They really want me to shift my gaming PC to Linux.
Gaming is the only reason it's still in windows 10.
But now? Ads? Full time spying? And they choose to do all this at a time when proton is making gaming on Linux easier than ever?
Okay then.
Heck. I'll gladly help my friends install Linux in their main device.
Hey government. This includes all your devices too.
I'm sure you'll be able to turn it off, and by some bug oversight it just hides everything but not actually turn it off.
Do something about it. Stop blindly trusting bigcorp to do the right thing. They've proven time and time again they WILL NOT.
Hey government. This includes all your devices too. I'm sure you'll be able to turn it off, and by some bug oversight it just hides everything but not actually turn it off.
My work computer upgraded to 11 last week and I'm sure I'm giving away people's personal info via the OS
My work is also rolling out the Win11 updates, and I am wondering if they knew about this. There are many things that require secret/TS clearance via temp badge and pass on certain project as well as low level sensitive documents.
If Win11 is recording all of this, they have committed about 100,000 felonies by illegally recording these documents from not just us but all the government contractors.
switching a while back was best decision ever esp since Windows situation has been rapidly deteriorating. Yes to get most of linux there is a learning curve but once that is down, it is a superior experience most of the time. Privacy and Security is the cherry tho.
Windows 11 is really shooting itself in the foot. Not just the privacy implications of this, but also the CPU and memory usage will surge once again. Why is this important?
I went to an electronics store recently to see the state of brand new laptop performance in 2024. Here's what I found:
Laptops with 16GB RAM, an SSD, and a good CPU (3K/13K single/multi thread on Passmark) will run Windows 11 smoothly. File manager, task manager takes about a second to open, while the start menu takes around 400ms. It feels like a truck with 350hp.
Laptops with 8GB RAM, an SSD, and a mediocre CPU (2.5K/9K Passmark) will noticably struggle with Windows 11. The file manager takes 3 seconds to open and the start menu takes 1 second, with stutters and hiccups using it. It'll be usable, but quite slow. It feels like a truck with 100hp.
Laptops with 4GB RAM, eMMC, and a bad CPU (1.5K/4K Passmark) will be brought to its knees by Windows 11. Task manager takes 27 seconds to open! A web browser takes even longer, and loading my light game somehow took 7 seconds (this game loaded in under a second on the better computers) to open. The CPU, RAM, and storage were pinned to 100% most of the time. Completely unacceptable performance, it's like a truck with 10hp.
And a laptop with the above but with a CPU with a Passmark score of 1K/2.5K was so bad that it couldn't open literally anything in Windows 11. It's literally a brick. I cannot believe the store (a giant multinational company) is selling this laptop. It's like a truck with 5hp that cannot go up a moderate hill.
But now, the store also sold ChromeOS laptops. As much as I hate how locked down ChromeOS was, I was delighted by the performance of it. The worst laptop specs I mentioned (4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, CPU with 1K/2.5K Passmark score) ran actually quite reasonably on ChromeOS. It opens Chrome in about 3 seconds, and my game in 1 second, with some stutters but no freezes. It struggled with YouTube, but this is due to YouTube's own bloat, which is like a 1000lb trailer to a bike with 5hp.
In conclusion, Windows is losing due to its incredible bloat. It'll make every computer--including my friend's 7900X, 4070, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, water-cooled beast--sweat, and will make low-end computers unusable. The super locked down ChromeOS is literally more desirable to me on laptops under $400. Yet Microsoft is still deciding to add even more bloat! No wonder why Linux market share is skyrocketing, because Windows can barely run on their computers!
I know you can disable this, but most non-techy people won't even know this exists and won't do anything to disable it, because they just want to browse the web and read emails. But the added bloat by this "feature" will cause them to notice their computers are even slower, and switch away from Windows when they realize they need a $800 Windows laptop to have a smooth OS experience, when they can buy a $250 Chromebook or $1000 Mac with a smooth OS experience.
TL;DR: Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot by adding more bloat to an obese OS, and Windows's bloat is its biggest liability.
