[HN Gopher] Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it's just
       renaming it
        
       Author : bundie
       Score  : 302 points
       Date   : 2026-04-13 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
        
       | lemonish97 wrote:
       | From the article: "Additionally, AI features in Notepad settings
       | has been renamed to Advanced features and it allows users to
       | toggle off AI capabilities within the app."
       | 
       | I honestly don't mind this, as long as it's not being forced. And
       | I believe this feature exists only within their npu PCs.
        
         | tosti wrote:
         | IMHO they're just hiding the wolf in sheep clothing. Can't
         | complain about AI if it's not called AI. Modern problems
         | require modern solutions, you get the idea. The snark in TFA
         | about shareholders and stakeholders hits the nail on the head.
        
         | hootz wrote:
         | But it's just so unnecessary. Everyone has always expected
         | Notepad to be a simple utility as it has always been, why does
         | it need optional AI features? It just feels like bloat.
        
           | Sharlin wrote:
           | Reminder that this is the company that decided to replace
           | Paint with something called "Paint 3D", the laggiest and
           | bloatiest "literally nobody wanted this" drawing app I've
           | ever seen.
        
             | hydrogen7800 wrote:
             | Ugh, I can no longer press win key and type "p a i enter".
             | I now have to find the old paint manually.
        
               | hilariously wrote:
               | win+r - mspaint - enter
        
               | hydrogen7800 wrote:
               | Thanks! Also useful for an old win10 machine I have, and
               | probably shouldn't be using anymore, that no longer
               | responds to clicking the start menu button...
        
               | catlikesshrimp wrote:
               | Don't throw it away. Install windows 8, and the last
               | offline version of office you can find. It makes for a
               | great distraction free workstation and a monitor for your
               | android (scrcpy).
               | 
               | Or, you can install and reinstall linux distros and learn
               | the ropes.
               | 
               | You should be fine as long as you use a proper firewall
               | device and access only manually withelisted websites, but
               | it is always better to keep it offline. That said, it can
               | become your next firewall device.
        
               | hydrogen7800 wrote:
               | I built it circa 2012 or 2013 and still have the physical
               | win8 disc. I considered futzing with linux on it. The
               | extent of my linux experience is via SSH to a raspberry
               | pi kludging some docker containers for this and that.
               | SSH/linux terminal feels like fumbling in a dark room
               | flipping random switches until something works.
               | 
               | >scrcpy
               | 
               | I also have a pixel 5a whose screen doesn't work, but I
               | think functions otherwise. Would this allow me to
               | interface with it?
        
               | catlikesshrimp wrote:
               | I think the pixel 5a can be connected to tv through an
               | hdmi cable. If so, plug that and a mouse to setup adb
               | (toggle enable adb and toggle debug permissions, then
               | accept adb host)
        
               | UncleSlacky wrote:
               | Or just install Win10 IoT LTSC, which is supported until
               | 2032.
        
               | esafak wrote:
               | They don't even do substring search??
        
               | xp84 wrote:
               | Apparently there's a proper app launcher in PowerToys.
        
               | amlib wrote:
               | Back in the 90s doing substring match was probably deemed
               | way too expensive and so just calling the executable name
               | directly was as optimized as it got... and it's beautiful
               | :)
        
               | dataflow wrote:
               | Switch to Open-Shell's start menu and don't look back.
        
               | idle_processor wrote:
               | Give FlowLauncher[0] or Windows Powertoys Run[1] a shot.
               | 
               | There are some amazing tools like that (and
               | Everything[2], which replaces Windows' inferior search)
               | that really change how one interacts with Windows.
               | 
               | There are other tricks like putting scripts or shortcuts
               | or executables in a directory referenced by your PATH
               | variable, which can make the Win+R trick better too.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.flowlauncher.com/ [1]
               | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run
               | [2] https://www.voidtools.com/
        
             | whynotmaybe wrote:
             | Must be some Mandela effect but I'm sure that Paint.net was
             | supposed to replace mspaint when it was started.
        
               | Sharlin wrote:
               | It was supposed to be a third-party replacement, sure,
               | but certainly not an official one. It started as a
               | student project. It's just the prefix that tricks your
               | brain to associate it with MS's own .NET branded
               | applications.
        
               | saghm wrote:
               | To be fair, the .NET brand is already super convoluted
               | (there's .NET framework, the .NET core, .NET runtime, the
               | .NET desktop runtime, the .NET sdk, and I'm genuinely not
               | even sure which if any of these might refer to the same
               | thing), on top of it weirdly sounding like something
               | internet related to a casual user.
        
               | Sharlin wrote:
               | Yes, "Copilot" is not the first brand that MS has tried
               | to stick to everything while being just as confused about
               | it as (inevitably) the consumers. Although somehow they
               | did manage to keep .NET mostly aimed at developers -
               | besides the actual frameworks there's Visual Studio .NET
               | and other dev tools, but I'm actually a bit surprised
               | that they never had "Office .NET" or "Outlook .NET" or
               | even "Windows .NET Edition" or something like that. Maybe
               | they still had some sane people in charge of marketing
               | and brand management back then.
        
               | xp84 wrote:
               | They did brand the Microsoft accounts themselves, from
               | "Passport" to ".NET Passport" for a while. That was
               | before they were "Windows Live IDs."
        
               | cwnyth wrote:
               | Paint.NET wasn't Microsoft's, but was an independent app:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET
        
             | mlnj wrote:
             | I remember how Skype, an awesome piece of software
             | transformed into Lync, which worked fairly well, slowly
             | transformed into whatever MS wanted to call it year after
             | year, slower and more buggy than the year before.
        
             | Rohansi wrote:
             | It was never replaced. Paint 3D was an entirely different
             | app for 3D art only. It's also been gone for a few years
             | now.
        
               | Sharlin wrote:
               | It was absolutely sold as a replacement. And it's gone
               | now because literally nobody wanted it, used it, or
               | understood why it existed. Sure, you could still find the
               | old Paint in a disused lavatory behind a locked door with
               | a sign "beware of the leopard". It wasn't even installed
               | by default, unlike the 3D version, or do I recall
               | incorrectly? Even MS isn't so stupid as to ship two
               | separate accessories both called "Paint" in the same OS
               | by default!
        
               | wlesieutre wrote:
               | And a weird obsession with making it impossible to
               | customize the sidebar in Explorer, so there was a "3D
               | Objects" folder stuck there permanently unless you're the
               | kind of user who doesn't mind a trip to the registry
               | editor.
               | 
               | What percent of users ever found that useful? I think I'm
               | being generous to guess one in ten thousand.
               | 
               | Absolutely braindead management running Windows
               | development.
               | 
               | https://www.thewindowsclub.com/remove-3d-objects-folder-
               | wino...
        
               | Sharlin wrote:
               | Yeah, the "3D Objects" thing is just surreal. You can't
               | make this stuff up.
        
               | robotnikman wrote:
               | It was a relic from a time when it looked like 3D
               | printing was going to be the next big thing.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | Agreed, it looked like VR was going to be big, MS & Meta
               | were pushing it hard.
        
               | Barbing wrote:
               | > one in ten thousand.
               | 
               | For their default file explorer experience, the prominent
               | fourth option right in the sidebar. Oh my gosh, that is
               | hilarious. Did someone think it made the computer look
               | advanced (or did they want you to buy apps to uh make 3D
               | stuff from them)?
        
