It kinda depends on what people mean too. If what you mean is a central software repository, where you can download stuff, then nope, Windows doesn't really have that. Part of it comes from the fact that much of the software on Windows is commercial and thus they can't just give it so you. It'd be a store, not just a download utility. However they are trying to introduce that, the Windows Store in Win 8 and as you say, people are raising hell. Not because it is crap (it is) but because evil MS wants to rule all your downloads (they don't). People have raised hue and cry over the idea.

However if by package management you mean something that deal with installing and uninstalling software or other things, and tracking changes, well then Windows has long had one and it is great: the Windows Installer. That is what manages those MSI files you'll see and most software uses it, even if they wrap their own executable around the startup. It is extremely robust, flexible, and good at what it does. It keeps apps from breaking one another, can be used to script installs, offer software from central enterprise repositories, and so on.

So depending on what you mean, MS has it, and you just might not have known it. But as for the "one place to get your software" they've decided they want that and as you say, people are raising hell.

If you run Windows 7, the desktop version is the only one you have since Metro is not being backporterd to 7. If you run Windows 8, you may use whichever you wish, which will end up being the desktop version after you try the Metro version. It looks, well, like a web browser. It has the rather minimalistic interface that Chrome pioneered that they all seem to have now and it looks and works like any other.

You might wish to actually, you know, research things a little before firing off.

Your hobbies are valuable, and his hobbies are worthless?

Oh come off it. I thought in general society was getting beyond the "videogames are a waste of time," thing and I'd certainly think Slashdot would be better about it. If they aren't for you that's fine, but don't try and make it out to be something bad, like it is so much more valuable to spend time reading or playing outdoorsman. Nor, for that matter, do videogames have to be one's only hobby.

For reference, I own more than that on Steam, 165 currently. Sorry man but trying to sell gaming on Linux right now is a non-starter. 126 games is not an impressive number, it is rather pathetic.

That aside with games the number has never been really what has mattered, it is the quality, the specific titles that you can get. I don't want 165 random games, I want the 165 games I have (well ok, I want about 150 of them, some have ended up sucking). That's why I bought them.

Will gaming on Linux get better? Maybe, we'll have to see. But don't try and sell Steam as being some big thing. Right now, there are vanishingly few games available, and basically all of them indy titles. That's fine, but not likely to be of much interest to most gamers.

Yes and Civ 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and all their expansions were not. It is manifestly a PC series. That they released one, cut down, game on the consoles doesn't really change anything. Same deal in reverse with, say, Final Fantasy. Ya, 7 and 8 came to the PC (and the MMOs if you count them) but not the rest so if they are your thing the PC is not the platform.

I was just trying to choose a game series that most people would have heard of so they'd know what I was talking about. That general 4x genre is what I like and is a PC mainstay. It doesn't make it to consoles much, and is not very good when it does because you really need a mouse.

In rough order of importance:

1) Games. I am a gamer, I'd rather play video games than watch TV for entertainment. I also find that the games I like the best are either PC only (like Civ), or better on the PC (like Skyrim). So a PC it is. Well, Windows is far and away the best for games. Any other platform has way, WAY less games. So all other things equal, I'd be on Windows just for that.

2) Pro Audio. I like to play with audio creation and production. This is something I could do on a Mac, though not with my prefered tool (Cakewalk Sonar). I couldn't do it on Linux though, the audio production software there is abysmal, and even if it wasn't all the samples I own are Windows and Mac only, and I do not wish to rebuy them, nor have I found any for Linux remotely close in quality.

3) Price. This relates only to switching to a Mac, but to get what I want, that being a tower unit with some good hardware, it would be monkey-fuck retarded expensive compared to PC hardware. I am not a rich man, so while I'll spend a good bit on computers, I can't afford to just blow money for no reason.

4) Hardware support. Linux in particular has issues with much of the hardware I choose to use. I really don't feel like compromising on that, I don't want to have to say "Man I'd like to use that, but it won't work on my OS." Thus far, no piece of hardware I've want has not had Windows support.

5) Ease of use. Perhaps it is just my lack of familiarity with it, or my somewhat odd requirements for use (like pro audio and good 3D acceleration) but I seem to be able to find an unsolvable problem in Linux rather quickly. When I've tried to use it at work I'll find something I can't get to work that even stumps the Linux guys. I feel like I have to fight with the OS to get it to do things, and often the solution is "Oh just write a script," or "Just modify the code and recompile," which isn't an option. I'm not a programmer and have no wish to become one.

6) It works. I'm not big on change for change sake. Were I to move to another platform, someone would have to convince me of the superiority. They'd have to show me what it is I could do there I can't do now, or how I could do what I do better. Even if it is just equal, I've little interest in changing.

