Don't you think Microsoft should make Windows Gaming edition OSes?

[Skybbles]

And i'm talking specifically about Windows 10. There's already W10 Home, W10 Enterprise, and W10 Pro. Don't you think MS should make a Windows 10 Gaming edition or just Windows Gaming Edition?

 

And maybe it should have more GPU drivers, support for 2+ TB drives and automatic pooling (storage). And also some changes to the GUI and maybe some additional built-in apps like a universal RGB LED controller would be there. And most importantly, AN FPS COUNTER IN ALL GAMES.

 

Idk why i thought of this, it just popped into my mind.

[Mira Yurizaki]

There's talk of a new "gaming mode." But honestly I don't see what difference it makes other than setting all non-essential services to the background. If anything that might make the rest of the system less responsive. If you're strapped for resources, do what consoles do: close everything out other than the game. Or you can set the game's priority to High or Realtime

 

As for a universal RGB LED controller or FPS counter... that's a touchy subject. Nobody likes it when Microsoft includes a useful app in their OS on the grounds of "MONOPOLY!"

[Oshino Shinobu]

I don't think that would be good from a consumer or business standpoint. 

 

Also, all Windows 10 versions support greater than 2TB drives anyway? "more GPU drivers" would be the same as just crippling the rest of the versions for GPU drivers. 

 

And FRAPS (and others like it) is free, no need to bake something into the OS. 

[ThinkWithPortals]

I don't like this idea. I don't think an OS is something we should try to split up into categories. If W10 had a Gaming Edition it wouldn't be long till it had an Editing Edition, Music Edition, etc.

 

More importantly, what would it offer that normal W10 doesn't have? W10 is compatible with any hardware, supports 2+TB drives, GUI can be personalised (eg Rainmeter), universal RGB controller can be done with software and an FPS counter in all games can be done between apps like Fraps, Steam overlay, Rivatuner, etc.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I don't think that would be good from a consumer or business standpoint. 

 

Also, all Windows 10 versions support greater than 2TB drives anyway? "more GPU drivers" would be the same as just crippling the rest of the versions for GPU drivers. 

 

And FRAPs is free, no need to bake something into the OS. 

And if you find FRAPS's overlay annoying, Steam has an FPS counter that's less in-your-face now.

[m0k]

9 minutes ago, Skybbles said:

And i'm talking specifically about Windows 10. There's already W10 Home, W10 Enterprise, and W10 Pro. Don't you think MS should make a Windows 10 Gaming edition or just Windows Gaming Edition?

 

And maybe it should have more GPU drivers, support for 2+ TB drives and automatic pooling (storage). And also some changes to the GUI and maybe some additional built-in apps like a universal RGB LED controller would be there. And most importantly, AN FPS COUNTER IN ALL GAMES.

 

Idk why i thought of this, it just popped into my mind.

yeah it already exists, comes standard with an Xbox...

[FAQBytes]

But in all seriousness, you can do most of that with add-ons for windows already. 

The 2 TB limit is a limitation, not in Windows, but of the partition table format, which is solved by GPT.

I'm not sure what you mean by "More GPU drivers". You can have as many cards running at once, but you can only really have one per card. 

A universal FPS counter may be difficult to create, and in all honesty, would be a waste of M$'s time.

[Guest Kloaked]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

There's talk of a new "gaming mode." But honestly I don't see what difference it makes other than setting all non-essential services to the background. If anything that might make the rest of the system less responsive. If you're strapped for resources, do what consoles do: close everything out other than the game. Or you can set the game's priority to High or Realtime

Agreed. Unless they do some weird black magic to somehow actually get you better performance in a game, it'll probably only be pausing/temporarily closing background tasks and such. Even though this is something minor, I'm glad they're taking PC gaming more serious now like they said they would be for so fucking long.

 

9 minutes ago, Skybbles said:

And maybe it should have more GPU drivers, support for 2+ TB drives and automatic pooling (storage). And also some changes to the GUI and maybe some additional built-in apps like a universal RGB LED controller would be there. And most importantly, AN FPS COUNTER IN ALL GAMES.

I don't know what "more GPU drivers" would mean, or what that would even do. Windows already will notify you when there's a new WHQL driver for your GPU released, at least I think they do.

 

Windows already supports mass storage like that. Windows supports an absurd number of bytes that no normal user would ever use that much within 50 years probably (probably wrong though).

 

The miscellaneous stuff that you're talking about exists. If you buy an RGB lighting kit, there will (or there's supposed to be) software for the controller of the kit so that you can actually control it.

