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whm1974
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How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 1:41 pm

I'm not sure where to put this, but it deals with using both Windows and Linux, I'm putting this here.

OK I haven't used Windows since 8.0, and even then I had to use Classic Shell to even make is usable at all by me as I found the Metro GUI to be completely and utterly useless. I completely switch over to Linux once a flood of games appeared for Linux and Chrome made it possible to watch online videos without have to jump through a bunch of hoops. I would be perfectly just fine if never used Windows or any Microsoft product ever again, but alas I'm going back to school, so I will at least be using Windows 10 for my class work sometimes at least.

And yes I'm well aware that I would be using the same software/tools any future employer will be using so... In any case, although I want to get involved in developing games for Linux, I am realistic enough to know that I will need to develop for Windows as well even if it just to pay the bills/keep the company going.

So is Windows 10 anywhere as bad as people been saying it is? The privacy concerns, the forced updates bricking the system, Microsoft trying to force everyone to use the Windows Store, and etc. I'm not saying that Linux is perfect, that too needs a lot of improvements as well.

Any thoughts?
 
LostCat
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 1:49 pm

Nobody is forcing anyone to use the Store.

Update problems do occasionally happen, but it's been mostly cleared up. The Spectre/Meltdown patches have made current builds a little messier than before IMO.

Personally I think the privacy concerns are a load of **** considering similar stuff has been in every Windows I remember, but there's been enough arguing on that point already I'd rather not get into it.
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 3:07 pm

Are people really still saying it's that bad? The griping seems to have died down. Other than the typical glitches whenever they roll out a major update, I've been under the impression that it is mostly OK these days?
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FireGryphon
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 3:13 pm

Complaining has died down, but that doesn't mean the security concerns are gone, just that you need to know how to turn off the right features to make the OS 'safe'. My impression that once you get that under control, it's just another version of Windows. Irrespective of all that, if you need to live in that ecosystem, there isn't really a choice, is there?
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BIF
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 3:30 pm

Windows 10 is the best, most reliable version of Windows to date. At home, I use classic shell. At work, I don't. It's pretty much a non-issue anymore. Crashes are very few. I don't view security and privacy concerns to be major exposures.

But beyond that, major corporations are forcing upgrades among their own workforces, and it's even become a compliance requirement. Nobody is so "special" that they can "opt out", because companies won't tolerate an audit failure.
 
bfg-9000
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 4:10 pm

You get used to the UI. It's kind of like the "personalized menus" that you used to disable because it would move things around on you all of the time so you couldn't find them--even the order of drives in Windows Explorer get scrambled around depending on what you used last, and this kind of behavior makes it usually faster to just start typing in what you want into search. I don't really mind this, as it reminds me of using a PC pre-Windows 3.1 (and spelling counts too because it's not as good as Google in trying to decipher misspellings).

That said, with each version upgrade Microsoft has been systematically removing the real gems in the UI like the right-click-on-the-Start-button shortcut to Programs and Features, which forces you to wade through the corresponding useless Metro App version to get to the more powerful Control Panel version. It's as if they are embarrassed about using a PC being too efficient and trying to slow things down in a sort of traffic-calming. If you are a patient person with a short memory for how things used to be, then you won't mind at all.

The occasional corruption requiring a full system reinstall with one of the every-six-months version upgrades is kind of a matter of luck, as you usually will only see it if you maintain dozens of systems--if you just let Windows do its thing and upgrade when it wants and let it change the settings it wants to change back to defaults (anything else is likely untested). Rolling back to a previous build is actually more risky than the upgrade itself and kind of reminds me of System Restore in Windows ME. Sometimes the system isn't totally trashed which gives you hope that some sfc /scannow or dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth or dism /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup magic will sort things, but the component store will remain corrupted and people at Microsoft are probably laughing at your pitiful efforts through their telemetry feed.

Other than that it's fine, so I suggest trying the Enterprise LTSB variant. If not, the "defer upgrades" tickbox will at least let others beta-test things for a couple months first.
 
FireGryphon
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 4:17 pm

bfg-9000 wrote:
You get used to the UI. It's kind of like the "personalized menus" that you used to disable because it would move things around on you all of the time so you couldn't find them--even the order of drives in Windows Explorer get scrambled around depending on what you used last, and this kind of behavior makes it usually faster to just start typing in what you want into search. I don't really mind this, as it reminds me of using a PC pre-Windows 3.1 (and spelling counts too because it's not as good as Google in trying to decipher misspellings).


