Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

github.com

212 pointsaquova230 comments

For those who don't know, Microsoft Recall is a system that screenshots what you do every few seconds, and uses OpenAI's vision api to allow search on eveything you did in the past.

There's an article from Sep 27th where they promise you'll be able to uninstall Recall: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24255721/microsoft-window... , not sure what that means for this explorer.exe dependency.

It supposed to be local.

Which is equally bad. Why am I wasting CPU power on that?

It sounds like an unnecessary security nightmare. Someone will figure out how to tap into this.

I think someone quickly realized it was all being stored in an unencrypted database on the machine when the first version launched, so anyone with direct access can just list through the whole thing.

~~it's supposed to be optional.~~

it's supposed to be local. <------ YOU ARE HERE

you can supposedly disable it.

it's supposed not to send your information to the cops if it's sees you being naughty.

Or maybe,

It's supposed to be local.

Broad, anonymized statistics are aggregated by Microsoft.

Including your name.

It's only available to Microsoft's marketing department.

It's available to third-party affiliates.

A handful of resellers are affiliated.

Insurance companies, employers and law enforcement have as much of a right to buy the information as anyone else.

There's another step:

"Okay, it'll send your information to the cops, but only if it sees you doing something REALLY, REALLY bad, and we pinky-promise we will not let cops in authoritarian countries decide what that means".

(Remember the iCloud photo scanning controversy?)

And then, the last step:

   If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to worry over.

   Why do you worry? What do you have to hide?

   Don't leave your house, a Black Maria is on its way to pick you up.

Why using curtains at home? Why closing doors when go to toilet? You must hiding something.

I use toilet paper when I go to the toilet, and not the curtains, but to each their own.

Did you mean "opt-in" rather than optional? Optional is the same as "you can disable it". Also, you scratched it out. Are you sure they just enable it without asking? The link above even has a screenshot.

An OpenAI model running locally, not sending data to OpenAI? Similar to how llama3 can be run locally?

Yeah, you'll have to bring some sources for me to begin buying that. It goes totally against everything Microsoft and OpenAI have been pushing.

What makes you say that it uses OpenAI models? From what I understand right now it only has search functionality, which could be easily done with a local embedding model (similar to the open-weights CLIP) and possibly OCR.

No need for OCR as it has access to the compositor as they explained at the Build conference.

> No need for OCR as it has access to the compositor

Learning from past mistakes was never one of Microsoft's strong points. /s

It is plausible MS is taking marching orders from a higher power, off the record.

No, that scheme would be too hard to contain so the three letter agencies are blatant about it. They just let tech companies develop these things and know they'll have access to the data anyway.

For every real user that finds a tool slurping up data to be useful, there are 100 law enforcement agents also saying it's useful so everyone should hop on the bandwagon.

It's not possible for you to know how hard to contain it is.

The commonality of strange beliefs like this makes me seriously wonder if there is an initiative on social media to teach this form of thinking as being correct, because it is certainly the default. Try defecting from the game for a month and watch the other players from the sidelines, and see if you don't see what I'm talking about.

Generally the more people you tell, the harder it is to keep a secret. I don't what makes that a "strange belief" but okay.

Well: it's the generalization that a large corporation is communicating with an agency as a whole entity - thousands of employees aware, top to bottom - as opposed to just 1 or 2 people at the top receiving secret orders.

It is strange because that's exactly the opposite of how a corporation operates. If every employee (or even too many) employees are aware of the decision making process, that process stalls out.

The default view should be: the person at the top is being the one contacted, and the employees are not in the know.

My point was that there isn't a secret scheme here where federal agents are pulling the strings at the top. They literally just ask private companies for data either through court orders or side channels and they'll get it eventually.

All out in the public view (essentially)

I think the disagreement is over whether the decision to ship the product was influenced. It is not hard to have a perfectly acceptable business reason, but also have secondary motive(s), and not many people need to be involved.

Plus it is not necessarily knowable.

Look how less ambitious this new characterization of your initial claim is.

> and know they'll have access to the data anyway

Here we agree.

Companies dealing only with new features, products and other things that are meaningless in the greater picture manage to keep secrets for years all the time. Why wouldn't more nefarious things also be able to kept secret. Before Snowden, plausible deniability existed. But not anymore.

Is this why a new privacy setting quietly turned up called "Activity history"?

> "Activity history: Jump back into what you were doing on your device by storing your activity history, including info about websites you browse and how you use apps and services. Review the Learn more and Privacy Statement to find out how Microsoft products and services use this data to personalize experiences while respecting your privacy"

"Copilot" also quietly turned up on my Windows 10 taskbar not long ago. I certainly didn't opt to install it.

Frankly I don't understand why anybody would be surprised over this. They have been doing this stuff for over a decade? (I specifically mean quietly introducing privacy-hostile settings without user consent or knowledge, not other user-hostile stuff that's been going on for much longer).

Copilot first appeared in my taskbar after an update as a pinned app, which I promptly I unpinned.

Another update not long after it appeared again in my taskbar, this time not as a pinned app icon, but it literally replaced my "show desktop" button in the bottom right corner! I had to search online for other confused people looking to restore a basic desktop navigation feature that's been around since like 2009, because they replaced it with the 17th ever-present option to jump into their preinstalled bloatware!

And just as a sidenote, Microsoft Copilot is by far the worst LLM I've tried to use, both in how dumb it is, but also in how infuriating it is when it gets stuff wrong while spamming a bunch of stupid emojis into every sentence like it's excited about how confidently stupid it is.

Activity History has existed for years. It's not new.

New is extra data collection and Copilot "understanding" your activities based on those records.

Windows Recall doesn’t use OpenAI or any online API. The indexing and OCR is done by a local model, in a Secure Enclave powered by VBS and encrypted with the system TPM. AKA: a virtualization-separated process with storage inaccessible to the OS (all lookup etc. is done over RPC).

Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2024/09/27/updat...

given Microsoft's excellent security record how long do you think that'll take to break into?

an hour? maybe two?

Do you hold Apple Intelligence's local LLM to the same standard?

