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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems

Windows 10 Launches 317

Posted by Soulskill from the onward-and-upward dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Today Microsoft officially released Windows 10 in 190 countries as a free upgrade for anyone with Windows 7 or later. Major features include Continuum (which brings back the start menu and lets you switch between a keyboard/mouse UI and a touch UI without forcing you into one or the other), the Cortana digital assistant, the Edge browser, virtual desktops, DirectX 12 support, universal apps, an Xbox app, and security improvements. Reviews of the operating system generally consider it an improvement over Windows 8.1, despite launch-day bugs. Peter Bright writes, "Windows 8 felt unfinished, but it was an unfinished thought. ... Windows 10 feels unfinished, but in a different way. The concept of the operating system is a great deal better than its predecessor. It's better in fact than all of its predecessors. ... For all my gripes, it's the right idea, and it's implemented in more or less the right way. But I think it's also buggier than Windows 8.1, 8, 7, or Vista were on their respective launch days." Tom Warren draws similar conclusions: "During my testing on a variety of hardware, I've run into a lot of bugs and issues — even with the version that will be released to consumers on launch day. ... Everything about Windows 10 feels like a new approach for Microsoft, and I'm confident these early bugs and issues will be addressed fairly quickly."
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Windows 10 Launches More

Windows 10 Launches

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  • First! (Score:5, Funny)

    by PaisteUser ( 810863 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:07AM (#50203573)

    First post from a Windows 10 mach..sd..foasfd89&$#(&*$(@#%*Y$H NO CARRIER

  • Windows 10 Sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:07AM (#50203577)

    Microsoft has seriously dropped the ball with Windows 10. I LIKED METRO! Why did they get rid of my metro? When I was growing up I watched Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and they didn't use a start menu, they used metro. Microsoft continues to alienate their users.

    No, the only way to save Windows is to port systemd to it. On Linux, systemd brought a new era of stability and always-on availability to servers globally. Before systemd, I didn't even like Linux. I can say it kind of sucked, I tried to run Aliens: Colonial Marines on my Ubuntu netbook and I couldn't get the setup.exe to open. What kind of shitty os can't run an EXE? DOS can run an EXE!

    Also the lack of an update manager for NVIDIA really screwed me over. Apparantly, it's all updated by the package manager (I read this on stack overflow) but I want my NVIDIA Experience app! It tells me when the latest game ready driver is available so I get max FPS.

    Anyway, Linux SJWs can keep their bullshit, except for systemd which I like. I think systemd would make Windows a more secure and robust OS. I bet you could write an antivirus that uses systemd, that would be really cool!

    I was reading about this new systemd - MongoDB cloud I want to use on our webserver (I am the project manager for a web app. I get to decide what we use and I always make good choices). We currently have this MS SQL 2014 database on Dropbox or something, I want to change that to leverage systemd.

    We upgraded to VS 2015 but resharper crashes a lot, so we're considering sticking with 2012. I think we can make this work with systemd. This one dude uses a Mac and he says systemd is bad, but he uses a Mac so I don't care. I tried to run MyCleanPC on a Mac once and it didn't work, so I stopped using Mac.

    We hired this new old chick (she's a grandma or something) I might fire soon. She wants to use F# for new development, saying it's a more modern language than Visual Basic. If she keeps her zealotry up I'll have no choice but to fire her (If you're reading this Linda, you know who you are). She's also one of those Slashdot SJWs so I hate her by default anyway. I just need a good reason or the government might come after me.

    systemd is the future. The Linux SJWs just haven't seen the light yet. I can see the stack in my head: Windows -> systemd -> MongoDB -> Sharepoint -> ActiveX plugin on client site. I've made my career out of making these choices. I fired a guy last week who said ActiveX should not be used in new development, but I disagree. ActiveX keeps those Linux SJWs from using my site.

    I saved us a ton of money by recommending we use Windows 8 (not 8.1 because our hardware doesn't support it) for the web server instead of Windows Server 2012. I don't think there's a stability difference, and I don't want to have to spend that much.

    Another thing! I have this EXE I run that automatically sets up telnet on my machine so I can remote in from anywhere. It's how I work from home. I tried running it on my Ubuntu netbook and it didn't work. So how am I supposed to enable telnet on Linux? I don't know that it's even possible! Linux SJWs won't admit these shortcomings.

    Anyway, I want you guys to know that Windows 10 needs native systemd so we can web scale our cloud apps.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MancunianMaskMan ( 701642 )
      the occurrence of systemd rants: the new corollary to Godwin's law

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by macxcool ( 1370409 )
      You, my friend, have way too much time on your hands.

    • Crazy as it sounds, I actually want to see a project that converts services.exe over to a systemd-like layout - with full registry integration, of course.

