If you are still using Windows 11, for enterprise, and things like this surprise you… you are an idiot, and are bad at your job.
There is one single app I need for freelance work that I cannot replace with a non-windows app.
It lives in a virtual machine and is shut down for 99% of its existence.
The machine that runs the VM is the one I use for local LLM and fucking around with docker containers. It’s an insanely powerful machine that’s slightly RAM constrained. I can run what feels like an unlimited amount of containers on it, or that fucking Windows VM. I have to kill every running container on the machine just to run one single Windows app for 10 minutes once or twice a week.
If my freelance work paid more, I’d buy a dedicated windows machine just to do this one fucking task. (And then I’d have to air-gap it, and figure out how to remotely start it somehow, because I don’t trust Windows at all, and don’t want it running all the time.)
Or, I guess… buy access to a windows VM online? Hm. The convenience/time/effort trade off could be worth it at certain price points.Same boat. And my work laptop just got fucked by OneDrive again, very frustrating. I have no other qualms with windows, honestly, but stop moving my folders. My desktop is no longer my desktop, despite me reverting back and all that. And it’s far from a big deal, it’s just an annoyance at this point. But I’m stuck because of my incredibly niche software.
The decade of the Linux Desktop, sponsored by Windows11
Once the leader of the pack. Now making it’s way to the back.
this has been a thing for years, I remember having to uninstall it so many times, back when I had windows, I mean. :P
so mac or distro?
Unlike traditional web apps, OneDrive Photos is actually quite well built. It has a Windows 11-like Acrylic design for the context menu and does not take up a huge amount of resources, as RAM usage stays under 1GB
Excuse me, a photo gallery that takes 1gb of RAM, especially in this economy, doesn’t seem “quite well built”.
This fucking web app wrappers, Picasa had 100x more features while using 50x less resources
It has almost never failed. We added 254092 ifelse statements, ensuring every possible state will be dealt with. It only fails if the user does something unexpected, like clicking too fast. Damn. That makes 254093.
I dislike this article because it hides important facts until the last section: “I am in touch with Microsoft about OneDrive Photos, and my early findings suggest that it was an unintended rollout. An apology should be coming soon.”
So, this journalist/news site shames Microsoft for doing something shitty, while doing something shitty themselves.
Strong disagree. Microsoft does this on the regular. They get no credit for their repeated ‘we’re sorry’.
nah, incompetence at this level deserves shame
If memory serves me right. This is like the fourth unintended rollout in OneDrive history, on W11 at least. Every time our IT has to send an email to remind all staff how to disable computer wide backup and how to disable OneDrive in general. Since we don’t pay for it but MS still insist it should infect everything.
Each of these unintended rollout costs us millions of dollars of people’s time, since our organization has hundreds of thousands of employees all over the world.
Literally malware
After how many “unintentional mishaps, woops teehee won’t do it again” can it be held against MS?
It’s weird how every time a company does something they’re known for doing and it’s badly received they claim it was an unintentional rollout.
micwosowft is just a smol bean
So does Copilot and Microsoft Copilot 365. I enforce GPOs to ban/remove them, and every couple Windows updates, it reinstalls, and each next day I see my alerts pop up they’re back.
Fun fact: Microsoft will try to guess your passwords to open and scan your encrypted archives when uploaded to OneDrive.
Microsoft also hands your BitLocker recovery keys to the government on request.
Microsoft also uses your local machine’s GDID to deanonymize and track you across the internet for the government.
These are paid surveillance services Microsoft provides to the government, paid for by your tax dollars. No wonder they desperately want to force you to use OneDrive.
Pay for it twice actually, Microsoft charges you to install that spyware on your computer as well.
Zipping files was never enough to secure them in the cloud. It‘s always recommended to properly encrypt sensitive data properly before you upload it. Whether you use OneDrive, Google Drive, Proton drive or whatever.
Still amazing how far Microslop goes to sniff through your stuff preemptively, though. Your cloud storage should be none of their business but sadly it‘s their entire business now. Privacy laws should definitely extend to digital space you rent no matter the circumstances.
If cloud providers argue that‘s too dangerous then they simply shouldn‘t be in business. If a government says it‘s too dangerous then they shouldn‘t be in power. Obviously they don‘t trust in the people who voted for them. Therefore they don‘t trust democracy and are therefore fundamentally undemocratic and a danger to the people.
ZIP encryption can be pretty strong, as long as you use aes-256 and not zipcrypt. AES256 had been supported for ZIP files since 2003, just not in the built-in Windows zip handling.
Wow, that’s how it managed to find “malware” (not actual malware) in a password protected rar that I shared
To be fair, a lot of platforms just flag any encrypted archive file (not just rar) as malware. Their argument is that those files are commonly used to get past malware detection, which is kinda true. Still a pain for everyone who has a legitimate need for the feature.
Hey now! I can honestly say Microsoft has never done that with any of my computers!
(Why yes, they do all run Linux. How did you know?)
If any of your Linux machines use SystemD,
then Microsoft has done thatthen there’s something to be aware of with those machines. SystemD has a global system ID that can be used like the Windows GDID apparently.Edit: not MS
Source?
See discussion below. I’m making it up obviously
Tell me more. I may have to move to a distro without systemdeez.