Apple Intelligence will index all of your messages, app data, etc. into a queryable index. That will also obviously reside on disk somewhere, encrypted. And it could be just as exfiltratable as your hypothetical. (Because both cases require compromising the host computer)

O&O's "ShutUp10" [1] used to be able to disable as apposed to remove this as of July 16th. Did they change it so it can't be disabled any more? If so is there a way to put an arrow in it's knee such as mounting a ram disk overlay where it stores data or creating a scheduled task that runs in the same security scope to truncate files?

[1] - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Proton is able to run just about anything now, not just games. Stop using Microsoft Operating Systems where you can and mark them as needing replacement with real software in all your reports.

The day Proton or WINE can run the whole Adobe suite of products is the day I will probably switch to using Linux full time.

Would you consider replacing the Adobe suite with other products?

For many graphics professionals, that's like asking if you'd consider replacing C++ with Rust.

There's one answer you might provide when you've the luxury to start things over and ramp up on all the differences, but practical reality is that you rarely have that luxury. Fluency and confidence in the tools you already use provides strong resistance to switching, even if alternatives promise they're ready to meet your needs.

> For many graphics professionals, that's like asking if you'd consider replacing C++ with Rust.

So, that's a yes?

Imagine if no C++ compiler existed for your operating system. Even if most of the code you write is Rust, would you be able to use this operating system?

I don't understand this analogy because every tool touted as a photoshop replacement supports PSD.

IME it doesn't work well enough for professional use.

The issue isn't file types; it's cloud collaboration.

Yes, I already have. Unfortunately, all the best tools for photography (my hobby) are Windows and Mac only. So I migrated to Mac. Linux is not an option because my software simply won’t run.

Maybe one day Okular will finally enter the 21st century and start supporting signing pdfs with digital cert signatures and become a viable replacement.

If you'll give me a proper alternative that can compete to Adobe and run natively on linux, sure. But there is none. Adobe dynamic link or After Effects do not have competition. Affinity don't work on linux.

I have and sadly the Affinity suite doesn't run (without crashes) in Proton.

Im surprised Adobe themselves dont try to help with this.

Adobe would be able to try a vertical integration play

They seem to be largely rent seeking, & making similarly received AI pivots.

Photoshop runs in the browser[0], maybe the whole suit will follow.

0. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/photoshop-web-faq.ht...

Seems like a downgrade, and I doubt it can handle Premiere. Honestly I'm looking to move off of Adobe stuff anyway, but I will have to do that before ditching Windows

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Yeah it's at the top of my list for a Premiere (and After Effects) replacement. Planning to check it out soon-ish.

The day when I can play Rocket League under Linux without anti-cheat kicking in is when I will stop using it completely.

Until then, I am dual booting.

The funny thing about this was that Rocket League was native on Linux and Psyonix removed Linux support.

Epic bought them, moved it to the Epic Store which has no Linux support. Makes sense to drop it.

Lutris solves most of that problem. I installed Unreal Engine through it.

supporting Epic is one of the most shooting-yourself-in-the-foot moves you can make as a gamer.

you could say the same about any corporation

I run it on Linux everyday with Steam on Proton. It is my go to game on steamdeck and my Fedora desktop.

By default steam wants to download the old old old Linux version that doesn't allow online play, but if you enable proton it will download the Windows version and run fine. I am pretty sure it doesn't have a real anti-cheat included.

Are you sure? Is this recent (last 6 months)? I enabled it and tested multiple versions of Proton with no success. Did you have to do anything else?

In addition to making sure that the EAC runtime is installed, try setting the compatibility command to:

    SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windows,x11 %command%

This is a typical problem with EAC.

Every thread that starts with "Linux gaming is basically 100% ready now" progresses into hacks like this :)

To be fair, every thread that starts with "Win 11 can still be debloated" progresses into registry hacks too :)

I don't have to do anything else. I just use the current proton. I just installed it on the flatpak version too. No trouble.

What? Rocket League works fine on Proton with no weirdness. Played a bunch of competitive matches with no issues whatsoever.

Better say your last goodbyes in that case, as it's always worked perfectly =b

Riot's Vanguard on the other hand, has unfortunately made it impossible to play LoL =c

No, Revit and other CADs are still not working.

Out of curiosity, what prevents that software from running on Proton?

Is it something involving certified OpenGL drivers?

I don't know about Revit, but Inventor and Solidworks are WIN32 API right to their very core. Basically everything in them is available on the COM interface as objects, which is awesome for writing extensions to the programs on Windows. I suspect the trade off is that they are so all-in on WIN32, that they just touch way more of the API than games do, so they probably expose much more of missing API. They both rely on Microsoft Office for a variety of functionality, particularly Excel to manage tables of data. They rely on SQL server for the Vault and PDM products. They are Windows based through-and-through.

From my experience, it's still not a 100% replacement. For example, there are no drivers for a pretty common steering wheel (Logitech G923). There is a driver for an older version of the wheel that kind of works, but no TRUEFORCE support. And even then, you have to mess with some low level details to make it work, send magic values to the hardware on plugging it in.

I also noticed that games from Steam end up taking up substantially more disk space to the point where I can have only a few games installed on Linux.

And even the games without any special hardware dongles don't work so well as you imply.

> For example, there are no drivers for a pretty common steering wheel (Logitech G923).

This is a nice, specific detail. Most of these comments are very vague.

> There is a driver for an older version of the wheel that kind of works

Do you mean an out of tree driver?

Would you test this and post back? The 6.3 kernel they mentioned 3 months ago is very old and likely a forked kernel.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/vb0b37/g29g92...

I am new to steering wheels-not sure if this is the exact version because they mention xbox)? Try a distro with a very recent kernel (6.11; like Nobara for a gaming focused distro).

> I also noticed that games from Steam end up taking up substantially more disk space to the point where I can have only a few games installed on Linux.

Shouldn't be substantially more disk space. Would you provide stats?

Proton makes a Windows environment for each game as it installs those 3rd party libraries in the environment and that is used for disk calculations, while on Windows those libraries may be installed directly to the OS. Each 3rd party library and the shader cache is stored separately. This is my guess-I do not work on Proton.

> And even the games without any special hardware dongles don't work so well as you imply.

Anticheat and a few obscure Windows libraries are an issue. River City Girls needs some media foundation library or it does not show cutscenes. Valve is working on them.

Anticheat is not some minor detail, lots of popular competitive games require it.

