You lost: Microsoft is NOT walking back Windows 11’s AI overload — scaling up Copilot and NOT rethinking Recall, business as usual

Most people are clueless about what M$ is doing so this will change nothing for 99.9% of users. I’ve already switched a couple of my systems over to Linux and my main box is next, just waiting to see if SteamOS can get their nvidia drivers sorted out.
 
This makes Apple look tastefully restrained, even with Siri AI woven throughout its software. You can leave the AI alone and it won't be in your face.
 
beating-dead.gif
 
I've been mostly Linux at home for 20 years, The biggest reason I still use Windows now that Linux has become more capable for games is work. Most office work is so deeply entrenched in the Microsoft/Office/365 ecosystem that it is inescapable.

Prince Valiant said:
If Linux shipped by default and had a few tutorials on startup most people probably wouldn't notice.
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Grandmothers probably wouldn't.

Where the typical low skill user would notice is when their friends or some online guide tell them to download a specific piece of software and install it. They won't be sophisticated enough to know to look for Linux work-a-likes, and even if they are, might freak out if the work-a-like has a slightly different name, or slightly different UI. That causes basic users to completely freak out.
 
gtrguy said:
just waiting to see if SteamOS can get their nvidia drivers sorted out.
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Have you considered giving Bazzite a try? I haven't yet, but I understand it already works really well, as long as you don't want DLSS5, as that is still maturing.

The biggest impediments to linux gaming these days seem to be minor frame pacing issues in some titles and the lack of kernel mode anti-cheat support in some competitive titles. Other than that, it is pretty much there now, on both AMD and Nvidia hardware, and in some cases where the CPU is the limiting factor it actually performs better in Linux than in Windows. Even HDR works these days.
 
🤷‍♂️

I switched to Kubuntu on most of my machines a little over 3 years ago and couldn't be happier. Except for the whole AMD HDMI 2.1 debacle (which should be fully resolved in 7.3) there is not been a single time that I have ever thought about changing back.

Only machines in my whole house not on Kubuntu is my ROG ally which is Bazzite, and my 9 to 5 job laptop which is a shitbox dell windows machine.

MS can do what ever they want, IDAF anymore.
 
I'm still using windows, when I see a change I don't want... like really don't want, I'll find a way to disable it, and if I cant... well then I'll worry about making my life more difficult by switching to something new
 
sfsuphysics said:
I'm still using windows, when I see a change I don't want... like really don't want, I'll find a way to disable it, and if I cant... well then I'll worry about making my life more difficult by switching to something new
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The switch is always difficult, but once you get used to it, I actually find it makes my life easier, not harder. There are so many frustrating things about how Windows is configured and set up that make me want to smash my head against a wall. Linux is not perfect either, but in my personal experience Linux is easier to live with for a competent Linux user, than Windows is to live with for a competent Windows user.

But yeah, the transition can be rough.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I'm still using windows, when I see a change I don't want... like really don't want, I'll find a way to disable it, and if I cant... well then I'll worry about making my life more difficult by switching to something new
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You'll be on Windows for a while because Microsoft is going to ride that enshittification edge until Windows 12. I imagine that you can't avoid not logging into your Microsoft account by Windows 12.
Zarathustra[H] said:
The switch is always difficult, but once you get used to it, I actually find it makes my life easier, not harder. There are so many frustrating things about how Windows is configured and set up that make me want to smash my head against a wall. Linux is not perfect either, but in my personal experience Linux is easier to live with for a competent Linux user, than Windows is to live with for a competent Windows user.

But yeah, the transition can be rough.
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Wasn't easy for me when I did it in 2021. I've been using Linux since around 2013 but never my main PC. It's always some laptop or NAS/HTPC server that I use Linux. When Windows 11 was released then I figure that was the time to switch. I had problems just playing WoW Classic, which at the time was TBC. Battle net would screw up every month and I would have to hunt down a solution. Those solutions weren't obvious either. That was before I found out about Heroic Game Launcher which automatically uses GE-PROTON. Right now there's a clean room Photoshop and Premiere called Photocraft and Filmcraft. Haven't used them but they do look like something from Adobe.
 
