“Get it the **** off my system” and “in the trash where it belongs” were common refrains as users voiced their displeasure at having Copilot forced upon them. Numerous reports emerged of people imm…
Have Windows users ever wanted a single thing they added since XP? It seems like every time I upgrade they add some cluttery nonsense I can’t get rid of. I moved to Windows 10 for software compatibility, and I still hate it.
They added a lot of things since XP that I enjoy, like window management, multiple desktops. I don’t know if they were specifically requested by windows users, but contrary to your opinion they are welcome changes. Users don’t always know what they want.
Eh fair, to me that’s just severely outweighed by the bloatware and needing third party apps to customize the UI how I used to like. It feels uglier and bulkier and like they took away a ton of good functions.
Have Windows users ever wanted a single thing they added since XP?
The new terminal for example is a rather neat improvement over the old command prompt, especially with the integration of Linux systems. Winget also is rather nice. Just two examples. So yeah with all the valid criticism Microsoft deserves for quite a bit of policies, I don’t think your hyperbole holds up.
Even the small things. When work upgraded to Win11 overnight and I logged into the Start being in the middle, I almost lost it. Yes, I could fix it, and a few other things, but I had a moment.
I understand it’s not for everyone but I jumped ship to Linux 10 years ago or so. The defining moment was me disabling Cortana only to have her reappear after an update.
At least with Linux when I’m fighting the OS it doesn’t feel like the OS developers are fighting back.
Same motivation here, but it took me until last year to make the switch. Pushing Office on me combined with all the good things I’ve been hearing about gaming on Linux was enough to push me over. I installed in dual boot, but I have never wanted to nor had the need to boot into my Windows install in at least three months.
I did the same thing about the same time as you. I did boot into Windows at one point and it updated, and it absolutely fucked my system. It removed or disabled the boot loader and I think it fucked up the partition table too IIRC. I then removed everything Windows and installed another distro I wanted to try and it’s been smooth sailing since, with no reason to regret removing Windows.
Edit: I was able to recover the partitions, but the Windows section of the bootloader I was never able to get working again after getting it to boot into my Linux install. That’s the moment I decided to just clear out that drive and switch distros.
I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since the 1990s. I’m certainly not opposed to people using Linux on their desktop. But I can definitely think of things, even in 2024, that someone might want Windows for.
If you go and buy a piece of hardware from a vendor, even really obscure stuff, there will almost certainly be a Windows driver. These days, Linux support is pretty common, and stuff like USB device classes providing a standard interface for a lot of hardware deals with a lot of that. But if I were getting something weird like, oh, one of those projectors that displays 3D images on mist, I’d be more-cautious. VR headsets are probably one of the more-prominent recent examples. Yeah, you can get a VR headset for Linux, but not all of the VR headsets out there are Linux-compatible.
Maybe a more-prominent issue – while it’s rare for hardware to not work, it’s more-common for some functionality not to be available. tries to think of an example Okay, here’s one. I have a flightstick and throttle from CH from some years back. These are standard ol’ USB Human Interface Devices. Their axes and buttons are detected, and I can use them just fine. But they also have a little button on both their throttle and joystick that – besides acting as a button – cycles a series of one illuminated LED through three LEDs, green,yellow,red. I believe that it’s intended to switch between different “profiles” – so, like, say you’re just flying along, you have one set of controls, but then you enter into combat in some flight system, you can toggle to the “yellow” profile by tapping a button. Whatever software CH ships to handle that on Windows isn’t shipped for Linux. Okay, you could probably set something similar up for Linux if you’ve the time and technical chops, and maybe there’s a way to do it for Steam games using Steam Input. But there isn’t gonna be software provided to do it out-of-the-box on Linux, whereas there is on Windows.
There are still a few pieces of software that you can’t run. If you specifically need or really want to run something, that may be a problem. There are very few games on Steam that I can’t run, but one happens to be Command: Modern Operations, which suffers from both relying on 3d hardware – so not being VM-friendly – and not having anyone manage to get it working. There are other military simulation games, but no real direct alternatives. Now, I can live without that software package, though I sure would like to run it, but there may users that don’t have that kind of flexibility.
