Who is surprised?
At this point, I think they are actively trying to drive us away.
The Elon Musk Maneuver.
It’s like the Picard Maneuver, but where you just warp straight in front of your enemy while simultaneously shitting yourself.
They will certainly succeed at driving some people away. I was a lifetime Windows user and I currently don’t have it installed on any of my machines now. I think the average Joe is blissfully unaware other than the occasional dialog about a new feature coming their way.
I think they are going to lose more of the hardcore tech community with decisions like these, but I don’t know that they care.
but the “hardcore tech community” guys are the IT guys of all companies. so this means a lot of the people who are in IT related meetings and have a say in which OSes to install will now be opposed to Win11. A lot will probably suggest waiting to hopefully be able to skip 11, but some will choose alternatives.
News flash, a lot of the hardcore tech community already used Linux and would’ve pushed for it in related meetings.
Using Windows isn’t a sign of advocacy, it’s a sign of legacy. Companies don’t want to swap and change things.
Right but if Windows is now becoming a problem then it’s a start. And so many software developers I know use MacBooks for their job and say that they’re just better for the work. Microsoft is hoping that the fear of change means they can do whatever they want, if they even have any thoughts in their thick heads at all that is, and don’t seem to realize that at some point even the most devoted users will have to face the fact that there are better options.
Fuck Windows, it’s such an ass product that’s only selling point right now that some key products don’t work on anything else simply because the developers of them don’t want to do the work and not because it has some magic sauce that a Mac or Linux machine doesn’t.
I hate being bothered. Linux, while overall almost botherless, still looses to windows.
But damn me, when Win 10 loses support, I am jumping to nobara. Win 11 seems to be win 10 with every addon being something I harbor dislike for.
I do like the convenience of Windows and I’m still on W10, when it loses support I’ll be switching to Linux too.
Linux, while overall almost botherless, still looses to windows.
Been using mint for around 2 months and I would say this is pretty accurate. Pretty much every game I play works out of the box. Discord however crashes the whole system sometimes and I can’t figure out why. Would still recommend Linux over windows but you will for sure encounter more issues.
Try vesktop. Maybe that will help.
In most situations i agree with you, but i think when it comes to the purchase of techie things (like which computers and OS a company should use) then the opinion of techies matters. Their opinion may not matter as much as it should, but in aggregate over time it can cause large changes in purchasing decisions
They don’t care and you really don’t matter in the big scope of things.
To be honest, they probably are. My pet theory is that they’re trying to do what do many politicians are doing - drive away everyone but the strongest base electorate that will stay with them no matter what they do. And then, the grift starts. I’m reasonably sure sooner rather than later they’ll start charging a subscription fee to use Windows, and people and companies will bend over and pay it…
There was a time when they did try to listen. Since 11 was being imagined, it all was downhill. I used to work for them and all messaging changed once 11 was being worked on
This is where we say switch to Linux, right?
Yeah but I think most of us have already… We are not many enough to matter though. Microsoft and Google will continue to do what they want with 99% of users.
If they keep going at this pace, even the average person will be sick of it. My company was already considering it (after some input from myself and a couple coworkers) after they first announced recall. We sometimes deal with sensitive information that we can’t share with anyone outside the company. Periodic screenshots, regardless of what Microsoft says they will do, is a huge security risk.
It still can be disabled in windows enterprise using a intune policy, at least.
Yeah this is all my company cared about. They trust that it will be disabled…
The way MS is headed, would it really surprise anyone if a faulty update accidentally re-enables it without telling you and cause a massive shitstorm, though? I‘m not sure how many companies are naive enough to have this sword of Damocles above their machines. Especially with that disastrous anti-hacker resolution by the UN on the way. Sure, there are a lot of companies that just don‘t care nearly as much as they should, but one massive leak with recall involved could be enough for thousands of them to switch.
