you are factually incorrect on that point.
However, the first point is (officially) correct. Technically you *can* read them, but it requires some hacks.
While I agree with you in general, there are actually apps which are developed on smartphones. As an example, WP7 has an app (written by MS) called "TouchDevelop" that's basically a touch-oriented scripting engine. It supports packaging scripts developed with it as apps and submitting them to the store, and some people have taken advantage of this.
It's slow and has an unfortunate effect on battery life when running anything remotely real-time, but it works, it's free, and it's really easy to use... and it's only available on the phone. There may be similar apps on other phones; I don't know.
Also, I personally have written and executed scripts on the Surface RT tablet, just to see if I could (it's actually really easy). I didn't try to package them as apps, though.
Involuntary termination for cause (i.e. fired) combined with a (related) felony conviction should, in theory, much more than compensate for the experience. Now, maybe he'll go work at an AT&T store, where his name is less likely to set off sirens in corporate HR... but they'll still probably call his last employer and ask basic questions (like, "is the former employee considered eligible for re-hire?" and/or "was the former employee terminated for cause?") plus check the criminal record. That kind of thing is pretty standard and is going to make it *really* hard for him to get a job in the industry again, short of falsifying his background and hoping they don't look too hard.
Fine? There's probably a fine, and it's probably pretty severe... but contempt of court is apparently a felony which actually carries a prison sentence. I doubt the UK could (or at least would bother to) extradite, say, the CEO... but they could certainly grab whoever is the head of the UK operations and toss him in a cell if he wanted. Or anybody else the judge wanted to make a point of. Or possibly several people... or they could just revoke Apple's license to do business and/or ban the sale of their products.
IANAL, much less a British one (barrister? My dad's from the UK but not in law either, and I live in the US) but a cursory research of the subject indicates that you really, *really* don't want to be held in contempt of a British court. This is a lot more than just a fine, where somebody gets canned over it and maybe some executive gets a smaller bonus than would otherwise be the case... this is a case of the judge basically deciding whether Apple UK, as both a corporate entity and a bunch of employees, should be permitted to go on existing / living free.
Hahahahahaha, but do you have an unrealistic view of the world...
They do fine in server OSes, virtualization, and databases. Their web server isn't hugely popular but it's doing all right. Their web browser has actually done fairly well, far below its height but largely stable now in market share. Their office software is still pantsing everything else, despite plenty of competition. Their desktop OS does just fine against OS X and Linux, although the former hampers itself somewhat by being tied to highish-end (and pricey) hardware. Their development technologies are widely used even though others (such as Java) are also available on their platfrm and have lots of supporters. The Xbox line is doing quite well, in terms of market- and mind-share, despite very heavy competition and this being only the gen2 product of Microsft's attempt to break into an established market. They make excellent mice and keyboards despite tons of competition in that area. Their search engine market share is small-ish, next to Google, but it's not trivial and was growing last time I checked (which was a while ago, admittedly).
Microsoft is quite capable of competing. You may claim any number of things about the way they compete, but they haven't lasted for this long and made this much money by rolling over every time some upstart comes along with a new product. They've been caught out by it a few times, certainly - witness their fall from a strong position in smartphones five years ago, and the huge drop in IE's market share - but they are hardly dead on the beach.
If [Microsoft] had any balls, they'd reinvent the PC, create something new that people might want
Arguably, Win8 and especially Windows RT (the ARM version of Win8) are attempts at just that. The combination of traditional PC management software (full file management via Windows Explorer, configuration via the control panel, registry, and management console) plus a *very* app-centric focus (apps can be written to handle file types and devices, can be written in a variety of languages, and are heavily highlighted via the store) and an interface that is designed to give apps the tools to do what the user wants to do (live tiles, multitasking apps, a standard way to access the Settings and Feeback tools for an app) is pretty different from both legacy Windows or existing mobile OSes, but it can be used like either one (except for RT, which can't be used with legacy desktop apps). The focus on alternative input methods (mostly touch) is also a departure for Windows; previous versions supported touch to some degree or another, but they were never focused on it.
Of course, whether or not MS can pull this off still remains to be seen. I suspect they'll do better than Slashdot predicts, worse than they'd like to, and well enough that by the time Win9 comes out, everybody is used to it. Where *that* will go... I'm not even going to try and guess.
