What else can I do with my Windows 10 PC?

[Taz]

My recently-built Windows 10 PC is very underused at the moment. It's only ever booted up to play X-Plane 11 and that's every couple of days when I can find a spare 2-3 hours. It seems a massive waste of a fairly powerful PC. So, I'm looking for ideas on what else I can do on a Windows 10 PC that would ensure the PC got used more.

[EndlessWaves]

That's a difficult question to answer without knowing your interests.

Perhaps the easiest way to use it more is to look at what you do at the moment and see if there's any way it could be better or nicer when done on or with your desktop.

[ik9000]

well with all that built-in telemetry why not do some random crap just to mess with the stats. Download and install as much early 2000s software as you can find, things like telnet, clipart, nero3, quark 5, Mso 2000, MSN messenger, better still ICQ, the original zonealarm and the like. Just fill the thing up with obsolete guff to get the boys at Microsoft wondering what on earth is going on.

then on a more constructive level why not try to learn to do some programming? If you want to get the best out of a machine and build your skill set why not learn ms scripting and something like C++ or similar. Then you can start writing some of your own stuff to auto-generate FU microsoft responses each time it asks to collect data on you.

Then you can pop in a 2nd hdd set up dual boot and learn linux, and never look back again.

[DDY]

Folding at Home, if you don't mind donating a bit of electricity and maybe putting up with fan noise for a good cause. Your 7600K and especially the 1070 can be very productive on F@H.

https://folding.stanford.edu/

[Taz]

well with all that built-in telemetry why not do some random crap just to mess with the stats. Download and install as much early 2000s software as you can find, things like telnet, clipart, nero3, quark 5, Mso 2000, MSN messenger, better still ICQ, the original zonealarm and the like. Just fill the thing up with obsolete guff to get the boys at Microsoft wondering what on earth is going on.

then on a more constructive level why not try to learn to do some programming? If you want to get the best out of a machine and build your skill set why not learn ms scripting and something like C++ or similar. Then you can start writing some of your own stuff to auto-generate FU microsoft responses each time it asks to collect data on you.

Then you can pop in a 2nd hdd set up dual boot and learn linux, and never look back again.

I'm doing a bit of PowerShell scripting on it. Putting Linux VMs on it is probably a good idea as I do a LOT of Shell scripting in my regular job. I still use my Mac for photo and video editing as the software is a lot better on that.

[virtuo]

Using it to learn something new is always good, Visual Studio is free and there's loads of resources if you want to learn programming. I've always got some Linux VMs running on mine as well.

How about Emulation? Your machine should cope with emulating pretty much anything reasonably well, if you have that retro itch.

[Ttaskmaster]

well with all that built-in telemetry why not do some random crap just to mess with the stats.

Because Microsoft release enough cack based on people doing this already?

[Taz]

What's the best free virtualisation software that will run on Windows 10? For work I use VMware Workstation but that costs money. I know VMware Player is free but I'm not sure of the restrictions in it, compared to VMware Workstation. I use Linux for my work projects every day and used to develop Unix itself back in the late 80s/early 90s (customising the Unix kernel for a European market - RISC/OS which was base don AT&T System V Unix). You can never know enough bash/sh/csh, awk, etc! It would be good to use a Linux VM on the PC.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s I was a 'proper' software engineer and developed mainly in C. I still get the urge to write software these days but I don't know if I've got the capacity to learn it all again. Back then we used to write our own interpreters and compilers as required. I even wrote a cut-down 'vi' on an OS called TMX (Transaction Management eXecutive) which was an OS used in the banking industry.

I'm not sure what's interesting in terms of programming languages and target environments these days. My (now very limited) knowledge of programming is all old school: Algol 68, Cobol 66, Pascal, Forth, LISP, Fortran 77 and C.

[virtuo]

What's the best free virtualisation software that will run on Windows 10? For work I use VMware Workstation but that costs money. I know VMware Player is free but I'm not sure of the restrictions in it, compared to VMware Workstation. I use Linux for my work projects every day and used to develop Unix itself back in the late 80s/early 90s (customising the Unix kernel for a European market - RISC/OS which was base don AT&T System V Unix). You can never know enough bash/sh/csh, awk, etc! It would be good to use a Linux VM on the PC.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s I was a 'proper' software engineer and developed mainly in C. I still get the urge to write software these days but I don't know if I've got the capacity to learn it all again. Back then we used to write our own interpreters and compilers as required. I even wrote a cut-down 'vi' on an OS called TMX (Transaction Management eXecutive) which was an OS used in the banking industry.

I'm not sure what's interesting in terms of programming languages and target environments these days. My (now very limited) knowledge of programming is all old school: Algol 68, Cobol 66, Pascal, Forth, LISP, Fortran 77 and C.

If you are on W10 pro then you should already have Hyper-V, which is fairly good (used to be Virtual PC).

Some more modern languages that might interest you are Python, Rust, Node, and maybe even R (or F if you have Fortran history).

Edit: you can also enable an Ubuntu Layer in Win10 "developer mode" (or whatever it's called), that gives you some linux command line functionality. It's a faff to get going but a neat trick.

[Dashers]

VMWare Player looked pretty comprehensive the last time I looked at it. It used to only play back VMs, but it seems you can do all the basic stuff in there. I think it lacks things like advanced networking options which is a no-no for me, but for running VMs to tinker in, it seems ideal.

But anyway, you should use your powerful PC for:
- More games
- Even more games
- Maybe some media editing, photography and home video
- Transcoding your DVD library to your media server to save on space
- Games
- Virtual Machines
- Consumption of HD "media"
- Virtual Reality games

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Give it to me??

[Taz]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I think I'll be putting Visual Studio on it as that looks interesting.

The OS is Windows 10 Pro so I'll explore Hyper V and get a Linux VM on it. I think I need to enable a couple of BIOS settings before I enable Hyper-V.

I'm on the lookout for good games. I'm toying with the idea of Elite Dangerous as that looks good, but it has mixed reviews. X-Plane 11 is massively immersive but that has the downside of requiring several hours of spare time. Hence, games that don't need a huge learning curve and time would be preferential.

In terms of emulation, many, many years ago I wrote several games for the Oric-1 and Amstrad CPC-464 home computers so might revisit my youth by running those!

[Taz]

Give it to me??

Ha ha, I'll remember you when I build a new one next year.

[ik9000]

Because Microsoft release enough cack based on people doing this already?

I notice they kept paint

[ik9000]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I think I'll be putting Visual Studio on it as that looks interesting.

The OS is Windows 10 Pro so I'll explore Hyper V and get a Linux VM on it. I think I need to enable a couple of BIOS settings before I enable Hyper-V.

I'm on the lookout for good games. I'm toying with the idea of Elite Dangerous as that looks good, but it has mixed reviews. X-Plane 11 is massively immersive but that has the downside of requiring several hours of spare time. Hence, games that don't need a huge learning curve and time would be preferential.

In terms of emulation, many, many years ago I wrote several games for the Oric-1 and Amstrad CPC-464 home computers so might revisit my youth by running those!

Be careful with clockspeed linked code on those. I ran an emulator back in win98 days to play some old CPC games and the default clock speed even at 750Mhz (as it was back then) was sufficient to render them completely unplayable unless you had the reflexes of an android like Data or Bishop et al.

[EndlessWaves]

Hence, games that don't need a huge learning curve and time would be preferential.

Possibly a building game of some sort, they're often good for half an hour tweaking a design.

Kerbal Space Program is one of the best of recent years, although be warned that it may cause you to develop knowledge of orbital mechanics and ruin lots of films.