4 ms·

WSL fundamentally depends on kernel improvements that are only available to Windows 10. Similar to the countless other improvements like high-entropy aslr, appg

by nxc18 10y ago

WSL fundamentally depends on kernel improvements that are only available to Windows 10. Similar to the countless other improvements like high-entropy aslr, appguard, better shutdown/bootup processes, a much improved print model, support for new classes of devices (usb3, 3d printing, etc), etc - and that's just covering Windows 8. There has been so much work done to improve the kernel over the last 7.5 years. You don't see mac users complaining that iOS integration doesn't work with Snow Leopard; iOS (the name) did not exist when Windows 7 was released. You certainly don't see snow leopard in the wild anymore. Stop. Using. Windows. 7.

ams6110 10y ago
It's the privacy invasion and the gratuitous UI changes that keep people on Windows 7, not all that technobabble stuff.
- bicubic 10y ago
  I use w10 at work, but I will not be installing it on my personal machines any time soon due to always-on black box spyware. It seems that the entire tech industry is gently pushing the population to accept broad surveillance as a fact of life. You want to chat to your social circle on facebook? Sure, just hand over all your personal and location data. Want WSL? Sure, just sign here to give us the legal right to rummage around your computer without your knowledge whenever we feel like it.
- gscott 10y ago
  Anytime an operating system is designed to show you ads it has to be bad!
- nxc18 10y ago
  The funny thing is, the only people who are sticking around with Windows 7 are the people who should know enough to care about the technobabble. You are not getting the performance you could be out of your PC. Your computer isn't as secure as it could be. You don't have the latest features. Some of those UI changes you mention are actually nice, btw. Your PC is not spying on you; it is not scandalous that a web search via Cortana sends what you type to Microsoft. Telemetry is also not scandalous; Microsoft has had telemetry in Windows & in Office for well over a decade (coming up on two). Perhaps I should consider a career in tech journalism; With all the scandal around Windows 10's approach, I can only imagine how people will react to literally everything they ever do in their browser. You never use your web browser, do you?
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    While it may sound trivial, it was a bit of an insult to wake up one day and find Cortana begging me to ask her something. Also, telemetry is not scandalous but it can be subpoenaed or hacked, and given its omnipresence and sheer depth, I wouldn't want less-than-trustworthy people gaining access to it. Microsoft could have made its privacy settings simple -- an elegant on/off switch with the more legacy-style "click here to report this exception" behavior. Instead they complicate the matter and overwhelm the user with a ton of seemingly pointless options by default, when it should have been a toggle and an "Advanced..." button. By throwing previously voluntary reporting into the same big telemetry bucket as everything else, they've diminished their product and forced users to accept an inferior experience when such integrations are unwanted (like my example above). Also, they never should have allowed marketing to get involved -- allowing advert pigs to switch people's desktops around is a massive overreach. You know the only reason it happened was to make more money from already-paid users. Win10 only gets my vote when an upstream netmeter and port-monitor show only essential network activity -- occasional Windows Update queries, local network scans, and so on -- during a long period of idling and local (non-network) use.
    - tavert 10y ago
      They conceal it more than they should, but you can shut Cortana off and create a local-only account.
      - tomc1985 10y ago
        Indeed, but local-only doesn't really lose much. You still get all the updates and telemetry; accessing the windows store is a bit harder. There are some scripts on Github that claim to rip out a lot of this stuff. They look promising, though I haven't tried yet: https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script
        acqq 10y ago
        Also note this answer: "Q: Can I run the script repeatedly? A: Yes! In fact the script has been written to support exactly this as it's not uncommon that big Windows Updates reset some of the settings."
- barrkel 10y ago
  You can turn almost all of that stuff reasonably easily - there are a variety of tweaking tools of varying degrees of completeness. It's a little bit easier with the Pro version (in particular, disabling the automatic update + restart overnight that lost my data a couple of times). Combine it with Classic Shell, and it's really quite tolerable.
  - c3833174 10y ago
    Who wants to waste their time to downgrade their experience to "tolerable"?
- coldpie 10y ago
  So, stop using Windows. Using ancient, insecure, and unsupported (in 2020) software is not an option.
eltoozero 10y ago
I'll add to this that unless you use a tool like wsusoffline[0], even on a fast ISP, on an SSD, running a beefy i7, you're looking at hours of downloads and countless reboots to get fully up to date running 7. At least a couple vendors in the medical and car repo verticals doing exclusively remote support and activation require systems are fully updated before they'll deploy their wares. [0]: http://wsusoffline.net http://wsusoffline.net
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by nxc18 10y ago

ams6110 10y ago

It's the privacy invasion and the gratuitous UI changes that keep people on Windows 7, not all that technobabble stuff.

