0patch Curiosity

[RichardDS90]

Hiya, recently heard that 0patch plans to support Windows 10 after next year and heard that they have been doing it for 7 and never heard anything bad about it so far. I'm considering getting it as I'm very skeptical about 11. Has anyone had experience with it with 7 and if so, is it efficient?

[Dark Pulse]

Let's put it this way: Continuing to be on 7 nowadays is like being on Windows XP in 2018.

 

Those things are little bandaids, but you're really better off just using Win10... even though the major support for that will end at the end of next year too.

 

Also, it will ignore that a lot of compilers are dropping support for Win7, so there are programs that will refuse to run. Take the Visual Novel software Ren'Py for example:

Quote

 

Pending Deprecations

The original OpenGL renderer will be removed after the next major release.

Support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 will be dropped after the next major release.

 

I stuck on Win7 for awhile too (out of the fact I was waiting on a PC upgrade to get off it - which I eventually did), but there's really no reason to remain on Win7 now.

[RichardDS90]

20 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Let's put it this way: Continuing to be on 7 nowadays is like being on Windows XP in 2018.

 

Those things are little bandaids, but you're really better off just using Win10... even though the major support for that will end at the end of next year too.

 

Also, it will ignore that a lot of compilers are dropping support for Win7, so there are programs that will refuse to run. Take the Visual Novel software Ren'Py for example:

I stuck on Win7 for awhile too (out of the fact I was waiting on a PC upgrade to get off it - which I eventually did), but there's really no reason to remain on Win7 now.

Ahhh my post did kinda get lost in translation due to bad wording on my end. I'm actually using Windows 10 at the moment. The reasons 7 was mentioned was because 0patch had been maintaining support of 10 for quite sometime, which OS you using?

[Dark Pulse]

6 minutes ago, RichardDS90 said:

Ahhh my post did kinda get lost in translation due to bad wording on my end. I'm actually using Windows 10 at the moment. The reasons 7 was mentioned was because 0patch had been maintaining support of 10 for quite sometime, which OS you using?

I'm on 10 as well, and while 10 will be fine for a little while even after the official support ends, you're definitely better off upgrading after a few years.

 

Basically, try not to be on Win10 around 2030 or so. :P

[RichardDS90]

1 minute ago, Dark Pulse said:

I'm on 10 as well, and while 10 will be fine for a little while even after the official support ends, you're definitely better off upgrading after a few years.

 

Basically, try not to be on Win10 around 2030 or so. :P

I'm guessing you're eventually gonna make the move to 11 at some point? If so, how long you waiting after support for 10 ends?

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, RichardDS90 said:

I'm guessing you're eventually gonna make the move to 11 at some point? If so, how long you waiting after support for 10 ends?

The way 11 is doing horribly, and given Microsoft's seemingly unbroken cycle between "Good OS, bad OS" that stretches arguably all the way back to Win95, it might be Win12 by the time I upgrade... or at least people will have figured out how to un-nastify Win11.

 

Official support for most Win10 versions ends October 14, 2025. Paid support goes until 2028 (which is about the time you should really consider moving off). Long-Term support actually goes until 2032, but only Enterprise edition will have that.

[Gez]

22 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Let's put it this way: Continuing to be on 7 nowadays is like being on Windows XP in 2018.

Honestly, if I could, I'd still use 7 today. It's the last good Windows IMO. 8 and 10 and 11 have all been bad; from a user experience perspective they're all downgrades from 7 as far as I'm concerned.

[Dark Pulse]

7 minutes ago, Gez said:

Honestly, if I could, I'd still use 7 today. It's the last good Windows IMO. 8 and 10 and 11 have all been bad; from a user experience perspective they're all downgrades from 7 as far as I'm concerned.

I'd agree there. But of course, Microsoft would really like money.

[LexiMax]

It sounds like a good deal until you look at the things that 0patch has actually patched for their previous releases - the list is not very long, and they charge $26 per seat for year.

 

I would just suck it up and update to Windows 11.  People always complain about updates to Windows, and you're likely to find just as many things to like about the update as annoy you.  Besides, in many ways 11 is just 10 with a new coat of paint, with similar compatibility expectations, to the point where they didn't even bother to bump the internal version number past 10.0.

[Edward850]

14 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

I'd agree there. But of course, Microsoft would really like money.

Windows upgrades are free. You could use a 7 and 8 key to install 10 for almost it's entire life, likewise 10 to 11 is free right now.

[Dark Pulse]

8 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Windows upgrades are free. You could use a 7 and 8 key to install 10 for almost it's entire life, likewise 10 to 11 is free right now.

Well aware of that. Heck, you can download the installer ISO and even make a bootable USB off of it.

 

But installing Windows isn't the way Microsoft really makes money off of you anymore. They'd rather you pirate their OS than switch to Linux, after all. It's certain other things.

