And who is to say that Microsoft will honor the toggle, “for analytic and performance metric” purposes?
EDIT: the rant above shouldn’t cast aspersions on Brave, good on them for trying.
Somehow find . -iname has worked for years in Linux without AI
Perhaps it’s because I lived in the days before search was even a thing.
Lots of options, plenty of opportunity for confusion.
A special kind of insanity that puts me in a mild, cold sweat. Such filesystems can come for your family too!
Worth noting, my father was an early adopter of the home computer. It's somehow regressed over the years.
And then complains to you all their files have disappeared.
Usually it's because they've run out of diskspace and windows has created a temporary profile for them (which is crazy default behaviour when you think about it). Not sure if that's still a thing.
Of course they just closed the popup saying "you're running low on diskspace" last week. After all, what are they supposed to do about that?
The more documents you have, the more likely you are to have strict classifications. The stricter the classifications the more likely you are to run into something like Russell's paradox.
find -type f -exec grep -Hn "_content_" {} \;
grep -RHn "_content_" .I just did it more tongue-in-cheek like the unneeded cat commands.
There’s definitely use cases. If you want to search for a keyword on the file name, that one’s great.
i think we both know how that will go.
first, Microsoft will exfiltrate data for the purposes of performance and analytics, in scare quotes.
Next, they’ll do it in order to train copilot, in an unannounced update, and tell us this is a wonderful new feature.
Finally, they’ll bundle this data that they said would always remain local, and offer it for sale as training data, which government users will then buy, for obvious reasons. this will be done in the name of safety, and for the children.
I'm not clamoring for any Microsoft software for the last two decades, but the idea itself is interesting, like being able to catalog and look back at what I did at specific times in the past, or be able to query "What was the website where I saw X at?", would have been useful just last week for me when I was trying to find some document I read but didn't bookmark/download.
But I'd probably trust BP to not spill oil into our oceans again over Microsoft not having security/data leak issues.
It is a totally worthwhile and useful bit of tech, unfortunately the scumbags have it and so you want to disable it because you don't want them to benefit even though they are giving you something useful in exchange.
I use gmail from time to time, and YouTube, but literally everything else I do on the computer won't be visible there.
What would be cool would be to ask "What documents about ICs did I have open last night around 23:00?" and have it give me a list of local paths that I looked at, and it's all outside of browsers/Google. And of course, have it all be local.
At this point, Microsoft should be treated as a threat to society and the individual, and we should probably start shunning Microsoft engineers & executives from public spaces.
it's shitty invasive employers (e.g. amazon)
they'll be able to notice you stopped working for 2 minutes to go to the toilet and punish you accordingly
NSA, CIA, maybe even ICE nowadays.
> This setting applies only to Enterprise and Education editions of Windows.
That limitation looks extremely impractical.
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...
See the blog post for how we implemented this: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall/#how-we-im.... We took Recall's guidance for web browsers and extended it to apply for ALL windows, not just Private Browsing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ai/recall/recall-w...
Without this loophole Recall could take pix of password managers and other such sensitive windows. So it doesn't seem closeable without per app exceptions.
But privacy is a bug on a school laptop used by a child. Brave could have a toggle on the feature if it wants to serve that market.
What you're going to learn is how many people that think like this consider you to be in the same position as the child.
"The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
(An infants hands are too small to hold a steak knife)
That time. With that child. I don't think "a steak knife per toddler" is a scalable value proposition.
No need to go all 1984 on children because those who can bypass such restrictions will figure out a way to see what they want.
Like with everything about parenting your main weapon against the evils of this world is the trust your child puts into you.
I have trouble thinking of a use case.
If you're thinking "just ask", unfortunately students often don't have that level of introspection.
Better switch to Linux. It's not perfect but I am sure that you will be fine using Linux(Unless you want to use Adobe Suite or Few Corporate applications which won't be used by many)
So after weeks trying to get a high-channel count I/O solution working, I gave in, I found the best thing to do was to just get a M4 Mac Mini for my audio/studio work. And leave Linux for everything else. I was setup within an hour on macOS.
There’s unfortunately still too much resistance and it can cost $1000s trying to get to a working solution or ultimately in my case: a non-working solution. It cost me about $6000 trying various options — not all wasted, but still, not cheap to find out that nothing works.
But I also think context matters. Maybe you also need work that motivates you to use Linux or is impossible or quite inconvenient to do on Windows.
