Windows 10 Redstone 2 Will Be Released In April

Megalith

Megalith

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Dell and Fitbit have reportedly leaked the release period for the Creators Update. In April, we’ll be getting 3D and virtual reality support in Windows 10, along with gaming improvements, better DPI support, and much more.

The update codenamed Redstone 2 "The Empire Strikes Back" release date has been leaked by Microsoft’s chums Dell and Fitbit. Dell and Fitbit both posted the update news on their forums. Vole has yet to confirm them itself. Dell made the announcement earlier, and effectively squashed rumors that the new update would be happening in March. Fitbit said: "We're excited to announce that Fitbit will be introducing support for tracker notifications (Call, SMS, Calendar and third party apps) and Connected GPS for all Windows users on the Windows 10 Creators Update coming in April."
 
Sounds ominous. "Empire Strikes Back"? Is there where MSFT infects all PCs with some kind of peer-to-peer AI?
 
'Empire Strikes Back' update... is Darth Vader going to personally show up to uninstall your games and reset your privacy settings?

Windows 10 is dead. Windows 7 beat 10 2:1 over the holidays... You can't even buy 7 directly any more. I got fed up with Microsoft's shenanigans back in October and moved all 6 of my computers from Windows 7 to Linux Mint.
 
devil22 said:
Loving Windows 10, nice and stable and I just get shit done and don't even think about the OS. Oh wait, no one will think I'm cool, I mean "Windows 10 is the devil, f*** MS!!!!"
Click to expand...

I spent ages trying to explain privilege escalation to all the anti-Microsoft trolls back in the Vista days, and I'm hardly the only person who thinks Windows 8/10 is a complete disaster. It's so bad they can't even give it away.

I thought Linux on the desktop was just a hobby project for a long time, I was blown away when I discovered how far it had come this past year. All my hardware 'just works,' even my Creative sound card and my Highpoint/Marvell controllers/RAID arrays. All my favorite games are Linux native. 1/3 of my Steam library and 1/4 of the whole store is Linux native. The UI is actually designed for a desktop instead of a phablet and looks quite good (I use Mint with Cinnamon) and there's no data mining. Why bother dealing with Microsoft? At this point I don't think I'd switch all my machines back to Windows even if they released a proper successor to 7.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I spent ages trying to explain privilege escalation to all the anti-Microsoft trolls back in the Vista days, and I'm hardly the only person who thinks Windows 8/10 is a complete disaster. It's so bad they can't even give it away.
Click to expand...

I've used all the Windows OSes, and I really do try to keep an open mind, but as far as I can tell, the reason 8/10 are hated is because the internet mob beats down any one who doesn't absolutely hate Windows. And it seems to me, that the better Windows gets, the more they attack it on trifling aspects because it is more of a threat to their fantastical plan to have everyone switch to a "real" OS (unix). Windows 10 has good stability, much hardened security, and so on. Except for "free/open" which most people don't give a hoot about, that raises the question, "why linux/unix?" Back in the day it was easy to laugh at Windows 95 and XP, but I think from a technical standpoint this is becoming much harder. So they latch on to trolling about the "store" of all things that you never have to look at, etc. "It's a tablet OS!" blah, I use it like a desktop OS with no issues.


I thought Linux on the desktop was just a hobby project for a long time, I was blown away when I discovered how far it had come this past year. All my hardware 'just works,' even my Creative sound card and my Highpoint/Marvell controllers/RAID arrays. All my favorite games are Linux native. 1/3 of my Steam library and 1/4 of the whole store is Linux native. The UI is actually designed for a desktop instead of a phablet and looks quite good (I use Mint with Cinnamon) and there's no data mining. Why bother dealing with Microsoft? At this point I don't think I'd switch all my machines back to Windows even if they released a proper successor to 7.
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I'm sure Linux is much better these days, but it's just not a realistic option for most people. Big game studios don't bother with it, and it kind of defeats the purpose of having a computer if you're incompatible with the mainstream. Your friends are using an app or playing a game, you want to do the same thing as them, not sit there just making troll post about how superior your OS is.. Data mining is a weak argument, as far as I can tell that's all in order to analyse app/OS issues because people are ironically hating on MS for not being stable. It doesn't seem to affect me in the slightest.
 
