I thought sticking with 8.1 was a good move, now I’m not so sure.

[Bombastinator]

With win7 going out of security update soon, a lot of stuff about 10 is popping up.

 

i went win 8.1, but avoided 10 as there appeared to be data mining concerns and Microsoft was pushing 10 so hard it strained credulity.

I then got out of the loop.

 I was recently told that my belief of safety in remaining with 8.1 was false and that it had the same data mining problems 10 did they were just obfuscated with legalese.  

I don’t like being used as a farm animal, which is what I think corporate data mining often does.  I don’t mind contributing information for purposes of maintaining hardware.  That kind of data makes products better, but I strongly dislike being observed for the purpose of manipulating my understanding of the world.  The step between the two can be quite small and easy to make.  It can be made without even noticing it has been made.
 

I had the impression win10 had a problem with this but 8.1 did not.  8.1 works.  I’m used to it, but it will follow 7 soon enough.  Meanwhile it gets more expensive to do.  Once upon a time it was free.  

I am quite ignorant about win10 vs. win 8.1

I am willing to read, but I don’t know what to read.

 

merely telling me where to look may be sufficient.  People can be busy.

 

Should anyone be willing to explain directly I will happily listen.

 

Things I don’t know:

My understanding was it was theoretically but not actually practically possible to control the excesses of win10 data mining.

 Is this still true?

are there automation rider apps that make things more viable?
 Can it be made safer than 8.1?

My understanding is win10 was free in some instances but is no longer free.  Or those instances have changed.  Or something.

 Is this true?  I remember performing some basic actions to insure myself a free update but it was long ago and I no longer remember what they were, plus they may have expired.

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

My understanding was it was theoretically but not actually practically possible to control the excesses of win10 data mining.

 Is this still true?

There are programs that will turn almost all of it all, and you can also do things on the router level like dns blocking

 

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Can it be made safer than 8.1?

 

As in more secure? Yea win 10 is normally more secure than win 8.1.

 

8 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

My understanding is win10 was free in some instances but is no longer free.  Or those instances have changed.  Or something.

 Is this true?  I remember performing some basic actions to insure myself a free update but it was long ago and I no longer remember what they were, plus they may have expired.

There is no really free way to upgrade now, but you may get the upgrade to work without activation issues. WIndows saying its activated doesn't mean its properly licensed, but then again microsoft won't audit you..

 

But really if you are worried about someone watching you, don't use windows, there are many alternative oses that focus much more on privacy, and won't send that data back home. MACos is also normally much better at this than windows aswell, and linux is much better aswell.

 

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

You can use the 8.1 key to activate Win10. AFAIK.

8.1 Pro = Win10 Pro

8.1 Home = Win10 Home

 

At least with my experiences on Win7/8.1 keys and Windows 10

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There are programs that will turn almost all of it all, and you can also do things on the router level like dns blocking

 

As in more secure? Yea win 10 is normally more secure than win 8.1.

 

There is no really free way to upgrade now, but you may get the upgrade to work without activation issues. WIndows saying its activated doesn't mean its properly licensed, but then again microsoft won't audit you..

 

But really if you are worried about someone watching you, don't use windows, there are many alternative oses that focus much more on privacy, and won't send that data back home. MACos is also normally much better at this than windows aswell, and linux is much better aswell.

 

 

Alternate OS is/was the original plan when 8.1 went out of date.  I have a weakness for video games though.  Particularly big AAA rpgs.  It’s not impossible with Linux/wine but it is more complicated and there are limitations I’d like to avoid if it’s all the same.  I don’t particularly mind paying Microsoft for their work.  It’s not the watching so much as the using.  I like what little illusion of free will I’ve still got.  I wound up being tricked into opening a Facebook account long ago by a phone game upgrade.  It sucked the data off my phone though which happened to be false.  I was registered as a 108 year old woman.  Suddenly the entire internet blossomed with ads for urinary aids and yoga pants.  Everywhere.  Also I started getting scam robocalls aimed at old people.  People were trying to use me.  Political ads also changed character.  It angered me.  This is what concerns me.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Alternate OS is/was the original plan when 8.1 went out of date.  I have a weakness for video games though.  Particularly big AAA rpgs.  It’s not impossible with Linux/wine but it is more complicated and there are limitations I’d like to avoid if it’s all the same.

why not dual boot or do vms then?

