Windows 10 To Be A Free Upgrade: What Linux Users Need To Know

[Guest]

Up to 50% can be 1%, 0%, 3% or 50%, anything.

Nvidia recently updated their driver on linux which featured "significantly faster FBO creation" so if your game only creates (and destroys) FBO's you get like 80% speedup!
I think we can say that Nvidia is now up to 80% faster on linux than before.

[Michael_S]

stability only matters when you have feature parity

Ignoring reality doesn't make for a very compelling argument. The "long dry spell" that was XP was 13 years long, a significant period of time, not something you can simply "ignore" for the sake of making a point. This "long dry spell" led to a great deal of stability and a homogenous OS support environment. That's a big plus, and IMO Linux could stand to learn something from that.

One of the biggest problems with Linux distros today is that they change too damn often. In other words, the support lifecycle for them is typically only about 1 year. And there's no upgrade path to the next version, outside of erase-n-reload. This is most unattractive, both for end users at home, and in a corporate desktop support environment. It's also most unattractive for commercial software vendors who may be considering a Linux version of their application.

I use RHEL for precisely this reason - a long support lifecycle. RHEL6 was released in 2010 and is supported through 2020 - I've got 5 more years before I'm forced to upgrade. And that's a key point right there. Being forced to upgrade. End users (whether business or home) don't give a crap about their OS. It's part of the machine in their mind and it doesn't add any value. They have no reason to upgrade unless their old machine "dies" or they are forced into it for end of life reasons. Remember, people were *happy* with XP, despite it being a 13 years old OS.

The problem is that Linux Desktop users want to be able to do as much of the things they can do on Windows or OS X as possible. I could run Debian stable or RHEL 5 right now, but if I want up-to-date Firefox, Chrome, Wine, Steam (when it's not wiping out people's files), drivers for video cards, and Skype then I need something more cutting edge.

My hope - which is probably foolish - is that things will settle down in maybe five years. The radeon and nouveau drivers will be more or less at parity with the proprietary drivers and up to date with the latest OpenGL standard. Wine will be on 2.something and able to handle almost anything Windows-compatible that you throw at it. GTK 3 and Qt 5 will be mature and there won't be a push for GTK 4 or Qt 6. Anything graphical still in common use will work as well or better on Wayland as it did on X. So I'll be able to run Debian 9 or 10 stable on my machine for years at a time without missing out on day-to-day functionality that people running Ubuntu or Fedora or Arch are getting.

[curaga]

"Cortana, install Ubuntu for me. And send feedback to your corporate masters that copying Canonical ideas is lame."

[Luke_Wolf]

Ignoring reality doesn't make for a very compelling argument. The "long dry spell" that was XP was 13 years long, a significant period of time, not something you can simply "ignore" for the sake of making a point. This "long dry spell" led to a great deal of stability and a homogenous OS support environment. That's a big plus, and IMO Linux could stand to learn something from that.

As stated by someone else in the thread XP to Vista was ~ 6 years, and that only happened because they got bogged down by longhorn and had to scrap and restart essentially, otherwise Windows has always been on a 3 year cycle for major versions. The only time that the schedule has gotten messed with is when there's been hiccups like the switch from ME to XP, and the switch from XP to Vista.

[Kano]

I think MS will allow private use for free for Windows 10+ just because they want a bigger Windows store infrastructure. First they say it is a free upgrade in the first year, after that year they tell you that Windows 10.1 or 11 is a free upgrade or that the period was extended. They copy the Android marketing, create a huge base, sell apps/games via integrated store. Next time they say it is a free upgrade for Windows 10 beta testers, all that is a way to get more people into it. They want to sell services (like Office 365) which cost a yearly amount of money, most likely they will create a limited free variant of it just like the old Office Starter or the new free mobile office. It was always possible to use Windows without buying it (even if you did not activate Windows 8(.1) you only needed to press ALT-F4 to bypass the nag window), now they accept it officially and want to bring you (and your data) into the cloud. Next time you should buy more online storage or whatever...

The new Xbox One streaming is a funny marketing gag to sell a few more Windows 10 tablets, but most likely it will be extended to standard PC streaming, just a matter of time. I would even expect if you buy games with your MS account that you can use it with any system, like not only with your PC but with your Xbox as well if it is a game that is available for both (or vice versa). The real competition is against Steam/Origin right now, at least for multiplatform (without Linux) games...