Eh, I switched. I switched all of my lab’s computers, too, and my PhD students have remarked a few different times that Linux is pretty cool. It might snowball.
I don’t think Linux will displace Windows meaningfully any time soon, but I do think people underestimate the fact that most people don’t install their own OSs. They get people like you to do it for them.
I’ll switch when Windows 10 is no longer supported. Or just before.
The problem is like that xkcd comic about experts underestimating the common person’s knowledge in their field. Linux is still not user friendly enough for the vast majority of people. Linux users just don’t seem to understand that most people are in the “wtf is a distro?” level of knowledge and would absolutely panic at the mere sight of a terminal.
True. Most people wouldn’t know how to install windows. They use it because it’s preinstalled and works. It’s a lot of risk for the average user to attempt an install from media even if it’s well guided. There’s also the roadblock of having media for local backup and the migration of personal data to cloud obfuscating the access to the data even further.
It’s hard enough to get professionals to rtfm.
They don’t need to know what a distro is, the same way they don’t know the difference between Windows Enterprise, Professional, LTSC, etc.
If it’s not OEM, people like us are going to be the ones installing it for them anyway.
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I’ve used Linux for 20 years and don’t even know what MPV is without looking it up.
Pretty sure that’s not an issue for any average user.deleted by creator
Why would anyone need a replacement for VLC?
Also, Gnome, KDE, Xfce, LXQt all come with a video player out of the box that’s much better suited for newbies.
If you’re installing MPV, you’re looking for it and probably know why you want it.
It’s not “linux”’s job to be userfriendly, it’s up to the distro. Look at android, steam deck and chromebooks, three very userfriendly linux distros. Now we just need some billion dollar company to do what google and valve did with those for a desktop and we’re good to go.
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Because they make it easy and do a few cool things.
“Do you want a mic in your home that can record everything you say and do and send that data off to wherever the company chooses?”
“No of course not.”
“What about of it will also turn your lights on and off and play despacito on demand?”
“You son of a bitch, sign me up”.
This is also the reason why typing on the TV is so bad and the remote has a huge microphone button on it.
Microsoft also wants to use 50 gigabytes of your hard drive space (for the Recall snapshots) and make you buy AI co-processors or their software won’t work. They want to use your property to create their own Skynet.
Soeaking of coprocessors…if it’s not in the cpu die, I wonder if we can just desolder the stupid AI chip.
Yeah they want you to pay for the hardware to train their crappy ai, pay for the OS so you can train their crappy ai, and then also provide your data to train their crappy AI.
And in return you get to use Windows.
I agree but technology hasn’t really been “ours” for a long time. Rooting, jailbreaking, and open source is the only way to take back a modicum of control.
On Arch you can easily uninstall Linux.
The fun part is that there are even legit reasons to do so, the by far most likely one being that you want to use a different package that provides you with a kernel, such as linux-lts or linux-hardened. Definitely know what you are doing in that case though!
Linux in general and Arch in particular are kinda laissez-faire in that they’ll allow you to shoot yourself in the foot. Some distros may put barriers in your way, others practically hand you the gun, but at the end of the day, the gun is freely available and it’s your own foot that you’re shooting.
Do you tolerate the TPM/fTPM in your computer? Can you deactivate it? Can you query it? Can you tell it to do something?
Yes, you can remove and interact with your TPM chip. I don’t know why you’re coming in so hot on this person, your last name Ballmer or something?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+or+reset+TPM+chip&ia=web
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I always wonder where the line is for the majority of people, maybe there isn’t one and they know it. You’ve got to hand it to Microsoft nearly 30 years and they still have the majority.
This is the thing Lemmy nerds don’t understand:
For most people, using a PC is a chore.
To most people, using a PC is like mopping a floor, or cleaning a car. It’s a boring - even unpleasant - task that you need to do every once in a while. They’d rather be on their phone or their iPad.
