There's basically no reason to keep using windows.
Debian or Linux Mint are both easy to install, work out of the box, and the only thing that might take a smidge of effort is the 3 commands you gotta run to install gpu drivers.
Steam proton works incredibly well. I ran my entire steam library (most of which were "windows only" games) and even single one worked with proton as is without issues.
I've been using steam link from my debian box for months now and it's smooth as butter.
Not everyone that uses Windows is a gamer. Productivity and creative software (and drivers for their respective devices) remains a sore point for Linux compatibility
Don't get me wrong - I think Microsoft and Windows are absolute trash and I hope to one day see them fall, but people really need to remember that folks do more than just play videogames. Computers are work tools for a lot of people.
Sure, if people willing to change and relearn their entire workflows to switch to alternative software. Something that, in the real world, doesn't happen. When you have a stable, functional tool that is making the income you rely on - the last thing you do is throw it in the trash to replace it with one you don't know how to us or requires extensive (and costly) downtime. Moving system(s) over to Linux can be a business-altering decision depending on what the use is, and they're not going to do it unless they absolutely have to.
This is going to sound harsh, but Linux fans really do need to touch a bit of grass sometimes. As I said in my previous message: computers are work tools for a lot of people. Your computer might be a hobby device that you play games on and tinker with which is great! Good for you! But a lot of people and businesses don't do that.
I'd love to but on my gaming rig Wine/Proton will absolutely refuse to install the Visual C++ runtime, making me unable to play most games. On another, virtually identical, Linux installation it works without issue; in fact, I have fewer weird issues like a game randomly not connecting to EOS.
I consider it karmic justice for buying Nvidia; that's the major difference between the two systems.
(Update: The latest Wine version seems to have fixed this. I'm certainly not complaining.)
At this point there's just a few pieces of software that keep me on Microshitty's teat. Foobar2000 being the biggest one—there simply ain't no good alternative for Linux, and I've tried them all. Freesurround, actual dB scale volume control via Jscript, waveform seekbar, precision spectrum analyzers, modtracker player are just some of the essential plugins, as is ASIO (in addition of bypassing all OS audio stack shenanigans it has the accidental benefit of not only auto-muting , but also auto-stopping auto-playing videos on websites that might slip through uBlock).
Also, Paint.net is so good for converting .dds files. Never got .dds to work properly with Gimp.
DeaDBeeF sort of is similar but doesn't seem to have the plugins I need to do a proper full-screen 10ft GUI, Facets-like library browsing, surround upmix, DLNA streaming to other rooms etc.
I have to give Krita another try and see if it can import/export .dds, but my impression from playing with it for a few hours is that it seems to focus more on digital painting instead of photo manipulation (which modding textures essentially boils down to). I also have my GIMP workflow down to muscle memory, it only takes me minutes to do eg a recolor or upscale+fake details via sharpening and noise.
Probably trying to cash in on some sweet intelligence agency and law enforcement funding for helping the government bypass the 4th Amendment by supplying the government with your data.
It also allows users to search through teleconference meetings they've participated in
I think that this may not be legal for users to have their computer doing in some states. Some states require you to notify the other party before recording phone or videoconference sessions. Maybe if it's not saving audio, it's okay?
EDIT: Yeah, someone on the original beehaw post raised that issue as well.
Holy fucking nope. I wasn't planning on getting Windows 11 and this serves as a great reminder to make the transition to Linux. I've been thinking of picking up a raspberry pi 5 as my next desktop. Anyone want to share their experiences doing something similar?
I would personally avoid the pi 5 for desktop computing purely because it only has micro/mini (whatever they call them) HDMI ports, imo they are kinda awful.
Also do note that being an arm device you will be limited on proprietary software and even among foss stuff will likely have to compile some things yourself.
(P.S. you probably don’t mind if you are considering such a device, but PC gaming on arm devices will take much more setup and the performance might be disappointing when using a x86 emulator like FEX)
Yeah, honestly I don't see the use case for pi as a desktop.
It's cool to have it as a second device running little things you want to have up more of the time, but the desktop performance would be pretty limiting imo for most people.
Honestly with how that company is going you might be better off getting a cheap rig and installing your favourite flavour of Linux. I'm still salty their implementation of surround sound and video decoding can't use the actual power of the chip it's running on.
Wouldn’t go for a full ARM64 system (yet anyway). Too many software incompatibilities. You can pick up the lenovo m-series tiny machines used for dirt cheap and have full x86 compatibility and way faster specs + expandable storage/ram for (m93p tiny, m700, m720 etc). They’re a little bigger than a rpi and use a bit more power but it will save a ton of headaches.
Making the switch to any linux distro is a big jump already, you don’t want to create unnecessary problems.
That's a good point. I hadn't factored in the processor architecture at all, whoops. I've already got plenty of Linux experience though, so I just need to find hardware that can support a wide variety of software. Thanks for the recommendations!
You can get a decent five year old ThinkPad off ebay that will run circles around an rpi5 for most tasks. The price, after case, power supply, and storage won't be that far off either.
My kids use odroid c4 devices. Great for browsing and videos, absolutely no gaming unless it's old and native (quake 2, half life, ...) or browser games like blockpost. They play the bejeezus out of that. All in all pretty good choice. It being both Linux and arm reduces the attack surface a bit considering these are kids with internet access.
If you like the form factor but prefer x86_64 then you could look into UP board series.
Is the AI/copilot integration already rolled out to end users? I haven't seen it myself, but I'm in the EU where it's apparently disabled by default (and I'd like to keep it disabled).
According to the article, this new tool automatically blocks DRM content, but not sensitive, personal data. It can't possibly mean Microsoft care more about copyright than people's rights... right?
