Windows for Vidya

No. If they tell you otherwise, they are either uninformed or lying; forced updates mean you have no control over your system. Any "telemetry" you disable might be re-enabled or superseded by another method without your consent and informing you.

Yes. "Telemetry" practices started to mimic those of Windows 10 around the time the added that "Update Now" icon to your taskbar.

I can not notice any issues with it on my machine.

No. Skylake and Zen will work in compatibility mode with Windows 7. In case of Zen, this means, among other things, no HT.

You're fucked.
I've been in those shoes, and decided to build a last Windows (7) machine to be able to play especially older games without a hassle. PoL has become a very viable alternative - the Steam installer is well-maintained and just works, if you cross-reference WineHQ for individual titles' requirements, you should be fine.
I wanted a plug-and-play solution and like you, I treat said PC basically like a console, so I've decided for W7.

Okay, but if Windows 7 is now spying anyways, why is it still a better choice if it has worse hardware compatibility? Is the removal of spying on Windows 7 somehow more rigid than on 10?

You are able to revert updates in Windows 7 and 8(.1).

windows can read ext4 filesystems?

Data corruption ensures that over time your OS gets progressively slower, so every once in a while you have to wipe your hard drive and do a fresh install. Anyways just get Windows 7 or 8.1 the only true benefit of Windows 10 is the latest DirectX nobody uses.

Windows Server 2008. You can crack it with Windows Loader, which I'll upload if nobody has it.
It's all the goodness of 7 without shitty updates and telemetry backports. I'm a Linuxfag and I use it on my gaming PC, because it just werks.
Just remember that if you're installing it from a USB stick use a USB2 port, it doesn't support USB3 by default.

Is there a Windows 10 Server yet?

Really? I've heard about the non-mainstream Windows editions as secret tips. Is gaming no problem with it, can you install latest drivers and so on without a problem?

Google "remove windows 7 telemetry"

can it work on a laptop?

Server 2016. I haven't tried it so I can't help you with that.

You want Windows 2008 Server Enterprise, which is an option on the 2008 Server disk. That'll give you an oldschool Windows desktop.
By default IE is made to not download anything for security purposes, but you can put Firefox on there easily enough.
As for drivers you use the Win7 ones. if they complain that you don't have Win7 look in the files for the driver for another EXE that'll run. I got all the drivers for my gaming PC through googling, and they all work fine.
Aside from that occasionally you might have to enable something in the options, but otherwise it should work just fine. I haven't encountered any issues yet.

Yes, but wifi is disabled by default. You have to enable it in control panel. I don't know about battery services, but you might have to tweak that too.

I get any of these from my university, which one is the one to go with? And i'd guess "Windows Server 2016" is the Windows 10 server equivalent.

That and toothpaste on discs is retarded. OS gets slower because you install more and more services on them. Programs that have to be ran and services that have to be started on system startup all contribute to a slower start, and the services that are running slow down the system in general.

No such thing as data corruption over time.

Windows Server 208 R2 Standard-Enterprise-Datacenter-Web with SP1 should work. Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter and Web are options at install time, you want Enterprise.

Windows 10 is really fucking weird, why are there ads whenever i open up the start menu?
Okay I have a search function built into the taskbar but couldn't i just open my web browser and search on bing/startpage/google to get the same exact results? It just feels like a weird downgrade. As far as performance goes, it's whatever and features you're missing out is if I recall native workspaces, actual command line that also works with bash so you don't have to program in the batch language and use sh language which only lack floats and dx12 compatibility, which in the end most people are into vulkan over dx12

Either jump to linux or stick with windows 7

I've been meaning to reinstall Windows 8.1 since it's getting too sluggish my own good. Any good ideas for backups?

7 has the best compatiblility, 10 the latest gimmicks and games, just get whatever fits your needs the best if you are using it only for games i don't think you should be too concerned about the spying, since windows has always been loaded with spyware

Windows 10 is objectively worse than Windows 7 in terms of stability and program compatibility and general performance, performance in games is the same. The only reason you might want to use windows 10 is dx12 but dx12 in games so far has been shit and vulkin offers the same shit as dx12 but can be used on any OS you want.

i've tried windows 10 at every milestone and ended up going back to 7 within a few days.

So i would put it as

7>10 Enterprise LSTB>Any other version of 10

Only 2 good versions of win10:

Enterprise
Enterprise LTSB (my personal favorite)

Neither of those are sold to the public so you have to find other ways to aquire them. Do not under any circumstance use win10 Home. Seriously windows 2000 was better. And win10 Pro is just as scam, you're a sucker who is paying for win10 Home.

