Matisyahu's Blog

Went for my nightly walk and tonight I cracked a sweat for the first time given how cold it has been for the last few months I found that even when wearing a sweatshirt I still didn’t get hot enough to start sweating when on a walk. Getting closure to summer so I’ll finally give myself a haircut if it starts to become to uncomfortable as the weather gets better and the average temperature rises. Two more days to go and then the weekend but I am really looking forward to the two weeks I have scheduled for annual leave over Christmas because goodness knows I want just a couple of weeks where I don’t have to do a single thing or worry about anything.

The one thing that I have really taken a liking to has been the use of winget from the terminal prompt – the ability to perform software updates. It is the one thing I did as soon as I setup my laptop I opened up a terminal window with administration privileges, winget update and then installed all the updates. It is one of the benefits that came with Windows 11. Personally I cannot work out where all the negativity regarding Windows 11 comes from having used WIndows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000 and even NT 4. Compared to the previous versions it is the least problematic and the most robust as so long as you don’t do something stupid like install anti-cheat that worms its way into the kernel resulting in instability or making ‘tweaks’ to the system because some blow hard on YouTube who has enough knowledge to be dangerous but not enough to be useful is giving out tips that are the equivalent of old wives tales.

I’ve been reading up regarding the Qualcomm X2 and it is interesting the announcement made during September however it won’t appear in products until 2026 and then pair that up with the recent restructuring of the Windows team (link). I was listening the Windows Central podcast on YouTube and one of the hosts was unsure as to why the team was divided in the first place. I don’t have any secret knowledge but I would hazard to guess that the move of having the Azure team taking care of the Windows core has more to do with wanting to have a rock solid core on which end user facing functionality could be built. In other words it came from a place of good intentions but the problem is that the line of demarcation between the core and the end user facing is difficult especially when end user facing functionality is dependent on features being present in the core of the operating system.

How does this relate back to Qualcomm X2, Microsoft will need to add support for the new chip not to mention the rumours of an N1X coming from nVidia and then there is the whole x86 working group. I bring up the x86 working group because they’ve agreed on APX, FRED and AVX 10.2 (link). One thing to keep in mind is that APX and FRED have been getting worked on for several years and AVX 10.2 is part of the larger focus of cleaning up the AVX mess so that both Intel and AMD are on the same page. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing either Nova Lake or Zen 6 or maybe a release after that bring that into compliance. Given that FRED for example has been worked on for years along with APX I wouldn’t be surprised that AMD and Intel have been working behind the scenes – end of the day there is no point is pushing the technology if you’re the only one using it. This is the reason why I’m in no hurry about getting a desktop – I want to wait for those big improvements to be made available so it makes the investment worthwhile rather than buying what exists today.

I’ve installed Microsoft Edge 141 and everything is going well. I am tempted to maybe giving Edge along with Microsoft 365, More leaked builds of One UI 8.5 which makes me wonder whether they’re a leak or whether Samsung is doing a vibe check about what end users want to see in a future update.