devil22 said:
I've used all the Windows OSes, and I really do try to keep an open mind, but as far as I can tell, the reason 8/10 are hated is because the internet mob beats down any one who doesn't absolutely hate Windows. And it seems to me, that the better Windows gets, the more they attack it on trifling aspects because it is more of a threat to their fantastical plan to have everyone switch to a "real" OS (unix). Windows 10 has good stability, much hardened security, and so on. Except for "free/open" which most people don't give a hoot about, that raises the question, "why linux/unix?" Back in the day it was easy to laugh at Windows 95 and XP, but I think from a technical standpoint this is becoming much harder. So they latch on to trolling about the "store" of all things that you never have to look at, etc. "It's a tablet OS!" blah, I use it like a desktop OS with no issues.
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Windows has its issues, so does Linux. If the problems Windows presents are show stopping I get why some wouldn't want it. Linux provides the show stopping issue of not supporting much of may hardware and software. Supporting 1/3rd of a Steam library I've spent thousands on over the years is no where good enough, along with losing things like OneNote, OmniPage, Acrobat, etc. If I were having the kinds of issues that some mention with all kinds of instability or random drivers being installed or anything like that, well I don't see how I could use it with all the stuff I have running on Windows.
 
heatlesssun said:
Because 1/3rd is not close to 100%.
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Then by the same logic you must agree that Windows 10 is a failure. It's stalled out with less than 25% market share.

The Windows ecosystem is fragmenting while the number of native games for Linux has gone from zero to something like 1/4 the game market in only a couple years.
 
Ahh, another glorious update that will magically reset everything back to ms apps and must likely, way more spyware crap that cannot be disabled, per orders of the NSA.

Man, we really need a good alternative to MS.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Then by the same logic you must agree that Windows 10 is a failure. It's stalled out with less than 25% market share.

The Windows ecosystem is fragmenting while the number of native games for Linux has gone from zero to something like 1/4 the game market in only a couple years.
Click to expand...

Windows 10 did grow last month, yes not as fast as Windows 7 in this one month of this survey you keep mentioning. You never mention that Linux "stalled" last month and actually lost share. So Linux is an even bigger failure?

And last year Steam added 1100 Linux games, 5200 Windows games, all the Linux games and another 4000. The gap in Linux in gaming GREW on Steam last year.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I spent ages trying to explain privilege escalation to all the anti-Microsoft trolls back in the Vista days, and I'm hardly the only person who thinks Windows 8/10 is a complete disaster. It's so bad they can't even give it away.

I thought Linux on the desktop was just a hobby project for a long time, I was blown away when I discovered how far it had come this past year. All my hardware 'just works,' even my Creative sound card and my Highpoint/Marvell controllers/RAID arrays. All my favorite games are Linux native. 1/3 of my Steam library and 1/4 of the whole store is Linux native. The UI is actually designed for a desktop instead of a phablet and looks quite good (I use Mint with Cinnamon) and there's no data mining. Why bother dealing with Microsoft? At this point I don't think I'd switch all my machines back to Windows even if they released a proper successor to 7.
Click to expand...

As a sysadmin, fuck everything about everything pre-Windows 8.1 except the Windows 7 GUI. The GUI, especially for changing network and other settings, is the ONLY area where Windows 7 is better than Windows 8.1/10. I have successfully eradicated Windows 7 from my network and I could not be happier in having done so. We're currently a mixed Windows 8.1/10 environment and hopefully in the next year will be 100% Windows 10 across the board.

The management tools and features (especially if you rely heavily on Powershell, which any good sysadmin does these days) available for Windows 8.1+ are reason alone to ditch Windows 7 in any corporate environment.
 
The core of Windows 10 seems good, and it's my daily driver at home.