There’s also some software that you can make use of on a machine running Linux, but need to run in a Windows VM. That…works, but is also kind of annoying. A good example might be something like Solidworks, which doesn’t support Linux. There are engineers out there who are going to need to use Solidworks to do their work. I understand that you can run it in a VM – and there’s sufficient demand that apparently the company certifies VM environments with a dedicated GPU for pass-through use with the VM but that’s kind of annoying, if you’re someone whose work revolves around the package.
I agree there are plenty of reasons some people may still want Windows. I think we all know this, and it doesn’t need to be stated every time. However, there are also reasons to switch from Windows to Linux that are better. I just switched GPUS (AMD) today and literally just plugged it in and it’s ready to go. Package managers are also hugely more convenient than the Windows method of each application managing its own updates.
Sure, if you need Windows then you need Windows. Most people don’t.
Yep. I tolerated Edge reinstalling itself for a long time. I used 3rd party tools to try to make Windows my own, but they failed repeatedly.
If MS would sell me a license to own my computer, I would buy it, but they don’t offer that. Instead it’s ads and spam and data collection. And I want nothing to do with that.
If MS would sell me a license to own my computer, I would buy it, but they don’t offer that. Instead it’s ads and spam and data collection. And I want nothing to do with that.
I kind of feel like that about Google’s services (to a lesser extent). Like, Google produces some really outstanding services. YouTube is great, and I’d have no problem with paying for it. But I have no idea whether, if I buy YouTube Premium or whatever Google calls it, I can buy privacy or whether it’s just going to mean that they can link my data to my financial information and carry on data-mining.
I mean theoretically you don’t have to pay for anything, just disable it in your account settings, but I don’t believe any of that for a single second.
I hadn’t minded it if it were on the center. As you know, it was actually somewhere around the center, changing its position every time I added an icon or whatever in the taskbar. And they were proud enough to call it a UX revolution. WTAF…
I don’t mind the taskbar in the middle, it’s like Apple’s dock. What I really hate, is the news popup on the left… and I don’t even mind the floating Start menu, I’ve been using MadAppLauncher for like a decade or more.
Man. Work moved us to windows 11 and you couldn’t ungroup windows on the taskbar… We use RPG / as400 and throughout the day you’ll end up with 4-5 windows… having them all grouped is annoying when I have to hover over a popup to see which window I need.
Googling revealed that win11 wasn’t shipped with that functionality and it was only patched into the operating system in late q3 of last year.
Guess no one at Microsoft realized people use computers differently and more options is always better than one. Or they intended to have the option and either forgot to include it or it was buggy. Either way it was #2 on my “how do you disable this” list, and I had to deal with it for a while. I get how grouping can be good for some things, but when you want to be able to bounce between various windows and some happen to use the same app, it was a pain.
if you feel comfortable mucking about in your BIOS, disabling TPM will pretty much guarantee they don’t spring 11 on you. they are really dead set on that requirement for some reason.
It’s literally just the Edge feature transplanted onto windows. I wouldn’t be surprised if they integrated Edge/WebView2 into Explorer just to do this.
Really trying not to be that “use Linux” person, but it’s easy to underestimate the impact this has on user perception. It was communicated to me by these actions that this isn’t my computer. It kept pissing me off, so I went with something that respects me.
I think Microsoft is okay with that because their operating system isn’t a main profit center anymore. It’s cloud stuff.
Over the years, Microsoft has been quietly taking away control from the users.
There’s been a transition from normal settings that you can do whatever you want with, to “yes / remind me later” settings that Microsoft uses to badger you until you submit, to finally just no setting at all - just quiet compulsory data collection and surveillance; with various bits of mysterious software that you can’t uninstall or disable or halt - because you’re not the admin - Microsoft is.
It’s not even good for non technical users. Microsoft takes admin responsibility, but then they manage it poorly by applying updates that haven’t been properly tested and using your system as the guinea pig.
