TLDR:
Windows 11 v24H2 and beyond will have Recall installed on every system. Attempting to remove Recall will now break some file explorer features such as tabs.
YT Video (5min)
I remember them doing this with Internet Explorer back in the 90s.
“We can’t remove this thing we don’t want to remove! Look! It’s hastily integrated with the OS! We can’t remove it ever!”
yep exactly my thoughts. IE couldn’t be ripped off a Windows computer at all
It still can’t… Hidden somewhere deep in windows, there is still a IE, believe me.
At very least there’s an OCX for InteractiveHtmlView or some stuff. It’s how South Korean banks apps run. I think even the EU-specific “unbundled IE” versions still have that ActiveX / OLE control registered, though it might be crippled.
Windows Debloat Tool:
https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools
I run this on any new Win install. I also suggest Portmaster so you know where your data is going (I use it on Linux too!)
However, if you can, it is really worth switching to Linux. Linux is built as a tool by the people using the tool. Windows is making a product. Enough said.
If people would like to “try Linux before you buy,” check out DistroSea. It spins up a virtual machine of whatever distro and flavour you choose to try.
There are a surprising and growing number of Linux compatible tools. Software is usually why people have a hard time switching. If you’re dependent on Photoshop/Adobe, check out:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Gamers should check out:
This site shows how well games run on Proton (compatibility tool) and people offer solutions to get them running if there’s any snags.
Just want to weigh in on Resolve. I was able to get the free version running on Mint, but the free version can’t do H.264. I then bought Resolve Studio, but activating the license did not work so I ended up on Windows for video editing.
I also had to switch back to Windows for Affinity, as I have been using Photoshop for years and I have yet to find another piece of software (excluding Affinity) I can move at speed in.
Once I get the content creation off Windows, I can probably leave it behind for good.
Linux is built as a tool by the people using the tool.
And that’s exactly how it feels to non-programmers or not-enthusiasts jus trying to exist.
And those devs (not all but more or less most) will troubleshoot and gear it towards how they see fit with less newbie testing.And all the webapps work well on Linux, so you have the MS office apps and the apple iCloud apps (by just having an account there). Even for photo editing, there are web app solutions, these days.
Explorer has had so many dependencies attached to it that if even one of them sneezes, the entire desktop environment crashes and has to restart.
Actually insane when you think about it. Why the hell is a file explorer the root process of the desktop???
I’ve only ever forced stopped thunar once and it was because I was messing with some thumbnail settings. Naturally the rest of my system worked as normal, as well as the other thunar windows open lol.
Looking at you microsoft store rdp manager. Crashing explorer when I dare to leave something in the clipboard.
I had to kill nautilus a few times back in the day and nothing but the background remained until I restarted nautilus. But ymmv
But but muh Linux is better.
Though to be fair, Linux has had some great developments!
I did kill explorer.exe many times ;)
There is a setting somewhere IIRC (or at least there was) where you can separate file browser processes from the “main” explorer.exe process so you can kill individual Explorer windows but not the whole environment.
Ahahaha, holly fucking shit.
They literally added some OS in their spyware.
For years… well pretty much since I had a PC, I had a Windows partition. Why? Well because I (sadly) paid for the damn thing (damn OEM deals). Plus, I admit, sometimes they were things that only ran on Windows.
For few years now though, everything, literally, from the latest tech gadget to playing games to VR, works on Linux.
Few weeks ago I deleted the Windows partition. I didn’t have to. I didn’t boot on it for months. It didn’t affect me.
Still, I now feel … safer, more relaxed, coherent.
When I see shit like that, I feel even better!
VR works on Linux? Thru Steamvr?
Depends on the headset, they don’t all work on Linux unfortunately.
Yes, I even play VR Windows games on Linux., the latest one released just weeks ago being Subside.
I’m using a Valve Index but with ALVR even standalone HMDs, e.g. (sadly from Meta) the cheap Quests line. You can find a lot more details on https://lvra.gitlab.io
Thank you!
deleted by creator
I tried running the standalone, ran some script from Lutris but ended up with a broken wine config. Hopefully we can at least get that working without VR at some point.
It’s the chicken and the egg problem, and most companies choose to be the chicken
Sadly Windows is still required for a lot of cad softwares.