The yearly updates that are essentially upgrades of the system are annoying though, as has been mentioned elsewhere they insist on resetting user options because the OS hasn't figured how to carry over user settings between upgrading the OS.

My home PC is used for games and hobby dev work though, and for both of those tasks it works well enough. I'm interested to see what the new VR features are.
 
grtitan said:
Man, we really need a good alternative to MS.
Click to expand...

And that would be cool. It's always the same thing with so many Linux supports. They tell you how wonderful it, you tell them well "33% isn't 100% and I'm not dumping all that, how's that any better than Windows uninstalling my software? At least with Windows I could install it back." No better listeners than Microsoft.
 
So will this be another forced update that will cause all manner of undocumented issues resulting in frustrating calls from my clients and long nights for myself? I'm all for features and shit, but I've never had so many consistently odd and obscure issues since July, and not coincidentally, they pop up within a couple weeks of major updates. I've managed to not have to reinstall Windows on any machines just yet but that shouldn't even be something I should have to consider.


TrailRunner said:
The yearly updates that are essentially upgrades of the system are annoying though, as has been mentioned elsewhere they insist on resetting user options because the OS hasn't figured how to carry over user settings between upgrading the OS.
Click to expand...

"The User Profile Service Failed the Logon."

"The User Profile Could not be Loaded."

"The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed."

These have been popping up randomly and pretty much never happened when clients were on Win 7. Plus I hate the fact that I can uninstall all of those stupid app store games and all that other stupid shit and it all just re-installs itself during a future "upgrade." Yeah there are archaic solutions to that but what's the point of being a sysadmin if M$ wants to constantly and aggressively suggest what should be on your machines? [/RANT]
 
devil22 said:
Data mining is a weak argument, as far as I can tell that's all in order to analyse app/OS issues because people are ironically hating on MS for not being stable. It doesn't seem to affect me in the slightest.
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Actually, data mining is Microsoft's argument to make - the burden falls on them, not customers, since they're the ones trying to sell people on 10.

And so far they have refused to disclose what exactly they're collecting and why, but the EULA paints a scary picture where they basically entitle themselves to anything and everything on your PC including files, taking screenshots, whatever. That's a pretty big red flag for most people, and the "but but Google spies too" is a lazy cop out - not everyone that uses Windows uses Google services, and this is a paid retail OS ($99 Home, $199 Pro). Google makes the case that their OS and services are free and they use it for advertising. Microsoft? Crickets. Neither of them are okay.

The only real irony is that MS collects more telemetry than ever, yet the track record of bad patches and updates during Windows 10's time is worse than for any previous Windows product. If theyre "collecting data" to make the product better, theyre failing miserably.
 
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DeathFromBelow said:
Load up Linux Mint or your favorite distro if you haven't recently and give it a shot, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Click to expand...

Actually, I am running Solus and it is fantastic.

The problem is the current fragmentation, in this particular case too many options is actually a bad thing.
 
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DPI said:
Actually, data mining is Microsoft's argument to make - the burden falls on them, not customers, since they're the ones trying to sell people on 10.

And so far they have refused to disclose what exactly they're collecting and why, but the EULA paints a scary picture where they basically entitle themselves to anything and everything on your PC including files, taking screenshots, whatever. That's a pretty big red flag for most people, and the "but but Google spies too" is a lazy cop out - not everyone that uses Windows uses Google services, and this is a paid retail OS ($99 Home, $199 Pro). Google makes the case that their OS and services are free and they use it for advertising. Microsoft? Crickets. Neither of them are okay.

The only real irony is that MS collects more telemetry than ever, yet the track record of bad patches and updates during Windows 10's time is worse than for any previous Windows product. If theyre "collecting data" to make the product better, theyre failing miserably.
Click to expand...

I can see the "logic" here, really, however, with all the people with packet sniffers on their networks, etc. not reporting anything big, I'm more inclined to believe the EULA is a blanket CYA just *in case* it accidentally happens here and there, and/or maybe for things like interactive tech support, etc. I think the hateful sentiment of it, comes from a lot of people who have grandiose ideas that the government gives two shits about their midget porn collection. :) EULA's be damned, if MS started collecting actual sensitive info they'd be raped on the internet, no different than if google turned on your phone and started recording you in your house.
 