Is there a third party Classic Shell like there was for Win8?
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bfg-9000
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 4:27 pm

Classic Shell itself works in Win 10 and fixes Windows Explorer too.

However there's so much screen real estate these days that you could just put the icons on the desktop and use it like Windows 3.1 or Palm OS
 
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 4:37 pm

FireGryphon wrote:
Is there a third party Classic Shell like there was for Win8?

Classic Shell still exists, but went out of dev and was returned to SourceForge in December 2017. The sole dev simply couldn't keep up with the pace of change in Win10.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
BIF
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 4:48 pm

bfg-9000 wrote:
Classic Shell itself works in Win 10 and fixes Windows Explorer too.

However there's so much screen real estate these days that you could just put the icons on the desktop and use it like Windows 3.1 or Palm OS


I still use Fences, by Stardock to manage my desktop icons. Works very well and is easy to configure.
 
David
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:08 pm

Windows 10 is fine. At t his point the issues are way overblown.
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bfg-9000
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:10 pm

That does make it look like Win 3.1/NT 3.1! Stardock also has their own Start Menu fixer in Start10, and the other notable Win 8 Start Menu that has been updated for Win 10 is StartIsBack. Both are payware and I've never tried them.

The rolling release every-6-months update schedule for major Windows changes is proving to be hard on everyone. Hopefully by Jan 14, 2020 things will have settled down some.
 
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:40 pm

FireGryphon wrote:
Complaining has died down, but that doesn't mean the security concerns are gone, just that you need to know how to turn off the right features to make the OS 'safe'. My impression that once you get that under control, it's just another version of Windows. Irrespective of all that, if you need to live in that ecosystem, there isn't really a choice, is there?

"it's just another version of Windows" - that is what I feel.

It is basically the same as Windows 2000. M$ has no creative spark.
 
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:10 pm

 
Captain Ned
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:24 pm

End User wrote:
It is basically the same as Windows 2000. M$ has no creative spark.

Because they still support 3.5mm jacks?? Oh, and M$ is ever so triste and passé.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
synthtel2
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:39 pm

I'm in the same situation, using Arch for almost everything but needing Windows around for work (and being able to run a few games that won't on Linux or via Wine is nice, but with Wine 3 supporting DX10/11, I'd probably ditch Windows entirely again if not for work). With 1709, it's gotten to being at least a bit of a fair fight.

* The privacy issues remain a major factor for me.

* Windows just works 99% of the time, but if something does go off the rails, I know I'm in for a bad day. Linux just works 98% of the time, but it gives me the freedom and documentation to fix whatever it can throw at me. When fixed, it also tends to stay fixed a lot better than Windows.

* 1709's update throttling is a massive improvement over 1703 and earlier, but Windows is still a whole lot less respectful of bandwidth (and other resources) than Linux. I've only got either a 1.5 Mbit or 4 Mbit downlink, and trying to get Windows and gaming to coexist on that is still a pain sometimes. On the other side of that coin, the Windows desktop has noticably (10-15 millis? 144 Hz, so it isn't going to be a frame delay) lower latency than X11 + libinput + Nvidia proprietary (non-libinput seems better and AMDGPU seems better), and doesn't have to deal with pulseaudio.

* As a concise bullet point in case you don't care to read the rant below, Windows' UI feels really slow and awkward compared to an environment properly customized to fit your workflow, and Linux allows that customization far more easily than Windows. Windows' UI also just fumbles critical things unreasonably often; recently when trying to fix something trivial on a friend's system, I actually had to go find the old-school control panel's executable *using a file manager* because it had inexplicably disappeared from every other method to access it, including searches. In Windows' favor, Gnome 3 makes dwm/explorer look like some kind of divine inspiration in comparison, and Gnome 3 is likely as not what you'll get if throwing darts at a board to pick a Linux distro.

