It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
Stallman just keeps being right*
*About software freedom
Linux!: Had set It up years ago when it was a slog. Came back recently after Windows did this— and it was so much easier.
Work? Yes. The comfort of knowing I’ve put off for one more day the tech ubergods carving my life open? Also yes.
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.
better get W10 LTSC in VM and use it until EOL and beyond, it’ll be more privacy friendly this way
Using an internet connected OS past EOL is definitely not privacy friendly.
He said until EOL. Windows LTSC, the IoT version in particular is supported until 2032.
2032 will be the year of the Linux desktop!
No, he said EOL and beyond
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.
You could try win 10 iot ltsc 2021 out. It gets security support until 2032.
I wouldn’t go for Ubuntu. They are also run by a corporation that has done problematic things with the project. It also just doesn’t work that well anymore. Better off going for something Debian or Fedora based, or even an Ubuntu derivative like Pop OS.
Isn’t Ubuntu Debian based? Or is that no longer the case? I haven’t used it for about a decade.
Yes, it is, although there are many differences between both.
Many suggest Linux Mint (one of the best regarded beginner distro) as well, which has two versions, one based on Ubuntu and the other on Debian.
So, the three are like Debian’s most popular branch.
It’s Debian-based, but Canonical has been really Microsofty about its development. They now have Snap as a universal packaging format, and have mandated that all official Ubuntu flavors (so X/K/Lubuntu and others, but not derivatives like Mint) must include Snap, and must not include Flatpak in the default installation. They’ve also fucked with APT where installing certain packages, like Firefox, would first install Snap and then the application’s Snap package, without even telling the user. They’ve had some controversy with Amazon ads in the search results, and advertising Ubuntu Pro in the fucking terminal. The default GNOME desktop also has a ton of issues.
I, and many others, recommend against Ubuntu. Linux Mint is the most commonly recommended “just works” distro. That being said, switching to Ubuntu, if able, is still preferable to staying on Windows.
I agree most of this is fucked up, though I don’t know what search results you mean. Also, I always find it funny that people refer to the Ubuntu pro thing as “ads”. Yes it technically is, but it is a fuck ton less shitty than what we’ve come to know as ads in literally every other context. It’s literally a couple lines of text about packages you can get premium updates and support for
IIRC: about decade ago Ubuntu (still with its own Unity DE) processed system search in a way it shoveled amazon ads to users in first places. Or something lime that.
The Unity desktop’s search would display Amazon ads based on the query. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Conformity_with_European_data_privacy_law
It’s like the “nazi bar” anecdote. It always starts small. You let in a bit of ads, a bit of self-promotion, then the revenue reaches a plateau. You let in a little more ads, maybe a pop-up saying that you could be more secure. Then a few years later you have a Recall situation. If you let one nazi drink at your bar, he’ll bring his friends, and you’ll be running a nazi bar.
I don’t trust Canonical to act with integrity.
It’s debian-based, but such an outlier from the rest of the linux ecosystem that it might as well be its own beast.
Yes, always has been to my knowledge
Pop os is fantastic
It varies. I struggle with its interface personally. I also had to force it to switch to Wayland to get some things working reliably. The hybrid graphics mode has issues too using the GPU when it doesn’t need to. Other than that it works reasonably well out of the box, though you still occasionally have to deal with headaches from apt. A lot of the issues will hopefully be fixed when the cosmic desktop is ready. Some more can be fixed if they end up going immutable, which I believe they are working on right now. The Ubuntu version is also kinda old.
Personally I would rather be on NixOS or Fedora right now, or UBlue’s Aurora. I am probably not a good candidate to be running something like Pop OS though. I am too experienced and my needs and wants are too complex for the poor thing.
I am sure you’re right about at least most of this but I will say my experience hasn’t been very troublesome. Other than a driver issue I had after an update 2 years ago, I haven’t had much trouble. Since I switched to an amd GPU especially, since gaming is much smoother. I had a lot worse issues when I used Elementary OS. Stuff broke a ton. For example, I had a weird graphical issue in Firefox for months.
Elementary OS probably isn’t what I want either.
Are you talking about a desktop? I am on a laptop with Intel iGPU and Nvidia dGPU. The battery life in Windows isn’t great, but it actually seems worse in Pop OS. I did actually catching it using the dGPU when it shouldn’t be. Obviously Nvidia doesn’t help things, and I am glad it works as well as it does. Still it’s kind of sad. I might buy a second laptop just so I can have battery life that isn’t horrible.