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hopefully the DPI improvements are significant...'gaming improvements' sounds vague but probably is that new Game Mode that was recently revealed
 
devil22 said:
I can see the "logic" here, really, however, with all the people with packet sniffers on their networks, etc. not reporting anything big, I'm more inclined to believe the EULA is a blanket CYA just *in case* it accidentally happens here and there, and/or maybe for things like interactive tech support, etc. I think the hateful sentiment of it, comes from a lot of people who have grandiose ideas that the government gives two shits about their midget porn collection. :) EULA's be damned, if MS started collecting actual sensitive info they'd be raped on the internet, no different than if google turned on your phone and started recording you in your house.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Well, packet sniffers are irrelevant with MS encrypting all the telemetry flowing back to the mothership.

As for why people don't like data mining (seriously how is this even a debate), it's irrelevant whether the customer is worried about their midget porn collection, government spying, or simply doesn't feel obligated to supply telemetry data in a paid retail OS. At a minimum, the $199 Pro SKU should provide users with a simple Off switch.

That you may personally feel you have "nothing to hide", and someone else may feel "LOL Googlez and Applez duz it too tho" is also irrelevant. There's a perception problem Microsoft has created with Windows 10 that is theirs to solve. Their communication blackout on this front is not helping. Neither is the scary EULA - regardless of whether its for "CYA" or not - it got drastically more intrusive between 7 and 10.

The longer they ignore this issue trying to see how much they can get away with and hoping it all blows over, the more mindshare they lose forever, the more bad press they generate, and the more doubt they create in the minds of consumers and business IT decisionmakers. Hint: It's never going to blow over.
 
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DPI said:
Gotcha. Well, packet sniffers are irrelevant with MS encrypting all the telemetry flowing back to the mothership.

As for why people don't like data mining (seriously how is this even a debate), it's irrelevant whether the customer is "worried about their midget porn collection", or worried about government spying, or just doesn't feel obligated to supply telemetry data in a paid retail OS. At a minimum, the $199 Pro SKU should provide users with a simple Off switch.

That you may personally feel you have "nothing to hide", and someone else may feel "LOL Googlez and Applez duz it too tho" is also irrelevant. There's a perception problem Microsoft has created with Windows 10 that is theirs to solve. Their communication blackout on this front short are not helping that perception problem. And the longer they ignore this issue hoping it blows over eventually, the more mindshare they lose forever. Hint: It's never going to blow over.
Click to expand...

Even if Packet sniffers are not useful, there are armies of hackers debugging and decompiling Windows code for various reason, and yet crickets on that front. Because it is absolutely boring shit, it's just another silly thing for the concern trolls to whack MS over the head with. If MS went through their code, and reworked it to be totally switchable to off, it would be a complete waste. These complainers would move on to another cause of the week and so on, and MS would waste extraordinary resources constantly chasing their tails trying to fix these "issues" to the absolute delight of cheeto eating internet trolls.
 
Well, I'm headed back to 7. Win 10, in my context, offers me nothing new I need. And, it actually seems to be a step backwards. I have to open settings to open another context menu to get where I want to go. Then, an update decides it'll change it back for me.

If you want DPI scaling and want to use mobile devices and want to fling games across the PC and Xbox, be my guest. None of these things I'm now doing with my PC. Ultimately Windows 10 gets in my way more that Windows 7. Maybe I'll check again a year from now.
 
Shotglass01 said:
Well, I'm headed back to 7. Win 10, in my context, offers me nothing new I need. And, it actually seems to be a step backwards. I have to open settings to open another context menu to get where I want to go. Then, an update decides it'll change it back for me.

If you want DPI scaling and want to use mobile devices and want to fling games across the PC and Xbox, be my guest. None of these things I'm now doing with my PC. Ultimately Windows 10 gets in my way more that Windows 7. Maybe I'll check again a year from now.
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So what is something that you commonly do that so much easier to do in 7 that 10? Wanting to be able to see things decently on a 4k screen, maybe more a need? Along with mobile devices that are thin and light extensions of my desktop. Well, that's more a want for me.
 