That's my reasons at home. At work, well I'm the Windows lead, so of course I use Windows. I need to be familiar with it and be able to easily administer the Windows servers because that's what I'm expected to do.

True, and I suppose that probably would be what someone would elect to do though it still does involve the purchase of new cable. In general my point was it isn't a case of "just get some faster NICs and everything is good." Going from gig to 10gig requires a rework of your entire network, including cabling.

Now maybe at some point it won't, for physics reasons I don't entirely understand, smaller lithography makes it easier to do a given speed over inferior cable, hence why gig used to be 5e only and now generally works on 5 to the point companies will actually officially support it. So perhaps when NIC/switch ASICs are on the 11nm node or something we'll see 10gig over 5e, but I kinda doubt it.

Can't say I've seen that. I've never been in a home where people did that. I've certainly seen two groups of people watching different TVs, but never everyone off watching their own show.

Also I have a little trouble believing that everyone is going to be watching high bitrate HD video all off of your fileserver at the same time. Particularly when you start talking wireless devices like tablets, which don't have that kind of bandwidth. N has 150-200ish mbps max effective throughput (it has a lot of overhead with respect to the raw rate) at its best, and it is shared among all devices on an AP.

So you are trying to tell me that you have enough people in your house that, at one time, access enough resources on one server to hammer a gig NIC? Sorry, having a little trouble buying it. Particularly since if you don't have an SSD, 15k SAS RAID, or really high performance NL-SAS array in said server, the disk would be the limit. You'd be asking magnetic media to do heavy random access since it would be streaming multiple different files and that is what magnetic media falls down on the hardest.

So if your scenario is truly something you do, and not just someone making up a make-believe scenario to somehow justify why a home would need 5 figures worth of networking hardware, then here's what you need to do:

1) Look at compressing your videos more. If you've ever watched 1080p on Youtube it isn't bad. So, for many things, knock the bitrate down to 6-10mbps. That'll get you decent video and plenty of overhead.

2) Get everything on to SSDs on your server. Yes, that will be a lot more expensive. However magnetic disks can't hold up to that kind of load without going to an enterprise type array and that is likely to be even more expensive. The Crucial m5 is a good not too expensive choice. 960GB for $600ish. That has both the IO performance and iops to handle high bandwidth random access.

3) If that still hasn't fixed it, and I expect it will, get a dual port server NIC. the Intel i350 is a great choice. You want one that does offload and bonding. If you want more, get a 4 port, they aren't a lot more.

4) Get a managed switch. Doesn't have to be a high end one, just one that can do LACP/LAG. Then, bond the gigabit NIC ports together and same on the switch. Presto, you've got 2 (or 4) gbps out to your devices.

Do note this won't fix WiFi contention if that's the issue. There isn't anything you can realistically do to increase that bandwidth that isn't an administrative and implementation nightmare, so you'll just have to wait for 802.11ac on new versions.

As I said, NIC bonding fixes this issue much cheaper. I mean let's say you had 6 devices, each streaming a solid 50mbps. That'd kill a gig port and then some. Ok so right now if you got the cheapest 10 gig NICs and switch on Newegg you'd be out about $3000 and the switch is rated as being crap and you still get to buy the Cat-6a cable. On the other hand if you bought a 4 port gig NIC and a cheap web managed gig switch, you'd be out about $450 and could use your existing Cat-5e cable. In either case, you'd get the bandwidth to meet your rather high end needs. You could do it for literally about 10% of the price (particularly once you factor in Cat-6a cable) and not have a jet-engine sounding switch (which the cheapish 10gig Netgear apparently is).

Seriously man, stop trying to justify new tech for its own sake. It is the kind of thing to get when there's a reason, not try and figure out a way as to why everyone should get it RIGHT NAO!

Ok #1 who does that? I mean that is not a very "home user" application in general. However #2 is gig is plenty for that. 1920x1080 24/30fps AVCHD PH video is 24mbps max. Blu-rays can in theory be 50mbps (between audio and video) mostly for MPEG-2 though in practice it is usually more like 25mbps AVC. Youtube is 6mbps for 1920x1080.

So even with the max Blu-ray rate you are good for two streams. Realistically you can do 4 streams at most data rates. Even when 4k stuff starts to happen, it'll be fine to do one, maybe two streams, as 64mbps is looking like the max for that on Blu-ray (and less on the Internet of course).

Thus where, precisely, do you need this 10gig bandwidth? Sure maybe some time in the future but, well, then get it at that point. Saying "well some day a gig won't be enough!" is silly. That's not the point, the point is that it is NOW.

