With all the articles about Microsoft/Windows integrating AI into "x" software and "y" software, do I need to do more to disable all AI existence off my PC?
I'm on 24H2 Windows 11 with a local account set up, ran windows debloat tool and have CoPilot/onedrive/other data mining features un-installed.
Edit: I have a plan to make the switch to Linux. For now I was just looking for any feedback on how to handle current Windows OS. I whole heartedly hate Microsoft as much as the next, I promise lol.
??? Took the same amount of time as any windows set up. Why would this even come close to the amount of times it would take for me to learn an entirely new operating system?
I plan to make a Linux drive to learn and test different software in but I'm not about to make that kind of blind leap without trying it out first.
I appreciate all the encouragement to make the switch but until I pull the trigger I'd like my current Windows OS to run as unmolested as possible.🍻
Linux never asked my mother's maiden name nor insisted on creating a cloud account just to log into my computer.
Also, many distros of Linux come with all the main baseline productive software one should need on a live boot media, ain't even gotta install it to try it out.
Lol wut? Even on Windows 11, I can use a local account with zero online signup. Linux is fantastic, I have two machines running it, but there are some specific softwares that are still Windows dependent (think video editing, music production, VFX).
It's not very different if you don't dig into the guts of the thing. I think the people most afraid of making the switch are actually the ones it is easiest for. If you're not used to digging into the windows registry and haven't upgraded to powershell 7, then you probably won't touch much of what's different in Linux.
The hardest part is picking a distribution -- I usually recommend either Fedora or Ubuntu. -- and an xwindows system -- and coming from Windows I usually recommend KDE Plasma or from MAC I'd recommended GNOME. So either:
The only reason I stuck with Windows for so long was PC gaming. But I don't do much of that anymore and what I do actually do runs fine on Linux these days. So I haven't looked back. But you can always install Linux after Windows is already present if you have a spare hard drive and boot into either at will. Just don't try to do the opposite since Windows installer will corrupt your Linux boot setup.
But to each his own. Windows is now a platform like many others where you trade your personal information for services instead of or in addition to your money. Some people are OK with that and that's totally fair.
I think it was about a year ago. I have given up since then, but I have yet to find anyone capable of getting my audio to work properly, despite many hours of trying and help from multiple people from the Linux support subreddit. It might have been fixed since then, but I don't have the disk space nor the time to attempt the switch again, and if I can't even get audio to work, then I can't use the OS.
Literally just a 3.5mm headset plugged directly into the mobo. As simple as can be.
I hope I can switch some day, but I doubt a lot of my actually specialized software will work any time soon, even if the audio issues have been fixed (or my computer replaced) so I don't expect to any time soon, unfortunately.
On older hardware I almost never have issues, it's only really on the latest hardware that I run into all sorts of issues.
But even then I still run into issues decently often on older hardware. ex: On my T14 gen 1 (came out in 2020 so should be well supported) I was distro hopping and kept running into all sorts of things that annoyed me. The fingerprint reader was hit or miss which really surprised me. Some distros it didn't show up at all, others it technically worked, but was so inaccurate it was infuriating to use, and often times would randomly stop working. S0 standby is still really fiddly and inconsistent. It sucks ass on windows, but it was even worse with almost any distro I tried. Trackpads are also still borderline unusable on linux. I know it will never come close to Mac OS which has spoiled me, but dear god does it bring back some mid 2000s PTSD. Also battery life was much worse which surprised me for a machine of that age, I figured power management would have been perfected by now.
But that was my beater machine, I don't even bother installing it on my main machines. Mostly because of the nvidia GPUs. I have yet to try it on my old RTX 3080 laptop, but I might give it a shot since it's currently unloved. But my biggest concerns are with S0 standby (curse you Intel), and battery life. I have never gotten good battery life on bleeding edge hardware, and from all the reading I've been doing lately it looks like the battery life gap has only gotten worse on brand new hardware. I know newer ryzen battery life has been pretty rough, but it's making some good strides. The problem is that by the time the support is fully baked I'm eyeing another upgrade.
Virtual machines or servers? Hell yeah I use Linux all day long. On my computer? No thanks. I'll still to my weird windows + mac setup.
Since you've been using Linux for a while, why not buy hardware that you know are more compatible like AMD GPUs? Do you need the latest top range GPUs for your activities?
I'm also not going to buy inferior hardware just to run a specific OS. Plus in a laptop you don't really get a choice. Almost 0 workstations have AMD GPUs.
That was where I started before I went distro hopping on my test machine. Ubuntu had a really annoying issue where the fingerprint reader would randomly stop working waking up from sleep. Going into sleep sometimes just didn't work, and battery life was also pretty awful.
I've never had significant problems with that. I mean sure, there can be minor hiccups and inconveniences when finding and installing proprietary drivers, but aside from that, I don't have any issues after that.