It's not common really, it's annoying. I use a PC as a PC. I had to set up 7 on one drive last night. Set one and done. I don't have to go back and check after updates are installed. I don't need to go through two context menus to get places. 4k might bring me back, but I don't think I'll be doing that at least for a year. I'm skipping VR this generation so going to be a while on that too. I can use 10, it's just more annoying to me than 7. Plus I'll have plenty of 10 experience at work.
 
devil22 said:
I've used all the Windows OSes, and I really do try to keep an open mind, but as far as I can tell, the reason 8/10 are hated is because the internet mob beats down any one who doesn't absolutely hate Windows. And it seems to me, that the better Windows gets, the more they attack it on trifling aspects because it is more of a threat to their fantastical plan to have everyone switch to a "real" OS (unix). Windows 10 has good stability, much hardened security, and so on. Except for "free/open" which most people don't give a hoot about, that raises the question, "why linux/unix?" Back in the day it was easy to laugh at Windows 95 and XP, but I think from a technical standpoint this is becoming much harder. So they latch on to trolling about the "store" of all things that you never have to look at, etc. "It's a tablet OS!" blah, I use it like a desktop OS with no issues.
.
Click to expand...
That's the biggest load of crap I've read on a forum ever. And I've been around. Fighting mad nvidia fanboys in the Geforce FX era, who refused to accept that the leaf blower formerly known as a graphics card was not a good product.

Guess history repeats itself, because here I go again arguing with fanboys who refuse to accept that spying, unwanted ads, lack of privacy, lack of customization, and overrides of your app preferences from the "masters" are not good things in an OS. And instead come up with some ludicrous conspiracy theory that W10 is hated because of some unix fanatic smear campaign against it.
 
devil22 said:
Even if Packet sniffers are not useful, there are armies of hackers debugging and decompiling Windows code for various reason, and yet crickets on that front. Because it is absolutely boring shit, it's just another silly thing for the concern trolls to whack MS over the head with. If MS went through their code, and reworked it to be totally switchable to off, it would be a complete waste. These complainers would move on to another cause of the week and so on, and MS would waste extraordinary resources constantly chasing their tails trying to fix these "issues" to the absolute delight of cheeto eating internet trolls.
Click to expand...

So, in few words, you think that is ok to have your data collected and with a million and one obstacles placed by MS, so you cannot turn that collection off?

Call me paranoid, but just the fact that is almost impossible to turn it off tells me that something in there is just not ok or clear.

But to each its own.
 
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devil22 said:
I can see the "logic" here, really, however, with all the people with packet sniffers on their networks, etc. not reporting anything big, I'm more inclined to believe the EULA is a blanket CYA just *in case* it accidentally happens here and there, and/or maybe for things like interactive tech support, etc. I think the hateful sentiment of it, comes from a lot of people who have grandiose ideas that the government gives two shits about their midget porn collection. :) EULA's be damned, if MS started collecting actual sensitive info they'd be raped on the internet, no different than if google turned on your phone and started recording you in your house.
Click to expand...

Ok I'm sending you the contract entitling me to help myself to anything you ever create on your computer forever. But I promise I won't actually take anything important. Would you sign that contract? Because you're subscribing to that idea here. Many people made the argument trough history "they'd never dare do that!" who were proven wrong later.

If they're really not collecting any "sensitive data" Then why are they so cagey about disclosing what they actually collect? They could end the outrage over telemetry with one press release and a tech document detailing the telemetry feature and all it's data collection thoroughly. Do they have something to hide perhaps? How does it feel to have your argument turned against you?
And in this case the argument is actually valid. Because I might not be doing anything illegal, that doesn't mean I want random ms employees to have full access to my living room trough my computer.
 
Omg just buy an upgrade to the enterprise or education version. (Yes you can find them, try cdw.com, ask me if you want)

Problem solved you can set telemetry to 0, never use location data, never install suggested apps. Never use Cortana or web search, Get rid of Windows defender.

