Windows 10 - free upgrade to those with PC using Windows 7 or 8

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

@ eschwartz
Your tl;dr exactly. Especially as they (MS) first said that the sniffing is essential for maintaining functionality

What functionality? OneDrive? I don't even want it.

My new (in transit now) workstation class notebook, which is going to replace both my aging desktop and notebook, has a 256 GB boot SSD and a 2TB hard drive. This means that I want all my data on that device, and not in the cloud. I want access to everything, from a text file to a 20GB disk image, even when I have slow or no internet.

An operating system should be just that.

Yes. I don't know anyone not running Linux, who actually uses the operating system actively to get work done, aside from the file manager. There is too much stuff in there; I still can't fathom why an operating system needs to be 10GB in size, since Windows Vista. Vista and 7 are 10 times as big as Windows 2000/XP, which was already 5 times as big as NT 4 SP6a.

To be honest, not much has changed in my daily usage; apart from ripping CD's to FLAC and managing e-books I still do the same things as I was doing in 1998. Sometimes I long for the days in which an operating system was like 6-7 MB after installation (MS-DOS 6.22), or around 25 MB, if you had Windows 3.1 installed.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sometimes I long for the days in which an operating system was like 6-7 MB after installation (MS-DOS 6.22)

...which the UNIX guys used to say was not an OS, but "a brain-dead program loader."

I guess it wasn't big and bloated enough. ;-)

At some point things in the Microsoft world switched from when most of the time spent configuring an OS was spent getting it to do stuff you wanted, to when most of the time is spent preventing it from doing stuff you don't.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ApK

...which the UNIX guys used to say was not an OS, but "a brain-dead program loader."

I guess it wasn't big and bloated enough. ;-)

I remember reading Ken Thompson and/or Dennis Ritchie did actually complain about bloat in Unix. One of them said that "X-Windows must be the largest program in existence that doesn't do anything for you."

edit: Here...

"The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you."

-- Ken Thompson

===

An operating system is indeed just that: a piece of software to load other pieces of software and manage them. It also needs to provide an easy way of configuring said hardware, and if possible, store the configuration in readable files.

Windows switched from ini-files to the Registry in 1995. Linux users have been bitching at the registry for 20 years. Ironically, now Linux, under Red Hat, is moving to registry-like non-text configuration with Gnome (dconf) and systemd....

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Personally I don't know what market research Microsoft are relying upon for their decisions regarding this. But I suspect they have gone further in their research than using your own specific personal needs as defining; after all, if they were to have relied on those, your lack of use for anything Microsoft would mean that they would have gotten out of the IT business long ago .

I am still confident that the market is saturated with ways of syncing data.
And application settings run the gamut from "no one gives a darn" to "gmail.com already knows it".


Anyway, that is only a reason in the event that settings are actually transferred, so I would think that using a local Windows account would have the side effect of disabling telemetry.

...

No, I think the simple explanation is reasonable enough, no need to go hunting for excuses.
Microsoft is doing it for the exact reasons they specified -- to get automatic feedback on features used and bugs/crashes encountered.


Whether that is objectionable depends on the person, but privacy advocacy groups exist for a reason, and some people just don't see why there is any need to collect data for something they aren't interested in.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Most people don't care. Explanations don't make it right.

The people complaining want only one thing: a switch called "Turn off data collection", which turns off *ALL* data collecting capabilities.

I certainly agree that most people don't care.

But with respect to whether explanations make it right or not it perhaps needs to be kept in mind that it is a matter of opinion as to whether the data collection is right or wrong. In which case one can equally say that explanations do not make it wrong either.

With regard to a switch to turn it off I can, without any more than a casual consideration, think of two switches available to even the most unsophisticated user that will turn data collection off.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...Yes. I don't know anyone not running Linux, who actually uses the operating system actively to get work done, aside from the file manager...

I am not making a claim on this, just wondering. What about real time systems using Windows (Windows is widely used for SCADA, for example)?

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...To be honest, not much has changed in my daily usage; apart from ripping CD's to FLAC and managing e-books I still do the same things as I was doing in 1998. Sometimes I long for the days in which an operating system was like 6-7 MB after installation (MS-DOS 6.22), or around 25 MB, if you had Windows 3.1 installed.

Maybe there is a market for a stripped down version of Windows, although I have an idea that Microsoft have already had a go with that and dumped the concept (I have no experience of that end of the market).

Regarding your comment on X-Windows my only exposure to it was back around 1990 when I was managing a number of large CCC projects, so not that long after it was developed. Those did not use it but some others being built in the same software factory were, I don't know if it was the best that was available then (under an economy, free I believe, and capability test) but it seemed to be regarded highly enough to be used in a very sophisticated environment back then. Perhaps it is junk now, I don't know except that it seems to still be around in real time systems.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Maybe there is a market for a stripped down version of Windows, although I have an idea that Microsoft have already had a go with that and dumped the concept (I have no experience of that end of the market).

There are a number of products the use Windows Embedded OS, albeit not as many as use Linux, but they're out there.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

I am not making a claim on this, just wondering. What about real time systems using Windows (Windows is widely used for SCADA, for example)?

