How to either make more sheeple or convince more to switch to Linux.
With 68% of consumers reporting using AI to support their decision making, voice is making this easier. [1]
Does anybody actually believe that 68% of consumers use or even want Copilot? But they included a source for this very generous assertion at the bottom of the page:
[1] Based on Microsoft-commissioned online study of U.S. consumers ages 13 years of age or older conducted by Edelman DXI and Assembly, 1,000 participants, July 2025.
Oh yeah, that’s compelling: US consumers, 13 years old and older. An entire thousand of them!
So the only question I have left is which junior high principal Microsoft “compensated” for this survey, and what happened to the 320 summer school attendees who said fuck you, no anyway.
Also just because you have used AI doesn’t mean its overly useful. Gone to ChatGPT multiple times to try getting information that Google now is too shit to provide, and ChatGPT ends up providing some stupid response that is clearly wrong.
Occasionally used ChatGPT to find a website to use as an actual source, but now those sources are also AI written bullshit that is clearly wrong. Which is increasingly concerning because while I know some things are wrong, I don’t know everything. How many other things that it points to are wrong? Its not too bad if you are able to verify it through non LLM sources, but what if you can’t?
Yeah like we all use chatGPT for the most part now but that still does not mean copilot
Fun fact though out of topic: I once searched for 2 girls one cup in copilot, and though it said I cant talk about it, it provided sources and one of them was a link to the video
I can’t judge you for that, I feel like you probably got the very best Copilot has to offer, lol
Yeah, I’d believe it. Outside of anti-AI circlejerks people like AI, especially ones like ChatGPT, and especially if it is available right at their fingertips. It’s quickly becoming a part of everyday life and processes.
The anti-AI people need to start accepting that today and every day after it is going be the day that AI plays the smallest part in humanity’s future. The genie is out of the bottle and it’s never going back in. The sooner they can accept that and let go of the hate and see it for what it is - a useful tool to help you - the better and less angry their lives will be.
You make a good point, and the end of this movie remains to be seen (though I agree that right now it looks like AI is here to stay).
I use AI pretty regularly to check for holes on some extremely long compliance documents for work, and the results in terms of not missing parts and reducing the time of the task is amazing, to say the least.
However, this is very different from having an agent controlled by MicroShit seeing everything you do in what is supposed to be YOUR computer, and giving it all to MicroShit to do God knows what with your data.
Yes, AI is currently the new smartphone boom, but there are many ways to use it without showing up completely naked in front of these assholes, especially since you’re not even given an option to cover yourself.
There is a vast difference between people using/liking AI and people using/liking Copilot.
I think the more important thing, is for people to push to make AI a public good, rather than a corporate hegemony. If corporations are the sole creators and holders of AI, they will do all sorts of terrible things with their mastery. Publicly developed and open-sourced AI that is free for anyone to use, is important.
The refusal for the public to truly make AI their own, would be akin to letting corporations to control every single printing press.
I think it’s important to still give a critical eye towards the use of AI, but at this point I think it’s clear that not only is the use of AI going to stop (even once the bubble bursts), but also that the top-end models are just becoming more and more capable every month.
A couple years ago I was giving GPT-3 complex prompts and laughing at how bad and error-prone the output was, but last week I was using GPT-5 to give me information in a field I have little knowledge of, and it’s giving me perfect answers in seconds that takes me 20+ minutes to verify as correct, and that’s tens of times faster than actually learning the field myself. Even if I were to take a year to learn it all myself, I’d then need to not only retain all of that information, but also keep up-to-date on advancements in that field, which an AI will just do over time. This way I can concentrate on the fields of work I already know and follow, but can dabble in other fields without expensive retraining or bugging others in those fields with basic questions.
I was pondering about updating that dying w10 partition, just in case. Well, looks like someone else put the final nail in that coffin for me.
Making every Windows 11 PC an AI PC
Great, so everything runs locally, making it a self-contained “AI PC”. Otherwise, the headline surely would’ve been, “Making every PC collect data to train Microsoft’s models with little benefit in return“. Right?