In any case, using Windows is fine. I don't think the user is to blame for the shortcomings of the brand. It's like with conscious consuming products that don't harm the environment. It's important to seek those, but if you have to go out of your way it's just not gonna happen.
Counterintuitively; using the latest kernel can be more stable as bug fixes are merged.
RME does have a few supported cards (I use one) but they're mostly the ADAT ones. And the driver is in-tree.
Sure, in general that's good advice, but it becomes more complicated depending on the solution/situation...
I’d bought the RME card long before I was hoping to make it work with Linux. I'd been running Windows for a long time for work reasons, so I had my dev work and my music setup on the same computer (a 64 core Threadripper machine, with 128gb of RAM, and fast NVMe drives). A few months before, I'd sold my company, so for work at least I didn't need to be on Windows any more. Then I started getting random audio dropouts! Presumably because of all the crap Microsoft keep loading onto the OS with after every update.
The audio dropouts was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If a machine like that, with nothing else running on it other than my DAW, could start having audio dropouts, then you know something has gone horribly wrong with the OS.
That's why I wanted to get my existing RME card working on Linux. When I wasn’t able to use it, I then assumed I’d be able to get a network based protocol running (Dante/AES67). There was plenty of discussion about it online, it seemed viable, and it's a network, Linux can do networking! Also, I kinda like the idea of network based audio, I think it's likely to be more future proof.
So, I replaced one of my Ferrofish A32 Pro interfaces with a Ferrofish A32 Pro DANTE ($4300) [1]. It supports both Dante and AES67. I figure if I can’t get Dante running then the open protocol AES67 (with support in Linux-land) should work. That didn’t feel that risky. But no amount of finagling would make the interface appear via the virtual sound-card/router concept.
This had already taken weeks (maybe months) to not get anywhere, so I looked for a Class Compliant sound-card (or, one that definitely had Linux drivers) that could support the number of channels I needed (96 channels in and out), it also needed to support the AD/DA interfaces interfaces I already had (so connectivity via MADI or Dante/AES67), but there just wasn't anything. The only other sound-card out there was another RME interface.
So, that’s when I opted for a Class Compliant sound-card [2] for casual use on Linux ($324) and a new RME Digiface Dante sound-card ($1543) [3] that I could use with a newly purchased M4 Mac Mini ($3000). I also needed to replace another one of my Ferrofish A32 Pro interfaces with another Ferrofish A32 Pro Dante ($4300) to make the setup work.
I realise now that my earlier estimate of $6000 was wildly out, it cost $13467 to leave Windows and to get an alternative pro-audio setup working. There may well have been alternative approaches and I may well have missed a possible solution that could have either worked with the original RME card (which would cost nothing) or AES67 (that would still require me to replace 3 x Ferrofish A32 Pro interfaces, so would end up about the same cost), but I felt like I'd been pretty thorough.
I guess the reason I'm writing War & Peace here is that it's often not possible to know ahead of time whether any one setup might work. Drivers is one thing, but a pro-studio setup has more moving parts, and so if you don't know ahead of time whether any one setup will work, then it can be an expensive process to walk through the different options. And that's a problem that neither Windows nor Mac has. It's a real shame, because the stability of Linux should make it the best platform for pro-audio.
[1] https://www.ferrofish.com/a32pro-dante-converter-multimode/
I rather think it cost you $mac_mini to buy a mac mini, and $compulsion buying hardware for reasons I still do not understand.
Paul Davis has lurked here at least as long as you have, and it would have cost $0 just to ask if that card is currently supported in Linux.
I mean, for $13467 I bet I could buy a plane ticket to Shenzhen, hire a translator, and have them send an email to Collabora to quote a price to develop the firware/driver I can afford with the money I have left over.
I didn’t need to ask him, I already owned it, I just needed to dual boot Linux to find out. You clearly don’t understand that a soundcard also needs connecting to everything else in a studio, so there’s no such thing as just changing one thing (unless you’re really lucky, which I wasn’t).
You also don’t seem to understand that once a setup is right, it can last a decade or more, so getting the right combo of gear to minimise friction in a studio is worth it over time, even if it is expensive upfront.
If it makes you feel a little less morally superior, I sold the original soundcard and the two replaced AD/DAs for ~$8000.
> for reasons I still do not understand.
That’s obvious.
