Windows 10 backlash: Which? demands compo for forced upgrades Microsoft has been given a roasting by consumer group Which? over Windows 10 woes reported by users, with the organisation calling for compensation for those who found their PCs bricked after auto-updates. Which? said that it had surveyed its members for their experiences with the latest version of Windows, which was released …
"is this 15 months too late ?"
Maybe not 15 months because it's dealing with customer experience which wouldn't start to accumulate until victimsusers were running it. But the sort of early and ongoing feedback that el Reg provides might have been helpful to their readers.
Yes and no: As M$ are pushing out updates without notification (depending on which version you have) and as these updates can brick or otherwise damage your computer, then it's relevant now, too.
For example: A few day ago my Win10 PC started rebooting shortly after I'd turned it on. didn't matter what I was doing, it just rebooted. I checked the logs and found this was happening just after an update had been downloaded. Not the same update - any update. Further digging showed this was due to a 'corruption' in the update system - which Windows 'fixed' while detecting the fault... but the fault was caused by Windows trying to download and install a new (aniversary) edition to Windows... and to get past that, I had to download and install that manually for the PC to start behaving again...
So no, not too late, just late.
This should be fun. I know several people who had assorted machines borked by the Win10AU, and several others by the forced upgrade to Win10 in the first place. I called MS myself on behalf of one of them; MS non-support told me to try to revert, in this case back to Win 8.1. When informed that I'd already tried that and it didn't work, the idiot said that the revert has to work, so if there's a problem, it's at my end. This resulted in the urge to reach through the phone and punch a MS drone silly, followed by the urge to reformat the hard drive of the machine in question and put Win 8.1 back until the user, or, more probably, I, can find replacements for all her apps which will run in some Linux distro, probably Mint.
Cutting edge games are among the most difficult to get through WINE, and you can probably forget about DX12 games working on them. As for a VM, that incurs serious performance penalties, not to mention, again, the newer a game is, the less likely it is to be VM-friendly due to the need to get closer to the GPU's metal.
But too many apps are Windows ONLY, to say nothing of games...
If there is a choice between carrying on with your business OR going back to using Windows so that you can play a game or two which one will you choose?
A friend of mine didn't manage to stop the W10 upgrade and got a totally borked system. Would not boot.
MS was SFA at helpimh him. So two of us spent the best part of a weekend rebuilding his system to run Windows 7.
He was able to carry on his business the following Monday.
This was back in April.
He's about to give windows the chop once and for all and move to a Linux solution. MS has lost a customer that has been paying them for the last 20 years (since windows 95).
If enough people do that then it might start to hurt but I fear it won't and MS will carry on getting $$/£££ from their customers and locking them in for the next 50years.
I finally escape from the MS camp next Friday. After than no more MS in my life. Yay! I'll be having a few pints to celebrate.
Not just that Win 8.x was terrible, but that it marked the dividing line between Microsoft trying to make most of its money from users paying (if sometimes indirectly) for the products it made to trying to make its money by manipulating the users through the products it made..
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Did you read some of the issues that were related to the update installing itself even when dismissed? Why would anyone buy a SSD or another HDD and software to make a backup when they don't want to upgrade in the first place?
Yes, Win 10 did install itself even when "dismissed", if dismissed means clicking the X of the dialog box that asks whether you want to install it. For a time, anyway, the X did not have the effect of killing the process, so the install just went on its merry way. So how in the world does one prepare for something unexpected? Yeah, I know, "prepare, prepare, prepare + backup,backup,backup". And people have more things to do with their time than to back up every hour.
Why would anyone buy a SSD or another HDD and software to make a backup when they don't want to upgrade in the first place?
Upgrades aside ... it is never wrong to make a backup. Not if you place any value at all on your data, anyway ... your mileage may vary.
'I think you'll find the accepted modern usage (in the UK at least, not sure about elsewhere) is:
"could of had"'
Oh dear. That usage is certainly not accepted by me.
"Could've" is a contraction of "could have."
"Could of" simply is not valid grammar.
Now, bear with me on this one Wilsus.
Up North we use 'Could've had', but if i lived at Downton Abbey, then a case could be put forward for 'Could of had'. Its a question of grammatical context! If i was a posh twat, i could definitely use ' Could of had' in a sentence.......just try it now in a posh accent, go on..........you see? Now try this sentence, 'He could of had a brand new Rolls Royce, but instead plumped for the Bentley instead'. You see, it works doesn't it?
Now lets try up North: (so with a northern accent in your head)
'He could of have had a plate of fish n chips, but instead he had a plate of black puddings'.
Now try: 'He could've had a plate of fish n chips, but instead he had a plate of black puddings'.
Hope thats cleared up things.....or is that, cleared things up?
"Could have".and "would have" etc
This is the conditional form of a phrase that contains the structure of have + verb. As in "We have eaten our lunch." Just as you could never say "I of eaten my lunch" you can not say " I would of eaten my lunch."
So, "We have eaten our lunch" becomes "We should have eaten...."
This is not grammatical policing.
This is about using the same verb phrase consistently across standard and conditional forms.
"If i was a posh twat, i could definitely use ' Could of had' in a sentence......."
No you couldn't
"If i was a thick ignorant illiterate twat, i could definitely use ' Could of had' in a sentence......."
YES! Then you could...........
PS - I not i.............
"Now, bear with me on this one Wilsus.
