I wish I was a billion dollar company who gets away with stuff like this. Just generally break people’s systems, add spyware, lie to users, treat them like shit.
All while making even more money and my stocks keep on going up, because AI, Ai, Ai…
I removed Recall just fine and now my Windows environment is Linux
So, some important context: you can disable Recall still. The only thing you can’t do is delete the files for it.
So it’s another potential attack surface for malware to target, something that Microsoft could enable in an update (so use Group Policy to disable it, they way they give companies with legal requirements to do so properly), and some space on your harddrive wasted.
This is NOT Microsoft requiring people to enable Recall for Explorer to work.
Still an egregious amount of bullshit, but not as much as the headline might lead you to believe.
This is NOT Microsoft requiring people to enable Recall for Explorer to work.
yet ™️
I’m wondering how the dod is going to fix this. I’ll have to look at their stuff files.
It’s like Nadella wants people to stop using windows.
Microsoft is certainly doing an excellent job driving away Xbox users. What else do they have? Azure maybe?
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Linux mega supporter working from deep inside is now a super believable narrative.
It’s like Microsoft doesn’t care if the home user’s personal computer runs Windows; because they don’t care.
This is what we get for no longer being the paying customer (that and a quasi Monopoly).
You still are the paying customer for Windows. Windows costs money.
Microsoft are just double-dipping.
“If you’re not paying, you’re the product” doesn’t make sense because FOSS exists, and in the proprietary world now, even if you pay you’re still the product.
I am a Mac user at home. I use windows for work, like most of us. But I keep reading all these articles and thinking, “Boy, I sure hope my company’s IT Dept. is on top of this.”
Everyone in IT wants to be ahead of the curve but we wind up being reactionary because if it ain’t broke don’t fix it…but it will break if we don’t do this…is it broken now…no but it will be…so it’s not broken we are good to go.
Wow. Obviously that’s a bonkers approach, but not at all unsurprising. A large part of my job is actually getting people off their ass to address stuff before the product breaks, and we lose revenue.
I’m on top of things when I have the time to be informed at work. I’m not doing all research after hours and might not always have time for it at work, so sometimes we too are rather reactionary.
Just install Linux, get it over with, more away from the clutches of Microsoft, use a system that is free and easy to work with.
Yeah, Linux is not perfect, nothing is. Might Linux require you in some cases to do some extra work? Maybe. Windows does not? Did you read this post? Did you read the countless other posts where Microsoft makes your life harder on purpose, triest to spy juuuust a little harder on you? Where Microsoft tries to fuck you over, yet again? Where Microsoft for the Nth time purposefully and willfully ignored security threats to save money or face, allowing even the US government to be hacked cuz better for Microsoft?
Seriously, it’s like watching a woman with a best up face defending her husband, he isn’t that bad, or if I leave I will be without this thing I need, omg, what will I do?
Just. Leave. Switch to linux, and be done with this shit
Yeah I have no clue why people think this is how they deserve to be treated.
Microsoft being Microsoft…
Aren’t there alternative file explorers for Windows? Or did support for that kind of thing end with Windows 7?
There’s Tablacus. Opus is supposed to be good too, but I haven’t tried it.
I used to use OneCommander, it is a very nice alternative.
Just generally break people’s systems, add spyware, lie to users, treat them like shit.
Too many people bought that shit. Their own fault for getting ripped another one.
I use mint on my laptop, steam runs great, but have to keep windows on the desktop because I need to run Ableton, lack of pro audio is the thing that’s holding me from full Linux right now…
Thanks I’ve been looking at that, only reservation is learning a new DAW…
Reaper works great on mint. Plus yabridge to use your windows plugins.
Thanks I’ll check those out…
I was under the impression you could still remove the feature without issue.
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2697#issuecomment-2403792309
That’s covered in the article you’re commenting on.
Another user on GitHub also pointed out that Microsoft’s own DISM can be used to disable the Recall service without the File Explorer consequences, although Titus points out that this behaviour seems inconsistent, as in his testing, the File Explorer still changed its appearance after a restart. Inconsistency aside, it’s unlikely that any non-technical Windows user will even know what DISM is, never mind how to use it, and this reliance on a command-line utility to remove a controversial feature is indicative of MIcrosoft’s goals.
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Just because Microsoft makes Recall “unremovable”, doesn’t mean anything to me. We’ve seen debloater tools, alternate start menus, someone even ported explorer from Windows 7 to Windows 10/11.
I’m pretty sure there’s gonna be a solution for this in no time.
That being said, just use a better OS ffs. I get it, some companies cannot easily switch from Windows because of tools specifically built for Windows, or due to strict policies or regulations or software support, but damnit, somewhere you have to draw a line and start a migration process to an alternative system. And maybe learn from this, and make your tools portable next time.
Having spyware on your system is certainly a big no-no at companies, and probably the aforementioned debloater/customization solutions as well.
Are you listening to yourself? Why are you even using this shite? You pay for being screwed over, bit don’t worry everyone, we can unsabotage the crap we paid for!
Switch to Linux already, come to the dark side, we have cookies.
Ona more serious note: there are literally less reasons every day to stick to windows. Games? Most , ir not damn near all work fine or better on linux. Photoshop? Run it in a VM if you must, away from the rat of your work, but at least stop paying Microsoft money FFS. Yes, actively pirate windows if you must.
I’m so fucking tired of people writing how they spend so much time to restore their paid product to a barely functional level, then complain about Linux being too complicated.