But the reasons are:
* I wanted to move away from Windows because it was unstable
* I already owned a high-end PCI RME card that connected to three Ferrofish A32 Pro converters
* If I could install Linux and have the RME card work then I wouldn’t need to change my studio setup
* There’s no official or stable driver
* So, a change to the setup was required
* To try and future proof the setup I looked to modern protocols like Dante and AES67 as they are taking over pro studios and are much more flexible — I also thought there was a reasonable chance it would work on Linux
* I couldn’t get it working on Linux
* Time is not infinite
* Therefore I bought a Mac for audio
* To avoid the expense of a Mac Pro I had to switch from a PCI based soundcard to a USB based soundcard
* I still use Linux on original machine, but with a class compliant soundcard for casual use
https://solidstatelogic.com/products/ssl-2-plus-mkii
It has pro quality converters and is plug-n-play.
The reason I have a need for so much IO is that nearly all of my processing goes through external hardware (EQs, compressors, delays, reverbs, filters, phasers, chorus, summing mixer, multi-FX units like Eventide H3000 & H8000) and I have a wall of modular gear + about 20 synths and drum machines.
AI doesn't have less respect for Copyright than any other tech company. AI has less need for the corporate connections to those copyright holders.
This of course comes from the neoliberal philosophy where the only remedy you have is to withdraw service. We've gutted the actual rights of actual creatives.
> We were partly inspired by Signal’s blocking of Recall. Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots. This breaks Recall, but unfortunately also breaks the ability to take any screenshots, including by legitimate accessibility software like screen-readers. Brave’s approach does not have this limitation since we’re able to granularly disable just Recall; regular screenshotting will still work. While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.
Even if that's the design, it's a massive new attack surface for malware to try to exfiltrate.
I don't know how many times I've had to tell Windows that I don't want Edge to be my default browser and OneDrive should not open at login.
I hope to god that Valve takes the opportunity they have with Steam OS to give us a potential real alternative to Windows that focuses on gaming support. Cause that's literally the only reason I'm forced to continue using this Microsoft adware slop of an OS.
That must be doing wonders for the click rate. I can see the pre-promotion powerpoint slide now: "User engagement with Copilot is showing exponential growth"
I’d be pretty nervous about running Windows with this even able to be enabled.
No way the benefit:risk ratio makes the slightest sense in this case.
That will last for as long as it takes for the value of privacy and ownership erodes further and then it'll get switched back to on by default.
Imagine how useful it would be for software vendors (Microsoft included): "We have implemented new feature X, how are our users interacting with it? Let's ask their Recall AI about it".
This could essentially become telemetry on steroids.
In the start telemetry was seen as outrageously user-hostile spying, too. Look where we are now. We are all frogs, at least Microsoft is banking on it.
its a pain for most people at first but its never too late to do the switch.
Familiarity is not really a good reason against Linux, however. Just install a Linux distro that comes close in looks. What are these Linux distributions these days? Pop OS? Elementary OS? Most people are only using their browsers anyway.
Wdym about LTS not being ideal for NVIDIA?
The OS receives updates, NVIDIA drivers also do. What is the problem?
Am I missing something?
Ironically your second sentence is an example of the impact on time and energy the switch will have: someone who just decided to switch from windows to linux will have to take the time and spend the energy to chose between the dozen of linux distributions before any practical consideration.
If you want it out of the box, there are laptops out there with Linux pre-installed, but it is not as common, unfortunately.
So I do not see the irony. They usually ask someone to install an OS, or they buy a computer pre-installed with an OS.
The irony is that before doing the work for the switch, and even before doing the work of checking if the switch is feasible for their need, they will need to spend time and energy to select which linux distrib they should choose. Switching from linux to windows of macos doesn't have this issue
Unless someone breaks that cycle of Windows being the dominant OS.
If you haven't already, check your BIOS for TPM/fTPM settings (or if you're on Intel also look for "Intel Platform Trust Technology" or "Intel PTT").
There are some that don't support Linux and likely never will like Valorant or Call of Duty, and even fewer that dropped Linux support like Apex Legends.
I've never been able to get Linux working right on one of my laptops, on another only rolling releases work.
These rolling releases like to break every 3 to 6 months.
Windows is much more stable on both laptops.
With my mini PC eGPU combo Linux just won't recognize the eGpu at all.
Maybe it's been fixed, but I brought this on release last year, it never worked right with Linux.
Hours upon hours of trying to fix it for naught.
I actually prefer Linux as a daily driver, I have the Ultra Core V2 version of the same laptop and rolling releases are generally fine for 3 to 6 months. At which point I just reinstall , while leaving Windows intact.