For Valve streaming is most likely very important too, from Windows to Linux and hopefully soon to a mobile device. Steam(OS) clients could run everywhere, maybe even on small ARM powered devices or integrated into your TV. Like you can get Playstation Now not only with Sony but with Samsung TVs. First maybe with LAN streaming, later via Internet. Steam for Linux was just the beginning I am 100% sure.

[necro-lover]

Valve switch to Linux or die!

"- Windows 10 will have an Xbox app by default on the PC and tablet. The Windows 10 Xbox app has many features like is common to Valve's Steam "

well well valve: switch to Linux completely or die in the Microsoft world.

[johnc]

Nvidia recently updated their driver on linux which featured "significantly faster FBO creation" so if your game only creates (and destroys) FBO's you get like 80% speedup!
I think we can say that Nvidia is now up to 80% faster on linux than before.

I kinda figured that would help in CPU-limited games but I think my performance is a bit worse on 346.

[Luke_Wolf]

"- Windows 10 will have an Xbox app by default on the PC and tablet. The Windows 10 Xbox app has many features like is common to Valve's Steam "

well well valve: switch to Linux completely or die in the Microsoft world.

Welcome back Q, I was wondering when you'd show up again.

[Alejandro Nova]

I can't vouch for their cloud integration, but I seriously doubt ms accounts will be required to use the OS. Encouraged, sure, and probably required for the store. But you can't expect or require companies to set up mandatory employee hotmail accounts, for example. They've got a lot of small/medium businesses out there that have company computers, but don't have exchange. They're not going to start logging in to their PCs as [email protected] to send you invoices.

Regarding preventing dual-booting? Possible, sure, but I seriously doubt it. Dual booting with GPT disks on EFI systems is significantly easier than it ever was with MBR disks and boot sectors. I fully expect them to keep setting themselves as default boot option whenever updates happen (which Linux distros also do occasionally), but that's not the end of the world. They also have no reason to, honestly..

Secure boot isn't a bad thing, it's all in the key control. Through the Windows 8 cycle their requirements have actually mandated that control be available to users (otherwise those pc's are not "Windows 8 certified"), and signing be available to OS vendors. It would be ideal if this was run by an industry group instead of Microsoft themselves, but they really haven't done anything to be worried about with their stewardship yet. Unless they announce sweeping changes to that scheme, I wouldn't worry (It would also likely get them in front of another antitrust suit if they abused their power to lock out all third-party operating systems from all computers).

Programs only through an app-store is also unlikely, though I can understand their heavy push toward that distribution model. It's worked for Linux, OS X, and Android, would help eliminate every app having it's own update mechanism on their platform, and give them a small source of additional revenue. That said, Microsoft's reason for continued existence is backwards compatibility. I've worked in a few different industries, and one commonality is a lot of old, old software out there. The only reason these places keep buying new windows licenses is that these old VB6 apps still run on Windows 7. Even on Mac OS X, the app store was generally pretty openly adopted by developers, and they still has the option to allow local "unsigned" apps.

I'm not a Microsoft fan by any means. I'm entirely Linux based at work and home (aside from one machine that can boot windows, solely for running Steam), but some of the conspiracy theories are rather overblown.

You are confusing Outlook.com/Hotmail accounts with Microsoft accounts. Since Microsoft allows to set up a Microsoft Account with an existing e-mail, it's perfectly possible that Microsoft introduces precisely that requirement to run Windows, in the same way it already exists if you want to have a Windows Phone. So it's not a conspiracy, it's reality.

[Kano]

I could run Debian stable or RHEL 5 right now, but if I want up-to-date Firefox, Chrome, Wine, Steam (when it's not wiping out people's files), drivers for video cards, and Skype then I need something more cutting edge.

Funny, but you can get all that with Debian stable right now. I don't update Wine that often anymore as it does not change much for daily use. With binary 3d drivers your OS does not matter als long as you get updates (i mirror/update that for Kanotix), same for Steam, if it is running once it updates itself in your home, OS does not matter. Chrome adds a Debian repo during install and for Firefox you could use the OS independent binaries with auto update or a nice backport repo (enabled by default for Kanotix Dragonfire/wheezy).

http://mozilla.debian.net

Updating mesa is very annoying, it usually can be done only a limited time without huge dependencies, when you need a newer llvm you can basically forget it, that often needs new libc6, new compilers...