               | wlesieutre wrote:
               | I think they wanted you to buy a Windows Mixed Reality
               | headset and use it for Paint 3D
        
             | MisterTea wrote:
             | I think that crown belongs to the pile of pig shit that was
             | the Windows 10 photo viewer. My first experience with that
             | trash fire was opening a simple 2k photo which took 15
             | seconds and 150 MB of memory on a six core i5 with 16GB
             | RAM. Viewing images was pain and suffering until I gave up
             | and re-enabled the Win 7 viewer which was thankfully still
             | included.
        
             | distances wrote:
             | Looking back, I understood with Windows XP that I wasn't in
             | the target group. Win 95/98 had a simple but functional
             | file search. Being naive, I was expecting some power user
             | features in the future, like regex search.
             | 
             | Win XP replaced the classic file search with one that had
             | an animated dog in it.
             | 
             | The dog search was completely, utterly useless. You would
             | not find anything with it. It was so bad I still vividly
             | remember my bafflement about it.
        
           | lynndotpy wrote:
           | When I stopped using Windows, it was because it required so
           | much constant upkeep and maintenance to stay usable. You had
           | to stay on top of the latest tool that disables tracking,
           | things like Cortana you'd want to remove, the latest toggles
           | you have to disable, what toggles revert themselves when you
           | update. These all exist behind different shifting UI toggles
           | which are not accessibly automatable. And all the while, you
           | have to hope your registry edits don't force you to a lengthy
           | reinstall where you have to redo all of these.
           | 
           | I could be wrong, but as far as I know there's not one "Fix
           | Windows 11" tool maintained to do all this for you.
           | 
           | "You have to toggle AI features off in Notepad, and they
           | changed the name to Advanced Features now," is just another
           | heaving brick on the pile.
        
             | trueno wrote:
             | > When I stopped using Windows, it was because it required
             | so much constant upkeep and maintenance to stay usable.
             | 
             | i actually had to spin up a windows vm last week to fix
             | some dumb excel workbook vba nonsense a coworker was having
             | issues with.
             | 
             | i laughed so hard at the amount of "debloat" powershell
             | tools out there for windows that are basically a non-
             | negotiable now to have a normal operating system
             | experience. just surfing around the web and seeing people
             | say "yeah install OS then run _ tool" like that is a normal
             | "this is fine" thing was so entertaining.
             | 
             | i destroyed that VM when i was done. then took a shower
        
             | supertrope wrote:
             | That's the same reason I deleted my Facebook account.
        
           | tracker1 wrote:
           | I really think MS should have just resurrected the "Wordpad"
           | app name for what the new "Nptepad" does. It would be far
           | less annoying if they'd just done that.
        
             | trueno wrote:
             | lol holy moly i totally forgot about how annoying it was
             | when something opened in the bastard child that was
             | wordpad.
             | 
             | kinda crazy to me how terrible the entire windows
             | experience is as a whole, i really think people have just
             | lost sight of how computing should be.
             | 
             | there's just too many cats outta the bag here that
             | microsoft is going to cling to for dear life, they can back
             | pedal all they want in blogs promising different, but we
             | can already see here they're not willing to let go of the
             | stuff they've woven into things that people hate.
             | 
             | im gonna be blunt, windows kinda sux. this is already not a
             | promising outlook for windows enjoyers. and it's only been
             | what, like 2-3 weeks since they were putting out this
             | nonsense
             | 
             | > "You will see us be more intentional about how and where
             | Copilot integrates across Windows, focusing on experiences
             | that are genuinely useful and well-crafted. As part of
             | this, we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points,
             | starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and
             | Notepad."
             | 
             | let me guess: copilot stuff remains on by default. lol,
             | lmao even
        
               | tracker1 wrote:
               | > im gonna be blunt, windows kinda sux.
               | 
               | No argument from me... I switched my personal devices off
               | Windows several years ago... I still use a Mac laptop,
               | and that may even be my last Apple device.
               | 
               | I really wish that MS would have spent far more time
               | making Win11 consistent instead of introducing so many
               | new features throughout... Win7 was the last version of
               | Windows that even resembled consistent. That doesn't even
               | go into a lot of the bloat and stuff that doesn't
               | necessarily belong in an OS imo. Completing the UI
               | transition should be the second priority only after long
               | standing bugs and usability issues. The AI
               | enshitification is horrible. I'm not even against an
               | option for AI tooling... give me a selection
               | dialog/wizard ONCE on account login/creation... then
               | leave me alone.
        
             | delecti wrote:
             | Based on the timelines, it seems like the WordPad EoL was
             | going on at the same time as the plans to add crap to
             | Notepad. They might well have killed WordPad _so that_ they
             | could turn Notepad into the pile of crap it became.
        
           | philistine wrote:
           | I'd argue it is Microsoft's own damn fault. They seem to have
           | completely abandoned improving their system, in favour of
           | dumping everything in their apps. Apple has introduced
           | writing tools at the OS level, so you can use their LLM in
           | TextEdit and no one complains.
        
             | pbhjpbhj wrote:
             | With Apple, can you leave the LLM features turned off?
        
               | LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
               | Yes you can keep Apple Intelligence turned off at the
               | system level, which I do
        
           | raincole wrote:
           | > Everyone has always expected Notepad to be a simple utility
           | as it has always been
           | 
           | Except the youngest of the demography who don't have this
           | expectation, and live in AI hype era since they're kids.
        
           | xoxxala wrote:
           | I don't need anything more than a simple text editor. Notepad
           | worked fine for a long time, but the bloat is real. I tried a
           | bunch of replacement editors, but none really scratched that
           | Notepad itch. Surprisingly, I'm now a fan of MS Edit:
           | 
           | https://github.com/microsoft/edit
           | 
           | It's very simple and here's hoping they don't bloat this one
           | out, too.
        
             | Neikius wrote:
             | I like kde's Kate. A bit more than notepad but not as crazy
             | as notepad++. More like notepad 2
        
         | saghm wrote:
         | If I'm understanding correctly, you have to go into "advanced"
         | features to turn _off_ AI? So someone who doesn 't think
         | they're an expert who needs advanced features might not ever go
         | and look there? I'd argue that "advanced" features are
         | something that a casual user would expect to be off by default
         | and need to go out of their way to enable.
        
           | mcdeltat wrote:
           | "advanced" in 2026 is closer to "using the app how you want
           | to as rather than the way that will generate the corporation
           | maximum profits"
        
             | dataflow wrote:
             | This stretches back much farther than the 2020s
             | unfortunately...
        
         | Topfi wrote:
         | The "AI" additions to Notepad are not limited to systems with
         | an NPU. Why would they be, it's powered by LLMs running on
         | Azure [0].
         | 
         | These sudden additions also correlated with the first CVE [1]
         | in Notepad since its inception, so maybe their attention isn't
         | where it should be.
         | 
         | I for one very much mind this and many other inclusions
         | including the metastatic takeover off Office. OneDrive also was
         | forced upon and severely worsened functioning software, despite
         | not being "AI", so there is precedent at least.
         | 
         | [0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enhance-your-
         | wri...
         | 
         | [1] https://infosecwriteups.com/the-dumb-editor-that-got-too-
         | sma...
        
         | noir_lord wrote:
         | Be better if there was a global "Disable AI" option easily
         | found in the settings that is a flag _everywhere_.
         | 
         | Some of us (including very much me) simply do not want
         | Copilot/AI _anything_ and playing whackamole with settings is
         | annoying but we 'll do it anyway and it leaves a bad taste.
         | 
         | Since it's the software equivalent of been in a filing cabinet
         | in the basement behind a door that has a sign saying "Beware
         | the Leopard".
         | 
         | In reality it's a moot point, I disable AI features and Windows
         | is a gloried steamos box for me at this point, I do my actual
         | computing booted into Linux and have for decades.
        