Up North we use 'Could've had', but if i lived at Downton Abbey, then a case could be put forward for 'Could of had'. Its a question of grammatical context! If i was a posh twat, i could definitely use ' Could of had' in a sentence.......just try it now in a posh accent, go on..........you see? Now try this sentence, 'He could of had a brand new Rolls Royce, but instead plumped for the Bentley instead'. You see, it works doesn't it?
Now lets try up North: (so with a northern accent in your head)
'He could of have had a plate of fish n chips, but instead he had a plate of black puddings'.
Now try: 'He could've had a plate of fish n chips, but instead he had a plate of black puddings'.
Hope thats cleared up things.....or is that, cleared things up?"
Sorry, I can't say I agree. Surely that's just poor pronunciation? Downton Abbey isn't real, so can hardly be used as evidence in this regard.
P.S. When you say something like, "if I was a posh twat" you should really use the subjunctive, "if I were a posh twat." :)
"Could of" simply is not valid grammar.
It is perfectly cromulent usage for the average chav on the street. Except they probably would not understand the last two words of the sentence, especially when paired in that way.
The Grammer Police are out in full today. I now see what happens when you upset a loyal Which? reader. FFS. My problem with Which? is the weasel words timing of this, the day after Microsoft removes Windows 10 nagware? Coincidence?
Its 15 months late and its pointless to suddenly start getting upset about it now. Damage has been done. If Which? gave a shit they'd have backed a prosecution early on (especially in respect of partially sighted/disabled users).
All these tech companies are at it, look at Google's Privacy check up, 31 clicks to fully opt out.
The Grammer Police are out in full [force] today.
The issue here is that using constructions like "could of" is a shorthand way of saying: "I'm a gormless twat". If you want people to take what you have to say at all seriously, commencing with "I'm a gormless twat" isn't going to take you very far.
"My problem with Which? is the weasel words timing of this, the day after Microsoft removes Windows 10 nagware? Coincidence?"
Are you saying MS timed this to coincide with Which?'s publication date?
I kept batting away the upgrade dialog till I could find time to prepare. Then, one morning, my machine forceably shut down and started upgrading. I imagine I selected the wrong option. But you get asked the same damn question several times a day and, sooner or later, you'll screw up.
As part of the installation, Windows 10 inserted another partition which confused grub, and left my machine unbootable. And because I was unprepared, I didn't have a working Linux USB pen I could boot from. Cue, a couple of lost days.
Also, I had no recent backups. Fortunately, nothing much was broken, although a couple of apps have been reduced functionality, and I'm now largely a happy Windows 10 user. But the upgrade was an unasked for shitstorm.
I did two Win10 upgrades.
One was on a Lenovo T550 laptop. Win10 worked, but there were irritations like USB working selectively and the dreadful UI.
The UI was sorted by Classic Shell, but eventually I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 8.1
The other was on an HP Elite Small form factor desktop - it is working 100% still. Installed Classic Shell as well. No issues so far.
Surely testing their code base is tricky. The sheer amount of drivers they support makes very tricky to test against all possible variations.
Admitted they don't help themselves. You could run two identical systems built from the exact same original media and I'd guarantee in 3 months time under the hood both would look quite different.
My biggest gripe with 10 isn't the fact it can go wrong, any OS can and will go wrong at times. You'll hear more crying about Windows than MAC OS/Linux due to the sheer numbers of PCs running windows. My BIG issue is the fact Win 10 is basically one big chunk of Spyware. The sheer amount of information its constantly reporting back is so worrying. I think 8.1 got the same Spyware updates a while back but think 7 might have skipped it. I want an OS that doesn't report back every little thing I do.
"Surely testing their code base is tricky. The sheer amount of drivers they support makes very tricky to test against all possible variations."
They could probably solve half of those problems by not dicking around with the APIs all the time. The rest of the problem is of their own making for "supporting" so many drivers. IIRC, many drivers are self-certified and never see the inside of an MS testing lab.
Then there's the "hidden" APIs that MS make liberal use of to out perform 3rd party competitors. When others discover and use them, MS change them, but being undocumented, don't bother to tell anyone.
Helping people use a pre-installed clusterfuck OS they will be unable to avoid on new PCs is not endorsement, it's accepting the sad reality that most plebs won't (and probably shouldn't) try to replace what it shipped with. It's an OS even experienced IT folk need internet searches to make sense of and we can't all choose to dump the sorry POS.
"Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc.
(1)A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a)he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer;
(b)at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and
(c)either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies.
(2)This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act—
(a)to impair the operation of any computer;
(b)to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; [F2or]
(c)to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data; [F3or
(d)to enable any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) above to be done.]]"
MS forced updates borking machines come under "Recklessness".
Bit of a long shot but it would be amusing to see MS up before the beak for this.
"MS forced updates borking machines come under "Recklessness".
Bit of a long shot but it would be amusing to see MS up before the beak for this."
Sadly MS have the get out of jail FREE card for this one as they say by installing a MS OS they can do what the FECK they like with your PC with total IMPUNITY !
Sadly MS have the get out of jail FREE card for this one as they say by installing a MS OS they can do what the FECK they like with your PC with total IMPUNITY !
Not completely true. An EULA has some standing in law but it can be challenged if it attempts to limit or remove your rights as granted under the law in whichever country you are in. Microsoft have come up against the law for things like this in the past, especially for things like privacy and anti-competitive behaviour.
