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.
Yeah, good luck preventing forced “upgrades/updates” every time a new Windows OS comes out too. No thanks, I’ll take my software locally thank you haha.
“You will own nothing and be happy”
It means I’ll continue to happily use Linux.
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Lol likewise!
I used to use OneDrive but they recently shrunk down everyone’s free storage capacity to laughably small space and now wish for everyone to subscribe to more paid space.
🖕🏼bye bye OneDrive.
Yeah, fuck one drive! Microsoft can eat my entire ass.
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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.
Omg are you in for a treat!
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.
Even Denuvo games work with a little effort
Highly recommend you give Linux another shot 😁
Which distro would you recommend starting with?
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.
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.
Ngl, getting those tools working on Linux is going to be as marketable as working with them in the first place
Get hacking!
It’s also worth to mention that there are options like Blender/Krita/Godot wich are quite good and don’t require tooling like Wine.
But those might not be a viable option if your courses are specific to Adobe products.
But really, check those out anyways, it’s worth it.
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.
For anything that you really can’t get on Linux:
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.
You can always run a windows VM on your linux computer. I used to do that when I had to use citrix receiver for work.
It’s definitely an option under consideration, but one of the softwares I use that doesn’t work correctly in Linux is also very resource intensive, and VM’s are less efficient in that area. So I think in that instance, dual-booting is more suitable. But the suggestion is appreciated. 🙂
I feel like it’s worth keeping in mind that you’ll likely be able to continue using some iteration of locally stored Windows for quite a while. The point at which Windows 10 becomes unusable is likely well past the point at which it makes sense for most people to use Windows 11 or whatever comes next.
I’ve definitely straight up skipped Windows releases before and kept moving along just fine. Of course that depends on what you’re working on and how much control you have over your own PC in the context of whatever class or company you’re dealing with.
But even then, there’s nothing to say you can’t dual-boot or run a second machine over a network and synergy the things together.
Personally, I’ve been using Windows 10 exclusively on my own machine for quite a while now, but I don’t like much of anything that I’ve heard about 11 so far. If it came down to letting Microsoft control most of my usage of my PC or to using Linux as my primary OS, I feel like it would be worth the hassle.
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.
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.
It does not mean anything for me because I am not a Windows user. For Windows users it means subscription models and renting software. It could also mean eventually booting your computer into a desktop that is in the cloud. I hope to god that does not happen because it may make finding hardware that will run Linux and BSD that much harder.
I don’t think it’s possible for them to do so, because that would means killing the gaming aspect of Windows. GPU on cloud is stupidly overpriced and expensive, just look at Standard_NV6 for an example, it easily cost $10,000/yr according to this (Just look for anything that have “N” in it’s name for GPU enabled VM and they are all expensive.)
If they try to ban everyone from being allowed to use their own computer hardware, I really doubt people would stay on Windows, they most likely would be in the 5 stages of griefs and then contemplate on switching to either Linux or Mac OSX.
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.
It means Windows is switching to a subscription model. It could be a good thing for some Linux users, if they need Windows for specific applications and don’t want to spin up a VM. O can’t see a reason for using it beyond that, other than being forced to, because Microsoft kills off yoir local Windows and turns your computer for a bootloader for a cloud system, which is itself a bootloader for your browser, for most people. What a terrible world we live in. Zero privacy guaranteed, a subscription model making Windows more profitable (again).
ALSO, good luck stripping down Windows, removing bloatware, ads and telemetry. I GUARANTEE you it will be impossible to remove ads and telemetry on Windows in the Cloud. And thus that crap will be FORCED on you!
However, since most retail hardware is built to target Windows compatibility, it could mean fewer options for hardware that will be easy to install Linux (or any other OS) on.
In fact, I would count on Microsift making their hardware spec intentionally be difficult to load anything “unapproved” on.
they are doing that already with secureboot.
altho i fortunatley haven’t encountered machines yet where you can’t disable it.
With the state of internet speeds in the US? No. This won’t work.
Bingo! Rural in particular is slow and unreliable. Something like this isn’t a practical option even if I was OK with it. I’m already planning to switch to Linux when I get a new PC or when Windows 10 hits EoL. This would make the switch a necessity.
It’s actually nonsense because you would still need some software on your computer to connect to the internet in the first place
Yeah, but you will get the most basic machine made up of a screen, touchpad, keyboard, basic ARM CPU, wifi and framebuffer. Those will be sold as Windows 365 terminals for a low price. Probably even subsidised and sent free if you subscribe for a year ahead.
I’ve used what used to be the shadow PC (before OVH got hold of it). That was surprisingly good. Latency often so low I could play FPS, yes not as good as playing local. But still not dying every single round because of it. But it DID need a fair amount of bandwidth to look good (30Mb/s was the point I think quality started to drop).
But in the end I don’t want it to succeed, because if it does proper PC hardware will become hobbyist and niche. And we all know hobbyist niche items are expensive!
A point where could be good, is being able to work from home more easily, I mean I’ve applied to some companies where I could only work using their computers, so If I can work from home with this. But I don’t really understand why they need it
If it wasn’t clear from the article, that’s already a thing. They can even set up your software for you. I can see how it would make managing hardware in lots of different places a lot easier.
I really don’t see any benefit to it (for users) for home use. It’s certainly an easy way to make Windows a subscription service and charge you for storage. It also pretty much wipes out any data privacy on your devices.
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.
Thanks for reading my longest post ever. ;-)
