What the hell?!?!?! This is a server OS! It needs to be as light as possible and for the sake of server stability and security, admins carefully choose the installed apps. Microsoft can’t just install new applications on a whim.
People in this thread seem to be missing this point.
This is windows server, not windows 11. The consequences is not “I’ll have an annoying taskbar icon on my home computer”, this is enterprise level interference that could affect large systems and thousands of users.
Linux Mint isn’t an alternative to windows server.
For sure, if you need paid support (which if you aren’t a tech giant, a fledgling startup, or a system with no need for uptime metrics, you probally do) the you have:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (aka SLES and only still Libre option in this category unfortunately)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Ubuntu are
if don’t need paid support then Debian, OpenSuse, Rocky, or Fedora are all good picks.
Almost any Unix can be an alternative for Windows Server. Never understood why it was used, other than tech illiteracy of lowly tech workers who only knew MS stack.
In addition, with all Microsoft’s faults they had a hell of a small business package for years. In a lot of small businesses, the current CIO came up during those times and dictates policy.
Plus there are a lot of VARs and MSPs who push MS due to favorable terms and kickbacks. Small and medium sized businesses who outsource IT go with whatever they’re told because they don’t have the expertise, time, or desire to explore alternatives.
Plus there’s a load of self hosted software for certain industries that only works on Windows servers.
Yep. I no longer have to administer Windows servers (everything I do is serverless these days) but I did for many years.
Adding anything to a server without vetting it against policies is a huge no no. Back when I was doing it, a big part of our monthly update deployment was updating the test environment first so we knew we weren’t about to break a bunch of shit for us and our customers. Not just “does this brick Windows server”, but “do our applications still function” (usually yes, but the answer was no on several occasions over shit smaller than this).
I don’t know what adding copilot does. Is it going to accidentally break some custom application by accident because it’s tied directly into the system? Is it going to report shit that I’ve already opted out of due to our data policies and possibly fuck up our audit compliance because of government regulations (defense, medical, and energy sectors have huge responsibilities in that area, just don’t ask how I know)? How does it interact with our in-house developed software?
Fuck, I dunno. That sounds like a nightmare for infrastructure and ops, several managers, government regulators, and a payday for legal.
Why does every mention or discussion of any annoyance in Windows immediately turn into a “install Linux” thread on here?
Sure, Linux might solve the immediate problem for the affected individual (and probably introduce a bunch of new ones as Linux isn’t always as easy to use as advocates try to convince people it is) but it doesn’t solve the larger issue - Microsoft needs to be held accountable for horrible design decisions and anti-consumerist practices.
Not everyone can, or will, switch to Linux. No matter how hard people champion that cause. And even if they do, it’s a process that will take time. In the immediate, lots of people stand to benefit from Microsoft not pulling this sort of bs, and it’s entirely justified to complain about it to make them walk back this decision.
I think it’s safe to say that the Lemmy user base trends a bit more “computer nerd” than the general public. So we generally have more people that already use Linux, and more people that could reasonably benefit from switching.
Plus of course moving off of windows is one of the most effective ways to show your displeasure with Microsoft.
All these discussions turn into that because WE KNOW that no one will convince MS to stop doing whatever they want, specially after investing literally billions on this kind of technology, the idea of MS “being held accountable” is something that realistically will not happen, and literally the only leverage people have against them is to just stop playing their game. Oh yeah, it’s not easy, but given the fact that MS have made it so that you’ll HAVE to fight the tech and relearn stuff every time they unilaterally decide to change things you might as well put effort where it will make a difference and free you from their BS
You’re not wrong, but as privacy conscious consumers we have more ways to force Microsoft and other tech giants to bend the knee than just disengaging with their product and leaving less savvy users to fend for themselves. One such example is legislative action, take a look at how the EU has been wielding their internal market to force companies into more pro-consumer practices. Another is class action lawsuits, there’s a long history of successful suits resulting in lasting change.
You might not agree with me on whether those options are the right path forward here, but I feel that we, as security and privacy conscious owners have a duty to speak up about these things for the majority that can’t or won’t due to their technical abilities.
Oh yeah, this MUST be done too, but expecting that to be the solution to MS apps getting worse all the time is for the moment not a solution for the random user of the day complaining of yet another MS enshittification escalation.