The issue isn't necessarily all down to Microsoft, though they are to blame at bottom, but you also need to consider the legal folk and the political folk that allow such things to occur. We all know how bought off American politicians are, and I have my suspicions about more than one British MP. The fact that Microsoft does this sort of thing isn't just that they hope to make money; it's also that they are allowed to get away with it by vested interests hiding their inaction.
OK, we saw the EU do a number on them for Media Player and UK Gov has had a go in the dim and distant past for collecting personal data but if the powers that be actually did a decent job consistently then it would be a lot harder for Microsoft and others to do this sort of thing and, worse still, justify themselves doing it.
Trouble is, when those who should be looking for evidence of wrongdoing are too busy coming up with arguments as to why there's nothing to investigate, it's going no-where. The response I got (after challenging their initial "nothing to look at" response :
In response to your question, yes contravening Section 3(3) of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is a criminal offence.
However,
Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is about offences committed through unauthorised acts with ''intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing the operation of a computer.''
Subsection 3 applies if the person is reckless as to whether the act will do any of the things mentioned below
(a) to impair the operation of any computer;
(b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in a computer, or
(c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data.
The situation you are describing does not fit into the criteria above and therefore is not a criminal offence, it is a matter of dissatisfaction with the way Microsoft are going about their upgrades procedure and we would advise you contact their complaints department.
So they don't consider that completely changing the UI, uninstalling programs, and generally borking stuff if it goes wrong is in any way "impairing" the system.
I have neither the time not the money to progress this any further ...
And the EULA can be challenged if it can be proven that it was changed by Microbloat after you accepted it. You know, these clever on-line folks keep changing EULAs made of binary bits. Back in the day, the EULA was a piece of paper or two, and it was very difficult to change.
So... print out all the EULAs that you accept. Or, at least. make PDFs of them.
Sadly MS have the get out of jail FREE card for this one as they say by installing a MS OS they can do what the FECK they like with your PC with total IMPUNITY !
... but what of the Unfair Contract Terms Act, 1977?
IANAL but I think a case could (and should) be made ... not by me, though, it would have to be someone who actually went through this hell.
Being a very long time user of MS OS's and having been through the OS upgrade process on many previous versions of Windows I have tried to use best practice for making sure my data is always separate from the OS, as well as backed up onto an external HD.
On all previous versions of Windows I have always done a clean install so as to give the new OS the best chance of having fewer issues and this has been the best way in the past of upgrading/migrating to the latest Microsoft OS.
Now I personally do accept that a new Microsoft OS will have issues and usually in a reasonable time they will be resolved if enough people have the same issue as to be honest it is a numbers game and the more people that have the same issue the more important it is to resolve !
The latest release of Windows aka Win 10 is a very different beast than all previous Microsoft OS's, there are many issues outside of the issues of being able to install it successfully and to be honest the one's unable to install it are the lucky one's !
I have this attitude because although of this new digital age of ours has many benefits from a Techie point of view, I have a major stumbling block with being data slurped via Microsoft's Telemetry and because this has been baked in at the OS level then although its supposed to be turned off for Corporate clients I would be extremely worried if I was in charge of the IT dept of any Corporate company that was going to rollout Win 10 in any form within the business !
Also as a home user the idea of being data slurped and this includes keylogging (recording the key strokes of the keyboard) so no password would be secure as MS would have access to this.
Now I know a lot of people will have the attitude what have you got to hide ? Well for one this is a very dangerous situation, because not only does MS have access to any of you passwords (When using Win 10) but also the ability to install/uninstall any software that it feels it wants to. But wait it doesn't end there, they also have to ability to do anything to your PC that they want without your direct intervention. Nay I hear you say, but if they can install Win 10 without direct user confirmation then they can do whatever they want, because of the way that Windows Updates are done.
Remember they wrote the OS and therefor they know exactly how to bypass any confirmations that would normally be required so that they can install whatever supposedly security updates that they feel is necessary for them to remain in control !
I will say that they are different than any other OS supplier (Except true open source) and I put Apple Mac's and iPhones, Googles Android Devices and Microsoft's Win 10 all in the same boat together.
There are all trying to lock users into their ECO system, Apple has been very successful at this and so has Google and now it is Microsoft's turn to try. The thing is Microsoft based PC's were not used like Mac's and are really a completely different beast altogether but MS is try to lump everyone into the same group, for example just because one owns an X86 PC with a MS installed OS it doesn't mean that they automatically have an Xbox, but Win 10 users have this and cannot remove it easily !
Many gamers use different sources for software of games, some use Steam but Microsoft's future is aiming at being the one stop source for any/all software via the MS Store (Which they will charge a commission for of course ) under the pretense that they will validate that no viruses or malware will be in this software when the OS is basically the worst malware you could install in the first place !
As many users have found out with the latest Anniversary Update they cannot now switch off completely Cortana which will use Edge and Bing of course.
Anyway that is enough of a rant, it seems that we have at least 350m stupid people or businesses out there and I am sure many more will be sucked in along with MS BS PR as being the most successful, enjoyable, happy OS they have ever released with no unhappy users whatsoever !
Well for one I said enough was enough and decided to use a more secure and trustworthy OS at least for the time being - Ubuntu.
I would rather go against the flow than just be a lemming and if I am wrong then I am wrong but at least I am not a lemming - And so far it has been a wonderful experience, far better than Win 10 was and from all what Windows users were telling me it was going to be !