I know you can disable this, but most non-techy people won’t even know this exists and won’t do anything to disable it,
Even if you can, the ones that do that get annoyed once again, as it will likely in windows tradition be randomly reset after an update: "oops, we reframed this feature you previously consciously turned off and thought we'ld give it a spin for you"
"AI Explorer will utilize next-gen neural processing unit (NPU) hardware to process these machine learning and generative AI experiences locally on the device with low latency."
"The feature is also said to be exclusive to devices powered by Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X series chips,"
If you actually read Qualcomm's white paper for their NPU you'd know OPs concerns about windows resource bloat is still a reasonable concern to have at least on the memory side of things.
The memory on their SoC is shared between the CPU, GPU, and critically the NPU. This is so they can save on memory bandwidth since they won't have to copy the same data potentially three times over. However this also means by adding more AI bloat into windows will also clog up precise memory that could be used elsewhere.
That SoC, the snapdragon elite x supports eight channels of LPDDR5x which means the lowest amount of memory we could see is 16Gb assuming all eight channels used with 2Gb memory packages (which is the smallest size JEDEC allows LPDDR5x).
Is that really going to be enough for everything? In my opinion no because the the GPU will take a chunk, windows will take a chunk, the NPU will take a chunk, and the storage will try to take a chunk for caching if there's anything left.
TL;DR: You should read the white papers instead of the marketing fluff articles.
they'll probably do a lot of computation ally expensive preprocessing / analysis of your behavior on-device to save costs. They'll only send home the relevant results of the analysis. So it's "only very little of the data" - like the important part :-)
I try to swear only when I mean it, and fuck off Microsoft. I'd rather take the few seconds or even couple minutes it takes to type out the beginning of an e-mail or set up a new app than have something recording my every move.
The development will be something like: in 2025 it will be offline, optional, and meant to optimize efficiency. In 2026 it will be online, mandatory for updates, and also used to optimize advertising. Finally in 2027 it will be fully integrated and aimed at sales of extensive data to companies who desire to know what habits users exhibit and so on. I have no faith whatsoever that my interests will outweigh the potential profits of knowing what every PC user is doing all the time.
Products you pay for should not have the ability to exploit you.
If micro$oft wants to provide free computer software to all it's exploited users, that's a different conversation.
Until then you have better options available.
Yes. That's why I use Win7 for legacy stuff and Linux for everything else. On Win7 it was still easy to deactivate (disable a few Tasks and a few checkboxes). Since the updates stopped that PC is super stable too.
It’s probably their shock and awe strategy. They are pushing this anti privacy shit hard and then pull back on it on the next release. But in reality they leave a lot of that shit in. Like how Windows 10 is worse than windows 7, but it’s better than 8 so 10 feels like an improvement for people.
Actually real, I'm genuinely planning to flash steamOS os my school laptop, sincr I have no need for adobe apps, I usually use web based stuff and the apps I do want are just games id likely be able to run through proton.
I don't know what you do or do not know about Linux, but I'd highly recommend using a desktop Linux distribution instead, like Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, or Arch. Something with quick releases so you get new performance improvements and bugfixes quickly.
SteamOS in particular is really cool on a handheld, but would be kind of irritating to use on a regular laptop. It's also immutable, which protects you from fucking up too bad, but also makes certain types to configuration way harder.
I love Arch, but don't install it unless you want to learn how it works. Archinstall is quick and easy if you aren't scared of the terminal, but it doesn't hold your hand at all and you will break something if you don't read the news or fuck about without knowing what you're doing.
It's an open secret that Microsoft is gearing up to supercharge Windows 11 this summer with next-gen AI capabilities that will enable the OS to be context aware across any apps and interfaces, as well as remember everything you do on your PC to enhance user productivity and search.
These new capabilities are set to ship as part of a new app internally called "AI Explorer," which I'm told will be unveiled during Microsoft's special Windows event on May 20.
The feature is also said to be exclusive to devices powered by Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X series chips, at least at first, as Intel and AMD play catchup in the NPU race.
AI Explorer is able to do more than just remember the things you do on your computer, it's also able to analyze what's currently on-screen and provide contextual suggestions and tasks based on what it can see.
This capability is called Screen Understanding, and I'm told one of the big selling points of AI Explorer is that it's supposed to work across any app, with no developer input required.
