I have a CNC machine that I control from windows. Windows 10 forced a hard shutdown for updates while I was running a job the other day. No notion that the software was running an active program, no observation that active processing and I/O was underway. I HATE windows. It seems to have more irrational and user hostile defaults than any other system. I'm sure that if I were better about it I could craft an image that worked better, and I could disable stupid things, but in a workshop I never want cortana. If I had wanted it, I'd be playing Halo...

Windows 7 was fine, but the spammy feature bloat is so frustrating.

If you're going to bother making an image you might as well just learn buildroot and switch to linux.

I am tied to Mach3 at the moment, which only runs on windows. I've thought about LinuxCNC before, but there seem to be issues supporting my machine. Otherwise, yeah, I would happily be running Linux.

I see ads in Windows 10 Enterprise. Microsoft has conceded to turning Windows into the OS equivalent to browser add-on malware.

When I started my current job I was astonished how much bullshit is built into the enterprise edition of Win 10

> malware

Source or example of malicious stuff done?

Most folks consider an operating system showing them unwanted ads to be malicious.

Forced update-restart immediately before I gave a presentation, with no warning. Malicious.

I hate it too.

In their defense, there was a pretty large subculture of technically knows-enough-to-be-dangerous people who would do everything in their power to totally disable Windows Update for various reasons.

Microsoft looked at this as compromising Windows' security and harming Microsoft's reputation. Their solution in Windows 10 was to make it much more difficult or impossible to delay or turn off updates for Home and Pro users. It's annoying as all hell for those who know what we're doing and do stay up to date. I hate it because it restarts in the middle of the night, then boots up into the Bitlocker screen - so when I get up in the morning I discover my desktop has been running at 100% CPU and blasting fans like a jet engine for god knows how many hours thanks to Windows update.

But at the same time, I can see why they did it, but there had to be a better way.

Unless you believe Microsoft intentionally designed the OS to hose your presentation by rebooting right when it believes you are doing one, this is incompetent/bad design, not "malicious" design.

Let's compromise and call it "depraved indifference". No update ever made is that important that it needs to boot me out of what I'm doing at the moment.

Things like this[1] should not be possible.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP31lluUDWU

That's another thing that bugs the shit out of me, to the point that I made a passive-aggressive bug report out of it: The update process is 3-part, and two parts of them require your input after the first part, if your computer didn't automatically restart. First is the force shutdown "blue screen," which, with no restart, can leave your computer/laptop in a time-bomb "fuck you" state. Woops, forgot that the last time you turned off your computer, it was an update-shutdown? Hahaha, you need it for a presentation in five minutes? Jokes on you, we still have two update screens to go!

Then you have the black screen with the circle, and then the blue screens "we are configuring your updates and didn't touch your files".

It drives me insane.

Incompetence as an excuse can only go so far. It's not like Microsoft is unaware of or completely ignorant that people use their Windows systems for all kinds of things — sometimes even mission-critical things. Choosing to ignore an ill you created despite knowing the consequences it has on others is not incompetence.

"Telemetry" that can't be fully turned off. I mean off. Not "minimal", not "disabled", off.

By itself this isn't horrible, but it (and many other Windows features, for that matter) crosses into malware territory when it treats the user as hostile (like re-enabling itself or working around blocks like DNS)

I've worked harder to make Windows 10 Enterprise actually useful than for any other version. Lot's of Group Policy and Registry edits are required to strip out the cruft, and even then it often leaves things broken. Windows 10 is the PC equivalent of a crappy Android phone with your carrier's impossible-to-remove bloatware baked into it. Absolutely horrible experience.

How did you get it? I asked at a Microsoft Store once and they had no idea what I was talking about.

Piracy.

Or you work for an organization that has an Enterprise license.

got mine from bizspark

Microsoft is making the same mistake as Apple; they call something Pro but in an effort to appear "not boring" they make it a mass market product that neglects almost entirely the Pro workflow.

Windows 2k Pro was an actual workstation OS. It’s a shame that they’ve diluted Pro for the mass market as you’ve stated.

The only silver lining is WSL, but it’s a toy at best, not a fully featured POSIX-compliant development environment.

I would love for them to fork Windows into consumer and commercial editions.

I used to uninstall the things I want gone, but I've given up. Contacts, maps, money, music, mail, news, weather, and the other bloatware just kept coming back. You can't uninstall stuff like Cortana at all, AFAIK.

Main reason you currently can't remove Cortana, is because Cortana if you leave the additional features disabled, is just a rebrand of Windows Search, a relatively core OS function. Earlier versions of Windows 10 used to differentiate the two, current versions do not.

I don't think I need Windows Search either. I shut off the indexing service because it was always using 100% of my disk in the performance monitor.

I have Windows 10 Pro and haven't ever seen an ad.

I'm genuinely curious what the difference is between my install and yours.

Windows 10 Pro has advertisements in the Login screen background, and the Start Menu -- by default, on every fresh install.

Yes, you can turn these advertisements off easily. But considering how much we pay for Pro (~$200), there shouldn't be any advertisements anywhere.

To be clear though, these "ads" are solely for Microsoft/Windows features, the most third party they get is being "suggested" apps on the Windows Store. Some people may not perceive them as "ads" (and Microsoft claims they aren't, as laughable as that is), because they are connected to Windows features, you'll never get sent to a third party webpage from these things.

And I don't think they're actually paid ads, for either the suggested apps or the rare occasion they've put an "ad" as the lock screen background. They've promoted the Surface on it before, and then for Tomb Raider, I think they were mostly pushing the idea of "hey, you can get games in the Windows Store now", rather than it necessarily being a paid campaign with the game studio.

They put "suggestions" for 3rd party apps right in the start menu. There's no way they're intelligently suggesting those apps either because they pop up almost immediately after a fresh install, and are often about games.

> And I don't think they're actually paid ads, for either the suggested apps or the rare occasion they've put an "ad" as the lock screen background. They've promoted the Surface on it before, and then for Tomb Raider, I think they were mostly pushing the idea of "hey, you can get games in the Windows Store now", rather than it necessarily being a paid campaign with the game studio.

So you're saying MS doesn't profit if you buy a Surface or something from the Windows Store?

No, nor I didn't suggest otherwise.

I just clicked on the start menu, and halfway down the list of apps is "Suggested: Fitbit Coach. Up your fitness level".

That's an advertisement. My computer has never had anything related to Fitbit on it. Ever.

I was the same (win10 pro as well, immediately customized options), then I saw a fresh install on a customer laptop to setup, and oh my god what a mess.

Thankfully for now there are still settings to turn off most of it, and removing all squares/tiles form the menu makes the Start menu look like the classic clean concise style, but it's frustrating that most people get stuck with the subpar experience.

Windows 10 pro on my desktop that I built

Windows 10 home on my hp laptop

Both are in insider branches

Never seen an ad. Never had it update without me telling it to. I never modified anything in Windows to get rid of telemetry.

I have a suspicion that Windows actually gets more strange the more you "fix" it

I believe the Xbox app is included on Windows Server 2016 as well.