"Now I know a lot of people will have the attitude what have you got to hide ?"
Do you notice how hardly any of those who keep saying that never bother to unhide stuff like there banking details. In fact the only one I can think of was Jeremy Clarkson and he quickly discovered that he had stuff he should have hidden.
The truth is, of course, that not only do we all have stuff to hide, we're contractually bound to hide it.
"The truth is, of course, that not only do we all have stuff to hide, we're contractually bound to hide it."
Especially if you are as fat and ugly as I am as it would be called indecent exposure and everything shrinks when I am cold aswell !
My (Microsoft as it happens) phone does that. If it doesn't like the word/spelling chosen it offers alternatives underneath. But then when I press send it suddenly changes my word to the first one in the suggested list. I don't know if other makes do this. F*ing annoying.
I 'upgraded' 5 cousins' 7 or 8 computers remotely via TeamViewer (oh yes you could), and then decrapified each to look like XP on-screen (which they preferred). Only one box declined to 'upgrade' to 10, and the rollback was flawless. They had been incapable of looking after their updates etc before, and I really think they're better looked after by Msft now. Only snag was random elderly programs no longer in evidence, but worked OK once re-installed. I insisted on dual-boot to Mint too of course (can't organize remotely), but they nevver bovver to go there.
I installed W10 recently in a VirtualBox just to keep myself up to date with the damn thing. Yes, it works there now though it was a pain when I first tried it that way some moons ago. However there were a few things I insisted on.
1. Make sure that the system is set up with a local account. I notice that the option to do this is difficult to locate but it can be done.
2. Classic Shell. Natch.
3. All options that could be construed as privacy violations were to be switched off. One thing that certainly helped here was a video by Barnacules, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1kGMCfb2xw, which advised the use of Spybot Anti-Beacon.
However I am still concerned that the compulsory download/installation of patches is still a problem here in that Microsoft's quality control is still as questionable now as it was back when this problem first came to light, and patches that brick machines still occur.
Mind you, I've been giving Mint's latest, Sarah, the once over today.... oh, behave!!!
"Classic Shell. Natch."
doesn't fix the 2D FLATSO, though
"I've been giving Mint's latest, Sarah, the once over today.... oh, behave!!!"
In general I like it. However, I noticed that THEY TOO have all of the themes in FLATSO mode, out of the box. I was disappointed. Granted, if you dive into customization, you can get ACTUAL BUTTONS in the title bar, but the fact that NONE of the default options had this, disappoints me greatly.
2D FLATSO non-skeuomorphic FLATASS is _SO_ bad, _SO_ ugly, I can't even use 8.x nor 10 with classic shell, and that's no joke! It's like "bad feng sheui", or a hideous colored paint on the walls, or K&R style code, etc. etc. etc., so distracting it keeps me from getting things done.
I like classic shell, as a desperate move to fix "Ape" and "Ape point 1" and even win-10-nic, but the FLUGLY 2D just bugs me...
(what is it with the MILLENIALS and their "do it OUR way now that it's OUR turn" down'up'grades and that gawd-awful FLATSO look???)
"Classic Shell. Natch."
doesn't fix the 2D FLATSO, though
Unfortunately not, but it does resolve some of the Start menu bother. Reinflating the graphical side of things could be tricky though if the whole thing is still as skinnable as Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 were, or indeed as Windows 2000 was with a third-party add on, then all is not lost. Keep an eye open, it's a market opportunity waiting for someone to exploit!
In general I like it. However, I noticed that THEY TOO have all of the themes in FLATSO mode, out of the box.
I suspect that it's the current fashion. It's a bit like mobiles that are redesigned each year that do very little extra but look different from the previous model. You can see what I think of the KDE version at least at http://mistie710.livejournal.com/131737.html but chances are that I'll still sling TDE (a branch of KDE3) over the top.
(what is it with the MILLENIALS and their "do it OUR way now that it's OUR turn" down'up'grades and that gawd-awful FLATSO look???)
I'm not convinced that it is all down to millenials. Execs want a quick turnaround and low cost, so simplification pays dividends as far as they are concerned. You can trace an awful lot of what is wrong with so many things back to an exec who has little interest in creativity, aesthetics or excellence unless there is a big, fat profit in it and even then they will be looking for a way to cut the cost no matter what negative effects it has on the product or the users. As long as we keep stuffing our hands in our pockets and forking over the money to pay these morons, you will keep getting your "2D FLATSO" or whatever.
The damage is done now. People have long memories.
This report only reflects a subset of the market, not everyone who was forced into Windows 10. The real picture will be far worse and cover all sorts of things like
Lets see what the MS market share looks like in 4 years time when everyone has had a chance to update their machines to a new generation and have picked who's logo is on the new piece of tin.
I bet MS will be struggling to get sales, whilst others have benefited from the larger market share as MS complete their swan dive into the dirt of irrelevance..
"I bet MS will be struggling to get sales, whilst others have benefited from the larger market share as MS complete their swan dive into the dirt of irrelevance.."
Sadly I wish what you prophesied would actually happen, but sadly there is too much money behind the MS PR BS wheel !
They will just keep on rolling forwards/backwards whatever !
I certainly hope Linux will take some serious market share away from MS and if some serious AAA Vulkan games in Linux could be released then who knows !
Because if gamers started to migrate it would suck along all the non-Techie users of Windows in the home aswell because most of them don't care what OS they use as long as they can access FB, Skype, Email and general internet usage (Which is OS agnostic anyway) including banking.
