Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

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.

> 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.

Somehow find . -iname has worked for years in Linux without AI

> 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/...

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.

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).

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.

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.

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)

Perhaps it’s because I lived in the days before search was even a thing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

I can't find this option under brave://settings/privacy

Why is that ?

https://github.com/btc/recall

https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/

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.

find -type f -exec grep -Hn "_content_" {} \;

wikileaks was 15 years ago. tech has come long way.

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.

NSA, CIA, maybe even ICE nowadays.

  "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

Even if that's the design, it's a massive new attack surface for malware to try to exfiltrate.

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.

[1] https://rme-audio.de/hdspe-madi-fx.html

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.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...

I have trouble thinking of a use case.

how is this even legal?

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.

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.

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.

That being said, I am eyeing up Framework for next laptop.

Good on Brave for doing this, but having to continually deal with these absurd Microsoft manufactured problems has to get exhausting.

Lots of options, plenty of opportunity for confusion.

Why would you want to use a closed source OS controlled by a corporation with a past as checkered as Microsoft's?

I run both of those on Linux, with no trouble. Who told you this?

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.

But I'm not here to convince anyone.

its a pain for most people at first but its never too late to do the switch.

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?

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.

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.

Unless someone breaks that cycle of Windows being the dominant OS.

If you're thinking "just ask", unfortunately students often don't have that level of introspection.

  grep -RHn "_content_" .

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.

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.

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 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.

You use Windows for games, and only games. For everything else, you use Linux.

This is a practical setup.

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>)

(An infants hands are too small to hold a steak knife)

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.

Microsoft has poisoned the well.

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.

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.

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.

So Windows 11 won't work, will it?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The only game that didn't work out of the box for me was Path of Exile 2.

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...

    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%

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

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.

Man I'm using windows and defending it's usage in this very thread but that's totally stupid

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.

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!”…

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.

https://github.com/conceptualspace/yet-another-speed-dial

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.

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 use Discord only for programming groups, study groups, etc. Not for games or in-game chatting.

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.

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. ;)

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.

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.

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.

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").

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/

[2] https://solidstatelogic.com/products/ssl-2-plus-mkii

[3] https://rme-audio.de/digiface-dante.html

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.

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.

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.

That time. With that child. I don't think "a steak knife per toddler" is a scalable value proposition.

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"

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.

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.

Microsoft has earned, many times over, its hate.

In theory you don't abuse that because it will come up as a possible browser option for users. :shrug:

What if you need to check emails or take care of some other task mid-game?

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.

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.

> 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-...

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...

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.

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

Could it be an extension?

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.

https://solidstatelogic.com/products/ssl-2-plus-mkii

It has pro quality converters and is plug-n-play.

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

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.

https://airwave.fxarena.net/

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Wdym about LTS not being ideal for NVIDIA?

The OS receives updates, NVIDIA drivers also do. What is the problem?

Am I missing something?

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, it cost me $0.

You don’t seem to understand that a soundcard needs connecting to everything else in a studio, so there’s no such thing as just changing one thing and it not having a knock on effect (unless you’re really lucky, which I wasn’t).

You also don’t seem to know 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 ~$7200.

And, you still miss the point of the story completely: the point was that it’s too risky for anyone considering building a pro setup on Linux. Especially compared to Windows and macOS where everything is plug and play.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t pockets of success in Linux-land, but that it can be costly in money and time to get it right, and it might never work for the setup you have.

It is risk.

> 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 and pissing me off

* 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 (which I could plug in to the Mac Mini)

* I still use Linux on the original machine (for dev work), but with a class compliant soundcard for casual use. It’s relatively trouble free, other than half of my usb ports don’t work, but you know, meh

* I haven’t needed to use Windows since. So I consider it a win.

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.

> 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.

This is not the kind of thing you'd do if you expect app developers to be enthusiastic about the feature.

> Apple Intelligence is designed to protect your privacy at every step. It’s integrated into the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through on-device processing. So it’s aware of your personal information without collecting your personal information. And with groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute, Apple Intelligence can draw on larger server-based models, running on Apple silicon, to handle more complex requests for you while protecting your privacy.

Source: https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/

All the marketing fluff aside, Apple literally says Apple analyzes your personal information in the core of your device and sends it to the cloud for more complex tasks. That's orders of magnitude worse than Recall which is on-device, opt-in and fully encrypted.

Why do I have to use Onenote? It's free. It syncs well with other computers and mobile apps. Sharing notebooks with other people works and is free. It's intuitive enough that my wife can use it. The search works, the formatting is rich enough, you can paste in pictures.

I don't need the rest of Office. The online versions or Google docs are good enough. If I can get Onenote and Fusion360 working well on Linux, I would likely switch to Linux.

Recall is already opt-in. It's fully on-device, nothing gets sent to the cloud (unlike Apple Intelligence which gets no hate at all but is worse because it sends your data to the cloud). You can disable Recall for specific apps at the OS level.