Shout out to Hue Sync not working with DRM content despite the lights changing color for a moment so clearly they can sort of see it. I love DRM and HDCP so much 🥰🥰🥰😍💖
To play devils advocate, DRM content is explicitly labeled as such, and is easily detected when it’s “properly” displayed. It’s likely trivial to exclude it from recording. Edit to note: I mean the video data itself is labeled, not the files. In fact most screenshot/recording software already can’t see DRM content out of the box. Try taking a screen grab of Netflix or CrunchyRoll (with a browser or app that has DRM labeling enabled)
Conversely, PII is notoriously hard to detect. It can come in infinite shapes and sizes, on websites, native apps, and images. And it is virtually never flagged in a way that you could programmatically censor it without heavy analysis of each frame. And then, unless you’re supplying it with all PII that will ever be entered into that machine preemptively, it would have to guess at what PII is.
Of course, none of this would be a problem if they actually took the time to explain what this was, and made it an opt-in with clear and concise wording on what it is that you’d be opting into.
It used to be that all versions of windows were fine. Then Home was a mess and you needed Pro or above to stop being nannied. Now you'll need Enterprise to not be nannied and spied on. The cost is completely worth it.
I do NOT blindly hate windows. It runs software today that existed 30 years ago. I haven't had a real blue screen since my Win98 machine that was upgraded to XP. It just works, it works well, and gives my company life. Linux is a mess comparatively unless you want to tinker. And yes I also daily drive nix machines, and only fan bois don't see how hassle free windows can be comparatively.
The big words are can be. Because out of the box, they're making it worse and worse. I don't have a Microsoft account, local only. And boy do they not like that. Enterprise doesn't force updates at all, I can keep my machine up and running indefinitely like the old days. The only issue I have today with Win11 is the forced task tray "overflow" menu that nobody asked for and nobody wants. Currently no way to disable without hacks, and if it isn't fixed soon then I'll do that.
But this screen shotting malware cannot happen. I know there are many places where it legally cannot happen. Therefore there will have to be a way to disable it or install a version without it. And that's what I'll be getting.
If Microsoft sold a Windows 11 Platinum Edition 3000 for $2000 that just gave you all the knobs like XP and let you shoot yourself, I'd buy it. Totally worth it.
You don’t have to be a fan boy to have an opinion. Windows is not user friendly in any way. People just know it. My Linux desktops are more robust and hands off than my Windows ones. Of course that won’t apply to all situations.
I have never encountered a user oriented Linux experience that is more hands-off that Windows this decade.
My embedded Linux systems, sure. The Linux backends in a closed system, sure. But something that is interacted with, not a chance. People love to hate Microsoft but there is a reason why they have the install base they do.
I have no problem paying for software at this point in my life. But I won't pay for a subscription. And if I pay oodles of money, I'd hope Microsoft would opt me out of all the crap they hope to make money on with an install base like ads and inevitably copilot data sales.
40 seconds when I guess windows "defender" or some "protection endpoint" uploads the clicked item to some microsoft server, wakes up Bill Gates, waits for an "OK" before returning access to the computer (and displays the context menu).
Same if you dare look at c:
Suct great OS. So productivity. So tinker free.
BTW it was worse before I removed some items from the context menu by editing the registry.
That's your corporate overlords screwing up your system. Not Daddy Gates. Yet.
Enterprise is something almost no standard corporate drone uses. The benefits are really for nerds and IT people. But it is a requirement for Xeon processors, and most of my machines are Xeon including my laptop.
This is Microsoft, an American corporation, actively developing the things the Internet spazzes out about China probably doing. How happy this makes China? Buddy, imagine how happy this makes every marketing company in the world, your local police department, and your own government, all of which have a much more vested interest in everything you do on your computer and are considerably more of a threat to you than the ruling party of a country on the other side of the planet. Seriously, y'all need to get your fucking priorities in order. It's borderline satire how fast your average Lemmy user slaps the China Panic button as soon as a privacy-related issue hits their front page.
Remeber when Microsoft banned some Xbox players for screenshots they took in singleplayer, local games? Because it turns out all screenshots were uploaded to the cloud without properly informing users?
That’s not even the best part. The best part is that some games will take screenshots automatically, by default. Some of the photos were then also uploaded automatically to Xbox cloud. Their automated system then banned players for sharing “prohibited” content.
If its processed locally and sent nowhere, why is this a concern? Unless otherwise.
Edit: I phrased it wrong. If MS claims its processed locally, and is like a second eye, why they would provide an exception to DRM contents. This could mean that some data might get sent to MS servers and transfer of DRM content is banned, this poses a legal risk. Who knows.
I think you've misunderstood the comment above. They're asking why snapshotting DRM-protected content would be a problem if everything stays local, implying that since it's a problem it does not stay local
The non-fun answer is that they're most likely just using the default screenshot mechanism, which already blocks that. Other programs like KeePassXC, which also hides itself from screenshots and recordings (unless allowed) will probably not be included either.
KeepassXC seems to register as DRM protected content (I think...) for me, kills moonlight streams while it's up so at the very least using a password manager (which you already should be using) would be protected?
I already daily drive debian on my lab computer and laptop, guest I'll be swapping my desktop over in the not to distant future...
"Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says.
It's conspicuous that this statement talks only about the raw screenshots, not any data derived from them (such as aggregated data, inferred data, or even just slightly reprocessed data). So Microsoft could do any minor reworking of the data and send it off to the cloud for their own purposes, while technically complying with the above.
now when have Microsoft ever lied before?
I mean, other than the falsified evidence they submitted during their legal battle with the US Department of Justice.
Honestly, it's less about trusting Microsoft than the inherently flawed nature of a closed source operating system. There's no way a user can tell what's really going on behind the curtain. Maybe that was okay before, but I think the capabilities of AI have pushed us past that point.