* <rant> I don't understand how people navigate Windows' UI in a timely manner. Let's say I want to open some program; this should be a solved problem. In Linux, I've configured that menu key nobody ever uses to open a terminal, so it's menu key -> type first few chars of program name -> tab complete -> enter. With virtual desktop abuse, the extra terminals left hanging around are no problem, and winkey+[number] to go straight to a desktop makes virtual desktop abuse easy. In Windows, the equivalent launch sequence is winkey -> type first few chars of program name -> wait for search to figure out what programs or other things might match -> select the right one -> press enter. The waiting takes as long as the entire launch sequence on Linux even on a fast machine, typing the whole program name doesn't solve anything because the search is janky, failing to wait sometimes opens Edge+Bing searching for whatever it is you typed instead of doing anything locally, and winkey+R isn't a good enough substitute because it just doesn't know what all the things I might want to run are. So the pseudo-CLI way is a bust, what about pinning things to the taskbar? If it still worked like it did in XP that'd be fine, but now running programs take the same space as quick-launch items, and launching multiple instances takes two clicks with precise aiming between them on top of the initial wait thrown in there because I don't really want a taskbar taking up my screen space all the time. Desktop icons? To access them without minimizing windows requires more virtual desktop abuse, virtual desktops aren't nearly as nice on Windows as Openbox, and the process (including mouse aiming) still takes longer than what I do on Linux. This is a fairly trivial example that doesn't waste that much time, but Windows is packed full of these little annoyances - on average, interactions with Windows probably take me at least 50% more time than it would to do the same thing in Linux. </rant>
 
The Egg
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:43 pm

It's a bit obnoxious to initially set up, especially if you're using mutiple accounts. You will need to go through each area of the "Settings" with a fine-tooth comb, and disable almost everything, some of which can be buried under several layers, or require an arcane set of clicks to access (such as turning off "Fast Startup"). Basically, everything is going to be defaulted to the opposite of how you would want it. While you're doing this, the Windows Store will be frantically installing multiple freemium games, along with Skype, Get Office, Spotify, some PDF thing, and probably a few I'm forgetting.

The entire process needs to be repeated any time you create an additional user account. This includes removal of the Microsoft Store apps, which will be force-installed again upon first login. Very tedious and annoying. The automatic updates haven't caused any real problems for me thus-far, though if I were still performing large encoding jobs, I might feel differently. I'm actually fine with automatic updates; what I take issue with is automatic system restarts which don't allow the user to finish/save work. Rebooting the system should require user-interaction, and the user should be able to delay it for up to 24hrs so that work can be completed. Any installation of drivers should also require approval by the user. If MS thinks this is too much for the average user, bury some options to enable it (they have no problems doing this for everything else).

All of this said, once you've gotten through the initial setup, toggled just about every setting, and are no longer adding user accounts, W10 is generally okay.
 
LostCat
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 6:46 pm

bfg-9000 wrote:
That said, with each version upgrade Microsoft has been systematically removing the real gems in the UI like the right-click-on-the-Start-button shortcut to Programs and Features, which forces you to wade through the corresponding useless Metro App version to get to the more powerful Control Panel version.

More powerful how? You lost me there. (Hell, for people who really think that there's an easy link to Programs and Features on the right side of the Apps and Features page. Though I can't see any reason one would want to use it.)
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whm1974
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:00 pm

LostCat wrote:
bfg-9000 wrote:
That said, with each version upgrade Microsoft has been systematically removing the real gems in the UI like the right-click-on-the-Start-button shortcut to Programs and Features, which forces you to wade through the corresponding useless Metro App version to get to the more powerful Control Panel version.

More powerful how? You lost me there. (Hell, for people who really think that there's an easy link to Programs and Features on the right side of the Apps and Features page. Though I can't see any reason one would want to use it.)

So Metro is still part of Windows 10????
 
synthtel2
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:05 pm

whm1974 wrote:
So Metro is still part of Windows 10????

Yes, but it isn't nearly as bad as in Win 8.0. At this point it's mostly just a bit of benign multiple-personality UI, which you're probably already used to as a Linux user. The store and other aspects like that are mostly avoidable.
 
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:07 pm

synthtel2 wrote:
In Linux, I've configured that menu key nobody ever uses to open a terminal, so it's menu key -> type first few chars of program name -> tab complete -> enter. With virtual desktop abuse, the extra terminals left hanging around are no problem, and winkey+[number] to go straight to a desktop makes virtual desktop abuse easy.

We seem to think along similar lines. I use WinKey+Alt+T to launch terminal windows, and Ctrl+Alt+[number] to go straight to a desktop. I may adopt your "Menu Key" trick though, as that's even more straightforward!

I also configured Ctrl+WinKey+Alt+T to launch a double-width terminal window, since I found myself doing the "launch terminal window, then resize to make it approximately double-width" thing really frequently, and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-[number] sends the current window to the specified desktop (great for rearranging which windows are on each desktop on the fly).
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
whm1974
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:12 pm

synthtel2 wrote:
whm1974 wrote:
So Metro is still part of Windows 10????

