6 ms·

At my workplace, most users are on Windows 7, and few on Win 10, and fewer (if any) are on windows 8.1 Migration to windows 10 is not going to happen until it

by rk06 9y ago

At my workplace, most users are on Windows 7, and few on Win 10, and fewer (if any) are on windows 8.1 Migration to windows 10 is not going to happen until it is absolutely necessary.

WorldMaker 9y ago
Would you expect Linux users at your workplace to still be running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)? Or to be a bit more generous, Windows 7 SP1 is closer to Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). Neither of which have been supported for at least half a decade. Even Windows 8.1's equivalent Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) fell out of support two years ago. Though arguably that's intentionally unfair because Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) is the closest LTS and still has support for less than two more years (through April 2019). Though that's quaint in comparison to Microsoft's generous extended security support of Windows 8.1 until Jan 2023. The reluctance to migrate users by corporations creates its own worst enemy. The longer you wait the tougher it is to migrate, the more versions you skip in the middle. That's both a detriment to user learning (they miss transitionary learning steps and evolutionary UX migrations), and a one of those "doctor, it hurts when I migrate because I do it so seldomly, so I migrate less often and it hurts more" problems. The less often you distro upgrade the more problems you have so you loathe to distro upgrade creating more problems. Maybe distro upgrade a bit more often? I realize that is a radical assertion in modern corporate IT, but it seems like a common sense one.
- catach 9y ago
  As another data point, RHEL 5, released two years before Windows 7, apparently has paid support available through 2020. I agree with you though that migrations increase in pain the longer they're put off.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    I looked it up because I was curious. [1] Apples to apples it looks like Windows "extended support" is closer to RHEL "Production Phase 3" support (not to be confused with RHEL's "extended support" which is vaguely "we'll keep the wikis lit and maybe answer if you hear ghosts"), so by that measure RHEL 5 ended "Phase 3" support in March of this year. With Windows 7 getting another 3 years of "Phase 3" support it looks about like RHEL and Windows' timeframes are very similar in this case. [1] https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/ https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/
- jsgo 9y ago
  While I agree with your main point, I find it odd that you'd even factor in the non-LTS/bleeding edge releases of Ubuntu vs Windows (10). The closest I can think of in the Windows world would be Windows Insider builds but those are a bit more akin to nightly releases (though that characterization is a bit unfair to Windows Insider). Yes, you qualify that with the "intentionally unfair" but I fail to see what it adds to this to compare apples to oranges. Point being, even.04 Ubuntu releases vs Windows seem to be the better metric if we're talking about support. Anything outside of those (non-even.04 Ubuntu or Windows Insider releases) you get the benefit of being on the bleeding edge, but you're going to be poked more than usual.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    I feel like I did address this criticism in the middle of my comment, even if perhaps I glossed over, both with the "unfair" jab and the hand-wavy "more than half a decade" mention because I glanced at the LTS support numbers, too. I made sure I included the only .04 LTS release as old as either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 that was still in support (until 2019). [For completion's sake: 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is the roughly closest Ubuntu LTS to Windows 7, and hasn't been supported since 2013. 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) was the closest LTS to Windows 7 SP 1, and also hasn't been supported since 2013 (on Desktop).] I used the more closely aligned dates because Windows and Ubuntu have been aligned to similar-ish 6 month cycles for a while now and especially in Windows 10. It's interesting that the LTS equivalents are in opposite parts of the cycle with Ubuntu LTS in the Spring and Windows LTS in the Fall. But even accounting for LTS versus LTS, the fact of the matter is that Windows extended security support still dwarfs the comparable Ubuntu timeframes and few are complaining that Ubuntu's support windows are too short. Of Desktop LTS support, Microsoft's seems almost by far the longest of any Desktop OS/distribution and no one is expecting Desktop support for even a Linux LTS distribution support like they expect from Windows.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      (Reply to point out my own cultural bias before others do: technically both Windows and Ubuntu LTS is their respective Fall release, because the two are headquartered in opposite hemispheres. Which is one interesting explanation to the six month-difference between the two groups.)
- vetinari 9y ago
  So maybe people would be more willing to migrate, if the new version respected their privacy? Unless there is no option to keep the chattiness of the system only to user-initiated connections (and keep that option on the same value after updates!), many people simply won't migrate.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Windows 10 FCU (the version released this month) continued the trend of making the privacy options as explicit as possible (and making them much more opt-in in the onboarding/setup process). Microsoft also apologized about updates resetting privacy options to defaults. YMMV, but I feel that Windows 10 is respectful about my privacy and that Microsoft has been working to address every concern people have had. Have you tried the FCU recently or do you intend to keep grinding the same ax from two years ago indefinitely?
