I never understand Microsoft’s strategy with being absolutely full bore focused on locking in 100% of everyone to this crap, consistently.
It has to be cheaper to let the .03% of people who want to do their own thing just do their own thing than it does spend engineering work to try to constantly capture them. The average user already doesn’t know what “an ai” is and doesn’t care, and therefore will never change your defaults. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to re-disable copilot because MS has invalidated my registry and/or group policy changes to get rid of it
If I don’t want the feature even installed on my system, then let me make that choice. Gaming is the only thing holding a windows install in my house anymore and the second DRM in proton is figured out I’m gone.
Hardware is so cheap these days you can just have a separate machine for Windows-only tasks like gaming in your case (in my case it's macOS for music production) - and enjoy the freedom for all other tasks.
I'd be more comfortable with it if MS didn't have a long and well documented history of overriding user settings via patches to turn on features that users had explicitly turned off.
If MS wanted people to trust them to honor settings, they shouldn't have ignored settings for decades.
Sadly Microsoft has a history of enabling "features" after updates, even though the user has disabled it before. Of course only to "improve the experience".
AFAICT it's only going to work on Copilot+ branded systems anyway, and currently only the Snapdragon ARM machines have a beefy enough NPU to meet that criteria. Both Intel and AMD are working towards getting that certification with their upcoming CPUs though.
> The latest preview update for Windows 11 version 24H2 contains a little surprise for those who don’t trust the software giant. It allows you to remove Recall, the coming AI-based timeline feature that will help Copilot+ PC users find things they did in the past.
So even when the feature can be disabled (but not uninstalled), Microsoft will at least make sure that "no means no" and not silently enable the feature again after an OS update right? Right?!
It's important that Recall is available to all Microsoft Windows users. The Microsoft ecosystem is a great value to its customers, and the obstruction of Microsoft's right to advertise to their users would be another example of how the EU hates their citizens. If you don't want Copilot, why can't you just buy another computer and let Microsoft customers enjoy their vertical integration? /s
Edit: Included sarcasm indicator because apparently people think this is a legitimate opinion serious people have in 2024.
Windows is good for one thing these days: Playing games via Steam. That's about it, and Linux is getting pretty good at that too - but not yet perfect. That's why I have to stick to Windows for my gaming PC for the time being.
> If you don't want Copilot, why can't you just buy another computer and let Microsoft customers enjoy their vertical integration?
Why doesn't Microsoft simply let me uninstall it? That would be the consumer friendly thing to do.
Is the question about Linux in general or about Pop_OS specifically? I've used it--the differences are going to increase once their new desktop environment releases, but right now it's comparable to Ubuntu except with some nice-to-haves (proprietary NVIDIA drivers are installed automatically, no software is delivered via Canonical's 'snaps' which are almost universally hated). I enjoyed it, but in my opinion, popular distros are more similar than they are different.
If you mean just replacing Windows with Linux in general: it's great, unless you need to run, say, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, or Fortnite.
I used to give Linux desktop distros a shot every few years for a long time but would always get fed up with something not working or not being able to run some games. The last time I have switched back to Linux (Mint, not PopOS) was around three months ago, it's been a very pleasant experience with comparably few glitches (some that have been fixed with updates, some that I am still dealing with) and I don't have any plans going back to Windows any time soon, if ever.
I am using it for two years as daily driver on two (Lenovo) laptops, and I'm loving it so far! Most things worked out of the box and the UI is a nice balance of being adaptable if you want it, but also having sensible defaults.
I keep having to bother with Windows for the sake of using a "real" Excel installation for some of my work, but Im really in love with the simplicity of just using Popos, whereas there are a thousand little spyware-annoyances whenever I boot up Windows again.
A couple years ago I wanted to try something simple for a daily driver and gave it a shot but it didn’t take long before its inadequacies became unbearable and I switched back; but they’ve been improving, so hopefully it’s much better now.
The unfortunate current state of the OS market: If you want a system that generally works without much hassle, Windows is the go-to choice, albeit with increasingly intrusive policies. For those who prefer customization, Linux offers a wealth of options, but be warned: if you lack a developer's background, your custom setups might break after an update. On the other hand, if you're looking for a rock-solid OS with minimal customization, macOS is your best bet, though you'll pay a premium and be locked into specific hardware. Personally, I wish Linux could take the lead in this battle, but it really needs to consolidate its resources to make a stronger impact.
It is a good thing that Windows 11 is optional. Microsoft seems to insist on making it an option which is relegated way back into the catalogue in the section where hardly anyone looks but that is their prerogative just like it is mine to avoid them and their products. The times of Windows dominance are over, mostly due to the rise of web and cloud offerings which have shifted the tech nexus from the operating system to the browser.
Readit News
It has to be cheaper to let the .03% of people who want to do their own thing just do their own thing than it does spend engineering work to try to constantly capture them. The average user already doesn’t know what “an ai” is and doesn’t care, and therefore will never change your defaults. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to re-disable copilot because MS has invalidated my registry and/or group policy changes to get rid of it
If I don’t want the feature even installed on my system, then let me make that choice. Gaming is the only thing holding a windows install in my house anymore and the second DRM in proton is figured out I’m gone.
This headline implies users won’t be able to prevent recall from taking screenshots of what they are doing. I don’t believe that’s true.
If MS wanted people to trust them to honor settings, they shouldn't have ignored settings for decades.
everyone knows if you want to stop something from happening you use group policy
Indeed, from the article:
>Once shipped, Recall will also be something Windows users can disable but not entirely remove.
> The latest preview update for Windows 11 version 24H2 contains a little surprise for those who don’t trust the software giant. It allows you to remove Recall, the coming AI-based timeline feature that will help Copilot+ PC users find things they did in the past.
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/copilot-pc/307817/microsoft-...
I guess/hope the EU is already on it though.
Edit: Included sarcasm indicator because apparently people think this is a legitimate opinion serious people have in 2024.
Windows is good for one thing these days: Playing games via Steam. That's about it, and Linux is getting pretty good at that too - but not yet perfect. That's why I have to stick to Windows for my gaming PC for the time being.
> If you don't want Copilot, why can't you just buy another computer and let Microsoft customers enjoy their vertical integration?
Why doesn't Microsoft simply let me uninstall it? That would be the consumer friendly thing to do.
Regular screen captures are a completely unacceptable intrusion.
If you mean just replacing Windows with Linux in general: it's great, unless you need to run, say, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, or Fortnite.
There's no way to use Wine for Microsoft Excel?
Biggest issue is printer drivers, I'd say.
https://openprinting.github.io/cups/
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