I know that, the OP is asking if there is a way to disable the spying and forced updates in window 10 and I show him that.

Do you know if there is any good place to buy bare bone laptop? All the new laptop seems to come with window 10. Even I can reformat them to Linux + Window 7 I don't want to give Microsoft their cut of the sales

Install Solyd or Linux Mint and then you can play almost all Windows games natively. The only things still missing is win64 and dx11 renderer support, but those will be finished at some point. And you can install windows as a guest OS in virtual machine, giving GPU full access to guest OS at same time cutting any networking inside. This way you can play all windows titles.

I think you could ask manufacturer about that.
I only bought laptop with OS once, and that was vista.. Luckily that laptop died in pain (BGA) about three weeks after I stop paying cover plan ; )

I've been a Mac user for almost seven years (and the honeymoon years have long since gone) thanks to forced updates during the Vista years which killed my network adaptor in one machine and killed a motherboard in another. Despite switching to Mac I've had to use Windows out of necessity (work, uni, some games) and honestly found that out of all of the current operating systems I've had experience with (Win, Mac, Linux), I've found that Win 7 was the best one. It was the happy medium between Windows XP's compatibilities with software/hardware and lessening the needless Aero interface and forced updates from Vista while plugging several security vulnerabilities.

Since Windows 8, though I've wondered who the heck at Microsoft thought forcing a mobile interface on a desktop operating system was a good idea; true, tablets were taking off, but for desktops MS again "fixed" what wasn't broken. The shift from Win 7 to 8 for my family's machines was a shock (I was sitting on the sidelines with OS X a that point), and the steady loss of hardware peripheral support and cryptic updates had my folks begging me for help constantly. I remember spending an entire morning on a day off from work and uni shuffling between three computers fixing wireless printer issues at my folks' request while they were out. I was a very nasty and angry man once they came home.

I now have two versions of Windows 10: a paid USB Pro Full version running via VM on my 2013 27" iMac (needed for running a specific version of Quickbooks and Excel's descriptive statistics calculations) and an OEM version on a 2-in-1 HP Spectre X2. It feels that, from using the OS, it's rather "soulless" as an OS compared to others. The Windows Store is lacking, the attempt to integrate Xbox functionality seems half-baked, forcing Cortana functionality caused my mother to have several issues until I disabled Cortana in all of the machines, and it has an annoying habit of constant crashes for the first few days after (again) forced, cryptic updates.

As a Mac user I was elated to finally have a OS able to play Falcom games natively after using Quickbooks and other programs for schoolwork, but unlike XP and 7, I've had more fun suspending Windows 10 on the VM, launch Wineskin, make wrappers for the Windows games that I want to play and run them under OS X. This shouldn't be happening and to me bodes ill for the future direction of MS.

During Windows XP, Vista and 7, I acted as the family IT guy and put every computer through defragging, cleanup and system checks. I felt more "in control" of the software and hardware, and the interfaces allowed me to see what files were fragmented and how large they were. With Windows 10 (and this sounds dumb), but I can't even defrag drives when I want; I get weird messages whenever I attempt to defrag a drive. And let's not forget the (again) forced updates, which my Spectre isn't happy with.

Mac OS X ISN'T MUCH BETTER. Forced iOS-like changes and idiotic design (why the heck would anyone need Launchpad?), changing iPhoto to Photos ruined many peoples' lives, iMovie's interface is becoming worse and worse, and DON'T GET ME STARTED ON Quicktime X. I used to make gameplay videos for fun before QuickTime became so limited and broken that I was forced to used iMovie; but after so many needless changes to iMovie I gave up making videos. iTunes UI under Windows (for me) > the Mac version.

Sorry for the rambling, but I have to agree with the original post in that Windows 10 is one of the most lacking in all Windows releases; however those wonderful XP days are long gone, and Win 7's days are numbered. And with Apple acting like idiots with their needless GUI redesigns and annual updates (what's wrong with two/three year cycles?), I can honestly see myself installing Linux Mint on a VM to try it out REAL soon, and by the time I graduate from college, be running Linux exclusively before 2020.

Let me supercharge you!

With Windows versions becoming worse for every new iteration, I finally made the choice and switched to Linux about 2 years ago. Tried several distros, and landed on Linux Mint. It's pretty easy for people used to Windows, and comes with loads of things you need anyway, so there is less hassle with finding and installing (and setting up) essential programs and so forth. You can try a Live version if you want, just to see what it looks like.