         | jgalt212 wrote:
         | > I honestly don't mind this, as long as it's not being forced.
         | 
         | This is indeed a step forward. With QuickBooks, there is
         | currently no way to disable their extremely intrusive AI. I may
         | just vibe-code a browser extension to block it. Fight fire with
         | fire.
        
         | razster wrote:
         | Even with it off, you can still see that it uses a lot of
         | resources for a basic Notepad. I've ditched Windows for work,
         | second drive now has Windows for gaming and that is all. I can
         | do all my work on Linux and that is fine by me.
        
         | BizarroLand wrote:
         | I would prefer off by default.
         | 
         | No nags, just a simple, "We are offering you this feature, use
         | it or don't, it's your computer".
        
       | tosti wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/M7Bv5
        
       | protoster wrote:
       | > At the start of the year, Microsoft generated a lot of goodwill
       | among Windows 11 fans when it announced its big plan to fix the
       | operating system in 2026
       | 
       | The only thing generated was boatloads of incredulity and some
       | laughs.
        
         | benterix wrote:
         | Yeah, I remember the same. Also, "Windows 11 fans" sounds like
         | an oxymoron.
        
           | tosti wrote:
           | It could relate to the amount of *pu and system fans needed
           | to run so much bloatware :)
        
           | bilekas wrote:
           | Might be considered "Windows 11 Hostages" instead given
           | they've dropped support for using anything else.
        
             | bluescrn wrote:
             | Wondering how long I can hold out on Win10...
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | No surprise for large companies, one company even renamed itself
       | but its approval ratings still stayed in the basement.
       | 
       | A fortune 500 company I worked for renamed internal projects many
       | times when the original failed. But they continued dumping money
       | into those black holes. One dollar eating project was renamed 3
       | times and was on its way for a 4th rename when I left. That
       | project was started between 2005 and 2010. I was not involved
       | with it, but everyone knew it would fail.
       | 
       | So M/S renaming copilot ? I expect a few more renames as time
       | goes on :)
        
       | benterix wrote:
       | > At the start of the year, Microsoft generated a lot of goodwill
       | among Windows 11 fans when it announced its big plan to fix the
       | operating system in 2026.
       | 
       | Interesting, I can't recall a single voice "Oh I'm so happy they
       | changed their corporate strategy" but many of "I'll believe it
       | when I see it".
        
         | shevy-java wrote:
         | Ah, you make a great point - I made almost the same comment a
         | moment ago, because I remember that Microslop babbled about "we
         | will listen to the community" some weeks ago. Guess it was
         | indeed at the start of the year.
         | 
         | So those who were skeptic were right - one can not trust
         | Microslop. Its AI addiction is too strong already. It sold its
         | soul to AI. There is no way back for Microslop anymore. All
         | Win11 users will have to support AI. AI up all the things! \o/
        
       | shevy-java wrote:
       | Didn't Microsoft say it will listen to the community, some weeks
       | ago? And now it looks as if Microsoft did not tell the truth. To
       | be fair: I think Microsoft actually has no alternative option.
       | They sold out to AI and all Win11 users will have to support the
       | hype train. I am so glad to have switched to Linux a long time
       | ago.
        
         | whynotmaybe wrote:
         | Well, they heard that we don't like copilot in notepad so they
         | removed "copilot" from notepad.
         | 
         | And right after that they added a brand new feature called
         | tolipoc that will revolutionize the way you analyze your logs
         | or modify your 17 year old cmd file!
         | 
         | Want to create a file with the current date and time? No need
         | to google for it, tolipoc will do it for you!
        
           | a1o wrote:
           | Is the last sentence a reference to the .LOG classic notepad
           | hack?
        
         | pndy wrote:
         | You prob recall this thing from 23 days ago:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459296
         | 
         | For me there's nothing MS could do at this point that would
         | bring me back. And as I said in that thread, it's too late for
         | them - people are moving elsewhere, maybe not in big numbers
         | but exodus is in progress. MS harassed their users/clients too
         | hard and for too long; now it's time to "enjoy" fruits of their
         | deranged actions and decisions.
        
         | yndoendo wrote:
         | Microsoft has jumped onto the Friedman doctrine with full
         | force. [0] Following this doctrine takes you down only one
         | path, Enshitification.
         | 
         | All the major Wall Street players are doing it too; Nestle with
         | removing real chocolate in their chocolate candy, McDonald's
         | now costing the same as a sit down with lower quality product,
         | car industry rejecting affordable vehicles for production. [1]
         | [2]
         | 
         | The only end users Microsoft concern themselves with are the
         | _Share Holders_. They reject the developers, maintainers, and
         | consumers as their focal user groups. This is how you get shit-
         | ware and people leaving your platform.
         | 
         | My major goal this year is to get our solutions running on
         | Linux so we can fully ditch the trash fire that Windows IoT /
         | Embedded has become. It originally was fully customizable now
         | it is bloated with Copilot, XBox gaming, and working to force
         | the creation of @Microsoft.com accounts versus local ones.
         | 
         | I support local restaurants, businesses, and breweries. While
         | Wall Street companies are last in line to receive my income, if
         | at all. I will not spend a penny personally financially
         | supporting large players like McDonald's, Microsoft, Pepsi,
         | Coca-Cola, Molson Coors, AB InBev ...
         | 
         | Everything these companies say is just PR to try and win back
         | those they lost and those that are walking away. Only trust an
         | origination's actions because their messages are meaningless
         | and without value.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
         | 
         | [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79x7q325p3o
         | 
         | [2] https://daxstreet.com/news/243275/affordable-cars-
         | disappear-...
        
       | xacky wrote:
       | Copilot has been reduced to "Internet Explorer" status, where it
       | is the "AI to download another AI".
        
       | _HMCB_ wrote:
       | Seems like what Apple does with Writing Assistant. At least in
       | this case, it's opt-in. You have to click. I don't run Windows so
       | I don't know if this implementation is vastly superior or not.
        
         | Shank wrote:
         | If you turn off Apple Intelligence, it's one switch and
         | features like that are gone from every single location.
        
           | _HMCB_ wrote:
           | I had no clue that you could switch it off. Thanks.
        
       | wing-_-nuts wrote:
       | I have windows on my desktop pc because it's easier to get
       | executable mods (downgraders, engine fixes, etc) working on
       | windows than linux. There's also the matter of 'kernel level
       | anti-cheat' games not working.
       | 
       | But if I just judge windows vs linux, on even ground, W11 is
       | _painful_. I 've main'd linux on my laptop for ~ 25 years. There
       | was a time when it was a jank experience that I put up with for
       | better devex, but that ended in the late 00's. From that point
       | forward, unless you were trying to get bleeding edge hardware to
       | work, linux has been hands down better.
       | 
       | It's enough that I've considered giving up online play all
       | together just to have a nicer computing experience.
        
         | californical wrote:
         | I just run two drives - one with windows and one with Linux.
         | 
         | I treat the windows one as a console essentially, not even
         | logged into my password manager or email or anything. It is
         | only for games. Basically an Xbox, with all sorts of normal
         | annoying UX, but it doesn't matter for all of the ~2 minutes
         | until I can launch a game
         | 
         | Separate linux drive for everything else.
        
           | wing-_-nuts wrote:
           | That's ...not the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Now I just
           | have to wait till prices come down on ssds again. While I can
           | of course afford it, it wounds my soul to pay the AI / tariff
           | tax on components.
        