I havent found anything I can’t do with freecad and blender.
Freecad is OK but it wouldn’t even be considered in a commercial setting like I’m working in. I work with Catia, Solidworks and Polyworks. None on those run on Linux.
Put it in a shame box (VM). This is how I run my specialty software.
vMs work well too though.
VM is still windows tho, just one layer deeper.
With less control of your machine and you can compartmentalize your use case instead of using dual boot. Especially if you’re only using it for one program
Yea about a year ago I switched entirely over to Linux. I am a system engineer so I have to deal with windows at work all the time but on my computer, I feel calm. Like I don’t have to worry about my operating system. Windows is getting in the way more than it’s helping 99% of the time now.
That’s my situation, except I haven’t deleted my partition yet, mostly because it sits on a separate physical disk. Maybe one day…
Even Windows exes work on Linux now. It took me some time and learning but I got Wine to work with some program from my walkie talkie’s manufacturer and it involves serial programming over USB.
Indeed but I very rarely, if ever need it except for some games. Usually there are FLOSS equivalent of most software. They are sometimes worst but often just as good and, obviously, they can be modified. So Wine and Proton are amazing but hopefully needed less and less.
The best windows debloater is delete system32 and install Linux,.
I have windows on another physical disk and I plan to delete my windows partition in 2025 and start a software raid 0 configuration, sadly linux is not yet ready.
how the fuck do you even begin making recall a dependency for explorer?
I can’t say how. But I can guess why.
“Sorry, can’t remove it. It’s a system dependency”
It’s the Microsoft way
Easy. For example: You could take something stupid like the controller for the background colour, move it into the recall.exe and have the file explorer reference the function inside the recall.exe. So whenever someone deletes the recall.exe the file explorer will crash because it can’t find how to set it’s background.
It’s complete bullshit, but it would work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So… how does this exist in corporate environments where PCI DSS is necessary? Is the government also going to have to deal with fallout from this?
I wonder if there will ever be a point where legislation dictates features from an os vendor… we lost control of our hardware when they started forcing updates. I’m sure someone will hack a DLL or something to allow explorer to run but kill this component… But should we really need to hack our systems to protect ourselves from spying?
Inb4 Linux - I ran Slackware in the early 90s, and my server still runs a deb based distro… but when I want to play Forza, I’m pretty limited with my choices, etc.
Microsoft: We’re going to arbitrarily require TPM and SecureBoot and say that makes Windows 11 more secure even though that’s a feature of your motherboard, not our operating system.
Also Microsoft: In Windows 11 the file explorer program depends on a program that periodically sends us screenshots of your screen.
So secure!
Security <> privacy. And this is where they slice the difference. Although, they’re not secure, either lol
Sending random screenshots somewhere is not secure at all lmao. That’s a hacker’s wet dream.
I’ve been wondering this too. Will there be a way for company policy admins to somehow remove this fully? I work in an industry that deals with very sensitive and private information - no way in hell this would ever even remotely be allowed or pass any audits. Even just existing but being disabled could be problematic.
But big companies aside, how will this impact small companies who have no real in house IT? The potential for it to be capturing and storing stuff like, as you say anything required by PCI compliance, could turn into a nightmare. We also know this will inevitably be hacked or used by spyware somehow, someday, too no matter how secure they say it may be. So now a bad actor can recall an entire day work and data capture from a worker?
Wondering the same here. I work in an extremely regulated industry as well. We have MS as a strategic partner but haven’t even deployed win 11 yet.
That said we have a deal to use co-pilot and also chatGPT. Both in a unique version that is compliant with company policies. Co-pilot integration into teams is not quite recall level but similar, think video transcripts, meeting and chat summaries, etc. I have no clue how this works practically but I assume there are some strict contracts regarding training data and data usage in place.
From my understanding, you can prevent Recall from running just fine, you only can’t remove it.
OS level malware. I suspect it will be turned on in an update a few years down the road. And then MS will be caught, say “whoops my bad!” And pay a 100 million dollar fine after their new valuation on the stock market of 5 trillion dollars.
Wow this doesn’t affect me at all thank fully
Who is fully?
screw Microsoft…i hope people will consider to switch to Linux
I have a long term project to migrate my machines, and the introduction of recall pressured me to move faster, but I still have some hurdles to overcome that just require a time sink on my part.
