AnandTech on the Windows 10 Technical Preview:
Although we have only seen the Technical Preview and a single update to it so far, you can see the potential for Windows 10 and what it will be able to accomplish. It is an ambitious goal to provide a single platform across such a swath of different devices, and one that was held back by the user interface before. With Continuum, it appears that it may be the best of both worlds. Even more exciting is how much more upfront and open Microsoft has been on this entire process, with not just the technical preview but also soliciting and requesting user feedback on the changes. One of the biggest change requests was a simple animation on the Start Menu, and that has already been implemented, so this really is a different world than when Windows 8 was given a sneak peek.
From a technical point of view, Windows 8 was great. However, it was hampered by bad user interface and interaction design at virtually every level. If Windows 10 will undo at least some of the damage done, then it’s a great leap forward.
– Software repositories: in opensource since the beggining
– Virtual desktops: seriously?
– Tablet and Desktop mode: when was plasma desktop designed? Boy…
– Upgrade to new version: home folders + repositories? wow!
And on and on and on…
For years I have been following Mac OSX and Windows and the only thing they offer and is “useful” is… that third party apps work on them (Photoshop… Microsoft Office… VMWare Client…)
LOL, the ONLY thing? You act like being able to run these apps is a minor convenience, and not the ENTIRE reason some of us use computers to begin with. It’s like saying ‘the only thing these other cars offer over mine is that you can actually drive them on long trips.’
Trust me… if alternate operating systems had the high end/professional apps we needed to get our work done, many of us would’ve jumped ship a long time ago. On the other hand, with apps like Adobe Creative now able to be run through the cloud, I don’t think this is going to be as huge of an issue going forward. However, this probably won’t make much of a difference to the open source crowd if we’re using a Free operating system on our desktops and then connecting to a proprietary one in the cloud.
It’s a *MAJOR* inconvenience.
Following your car analogy: I choose a car because I like what it offers not because it’s the only one able to drive in that specific road ( the fact that this is impossible to happen is what I would love to see in OSs)
No, it won’t. These people won’t be satisfied until every single thing in the world is open sourced which, of course, means satisfaction for them in this lifetime is rather unlikely. Never mind that you need to get your work done. Your using proprietary software, you’re evil. I’ve actually been treated this way in the foss crowd before.
You know its going to be a good comment when starts with this.
You ain’t the only one there. Open-source fanatics and their antics aren’t really all that different from religious fanatics, what with the “I’m holier than thou” – attitude, naming and blaming people and the constant shaming of other for not doing exactly what these fanatics want.
I’ve been quite happy with Win8.1. It’s fast and stable and all my hardware and software works on it. I wouldn’t use Linux or other F/OSS OS on the desktop even if I was offered money for it; at least on Linux there’s always something breaking, something needing fiddling, it’s just too much of a mess for me to bother with. It’s great on servers, but on the desktop I want stuff working.
What’s wrong in using that great server OS on the desktop?
For my Linux dev needs, I use CentOS. The same OS is my target OS in the Server world.
Stable, long life (not all change every 6 months) and the big plus point (IMHO) is that CentOS 6 runs Gnome2.
If it does everything you need it to do and you don’t have any major issues with it, nothing. But that isn’t the case for some of us.
Oh, you mean like Windows NT 4.0, where the “server” and the “workstation” were differentiated by two registry keys?
Or how Windows XP was based on Server 2003?
While I’m being somewhat facetious, my personal opinion is that I don’t want my server optimizing my desktop experience, or my desktop prioritizing file sharing.
Yes, Linux allows tweaks for that, and in some cases, optimized kernels to make those tweaks easier, but they’re two different user experiences, so really, should they be the same OS? Or just very similar OS’s?
I deploy RedHat/CentOS for both servers and desktops at work, but the deployments are very different in nature.
Windows XP was not based on Windows 2003, the little used, hardly noticed XP 64 was, but XP itself was based on well, XP
Go look up “Neptune”, “Odyssey” and “Whistler”– Neptune was Windows 98 + the NT kernel, Odyssey was intended to be Win 2k with a better interface.