             | fhd2 wrote:
             | I typically install both systems on the same disk,
             | different partitions. Then work with additional SSDs
             | strictly for game storage. Only annoying bit is that some
             | games _need_ to be on C, but very few in my experience. If
             | you have enough space to shrink your Windows partition,
             | that could work without waiting for an SSD. Though I guess
             | the one OS per disk setup is ultimately cleaner.
             | 
             | Been dual booting for >20 years now. It's nice that some
             | games work on Linux pretty well these days, and of course I
             | had fun messing with Wine manually to get some stuff to
             | work decades ago. But it really doesn't bother me too much
             | to reboot when switching between gaming and literally
             | anything else.
        
               | keyringlight wrote:
               | The issue that has occurred a few times is that some
               | windows updates will decide that they 'own' the disk it's
               | installed on or knows better than whoever is running the
               | system, and overwrite any other boot manager with
               | window's own and you may need to break out a live boot to
               | recover it. Using a single isolated disc at OS install
               | time (if you can have multiple physical drives) and using
               | a motherboard boot selection hotkey means that risk
               | likely goes away.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | Many newer computers now have a rudimentary bootloader
               | integrated in the EFI. Some are actually quite nice,
               | allowing you to browse partitions to choose which image
               | to boot. HPs have this. You just hit a key during uefi
               | "post" and voila.
               | 
               | The functionality is present on my new Lenovo laptop,
               | various generations of HP elite/pro books/desks, old asus
               | mobo and newer cheap gigabyte mobo, 7th gen intel nuc.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | I use BIOS boot selection to dual-boot. MS has broken it
               | twice. I turned off SecureBoot now and just don't run
               | games that require it.
               | 
               | Apparently you can get a mobo with switchable BIOS config
               | (or was it just a switchable SSD?) so the OS didn't even
               | know that there's a second OS around. If there's no
               | connection of the other OS then MS can't break it [as
               | easily]!
               | 
               | IMO it must be malicious, because otherwise it would be
               | caught with remedial testing. I can't believe MS don't
               | include dual boot setups in their testing.
        
               | supertrope wrote:
               | Microsoft got rid of QA years ago. If it was targeted
               | sabotage they could break dual boot setups every single
               | Patch Tuesday. It's just disrespect for users. Like how
               | Copilot and other shovelware such as Candy Crush keep
               | getting reinstalled every few updates, and privacy
               | settings reset every once in a while. Dual booting is
               | likely not even on their radar.
        
               | dns_snek wrote:
               | > It's nice that some games work on Linux pretty well
               | these days
               | 
               | This description doesn't really do it justice. ~75% of
               | top 100 games work well out of the box/with minimal
               | tinkering according to https://www.protondb.com/dashboard
               | (it varies a bit based on the rating scale)
               | 
               | Many work perfectly and many work even better than they
               | do on Windows. Valve's work really changed the game over
               | the past few years.
        
             | GeoAtreides wrote:
             | > Now I just have to wait till prices come down on ssds
             | again
             | 
             | oh man, do I have some really bad news for you:
             | 
             | https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/chart/SNDK
        
           | ghighi7878 wrote:
           | I have a windows machine connected to my TV for games. Thats
           | it. 1000 Euro machine with 500 Euro GPU. Also use it for
           | govts windows only thingies.
        
             | dathinab wrote:
             | Similar for me but I mostly play single player small studio
             | games/no mods, and on Steam/Linux there are enough "out of
             | the box working" games to fill all the time I still have
             | left for gaming.
             | 
             | It's not perfect, but I anyway had the computer for other
             | reasons and may need it for the other reasons again after
             | which I would need to re-setup anything. Bazite default/w.
             | SteamOS UI install + a minor number of setting changes (
             | _1) and a login to steam and it 's ready to go again. Can't
             | complain. Just which the SteamOS UI version would also do
             | the same background download+apply of updates the main
             | versions or distros like Fedora Silverblue do.
             | 
             | While not quite yet console experience, for many games it
             | really is not "that" far away. (For some other games very
             | much very far away, don't expect any competitive PvP games
             | or games with real world money related online economy
             | working. To some degree it's not even about anti-cheat not
             | working on Linux. It's about many such games struggling
             | making it work on Windows and having no room to bother with
             | another platform, and dishonest managers potentially using
             | "all Linux fault" as an excuse when the anti-cheating
             | strategy failed on Windows where most of their players
             | where... (happened before))
             | 
             | --
             | 
             | (_1): Mainly SteamOS UI is made for Handhelds and as such
             | has some bad defaults for more powerful desktops (which
             | likely will change soon). I'm only couch gaming on it,
             | hence close to everything else just stays with default
             | settings. Sure it's not fancy customized Linux or most
             | maximal privacy preserving Linux. But it's in the "good
             | enough" area of settings, privacy and similar, which
             | Windows in many aspects isn't anymore. No fighting windows
             | forcing things down your throat, weather it's Copilot, the
             | nasty way it tries to deceive you into using it's online
             | drive, etc.
             | 
             | ---
             | 
             | Oh and as minor tip: You can majorly micro optimize
             | kernels, schedulers, drivers etc. If you don't need to,
             | then don't bother. That is where unexpected perf.
             | regressions, issues after updates etc. come in. Like you
             | still find reports about Bazzite being slower then windows
             | due to them having don that in the past and having run into
             | an unexpected perf. regression on some hardware without
             | realizing. I mean it is fun to tinker. But I'm in the
             | "please mostly just work" age by now.
        
             | nomel wrote:
             | I was going to go this route, but with all the GPU's
             | sitting around in data centers now, you can get Steam cloud
             | gaming for stupid cheap. I pay $10/month for 4k@120Hz (up
             | to 80mbps video bitrate, they're experimenting with HDR),
             | with my MacBook connected to my TV. It would take 12 years
             | of subscriptions to equal the price of a PC, which is
             | realistically more like 20 since I pause the subscription
             | for months that I don't play. And, if I want to play some
             | multiplayer game with a family member, I just add another
             | subscription for $10, we play the game until they're done,
             | then cancel.
             | 
             | I'll probably pick up a PC at some point, but this has been
             | completely fine.
        
           | marcosscriven wrote:
           | I installed Proxmox on my main desktop - with GPU passthrough
           | I can quickly switch to a Windows desktop for the rare games
           | that need it (mostly VR).
        
           | dasyatidprime wrote:
           | I've considered this for consolidating core hardware, but
           | dual-boot doesn't do trust boundaries well. The Windows
           | kernel still has full block access to the other device, so if
           | it gets admin-level malware, it has free rein to infect the
           | other system. At one point several years ago I got partway
           | through a plan involving having most disks be externally
           | pluggable (and assuming that firmware-level malware
           | persistence is unlikely, which I'm not as sure about these
           | days) but gave up for unclear reasons. I think if I were to
           | try that again (and if I had the hardware for it) I'd try
           | some kind of NAS approach to separate storage credentials
           | from the OS.
        
             | kogir wrote:
             | With secure boot, full disk encryption, and robust backups,
             | this risk should be largely mitigated, right?
             | 
             | That's what I'm personally banking on. I think anyone with
             | the resources to bypass these would first just use a rubber
             | hose.
        
             | Neikius wrote:
             | You could run windows in the VM. Pcie passthrough is a
             | thing just be careful with the Mobo.
        
           | miguno wrote:
           | Steam is a wonderful boot loader.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | Y'all just need to game on Linux when and where possible, to
           | the extent that it is possible.
           | 
           | Be the change the market needs to see to adjust development
           | practices.
           | 
           | Valve is doing their part. I get playing on Windows when
           | there are mods, but if you can play a new game vanilla at
           | launch on Linux - do it. It shows demand.
        