I actually still have a Windows 7 install in dual boot, but haven't used it in years. Everything I want works in Linux anyway, so no reason to go back to Windows (which would probably get downgraded to Win 10 at some anyway if I did, the bastards).

Games tend to be a little more tricky to get working, but more and more new games can be played in Linux now, so it is less of an issue. I prefer the older games, but I still got most of them working.

Maybe a change of OS isn't the answer people want, but when the Windows alternative is so horribly bad, is it not worth a try at least? If nothing else, Linux respects your privacy, and is much more secure. And who knows how many backdoors exist in Windows for NSA and other dodgy entities. Hopefully Linux is more secure on that front too.

One of the things I really like with Linux is that you can have several "desktop" or work spaces. Easy to switch between them, and you can for instance play a game in one, and have the browser open in another.

When I got my new laptop, it came with Windows 7, with an option (strong suggestion) to upgrade to Windows 10. Instead, I downgraded to Winows 7. If you really don't want to use 10, although complicated, there are ways to downgrade to 7. I also dualboot with Linux (the idea that it loves your privacy is not necessarily true, however- I had to switch over from Ubuntu to Xubuntu because Unity had some dodgy data sharing going on, along with being a horrible interface), but don't use that much anymore for gaming :(.
I'll probably switch over to 10 in a year or two or three, once all of Microsoft's sneakery has been exposed and become bypassable. I hear it isn't a bad OS other than the current privacy issues. Until then, I'm content with 7.

For those of you who don't want Windows 10 in the first place I've found a way to block it. There is a program called GWX Control Panel which blocks Windows 10 now and forever (hopefully). Google it and it should be the first link for Ultimate Outsider. I've gotten it and now I don't get those messages anymore about how the upgrade will happen in the next hour. I panicked at first since there was seemingly no way to cancel this.

I've considered changing over to Linux but for now I'll continue blocking Windows 10 as best I can. Maybe in my next PC build I'll look at Linux.

Well it isn't all rosy on the Linux front. People like to complain about Windows' unification of the UI with mobile, but those who have used Linux have witnessed the change in Gnome, the shift into Unity, major KDE rewrite, etc. At least you can opt out of that mess if you're using alternative, smaller desktops or window managers. On the other hand, if you liked (say) old Gnome, you're pretty much on your own.

And if you like life with the command line, things can be less rosy still. Unlike with desktops and window managers that are easily an user choice, it's harder and harder to have any say at the lower level when systemd is showed down your throat, old tools get major revisions with significant increases in complexity, messy scripts and piss poor documentation (gurb2 for example). Or old tools are abandoned and you need to learn a new set of tools while documentation keeps referring to the old one or a mix of old and new, without telling you how one or the other is broken (see old ifconfig vs iproute2). New distro releases constantly change the way you do things, often without correspoinding change in documentation... then you have all the outdated wikis and docs that effectively read "TODO" or "FIXME" or "here's how to do it but don't do it since it's broken since release N+1" all over the place. Good times.

For another example of things we remember, consider Pulseaudio and ALSA. They could've continued the development of OSS and fix & improve when upstream went commercial, but instead they chose to develop a new system. Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. "Advanced" presumably means "Overengineered, big, complex, and hard". For years and years we had this issue with "legacy" OSS using programs needing exclusive access to the audio device, and ALSA & OSS applications couldn't happily coexist at the same time, well, not output sound at the same time anyway. And ALSA was very very poorly documented. And yeah, you had to configure it. Dmix wasn't a default, and it got many other things wrong too, depending on your card and setup and whatnot. Alsawiki was sparsely populated, if it existed at all. Man pages were absolute shit. Figuring out the configuration syntax, and then after syntax, figuring out what all the devices and parameters and plugins actually are and how they interconnect.. yeah, good luck. Most people just blindly pasted shit from wikis and forum posts and IRC until it eventually (hopefully) worked somehow.

Eventually, it got pretty good. Documentation still sucks but at least it sucks less. Dmix was enabled by default. You still needed to configure things if you had multiple sound cards or a surround setup. Programs mostly worked however, and OSS was mostly forgotten. Pulseaudio happened and fucked it all up. People blame Ubuntu for shipping it broken, but I kept having to fix family members' computers' audio problems regularly for *years*, even years after people told pulseaudio is fine. It was not fine. Most often, the most reliable fix was to get rid of PA entirely (hard on all those "easy to use" distros that insist on installing shit packages on you any chance they get). And then people started really depending on PA. So now you have programs that don't do sound properly or at all without PA. And on some systems you still have problems with PA. So it's broken either way...