Ultimately, both got dropped for “Whistler”, a combined platform that was released first as XP, then later with server functionality, as Server 2003. But XP and 2003 are from a common code branch.
Similar code branch, but not identical.
Windows XP is NT 5.1, Windows Server 2003 is NT 5.2, as is Windows XP 64-bit. They are different operating systems.
Similar, but not the same.
I use Linux on the desktop for the same reason: clean, simple, low maintenance and something the kids can’t break. I don’t have time for fiddling or managing software updates. I’d rather the system did all that itself.
you do realize you were complaining about other people’s fanaticism, and then proceeded to expose you own fanaticism in the next paragraph. Right? 😛
Edited 2014-11-21 18:18 UTC
Uh, how am I being fanatical? Do I go around trying to “convert” people to this OS or that OS? Or jump in on every news article bashing anything than my chosen one? I even admit to using Linux on my servers, so I fail to see the fanaticism you’re referring to.
I can’t help it that I have a bunch of bad experiences with Linux on the desktop, what with upgrades going bollocks and rendering the system unbootable all of a sudden, or this or that application breaking for no seemingly good reason, or how about the recent troubles I had with trying a few different DEs:
(copypaste from my G+-post)
Unity is really, really slow just in general and there’s not much one can do about it. I tried KDE, but there’s apparently a years-old bug in kded4 that causes it leak memory like a sieve; my system slowed down to crawl and I found out kded4 was using nearly 16GB of RAM! I tried all the solutions I could find online, but nothing worked, so I had no choice but to abandon KDE, too. Now I tried Mate and, well, mate-settings-daemon ended up using 100% CPU. Luckily it could be fixed as per http://forums.mate-desktop.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2094 , but how’s an Average Jane supposed to know about such? They’ll just wonder why their system runs so hot and slow.
I ain’t saying Windows ain’t without its own share of problems and it definitely is inferior in my experience on servers, but I’ve had less trouble with it on the desktop than with Linux.
Edited 2014-11-21 18:32 UTC
“ I wouldn’t use Linux or other F/OSS OS on the desktop even if I was offered money for it; at least on Linux there’s always something breaking, something needing fiddling, it’s just too much of a mess for me to bother with. ” Perhaps, there are cultural differences at play? Where I come from that does not pass as being very “open minded” speech.
Anyhow, the thing is that I am browsing this site, from a backup desktop running linux w/o any problem, while fixing my win 8.1 laptop that just got borked after a system update messed up big time yesterday.
I was just amused by the pharisaicalness in your post, given how I’m experiencing just the opposite. That’s all.
Cheers
Edited 2014-11-21 20:58 UTC
Then you use the wrong distro
I have some co workers that use Mint and updates make things crash pretty often.
Try using the same system that you use for servers, but adding whatever you need to make it a desktop system.
I prefer debian. I use testing/unstable for desktop/laptop and stable for server.
Works very very well. I never have any problems with stability or updates crashing things.
I don’t know what you are doing wrong, I use a Linux (Ubuntu) and don’t ever have this problem. In fact I live in China at the moment, all my family apart from my father use Linux. Because I know when I come back to the UK, the systems will be working as I left them apart from my fathers PC which will be fu**ed and full of maleware.
Edited 2014-11-21 23:16 UTC
+1 from me. I simply would not use Windows at all if I didn’t need to run 3rd party apps. Unfortunately I do, hence I have Windows in a VM, or sometimes I use Wine.
I know that some FOSS purists will say that I’m trading in my Freedom for convenience, but it not “just” convenience it’s for work. Possibly proprietary software inherently is evil, but so is work.
I also note that some companies such as Adobe are utterly committed to supporting only windows as a way of insuring its and their survival, I suppose they will also try and support their applications in a proprietary only cloud.
Edited 2014-11-21 06:41 UTC
Hey, if you don’t like it, don’t use it, but many people are interested in 10, I am, and the first post being so content free, and dare I say useless just clutters up the discussion.