Money. And the average tech illiterate normalfag user wants things like the Store, Cortana, Bing and all the shit apps. Why do I need my computer to tell me what the weather? I can just look on my phone.

But MS did focus test and this is what they came up with. Just as most people don't want a clean Android but prefer Touchwizz.

>Windows 10
Quite extensively if you have the knowledge and patience to go through the process.

Absolutely, I've done it.

Updates can be disabled and frankly that's what I'd recommend unless you're running specific software which might become unstable/unusable unless you keep your system updated. Fusion 360 and other cloud-integrated shite is the kind of stuff that will be the most vulnerable to issues of this kind.

All of it, yes. You will however want to be extremely careful when purging completely any of the new "modern" apps since you never know what might be integral to fundamental system functionality. Cortana and other bloatware is best left disabled, if you remove the files completely (a couple gb in total is their footprint) the taskbar is guaranteed to become non-functional — you won't be able to right click open windows and the start menu won't show at all (unless you have classic shell).
A fresh install of win10 is only 14-15gb though so on the whole it's rather lightweight, at least compared to previous windows versions.

I wouldn't fucking recommend it unless you have a lot of patience for reverting to backups or reinstalling and starting fresh half a dozen times as you run into unforseen dead ends. Where taking ownership of C: in previous versions was safe in win10 it'll introduce shitloads of stability issues, stick to system32 and syswow64, don't touch winsxs unless you have balls of steel, for example. With win8 and now win10 Microsoft has moved to integrate ever more components of their modern API with basic windows functions, the practical effect this has is any amount of under the hood tinkering is much more likely to introduce stability issues than in win7.

Oh and if you can, get an enterprise ISO

Yes. It's pretty easy to kill that shit though.

Win10 boots faster, that is the only performance improvement it brings to the table.
Goddamn do I love it though.

W7 can be easily unfucked by uninstalling a few updates and disabling windows update. There's even a script doing it for you somewhere.

It's not as quick to boot as Win 10 and doesn't have a lot of that design shit that some people like, but otherwise it's just as good and you don't have to worry about Microshit's fuckery. Also, since Win 10 is still sort of new, troubleshooting for older games may still not cover it, if that's an issue. Sure, it'll probably change in the next few months, but it's a drawback right now.

virtualizationreview.com/articles/2016/10/24/downside-of-windows-server-2016-for-virtualization.aspx

Well fuck, they're compromising the Server editions now. At least 2008 is safe, but that'll eventually hit EOL.
Linux gaming can't come fast enough but companies have to actually give a shit first. Until then the best we'll have by 2020 is DX11 support.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

You might still run the risk of Windows fucking up your boot parameters, it has happened before. I'd keep it on a separate disk and select it at boot if running it in a VM is too much hassle.

By far the best option is using Wine and then a sandboxed VM for games that don't work. If you're getting a new computer virtualization will be built into the CPU and motherboard chipset so you might as well use it.

Which means fuck all to most people here. Your 4k video encoding or 120mp photo rendering might be slower but most programs(including games) aren't made to take advantage of the latest in CPU technologies since the consumers who use them typically don't know what a CPU is. The only exception I can think of is when a 64 bit patch came out for FarCry over a decade ago and that was more a promotional stunt for AMD-64 than a worthwhile update.

When it comes to running old Windows on newer hardware the real issue is missing drivers. Not missing support for new CPU features that very few programs will use properly.

He probably means a combination of file fragmentation and sectors on the disk going bad and being reallocated elsewhere. You're right about Windows becoming slower with time due to accumulating crud, I got so sick of periodically reinstalling it that I switched to GNU/Linux. I can install terabytes of crap to it while leaving it running for years and it'll be as fast as it was on the first day.

Doing this shit seemed to cause me to start bsod almost every night

Less likelihood of running into compatibility problems with older games on Win 7 than 8 or 10.

Jesus fuck, I tried running a legit copy of Diablo on Windows 10, exhausting hours of research and it would NOT work no matter what I did.
On windows 7 I literally just put the disc into the tray and I'm playing D1 perfectly smoothly

You can unfuck windows 10 thankfully. I haven't been forced to install an update since I purged the updaters from my system and the spying and bloatware are pretty easily dealt with. While I do like 7 more in the end, 10 is better for the long term since compatibility with 7 will be slowly phased out. If you're just using windows for gaming then I don't really see any harm in using 10.

So is there a comprehensive guide somewhere?

Yeah, it's called installing a better OS.