When you already view using your PC as a chore, and some Linux user says to you “hey, if you spend a day backing up all your files, creating an install USB, installing Linux, reinstalling your programs (and finding alternatives for those that aren’t available), logging back in to everything, moving your data back across, and relearning how to use a PC, it’ll be worth it in the long run!”, you will just ignore their advice. It’s easier just to say “nah, I only occasionally need my PC when I want to update my CV or write a long email anyway. Thanks for the suggestion though!”
They put up with an hour or two of MS’s bullshit every few months. They don’t like it, but they also don’t care enough about putting effort in so that in future, the chore of using a PC only feels half as bad. At the end of the day, either way, it’s still a chore, and they’d still rather be on their phone/tablet/doing something else entirely.
In the same way, they also don’t care enough about ultimately saving 10 mins every month when they clean their car to go out of their way and do the initial work of claybar-ing, polishing, then waxing it.
I use Linux. I like Linux. But I’m just another Lemmy nerd, not an average PC user.
Yes, small things could quickly put ordinary people off Linux with the current state of software. I’m involved in running an organization that needs to submit reports regularly to the government using their online forms. Unfortunately the forms are PDFs that only seem to work in recent versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Any other software results in a more or less broken form. I haven’t yet found anything in Linux (even on Wine) that handles these forms properly. So sometimes I have to use Windows.
For me there are still enough benefits to using Linux that I continue with it as my main OS, but for most people they’d quickly get annoyed by obstacles like this. Of course the government shouldn’t be using one company’s proprietary format that only runs on commercial OSes for their forms, but that’s the way it is for now.
The gov and higher education should be forced to use open source software. I would absolutely support that.
Well, the PDF format was created by Adobe and even though they somehow got it to technically be considered an open document format. They are to my knowledge still the only entity with a complete implementation in existence. Just some food for thought.
You are correct, but on the other hand it doesn’t hurt to make the average person aware of alternatives.
Can be especially effective when the person buys a new PC and needs to do all the stuff you mention anyway. Yes, it is still a new OS, but honestly, it’s not that different - especially if the person remembers older Windows versions, it might just feel like going to familiar places (I know this is something my wife would really apreciate as she hates the constant changes of how things look). Obviously depends on distro, only have experience with Mint.
I’m saying this from a position of a resonably tech savvy, but not your average tech nerd (at least knowledge wise lol). Sure there are differences under hood but I don’t think the average user would really notice them that much.
There is no such thing as a line, it seems to be a long gradient and its about how fast you move on the gradient. If you ever so slightly introduce more and more crap slowly enough, people don’t care as they forget how good they had it much earlier.
Boiling the frog
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Great way of putting it
I agree, I don’t think they have any limit. Look at how invasive platforms like Facebook are, and yet they’re still massively popular. Mobile operating systems are several times worse than Windows is for privacy and data harvesting, and people clearly don’t care at all. They’ll even happily consent to ever more levels of it - there’s no evidence to suggest that they’ll ever stop.
One of the biggest “mistakes” Microsoft made was not realizing how lucrative data collection could be. Back in the quaint old days of early PC computing, spyware was actually considered a bad thing. When Google came along, that philosophy was flipped on its head. Over the past 15 years, Microsoft has seeing what these spyware vendors are doing and salivating because they know that they are still the kings of computing - they still have total control the PC market and there’s a good chance that it’s not really going anywhere because most people hate change - even though Linux is starting to make inroads in quite a few places.
It would not be surprising if, in a few years, a Windows OS looks like a Google search page, or a cable television channel.
If you buy a PC it has Windows on it. The majority of people are not cocking about formatting a USB stick and fiddling with the BIOS to put Linux on it. They aren’t thinking about operating systems at all, and if you need specific software for work, chances are it isn’t going to run on anything other than Windows. If you don’t need it for work, you’ve probably just got a tablet by now and store all your photos on Facebook.