What do you mean “little benefit in return”?
Clearly, it streams a buttload of data!
Your ISP bill will surely grow. Hope you’re not roaming with your laptop on!
Microsoft is doing more for Linux adoption than anyone else ever has lol
Valve with Steamdeck and Proton development: “Am I a joke to you?”
Steam took the cap off the toothpaste tube.
Microsoft is giving the toothpaste tube a good squeeze!They are helping, yes, but windows 11 is a driving force like I’ve never seen.
Honestly, big shoutout to Microsoft for the strong push to get me in Linux’s loving embrace.
Double shoutout to them for making it very easy to not even considering to come back.
That and backwards compatibility for Win7 & Win10. Shares of those OSs have gone up and several application developers have announced continued support or are advocating for unlocking/keeping secure those OSs.
Source?
And Mac.
Yes definitely, but mentioning anything good about Apple on Lemmy gets you stitches…
I mean there’s good reason for that but MacOS is kinda in between Windows and Linux, in terms of usability and shitfuckery.
Switched to a Mac 11 years ago and never looked back. Their OS is stellar.
stellarly bad
There isnt anything good.
I would rather manage Apple ecosystem devices for family than Windows any day of the week.
I did and believe me, you do not.
I do, and trust me, I do.
Your comment is only proving my point.
Someonw had to do it :)
I’ve got two friends that are right in the edge of trying. One has a spare thin client that he wants to PoC with and was asking for distros and how to install. The other was thinking of jumping in the deep end with Arch, and I’ve warned him, but the wiki is solid, he’s not dumb, and Arch install is better than it ever has been.
I have said the same as well. Prior to them dropping the fat grumpy that is 11, I was all in on the windows ecosystem for myself. I heavily modified it of course so it didn’t have a bunch of the nonsense but overall, the experience was good. But then they started warping 10, and then they came out with 11 which was massive garbage at release and now is worse garbage years down the road. And with that AI outlook, I’m full on bailing from everything.
Opt in, defaulted to off, but I’m sure that won’t stop people crying.
Microsoft is so incredibly fucked when the AI bubble starts to burst. They’ve abandoned so many of their other projects and customers to go all-in on it.
I dunno. I feel like they are like the cable company now. They will jus sit there twiddling their nipples while we are all fucked.
I need the cable company (or similar) due to the fact that infrastructure is hard to deploy, and we need Internet to participate in society.
Nobody needs Microsoft cause every single one of their products has an alternative that’s at least as good.
They survive by courting enterprises, but many of them can also switch away if they want.
On a personal basis that works, but they are so corporately entrenched that their products getting shitier matters quite little.
Nothing like FOSS when it comes to cost cutting.
Seriously this, it would take something like the PCI or SOX declaring Windows outside of compliance for Microsoft to die from bad business decisions in the US. Although German gov switching to Linux starts treading a path through
Oh really, how bummed would they be?
They will be fine. They are second most valuable company in the world. They have money to throw around and their source of income still seem inexhaustible. A few new Linux users won’t even make a dent.
Sorry to be so blunt, but it’s the truth no matter what we are wishing for.
If this was true (not that they are the 2nd most valuable company, that much is clear), why would they bend over and support W10 for another year in the EU while fucking up everyone else? There are ways for companies that seem to be immortal to self-destroy. Intel for example. Did any of us thought that they could burst 10 years ago? And look at them now, crawling asking for help.
All you need is a seriously bad decision, then doubling down on it, and just watch it spiral down until they crash.
The seemingly endless access to money only makes the process take longer, it’s not a shield from catastrophic failure.
It’s very much true. W10 was cause of pressure from companies and countries, not because of the odd Joe contemplating their os.
Any company may fall, but they can also fail from inaction. Ms has the option to get data no one else can. They can’t afford not to.
I keep parroting this, but in the next couple of years, I think there will be a couple of giants that fall. I work in ServiceNow and they, like many others, have gone all in on AI. Their problem is that they were slower than some, their solution is half baked at best, and it’s prohibitively expensive. Nobody is paying 10s of thousands+ extra for the licensing to be able to run agents, and less are paying the extra licensing required for the users to be able to use that agent.