Infact it would only take a major bank or two to recommend Linux as a secure platform to do banking on and that would go a long way, but they won't as MS probably gives them a discount to use MS software and they wouldn't want to bite the hand that potentially saves them a £1 or two even though for every £1 they save it prob costs them £500 !
I am just waiting for the day that the Telemetry encrypted data gets hacked happens and it is revealed to everyone just how intrusive MS has really been, but then again so many people use cloud services so what would that matter anyway !
A final note, yes as far as I am concerned I have lost total faith in MS and lots of people I know feel the same way. Many are looking at alternatives like Macs and Linux but the force is strong with MS Windows and it takes usually a spare PC or Laptop to be able to venture into an unknown like Linux.
For Joe Bloggs at home without any real computer knowledge, it must be frightening situation especially if they are poor and the laptop/desktop is their only device for internet access/homework/porn etc !
"I certainly hope Linux will take some serious market share away from MS and if some serious AAA Vulkan games in Linux could be released then who knows !"
Good Luck. Bethesda (makers of one of the recent AAA's, Fallout 4) went on record swearing off Linux as too difficult to develop because it doesn't have a united user front (IOW, will be Red Hat or Ubuntu or whatever). Not even Valve's SteamOS is making any headway, and for whatever reason WINE (even a self-contained type a la DOOM using DOSBox) isn't even being considered.
I've seen a huge change since SteamOS has been released. Gaming on Linux used to be pretty much non-existent, with Tuxracer, etc being the staple type of game. In the last year or two the floodgates have started to open and there are games coming out weekly for Linux now (gamingonlinux.com has a list of release dates for many games). There is no shortage of games, I have almost 400 in my Linux steam library. Indie developers have really embraced Linux and there are plenty to choose from including all the most popular indie titles like Rocket League, Stardew Valley, etc,etc. Likewise there are plenty of sim type games like Total War, Stellaris, Hearts of Iron, Civ, etc. Aspyr and Feral are porting more and more "AAA" type games like Borderlands, Tomb Raider, XCOM, Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Total War Warhammer, etc.
Even *Electronic Arts* is adding support for Vulkan into Frostbite, and pretty much every major middleware engine like Source2, id, CryEngine, Serious, Unreal, Unity is adding in Vulkan support. Vulkan is only about 6 months old, in another year or twos time I think the floodgates really will have opened.
I've taken a look at the gamingonlinux.com, and as I suspected, almost all of them are made by indies with little to hold them back. And while most engines these days are multiplat, developers still don't put forth the effort to make the actual games (which are more than just those engines) multiplat. Why is it that not even Valve can convince the major developers or publishers to support Linux? Take EA, for instance. Sure, the Frostbite engine is multiplat, but where's the latest Madden or FIFA or whatever for Linux? It would have to take something serious to make gaming devs take Linux seriously, and so far not even the backlash of Windows 10 is doing that (probably because Win10 is practically a two-fer: developing for Win10 makes developing for the Xbox One a lot easier). And Valve won't help with that since they know which platform has the most Steam installs (not to mention the largest supported library--compare them for yourself). So it's not like we're going to see a major title come to PC but only to Linux; it would be fiscal suicide.
>> Why is it that not even Valve can convince the major developers or publishers to support Linux?
Simple economics? No profit-motivated company is going to spend money targeting a tiny sliver of the market, unless they can charge a hefty premium (and I doubt Linux gamers are going to be prepared to pay $1000 per game). Why do you expect a company to lose money on the work it produces?
You're right Charles, the majority of the games being released are indie titles and from smaller studios like Team 17, etc, as the scope of these games is smaller so they're quicker to develop, QA and release. I think that's the same with Windows, the majority of games are smaller titles, with a small number of big well publicised AAAs. I personally think this year has been a really bad year overall with very few interesting AAA games.
I would say Valve *is* convincing developers to support Linux, they recommend and support Vulkan ahead of DX12, put funds into the Khronos group and sponsor tools such as Lunar, present a lot of info at GDC and the like. Gabe has made no secret of the fact he doesn't like where Windows is headed with the Store and UWP, etc, and is working to develop alternatives, going as far as to create his own Linux OS and client. I'd say this is bearing the fruits of success, the smaller devs are getting onboard, the porters like Feral have many announced ports in progress, and Linux support for the larger games is becoming more common. Some of the big studios and middleware vendors are building in Vulkan support into their engines and once that is in place it becomes so much easier to support alternate OS's, it all takes time and there's no Madden or FIFA yet as those big budget titles take years to develop, and Vulkan was only released about 6 months ago and the engines are still in development.
Whether the big publishers like Ubisoft, Activision start to support Linux, who knows but as it becomes more cost effective I think its more likely. I think having PC gaming not locked into only Windows can only be a good thing for the industry.
"I would say Valve *is* convincing developers to support Linux, they recommend and support Vulkan ahead of DX12, put funds into the Khronos group and sponsor tools such as Lunar, present a lot of info at GDC and the like."
And they've been at it for years, and what have they to show for it? Most games coming out, be they indie, small-studio, or big-name, are Windows-ONLY. They've had plenty of time to push SteamOS, and they could've always provided migration tools, WINE layers for older games, and discount incentives, and so on. Why haven't they have anything really significant to show for it despite all that time?