 

Idk what you're actually thinking, man. Windows already does what you want. There doesn't need to be another fork of Windows for gaming.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Also, the OS spends most of its time idling or using that idle time to do low impact maintenance work that'll just get shoved into the background once it figures out the user is actively using the computer. The only thing the OS will happily eat is RAM, but that's what RAM is for, and it'll shove what's non-essential off RAM into the page file anyway. Which by the way, you shouldn't disable the page file.

 

Seems like a good thing for someone to do: Get a fresh install of Windows, install the just the drivers and the games you want to test out (and any support programs), benchmark it to create a base line, then strip out as much stuff as you can from Windows and redo the benchmarks and see if there's any appreciable performance difference.

[Aaronius_Leonius]

18 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

I don't like this idea. I don't think an OS is something we should try to split up into categories. If W10 had a Gaming Edition it wouldn't be long till it had an Editing Edition, Music Edition, etc.

 

More importantly, what would it offer that normal W10 doesn't have? W10 is compatible with any hardware, supports 2+TB drives, GUI can be personalised (eg Rainmeter), universal RGB controller can be done with software and an FPS counter in all games can be done between apps like Fraps, Steam overlay, Rivatuner, etc.

Don't forget windows 10 occasionally looking at facebook edition.

[Skybbles]

22 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

There's talk of a new "gaming mode." But honestly I don't see what difference it makes other than setting all non-essential services to the background. If anything that might make the rest of the system less responsive. If you're strapped for resources, do what consoles do: close everything out other than the game. Or you can set the game's priority to High or Realtime

 

As for a universal RGB LED controller or FPS counter... that's a touchy subject. Nobody likes it when Microsoft includes a useful app in their OS on the grounds of "MONOPOLY!"

I see your point there.

[NTDaws]

Oh I would absolutely love a gaming version of Windows 10, technically I already have one, but if they did I would want all the apps/metro apps removed except Store and Xbox so I can still play forza. And it would have to run less processes. 

[Skybbles]

4 minutes ago, AA-RonRosen said:

Don't forget windows 10 occasionally looking at facebook edition.

 

22 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

I don't like this idea. I don't think an OS is something we should try to split up into categories. If W10 had a Gaming Edition it wouldn't be long till it had an Editing Edition, Music Edition, etc.

 

More importantly, what would it offer that normal W10 doesn't have? W10 is compatible with any hardware, supports 2+TB drives, GUI can be personalised (eg Rainmeter), universal RGB controller can be done with software and an FPS counter in all games can be done between apps like Fraps, Steam overlay, Rivatuner, etc.

Hmm.... that's one right there. You're right that if they make a gaming edition then there would be a music edition etc. But for example, Valve made SteamOS based on their steam app in Windows. Why can't Microsoft do the same? I mean, do they realize that their OSes are the ones that are being used by 99% of the whole PC gaming population? Why don't they make an OS built specifically on that? Other editions like you said (music edition, editing edition, etc.) are already incorporated in Windows 10 Home and pro. But if they made a gaming Edition, then they would prioritize the gamers' most important needs.

[Skybbles]

14 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Also, the OS spends most of its time idling or using that idle time to do low impact maintenance work that'll just get shoved into the background once it figures out the user is actively using the computer. The only thing the OS will happily eat is RAM, but that's what RAM is for, and it'll shove what's non-essential off RAM into the page file anyway. Which by the way, you shouldn't disable the page file.

 

Seems like a good thing for someone to do: Get a fresh install of Windows, install the just the drivers and the games you want to test out (and any support programs), benchmark it to create a base line, then strip out as much stuff as you can from Windows and redo the benchmarks and see if there's any appreciable performance difference.

I will try that, thanks! ^^

[ThinkWithPortals]

3 minutes ago, Skybbles said:

Other editions like you said (music edition, editing edition, etc.) are already incorporated in Windows 10 Home and pro.

And gaming isn't?

 

Normal W10 already has support for every GPU/CPU under the sun, support for a tonne of software, support for Steam, support for the Windows Store, support for massive storage devices - what more do you need that W10 doesn't do?

[porina]

1 minute ago, Dawson Wehage said:

Oh I would absolutely love a gaming version of Windows 10, technically I already have one, but if they did I would want all the apps/metro apps removed except Store and Xbox so I can still play forza. And it would have to run less processes. 

If MS were ever to make a Gaming Edition, it would probably be that you can only use the Windows Store and remove desktop capability...