The existence of Rewind.ai proves that this is a concept that can be done, and Microsoft is essentially building its own version into Windows 11 that offloads the resources required for such a feature onto NPUs to keep the load away from the CPU.
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I'm gonna be honest with you, Linux is so much more simple than people make it out to be. If it's your first time dipping into that world, you can grab Ubuntu, KDE neon, or Linux Mint, all of which are very stable and beginner friendly. Ubuntu has a more unique look to it, and neon/mint looks more like windows. You can run and manage both without ever having to open a terminal or dive into any code, just use it like a normal computer and you'll be fine. I've been using Linux since about '08, I'm not a sysadmin or coder or anything like that. I play most of my games in Linux with no problem
Probably stupid question that I can look up, but I think Linux expounding isn't a problem here:
I have an Intel/Nvidia laptop as my only machine right now. I've read the jokes about how hard it is to get working peripherals and the jokes about the brains of those who can't get them to work.
I'm an amateur web dev (looking to un-amateur) so while a command line isn't super scary, it sure would feel like work or daunting at least for a bit. I also gotta share the machine.
So I guess the question is: how true are those peripheral driver issue things for say random stuff like using a Dual Sense controller with (I think this is the right name) Proton for the gaming nights, and am I right in assuming any distro (except those mutable or atomic distributions that seem to be divisive) that is "beginner friendly" with a GUI for the family is still going to enable me to poke into further learning with the CLI, i.e. you don't sacrifice full featured command line for GUI?
Silly ahead of myself concern, but if I can avoid needing to learn more PowerShell junk and just focus on learning Bash, that's actually a bonus I hadn't thought of.
Install Ventoy onto a USB, copy over a few distro images onto it, and now you can boot up and try a few.
If you know anyone running Linux just run the same distro as them unless it's one of the intimidating ones: easiest way to beat the learning curve is to work with someone else. Otherwise grab a beginner-friendly distro. I once started with Ubuntu but today I'd probably start with PopOS
All the Windows fanbois must be kicking themselves as of late with Microsoft doing all these Ls, making those switching to MacOS/Linux for a better experience.
Is there such a thing? I’m nearly certain that everyone is using windows as a result of compatibility issues and/or indifference. It’s an oxymoron, like “vanilla enthusiast.”
I've seen not so much fanboys but more like enraged children who were unable to make Linux work with their hardware. Just hanging out wanting to start arguments in the comments sections of linuxmemes. They don't seem to enjoy Windows, they just want to play games on Nvidia cards.
Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'd like to read if Windows has anything comparable to people nerding out about their Linux selfhosted stuff.
Yet again it's a feature that can be disabled, not to mention your hardware probably will not even support it. Obviously something like AI assistant will monitor everything you do same as voice assistants like Google and Alexa monitors audio 24/7 if you want to wake it up with voice commands. Article mentions a macOS software doing exact same thing called Rewind.
Unless all of important recorded data will not be saved locally, this is yet another nothingburger instead of ″Look at Microsoft killing itself, everyone will move to Linux next year″ nonesense.
Would I personally use this feature? Probably not, I would disable it and move on mainly because I have no need for this. Will there be people who will use this? Absolutely.
When you HAVE to use it at work and you have NO choice in the matter it's really irritating seeing all these posts berating you instead of the company itself.
Additionally most of the time most of these features come automatically disabled if you leave in the EU like me, cause of, you know, GDPR.
So yes, they need to make it an optional feature because fines based on revenue are no joke. That said you are not gonna convince people by berating them with clown emojis, you'll only prove that whatever you are advocating for is supported by a toxic community.
But you do you...
You always could have disabled Cortana (no longer a thing btw) and you can disable Copilot if that's what you thought about. Edge is another story, it does provide other functionality (WebView2) and is not just a Web browser so there is no official way to disable it. There will be something close to disabling it, but I doubt it will be truly removed from OS, just hidden from sight. Use another browser and forget it is there, I see it only if I explicitly search for it.
If you want to truly make your OS yours and fully remove most of the stuff you do not want, Windows is not and never will be for that, ″King of customization″ title belongs to Linux.
All we have here is people losing their minds over a new feature that can be disabled.