“You will own nothing, and you will like it.”
That’s a big nope for me.
Internet goes out? I can still do some amount of work, now I need power and internet to both work to do any work at all.
Not a fan of this and I will not embrace it.
Microsoft has recently announced Windows Copilot, an AI-powered assistant for Windows 11. Windows Copilot sits at the side of Windows 11, and can summarize content you’re viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. Microsoft is currently testing this internally and promised to release it to testers in June before rolling it out more broadly to Windows 11 users.
Oh my God, they're bringing back clippy.
That means a whole new market of NFT Clippy Skins can be established.
That fixes the main problem with Clippy, which was not using a blockchain.
"It looks like you're trying to defraud people. Would you like help with that?"
I guess that means more people switching to linux, assuming they eventually 100% phase out non-cloud. Not even because "cloud bad" - there will be some of that, but because of the sheer number of people who don't pay for windows, not paying for it isn't an option if they control it completely.
Yup, that'd also be the case for people like me who stick with Windows for gaming compatibility/convenience reasons and critical GPU features the Linux drivers just don't implement (looking at you, DLDSR). That, or just anyone with a GPU, I suppose, assuming the hardware market would look remotely like it does nowadays by then.
and I want to move fully off of windows, what a coincidence.
The situation has never been better for comfortably abandoning Windows. Come to Linux, we have penguins
tbh, windows user since the 90s, tried *nix desktops since the early 00s every few years. Used to have a thing where I would force myself to use it for 6 months and it would fail again and again.
In the last year, ive been using ubuntu (which i know isint the best desktop to use even) as a dev system on some of my work. Unlike in the past I am no longer finding an unreasonable delta between the user expectations in linux vs windows systems. I need to drop to a cli for both with ~ the same propensity once I do anything advanced. Not having a registry is a blessing I never thought I would be able to have in a rich visual system.
Long time .NET / Azure dev - moving to linux. After all, what do you think remote windows will run under-the-covers?
That's a pretty similar story to mine. Used Linux pretty exclusively over a decade ago, then switched back for my gaming PC. Now that I'm back on Linux though, I don't see any reason to use windows on anything but my company PC, Linux is just better IMO now.
Are we doing the nobody reads the article thing here too? This isn't a replacement for Windows as an operating system, it's a cloud based version of the OS being sold to consumers. They're trying to compete with inexpensive Chromebooks, not take away your PC.
Why would I read the article? I don't want to know the details. I want to be outraged.
As an occasional sys admin, they've had stuff like this for enterprise forever, it's just self hosted. This is about as surprising as the sun coming up, they've been moving lots of their enterprise tech to consumer subscriptions.
Well of course they do. They want to turn an every-few-years OS purchase into a monthly subscription fee, like they did with O365. And eventually they'll drop the ability to install apps except through their store (under the guise of providing "safety" from malicious apps), so that they can collect a commission on the third party software sales market as well.
Ya I'd be fully Linux after that. Still too many benefits of having your own hardware.
No thank you.
Also I bet instead of a one-time license you can have the privilege of paying $9.99 a month forever or lose access to all your files. And possibly requiring an internet connection to use your desktop computer?
Okay but what happens if you don't have a good net connection like at the coffee shop or airports? I swear sometimes people are clueless and just assume you always have good internet when that's not often the case!
As someone who works in cloud services/ops and has to deal with Microsoft partner relations almost daily, good luck with that.
How is this supposed to work in countries that have bandwidth caps, or slow internet connections?
It seems like every company these days wants to move everything to the cloud, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen. While something like this makes sense in some instances (like kiosks or similar maybe?) for the vast majority of use cases this is a non-starter.
I don't really want to switch to Linux, Microsoft, please stop pushing me to. I will, but I'd rather not. Ffs.
I'm kind of confused...if the plan is to move Windows fully to the cloud, why are they talking to chipmakers about enabling more Windows features in future chip releases? Why would you need processing power for the OS if the OS is fully on the cloud?
I want to move Windows fully to the Recycle Bin.
Was already considering running Linux on my next machine. That just made it a definite. Is Mintos still the best choice for an everyday desktop?
Good luck to them. I’ve been very much enjoying Fedora since Windows 11 came out.
Microsoft has recently announced Windows Copilot, an AI-powered assistant for Windows 11. Windows Copilot sits at the side of Windows 11, and can summarize content you’re viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. Microsoft is currently testing this internally and promised to release it to testers in June before rolling it out more broadly to Windows 11 users.
Assuming this will use OpenAI API like other Microsoft's AI products, this is going to be expensive to operate. Subsidizing it indefinitely is surely not an option. How would Microsoft monetize it? By charging subscription like GitHub Copilot, or monetizing it somehow using users data they collected? I assume it would be the latter.
Just another move toward " you will own nothing and you will be happy". Gotta resist the botnet people, Free software anarchy ftw!
Typical loop in this case:
In a few months/years
Microsoft has a track record of having excellent uptime! /s
I find it somewhat funny that this article came out on the day Microsoft 365 had an outage for most of the day.
Moving “Windows 11 increasingly to the cloud” is identified as a long-term opportunity in Microsoft’s “Modern Life” consumer space, including using “the power of the cloud and client to enable improved AI-powered services and full roaming of people’s digital experience.”
Intel and Microsoft have even hinted at Windows 12 in recent months, and Windows chief Panos Panay claimed at CES earlier this year that “AI is going to reinvent how you do everything on Windows.” All of this is part of Microsoft’s broad Windows ambition, detailed in its internal presentation, “to enable improved AI-powered services” in Windows.
Words cannot express how much I do not want to participate in this version of the future.
More reasons to switch to Linux and stay there.
Once you're logged into Windows 365 you're technically using their hardware and just streaming the use to your machine. You will have almost no control over your own device because it isn't actually your own device. Your own device has been turned into a television, a device that just plays what another device is displaying.
This is about property and ownership and how Microsoft wants to take those things away from you. They want full control of how you use their operating system, and when they force users to use their software and hardware, they will acheive it.
What a terrible fucking idea
Of course they want to get as many people as possible to pay a monthly fee to use their cloud system. I'm sure they won't be going cloud only anytime soon, but they will keep making each new windows version worse than the previous one.
They won't get a single cent from me. I've been running Linux for the last 15 years. Wine, DXVK, and Proton keep getting better and I can run all of my games in Linux now.
I'm surprised they're bothering to focus on consumer devices instead of just going all-out on enterprise and business.
Cloud workstations make a lot of sense for when you need the extra grunt occasionally and have a rock-solid internet connection, but about the only reason the average consumer would want to use them on a portable device is gaming. Everything else you can do locally or as a web app.
And even gaming has been a bit rocky, though it has its small cult of followers.
I switched to Linux a long time ago, it's only getting better and better. After valve started making serious investments in the ecosystem it has only gotten better for desktop usage and it simply 'works' in ways that even windows struggles with, ie: ps4 controllers/switch controllers work ootb, gamescope allows significantly more control over how games are rendered and offers a true console-like experience combined with big picture UI.
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