 

What I think is needed is, for lack of a better term, a Power User button that unlocks all the stuff you wish you can alter without resorting to registry hacks and 3rd party utilities. Windows versions since about 2000 have started adding friction to the user interface. So I'm not saying they're not trying to improve it, but for everything they do that is positive, there are as many that are not so. I don't want what MS recommends like trying to force you towards Edge, Bing and Cortana. I want what I want. If I don't want something, I want to turn it off. There are also many features implemented in the name of security that serves little more in practice than to get in the user's way and teach them to click the ok button without thinking so they can get on with what they want to really do.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

What I think is needed is, for lack of a better term, a Power User button that unlocks all the stuff you wish you can alter without resorting to registry hacks and 3rd party utilities. Windows versions since about 2000 have started adding friction to the user interface. So I'm not saying they're not trying to improve it, but for everything they do that is positive, there are as many that are not so. I don't want what MS recommends like trying to force you towards Edge, Bing and Cortana. I want what I want. If I don't want something, I want to turn it off. There are also many features implemented in the name of security that serves little more in practice than to get in the user's way and teach them to click the ok button without thinking so they can get on with what they want to really do.

The problem with this is everyone thinks they're an expert when in reality, a minuscule fraction of the Windows userbase really is.

 

So you'll have Joe Shmoe who thinks because he can install Windows, he's an "expert", and so he'll enable this setting and start tweaking things without understanding what they do or how they work, and then when things break, he complains it's Microsoft fault because he's obviously the "expert" or that the setting he just touched shouldn't have broken the system, even though it was something important.

 

Like you might be tempted to just turn off services willy nilly. Except there's one that if you turn off will break your system in horrible ways. Why is it even there to begin with? I dunno.

[Pesukarhu]

5 minutes ago, porina said:

I don't want what MS recommends like trying to force you towards Edge, Bing and Cortana. I want what I want. If I don't want something, I want to turn it off. There are also many features implemented in the name of security that serves little more in practice than to get in the user's way and teach them to click the ok button without thinking so they can get on with what they want to really do.

Agreed. I want to select what features i want during the installation, like xp. (was it xp? i think so.) Only install the things i want and use.

I would like a windows 10 custom edition, where you get to choose what you want. But customer satisfaction is probably the last thing on ms' to-do list.

 

Also, i find annoying the popup for giving a program access to admin-level files cant be disabled on a developer basis. I dont want to click it every time i install a new game from steam god dammit. Installing has become "spam the next/ok/install/agree button" experience. And then there is a piece of adware in there.

NICE

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, Pesukarhu said:

Agreed. I want to select what features i want during the installation, like xp. (was it xp? i think so.) Only install the things i want and use.

I would like a windows 10 custom edition, where you get to choose what you want. But customer satisfaction is probably the last thing on ms' to-do list.

Windows 98 and possibly ME was the last one that would let you customize the Windows install thoroughly, down to even where Windows itself gets installed.

 

The problem is though is that again, "experts" would configure what they thought was best and then get confused as to why some things break. This is also a pain in the rear for developers because they have no idea what configuration to target and they'll just target the default configuration. So if you installed anything other than the default configuration and you want to use this app, it may break, then you curse Microsoft for their crappy OS or the developer for their crappy program.

Quote

Also, i find annoying the popup for giving a program access to admin-level files cant be disabled on a developer basis. I dont want to click it every time i install a new game from steam god dammit. Installing has become "spam the next/ok/install/agree button" experience. And then there is a piece of adware in there.

NICE

Linux and Mac require you to do effectively what is a sudo any time you make system changes so it's no different there. Steam is trying to make system changes when you install games. You can set the UAC level to 0 which eliminates the UAC prompts, but you're then effectively running as root.

 

Security or convenience, pick one.

 

EDIT: The only way to get around this is if all apps you install are certified by Microsoft and you can only get apps through Microsoft's own or approved channels. You need to have a trusted source if you don't want to deal with security checkpoints.

[Pesukarhu]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The problem is though is that again, "experts" would configure what they thought was best and then get confused as to why some things break. 

Ahh, the experts. "i closed explorer.exe and my pc broke! halp!"

Could be partially solved with requiring email activation during installation to activate expert mode. (have disclaimers on the activation site)

 

Then add a feature that reminds you when it detects a new program installation, that you have a custom version of windows and any performance/stability issues could be caused by your configuration and that you can use this tool to add features you didn't originally install.

Complicated af.

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Linux and Mac require you to do effectively what is a sudo any time you make system changes so it's no different there. Steam is trying to make system changes when you install games. You can set the UAC level to 0, but you're then effectively running as root.

Linux? You will be installing half the stuff through the terminal anyways.

Mac? meh.

 

i know what steam is doing, just want an override for certain applications.

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, Pesukarhu said:

Ahh, the experts. "i closed explorer.exe and my pc broke! halp!"

Could be partially solved with requiring email activation during installation to activate expert mode. (have disclaimers on the activation site)

That doesn't actually prevent "experts" from activating it.