Specifically, these ones:

https://areweanticheatyet.com

I wish anticheat/multiplayer was universally an option on install. I don't play multiplayer games online, and often I'd like to be able to cheat in single-player, because I'm time-constrained and would like to cut out some part of the game I find less fun. Anticheat only makes my experience worse.

I think the point OP was trying to make is that there's still a large amount of programs and devices that don't work on wine. Probably for at least as many people that "everything just works" for, the opposite is true in my experience.

A question about the shader cache. what is it?

My steam system is somewhat questionable. it is netbooted, everything is nfs. This... well, it sort of sucks, I would not recommend it. But I love having the "one good drive" my NAS and then using that for everything, I am patient So I am sticking with it. But the "rebuilding shader cache". what is it doing? why does it take so long? why does it do it every time a launch a game? why am I offered a choice to skip it? why do I not notice any difference if I skip it?

I have a 10G connection to my nas but things are still much slower than I think they should be. I think it is related to poor interaction between nfs and a lot of small files. Otherwise, linux and proton are working great for games. When running games on windows I used iscsi for my games, and that worked well, I should probably do that on linux but I like having a filesystem on the far side instead of an opaque block device so I thought I would try nfs.

There are some weird artifacts in the system, I have to start steam twice, The first time it fails to connect to the webhelper, once everything is cached, it starts faster and thus works the second time, the shader cache takes forever and a day to rebuild, I can manually empty it which helps the next rebuild, I suspect many small files, having to check and replace them one by one, but I don't know, nfs tuning is somewhat of a dark art. Steam does not get along with my favorite tiling window manger(spectrwm) so I thought I would try that other openbsd floating window manager(CWM), steam is happier, but still has a few artifacts with menus, I suspect the CWM zero sized borders are the cause.

Overall, The experience is much worse than on windows, but that is because I made it that way, and so I am much happier than when I am on windows.

> But the "rebuilding shader cache". what is it doing? why does it take so long? why does it do it every time a launch a game?

Does that happen for every game, or just specific ones?

Asking because this is a behaviour I saw for a short time (week or two?) a few years ago, but these days it'll just do the "rebuilding shader cache" thing once for a game. Mostly after upgrading the Nvidia driver to a new release.

> I have a 10G connection to my nas but things are still much slower than I think they should be. I think it is related to poor interaction between nfs and a lot of small files.

That sounds more like your NAS is using hard drives (slow, especially in an array) rather than ssd's. Is that the case?

> There are some weird artifacts in the system, I have to start steam twice, The first time it fails to connect to the webhelper, once everything is cached, it starts faster and thus works the second time ...

Yeah, that really does sound like your storage isn't set up optimally, so is timing out as Steam loads into cache on your NAS. :(

Out of curiosity, what kind of NAS is it? :)

With regard to the shaders, I actually started steam instead of going off memory, it is any windows game, so proton is involved, and the message is "processing vulkan shaders", This take a long time to finish(5 minutes for simple game "CW4", Long enough I always skip for larger game "satifactory") I just checked and opposed to my memory it does appear to cache them correctly, that is, only run the process one time. I cleared the cache at one point as nothing was progressing(too many skips, corrupted cache?), I just deleted everything under "steamapps/shadercache" and this appeared to help.

You are probably correct about the nas, it is full of wd reds, that is, the very slow supposedly reliable drives. I was prioritizing cheap bulk space when I built it, hoping the infamous zfs cache would save me. On your not quite advise I will probably add a ssd pool and see how that affects the whole system.

The nas is a 5 year old home built clone of a IX systems truenas box. 32gb memory.

Thank you very much for your kind words on the subject. It is more than I deserve for my screwball system.

No worries at all. I've used TrueNAS before, and you should be fine with adding an ssd pool. That'll work well with a 10GbE connection. :)

There's one thing you might want to try first though, which is to create an iSCSI volume from your hard disk pool and try running your Steam library from that instead of NFS.

iSCSI is a "single user at a time" access thing (unlike NFS), but the caching acts differently to nfs so you might get a better result. Or not. ;)

Am suggesting that as it could be useful to try prior to spending money on ssds. :)

The actual mounting of your TrueNAS iSCSI volume from a Linux box just needs the installation of "open-iscsi" (on Debian anyway).

You run the appropriate iscsiadm command to log in to the iSCSI portal, then mount it:

  # iscsiadm --mode node --targetname "iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl:myshare1" --portal myserver --login
  # mount -o noatime /dev/disk/by-label/NAME_OF_THE_SHARE_IN_TRUENAS /Games

Unmounting the iSCSI share afterwards is the standard umount command, then you log out of the iSCSI portal:

  # umount /Games
  # iscsiadm --mode node --targetname "iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl:myshare1" --portal myserver --logout

Anyway, hope that helps. :)

Heh, and now I just noticed your earlier message had this:

  When running games on windows I used iscsi for my games, and that worked well ...

Ahhh well. If you want to try iSCSI for the Linux side of things too, then the above might help. :)

Using an ssd pool on the nas will be your best bet though. With a 10GbE connection it'll feel like a natively attached ssd, which sounds like it'd be a massive improvement for you. :D

> From my experience, it's still not a 100% replacement

if it were a perfect replacemente, there would be no Windows.

for some it's good enough to endure the rough spots.

if you want to replace Windows and give yourself a gray area, and you can afford it, get a computer with 2 gpus and use a VM with VFIO and looking glass and you can contain its naughtiness away while enojoying it at native speed for gaming or whatever you want at 4k@120hz in a window or fullscreen inside Linux.

It's possible to do this with one GPU. The downside is that you have to shut down the VM in order to get back to your Linux desktop.

I still don't get why wheels even need drivers at this point. It's 2024 and even with a legit version of Windows, there are all kinds of problems with all different wheels and all different games. We have a couple of axes and a bunch of buttons and some feedback. Steering wheels have been around for at least 30 years.

And if you DO have a driver, why does the fucking game have to have a list of supported steering wheels? Shouldn't that be abstracted away from the game? Isn't that the whole point of all those gaming and device APIs that Microsoft has built?

The experience with racing games isn't great on Windows, it's going to be worse on Linux where manufacturers put exactly zero investment into making it work and the crossover between sim racers and Linux developers is very small.