      Why? Well, mostly because it would create such a singularity of suck that space-time itself could be torn, all by the mere act of booting an OS rigged in such a fashion.

  • Now the UEFI BIOS of the OEM machines can be locked using the M$ keys. What do you think of this new feature? OEM laptop=mobile phone?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      I suspect the big change we'll see trusted computing. Features like Samsung Knox but for PC. Microsoft was too chicken to go all the way and take all the heat when they were leading the effort along with Intel. This way Intel and Microsoft have just enabled it, there will need to be other 3rd party software but it will be the hardware OEMs that actually deploy it. Lots of pieces and no one but the security vendors doing more than enabling.

      As far as the general fear of blocking other OSes, I doubt it. M

  • So far so good.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tomknight ( 190939 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:28AM (#50203733) Journal

    Am I allowed to say this on /.?
    W10 is so far not too awful.
    W8 introduced File History and a far improved Task Manager, the former alone was enough to get me to put in on my home PC. I'll admit I had to install Classic Shell to remain sane, but I don't think I was alone in not enjoying the Metro interface.

    With W10 there remain those goodies, virtual desktops (finally, hurrah!) and best of all a non-offensive UI. Yes, it's different to W7 and still a little messy for my liking, but then things do change, and we do cope. I'm not going to move my home PC to W10 for a while, but I'm not totally discounting it either...

    • Re:So far so good.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 605dave ( 722736 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:31AM (#50203757) Homepage

      Oh you're allowed to say it. Just don't expect a totally reasonable response.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 )
      Well, according to the universal laws of Star Trek movies and Windows releases, this one shouldn't be completely awful, so it's not surprising... unless you consider Windows 8.1 to be a major release (which I don't). Windows 11 directed by J.J. Abrams, though, isn't looking too promising.. especially the rumors that the twist might be "Where did my data go?"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )
        Hopefully Abrams learned his lesson and doesn't make the computer screen flare when the data disappears.

      • They call it 10, but it's still technically 9....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bongo ( 13261 )

        You mean the creator of OS/2 went back in time and destroyed planet Redmond, causing a split in the timeline, forking Windows development down a new path of teh ultra shiny and full of lens flare? And somewhere, a very old Jobs is walking around in a black robe, whispering to his younger self?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I heard it won't let you set the brightness below 3000%. When you shut it down you feel like you have just wasted 137 hours of your life.

      • Windows 11 directed by J.J. Abrams, though, isn't looking too promising.. especially the rumors that the twist might be "Where did my data go?"

        Wasn't Data being missing already the plot of one of them?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:29AM (#50203749)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Mod parent up!

    • Wow the Download Tool can't even default to English ...

  • Thank you, early updaters (Score:5, Funny)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:31AM (#50203769) Homepage Journal

    You're a bunch of idiots, but I love you. Thanks for taking that early install bug bullet for me. I'll wait a couple of weeks minimum before I do any installs.

    • You are quite welcome.

      I've been running the Windows 10 Insider version for the last 3 months on several different PC's and the only one that has an issue on were laptops from before 2008 that needed the 32bit only version.

      Beyond that it's been a breeze to run and have had a relatively painless experience testing the new features. Microsoft Edge is a bloat free joy compared to IE and the tiles abominations are shoved into their own corner of the desktop (I can even disable them!), the charm bar is gone (th

      • Are there bugs? Yes of course. Was there a few hiccups in updating/installing? Of course. I don't expect this update to be flawless but I do expect a more receptive desktop with less bloat and clutter than Windows 8 and Windows 7.

        My machine is by no means blisteringly fast and I built it for chump change but I've got 500GB of SSD, 16GB of RAM and eight cores. I give a shit about bloat. In principle, I care very much. In practice, it is not really affecting me any more.

        Windows 7 is so very good I am afraid to leave it. It is not by any means perfect, but I enjoy it more than I ever thought I would enjoy a Microsoft operating system.

        • My machine is by no means blisteringly fast and I built it for chump change but I've got 500GB of SSD, 16GB of RAM and eight cores. I give a shit about bloat. In principle, I care very much. In practice, it is not really affecting me any more.

          So what specs would qualify as "blisteringly fast." Discounting the graphics card, you can't get the specs of a machine a whole lot higher than what you have now. Yes, you can add more RAM but going beyond 16 GB is only going to be helpful for a small selection of tasks.

          • So what specs would qualify as "blisteringly fast." Discounting the graphics card, you can't get the specs of a machine a whole lot higher than what you have now.

            Oh, yes you can. You can buy enterprise-class processors and have assloads of cores. And my cores came from AMD, you could get cores from intel. Of course, you would have to spend vastly more money, which is why I didn't do that. I bought as much machine as I could get for just a few hundred bucks. The MB and case are refurbs, the video card is just a 750 Ti (Might upgrade pretty soon though, nvidia is getting ready to drop another budget board) and the processor is the middle-of-the-road version.