Both Brave and Signal add a feature that already exists at the OS level and then write ludicrous attention-seeking blog posts about it. Why? If you don't trust the OS to honor your settings and not spy on you, then you should consider the device compromised and you shouldn't be using it anyway. And if you're somehow still using it, why would you enable Recall on a device that you don't trust? That scenario simply doesn't exist, yet both Brave and Signal fail to mention that in their blog posts they write to gain internet points on communities like HN.

My point is it isn't a universal truth that everybody currently running 10 can just switch to linux/proton now and it is seamless. Really depends on what you run and your hardware, as with everything linux.

I also hack some games with dll injection and I don't know how I'm going to get that working with proton, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

Well some people currently pay $19/month for that feature.

https://www.rewind.ai/

Do you have your phone by you all the time? Mine is always sitting somewhere, probably charging. On my laptop I just get a notification instantly showing me an email preview without me having to do anything. Having to go check my phone isn't a substitute for that.

> Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related?

Like replying to a message? Going to fetch your phone and type on it is way more painful from than just pressing alt-tab and doing it on the computer.

> Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related?

Do you have nothing long or serious outside of work? I just had to fill out some forms and do some shopping yesterday online for my personal life. That'd have been painful on the phone.

> Then you are stopping to play anyway.

Stopping the app loses your exact state... that's kind of the whole point of pausing the game.

Well, I mean, it kinda DOES seem like my critique was on point. It just wasn't YOU that was bad at backups. It's that your IT department is worthless.

But either way, it's not an Apple problem.

>Apple Silicon

The power management on the Apple chips is really just amazing. It's like nothing I've ever used before. This level of performance AND insane battery life feels like a magic trick.

Oh, and the heat management is all part of it. I've had this machine for 4 years, and a few weeks ago it started making a disturbing noise I'd never heard before. "WTF????", I thought.

And then I realized what it was: I'd finally triggered the fans, which had never come on before. Turns out, rendering a shitload of high-def 360-degree video down into a flat file for Youtube sharing is computationally intense enough to trigger the M1's cooling system.

You can also give infants who are ready for food meat and other real foods, just keep in mind the lack of teeth.

The customer support story is also much better. Instead of dealing with IRC channels and Reddit post trying to figure out why the latest kernel ruined everything, you go to the Apple Store.

I literally run Tumbleweed on my second laptop, I like Linux.

It's just not for people who don't want to invest time into understanding how computers work.

This whole thread is about how Linux is difficult because you need to understand what hardware is actually supported and you're arguing that MacOS is different because you still need to understand what hardware is supported, but the apple store will sell you something else with a smile.

I'm not even denying that MacOS is a perfectly acceptable OS, I just don't understand your argument.

They shouldn't be selling 3rd party hardware, with an over 100% markup, that isn't well supported.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/gaming-mouse/CH-931D101-NA/m...

It's less than half the price anywhere else.

But Apple's argument is it's not on them if a 3rd party mouse they happen to sell has issues.

With Linux you need to do significantly more work to get setup and every now and then a kernel update can ruin your day.

I want something Ubuntu stable that actually supports newer hardware, but that's just not where Linux is at.

The Linux community is amazing, but they lack the capacity to QA every possible laptop on the market.

Just a few days ago the sound on my Tumbleweed install decided to stop working. I thought about reinstalling, Chat GPT suggested I just accept audio not working and using a USB sound card.

Eventually, thinking as a last ditch effort, I asked Chat GPT how to completely reinstall the audio stack.

This went and removed my KDE desktop for some reason. Cool, I'll install Xfce from the tty.

I then installed Budgie since it's a bit easier to use.

All this because for some reason my sound didn't feel like working.

We, the types of people who visit this site, enjoy the process.

Not everyone does.

Macs definitely have issues too.

But you can go to the Apple store and have them figure it out.

Plus a routine update probably won't stop audio from working.

I've been using Desktop Linux for about 20 years.

It's better now, but it's still work to use.

Ubuntu releases LTS versions every two years. I jump from LTS to LTS by simple `do-release-upgrade` command. Takes about 30 minutes. And I only upgrade after the dust settles, i.e. after 3-4 months of the release.

Mint also releases upgrades regularly. I suggest upgrading regularly.

NVIDIA drivers work great, and receive updates.

You know that's not the only issue, and that it is not what I'm saying. You can try to convince yourself as much as you want that it is not an issue, the reality will not change

> Which Windows version?

Are you kidding ? there is only one in 2025 : windows 11.

> Which torrent is the right one?

Why are you even talking about torrent ?

I told you why I am talking about torrent. No one has a legit copy of Windows 11, no one actually buys it here, especially not individuals. Companies might.

Oh yeah, how would they know Windows 11 is the latest if not by looking it up?

Either way, as I said, someone will be asked to install an OS, or they will buy computers with an OS pre-installed (and they will eventually ask, even then). None of which require them to pick anything.

Windows still wins, mac is great for most of those points except for gaming and torrents, Linux bad at most of those.