They have been at it for years and I think it will take years more, Vulkan has only just been released this year, Linux support will need to be added into some of the new engines that support Vulkan, then games will have to start using the Vulkan APIs, and even after that then people will need a catalyst to make them switch. Things are changing but it does take a long time. Windows is over 30 years old, SteamOS is 3 and Vulkan which will make things a lot easier not even 1. I think Valve has also been a bit distracted by Vive, they're not that big a company and can only do so much.
Most games are Windows only but the figure is decreasing, from almost 100% to about 60% now. Nearly half of games now support Linux and I have way more games than I can ever hope to complete already and plenty of new ones to keep me and my kids interested. I prefer RTS, sim and indie titles to FPS (I have a PS4 for those) so don't ever miss whats available on Windows, the only game I used to boot up Windows for was Witcher 3, I haven't needed Windows for anything else.
wow - strong words (I particularly liked "swan dive into the dirt of irrelevance" - were your hands shaking as you typed that?)
what about those numbers? All the numbers I see is micrsoft losing share in 1 os and gaining it in another - there is no appreciable migration to apple or Linux. But don't let that stop you...
"there is no appreciable migration to apple or Linux. "
Maybe not an "appreciable migration", but there is a continuous trickle, and a slow bleed in the right place can be as bad as an open wound. Our office has recently completed a Linux changeover on all but the design-room machines, which need Windows 7 to run Photoshop and InDesign (I did look at using VMs and Wine, but the performance hit precluded those options.) While we're looking at alternatives like Gimp and Scribus, shifting an MS Office user over to Libre Office is one thing, but shifting a rusted-to-Adobe graphic designer from Photoshop to Gimp is a very different breed of cat!
Nevertheless, we're now using Linux machines in the office with few or no problems. We would have had to retrain on Windows 10 anyway, so we decided while we're retraining we may as well retrain on Linux and break the vendor lock-in.
And we're not the only SME doing this. At least 3 other businesses in my area alone are undergoing their own Linux changeovers and I know of another whose managers are currently evaluating a Linux rollout. The acid test for us will be how much money this saves us over the coming years in software licence fees, reduced productivity loss due to things like antivirus maintenance and additional security measures, and improved performance. Once the numbers start coming in and our accountants have crunched it all, if there's a significant saving there (as I'm sure there will be once the retraining costs are recouped) you can bet the beancounters will spread the word through the small business community like a bushfire.
While the big corporate customers may be immovably content with their cosy MS deals and vendor lock-in, SMEs are in a different basket and will happily embrace any cost saving measures that come up. If Linux turns out to be the way that can be achieved, more and more SMEs will make the hop. And SMEs account for a larger section of the economy than most people think.
Will this destroy Microsoft? Very unlikely, as you say. Their corporate and government contracts alone will keep them afloat for the foreseaable future. But with a grassroots base of SOHOs and SMEs switching to Linux, it will remain an option that no sensible accountant or IT manager can afford to ignore.
"Maybe not an "appreciable migration", but there is a continuous trickle, and a slow bleed in the right place can be as bad as an open wound."
You're lucky. Many other businesses are locked in to Windows, not because of Microsoft itself but because their critical, irreplaceable, custom application was built exclusively for Windows by a company that probably went out of business and has no direct replacement; either that or getting a new version would kill the business faster than a crash would.
"but because their critical, irreplaceable, custom application was built exclusively for Windows by a company that probably went out of business and has no direct replacement;"
In which case they are living on borrowed time - one update to Windows may clobber their application and, if it's so important, their business.
In which case they are living on borrowed time - one update to Windows may clobber their application and, if it's so important, their business.
That's always assuming that W10 hasn't killed it already or is threatening to.
The problem here is that we, the people that comment here on El Reg, probably have a degree of knowledge about the thing that we work with. We are, however, not necessarily in control of our own destiny, often caught between companies that sometimes do outrageous and occasionally unethical things to maintain their hold over it customers and those in charge of company purses who aren't always technically literate. They don't know IT but they know what they like.
Add that to the millions of home users who aren't necessarily savvy enough to allow for situations like this and have no recourse to legal representation against someone as big as Microsoft and there we have it. It's the reason why Microsoft and others get away with this sort of thing every time and those of us that are technically savvy enough to see what is going on get caught in the middle trying to make the best of a bad job.
EVERY F*CKING TIME.
"...because their critical, irreplaceable, custom application was built exclusively for Windows..."
Every day in my email I get at least a dozen messages from programmers and developers in places like India, China, Vietnam and so on, offering application-development services, often for rates ranging between $2 and $7 an hour. Some of them are dodgy, others are certainly competent. Quite a few are uni students doing their CS theses and looking for a real-world project to cut their teeth on, and these lads (and the occasional lady!) often do a very passable job.
At those prices, I would consider it feasible for a custom-application-locked business to outsource a testbed to one of these guys, if they're willing to take the risk of outsourcing to an unkown developing-country programmer over paying more for a local developer (a fair bit of our own business comes as a result of other companies not wanting to take that risk, so I'm hardly in a position to bitch!) Such a business wouldn't have to blow their custom app in one hit, they could develop a testbed and start doing some of their smaller, simpler jobs on it.
This is exactly what we did: we started with just one Linux machine in my office until I could get my head around it all, and work up a changeover plan and staff retraining program (my experience as a college lecturer stood me well there.) Then we transitioned our staff one application at a time (e.g. LibreOffice Writer instead of MS Word, LO Calc instead of Excel, etc) then dropped Linux on them as soon as they were comfortable using the open source software.