There are certainly casual Linux users. Not terribly many, compared to other desktop OSes, but they exist. I've had to do tech support for a few of them.
Anybody who can install the build tools (for those silly distros which don't include them) and run
tar xzf [tarball] && cd [folder] &&./configure && make && sudo make install
on Linux can handle the process to sideload on Win8 just fine, which is what this thread is about. As you (rightly) point out; plenty of people do it. Possibly the majority of Linux users, although I'm not sure about that.
However, the majority of Android users definitely do not sideload apps, even though the process is considerably simpler. This is partially due to Google's lax policy on admitting stuff to the store, but largely due to the fact that most people will basically never open the Settings widget in the entire time they have the phone unless explicitly instructed to do so, nor will they go looking for apps anywhere except on the store.
I'm terribly sorry about your mod points. Hopefully, in the interest of them not being completely wasted, you'll learn something:
I'm right, and I know because I've done it. How much experience with Win8 / Windows RT sideloading do you have? I'm guessing moinimal to none, because (to use your own words) "you clearly do not understand how sideloading works on Windows 8." Or rather, you may understand how APPX provisioning into an install image works, but you have no clue about how sideloading (in the sense that normal people and Microsoft themselves generally use the term) works.
Follow the steps I gave above to enable sideloading. Download any app bundle off a website (there's a few on XDA-Developers, for example). Bundle will contain the following: * An.APPX file (a signed ZIP archive holding the compiled application binaries if applicable, and configuration files). * A.CER certificate file, which contains the public key to verify the signature on the.APPX. * A.PS1 powershell script, which installs the cert and the app for you (you can also do it manually). * A Resources folder, which holds translations.
No source code (although decompiling managed code is pretty easy, and JS/HTML/CSS apps aren't compiled at all so I guess they're all source). No product key at all! I think you need one for buiness-internal apps, but you don't need one for everyday sideloading. No.MAIN file anywhere, even inside the.APPX archive. I've never encountered one, ever. Not only is the app packaged, the dev doesn't even need to do the packaging him- or herself; either the command-line build tools or Visual Studio can do it for you. You don't need to do these steps on a pre-sysprep image; you can sideload on live images (a good thing too, or sideloading on Windows RT would be impossible, which it empirically is not).
I don't know who is coordinating your "project for Microsoft" but both that person and the head of your project should probably be fired at this point; they are clearly completely incompetent. Take what you just learned and go solve this "problem" for them, why don't you?
You live in the middle of the goddamn desert. The coasts are a lot more densely populated. 265 miles will almost get you from Seattle to Portland, OR - a trip I take once or twice a year - without stopping to charge. Yeah, my gasoline car gets 450 milues instead (which is high; many cars only get about 300-400) and there are more places currently where it can be recharged (fueled), but for well over 99% of the time I spend behind the wheel of my car, a total range of 100 mines would be sufficient, never mind the better part of 300.
Oh, hardly. Technical limitations to prevent installing other operating systems / firmware have existed on mobile devices for years. *Some* Android phones now come with unlockable or easily unlocked bootloaders, but it was only a few years ago that "e-fuses" which bricked the device if you tried to flash a custom ROM were all the rage among some of the big manufacturers. No WP7 device has an officially unlocked bootloader, and indeed many of them can't currently be unlocked at all, yet they managed to gain 3% market share - hardly a huge success, but a lot more than "no people". Apple devices, which have never supported custom ROMs at all, are still wildly successful even in the face of unlockable Android phones. As for tablets, the iPad certianly doesn't support running an arbitrary OS on it, and neither do most Android devices (although some of the most popular ones do).
Granted, MS is evil and/or stupid for *insisting* on a locked bootloader (and the bootloader is locked; bcdedit is present on the devices but you can't *do* much with it), but if so, Apple is far worse; they not only lock down their own sofware on their own hardware, they don't let anybody else make it at all! Yet iPads are still very successful in the market.
Actually, getting a sideloading key is dead easy. You have to run Powershell as Admin, then type Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration (or just "show-wi" and hit Tab). Enter Windows Live credentials - anything, including a throw-away account created for the purpose, will work - and boom, you are unlocked for sideloading. Works on Windows 8 (Pro, Enterprise, or otherwise) and on Windows RT (tested it on a Surface).
