When I first tried it (back in 2010) it was pretty rough all around but after trying it again recently due to the whole TPM requirement for Windows 11 I've found it to be really straight forward
Linux Mint is really user friendly and is what I've even put on my grandma's pc
Your grandma probably hates the fact that you did though. There's a small chance that's not the case but I'd be shocked if she hadn't complained about it many times to other people.
You say that but at the same time there’s a linuxmemes post in my feed right now where people are joking about how broken drivers require an OS reinstall so you know
Also there are distros that are more volatile, but all of the most popular ones are extremely dummy proof and intuitive. See Pop_OS!, EndeavourOS, or Mint for example.
It's just a little different nowadays. Like the other user said, they just don't know they have a choice or what to choose and follow whatever they know...
And what was one of the early bolsheviks' regime strongest points? They created schools and made people literate en masse, and did it with their own curriculum. People became less suspective to ex elites and religious propaganda, and became their target audience.
Adobe, Google, MS give discounts and special programs for education because this way people get used to their products. Many local organizations that touch these casual users don't have a real IT department and just flow with what's given, they don't make an informed choice like corporations. And that's probably the place where this switch may even start to begin. A class of students who started with e.g. KDE Plasma would be used to it more than they used to Windows, same with other software. They can already do their homework and play most games. What else do they need?
The sharp corner is to find money to fund select schools to show others it's not scary and makes it even cheaper for them in the long run, maybe some special troubleshooting team to teach them the ropes. I've heard from some users there and on reddit that their computer classes with a geeky teacher who installed Linux is how they've rolled in without a problem.
I figured on my gaming and VR rig that I’d begrudgingly upgrade it to W11 when W10 stopped receiving security updates and support but at this point the recall feature (which will be used to train LLMs regardless of what Microsoft promises or guarantees) has ensured that I never install that kind of spyware as an operating system.
I’d rather spend forever troubleshooting and getting my Valve Index to work with Ubuntu than deal with a giant backdoor.
I would also suggest not Ubuntu, and instead say you should give Bazzite a try. They are specifically interested in gaming with Steam (they even have a spin for running on Steam Deck). They might have already put in the work troubleshooting the distro with your VR gear.
A lot of people here seem to be missing the nuance.
Sure, it’s problematic for their consumer market share, but you’re right that that’ll probably be forgotten by the mostly tech-illiterate populace over time. But that’s not the problem.
Step 0 of MS’s plan for this should have been “make sure there is an absolutely bulletproof and ironclad way to disable that stuff completely for enterprise customers”. And they didn’t do that. So now, enterprise IT writ large is going to… you know… just not buy any of these devices. Which is absolutely their right.
But the really frustrating bit is that MS may have significantly harmed the rollout of ARM-based laptops (as well as x86 chips with beefy NN-optimized tiles) with this, and additionally done real, massive harm to Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm by doing so. All three of those manufacturers have gone to ENORMOUS lengths to roll this tech out, largely at MS’s behest. They’re all going to take this on the chin if the rollout goes poorly. And the rollout is already going poorly.
But MS thought they could Apple-handwave away the details. And they can’t, because a lot of people who understand the absurd security implications of continuous capture and OCR and plaintext storage of the OCR output. It’s not something you can handwave away. It’s entirely a non-starter in the context of maintaining organizational security (as well as personal data security, but we’ve already talked about why that’s a bit of a moot point with the general public). But enterprise IT largely does try to take their job seriously, and they are collectively calling MS’s bluff.
The problem for the long term is that MS has pretty much proven to the IT industry with this stunt that they can’t be trusted to make software that conforms to their needs. That’s a stain that isn’t going to go away any time soon. It might even be the spark that finally triggers enterprise to move away from MS as a primary client OS. After all, Linux is WAY easier to manage from a security perspective.
TL;DR: the issue is that MS has significantly damaged their reputation with this stunt. And you can’t buy reputation.
Edit:
The article has an update:
Update noon ET June 7, 2024:Microsoft has released a statement noting it is making three significant changes to how Recal works including making it opt-in during setup, requiring Windows Hello to enable Recall, proof of presence is now required to view your timeline, and search in Recall, and adding additional layers of data protection including “just in time” decryption protected by Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) so that snapshots will only be decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates.
It’s definitely a move in the right direction… but it also begs the question of why didn’t they do that in the first fucking place? Seriously, some heads are gonna roll over how badly this whole release was planned, and the very clear lack of due diligence.
Microsoft has built a number of safety features into Windows Recall to ensure that the service can't run secretly in the background. When Windows Recall is enabled, it places a permanent visual indicator icon on the Taskbar to let the user know that Windows Recall is capturing data. This icon cannot be hidden or moved.
Ya, a PR nightmare for the next 15 minutes until the next unbelievable thing comes along and the ADD nature of people forgets windows is watching everything they do.
That's usually what I think too, but after watching how Twitter's gone to shit since the two big user departures, I think this could legitimately affect Microsoft's bottom line.
That will rely on businesses moving away from Windows. That is where they make a ton of their money with Enterprise licenses and Office 365 subscriptions.
If you look at sysadmin forums and groups it seems like most recommend disabling recall. Just about every enterprise will have confidentiality, security, or legislative requirements that recall is simply inconsistent with. It's understandably been a hot topic.
Twitter is a great example of the exact opposite being true. Are people upset? Absolutely. Did they leave the platform? Nope. Maybe a small percentage.
Twitter definitely lost a ton of users and tons continue to leave. That's why advertisers have pulled out and their stock price has tanked. Twitter is a bad example
Twitter definitely lost a ton of users and tons continue to leave.