    - vetinari 9y ago
      Yes, I do have one machine with Windows 10, yes, it is updated to Fall Creators Update and yes, I did have to rerun the clean up script, because the preferences were reset again (not talking only about privacy related ones). But thank you for reminding me, that any criticism not towing the party line is met with derision.
      - WorldMaker 9y ago
        My criticism was not meant to be derision. It was genuine curiosity to ask how up-to-date you have tried to be. "Privacy issues" still seems like every other comment about Windows 10 here on HN and elsewhere like Ars Technica and The Verge. It's a very repetitive refrain at this point (y'all are quite a vocal minority). It's also a criticism that I'm having an increasingly hard time understanding or sympathizing with, because the privacy tools in Windows 10 do continue to get better and more transparent with each update. I am starting to wonder if this criticism is simply the easiest excuse available (because it will always be hard to 100% satisfy a tinfoil hat that "there are no magic hidden NSA bugs"; I read Slashdot for long enough to know how deep that rabbit hole sometimes goes), and that there is no actual way to satisfy this criticism, it will just continue to haunt every time Windows 10 is even remotely brought up in conversation for the rest of time.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Upgrades of Linux distributions typically are actually upgrades and if they're not, you'll find a not-shit upgrade path somehow, be it by switching to a different distro or to a different flavor of the same distro. With Windows, it's very much arguable if the upgrade from 7 to 8.1 or to 10 is beneficial (or even legal for you to do, thanks to the increased surveillance) and if you dislike this upgrade path, then you can't easily switch to the next operating system, run all your same applications and continue using most of your configurations and scripts. There's also still a monetary cost to upgrading Windows.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    I think this is a pretty apples-to-apples comparison: the timeframe in question for Ubuntu has just as many ups and downs as for Windows in terms of upgrades. It includes the Gnome 2 -> Unity -> Gnome 3 transition. The systemd transition is in there somewhere. That kind of supports my point that if you were sticking to Ubuntu specifically you've seen a lot of change during the support lifetime of Windows 7. No IT department in their right mind would still be running a comparable Linux distribution on user desktops as old as Windows 7, and those Linux distributions have changed nearly as much as Windows 7 through to Windows 10. Monetary cost is apples-to-oranges and irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, but: the Windows upgrade from 7 and 8.1 to 10 was made free for consumers and small businesses, and Microsoft has aligned with Apple that starting with Windows 10 upgrades are free for the support lifetime of the hardware; businesses above a certain size (the most likely ones to be conservative in their IT) have always paid for the latest version of Windows with their software assurance agreements, regardless if they deploy/upgrade to it. Similarly alternative distributions are great, it's nice to have alternatives, but are also irrelevant to my point. Certainly in the Windows 7 support lifetime maybe you moved Ubuntu to Mint because you thought Unity was a mistake and maybe by now you are considering moving back to Ubuntu now that it is switching back to Gnome. The point is that you've still done many more distribution upgrades than Windows upgrades in the same timeframe and don't question it. (For the most part you'd still want the latest kernel and applications support, you mostly aren't just leaving machines be and not upgrading them.) Not having more options in Windows upgrade direction is a fair complaint, but the point was that Microsoft in return granted one of the longest security support lifetimes of any desktop or mobile operating system out there. I think it is useful to have that perspective on that, regardless of what you think about Windows or Microsoft. Whether or not Windows is moving the direction you want it to, the fact that so many people have the option to rest on their laurels for three more years before the next major scramble to a supported Windows version for their desktops (I'm ignoring servers and embedded appliances, this thread has always been about desktops), is largely unprecedented outside of Windows, and the refusal by some major corporations to keep Windows up-to-date would be laughed at if they were running Ubuntu or macOS.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I work in an environment that despite having varied departments and significant bureaucracy, and some software written to run on Windows XP and not updated since... has 100% of Windows clients on Windows 10 with the latest cumulative updates. And shockingly, everything works. Business happens. It's not actually a hard transition. (Actually, at a former employer, they scripted the upgrade process and shipped it.) If it can work in my environment, it can work in any environment, and nobody has any valid excuses.

by rk06 9y ago

At my workplace, most users are on Windows 7, and few on Win 10, and fewer (if any) are on windows 8.1 Migration to windows 10 is not going to happen until it is absolutely necessary.

