If developers release a shit port that's locked at 30 fps or 720 we should be able to mod it.
I wouldn't say those changes aren't significant.

Quick look at the default Win10 apps show that one can access the .exe, even if "This application can only run in the context of an app container" (direct quote of attempting to run the executable for Calculator. Not sure if any of the default apps are UWP ones, or how easy it would be to remove said limitation, but it does appear that said modding will still be possible, though possibly harder.

If Calculator, Photos, Mail and Skype are not UWP, I would appreciate anyone telling me of any free UWPs on the Store to see if the .exe is accessible for those as well.


Edit: Netflix appears to not have a .exe file, though it does have a default.html one. Let me see its files a bit further.

You might want to visit the nexus mods site and browse around there for a bit. There's a fleeting chance that might make you change that statement.

There's pretty much no question that win32 will be phased out eventually, that's just how things work. Although I don't think that's something to worry about for a long time.

I have nothing against UWP as long as they deal with the current limitations properly. The security measures that are currently preventing modding aren't a bad thing but it needs an "off switch" that allows full modding support for apps we trust, until then it's unacceptable.

The other limitations like no full screen exclusive mode are also ridiculous, imo games shouldn't even have been released on the platform until that stuff was dealt with. Talk about shooting yourself in both feet when everyone is already looking for any reason to hate on you.

I expect that hard-core PC gamers (i.e., those people who use their PC as a games console) do not care what OS runs on their machine. They could move to Linux and not lose their games — that is mostly what they care about.

I am all for Free Software, but I don't see Valve's support for Linux as being bad for the OS. It may bring some more people to come over, more hardware support, and so on. I think that offsets the introduction of more closed source programs. What is your point of view?

Most information highlights the ability to run on every platform, but I think it is fair to suppose it will be possible to limit those. However, I also suppose many developers will target the most limited platform (smartphones?) and make their application available everywhere. I trust that MS provides good tools, but they can't do magic. Developers will take as many shortcuts as they can. And they will be the ones who make or break UWP.

Fair points. MS is looking for other sources of income. People won't buy OSs. But they will buy applications (such as Office) and hardware.
Given the deep pockets of the Redmond giant, they can keep pushing it. The same way they pushed Me, Vista, 8, 10, Windows Mobile, IE and so on. I think it will work out once MS makes some changes, since the way we distribute software could be much better. I also think that a 30% cut is too high.

I do not understand what that "sideloading" feature is. You buy the UWA somewhere else, and you can install it into your system? What about the file signing?

One more question: how do UWAs handle their settings? Do they still use the registry? Are the settings synchronised between devices? What if I don't want them to? What if I do want them to? I guess things will never work out perfectly...

Mods are not really rare. But it's also not really about mods. It's about commercial third party developers which might get a disadvantage by Microsoft controling and limiting access. Probably taking control is the important topic here.

247 games. Not enough to change my mind.

Indeed. However, making a choice of which OS to use is still essential. There are various flavors of Linux, and insofar, I don't believe SteamOS is one optimal choice for that. I'd recommend Ubuntu over that anyday. I haven't seen any sort of great push for Linux market share. It's sort of still low, and it's still evidenced by people asking around for a preferred distro to their taste. Luckily SteamOS isn't getting any shares and remains willfully ignored. But the point is, isn't Linux open-source? That is one of the main points of the system, right? I shouldn't go to a Linux distro that is by default, closed source. Again, it is as you said. The developers will make or break them; Microsoft developed Universal Apps with that in mind. The problem is we haven't encountered a good example of a Universal App yet. All of the coverage regarding Windows 10 is still focused on one thing: telemetry, telemetry, telemetry. And the occasional GWX article. The info is buried under the same topic which is repeated thousands of times, that basically we heard nothing about Universal Apps that we can take for granted. Exactly. If there's a thing I like about Microsoft, they're persistent, and they never die. With the support of their other businesses, they keep pushing their goods forward in hopes that people will use them. As far as I'm told because we haven't seen an app we could sideload yet, yes, you get the Universal App from somewhere else. With a powershell command, it's installed; a developer will properly implement an installer to said powershell command. Though I haven't tried sideloading anything to begin with (because of the lack thereof) which makes me unable to verify what I said. I don't know about the registry deal, but their settings are tucked inside the app if they were games, or available as part of the fairly consistent UIs across apps. As for synchronization, I can't talk about this because as far as I'm concerned, my laptop is the only device with Windows 10 that I possess. However, I think it depends on the nature of the app to allow you synchronization or not. Microsoft apps do this because they use your Outlook account. That's about it.