DukenukemX said:
Right now there's a clean room Photoshop and Premiere called Photocraft and Filmcraft. Haven't used them but they do look like something from Adobe.
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Interesting. I wasn't aware of those. I'll have to give them a try,

My needs in that area are pretty limited though. I've been happy with the likes of Gimp, even though it really just resembles the capabilities Photoishop 6 from ca 2000.

DukenukemX said:
I had problems just playing WoW Classic, which at the time was TBC. Battle net would screw up every month and I would have to hunt down a solution. Those solutions weren't obvious either. That was before I found out about Heroic Game Launcher which automatically uses GE-PROTON.
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As far as gaming goes, I haven't tried the latest and greatest yet. 2021 was probably about the last time I did, and my experience mimicked yours, that it was really cool how far it had come, but it wasn't quite ready yet, at least for me.

From what I have read, in the last couple of years most of that gap has been closed. When I finally get my game machine back up and running after the never ending custom project, I'm looking forward to give Linux gaming a try and see if I am finally happy with it.
 
DukenukemX said:
You'll be on Windows for a while because Microsoft is going to ride that enshittification edge until Windows 12. I imagine that you can't avoid not logging into your Microsoft account by Windows 12.

Wasn't easy for me when I did it in 2021. I've been using Linux since around 2013 but never my main PC. It's always some laptop or NAS/HTPC server that I use Linux. When Windows 11 was released then I figure that was the time to switch. I had problems just playing WoW Classic, which at the time was TBC. Battle net would screw up every month and I would have to hunt down a solution. Those solutions weren't obvious either. That was before I found out about Heroic Game Launcher which automatically uses GE-PROTON. Right now there's a clean room Photoshop and Premiere called Photocraft and Filmcraft. Haven't used them but they do look like something from Adobe.
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I have played Diablo 4 fine on proton, Civ series up to the latest, Arc Raiders, The Finals, all work great, most games that wont work have kernel level anti-cheats.

https://www.protondb.com/explore
 
Windows (11) annoyed me one time too many last year so I decided to try Linux on my main desktop. I play games but not competive shooters, and my computer is also my TV so I watch TV shows and movies on it. LG OLED 65" CX, Ryzen 7950X, Radeon 9070XT, 32G RAM, Intel X540 10G NIC, SoundBlaster AE5-Plus.

Started with Debian Trixie because it seemed the most supported and stable. Software-wise? Everything I tried worked fine. Hardware-wise? Everything worked except HDR (all washed out) and the soundcard (stereo only, I needed Dolby Digital for my 5.1 audio system) so I went back to Windows 11.

I talked about the problems I was having with it on this forum and someone suggested trying Kubuntu (25.10) since it had a much more recent version of KDE with improved HDR support -- and the HDR worked perfectly! Still couldn't get my Dolby Digital working. I decided I'd have to break down and hook up the 5.1 system using analog outputs and I could live with it. Right after I bought the cables to do this, of course the 5.1 Dolby Digital... just started working on it's own.

It wasn't any updates that made it work, I had everything in the system updated immediately after install. After a couple of re-installations, I tracked it to installing the MPV player (a video player that supports HDR playback), I don't know why but shortly after installing it (and only after installing it) the Dolby Digital support just shows up.

Mostly smooth sailing ever since. I DID run into problems installing games onto my NTFS partitioned drive. The fix for that was to install them on an Ext4 partitioned drive instead -- apparently Heroic and Steam use symlinks and filenames that don't work on NTFS. After about 3 months of never rebooting over to Windows, I just deleted it and recovered the space.

I have a Windows VM for a couple of utilities that I still prefer using but it only gets fired up a few times a month. Some things in Linux are easier to do than in Windows and vice-versa. Overall, it all equals out to be about the same level of effort; just without the annoyances.