6 minutes ago, Pesukarhu said:

Then add a feature that reminds you when it detects a new program installation, that you have a custom version of windows and any performance/stability issues could be caused by your configuration and that you can use this tool to add features you didn't originally install.

Complicated af.

That's just as annoying as a UAC prompt.

6 minutes ago, Pesukarhu said:

Linux? You will be installing half the stuff through the terminal anyways.

By first invoking "sudo" and typing your password and making sure you do everything you need to do as an su before the timeout expires.

6 minutes ago, Pesukarhu said:

Mac? meh.

macOS is UNIX after all, and abides by the same rules that Linux mostly adheres to.

6 minutes ago, Pesukarhu said:

i know what steam is doing, just want an override for certain applications.

So what's stopping an attacker from poking at your programs and trying out things, only to find out you have this override for Steam (which is a popular application, so they'll probably try that in the first few attempts) and do horrible things to your computer? i.e., Steam is now a backdoor. Good job.

[porina]

1 hour ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Like you might be tempted to just turn off services willy nilly. Except there's one that if you turn off will break your system in horrible ways. Why is it even there to begin with? I dunno.

 

My point is more options should be available at UI level and implemented in a way that makes sense. I should not have to do low level or risky things to get it to work how I want. Take Windows Update in Win10 as an example. This does cause problems both for technical users, and the clueless masses. Who does it satisfy? The Win7 approach was not perfect but still far better. By disabling services I can make it more like Win7 behaviour, with effort, and not easily. It does have side effects, in that Windows store doesn't work correctly, but since I never use it I accept that tradeoff. 

47 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Security or convenience, pick one.

They're not exclusive. If security gets so bad you can't do what you want easily, the system is broken. Airport security in the modern world is getting that way...

 

I like the old MS, where the OS team just did OS and not have to try and take over the world. As far as I'm concerned, earlier versions of Win2000 were the last clean MS OS before the rot started. Even the later SP started adding crap that spread through XP and beyond.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, porina said:

My point is more options should be available at UI level and implemented in a way that makes sense. I should not have to do low level or risky things to get it to work how I want. Take Windows Update in Win10 as an example. This does cause problems both for technical users, and the clueless masses. Who does it satisfy? The Win7 approach was not perfect but still far better. By disabling services I can make it more like Win7 behaviour, with effort, and not easily. It does have side effects, in that Windows store doesn't work correctly, but since I never use it I accept that tradeoff. 

You're talking about tweaking system level parameters. That by default is low level and risky. The only problem with Windows 10 is that it's not consistent, but everything is still there. The only way to get what you want is to use a microkernel based setup, where practically everything except the kernel itself is run in the userland. Except this causes performance issues.

1 minute ago, porina said:

They're not exclusive. If security gets so bad you can't do what you want easily, the system is broken. Airport security in the modern world is getting that way...

Convenience implies doing less things. You can make security more convenient by skipping steps, if only you trust the thing. If you don't trust the thing, you must do something to verify its validity, which hampers convenience. Or you don't have a secure system.

1 minute ago, porina said:

I like the old MS, where the OS team just did OS and not have to try and take over the world. As far as I'm concerned, earlier versions of Win2000 were the last clean MS OS before the rot started. Even the later SP started adding crap that spread through XP and beyond.

Uh... What?

 

Also security before Vista was horrible considering that every user account by default was an admin, and effectively, root. Even the Linux people tell you not to run as root as your main account.

[2FA]

1 hour ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Linux and Mac require you to do effectively what is a sudo any time you make system changes so it's no different there. Steam is trying to make system changes when you install games. You can set the UAC level to 0 which eliminates the UAC prompts, but you're then effectively running as root.

 

Security or convenience, pick one.

 

EDIT: The only way to get around this is if all apps you install are certified by Microsoft and you can only get apps through Microsoft's own or approved channels. You need to have a trusted source if you don't want to deal with security checkpoints.

The funny thing is that Windows 10 won't let you open apps if you set UAC to zero.

[GoodBytes]

There is nothing that Microsoft can go to have a "game edition" of Windows. Anything they remove/disable would have 0 impact on the games.

They can add game related features like they are doing with the XBox bar, but they are on all editions, there is no reason to remove it from teh others just to make "game edition".

 

The only thing I see that they can do, is detect a game, is play with the process scheduling to give more CPU time to the game over the rest of the system.. but are games really CPU limited these days? I guess it could potentially help textures loading to GPU a bit, but it won't be some miracle. Sucky hardware can only go so far. So far, we have seen that using a different OS doesn't benefit gaming, performance is at best the same as Windows. So Microsoft is already doing a pretty good job. Anyway, we will need to wait and see what is this "gaming mode" things circulating.