In reference to the idea of making Windows completely open source:
"10 or 15 years ago, that would have been interesting and potentially useful. Today, it's like PalmOS going open source. There might be some interesting corner cases for WINE to further improve compatibility but on the whole it doesn't seem that valuable to me. Desktops are dying while Android, ChromeOS, and iOS are becoming the predominant end user computing devices. Linux has the back-end processing. Windows is the POTS of the computing world; the long tail of historical usage." -macemonetaWe're now up to build 10049. Not much has changed as far as the eye can see. There are obviously under-the-hood changes but exactly how many remains a mystery, as Microsoft refuses to open up the source for Windows. They can say whatever they want, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are a few notable improvements which I will list here, but as a generality, I'm unimpressed with Windows 10 thus far. The new "for complete dumbasses" "control panel" or settings UI or whatever the fuck Microsoft is calling it this month is a real pain to work with, and doesn't offer the features that programmers and I.T. people are looking for. They've dumbed it down just about as much as possible in terms of its UI, conveyance and continuity, and the artwork looks like complete shit. It's actually painful to look at. What the fuck are they thinking; maybe April Fools' Day/365?
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Microsoft needs to get rid of this ugly ass bullshit imposter of a control panel, and go back to having one control panel which already exists in Windows 10. Apparently they are too stupid to realize that desktop users don't want a tablet experience, therefore more of the foisting effort continues. Microsoft refuses to let go of their desperate ideology of cleaving to a one size fits all approach in terms of how they are rolling their Windows product out, and their shit stinks to high heaven with a lack of uniformity and appropriateness that desktop users desire. Most of the reason why Microsoft refuses to budge, at least for now, is that they want to shove their Windows store right down your throat and save your credit cards and personal information on file forever. They will get a list of your PC's hardware, what apps you are renting, and will cross-compile data about times opened and downloaded (in reference to time of day), what was searched, and your voiceprint with Cortana. At anytime MS can remove an application off your PC with Windows 10's built-in backdoor, which carried over from Windows 8.x. But don't worry, it's for your own safety. This is truly scary stuff that people should be paying attention to very closely. You don't give up freedom for convenience or perceived security, and this is exactly what Microsoft is trying to brainwash people into believing.
Microsoft thinks that people like tiles that flash stupid shit in the users face, but nobody likes them. It's a dumb idea that's going nowhere, and is why the Zune failed and is one of the reason why Windows 8.x is hated by everybody I've talked with. Why Microsoft refuses to move beyond their idiotic tile thing is beyond me. They obviously have an insane case of Stockholm syndrome, and have their heads very very far stuck up their asses. This is all a good thing, though, because Microsoft has done nothing but impede the progress of computing technology (embrace, extend, extinguish, etc.), and the sooner people realize this and spend their money elsewhere, the better off humanity will be. The more they keep perpetuating these idiotic maneuvers, the more market share they leave available for up-and-coming software companies. The market is so ridiculously saturated with companies that will do just about anything to capture a piece of the pie, how is Microsoft, this old behemoth steamboat with a completely idiotic board going to compete? Hanging on to their legacy software paradigm and backwards compatibility will get them through the next decade, but look at Microsoft's declining market share in terms of overall computing devices. Do people think that these numbers are magically going to go up? Oh, that's right, the Surface 3 is
the one that people want. Yeah right!
The networking tray UI is very fucking idiotic. The artwork looks like barf, is uninspiring, and there's an annoying animation where the networks "slide in", which means there's a slight delay until you can see all of the networks. I want to see everything instantly. Dealing with forgetting networks, typing in a network password, and other basic network setup tasks are frustrating with Windows 10. The UI is so dumbed down that it works against the user, rather than for the user. Windows 7's interface was superior, and why Microsoft needed to change it and make it worse is beyond me.
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The notifications UI is very stupidly designed. It takes up the entire vertical space of about two thirds of your horizontal screen space, when that's absolutely unnecessary -- and it can't be resized. Notice all the white space. Microsoft should have had these things figured out by now, and even though it's a preview build, the reason it's not resizable is because they most likely hadn't thought of this yet.
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Windows 10 requires a password hint when creating a password. If you don't enter a hint, you can't set a password. I never use password hints because I'm scrupulous enough to remember my passwords, and password hints can be a major security problem. I haven't tried creating a password in the administrative tools UI, so I don't know if this same policy is enforced. However, most users are not going to be creating user accounts and passwords in administrative tools because they don't know it exists, and if they did they wouldn't know how to use it.
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Searching for programs or files on my slow laptop is a nightmare. Even though the machine is fairly old and slow, the bloated new Start menu completely bogs the machine down. It's searching Bing and the app store, and then you have all this integrated Cortana crap mixed in. I don't know how much Cortana when inactive bogs it down, but without seeing source code we're all left in the dark. With XP or Windows 7, typing the name of a program and hitting enter instantly opened it up. Not so with Windows 10. Slower machines are great for testing to see how efficiently software was written.
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In one of my previous posts, I wrote about how the "Home" and "Favorites" folders were poorly conjured up, and how pinning and unpinning folders was buggy. Microsoft has changed this for the better, and it's now called "quick access". It's a stupid name, but at least it's more straightforward.
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Spartan is a complete disaster, and needs major work. It's not even really worth writing much about at this point. You gotta give MS some love, however, for the artwork that displays when it starts up. Talk about beautiful.
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The feedback and settings dialog wipe each other out, since MS forbids any type of dialog box with tabs, radio buttons, and checkboxes. It's very infantilizing and looks hidious. To view all the settings, you are forced to scroll very far down to the bottom. This is a pain, as it's obviously designed for a tablet. The on/off radio button also is poorly implemented. When you click it it slides to the right, and "off" dynamically changes to "on". It makes zero sense and threw me off. By sliding it to the right, a reasonable person would think that a switch next to "off" meant "off".
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Last but not least, the Windows store looks completely repugnant.
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While GNU/Linux is just about to get live kernel patching with version 4.0 of the Linux kernel, Windows still struggles with failed updates and requires numerous restarts for even small basic patches. It's rare you have to reboot a Linux machine for an update; usually at the most (if updating KDE, for example) you need to log out and back in. Windows update in Windows 10 doesn't by default give the user the option to disable an automatic restart of their computer. It sets a time and you better be done with whatever you're working on when that time approaches.