I’ve seen this happen to family. Forced update comes in, breaks system.
I’m pretty sure Windows is a key part of their “cloud stuff” strategy. You are right that consumers are not the direct focus of Windows, since they are not the direct paying audience, and that shows in the direction Windows is going, but getting consumers to use Windows is a big part of creating corporate buy in for Microsoft cloud services. Corporate environments will shun Microsoft cloud services if employees can’t use Windows, or Windows features run afoul of corporate policies (like blanket LLM bans).
In my case, many of my games are purchased through Steam, which automatically handles Linux compatibility for most games. The product page of the game lists the compatible operating systems as SteamOS, Linux, or SteamPlay. You can also set up proton directly for other games, which is a fork of Wine that has really good gaming support these days.
I wouldn’t call it a completely solved problem. It’s always possible to find games that just won’t work, but most of them do. Even most DRM works. If the DB covers the games you care about then you’re golden.
I mean sure, c# is better than java, but c# also makes you dependant on MS and all their shenanigans. Java is free of such burdens. Oracle sure is a dependency, but you’re free pick another vendor or fork your own.
It’s not just text generating AI, like those transformer models, but also image classificators and generators, time series predictors, and a bunch of other stuff you get.
But yes, even though you seem not to like it, it is AI.
Copilot is no more “intelligent” than Clippy from Microsoft Bob in 1995.
I can’t share that experience.
It just appears to be to people who also have low intelligence.
The distinction is irrelevant and “AI” is what businesses and normal folks call this stuff. Just like the age old arguments that the media should say something like “cyber criminals” instead of “hackers” or “cloud” is just other people’s computers. LLM, GNU/spicy-auto-correct, whatever. To the populous it’s all “AI”.
Ehhhh, if you have expertise in ANY field outside of like programming, you can easily test various models and see that they produce a lot of crap. That doesn’t require you to understand how LLMs work exactly.
I use it to ask questions I’d otherwise google, I also had it tell me some jokes and also present a list of interview questions for a candidate in our field.
That’s cool and all, but I do want my “show desktop” button back.
I logged on to my father’s computer today to fix a few things for him and was immediately overwhelmed with all the Windows bloat. This includes copilot and… so… much… more… 😖
One trick I found is disabling edge (renaming the install folder) basically disables half the bloat from even running, your copilot button just doesn’t even load in
That’s based on OP’s assumption that everyone who uses copilot is an “idiot”. There are people out there actually using such tools in meaningful ways instead of whining because “ai bad”. That people will have the last laugh.
They won’t.
Maybe they get rudimentary tasks done faster but their lack of understanding of what they are doing is gonna cause problems in anything else.
So programming is gonna go from a “search, understand basics, copy/paste, make changes” industry to a “I breathe compiler optimization, pay me money” industry?
Can’t say I’m that upset, it had to happen eventually. But this will only kick the brainpower down the road for the copy/pasters because they’ll have a lot more time to dig in and specialize.
Normal users can quickly hide it with a taskbar setting, power users (or those who can Google) can disable the feature entirely through a group policy.
‘Data Detectors’ in MacOS are just as bad. Just like how sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a string of numerals is just a string of numerals.
It is not a phone number or a flight number or a ticket number, it is just a string of text that happen to all be numerals.
I asked Apple Support how to disable data detectors in Preview (MacOS’s native PDF and image viewer) so I could highlight some part numbers without MacOS trying to make a FaceTime call and they told me to use Adobe Acrobat instead! The problem is that Acrobat is worse.
Yeah, it’s a minor annoyance… another minor annoyance on top of all the others. And another personal data leak (or siphon) to go with all the others.
This on its own is not worth switching OSs for - but as a piece of a larger picture it’s yet another reason to consider it. And for some people this may be what tips the scales in their evaluation.
Driver issues usually only happen if the manufacturer doesn’t provide a Linux driver. Usually it is best to do some research to ensure the hardware will work before purchasing. Otherwise, the driver usually is included with the kernel so it is plug and play even for things that require manually downloading and installing on the Windows side.
