A Linux User's Review Of Microsoft Windows 10

[Blancmange]

I did not see this posted, but so perhaps I missed it.... but as a point of clarification it much easier and faster to do a clean install of windows 10 than what was outlined ... beyond that I have to say that as someone with no horse in this race, although I am using Windows 10 so perhaps I do have a horse in the race, I find most of the comments and complaints here to basically be incomplete. This is based upon the fact that in almost every instance and perhaps all, there are easily found work arounds to each and every complaint. You might say,"but why should you have to do work arounds?" To me these are nothing more than the tweaking I would do with any new OS to personalize it and make it my own,"From the outside, it appears that most of the comments are based upon a dislike of Microsoft and /or Windows which is perfectly ok but perhaps suggests an"agenda" , which again is ok, but also good to know. I don't find Windows 10 to be perfect by any means, but so far, fingers crossed, it has worked pretty good for me, Basically, it seems to boil down to one persons ceiling is another persons floor.

[bug77]

I did not see this posted, but so perhaps I missed it.... but as a point of clarification it much easier and faster to do a clean install of windows 10 than what was outlined ...

Clean install, yes. Buy the thing and install it. The problem is you have to jump through hoops if you have Win7/8 and want to install Win10 anew. Win10 requires a new product key and you can only get it by upgrading first. Then you write down your new key and may proceed with the clean install.
And I'd love to see a workaround to my taskbar becoming unresponsive or to the countless explorer crashes in the event log (they're probably the same thing, but just sayin').

Also, welcome to Phoronix!

[torsionbar28]

Windows 8/8.1 honestly weren't that bad once you learned the keyboard shortcuts for everything. There were genuine performance and power improvements compared to Windows 7 IIRC.

Keyboard shortcuts??? Hey, check out this radical new Windows GUI, it's not that bad if you ignore the GUI and do everything with the keyboard! LMAO

That's like saying Gentoo Linux is suitable for your grandmother, she just needs to learn vi and some bash scripting, and then its not that bad, a perfect fit for the elderly!

[pjezek]

Few improvements for creative working users, very suspective data sniffing feature (can be manually switched off, but really?), MS and MS partners obtain your data - this is why people are to install the 10? The 7 are worth enough...

[cutterjohn]

I've been (slowly) working on cleaning up and organizing my Windows system the past week in preparation for the upgrade to Windows 10. I'll likely wait at least another month for bug fixes and improved support in applications.

Windows 8/8.1 honestly weren't that bad once you learned the keyboard shortcuts for everything. There were genuine performance and power improvements compared to Windows 7 IIRC.

i'd been planning on guinea pigging it on my old msi gt725 that i resurrected and am slowly upgrading, new hdd, win7x64pro, qx9300, and 8GB ram, but the stupid win10 updater went ahead and updated my dell venue 11 pro 7140 after being explicitly told to postpone.... but it worked, but it's also a basic system, newish, few extra apps yet, and intel igpu. doesn't feel much different from win8.1 to me other than the stupid start screen is gone, and the start menu stock is a bit more useful.

[edit]
btw i prefer startisback for restoring former start menu functionality/look. it's not free, but it is fairly cheap and the dev updates it fairly frequently. classicshell struck me as a klunky mess in comparison when i tried it out on a new install a few months back otoh it's free, but for $2 i'll take startisback in preference personally.
[/edit]

[edit2]
there's also a 500 iirc app limit to the win10 start menu. the ars reviewer ran into that limitation...
[/edit2]

[Ericg]

I've never seen in a linux distro a way to restrict programs to access my webcam and mike

That's coming, but the usual prereqs for it are: app-sandboxing, which in and of itself requires, I THINK: Wayland, KDBUS and Logind. All of which are coming / are here already. Its being worked on, but it's a piecemeal effort.

[ssokolow]

Thanks god there is Linux and Gnome.

Dear god, anything but Gnome. (Literally. I've tried pretty much every Linux DE and GNOME 3.x is the one I like the least.)

[Kano]

@bug77

You never get a new product key. As soon as you start the Win 10 setup the hardware hash is bound to a licence. That means as soon as you get online with a fresh install you get the activation, you never enter a product key for Win 10. I think the setup just verifies genuine and thats all. It does not matter which kind of key, KMS keys get replaced by MAK but if you reinstall it would be RETAIL.

[bug77]

@bug77

You never get a new product key. As soon as you start the Win 10 setup the hardware hash is bound to a licence. That means as soon as you get online with a fresh install you get the activation, you never enter a product key for Win 10. I think the setup just verifies genuine and thats all. It does not matter which kind of key, KMS keys get replaced by MAK but if you reinstall it would be RETAIL.

I can see a "Product ID" under system properties. I assume that's the key (I haven't tried a clean install).

As soon as you start the Win 10 setup the hardware hash is bound to a licence.

How does it know you have a legitimate copy? Because it can't give you a license simply because you're installing Windows.

[lovenemesis]

The only gem I can see in Win10 is DX12, which no longer cripple the GPU that much.
Anything else remains unattractive to me.

By the time Vulken comes, that part is no more.

No, I play AAA games on consoles. Indie games works fine under Linux.