           | tantalor wrote:
           | Glad to see Windows is still treated basically the same as
           | DOS, but with slightly better graphics and mouse support.
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | This is basically how I use linux. PC plugged in to the TV
           | running bazzite. No keyboard or mouse, just an xbox
           | controller. The experience is so seamless now.
        
         | MiddleEndian wrote:
         | Anecdotally, my (smart but doesn't really care much about
         | computers) fiancee was able to get all dozen of her mods for
         | The Sims working on Bazzite Linux without any help from me
         | besides a chmod +x to one script.
         | 
         | But we don't play any online multiplayer games, so YMMV on that
         | one.
        
           | Neikius wrote:
           | Multiplayer online games work mostly fine. There is just a
           | small fraction that is not.
        
         | connicpu wrote:
         | For me last year was the tipping point, with Windows 10 hitting
         | EOL I refused to move to the buggy mess of 11. All the games I
         | regularly play are now nearly flawless in proton and games that
         | refuse to run on Linux just don't exist for me anymore.
         | Admittedly I already didn't play the kinds of highly
         | competitive online games that like to use KLAC, so might be a
         | tougher sell if that's your jam. Most of my game time goes to
         | FF14 and GW2.
        
         | pawelduda wrote:
         | I repeat this story every now and then but I "maintain" a 18
         | years old laptop with Ubuntu (mainly for Internet) for non-tech
         | savvy user. I put it in quotes because I just run apt update
         | every now and then - that's it. Just works. The only bottleneck
         | is how resource-hungry browsers got over time but it remains
         | usable. Ubuntu was installed sometime back in 2017 and there
         | was no need for fresh reinstall since then.
        
           | rbanffy wrote:
           | I did that for my mom. At some point she learned to click
           | through the Ubuntu updater and she kept her machine updated
           | by herself. I only kept tabs on her computer via the server
           | monitoring tooling I had on my network.
        
             | Barbing wrote:
             | This sounds like the move, vs. having mum on Win+Chrome.
             | 
             | If people had set their family members up with Firefox and
             | Ublock Origin, then the Manifest v2 deprecation wouldn't
             | have resulted in seniors getting hit with certain scams.
             | Specifically over the period between deprecation and the
             | next visit from tech savvy family members.
             | 
             | Unforgivable btw
             | 
             | Edit - Linux bit's important too b/c of MS nagscreens that
             | could try to upsell
        
           | SoftTalker wrote:
           | That can't be literally true, no release of Ubuntu is still
           | getting updates after 18 years. At some point you have to
           | upgrade to the next release, and that's not quite as simple.
        
             | LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
             | The laptop is 18 years old, Ubuntu was installed in 2017.
        
             | wing-_-nuts wrote:
             | The 'upgrade to next version of ubuntu' has gotten pretty
             | good these days.
             | 
             | The only thing I would make sure to do is to have a
             | separate home partition / volume so if you _had_ to blow
             | the underlying OS away after a botched upgrade, it 's
             | easily doable.
             | 
             | For the _life_ of me I don 't understand why having a
             | separate area for your personal files isn't the default on
             | every OS. Just pick a reasonable size for the OS part
             | (20-30G?) and give the rest to /home
        
               | goalieca wrote:
               | Check out the volume scheme in macOS.
        
         | Aardwolf wrote:
         | I don't seem to have issues modding games like Skyrim, Fallout
         | 4 or Factorio on Linux
        
           | wing-_-nuts wrote:
           | Do you use executable mods? Downgraders, engine fixes, etc?
           | I'm also curious what mod manager you use, because getting
           | MO2 to work under linux is a bit janky as well.
        
             | joombaga wrote:
             | I use MO2 on Linux through Steam's Proton runtime, to play
             | TTW (Fallout NV mod). Works fine. The TTW installer did
             | require an older Proton version though.
        
             | Aardwolf wrote:
             | Probably not often I'd say, but at least there were some
             | games I played with wine where some executables to apply
             | mods also ran in wine and worked, I vaguely remember some
             | fix to make something be able to use more than a few GB of
             | ram to allow farther or better remdering, sometimes just a
             | strange combination of things is needed to get something to
             | work. But that's actually long ago, these days everything
             | just works in Steam instead
        
               | ChoGGi wrote:
               | > I vaguely remember some fix to make something be able
               | to use more than a few GB of ram to allow farther or
               | better remdering.
               | 
               | A 4gb patch probably (let's you use 4gb instead of 2gb
               | for x86 executables).
        
             | Neikius wrote:
             | Janky but works. I started experiment with game scope I
             | think is called. Interesting results upscaling some games.
             | Fiddly though
        
           | dathinab wrote:
           | it's a question of tooling, modding kits
           | 
           | most times it this tooling which causes issues not the mod
           | itself
           | 
           | For very popular games it's not rare if moddingkit/tooling
           | producer (or contributes) made the tooling work on Linux, but
           | it can be very hit or miss.
           | 
           | but it increasingly more "just works", kinda, somewhat
        
             | delecti wrote:
             | Yeah. I recently tried to run an auxiliary program (Mass
             | Effect save editor because the character creator sucks) on
             | Linux which was only written for Windows. Getting it
             | running in the same Proton "space" (bottle?) was not an
             | _enormous_ challenge, but it was very far from  "just
             | works".
        
         | tracker1 wrote:
         | I tend to run pretty close to the edge on hardware (9950x,
         | 9070xt, gen5 nvme)... I've had a few issues with that in
         | Linux... that said, I've been using Linux as the main OS on my
         | desktop for a while now, and when I upgraded about a year ago,
         | I ditched the Windows drive entirely.
         | 
         | I do have a Windows Server 2025 and Win11 VM running for a
         | couple testing issues, but that's about it. That said, there
         | seems to be a few integration issues on Wayland where the RDP
         | client or the VM UI both will not intercept hotkeys like alt-
         | tab, which makes it kind of painful to use the VM effectively.
         | 
         | Even with the rough edges in Cosmic, I'll still take it over
         | the jank they keep addding to Windows.
        
           | vidarh wrote:
           | Yeah, I mostly stopped checking hardware compatibility for
           | Linux ~10 years ago. Every now and again there's an issue,
           | but it's usually easy to work around, or I wait a little bit
           | and it's resolved. When it got to the point that I felt I
           | didn't need to check any more, it was a big deal.
        
             | tracker1 wrote:
             | I had an RX 5700XT at launch, that was about the most
             | painful... but 6mo later it worked fine... But by then I
             | did switch back to Windows because I couldn't deal with the
             | day to day issues... A year later, I went back to Linux and
             | haven't looked back though.
        
         | TheGRS wrote:
         | Its always been a momentum thing for me, grew up on Windows,
         | esp in my LAN party days. The guys running linux couldn't play
         | 90% of the games the rest of us were. When dev became more
         | important to me I would typically reach for something else
         | because the windows dev experience always kind of sucked IMO
         | (unless you were a .NET person, which for the most part I was
         | not).
         | 
         | I have a spare laptop with Pop OS on it now and I'm really
         | enjoying it. Kind of forget I'm on it sometimes. I'm
         | considering putting it as my OS for my main powerful laptop
         | that I play most of my games on.
        
         | iLoveOncall wrote:
         | I run Windows 11 as my main desktop (and use Mac at work and
         | have a bunch of servers / NAS where I run debian), and W11 is
         | not painful at all.
         | 
         | I installed the Professional edition, disabled a few settings
         | that I don't like the first time I installed it, and haven't
         | had any issue or friction since then.
         | 
         | Meanwhile I'm constantly frustrated at MacOS and obviously you
         | can't do anything on Linux without running into some sort of
         | trouble.
        