Agreed that control is the issue.

You mentioned a single game which had more than minor mod support, and suggested that there were only a handful of others. I was merely pointing out that this was incorrect.

Keep in mind that Nexus is only one modding site (although a big one) - each game tends to favour different sites. Some fairly heavily modded games have no presence on Nexus whatsoever - the Total War series of games, for instance.

Edit: just found that this was not quite true - Medieval Total War has 3 files there. But that's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of modding that exists for the entire series.

SteamOS is a specialized distro. As long as people make informed choices, it is all OK.
But isn't there a way to install Steam as a program, as you do on Windows? Then you could install Steam on Ubuntu. No more problem there.

Once you had to rely on Knoppix to run Linux from a CD or a USB stick. Now its standard practice on most well-known distributions.

Steam is not just closed-source. It has DRM, which is even worse! True, that is a problem. But that problem will not be solved by keeping Steam at bay.

There is a lot of closed source software for Linux (just about every game for Linux on GOG). There is a lot of debate regarding freedom, and which path is more free: the one where we force freedom or the one where we allow it to be taken away. No definite answer has yet emerged.

In the end, we may get flooded with noobs, forum quality may decrease a little, people will expect "Windows in a different suit" and be disappointed. But also we may get better (open) video card drivers, more money flowing to Linux development and so on. And if I need to feel like an elitist, I can always jump ship, and move to some other OS, like BSD or Haiku and cheer for another underdog. :-P

What? No games for Haiku on GOG? How is it possible? Come on! 2016 is the year of Haiku on the desktop! And then we'll move on to Hurd!

No UWA yet? What about that Tomb Raider game? Am I misunderstanding things? Or do you mean an app that can show all the benefits of the new platform such as a Microsoft Office that can run on multiple devices?

Well, Scipio understood that mighty Rome would one day perish, as he saw Carthage burning. One day Miscrosoft will cease to exist.
Also, Microsoft has given up projects in the past: Zune, Silverlight, PlayforSure... Do you remember the Kin? How is Live doing? I'm sure you never had a Windows Mobile, a Windows Phone 7 or a Windows Phone 8. That annoyed a lot of consumers. All this just to say that MS can push this for a long time, but they may not do it.

And while I do think the future of the company may be at stake here (not saying it is a "make it or break it" moment), large companies will not purchase software through this method, gamers have alternatives, pros don't buy new software on a regular basis... what is left? Office, anti-virus, casual games and fart apps? Most of these exist for Android and iOS, whose platform has lots of sensors and are more portable than a PC or an XBox. It will be an uphill battle for MS, but also an interesting thing to watch.

Once Free Software starts showing up on the MS App Store, at $0.00, more people will adopt Free Software, and less will pirate their applications. Hmm... not everything will be bad. Also, indie games may look for more exposure. Let us see how that one goes... It may take a long time to learn the new tools.

Will I be right? Just for the record, I once said "Who needs hardware for 3D acceleration? That's a silly thing, and doomed to fail on the market." :-P

The problem is that the whole system is designed with the intention to plaster Steam all over your face. That's about it, which as you'd go in the next point...

