...probably will not be used again. I gave up trying to make it useful and I'm sticking with XP, Linux Mint Mate, and Windows 7. Anyone else sidelined their Windows 10 box(s)?
I studied up and made Windows 10 my bitch. You can do it too but it requires patience and diligence. Once you get it working like you want it it's actually a fairly nice OS. Be prepared to spend a lot of time on it. The upside is, Windows 10 is going to be around a long time so if you learn it it will be to your advantage. Xp is dead, Windows 7 is almost dead. That leaves Linux and Windows 10 as your main choices. Learning Windows 10 is no harder than learning Linux. I dual boot Linux Mint and Windows 10. Having said all that, if Windows went away tomorrow, I'd be okay with Linux.
I agree with the above. I loved Windows 7, stuck with it over Windows 8, and even 8.1 (which WAS better than 8). But Windows 7 is old, very old now, it is difficult to get it working on modern hardware. And I could live with Linux alone, if Windows 10 went away.
I put windows 7 on my alienware 17 r3 made my life good yes not officially supported just get used to manually locating drivers and in some cases. playing with INF files
What he said. Through efforts mainly from others that have provided tools to remove crapware, I didn't adopt Windows 10 until 1607. I did do something I haven't done ever: actually pay for a program to remove unneeded features like Store & useless Store apps in 1803 & 1809. I created a whole damn suite of scripts for interchanging ISOs, WIMs/ESDs, so I can test Insider Previews while using the same scripts for stable or next public releases, a bunch of files being edited on the fly before the ISO is created, and unattended scripts that are tailored to the target release and scripts that after installation are tailored for that system or release. My biggest beefs so far that indicate bigger problems: - For example, you used to be able to set a global lockscreen background, they later limited it to Enterprise/LTSC or Pro while connected to a domain. At some point they no longer trusted even Home users with such a trivial option. I could do this in Windows 7. - At first you couldn't disable WU driver updates. I decided what driver version is installed, right? There is a registry option, they later added GUI option, then later removed it, the corresponding registry entry is still valid but they couldn't trust even Pro users with this hidden option. Nothing is stopping them from removing it. They make too many drastic changes often that even hardware drivers are no longer compatible, the vendors can't or won't update their drivers. Microsoft blocks installation on hardware that has a single piece of hardware that may be incompatible. Now you're stuck with an old version of Windows 10, you want to install software that requires a newer version of Windows 10, but only because Microsoft has blocked installation of newer versions on your hardware because a vendor that makes your hardware didn't want to keep up with MS breaking the driver model everything every hour. TL;DR: MS is breaking stuff just for the sake of breaking stuff, everyone is tired of it.
I can not believe how much time and effort it took to make win10 "my bitch". Seriously it was ten times more work than streamlining win7 which is where I came from. Though I have it done and and I'm pretty satisfied with my system now. I honestly don't think I can put that kind of time and effort into a new version of Windows again. So this is probably going to be it for me and Windows. When I replace the machine I'm using now it's going to be a Unix friendly model and I'm just going to bail on whatever apps I'm running that don't have Unix equivs. I'm actually pretty well versed in Unix so I know exactly what to expect. It used to be I liked Windows for being fast and easy to set up. That is just not the case anymore. I can do the intitial set up of a new Unix version in a fraction of the time it takes me to set up a new version of Windows now. I'm talking just in terms of scripting OS configuration to user preference.
Yes that's a big part of the problem, drastic changes and then they waffle on stuff. The bi-annual release cycle greatly magnifies the problem, further alienating customers and developers. From the outside looking in it seems the whole Windows product line is in a constant state of chaos. I think probably looks like that from the inside too. In my case I'm running LTSC and I'm not going to move to another version of Windows after this. I'm staying at 1809 for the duration. Once it gets to a point that apps no longer run on 1809 I'm going to bail on my current hardware and Windows altogether. That's the plan anyway.
If one absolutely had to do it, one could install Windows 10 on that laptop (meaning the OP) and then run Windows 7 in a VM and use that guest OS as the primary OS. Or do the same with Linux as a host OS, either way it's possible to continue using Windows 7 if you absolutely must. I've yet to work on a laptop so far that I couldn't get working with Windows 7 - I did have one laptop, a Kaby Lake Lenovo Yoga, that would not give me the full 10-point multi-touch on the touchscreen but single touch worked just fine. Everything else was fully supported under Windows 7 including the older Intel GPU. It does take work, yes, and as time passes it will become more and more difficult to get Windows 7 to install and be functional on modern hardware, but so far we haven't reached that total cutoff point.