Also, I'd argue that in your situation, in the unlikely event you needed more streams, a much, MUCH cheaper alternative would be to just put a dual or quad port NIC in your server and do a port channel to the switch. You bandwidth is increased out of the server, the clients and switching hardware are on gig, and a 4 port gig NIC is less than a 1 port 10 gig one.

And if you've ever looked at a NIC, you can see why. You get a modern gig server class NIC and it has this tiny little ASIC on it that does everything and draws less than a watt. Heck it'll probably drive two ports, if the hardware is on it. Then you get a 10gig NIC and it has a much larger ASIC with a big heatsink on it, and perhaps another chip as well. Guess what? That extra silicon cost extra money, as well as all the other related shit. And it just gets more and more expensive as you want more ports, like on a switch, and have to have a faster fabric. 48 ports of gig needs a 96gbps fabric, 48 ports of 10gig needs a 960gb fabric and costs don't scale linearly.

If you want a quick visual look up the Intel X540 and i350 sometime. They are Intel's current gen 10gig and 1gig 2 port cards. You can see a pretty substantial difference in the amount that goes in to them.

When you talk 10gig these days, you have to want it pretty bad to bear the cost. It is WAY more. As such it is very much a "only if you need it" kind of thing. We just bought a Dell Equallogic setup and opted for the 1gig model for that reason. We only have gig in the building, so the 10gig would only be for "future proofing" and it was a ton more.

Also often if you are over a gig, but not much, it is cheap and easy to just bond ports. Have two ports and get 2gig. Cheaper and works on existing equipment. The aforementioned Equallogic does that, the NAS has 8gig out to the client network and to the SAN (the 10gig model has 40gig to each). That can go a long way because it turns out that just because 1 gig isn't enough doesn't mean 10 is necessary and Cat-5e cable is cheap.

For many things you do, you find 1gbit is enough. More doesn't really gain you anything. It is enough to stream even 4k compressed video, enough such that opening and saving most files is as fast as local access, enough that the speed of a webpage loading is not based on that link but something else.

Every time we go up an order of magnitude, the next one will matter less. There will be fewer things that are bandwidth limited and as such less people that will care about the upgrade.

As you say, 10gbit, or even more, is useful in many datacenters. But at home? What the fuck would I do with it? I guess I could... copy files faster from my desktop to server? Well except my server uses a magnetic drive that is slower than gigabit.

And, of course, you get to re-run all your cables. Gig works over Cat-5e, of course, which has been used for awhile, and with ASICs on smaller processes it actually usually works over Cat-5. So you can have some pretty old wiring and just knock in a gig switch and cards and call it good. 10gig needs Cat-6a. That is new, expensive, and a pain in the ass to work with.

Bandwidth is not something where we need "MOAR ALL OF THE TIMES!!" it isn't something we need to just seek to increase at any cost. Rather it is something that we need to have enough of to make it not a bottleneck for whatever it is we are doing. Well, for a lot of network stuff these days, gig is that. It is fast enough that it doesn't slow things down, at least not a significant amount. So that's all you need.

Same shit with BW anywhere else. You find that increasing memory bandwidth past a point with current CPUs is useless. Like with a Core i7-2600 increasing memory speed up to 1600MHz seems to help, however past that, doesn't matter except in synthetic benches. The memory bandwidth isn't an issue. With graphics cards the PCIe 3.0 upgrade did fuck-all since it turn out PCIe 2.0 4x is almost always enough bandwidth, and 8x is more than enough so PCIe 3.0 16x is doubling something you already have more than enough of.

As things progress we'll probably see more uses for 10gig, and thus it'll get rolled out wider. However it is the kind of thing that'll happen as needed, not that'll happen just because it can. We'll upgrade our building when it needs to be. When our uplinks are getting saturated, we'll take those to 10gig. When there is a reason to get it to the desktop, we will. However we aren't going to run out and drop 6 figures to go 10gig right now just for the sake of doing it.

A big one you see in Muslim countries is ways around the "no charging of interest" thing. They have all sorts of special "technical" ways that things get done which have the net effect of being a standard mortgage, credit card, that sort of thing. It is set up in such a way they can tell themselves that it isn't interest, but of course it is.

Sometimes it is more direct. You'll see Saudi's in their traditional garb get on a plane, change to a western suit during the flight, and then when they get to Europe or the US go off and drink and partake in other proscribed activities. Then on the way back they change back, and go on with their orthodox lives. Near as I can tell it is justified with the "Well it didn't happen in the holy land," sort of mentality.

You see it all over, and not just in religion: A group of humans will come up with rules they are supposed to follow, for whatever reason. They will then decide some (or all_ of said rules are inconvenient and try to find technical ways around it such that they can tell themselves they aren't breaking the rules, though they actually are.

It is trying to find loopholes, no matter how you want to justify it. If you like to do that, it if fine, but that is what you are doing. You are trying to obey the letter, not the spirit. Also it is choosing to interpret things in a certain, and not correct, fashion.