That comic really reminds me of trying to degoogle and FOSSify my computer as a complete novice. Multiple, extremely frustrating times, I’ve wanted to install something but I genuinely have not been able to understand the installation instructions. I also don’t know enough to know what the right search terms are to find out what I’m meant to do.
I’m still trying but it’s fucking demoralising.
If you buy a PC it has Windows on it. The majority of people are not cocking about formatting a USB stick and fiddling with the BIOS to put Linux on it.
And increasingly the majority of people don’t even bother to keep a PC anymore and just use their phone
Exactly. We used to have a massive chain of shops called PC World, and that eventually became Currys/PC World, and is now just Currys.
The age of computers came and went, and people still need washing machines and TVs. They still sell laptops I think, but if you want anything from their range of “gaming” PCs, they have to order it in, usually from one of the many stores online that will build them for you.
Windows already lost. It lost to Android.
It’s more likely those who are like that are going for ChromeOS.
Doesn’t it say more about the users than Microsoft? Seems to me that people who don’t care about computers will accept anything coming from big tech…
Right in front of me is a guy editing a >10 page LaTeX file in Overleaf on a 13 inch laptop. The sidebar takes like 1/3rd of the screen. The editor in around 3 inches in width, and he needs to zoom into the PDF preview to read it.
My point in, some people simply don’t care about anything.
Yeah, I guess it means they know people don’t care, and they can do what they want. What are you going to do, use the scary CLI OS that’s for nerds. Or spend loads of money on a walled garden, no just stay in the cosy middle.
All my windows friends and family just don’t care, computers are a utility, and they won’t learn something as easy as Mint or Bazzite. To them, they still see Linux as it was in the 2000s.
There are whole businesses dedicated to MS, like everything they do is MS. You hire an IT firm, they’ll plonk a load of Dells in your offices and spin up Exchange 2019 where everything bespoke is programmed in C#, despite their being better products because it’s all they know. They spent all that money on MS partnerships.
Microsoft have created a stable ecosystem we didn’t learn in the late 90s or the mid 2000s and we will carry on because at this point it’s effort. Unless you’re Germany…
They don’t relly know better. Windows is familiar, Linux sounds too complicated and techy. Hell, I was thinking the same and I’m reasonably tech savvy. It’s infinitely more friendly than I’d ever expect.
People are afraid of change and unknown. Though ironically Linux might actually be closer to the original Windows experience that Win11 is (speaking from my limited experience with Mint)
It’s because Apple products are heinously expensive, and Linux is far more hassle than most people are willing to go to.
There’s also Chrome OS, I have no idea if it’s any good though.
From my limited experience using it on a shitty Chromebook for school (granted also pretty locked down) and it’s not great. Pretty much only useful for doing web things and the Google ecosystem. I also have no idea whether it’s even possible to get it on anything else.
From a UI perspective I didn’t really like it l, especially as it and other chrome apps got more and more sleek and curvy. I did grow up using a Linux mint laptop though, only getting a dual booted Linux/Windows PC in highschool for some games that needed it as well as running SOLIDWORKS at home. (thanks to my dad for all that lol)
This is the same false analogy people make as to why Americans drive giant trucks to shift blame… it’s not the manufacturers who are pushing these cars to circumvent taxes, it is the users for demanding it.
Very few people actually like these invasive shit Microsoft pulls, but the vast majority either do not know about them, understand them or feel they have another choice. For example, I hate MS, I understand what dog shit this Recall feature is, yet my job will provide a Windows machine with it and I have no choice but to use it.
I am a nerd so at home I do have everything running on Linux. But for the majority of people that would be a unknown option or just an unobtainable one
We drive giant trucks because the small ones are cheap pieces of shit, with inferior designs, inferior engines, and inferior driveline components, that aren’t rated to tow or haul anything.