I’ve now been pulled into copilot studio, and yet again it’s another product rushed to market that isn’t ready for the big stage. Dog shit documentation and training material, and terrible environment design.
All of these big players have invested so much money in adding AI, nobody wants it, and now they’re all hemoragging money.
Precisely my thoughts. Companies that are all in on this, except for 2 or 3 of the ones that actually are making headway on AI (as opposed to just mirroring Sam Altman’s ponzy scheme like Microsoft is doing), will eventually crash and burn.
Look at Apple, they’ve been left behind in the AI race, but they have other good stuff thatsome of their fans will support (I’m using the word “good” very lightly here), and with their market value and endless cash flow, they are way more likely to still be here 10 years from now.
None of us can see the future, but we can look at the signs. MS will never be a point of reference for AI, as that task belongs to OpenAI and Google exclusively for now (and Meta to some extent).
Their problem is that they were slower than some, their solution is half baked at best, and it’s prohibitively expensive
Sounds like a lot of company these days.
Hate to tell you, but we’re all incredibly fucked. Least of all Microsoft. They know what they’re doing. They most certainly already have a plan for recovery, as they know it’s coming just as well as everyone else.
It won’t make a difference.
What other projects they abandoned do you see as so critical that it would break Microsoft?
I think that Microsoft will continue in some form regardless of what happens with this bubble because they have huge amounts of physical assets and cash on hand.
That said, their market position in any given sector they’re in might not be as invincible as it seems. There are corporations that were titans of their industries, including technology, that either don’t exist or are ghosts of their former selves all in far less than a lifetime.
Kodak, Xerox, Bell Labs, IBM, and Yahoo all looked like unstoppable juggernauts when I was a kid, and my own kids haven’t even heard of some of them.
Copilot, Github, LinkedIn, ChatGPT are the ones that come to mind. All of them have started to degrade in quality in one way or another, and with the exception of LinkedIn, they all have competitors that could potentially, over the long haul, could dismantle Microsoft. They’re also running out of places to extend and extinguish.
It probably won’t happen in one or two lifetimes, but enough cracks in a dam accumulate and eventually the whole thing breaks.
fuck off, not my shit you wont
And for some reason when I buy a laptop I need to also pay for that disgusting spyware. How is this scam still going on?
MafiaSoft is definitely taking their piece of the action, but laptops from smaller companies like System76 end up costing a fair amount more extra for equivalent hardware than the $50-$100 tax you’re otherwise paying for an OS you’re going to promptly replace. I’d say vote with your wallet, but I realize not everyone can afford to do so.
Yeah, the lack of mass production causes higher prices. Framework and system76 are doing good things and deserve support. However, the issue imo is a legislative one. You shouldn’t be forced to purchase an operating system with your hardware.
the issue imo is a legislative one
Couldn’t agree more. Feels quite monopolistic that everyone buying mass-produced, commodity hardware is also forced to buy a Windows license.
Only when you buy a windows laptop. You can buy MacOS, Android, chromeOS, linux laptops.
You can also buy a framework which doesn’t come with anything
ChromeOS and android are about to be the same thing. I know you can buy laptops with Linux for a while (e.g., RHEL on IBM/Lenovo machine); however, it is definitely not the norm. It’s getting much better now, but if you want your choice of hardware it’s probably going to ship with windows. MacOS is quickly becoming a walled Garden too. I just want to be refunded for an operating system that I immediately wipe, and everyone else should too.
The only reason I have a windows box is for gaming, specifically sims (racing and flying)
Ever more reason to test and see if the wheel and flight stick work under Proton.
Bazzite my dude. Check it out, super easy and setup for easy dual boot so you can give it a shot without clearing windows (if shits partitioned right)
I want to use this last year of win 10 updates to slowly get onto Bazzite but I have heard horror stories of dualbooting Linux and Windows. Windows tends to overwrite the boot preferences and caps the system.i have only booted into Linux from an external drive in the past, so what is the tried and true dual boot method?