WorldMaker 9y ago

Would you expect Linux users at your workplace to still be running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)? Or to be a bit more generous, Windows 7 SP1 is closer to Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). Neither of which have been supported for at least half a decade. Even Windows 8.1's equivalent Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) fell out of support two years ago. Though arguably that's intentionally unfair because Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) is the closest LTS and still has support for less than two more years (through April 2019). Though that's quaint in comparison to Microsoft's generous extended security support of Windows 8.1 until Jan 2023. The reluctance to migrate users by corporations creates its own worst enemy. The longer you wait the tougher it is to migrate, the more versions you skip in the middle. That's both a detriment to user learning (they miss transitionary learning steps and evolutionary UX migrations), and a one of those "doctor, it hurts when I migrate because I do it so seldomly, so I migrate less often and it hurts more" problems. The less often you distro upgrade the more problems you have so you loathe to distro upgrade creating more problems. Maybe distro upgrade a bit more often? I realize that is a radical assertion in modern corporate IT, but it seems like a common sense one.

catach 9y ago
As another data point, RHEL 5, released two years before Windows 7, apparently has paid support available through 2020. I agree with you though that migrations increase in pain the longer they're put off.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  I looked it up because I was curious. [1] Apples to apples it looks like Windows "extended support" is closer to RHEL "Production Phase 3" support (not to be confused with RHEL's "extended support" which is vaguely "we'll keep the wikis lit and maybe answer if you hear ghosts"), so by that measure RHEL 5 ended "Phase 3" support in March of this year. With Windows 7 getting another 3 years of "Phase 3" support it looks about like RHEL and Windows' timeframes are very similar in this case. [1] https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/ https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/
jsgo 9y ago
While I agree with your main point, I find it odd that you'd even factor in the non-LTS/bleeding edge releases of Ubuntu vs Windows (10). The closest I can think of in the Windows world would be Windows Insider builds but those are a bit more akin to nightly releases (though that characterization is a bit unfair to Windows Insider). Yes, you qualify that with the "intentionally unfair" but I fail to see what it adds to this to compare apples to oranges. Point being, even.04 Ubuntu releases vs Windows seem to be the better metric if we're talking about support. Anything outside of those (non-even.04 Ubuntu or Windows Insider releases) you get the benefit of being on the bleeding edge, but you're going to be poked more than usual.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  I feel like I did address this criticism in the middle of my comment, even if perhaps I glossed over, both with the "unfair" jab and the hand-wavy "more than half a decade" mention because I glanced at the LTS support numbers, too. I made sure I included the only .04 LTS release as old as either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 that was still in support (until 2019). [For completion's sake: 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is the roughly closest Ubuntu LTS to Windows 7, and hasn't been supported since 2013. 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) was the closest LTS to Windows 7 SP 1, and also hasn't been supported since 2013 (on Desktop).] I used the more closely aligned dates because Windows and Ubuntu have been aligned to similar-ish 6 month cycles for a while now and especially in Windows 10. It's interesting that the LTS equivalents are in opposite parts of the cycle with Ubuntu LTS in the Spring and Windows LTS in the Fall. But even accounting for LTS versus LTS, the fact of the matter is that Windows extended security support still dwarfs the comparable Ubuntu timeframes and few are complaining that Ubuntu's support windows are too short. Of Desktop LTS support, Microsoft's seems almost by far the longest of any Desktop OS/distribution and no one is expecting Desktop support for even a Linux LTS distribution support like they expect from Windows.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    (Reply to point out my own cultural bias before others do: technically both Windows and Ubuntu LTS is their respective Fall release, because the two are headquartered in opposite hemispheres. Which is one interesting explanation to the six month-difference between the two groups.)
vetinari 9y ago
So maybe people would be more willing to migrate, if the new version respected their privacy? Unless there is no option to keep the chattiness of the system only to user-initiated connections (and keep that option on the same value after updates!), many people simply won't migrate.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Windows 10 FCU (the version released this month) continued the trend of making the privacy options as explicit as possible (and making them much more opt-in in the onboarding/setup process). Microsoft also apologized about updates resetting privacy options to defaults. YMMV, but I feel that Windows 10 is respectful about my privacy and that Microsoft has been working to address every concern people have had. Have you tried the FCU recently or do you intend to keep grinding the same ax from two years ago indefinitely?