Another one that never used tarballs and BBS.
The first time I compiled a local copy of ‘rn’, and ran across “configure ; make”, I sat there staring at the screen for several minutes in awe.
Previously, I’d always had to dive into the .h files to make changes so it would run on HPUX, and the idea that someone had built a framework that would do the work automatically blew my mind.
For that matter, it’s been years since I’ve heard the phrase “RPM Hell”… but I remember when it was a common occurrence.
Actually, I did.
My sentence was wrong, obviously. However, the point was that package management has been in linux (or BSD) for so long that I barely remember having to mess around with that.
I noticed that in the latest build, File Explorer still doesn’t have tabs, despite it being the #1 most requested feature on their site the last time I checked. For those who have to work in locked down, corporate environments and can’t install 3rd party apps/addons, this is a HUGE pain point.
Edited 2014-11-20 22:37 UTC
Speak for yourself, I work in a locked down corporate environment and can’t install 3rd party apps/addons and I have yet to experience any pain because there are no tabs.
And before you say it, yeah i do real work, yeah I use explorer for hours every day.
I’m sure some people said the same thing about no tabs in IE6 back in the day. Just because 4 or 5 of you can get by without any pain doesn’t mean the rest of us can.
How long does it take for finder to get any updates?
An animation on the start menu was implemented. I’m sure we’ll all sleep better knowing that useful features get pushed back for that.
I just want those &%^$ tiles GONE, not crammed in the Start menu.
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8705/09-30startMenu_Page.jpg
Wonder if there’ll be an upgrade discount from XP to 10?
You can easily remove all of those tiles from the start menu to give you the equivalent of the old start menu, if you like. That’s what I did.
Interestingly, despite this, on Windows 10 TP I find myself trying the Modern-style apps more often now that it’s possible to use them in “normal” windows. They tend to look pretty nice and be usable *enough*, the bigger problem is that performance of many of the apps (even the ones from Microsoft) is still utter crap. I chalk it up to some of them being HTML-based and rendered with the poky IE engine, but honestly I don’t know the cause. When even Microsoft’s own *Weather* app takes more than 30 seconds to load on a desktop machine, i.e. 10 times longer than simply opening a weather website, you’ve got to wonder what on earth is going on behind the scenes….
This in contrast to Windows Phone, which is damn snappy even on crappy hardware. I sure hope that the next “unified” version of Windows tends toward making tablet apps as fast as phone apps, rather than the other way around…
Edited 2014-11-21 07:51 UTC
Yeah, when they launched WinRT I thought it was supposed to be an optimized runtime providing the 21st century with great performance. They’ll never get any traction unless a simple weather app launches 10 times faster than Word.
Not sure about Windows 8.1, but the preview would generally be slower due to debugging being turned on so that they could collect logs/diagnostic information.
adkilla,
I’m surprised no one has mentioned windows 10 preview’s tracking functions, actually:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-10-Preview-Allegedly-Acting-…
It’s right there in their license agreement, but most users probably aren’t aware the windows 10 preview does this.
Edited 2014-11-22 08:04 UTC
I haven’t loaded the preview yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb, and say I’m sure the tiles are removable, just like they are in Windows 8.1. My “Start screen” has 5 tiles on it, for the applications I launch the most.
Personally, I think they missed an opportunity to put the tiles on the desktop itself, like the gadgets from Windows 7. They’d be far more useful there.
Why are they still making Windows? I thought tablets were the future and no one used PCs anymore..
That’s what the people who sell tablets want you to believe.
Consumers will decrease their use.
Producers (programmers, artists, etc.) will always use something with a full kb+mouse and accessories like wacom tablets.
For those people, OS X and GNU/Linux are more powerful and friendly (programming in GNU/Linux is far better than anywhere else, for example).
It’s *Windows* PCs whose days are numbered.
How exactly are OS X and GNU/Linux more powerful?
That’s why they’re turning Windows into a phone/tablet OS