[Kinsie]

3 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

They'd rather you pirate their OS than switch to Linux, after all.

What is this, the '90s? Microsoft is hips-deep in the Linux eco-system between WSL (You can download Ubuntu as a Windows app! Among many other distros!), the whole GitHub thing, platinum sponsorship of the Linux Foundation, Azure, and so on and so forth.

 

And that last one is the big one. Azure. Microsoft's biggest money maker is no longer operating systems or productivity software. It's cloud servers and cloud services used by fellow megacorps, big banks and government contracts. Their major rivals are less MacOS and Linux and more Amazon, Google, Akamai, Alibaba and the like. If someone wants to pay a squillion bucks to rent a chunk of MS's data centers to run Docker containers, they're probably not going to get any "no"s in response.

[Edward850]

Also Azure just straight up let's you run Linux servers.

[Kinsie]

3 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Also Azure just straight up let's you run Linux servers.

That's what I was referring to by the Docker bit since that's a very prominent *nix server tool, but I'm not very good at explaining things.

 

My point stands though: MS is at least a decade or so past the embrace-extend-extinguish days, and they have enough fingers in the open-source pie that I doubt they'll be pulling any out anytime soon.

[Dark Pulse]

15 hours ago, Kinsie said:

What is this, the '90s? Microsoft is hips-deep in the Linux eco-system between WSL (You can download Ubuntu as a Windows app! Among many other distros!), the whole GitHub thing, platinum sponsorship of the Linux Foundation, Azure, and so on and so forth.

 

And that last one is the big one. Azure. Microsoft's biggest money maker is no longer operating systems or productivity software. It's cloud servers and cloud services used by fellow megacorps, big banks and government contracts. Their major rivals are less MacOS and Linux and more Amazon, Google, Akamai, Alibaba and the like. If someone wants to pay a squillion bucks to rent a chunk of MS's data centers to run Docker containers, they're probably not going to get any "no"s in response.

Serverwise, sure, they are fine with Linux. They've given up trying to compete on that level, and as you said, they make a murder off the cloud services.

 

You installing Linux on your home PC versus you installing Windows is still a whole other story, and is what I'm actually referring to.

[Kinsie]

15 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

You installing Linux on your home PC versus you installing Windows is still a whole other story, and is what I'm actually referring to.

You can install Linux inside Windows, there’s a Linux port of the Edge browser, and various forms of official support for their games on the Linux-based Steam Deck. You’re Hiroo Onoda, dude.

[Dark Pulse]

10 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

You can install Linux inside Windows, there’s a Linux port of the Edge browser, and various forms of official support for their games on the Linux-based Steam Deck. You’re Hiroo Onoda, dude.

Okay... I don't think you're getting my point here, so I'll spell it out much more clearly.

 

Yes, Microsoft supports a Linux subsystem within Windows. There's a Linux port of Edge. Steam Deck has utterly nothing to do with Microsoft (that's Valve), so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.

 

The point is still that Microsoft would rather you use its Linux subsystems on Windows because that means you've installed and are using Windows, which in turn gives them the opportunity to datamine you and target you with advertisements for their services and products, which monetizes you, than they would get if you've actually installed Linux and completely tossed Windows aside - which means their only inroads would be initiatives like the Linux port of Edge (which almost nobody in their right mind on Linux would use).

 

You are missing the trees (that Microsoft has these initiatives to try to get more information/data on people) for the forest.

 

So yes, they would still very much prefer you install Windows (even if it's pirated), and use those WSL subsystems if you have to, than they would for you fire up, say, Debian and install it as your primary OS of choice. Pirated Windows could still turn into money for them; a full-time Linux user will probably not unless they're in the server space.

[LexiMax]

On 7/7/2024 at 12:26 AM, Dark Pulse said:

You installing Linux on your home PC versus you installing Windows is still a whole other story, and is what I'm actually referring to. 

 

They don't care about Desktop GNU/Linux either, because it does a good-enough job of tripping over its own shoelaces without Microsoft having to lift a finger.

[Gez]

On dimanche 7 juillet 2024 at 6:51 AM, Dark Pulse said:

Steam Deck has utterly nothing to do with Microsoft (that's Valve), so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.

Microsoft is actually a pretty big game publisher. It has a lot of games on Steam. They usually make sure they can work on the Steam Deck.

 

19 minutes ago, LexiMax said:

They don't care about Desktop GNU/Linux either, because it does a good-enough job of tripping over its own shoelaces without Microsoft having to lift a finger.

Yeah...

 

Triumphant title: "Linux market share on desktop computers reaches an all-time high"

Clickbait subtitle: "Is the "Year of the Desktop Linux" finally to become a reality?"

Actual article: "The latest data suggests that the combined market share of various Linux distributions reached 4.03% in February, marking an all-time high."