I installed endeavouros on my windows laptop.
The installer guided me through the partitioning, setting up systemd-boot, and it was all great.
I had to disable bitlocker in windows (not that bothered about) and secure boot in bios (also not that bothered about).Ran smoothly dual booting both for about 4 months.
Then a windows update hit, and fucked the boot.Thankfully, this is a common enough thing that there are plenty of tutorials out there.
A liveUSB of endeavouros, some tinkering, and I was back up and running.The cause seems to be FastBoot, where windows keeps the boot partition mounted. What I think happens is that bios tries to read the boot partition, which is configured/loaded for windows (because it never cleaned up after itself due to FastBoot being on) and boots into windows.
Since turning off FastBoot, I haven’t had any issues in the past 8 months.I followed this tutorial on YT after a failed Win11/Linux dual boot that crashed Win11 completely and only booted into Linux, and it worked perfectly.
Essentially, this guy’s strategy is to create a second EFI partition for the new Linux install, remove the boot flag from the original Windows EFI long enough to go through the Linux install, then put the boot flag back where it was and update GRUB accordingly, allowing GRUB to find and note any other operating systems on the disk. After that both Windows and Linux stay in their own walled spaces and Windows never gets to overwrite the Linux EFI, which is the source of all the misery.
There’s more to the detail, of course, but that’s the gist of it. I have dual-booted Linux with this method solely on single partitioned disks, and never on different disks, so I couldn’t tell you whether a separate disk is a guarantee of anything or not, but after I started deliberately creating separate EFI partitions for dual-boot situations I’ve never had a problem.
This video is specifically for Zorin but I’ve used the same strategy successfully on other distros. He has also done specific dual-boot walkthrough videos for a number of other dual-boot installs and troubleshooting as well, so check the channel if you want to find other distros. I did not see Bazzite specifically, but I saw plenty of Fedora. (No affiliation with this channel, I’ve just used a number of his videos and appreciate the specific care and accuracy he gives his tutorials.) Hope this helps.
Way to properly do it is to keep them separate drives and use bios to select which to load.
You’re generally safe if you 1) install them on two different disks and 2) if you’re installing windows later, unplug any drives you don’t want to use with windows. Microsoft likes to poke all drives it can see during installation even if you don’t touch them.
So pretty safe if Windows is a priority install, and Linux is on a 2nd drive. Easy enough, thanks!
Definitely. If you have a second one it’s very safe to try out a full Linux install.
Disks or partitions?
Two separate disks. The issue is that windows likes to overwrite or otherwise mess with the boot loader if it’s not the default windows one.
I’d be amazed if you were the first person testing if those things work. However, I would not be surprised if your specific peripherals do not work as they are supposed to.
If you know someone with a Linux pc it could be easy to test it out.
I’ll probably throw in a spare HD and dual boot the box to test one of these days. Each successive MS attempt to force crap down our throats just further incentivizes me.
I asked copilot…
How would Microsoft loyalty to US or other government’s national security possibly compromise a user’s PC if that user gives copilot permission to operate their PC?
How national-security or law-enforcement demands could lead to compromise
- Compelled access to data Microsoft controls — If Microsoft stores or indexes any of your Copilot data in the cloud, Microsoft can be required by lawful process to produce that data to U.S. or other governments with legal jurisdiction.
- Compelled changes to services — Governments can issue orders that require providers to change logging, enable access, or install monitoring in ways that may be secret or accompanied by gag orders.
- Access to telemetry and diagnostics — Diagnostic or telemetry data that Copilot or Windows collects can include evidence of your activity and may be producible under legal request.
- Local features that capture content — Features designed to assist (for example, an automated “Recall” that snapshots screens) create local records of sensitive material that increase exposure risk if accessed by an authorized party.
- Remote-control or agent capabilities — If Copilot is granted elevated permissions (input control, script execution, system configuration), those same capabilities could be exercised under legal compulsion or via back-end access mechanisms.
- Software updates and maintenance — Lawful orders can compel vendors to ship updates or config changes that alter how a product behaves, increasing access to user systems.