           | mancerayder wrote:
           | Some people don't mind ads on the radio, when they're
           | watching a show, some people don't mind pop-ups, etc.
           | 
           | Now, if I search on win11 to start a program (which is what
           | they want you to do), why does auto complete call out to the
           | Internet? Users had had browsers for over two decades, who
           | has asked Microsoft to mix local search, application startup
           | and web search?
           | 
           | As it turns out, I really hated on-call my whole career. I
           | guess different personalities here, as well.
        
             | iLoveOncall wrote:
             | > if I search on win11 to start a program (which is what
             | they want you to do), why does auto complete call out to
             | the Internet?
             | 
             | This is how I launch most of my programs and it has
             | literally never been an issue for me, it always does
             | exactly what I expect, which is to launch the program I
             | have installed locally.
             | 
             | I don't give a fuck if it makes an HTTP call or performs an
             | incantation to the god of search in the background, as long
             | as it just gives me my locally installed software
             | instantly, which it does.
             | 
             | > As it turns out, I really hated on-call my whole career.
             | 
             | Read my bio.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | Linux is missing good vm defaults (dirty_bytes etc.) - out of
         | the box settings on the distros I tried are abysmal; both
         | windows and macos are much saner.
         | 
         | Other than that, yeah, it's a royal pain in the ass. It's
         | treating the user primarily as an upsell funnel.
        
         | seabrookmx wrote:
         | I assume this isn't the case with every machine, but every
         | hardware I've ever owned (including the Framework 13, which has
         | pretty good Linux support) has had worse battery life under
         | Linux (mainstream distros like Fedora and Ubuntu).
         | 
         | To say nothing of the truly excellent battery life Macs these
         | days get.
         | 
         | That's the only reason to avoid Linux on a laptop these days,
         | IMO.
        
           | wkrsz wrote:
           | David Heinemeier Hansson reports excellent battery life on
           | 2026 Dell XPS 14 with Panther Lake
           | https://world.hey.com/dhh/panther-lake-is-the-real-
           | deal-4bd7...
        
             | seabrookmx wrote:
             | I'm a little gun-shy of getting another Dell after two bad
             | machines in a row (two separate models with swollen
             | batteries < 3 years old), but I'll admit the 14 looks nice
             | now that they've brought back the physical function keys!
        
             | ebbi wrote:
             | I'm waiting to see some other reviews of the Omarchy and
             | Dell XPS combo on battery life. DHH has overhyped some
             | things in the past - he posted a screenshot on X last week
             | showing ~40 hours battery life remaining on the Dell.
             | 
             | But it's so good to see the Windows side catching up to
             | Macs now. So tempted to try out Omarchy on the XPS.
        
           | HumblyTossed wrote:
           | > That's the only reason to avoid Linux on a laptop these
           | days, IMO.
           | 
           | Pop_os! with the system76 power daemon makes a world of
           | difference on my tiny AMD powered Lenovo ideapad.
        
           | Computer0 wrote:
           | My scrolling is screwed up everytime I try to run Linux on my
           | laptop.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | Install the IoT LTSC edition. No crapware at all. It's a really
         | solid OS. Less painful than Linux overall.
        
           | delecti wrote:
           | Is there any legitimate way to do that? Last I heard, that
           | version needed an Enterprise license which end-users
           | realistically can't realistically get.
        
         | LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
         | I dual boot Windows and Pop OS. I find the Windows 10 LTSC
         | experience totally perfect, and it has a longer EOL.
        
           | themagician wrote:
           | LTSC is the "real" Windows. It's so boring and terrific.
           | 
           | What I don't understand is why they don't make it more
           | available. Just let people pay for it. I do not understand
           | why they don't.
        
             | com2kid wrote:
             | For the same reason everything is moving to being ad based
             | - because ads pay more, and because the high income users
             | who are willing to pay to get rid of ads are the most
             | valuable users to show ads to.
        
             | supertrope wrote:
             | Google and Facebook showed the way. Consumers see FREE
             | service and it sets the market equilibrium. Retail Windows
             | licenses were already a slim minority. Those who would buy
             | Windows 11 LTSC for Home would be an even smaller group.
        
         | bradley13 wrote:
         | If you avoid games that demand kernel-level access, gaming on
         | Linux works just fine.
         | 
         | Honestly, I don't trust game producers enough to grant then
         | kernel access. Do you? Really?
        
           | wing-_-nuts wrote:
           | I don't trust _windows_ with access to sensitive data, much
           | less games. I do all banking, etc on my linux laptop. My
           | desktop is for messing around with AI  / ML / games
        
         | augusto-moura wrote:
         | I usually don't care enough about the games that only run on
         | Windows. Most of the games I play are 100% playable on Linux,
         | even the online competitive ones. Never liked League, PUBG or
         | GTA Online anyway
        
         | Neikius wrote:
         | There is like 20 online games that don't work... No need to
         | give it all up if you switch
        
         | lqstuart wrote:
         | I switched from Windows to Linux because I got a Steam Deck,
         | which caused me to realize that the only games in my library
         | that don't also run flawlessly on Linux are the ones that have
         | invasive anticheat that I'm really not comfortable installing.
         | 
         | Having to enable TPM or device integrity or whatever it is on
         | my own computer just to run my own games is just too much power
         | to hand to some garbage corporation that shits on its users.
         | Rubbed me so far the wrong that way that I gave it up. The fact
         | that Win 11 is no longer just an easy and hands-off solution
         | that "just works" but is bloated with dark patterns and "AI"
         | bullshit certainly helped cement the decision.
        
           | brianwawok wrote:
           | Have a Linux gaming machine with bazzite. Fantastic! So far
           | any game I care about works and with AMD drivers it's even
           | stable..
        
         | ljm wrote:
         | I could tolerate Windows more if it stopped being a rental OS
         | that thinks MS own your laptop more than you do. Like it was in
         | Windows 7.
         | 
         | All I ask is that things I uninstall stay uninstalled -- I got
         | rid of OneDrive and Teams for a reason, stop adding that shit
         | back! -- and that it doesn't shove Edge and Bing down my throat
         | and decide that MS knows better than I do about what I want.
        
         | aucisson_masque wrote:
         | Last time I checked, Linux didn't have hardware acceleration
         | for videos in most browsers. I think it was 2 or 3 years ago,
         | certainly way after "the late 00's".
         | 
         | In my opinion, an operating system that sucks the battery out
         | of your laptop is not good enough.
         | 
         | Just one exemple but I think it's pretty straightforward.
        
           | jasomill wrote:
           | Worse: while, as a technical user with decades of *nix
           | experience (SunOS since 4.1.x, FreeBSD since 2.x, Linux since
           | Red Hat [not Enterprise] 6, NEXTSTEP and its successors since
           | 3.3, etc.), I've never had trouble getting hardware decoding
           | working in Linux browsers with a little elbow grease, the
           | overall support picture is not straightforward at all.
           | 
           | Whether hardware decoding works in browsers on Linux depends
           | on the Linux distro, the browser, the hardware, and how the
           | browser is packaged and configured.
           | 
           | It may be disabled by default. X11 backends may in some cases
           | have broader decode support than Wayland backends or vice
           | versa. And at least one popular distro, Fedora, packages
           | video decoding libraries with patent-encumbered codecs
           | disabled, which need to be replaced with libraries from a
           | third-party repo for hardware decoding to work _except_ in
           | the case of applications installed via packaging mechanisms
           | that vendor dependencies like Flatpak.
        