I don’t give a shit about what work gives me saying all I’m doing is work on that thing. Now what I’m really afraid of is Microsoft pulling data from the sensors on the device when I’m working from home with it. I need too think of a way to deal with it (I do not have a separate room for work)
I did it! I did it over the long weekend. Been using Windows since 3.1 (albeit only switched fully from MSDOS when Windows 2000 came out).
I did a test run on my laptop during time away from home/desktop over the summer, using Linux Mint, to see if I can do work and school on an unfamiliar system exclusively. On Mint I never had to open the terminal and everything worked right out of the box. Cinnamon is very similar to Win10 too. Heck, I can’t even remember the installation procedure, it was so hands off and easy.
After two failed attempts of Arch on the same laptop, I’ve managed to install it with help of archinstaller on my main desktop. No idea what I’m doing, but I got it up and running to a state where I can do both work and school.
FUCK Windows and the constant nag it does everywhere. Good riddance.
Lol I misread this as you’d been relying on windows 3.1 and never upgraded but that 11 including recall made you switch to Linux. I need to be more thorough in my reading .
That’d be hard core. Alas, I don’t have balls of steel and/or a mushy brain like that.
I bet there’s still someone out there that makes it work somehow.
Lol i don’t doubt it. Some people get fixated and can’t be swayed.
Well done. Mint is the gateway drug, perfect for users like you. Progress and attempts with arch are noble though! Glad it didn’t scare you off.
It did! I just checked and I put it (arch) on the back burner for four months.
But yes, Mint and similar easy to install distros are the way to go for someone new for sure. Probably don’t even need to move on from it ever, as long as it works.
Good work getting through arch installer, it can be tricky too. I’ve been on arch for like 10 years and still don’t think anything else is better.
Not everything is as snappy as I’d like it to be yet. Maybe KDE Plasma is not the best for my 12 year old system. Been thinking I should have gone with the zen kernel.
But I’m having tons of fun while discovering it nonetheless.
Plasma needs a decent graphics card so that’s probably why. You can disable a lot of the effects in the control panel though but it may not help.
I guess the fastest desktop is xfce otherwise, it’s so fast that apps launches instantaneously. Reminds me of how fast computers can actually be without eye candy.
You can easily install and try it on arch to see if you like it. Good instructions in arch wiki as usual.
I applaud your bravery with Arch. Have some fun with it and don’t worry if you break stuff. Keep your files backed up and you’re golden! Even if you switch to a different distro later on, a lot of what you learn will translate 1:1.
I just really aimed for it due to the meme.
Good choice on Mint.
I have been using Linux exclusively (personal) since 2008, distro hopped for a few years then settled on Ubuntu, until they shot themselves in the foot with 22.04 and the snap debacle; moved to Mint (after trying Pop, MX and a few others).
I have to say a big well done to the Mint devs, it is better than Ubuntu ever was; part of this is newer drivers etc…but it is very polished and it gets out of my way and lets me do my work.
Been working with the various flavors of Windows in a work capacity over the same stretch, in my opinion windows peaked with XP, 7 was ok, and 10 is also ok. But it really has been down hill since XP was retired.
Yeah, XP was pretty good.
After a lot of back and forth between MSDOS/Win98SE (I used to play a lot of QuakeWorld which did not need much), I finally got an AMD Duron 800 around 2000, and someone recommend me Win2k. It was a really stable system, way ahead of its time in terms of user management and services compared to Win98SE and early XP. I think I’ve stayed on it well past it’s final release. I got sucked into WoW in 2008, so definitely had to move on by then.
To be fair, you never forget your first. Amiga workbench for the A500 was some of the best computing…
Yeah, XP was pretty good.
I was a young sysadmin during this era, I don’t know if I agree with this sentiment. It got tolerable by the time of the last service pack, but it was a security nightmare otherwise and didn’t offer much over Win2k.
That said, I’m not a Windows fan in general, but I’d class the following as the “good” ones:
- NT 3.5 (user-mode GDI FTW!)