I was going to say Fusion360 is my largest blocker, but it looks like it's now in the Silver category https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...

Sadly, Solidworks is still in the "Garbage" category. Is there any effective way (aside from coding myself) to effect improvement there?

I'm pretty sure Fusion360 is built with QT tool kit for the GUI, and uses Python for the scripting engine. Of any of the modern professional paid 3D CAD programs, it seems to be the least tethered to Windows. It would be nice if they released a proper Linux version, like Autodesk does for some of their art industry programs. NX used to have a UNIX GUI recently, but it would take a pretty major company to move off Windows to bring that back.

Solidworks made its name by being the first mainstream CAD built for Windows back when all the other 3D CAD was running UNIX workstations that cost more than a new pickup truck. Both Solidworks, and the Autodesk competitor to it, Inventor, are Windows API through and through. It is disappointing, but unsurprising that they don't do well in WINE. They went all in on Windows to their core from the very start.

Maybe anyone can chime in about VR support under Linux?

That's a huge show stopper for me at the moment and holding me back from switching over to Linux.

Valve Index. I currently dual-boot Windows for VR. This is the rabbit hole I went down (to be clear: SteamVR, specifically the compositor, is completely broken).

1. Install Monado with libsurvive.

2. Discover that libsurvive doesn't have the "smarts" that SteamVR has, and that calibration can be wonky (and was wonky for me).

3. Learn that you can import SteamVR calibration data. I can't do this in Linux because, well, SteamVR doesn't work.

4. Dual boot Windows with the intention to copy over calibration data.

5. Windows is installed. Give up and dual boot.

https://monado.freedesktop.org/libsurvive.html

If anyone else has had success, I would love to hear about it.

Well, I got Monado and libsurvive running some time ago (Valve Index, X11, Nvidia), even for Beat Saber. It sadly was unplayable, because reflections were wrong in VR apps, it felt like both eyes using the same reflection angle instead of adjusting it to each eye. For close objects this was bearable, anything further away would look "wrong" and cause VR sickness. Also the FoV was wrong, it felt like a vignette around the screen edges, a good bit narrower than in SteamVR. Oh yeah, and the latest version did not build for me, used a previous one.

Performance, especially in Beat Saber, was great and better than SteamVR!

I would expect SteamVR to at least work enough for calibration. You could try switching to beta or other versions.

I don't understand why Valve of all companies isn't supporting Linux here.

My guess is they focus on Proton for Steam Deck, which can not run VR comfortably (but, it can run it via USB-C docks/dongles, the power of a full Linux PC!). So we get constantly better Proton compatibility, including work on anti cheats, but VR is low to no priority. The market is pretty small, especially if you mostly worry about Index and related PC-tethered headsets. Also developing VR for Linux can't be an easy task.

I am especially annoyed that they more or less dropped the ball when it comes to Beat Saber via Proton. Beat Saber was an official launch title for Proton, but was unplayable for months [1].

[1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6638

Well, or someone could create a cardboard like holder for the Steam Deck! ;)

Overall, if you are willing to deal with some annoyances, give it a try, it might cover your use cases.

SteamVR is playable, but not at Windows level and rough around the edges. I personally run an Index on a 4080 Super (previously 3080) via the SteamVR runtime. System details in case it matters: Arch Linux Zen kernel, X11 (i3), Nvidia drivers, SteamVR Beta, usually a recent Proton GE version. I remember playing Beat Saber, including modded [1], Until You Fall, Pistol Whip, Raw Data and After the Fall without issues. Non-steam applications outside Steam can also work, I have a launch script that sets up the env vars for Proton, should be easier via Lutris.

I see some problems however. VR itself is not as smooth as it should be, 100% playable, but not as smooth as I remember it ages ago on Windows or using a FOSS VR [4] stack (which has other issues). I don't really use SteamVR home, it sometimes takes a while to load. SteamVR window on the monitor has weird flickering issues, usually I can't get into its settings, likely i3 related. Firmware updates are mostly broken. No (I think) standby for the Lighthouses, I toggle them via Home Assistant and smart plugs.

Shout out to steamtinkerlaunch [2] for making certain settings easier to apply and ProtonDB [3] for tweaks if needed.

[1] https://github.com/geefr/beatsaber-linux-goodies [2] https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch [3] https://www.protondb.com/ [4] https://monado.freedesktop.org/ https://lvra.gitlab.io/

I recently set up my gaming rig dual booting Win 10 and Linux. I've spent almost all of my time in the Linux side, and when Win 10 is EOL I am no longer dual booting - Windows can live in a GPU passthrough VM under Linux with only Steam and whatever Windows software won't run under Proton/Wine.

Windows can see what I want it to see and not the whole machine. It has completely broken my trust.

Can it run the most recent version of SolidWorks? Can it run any version of SolidWorks?

If it can, I am switching to Linux immediately.

It is not able to run Adobe. Only reason why I still cannot switch to linux unfortunately.

What about Software for hardware (Mouse, Keyboard, Audio Interface) and some productivity apps?

Does anyone know any good "debloat" scripts to disable all these modern features of Windows 11 and bring me back to something that resembles the Windows I grew up with?

I'm having a hard time keeping track of all of the registry keys and config settings I need to update to keep this crap at bay.

Not really a windows user, but I had some success with: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

the repo linked here is what you want

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

This is the first thing I run on any new Win 11 device/install and afterwards the OS just disappears into the background and doesn’t bother me one bit.

Incredible feeling of zen being able to scroll past the heated online Win 11 debates that don’t seem to apply to my day to day usage at all.

massgrave's LTSC install has made it tolerable for me at least. The first time I booted into a standard consumer win11 install I nearly had an aneurysm

Yes, w11 iot ltsc is the way.

Despite the dumb name this looks useful:

https://privacy.sexy/

It generates the script for you based on your requirements. Looks extremely detailed with long descriptions.

Just disable Defender's real time scanning when you run the resultant script, otherwise it will protest. A lot. (Not just when you first run it, but the whole time.)

What you’re describing is the entire point of all these disparate settings.

Security through obscurity.

The security, though, is for Windows features not user’s protection.

I've used https://ameliorated.io/ to good effect.

