Win10 available now via Windows Update... what would this do to dualboot?

[ahhaa]

I have a Ubuntu/Windows dual boot laptop that came without recovery discs (Ubuntu repartitioned HD to install itself).

I just read this, and it raised a question in my mind-

Forbes: Windows 10 Installs Automatically On Windows 7 And Windows 8

For now Microsoft is keeping it quiet, but Build 9926 of the Windows 10 Technical Preview released last week can be downloaded and installed via Windows Update on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Yes, this is something so simple and sensible it beggars belief Microsoft hasn’t done it until now.

For now this method comes with a caveat: a small file is needed. Users go to Microsoft’s Technical Preview page and click the ‘Start upgrade now’ button. This downloads the file, you run it and afterwards you will be prompted to restart your PC. On first boot Windows Update will now show ‘Upgrade to Windows 10’ as an option. Say goodbye to burning DVDs, making USB boot drives and fiddling with bios boot order settings.
more details at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/02/02/windows-10-automatic-install/


My question is whether such an install (I'm tempted) might cause chaos with Grub or whatever did the on-the-fly re-partitioning.

In particular, I do notice that warm reboots do not work with the default dual boot setup; the machine just turns off; so it would need to be manually monitored and on a very fast connection (2+ gigs incoming).

Do you guys think this is a bad idea to try?

[TreeTops]

I would let someone else try it first. Who knows if it will allow me to run all my esoteric programs?

[hudsonf]

I wouldn't do it if are upgrading your main OS. Windows 10 is still a technical preview. If you decide to upgrade I would do a drive image first.

[jman98]

Do you guys think this is a bad idea to try?

As an IT professional, hell yes I think it's an absolutely terrible idea to try it.

Evaluation copies of Windows are notorious for causing all kinds of software and attached hardware devices to not work. To be blunt, if you were the right kind of person to be running Win 10, you wouldn't be a member here and you sure wouldn't have been one for 10 years with 800+ posts to your name. Win 10 right now is for people who don't use their PCs for anything but sending email and surfing the web.

It's highly unlikely to miss with Grub or do "on the fly repartitioning" as you put it, but this is Microsoft so I wouldn't bet my house on it. But hopefully they have designed it to not do those things. I have objections to running any Windows version that not yet an official release but worrying about it breaking dual booting isn't one of them.

[ahhaa]

OK, you guys talked me back from the ledge; I think it is just cabin fever, 2' of snow on the ground, daily shoveling and we haven't got up to freezing all month and no sign we will even into March... at least daylight was 2 min 47 seconds longer than yesterday.

hmmm; now if I just had a Raspberry PI..:]

[lingyi]

Agree with the previous posters. Unless you're a Windows Guru or you're installing this on a non-primary PC, wait until at least until the actual final release. Essentially, any pre-release is still in the bug testing stage and the early adopters are the testers.

BTW, anyone else agree (especially since Win 10 will apparently be Free) that this is Microsoft's apology for Win 8? **

**Sorry for the obvious question and answer! <GRIN>

[johns0]

Free upgrade for win 7 and win 8 to win 10=apology.

[ahhaa]

Around here, it was called w8 (as in PLEASE WAIT)..:]

[hudsonf]

Windows 10 is a big improvement over Windows 8. I have been using it since the first release. I'm dual booting Win 8.1 and Win 10 without any problems. It's still a technical preview so it's going to have bugs. MS is supposed to release a new build this week to fix some of the bugs. It's a good OS but I wouldn't recommend it as a primary OS. MS is still adding features and making changes.

[TreeTops]

Hudsonf. since you seem to be using Win 10 and it's working for you, how about telling us something about it? I don't mean a full review but some highlights like...does it load faster than Win 7. Can you edit videos with Vegas Movie Studio or other consumer video editing programs? Does it have a decent start menu? Can I still multitask with many programs open at once? In your estimation, what is the biggest new thing in Win10 that would increase my business productivity?

[hudsonf]

It's been a long time since I used Windows 7 so I couldn't fairly compare the two. My boot time is on par with with my Windows 8.1. This is comparing Windows 8.1 on a SSD and Windows 10 on a HDD. Windows 10 has combined a start menu with the Metro screen. Much better than what was offered in Windows 8.or 8.1. Windows 10 also includes Cortana. With Cortana and a mic. you will be able to start apps and do searches just by voice. All you have to do is say "Hey, Cortana" and give a command. Cortana still needs work. With the release from earlier this month (build 9926) all my programs are hardware are working OK. The earlier build my Hauppauge HD PVR 2 would crash my computer when I was done recording and tried to exit the capture program. I also lost the ability to print from Firefox and Thunder bird.
This is a list of some of my programs working in Windows 10:
1. Hauppauge Capture
2. GamerCap
3. VidCoder
4. VideoReDo
5. Mezzmo
6. MPC-HC x64
7. VLC
8. Malwarebytes Anti Malware
9. Firefox
10. Thunderbird.
When Windows 10 goes final, MS is going to offer it as a free upgrade for anyone using Windows 7 or 8.1 for 1 year.

Edit: I almost forgot Windows 10 includes Continuum. Continuum switches between Desktop mode or touch mode depending on what device you are using. Windows 10 is much more desktop friendly than Windows 8.

[jman98]

When Windows 10 goes final, MS is going to offer it as a free upgrade for anyone using Windows 7 or 8.1 for 1 year.