I would like to see this answered too, the OP has a windows 10 laptop but gives no information about the motivations to keep Linux and Win 7 running on it. not related: ps, chopping doesn't make windows run faster, only more unstable
Well, at least they don't make you pay for the extra entropy it includes. The reason for that "chopping" is that customizing is not really possible anymore. Making Windows 10 your bitch includes taking a big nailed club and slapping the s**t out of it. Personally, I don't appreciate that "Windows for Dummies". I want to administer my system by myself. I don't need help from MS, I'm no Apple sheep.
I just remove all the inbox apps plus Store/Store support but also keep a different version of WIMs that only have Store on Semi-Annual Channel. I still use Semi-Annual on some and LTSC on others. -- Still, it takes dedication like me to create a suite of scripts to tailor multiple release of Windows 10 for multiple PCs with my customizations, when building I can interject any ISO, WIM/ESD, specify any build #, and at setup time the same information is read and settings are applied for a given build or codename. When testing a new insider preview I just direct it to the new ISO/build # settings and that's it.
the "duration" ?? Windows 10 is the last version of Windows. they might even just change the name to Windows and stop releasing versions at all, just updates.
Regardless of whether they change the name or not, different releases are significantly different from each other. Now they are changing the driver model again, which means more of the older hardware will become obsolete, as drivers for them will probably not be updated. I have a laptop I bought in 2010 which I'm still able to use with a BIOS hack (without that it would probably not have run Windows 10) - I doubt it will survive the upcoming driver model change. Back to the main topic: It is a power struggle - either you make it your bitch, or it makes you it's bitch. I'm dual booting Linux. I effing have to, if I want to get any work done while travelling in areas with poor internet connectivity. Even something as basic as checking email becomes nearly impossible until Windows has finished updating itself, which could take hours, since WU very kindly does not tell you how many MB/GB each update session will cost - sometimes it doesn't even tell you what it is downloading. If there is an urgent email I have to read now, I have to reboot into Linux. Windows absolutely loves it's own apps - try uninstalling Candy Crush, for instance. You can install your preferred apps and set them as defaults for certain file types, but every couple of weeks Windows will set it back to it's own apps. Media players, for instance - you laboriously set your preferred media player to open files with the commonly used file extensions (there are a lot of extensions to manage), and bam - a few days later you have to do it all over again. What makes it worse is that many of these 'default grabbing apps' totally suck. M$ Edge wants to open PDFs , but just try opening a PDF that is saved on your hard drive if you have a poor internet connection or when you are offline. What is the effing point of downloading and saving PDFs if you can't view them without a good internet connection?
Well you don't ~have~ to run with Windows update, I don't. I do my updates manually from the MS catalog. That's the one nice thing they've done for us poor sap users, though it's actually there to support corporate admins running an in-house update server. Still it's a huge help. I absolutely agree about the constant Windows updates causing big problems without a high speed connection, but that's if you leave things in their default installation state. At this point there's still enough control over the system either through reg hacks, third party utilities, or version selection (i.e. enterprise over Pro) to make things tenable. Though MS seems intent on torturing us poor Windows users as much as possible so it may get to the point where the controls are no longer there. Microsoft can call it want they want, but they've basically gone to a rolling release approach to Windows, everyone runs the latest release regardless of anything else. Still there is a duration there. They do support a particular bi-annual release for two years, that's on paper. In my case I'm running LTSC which will get regular updates for five years. So that's what I mean about "the duration". I'll run LTSC 2019 as long as I can and that will be it for me, will go a non-win route after that. I just can't take any more of this MS nonsense. It's like they fired all their engineering managers and put the marketing pukes in charge. Sometimes things are so illogical I wonder if they even use the OS they design.
I think they have a lot of weird "rules" they have to follow based on contractual obligations w/ govt/large corps and OEMs. it's not like when Win 95 came out and people actually went to the store and bought the box.
look on the bright side, Microsoft's "agreement" is far better than Facebook's or any of the social media giants that most people fully accept on a daily basis. just think of Microsoft's telemetry like being in the hospital. the nurses are just making sure your BP and heart rate don't go in the red. and with Windows they can't even really tell the data is coming from you unless someone high up at MS really goes in and spies on you which I guess they could do in theory. I'd rather use OneDrive than Google Drive any day. Apple and Microsoft care more about your privacy than Facebook and Google.
Yeah I'm one of the old cockroaches for sure, you nailed it on that. In any case it is relative to a great extent, but whatever the case it's ~my~ computer and I want it to run and look how I want, be that as it may. Barring the subjectivity about where MS has gone with Windows there's still a lot not to like. Having a good amount of experience working with Unix systems including proprietary versions I can say there's a world of difference there just in philosophy of design. But that's not something that has changed over the years, always been that way. I can say for sure I've never been annoyed by the way a Unix system works the way I have been annoyed by Windows, and the annoyances keep getting bigger. Just don't think it's worth the trouble anymore.