An external hard drive, preferably more then two but if you're tight on a budget you'll just have to compromise. Just save whatever you want to backup and then do the disc wipe and clean install. Of course you should be aware that the big chain stores has this utterly retarded selection of external drives so try and find a shop that is dedicated to buying computer parts instead.

Data corruption happens because
as well as simple hardware failure like a sudden blackout or just simple overheating damaging the parts amongst other things. As far as I'm aware Windows gets slower due to a combination of putting in more and more programs and data of various things constantly being changed imperfectly which ends up leaving behind artifacts and other problems that arises. What else would come to your mind that you don't believe it's a thing?

No, you'll have to go to Holla Forums and ask for one in one of their sticky generals. I'd wait 5 years before switching to Win10 though since if it can't break into a solid ground then it might just end up dumped. You can't get rid of Cortana though, that thing is a part of their "change OS to being an Operating Service instead of an Operating System" plan, slimy fucks.

...

Unfortunately I haven't seen a single guide that covers everything. When it comes to the updaters, I used an external program to disable updates and then deleted the updater program, its backup, and disabled everything I couldn't uninstall safely. It's pretty easy to find programs that will disable most of the bloatware and spying and will help with the updates through a simple google search. I honestly can't remember which program I used so I can't help you much there.

I'd love to if I could play any games on them.

You can permanently disable her though. I never used her and never plan to.

Sounds like pain, i'll go with Windows 7 until the end of extended support, hopefully by then there's a proper solution to shut this piece of shit up.
Im aware, but i don't like installing cryptic third party GUIs that don't explain what they do and require full permissions.

Fair enough. You can still disable shit without them, but it's tedious as fuck.

The reason your OS gets slower is because of more things running, not because of magic artifacts. If this was true, you probably wouldn't even be able to boot, since your partition would be broken. fsck and other tools exist to bring your partitions back to a consistent state, which prevents all of this from happening in the first place.

there are programs and methods for unfucking it, and people keep finding new methods to unfuck with each no update, but that's still the issue, it will update and refuck itself. win10 functions decent enough and its pretty lightweight but its a matter if you wanna deal with fuckery constantly in exchange for gaming features they're slowly trying to trap into it

I personally love windows 10.
Can't fathom going back and using anything else at this point.

Honestly, I think the only people who really hate Windows 10 are the following;

A.) People who legitimately care about privacy (Superfluous as long as you're connected to the fucking internet but whatever)

B.) People who have never actually used Windows 10 and just blindly parrot Freetard argument by assertions

Its called "Disk fragmentation" and it happens to other OS' besides Windows as well (despite what people say, ext3/4 will become fragmented as the disk fills)

Do you ever defrag your disc? They taught us this at my computer class in fucking middle school for fucks sake.

I've done nothing to protect my privacy, not that I care about it either.
Never seen a single targeted ad, pop-up, etc.

Or any other insane, malicious thing people are worried about.
Runs great, boots up fast, plays games amazingly well. I'll never understand it I guess, meh.
The quality of life improvements are just great all around, its all in the small details. People are kidding themselves if they think 7 is superior.. so I agree, probably never tried it.

its too much to reply to every bullshit post in this thread, some of which are very worrying.
jesus christ

You should be careful if you're using run down imageboards like this one and are not taking care of your privacy.

Yeah, and I've been pirating a bunch of shit too. Real life isn't some crime drama 8. Using Windows 10 isn't going to fucking kill you.

There are people that really do have things to hide though, for them I would probably recommend GNU/Linux. But don't push it on everyone you see using Windows 10, its a matter of what people value, not a matter of life or fucking death. Even Linus Torvalds and RMS have stated how much they hate Linux zealots

ReactOS 1.0 never EVER

:'(

I hear ReactOS can play Skyrim not sure about hardware support though

We don't call windows DOS/Windows, just because its DOS with windows operating system being added.

Windows hasn't used DOS as its kernel since 1999. Every Windows OS uses the Windows NT kernel

Besides, NT is a hybrid kernel, so the naming convention wouldn't be the same. Its microkernel is ntoskrnl.exe. Same with OSX, its kernel is XNU and its microkernel is Mach

Old Windows is MS-DOS with Windows as a graphical shell over it. New Windows is based off the NT kernel, so it would be Windows/NT
It's still stupid, a lot of Linux distros just call it Linux for convenience. The GNU is implied.

That's one of its many problems - it's mostly tested in virtual machines. One guy once got the partition table on his Mac's hard drive corrupted by simply running the boot CD, before any partitioning or installation could even take place.

Linus has been cucking lately, he said the kernel will be "finished" soon.

