Even my mother of 75 years switched to a Mac. Microsoft does not understand the effect of these stupid decisions.
They also don’t seem to realize that MacOS was the operating system for many demos on the just finished dotnetConf …
If your developers don’t want to use your system how do you expect others to use it…
My answers is that Satya Nadella is betting the farm on LLMs/AI and, even if it's a path toward failure, Nadella has built enough credibility from past results that he will allowed to go a long way before the board or investors will start trying to rein him in. This could be Nadella's "let's buy Yahoo" moment.
In a sci-fi world that sounds nice, the tweet makes it sound like you could get a computer which Captain Picard can ask "Computer, scan all ship systems for information about Spot the cat" and the AI can talk to different systems (Windows apps) and ask it about information relevant to Spot (i.e. which has been tagged with metadata like subject=Spot).
In reality, it's Microsoft. Click this popup now to get 12 months free of 1TB OneDrive, and Copilot 365!
OK, the headline got borked into ungrammatical garbage, but that's probably an HN filter thing.
MS is going all-in on something the users don't want... surprise! Your OS is going to be involuntarily made all-AI all-the-time. And somehow, this fundamental change isn't even worthy of a rev; it's still "Windows 11" - FWIW.
My favorite part of the article is when they refer to it (apparently accidentally) as MS Widows.
The problem is that I don't really trust a big company to have an agent monitoring me let alone all the phoning home it does, but in an alternative universe, I can see the vision here as creating something that is closer to a starship-type OS from scifi where interactions are increasingly natural. That's interesting, but at the same time, what does it mean when the computer has its own kind of volition and is more loyal to the company than to you?
It would be wonderful if this were the final blow for Windows as a classic PC operating system and if Linux were to establish itself on the desktop as a more than reasonable, indeed unavoidable, alternative. The problem with AI is that it offers apparent solutions to non-existent problems. How long will big tech continue to back a horse that the general public does not want to ride?
PC manufacturers are bribed to use Windows, as always. Windows has a Soviet problem, it's like an Iron Curtain and most users will never thing of leaving it, if they do it's with kgb tourism agent called WSL. If Windows is a horse your certainly do not ride it, it rides you.
We've been working against the direction of capitalism and human nature for fifty years to achieve the promise of software, in all its theoretical beauty. It was always an uphill battle, but the glimmer of possibility never completely disappeared. In all this time, I never could have guessed that AI would be the thing to finally kill the promise of software.
> Microsoft's Windows chief Pavan Davuluri had earlier hinted at such plans already about how the next evolution of OS will make it capable enough to make it "semantically understand you" as Windows will get "more ambient, more pervasive, more multi-modal". Using features like Copilot Vision it will be able to "look at your screen" and do more.
These are not words that usually leads to user shouting "Yay, finally, what a pleasure this is to use now!". Why even use the word "pervasive" and the term "look at your screen", almost sounds like it's intentional to turn a specific segment of users away.
I feel like we're still discovering how security, privacy and LLMs connect together. Add in a OS-available MCP that has access to your computer and applications, and I feel like it's way too early to integrate it on that level, especially when they at the same time say "security is our top priority".
I guess now is the best time to switch to Linux. MacOS 26 being super sluggish and looking like a soap bubble game for children. Windows becoming a SkyNet OS. Meanwhile Steam just announced their new hardware on SteamOS, emphasizing that users still own their hardware and can install whatever they want.
Linux (with the "traditional" userspace) is a mess on the inside, has always been, and will always be. It blows my mind that there still isn't a universal, easy way to compile binaries that would run on any distro, of any version — something that all other mainstream OSes have solved from day one.
Yes, I know that AppImage and Flatpak are a thing. No, they are not the answer, because they, too, all come with their own issues.
As long as debloat and spyware-removing software such as Win10Privacy continue to exist, I’ll have at least one system still running a pro workstation version of Windows.
But damn, they seem to be doing everything they can to drive users away.
Individuals aren't Microsoft's core customer which is why they don't care. It's the same reason Apple never went after the enterprise. Steve Jobs wanted people to choose the product, not have it chosen for them.
For Microsoft, they don't care. Businesses/IT Departments are the ones choosing and shoving it on everyone else. The users don't have to like it.
It’s Vista 2! I switched to Mac in 2008, and I just did it again a few days ago.
Reality is that almost everything I do is Linux, but Office with its horrific file formats keep it around. Fortunately Visio is nearly dead, 3 to go.
For anyone who devs C++ on Windows because they still prefer visual studio over having to manage cmake on Linux, I've found meson to be a much friendlier build system and has really good integration with VSCode.
And if you're like me and hate bourne-like shells (sh, bash, zsh), powershell works on linux and mac and there's also nushell and fish, which have nicer syntax but I've had compatibility issues in the past
To stop being used by Windows and use Linux, ask for help with some friend that already use it. This is a great start.
If you don't have anyone that use Linux, you will need to install it and this is the summary of the process for Manjaro Linux:
This is for you that don't even know what Linux is.