I find desktop Ubuntu to be reasonably close to the Windows 7 experience, which was when Windows peaked in my opinion.

If you use Ubuntu Cinnamon it will look like it too.

I find Gnome on stock Ubuntu pretty terrible for someone used to Windows, since workflows are different and you can't adjust anything.

KDE and Kubuntu are pretty close though. I'd never really considered fully switching to Linux a usable option before I found it, but I've been running it for a few years on my laptop and recently on my work pc, and once Win10 is EoL it'll probably be the only thing I still run on the rest of my machines. The nice side effect of bloated Electron apps is that at least now most things work on all platforms lmao.

O&O ShutUp10++ is a requirement for me. It is my preference because every debloat script tends to legitimately break the OS. I have had to do clean installs multiple times this year after customers ran them. MS provides registry keys that can be configured, but they do consistently move them around. Without an application which can easily revert automated changes, it'd be nearly impossible to keep track of it all, let alone notice changes. Upside is not having a broken system, downside is needing to open it once every week or two. I agree with the other comments that LTSC would be better, but there's no reasonably legal way to obtain it, and nobody wants to have the BSA knock on their door asking for a quarter million USD per license violation. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

> LTSC would be better, but there's no reasonably legal way to obtain it

I looked into it in 2018; turned out to be pretty easy and reasonable (~$300):

https://tinyapps.org/blog/201811300700_windows_10_ltsc.html

You can buy the licenses https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2...

Ms just finally released the installation media for ltsc win11

I keep God Mode and a text file of all the reg settings... in case the porkchopolips arrives, which I was greeted with Monday morning. By early after noon, all was quiet again.

I recommend ALL these sites, and would only add Black Viper:

https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/18394-blac...

and...

Windows 10 Integral Edition:

Zone 94 and the Internet archive are temporarily offline,

Hopefully MassGrave.dev is still working.

Not directed at you but I find it funny that people (rightfully!) complain about Microsoft spyware and then run some dubious scripts from who-knows-where. With the added side effects that these scripts always disable/remove waaaay too much and break the install which then lead to users cursing Microsoft for things that the user has broken without knowing.

Ultimately it's Microsoft not giving those users what they want. They have to accommodate the OS to fit their needs and sometimes it breaks.

It should be technically easy for Microsoft to decouple Recall from Explorer. I already saw this in the 90s with their web browser, coupled to the OS for purely commercial reasons.

I think it's a pretty damning condemnation of Microsoft's current product strategy, at least in relation to the user segment that visits hacker news.

People are willing to run highly privileged untrusted and unverified code in the personal computers, just for a chance to remove the stuff you're actively spending money and time developing.

Microsoft's software is now indistinguishable from malware. If I had to run Windows, I would have zero trust in it, which matches my level of trust in "Fast Eddie's Random Script". At least Fast Eddie says in the README file that his script is not attacking my computer. Microsoft readily admits to its status as an attacker, and calls the attacks "features."

Microsoft learned from the years of its own users accepting 3rd party malware on their machines pre Win-7, and pretty much all phone users (Android definitely, probably iOS as well but I'm less familiar) accepting unremovable bloatware, so they added it back with Win8+.

Honestly Windows 10 is/was pretty good once you removed the MS malware but they're definitely antagonistic as a whole.

This really hit home for me when trying to dual boot. Repeatedly I had to select the drive in the boot menu and rerun the script to get me back to my nice grub chosing screen. I gave up, it felt violating.

I find it funny that on website called hacker news, it's still assumed that anyone who customizes their system must also be an idiot that knows nothing about being safe online.

You'd think a bunch of javascript programmers I mean hackers would know better.

I like to live dangerously and with my riced up little Linux setup. It makes me feel cool and edgy.

Those that describe themselves as "pro users" or "hackers" are mostly the users that don't actually know better. It's kinda cringy reading blatant false information from tech people and then people not in tech believe this "misinformation" and it spreads like wildfire and can never be contained.

There is misinformation out there, for sure, but I fail to see your point. People will happily recommend installing Linux over Windows but then suggest you shouldn't dare to touch the registry! That makes no sense.

Windows 10 basically unusable on my GPD Pocket 1 without about as many tweaks as I can make to it. However, once properly tweaked it's actually pretty usable for pretty heavy coding tasks. It has a good amount of RAM but a pretty slow drive.

I don't bother tweaking my Windows 11 machine so heavily except to turn off everything that makes sense to turn off. These are all settings that Microsoft provides themselves but are only available via group policy or registry keys. Thankfully there are tools that not only make it easy to change but also explain the consequences and provide recommendations.

If I were to describe myself as "Pro user" or "hacker" would you assume I don't actually know better? That seems pretty uncharitable.

I wouldn't say always. The last time I ran such a script, it didnt break anything. Granted, I did as the repo readme expressly and boldy stated, more than once, that 'anyone using this should read through the list of commands' (it was also nicely commented for lay people) and disable any sections related to services they use. Regardless, the defaults seemed quite sane and I even had to enable/uncomment a few for other services/products I didn't need.

What would get disabled that "breaks the install"

I don't have a list but over the years I've seen a lot of people that had problems after running these. This was also prevalent for earlier Windows versions and especially by "gamers" who thought they could squeeze more FPS out of their machines. Failing Windows updates come to mind, especially major Win10 & Win11 updates.

is it that funny?

I'd trust some rando on github more than modern Microsoft

key difference being - copilot and recall were added to my operating system without my consent - microsoft did not ask before they added these things, via windows update.

those dubious scripts from who-knows-where are run by me, with intent and with my consent, having passed whatever my own personal review process might be for that particular script.

If I try something and it turns out bad, that's on me, and I'm okay with that. If something is done to me without my knowledge or consent and it turns out bad, then that's a different story.

>If I try something and it turns out bad, that's on me, and I'm okay with that

That's ok, I'm critizing those that run these scripts without checking (and understanding!) them and then blame Microsoft when things go south (think of the "stick in own bicycle" meme). This is not a defense of Microsoft, they are also to blame that users feel the need to run these scripts because dubious stuff like Recall gets added and/or automatically activated without asking.

