If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW!

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Graf Zahl
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Graf Zahl »

dpJudas wrote: Windows 8's infamous metro UI is WPF/XAML, a complete redesign of how those things works. Likewise, Qt 5's new toy Qt Quick and the resulting desire for KDE5 to build itself on top of it changed what is easy or hard to build. When you look at websites with HTML 5, technically you can do almost anything that a desktop UI can do, but you almost never see it in practice because it requires too much work. By the same token, WPF or Qt Quick seem to suffer from the fact that while an application can do things far more freeform now, they also have to do a lot more work for stuff that used to be easy and quick to do before. As a result most applications don't bother to do half of what older apps did, usually defining themselves out of the problem by being more "modern". Less is more, supposedly.

TL;DR: not every technology rewrite is an upgrade. Sometimes the old toolkit actually was better.
Very true indeed. And we only need to take a look at how these newfangled interfaces are being received by the users to tell the whole story. Just because it works fine on Mobile it doesn't mean it's the way to go for actual working machines as well.
It's all about visual design these days and these newfangled tools clearly have their focus there. But what's ironic is that getting a good UI out of those tools is exceedingly hard. Even when working on IOS I generally steer clear of Apple's Interface Builder and choose to construct the UI manually. The results are always far, far superior. So this becomes a genuine problem if some UI framework totally depends on these visual editors and cannot work without them. Windows/Metro and XAML are probably the worst example. While it can be programmed directly, it is a lot more complicated than doing it on iOS or Android. One more nail in the coffin of this misbegotten piece of crap.

And regarding games and the API they target, I think the choice between Vulkan and DX12 is a lot more balanced than between DX10 and OpenGL3. Say what you want, but the initial GL3 specs were a disaster. The system was saddled with problems that took years to fix and by the time they finally did get fixed (which was as late as GL 4.4!), anyone had lost interest because XP and Vista were no longer relevant platforms.
With Vulkan it's very different: Go DX12 and you lose all customers still on Win 7 or 8.1, but with Vulkan you can still support them. And the latest Steam survey still shows those at roughly 35%, i.e. more than one third. Aside from that, DX12 has no deciding advantage over Vulkan. In the end this will mostly be decided by developers' preference, unless they feel compelled to target the Windows Store - which is more suited for casual games because the real gamers probably won't have to deal with it anyway.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Chris »

Graf Zahl wrote:Say what you want, but the initial GL3 specs were a disaster.
Sure, though like I said, when Vista hit with DX10 being exclusive to it, and Vista adoption was low, Khronos was off wasting time. Rather than work on what we'd know as GL3 and over take D3D, they were working on a new API called GL Next or something. When they eventually realized the API they were designing was crap, they dropped it and went back to fast-track GL3. So GL3 ended up rushed and late. By the time it came out, few people had reason to care, and low adoption meant slow fixes. This started them on the back foot when it came to GL4 and D3D11, they were still fixing issues from GL3 while trying to maintain feature parity with D3D11.

With Vulkan, they finally got a chance to start fresh with a proper new API. I'm sure AMD's early work with Metal helped get Vulkan out a bit faster and a bit ahead of D3D12 too. But whether it'll stay there with Microsoft's meddling, who can say. As it is, Microsoft requires D3D for the XBox and Windows Store, and there's plenty of rumbling that they're going to release a version of Windows that relies on the store for getting software. Similar to how Microsoft removed the OpenGL components from the vendor drivers it provided, developers may again just see it as less annoying to universally target D3D12 on Microsoft systems, even ones that can natively support Vulkan (i.e. the regular version of Windows which will still allow "untrusted" apps using other APIs). The only way that'll stop is if the Windows Store manages to stay irrelevant for most developers. Though with the studios Microsoft has been buying up recently, and another noteworthy acquisition apparently right around the corner, I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to push their Store enough to be at least somewhat relevant.
In the end this will mostly be decided by developers' preference, unless they feel compelled to target the Windows Store - which is more suited for casual games because the real gamers probably won't have to deal with it anyway.
This last E3, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Ninja Theory (the people behind the highly-acclaimed Hellblade), along with two or three other indie studios. It's looking quite likely they're about to buy Obsidian. You can bet your bottom dollar these studios' new games will be Windows Store-exclusive, just like Minecraft with the Mojang acquisition (the Windows 10 Edition, which Microsoft calls just "Minecraft"; the original Java version was rebranded "Minecraft: Java Edition" and has only remained relevant because of the huge pre-established modding scene, but you know they'd prefer the Java version to go away and focus on the Win10 edition if they could). At this rate, it won't be just for casual games.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Graf Zahl »

They cannot buy the entire gaming industry. And I absolutely have no faith in them running a multitude of former indie shops successfully. It just sounds like another round of buying "success". So far it had failed every single time they tried.