My literal last experience installing both lonic and windows was 25 minutes for Linux (that includes downloading the iso and burning it on a USB) and 7 grueling hours spread out over 4 days with countless failed attempts to install windows, BIOS metssing, trying different ISO burner programs, with the final attempt taking well over an hour to complete, passing countless “BUY MORE, ALLOW US TO SPY, GIVE US MORE MONEY, YOU WILL USE THIS SERVICE!” screens. Then Linux just worked and windows still was fucking me over.
Why do people put up with this? Just use Linux, get it over with. So much less pain.
No need to tell me all this; I’ve been using Linux for more than 15 years and I don’t freakin’ care what’s happening to Windows.
Now either you haven’t read properly what I said, or my wording was not clear - apologies in the latter case. Either way, I’ll try to explain what I meant.
- It’s pointless for Microsoft to make Recall (or anything) unremovable, since someone will find a solution to it pretty quickly. So those who use Windows, most likely will still have the option to continue to use it without Recall, in my opinion.
- I also highly recommend everyone to just use a usable operating system instead.
- Telling the average user to use a better operating system is one thing. That’s fairly doable nowadays, I don’t see basically any obstacle to that, and I wouldn’t even mention it, because you just tell them the facts, and the smarter ones will listen and think it through, the rest of them will do whatever they want, it’s their problem. What I find very problematic, is industrial environments. There are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of workstations, terminal computers, controllers in companies of varying sizes, where it’s absolutely not cost efficient to switch from Windows to something else (well, at least not until they get into their first data breach attributed to Recall or other shady Microsoft services). They have highly specialized tools complete with documentation and support and everything made for the one specific platform they are operating on, and it’s certainly not easy to change that, especially without halting production. If there’s one IT advice I could give to those companies, it would be to start creating a strategic plan to drop their Microsoft dependencies, and then execute their plan. It would take probably years, but they gotta start doing it like ASAP. And along the way, while porting their toolchains, they could as well do it the smart way: make it highly portable, so whatever platform they switch to, wouldn’t be the only option. Should that platform go south just like Windows did, they’d have the option to switch again to something else, just much easier this time.
- According to my experience, customization tools to remove bloat (including Recall) are not permissible in work environments, and spyware (such as Recall) are not (supposed to be) tolerated either. If this doesn’t make them switch to a better platform, nothing will.
“I really would like to switch to Linux, bUT muH gaMEz!”
Like, just get a console or a Steam deck and tell MS to piss off. Until their market share plummets noticeably, they’re going to continue this crap.
Gamers are not the only people that use Windows. A lot of creative and commercial software either requires Windows or works best on it.
I think Windows is garbage as much as everyone else here, but switching is not that easy.
It’s pretty easy for 80 (90)+% of competent computer users, get an old Macbook for that stuff (it’ll probably be better) and switch your main to linux. The real problem is less competent computer users.
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference. - Jim Butcher
Fair enough. I suppose my point is at some point, people are going to have to start making sacrifices and say “enough is enough” or nothing is going to change. There’s no incentive for companies to de-enshittify or support new platforms as long as people keep accepting the ever-worsening status quo. Change is hard, I’ll agree.
I’m gaming just fine on mint. It’s like the old days when I would install something and not be sure if it worked, but so far most things have been working more or less out of the box. Installing and patching mods to final fantasy 7 took a little bit because I wasn’t familiar with the terms being used, but it was a couple hours, not a few days.
Our just play games on Linux. Wine/proton is shockingly good. I’ve never had an issue
Oh, so buy an Xbox?
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I’ve been trying to learn linux for like 15 years off and on.
I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing.
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I am planning on just disabling windows update medic service and keeping my current version of windows 10 that still allows dual booting to Linux.
Once Valorant stops working on that version I guess I’ll have to just only play deadlock from then on.
Caring about system integrity/security while playing a game that requires a literal rootkit are not compatible
Absolutely agree, that’s why when I saw the patch notes for this latest Microsoft update I was like “They don’t mention why this is dangerous other than Linux can be used by the haxors”. It definitely just sounded like a way to crunch down on Linux use.
And like you said, I already allow Microsoft and riot and probably others I’m not thinking of to just have complete access to my computer so it’s not like I have any privacy, for security I can always check out potential issues myself with my pen testing laptop, so there is literally no benefit and only a ton of downsides to upgrading. So why would I?
This weekend the upgrading and updating ends for good, and I will get my dual boot Linux whether they like it or not.
I used Linux for a long time, like years, as my main os since I was a teenager. (I broadly say Linux because I hopped distro a lot). but ultimately, I hardly even used it by the end because during my creative bursts, I would be using windows exclusive software that was just better than any Foss. then, I would want to play some multiplayer games with my friends, where the anti cheat only worked on windows. this totaled to like 75 percent of my time being used on windows in the end, so I just sucked up to the reality of the situation and hardened windows for privacy and debloating and switched back after so long. if it weren’t for those 2 specific things, I would have probably kept mint as a daily driver forever, it was really stable and nothing else was an issue for me. but the fact is that I (and presumably many other people) don’t want to give up things we enjoy and spend more time bleak and bored just to prove a point to some company that doesn’t know we exist. I’m sure for a lot of people though, daily driving Linux would be fine for things like YouTube or online shopping or whatevsies.
You don’t want to play on Linux? Get a steam deck… Which runs on Linux! 😀
Ingenious.
