Windows 9 - The OS Microsoft WON'T Tell You About!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,443 words · ~7 min read
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what if I told you there exists a version of Windows that you can't find
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anywhere on Microsoft's website one that won't track your online activities one
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that's optimized for Speed and reliability and that performs better
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than Windows 7 or Windows
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10 well follow me down the rabbit hole
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and I'll meet you on the other side
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the master keys Pro keyboard lineup from Cooler Master is available in three
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sizes each in white or RGB flavors check
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them out at the link below now Microsoft's official reasoning
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for not releasing Windows 9 was that
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789 but we know better meet Windows 9 an
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unofficial custombuilt OS based on Windows 8.1 embedded industry Pro of all
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things that applies this extensive list
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of tweaks to look and feel like Windows
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7 because it's an embedded OS intended
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for use in payment terminals digital
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signage or other industrial applications
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8.1 industry Pro lacks Telemetry and
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tracking and is considerably leaner than
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your standard copy of 8.1 with fewer Services running by
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default despite its looks it's still
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Windows 8.1 under the hood which by the
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way is a good thing you get newer features like smb3 dism recovery tools
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better memory management the newer file copy dialogue and task manager secure
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Boot and perhaps most importantly to enthusiasts native support for USB 3 so
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that shiny new z270 board will be able to install Windows 9 without worrying
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about slipstreaming drivers for those of us who keep our Optical drives in a bin
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rather than in our box well that all sounds great lonus what's the catch well
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first of all you're trusting some dude on the internet who's providing you a
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modded version of Windows and second
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it's virtu truly impossible to get a legit license for Windows 8.1 embedded
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industry Pro since it's only sold as part of an embedded system that means
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that you're probably going to be limited to a trial install which obviously isn't
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ideal so what can we do about it we're
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going to make our own so we're going to take one part legitimate widely
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available OS add two parts modification and tweaks and boom Windows 9 point five
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while it's not going to replicate Windows 9 exactly it's going to bring us
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pretty close and we are able to use Windows 10 to do it so we start with a
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fresh install of Windows 10 only the updates and Benchmark tools that we'll
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need for later first order of business make Windows 10 look the part this was
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not trivial but with the help of a few free tools and resources we made it work
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the first of these was a window 7 styled theme for Windows 10 by Deviant Art user
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SE okay I don't know next we installed
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AOG glass a free tool that does what it says on the tin ooh shiny we followed
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that with Classic Shell a well-known alternative start menu and theme utility
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which with a few tweaks to its settings and a couple of community provided
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textures gives us our Windows 7 start button start menu and taskbar mostly
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then we still needed 7 plus taskbar tweaker to make our show desktop button
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look right and then while we're at it old new Explorer does a great job of
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restoring the Windows 7 style Explorer look finally ux style Community Edition
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unlocks the theme we installed earlier to complete the look all it took from
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there were a couple registry tweaks he voila Windows 7 of course Windows 9 is
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more than just a pretty face it also disables Windows phone home
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functionality some services and some other miscellaneous nonsense so we
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followed their lead and disabled the same items now while we can't guarantee
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that our Windows 9.5 has all of the
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tweaks Windows 9 does the key ones are all in there you can find the full
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details of the registry and Telemetry tweaks in the blog post on our Forum
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linked below so how do we know we've succeeded
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well we used our RGB test bench and three separate Kingston KC 400 1 TB ssds
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each one was secur erased then loaded with Windows 7 Windows 9 and Windows 10
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so we could perform the best possible Apple's to Apple's comparison then we
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ran our tests multiple times on each
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Windows and our own 9.5 mod the results
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honestly weren't quite what we were expecting in Rise of the Tomb Raider we
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can see that compared to Windows 7 Windows 9 scored almost identically on
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average while Windows 10 and 9.5 were
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basically identical too okay moving on
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to DSX mankind divided we can see that Windows 9 actually flunked the test yeah
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no matter what we did Square enix's DRM triggered every time on nine but
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otherwise our results were basically the same City's skylines showed off better
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CP puu performance in 10 and 9.5 with a
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tangible boost of 5 to 6 frames per second likely down to support for
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Intel's speedshift technology on our KB Lake platform and then rounding out our
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gaming tests Crisis 3 brings us back to
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basically a wash across the OS is tested
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today this is starting to feel like a workshop video next we tested system
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performance starting with a networked file transfer over 10 gbit land
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this one was actually pretty surprising because Windows 7 held its own against
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our newer operating systems in spite of SMB 3.0 even when testing with groups of
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smaller and mixed siiz files PC Mark
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however tells a very different story Windows 7 was blown away by all our
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other operating systems with nine sandwiched in the middle interestingly
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that Trend continued through our final Ado IO Benchmark where when Windows 7
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was handily beaten by everything else
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the Windows 10 Edge over 9 wasn't something we'd expected to see going
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into these tests today but there it is so then is it worth tracking down the
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Unicorn license for 8.1 embedded or
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navigating the Labyrinth and depths of Deviant Art the short answer by the
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numbers is no even Windows 9 didn't
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perform as well as we expected it to the long answer though has a lot in common
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with with our does $11,000 Windows
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perform better the video we did back in late January the difference between
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additions of Windows just doesn't seem to matter much even across
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Generations while there are some cases where drivers or support for Hardware
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features like Speed Shift can make or break a certain workload it really just
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boils down to user experience privacy
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features and support and that is where
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mods like Windows 9 or 9.5 shine but
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what do you guys think did you expect the numbers we got are you going to run
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Windows 9 or go to the effort of making your own 9 and a half let us know in the
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comments down below crunchy roll was created by a
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thanks for watching guys dislike or like make sure you get subscribed and maybe
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check out where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
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description 9.5 okay maybe don't worry
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too much about that also down there though is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and a link to our
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community Forum which you should totally
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join guess that pretty much wraps it up go watch another one of our
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videos that was the most awkward outro ever I think