I guess if you want to buy a slightly older laptop or at least one with a slightly older CPU things are fine.
Refurbished Thinkpads excel particularly well here.
I have one machine that I can't even install Linux on because no Linux installer or live CD will even boot on it. No idea why, and I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort figuring that out given that it's my dedicated gaming box, a "PC console" basically.
OTOH I have a laptop that I specifically purchased to run Linux on it. Which it does, and all devices work just fine. The only catch is that battery life when browsing is about 20-30% less, and, as far as I can tell, this is entirely due to Linux browsers disabling video hardware acceleration by default on most configs. If I enable it, things get much better for the battery, but at the cost of an occasional browser crash.
I have had tons of grief with NVIDIA cards that work stellar on Windows and the answer I always get talking to Linux folks is “LOL NVIDIA? You’re an idiot for buying NVIDIA.”
My friends who daily drive Linux have accepted that I’m particularly cursed. Either that or they privately think I’m a moron. Regardless none of them seem to be able to explain my issues or help.
Linux still isn't really ready for normal people who have other things to do.
Arguably if it's within your budget and you just want your computer to work, buy a Mac.
I make music and I don't want to fiddle with external drives so I'm basically stuck on Windows.
My biggest issue with Macs is not being able to replace the SSD. Eventually all SSDs must fail. Might not be in 2 years, might be in 6 or 7, but at that point the entire laptop is useless.
Both Wifi and Bluetooth doesn't work on a fresh Windows install, I have to physically connect a USB DVD player to install the drivers from the DVD that came with the package (in 2024! btw). On Linux everything just works out-of-the-box. Okay maybe not everything, I did have to patch my kernel for bluetooth drivers, but other than that it's a LOT smoother in every way than on Windows.
I also enjoy the polish Apple provides in other ways -- the platform features you get if you're on a Mac, use an iPhone, have a Watch, etc, are all pretty great. Cobbling together something like that on my own under Linux probably isn't possible.
If you don't need that kind of thing then Linux is indeed pretty good these days. But especially in a business context, a lot of people do.
I run both of those on Linux, with no trouble. Who told you this?
I used Linux Mint for about a year and gave up because everything was constantly breaking and the software was a direct downgrade from MacOS in terms of usability and prevalence. Oh, and new hardware usually doesn't even work on Linux.
Linux is like Communism, sounds great in theory but in reality it doesn't work.
It appears a site for software engineers can get lost in the sauce with the concept of something being "easy" - but Linux absolutely will never take off if it's a pain in the ass for the average computer user to install and use.
Man I'm using windows and defending it's usage in this very thread but that's totally stupid
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously
> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Well - I think this should start to cover it.
I switched from Mac to WIN a few years ago, because maintaining MB Pros became a nightmare, after having had six burned mainboards (with Macbook Pro devices each) within 3 years. I had definitely enough. Happy my former employer had to shell out the money for repairs/replacements. But each time getting back into a workable state with my backups still took north of two days.
And while for my day job I still need to use Windows, for my freelance business I am using Linux for quite a while now. Without any maintenance except regular updates (like with any OS out there). There is exactly nothing I am missing in terms of tools/software (for my line of work), while I am also benefitting from better performance, longer battery life and overall a smoother user experience.
Not going back anytime soon.
That being said, I am eyeing up Framework for next laptop.
I'm still using a 10 year old one as a poor-man's-NAS-controller. And the backup system that ships with the tool is insanely solid -- while I don't trust any single backup solution alone, the one time I did have to recover from backup (we were robbed), Time Machine had my new machine in exactly the same state as my stolen one within about 2h. I'm sure with faster bus speeds and drives now, it'd be even faster.
Unfortunately when we got acquired, we had to return all secondary devices with no buyout option (they used to let us keep older machines, but corporate policy changed that).
These days I'm running an older Lenovo Yoga that's actually holding up pretty well. Since I don't game and stopped doing video work, it covers my needs just fine. Swapped in a 2TB SSD and replaced the battery after about 6 years - can't complain about that longevity.
When this one finally gives up, Framework is definitely on my shortlist. Also planning to grab a mini PC for NAS/home server duties in the next few months - been putting that off way too long.
The repairability aspect of Framework really appeals to me after years of dealing with machines you basically have to replace entirely when something breaks. Seems like a much saner approach.
