Microsoft agressively pushing Win10 & advertising

It seems Redmond are not respecting users wishes, if you've opted out of the 'optional' KB3035583 update by making sure it's not checked & hiding it, it still pops up the next time and even better it's pre selected despite being an optional update. So if you don't look at the optional updates, and most people don't because they are supposed to be optional, it gets installed.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/pushy_windows_10/

Further Microsoft are only going to tell you what's in 'significant' updates, where they decide what is significant, so there's a possibility that even if you do manage to escape the push of KB3035583 they could release a different update that 'trivially' rolls up everything that's in it plus a few bells and whistles just to make it different and voilà you get Win10 or at the very least a permanent nag screen. Which going off current performance will probably become ever more insistent, intrusive & impossible to get rid of.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/21/microsoft_will_explain_only_significant_windows_10_updates/

And now we start to find out exactly what Microsoft mean by 'free', they are putting adverts on the start menu. You can turn them off, for the moment, but given the aggressive way they are pushing the Win10 update I don't see that lasting long.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/windows-10-start-menu-advert/

Hopefully the backlash will kill these ideas, I paid for my machine it's mine & I decide what's on it, not some random bloke in Redmond.

Microsoft seem to have forgotten what the purpose of an operating system is and seem to think that because they are giving it to you for free they can do any shady old trick they like to remove the product you paid for and then do whatever they want with your machine and the data on it because they've not charged you and they need to pay for development somehow. Personally I'd rather pay for an advert free OS that does what I tell it and not what some bloke in a foreign country says.

So as it's been a while since I dabbled in anything Unix, suggestions for a good secure Unix OS will be gratefully received.

Only Unix is Unix - Mac and GNU/Linux are 'unix-like'

There is a plethora of good stuff out there:

Debian 8, Zorin 9 (Zorin 11 should come out sometime mid year after Ubuntu 16.04 which will be LTS to April 2021), CentOS, MakuluLinux 10 "Aero" is looking promising (with both left and right windows keys bound to the Menu - better than Zorin in this regard - I personally think binding the windows keys to the menu is more important than windows 'stacking':

http://zorinos.com/gallery.html

Then of course let's not forget about PC BSD which can utilise GNU/Linux Desktop Environments - the downside is they have a 2 year life-cycle - unless I got that bit wrong - but certainly prudent for stability.

Oh and before I get shot down, let's not forget Fedora, Open SuSE, and Mint

For older kit which need a lightweight distribution:

SolydX, Lubuntu (LTS), quelitu, Zorin Lite, Feather Linux, Damn Small Linux,

MacPup (easier than Puppy Linux but that is my experience), if you are really into the hard stuff then MLinux - very lean indeed! For 'hacking' (not cracking) then there is Kali Linux.

Enjoy 'Choice' - see https://stallman.org

For those not wanting to migrate and you have a 'restore' partition to factory defaults, do that then turn off windows updates after reboot but not until all Service Packs have been installed.

I must admit that I like Zorin as it also has a good Windows style desktop which make the transition from Windows easier. I used to like Ubuntu but went away from it when the started putting the task-bar on the side of the screen instead of the bottom and stopped giving the choice to move it.

Download a live ISO and run it from boot-up without installing it and see what version you like.

With Windows, Microsoft have been pushing out "essential" security updates for Win 7 even when they are not needed by a lot of users. They seem to treat every user as a numpty when it comes to computers and don't like people messing with their settings. Its one of the reasons I have updates put on manual.

Only Unix is Unix - Mac and GNU/Linux are 'unix-like'

Thanks for the suggestions

It must be some two years since I decided enough was enough with MS. Too many issues, too time consuming to fix if even possible and too intrusive. So after a lot of research, I took the plunge and moved over to Linux. Boy was that a shock! Back to the old DOS days of command line entries. After trying a number of variations, I ended up with Debian which was OK. Then I came across Sun Virtualbox and that changed everything for me. The ability to run multiple OS with rock solid stability meant I could keep all the familiar XP stuff to run the business yet isolate it from the outside world to prevent infections. Just perfect.

The new PC came with Win 8 installed which I never did like (should have bought Win 7) and this is soon to get a Win 10 upgrade to see what I'm missing!! I'll keep Win 8 in its own little container though just to remind me of how awful MS products can be and why I changed to Linux.

I found the best Linux (for me at least) was Fedora (with lightweight XFCE interface) which is the platform for running Virtualbox. I have Zorin and a couple of others loaded in containers which makes swapping between OSs an absolute doddle. I can even run them all at the same time. A large 2TB shared drive works on both Windows and Linux seamlessly and I must say, files that Windows prevents me from removing (er why?) are soon toast with Linux - excellent.

Fedora (22) runs like a dream, is very fast and never crashes. Updates are frequent but never ever get in the way (unlike Windows). The big negative though is the time required to learn a whole new set of commands. The Debian GNU/Linux Reference Card is invaluable to help get started after which you have to learn some non intuitive and pretty wild names for simple programs. Update for example ought to be simple but is actually called 'YUM Extender' and worse, YUM is now replaced by 'dnf'! A simple text editor is tricky to find as well, try remembering Nano!

Linux is far better than it used to be given a little time and patience to learn the basics. In day to day operations, it wastes far less time than does Windows and is nowhere near as frustrating to use on a day to day basis. It never locks you out waiting for who knows what to update either.

I'm sure some will disagree with this summary but it reflects our experiences.

OK, managed to get rid of GWX (even after deleting previously by taking ownership it has come back!).

This time I used SUPER-AntiSpyware's right-click context menu - SUPER delete - I had to click on the + sign to do aggressive delete - let's see how long this holds up!

This may be of help to some..

http://bgr.com/2015/08/14/windows-10-spying-prevention-privacy-tools/

As always do a backup first in case you screw up or want to get back as some of these apps and setting do a permanent removal.