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Windows Sandbox

techcommunity.microsoft.com

301–310 of 328 posts

Re: Windows Sandbox

#301
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it like giving your parent's a $100 present for Christmas, an upgrade from Win Home to Win Pro and your life will be so much easier.

Sure, but Microsoft could give the same gift to every parent out there. (I don’t mind buying windows pro for parents at all, issue is that when they buy a device it often does not come with pro preinstalled so there is a window where the device is vulnerable before I can remotely administer it)

Of course they could, but using that money they will go on to build another feature that you'll be able to use because you're already at the 'pro' level of their OS.

The alternative is to convince some engineers to create this same feature in their spare time and contribute it for free as a Linux package. Then they can get email about all of the things it doesn't do, and fix bugs in their spare time on a feature that all they see are complaints for. Until they burn out and the repo goes dead for a while and then gets picked up by one of those users who wants the feature to exist, and they make some improvements and get into an argument with another user who forks it and now there are two of them, almost the same but with a few features that are unique to each one. Of course for most of the users they either don't care and load one at random, or they do care and find features from the "other" system they want in the one that is being used. They send mail to the maintainers asking them to copy those features. Which adds more pain as the developers copy each other's features but they put their own special spin on them. This burns out more developers and a third person comes out and writes their own syntactically incompatible version that is functionally identical to the two different 'legacy' versions.

At this point I just pay the man his $100 and appreciate that the people working on the code are on it all day and can spend evenings with their family.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#302
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sometimes they buy a new computer and it is a while before I am able to visit them across the planet and install a new OS in it. Would really like a good out of the box experience.

You don't need to install a new OS, you just enter a Windows Pro license key to upgrade the version? Buy the key online, send it to your parents, tell them where to enter it, done. Also I don't think your parents want to use that particular sandbox. There's no persistence at all: no bookmarks, no cookies, no history, no local documents, ...

The no persistence is why I like it. It would be ideal if I could ask my parents to do their entire browsing in an ephemeral sandbox and even if they end up clicking / installing something from a shady link it wont blow away their (real) persistent OS install.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#303
post #21

"Graphic virtualization" so could someone who isn't me use this to safely run pirated games?

Theoretically yes, but it would probably take a considerable performance hit.

"probably".. that's the question.. not being useful answer

Re: Windows Sandbox

#304

Did Microsoft fix the issue that when Windows virtualization is enabled then VirtualBox VMs do not run [0]? Better they focus some of their resources to fix that first. If not yet, then Windows Sandbox it is a less useful feature that it may seem, because we have to choose between Windows Virtualization and VirtualBox VM snapshots all the time. [0] https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/16801

This. I cannot use docker on my gaming rig to use it as dev machine sometimes because I need VirtualBox on it.

You can use docker-machine with VirtualBox. It is not smooth as the native Docker experience, but it is good enough.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#305
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know what to call it, although I've seen tech sites call it a "chin". The screen doesn't extend right to the bottom.

The 'chin' on newer Android phones is pretty thin anyway. And with gesture navigation becoming more common (see the newest Pie version, but plenty of OEMs offered gesture navigation before), starting the gesture from the "chin" (outside the touch area) is a nice convenience. The newer iPhones have that horizontal line at the bottom anyway, so it's not even clear what the cleanest design is.

Yeah I actually don't mind it at all. Just saying there's extra hardware (and R&D) expense in doing it Apple's way, in terms of the production cost of those two phones.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#306
This is great! I was waiting for something like this for a while. Can't wait to try it out.

Now we need the same for Android and iPhone, so we can run our apps in true isolation. I dont want apps to be anywhere near my actual data and contact information on the phone. Just mimic some fake contacts or whatever for majority of apps.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#307
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what Windows store apps and MSIX sandbox are for.

I wish MSIX was available on Windows 7 too. It would have much greater adoption.

It is in Preview. https://github.com/Microsoft/msix-packaging/tree/master/prev...

Re: Windows Sandbox

#308
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot (most?) of the hardware Home runs on doesn't support hardware virtualization.

£2,500 Dell XPS ships Home out of the box unless specified otherwise. Windows SKU has nothing to do with hardware. https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/2-in-1-laptops/new-xps-15-2-... Actually I can't seem to configure that directly from dell to come with Pro lol. Seems there's a question about that too.

The Windows Store in Windows 10 has a "one-click" $99 upgrade from Home to Pro, Dell doesn't really need to offer it as a configuration item anymore.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#309
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would argue they are better off with Windows S mode.

Tell that to my father who still uses decades-old software. I agree with the gp, Windows Home users need this feature the most. Folks who don't mind Windows S would already be using android/ios.

"S Mode" (as opposed to Windows S which was briefly a separate SKU) in current builds of Windows 10 (Home/Pro/Enterprise) is now arbitrarily admin activatable/deactivatable. As your father's admin (assumedly in this example) you deactivate S Mode, install all the old apps, then reactivate S Mode. Your father still gets access to the old apps, and can install new apps from the Windows Store [1] without your involvement as admin. You just have switch it out of S Mode if your father finds another old CD or floppy behind the couch to (re-)install.

[1] I don't recall if S Mode currently allows sideloading non-Store but code-signed APPX/MSIX packages. I think it is supposed to? But I think my confusion is that it may differ (at least currently) between Windows Home in S Mode and Windows Enterprise in S Mode.

Re: Windows Sandbox

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see some people are really annoyed that it isn't available for the Home version and I too am somewhat annoyed but in this case it is somewhat understandable since it depends on a feature that is (somewhat more reasonable) limited to Pro versions. Hyper-V does function under the garb of 'Windows Hypervisor Platform' and 'Virtual Machine Platform' even under Windows 10 Home. I have it installed and it provides the…

Looks like you're singing the proprietary software blues. No worries, just spend more money. That solves everything on Windows.

When it comes to computers, there's never a silver bullet, not even money.
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