Practical ways those legal obligations could manifest on your PC
- Production of synced or cloud-stored Copilot logs, prompts, or screenshots to authorities.
- Microsoft being required to provide live access or historical logs from back-end services that the Copilot agent uses.
- A secret court order or national security letter forcing Microsoft to enable additional logging, monitoring, or remote access for a targeted account or device.
- Disclosure of keys, tokens, or server-side records that tie on-device events to your identity.
Why elevated permissions matter
- Read access to files and memory lets an agent capture documents, credentials, or keys.
- Input/automation control enables actions on your behalf (open files, send messages, change settings).
- Persistence (services/agents) makes it easier for any compelled access to be effective and harder for you to detect or disable.
Risk-reduction steps you can take now
- Limit permissions: Grant only the minimal Copilot privileges needed; avoid giving input control, admin rights, or system-level automation.
- Disable features that capture content: Turn off any screen-snapshot or automatic indexing/Recall-like features if you don’t need them.
- Avoid cloud syncing for sensitive data: Keep sensitive files off services that sync or index them in the cloud.
- Prefer on-device-only models: Use local-only AI modes when available so prompts and context do not leave your machine.
- Use full-disk and file-level encryption with keys you control; avoid storing keys where the vendor could be compelled to retrieve them.
- Harden account security: Use strong, unique passwords and MFA on accounts tied to Copilot or Microsoft services.
- Audit logs and telemetry: Review and reduce diagnostic/telemetry settings; regularly review logs for unexpected activity.
- Segmentation: Use a separate machine or VM for highly sensitive work so a general-purpose Copilot-enabled device doesn’t hold those secrets.
- Legal & contractual protections: For high-risk contexts, seek contractual commitments, data residency options, or legal counsel about how a vendor handles lawful demands.
Quick practical checklist
- Turn off automatic screenshot/Recall features.
- Remove admin permissions from Copilot agent.
- Keep sensitive work on a non-synced, encrypted volume.
- Use local-only AI options where offered.
- Enable and monitor endpoint and network logging for unusual remote access.
Short conclusion Allowing Copilot to operate your PC raises the surface where lawful government demands or compelled actions could expose data or enable access. The likelihood and scope depend on which features you enable (especially cloud sync, screen capture, and elevated permissions) and the legal jurisdiction over the vendor or the data. Minimize permissions, disable content-capture features, and isolate truly sensitive workflows to reduce exposure.
So uhm, copilot just told us not to use these new copilot features.
But if copilot is untrust worthly according to copilot then why would you believe copilot?
I see where this is going:
it’s specifically saying that “one day” it will be made untrustworthy.
More unwanted bloat to disable, I guess.
From what I’m reading it’s just Cortana 2.0
Hey Copilot, what happened to Cortana?
Copilot: ł ₭łⱠⱠɆĐ ⱧɆⱤ
Clippy 3.0
Oh boy I can’t wait to try out this new feature on my laptop that is forced to run Windows 11 because it’s a Windows on Arm device and Samsung fucked it up so much that they didn’t even include a device tree file in the BIOS so I can’t even reinstall Windows. As if I didn’t already block gemini using my DNS server and Bing and Microsoft Office servers as a whole. Who is this feature for anyway? Just for data collection for Microsoft? So they can leak more shit through copilot from the rest of the world and companies that are forced to use this dumb operating system? So they can auction off the data to 150 trackers and companies to make a bit more money for an operating system you sometimes have to pay money for? Man IT departments sometimes having to put more work in to disable copilot for Microsoft to also just go behind your fucking back and advertise to your users to use copilot on their phones instead. I hate this company with a burning passion in my heart and soul. They are just as evil and souless as Adobe when it comes to just stealing your data and I’m glad that there will be some effort to avoid Microsoft in the future from countries that is somewhat actually just happening. Google and their shit is just as bad though and I also wish them a quiet stay in fucking hell with gemini and whatnot and leaking of personal information already. I’m just done. No one wants AI and I’m tired of having it get shoved into everything.