 

 

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

why not dual boot or do vms then?

 

 

Dual boot has the same problems. A VM is an option, but I’m not sure I’ve got the spare overhead in hardware, and I’ve never set one up.  I did read about doing so once.  It looked to be  daunting. Choice of technically Or financially.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Dual boot has the same problems. A VM is an option, but I’m not sure I’ve got the spare overhead in hardware, and I’ve never set one up.  I did read about doing so once.  It looked to be  daunting. Choice of technically Or financially.

How does a dual boot have the same issue? Do all the normal day to day things on linux or osx or whatever, and just use windows for games.

 

And the vm really isn't that hard often. What hardware do you have?

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How does a dual boot have the same issue? Do all the normal day to day things on linux or osx or whatever, and just use windows for games.

 

And the vm really isn't that hard often. What hardware do you have?

It’s a pretty old system.  Z97, 16g ram, 4770k@4.0 (lost the silicon lottery.  It’s 99% stable at 4.1, and I’ve got the cooling for maybe 4.5 (viperX 6 pipe and diamond paste) but it would need voltage bumps and hand massaging. My feeling was it wasn’t worth it) Gtx970.   May upgrade GPU TO 5700xt Black Friday.  Jury is out. Kinda doubtful though.  The GPU is pretty heavily bound.  There are spare processor cycles.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

It’s a pretty old system.  Z97, 16g ram, 4770k@4.0 (lost the silicon lottery.  It’s 99% stable at 4.1, and I’ve got the cooling for maybe 4.5 (viperX 6 pipe and diamond paste) but it would need voltage bumps and hand massaging. My feeling was it wasn’t worth it) Gtx970.   May upgrade GPU TO 5700xt Black Friday.  Jury is out. Kinda doubtful though.  The GPU is pretty heavily bound.  There are spare processor cycles.

That system should go gpu passthrough for vms if you wanted to just fine.

 

 

[xHalloweenx]

Linux is a great alternative. Gaming on linux has never been easier, I am a Arch Linux user. However if you want to play the latest releases or play anything with a anti-cheat software or a intrusive DRM scheme, linux is still at minimum a year out if not longer. For the best gaming experience, Windows 10 is your only option. Windows 10 in a KVM with GPU passthrough is a option, but you will need a second dedicated GPU for either Linux or your Windows VM, and you do lose some of your cpu's resources which could affect your gaming performance depending on the title. Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys do still active Windows 10, but I believe only from a clean install, I could be wrong here. As far as Windows 10 vs 8.1 they honestly collect about the same amount of data. You could limit the data or eliminate it by blocking access via a firewall, preferably at a network/router level.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

That system should go gpu passthrough for vms if you wanted to just fine.

 

 

So some Linux distro or other set up for a windows VM so I could control what Microsoft was monitoring and what information it phoned home with.

 

Are there any Linux distro set up for this you happen to remember off hand?

 

I fear Linux a little.

My Linux distro knowledge is fearsomely out of date and my command line capacity was always pretty poor.  My favorite command was “man”.  It won’t help that it’s near 20years old by now.  I do know the difference between Vim and emacs (which should date me) but not well.  I remembered the name emacs but had to look up the other.  I remembered it as being 2 characters not three.    Possibly vim is something newer than emacs rather than older.  I could barely use emacs.  I suspect it’s so old and out of date that even if it somehow popped back into my head it would be useless.  There may still be an early Ubuntu partition somewhere on my storage drive.  It wasn’t very large iirc.  Iirc   It had to be done in FAT32 because of compatibility issues.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

So some Linux distro or other set up for a windows VM so I could control what Microsoft was monitoring and what information it phoned home with.

Thats what id do if you want to easily switch between oses.