Also, I’m not trying to get on any high horse. I personally think Linux is a great alternative to Windows and would love for everyone to at least try it out and see if it is right for them. It could save them tons of headaches and open the door to a new skill set, or just to breathe new life into that old laptop in your closet gathering dust. Linux has a lot of great uses that aren’t possible with Windows. Give peas a chance.
Oh, I use both, I was just poking fun. That being said, I unfortunately I don’t feel comfortable trying to get my parents on Linux… or even friends.
Most people just want things to work and won’t do any sort of troubleshooting themselves. “It just works” is worth the intrusiveness that comes with Windows.
This may have been true historically but I’m not sure it still holds up. I switched to Linux Mint as my regular OS a while back and the only driver issue I’ve had was that the installer didnt properly install my wifi card’s proprietary driver (which was working during live boot from usb), so I had to tether to my phone to download the driver through the driver manager. It even installed Nvidia drivers just fine.
It might still be an issue for more barebones or heavily customisable systems but I’m fairly certain nobody’s recommending people switch to Arch for their first Linux experience.
yeah, ive been meaning to switch, but it doesnt really compare in sheer quantity of little crappy things stacked on top of one another.
i think the main thing though, is that i can switch away from ubuntu and still be on same ol linux. and switching the rare stuff i dont like is as easy as doing it once and never worrying again.
And I don’t see why Arch is relevant to the discussion. My point is that software being non-proprietary is not a guarantee for preventing fuckery like Microsoft’s. Profit-maximizing companies will maximize their profits, proprietary software or not. Canonical, which sells a non-proprietary Linux distribution, is an example of this.
oh, i reckon most people in this nice little corner of the internet are communist programmer atheists using linux and firefox, and are likely some flavour of queer.
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Have Windows users ever wanted a single thing they added since XP? It seems like every time I upgrade they add some cluttery nonsense I can’t get rid of. I moved to Windows 10 for software compatibility, and I still hate it.
They added a lot of things since XP that I enjoy, like window management, multiple desktops. I don’t know if they were specifically requested by windows users, but contrary to your opinion they are welcome changes. Users don’t always know what they want.
There was a free version of virtual desktops already available.
To me that proves that the feature was in demand. That’s why it’s included now.
Eh fair, to me that’s just severely outweighed by the bloatware and needing third party apps to customize the UI how I used to like. It feels uglier and bulkier and like they took away a ton of good functions.
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The new terminal for example is a rather neat improvement over the old command prompt, especially with the integration of Linux systems. Winget also is rather nice. Just two examples. So yeah with all the valid criticism Microsoft deserves for quite a bit of policies, I don’t think your hyperbole holds up.
Yeah, I know I was exaggerating. I’m just constantly pissed at stuff I swore I removed from my PC
Wait, there’s a whole website dedicated to copilot? #ffs
I wouldn’t be shocked if the articles itself are written using an AI tool. :D
So true!!
How many times are we going to have to teach you this lesson, old man. Don’t fuck with the task bar.
What lesson is that? That MS can do whatever they want and there’s fuck-all you can do about it?
How did that work for Windows 8?
Even the small things. When work upgraded to Win11 overnight and I logged into the Start being in the middle, I almost lost it. Yes, I could fix it, and a few other things, but I had a moment.
I understand it’s not for everyone but I jumped ship to Linux 10 years ago or so. The defining moment was me disabling Cortana only to have her reappear after an update.
At least with Linux when I’m fighting the OS it doesn’t feel like the OS developers are fighting back.
Ironically, Microsoft would later remove Cortana itself in an update.
Same motivation here, but it took me until last year to make the switch. Pushing Office on me combined with all the good things I’ve been hearing about gaming on Linux was enough to push me over. I installed in dual boot, but I have never wanted to nor had the need to boot into my Windows install in at least three months.
I did the same thing about the same time as you. I did boot into Windows at one point and it updated, and it absolutely fucked my system. It removed or disabled the boot loader and I think it fucked up the partition table too IIRC. I then removed everything Windows and installed another distro I wanted to try and it’s been smooth sailing since, with no reason to regret removing Windows.