I don't know what's up with that old data that says you can't. That's been bouncing around for almost a year, and as far as I can tell it was *never* true, even on pre-release versions. You've been able to unlock Win8 for sideloading since the first preview builds came out! It's as though there's two completely different teams talking about this. Well, three (the one that says *only* Store apps are allowed) but the last one is the marketing team trying to keep the n00bs from getting confused; they are safely ignorable. Fortunately, the team that supports the more open approach is the one that is correct.
Actually, that's a good point. Porting existing C/C++ to "Windows Store" ("Metro") sometimes takes work, because of the limited sandbox the code must execute in, but the actual compilation engine for LaTeX shouldn't care. Wrapping a UI around it would be easy, and the app could register itself as a handler for the.tex filetype.
Uh... you download the bundle, right-click the script file, select "Run in Powershell", and approve the prompts. That's all there is to it. The thing comes pre-rooted (you have Admin access, although it uses UAC so stuff doesn't run as Admin at all times) and the whole process takes like 30 seconds even if the app has a signature that you haven't installed the cert for yet (Powershell will install it for you, after prompting). For apps that you already have the cert installed, the actual installation process takes no longer than installing an APK does.
That post is based on extremely dated info (early 2012). The fact of the matter is, you absolutely can use sideloading for "Windows Store" (formerly known as "Metro-style") apps; I'm doing so right now. From info posted just two weeks ago (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx):
If you have a developer license, you can run Windows Store apps that haven’t been tested and certified by the Windows Store, but you won't benefit from the protection that certification provides. A computer on which a developer license is installed might have a bigger risk of virus or malware infection than a computer that installs apps only through the Store. In other words, if you acquire and run Windows Store apps from sources other than the Windows Store, take the same precautions you normally do when acquiring desktop apps from the web.
As for "enterprise customer" and "machine joined to a domain", that's there too, but to claim that it's required is bullshit. Domain joining and Group Policy is *one* way to sideload apps, but it is not the only one. You can enable sideloading on any Win8 or Windows RT device that you can get an Admin powershell prompt on, which is to say, on any of them that you own, even at home.
To sideload apps, you'll generally download a bundle (probably a ZIP archive or similar) containing the.APPX file, the certificate for the key which signed the app, and a Powershell script. Such bundles are generated automatically by Visual Studio, including the entire script. Just run the script in Powershell, and agree when prompted. It will install the certificate if needed (i.e. if it isn't already installed or doesn't chain to one that is) and then install the app. The entire process takes well under a minute for most apps.
For desktop apps on RT, it's still pretty messy and complicated. Probably best if I just link you to the forum thread where the work is being discussed (and there are links to explain how to do things): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1885399
That's the marketing line, to keep the technologically ignorant from getting confused. In truth, Windows RT (that is to say, the ARM version of Win8) fully and officially supports sideloading, so you can get your apps from anywhere that you can download an APPX package (which is just a ZIP archive, much like an APK) and the cert it was signed with. It's actually trivial to install them, too; Visual Studio builds a script for you that does everything needed quickly and easily.
There is also a (very unofficial) way to run third-party desktop apps on Windows RT already. It actually isn't really a big hack; Visual Studio handles ARM as a compile target even for desktop apps, and you just then have to sign the EXE and get Windows to use your certificate when doing the signature check (the last bit is the only hackish part, and it's not very complex at all). Unlike sideloading of "Metro"-style apps, this is actually something that isn't supposed to be possible, so I can't be sure they won't patch it out, but for now it works fine.
Or maybe you just keep re-iterating it because you're wrong, and are nonetheless trying your hardest to spread FUD.
It's entirely possible for "Metro"-style apps to use the normal Win32 APIs; developers figured out how to do this long before Win8 even went RTM. That's just the nature of C++, which is what WinRT is actually written in (although it has bindings in all the supported languages). Microsoft may (or may not; I haven't checked) prevent any app which does so from appearing in the store, but that's not a huge problem. Windows 8 and even Windows RT fully support sideloading of Metro-style apps; it's free and requires no hacks of any kind (official, though rather quiet, feature).