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Are there any Linux distro set up for this you happen to remember off hand?

All the major distros like debian or fedora will do this fine. Id personally use fedora, but it really doesn't matter.

[Bombastinator]

57 minutes ago, xHalloweenx said:

Linux is a great alternative. Gaming on linux has never been easier, I am a Arch Linux user. However if you want to play the latest releases or play anything with a anti-cheat software or a intrusive DRM scheme, linux is still at minimum a year out if not longer. For the best gaming experience, Windows 10 is your only option. Windows 10 in a KVM with GPU passthrough is a option, but you will need a second dedicated GPU for either Linux or your Windows VM, and you do lose some of your cpu's resources which could affect your gaming performance depending on the title. Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys do still active Windows 10, but I believe only from a clean install, I could be wrong here. As far as Windows 10 vs 8.1 they honestly collect about the same amount of data. You could limit the data or eliminate it by blocking access via a firewall, preferably at a network/router level.

Sadly my router belongs to the phone company.  I doubt they’d appreciate my attempting to poke around in it.
 

This is not a project I want to put $into if I can avoid it.  I’m expecting I’ll need to do a whole new rig around mid 2020 or whenever.  It’s going to suck multiple months of discretionary spending.  The 5700xt would need to go into that machine.

 I’ve got the parts for an old quadro Q series lying around.  I might be able to turn it into a firewall.  That would be a week of work though.
 

 Doing a bit of googling, the 4770k has an HD 4600 in it.  Definitely not a lot of gpu.  Whether it could even be accessed with a discrete GPU in place I don’t know.  I do have several spare old GPUs lying around.  I’ve been meaning to donate them to freegeek for years but I keep on not getting around to it. There’s a 470 somewhere (real power hog) and a Radeon 7950 which preceded the 970.  I’ve got an asus z97 extreme4 which should have a slot for one.  PSU is 600w so I might even be able to power all of it.  Poor old PSU isn’t any newer than the mobo though.  Im beginning to worry for its health.  Hoping it will last till the new rig goes together.

 

 

[xHalloweenx]

For a distro, I would recommend Fedora as its built from Red Hat and should provide anything you need.  If you just need a simple text editor while your in bash, I recommend nano. As far as using a 4770K in this setup, I personally wouldn't recommend it and would recommend a network based firewall. What you would have to give up to your KVM would have a larger impact on that setup. If you want something quick and dirty use a KVM, If you want the best performance you can get, use a network based firewall. On a side note, you can force linux to use your iGPU to free up your dedicated GPU. Honestly the effort put into both, it would probably take about the same amount of time to set either of them up.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, xHalloweenx said:

For a distro, I would recommend Fedora as its built from Red Hat and should provide anything you need.  If you just need a simple text editor while your in bash, I recommend nano. As far as using a 4770K in this setup, I personally wouldn't recommend it and would recommend a network based firewall. What you would have to give up to your KVM would have a larger impact on that setup. If you want something quick and dirty use a KVM, If you want the best performance you can get, use a network based firewall. On a side note, you can force linux to use your iGPU to free up your dedicated GPU. Honestly the effort put into both, it would probably take about the same amount of time to set either of them up.

Red hat.  I remember red hat.  The memories they are not good.  Red hat was... weird.

 

ugh. Bash. Text editors.  Not a strong suit of mine.  I’m really remarkably bad at programming.  Anything that isn’t really really small and I’m hosed.  I tend to get lost in loops.

 

 Back in high school I had to write a program in BASIC for science class.  I banged on it for days. (It was a simple hamurabi puzzle. Should have taken a normal person 20 minutes)  I was supposed to be one of the smart kids, but people would stop by occasionally just to watch me suck.  There’s a reason I never went IT. 

 Did KVM KDE get better?  That thing is older than me.  Or am I thinking of something else?  It’s what gnome was trying to fix.

 

UPDATE:

gnar.  I got KVM confused with KDE.  It really has been a long time.  I don’t know what a KVM  is.  Found the wiki though.  I will soon.