Once you had to rely on Knoppix to run Linux from a CD or a USB stick. Now its standard practice on most well-known distributions. Linux's strength is in being open-source. Now take that away with closed source software that acts as DRM. It's probably also not far a choice to consider that other applications might follow suit and become closed source. But let's forget about the future for now. What you get with DRM with Steam on Linux is essentially the same result as Windows. You can't take the advantage of Linux's openness if most of the apps you use daily are also becoming DRM'd and whatnot, and in the end, the changes only become system-level and not as a whole. That is if you can even convince the rest of the world to jump over to Linux as a main system. I say Valve is just wasting money on a failure of a hate bandwagon that started with Windows 8, and so are the rest. In fact the rest are probably too generous to make native Linux ports. In the end, what am I going to value more; less games without DRM, or more games with DRM? I'll simply pick up the former. I've had my fair share of experiences with DRM, and regardless of DRM or not, pirating a game has never been easier and cheaper. I mean the last choice of course. An app that shows how it's done on various platforms. But when your media coverage is swimming in clickbait crap like repeating the same talk about telemetry and the same talk about Get Windows 10 and hiding from you ACTUAL news about the system's functionality itself, can you figure out anything? In the end, you get to be as skeptical of the idea as you are, because of the lack of available knowledge that you can access. I wonder how long it'll take for these news to die out and we start covering other aspects of Windows 10 properly. By never die, I mean they don't seem to show any signs of death, and they look very healthy to me. To be honest, I didn't have a Windows Phone 8, but my sister does, and Windows Phone 8 is just so damn great, I can't even fathom why developers don't do anything for it, with the most eye-catchy being the user interface that my beloved Android can't emulate any day. Just because they are available on Android and iOS, doesn't mean they don't have a place for desktop users to enjoy. Thanks to a plethora of Android apps that I own, I also use an Android VM on my Windows 10 OS to let me play any Android app I throw it at; but of course that comes with its cost, mainly the performance hit as you run a virtual machine with an Android app inside. If these same apps were to follow, I would be able to run them at less battery power wasted and with less a performance hit. Heh, not sure what you're trying to go with this. Sure, Google Play is littered with $0 apps. That doesn't mean I don't look for the pretty paid apps in the background. In any case, it's as you say. A game of waiting and watching.

I never used Steam, but as far as I know, Steam seems to be an optional application and behaves like such.

Why would we be taking that away? We are adding stuff, nothing is being removed.
And why would other applications become closed? They are distributed with a perpetual licence. What is out there now will always be Free. So here is the worse case (doomsday) scenario for you:

1. All the developers will stop releasing improvements for the applications;

2. All the copyright holders to the current code agree to have their code distributed under a non-Free licence, so that proprietary software can be made using it (what is out there is under a perpetual license to always be Free);

3. No one else decides to take the place of maintainer and continue developing of the Free code already available, or they cannot because they copy of the last Free release can be found. Also, no Free replacement is created. And no port of applications from other OS is made.

4. All the copies of the free software that we already have and use today will go away, leaving us with no Free software.

Then the scenario you describe would come true. What would be the gain to turn a Free application proprietary? The opposite is much more common. To make money? Look at "Tales of Maj’Eyal": there is a Free (as in speech) version available (also free as in beer). Hey, I can even sell copies of ToME! Yes, me. It is in the license of the game. It is totally legal. Isn't it neat?

I'll admit that I like the idea of the Live Tiles. I can trace that idea back to NEXTstep (or at least I had that idea when using a copy of NEXTstep, so I think it is not new). But since I never used it outside a store, I cannot say what went wrong with it. But I recall 7 missed some relevant features present in my phone (purchased in 2003).

I know MS burned many developers by providing no path from Windows Mobile to Windows 7. Then the phones running 7 could not be upgraded to 8. So MS was losing a lot of people along the way. (I know a MS fan and ex-employee who said she had been "fooled" by getting a Windows 7 phone). By 2015 MS never reached 4% mobile market share (and had topped in 2013). Would you invest 6 months of work into that new platform that had few users and seemed seriously mismanaged with a terrible track record?
Still, I mus admit that MS topped Blackberry as the third ecosystem. Congrats to them.
(Yes, I resent MS for that Nokia business.)

I appreciate that you have been taking the time to explain to me some things I did not grasp, and sharing your point of view. Thanks to you I think I have a clearer view of the Universal Apps. Unfortunately I do not think I'll continue to have the time to write these longer posts. But it was nice talking to you. I hope we can continue it in a few months, when we have more information.

I managed to slip in one more reply! :-)

Oh! Wait! Now I understand what you mean. Yes, what you say is true. However, in the end, that is a choice that the developers should be free to make. And they may not understand if a lack of sales is because of the poor market (Linux) or their use of DRM; but whatever! I'm also free to not buy their software.