There is a distinction between things like a clean uninstall and an unclean uninstall for a reason, that is what I'm talking about when I mean artifacts.
I remember when some things fucked up once which caused a memory leak that did just that, even the BIOS file ended up becoming corrupted. It was a pin in the ass to deal with.

Right now I'm using an SSD so defragmentation will just kill it faster. I was never taught this stuff in school, so I grew up figuring fragmentation specifically referred to the physical state of the hard drive itself. I'm biased in associating it with everything that can result in a break down of various software and programs even when it's a piece of shit that breaks itself down (I'm looking at you Neverwinter Nights), or things that would not be fixed from defragmentation.

I did actually never try it but everyone i know that uses Win10, from classmates at university to colleagues bitches and moans all day about it, and not about the privacy stuff. They hate the forced updates, how long they take, the features they don't like but can't disable and so on. My boss actually uninstalled it only because of that feature when you drag a window to one of the sides and it pops up an overview of the other open windows on the remaining unused space to auto align it.

what
That makes no fucking sense, did you flash your bios with nonsense? BIOS Flash isn't writable by default for a reason.

The Windows disk defraggle utility in 8 and above doesn't do traditional disk defragmenting on an SSD, and doesn't do anything in 7, as of at least March 2012. It sends the TRIM command to the drive so that the drive's firmware can handle all the cleanup shit it needs. There might've been an update to Windows 7 that makes it work like 8 and above, but I don't care enough to look into it.

The rest of your post is either collossal tier stupidity that means you shouldn't be near computers, or outright bullshit. The most likely result I can think of is you did something retarded like overwriting the boot sector of your HDD and ended up with a non-bootable drive, or trashing your filesystem sector.

sounds a bit like this: archive.is/8NxfZ

The guy you're replying to is an idiot talking out of his ass but when I was installing win10 from a usb created with microsoft's mct it actually corrupted my bios and I had to reflash it. Probably the most bizarre computer related problem I've ever had to deal with.

Just use windows 10.

A memory leak in my video card would cause it to hog resources gradually over time, then the computer would abruptly grind to a halt followed by a green screen followed by a BSoD indicating the video card was the problem, this would interrupt anything that was happening and frequently files would end up corrupt. The BIOS file being corrupted didn't show up until after I already wiped everything to do a clean install, everything was fine except for the part of actually trying to boot the system up since it'd always freeze. When checked what the problem was the only apparent error that came up was that the BIOS file was corrupted.
I figured there was something else and the memory leak was a symptom that made things worse but I chucked the fucking toaster out when I got my files I needed to backup one last time.

what the fuck even

EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU CAN UNFUCK WIN10, AN UPDATE MAY MAKE YOUR LINUX PARTITION UNRECOVERABLE.
The anniversary update fucked everyone's dual booting because it made linux partitions unreadable.
Windows 7 or hell even vista would be better at this point, but you absolutely MUST AUDIT every update, some updates have bricked PC's depending on their hardware or SecureBoot in their BIOS.
I think it was those with AMD hardware that got fucked and had their computers brick with a hardware failure after a specific update, and those with SecureBoot were locked out of their machine because an update prevented SecureBoot from recognizing windows 7 as "a certified microsoft operating system".

Stick with either win7 or vista, because either one is far easier to unfuck than anything post-7.

PC gaming is dead. Microsoft windows is why.
i have XP still

Vista is underrated. people bought into the mac ads and always repeat how fucked vista is. yea, vista is fucked if you have a bunch of PCs on a private domain and want to have group policies and shit, but to the average user Vista is just XP with a slightly nicer GUI and the ability to automatically install drivers with windows update.

Windows 7 and beyond all suck because there is no true admin account. they all require admin privledges to run properly, even if logged in as an admin.

I prefer XP over Vista just because there are literally 0 updates. XP never bothers me and does what i tell it.

I don't know about you, but when I turned off all the updates in windows 7 long before the win10 addware was added, I still got the update.

Do you honestly think you can disable some of the defining features of NSA/Windows 10 by just fucking around with a regeditor?

Yeah, fuck that unstable shit.

why bother? just get an older OS

You know, even though my credibility is questionable, video cards and graphics cards have their own built in memory and processing mine got fucked up.

Dual booting is fucking outdated. VMs with GPU pass-trough are the new hotness. Minimum performance loss but Windows can't do jackshit to the rest of the system, and also can't phone home if you set up your shit right.
Only downside is it's kind of a bitch to set up since you actually have to build your PC around the idea and you pretty much need two monitors unless you do some specific fuckery.