I don't know. What I mean is that nobody I know, including myself, uses the Windows operating system to get work done. In Linux, many people use the actual operating system, even if it's the command-line, to get real work done. You can do so in Windows, using Powershell, but it's too verbosive in comparison.

Linux provides an operating system, and on top of that you install applications you need to do stuff, if the operating system can't do it on the command line or if it's too inconvenient. You get to choose the applications.

Windows just provides a lot of crap built-in that sits there unused. The Win10 calculator is a joke. Why is there no Ti-84 or equivalent or something? Have you ever seen anyone seriously use Notepad, Wordpad or Paint to get stuff done? I use Firefox. I should be able to remove Internet Explorer. And so on...

Perhaps it is junk now, I don't know except that it seems to still be around in real time systems.

It is still the default windowing system in Linux/Unix-like operating systems (except for MacOSX). X-Windows is a client-server, network-based display server. It is *very* powerful and can do things Windows can only dream of (or needs third party applications to manage it), but large parts of its code are also *very* old and extremely hard to maintain and update. There are several projects underway (Wayland, Mir) trying to create a viable alternative display server, as the X-Window system is one of the oldest parts of Unix/Linux still in use.

The Ken Thompson quote was about the fact that the huge (by 1984/85 standards) X-Window system only existed to support graphics, but didn't do anything itself; you couldn't get any work done with it. It only served to graphically do what the command-line already did textually.

[AnotherCat]

In response to me wrote

Originally Posted by wodin

There are a number of products the use Windows Embedded OS, albeit not as many as use Linux, but they're out there.

Yes there are.

I was trying to recall the stripped down version of Windows whose name I have now remembered - Windows 7 Starter which was apparently aimed at developing markets, but on checking I see it actually compromised basic functionality (couldn't play DVD's, for example) rather than strip out the things that Katsunami referred to.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Windows just provides a lot of crap built-in that sits there unused. The Win10 calculator is a joke. Why is there no Ti-84 or equivalent or something? Have you ever seen anyone seriously use Notepad, Wordpad or Paint to get stuff done? I use Firefox.

I don't know about 10, but I use win 7's calculator daily for basic math and hex/Dec conversion.
I know people who CLAIM to use Notepad as their primary code editor, but I don't know if I believe them.
I use Wordpad frequently for short documents, especially letters and other stuff that gets printed, because it loads fast and is, well, good enough. And just today I used Paint to create a small image to test a production process! So I guess, yeah, I do.

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

I was trying to recall the stripped down version of Windows whose name I have now remembered - Windows 7 Starter which was apparently aimed at developing markets, but on checking I see it actually compromised basic functionality (couldn't play DVD's, for example) rather than strip out the things that Katsunami referred to.

I believe that was also the version that shipped on Netbooks to compete with free Linux.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ApK

I don't know about 10, but I use win 7's calculator daily for basic math and hex/Dec conversion.

The Windows 7 calculator is much better than the Windows 10 one; I at least can use it more easily. Maybe it's just that I'm used to it for so long.

I know people who CLAIM to use Notepad as their primary code editor, butI don't know if I believe them.

I wouldn't. Using "copy con file.txt" and ending the file with CTRL-Z is the only correct way of coding.

I use Wordpad frequently for short documents, especially letters and other stuff that gets printed, because it loads fast and is, well, good enough. And just today I used Paint to create a small image to test a production process! So I guess, yeah, I do.

HERETIC!

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by ApK

...I believe that was also the version that shipped on Netbooks to compete with free Linux.

Not being familiar with the netbook end of the market your post prompted me to look further. And found an interesting history regarding the Windows moves (through XP, etc., to Win 8) to compete with Linux (including Chrome OS and Android) on netbooks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook#Windows EDIT: Just past half way down the page.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

What functionality? OneDrive? I don't even want it.

My new (in transit now) workstation class notebook, which is going to replace both my aging desktop and notebook, has a 256 GB boot SSD and a 2TB hard drive. This means that I want all my data on that device, and not in the cloud. I want access to everything, from a text file to a 20GB disk image, even when I have slow or no internet.

I don't use OneDrive to have my data in the cloud so I can work in the cloud. I use OneDrive to have my data in the cloud so that if I switch device, I still have the same files available. So I can work on them offline.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

"The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you."

-- Ken Thompson

Just after reading this, I watched the CNN Steve Job "The Man in the Machine" documentary. It made the point that at the time windowing GUIs and the mouse were first invented, computing cycles and bits of memory were scarce, expensive resources that were zealously guarded by sys admins. It was considered sacrilege to waste those precious resources on things that did nothing for you, like drawing windows and icons and moving pointers on the screen.
Such is the stuff of revolutions.
As Nigel Tufnel wisely observed, there's a fine line between clever and stupid.

[wodin]

X-windows and its derivative Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)s were probably the best thing that ever happened to computer evolution. They both drove hardware development and made computing available to the unwashed masses, who were generally incapable of understanding command line interfaces.

Ken Thompson was either very short sighted or was very afraid for his status in geekdom. I'd vote for short sighted.