Windows 10


So does this mean that 7 can be updated to 10 until July, but after that time it has to be purchased?
I think so. The free upgrade offer is supposed to be for one year after the Windows 10 release.

I still use a Windows 10 VM a few times a month (not by choice) and feel it might be acceptable for people that don't care about the things some of us are concerned about.
Even some of the things people are concerned about are improved by having the Windows in a VM.

My current desktop isn't powerful enough to run a Windows VM but I've thought about it for the future. Looks like I'd have to buy a retail Windows licence to do that - though sounds like Windows 10 is offering free upgrades forever, and if that's the case, a retail licence is a better deal than before.

I'm using a cygwin based shell mixed with native tools as my main environment at work (for a long time, probably more than 10 years already, I guess). Only problem is that cygwin can't Ctrl-C a non cygwin subprocess (e.g. a native java process). That is annoying, but right now it isn't clear whether this would work any better on this new subsystem. What problems did you have?
Cygwin was the one I used longest ago, strangely I can't quite remember why I didn't like it, and it might well be better now than it was. I should install it again and find out...

I think the things that didn't work were mostly about trying to build open-source software, kind of like what happens on the Pandora now. A sequence of errors where each takes me an hour or more to figure out what trival-in-retrospect change is going to fix it, and no idea how many more there are going to be.
 
@HelenF I can't tell which of us is confused about the Windows 10 VM stuff. Probably me. Windows isn't my choice, the VM is. I don't want to ruin a perfectly good computer by actually installing Windows. :p

I got this laptop specifically to run VMs. I haven't cared about having high end hardware in a long time, but everything I had was too weak and old, so I bought it so I wouldn't need to worry about it for a couple years (at which time I hope to only use VMs for fun and personal testing). Funny thing is that the laptop is already 5 years old and works fine for my uses, yet the desktops I was using of an equal vintage might be fine with one Windows VM, or maybe 2 Linux ones. I really think it mostly came down to RAM, but my processor seems to rate higher in benchmarks than the desktop ones (which I did not personally own).

Microsoft doing something free, forever? Hmmm...

Out of curiosity, what OSs do you use? Do you dual boot? What do you need/want to do with your computer? (I am guessing it meets your needs, or you would have already upgraded your hardware.) What are the specs?
 
I think the things that didn't work were mostly about trying to build open-source software, kind of like what happens on the Pandora now. A sequence of errors where each takes me an hour or more to figure out what trival-in-retrospect change is going to fix it, and no idea how many more there are going to be.

Not saying it is perfect, but unlike on the Pandora all the necessary build tools are available through the package manager. For most things I've tried the standard build did work without problems, but there definitely are source packages that detect cygwin and then break the build (e.g. due to expecting very old versions) while a standard linux build configuration would work fine. So you will have more problems than on a somewhat recent linux distribution, but these problems may also exist on the new Windows subsystem (was there a screenshot that showed e.g. uname output?).
 
I think the things that didn't work were mostly about trying to build open-source software, kind of like what happens on the Pandora now. A sequence of errors where each takes me an hour or more to figure out what trival-in-retrospect change is going to fix it, and no idea how many more there are going to be.

This happens everywhere, if the source was made for older libraries, if it was made for a particular linux distro, if it was made for a particular file system, etc... I found issues even compiling a program made in Debian, with Debian, just because it was using some not standard settings.

Cygwin is great now, it has a good terminal and also an xserver for graphic things that you can also use for ssh and x11 forwarding, just remember to exclude Cygwin's folder from whatever antivirus you have, and limit it's access to only the network folders you need, because those things can slow it down a lot.

The only thing it is still missing is an integrated repository manager, there are some external projects that add this functionality, but them can't update it fully, and most of the time, if you have services runnings you still have to terminate them and/or reboot... but this is because with Windows it have limited options...
 
@HelenF Out of curiosity, what OSs do you use? Do you dual boot? What do you need/want to do with your computer? (I am guessing it meets your needs, or you would have already upgraded your hardware.) What are the specs?
The laptop is a Thinkpad X131e from 2012 with 8G of RAM, running Windows 7. The desktop is a P4 with 2G of RAM, running Fedora LXDE. I need to replace it shortly as a few things are too slow now, and Google just discontinued 32-bit Chrome for Linux. In theory I could dual-boot on the laptop rather than buying something else, but I like being able to run both OS at the same time, and I don't like taking my main computer out of the house. Most of the time I'm using a web browser, Anki, a text editor, VLC for audio, or command-line stuff.

the desktops I was using of an equal vintage might be fine with one Windows VM, or maybe 2 Linux ones. I really think it mostly came down to RAM
At a previous job, we had to use a Windows 7 VM on a Windows 7 laptop with 4G of RAM and it was horribly slow. Once we got the laptops upgraded to 8G of RAM (already halfway through the project) the VM ran so nicely you could forget it was a VM. I don't remember what model of laptop they were though.

