I’m not entirely a fan the idea of having my OS run somewhere other than my own computer, unless it’s like a remote lab I use for specific tasks. Like if I could use Linux, and just use this for my classes that run Windows exclusive software, then I’d maybe use it. Otherwise I think it’s a bit weird to have your whole computer basically be in the cloud.
honestly if not for DirectX and whatever windows specific thing, I would have use linux for a long time cause I am heavy gamer. I know this version of windows OS is probably experimenting offering stuff that are directly on the cloud(like office/team etc), I don’t see them suddenly throw away local OS market and just let whoever wants to take over. (oh, and all the telemetry data, right? )
made a switch to linux recently due win11 changing privacy settings with updates and installing tiktok icons. i paid good moeny for this hardware, fuck off satya microsft
steam on linux supports everything i play but CoD and new BF so not a big loss imho
I also hope that software companies also move to have better support on linux. (so home/work can all be on more stable OS. ) Using api wrapper isn’t really a good solution.
Telemetry won’t be a topic anymore under such circumstances because will be implicit and the least of your worries. Tracking the input of the users will be part of the service they are paying for.
My take on this Cloud-First-Windows vision that was leaked from a Microsoft presentation with very little details and just a lot of speculation:
If it actually happens, it will be more similar to a Chromebook, they will provide, likely an ARM based, low specs device with a basic Windows install that perhaps only has the cloud-connector (probably RDP based), One Drive to sync files, and Edge with extensions to run Office365 in offline mode.
Apps would just be either web-wrapper based apps, or RDP Apps, or you could just deploy your cloud desktop to do some work that requires more power.
I also think they would still provide an x86_64 based Windows for more powerful PCs for content creators and gamers.
Long term, there is some benefit to this sort of concept. You aren’t going to have as much freedom to turn your cloud based OS into a custom build, but what you will have is a machine which will never have down time for patches and security updates. The user will be running their app remotely, using all the power and hardware of a data center, and the instance of the app can migrate from one host PC to another, seamlessly without any perception to the end user. Furthermore a user can access all their applications and data from whatever client they are using and it will migrate this session from their terminal, to their phone, to their AR HMDs.
It isn’t going to be a change which happens over night, and it will be more like how car engine have become less user serviceable but more reliable and efficient. It will be a different experience for sure, but it has potential value beyond being a way to charge people subscriptions.
a user can access all their applications and data from whatever client they are using
Also, users won’t own their most basic data anymore, nor will they be able to control how it is used. Canceling a subscription (or being locked out) could mean loosing it all.
For a business, I see this as a strong benefit for this design. The work done for a company is the property of that company by most hiring contracts, so the work done on a remote system can by tightly controlled. At the same time, it would allow someone to use their own thin client to do both professional and personal work and keep things isolated. For someone doing freelance work, it makes sharing a natural extension of that process and access can be granted or revoked as it relates to contracts. That seems like an advantage to corporate IT departments.
As for individuals, I don’t see how this takes away ownership. Regulations will be updated to allow users to request their data in compliance with GDPR requests, so nothing would become completely locked up. Should that be challenged ever, I don’t think any jurisdiction would say that Microsoft owns the data. What a user will be able to do with the bits they receive is a different question.
I understand your point (regarding protection of intellectual property and having a homogeneous and controlled IT infrastructure), but I’d like to add that as a business (disregarding what my employees might like or consider more effective) I am still not in control of anything if my data and applications are somewhere “in the cloud” and I have no control over it. As a company I would be bound to that provider (in this case Microsoft) and would have to pay whatever they require for whatever they offer(good or bad services). A small alleviation would be to have that “cloud” on premise, but I think that that’s highly unrealistic. In this regard, a business is very similar to the plain user in my previous reply.
Also, don’t forget that GDPR doesn’t apply everywhere. That’s just a EU requirement which might or might not be fully implemented, even when required. As I mentioned, there’s no guarantee that your company data is not misused when it’s completely out of your hands. Not even to think about what a security breach or outage would mean and what kind of impact it would have.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to spread FUD, but I am general skeptical and trying to think critically. Moving “everything” in “the cloud”, in the hands of one single actor requires a level of trust which I’m not able to provide and introduces single points of failure which I wouldn’t like to have, neither as individual nor as company.
Ehhh we’ve been down that road before with thin clients. Anyone who has had to do their job on thin clients will tell you the experience never compares to running it locally
We have, and there are still things to solve before this is completely practical. This is still different than connecting to a mainframe over a 3270 terminal. A closer example of how this would work is port forwarding an X11 to a remote system or using SSH to tunnel to a server where I’ve ran screen. If I’ve connected to a GUI application running on a server or reconnected my SSH session, it is less important about where I’m connecting from. Extending this concept to Windows, you wouldn’t even need local storage for most needs. It won’t be practical for places with poor network connectivity, but where it is reliable, high bandwidth, and low latency, it won’t be so discernable from local use for most business applications. This is probably the biggest driving force behind XCloud. If Microsoft can make games run across networks with minimal problems, business applications are going to do just fine. XCloud works great for me, allowing me to stream with few problems. That’s less true for others in my family, so clearly this isn’t something which can roll out to everyone, everywhere, all at once. I think it would be great to be able to spin up additional vCPU cores or grow drive space or system RAM as needed per process so that I’m not wasting cycles or underutilizing my hardware. It seems like this would become possible with this sort of platform.
