Microsoft is releasing a big Windows 11 update on September 26. Update 23H2 includes the new AI-powered Windows Copilot feature, a native RAR app, a new volume mixer and a lot more.
Oh, another system wide crapware that nobody is going to use.
They might as well call it Cortana AI
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Started a new job 4 months ago. First time using a windows desktop since windows 2000. Have multi screens always sucked this bad? You never know on what screen a launched window will appear.
How can people work like this?
They have not sucked this bad, no.
That’s interesting. Windows 11 is the best multi monitor version of windows ever, in my experience. It “remembers” where apps were last used opens them there. While not perfect, I find it great that it handles more than one multiple monitor setup. I have 3 monitors at home and 2 at the office. I just plug in and they are always in the same alignment. Given how bad it was in previous versions, I’m impressed.
I love the part where it remembers what screen an application was last launched on, even if that screen is no longer connected, so the window is completely missing with no visible way to get it back 😅
But yes, I find multiple monitor stuff to mostly be good in Win11 I agree!
Though it’s sorely missing a feature Win10 had that I find really, REALLY annoying. My monitors aren’t the same resolution, so when I move my mouse from one of a higher resolution to a lower one, if the mouse is near the top of the screen as it often is, it will literally get stuck on the edge of the screen, because the next screen technically has no pixels that high up 🤦♀️
So I then have to move the mouse down an inch or two to get it to be allowed to move to the next screen. Incredibly infuriating, and a problem that was solved in previous versions of Windows (which would just helpfully move your mouse to the top of the neighbouring screen, as you’d intuitively want).
When I still had monitors with different resolutions I used an app called https://cursr.app/ to fix that. Or at least I think that is your issue…
When the invisible app window happens, you can use the windows key + arrow keys to move the current window around.
Agreed about the mouse thing being infuriating. I match my display resolutions to avoid it.
I usually move the monitors around, the move my mouse to test it, until I avoid that, as perfectly aligning then with different resolutions doesn’t work. But yeah, totally know what you’re saying.
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I have been using a multi-monitor setup for years and never had any issues. Windows will usually appear on the screen you closed them on.
I’ve been waiting to move my fucking taskbar forever.
We just haven’t advanced technology to that stage yet. Big ask.
we had it in windows 7, 8, Vista, 10
This ancient technology is long lost by now. Pictures on clay plates is not how we are used to read comments in code now.
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Still chasing the dream of mainstream Clippy acceptance.
fr tho, MS has been on the digital assistant thing for decades at this point.
Digital assistants are to Microsoft as Messaging apps are to Google.
“Maybe it’ll work this decade”
The problem is Cortana or clippy or whatever they call it now sucks. I’ve never found its suggestions to be helpful. Google assistant has been helpful at least once in a while.
Google now used to be so good. Integration between calendar, email and maps for appointments and travel plans was amazing and I don’t even travel that much. But it just all worked and was legitimately helpful.
No one since has really sat down and tried to figure out ways to speed up or improve a typical users daily routine. They just build little isolated gimmicks that seem cool in an advert, but barely get used in reality.
I hate that everyone wants to build an ecosystem that locks you in and then doesn’t even seem to deliver on the low hanging fruit that being in that ecosystem could accomplish.
Gonna get downvoted to crap for this, but what the hell - hi, it’s me, I’m that one guy who actually loves Windows a little more with every release. I’m continually surprised by the good stuff that’s baked into the OS now (e.g. Much better multi-monitor support) and how the real power users can do a whole load more besides with Powertoys (key remapping!) - It’s really encouraging to see that I need fewer and fewer specialist programs to get Windows to work just how I want.
I’m not wildly sold on AI being baked into the OS, but what the heck - Microsoft have earned their goodwill from me in recent years. I’ll play around with it with interest.
I was like you until windows 10. I opted out of that. It just felt like losing control over my computer. Windows 11 even more so.
Same here. Switched to Linux because of that.
I’ll be very surprised if AI is actually “baked into” the OS. A client to their cloud AI will be baked in, but that’s not the same thing IMO.