Cosmic desktop from my understanding will have a better implementation of the hybrid graphics mode to stop this nonsense.
Yeah, desktops. I do think though that the Intel/Nvidia combo you have makes Linux in general a bit tougher than any setup more Linux friendly than that.
Linux ftw!
Tell me about gaming on Linux. Most if my gaming is via Steam and I have a Steamdeck which I know runs on a flavor of Linux so it can be done. Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?
I just got a new prebuilt with Windows 11 Pro and I’ve been curious about Linux for the past few months. I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it. I hear Mint and Arch quite a bit.
Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?
No, it’s not that far along. A lot works, but if there’s invasive DRM or anticheat then it probably won’t. If you have specific games you want to play in mind check out https://www.protondb.com/
I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it.
If you’re curious you can just create a live USB stick to test drive it. Won’t work well for gaming though.
Did you mean to say “any game that runs on the Steam Deck runs on Steam Linux?”
If so, the answer is yes. It’s honestly surprising these days to run across a steam title that doesn’t run in linux (though always look into the anti-cheat situation for online games).
For those of you that are tired of Microsoft’s bullshit, a great place to start is Linux Mint or, if you want to be on the bleeding edge with a rolling distro that still gets some testing, openSUSE Tumbleweed (which is what I’m using).
Signed,
Linux daily driver convert of ~3 months now.
I started with Mint, but for Windows users I’d advise openSUSE too.
There’s an issue, though, with them preparing for the next big release to become something like Fedora Silverblue or I don’t remember. But for now it’s a distribution with the corporate feeling in a good sense as strong as with Windows, almost none of that feeling in a bad sense, and it’s very polished.
I went through quite a few distros to find one that would cooperate with my laptop and opensuse is the one that did it.
Same reason I picked it. I did some distro hopping when I made the switch and Tumbleweed was the first one I tried that my motherboard audio worked with.
Did you try leap before tumbleweed because I still have a few issues I am running on bandaids right now.
No, I tried Mint and Manjaro for a couple weeks each and a couple other distros I’ve forgotten cause I just booted them up, checked audio was broken, and replaced them. But I know Leap wasn’t one of them.
I’ve been driving Linux for about a year now, I ended up switching to Debian because I don’t want my programs updating with bleeding edge releases that can break things. The coolest part about Linux is that you can choose like that.
I found endeavour (arch) to be a much simpler experience vs fedora or opensuse or void. Tpm chip worked right away, clear instructions for setting up secureboot with a hook that signs everything as it’s updated, etc. I could barely get void to boot, opensuse worked well but after a power outage the tpm stopped working and I was never able to get it back, fedora I had no success with tpm. I’m sure that’s all pretty variable depending on hardware.
If you aren’t looking for full functionality of your hardware most any distro should be fine, but…why sacrifice security?
There is more than one distro.
If you’re still using Ubuntu, I’m not sure what you’re expecting
You guys trusted MS before this???
I remember when Windows 10 first came around, and people were trying to bring attention to the privacy issues in the TOS. Now it’s been widely adopted just about everywhere, and this is probably going to be the same.
A couple years ago it wasn’t thoroughly and transparently sucking off every bit of personal data it could get, and gearing up to put adds on the desktop on top of that.
Seems the consensus is that telemetry started with Win7, but I swear I remember privacy people freaking out about Win95 or 98 sending system specs or something back with out telling the user. It’s been a slow boil for a long time.
Yes & No.
From what I remember from that time it wasn’t really a lot of people going on about privacy at that time. We were more concerned with how they just grabbed the BSD networking stack without saying anything about it.
There were a few things w/rt activation that people were pissed about. That was more towards the XP era though.
Though maybe someone else remembers it differently than I do since I wasn’t paying attention to privacy at that point and I don’t remember seeing anything about it in PCMAG or G4
I vaguely remember something from TechTV or Slashdot. Searches only turn up more recent discussions though. The old stories are getting buried by the more recent shit going on.
Don’t worry a quick google search will tell us to use a non toxic glue mixed with vanta black to keep privacy intact
Yeah I think 7 was when it was a big blip on the radar. But 100% they had to start laying that foundation beforehand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either always there or started making its way in 98.
95 was relatively groundbreaking and a part of me thinks the PC was so new they hadn’t thought of it yet or if it was even possible given the nature of internet, but you can’t put anything past the marketing guys that would probably love to know what colour your shit is.
Is github, owned by Microsoft, the largest public code repository?
I’ve always trusted them to do what they’re great at… which is get a product nearly 100% perfect, then back it up about 20%, and polish it off by shooting themselves in the foot.