My wife and kids are still on Windows 11, and I still keep up with their system maintenance for them. My wife has no troubles switching between our machines -- she's fine on either. I don't preach the Linux gospel, but for me, it pretty much just works. I've been on DOS from 3.3 on up, OS/2 2.1 and Warp 3.0, and every version of Windows from 3.0 to 11 INCLUDING Windows 2000 Pro (the overall best Windows release ever IMHO). And I was surprised to discover that I don't miss it.
 
mvmiller12 said:
Mostly smooth sailing ever since. I DID run into problems installing games onto my NTFS partitioned drive. The fix for that was to install them on an Ext4 partitioned drive instead -- apparently Heroic and Steam use symlinks and filenames that don't work on NTFS. After about 3 months of never rebooting over to Windows, I just deleted it and recovered the space.
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The NTFS drive I have is for Windows 10. Otherwise I've moved everything to EXT4.
My wife and kids are still on Windows 11, and I still keep up with their system maintenance for them. My wife has no troubles switching between our machines -- she's fine on either. I don't preach the Linux gospel, but for me, it pretty much just works. I've been on DOS from 3.3 on up, OS/2 2.1 and Warp 3.0, and every version of Windows from 3.0 to 11 INCLUDING Windows 2000 Pro (the overall best Windows release ever IMHO). And I was surprised to discover that I don't miss it.
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Linux is not ready yet for normies to use. Until the day comes that I can just double click on a .exe and run it like it's on Windows is the day I can recommend Linux. Even better, double click a .exe and the OS warns me that a native Linux version exits of this app. Until then I can't recommend Linux for someone who can barely use a computer.
 
DukenukemX said:
The NTFS drive I have is for Windows 10. Otherwise I've moved everything to EXT4.

Linux is not ready yet for normies to use. Until the day comes that I can just double click on a .exe and run it like it's on Windows is the day I can recommend Linux. Even better, double click a .exe and the OS warns me that a native Linux version exits of this app. Until then I can't recommend Linux for someone who can barely use a computer.
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Since web apps became a thing who is actually clicking on exe's? Certainly not grandma, or grandpa. They pretty much use the browser for everything. I would estimate 90% of the regular users do as well. We're at a place were a large amount of people don't even have desktops anymore. They use their phones and a lot of them from Apple or Android with Windows no where to be seen. I use full blown applications for some really niche things like transcoding, messing around with AI, some graphical design stuff. None of that is mainstream.

In terms of Linux being ready, I think its ready for the people that think it is and it's not for the people who think it's not. The people who think its ready largely use it without issue. The people who don't think its ready will always have some crazy set up that can't be catered to because it's not mainstream enough.
 
kac77 said:
Since web apps became a thing who is actually clicking on exe's? Certainly not grandma, or grandpa. They pretty much use the browser for everything. I would estimate 90% of the regular users do as well. We're at a place were a large amount of people don't even have desktops anymore. They use their phones and a lot of them from Apple or Android with Windows no where to be seen. I use full blown applications for some really niche things like transcoding, messing around with AI, some graphical design stuff. None of that is mainstream.

In terms of Linux being ready, I think its ready for the people that think it is and it's not for the people who think it's not. The people who think its ready largely use it without issue. The people who don't think its ready will always have some crazy set up that can't be catered to because it's not mainstream enough.
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My father-in-law and mother-in-law use the computers I built them quite a lot. They're in their early 80's and late 70's, and not tech savvy at all (my wife's side of the family are all not techy). They prefer downloading and sending photos, reading their e-mails on Outlook, watching videos, printing things out, opening files they need to look at, and looking at social media posts, etc., on a nice 27" 2K monitor. They have iPhones, iPad's, and even a Macbook. Yet, they don't sit on a comfy sofa while on them, instead they go to the computer that has Windows 11 Pro (father-in-law accidentally upgraded, but isn't complaining, so I left it at Windows 11 Pro), and Windows 10 Pro with ESU (mother-in-law). I could easily switch them to a Linux distro like Linux Mint, and they'd eventually figure it out, but would take a lot of time on my part to organize things for them in a way they're familiar with.
 