Yes, but it isn't nearly as bad as in Win 8.0. At this point it's mostly just a bit of benign multiple-personality UI, which you're probably already used to as a Linux user. The store and other aspects like that are mostly avoidable.

Well I use Xfce which is fairly straightforward, and runs well.
 
The Egg
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:20 pm

LostCat wrote:
bfg-9000 wrote:
That said, with each version upgrade Microsoft has been systematically removing the real gems in the UI like the right-click-on-the-Start-button shortcut to Programs and Features, which forces you to wade through the corresponding useless Metro App version to get to the more powerful Control Panel version.

More powerful how? You lost me there. (Hell, for people who really think that there's an easy link to Programs and Features on the right side of the Apps and Features page. Though I can't see any reason one would want to use it.)

I don't know if it technically has more features, but the legacy Control Panel version does have many more sorting options (customizable columns), and is much less disorienting to me. With default view settings/scaling on a 1080p display, I can see 40 items per screen under legacy "Programs and Features", but only 16 under the metro variant.
 
synthtel2
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:44 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I also configured Ctrl+WinKey+Alt+T to launch a double-width terminal window, since I found myself doing the "launch terminal window, then resize to make it approximately double-width" thing really frequently,

There's a good idea I may have to try! For short-lived or launcher terminals, 80*24 or maximized are fine options, but being able to quickly tile terminals of certain sizes onto particular parts of desktops could definitely be handy. I wonder what options Openbox has for speccing window placement? *Goes to read some docs*

whm1974 wrote:
Well I use Xfce which is fairly straightforward, and runs well.

I was thinking more along the lines of GTK versus Qt; the average system will be heavy on GTK programs but probably have Qt showing up here or there, and even the most dedicated KDE fans will probably have some GTK programs around. Making the two of them look and feel identical is non-trivial, and that's without bringing other UI toolkits or programs that do their own thing (browsers) into it.
 
LostCat
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:46 pm

whm1974 wrote:
So Metro is still part of Windows 10????

Technically, there aren't really Metro apps. But apps can certainly use it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)
It's being slowly replaced by Fluent Design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_Design_System
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 7:59 pm

synthtel2 wrote:
* The privacy issues remain a major factor for me.

But isn't that why Microsoft is actually releasing a tool that will allow you to look at the telemetry that you are sending back to them, since they seem pretty commited to be transparant about the whole thing.

In my world, there are much worse things out there to be worried about. And I'm working wihin the security field. There are just some things basically not worth wasting energy caring about when there are so many other things that are infinitely worse you want to get look into getting rid of.
 
ludi
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:21 pm

bfg-9000 wrote:
That does make it look like Win 3.1/NT 3.1!

It's particularly useful for systems that undergo frequent resolution changes (laptops, and systems accessed remotely). A former coworker started using it when he got tired of his desktop icons jumping around.
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synthtel2
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:30 pm

Aphasia wrote:
But isn't that why Microsoft is actually releasing a tool that will allow you to look at the telemetry that you are sending back to them, since they seem pretty commited to be transparant about the whole thing.

In my world, there are much worse things out there to be worried about. And I'm working wihin the security field. There are just some things basically not worth wasting energy caring about when there are so many other things that are infinitely worse you want to get look into getting rid of.

If they were committed, they'd have either done that or allowed it to be properly disabled a long time ago. There certainly are much (much much) worse things for average consumers to be worried about, but I've mostly already gotten rid of those, and have substantial awareness of and control over the remaining ones.

If I relax my standards to be closer to average, Win10's technical activities at present don't look that obnoxious, but last I knew their EULA still was.
 
whm1974
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:31 pm

ludi wrote:
bfg-9000 wrote:
That does make it look like Win 3.1/NT 3.1!

It's particularly useful for systems that undergo frequent resolution changes (laptops, and systems accessed remotely). A former coworker started using it when he got tired of his desktop icons jumping around.

Does Microsoft even listens to it's user base anymore?
 
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Re: How bad is Windows 10 Really?

Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:39 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
End User wrote:
It is basically the same as Windows 2000. M$ has no creative spark.

Because they still support 3.5mm jacks?? Oh, and M$ is ever so triste and passé.

Hit a nerve I see.
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