- Phone 7.0 (this was probably what I’d call the Practically Perfect version of Windows. WP7 is just so good)
- NT 3.1 gets an honourable mention
- 8 (after WP7, this is the first version of Windows that was pretty much stable on day one. Say what you will about the UI, the core was the best Microsoft has ever one; ditto fir Server 2012)
- 10 (8 but with refinement; I’m cautious putting it here because you can see the genesis of the decisions that gave us 11)
- Vista (a lot of what people like about 7 really came from Vista, like the WDDM driver model and the improved security infrastructure; Vista, like NT, came out before hardware was commonly available that could run it)
Anchoring the bottom
- 98 & ME (IE integrated everywhere and the security nightmare it begat deserves a special place in hell)
- 1.0 (you had to be there, but this thing made Atari TOS look sophisticated)
- 95 pre-OSR2 (VxDs, DLLs and a login screen you could bypass with an escape key!)
- NT4 (it wasn’t bad, per se, but I still resent how unstable it was versus 3.5)
- CE and pre-5.0 Mobile (hey, guess what, replacing your battery wipes your device because we didn’t implement persistent storage!)
- 11 (10 without most of the redeeming features, plus an Android launcher for a Start menu. Now with extra spyware!)
A lot of people really like 7 and 2000, but I tend to think of those as polish releases of Vista and NT4. They’re Microsoft eventually fixing their mistakes, after having everyone drag on them for years.
I feel vindicated that Vista and 8 where my favorite as well.
Out of curiosity, which step in the arch install did you have issues with on your first two attempts?
Mint is great.
I use Linux Mint cinnamon on a daily basis, typically with one or two command line terminals open at all times (one normal and one in a docker container), and with some kind of code always open too. I use 4 monitors as well, which the same machine can’t handle when I boot into windows.
No apologies and no regrets. Being user friendly doesn’t mean it’s limited. It uses Ubuntu and Debian stuff after all, just with the controversial Ubuntu stuff removed.
I really love it on my laptop.
The only thing that scared me is its reliance on Ubuntu. I wonder if it can go beyond that some day somehow. Plus I wanted to try something different. I have no idea what I’m talking about btw.
They have LMDE that they maintain so that Mint can continue if Ubuntu ever goes away. And of course, some people choose to just run LMDE now.
Did mine a few weeks ago. The only part I’m stuck on is OneDrive, which I unfortunately need. I got access to my personal files but not the shared files. The other part is I still need to download all of my mods…which I am not looking forward to 😆 but let me just say it is so nice to have a computer that actually works! It’s older so it was getting impossibly slow.
Between Linux and the new IRS software I am feeling spoiled.
Off is the direction in which I would like Microsoft to fuck if they think I’m gonna have a deep learning AI spy on my computer activity.
This just makes me want to switch to Linux.
Stop threatening. Commit. Take the leap. A lot of us here are already on the other side and we’ll help you find your footing.
And it is not scary. A simple distro like Mint, figure out where the software repositories live, how to use thr off8xe suite, and you’re done. Life is "great*.
Free software with no ads, and things that are built for purpose over profit. Going back to Windows is jarring when I use it now.
Do it.
Do it. I made the switch a few months ago and its so much better
Anecdotally it hasn’t been that hard. I’ve had the best luck with Linux Mint just working straight out of the box. I basically only use my computer to game so your mileage may vary if you need specialized software or something.
Also the benefit of mint is that Ubuntu has a huge user base comparatively so you can find a lot of info online for people who have probably already figured out issues that you might encounter.
back up all your shit and move to linux. start with mint, thats the best one for total beginners imo
Lots of support already but I made it switch in December last year and no regrets. There’s a bit of a learning curve getting used to a new environment but the computer actually becomes a tool you can shape to your needs rather than changing how you work so your computer will do it.
Try Fedora! I did and love it!
What was it, not even two months ago when they said they “listened” to us and that they wouldn’t go forward with Recall? And we all said they would still roll it in later when the dust had settled? Yup, we were right.
