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

[sarmad]

Well, Windows is now at least more tempting than Mac.

[sarmad]

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

No, it's not lame. It's Canonical's fault that they announced an idea that wouldn't be available for years.

[Zan Lynx]

heck, up to 50% also includes -50%, a la vista.

Only people with single-core systems or not enough RAM slowed down in Vista. My Athlon X2 sped up and was faster than XP or XP 64-bit in most games.

There were, technically, ugly hack programs you could run in XP to manually assign game threads on dual core systems. But by default XP really kind of sucked at multi-core. I used to cringe when I saw people running XP on quad core Core2 systems. Such a waste of resources.

[Michael_S]

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...

I know Steam and Chrome update themselves automatically, regardless of the core operating system. But I was more concerned with the video card drivers and Mesa you need to get a better experience playing graphically-intensive games.

I didn't know you could run the latest proprietary drivers with a comparatively old kernel. I'd rather to go pure open source, but if I'm going to run Steam anyway I might as well grab the binary blobs from Nvidia or AMD. Anyway, thanks for informing me of that.

I also didn't know it was easy to run Firefox releases on Debian aside from Iceweasal in the repositories. Thanks for that information too.

Last and best of all, thanks for mentioning Kanotix. I ran it as my primary operating system for a year or so around 2005. Nice work. I didn't realize it - and you - were still active.

[Xaero_Vincent]

wine will never be upgraded to support metro apps- it will lack the encryptions bit, the network bits to integrate into microsoft services, and a lot of other stuff.
Linux desktop will never get something like cortana. The closest thing we might have is google now on chrome. We simply could not have the cloud power, backend, deals with providers sites and enterprises(tracking flights etc).

Hopefully that won't be the case forever. There is a way to download .APPX file from the Windows Store without installing it--I've tried and done it but it still requires using the Windows store.

If Wine implements the WinRT runtime and is able to support installing .APPX files via an "add-appxpackage" program then it might be possible.

[Cyber Killer]

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.

They do change really fast, I agree, but on the other hand recently many major distros started putting out some kind of long term support releases, so one can use that. And nearly all of them (except probably ubuntu offspring) do have an upgrade path to a newer version (I upgrade my OpenSUSE from 12.1... that's 4 releases in a row, without any problems), so that's not true. There is also an option of using a rolling release, so you don't need to upgrade the release ever.

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.

True, RHEL and CentOS with their 10 year support are awesome. SLED comes close (they offer up to 8 years afair), but many other distros get you 3-5 years usually. So that shouldn't be a problem for a user to choose a distro version that will not change over a couple of years.

Also remember - in our GNU world (and on Macs too as it seems) people usually want to upgrade to new version, cause that's the only way to get new major features and software. Only a few apps get backported to the long term releases, like browsers. For everything else you need a new version to be on time. Plus new versions very rarely change into some abominations that nobody wants to use like windows does.

[staalmannen]

OneGet

One of the biggest improvements for me will be introduction of a package manager. Hopefully this will take hold among Windows users and we will see a lot less crap/mal-ware. Win 10 tech preview was actually the first Windows I have installed over a decade and I actually think it seems pretty good (although I do not really use it much apart from exploring the system).

[grndzro]

But Windows XP to Vista was 6 and a half years?

And the only reason W7 came out so soon was because most people were cackling like a madman when they burned their Vista copy.

I remember breaking my Vista disc into as many pieces as I could and grinding them up in my garbage disposal. This was before Vista SP2....and I was a Dell L3 tech at the time....I swear if I had met Bill Gates at the time I would have gone to jail. I probably would have socked anyone from Nvidia too....lol

[spirit]

One of the biggest improvements for me will be introduction of a package manager. Hopefully this will take hold among Windows users and we will see a lot less crap/mal-ware. Win 10 tech preview was actually the first Windows I have installed over a decade and I actually think it seems pretty good (although I do not really use it much apart from exploring the system).

you can use

https://chocolatey.org/

theit repository is already big

[brosis]

you can use

https://chocolatey.org/

theit repository is already big

Nice project. Browsed a bit, remembered the past. Lots of freemiums and tools to "help with malware".
Nah, its still a children's sandbox, should add a "Debian Auto Replacer" to it. That would be an instant profit.