True, but nobody, including Microsoft themselves, knows exactly what that means. There's been a ton of speculation that Microsoft may simply be giving you what you might call a "rental" copy that will cease to work after one year unless you agree to start paying a yearly fee. I work in IT and there's been very strong speculation in the industry that Microsoft is going to use Windows 10 to try to force people to start paying yearly subscription fees for Windows. That may not be what happens and maybe that version will be a true, fully functional non-crippled free version that is yours for as long as you can keep your PC running, but at this time I might advise great caution and paying very careful attention to the offer when it finally comes out. Larger businesses are simply going to revolt at the idea of paying yearly subscriptions so Microsoft may end up under enough pressure that it never actually happens.

[hudsonf]

I'm sure that MS knows exactly what that means. I've heard the rumors of Windows 10 going to a subscription service. For now it is just a rumor. I would think if MS does decides to go subscription it will be for upgrades and not updates. A subscription version would probably be good for people who have to have the latest and greatest. Only time will tell what direction MS is going. As for me, I'm going to upgrade all my computers from Windows 8.1 to 10 when it's released. I can always reinstall Windows 8.1 if MS decides to pull any tricks.

[johns0]

Microsoft will lose millions of customers if they go subscription including me,I'll stay with win 7 and see what happens.

[hudsonf]

The only way I would even think about buying a subscription would be for OS upgrades. If they try to charge for security updates or bug fixes I'll down grade back to 8.1. I can even go back to 7 on a couple of my laptops if I had to.

[Keyser]

Windows 10 also includes Cortana. With Cortana and a mic. you will be able to start apps and do searches just by voice. All you have to do is say "Hey, Cortana" and give a command. Cortana still needs work.

Back in '93 I bought a Sound Blaster 16 ASP for my i486 PC running Windows 3.11. The sound board was packed with a lot of software, including a speech recognizing program that would allow you to take control of the OS and some applications by voice alone. In 1993, that was cool!

Now I'm thinking, how come after 22 years we still look at such a thing as beeing something new? That tells you how small the advances in that area have been and how little effort was made in two decades.

[ahhaa]

Nuance snapped up all the voice recog and OCR patents they could, basically have a stranglehold on that arena...

[ahhaa]

hudsonf- M$ is apparently killing off the Explorer browser (no tears please) and sticking in the all-new Spartan browser (terrible branding- there's already a chain of cut-rate food products called that).

Have you had a chance to get a read on whether this will be more than getting rid of the Explorer file manager naming confusion?

[sophisticles]

Windows 10 also includes Cortana. With Cortana and a mic. you will be able to start apps and do searches just by voice. All you have to do is say "Hey, Cortana" and give a command. Cortana still needs work.

Back in '93 I bought a Sound Blaster 16 ASP for my i486 PC running Windows 3.11. The sound board was packed with a lot of software, including a speech recognizing program that would allow you to take control of the OS and some applications by voice alone. In 1993, that was cool!

Now I'm thinking, how come after 22 years we still look at such a thing as beeing something new? That tells you how small the advances in that area have been and how little effort was made in two decades.

This reminds me of Peanut Linux, I think it was version 9.6, that had a desktop that was "active", basically it was a lake scene and the water rippled in real time and it had a voice, it could be a guy or girl, that confirm when you were launching an app, like it would say "calculator" in a sultry voice if you launched the calculator.

I remember thinking to myself how cool it was and why more distros didn't do this, but it was buggy and when the voice thing crashed it was hard to get it working again. These 2 features were removed in later versions of Peanut and I have never seen them in any other distro or OS but I always wondered why more OSes and distros didn't have such a feature that you could turn on and off.

[hudsonf]

hudsonf- M$ is apparently killing off the Explorer browser (no tears please) and sticking in the all-new Spartan browser (terrible branding- there's already a chain of cut-rate food products called that).

Have you had a chance to get a read on whether this will be more than getting rid of the Explorer file manager naming confusion?

This is all I know about Spartan. Spartan will be replacing IE. Spartan will be integrated with Windows 10 and Cortana. The name Spartan is going to be changed by the time it goes final. Spartan was rumored to be included in the latest build of Windows 10 but it didn't happen. I'm a Pale Moon/Firefox user so I doubt I'll switch to Spartan when released. I will give it a try though.

[hudsonf]

Windows 10 also includes Cortana. With Cortana and a mic. you will be able to start apps and do searches just by voice. All you have to do is say "Hey, Cortana" and give a command. Cortana still needs work.

Back in '93 I bought a Sound Blaster 16 ASP for my i486 PC running Windows 3.11. The sound board was packed with a lot of software, including a speech recognizing program that would allow you to take control of the OS and some applications by voice alone. In 1993, that was cool!

Now I'm thinking, how come after 22 years we still look at such a thing as beeing something new? That tells you how small the advances in that area have been and how little effort was made in two decades.

This reminds me of Peanut Linux, I think it was version 9.6, that had a desktop that was "active", basically it was a lake scene and the water rippled in real time and it had a voice, it could be a guy or girl, that confirm when you were launching an app, like it would say "calculator" in a sultry voice if you launched the calculator.

I remember thinking to myself how cool it was and why more distros didn't do this, but it was buggy and when the voice thing crashed it was hard to get it working again. These 2 features were removed in later versions of Peanut and I have never seen them in any other distro or OS but I always wondered why more OSes and distros didn't have such a feature that you could turn on and off.

I would use Cortana on a Windows phone but not my computer. I have tried it and I have trouble getting it to respond by my voice command. It works if I click on the microphone. It's very limited in what it can do for now. Besides that I have no desire to talk to my computer.