It happens every time…tech companies are not worried what users think because users don’t care enough to switch to Linux.
Whoops we turned the heat up too quickly and the frogs noticed. Just turn it back down for a bit then begin heating up again, just a little slower this time.
At that point they said that they wouldn’t go forward with Recall in the current state. It was never in question that it would come eventually. The question was in what state?
False. The hard drive where Windows lives will soon find itself exiting my window
Ah the ol’ defenestration uninstallation.
Dewindowed
Nah, loot it for the magnets at least. Frisbee the platters, save the chassis for the scrap bucket (it’s solid aluminum).
Not use Windows 11 you say? Install Linux you say?!
Even if you can’t cleanly remove it, you can probably delete a few system files and break it. It’s not like the whole thing will be baked into kernel32.dll.
Good point. Sounds like the kind of company I want to do business with. /s
Not yet…
Sometimes you have to fight with the OS to make it work but that should be due to a bug (or my incompetence in using it). When it’s not working because it’s actually working on someone else’s behalf you can probably delete the whole fucking thing mate.
I’m actually enjoying the Linux learning curve because I know it’s not working against my interests.
On the other hand, every time I’ve had to go “under the hood” with Windows (Registry settings, config files) it’s been to prevent Microsoft from doing something sh*tty to me.
Cortana and IE break the OS if you fuck with the registry hard enough. When I deploy W11 to my building I wonder how much GP is gonna need to be setup to fix this bullshit
Hmm, I wonder if there could be an exploit where Recall is covertly turned on, so it can be used to exfiltrate data. Not a good idea to basically have a surveillance rootkit sitting passively on your system, with no ability to remove it, just waiting to get abused by attackers. But using this proprietary garbage OS nowadays isn’t a good idea in general and there is a much better alternative.
Removed by mod
Windows does have its own command-line package manager. I don’t know if it can remove Recall, but last I checked it could remove Cortana. It would just get reinstalled soon after, but that could be prevented with some file-naming trickery. If you give a file the same name as the folder used to have and make it read-only, it couldn’t remake the folder and wouldn’t reinstall.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you can still do that now.
Which one do you mean? Winget which is their newest attempt at creating a package manager that isn’t an absolute piece of garbage, or their crappy CLI for managing MSIX/APPX modules? Because I remember using the latter to try and remove Cortana back when I first tried Windows 10. Fast forward, I removed all the garbage I didn’t need, applied a Windows update, restarted my PC and it was all reinstalled. I wiped that SSD the same day and went back to Linux. This was the last time I used Windows on any of my personal devices.
I was talking about Appx. I haven’t used Windows in a while, but that was how I got rid of Cortana. The key part was the read-only file named after the folder that couldn’t be replaced.
I’d say you didn’t actually remove the garbage. “Settings, apps, uninstall” doesn’t really get rid of it, the deployment package is still hanging around.
You need to use powershell to de-deploy those packages.
It’s a bit like the difference between “apt remove” and “apt purge”
You need to use powershell to de-deploy those packages.
Oh I did, I spent hours looking up different pwsh commands and package names to clean it all up
There’s always the Microsoft telemetry blocklist in pihole. If you can’t stop the computer collecting the data, you can stop MS getting hold of it.
It’s not a 100% guarantee, they can easily bypass your DNS by either just connecting to another DNS sever over plain, unencrypted DNS (UDP on 53), or use something more sophisticated like DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS.
You can reroute unencrypted DNS requests to your Pi-Hole using a firewall like OPNSense, but things get more complicated with DoT and DoH
Didn’t they say the same thing about Internet Explorer, it was part of the OS and can’t be uninstalled or disabled…
Then, antitrust legal action against Microsoft and it turns out they can enable it being removable. Whoops!