I personally don't see the "Eureka!" moment that big tech apparently does in moving EVERYTHING to the cloud when they struggle to design safe and reliable services as is. The whole cloud stuff just kind of says "sure it will be a privacy nightmare rife for exploitation from bad actors, but THINK of the money we could earn from it in the long run!"
Wouldn’t moving Windows into the cloud basically make computers non-functional without internet? Because I can see a few problems with that, particularly for those in rural areas or who are travelling a lot.
I’ve hesitated to switch over to Linux in recent years, primarily due to concerns about compatibility with software and games, but I’d rather have to find new art software than pay a subscription for an operating system that I can’t even use offline.
Steams work with proton, steam OS, and the steam deck means after switching my gaming pc to Linux last year, the only games out of the hundreds I have that don’t work are the ones whose launchers refuse to run on Linux.
Yeah I switched in 2020, but finally deleted my Windows partition a couple months ago. Never going back now.
And anymore, I feel like niche windows software is gonna be harder to run than almost all the games. The only games that don't work are the annoying anticheat ones.
I’ve unfortunately still run into some issues running games on Pop_OS, most recently Street Fighter 6 which is weird since it runs perfectly on the steam deck. I still keep a windows installation mainly for games like that
I’d need to check into whether Linux is also viable with the software I use: I’m starting a game design degree in September, so there’s a wide variety of software, including the Adobe suite, that I’ll be tied to for at least the next three years.
My plan at the moment, I think, is to wait until I have a full list of which softwares I’ll be using (which I won’t get until the course begins - the college pays for it all), and then make a decision. Based on the partial list I have, about half are compatible with Linux. I do also have the option of having Linux on my desktop and Windows on my laptop.
I’m definitely going to do some more research. The last time I looked into it, Linux wasn’t compatible with the vast majority of the software I used and games I played, and there weren’t many suitable alternatives. That situation has definitely changed by the looks of it, so I just need to research some more specific things.
That’s a good strategy and it makes sense. Don’t forget that you don’t have to decide for one alternative or the other. You could always have multiple options available and use them as suitable.
Just out of curiosity: when was the last time you looked into Linux?
Oh, it was a good while ago. I thought it was 3 years, but it was definitely pre-Covid, so it’s probably more like 4 or 5 or more. I was annoyed with Windows (not that I can recall now exactly what it specifically did that irked me, but I do remember yelling at it so it was probably bad), so looked into alternatives, and the biggest thing that stopped me was the MMO I was playing a lot at the time was not compatible and nobody had found a way of convincing the two to work together. That has definitely changed since then.
People have probably told you that Wine is the way to use it anyways, but maybe no one’s mentioned Bottles which makes using Wine dead easy. Most of the time you can sort of just open up Bottles, run the installer for the software through there, make sure Bottles knows where the .exe is for the actual program is and you’re good to go.
Most software works with wine anymore, including the adobe suite. Be warned there is probably going to be some tinkering to get it working perfectly, but nothing a bit of searching can’t solve.
Gotta mention Pop_OS! as a fantastic beginner distro. My 72 year old mother refuses to use anything else. It’s simple, has automated backups and disaster recovery, and installs non-free drivers for graphics cards.
I don’t personally use it since it doesn’t yet support Wayland and my gaming rig has a HiDPI screen and X11 doesn’t support fractional scaling. Or per screen scaling.
I’m legally obligated to inform you that I run Arch.
That sounds like a horrid decision. Imagine having to troubleshoot a relative's computer, which isn't working because their internet is down, or is too slow to support streaming Windows like that.
It just sounds like a nightmare all-round, both from a Microsoft Standpoint, since they would have to build all the hardware to support it, people who would have to troubleshoot an issue that might show up on either the local or networked version of Windows, but not both, and from a security standpoint, since it seems like it would make it a lot easier to just hijack the whole computer using that kind of mechanism, with the user being none the wiser, for the most part.
That's something I want to do, but I'm afraid of missing something while backing up up my files and losing it in the OS wipe. It's a lousy excuse, I know, but it still stops me. Mostly since I play a lot of games and don't want to lose any save files tucked away somewhere unexpected.
That stuff should all be in C:/Users, but what if its not. And would have to go to each of my installed pieces of software to make sure any of my files are properly backed up which is so much work. Which only reveals another issue that I am terrible at keeping my stuff backed up.
Just dual boot at first, you don't have to wipe the windows partition. That way if/when you find a save file you need to copy over, you can go looking for it on your still existing Windows drive
I'll be more than happy for more people to migrate to linux (or mac, but many people just can't afford it) so MS doesn't have such a monopoly on the OS space.
I doubt people will pay for a windows subscription. Most will stay on 10/11 indefinitely and Microsoft will probably backtrack pretty quickly (look at windows 10 to 11 migration) 😉
And some will probably give Linux a try. I only stopped pirating Windows because it got free, but I have no intention to pay a subscription to be able to use my fucking PC.
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