(btw powertoys is great, multimonitor support is great too, if they finally fix the task bar I might finally go to Win11)
A client to their cloud AI will be baked in
That would instantly kill the feature for me. Hope its easy to remove but I know how shitty MS is about getting that data.
Hope its easy to remove
has edge flashbacks
You could use things like StartAllBack to bring back the “classic” taskbar and start menu (Windows 7 style) There’s Open Shell and Start 11 too, I don’t use them but they’re good afaik.
I use Start 10. It’s good, and I’ve tried Start 11 on a Win 11 VM, but while it sort of lets you ungroup the taskbar it wasn’t a great experience. I want MS to do it for real.
Well StartAllBack brings back the Windows 7 style taskbar with all of its functions, Microsoft may add some functionalities but don’t expect them to do it quickly or at all.
Much better multi-monitor support
Tell that to the Snipping Tool.
I was dealing with this yesterday it’s so stupid.
When I press the screenshot button on my keyboard it should only screenshot the display that the cursor is currently on. There is absolutely no reason that it should screenshot the entire display.
Window key + Shift + S
Select only what you need.
Crtl + shift + print screen
You’re welcome.
I tend to use alt + print screen
Alt-Printscreen selects whatever screen you’re in for capture, and Ctrl-Shift-S brings up an overlay to do it manually.
Stop using Snipping Tool and download Share X
Ahh, if only I had such control over a company assigned machine.
I’ve been using Linux in various ways since the mid 90s, work has dictated OSX to me for the last decade or so, and I still choose windows as my desktop OS. I use copilot, and it’s great for development, but also great for generating text in a lot of ways. I miss it in my browser when I go to put in a pull request, and I miss it sometimes when explaining blocks of code or giving someone else an outline of how to do something. It doesn’t really lower my need to understand things, but it just speeds up the most mundane parts of the job. If ‘having it in the OS’ means it could fill in those bits, I’d wish even more I could use windows for work.
It’s great as a dev platform with WSL2 a great experience, VS codes built in remote server, native first class hypervisor support (with competent virtual networking). I know IT admins still hate it, and I’m sure a lot of the things that don’t affect me still suck, but they are building a good user experience.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you haven’t tried anything else
MacOS, Ubuntu, Manjaro, Mint, Solus…
really !
Can we just ungroup the damned Taskbar already? I don’t understand why they are being so stubborn on this.
That’s already available for insiders and can be enabled, meaning it will soon-ish come to the stable versions of Windows 11.
I recommend StartAllBack. Granted no third party apps should be required for such a simple feature, StartAllBack does this and more.
It won’t be needed on the 26th, ungrouping was announced months ago.
I do love StartAllBack though. I’m curious if the new file explorer will convince me to stop using the Win10 Ribbon mode in StartAllBack
That’s the number one reason I stayed on 10. I’m figuring out a swap to Linux - gaming is my only concern. Might just dual boot.
Other than game devs who intentionally block Linux with anti-cheat (Epic, Riot) almost all other games work perfectly fine on Linux nowadays.
Does Teams work on Linux?
This is a LOT of people currently. We all want off of this Microsoft crapfest. Luckily a lot of us bailed on Windows 11 so we won’t have to deal with this further enshittification of windows.
Gaben had a talk about the future of Linux gaming so things are moving and windows will finally be a forgotten memory.
I swapped about a month ago. I’m running Ubuntu on desktop and openSuse Tumbleweed on laptop; both with KDE Plasma desktop environment, which makes the transition from windows easier. It’s a little bit of a learning curve as the names of software packages are unfamiliar to me, but I’m liking it.
My partner who never even contemplated anything else but windows did some work on my computer and I expected questions and frustration from her, but alas she did what she needed to do and I doubt she even noticed.
Mind you, I don’t really do gaming.