I've used Chris' winutil https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil due to being open source and a powershell script, you can see everything it's doing there's no magic. The recommended update schedule change is something a lot of other programs miss out on imo

Additionally for O&O shut up fans, it has the option to launch that too within the script's GUI, as neither has to be installed to run

I know this technically applies to a lot of open source, but given the breadth of tools under the windows 'tweaking' category and the audience I'd expect to use these "magic wands to fix things you disagree with MS on" I'm really surprised there aren't more subtle trojans mixed in with them. I think it's extremely unlikely any significant amount of users examine the source or make sure a binary they're using is trustworthy, even assuming they know what to look for.

There's a lot of 'marketing' possible and a receptive audience whenever a big tech company pushes something like Copilot/Recall, and I'm sure a well timed or prompt 'quick and simple fix' tool release with some a time pressure could get a lot of installs.

There are tons of windows Trojans already. Going after the 'too smart' type just gets you detected faster.

Switch to Windows LTSC.

https://www.getblackbird.net/

Be sure to backup your system first. Blackbird thoroughly rips away whatever you choose.

My solution was to run Linux and a Windows 2000 VM for the old apps.

> disable all these modern features of Windows 11

Being a dependency of explorer.exe implies that it can't be disabled. To explain further: explorer.exe is responsible for your task bar, start menu, etc.

I thought for sure somebody was complaining about explorer.exe not loading if it cannot find recall.DLL or something.

The thread describes a much more minimal kind of dependency. More like the dark pattern variety which is hard to turn off.

would it be possible to make a stub for recall.dll, that does nothing? Or it HAS to be signed?

Doesn't matter - they are not talking about that. AFAIK, there's no recall.dll.

But assuming they do this, you can enable unsigned driver installation (there's a valid use case for that), but I'm not sure you can get explorer.exe to load unsigned libraries. Maybe! Explorer.exe is a user mode process, so it's way less bad than other system processes.

> I'm having a hard time keeping track of all of the registry keys and config settings I need to update to keep this crap at bay.

Remember when the retort from Windows users against Linux was "Linux is only free if your time has no value?"

I downgraded a laptop to Win10. Is there any reason to go to 11 before EOL for 10?

No. It's just a less useful UX. Linux Mint after will get you everything Windows forgot customers want.

One of the things I've been trying to do since the advent of Windows 11 is ... get rid of 'Recommendations' on the Start Menu. It gives me the creeps to see stuff pop up there.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...

Whatever you do, the GPO / Registry key doesn't work on Non-Education / SE systems.

If you apply it on an Education version, the StartMenuShellExperienceHost (you may need to shuffle those words around) will read the settings. Nothing on my Workstation version.

Now, it MIGHT work if you push it through MDM, but MDMs cost money, and I haven't been able to find a self-hostable MDM that is up to date.

The "Recommendations" section is near-impossible to get rid of, but it's pretty easy to stop anything from displaying in that section.

Under Settings > Personalization > Start, I have "More pins" selected, and the various "Show whatever" options disabled, and my "Recommended" section is a single empty row at the bottom of the start menu that reads "To show your recent files and new apps, turn them on in the Settings."

  download && install rufus
  flash usb drive with linuxmint
  backup files
  reboot and boot from the usb drive
  wipe system drive and install linuxmint

Just be aware that these "fixes" aren't 100% complete and will likely break in the future when Microsoft patches Windows. For example, when people tried to block telemetry in Windows 10 via the hosts file, Microsoft first moved the telemetry servers from named domains to a series of new IP addresses, then after a year or so they patched the telemetry sending code to bypass the hosts file. Similarly if you ran the scripts to disable Cortana/Windows Search, that worked for a while but nowadays you'll find SearchApp.exe doing Cortana work in the background whether you like it or not.

https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools

I run this on any new Win install. I also suggest Portmaster so you know where your data is going.

https://safing.io/

O&O ShutUp is the first thing to install on every windows system, followed by netlimiter

So glad I switched to Linux and got away from this garbage. Now I have to convince my employer to also allow Linux on their workstations.

Windows 7 was the last good OS from MSFT but even that had a bit of telemetry.

If it is about telemetry and related stuff (like that activation), it would be Windows 2000.

Sadly I never had the chance to experience it and went with Windows ME. :(

Activation, introduced in Windows XP, is the main reason why I consider Windows 2000 the high water mark of Windows. The Windows NT lineup was truly no nonsense, no fuss. Unfortunately the merger of consumer-focused Windows (which used to be the 3.1/95/98/Me) lineup) and pro-focused Windows (which was the NT lineup plus Windows 2000) coincided with the introduction of many annoyances, starting with activation in Windows XP and later adding nagging prompts for updates and security-related things, telemetry, UI changes, and more.

Sadly even macOS has gotten more annoying over the years with its various nagging prompts.

What Windows 7 telemetry are you referring to? Other than WER, there was no telemetry in Windows 7 to my knowledge. There was an update a few years ago that back ported telemetry to Windows 7 right before the final stage of extended support and final EOL.

Back when Microsoft started pushing telemetry in Windows 10, they added additional telemetry to Windows 7 through updates. Not nearly as pervasive and omnipresent as with Windows 11, though; you can just remove the telemetry updates: https://gist.github.com/xvitaly/eafa75ed2cb79b3bd4e9

Yes, it was me that backported some of that telemetry to both Windows 8.1 and Windows 7, circa 2015 when I was working on the WU team but we used WER to upload that to our endpoints. I don't think there was any telemetry at all before 2015 in the base operating system.

I recently made the switch to linux full time as well. Even small things, like my computer taking three seconds from clicking Shutdown to turning off, is such a relief compared to Win11.

It's amazing how much frustration and cognitive load you remove when using things that aren't hostile to you. I've had the same experience.

The year of linux on desktop, everyone!

> To those that arrive here from any Youtube or Twitter posts, please know that disabling Recall via DISM works fine, and preserves the modern File Explorer (though some might consider this an anti-feature). CBS correctly disables it, and the disablement is preserved through reboots, just like with any other feature.

> that disabling Recall via DISM works fine

this whole deal with recall slowly creeping in after the initial rejection is the worst case of just-the-tip I've seen people accept.

will anyone be surprised when it gets enabled in an update by mistake, not to mention by spyware.