Same here. Had the 2017-era MBP (pre-M1 days). Still miss my 2014 though - that thing was solid.
The newer Intel ones ran stupidly hot, especially driving 4K externals at full res. Add corporate "compliance software" (read: bloatware that shall not be named) and those machines basically lived at 80-90°C. Heat up in the morning, thermal throttle all day, cool down overnight, repeat.
Our IT dept tracked failure rates - roughly 0.5-1.5% (depending on holiday season or not) of the MBP fleet was always out for thermal-related repairs at any given time. Not exactly confidence-inspiring for a $3k+ machine.
It sounds like you're not very good at backups, then.
I've only ever needed to do a real DR once, after we were robbed, but my Time Machine restore had my replacement Macbook up, runing, and with my application states in place within about 2 hours.
>longer battery life
As an Apple Silicon user, I doubt that. ;)
I'm sure you've never had the pleasure of working in a corporate environment where IT has banned Time Machine, external drives, and replacement machines that actually match your storage capacity. Where "backup and restore" means navigating a Kafkaesque ticketing system on your phone to get someone in a different timezone to temporarily unlock your account because you're now on an "untrusted device."
The actual data backup? 2-4 hours, worked fine. The rest was dealing with invalidated certificates, version mismatches in corporate "security" software (that ironically required Flash to be "compliant"), and finding a replacement machine that wasn't a 256GB base model when you need to restore from a larger drive.
But you're right - back when we were independent, before the corporate acquisition, Time Machine worked exactly as advertised. Two hours, everything restored perfectly. Then came the security theater that somehow made machines less secure while being infinitely more annoying to manage.
So yeah, clearly I'm just not good at "backups." Got it.
> As an Apple Silicon user, I doubt that. ;)
Feel free to doubt away - yours is definitely longer. For context: I'm comparing Windows vs Linux on the same dual-boot hardware (old Intel workhorse), not against whatever "M" you are running. Linux consistently delivers 40-45% better battery life than Windows on identical hardware. Still need the Windows partition for certain freelance client work, but working on eliminating that dependency entirely.
The problem is: it depends a lot on the specific program whether I want the newest or stay with some older version of some program. Many GNU/Linux distributions make this hard, while Windows makes this easy.
But I'm not here to convince anyone.
Or did you mean that you want to pin an app to a specific version? This can be done also, trivially - not that it is a good idea in general.
Nobody ever disputes that there are workarounds to the default packaging workflows of Linux distros. The problem is, your average user, even technical ones don't want using an OS to be a second job outside their real job.
That hasn't been the case with Linux, any more than other OSs, for some time now. At least not if you chose an LTS release of a big “getting work done” oriented distro rather than something geared around the bleeding edge or customisability.
There are issues with some software support, but that is almost all Windows stuff that you'll have the same problems with on Macs as Linux.
There are occasional hardware issues, which is where Apple limiting choice in favour of known reliability can look attractive, but that is mostly on the bleeding edge too which isn't a concern if you are “getting work done” (I had issues with some 2.5GbE NICs a while ago and swapped them back out, retried with the same kit last month, at least on apt-release-update later, and things are working just fine).
> if you're on a Mac, use an iPhone, have a Watch, etc,
I can see that.
Though I prefer to select my devices based on what they are best at rather than being locked to a single manufacturer's ecosystem. My watch (Garmin) and phone (Android) talk to each other just fine and integration with the desktop when I need it (mostly for planning routes & pacing plans using maps on the big screen) is web-based so works just as well with Linux as Widows or Macs.
That hasn't been the case with Linux...for some time now
There are issues
There are occasional hardware issue
You're arguing against yourself.
Headset does not work on Linux: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from Linux!”
Headset does not work on Windows: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from these headphones!”
(Re-post from 2022: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32541772>)
Maybe actually read the my comment, in which I mention such caveats, instead of just scanning to pluck out the few words which agree with your existing blinkered view. Your reply is like film posters paraphrasing quotes like “Terribly written, nothing good to say about it!” to “Terribly good!”…
If WINE eventually works well enough I can confidently use random Windows programs, esp. if they can be installed in a nice sandbox, that would let me go to Linux.
Windows has for it:
- the gazillion software, free or crazily expensive, that do not exist on linux
- the hardware compatibility, whatever is built, it is with windows on mind
- the office file formats that are the de facto standart
- the software installation model that is very crap but infinitely better than on linux
- the OS upgrade path also has it's issue but still much better than on linux
Of course linux has its strength also, and you can find it better in some cases on the points I listed
Moreover I think that not only windows' model is bad, and worse what makes it better than linux's model is the monopolistic and proprietary nature of windows.
