Ok, guys. I'm reading some of these replies which are saying the amount of outrage is out of proportion. I have to disagree with that. I don't want an AI running on my PC that is monitoring and learning about my shit. I didn't want that data saved even locally, let alone the monetization of that data. I don't want to be paying for power of a device that is turning me into someone else's paycheck.

Can you turn it off? I believe you can. But I also believe that doing it manually would be incredibly annoying since that does go with a lot of past practice. I also get it would reactivate itself after major updates, like how Edge keeps reinstalling.

Are there other solutions to my Microsoft issues, yes. Chris Titus Tech comes to mind.

But overall, the Windows ecosystem does not feel right to me anymore. Could other people still use it, yes. Am I going to stop them, not intentionally. But my Arch gaming PC runs games better than the same machine running Windows. I've always entertained the idea of a full switch, still have a Windows 11 dual boot and haven't officially done it yet, but with this the moment feels right. At least for me, hopefully you can understand that.

I will continue to enjoy my incredibly straightforward and to the point Linux desktop that’s somehow gained a new AI-free feature by doing nothing.

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse

1. The country where a lot of tech countries are headquartered in, elects a wanna-be dictator
2. Android restricts "sideloading" (aka: non-approved install)
3. Windows has mandatory AI
4. Mandatory ID Verification

Have Win 10 and was a Windows die hard since I was a kid.

Been running Linux on another drive as my default boot for a year and a half in anticipation of this horseshit and was only hesitant to delete Win because my Fanatec sim racing hardware wasn't supported on Linux.

Welp, turns out hid-fanatecff is a thing. Installed the kernel driver and boom, working Fanatec peripherals. Even my Moza shifter is plug-and-play.

Bye bye Microsoft.

Microsoft literally wanted me to convert my desktop to e-waste as it lacks the magical TPM chip that Win11 demands.

I said "fuck that" and pulled the Boot SSD, kept the existing non-boot drives for data, and put in a brand new SSD, encrypted it and installed Pop OS in one shot.

Not only was it easy, I lost literally zero critical functionality vs. what I had with Win 10. There is a Linux app equivalent for everything I had before. I had a few driver issues but most were auto-discovered including obscure ancient printers and scanners on my network.

I work in IT and far be it for me to tell you what OS to use on your own computer.

The only thing I want to die right now, is the AI bubble. Just pop already. Holy fuck what a worthless endeavor this has been.

Crazy to me that windows is finally worse than MacOS

Don’t downgrade to Windows 11, update to Linux

Windows is still a fixture in my life due to work, but I’ve ditched Windows at home for years and won’t ever go back.

Once I finish college I'm nuking my Windows partition. Won't even boot into it on any future laptop, will just nuke it fully. I'm just waiting now cause I don't wanna have to fight with teachers over online test software and shit, I like being able to do easy at home exams.

But I will relish the day I walk across the stage. It'll be gone that night.

Finally got my last PC switched off Windows. It feels good.

Cool. Pop_OS is working quite well over here.

It's never been a better time to convert to Linux. The best part is that if one distro turns to shit you can just move over to another.

Over in the Linux world we have a cute penguin who leaves you alone.

Windows is becoming so trash that a bunch of my not-that-tech-savvy friends have been hitting me up asking about gaming on various Linux distros. (Just a few years ago it was all “Linux? Haha nerd”.) And the non gamers are switching to Mac at a remarkable rate.

And things have progressed so well that even for the non-technical crew, after installing Mint and showing them how to use ProtonPlus to install and select Proton-GE, they’re pretty much off to the races without much further hand holding.

I’m dangerously close to moving my gaming pc to Linux. What’s the consensus for the best distro for gaming?

I’m comfortable enough with *nix, as my daily is MacOS and I have a home lab/server.

I am forced to use Windows on my work computer, but that is ONLY used for official work related functions. My personal PCs (I have several) all run various flavors of Linux. Monday through Friday I am reminded why I don't have Windows on my personal machines.

This entire article is trusting the word of Microsoft's director of marketing

Some real 5D chess plays from the big MS these days lmfao. I'll stick with Linux, thanks.

I am 99% Tumbleweed except my gaming PC which is still on Win11 (but I haven’t seen any bloat on it, no ads in winkey menu etc).

I am a huge flight simmer and, besides Xplane, MSFS has Microsoft in its name but the problem is more about the tons of tools around the simulator rather than the sim (aircraft, peripherals, maps&nav, ATC, job manager etc). MSFS do run on proton, but plenty of background tools don’t 😔

yeah, I updated one machine that was running Win10, it's now running LinuxMint

What is this AI everywhere concept actually supposed to accomplish for the end user? Maybe I'm just behind on the vision but I can't grasp the point. I have a feeling it's not really about what the users want but I'd love to here a genuinely good use case.

I hate this world. Linux it is then.

Me, using my MacBook:

(Don’t roast me for not using Linux, I’m all in and happy in the Apple ecosystem!)