Won't be surprised to see MS limiting windows update to CPUs with NPU only in the near (5 to 7 years) future. That or maybe countless pop-ups telling user to upgrade to system with NPU features.

More bloatware, adware and spyware for us to disable. Thanks a lot Microsoft.

I'm growing really tired of Microsoft.

Horus-Anhur:

More bloatware, adware and spyware for us to disable.

Everytime there is an update

What's worse is that they are starting to shove this bs into Windows 10 as well... luckily W10 can still be significantly tuned and cleaned, unlike W11 which becomes more and more locked down. Valve, time to step up with SteamOS for desktop!

Windows 11 at the moment is terrible; filled with bloat wear... How is windows 10?

wavetrex:

What's worse is that they are starting to shove this bs into Windows 10 as well... luckily W10 can still be significantly tuned and cleaned, unlike W11 which becomes more and more locked down. Valve, time to step up with SteamOS for desktop!

Why? Just use Linux...

Wait, AI isnt good when microsoft do it? Bitching about windows got old and you still use it.

wavetrex:

What's worse is that they are starting to shove this bs into Windows 10 as well... luckily W10 can still be significantly tuned and cleaned, unlike W11 which becomes more and more locked down. Valve, time to step up with SteamOS for desktop!

IIRC, HoloISO is pretty much what you're looking for. But as @insp1re2600 pointed out, you can just use any other Linux flavor.

Undying:

Wait, AI isnt good when microsoft do it? Bitching about windows got old and you still use it.

I for one have been Windows-free for the better part of a decade. If you (not specifically you) want things to change, you have to do something about it. MS isn't going to make things more appealing any time soon. If anyone wants help getting set up or have any questions before committing, PM me and I can probably help you through your transition. Just remember: using a different desktop OS with the expectation that it is a drop-in replacement to Windows is a surefire way to hate your experience. Sometimes there are things Windows does that are more user-friendly and convenient, but those are often also the reasons why Windows is more bloated and insecure.

minimum of 16GiB of memory, [...] SSE4.2 [...], +225GB total disk space

Yeah, whatever Microsoft... I deactivated Copilot the minute it showed up, I use Directory Opus so "File Explorer AI" can take a hike and all other AI garbage can also take a hike.

Microsoft says it cares about the environment, but forces people to buy new hardware when maybe the current computer the users have meets their needs? Hypocritical and this is just wrong of them, are words that comes to mind. On a personal level my oc`d 5820k system chugs along still and is my primary system. I hope this can continue a little while longer, as im not tempted to cash out loads of money for a new desent system yet. Furthermore i don`t trust the current lineup of hardware, because look at all the affected intel 13th and 14th gen cpu`s that suffer from a rapid degradation. When it comes to new gpu`s then i just can`t justify to myself paying this silly prices they put on a somewhat futureproofed card either.

we just need a decompiler better handling LTCG generated pdbs... or someone getting tired and leaking the final nda source code of this crapware.

MS is absolutely FOMO'ed about the AI hype, that's why they are hand-twisting all CPU/SoC vendors to cram any quantity of inference (NPU) hardware into their designs, desperate to replicate the Apple Silicon success in the mobile market, despite the fact that any DX12-capable GPU can do the job. These new NPUs are just there to make the perf/power metrics look good for the marketing materials. Here's a quick benchmark: https://imgur.com/JAUPpzI.jpg The Radeon 6900XT doesn't even have dedicated inference acceleration, beyond baseline DP4a support. Source: Intel Meteor Lake’s NPU

fellix:

MS is absolutely FOMO'ed about the AI hype, that's why they are hand-twisting all CPU/SoC vendors to cram any quantity of inference (NPU) hardware into their designs, desperate to replicate the Apple Silicon success in the mobile market, despite the fact that any DX12-capable GPU can do the job. These new NPUs are just there to make the perf/power metrics look good for the marketing materials. Here's a quick benchmark: The Radeon 6900XT doesn't even have dedicated inference acceleration, beyond baseline DP4a support. Source: Intel Meteor Lake’s NPU