At first, comparing both model can be thought as a joke: on windows, discovery and installations are manual, update are either manual or have to be implemented by the software developer, uninstallation is a bad joke that can let several gigabytes somewhere on your hard drive without even your knowledge or knowing how to find them (I'm not considering the app store, winget, etc because they are either bad or not well integrated).
But because windows versions last long, that they are very few of them and because the software is decoupled from the OS, installing a software on any windows machine that is less than 10 or 15 years old is downloading one of the maximum two installers, click to install and it's done. To update is just to accept the update for most software, but indeed to check first if there is an update for still many software and repeat the installation step. There is now redeeming the uninstallation: going to the parameter windows, uninstalling the software, and praying everything is properly removed.
In theory, on linux everything is better: click on the app center/use a command and look for what you want, clink install/type a command to install, everything is updated in one click/command, a software is uninstalled in on click/command.
But practice is different: discovery is still manual because you need to have more information and know the alternatives. Installation and update are where the real issue is: at the difference of windows, there is a close coupling of the OS and software. Every software has to be built and packaged for the dozen of distributions and all the versions of each distribution. The work is often duplicated: both the distrib managers and upstream propose their own packages. if you need or want to install from upstream, the dev must have their own repository that you have to add or you have do install the package manually. Update has the same issue: cross your fingers that your distribution and its version is covered either by the distribution or upstream, and that there is no conflict several sources are available. If you installed a package manually, it's not better than on windows. And because of the software-OS coupling, updating the OS means updating the software, and updating the software may mean updating the OS. Uninstallation is much better: afaik the issue of removing the dependencies is mostly resolved, and if sometimes some stuff is not removed, it's either small, not safely removable or easy to find.
For the OS updat, in theory again linux is much better, but in practice and since windows 7, here again because of the longevity of the OS versions and the decoupling OS-software I had less issues under windows
Microsoft has poisoned the well.
I can't find this option under brave://settings/privacy
Why is that ?
wikileaks was 15 years ago. tech has come long way.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...
how is this even legal?
Good on Brave for doing this, but having to continually deal with these absurd Microsoft manufactured problems has to get exhausting.
Why would you want to use a closed source OS controlled by a corporation with a past as checkered as Microsoft's?
My last hurdle which I kind of sucked up was Discord, I was holding off on it for ages, till I got irritated enough with Windows to ignore it. It didn't let me stream with audio, but when they switched from 32-bit to 64-bit it seems Linux finally got streaming with audio.
So Windows 11 won't work, will it?
The only game that didn't work out of the box for me was Path of Exile 2.
DRI_PRIME=1 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="xaudio2_7=n,b" PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=90 %command%
DXIL_SPIRV_CONFIG=wmma_fp8_hack FSR4_UPGRADE=1 game-performance %command%
People will post their tinker steps for everything. It's often just to disable the steam overlay, or inject their own overlay, or whatever they think gets them an extra 2 fps. It's linux and people love to configure it their way, but honestly steam/proton handles it automatically 99% of the time.
There are very few games that run "better" on Linux, and that too only on specific benchmarks and after a lot of tweaks and hacks. Nvidia is a lost cause, many devices, parts and peripherals don't bother providing Linux driver support, and HDR & VRR have either bog-standard implementations or are straight-up unsupported. There is no way any current nontrivial game runs better out-of-the-box on any Linux distro for a layman than on Windows on most retail "gaming" computers.
You use Windows for games, and only games. For everything else, you use Linux.
This is a practical setup.
Like you alluded to, I never use the Windows PC for anything else -- nothing even remotely sensitive -- nothing with identification like logging into government websites, no financial activity, etc. It has no access to my e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, contacts, pictures, videos, and so on. While it has Steam on it, I don't buy Steam games on it; I go to Steam's website on my Linux desktop and buy games there, then they show up in my Steam library on the Windows desktop. I do also use it for 3D CAD since I'm still very much in my infancy learning FreeCAD (which will remove that Windows dependency).
It spends the vast majority of its time turned off and if the entire contents of its drives were published publicly I wouldn't lose a minute's sleep over it. I still image the drive every couple months so I can revert to a known-good config should the need arise, as breaking itself for no reason is what Windows is really good at.