            Yes, you can add more RAM but going beyond 16 GB is only going to be helpful for a small selection of tasks.

            Mostly you

        • My machine is by no means blisteringly fast and I built it for chump change but I've got 500GB of SSD, 16GB of RAM and eight cores. I give a shit about bloat. In principle, I care very much. In practice, it is not really affecting me any more.

          Obviously you are concerned about bloat ... which is why you seem to have the same machine as I do. You future proof yourself against bloat by over-building it up front. Worked well for my last machine, which lasted me 5+ years.

          Me, my machine is about 5 months old, r

          • Obviously you are concerned about bloat ... which is why you seem to have the same machine as I do. You future proof yourself against bloat by over-building it up front. Worked well for my last machine, which lasted me 5+ years.

            I think two cores is enough for most purposes, but since the Xbox 360 you really want at least four cores for PC gaming. My last machine originally had three cores (Phenom II X3 720) and later sprouted three more (Phenom II X6 1045T) and is now my dedicated Linux desktop system. It, too, has 8GB. Now that game consoles have eight cores, it is in theory a good idea to have eight cores. In practice, the new i5 is faster at running eight threads than my FX-8350, even though it only has four cores. I would have

            • I think two cores is enough for most purposes

              Really? I'm surprised by that.

              Over time I've found the extra cores goes a long way to a better experience.

              It means I can be using two browsers, ripping a CD to MP3, possibly streaming through my Apple TV, and still have a responsive system. This may not be 'normal' for most people (which has never been my goal), nor is running the several VMs I always have up with Linux and FreeBSD. But it is actually representative of how I use it.

              I don't ever find myself tax

    • Hey. That's what VMs are for.

      • Hey. That's what VMs are for.

        It's a nice idea, but running on the metal often exposes bugs which you don't see while running in a VM, usually driver-related. While my hardware is pretty boring now from this standpoint as it's quite new and not exotically expensive or inexpensive, I'm still not going to risk it. I wasn't just born on the turnip truck last thursday night.

    • You're a bunch of idiots, but I love you. Thanks for taking that early install bug bullet for me. I'll wait a couple of weeks minimum before I do any installs.

      I too will wait for the first service pack.

      (Yes, I know)

  • We had a preview version here at work, and it froze up while I was trying to change the wallpaper. Admittedly, this was several months ago, and I expect that those kinds of issues have been fixed, but I'll stick with Win 7 as it still works fine.

  • I don't want it (Score:3)

    by X10 ( 186866 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @09:57AM (#50203995) Homepage

    I have a copy of Windows 7 that I sometimes run in a virtualbox. I bought Windows 7, now Microsoft is going to take that away from me and give me Windows10? Can I get my money back? I don't want Windows10, it's not what I bought.

  • Window 10 was officially launched today. I am waiting for SP1 before I upgrade. Standard practice for MS software.

  • I'll wait for service pack 1 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zwarte piet ( 1023413 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @10:09AM (#50204089)
    ...before I even consider switching from 7. For crying out loud, I just switched from xp. I'd like to get actual work done.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • This isn't really true anymore.

        It's never been reliable. NT4SP1 was murderous. You have to wait to find out if service packs will break things, too. Or, you know, test. That's what a responsible corporate environment looks like. At home, you wait, or you live dangerously.

  • Right idea, but a big shift (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @10:28AM (#50204241)

    I've been using Windows 10 for quite a while. The thing that's going to really change on the "enterprisey" side of things is the need to buy the Enterprise version so you can get the Long Term Stable servicing branch, and thus you'll be forced into volume licensing rather than OEM licensing. If you don't, you run the risk of Microsoft introducing a new change in the Current Branch for Business that breaks your applications, with a ticking clock counting down to the time you're forced to accept it. Unlike phones, PCs in businesses typically run applications that, for whatever reason, can't easily be upgraded. I've worked in end user computing for years, and it happens everywhere, in large and small businesses. Entire departments live and die by Excel macros and Access databases. Web applications that are too expensive to upgrade have to keep working. And on and on...

    I think the biggest thing that Microsoft needs to get right is stability. Rolling out new features all the time sounds like a really great idea, more Agile, etc. etc. The problem is that to do this with an operating system, those feature changes need to be solid and not break existing functionality. If they got rid of all their QA staff, I hope they're not relying on Windows Insiders to test key functionality. Insiders are generally not running the legacy junk applications that businesses need to keep supported and alive. Insiders are running their general Office workstations, maybe some web browsing, but usually not legacy applications.

