This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I am a Mac user at home. I use windows for work, like most of us. But I keep reading all these articles and thinking, “Boy, I sure hope my company’s IT Dept. is on top of this.”
Everyone in IT wants to be ahead of the curve but we wind up being reactionary because if it ain't broke don't fix it...but it will break if we don't do this...is it broken now...no but it will be...so it's not broken we are good to go.
Wow. Obviously that’s a bonkers approach, but not at all unsurprising. A large part of my job is actually getting people off their ass to address stuff before the product breaks, and we lose revenue.
I was under the impression you could still remove the feature without issue.
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2697#issuecomment-2403792309
That's covered in the article you're commenting on.
Another user on GitHub also pointed out that Microsoft's own DISM can be used to disable the Recall service without the File Explorer consequences, although Titus points out that this behaviour seems inconsistent, as in his testing, the File Explorer still changed its appearance after a restart. Inconsistency aside, it's unlikely that any non-technical Windows user will even know what DISM is, never mind how to use it, and this reliance on a command-line utility to remove a controversial feature is indicative of MIcrosoft's goals.
I removed Recall just fine and now my Windows environment is Linux
So, some important context: you can disable Recall still. The only thing you can't do is delete the files for it.
So it's another potential attack surface for malware to target, something that Microsoft could enable in an update (so use Group Policy to disable it, they way they give companies with legal requirements to do so properly), and some space on your harddrive wasted.
This is NOT Microsoft requiring people to enable Recall for Explorer to work.
Still an egregious amount of bullshit, but not as much as the headline might lead you to believe.
I'm wondering how the dod is going to fix this. I'll have to look at their stuff files.
This is what we get for no longer being the paying customer (that and a quasi Monopoly).
I use mint on my laptop, steam runs great, but have to keep windows on the desktop because I need to run Ableton, lack of pro audio is the thing that's holding me from full Linux right now...
Reaper works great on mint. Plus yabridge to use your windows plugins.
It’s like Nadella wants people to stop using windows.
Microsoft is certainly doing an excellent job driving away Xbox users. What else do they have? Azure maybe?
They are ruining sony's competition... I don't get it. Like should they compete?
It's like Microsoft doesn't care if the home user's personal computer runs Windows; because they don't care.
Linux mega supporter working from deep inside is now a super believable narrative.
Aren't there alternative file explorers for Windows? Or did support for that kind of thing end with Windows 7?
There's Tablacus. Opus is supposed to be good too, but I haven't tried it.
Microsoft being Microsoft...
Just generally break people’s systems, add spyware, lie to users, treat them like shit.
Too many people bought that shit. Their own fault for getting ripped another one.
"I really would like to switch to Linux, bUT muH gaMEz!"
Like, just get a console or a Steam deck and tell MS to piss off. Until their market share plummets noticeably, they're going to continue this crap.
Our just play games on Linux. Wine/proton is shockingly good. I've never had an issue
Gamers are not the only people that use Windows. A lot of creative and commercial software either requires Windows or works best on it.
I think Windows is garbage as much as everyone else here, but switching is not that easy.
It's pretty easy for 80 (90)+% of competent computer users, get an old Macbook for that stuff (it'll probably be better) and switch your main to linux. The real problem is less competent computer users.
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference. - Jim Butcher
Fair enough. I suppose my point is at some point, people are going to have to start making sacrifices and say "enough is enough" or nothing is going to change. There's no incentive for companies to de-enshittify or support new platforms as long as people keep accepting the ever-worsening status quo. Change is hard, I'll agree.
I'm gaming just fine on mint. It's like the old days when I would install something and not be sure if it worked, but so far most things have been working more or less out of the box. Installing and patching mods to final fantasy 7 took a little bit because I wasn't familiar with the terms being used, but it was a couple hours, not a few days.
Oh, so buy an Xbox?
At some point I was spending more time debloating, breaking, reintlling then it took me to learn Linux
I've been trying to learn linux for like 15 years off and on.
I still don't have a clue what I'm doing.
Man... That's a very valid point... It is so much googling it is nuts. I rage quit microshit and raw dawg linux. It was a lift.
Good new is that these retarded LLMs are all trained on a lot of Linux data due to all that shit being OS. So chatgpt can really make a huge difference. Since it can explain really well any question you might have in a nice normal format.
Chatgpt deff will turbo charge your learning curve. But fundamentally, to use it properly, you do need some side foundations.
I am planning on just disabling windows update medic service and keeping my current version of windows 10 that still allows dual booting to Linux.
Once Valorant stops working on that version I guess I'll have to just only play deadlock from then on.
Caring about system integrity/security while playing a game that requires a literal rootkit are not compatible
Absolutely agree, that's why when I saw the patch notes for this latest Microsoft update I was like "They don't mention why this is dangerous other than Linux can be used by the haxors". It definitely just sounded like a way to crunch down on Linux use.
And like you said, I already allow Microsoft and riot and probably others I'm not thinking of to just have complete access to my computer so it's not like I have any privacy, for security I can always check out potential issues myself with my pen testing laptop, so there is literally no benefit and only a ton of downsides to upgrading. So why would I?
This weekend the upgrading and updating ends for good, and I will get my dual boot Linux whether they like it or not.
I used Linux for a long time, like years, as my main os since I was a teenager. (I broadly say Linux because I hopped distro a lot). but ultimately, I hardly even used it by the end because during my creative bursts, I would be using windows exclusive software that was just better than any Foss. then, I would want to play some multiplayer games with my friends, where the anti cheat only worked on windows. this totaled to like 75 percent of my time being used on windows in the end, so I just sucked up to the reality of the situation and hardened windows for privacy and debloating and switched back after so long. if it weren't for those 2 specific things, I would have probably kept mint as a daily driver forever, it was really stable and nothing else was an issue for me. but the fact is that I (and presumably many other people) don't want to give up things we enjoy and spend more time bleak and bored just to prove a point to some company that doesn't know we exist. I'm sure for a lot of people though, daily driving Linux would be fine for things like YouTube or online shopping or whatevsies.
You don't want to play on Linux? Get a steam deck... Which runs on Linux! 😀
Ingenious.