instead, it has an extra 400w of dedicated power budget

#CopilotIsTheNewCortana

What, Microsoft won't let me run their bloated, buggy, dumbed-down MacOS / ChromeOS rip-off 'AI Explorer' that would record all my actions and require natural language commands for trivial tasks that took just a few mouse clicks during the last 35 years? Good riddance. They're adding this useless 'Windows Timeline 2.0' feature alongside stupid 'improvements' like rounded window corners and irritating redesigns of Explorer toolbars and context menus, instead of fixing fundamental UI and UX issues in their 'modern apps' platform which are outstanding since Windows 8 - so users need tools like Tiny11 Builder to remove all this unwanted garbage. In retrospect, Windows never had a chance for recovery after the botched object-oriented Cairo NT 5.0 project. It has become stuck in C-style native interfaces from 1980s, while for example MacOS managed to reinvent itself by adapting NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP object-oriented UI layer, Objective C language, and BSD UNIX kernel, to form a solid foundation even for embedded devices like iPhone/iPad, TV and Watch - at the time when Microsoft had to maintain a very different WinCE codebase for embedded Pocket PC / Windows Mobile devices. Make no mistake, the NT OS kernel designed by Dave Cutler is stll going strong after all these 30 years and continues to work flawlessly with current hardware that's 4 or 5 orders of magnitude more powerful than a typical PC of early 1990s. But user-spaces libraries and interfaces like USER32 and GDI32, which were inherited from OS/2 1.x and WIndows 2.x, proved to be a complete disaster in the long run. Microsoft failed to re-engineer these components and fully embrace ISO C++ for native-code APIs when it still mattered - instead they pushed Visual Basic .NET language and its C# dialect, implemented on top of that 'managed', garbage-collected interpreted bytecode CLI runtime monstrosity, designed in anticipation of Intel Itanium takeover that never happened, then pushed for its native-code counterpart WinRT/UWP platform built on top of COM API monstrosity. All these were outright hostile to existing Win32 developers working with native-code C\C++, so no wonder they fled to web and mobile 'apps', and it's mostly PC games and a few productivity suites like CAD tools that still remain on the Windows platform (and even these few remaining are mostly cross-platform now). IMHO, Windows is simply beyond repair at this point, and buzzwords like AI, cloud, etc. are not going to save it - even though Microsoft fails to admit it due to their massive coprorate superiority complex cultiviated during the Bill Gates era. At best, Windows is slated to become yet another Linux distribution for Microsoft-specific application services like Office 365 and Azure - but more likely, it will simply wane into obscurity, like most other operating systems from that time period.

There should be no problem if you can disable it, so only gen pop have to deal with that. Remember MS is the expert of releasing half assed featured. Linux isn't the magical solution either, for the supposed "open source OS", their distro's devs sure loves to lock things down, deciding that their users is dumb and shouldn't meddle with their settings, it's for your own safety trust me bro! Kek. MS devs always gives you the flexibility, a worthy plus to keep using it in my eyes.

The only way Windows 11 gives you the flexibility of doing things is "my way or the highway" 🙄 Meanwhile hapless users of Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant etc. will happily line up to pay 15% more for their new 'AI' PCs that allow Microsoft buggy bloatware to spy on them and collect their personal data, and probably make irreversible alterations to it with malformed user commands 😀 AI Technology to Propel Global PC Market Growth in 2024, #13

DmitryKo:

The only way Windows 11 gives you the flexibility of doing things is "my way or the highway" 🙄

I basically tick a few checkboxes in Rufus & Winaero Tweaker and Windows 11 works pretty much the same as Windows 7. 😕

wavetrex:

What's worse is that they are starting to shove this bs into Windows 10 as well... luckily W10 can still be significantly tuned and cleaned, unlike W11 which becomes more and more locked down. Valve, time to step up with SteamOS for desktop!

At the moment i am writing W11 is locked the same way than before... Everything still work on older PC once cleaned (latest build still work on 3rd gen i3, and in a better way than W10... i have done an install 2 day ago). SteamOS is crap, it is too dependent from Steam... Just use a normal distro that can use Steam and all other (GOG, Epic and so more), streaming etc And yes, my main OS is linux (despite i have some W11, iOS and macOS too) since some years and everyday i found less use of Windows. I think Windows reach little by little the end of the road, the dev of this OS go in a way that doesn't fit home use and doesn't fit pro use either. And Open OSes are more agresive in tech now and cost less, also customers already have had or have Android device and are no more afraid of invoke the big evil "sudo" 🙂 ...