During the transition we ironed out any hitches as we went. End result: Our graphic/layout designers refused outright to move off Windows 7 and their beloved Adobe-ware; so what we did with them was to airgap the design room from the Internet and told them if they needed Internet access to use the Linux machine in there, as well as the fact that there would be no more Adobe upgrades (we're still using the pre-CC versions anyway since I long ago convinced the directors that going cloud was a really bad idea.) There was some grumbling, but that was the line that got drawn. Everyone else - sales reps, management, front office, accounts - all made the switch with very little fuss.
Granted, we're not that big, so I don't know how well this approach would work in a corporate environment, if at all. But I'm sure any locked-in SME could work up a similar solution - outsource, test, transition, rinse and repeat. If they have an app that requires an old version of Windows to run they should really look at airgapping those machines from the internet anyway, otherwise that's a time bomb waiting to blow up in their faces, as someone else commented.
The key is not to blast it all through in one hit, I think the best method is to transition piecemeal. You still have problems, but in a piecemeal scenario they tend to small enough to be readily resolvable, and this allows you not only to build a more robust replacement but to spread the costs over a longer period as well.
I wonder whether governments will stick with MS once the SMEs start to use 'nux more. Especially if schools and local authorities adopt open source.
Ultimately when users become more familiar with the software they'll be more likely to ask why it isn't being used in their offices. Currently the pressure is all the other way. We expect MSOffice in our office and use Windows because that's what we are used to. But once that log-jam around attitude is broken........
I'm no MS hater, even used to be a fan, of sorts.
But not since they started pushing crap like the "Ribbon" Win 8.x etc. and generally forcing stuff on us that they wanted us to want, rather than what we do want.
12% reverting back, and half of those because they had post-upgrade issues = 6% of users reported upgrade issues.
6% - not the "overwhelming majority" you would believe from reading El Reg. I always wondered how I managed to dodge a bullet with every single upgrade I did, as I never experienced any real hassles.
And then I remembered that a lot of El Reg readers are whiny OSS fanboys on a religious crusade to rid the world of microsoft (hows that working out for you?).
I agree - the "forced upgrades" thing is unpalatable and I understand why people are pissed off, but the alternative (as seen from XP) is them supporting a lot of old versions till the end of time (and certainly not something any other vendor can claim they do).
Given the infinite software combinations and hardware of varying quality, I am actually surprised that the failure rate isn't higher than 6%
> ... 12% reverting ... not the "overwhelming majority" ...
I wonder what proportion of Windows users are actually capable of reverting the OS "upgrade"? Could it perhaps also be 12%, I wonder?
PS "reverting" already implies "back", the latter word being superfluous or worse in this instance.
Don't use windoze myself - had too much hassle with it in the past - but my daughter was having issues with win 8. something or other, so accepted the upgrade. All went well for a short while, then following an auto update, the screen went blank and stayed that way. Call in dad! Well, I tried everything I knew, and couldn't coax it back to life. It would only work at all in "safe" mode, so I suspected the graphics driver (its a simple Intel gfx set, for heaven's sake!).
So, I did a full, clean, re-install. All went well until it got to the "automatic updates", which I couldn't stop. Once again the screen blanked! After three attempts, I gave up and put Mandriva Linux on it.
It has run perfectly ever since!
Clearly, there's nothing wrong with the hardware. If the "auto update" doesn't qualify under the computer misuse act, I don't know what else would. It rendered the device completely inoperable....
A Win 10 auto update borked my homebuilt AMD/NVidia/SDD desktop. Also rendered my SDD incapable of accepting a Win 10 install (even though Win 10 had been installed on it just prior). Reformatted, repartitioned and installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Someday, I might get around to fixing the SDD format issue, but for now, I can't be bovvered with the headache of all the steps involved...just to get Win 10 back on the machine. Win 10's only function here is to run the player for my Blu-ray drive.
I just did an update of this nice computer in front of me. Went to the App store and clocked on upgrade, it nicely downloaded, and then asked me if I wanted to upgrade. I said yes, and although it did take about 30 minutes, everything I use works quite nicely.
Oh, it was the macOS Sierra update, and it didn't yell and scream at me to update. I did it my self quite easily on my terms.
Me? Windows? Not on your life! The other machines I have are nicely working with Linux. They update quite easily as well.
Installed on my desktop system, couldn't get my work's vpn connection to work, so reverted. Installed on laptop, ran poorly even after tweeks so reverted. Tried again after AU came out. Still had performance issues, but they cut revert time to 10 days, which didn't leave me enough time to fiddle with it to try to get to run as well as win 7, so reverted again. The good thing is that the revert process worked great every time.
One thing not mentioned is the large number of software apps that will now NOT work with Windows 10 but worked flawlessly with W7 and W8/8.1. It's almost as tho' Redmond cut a shady deal with those companies to help force people to upgrade.
And let's not forget Intel's intentional decision to bork older software by claiming its newest chips will not run Win 7 / Win 8/8.1.
As usual, we get Microsoft propaganda rather than true and accurate facts. For a time, Windows 10 DID install itself without the permission. (I have bailed out people who came into the office in the morning to find Windows 10 staring at them from their computer screen. And, no, they did not authorize either the download or the install.) Once it is installed, it gives you the option to accept or decline the license agreement. If you decline and you are so lucky that everything goes swimmingly, the software rolls back to the previous release: 7, 8 or 8.1.