You aren't creating or destroying a circuit when you turn a light on or off. A circuit exists independent of current flowing through it. You are just changing its configuration. And for that matter if you believe in the "creating" and "destroying" of an electronic circuit, well guess what? Your oven does that when its timer turn on and of, your fridge does that when its compressor cycles. As I said in no case is it actually creating or destroying anything, but it is no different if you operate a switch or if an automated system does.

As for the indirect asking, you are doing nothing of the sort. Electronics are a deterministic system. When you tell the timer to turn on, you are doing so explicitly. You are giving it a command to activate the device at a specific time, a command it is required to follow in detail if it is functioning properly.

As I said: Your sect has chosen to interpret Talmudic rules in a certain fashion, and chosen to interpret electricity in a certain fashion that says you shouldn't turn devices on or off. I think any scientist would say you are wrong in your interpretation, but it is yours and you may believe what you wish. However you find that inconvenient, so you then try to find technical loopholes around the law you've created.

You aren't going to convince anyone as to the logic of your position because it is not logical, even internally. Now that's fine. You are free to believe what you wish, and operate as you wish. But don't be surprised that you can't sell people on the logic of the situation, it has none. You wish to pretend to obey restrictions without actually obeying them.

It isn't so much the Easter/Christmas Christians. I mean when you have someone that only has a passing involvement in their religion, it is not at all surprising when they ignore some (or many) of the rules. However you see it in the really orthodox as well. They find what they believe to be loopholes and use them.

Orthodox Jews are some of the best examples:

So Exodus 35:3 says "Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day." This relates to Exodus 16:23 which says "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.'" Basically the idea is, as far as biblical scholars can tell, that making a fire was a lot of work (try making a fire rubbing sticks together, it sucks) and the Sabbath is a day of rest. So none of that, you make your food on Friday, rest on Saturday. Remember that we are talking the ME/Mediterranean here, so you didn't really need fire for warmth.

However, for whatever reason, the Talmudic interpretation has decided that electricity is fire. I'm not sure why, but that is what the orthodox churches teach. So, you aren't allowed to operate electric devices on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath), in particular your oven. Well that's pretty damn inconvenient in the modern world... So they find all kinds of "loopholes". You can get ovens that have timers longer than 24 hours. You set them up the day before, and they'll heat up (and down) at the prescribed times. Also while an Orthodox Jew can't go and push the buttons to operate an elevator in their building, it is 100% fine to have a Gentile who does it for you. Or, since elevator operators are a rather unnecessary expense these days, elevators can be (and are) set in to 'Sabbath Mode' where they automatically stop at every floor and open up, and just keep cycling. Takes longer, you have to get on and wait, but you can use it without 'operating' it.

This is real, and it is big. There are plenty of Orthodox Jews that seem to think it is important to obey that part of the bible, but that they can find ticky loopholes and gotchas to get around it and god will be ok with that. I don't claim to understand it, however it is what it is.

On the flip side you'll see some weird stuff like stores that won't let you order on the Sabbath. B&H Photo Video, one of the best camera stores in the US, is like that. They have a big, well designed, online ordering system. However it won't let you order on the Sabbath. You can browse, but if you try to place an order, it won't allow it, you have to wait, it won't queue it into the system. The servers don't get the day off, but they aren't allowed to take orders :).

So you can see how, given things like this, people might assume the Amish would be similar. It is not from dealing with people who are casually religious that you get the idea, but from dealing with those that are deeply religious and seem to care about certain rules, but are 100% fine with going around those rules in tricky ways.

Now lest someone think I'm picking on the Jews here, I just chose the example because it is one you see a fair bit in America. You should see some of the things various orthodox Muslims do that are against the Koran, but they've found a loophole that makes it "ok" in this particular case.

Intel provides rather extensive technical documentation of all their products. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/CoreTechnicalResources.html is the page with basic datasheets (basic in this case meaning a couple hundred pages, their more detailed ones are a thousand). If you truly are as interested in the technical details as you pretend, then go look them up.

However if you are just throwing out technical shit in an attempt to deflect the argument then knock it off. Particularly since much of what you are asking for are the kind of the things that would be of concern for high end dedicated GPUs for particular applications, not for an integrated controller for general use.

For most people, what matters is how fast it is at running the programs they want to use, like games. All the other stuff is for, as Tam McGleish would say "Specy wanks who get excited about fuckin' GPU clock speeds and hardware tessellation and all that shite folk who are actually interested in playing games dunnie give a stuff about." It's all well and good, and matters for certain markets and applications, but those markets are generally not the ones using an integrated GPU. Most people just care how fast it runs their stuff.