Also previous comment about the tool being updated:

> the latest commit to the draft PR now does the following. It leaves Recall enabled, but then it disables it on the first run. During my testing, it kept the explorer look intact

Wake up people, you are in a toxic relationship with your OS. You can do better.

Still not going to file a divorce, getting there...

Despite the high maintenance required in my current relationship, I still don't want to move in with that hippie Linux. :)

If people would like to "try Linux before you buy," check out DistroSea! It spins up a virtual machine of whatever distro and flavour you choose to try.

https://distrosea.com/

What about Attorneys and Doctors who have protected health information and client privileged information? Are they not to use Microsoft Products now?

What about any company with Trade Secret information? Are they also not to use Microsoft Products now?

This is the same question people have been asking since Microsoft started including Telemetry in Windows.

Except now it's __literally__ taking screenshots and reading them.

"Oh no it knows a program was run" is not 'as bad' of a HIIPA violation as, "Oh no, it's literally taking a screenshot, reading it and saving it".

If this is a reliable way to revert Explorer back to the non-ribbon version, I hope they’ll keep this in.

Yes, install Windows 10 LTSC, use it until end of support, then switch to Linux.

There are no new features in W11 that are worth enduring the absolute bloated spyware-ridden POS that it is.

Windows 10 LTSC is either too old (2016?) or only lasts until 2027. It’s not worth it. Linux is fine for CLI use, but the GUI doesn’t cut it for me, not to speak of the many Windows software and drivers that won’t work or will be awkward to use. There is no good solution, but ditching Windows entirely is still the worse (non-)solution for me.

> revert Explorer back to the non-ribbon version

Don't you mean to the ribbon-UI version? Explorer switched from having a traditional menubar with a text-only context-sensitive toolbar (as in Vista and 7) to using the ribbon in Windows 8 and Windows 10; Windows 11 had the new dumbed-down explorer UI design since day-one (though in earlier builds of Win11 the ribbon UI could still be restored in Windows 11 using tweaks - or simply via bugs in explorer: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/s3nilb/you_can_g... ) - it looks like MS fully removed the old code at the same time they added Recall support?

I wasn’t really familiar with the Windows 11 changes. I’m still on Windows 10 and use Ribbon Disabler, and also hide the toolbar by patching an XML resource in shellstyle.dll (IIRC). Ideally I’d want a no-context-sensitivity “just normal menus” version.

There’s a registry key you can set to disable the new Win11 context-menus btw.

Yep, that much I already knew. :)

People aren’t people. They’re not citizens.

We are consumers, labeled and binned.

Our constitution might as well read: ‘We the Product…’.

We hold these truth self evident that all corporations are likely created in Delaware and domiciled in Ireland for tax purposes. They are endowed by their shareholders with certain unalienable rights, that among these are profit, lack of regulation, and the pursuit of infinite growth.

I thought I make a generic reply instead of replying at every comment below:

People don't use Windows over Linux because they prefer the Windows environment/experience. They use it because of the applications, and to some degree the drivers, that are not available in Linux.

To the shock of some people as well, some people use Windows because they prefer it over other operating systems.

Probably yes. Depending on your requirements (e.g. if cloud, spying, etc is all fine), it can indeed make sense. Windows has its strengths.

But what I suspect: A much bigger cohort is people saying "I'm not forced, I just explicitly prefer it" although this is actually a lie. Some of them are aware of that, some not. Being forced to sth is not great. Not everyone is honest (or even aware) enough to admit it.

Participating in a thread that makes me feel a little better about myself.

I just spent an hour and a half getting my friend's email account untied from my local Windows account after she typed it into Windows Store once.

Involved having to remove all kinds of system files and many registry keys, some that did not contain the email string at all, but encrypted versions of it (IdentityCRL)

This spyware is out of control. The worst part is they do all this and all their telemetry based products are still useless Clippy garbage that helps absolutely nobody do anything better or faster.

Isn't this the old trick MICROS~1 pulled trying to claim IE was part of the base OS. They cooked it so that IE was the DNS of the filemanager when upgrading to IE4.

For those looking to dual boot but not deal with the hassle of Windows breaking boot sectors:

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/create-portable-windows-...

Rufus + Windows To Go + an external SSD = I'm able to use windows when I want, the rest of the time it stays in a drawer.

Is Ubuntu the best for a touchscreen? Is there a specific flavour people are happy with? I prefer to keep to Ubuntu if possible as I use it as my daily. I have a HP laptop I got a year or two ago with a pen. It's literally the only thing holding me back from switching on that machine. I have run debloat tools on it but Windows doesn't respect that with subsequent updates.

I ran Ubuntu on a Surface Pro 2 like 6 years ago. Touchscreen seems to work as well as Windows as far as I can tell.

This is good to hear. It seems built for it.

Can OP explain what they've linked to or further link to the actual comment discussing Recall.

I'm not a windows user myself, but I'm curious what you windows users think about this.

Surely they can't be thinking much about operating systems?

This doesn't deserve downvotes because it is entirely correct. Your average Windows user doesn't know about this let alone think about it. The number of people who know and care about this are an extreme minority.

It completely deserves downvotes because the question was addressed to Windows users of this forum, who are the sort of person who would think about it. There's no call to insult Windows users just because they use Windows.

You taking it as an insult says more about you than the poster. I don't see it as an insult at all.

What a sarcastic comment. It may be true on average, but definitely not for everyone. I'm one of the counterexamples, because I think about it a lot, and I'm carefully considering my options and alternatives.

I don't care. My XPS 15 from 2018 still works absolutely perfectly and it's not Windows 11 compliant.

Well as a windows user and developer for 30 years, I’m typing this on my MacBook Pro.

You should take a look at what Apple collects

They collect your money. The annoying part is that you can't build your own hardware. Not completely up to date with the situation, but I heard with the new CPUs you won't even be able to upgrade your RAM. The RAM will be integrated on the CPU.

I would strongly consider MacOS if I could run it on whetever machine I want. I would even pay for it.

Not much. And at least their hardware and software works.

I will continue using Windows 10 und probably have to make the switch to linux after EOL.

Like many other things in Windows, I will find some way to disable it.

Or maybe I'll find it useful -- anything is possible!