    One of the things from the past that was nice about a definitive "RTM" line in the sand was that the code was declared feature complete, and most showstopper bugs were squashed before the OS was allowed to be released. Back in the day, it was because you were pressing a million DVDs and your customers couldn't easily download patches, so it had to work. Now, the "ship it, we'll just rush out a patch later" mentality is dominant everywhere. The other nice thing was that when Version X came out, features didn't change until X.1 was ready. With this continuous upgrade cycle, I can see some problems. Maybe this is part of Microsoft's long term strategy -- just kill desktop applications and make everyone run VDI in Azure.

  • is the exact same thing they said about every previous release. "They got it right this time", "they finally fixed all the bugs", "it has a few bugs that will surely be fixed quickly"...

    Gimme a break.

    • is the exact same thing they said about every previous release. "They got it right this time", "they finally fixed all the bugs", "it has a few bugs that will surely be fixed quickly"...

      This.

      I'm pretty sure you could copy and paste 95% of the content from reviews of Windows 95 right into Win 10 reviews and nobody would blink an eye.

      [NB. I have been testing Win 10 on non-production desktops for a few months, and I kind of like it. Despite having 20 years of linux experience and being a Java/Eclipse/J2EE "expert" I spent most of last weekend running Visual Studio 2015 on a Windows 10 VM and I didn't feel the need to scrub my skin clean with coarse sand, so things are looking pretty good.]

  • ... or more forced obsolescence ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      ... or more forced obsolescence ?

      Obviously not. Since anyone running Windows 7 can have a free 'upgrade' to Windows 10, there's no chance of Microsoft releasing DX12.

      The real question is whether enough gamers will fall for the 'free upgrade' that no-one will release DX12-only games until 2025, or whether most will stick to Windows 7 until they buy a new PC.

  • I have not used it yet, but have read good reviews. Please free me from IE! Most of our mandatory corporate pages never seem to work properly on anything but IE.
    • No plugins other than the builtin Flash will work with Edge. So no Java, no ActiveX. If your corporate apps require those, you've gotta use IE or another alternative.

  • Windows 10 is tightly locked to Microsoft services (Score:5, Informative)

    by dell623 ( 2021586 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @11:39AM (#50205063)

    The implications of which no review has mentioned or discussed in detail. With antitrust cases long behind them, and a lower market share in a more mobile world, Microsoft would be pretty sure they can get away with it. It is non trivial for a normal user to change default browsers, all Chrome can do is dump you on the correct settings screen. Then you've to scroll down, click on one of those buttons that doesn't look like a button. And there's a big friendly 'Reset to Microsoft Defaults' link at the bottom. You need a Microsoft account, or at least it is non trivial to install Windows without getting one. OneDrive pops up right away.

    The most egregious is the 'express settings' option when you install. The 'custom settings' option is hidden in small text in blue on a blue background in another link that doesn't look like a link thing. The 'express settings' are scary, sending your voice, contact details, location, advertising ID, browsing history etc. to Microsoft and others.

    Sure, the average slashdot user can get around it in a few minutes. The average user, not so much - they'll click Next.

    • I don't think they should count on that. They've been giving Google so much hell in Europe I'd expect Google to pay them back and launch similar complaints about Windows 10. The US government might not do anything but I'm willing to bet other world governments will.

    • No kidding on the "express settings".. Since I'm kinda my neighborhood's "tech support", I've already told several people to be very careful in setting up 10, if they decide to upgrade to it, of course my recommendation is to wait at least 6 months, but I *know* several wanna-be geeks in my neighborhood who will want it on day 1... they're kinda the "oooooooh shiny" type of user...

  • Since MS loves their goof-ball product keys, *how* do I get one if I download the ISO? I have several legit Win7 and Win8.1 product keys.. I understand how the upgrade works if you're actually running 7/8.1 on a machine. It knows you're "genuine" so it downloads and upgrades whichever older version of Windows you have.. But I'm not currently running these copies of Windows, but want to have a copy of 10 on hand *if* I decide to run it in the future.. Anybody know how getting a 10 product key works in this c

    • From what I saw somewhere else, you can give this command to get your existing Windows 7 or 8 key:
      wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
      Then you enter that key when installing from the ISO.

      http://hothardware.com/news/of... [hothardware.com]

  • That's not good. I mean lots of people had issue with 8 due to poor UI choices, but it was stable. I had Vista on my old computer, to say it was buggy wasn't quite right. It was pretty broken from being unsupported more than anything else. MS HW drivers didn't work. You had to hunt them down individually online (if they had one, or wait until one was made)... So for the first year or so, not so good. After that it was more less fine, unless you had to re-install, as it was going to take you a couple hours t

  • Other major features include Error 0x80240020.

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