Edit: I was able to recover the partitions, but the Windows section of the bootloader I was never able to get working again after getting it to boot into my Linux install. That’s the moment I decided to just clear out that drive and switch distros.
I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since the 1990s. I’m certainly not opposed to people using Linux on their desktop. But I can definitely think of things, even in 2024, that someone might want Windows for.
If you go and buy a piece of hardware from a vendor, even really obscure stuff, there will almost certainly be a Windows driver. These days, Linux support is pretty common, and stuff like USB device classes providing a standard interface for a lot of hardware deals with a lot of that. But if I were getting something weird like, oh, one of those projectors that displays 3D images on mist, I’d be more-cautious. VR headsets are probably one of the more-prominent recent examples. Yeah, you can get a VR headset for Linux, but not all of the VR headsets out there are Linux-compatible.
Maybe a more-prominent issue – while it’s rare for hardware to not work, it’s more-common for some functionality not to be available. tries to think of an example Okay, here’s one. I have a flightstick and throttle from CH from some years back. These are standard ol’ USB Human Interface Devices. Their axes and buttons are detected, and I can use them just fine. But they also have a little button on both their throttle and joystick that – besides acting as a button – cycles a series of one illuminated LED through three LEDs, green,yellow,red. I believe that it’s intended to switch between different “profiles” – so, like, say you’re just flying along, you have one set of controls, but then you enter into combat in some flight system, you can toggle to the “yellow” profile by tapping a button. Whatever software CH ships to handle that on Windows isn’t shipped for Linux. Okay, you could probably set something similar up for Linux if you’ve the time and technical chops, and maybe there’s a way to do it for Steam games using Steam Input. But there isn’t gonna be software provided to do it out-of-the-box on Linux, whereas there is on Windows.
There are still a few pieces of software that you can’t run. If you specifically need or really want to run something, that may be a problem. There are very few games on Steam that I can’t run, but one happens to be Command: Modern Operations, which suffers from both relying on 3d hardware – so not being VM-friendly – and not having anyone manage to get it working. There are other military simulation games, but no real direct alternatives. Now, I can live without that software package, though I sure would like to run it, but there may users that don’t have that kind of flexibility.
There’s also some software that you can make use of on a machine running Linux, but need to run in a Windows VM. That…works, but is also kind of annoying. A good example might be something like Solidworks, which doesn’t support Linux. There are engineers out there who are going to need to use Solidworks to do their work. I understand that you can run it in a VM – and there’s sufficient demand that apparently the company certifies VM environments with a dedicated GPU for pass-through use with the VM but that’s kind of annoying, if you’re someone whose work revolves around the package.
I agree there are plenty of reasons some people may still want Windows. I think we all know this, and it doesn’t need to be stated every time. However, there are also reasons to switch from Windows to Linux that are better. I just switched GPUS (AMD) today and literally just plugged it in and it’s ready to go. Package managers are also hugely more convenient than the Windows method of each application managing its own updates.
Sure, if you need Windows then you need Windows. Most people don’t.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a similar story. Windows is often not a good neighbor in multi boot configurations.
Switched to Fedora at the beginning of the year and couldn’t be happier.
Yep. I tolerated Edge reinstalling itself for a long time. I used 3rd party tools to try to make Windows my own, but they failed repeatedly.
If MS would sell me a license to own my computer, I would buy it, but they don’t offer that. Instead it’s ads and spam and data collection. And I want nothing to do with that.
I kind of feel like that about Google’s services (to a lesser extent). Like, Google produces some really outstanding services. YouTube is great, and I’d have no problem with paying for it. But I have no idea whether, if I buy YouTube Premium or whatever Google calls it, I can buy privacy or whether it’s just going to mean that they can link my data to my financial information and carry on data-mining.
I mean theoretically you don’t have to pay for anything, just disable it in your account settings, but I don’t believe any of that for a single second.
I use Arch BTW
Funny you say that ah
For real though I use a down stream arch distro.
Installing arch manually is a good learning experience but I’ve got other things to do.
