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

[rikkinho]

well

windows 8 will die fast with this

[Adarion]

A lot of marketing.
Anybody anything about the downsides? DRM? Cloud is mandatory? MS accounts? Does not allow any other OS on the same HW? Forces "secure boot" to be active? Programs only form an "app store"? MS controls all your programs and data remotely? Come one, I'm sure there is even more of that than enigmatic improvements in the kind of "oh, we're scared of mantle so let's say (up to) 50%".

[Luke_Wolf]

Wow! After spending thousands of dollars over the years, I never imagined that MS would ever allow free upgrades. In the past all upgrade editions cost 50 bucks less than retail editions. For me that's the biggest news.

EDIT: Windows Vista and Windows 8 must have scared them

Honestly it makes sense for them to go this route. Here's the thing, almost nobody upgrades from one windows release to another, as a result they're likely making a very minimal amount of money off of upgrade SKUs. Meanwhile if they allow free upgrades then it becomes much easier for them to push new technology faster, as opposed to having to deal with legacy for forever like they did with XP. So for example now this incentivises a shift to Dx12, and towards an environment that supports metro apps and their own steam competitor.

Overall it's a smart move for Microsoft that comes at minimal cost for significant gain on their side of things.

[duby229]

....................
5) No one uses Vista so it can be ignored

That's what I think scared them. Windows 8 is in the same boat imo.

I can't imagine any other reason for this move.

[duby229]

Honestly it makes sense for them to go this route. Here's the thing, almost nobody upgrades from one windows release to another, as a result they're likely making a very minimal amount of money off of upgrade SKUs. Meanwhile if they allow free upgrades then it becomes much easier for them to push new technology faster, as opposed to having to deal with legacy for forever like they did with XP. So for example now this incentivises a shift to Dx12, and towards an environment that supports metro apps and their own steam competitor.

Overall it's a smart move for Microsoft that comes at minimal cost for significant gain on their side of things.

Yeah, I agree with you, but I'm not sure if MS does. My guess is they are afraid of adoption weakness. This would strengthen adoption.

The rest of it is just the bonuses of strong adoption.

[torsionbar28]

No not on Windows, their turnaround time is the same as it's always been, if you ignore the long dry spell that was XP, Microsoft releases a new windows about every 3 years. Now Visual Studio has sped up, and they're trying to speed up Office releases through Office 365, but not Windows.

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.

[Riotta]

I don't know if You noticed, but... there were plenty of penguins during this event, f.e. guy with the Christmas penguin sweater on picture and animated Bing page with bunch of penguins .

[Xaero_Vincent]

Looks like Windows 10 is shaping up to be a good release. I already have Windows 8.1 on my laptop and often use In-Home Streaming to stream Metro apps and the Win 8 desktop to my Arch Linux system. I've tried the Win 10 Consumer Preview, hopefully there will be a new preview released to try out Cortana and the other features.

Couple questions come to mind...

Will Wine be upgraded to support Metro apps and app download integration with the Windows store on Linux?

Will Linux desktop get something comparable to Cortana or Siri?

[sireangelus]

Thats easy to do when there is so little changed in each release.

...because, adding a whole new interface, api , reducing the (still large!) footprint of the os at each release, augmenting the driver plug and play functionality, a completely new usb3.0 stack, revising the interface 3 times, making the same code run fast and without lags on a dual 1.0 ghz 512mb device, creating cortana, dx12, complete and seamless onedrive integration is " so little ".

Don't get me wrong: i find linux wonderful for small offices, servers, casual users that just need a browser and a torrent client, and maybe i hope in the future for games! (if khronos group can release the new opengl within 2 to 3 months the release of windows 10, or we will miss that train also). But some features of office/windows, on mid to large scales, especially since windows 8 on are unbeatable by free software. "We" just luck that focus. The only thing that linux can handle very well ,in a windows kind of way, on large projects is development. But not because of the tools involved, but because we came up with workarounds( i wonder how many lines of code does Linus copy-past from the kernel mailing list every day). Instead of seemingless integrate CLI and GUI on development ,we have to either use one or the other, and in case of large projects to have sharing and communicating features we are forced to do CLI only work (git).
I still have to use CLI to set up / force a x11 resolution if i want to use for reasons a non plug and play cable. All advanced settings are hidden away inside files, and there are no easy tools to work around them. Or if i have to correct overscan and underscan in hdmi monitors and tvs.( the only thing i ever praised in this field is the automatic setup of samba shares on ubuntu. But i still get gray hair every time i have to setup a samba on a centos server- something always seems to go wrong, even when i use an automated script made by myself and copy-pasting the smb.conf i created from working servers.)

So they do innovate, a lot. - and in terms of ease of use they make giant steps on every iteration.

Looks like Windows 10 is shaping up to be a good release. I already have Windows 8.1 on my laptop and often use In-Home Streaming to stream Metro apps and the Win 8 desktop to my Arch Linux system. I've tried the Win 10 Consumer Preview, hopefully there will be a new preview released to try out Cortana and the other features.

Couple questions come to mind...

Will Wine be upgraded to support Metro apps and app download integration with the Windows store on Linux?

Will Linux desktop get something comparable to Cortana or Siri?

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).

[duby229]

Looks like Windows 10 is shaping up to be a good release. I already have Windows 8.1 on my laptop and often use In-Home Streaming to stream Metro apps and the Win 8 desktop to my Arch Linux system. I've tried the Win 10 Consumer Preview, hopefully there will be a new preview released to try out Cortana and the other features.

Couple questions come to mind...

Will Wine be upgraded to support Metro apps and app download integration with the Windows store on Linux?

Will Linux desktop get something comparable to Cortana or Siri?

I sure hope nuhi (nlite, vlite, ntlite author) gets something ready for stripping all that crap out. As long as it functions well after all that junk is removed, I'll be happy.