 

So Linux has been around for over 30 years, in 30 years it has claimed a colossal 4% market share, at this pace it should outgrow MacOS in just about a century. And then, tremble, Windows, in merely three more centuries your desktop hegemony will be over!

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

Microsoft is actually a pretty big game publisher. It has a lot of games on Steam. They usually make sure they can work on the Steam Deck.

Are they actually making their games run natively on Linux, or are they just fine with Proton making it all work?

 

There's a huge difference between the two.

[LexiMax]

2 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Are they actually making their games run natively on Linux, or are they just fine with Proton making it all work?

 

There's a huge difference between the two.

 

Wine and Proton aren't emulators, they expose a stable Win32 ABI on Linux that games and other applications can use to run natively on Linux.

[Dark Pulse]

58 minutes ago, LexiMax said:

Wine and Proton aren't emulators, they expose a stable Win32 ABI on Linux that games and other applications can use to run natively on Linux.

I'm well aware that they're API compatibility layers. There's still a difference between just letting that do all the work (which isn't really supporting Linux directly at all) versus actually building a native Linux-compatible version of the game.

[Edward850]

35 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

There's still a difference between just letting that do all the work (which isn't really supporting Linux directly at all) versus actually building a native Linux-compatible version of the game.

Is there though? This just seems like extremely picky semantics. The kernel is already an abstraction as far as the Windows ABI is concerned, it doesn't directly interface with it, this is how Windows has like 40 years of compatibility, including for what was essentially an entirely different kernel made on DOS. Sticking that on Linux is just doing the same thing.

Furthermore, the Windows ABI is just plain better to make games with, OpenGL just works. Strife:VE currently works better running under Proton than it does running it native because we don't have to fuck around with Linux's weird library requirements. The point here being that regardless of what Proton semantically is, if you're giving a developer the choice they are likely using Proton anyway.

[Dark Pulse]

7 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Is there though? This just seems like extremely picky semantics. The kernel is already an abstraction as far as the Windows ABI is concerned, it doesn't directly interface with it, this is how Windows has like 40 years of compatibility, including for what was essentially an entirely different kernel made on DOS. Sticking that on Linux is just doing the same thing.

Furthermore, the Windows ABI is just plain better to make games with, OpenGL just works. Strife:VE currently works better running under Proton than it does running it native because we don't have to fuck around with Linux's weird library requirements. The point here being that regardless of what Proton semantically is, if you're giving a developer the choice they are likely using Proton anyway.

Huh. Now this is new information to me, because I'd figure there'd almost always be some sort of extra proceessing needed that the layer would create than there would be running it native. If Linux is actually worse in this regard to the point that it's still slower despite not having to do that, to me that's a hell of a problem.

 

Then again, I'm not sure how much of that is "Linux sucks at doing that" versus "Vendors essentially second-class GPU support on Linux." I don't profess to be any sort of expert on that matter, but I'd hoped that Valve and Steam Deck would actually get more vendors and developers behind pushing a native Linux version out there by using Proton to get their foot in the door, but encouraging developers to actually get working with native Linux versions so that things would actually improve on Linux.

 

Guess I was wrong.

[LexiMax]

2 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Then again, I'm not sure how much of that is "Linux sucks at doing that" versus "Vendors essentially second-class GPU support on Linux." 

 

Linux is perfectly fine, thanks to the ability of projects like WINE and Proton to run Win32 games natively in most cases.

 

The real issue is with the GNU/Linux POSIX-flavored desktop ecosystem.  It is not a very accommodating platform to target unless you either cede control of distributing your software to the distros themselves or cordon your app off from the rest of the system using some form of container.

[june gloom]

Windows 7 would have been great if its Windows Update wasn't trash and if it didn't repeatedly eat its own bootloader.

[Edward850]

42 minutes ago, june gloom said:

Windows 7 would have been great if its Windows Update wasn't trash and if it didn't repeatedly eat its own bootloader.

I can't say I've ever seen this happen, certainly not even when I was doing computer servicing as a full time job.

I suspect that whatever your problem is, it was specific to you and what you were doing, certainly not a common or standard issue.

[Dark Pulse]

Definitely can't say I've ever had Win7 eat its own bootloader either. I did have Win10 do that after I installed my new GPU somehow, though.

 

Well, more accurately, it somehow corrupted the free space bitmap, but I got it repaired and it's been fine since.

[june gloom]

It's only happened to me personally once but I've witnessed other people run into the same problem. I suspect it was because of Windows Update. Thing wanted me to reboot, so I did, and then it didn't want to reboot. Wound up just nuking the drive and installing W10.

[Gez]

Nonsense, Windows Update would never cause problems. In fact, it's a good thing that automatic updates are enforced.

https://www.wired.com/story/crowdstrike-outage-update-windows/