Okay but correlate that with the same methods and usage and by the same threat actor (MS) in this case.
Or any of the combination, as a treat
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s extremely implausible.
Absolutely zero reason a unit system needs admin date of birth. Yes separate issue entirely, but it’s showing a trend and the direction things are headed.
To be fair, yeah that shit is egregious.
But that’s not at all what I asked you or what you claimed. Those are technically two different things. And not technically like yes or no. Those are entirely different security fronts.
You’ve got to back that claim up or take it back, and I have a feeling you’ll be taking it back.
It’s okay to be cautious, and it’s especially okay to warn others of trajectories that could lean into privacy or security issues, but it’s not okay to make shit up.
Lastly it’s no longer an init system. It’s a system that happens to handle init.
To support and to need are two different verbs. Linux also needs your phone number in the user metadata by the same standard.
Well if I’m already paying for Windows, I might as well use it, right? /s
You say /s, but that’s the literal exact reason that Microsoft has all the market share.
What do you mean I’m out of space? I just bought an external hard drive on Thursday!
I want to switch but I just can’t give up winrar free trial
One drive was the final kick that made me jump to Linux. I had removed all my files from it and turned it off several times over the last few years then randomly, something like The Sims 2 will have a brand new game file and I know, One Drive stole my documents… Again.
Well the most recent time they took all my shit and put it back in One Drive was after that update where randomly One Drive was glitching out hardcore. It deleted all my files. All the files that should not have been in there to begin with. Microsoft help basically said, too bad so sad, if you were paying for it maybe we would help you.
I installed Mint that day. Haven’t been back.
I corrupt the files. I take ownership, remove inheritance, and then deny Trusted Installer and System access. My windows systems generally have several components neutered like this. Major upgrades will sometimes overwrite my changes, but mostly they stick. Absolutely nonfunctional.
I’d rather not use windows than have to do what you’re doing to keep it functional.
Ok. Then don’t use windows. Sounds good.
I already don’t. I’ve run Linux as my main OS on home computers for 3-4 years now, and I use MacOS for work.
Well there ya go. All of your problems are solved.
Seems a lot more annoying than just using linux instead.
Meh. I like things my way. There’s a certain satisfaction there.
That sounds a lot like typical Windows features over the years. Using WIndows at work today I unpinned Co-pilot and that stupid new Notes app from my taskbar three times. They kept coming back, not right away, but ninja like.
Our O365 admin panel keeps telling me there is a problem because 0 of our employees can easily find copilot and I could fix it by forcing it to be pinned to the taskbar.
We’ve noticed you unpinned the apps. We’re sure you didn’t mean to, so we fixed it for you. You’re welcome.
Are you sure it wasn’t your workplace group policy bringing them back?
Unlikely. Microsoft took away GPO control of taskbar and start menu a while back, and I don’t think they restored it. And even if they did, a company would be more likely unpin and block them than to push them.
I’ll taken your word for it, but if taskbar and start menu were controllable, I’m pretty sure after the third “I’ve deleted the internet/copilot/notes” support call I would be enforcing that the default taskbar items stay there.
Some companies might be resisting copilot, but many are going all in on it.
I’d love to think that, but my company is currently holding weeklong seminars to make sure that every employee is using Copilot and ChatGPT as much as possible.
How to turn off OneDrive with Group Policy.
Press Windows + R, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > OneDrive.
- Save documents to OneDrive by default: Disabled
- Prevent OneDrive from generating network traffic until the user signs in to OneDrive: Enabled
- Prevent the usage of OneDrive for file storage: Enabled
The last setting disables OneDrive on your system; make sure to change it to Disabled if you use OneDrive.
Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
Every Windows debloater script comes with the caveat of “until the next update”. Instead of becoming a Windows Defucking Engineer I just left it entirely.
Except that these are group policy settings. The stuff they provide to allow businesses to manage their endpoints. Businesses that actually have enough size and money for Microsoft to care. Businesses that can have strict audit and data security requirements relating to things like not allowing data to even brush against something like OneDrive.
To be more direct, the only reason I can’t count the number of times they’ve broken a Group Policy is because I legitimately don’t recall it happening in the past decade.
Yes and no. They started to limit GPOs. Some are only valid on Enterprise Licenses or Windows Server and will be ignored by your usual Windows Pro License at home. With Windows Home, you’re SOL regarding GPOs.
Also they started to migrate some of these settings to their Intune Device Management and will ignore those if not set via Intune.
Read: Companies can still disenshittify Windows to some degree, but they make it harder and harder for normal people to do so.
Won’t work for Win11 Home. But it’s MASterly easy to conver your Home to Pro or even Enterprise. MASterly easy.
Nice pun but might as well link to it. It’s already MASsively popular.
We’re on World right now, they kinda frown on that kinda thing here, might be why they didn’t link it.
https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
For the people on mobile without needle-like fingers.
needle-like fingers
Right … you’re operating your touchscreen with your dick again, aren’t you?
Their own f*cking fault. Anyone still using that garbage corp/software are just asking for it. Stop whining about your own decisions, start migrating to a non-psycho open OS. Please, spare other people from the guaranteed problems coming from your own stupid choices.