AI desktop computer use is becoming so good already, that it would be a big mistake for microsoft to not be at the forefront R&D and be ready.... unlike an apple they will launch stuff not ready for the mainstream and subpart, leaving Anthropic-OpenAI win this I feel like.
 
kac77 said:
Since web apps became a thing who is actually clicking on exe's?
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A lot of people still expect to download something and double click it. You'd be surprised how many people were wondering how to get TurboTax installed. Web apps are more for people who grew up on ChromeBooks.
Certainly not grandma, or grandpa. They pretty much use the browser for everything.
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Until they try to install WeatherBug. There was a time when I secretly installed Linux Mint on my Aunt's laptop and made it look and sound like Windows. She knew something was up when she tried to install WeatherBug. The reason I did it was because she kept getting malware. Shocking, I know.
I would estimate 90% of the regular users do as well. We're at a place were a large amount of people don't even have desktops anymore. They use their phones and a lot of them from Apple or Android with Windows no where to be seen. I use full blown applications for some really niche things like transcoding, messing around with AI, some graphical design stuff. None of that is mainstream.
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That's a nice theory but there's a reason why Apple made the Neo with MacOS and not iPadOS. Same goes for Google with their new Googlebook OS which is replacing ChromeOS. I still get people who try to read PDF's and print documents with their iPhones and fail. I'm not joking when a signed PDF document shows the signature on the iPhone as boxes. Someone tried to print with their iPhone on my new Canon laser printer and couldn't. They then decided to connect my printer wireless and broke the LAN connection.

In terms of Linux being ready, I think its ready for the people that think it is and it's not for the people who think it's not. The people who think its ready largely use it without issue. The people who don't think its ready will always have some crazy set up that can't be catered to because it's not mainstream enough.
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It depends on your use case. I would definitely do my research on what you can and can't live with when switching to Linux. There's a reason why Linux usage drops around September according to Statcounter, and this also applies to Macs. If there's software your school needs you to run and they see Linux, then they're telling you to get another laptop or reinstall Windows. The only difference is last year Windows 10 support ended and a lot of people jumped onto Mac. Look at how Linux went from 8.7% in August to 4.5% in September? I'm surprised nobody talked about the massive 8.7% for Linux? Linux was just 2% away from matching MacOS. After school started it's a good 5% difference.
 
DukenukemX said:
A lot of people still expect to download something and double click it. You'd be surprised how many people were wondering how to get TurboTax installed. Web apps are more for people who grew up on ChromeBooks.
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? Turbotax has been web for a while, so has Office. Photoshop released a web version in 2023. Are you saying that people are seeking out the exe's over web?
 
kac77 said:
? Turbotax has been web for a while, so has Office. Photoshop released a web version in 2023. Are you saying that people are seeking out the exe's over web?
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Yes, they are seeking out the exe's due to old habits. I also wouldn't use Photoshop in a web browser. Something like TurboTax is perfectly fine.
 
There was no way in hell MS was ever going to walkback any of those things. Too much money has been dumped into AI to not get a return on it. At no point in time did I ever think MS would drop any of that. It was a pause to let the furor die down, especially with regards to Recall, and then it was going to be full speed ahead with even more stuff.

As I said, MS like every other company which has dumped way too much money into AI, must start seeing some returns on the investment.
 
There's always going to be some form of balance between executables and web-based versions of applications. It's nice to have browser extensions, but there's a lot of browsers out there besides just the more popular ones that don't have them. There's also going to be lockdowns on them by companies, whether it's those who own or develop the OS, browser, or application. The mainstream are more versatile than you might realize. Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux are the big 4 (or big 3, if you want to lump Android and Linux together), and every non-techy people I know are familiar with at least two of them, if not three. My wife - Mac (old iPads), Android (Pixel 6a), and Windows (PC). Her parents, just two (iPhones, iPad, Macbook, and Windows PC). My daughter - Android phone and tablet, Chromebook for school, Windows for PC.

I've never worked at a company that didn't get standard Windows-issued workstations. There were a few developers who preferred Macs, but those were outliers - they also preferred Linux servers instead of Windows servers. That'll likely change, as the EU and European countries not part of the EU are switching to Linux and ditching Windows. I could see more U.S. companies doing the same. I don't ever see web-based and cloud-based ever being the standard. There's too much risk of losing data, lack of redundancy, control, security, connection, etc.
 