And If you want barebones no extra anything. LTSB edition.


There are options and they work.

Or Use your downgrade right to 8.1 which is actually a good OS
 
blandead said:
Or Use your downgrade right to 8.1 which is actually a good OS
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Every Windows OS for 20 years has been a good OS in terms of support because of it's market share. As long as Windows command dominate market share on the desktop pretty much every issue it has is irrelevant beyond these kinds of discussions. People proclaiming Linux as viable PC gaming OS are ignoring everything that's happened since Gabe Newell did is "I hate Windows 8" speech and then pretty much forgot Linux.
 
blandead said:
Omg just buy an upgrade to the enterprise or education version. (Yes you can find them, try cdw.com, ask me if you want)

Problem solved you can set telemetry to 0, never use location data, never install suggested apps. Never use Cortana or web search, Get rid of Windows defender.

And If you want barebones no extra anything. LTSB edition.


There are options and they work.

Or Use your downgrade right to 8.1 which is actually a good OS
Click to expand...

You can't set telemetry to 0 even in LTSB. You only get rid of Cortana, and the Store with it. And it introduces it's own can of worms anyway. I wouldn't recommend that based on my experience.

Windows 10 is a good OS too, only it comes with a ton of baggage.
 
I Really like Windows 7 as an OS. It was a phenominal system from MS.

8 was a clusterfuck. 8.1 was at least better than that, but still not great.

10 had a shitty rollout and immediately got lambasted by the press, users, and techs (Mostly rightly so, too!) Now that it's had some time to fix the rollout issues, holy shit, the OS is great! I'm using it on all of my computers save one (Work laptop that had work configured 8.1 pre-installed) and am absolutely enjoying it. Cortana (text search) is actually really convenient and useful in a lot of ways IMO.
 
What, people are surprised you can't actually make the OS do things faster than the OS can do things? :p
 
potency said:
So will this be another forced update that will cause all manner of undocumented issues resulting in frustrating calls from my clients and long nights for myself? I'm all for features and shit, but I've never had so many consistently odd and obscure issues since July, and not coincidentally, they pop up within a couple weeks of major updates. I've managed to not have to reinstall Windows on any machines just yet but that shouldn't even be something I should have to consider.
Click to expand...

Oddly enough, the only issues we had with the major updates were just issues installing the updates themselves. Worked fine after a manual install.

potency said:
"The User Profile Service Failed the Logon."

"The User Profile Could not be Loaded."

"The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed."

These have been popping up randomly and pretty much never happened when clients were on Win 7.[/RANT]
Click to expand...

Huh...I've ONLY ever seen that happen on Windows 7 machines, and we have several clients on Win7, Win10, and mixed environments on domains.
 
I truly detest the massive dragnet of data mining Microsoft has unleashed upon us with Windows 10. It's bad enough Microsoft wont let the end user completely disable the numerous ways your data is harvested, but it's down right insidious when 3rd party developers figure out and issue tools to stop all the data mining and Microsoft Developers reactivate numerous mining scheme's through non disclosed security patches and new builds creating a game of cat and mouse.

If the data mining is about new revenue steams as Microsoft claims, why not release a "Premium" version of Windows 10 (at a higher cost of course) that has NO "telemetry" or at least the fully sanctioned right to turn it all 100% off. Legions of end users would gladly pay extra and most Corporate businesses would definitely pay the premium to unquestionably protect their Intellectual Property and sensitive information from being mined and sold.

I suspect the reason we lack this "spying free" build of Windows 10 has more to do with NSA / Big Brother cooperation / secret agreements and less to do with money lost through the sale of data mined. Windows 10 for me is ONLY used for gaming and a VERY few tasks I cannot perform in Linux. Generally speaking, unless I'm gaming I'm running Linux Mint and I hope more AAA gaming studio's adopt Vulkan API en-mass so I can leave Microsoft forever. Open Source (and thus transparency) for the win!
 
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