  - vetinari 9y ago
    Yes, I do have one machine with Windows 10, yes, it is updated to Fall Creators Update and yes, I did have to rerun the clean up script, because the preferences were reset again (not talking only about privacy related ones). But thank you for reminding me, that any criticism not towing the party line is met with derision.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      My criticism was not meant to be derision. It was genuine curiosity to ask how up-to-date you have tried to be. "Privacy issues" still seems like every other comment about Windows 10 here on HN and elsewhere like Ars Technica and The Verge. It's a very repetitive refrain at this point (y'all are quite a vocal minority). It's also a criticism that I'm having an increasingly hard time understanding or sympathizing with, because the privacy tools in Windows 10 do continue to get better and more transparent with each update. I am starting to wonder if this criticism is simply the easiest excuse available (because it will always be hard to 100% satisfy a tinfoil hat that "there are no magic hidden NSA bugs"; I read Slashdot for long enough to know how deep that rabbit hole sometimes goes), and that there is no actual way to satisfy this criticism, it will just continue to haunt every time Windows 10 is even remotely brought up in conversation for the rest of time.
Sylos 9y ago
Upgrades of Linux distributions typically are actually upgrades and if they're not, you'll find a not-shit upgrade path somehow, be it by switching to a different distro or to a different flavor of the same distro. With Windows, it's very much arguable if the upgrade from 7 to 8.1 or to 10 is beneficial (or even legal for you to do, thanks to the increased surveillance) and if you dislike this upgrade path, then you can't easily switch to the next operating system, run all your same applications and continue using most of your configurations and scripts. There's also still a monetary cost to upgrading Windows.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  I think this is a pretty apples-to-apples comparison: the timeframe in question for Ubuntu has just as many ups and downs as for Windows in terms of upgrades. It includes the Gnome 2 -> Unity -> Gnome 3 transition. The systemd transition is in there somewhere. That kind of supports my point that if you were sticking to Ubuntu specifically you've seen a lot of change during the support lifetime of Windows 7. No IT department in their right mind would still be running a comparable Linux distribution on user desktops as old as Windows 7, and those Linux distributions have changed nearly as much as Windows 7 through to Windows 10. Monetary cost is apples-to-oranges and irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, but: the Windows upgrade from 7 and 8.1 to 10 was made free for consumers and small businesses, and Microsoft has aligned with Apple that starting with Windows 10 upgrades are free for the support lifetime of the hardware; businesses above a certain size (the most likely ones to be conservative in their IT) have always paid for the latest version of Windows with their software assurance agreements, regardless if they deploy/upgrade to it. Similarly alternative distributions are great, it's nice to have alternatives, but are also irrelevant to my point. Certainly in the Windows 7 support lifetime maybe you moved Ubuntu to Mint because you thought Unity was a mistake and maybe by now you are considering moving back to Ubuntu now that it is switching back to Gnome. The point is that you've still done many more distribution upgrades than Windows upgrades in the same timeframe and don't question it. (For the most part you'd still want the latest kernel and applications support, you mostly aren't just leaving machines be and not upgrading them.) Not having more options in Windows upgrade direction is a fair complaint, but the point was that Microsoft in return granted one of the longest security support lifetimes of any desktop or mobile operating system out there. I think it is useful to have that perspective on that, regardless of what you think about Windows or Microsoft. Whether or not Windows is moving the direction you want it to, the fact that so many people have the option to rest on their laurels for three more years before the next major scramble to a supported Windows version for their desktops (I'm ignoring servers and embedded appliances, this thread has always been about desktops), is largely unprecedented outside of Windows, and the refusal by some major corporations to keep Windows up-to-date would be laughed at if they were running Ubuntu or macOS.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

I work in an environment that despite having varied departments and significant bureaucracy, and some software written to run on Windows XP and not updated since... has 100% of Windows clients on Windows 10 with the latest cumulative updates. And shockingly, everything works. Business happens. It's not actually a hard transition. (Actually, at a former employer, they scripted the upgrade process and shipped it.) If it can work in my environment, it can work in any environment, and nobody has any valid excuses.