I imagine you'll have trouble trying to find someone around here that's using Windows because they like it. People use Windows because they're forced to, and that's why Microsoft knows they can take full advantage of that and abuse their prisoners.

I can't believe the EU is wasting all this time on making it so you can... uninstall the camera app on your iPhone? Even the worst parts of iOS are so much less egregious than every interaction I have with Windows. At least people have the option to not use an iPhone. With Windows, people literally don't have alternatives. Their business' accounting software, or whatever domain-specific program is on there and has no plans of getting ported anywhere else.

I'll just keep disabling everything I don't like insofar as it's possible. I'm focusing on pragmatism. I've used Linux on the desktop in the past, and the amount of work required to make things keep running smoothly and the amount of things I can't run natively outweigh the feel-good benefits of less data collection. It's vastly more convenient to know my computer will be working every day, and I can run whatever Windows-targeted software I want without any hassle. Whatever I need for development can be run on WSL with minimal effort as well (occasionally WSL will have minor issues, but it's infrequent and the solutions are pretty easy to find).

None of this is to insult anybody who prioritizes things differently, or anybody who feels more strongly about how much of a problem the stuff that MS does is. I just view it as one of the many things that it's easier not to worry too much about in order for things to go more smoothly.

Long ago when I last used it at home I used to run the Windows without explorer.exe. I believe I did it via editing a key or keys in the registry. Wonder if it still works today with more recent Windows versions.

Controversial Windows Recall AI Search Tool Returns with Proof-of-Presence

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41684116

Wow. Windows Explorer is literally spyware now. it's incredible to see how far Windows has slid down the tubes, and I say this as someone who LOVED Windows.

Just a reminder that Windows Defender has flagged certain versions of ExplorerPatcher as a virus.

The last time I updated Windows 11 was to fix the IPV6 RCE vulnerability, but other than that I have updates blocked.

If it comes to Windows 10 I'll have to go for a Linux machine.

Give it a try, dual boot.

You don't even have to go that far: https://distrosea.com/

Thanks. I already use Linux for my dev box so it's fine. Right now I'm just not motivated enough to use it in daily drive.

Yeah this is it for me, cleaning up my windows installation and backing up my files, going to move to some linux distro this month.

Despite lots of good info here, it's devolved into yet another "just switch to Linux" thread. Sigh.

I wish people would just switch to Linux so they’d shut up about it.

I use Linux every day, I love it, but it is a community project with rough edges and no customer service. Pretty small rough edges nowadays. But they are still there, and there’s no customer service.

Always happy to see people join Linux, but slightly confused at the folks advertising it. Are they implicitly signing up to be the customer service for these folks who are used to an OS-as-a-product type setup?

>Are they implicitly signing up to be the customer service for these folks who are used to an OS-as-a-product type setup?

I mean first off, yes most people using Linux have no problem with helping people out, my guess is linux users are probably 100x more active on support platforms than anyone else. (if not more)

But also, who on earth has Microsoft customer service? Big businesses sure, but do you think most Windows users get customer support, big tech companies stopped connecting you to a human being like ten years ago. Everyone just googles when something breaks no matter the OS. I'm just so tired of the meme that there is any meaningful difference at this point. I've been using stock Ubuntu Desktop for 12(?) years, out of the box, no weird tinkering.

Do you know how often friends and family call me because something broke on their Windows machine and I'm the "tech guy"? This is the experience of every programmer I know. What difference does it make if they run Linux, yes stuff will break but we've been fixing stuff breaking anyway.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the Linux ecosystem is the 'community'. The self-proclaimed experts in forums who try to help people. I'm using Linux only since >20 years. I usually don't need them. And I learned soon to not involve them. Whenever I did, it was a pure waste of time.

I hadn't heard of this feature before, but WTF? Who thought AI parsing everything you do on your system would be a good idea?! I want zero to do with this "feature".

Every single day I am given more reasons never to use Windows again. Glad I moved to Linux early this year. My next desktop will likely be a System76 to ensure Microsoft doesn't get a cut from my next purchase, and it supports a business that supports Linux.

Made the switch to Linux myself roughly a year ago. With Steam and Lutris even my gaming needs are nearly fully covered. Developing for Linux servers or the web anyway, so no problems there. Very little troubles with just a plain old Ubuntu distribution, no console wizardry required either. I won’t go back. Businesses that depend heavily upon it though… good luck.

Having followed the same path, you won't regret it. I jumped ship 15 years ago after starting off my career as a C# dev and I never looked back. Linux makes it easy for you to be a developer, while other platforms fight you every step of the way. You'll eventually get into situations where you need to update something manually or rollback a dependecy, but it will be possible, and you'll find bug tickets describing the problem and what you can do about it.

> Linux makes it easy for you to be a developer, while other platforms fight you every step of the way

I see this sentiment a lot but the developer experience on Windows is good to great in my experience.

Much better than MacOS or linux if you are using Visual Studio and .NET, pretty equal if you are using another stack.

What it isn't is posix/unix. A lot of the bad developer experience people have on windows is from trying to (pre-WSL, at least) shoe horn unix tools and practices instead of doing things the windows way.

I’m assuming it is easier to write code on the platform you want to deploy it to. So, server-first stuff: web dev, scientific computing, AI, all that sort of stuff is Linux-first.

Writing Windows software, I’m sure, is easier on Windows.

Happily Valve fixed the whole gaming issue, outside of niche DRM stuff that I don’t care about.

Chiming in here to drop

https://www.protondb.com/

This site shows how well games run on proton and people offer solutions to get them running if there's any snags.

Linux is a tool. Windows is a product. There's only so much UX needed between a user and a command line for a user to have a pleasant experience. Windows chases the dollar and needs to produce products.

I am still a C# developer :) I just use Linux for my personal devices, and with a license for JetBrains, I use their Rider IDE. While not perfect, it is just good enough for my use case.

Last time I had Windows installed on a physical machine was Windows 2000, but I still need to keep virtual Windows boxes around for random reasons (clients having terminally braindead VPN setups is a popular one.)

Boy is it bad! Consumer versions of Windows are basically malware at this point. No idea how people can get stuff done at all.

Every day we stray further from god

Same, I'll be damned if I tolerate ads in my OS. I can confirm that PopOS from System76 is lovely, it just works and I don't need to think about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com