             | Neikius wrote:
             | This one is a real pain yes. Contributes a lot to bad
             | battery life on laptops
        
         | d3Xt3r wrote:
         | > _It 's enough that I've considered giving up online play all
         | together just to have a nicer computing experience._
         | 
         | Why don't you play games that actually work online, instead of
         | giving it up altogether?
         | 
         | Diablo 2/3/4/D2R/PD2, Path of Exile 1/2, Last Epoch, Fall Guys,
         | Age of Empires, Forza, MS Flight Simulator, Quake
         | 3/4/Champions, The Finals, CS2, TF2, Halo Infinite... there's a
         | bunch more I'm missing, but you can certainly game online on
         | Linux.
        
       | kotaKat wrote:
       | It's almost as if Microsoft really loves to assault and abuse its
       | users and claim its for our own good.
       | 
       | I'm tired of being a victim.
        
       | luxuryballs wrote:
       | I hope this is better than seeing that Copilot logo infecting
       | every menu, I've had to use registry hacks to get rid of that
       | thing.
        
       | rdiddly wrote:
       | So they didn't remove it, they just renamed it? Reminds me of
       | that time we fixed racism by renaming the master branch to main.
        
         | Barbing wrote:
         | Maybe comparing <the sum total of annoyance from reading the
         | old name> to <the current sum total of annoyance reading the
         | current name>, it was a positive direction overall?
        
           | lnenad wrote:
           | I mean, if you were to do that, I'd wager more people are
           | annoyed with the change than were annoyed with the original
           | name. So no, it was a negative direction overall.
        
           | stronglikedan wrote:
           | nope. to this day, it's still fucks people up and causes
           | mistakes. it was stupid then, and it's still just as stupid.
           | virtue signalling is always fucking stupid, and sometimes,
           | like in this case, is flat out egregious
        
             | smrtinsert wrote:
             | At some point virtue signaling is fixing symptoms of the
             | problem. Always had a problem with master slave terminology
             | happy to see it gone.
        
               | anonymars wrote:
               | You'll be happy to know in the context of a "master
               | branch" it never had any connotation to slavery, except
               | in the minds of people who see _everything_ as a question
               | of race*
               | 
               | Anyway I'm off to listen to the 50th anniversary Dark
               | Side of the Moon remaster. Wait, is "dark" an okay word?
               | I didn't get a master's degree in English
               | 
               | * Parallel ATA on the other hand, yeah, yikes
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _virtue signaling is fixing symptoms of the problem_
               | 
               | It diminishes the seriousness of the entire anti-racism
               | movement by making it look petty, out of touch and more
               | interested in creating nuisances than solving real
               | problems. The San Francisco school board got fired for
               | doing similar nonsense during COVID, renaming schools and
               | thus showing they weren't serious people.
        
               | zahlman wrote:
               | > by making it look
               | 
               | I have yet to see a good reason to believe that it isn't
               | actually the case.
        
               | zahlman wrote:
               | Can you, perhaps, cite your own pre-2020 writing
               | attesting to the problem, and explaining why it should be
               | considered a problem?
               | 
               | Do you consider that using the name "master" for a branch
               | tends to endorse or normalize slavery, or (even
               | stochastically) increase the amount of slavery that
               | occurs in the world?
               | 
               | If so, how?
               | 
               | If not, _why is it actually a problem_ to reference the
               | concept ( _even disregarding_ the evidence that it was
               | _not intended_ to do so)?
        
           | rurp wrote:
           | You need to add all of the real world breakage to scripts and
           | tutorials on the right side of that ledger. Plus the negative
           | effects of virtue signaling undermining efforts at
           | substantive change.
           | 
           | Also, are we supposed to ban the word master from all of it's
           | dozens of normal English use-cases? I never got a clear
           | answer on why git branch names were so much more harmful than
           | someone mastering a skill or making a master record.
        
             | seanw444 wrote:
             | I suggest we all boycott Mastercard until they rename to
             | Maincard. I simply cannot bring myself to generate revenue
             | for a company so bigoted they'd use such an egregious name.
        
             | moduspol wrote:
             | And somehow academia, the most enlightened among us, kept
             | their master's degrees.
        
               | zahlman wrote:
               | Somehow, "primary degree" _really_ doesn 't have the same
               | ring to it.
        
           | ecshafer wrote:
           | I don't believe that more than .0001% of people actually felt
           | annoyance. Master branch was used referencing a master, as in
           | the master copy of a record, not a slave master. No normal
           | people were actually annoyed by that.
        
           | SkyeCA wrote:
           | It was preformative nonsense that caused (and still causes!)
           | more hassle than it was worth
        
           | zahlman wrote:
           | Can you name any person who publicly registered any form of
           | annoyance reading the old name, prior to the movement to
           | replace the name?
           | 
           | Can you cite any person, _before, during or after_ , who gave
           | a valid, coherent argument as to _why_ the old name _should_
           | annoy anyone? (Or are you willing to attempt one yourself?)
           | 
           | Note: the two arguments I am familiar with boil down to "it
           | could be understood as describing a bad historical event, and
           | _ipso facto_ must not be uttered ", and "if I am annoyed by
           | something then that is inherently valid and you lack standing
           | to question me, on account of my identity characteristics". I
           | don't accept either of these as valid, for hopefully obvious
           | reasons.
           | 
           | (And in fact, I can't recall actually ever seeing the second
           | argument deployed honestly. I can only recall seeing people
           | _not_ of the relevant identity characteristics _presuming_
           | that they were defending people _who would_ feel that way.)
        
         | eps wrote:
         | Slavery. It was meant to fix slavery.
         | 
         | Rasism was fixed by not using black- and whitelists on
         | firewalls. Separate endeavour.
        
         | Glant wrote:
         | At least Comcast isn't the company with the worst customer
         | support now, we can give that honor to Xfinity
        
         | shye wrote:
         | People who claim the goal of changing the common terminology
         | was to abolish or discourage racism are an example of why we
         | are still having such prevalent racism all around.
        
           | abcd_f wrote:
           | What was the goal then? Of those who demanded the change.
        
       | rbanffy wrote:
       | Microsoft Live Copilot anyone?
        
         | kjs3 wrote:
         | Needs more 'Clippy'.
        
           | rbanffy wrote:
           | Live Clippy sounds very creepy.
        
             | catlikesshrimp wrote:
             | Live Clippy Copilot powered by AI. All turtles to the
             | end...
        
               | pndy wrote:
               | Nah: _Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Clippy Copilot Live
               | Foundation with MSN .NET Framework version 2026_
        
       | porridgeraisin wrote:
       | The copilot executable and the edge executable are actually the
       | same! It looks at argv[0] to decide which to show you. You can
       | move mscopilot.exe to msedge.exe, it still opens edge. And vice
       | versa.
        
       | jasoneckert wrote:
       | I think we'll see this happen over time in all tools - individual
       | AI brands replaced by generic AI icons.
       | 
       | The real question is this: While the floppy disk became the
       | standard "Save" icon, what will eventually become the standard
       | "AI functionality" icon?
        
         | pawsocks wrote:
         | I'm guessing the 'sparkle' icon will stick around, for better
         | or worse
        
         | micromacrofoot wrote:
         | I think it's even more than that, they'll be features without
         | AI even being mentioned
        
       | aizk wrote:
       | Microsoft is collapsing under the weight of their own bloat.
        
       | bachmeier wrote:
       | I honestly don't understand Microsoft's AI strategy. It seems to
       | be built around automating the writing process. If you ask MS 365
       | Copilot (as opposed to the many other Copilots) what it can do,
       | it's deeply disappointing:
       | 
       | "Can you edit the Word document so the format is in line with
       | these requirements?"
       | 
       | "No, but I can help you draft an implementation consistent with
       | the requirements."
       | 
       | "Can you add this section to the 35 individual copies of this
       | document in this OneDrive folder?"
       | 
       | "No, but I can help you draft [something]."
       | 
       | This is NOT the AI revolution anyone was waiting for.
        