Which I’ve always found it insane that EVERY product they ship is like that. The only exceptions (IMHO) to that were Office, DOS5, Win7, (Maybe XP)
Straw that broke the camel’s back? Every vertebra in that camel’s back has been smashed with a sledge hammer over the past 30 years.
Windows 95 was the last version I was excited about; Windows 98 SE was the last version of Windows I willingly purchased, and XP was the last one I willingly used. When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”. Since then, Windows has only existed on my computers as pirated, virtual machines.
I think Windows 7 was good, and their last decent desktop OS before they started backporting Windows 10 garbage into it late in the lifecycle.
I’m in the same boat as you now. Earlier this year I’d had enough and there was no way I was going from my de-shittified Win10 Enterprise install to Win11. I’m on Tumbleweed for my main PC now.
My job is in the early stages of planning for updating everything to windows 11. I just got my testing VM with it the other day which is my first experience with it and I had an almost physical reaction to how bad the gui looks when I first logged in. I haven’t even done anything with it and I already hate it.
On the other hand the Linux VM I set up at home to test my personal stuff out on has been going swimmingly.
and XP was the last one I willingly used.
Same.
When they announced Win7,
I, eh, still used it for some time, but then went to Linux.
You lasted until Windows 7? I’m guessing you didn’t have to deal with Windows Vista’s bs then. I changed ship thanks to Vista.
I also suffered Windows Me, but I was too young and at that time I didn’t know there was an alternative.
I dual booted Vista/7 and Ubuntu/Mint for a while but after not using Windows in years ended removing it completely. Now I’m a happy
AntergosArch user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Wow, I actually forgot about Vista. I never actually had it installed on anything. XP was the last OS I had installed on hardware. Win 7 was the first I knew only from VM installations.
When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”.
Windows Vista was so bad that it gets forgotten even in a retrospective about how Windows versions sucked. But yeah, Win7 didn’t come out for another few years after that, to rescue the world from Vista.
I have a unique memory of people saying that XP sucks ; after Vista nobody remembers that.
I hated Windows from the day I saw the 3.1 floppies had no write tab (that tiny piece that allowed you to write the disk). My first though was “we’ve payed for this and they forbid us to write on them? Fuck MS”. It was the last original Windows in any PC at home. And I used DRDOS, so even worse (Windows 3.11 had a “bug” that made it crash if it ran on DRDOS).
Tape over the hole.
I know (and then too) but that’s not the point. It’s “you are not selling this to me”.
I don’t think this will bury MS because they can easily market this to enterprise clients ( if they haven’t already ). Recall is a particularly useful tool for any employer that wants to keep track of everything employees do, especially in an age of WFH. They probably figured they can take the PR hit from users concerned about privacy and move on unaffected.
Any enterprise working with sensitive data certainly has to disable the feature. And turns out, that’s most enterprises.
I have heard very little, if any, enthusiasm about this. Nobody seems to be excited about it at all.
I love the concept… I think it should remain a concept
Outside of the “Microsoft bad” comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.
The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It’s made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it’s destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it’s adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.
Microsoft has already taken a step back: Microsoft implements drastic changes to Recall after criticism
- Recall needs to be enabled during installation
- Windows Hello is needed so that only the users can view it’s own screenshots
- Recall database will be encrypted
Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don’t care lol.
The switch to Linux will have to come from the bottom up. Corporations will NOT switch until Microsoft costs them serious money.
OH, it was been a long time coming seeing this type of headline again, it’s…glorius!
Microsoft is most years a #1 and sometimes a #2 Funder of: Rust, Python, and Linux. Are those destined for an E^3 “rug pull” too? Will it ever stop this kind of behavior, consistently conforming our behavior to itself with the money and industry position it leverages?
Don’t forget in calculating that industry position that OpenAI is now able to contract to the DoD for offensive capability.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/I5qAshY2jkw?t=27
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I know that I shouldn’t, but here’s what I think about this whole deal, illustrated with a single image macro:
Get wrecked, Microsoft.
I think that the article does a good job highlighting how much of a trainwreck this is, because Microsoft is not to be trusted. The Windows users hysterically complaining about this are not expecting Microsoft to behave in some outrageous way; they’re expecting Microsoft to behave as usual.
Every generation needs to learn what microsoft is all over again, but they only learn the hard way.
Man, there is a LOT of people in this thread hoping to normalize this, or pretend it will happen anyway, or that it’s ‘not really a PR disaster’, or that people will ignore it, or-
Go make your money elsewhere, christ.