Switching to Linux gets you completely out of that mess and has lasting results, continuing to participate in the MS market might change things if the anti-monopoly forces taking encouraging actions the last few years continue advancing but will take years IF it happens, along with any class-action lawsuit, anything else in the meanwhile (patches, debloaters, secret policy rules or registry entries, etc.) is nothing more than a band-aid treating the symptoms.
So, these discussions always devolve to this because it’s a proven and effective solution that works today and lasts, unlike any other patch that can be broken next time MS forces an update or catches you unaware, it’s hard and imperfect and “not the CORRECT way to solve the problem”, but works.
To configure your active directories and stuff. Wouldn’t it be great to automatize everything to the point that when something breaks you have no idea what to do because you have no idea what is done and where
“Hmm. It looks like you are serving porn. Would you like me to create more of this porn and distribute it to as many of your contacts and visitors as possible?”
NO!
" okay removing hot dildo Asian DP 12 inch penis porn. Sending recall email to contacts from: Pornification@yeahovas.com MikeArmington@UCSF.edu MArmington@Gaminisfun.com JustMikenFamily@MiddleHigh.edu MikesChurch@Churchography.org These are all the email contacts we gathered from you in the past 25 minutes. There’s high traffic from Churchography.org and yeahovas.com, are you sure you want to ruin a good thing? Only 40 people replied from MiddleHigh.edu, the replies were deleted but they seemed awfully upset. Good day Mikey!"
Who exactly is the target audience for this? Home users running Windows server? This would get flagged for sure in an enterprise environment and no self respecting admin would ever install something like that.
This stuff always makes me laugh. Firstly, yes absolutely, Microsoft shouldn’t do this sort of crap. But more importantly, the person complaining about it here is shouting out for the world to hear “I don’t know how to manage Windows servers properly!”. There is one single group policy setting that stops this from happening. A single, set-and-forget GPO. Anyone managing Windows environments that isn’t aware of this, shouldn’t be managing Windows environments.
Then my next question would be, does that update on the change logs? Does the change log notify the admin that in the future, copilot may be installed if they didn’t touch those settings?
There are 5 million ways to configure windows and each have an absurd and almost by-design level of convolution. You can’t possibly expect people to know about a new GPO immediately
There is one GPO to disable co-pilot. One. It’s not even hard to find and has been available for more than 6 months.
And yes I would absolutely expect someone whose job it is to manage Windows servers to know about it. And certainly, I would expect them to look it up before declaring to the world how bad at their job they are.
That is why companies will hire good sys admins who do their job and stay on top of the important group policy settings. This absolutely would not be missed by any reasonably competent IT dept.
I don’t use windows so I don’t know the specifics. If microsoft is INFORMING the user beforehand about this change (that copilot switch/policy is now available) AND DISCLOSE that in the future if you didn’t touch this switch then copilot may be installed, sure, blame admin. Otherwise, this is a shitty move from software update POV
To add: Maybe you can link the change log provided by microsoft before this update that adds those switches or rules to prove that it has indeed been disclosed to the admin.
Let me see if I understand your logic. Microshit decides to push something sneakily on servers, and the OP mentions that he just found out about it, and never once does he mention that he doesn’t know what to do about it, but and you assume he doesn’t know, but and choose to blast him over your assumption.
It wouldn’t have been installed at all if the OP did their job properly and had set the one config option. Microsoft doing shady things is hardly news. That’s why a good Windows sysadmin keeps and eye out for this sort of stuff.
I get that, but we can’t go around assuming stuff and blasting people over assumptions. We don’t know if someone else in his team was in charge of that, and he found out while auditing the server, that’s certainly a possibility. Then there’s the fact that his post could help someone thinking about setting up a similar server rethink this and choose to move away from Microshit altogether. I agree that whomever is in charge should keep updated on information, issues and their potential solutions (I’d fire any sys admin not living by those rules, for sure). Now, if he is, in fact, responsible for that, shame on him, but he’s innocent until proven guilty.
The OP is re-tooting a toot of a screenshot of a tweet. My (mild) criticism isn’t aimed at OP, nor the OP of the OP, just the original Twitter OP. No one was “blasted” but even if they were, the Twitter OP is not likely to see my comments and have a bad case of the sads from it.
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