Even gaming is good on Linux now. Until you use the minimum softwares portfolio it’s okay. But if you are a content creator or if you need many softwares for your work it’s better to keep windows. After years of testing and trying to swap, Linux still have issues with hardware compatibility and version update (without reinstalling all the stuff) on my concern. And it will never replace windows cause the software library is too small. I am not saying that is not polish or easy it just depends what you need to do with.
Start11 by Stardock does this and more, its not FOSS, but is cheap (if you go the legal route). There is also Winhawk, which is FOSS, though is a little less intuitive.
Ungroup icon of multiple instances of one app into separate taskbar items? That’s been in insider builds for some time now. (Luckily…)
They’re not being stubborn, it’s coming in this same update and was announced at least 6 months ago
I keep hearing this complain so I guess it clearly bothers some people but personally to me it never causes any issues nor I see the benefit on ungrouping.
If you have multiple windows of something you can go to the one you need directly. Them always bring grouped and requiring twice as many steps instead feels like I’m being handicapped by the OS.
Idk I guess I barely use the mouse for windows changing and that’s why doesn’t bother me. Well that and I don’t think I have that many apps with multiple windows that group, except I guess the file explorer but now it has tabs support.
Going off of Dave Plummer’s video, looks like copilot is kind of a wash. It has the potential to do some neat stuff on desktop, but its crappily shoehorned into the OS instead.
“This time you’re going to love Cortana. For reals!”
With love,
Clippy.
Every tech company is pulling this stupid bullshit now. Mine is also trying to find any way they can to shoehorn an LLM into their product. It’s marketing BS
Underpants gnomes economics.
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Integrate AI into everything, even where it doesn’t make any damn sense.
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???
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Profit.
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Hoping they’ve made it better since
Isn’t this exactly how Skynet was created?
I actually spoke with one of the people on the team for this the other week.
They have significant money problems. Copilot is expensive as crap to run, and this is about to make the situation 10x worse.
(Also this feature was completely broken a few weeks ago, so I’d be surprised if it launches without a hitch)
They have significant money problems.
Who is “they” here? Microsoft?
I think they’re doing just fine financially.
The particular team is burning money to run Copilot, and this new feature will burn money faster. Microsoft is mega profitable and happy to do this in the short-term, but they’re banking on a better solution in the long run.
I also specifically asked if Copilot was nerfed, and all the employee said was (paraphrasing): “Some people have run benchmarks and found it is worse than a year ago”
It’s GPT itself that’s shittier. All of these cloud AI platforms are very expensive to run. These are both well-known and you definitely didn’t have to talk to “Microsoft” to make that conclusion.
Who would even create rar archives these days, when there is 7zip?
Everybody using usenet.
Memesters, because WinRAR is a negware type of shareware (having an unlimited trial period), which constitutes as being “the good guy”.
Okay but 7zip can open and create .rar archives so why would anyone ever use WinRAR
Don’t try to understand memesters. I once installed one 7zip instead of WinRAR, and he installed the latter because “it’s free, you just have to click the button and wait a little bit”. It was even worse with the uTorrent vs. qBitTorrent situation, where the former is a de-facto spyware/adware, but the latter isn’t in piracy memes.
People using WinRAR. “Why would people use WinRAR?” It has more features than 7zip (password, encryption, profile presets especially).
If you’re asking why Microsoft would include it as a format for their extremely basic compression tool built into Explorer… why not, it’s one of the top three formats.
more features than 7zip (password, encryption,
Eh? 7zip supports these.
profile presets
I have to admit, I’m not familiar with this feature.
What I mean is more options for those features. The profiles and password tools are especially clever. (Examples: Password organizer can be locked with short master password, great for quickly decrypting archives matching ANY stored password. Profiles can quickly encrypt using specific settings, including super-long saved password without entering it.)
Ah, I see what you mean. 7zip’s password support looks pretty simple in comparison.
a native RAR app
It better come with a “Trial Expired” pop-up or I am not using it
Damn, this is actually kinda sad news that the OS will come with a rar app. Makes me finally want to buy a copy on WinRAR for like 15+ years of service.
Man fuck that shit.