I hadn’t minded it if it were on the center. As you know, it was actually somewhere around the center, changing its position every time I added an icon or whatever in the taskbar. And they were proud enough to call it a UX revolution. WTAF…
They killed the vertical task bar with that update, which seems like such a pointless thing to disable.
I don’t mind the taskbar in the middle, it’s like Apple’s dock. What I really hate, is the news popup on the left… and I don’t even mind the floating Start menu, I’ve been using MadAppLauncher for like a decade or more.
Man. Work moved us to windows 11 and you couldn’t ungroup windows on the taskbar… We use RPG / as400 and throughout the day you’ll end up with 4-5 windows… having them all grouped is annoying when I have to hover over a popup to see which window I need.
Googling revealed that win11 wasn’t shipped with that functionality and it was only patched into the operating system in late q3 of last year.
So annoying and a huge productivity hit for me.
Guess no one at Microsoft realized people use computers differently and more options is always better than one. Or they intended to have the option and either forgot to include it or it was buggy. Either way it was #2 on my “how do you disable this” list, and I had to deal with it for a while. I get how grouping can be good for some things, but when you want to be able to bounce between various windows and some happen to use the same app, it was a pain.
That’s why on my kde desktop at home it has a check box that say “allow these windows to be grouped” and I can check / uncheck as needed.
It works so much better. Imho
I’m sorry, what!?
At this rate, I’m definitely going to hold onto 10 until they *pry it away from me.
(Yes, I use Linux as well but gaming isn’t perfect on it, etc…)
if you feel comfortable mucking about in your BIOS, disabling TPM will pretty much guarantee they don’t spring 11 on you. they are really dead set on that requirement for some reason.
IT don’t like it. Lock the taskbar. Lock the taskbar.
It’s literally just the Edge feature transplanted onto windows. I wouldn’t be surprised if they integrated Edge/WebView2 into Explorer just to do this.
I’ve been under the impression that it’s been the plan all the time: have a “system-wide” AI assistant.
And honestly, I bet other OSs are going to follow suit (Apple, Linux… Android already kind of has it).
It’s honestly a downgrade from Cortana. Not that I used that either…
3rd times the charm, right?
Really trying not to be that “use Linux” person, but it’s easy to underestimate the impact this has on user perception. It was communicated to me by these actions that this isn’t my computer. It kept pissing me off, so I went with something that respects me.
I think Microsoft is okay with that because their operating system isn’t a main profit center anymore. It’s cloud stuff.
Over the years, Microsoft has been quietly taking away control from the users.
There’s been a transition from normal settings that you can do whatever you want with, to “yes / remind me later” settings that Microsoft uses to badger you until you submit, to finally just no setting at all - just quiet compulsory data collection and surveillance; with various bits of mysterious software that you can’t uninstall or disable or halt - because you’re not the admin - Microsoft is.
It wasn’t always this way.
It’s not even good for non technical users. Microsoft takes admin responsibility, but then they manage it poorly by applying updates that haven’t been properly tested and using your system as the guinea pig.
I’ve seen this happen to family. Forced update comes in, breaks system.
I’m pretty sure Windows is a key part of their “cloud stuff” strategy. You are right that consumers are not the direct focus of Windows, since they are not the direct paying audience, and that shows in the direction Windows is going, but getting consumers to use Windows is a big part of creating corporate buy in for Microsoft cloud services. Corporate environments will shun Microsoft cloud services if employees can’t use Windows, or Windows features run afoul of corporate policies (like blanket LLM bans).
The Win10 machine I got in 2020 will be my last Windows computer now that gaming on Linux is basically solved.
Can you tell me how gaming on Linux is solved? It’s the only reason I use windows still.
In my case, many of my games are purchased through Steam, which automatically handles Linux compatibility for most games. The product page of the game lists the compatible operating systems as SteamOS, Linux, or SteamPlay. You can also set up proton directly for other games, which is a fork of Wine that has really good gaming support these days.