Of course, the apps still run in a low-permission sandbox. That's hardly a problem for games, though. In fact, it's by far the preferred behavior; most games have absolute shit for security. For things like productivity apps, you'd probably want to use the WinRT file open and file save APIs, although you don't need to; there are other ways to get acess to the rest of the filesystem if you don't mind having the user run a script (which since an automatically-built Powershell script is how you sideload "Metro"-style apps, could be easily done by just adding to that script). Just change the ACLs to give the app access to whatever locations it wants.
You do realize that the "fully locked down store" of Win8 supports such horrific lock-in features as unrestricted app sideloading, right? Even with the RT versions (such as on Surface) where third-party desktop apps are supposedly banned (people have already worked around that), you can sideload apps to your heart's content, using nothing but official functionality.
Valve is nothing but a crybaby whining that Microsoft is re-creating the benefits of Steam without making people go get Steam. It's not as if Valve has ever been in support non-lockdown. Steam is a fucking DRM platform! It's more locked down than even Windows RT, much less Win8...
Slashdot seems to be giving them a pass, even supporting them, because they're saying good things about Linux and bad things about Windows. OK, I like seeing more games for Linux, and more commercial support in general. But you don't think they're going to drop the DRM just because it's on a "free" OS, do you?
Some serious reality distortion going on here. I wouldn't have picked Gabe Newell as a likely heir of Steve Jobs, but apparently I'd have been wrong.
How is the Surface not usable in a corporate environment? Aside from the Office license, which you can purchase a business license for if you want to (and it's not as though MS can tell how you use it anyhow; screw EULAs), it's pretty damn corporate-friendly.
It explicitly supports sideloading business apps that don't go through the store process (it also, officially but hidden, supports sideloading *any* app, but that's another thing). It has excellent ActiveSync integration, so it plays very well with Exchange even if it doesn't include a program actually called Outlook. It suppots things like 802.1X and WPA Enterprise that are often required to connect to business networks. It supports VPNs, even using a smartcard (though you'd need a USB smartcard reader). It supports system-wide proxy settings. It has full device (BitLocker) encryption. It talks Windows networking natively. It can run CMD and Powershell scripts. It can connect to projectors.
How much more corporate support do you want? Yes, doman joining would be good; they took that out because domain admins typically require connected PCs to run a bunch of software that isn't available for RT (because it's all x86). No other (ARM) tablet supports that either, though, so that's hardly a competitive disadvantage vs. things like iPads.
Slashdot Mirror
Apps range in size drastically, from a handful of KB up to many hundreds of megs (I haven't seen any over a gig yet, but I expect they exist already or will soon). Remember that this OS supports full DirectX for gaming, and unless the game developers choose to downsample all their high-res textures or something, the RT version will be close to the same size as the x86 and x64 versions (the only difference being the size of the compiled binaries).
On the other hand, the Surface also supports doing stuff like mounting removable storage into the root filesystem, or creating symlinks to removable or network drives. If you want to expand the available storage, even for apps (which is not officially supported), that's possible with a bit of effort.
The Surface comes partitioned with a 3.5GB recovery partition, which can fully reset the device including drivers, OS updates, full volume encryption + losing the recovery key, and people running amok with Admin permissions (assuming they don't mess with the recovery volume itself). The iPad, last I checked, still required the use of a real PC if something goes drastically wrong and it needs resetting. It can handle typical reset scenarios just fine, but can't be used to downgrade (or so I'm told; that may be wrong). I don't know if the iPad even supports installable drivers, either (although on the Surface RT, they must be signed by MS so hopefully not *too* much harm would occur from them).
The Surface also comes with the standard suite of Windows admin tools, including the Management Console and the Disk Management snap-in for it. You can modify the partitions if you want to. You could even back up the recovery volume to a USB storage device or NAS (the device supports booting from USB, not sure about NAS) and then remove the recovery partition and extend the main volume to fill its space. You can also mount a removable storage device, such as a microSD card or USB Mass Storage volume, into the root filesystem. Can an iPad do anything like that?