This type of shit is why i jumped to linux mint recently. Who the hell removed the right click menu options. I’m sure it will be back as a feature.
They didn’t remove it. Go down to the bottom and choose More Options.
It’s bullshit but they’re still there
Old context menu is still there. Need to do a regedit to make it default again.
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Like baking a turd into a mud cookie.
Im so happy I uninstalled W11 and installed W10 LTSC
I’m so happy I replaced Win 10 with Linux and now can watch this dumpster fire from afar.
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Most laptops are “made for Windows”, but they run Ubuntu just fine. It’s highly unlikely that wifi isn’t working out of the box nowadays.
So the only reason not to switch would be if you have certain applications that only work on Windows.
This person just stated it wasn’t a pleasant experience for them, you’re not going to magically change that by trying to argue it away.
Dual booting is never a pleasant experience, because Windows is a bitch that fights and breaks the bootloader at every opportunity it can to claim superiority over the computer. But deleting Windows and just running Linux is a perfectly viable and pleasant option.
Oh, I’m stuck with Windows at work myself. It’s even more painful if you know what the user experience could be.
I got hands on w11 after 3 years on Linux and didn’t know what to do - it was some home edition and I couldn’t find what I want in the amount of unwanted apps.
Btw it was fresh install.
Windows 11 has preinstalled TikTok. It’s so fucking bad.
technically it’s not preinstalled, just an ad that installs it if you click it
Not that that makes it better
Signed: someone who left windows for linux approaching 2 years ago
The only feature I’m looking forward to is the ability to ungroup multiple instances of the same program in the talk bar. That feature was around forever but for some reason they disabled it in Windows 11.
How do I install the nVidia drivers on Linux? I asking in case I decide to finally switch (found some Linux DAW, now all is happy, likely will go with Ubuntu + KDE).
On Ubuntu it’s just an option during installation. So far that’s the easiest install I’ve seen.
OpenSUSE supports a graphical install through their software manager, but I found it caused some issues so I ended up using the command line. That was actually very easy if you’re not uncomfortable using a terminal. Their docs were also accurate and easy to follow.
On fedora I followed the official docs but their instructions didn’t work, so I had to find some thread on a forum with alternate instructions. It took over an hour to get it working.
For sheer ease of use I would definitely stick to Ubuntu since that’s also the only distro Steam officially supports. I’ve had a good experience with OpenSUSE though so I’m sticking with it.
For the Open Source Nouveau Driver, it’s included in Mesa. You may also need the
xf86-video-nouveaudriver for 2D acceleration on X11 depending on your hardware. For example anything older than NV50 (G80) would likely need it. Newer GPU’s have seen better results when falling back onto the modesetting driver.For the Proprietary Drivers, it depends on the distro; most allow you to install them during the installation of the distro (few do it automatically afaik), using a GUI driver manager/detection tool included in some distros or using your package manager.
A distro like fedora however requires extra steps because they’re not included in the official repos.I hope you find this more informative than “install PopOS or X distro” that includes the proprietary drivers on the installation ISO itself.
Depends on the distro you choose, but these days it’s nothing too complicated. Either clicking an option for enabling the private driver in the drivers settings, or worse case just running a couple commands to manually add the private driver repo and download the package. You are done in 5 min m
If you’re set on Nvidia, I recommend Pop OS or Nobara. Pop has a separate image that preinstalls Nvidia drivers. Nobara has a built in tool to download and install Nvidia drivers on first launch. Of the two, I’d probably go with Nobara (I’ve been using it for a year or so, love it) because not only does it have that tool, it also has an official KDE version, which it sounds like you’d prefer. You could install KDE with Pop, but I’ve done that before, and it creates a bloated nightmare of conflicting apps.
Not NVidia driver-related, but I would recommend KDE Neon or Kubuntu since they’re both KDE and Ubuntu-based, KDE Neon is made by KDE while Kubuntu is an Ubuntu flavor.
Pick a distro that ships with Nvidia drivers out of the box. My personal recommendation is Pop OS.