I wouldn’t call it a completely solved problem. It’s always possible to find games that just won’t work, but most of them do. Even most DRM works. If the DB covers the games you care about then you’re golden.
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Start with protondb
Exactly. It’s Microsoft ffs. They don’t care what consumers want. The only time they do anything truly beneficial is when the EU makes them.
Except when they make programming languages
I mean sure, c# is better than java, but c# also makes you dependant on MS and all their shenanigans. Java is free of such burdens. Oracle sure is a dependency, but you’re free pick another vendor or fork your own.
Of course they prioritise Windows and Azure, but still, .NET works on Linux well, and it’s licensed under MIT, so you’re allowed to fork too.
But on the other hand I won’t waste my time defending Microsoft here, because they have people for doing it.
They also created TypeScript which is a huge improvement over js imo. And with C# you can use Mono, so you really aren’t locked into MS automatically.
Plus, they made VS Code free. I hate MS but they do make solid tools for developers.
You get AI tools shoved down your throat everywhere nowadays. Whether you want it and it’s useful or not.
Please don’t call them AI. They are “Language Learning Models” (or “Spicy Autocorrect” if you want to be cheeky).
Copilot is no more “intelligent” than Clippy from Microsoft Bob in 1995. It just appears to be to people who also have low intelligence.
It’s not just text generating AI, like those transformer models, but also image classificators and generators, time series predictors, and a bunch of other stuff you get.
But yes, even though you seem not to like it, it is AI.
I can’t share that experience.
That’s a bit condescending, don’t you think?
The distinction is irrelevant and “AI” is what businesses and normal folks call this stuff. Just like the age old arguments that the media should say something like “cyber criminals” instead of “hackers” or “cloud” is just other people’s computers. LLM, GNU/spicy-auto-correct, whatever. To the populous it’s all “AI”.
https://mastodon.social/@sdw/112203918268779518
Actually Indians.
People who don’t understand how LLMs work aren’t necessarily of low intelligence.
Don’t get ignorance and intelligence mixed up. People of low intelligence do that
Ehhhh, if you have expertise in ANY field outside of like programming, you can easily test various models and see that they produce a lot of crap. That doesn’t require you to understand how LLMs work exactly.
A blog of another website’s report on what reddit users wrote.
Nice.
I use it to ask questions I’d otherwise google, I also had it tell me some jokes and also present a list of interview questions for a candidate in our field.
That’s cool and all, but I do want my “show desktop” button back.
I logged on to my father’s computer today to fix a few things for him and was immediately overwhelmed with all the Windows bloat. This includes copilot and… so… much… more… 😖
One trick I found is disabling edge (renaming the install folder) basically disables half the bloat from even running, your copilot button just doesn’t even load in
So weird that so much is integrated into a web browser.
Can you list the filepath?
Actually I quite like it…
Its not the worst, and If I’m honest its not as annoying as the desktop view button, I hated that thing since day 1
I’m having a bad day.
Can someone reassure me that idiots using copilot aren’t suddenly going to become more effective and productive than me?
Maybe, but you’ll get the last laugh when they rely on it for everything and it is eventually whisked away behind an enormous monthly fee.
That’s based on OP’s assumption that everyone who uses copilot is an “idiot”. There are people out there actually using such tools in meaningful ways instead of whining because “ai bad”. That people will have the last laugh.
They won’t. Maybe they get rudimentary tasks done faster but their lack of understanding of what they are doing is gonna cause problems in anything else.
So programming is gonna go from a “search, understand basics, copy/paste, make changes” industry to a “I breathe compiler optimization, pay me money” industry?
Can’t say I’m that upset, it had to happen eventually. But this will only kick the brainpower down the road for the copy/pasters because they’ll have a lot more time to dig in and specialize.
Unfortunately windows users don’t have choice.
Normal users can quickly hide it with a taskbar setting, power users (or those who can Google) can disable the feature entirely through a group policy.
Shouldn’t have to, it should be something to enable or better yet install
‘Data Detectors’ in MacOS are just as bad. Just like how sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a string of numerals is just a string of numerals.