Massive change, massive churn all the time. Ten years ago, major distro updates always caused trouble. Unless you used something rolling release (Gentoo, which I did use). Five years ago, same thing. Today? Same thing. I watched my father update his Fedora today. It was sad. Actually, I was planning on trying Fedora on my new laptopt, but I just lost the appettite for that.

The security thing is another front that isn't exactly rosy. Certainly fanboys keep telling Linux is secure, as if repeating the mantra made it so. Facts are often absent from the surrounding discourse.

Back when I started with Linux (back in 2005) my image of the community was that it was helpful, inclusive, held portability as a highly regarded virtue, and choice was a natural human right. Now the community feels extremely polarized, discussion is very hateful and argumentative, and always uderlined by this "our way or highway" overtone, suggesting that people must make a choice, an exclusive choice, and abandon everything else, or be abandoned. Portability isn't a concern as long as whatever runs on the high and mighty Linux as it exists in the mind of Lennart or whoever..

As far as privacy goes, you have to be real careful especially with the distros led by corporations. Ubuntu in particular has made some, uh, questionable moves.

That might happen once I relearn Linux. The last time I touched Linux was in 2007 during the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon days. It was fast and decent on my Windows XP machine, but I didn't have time to completely learn it due to work and going to school part-time.

Right now I'm looking at Linux Mint as an alternative; maybe I can start using Linux in earnest before the fall semester. Not for classes though, because I still need a fully-functional MS Office (accounting major) but definitely to begin giving Mac OS X and eventually Windows the boot.

Win 10 sounds like spyware

It is.

What change?

or [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Frameworks_5]KFW5?

Which mess? Everything is fine in the stable department.

Those will not evade changes!

Uh-huh.

True story, bro! Patrick removed these!

Lol!

Worksforme.

Ouch!

, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iproute2]otherwise.

Someone wrote something on internets and you enraged?

Yay!

Means "better" than overengineered, big, complex, hard OSS. Simpler.

No more "/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy ".

When application has same bit ABI as kernel (32/32 or 64/64).
Otherwise.

Ugh, it was either crappy soundcard without driver support, or root problem - nearly all sound cards missing any hardware mixer. Reason why PulseAudio happened.

You call configuring sound cards and library back-ends per hand good and automatic configuration (PulseAudio) - a fuck up? I did that, and that sucked. PulseAudio happened, and no problems so ever (after libasound got Pulse sink).

For good!

But it did ship it broken and it was the reason.

Yeah!

Sure, because it does its job!

Get a decend soundcard. Problem solved.


/me yawns from Debian Stable.

remove the "~" from your sources.list and clean the use.unmask.

I head Fedora to be RedHat's unstable/cutting edge testbred. Am I wrong?

Why, you don't want to burn speakers in your laptop with Fedora anymore?

I can confirm that its secure. No viruses caught since 2006.
Hardware firewall, latest stable packages on machines, script blocker. And a good wpa2 wifi password.

What am I doing wrong?

Awww....

Right, Linux is not about Linux. What?

Right, they built in an official NSA backdoor.
Yeah right ;)

Windows 10 has another 2 months before their free upgrade offer officially expires. *wink wink*

The easiest way to avoid automatically upgrading to Windows 10 from Win7 is to use the
"Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" setting in Windows Update,
and uncheck the "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates".
Then either never approve recommended updates or wait 3-5 weeks before approving them to see if Microsoft tried sneaking in more spyware monitoring.

This should be chaptered.

I have win 10 pro and I have been able to disable all the features people complain about. Most of them were quite easy. A couple not so easy. Refusing an update is bit harder than it should be of course, but it can be done. If you have the home version you are basically screwed on controlling updates from what I have read.

I had Win 7 before, and I much prefer Win 10 at this point, after 7 months of owning and using it.

I used Unix then Linux at work, and my home PC is for gaming which is why I will not be switching to Linux. Plus, I hate updating drivers on Linux. Compared to the 90s, Linux is much much nicer now. I have two distros running in a VM on my Win 10 system.