         | mring33621 wrote:
         | It looks like you're trying to write something! Click here to
         | have me fuck it up for you!
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | This is decidedly the result of a lack of strategy. Microsoft
         | isn't a single unified borg.
         | 
         | Instead, all the little individual teams got their hands on
         | these capabilities and they figured out where to shove it. At
         | "best" there would have been the head of Windows or Office or
         | whatever saying to all their reports "go do AI!"
        
           | rdedev wrote:
           | Atleast someone at some level need to think about how the
           | user is going to use copilot right?
        
             | samrus wrote:
             | Its shocking how they didnt. Imagine how shit the culture
             | must be when employees arent bothering to consider how the
             | user will use the feature, just focussing on getting it
             | through
        
         | ExoticPearTree wrote:
         | > This is NOT the AI revolution anyone was waiting for.
         | 
         | It's Clippy. All over again.
        
           | zahlman wrote:
           | Don't let Louis Rossmann hear you say that, though.
        
         | rdedev wrote:
         | Here is a fun one. I had a column with around 200 entries and
         | there were some duplicates in it. I just wanted to see which
         | were duplicates and remove some of them.
         | 
         | I selected the cells and asked copilot to tell me which ones
         | were duplicated. Copilot had to ask me to copy and paste the
         | cell contents in its chat box. It couldn't even detect which
         | cells were selected and read them
         | 
         | Why even have copilot inside excel when it can't even read a
         | cell? This is what happens when all you care is about KPI
         | metrics or what not
        
       | NoSalt wrote:
       | LOL ... of course it is.
        
       | mring33621 wrote:
       | Welcome to the new FartPilot!
        
       | gverrilla wrote:
       | Sorry if your a windows user, but you have no escape, only Linux.
       | Until you get the time and courage to do the move, you will
       | continually be abused by microslop.
        
       | lovegrenoble wrote:
       | Moved to MacOS, chao Copilot...
        
       | cordwainersmith wrote:
       | So they're reshuffling the branding again. At this rate they'll
       | rename it three more times before most people figure out what it
       | does.
        
       | lovegrenoble wrote:
       | Microslop? No trust.
        
       | prmoustache wrote:
       | That is a smart move from them. People have AI advertising
       | fatigue but they sure like some of the features it allows. I
       | don't know of anyone asking their 15y nephew to edit their ex or
       | a photobomber out of a photo anymore, they just do themselves
       | from their smartphone. They use automatic translation everywhere,
       | they don't even look at links in web search but read the answer
       | provided by an LLM, they sure fall into periodic meme/trends like
       | converting photos to Studio Ghibli like drawing a year ago or
       | whatever is trendy today, etc.
        
       | smrtinsert wrote:
       | Deep copilot integration feels so intrusive. It pops up with your
       | recent files. What if they were my bank accounts or api keys?
       | Whoever thought that would be a good use experience should be
       | fired.
        
       | drooopy wrote:
       | They're doomed to repeat the cycle of reinventing Clippy every
       | few years and always failing at it.
        
       | mikaeluman wrote:
       | I have been using Windows on my laptop and been annoyed by how
       | performance have really degraded.
       | 
       | RAM consumption on startup is 50% (of 16Gi).
       | 
       | I asked claude to help me remove bloat and was horrified by all
       | the different background services and "enhanced" and "advanced"
       | features that are always ON.
       | 
       | I don't think it's fair to say "no AI in any app", however. That
       | should depend on the value delivered in the app.
       | 
       | But I do wish there was some honest restraint on all these weird
       | OS services that no one wants/uses.
        
         | sedatk wrote:
         | Good news: https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/03/23/microsoft-
         | confirms-...
        
       | scotty79 wrote:
       | If only there was a virtual machine I could run Windows in with
       | full hardware passthrough, I think I wouldn't ever install
       | Windows as main system anymore.
        
       | andrewdubinsky wrote:
       | Please let it be Cortana. Don't give up on her.
        
         | AuryGlenz wrote:
         | For real, it was insane to drop Cortana. Halo-aside, it's a
         | great name for an AI assistant.
        
           | MengerSponge wrote:
           | Deep lore, seems helpful, cute avatar, becomes evil? Yeah
           | it's a perfect name for an AI assistant
        
             | mentos wrote:
             | And since Cortana isn't a widely used name like Alexa, it
             | spares a whole generation of people named Alexa from that
             | inconvenience.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Previously:
       | 
       |  _Microsoft starts removing Copilot buttons from Windows 11 apps_
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47722136
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | who of you is using Notepad for anything?
        
         | qwerpy wrote:
         | I built a new PC at around the same time that notepad++ was
         | exploited so I steered clear of it for a bit. And VSCode was
         | becoming too clunky to use as a general purpose text editor. So
         | I tried the new notepad. The new version is also clunky and
         | sluggish, and I didn't want Copilot, so I switched back to
         | notepad++ after a few days.
        
       | 6DM wrote:
       | I spun up an old laptop the other day and it has Windows 10 on
       | it. I can't believe how snappy and fast that old laptop felt in
       | comparison to what I've been experiencing on Windows 11.
       | 
       | Especially when you consider that the old laptop has inferior
       | hardware to my newer one with twice the RAM.
       | 
       | I just hate using windows at this point.
        
       | SilentM68 wrote:
       | I like Copilot. Don't hate any OS, Windows, MacOS or Linux. Just
       | don't see much thought put into the design, engineering and User
       | Experience aspect of some of these OS iterations. As far as
       | Copilot, I can't see a way to exist without it because it keeps
       | me off my mobile phone :)
        
       | themagician wrote:
       | Please just make W11 IOT LTSC more available. Please. Pretty
       | please?
        
       | WhiteDawn wrote:
       | Microsoft put AI, Tabs, a login portal, a 'search with bing'
       | action and text formatting on notepad before a 'redo' button to
       | pair with the 'undo' action.
       | 
       | That says everything about the current product priorities that
       | you need to know.
        
         | rdedev wrote:
         | My recent frustration is with Powerpoint Designer suggestions.
         | Who asked for this? The suggestions don't make sense or look
         | good. And then microsoft provides a helpful tip to not pop open
         | suggestions till the next time powerpoint is opened
        
           | buildbot wrote:
           | Those do super fun things to slide numbering too sometimes,
           | so you get 2 slide sixes, and no slide eight.
        
       | cdrnsf wrote:
       | Turns out users don't want your AI features. But, sure, paint the
       | dumpster fire.
        
       | kelvinjps10 wrote:
       | windos copilot will become cortana. (as a useless feature of the
       | OS)
        
       | kccqzy wrote:
       | > At this point, Microsoft is walking a tightrope. It cannot
       | appease everyone since it also has its shareholders and investors
       | to think about, but then there's also a rather large Windows 11
       | user base which really is fed up of AI experiences being shoved
       | down its throats.
       | 
       | Are shareholders and investors stupid enough to think that AI
       | hated by users is still desirable?
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | Looking forward to seeing "AI for Copilot" released before
       | someone at MS finally realizes they're idiots at marketing.
        
       | josefritzishere wrote:
       | I just want to be able to disable AI. Its just garbage. I do not
       | want Clippy 2.0 inserting slop into my work product.
        
       | gwbas1c wrote:
       | Seems like it makes more sense to keep "Windows" security and
       | bugfix only, and to do new feature development, such as AI, in a
       | newer OS.
        
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       (page generated 2026-04-13 23:00 UTC)