[Open]Suse is another good distro if you want a great KDE experience. I realize it's losing ground slowly (it used to always be in the Distrowatch top three; it's current at #5) but it's still a solid distro. They do a lot of customizations to KDE as well (far, far better than Kubuntu does; I can't speak as to Mint though).
K3B is easily the best disc burning software I've ever used, although these days that's pretty irrelevant (I put my install media on bootable flashdrives now).
Okular is an excellent viewer app, and incorporates hilarious items such as "respect DRM [on PDFs]" as a checkbox item.
Amarok (sp?) was an amazing app on KDE3. It was shit in the early days of KDE4, but has come a long way towards redeeming itself.
Konqueror is probably still my favorite filesystem browser of all time. Dolphin is crap, though, or was last time I tried to use it.
Kate (KDE Advanced Text Editor) is good enough that, when working on Windows, I often install the Windows port of it (http://windows.kde.org) rather than use some other editor.
I do think it's odd that the summary implies that Linus is trying KDE for the first time, rather than being a returning user, and doesn't point out the fact that he's specifically trying it out again now that v4 is mature.
Actually, even the low-hanging fruit isn't enough. Malware is an illegal business; engaging in it has risks. Hypothetically, if I could write the code for an OS X botnet worm at no cost (say, an evening of my own time), and earn $10 for each Mac infected, or spend $500000 (say, a government project) developing something equivalent for Windows, the Windows option is by far the better one even though OS X is the low-hanging fruit. Once you've managed to infect 50k more Windows boxes than OS X ones - which will happen quickly if your malware has good ability to spread at all - you've come out ahead by targeting the much more expensive (difficult) Windows. That's the simple fact of why market share matters to malware.
Of course, if you're already going to break the law by putting out the one version, you'd probably go whole hog and put out both versions (in this little sample). Maybe you wouldn't, though, if doing so increased your risk of discovery by more than the 11% extra cash you'd take in.
You can copy link addresses and paste them into a text window, rather than just opening them in the browser. It's a bit messy, but you are factually incorrect on that point.
However, the first point is (officially) correct. Technically you *can* read them, but it requires some hacks.
While I agree with you in general, there are actually apps which are developed on smartphones. As an example, WP7 has an app (written by MS) called "TouchDevelop" that's basically a touch-oriented scripting engine. It supports packaging scripts developed with it as apps and submitting them to the store, and some people have taken advantage of this.
It's slow and has an unfortunate effect on battery life when running anything remotely real-time, but it works, it's free, and it's really easy to use... and it's only available on the phone. There may be similar apps on other phones; I don't know.
Also, I personally have written and executed scripts on the Surface RT tablet, just to see if I could (it's actually really easy). I didn't try to package them as apps, though.
Involuntary termination for cause (i.e. fired) combined with a (related) felony conviction should, in theory, much more than compensate for the experience. Now, maybe he'll go work at an AT&T store, where his name is less likely to set off sirens in corporate HR... but they'll still probably call his last employer and ask basic questions (like, "is the former employee considered eligible for re-hire?" and/or "was the former employee terminated for cause?") plus check the criminal record. That kind of thing is pretty standard and is going to make it *really* hard for him to get a job in the industry again, short of falsifying his background and hoping they don't look too hard.
Fine? There's probably a fine, and it's probably pretty severe... but contempt of court is apparently a felony which actually carries a prison sentence. I doubt the UK could (or at least would bother to) extradite, say, the CEO... but they could certainly grab whoever is the head of the UK operations and toss him in a cell if he wanted. Or anybody else the judge wanted to make a point of. Or possibly several people... or they could just revoke Apple's license to do business and/or ban the sale of their products.
IANAL, much less a British one (barrister? My dad's from the UK but not in law either, and I live in the US) but a cursory research of the subject indicates that you really, *really* don't want to be held in contempt of a British court. This is a lot more than just a fine, where somebody gets canned over it and maybe some executive gets a smaller bonus than would otherwise be the case... this is a case of the judge basically deciding whether Apple UK, as both a corporate entity and a bunch of employees, should be permitted to go on existing / living free.
Hahahahahaha, but do you have an unrealistic view of the world...
They do fine in server OSes, virtualization, and databases.
Their web server isn't hugely popular but it's doing all right.
Their web browser has actually done fairly well, far below its height but largely stable now in market share.
