Windows 10

[rogerzilla]

Forced to install this shite because Windows 7 has gone out of support.  ZOMG the installation process is bad.  And it's overwritten my Linux bootloader without so much as a warning.  I only ever use Windows to update satnav devices these days.  Anyone else find it dumbed-down, excessively intrusive and frankly terrible?

[fuaran]

I installed it on my mums PC yesterday, was quite impressed at how quick and easy it was. Aside from the slightly hidden option to create a local account, instead of a Microsoft account. Quite simple to turn off most features that send data to Microsoft. Don't have a microphone to use Cortana etc anyway.

The default interface is a bit annoying, but can disable a lot of stuff to make it more usable.
Generally seems a lot more stable than Windows 7. Not too slow, even on an older PC, I upgraded the RAM anyway.

[Kim]

Forced to install this shite because Windows 7 has gone out of support.  ZOMG the installation process is bad.  And it's overwritten my Linux bootloader without so much as a warning.  I only ever use Windows to update satnav devices these days.  Anyone else find it dumbed-down, excessively intrusive and frankly terrible?

I have as little to do with it as possible, so can't really say whether it's bad or not, but:

- Frequent, intrusively large updates.
- All the usual Windows stuff is hidden.  I keep failing to find the device manager.
- As mentioned, it likes to shit all over your bootloader.  To be fair, Windows has been doing this since at least 2000, the new development is that it occasionally gets clever and spontaneously tries to repair itself, so you don't get any warning.
- Performance seems decent enough.  Certainly a big improvement on 8.
- Tangential grumbles relating to UEFA bioses, which aren't technically Window's fault.


If you're literally just applying updates to a GPS, you could follow my approach of running an evaluation version of Win10 LTSB^[1] edition in VMWare Player, which I use for running Basecamp, the XFP fire panel configuration software, and occasional forays into the CrossMgr suite when I don't have the BHPC laptop to hand.  If you don't have a valid licence, Windows shuts itself down after an hour, but is otherwise fully functional.  For some reason I can't get to the bottom of, giving WVware focus seems to break the shift key in Linux, but that can be cured by running setxkbmap.


_{[1] Windows 10 Enterprise without Edge, Cortina and most of the bloat, intended for systems where the computer acts as a frontend to expensive industrial/medical hardware that does something rather more important than running Excel and accessing Facebook.}

[Jurek]

I installed it on my mums PC yesterday, was quite impressed at how quick and easy it was. Aside from the slightly hidden option to create a local account, instead of a Microsoft account. Quite simple to turn off most features that send data to Microsoft. Don't have a microphone to use Cortana etc anyway.

The default interface is a bit annoying, but can disable a lot of stuff to make it more usable.
Generally seems a lot more stable than Windows 7. Not too slow, even on an older PC, I upgraded the RAM anyway.

My bold.
This.

Also, is it me, or is there a similarity between the stunning scenery used in the screensaver images of Windows 10 and the Desktop images which Apple have been using in their OS for the last six, maybe seven, maybe more, years?

[rogerzilla]

Yeah, they can FRO if they think I'm going to set up a Microsoft account

Next job is to make a Mint bootable USB so I can get the bootloader back.

[fuaran]

- All the usual Windows stuff is hidden.  I keep failing to find the device manager.

Right click on the start button, or press Windows + X.
That has some useful shortcuts to a variety of admin tools. eg Task manager, device manager, powershell.

[Kim]

Right click on the start button, or press Windows + X.
That has some useful shortcuts to a variety of admin tools. eg Task manager, device manager, powershell.

Barakta taught me that one last week.  It has greatly improved my Windows experience.   

[Phil W]

Or just click the start button and start typing in the name of what you are looking for. Can’t remember last time I navigated to stuff via the menus but defo pre windows 7 (when the search functionality appeared), so pre 2009.

[Kim]

Or just click the start button and start typing in the name of what you are looking for.

That's fine when you can remember what Windows calls things.

[Phil W]

Or just click the start button and start typing in the name of what you are looking for. Can’t remember last time I navigated to stuff via the menus but defo pre windows 7 (when the search functionality appeared).

That's fine when you can remember what Windows calls things.

That’s true of any operating system.

[Kim]

Or just click the start button and start typing in the name of what you are looking for. Can’t remember last time I navigated to stuff via the menus but defo pre windows 7 (when the search functionality appeared).

That's fine when you can remember what Windows calls things.

That’s true of any operating system.

Of course.  But I'm fluent in *nix, rusty in Windows and computer literate, so poking around a hierachy of utilities and settings is more likely to lead me to the right place quickly than trying to remember the names for things.

