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owsf2000Essentially for those trying to avoid Windows 10 and all the backported spyware/nagware/etc that Microsoft keeps trying to inflict on Win7/8 owners, your Update checking will become much easier very soon!
Starting in October, Updates for those two systems will be the same as Windows 10 - essentially nothing more than a cumulative update. All or nothing.
And that's going to mean if you want any security update at all, you're going to have to accept all the phone home spyware, the forced advertising, and likely nagware for upgrades to Windows 10. And if Windows 10 really ends up as a paid upgrade, it'll probably take the form of forced advertising with a link to where you can purchase the update. I'll place a bet that the popup will show when you start the computer, whenever the screensaver is on, and stay in the task bar down in the corner at all times. Maybe even popping up to helpfully jog your memory at least once a day.
But the more immediate point however is that starting October, you'll have to choose. No security updates, or Microsoft breathing down your neck.
Might want to take this time to start looking into the various Linux distributions. As a helpful reminder I'll point out that many Linux distributions can be run directly from the installer - and the installer can be trivially placed on a usb thumb drive. Just plug the drive into a usb port, restart the computer and make sure it'll try to boot from a usb drive from the bios settings.
Booting from a usb drive like that takes a couple of minutes - it has to detect all your hardware after all, and a usb drive tends to be slower than an internal harddrive. Case in point, when I was fiddling around with Ubuntu on the usb drive, it'd take a minute or two to boot. After it was on the harddrive proper, it'd boot in 10 seconds or less.
If you find an installation that's suitable for you, you can generally just install to the harddrive directly from that. Often times they'll have an icon on the desktop to start it. While Ubuntu is one of the easier distributions to get going (complete with their built in "web shop" (which has both free and paid software.) it'd be important to remember that they're probably the most Windows 10-like distribution as well. Pretty sure they do the same send-searches-back-to-base mentality. At the very least they don't really have a start menu.
I think most people tend to recommend Debian and Fedora.
Starting in October, Updates for those two systems will be the same as Windows 10 - essentially nothing more than a cumulative update. All or nothing.
And that's going to mean if you want any security update at all, you're going to have to accept all the phone home spyware, the forced advertising, and likely nagware for upgrades to Windows 10. And if Windows 10 really ends up as a paid upgrade, it'll probably take the form of forced advertising with a link to where you can purchase the update. I'll place a bet that the popup will show when you start the computer, whenever the screensaver is on, and stay in the task bar down in the corner at all times. Maybe even popping up to helpfully jog your memory at least once a day.
But the more immediate point however is that starting October, you'll have to choose. No security updates, or Microsoft breathing down your neck.
Might want to take this time to start looking into the various Linux distributions. As a helpful reminder I'll point out that many Linux distributions can be run directly from the installer - and the installer can be trivially placed on a usb thumb drive. Just plug the drive into a usb port, restart the computer and make sure it'll try to boot from a usb drive from the bios settings.
Booting from a usb drive like that takes a couple of minutes - it has to detect all your hardware after all, and a usb drive tends to be slower than an internal harddrive. Case in point, when I was fiddling around with Ubuntu on the usb drive, it'd take a minute or two to boot. After it was on the harddrive proper, it'd boot in 10 seconds or less.
If you find an installation that's suitable for you, you can generally just install to the harddrive directly from that. Often times they'll have an icon on the desktop to start it. While Ubuntu is one of the easier distributions to get going (complete with their built in "web shop" (which has both free and paid software.) it'd be important to remember that they're probably the most Windows 10-like distribution as well. Pretty sure they do the same send-searches-back-to-base mentality. At the very least they don't really have a start menu.
I think most people tend to recommend Debian and Fedora.
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no subject
Date: 2016-08-18 03:52 pm (UTC)The only version of Linux I've used is Ubuntu, and that only as of at least a couple of years ago. No experience with Debian or Fedora, so not sure how similar they are, but I would assume they're still not too terribly dissimilar.
Honestly, from what I have used of it, Ubuntu did indeed seem fairly similar to Windows, on the surface. It's just that there was (seemingly) more transparency as to what was going on under the hood, and you had more direct command line control (if you wanted it), rather than everything being hidden behind layers and layers of arcane, esoteric, obscure Control Panel dialogs and settings windows and whatnot, the way it tends to be with most things Windows related. On the other hand, it's kind of like learning a second language (or a programming language) to know how to do most things in Linux, which is why I rarely bothered with that stuff myself and just let the "Linux guy" at our company handle most of it, when necessary.
Or, again, you could just run it like Windows and let the OS itself take care of most of the under-the-hood shit, if you wanted. After current experiences with Micro$hit, I'd be less likely to do that, myself, but it is still an option. (Again, I'm only speaking of Ubuntu. Dunno how different Debian or Fedora or the rest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions) are [and based on those comparison tables, Gentoo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux) looks like it might be worth checking out, too... have you done any messing around with that one yet?].)
As for me, I'm still not quite to the point of abandoning the Windows 7 ship entirely, yet, but I hear the in-rushing water from all the leaks that are springing, to be sure. And the good ship SS Windows 10... I don't see that anywhere, since, as far as I'm concerned, it has already sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
I just hope that, sooner rather than later, more and more game companies realize the importance of making sure their shit works on Linux, since that's really the only bottleneck that has been holding me back from going ahead and jumping ship, especially given how Micro$hit as a whole has been sinking into the sea of proprietary spyware/nagware/malware bullshit lately. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if, over the next few years or so, we started seeing Micro$hit making a bunch of clandestine deals with some game companies specifically to keep said companies games Windows-only. (If not buying said companies outright *cough*Mojang*choke*Windows10Edition*sputter*) But, to be perfectly honest, video gaming in general is slowly becoming less and less important to me, and so as long as my computer is able to run a word processor, no matter what OS said word processor is running on, anything beyond that would be gravy.
As far as Micro$hit's changing Windows Update philosophy goes, I'm already starting to see more and more of those horseshit "roll-up" updates, even now. I vet all of these, same as always. So far, I haven't seen any Windows 10 bullshit sneaking in, but if and when I do, said update does not and will not get installed.
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Date: 2016-08-20 05:26 pm (UTC)One of those updates was a fucking "rollup."