Somebody please make Linux user friendly so that those of us with an IQ lower than our body temperature can install it, use it, browse the web, print things out and generally make life simpler again. I don't need no fancy graphics and photo or video manipulation.
I'm variously pissed off at Apple, Android and MS. Perfectly good devices rendered unusable by upgrades, data slurping and a general increase in aggro rather than diminishing of it.
Has anybody got a solution for a simple system?
I'd say that Linux Mint is already very user friendly, and is perfectly fine for all the general computing tasks that you have described. There is undoubtedly a learning curve, although Mint 18 looks visually quite similar to Windows many of the built in tools have different names, in different locations, etc and the settings and preferences, etc are of course different to where they are in Windows, but that said it only took me a few days to get used to the change. Its not difficult, its just different. My young kids took to it like ducks to water.
The simplest way to see if you like it is to download a USB/CD image from the Mint website and copy it on to a USB stick or CD/DVD, boot from the device and see how you get on. Unlike Windows you don't have to install the operating system to try it out, it can run from a bootable media (although it will be much slower). If you do like it you can then choose to install it, there is an option to dual boot to keep Windows in place so you can go back to it if needed. There are lots of different distributions/flavours of Linux, Mint is generally regarded as the simplest to use.
> ...many of the built in tools have different names ...
That's well-known Microsoft policy, they routinely avoid established terminology for standard items and features, and instead employ their own choice of names (often names that are already used for quite different things in the IT/computing domain).
And then people complain everyone else is out of step.
>> they routinely avoid established terminology for standard items and features, and instead employ their own choice of names
perhaps just 1 example might be useful to illustrate your point?
(and I think they chose "notepad" because they couldn't decide which of the really intuitive "established" names like vi, vim, emacs, joe, nano etc. to choose from)
Anyone can sit in front of a Linux desktop distro, browse the web, view their media etc. Just as most people could use a new tablet, phone, smart tv etc. without any help.
The problem is when things go wrong, or you want to venture off the reservation (install new devices, new software, change config etc.)
All of the Linux GUI tools I have seen are a thin veneer on top of an alien world that is completely incomprehensible to a non-experienced user. So while you crow that nan is rocking her bingo numbers on Mint with that wicked gleam in her eye, she is really just a web user that happens to be using a Linux device that you set up and maintain for her :-)
"All of the Linux GUI tools I have seen are a thin veneer on top of an alien world that is completely incomprehensible to a non-experienced user."
"All of the Microsoft GUI tools I have seen are an alien world ( on top of thin ice ) that is completely incomprehensible to a non-experienced user."
On the whole a non-experienced user is just that whatever the OS BTW
Has anybody got a solution for a simple system?
IFF your needs are simple, as others on this forum will tell you, Linux Mint will satisfy your needs. After more than a year running Mint on my computers, I have not needed any of the "leet" skills I picked up playing with Lunix 10 and 15 years ago. Updating is fast and simple; installing and uninstalling applications with the Synaptic Package Manager is way easier and faster than Windows.
If you need to do anything more than the basics, you'll either have to boot into Windows, or work with some frankly terrible software. Example:
I needed to make a video DVD for a friend from some video files he had been sent by a musician who wants him to write lyrics for his compositions. The files he sent were variously AVI, WMV and MOV. My friend doesn't possess a computer (frankly I wouldn't let him near one) and of course his DVD player didn't know how to play the computer videos.
Usually, I use Nero 9 for this, but on this occasion, the software informed me that since I had pirated the software, I needed to pay for it. Again? WTF! Nero allows you to create a video DVD by dragging the files onto a window and clicking a button to burn the compilation to DVD. The title menu takes its labels from the filenames.
The first FOSS application I used crashed when clicking the button to burn the compilation. Twice! The second FOSS application required selecting each individual file through a dialog box, then using a separate dialog box to rename the default Menu 1, Menu 2... to the required titles. At the end of the process, which took several minutes rather than the several seconds that Nero requires, it refused to create the DVD image file. It only managed to do this after rebooting the computer. Fortunately, Brasero managed the burning of the DVD image though unlike Nero, it doesn't include a file comparison after finishing the burn.
So, I find that from time to time it's easier to boot into Windows to do things that FOSS makes excessively complicated. And I find myself angrified by businesses like Ahead and Microsoft that I supported for many years treating me like a piece of shit. Of course when they call one a pirate, then it makes sense to become a pirate so that you are no longer called a pirate and/or denied the ability to use something you paid for. Go figure...
I've been mucking about with Sarah for the last few days and it seems like a fairly solid system. Installation is pretty easy given a reasonable net connection - you can leave it using default settings if you don't have the goods to muck about yourself and as with so many Mints over the last few years, you can try before you install anyway.
My biggest gripes would be the imposition of systemd (which probably won't matter if you are using it as a desktop/laptop home user system) and where I've installed KDE, I've got the rather dreary looking Plasma 5 over which I intend to attempt to load Trinity as soon as I can. I find many users seem to prefer either Cinnamon or MATE though.
Windows 10 sucks big time and ia nothing but a Microsoft scam.
That's nice, and you won't find a shortage of people here that would agree with that sentiment.
Perhaps you could expand on how you reached that opinion? The installation nagware? The forced installation itself? The compulsory updates? The many different driver problems? The lost data? The lost or disabled applications? The spyware? Anything I missed?
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