(Credit where it's due:  This is the good way round.  It's generally much harder for a Microsoft person to find what they're looking for on a Linux system, not least because most of the GUI tools are a trap.)

[FifeingEejit]

Or just click the start button and start typing in the name of what you are looking for. Can’t remember last time I navigated to stuff via the menus but defo pre windows 7 (when the search functionality appeared), so pre 2009.

Aye, been doing that since Windows Vista.
Going back to the XP image for legacy support is "interesting".

[Phil W]

Or just click the start button and start typing in the name of what you are looking for. Can’t remember last time I navigated to stuff via the menus but defo pre windows 7 (when the search functionality appeared).

That's fine when you can remember what Windows calls things.

That’s true of any operating system.

Of course.  But I'm fluent in *nix, rusty in Windows and computer literate, so poking around a hierachy of utilities and settings is more likely to lead me to the right place quickly than trying to remember the names for things.

(Credit where it's due:  This is the good way round.  It's generally much harder for a Microsoft person to find what they're looking for on a Linux system.)

Oh there’s a hierarchy in Windows as well but you still need to know how that is organised and what the thing you are looking for is likely called. It’s just a case of better the devil you know with all this stuff. Familiarity and frequency of use and all that...

[Phil W]

Windows 10 also has a Linux subsystem for Windows as well if you want to do Linux command line stuff directly (in Windows).  It's an optional component so you need to add it in Windows features under add / remove programs.

[Feanor]

Control Panelly stuff is now a totally fragmented nightmare.

There are new shiny interfaces which present some but not all of the configuration options, and try to be smart and hide stuff from you.

It takes a bit of digging to find the 'proper' UI which exposes all the stuff like it always did.
They are still there, it's just harder to find them

[rogerzilla]

Back into dual boot after loading Mint onto a USB stick and running a boot repair application.

When did applications in Windows become "apps"?  It's like hearing your dad saying something is "sick" or "dench" 

[Mr Larrington]

Control Panelly stuff is now a totally fragmented nightmare.

This ^^^^.  I want the person who decided randomly to distribute Stuffs between Control Panel and Settings tracked down, I want them shot, and I want it done yesterday.

OTOH my keyboard, which celebrates its thirtieth birthday in a few weeks time, still works.  Take that, Sonos!

[ElyDave]

teh one that really pissed me off was removal of the photo editor, that was immensely useful when puling together my closing meeting presentations, now made far more tedious and longwinded, and powerpoint seems to have developed an aversion to actually compressing photos when asked to do so.

[ian]

I did hear a horrible rumour that the mothership wasn't supplying Macs to suitably enabled subdeck minions. I don't think I can handle any fate that involves Windows 10. I think my Macbook Pro is going to be in service for a long, long time...

[T42]

I heard from a couple of places that W7 and a decent antivirus should be safe enough, so I just turned off W7 updates.  I have stuff I wrote under VB6 that I don't want to lose, and my development environment runs under W7's XP emulation.

[ian]

Hamid, who has the privilege of sitting next to me aboard the mothership and has the standard-issue Win 10, seems to spend half of every day on the phone to IT support for some reason or other, but mostly pleas to 'make it work.'

[ian]

Ironically, I let IT get their claws into my Macbook, and now Safari quits randomly and it takes twice as long to start up (still about six weeks faster than Windows, mind), and there's no longer any opportunity to defer any system update to a sensible time. You have five minutes to reach a minimum safe distance. I discovered this 'feature' while presenting to 450 people via Webex. And yup, it was a 5GB complete OS incremental update.

[quixoticgeek]

(Credit where it's due:  This is the good way round.  It's generally much harder for a Microsoft person to find what they're looking for on a Linux system, not least because most of the GUI tools are a trap.)

I find the fastest way of finding how to do something on any OS, is to declare loudly on twitter that it is impossible to do what I want to do on the platform I want to do it. A man appears within seconds to tell me how to do it. It's faster than google every single time...

J

[Kim]

(Credit where it's due:  This is the good way round.  It's generally much harder for a Microsoft person to find what they're looking for on a Linux system, not least because most of the GUI tools are a trap.)

I find the fastest way of finding how to do something on any OS, is to declare loudly on twitter that it is impossible to do what I want to do on the platform I want to do it. A man appears within seconds to tell me how to do it. It's faster than google every single time...

Of course, you've still got to filter through all the messages from people telling you you should be using $other_platform...

[ian]

I confess that I can never find anything on Linux (and adding something to a menu seems impressively tortuous) – I can usually dig through my memory midden to remember where something is on Windows, but yes, just changing screen size seems a nightmare, settings are splattered all over the place. On a Mac I just bang cmd-space and start typing which seems to the way it ought to work (and if you want to add something to the dock, just drag it there).