World of the strange: There will be NINE KINDS of Windows 10 When Windows 10 ships this summer, buyers will have a host of different versions of the operating system – actually as many as nine, when you take everything into account. The basic consumer version is Windows 10 Home. For that you get the OS with support for Windows Universal apps, the Edge browser (and Internet Explorer), …
This crowd have learned nothing. 10 flavours and no way to customize the interface for experienced Pros like me. I laughed when I read: "which allows security updates to be delayed so that Windows Home users can test the patches for bugs."... More joyous moments of being an unwitting guinea pig for Redmond....
I'm getting my act together finally and starting to test-drive Linux. When the day comes that I can comfortably run everything I need to, I'm off this windows rat ship... Linux even has Firefox and VLC installed by default, and you can boot off a CD in about a minute.... What's not to like?
If you don't know exactly how customizable the Windows interface has always been - and here's a hint, Start8 is the very least of what's possible - then I'm glad they don't design for "experienced Pros like [you]".
What are you Pro at exactly? Wheelbarrow maintenance?
"lord only knows how many Vulns Start8 brought / brings with it?"
With Win8 onwards Microsoft created the *need* for products like Start8, they share responsibility for any resulting issues.
MS didn't need to actually remove the theming code from Win8 that would have let dissenters safely revert the hideous new look&feel - they deliberately chose to take that choice away permanently, they share responsibility for issues hacking it back in cause.
"If MS had removed the "theming code", Start 8 could not exist."
They didn't remove all of it, just the bits Metro didn't need and the code to read many preferences. In prerelease builds much of it was just a regedit away from resurrection, then they excised the code they didn't want anyone using.
Through subclassing pretty much anything can manipulate the UI. Having to install a 3rd party theming driver to actually do that is a security hole waiting to be exploited.
The only way a graphic driver would enable a security hole, is if you use internet software that allows access *outside* the browser... do tell me WHY you would have this happen??? getting fancy webb apps at the expense of security, and then a few MEGS of patch to work around the problem ??
It is for the above reason that most have gone to 3rd party browsers, and heavily limited flash and script.. (if your stupid webpage wants 'prettiness' over function, I will go elsewhere , thanks...)
> And you sir deserve a slap
Oh, do we have to be nice to arrogant idiots now? He's not our CEO so I don't have to pretend he isn't a moron
BTW, was your "slap" the new downvote added to my total on every single thing I've posted in the last month? Ooh, ooh, that hurts make it stop argh argh wait actually grow the fuck up and stop being so petty.
> You keep stats? 'Sufficient unto the day' dear friend.
No, I just have a good memory and the Your Posts page is handy for keeping up with a conversation.
Although most aren't worth bothering with.
Take this one - Article about Windows 10? Quick! Log on to the comments and tell everyone you use linux! Then they will know how cool and uber and an "experienced Pro" you are. Very little in the comments about the actual article, just the usual communal dick-rub about how awesome it is to be a Penguinista.
And don't get me wrong, it is awesome. I've been using Debian since 1998 so I can see how some people could get excited about it. What it is not is a) big b) clever -anymore, most WMs and installers have got a lot friendlier to the newb and that's a good thing - or c) relevant in any way.
It's like a whole crowd of people getting erections over how they can drive a car with a manual gearbox - standard response should be "so fucking what?"
What's not to like?
No Office, and Photoshop, or AutoCAD... Ok so actually with Two out of these three having gone into the Cloud, and, One of those Three being a non-sequitur I guess only the Architects will be the only Ones to suck up MicroSoft's latest offering.
So this Old Chessnut of... Well I need MUH Software is slowly drying up now too it seems...
OpenOffice/LibreOffice do a good job as substitutes for Office, only issue I've heard of is compatibility because of Microsoft doing non-standard stuff with their formats.
Photoshop you've got Lighttable, Darktable, Krita, Gimp and MyPaint, so most things you want to use it for have a program, although in some edge cases there might be a bit more swapping programs than preferred.
AutoCAD I'll give you though, CAD software is a bit of a pain to find on Linux. There's Blender, 3D Coat and a few other 3D modelling applications, but actual CAD software I think is largely limited to 2D CAD
"actual CAD software I think is largely limited to 2D CAD"
I'm not going to pretend you can have a 1:1 Autocad replacement in Linux (definitely not) but on the other hand SolveSpace, FreeCAD or OpenSCAD do a surprisingly decent job (in 3D) when you don't quite need to design the Golden Gate bridge or be enterprise-compatible...
"try Bricscad. Maybe not 1:1 but good enough for many. Now available on three platforms - win/linux/mac."
Ah, I see, it's a commercial product. That of course detracts nothing from your perfectly valid point, I was just wondering why it wasn't familiar - that's clearly because I tend to stick strictly with the free variety.
"""I'm not going to pretend you can have a 1:1 Autocad replacement in Linux"""
Draftsight aims to be a clone of AutoCAD, you can even run Lisp macros on it, perhaps is not 1:1 but very close.
Some versions run in Wine quite well, AutoCAD 2000 runs almost perfectly.
Ok so I've used the majority of the software you mention (both the commercial and FOSS elements) (minus the CAD/3D stuff - I tried playing with that once and decided I simply didnt have the mind set for it).
Something I find that is often missed in these conversations is skills/training and consistency. FOSS projects are much better than the 1990's and early 2000's but they still generally lag behind, more over because they tend to have smaller user bases the availability of training (as opposed to online learning materials) is much more limited.