They are doing a lot better about baking stuff in these days. If you uninstall edge on windows you unironically break a lot of systems, can’t even play Minecraft or use teams lol
Teams isn’t a loss, but MS are scumbag greifers for messing with my Minecraft.
Webview2 is the edge component that is assumed to be installed on all Windows computers. Unlike runtimes which a launcher could detect is missing and install, Webview2 doesn’t have a silent installed that can be bundled. The user must, by hand, go to a website, select their CPU architecture, and install it.
Anyways it’s clear that, at least within the Windows org, Microsoft is the new Oracle and teams are pointing guns at each other. Hopefully it dies quick to avoid this slow decay.
Who else has ever invented such a powerful spyware?
Serious question. Because usually Microsoft are not the first ones with anything, it is very likely that there is a predecessor.
Now I am quite disturbed because I don’t know how and where we are being spied on already in such an infamous manner!
There is a Mac app called Rewind that came out a couple of years ago that does the same thing. There was also an open source thing for Windows. Everyone is desperate to show that they are hip and can do AI. It looks like someone at Microsoft saw a demo of one of those apps and thought that putting it into Windows would let them brag about how much AI Windows can do. They clearly tried to rush it out in time for their Copilot PC marketing push.
The idea is that you can use local LLM models and image scanning to talk to your computer. You could ask it to summarize your day, ask what you were working on last week, or find those articles you vaguely remember reading last year and can’t find anymore. I can almost see the merit, but the security risk is so high.
I wonder if people will eventually stop caring about the security risk of features like this. Those AI girlfriends some people dream about will have access to so much private information. Give this thing a voice and you can market it as a companion who learns the things you like and can talk with you about the things you are reading. Hackers might be able to see literally everything you’ve done on the computer for the last few years, but you’ll get to feel like Iron Man with your own personal Jarvis.
I think the average Joe doesn’t really understand or care about the security risk of such a feature, because they assume that there are competent people at the company who have considered the security risk and took sufficient steps to address it. It’s not by accident that there’s a meme about some guy having a smart fridge and watch and everything, and his friend the IT expert, who doesn’t have a single piece of smart tech and keeps a gun in the kitchen in case the toaster makes a wrong move…
China?
Tell me more?
Vietnam? They have their own browser (CocCoc) and IM application (Zalo).
I hope enough companies realize the inherent danger to their IP this feature brings. Or that the government realizes the inherent danger to CUI data and forces there to be an admin level lock of the feature so normal users can’t just turn it on.
I and many others can’t just switch to Linux because we are required to use company laptops/desktops that are admin locked.
Specially since there’s no Microsoft app that has ever securely functioned past a few days. This thing is gonna be hacked as soon as it comes out an we won’t know until until there’s an investigation into the accidental death of thirty innocent people as passengers in some vehicle somewhere controlled by windows 11 or something… Boeing re-entry vehicle maybe? Nah! You guys are good! Just jump in and come back home already!
If the US government bitching was enough to get the flight simulator easter egg removed from Excel (allegedly), I can’t imagine a similar stern glare from the Pentagon would not cause Recall to magically turn out to be uninstallable after all. At least from any US government owned computers originally so equipped.
Anyway, isn’t this only going to roll out on “Copilot” compatible PC’s with the requisite AI acceleration chips in them? I would be furthermore immensely surprised if it could not be locked out in Group Policy for corporate customers.
Somewhere, some patent lawyers are going to make millions debating about whether or not this constitutes “public disclosure”.
I can’t wait until the first breach caused by Recall hits the FCC. It’s definitely gonna happen.
I hope Khan is in charge of the FCC that catches it.
shouldn’t be doing personal stuff on work computer. let the company deal with recall if they don’t want their shit leaked.
They didn’t mention personal stuff
then he/she can let the organization decide about recall, it’s not up to him at this point unless he’s the owner. maybe the organization wants recall to further spy on employees and that’s a different reason to not work for them at that point.
That… that’s what they were saying, no? Companies should worry about their shit.