It is not a phone number or a flight number or a ticket number, it is just a string of text that happen to all be numerals.
I asked Apple Support how to disable data detectors in Preview (MacOS’s native PDF and image viewer) so I could highlight some part numbers without MacOS trying to make a FaceTime call and they told me to use Adobe Acrobat instead! The problem is that Acrobat is worse.
Lol at using windows ngl
i know you hate to hear this, but you wont get rid of these shenanigans unless you move to linux.
proprietary software devs will always be looking for more ways to monetize you.
For the average user this is like a minor annoyance like once a month. Not worth switching OS’s over.
There’s been tens of dozens of annoyances over the last decade.
Literally not even boiling the frog at this point, the frog is fried.
Yeah, it’s a minor annoyance… another minor annoyance on top of all the others. And another personal data leak (or siphon) to go with all the others.
This on its own is not worth switching OSs for - but as a piece of a larger picture it’s yet another reason to consider it. And for some people this may be what tips the scales in their evaluation.
It’s a boil the frog scenario. Windows users will always cope with more and more shit thrown at them.
And Linux fanboys will get up on their high horses while googling how to fix their driver issues.
Driver issues usually only happen if the manufacturer doesn’t provide a Linux driver. Usually it is best to do some research to ensure the hardware will work before purchasing. Otherwise, the driver usually is included with the kernel so it is plug and play even for things that require manually downloading and installing on the Windows side.
Also, I’m not trying to get on any high horse. I personally think Linux is a great alternative to Windows and would love for everyone to at least try it out and see if it is right for them. It could save them tons of headaches and open the door to a new skill set, or just to breathe new life into that old laptop in your closet gathering dust. Linux has a lot of great uses that aren’t possible with Windows. Give peas a chance.
Oh, I use both, I was just poking fun. That being said, I unfortunately I don’t feel comfortable trying to get my parents on Linux… or even friends.
Most people just want things to work and won’t do any sort of troubleshooting themselves. “It just works” is worth the intrusiveness that comes with Windows.
Certainly better than throwing a perfectly working machine because Microsoft won’t support it 🤷♂️
This may have been true historically but I’m not sure it still holds up. I switched to Linux Mint as my regular OS a while back and the only driver issue I’ve had was that the installer didnt properly install my wifi card’s proprietary driver (which was working during live boot from usb), so I had to tether to my phone to download the driver through the driver manager. It even installed Nvidia drivers just fine.
It might still be an issue for more barebones or heavily customisable systems but I’m fairly certain nobody’s recommending people switch to Arch for their first Linux experience.
I mean canonical also tries to monetize its users. The problem is more shareholders who want profit than the software being proprietary.
yeah, ive been meaning to switch, but it doesnt really compare in sheer quantity of little crappy things stacked on top of one another.
i think the main thing though, is that i can switch away from ubuntu and still be on same ol linux. and switching the rare stuff i dont like is as easy as doing it once and never worrying again.
Canonical has nothing to do with Arch Linux, so I don’t see what’s the issue.
And I don’t see why Arch is relevant to the discussion. My point is that software being non-proprietary is not a guarantee for preventing fuckery like Microsoft’s. Profit-maximizing companies will maximize their profits, proprietary software or not. Canonical, which sells a non-proprietary Linux distribution, is an example of this.
I am on Linux. I just posted about what Windows users are saying.
oh, i reckon most people in this nice little corner of the internet are communist programmer atheists using linux and firefox, and are likely some flavour of queer.
Ya got me on the atheist and firefox thing
Blogspam that links to a ‘news’ website that just regurgitates this reddit thread. Somebody explain to me why is this upvoted so heavily.
I mean the minute you see “Copilot bad, from windowscopilot[dot]news” should surely raise some flags
Windows bad, ai bad. Upvote. Thought isn’t a big consideration here.
Lemmy sucks at sourcing but rocks at being opinionated.
Coz noone reads that stuff besides the title.
The vibe is right tho lol
Windows bad, updoots to the left
This is the high quality journalism we want
The real journalism is always in the comments. Or how did that go?
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