A phrase that I heard once is that an amature practices until they get it right, a professional practices until they dont get it wrong (ok big generalisation as I know that pro/amature is about being paid and that there are big skills variances on both sides - but in aggregate people being paid then to be better than people just doing stuff for fun)
Basically what I'm saying is that the FOSS solutions are good, and certainly helpful for home users who want to stay on the right side of licencing. But the dominant commercial products tend to stay that way and to produce more consistent and better quality output for a whole load of reasons which are much more about users than about products.
> AutoCAD I'll give you though, CAD software is a bit of a pain to find on Linux.
An Autocad USER is a bit of a pain to find actually.
It's been 20 or so years since this product was a visible thing to consumers. The PC market has grown and evolved since then. Back in the days of DOS, CAD programs were a much more significant portion of the overall user base. These days not so much.
Actually Jed, Autocad was never a consumer product since it was never in the consumer price range. What happened is that as PCs got cheaper the professional CAD software remained expensive and lots of smaller companies tried to break into the market with low cost alternatives. Some built up a decent user base, like Sketchup, and most folks likely find the base package to be good enough for their needs. Also, if acad users are harder to find it's because many have moved up to 3D solid or surface modeling since it doesn't require a high end unix workstation anymore. Sure there are some specialized areas where acad still has strong support, electrical schematics and P&ID come to mind, but in much of the mechanical world designers are using things like Creo, SolidWorks, NX, etc.
Who cares? C'mon everybody!
Srsly, Open/Libre Office takes the biggest faults of MS Word to an extreme.
I DO NOT WANT your idea of what automatic formatting I should have, what I DO WANT is easy and transparent control of format.
Seriously, between the MS 'ribbon' stupidity and the Open/Libre Office design's asinine assumption that I will always like their irritating auto-formatting (I never do), where is there to turn?
I can't see a place to turn Open Office's stupid auto-formatting off.
If only WordStar etc. had stayed competitive, good lord, many of the Commodore 64 word processor offerings were more usable than MS-Word of now, or what's left of Star Office.
"Open/Libre Office takes the biggest faults of MS Word to an extreme."
The BIG problem is, there are those fools who either LIKE the 'faults' in MSword, or are too lazy to fix it, so just use it 'properly'..... rolleyes
... and when they want to use Open/Libre Office, they moan that their doc wont work!!! :( :(
Siemens NX is cross platform, with one of the supported platforms being Linux:
http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/nx/about-nx-software.shtml
It's kind of like a high end version of Autocad, with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and manufacturing also integrated.
"No Office, and Photoshop, or AutoCAD"
I did an install of "AutoCAD 2000" (Hey I still have a license for it, and I do not need to exchange drawings with anybody else) a few days back on Wine and to my surprise it works 99.9% (Only the MS help menu doesn't work 100% because of missing functionality) Spent hours on it drawing and no crash no single problem.
PhotoShop CS3/4/5/6 is almost working in Wine now. (Application runs but has some issues) , PhotoShop CS and CS2 run almost perfectly now.
Different versions of Office works to different degree. I run Visio 2003 on Linux regularly.
For a while I have had the feeling that in some time Wine will be the best way of running some of windows' old applications.
Take Autocad 2000, a perfectly capable professional grade CAD software made obsolete because it can only run in Windows 2000, and Autodesk's greed. Revived thanks to Wine.
Also of course you can always run an XP VM on Virtualbox if one becomes desperate for some piece of windows software.
One big renaming scheme.
Mobile and tablets only run simple noddy "universal apps". Previously known as metro apps. Desktop windows run those and win32 apps.
How is any of this any different from what we have now? How dies this save Microsoft's failed mobile strategy?
Thty have just taken everything they already had, rolled it in glitter and called it all windows 10 and offered windows 7 users a free downgrade.
Home users
Pro users also get the option of Windows Update for Business, which allows security updates to be delayed so that Windows Home users can test the patches for bugs.
So do I take it that the Windows 10 Home users will have autoupdate (whether they like it or not) so that they can be first to be hit by any screw-up from Microsoft?
Sort of like being sent out into a minefield with nothing more than a stick for prodding, while the Pros hang back and mark where the bangs occur.
"So do I take it that the Windows 10 Home users will have autoupdate (whether they like it or not) so that they can be first to be hit by any screw-up from Microsoft?"
This is becoming more and more obvious. Same goes for W7/W8 adopters within the first year. They'll get it free and will test it before paying customers come.
Note it's the first time MS is stating openly about 2 classes of users: those guinea pigs, and the rest ...
This is really telling !
Tom's Hardware is reporting 7, not 4/6/9.
Make your shit simple Microsoft. I thought you were converging all the platforms and getting rid of OS versions entirely... then you pull this Home/Pro/Enterprise/Education/Mobile shit yet again. What are the arbitrary RAM limits this time around?
"Make your shit simple Microsoft. I thought you were converging all the platforms and getting rid of OS versions entirely... then you pull this Home/Pro/Enterprise/Education/Mobile shit yet again."
The mobile versions are obviously special since they're meant for the phones and tablets. Which generic desktop OS are you using on your smart phone/tab?
Compared to some other supposedly popular operating systems the MS lineup looks tidy. Mint has 8 different editions, why? And how many Ubuntu versions are available - a couple dozen or so?
What are the arbitrary RAM limits this time around?
Windows 8 ("Home") is limited to a paltry 128GB, and the Pro can handly only 512 GB - hardly a problem for workstations of today. The limits have been raised with every Windows version and have been quite reasonable I'd say. If you need more, then MS would like to sell you a Server version.
BTW, 64-bit CPUs are supposed to handle 16EB but no OS supports that. Why?
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