Which makes those god-awful prompts to "Finish setting up Windows Backup" every couple of weeks bloody hilarious...
I use Discord only for programming groups, study groups, etc. Not for games or in-game chatting.
What if you need to check emails or take care of some other task mid-game?
I just do it on my phone if needed.
> some other task mid-game
Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related? Then you are stopping to play anyway.
Or want to order something via Amazon? You can do it on the phone. The app or any browser is sufficient.
Dual-booting means supporting 2 OSes on my personal machine. My personal machine is for doing personal things, not supporting OSes.
I use windows on my main PC because it supports all the games I want to play, and it also supports all the software I want to use. Linux does not. Simple as that, for me.
I also use Linux and Mac at work daily. I prefer to use the right tool for the job.
Considering that most elderly that I've met do their entire workflow through the browser, that just adds to the ease of moving to Linux.
I wish I was exaggerating but I've had these arguments with people that really should know better and there was nothing I could do to convince them. There's a lot of people that are strangely proud in being completely technically illiterate and they don't care to actually have control over their computer or personal data. This isn't an age thing either; this was from people that were otherwise my age or younger that simply got angry at the mere thought of Linux.
I myself made the full switch last year with the advent of them forcing copilot shit everywhere and everything just works out of the box. I originally thought I might need to switch back to Windows every now and then for gaming but no, everything I've thrown at it works great and often better than it did on Windows. I only keep Windows around on my separate dev/work machine for the sake of game dev and coding.
Say when an application starts being slow for memory issues or io issues or downright freezes, I can still click a button or start typing something in that application, wait and it'll work eventually. I can push windows as far as I can, I can be absolutely careless and it'll still work.
On mint, if things start going slow, I'll stop clicking and wait for it to die so I can restart the app again. I don't feel confident enough to push it.
It's like buying a boring, easy to maintain japanese car and a fancy, one of 100, exotic super car from some obscure european brand. I know which one I can confidently thrash about.
As far as I know, Recall has never been enabled by default on any Windows-PC, even the new "Copilot+ PCs", so this should not be a concern as users have to explicitely opt-in to enable this privacy-invading feature.
First it was Signal which pretended being "forced" to create such a feature. I love Signal but I found this absolutely ridiculous.
Preventing a Window to be seen by other programs has the side-effect of making it completely invisible when using Windows remotely with tools such as Sunshine. How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?
HN really loves making Microsoft (especially Windows) appear even worse as it already is...
Microsoft has earned, many times over, its hate.
> How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?
Brave's implementation shouldn't block screen readers or screenshot tools. It only blocks Recall. See the blog post: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall#disabling-...
Could it be an extension?
It's one of those issues that's so infrequent and just tolerable enough because it's not like I'm writing essays in youtube comments, it's easier to just tolerate it for 10 seconds than to put the effort into figuring it out!
jadamson•8h ago
Svip•8h ago
> Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots.
(emphasis mine)
Apparently, Microsoft consider browsers special:
> While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.
jadamson•7h ago
Still, does this mean Microsoft maintains an approved browser list for this? Would the various other less-known Chromium/Firefox forks be unable to take advantage of the same thing?
Edit: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ai/recall/recall-w...
> To make sure that Recall doesn't save your user's browsing history while in modes like this, your app can use the SetInputScope function, setting the input scope to IS_PASSWORD.
> Your app must also have a http or https protocol handler registered before SetInputScope will support the behavior described in this article.
I now wonder if you can register a handler that never gets used since you won't be the default browser (and if you do end up as the default somehow, warn the user when called).
robin_reala•8h ago
eviks•7h ago
aleph_minus_one•7h ago
1. "Browser" does not mean "web browser": many kinds of applications can be considered a browser.
2. Even if you identify "browser" with "web browser": Electron apps are basically (web) browsers (though not fully functional ones). Nobody claimed said for a software to be in the "browser" category, it has to be a fully functional web browser.
dotancohen•5h ago
delfinom•3h ago
In theory you don't abuse that because it will come up as a possible browser option for users. :shrug:
skaul•3h ago
Windows lets browser apps (more technically, apps that have an `http` or `https` protocol handler registered) to use `SetInputScope` function to set `IS_PRIVATE` for a window. We were able to use that and have it apply for all Brave windows, and thus granularly turn off Recall without affecting non-Recall screen readers or screenshot capabilities.
Signal doesn't have protocol handlers for `http` and `https`, so it can't do the same.