bicubic 10y ago
I use w10 at work, but I will not be installing it on my personal machines any time soon due to always-on black box spyware. It seems that the entire tech industry is gently pushing the population to accept broad surveillance as a fact of life. You want to chat to your social circle on facebook? Sure, just hand over all your personal and location data. Want WSL? Sure, just sign here to give us the legal right to rummage around your computer without your knowledge whenever we feel like it.
gscott 10y ago
Anytime an operating system is designed to show you ads it has to be bad!
nxc18 10y ago
The funny thing is, the only people who are sticking around with Windows 7 are the people who should know enough to care about the technobabble. You are not getting the performance you could be out of your PC. Your computer isn't as secure as it could be. You don't have the latest features. Some of those UI changes you mention are actually nice, btw. Your PC is not spying on you; it is not scandalous that a web search via Cortana sends what you type to Microsoft. Telemetry is also not scandalous; Microsoft has had telemetry in Windows & in Office for well over a decade (coming up on two). Perhaps I should consider a career in tech journalism; With all the scandal around Windows 10's approach, I can only imagine how people will react to literally everything they ever do in their browser. You never use your web browser, do you?
- tomc1985 10y ago
  While it may sound trivial, it was a bit of an insult to wake up one day and find Cortana begging me to ask her something. Also, telemetry is not scandalous but it can be subpoenaed or hacked, and given its omnipresence and sheer depth, I wouldn't want less-than-trustworthy people gaining access to it. Microsoft could have made its privacy settings simple -- an elegant on/off switch with the more legacy-style "click here to report this exception" behavior. Instead they complicate the matter and overwhelm the user with a ton of seemingly pointless options by default, when it should have been a toggle and an "Advanced..." button. By throwing previously voluntary reporting into the same big telemetry bucket as everything else, they've diminished their product and forced users to accept an inferior experience when such integrations are unwanted (like my example above). Also, they never should have allowed marketing to get involved -- allowing advert pigs to switch people's desktops around is a massive overreach. You know the only reason it happened was to make more money from already-paid users. Win10 only gets my vote when an upstream netmeter and port-monitor show only essential network activity -- occasional Windows Update queries, local network scans, and so on -- during a long period of idling and local (non-network) use.
  - tavert 10y ago
    They conceal it more than they should, but you can shut Cortana off and create a local-only account.
    - tomc1985 10y ago
      Indeed, but local-only doesn't really lose much. You still get all the updates and telemetry; accessing the windows store is a bit harder. There are some scripts on Github that claim to rip out a lot of this stuff. They look promising, though I haven't tried yet: https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script
      - acqq 10y ago
        Also note this answer: "Q: Can I run the script repeatedly? A: Yes! In fact the script has been written to support exactly this as it's not uncommon that big Windows Updates reset some of the settings."
barrkel 10y ago
You can turn almost all of that stuff reasonably easily - there are a variety of tweaking tools of varying degrees of completeness. It's a little bit easier with the Pro version (in particular, disabling the automatic update + restart overnight that lost my data a couple of times). Combine it with Classic Shell, and it's really quite tolerable.
- c3833174 10y ago
  Who wants to waste their time to downgrade their experience to "tolerable"?
coldpie 10y ago
So, stop using Windows. Using ancient, insecure, and unsupported (in 2020) software is not an option.

eltoozero 10y ago

I'll add to this that unless you use a tool like wsusoffline[0], even on a fast ISP, on an SSD, running a beefy i7, you're looking at hours of downloads and countless reboots to get fully up to date running 7. At least a couple vendors in the medical and car repo verticals doing exclusively remote support and activation require systems are fully updated before they'll deploy their wares. [0]: http://wsusoffline.net http://wsusoffline.net

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]