This happens everywhere, if the source was made for older libraries, if it was made for a particular linux distro, if it was made for a particular file system, etc... I found issues even compiling a program made in Debian, with Debian, just because it was using some not standard settings.
I thought that's what the autotools were for :D. I guess I've been lucky with the things I tried to build on Fedora.

I definitely need to try Cygwin again. And I can compare it with the new thing if I upgrade.
 
@HelenF Your VM experience sounds just like mine. We had times when we needed 2 or more Windows VMs, usually a server and a client. I think we really only needed 3 VMs when we were messing with Linux VMs, or a mix. If one Windows 7 VM plus the host Windows was already nearly unusable with 4GB I am sure you can imagine what happened when I exceeded that. Everything just stopped and I had to kill power after a 30-45 minutes of trying to move the cursor on a very slow slide show. I can't remember if I was stupid enough to use one of my W7 VMs that I gave more RAM to. Anyway, once I got the laptop (Thinkpad X220, btw) with 8GB everything flew (I also don't have as much overhead since the host OS is Slackware).

They finally replaced the desktops late last year with custom builds due to even more demanding software. Funny enough, the person that did the purchasing still got the wrong CPUs. I don't remember what was ordered, but they were i7s, however the requested ones had a letter at the end of the model that was ignored when they put the order together (not sure if the purchaser is familiar with computer hardware since they usually buy other stuff too). They got what they thought was enough RAM, but some things could benefit from more, in addition to a much better processor. When I stopped in there a couple months ago I was talking to them about the software they were using, and how things were going on the new computers. I guess they are happy they have what they have, but would prefer not to wait so long for some things to finish. When I looked up the software I found out that the recommended RAM is something like 128GB! That has nothing to do with the VMs, but I can see problems using both at the same time since they aren't anywhere close to that.
 
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Just found something that can be useful to some people that does not want to upgrade to Win 10:

While cleaning the Win 8.1 of a friend of mine I found out that in the Windows Updates there where the "windows 10 upgrade" checked (he told me he always closed with the X the windows asking for the upgrade), so I unchecked it and did the others updates (also tried to hide that update, but it wasn't possible).

Because that computer had auto-updates active, I rebooted for three times to check if it was installing it, but it was still Win 8.1... anyway everytime I was checking the windows updates, that voice was still there checked...

For like a week nothing strange happened, it did some automatic updates, but still was booting as Win 8.1... until today... while I was using it a window appeared with 2 choices, a big button reboot and install Win 10 and another little link to the left "i need more time"...

BUT looking better at that window, I found that in the upper left of it there where the logo of a menu (the square with three horizontal lines), so clicking it opened a menu with many voices like "what's new in win 10", "how cool is win 10", "win 10 is so fucking secure", etc...

One of those choices was something like "Check the confirmation" (or something like that, I don't know the english translation), and it opened another two choices "reboot with win 10" and "cancel the reservation", so I choose the second one

So, two new buttons appeared "reboot with win 10" and "close", and I choose the second one

After that, I rebooted more than one time, just to check, and also opened the windows updates to find out that the "win 10" entry was no more there !!! :)

So seems like it is stopped now :)
 
M$ said they were going to remove the nag screen etc. Basically if you haven't switched by now, you're not likely going to. Trouble is all the spyware crap that is in 10 is also now in 7 and 8.XX
 
Trouble is all the spyware crap that is in 10 is also now in 7 and 8.XX

As far as I understood reading a lot of articles, they can't put all the telemetry things in their old OSes because the EULA is different, and you have to accept the one that comes with W10 to have all their new services running
 
What happened to 9?

Apparently it was because of internal numbering in the OS. So when a program look for a specific OS version "9" would be interpreted as "Windows 95/98". So by jumping to "10" they solved that problem.
 
I cant say something about the new Windows 10 Update, the only Device whit Windows 10 i have is a GPD Win, a tiny little China Handheld, I play Windows Games on it and use it as a "TV Youtube Watch Device" so expect some configurations to get my devices to run (Bluetooth Keyboard, Bluetooth Mouse, and Bluetooth Headphones) i ditnt got far in Windows 10

Currently, i run Windows 7 on my Notebook, 8 on the Tablett of my Dad, and 10 on the GPD..
 
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