Define "tons"? As a percentage, it is miniscule, and it remains the place where politicians, companies and other entities make public announcements. It's also, for some reason, the only platform supported for customer support from various companies.
I believe the biggest thing that will hurt MS is moving to subscription. The vast majority of users aren't gonna wanna have a forever fee when they buy a laptop/PC
A lot of people would have huge bursts of negativity about this, but at the same time remain stubborn enough to not even consider evaluating alternatives. Microsoft and Apple spent decades making sure this would work
My mom only really browses the web, writes emails, and edits and occasional document. I've given her my old XPS 9350, with Fedora installed on it, and she's been very happy with it. Keeps saying that everything just makes sense, and when she needs something, it's easy to find. She's far from tech savvy, but not completely clueless either
You’re right - many consumers will likely forget about it and just use it anyways. But enterprise customers absolutely, categorically will not. Even with their damage control, this is still going to hurt them a lot. Moreover, it’s going to hurt hardware sales from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, all of which have dumped MASSIVE amounts of capital into this tech. This is going to slow the rollout of NN-optimized chip tiles, and that is going to directly hit their bottom line. Microsoft hurt themselves AND the three most important hardware partners they have.
MacOS has had spotlight search which searches any shit in your computer in 0.1s for over 10 years now. We have a pity search engine that takes 5 minutes to look up for a slightly obscure file in your computer and this piece of shit is all that they can come up with?
This is exactly the kind of shit I don't ever want my fucking computer doing. You don't need to track shit. You do what I tell you and then you shut the fuck up.
TRY OUR EXTRA SPECIAL DISCOUNT ONEDRIVE PLAN!!! USE EDGE!!!! LOOK AT THESE FANTASTIC APPS YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED!!!! HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? THERE'S NO ESCAPE!!!!!
I shouldn't have to fight with my devices. It's the exact reason I got rid of my iPhone. When you fight against something long enough, you end up migrating to devices/software that let you do the crap you need to.
I mean, it can track the files on the drive and make searching for things I have on the computer faster (indexing). Or it would on a good OS, anyway. 🤷🏻♂️
(It knows you, it sees all that you do)
(You cant hide)
(....)
(You thought so much about whether or not you Could, that you didn't think about if you should)
(quite a scary thing)
(to be so fully Known)
(I hope that there is going to be a way to disable that)
(The bit outside the brackets is always the Entity and anything inside brackets is stuff that has nothing to do with the Entitys or is just an explanation ^^)
(I am just trying to differentiate these two bits)
Sources say AI Explorer features a UI that runs along the top of the screen, and lets users recall memories based on the user's inputted search criteria. Because AI Explorer is recording and triaging everything you do on your computer, anything and everything becomes something you can search for.
Hello Billy, how are you today? Do you want to search for more incest porn, or may I serve you some 'hot milfs in your area', like last tuesday? Or perhaps you need a new fleshlight, considering how worn-down your current one is. And by the way, next time you use that, it would be great if you could cover your camera. Even an AI has its limits, thank you so very much. Remember: I see everything and I cannot ever forget, even if I might want to.
So I'm trying to figure out a way to jip Microsoft. We've already got a way to activate windows for free, but LTSC images need to be available - because that's where we get away from Microsoft's bullshit.
Unless Microsoft removes access to DISM and gp, we'll still be able to cut off that "always online" limb.
That's not, wasn't, and never will be free even if you don't ritual with your Talisman, the dollar.
Closed source software isn't about making money. That's just a sucker tool to vacuum people that accept shit-worse-than slavery from the dollar.
Free means to ditch any and all software that some person you don't gorram know bar one pedophile who stole everyone else's written software and turned around selling it promising what it does. Even he doesn't know jack fucking squat about what it really does.
If you flip that for the trust you gave over the then the news is that you're an even more gullible sucker and it isn't a gamble on whether or not the next software cracker will kidnap the rest of your family as well.
The life of everyone in your family will inevitably become the truth serum regenex for Steve Jobs when they unfreeze his ass. If you think he really is dead then you weren't paying the fuck attention to his stock market vaccine six months before his ice cube.
what specs do you have? im wondering since im planning to install it on my school laptop (lenovo thinkpad 11e 4th gen, 4gb ram, 128gb ssd, intel celeron, integrated graphics.) and in wondering if it would work somewhat fast, especially at web browsing.
My apologies on the late reply, I currently have Bazzite on three devices,
My main PC: Ryzen 7 3700X, RX 5600, 64Gb DDR.
My main laptop, a Lenovo E590.
And my backup laptop: A Lenovo L412.
So far, I prefer it over windows on all three.
And removing one of the best features, the subsystem for android. It stops making sense from many people's perspectives and using a linux program like waydroid would probably be better than using android studio on Windows11.
For the average user, with maybe a little bit of IT knowledge but doesn't work in IT, what can we do for ourselves and our families other than go to win 11 eventually?
Unironically, switch to Linux. Mainstream distros like Mint, PopOS or Ubuntu are very friendly for casual users, have GUIs for everything and if something does go wrong, the error messages actually have proper meaning and you'll find tons of resources online as well as people willing to help.
Most stuff nowadays runs in a browser anyway, so here there's no compatibility issues, office is available in Linux through libre office and gaming has come far with steam and proton.
I don't like Canonical either, hence my recommendations for Mint or Pop being listed first. But let's be real, if someone wants to just get away from windows and wants something that works without having to learn much new, this is good enough.
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