Their office software is still pantsing everything else, despite plenty of competition.
Their desktop OS does just fine against OS X and Linux, although the former hampers itself somewhat by being tied to highish-end (and pricey) hardware.
Their development technologies are widely used even though others (such as Java) are also available on their platfrm and have lots of supporters.
The Xbox line is doing quite well, in terms of market- and mind-share, despite very heavy competition and this being only the gen2 product of Microsft's attempt to break into an established market.
They make excellent mice and keyboards despite tons of competition in that area.
Their search engine market share is small-ish, next to Google, but it's not trivial and was growing last time I checked (which was a while ago, admittedly).
Microsoft is quite capable of competing. You may claim any number of things about the way they compete, but they haven't lasted for this long and made this much money by rolling over every time some upstart comes along with a new product. They've been caught out by it a few times, certainly - witness their fall from a strong position in smartphones five years ago, and the huge drop in IE's market share - but they are hardly dead on the beach.
If [Microsoft] had any balls, they'd reinvent the PC, create something new that people might want
Arguably, Win8 and especially Windows RT (the ARM version of Win8) are attempts at just that. The combination of traditional PC management software (full file management via Windows Explorer, configuration via the control panel, registry, and management console) plus a *very* app-centric focus (apps can be written to handle file types and devices, can be written in a variety of languages, and are heavily highlighted via the store) and an interface that is designed to give apps the tools to do what the user wants to do (live tiles, multitasking apps, a standard way to access the Settings and Feeback tools for an app) is pretty different from both legacy Windows or existing mobile OSes, but it can be used like either one (except for RT, which can't be used with legacy desktop apps). The focus on alternative input methods (mostly touch) is also a departure for Windows; previous versions supported touch to some degree or another, but they were never focused on it.
Of course, whether or not MS can pull this off still remains to be seen. I suspect they'll do better than Slashdot predicts, worse than they'd like to, and well enough that by the time Win9 comes out, everybody is used to it. Where *that* will go... I'm not even going to try and guess.
There are certainly casual Linux users. Not terribly many, compared to other desktop OSes, but they exist. I've had to do tech support for a few of them.
Anybody who can install the build tools (for those silly distros which don't include them) and run
on Linux can handle the process to sideload on Win8 just fine, which is what this thread is about. As you (rightly) point out; plenty of people do it. Possibly the majority of Linux users, although I'm not sure about that.
However, the majority of Android users definitely do not sideload apps, even though the process is considerably simpler. This is partially due to Google's lax policy on admitting stuff to the store, but largely due to the fact that most people will basically never open the Settings widget in the entire time they have the phone unless explicitly instructed to do so, nor will they go looking for apps anywhere except on the store.
I'm terribly sorry about your mod points. Hopefully, in the interest of them not being completely wasted, you'll learn something:
I'm right, and I know because I've done it. How much experience with Win8 / Windows RT sideloading do you have? I'm guessing moinimal to none, because (to use your own words) "you clearly do not understand how sideloading works on Windows 8." Or rather, you may understand how APPX provisioning into an install image works, but you have no clue about how sideloading (in the sense that normal people and Microsoft themselves generally use the term) works.
Follow the steps I gave above to enable sideloading. .APPX file (a signed ZIP archive holding the compiled application binaries if applicable, and configuration files). .CER certificate file, which contains the public key to verify the signature on the .APPX. .PS1 powershell script, which installs the cert and the app for you (you can also do it manually).
Download any app bundle off a website (there's a few on XDA-Developers, for example).
Bundle will contain the following:
* An
* A
* A
* A Resources folder, which holds translations.
No source code (although decompiling managed code is pretty easy, and JS/HTML/CSS apps aren't compiled at all so I guess they're all source). .MAIN file anywhere, even inside the .APPX archive. I've never encountered one, ever.
No product key at all! I think you need one for buiness-internal apps, but you don't need one for everyday sideloading.
No
Not only is the app packaged, the dev doesn't even need to do the packaging him- or herself; either the command-line build tools or Visual Studio can do it for you.
You don't need to do these steps on a pre-sysprep image; you can sideload on live images (a good thing too, or sideloading on Windows RT would be impossible, which it empirically is not).