Yay am dualbooting linux with windows 10 but man I love the flexibility of linux.
I’m on win10. I use win11 at work and I’m fine with it but there’s no way in hell recall is going on my home machine and equally no way in hell I’m getting a computer just to get win 11. Im fine using Linux. I will definitely do that before put with with this bs
I switched to Linux mint about 6mo ago now. No regrets. Works so smooth
So, I just bought a new laptop. It came with Windows 11. But anyways, I’m writing this comment from a freshly installed Bazzite Linux OS.
No judgement here; but it always bothers me when a laptop only comes with Windows preinstalled, when 1) it makes the device more expensive, and 2) I don’t need it.
I didn’t have much choice. Where I am imports are heavily restricted and the market is not very keen on alternatives anyways. I already had a slim number of options to begin with. Importing a linux first brand, a used thinkpad or a fancy framework as is the fashion on the first world would’ve cost me about three times what I paid for the model I got, and I already got it with a bit of overcharge. Just on port fees, taxes, etc. Trust me, I did my research and this was the best performance and compatibility with linux for money I could get where I am. Windows 11 license cost is not even a factor, we just don’t get a choice to not factor it in the price.
This is one of the reason I like Framework laptops. Not only are they user serviceable/repairable, but they also don’t force you to pay extra for a Windows license. Hell, they even sell motherboard upgrades if you want to turn you older Framework laptop into the newest one.
Funny you say that, I’ve been looking into getting one recently. They seem great.
I love winutil. Makes debloating windows a lot easier.
Does it remove recall?
Installs Debian.
Glad I moved away from Windows on all my personal computers. Fedora with Plasma is so similar to Windows and so much better. If my non-tech partner can use it, then anyone can.
Only problem is that Windows is better at resizing content on high resolution (4K) monitors. And ordering multiple monitors on the login screen doesn’t always work right, but it’s fine once logged in. And it takes a bit more to set up than preinstalled Windows that’s on most computers when you buy them. But if it was preinstalled and set up already for the hardware like Windows usually is, it would be way better for nearly everyone.
I’m not sure how it works for KDE and sddm but on gdm it is possible to copy the monitors.xml config file to a certain directory to fix that. After doing so, the login and lock screen settings are synced between the desktop environment and display manager. Not sure how to do it for sddm but I’m sure there’s a way, maybe a script with the correct xrandr commands could solve that.
Edit: monitors.xml, not x11.conf
Yeah, that works sometimes, but the way to fix it seems to change every time I have had to do it. And I have been using Wayland lately and haven’t found a good way to do it that works with the latest versions.
I was curious about this and found this KDE forum post that might help. Looks like you don’t even need a script.
I hope every SWE looks at this and remembers how not to conduct oneself.
I doubt it’s the engineers who are demanding that this atrocity exist.
The issue is that people who find an issue with it and don’t want to do it will get told off by management. Then management just replaces them with someone who is willing to do it (for job safety, or simply because they don’t care)
Thats just how big tech is
And it’s why I, as a self-respecting SWE, refuse to apply to big tech jobs. Yeah, I could get paid a lot more, but it’s not worth it for the work culture. My current org seems to respect my opinions and values, and that’s worth a lot more than money.
Good for you! I’m still waiting for the day the tech world unionizes and push back on the recent horrendous decisions
I don’t think the whole tech world needs to unionize, but I think there’s a strong argument for the gaming industry. But in general, there should be stronger protections for those who choose to unionize. IIRC, you can’t be fired for attempting to unionize, but that doesn’t seem to be enforced in practice.
There’s some moral responsibility though. When it comes to privacy though, the majority is too naive
Yes and no. In a perfect world, people would be able to uphold their ethics. Unfortunately, in the real world, people don’t have that luxury. A job is their lifeline to basic necessities, and sacrificing their job might mean going to debt for many. Especially if you are young and without many options due to the lower level pullback in the tech sphere.
100%
As much as I would love this to kick MS in the backside, it won’t. The public at large has no idea what this is or why it’s bad and evil. They will buy a computer, it will come with Windows, and they’ll use it like they always have. Companies and Govts will gripe initially, but give in because their ancient VB enterprise apps only run on Windows.