The hell do you mean, I lost? I wasn't planning on buying a Copilot+ PC anyway, sounds more like Microsoft's losing my money to me.

My 14900K/RTX 5090 build still runs Windows 11 for the time being, but that's largely because it's not just a gaming PC, but a flight sim/VR-centric gaming PC that gives me concerns about peripheral support on Linux. (I'll eat my damn hat if the MOZA AB9 has working FFB under Linux.)

For everything else, there's Linux. Or maybe macOS. Most everything's done through a Web browser nowadays, it doesn't matter too much what OS I'm using so long as it can run modern Web browsers and isn't actively trying to piss me off. The next step is just pivoting more of those commonly used Web apps to self-hosted ones, which means - you guessed it - more Linux.
 
SmokeRngs said:
There was no way in hell MS was ever going to walkback any of those things. Too much money has been dumped into AI to not get a return on it. At no point in time did I ever think MS would drop any of that. It was a pause to let the furor die down, especially with regards to Recall, and then it was going to be full speed ahead with even more stuff.

As I said, MS like every other company which has dumped way too much money into AI, must start seeing some returns on the investment.
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Trump declared anyone who doesn't use the term Super AI is an enemy of the white house. What this means is that the AI bubble isn't going to fall apart without a lot of government intervention AKA tax payer money. The US economy depends on the AI bubble not popping, which means the rest of us will suffer. I doubt AI could make the kind of profits that's needed to to pay back these tech companies have created. If the tech companies don't have to pay back their debt then they'll continue to drain the economy. This also means we're getting AI, and if we don't like it then you're the enemy.

View: https://youtu.be/iDybrNkaWtY?si=x-RuaYvdOPdBfvg-
megas xlr everything is the enemy.gif
 
It's probably only a matter of time before an open-source Windows clone is made via AI, without data-harvesting, ads, bloat, backdoors, etc. It's already happening to a lot of commercial software, and it's going to happen to everything.

Ubisoft's CEO envisioned a future where gamers wouldn't own their game or even run them on their PCs - where everything would run off Ubisoft servers, fully taking away end-user control and rights. But instead of the future being "you'll own nothing", it's going to be, at least in terms of software, "you'll own whatever you want". The big publishers are set to completely lose the war they fought against ownership.


View: https://youtu.be/eFB79TYI-Vw


View: https://youtu.be/GSNZ0xco92c
 
Delicieuxz said:
It's probably only a matter of time before an open-source Windows clone is made via AI, without data-harvesting, ads, bloat, backdoors, etc. It's already happening to a lot of commercial software, and it's going to happen to everything.

Ubisoft's CEO envisioned a future where gamers wouldn't own their game or even run them on their PCs - where everything would run off Ubisoft servers, fully taking away end-user control and rights. But instead of the future being "you'll own nothing", it's going to be, at least in terms of software, "you'll own whatever you want". The big publishers are set to completely lose the war they fought against ownership.


View: https://youtu.be/eFB79TYI-Vw


View: https://youtu.be/GSNZ0xco92c
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But isn't it the whole point people don't like Windows 11 because of AI? Seems contradictory that AI would make an AI-less clone of Windows.
 
Delicieuxz said:
It's probably only a matter of time before an open-source Windows clone is made via AI, without data-harvesting, ads, bloat, backdoors, etc. It's already happening to a lot of commercial software, and it's going to happen to everything.
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ReactOS is an open source Windows. No AI used here.
Ubisoft's CEO envisioned a future where gamers wouldn't own their game or even run them on their PCs - where everything would run off Ubisoft servers, fully taking away end-user control and rights. But instead of the future being "you'll own nothing", it's going to be, at least in terms of software, "you'll own whatever you want". The big publishers are set to completely lose the war they fought against ownership.


View: https://youtu.be/eFB79TYI-Vw


View: https://youtu.be/GSNZ0xco92c
Click to expand...

We're moving rapidly towards games where they can be decomped to run on anything. We're well past Denovo here. It doesn't matter really as AAA games are AAA slop now.
 
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