But in the end, both APIs are relatively similar so you could easily write wrappers to translate one to the other so in the end it probably does not really matter.
That wasn't the case with D3D and OpenGL because their foundation was utterly incompatible.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Hellstorm Archon »

Apparently, the update was patched as to remove the feature that had been causing files to spontaneously combust, but there's been a new problem in which some HP computers will outright refuse to boot due to a WDF_Violation Stop Code.

I have an HP laptop, and as of this morning, Windows forced the update on me.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. :bang:

EDIT: As of now, it doesn't appear to be affecting my laptop (yet). It did mention that only a small portion of HP computers are having this issue and that those that are affected usually have some sort of bad driver that they should delete in System32.
Last edited by Hellstorm Archon on Fri Oct 12, 2018 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Rachael »

I dearly hope that this debacle puts enough pressure on Microsoft to stop the forced updates and go back to the Windows 8 model. Sure it wasn't perfect, but at least we still had control over our systems...
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Gez »

I'm so glad I stuck with Windows 7.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Graf Zahl »

I am also glad I stuck with Windows 8.1. I wouldn't consider 10 a viable choice unless the update model was more user friendly. I don't think that the independent update option in the older OSs is so great but at least allow the user to decide when to do an update.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Rachael »

Agreed.

At this point, I am looking at the possibility of installing Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 R2 on this machine. It's either that, or go full Linux.

I'm really sick and tired of Microsoft's bullshit and I have come to the determination that Windows 10 is not the right OS for me.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by drfrag »

But you need windows for windows development. I'm using mostly 8.1, there's an update 3 (not called that way officially, last iso) and it works pretty well with classic shell installed. For me it's clearly better that windows 7, less buggy and more stable (i use hibernation a lot and the first thing getting corrupted in 7 is the file explorer).
Also you can disable updates in 10 home by setting your internet connection to metered, you only get defender updates that way AFAIK.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by leileilol »

if linux did the C:\ (and other dos standards) i'd be on that for years already. ~/ (and symlinking from there) is just not my flow. :shrug:

so for now i'll sail 7 as long as I can.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Rachael »

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the "one-root" system in Linux, but it does have its advantages.

Luckily, both BSD and Linux can chroot, which allows you to run programs with completely off-the-wall configurations that would never be possible with a static root, or even diagnostically run someone else's Linux install into a nested X window and fix their configuration problems both from inside and outside. Something you definitely can't do in Windows.

Also, any program that emulates DOS or Windows allows you to set up an arbitrary drive letter system that the nested programs will use. Example: DOSBox allows you to mount any folder as a drive, Wine allows you to directly symlink a drive letter to a local folder. And, even better: symlinks that you use inside such folders are completely invisible to the wrapped/emulated programs, allowing you to efficiently link files together without compatibility issues.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Wiw »

What about the Windows 8 update?
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by Rachael »

Windows 8 is not affected by this update.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by drfrag »

I think he's referring to the old update to 8.1, that one could go very wrong as well but that happened only once. Windows 8.1 is actually still 8 for Monkeysoft and you can install 8.1 from scratch using your 8 key.
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Re: If you have the October Windows update, do a back up NOW

Post by ramon.dexter »

Wow, new 'feature' of the 1809 update.
Today I opened my dell laptop and wow, sound is gone. The only speakers available are 'steam streaming speakers'. What?? Quick look at devices manager shows that drivers for soundcard are GONE, and the system is not able to download them...? Like what??
Fixed by downloading drp.su suite, that correctly identified my HW and downloade&installed correct drivers.

So, thank you, Microsoft, very, very much :evil:

(the only thing keeping me on windows is that gzdoombuilder is not available on linux, and slade3 lacks too many options that I'm too familiar with at this point)
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