Making The Upgrade to Windows 11

 

 Well, finally did it.

 

 It was last week on October 14 that after ten years of use, Microsoft finally ended support for Windows 10, which in the early days they were calling the last Operating System we would be needing. But as we all know, that would not be the case and Windows 11 was developed. Early on, I heard about some issues, and like many saw no reason to change.

 

But a couple years ago, Microsoft announced support for Windows 10 was ending in October of this year. While there was the option to extend Windows 10 support (article), it would be only for a year. So decided to just go ahead and make the change. So I figured out what to do, and then restarted. 

 

 

So far, things seem okay, just different. One driver had an error message, but that may have been temporary. Getting used to things and figuring things out. So the news will be a little late. 

 

For those who haven't updated yet, there are still ways to do so (article).  

 

Sources: Forbes, PC Magazine  

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

Chrome is Becoming a Real OS

If you have a PC, and are looking for something lighter you can take on the go, a laptop may be your first thought. If your budget's small, you may be considering an android tablet. But there's another option: a Chromebook. What's a Chromebook? Cyfir (Cyfiremmerich) recently got one after looking into what portable machine to get. So was he statisfied?

Read Cyfir's article in Extra.

Mooogle As A Search Engine For The Metaverse

It's been a busy time in real life for Marcel Mosswood. But she's back this week with an article. When it comes to looking up things on the Internet about virtual worlds, it can be tricky. While one can always add "Second Life" to the search, suppose what you're looking for is in another virtual world? Marcel recently found out about a way to search called "Mooogle," a search engine for websites related to content in Second Life, Opensim, and other virtual worlds.

Read the story in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

What Is Opensim And What Is A Hypergrid/Metaverse?

Second Life is no doubt the most successful of virtual worlds. But some people want something a little more. What about one's own private server? This is possible in Opensim in which the servers aren't owned by Linden Lab, but by someone else. In this article, Angel Fencer (Ender Leven) explains just what Opensim is, and a little about what can and can't be done there.

Read Angel's story in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Windows 7 Approaching "End of Life"

Next week marks the end of a chapter for users of PCs. On Tuesday January 14, Microsoft will no longer support the use of Windows 7. On Thursday, Linden Lab had a reminder that for anyone who hadn't upgraded their operating system, time was running out. They would also be changing the system requirements to run Second Life.

Microsoft is discontinuing support for Windows 7 on January 14th. This means that it will no longer get updates, including security patches. Therefore, running Windows 7 will become increasingly insecure as new vulnerabilities are discovered and not patched.

Accordingly, Linden Lab is updating our system requirements to remove Windows 7 from the versions we support. This does not mean that Second Life will stop working on Windows 7 immediately; existing viewers, and possibly some new viewers, should run as well as they did before. However, we will not be testing any viewers on Windows 7, so it is likely that compatibility problems will develop and increase over time. In addition, we will not attempt to fix any problems which occur only on unsupported operating systems (if a bug is reported against an unsupported system, we usually try to reproduce it on one that is supported; if we can't, we don't investigate further or attempt to fix it).

In order to keep your Second Life experience as reliable and secure as possible, we strongly recommend using only supported versions and keeping them updated with the latest vendor patches.

Windows 7 has been among the more popular versions of Windows, to the point many kept on using it after 8 and 10 came out. Windows 10 has had some problems in it's first few years. But ready or not, the old OS is going away, and the alternatives to upgrading to 10 are few and not for everyone.

image source: Imagit

Firestorm To Offer Seperate Viewers For Second Life And Opensim

For years, Team Firestorm has offered not only a viewer that can access Second Life, but also one that can go online either Second Life or the Opensim girds. In a recent announcement however, Firestorm's team leader Jessica Lyon announced they would no longer offer a viewer that can get on either virtual world.

We have reached a milestone in how we handle Open Simulator and Second Life binaries. In the past we have provided SL-only builds AND OpenSim-and-SL builds. This has always caused much confusion to our users, and for that reason—among many others—we have forked our code into two repositories. This means we can now issue updates for Second Life and updates for OpenSim independently of each other. It also makes it a lot easier for us to develop for Second Life without worrying about backwards compatibility with OpenSim, and to develop for OpenSim without concern about SL compatibility. Everyone wins!

No longer will the two be tied by release date or version numbers. Firestorm developer Beq Janus has been communicating with OpenSim developers and grid owners and has been working hard on OpenSim-specific issues for a future OpenSim Firestorm viewer update.

The SL and OS Viewer will still work for now. But the next viewers for Second Life and Opensim will only work on their respective grids.

Click Here for the blog post in full.

OS Grid Hypergrid Business "Winding Down" After Nine Years

For fans of Opensim, some sad news. HyperGrid Business, the leading source of news and other articles about the OS grids has been scaling back it's coverage lately. Maria Korolov, the editor, stated they have just two more articles, "after that, there's nothing else in the pipeline."

"What's Next?" Maria stated, "I’m going to continue maintaining the site itself, so that the article archives stay up, and all the resources stay available. I’m also going to do a monthly active grids list — just the list of active grids, not any of the usage stats. I’ll stop updating the list of popular hypergrid destinations, since I’ll no longer have the traffic numbers.I’ll continue running press releases and guest columns, and the free ads will stay up. We might do a short news piece or two each month as well."

