Windows 10

[Mike]

Which is why I've switched to Linux.

Not using apple any more then Mike? 

Does Linux operate all the astro software needed for imaging?

Carole

I have a Macbook Air with OSX. My desktop and another laptop I use are Linux.

There are plenty of Linux based pieces of software for imaging/astro stuff. A lot of software nowadays has cross-platform versions anyway. Plus, you can run Windows software in Linux and OSX using Wine or Crossover. Linux is a lot more mature and user friendly than it was just 2 or 3 years ago. Especially Ubuntu and Zorin OS is very Windows like.

However, you do need to be reasonably computer savvy to do a few things in Linux still so if you still don't know the difference between left click, right click, folders and files then perhaps it is not for you.  For me, it has everything I need, is ultra secure, stable, fast and is also 100% free.

[MarkS]

I've just bought a Windows 10 laptop.  I love everything except the tiled apps on the start menu because they take up too much screen space.

The only astro-related problem I had was the Prolific driver for HitecAstro EqDir lead that I use to control the mount.  I had to manually install an earlier driver because the latest driver doesn't support that older version of the Prolific chip.

I wish I had upgraded my desk PC for free while I had the chance

Mark

[JohnP]

Mark - I love win10 as well. You can get rid of tiles - just rightckick on tile & unpin from start... John

[Carole]

You can get rid of tiles - just rightckick on tile & unpin from start... John

Worth knowing if I ever get W10.  I have used it when setting up my sons PC, and I could see a lot of prominent stuff that I would not need dominating the home page.  Presume that is what you mean.

Carole

[The Thing]

You can get rid of tiles - just rightckick on tile & unpin from start... John

Worth knowing if I ever get W10.  I have used it when setting up my sons PC, and I could see a lot of prominent stuff that I would not need dominating the home page.  Presume that is what you mean.

Carole

That sounds like you're talking about the Win 8 'tiles' - they were the 'desktop' as MS assumed you would have a touch screen. They were inherited by Win 10 and can be turned off.

[Klitos]

Well, not really. In Windows 10, by default, live tiles are in the Start Menu instead of taking up the whole desktop as they did in Windows 8. There is no officially documented way to completely remove live tiles. You can unpin them from the Start Menu one by one until they all disappear. This leaves the illusion of having no tiles, but in fact the framework for them is still loaded into memory and constantly running.

[Mac]

If you just want to disable one live tile you can do this by right-clicking it and selecting More > Turn off live tile.

If you want to disable all of the tiles, you'll have to repeat the process for each one in turn.
However, you can kill the whole lot in one go using the Group Policy Editor or, if you don't have that feature in your edition of Windows 10, a registry tweak.

Firstly, to use the Group Policy Manager, follow these steps:

Open the Start menu.
Type gpedit.msc and hit enter.
Navigate to Local Computer Policy > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Notifications.
Double-click the Turn off tile notifications entry on the right and select enabled in the window that opens.
Click OK and close the editor.
The Group Policy Editor isn't available in Windows 10 Home, so if you're running that edition of the new OS you'll need to use the Windows Registry Editor instead. Follow these steps:

Open the Start menu
Type regedit and hit enter.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\PushNotifications
Right-click on PushNotifications and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
Call it NoTileApplicationNotification.
Double-click the item and set its value to 1.

[Klitos]

Thanks, Mac. Can I ask if anyone had any success with this?

I've got Windows 10 Pro at home and I used Group Policy Editor as described to turn off tiles. After applying this setting, I confirmed that it had the effect of adding the Registry entry shown in the second section of the above post. Yet, my tiles are still there, even after restarting.

[doug]

I just live with them on my laptop.... but I ain`t a pro user. Just an `umble user.

Doug