I don't know who is coordinating your "project for Microsoft" but both that person and the head of your project should probably be fired at this point; they are clearly completely incompetent. Take what you just learned and go solve this "problem" for them, why don't you?
62mi = 100km to within such a small margin of error that I'm sure the actual rated range is 100km (though that's odd for an American car)
You live in the middle of the goddamn desert. The coasts are a lot more densely populated. 265 miles will almost get you from Seattle to Portland, OR - a trip I take once or twice a year - without stopping to charge. Yeah, my gasoline car gets 450 milues instead (which is high; many cars only get about 300-400) and there are more places currently where it can be recharged (fueled), but for well over 99% of the time I spend behind the wheel of my car, a total range of 100 mines would be sufficient, never mind the better part of 300.
Oh, hardly. Technical limitations to prevent installing other operating systems / firmware have existed on mobile devices for years. *Some* Android phones now come with unlockable or easily unlocked bootloaders, but it was only a few years ago that "e-fuses" which bricked the device if you tried to flash a custom ROM were all the rage among some of the big manufacturers. No WP7 device has an officially unlocked bootloader, and indeed many of them can't currently be unlocked at all, yet they managed to gain 3% market share - hardly a huge success, but a lot more than "no people". Apple devices, which have never supported custom ROMs at all, are still wildly successful even in the face of unlockable Android phones. As for tablets, the iPad certianly doesn't support running an arbitrary OS on it, and neither do most Android devices (although some of the most popular ones do).
Granted, MS is evil and/or stupid for *insisting* on a locked bootloader (and the bootloader is locked; bcdedit is present on the devices but you can't *do* much with it), but if so, Apple is far worse; they not only lock down their own sofware on their own hardware, they don't let anybody else make it at all! Yet iPads are still very successful in the market.
Actually, getting a sideloading key is dead easy. You have to run Powershell as Admin, then type Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration (or just "show-wi" and hit Tab). Enter Windows Live credentials - anything, including a throw-away account created for the purpose, will work - and boom, you are unlocked for sideloading. Works on Windows 8 (Pro, Enterprise, or otherwise) and on Windows RT (tested it on a Surface).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx
I don't know what's up with that old data that says you can't. That's been bouncing around for almost a year, and as far as I can tell it was *never* true, even on pre-release versions. You've been able to unlock Win8 for sideloading since the first preview builds came out! It's as though there's two completely different teams talking about this. Well, three (the one that says *only* Store apps are allowed) but the last one is the marketing team trying to keep the n00bs from getting confused; they are safely ignorable. Fortunately, the team that supports the more open approach is the one that is correct.
Actually, that's a good point. Porting existing C/C++ to "Windows Store" ("Metro") sometimes takes work, because of the limited sandbox the code must execute in, but the actual compilation engine for LaTeX shouldn't care. Wrapping a UI around it would be easy, and the app could register itself as a handler for the .tex filetype.
Uh... you download the bundle, right-click the script file, select "Run in Powershell", and approve the prompts. That's all there is to it. The thing comes pre-rooted (you have Admin access, although it uses UAC so stuff doesn't run as Admin at all times) and the whole process takes like 30 seconds even if the app has a signature that you haven't installed the cert for yet (Powershell will install it for you, after prompting). For apps that you already have the cert installed, the actual installation process takes no longer than installing an APK does.
That post is based on extremely dated info (early 2012). The fact of the matter is, you absolutely can use sideloading for "Windows Store" (formerly known as "Metro-style") apps; I'm doing so right now. From info posted just two weeks ago (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx):
As for "enterprise customer" and "machine joined to a domain", that's there too, but to claim that it's required is bullshit. Domain joining and Group Policy is *one* way to sideload apps, but it is not the only one. You can enable sideloading on any Win8 or Windows RT device that you can get an Admin powershell prompt on, which is to say, on any of them that you own, even at home.
For enabling sideloading, it's just the Powershell command Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration (must be run as Admin, though). You can read more about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx
To sideload apps, you'll generally download a bundle (probably a ZIP archive or similar) containing the .APPX file, the certificate for the key which signed the app, and a Powershell script. Such bundles are generated automatically by Visual Studio, including the entire script. Just run the script in Powershell, and agree when prompted. It will install the certificate if needed (i.e. if it isn't already installed or doesn't chain to one that is) and then install the app. The entire process takes well under a minute for most apps.