On the flip side, more tools may start supporting Linux. We already see some game developing tools adressing Linux. This OS will no longer be a stranger. That should lower the barrier to get more games for us penguins. Hopefully, some of them will be non-DRM'ed, or even better, Free!

Oh, you are asking that to the wrong person. :-)
All software I'm not paid to write runs 100% on Linux. For a number of reasons, including:
— I don't run Windows for years now, so I develop and test on Linux
— As a "thank you" and to give back to the community I owe so much to
— Because I like to support the underdogs
— And to honour the FSF movement I believe in

Thus, comparing Windows to Linux, and why one is given a benefit over the other, I would guess:
Linux: Community, Idealism, Freedom
Windows: Business, Money, Lock-in

Consequently, Linux is made by developers for developers, and that is why it is not so user-friendly (but it is so easy to develop for). Windows is made for regular users, and even though MS used to "dog food" its developers too, I think developers only heed MS's call when there is sure money to me made. The GNU tools were made without money on the line.

This is how I see things. But you should consult someone less brainwashed than me if you want to get a picture that is closer to reality ;-).

Since Vista, it became fashionable to dish MS (hey, look at me! But on my defense, I started with Windows 98 — 140MB minimum to install? That's crazy! That is more than twice my Windows 95. Can't I take out IE to get that number down? Damn you, MS!). I won't mention Me.

I'd say that this negative sentiments towards MS are not entirely baseless. The company did a lot of things that warrant such feelings. Do you see such nasty treatment of Apple, Google, Oracle, HP, Dell or IBM? MS has gained a poor reputation. People don't expect good things from them right now. Everything they do now will be examined under a bad light first, and I find understandable that people act in a suspicious manner. Gates and Ballmer did a lot of nasty things. This is the result.

I'm not saying that Linux has been blessed by Saint Ignucius, and that MS represents pure evil. That view is too simplistic. But I do pay attention to those "alarmist" headlines also because MS is too powerful not to be watched carefully. And given the way it is pushing 10 down our throat, must we be happy about it?

Regarding slideloading apps, I simply wish that would be nothing more than a double-clicking matter. That should be possible, I think.

So long, PookaMustard. We'll meet again in some other thread! :-)

I think it's easily possible, but I don't think it's configured that way currently.

This is a good read by Tim Sweeney: http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/10/epics-tim-sweeney-heres-how-to-keep-windows-an-open-platform/

Rendering mods

That article posted by the guy who did the graphic rendering mods for badly released games is a good read, though I think it's bit biased, because that is his thing-to-do and his online reputation is closely linked to it. If that disappears.. ouch.

However, I honestly think mods like that are bad. The reason being is that they let game companies off the hook for bad ports. If I went to the Dead Space forum on Steam and asked "Should I buy this game?" and someone responded with "No don't do it! You have keyboard and controller problems, framerate issues, and things like that because EA was too cheap to do a proper port" I wouldn't buy it. But if someone said, "Yeah buy it, this guy modded the game and you can download his mod and fixes all the bugs EA created when porting the game" I end up supporting EA's bad practices.

But in watching the post-ballmer era has shown a mighty different outlook. More open source and code sharing from Microsoft. More community contributors because of the open source. https://github.com/Microsoft/ shows 480 projects, that's quite a lot. And a lot of them are a part of Universal Apps such as https://github.com/dotnet/core.

I agree they should fix the windowless mode, but honestly, I only game windowless anymore because I want easy alt-tab on things and everything I run, I can run at the highest resolution now, no need to switch resolutions just for a game anymore. This happened because TF2 took 6 years to fix alt-tab crashing... By the time they fixed it, I had already changed up to using full screen windowless.

Can NVidia and ATI help fix the problems? Or is it something only an operating system can do? I'm not sure.

Win32 API

Why will Win32 be around for a long time? Because it's still in Windows 10, which as of this moment, the July 2015 version of Win 10 loses support from Microsoft in 2025. But with Win 10 becoming an evolving OS, we'll have to wait and see when the next 10 year lifecycle starts, and what it will look like. But that's always been the case for every MS OS... No one knows the future.

Also, Microsoft wants Win 10 on businesses, which all run Win32 software. The quickest way to lose businesses is to eliminate Win32 from your OS.