- once you got the file, record this ISO to a USB pen drive with Rufus
- reboot your pc and press the key to allow you to choose to boot from the USB
- the usb will boot and Manjaro will open, you can start the install
- once installed, your next reboot will bring Manjaro installed
- start using it, install LibreOffice, video or photo editors, create music, browse the web with Firefox, LibreWolf, degoogled-chromium and you can also use Chrome if you really really want it and other browsers
Configure the programs like email clients and many MANY other programs
Since you already know Windows, you will now learn about computers and you will be the boss of that pc, like updates are when you want it, reboot is when you update and if you really want it
There are many "versions" of Linux, like Manjaro, Ubuntu, Archlinux, Fedora, Red Hat, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, etc.
Each of those versions will usually also allow you to choose your desktop. Windows has one desktop, here you can choose from Plasma, XFCE, Gnome and many many others. Then each allow you to configure the looks and feel. It is this amazing!
Now that you are the owner, the boss, the administrator of that operating system, you start using it. For the first weeks, save your documents to an external drive or pen, because if you have any problem, you will use the installer USB again and delete everything, so you have a backup of your docs. The programs you can install again.
I feel like the stars are all aligned for Linux-on-the-Desktop right now.
- Windows 11 forced-AI integrations and telemetry. Many "old" devices are incompatible
- Windows 10 is officially end-of-life
- MacOS 26 looks and feels like a toy operating system. Performance issues and bugs continue to
pile up and undo the incredible work that Apple hardware teams have done the past decade.
- Omarchy Linux has some substantial hype in the developer world.
- Valve continuing to make Linux a first-class OS for gaming and is pushing forward ease-of-use.
- New hardware from Valve looks to be a great entryway into PC Gaming/Linux for outsiders.
- Framework is becoming more mainstream and has great options at all price points.
I see my decision to sunset Windows and my upcoming migration to Gentoo Linux is already paying off.
Can't wait until my new hardware arrives.
Also really hope that KDE Plasma and GNOME usage statistics go to the moon and Microsoft really shits their bed this time around. With all these enshittification tactics they really deserve it.
46 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 67.7 ms ] threadIn reality, it's Microsoft. Click this popup now to get 12 months free of 1TB OneDrive, and Copilot 365!
MS is going all-in on something the users don't want... surprise! Your OS is going to be involuntarily made all-AI all-the-time. And somehow, this fundamental change isn't even worthy of a rev; it's still "Windows 11" - FWIW.
My favorite part of the article is when they refer to it (apparently accidentally) as MS Widows.
These are not words that usually leads to user shouting "Yay, finally, what a pleasure this is to use now!". Why even use the word "pervasive" and the term "look at your screen", almost sounds like it's intentional to turn a specific segment of users away.
I feel like we're still discovering how security, privacy and LLMs connect together. Add in a OS-available MCP that has access to your computer and applications, and I feel like it's way too early to integrate it on that level, especially when they at the same time say "security is our top priority".
Yes, I know that AppImage and Flatpak are a thing. No, they are not the answer, because they, too, all come with their own issues.
Fast, a slight learning curve(took me a weekend), and I'm back gaming and coding regularly.
But damn, they seem to be doing everything they can to drive users away.
I love using my PC, but in the past couple of years it’s become my Steam and emulation box, and for tinkering.
They need to step up.
Individuals aren't Microsoft's core customer which is why they don't care. It's the same reason Apple never went after the enterprise. Steve Jobs wanted people to choose the product, not have it chosen for them.
For Microsoft, they don't care. Businesses/IT Departments are the ones choosing and shoving it on everyone else. The users don't have to like it.
Why do I feel like Neowin is using AI to write its articles?
The AI models that everyone wants to use are cloud based. What is the purpose of AI hardware on users' machine?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42678822
And if you're like me and hate bourne-like shells (sh, bash, zsh), powershell works on linux and mac and there's also nushell and fish, which have nicer syntax but I've had compatibility issues in the past
This is for you that don't even know what Linux is.
Welcome. Read below:
- download an ISO file from https://manjaro.org/products/download/x86 and choose a desktop to use, Plasma is cute, XFCE4 is mega fast and Gnome is mac-like desktop
- once you got the file, record this ISO to a USB pen drive with Rufus
- reboot your pc and press the key to allow you to choose to boot from the USB
- the usb will boot and Manjaro will open, you can start the install
- once installed, your next reboot will bring Manjaro installed
- start using it, install LibreOffice, video or photo editors, create music, browse the web with Firefox, LibreWolf, degoogled-chromium and you can also use Chrome if you really really want it and other browsers
Configure the programs like email clients and many MANY other programs
Since you already know Windows, you will now learn about computers and you will be the boss of that pc, like updates are when you want it, reboot is when you update and if you really want it
There are many "versions" of Linux, like Manjaro, Ubuntu, Archlinux, Fedora, Red Hat, RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, etc.
Each of those versions will usually also allow you to choose your desktop. Windows has one desktop, here you can choose from Plasma, XFCE, Gnome and many many others. Then each allow you to configure the looks and feel. It is this amazing!
Now that you are the owner, the boss, the administrator of that operating system, you start using it. For the first weeks, save your documents to an external drive or pen, because if you have any problem, you will use the installer USB again and delete everything, so you have a backup of your docs. The programs you can install again.
Problably the problem is your hardware. I have installed Fedora and Windows and it did not install, because of reasons.
So what was the problem? Can you install it again?
Can't wait until my new hardware arrives.
Also really hope that KDE Plasma and GNOME usage statistics go to the moon and Microsoft really shits their bed this time around. With all these enshittification tactics they really deserve it.