For desktop apps on RT, it's still pretty messy and complicated. Probably best if I just link you to the forum thread where the work is being discussed (and there are links to explain how to do things): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1885399
That's the marketing line, to keep the technologically ignorant from getting confused. In truth, Windows RT (that is to say, the ARM version of Win8) fully and officially supports sideloading, so you can get your apps from anywhere that you can download an APPX package (which is just a ZIP archive, much like an APK) and the cert it was signed with. It's actually trivial to install them, too; Visual Studio builds a script for you that does everything needed quickly and easily.
There is also a (very unofficial) way to run third-party desktop apps on Windows RT already. It actually isn't really a big hack; Visual Studio handles ARM as a compile target even for desktop apps, and you just then have to sign the EXE and get Windows to use your certificate when doing the signature check (the last bit is the only hackish part, and it's not very complex at all). Unlike sideloading of "Metro"-style apps, this is actually something that isn't supposed to be possible, so I can't be sure they won't patch it out, but for now it works fine.
Or maybe you just keep re-iterating it because you're wrong, and are nonetheless trying your hardest to spread FUD.
It's entirely possible for "Metro"-style apps to use the normal Win32 APIs; developers figured out how to do this long before Win8 even went RTM. That's just the nature of C++, which is what WinRT is actually written in (although it has bindings in all the supported languages). Microsoft may (or may not; I haven't checked) prevent any app which does so from appearing in the store, but that's not a huge problem. Windows 8 and even Windows RT fully support sideloading of Metro-style apps; it's free and requires no hacks of any kind (official, though rather quiet, feature).
Of course, the apps still run in a low-permission sandbox. That's hardly a problem for games, though. In fact, it's by far the preferred behavior; most games have absolute shit for security. For things like productivity apps, you'd probably want to use the WinRT file open and file save APIs, although you don't need to; there are other ways to get acess to the rest of the filesystem if you don't mind having the user run a script (which since an automatically-built Powershell script is how you sideload "Metro"-style apps, could be easily done by just adding to that script). Just change the ACLs to give the app access to whatever locations it wants.
You do realize that the "fully locked down store" of Win8 supports such horrific lock-in features as unrestricted app sideloading, right? Even with the RT versions (such as on Surface) where third-party desktop apps are supposedly banned (people have already worked around that), you can sideload apps to your heart's content, using nothing but official functionality.
Valve is nothing but a crybaby whining that Microsoft is re-creating the benefits of Steam without making people go get Steam. It's not as if Valve has ever been in support non-lockdown. Steam is a fucking DRM platform! It's more locked down than even Windows RT, much less Win8...
Slashdot seems to be giving them a pass, even supporting them, because they're saying good things about Linux and bad things about Windows. OK, I like seeing more games for Linux, and more commercial support in general. But you don't think they're going to drop the DRM just because it's on a "free" OS, do you?
Some serious reality distortion going on here. I wouldn't have picked Gabe Newell as a likely heir of Steve Jobs, but apparently I'd have been wrong.
How is the Surface not usable in a corporate environment? Aside from the Office license, which you can purchase a business license for if you want to (and it's not as though MS can tell how you use it anyhow; screw EULAs), it's pretty damn corporate-friendly.
It explicitly supports sideloading business apps that don't go through the store process (it also, officially but hidden, supports sideloading *any* app, but that's another thing). It has excellent ActiveSync integration, so it plays very well with Exchange even if it doesn't include a program actually called Outlook. It suppots things like 802.1X and WPA Enterprise that are often required to connect to business networks. It supports VPNs, even using a smartcard (though you'd need a USB smartcard reader). It supports system-wide proxy settings. It has full device (BitLocker) encryption. It talks Windows networking natively. It can run CMD and Powershell scripts. It can connect to projectors.
How much more corporate support do you want? Yes, doman joining would be good; they took that out because domain admins typically require connected PCs to run a bunch of software that isn't available for RT (because it's all x86). No other (ARM) tablet supports that either, though, so that's hardly a competitive disadvantage vs. things like iPads.