Of her cutting back, "The reasons are both personal and practical. Personally, I’ve moved on from covering virtual worlds to covering cybersecurity and, most recently, artificial intelligence. ... I barely spend any time in OpenSim anymore."

"Practically, there was once a strong possibility that OpenSim would evolve into an open source, virtual reality metaverse. That’s not happening. Our viewers are still stuck where they were ten years ago, without any real support for web or mobile access or for virtual reality headsets. All projects to address that issue seem to have faded away. Instead, the focus has shifted to VR-native platforms from Google, Facebook, and, to some degree, Microsoft. We don’t know yet what Apple is cooking up, but they’re busy as well.

"It’s increasingly looking like the whole SL-OpenSim ecosystem has hit a dead end. It will probably continue to exist as a niche platform for its half million active monthly users, shrinking slightly each year until it’s just a nostalgia thing, like text-based adventure games or manual typewriters."

Those commenting on Korolov's article tended to support her observation about OpenSim. One stated, " The open source developers have been great, but if OS is not to degenerate into an historical curiosity, there needs to be a linking of business cases and investments with resources and developers. Investors need to understand the need for Open Source, and OS developers need to be open to dealing with the changes that come with resources." Another commented, " It does feel like we are stuck in Limbo at the moment. ... Opensim development seems to have hit a dead end." A third remarked, "To get to the next level of user involvement is going to take a lot of development. The kind of capitalization needed to do that means big players will develop it. Yes, there is the possibility of a grass roots development effort, but that is much harder to coordinate." But one remained optimistic about OpenSim, "I think Opensim still has a lot going for it and for those of us that still use Second Life too and are perfectly happy still using our PC's."

Hamlet Au didn't agree with Korolov's comments, at least in regards to Second Life, " I don't quite buy that last bit, because unlike OpenSim, Second Life is still backed by a profitable company with a highly engaged, highly monetized userbase, giving Linden Lab enough money to evolve ... . As with many open source-based projects, OpenSim was relying almost solely on the community spirit and voluntary work of assorted tinkerers and enthusiasts -- and that rarely leads to a commercial product with a consumer userbase." It was his wish though that Hypergrid Business somehow find a way to continue on, "maybe a benefactor could buy the site and take over?"

Sources: Hypergrid Business, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Commentary: Windows 10's Dark Secret

Microsoft is releasing their latest version of Windows: Windows 10. In development for over two years, Microsoft calls it, "the best Windows ever." And the company is giving it out for free. So what's the catch? It seems the Operating System collects quite a bit of your data that gets sent to Microsoft. Nydia Tungsten had a few things to say about it.

Read more in Extra.

New Section: Other Grids and MMOs

Since close to the beginning, the Newser made it a policy to occasionally report on Multiplayer Online Games, and other Grids. However in recent months, some of our neighbors have proven to be devoted Minecraft players, in addition to the rise of the InWorldz virtual world following Linden Lab's Terms of Service controversy.

And so, the Newser introduces it's new section: Other Grids and MMOs. Here, you can get occasional developments on places outside Second Life.

To take a look at the new section: Click Here.

US Military Grid Experiment Taking Place Today

From 5 to 8PM EST (2 to 5 SL time), there will be an experiment running on the US military-backed MOSES Grid. Experiment DSG #5 (Distributed Service Graph) is to "stress-test" the Grid by populating it with a large number of avatars and observing the results. Public participation is encouraged (Click Here to register). Those registered are asigned roles as either soldiers or civilians in a village in the mythical country of Atrophia. There are viewers available for PC, Mac, and Linux computers.

On the experiment on July 20, the Grid was able to hold 163 avatars.  In theory, the DSG Grid could hold close to a thousand. More on DSG technology can be read in this 2011 Hypergrid Business article.

The MOSES Public Grid is an ongoing development of the Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) Project, supported by a coalition of Military, Industry, and Academic partners who share a common interest in the advancement of virtual world technology for simulation based training. The MOSES Public Grid offers a virtual world platform for individual and collaborative strategy development utilizing 3D immersive environments.  The MOSES Public Grid resident community is composed of professionals from many disciplines include military, technology, science, government, education, industry, and the arts.  They have created a strong network of support, meeting inworld weekly for MOSES Office Hours and sharing discussions using the MOSES Mail List.  Many residents have been awarded Estate Manger Strategy Development Land Grants and contribute to each others 3D content and virtual immersive strategy. development.

US Military Running High Capacity Grid Experiments on OpenSim

Grey Nacht informed Second Life Newser about some US Army experiments with Grid capacity, the MOSES (Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy) DSG (Distributed Scene Graph) prototype experiments. Grey told the Newser this is a Department of Defense project on an OpenSim Grid with the goal on Saturday to get 160 avatars going about on the world. She had seen 66 last time, and the DSG code testing suggested it could hold a thousand.

In Second Life, fifty avatars is the most event organizers will usually have in a sim for an event. One can squeeze more in, in the past I've observed 66, even 99 avatars on a sim. Nowdays however, high number events are generally on two or more sims. With this in mind, 160 avatars is certainly an impressive number. A thousand would be just staggering.

This experiment, a scenario in a fictional Middle Eastern place involving avatars taking the roles of "soldiers" and "civilians", takes place Saturday July 20. There are viewers available for PC, Mac, and Linux computers. Following the test, the MOSES DSG Grid will be closed to the public until the next experiments.

More images on Flickr (Here).

Bixyl Shuftan