What the hell?!?!?! This is a server OS! It needs to be as light as possible and for the sake of server stability and security, admins carefully choose the installed apps. Microsoft can’t just install new applications on a whim.
This is fuged up.
Oh they can, as we see
That’s all true for consumer OS as well
That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
No enterprise is going to want to deal with that and realistically they’re the only ones with the pockets to fight that battle.
If introducing Copilot to server degrades service enough to trigger an SLA downstream, you can absolutely bet lawyers will get involved.
Or if CoPilot starts exfiltrating data to Microsoft so their server farms can ‘analyze’ it.
I’m not heavily involved in the space, but I’m given to understand that MS isn’t very clear about what happens to your data or how it gets used or shared.
Perhaps Microsoft will be smart enough not to allow the general public to query trade secrets or government data that’s been pulled via unwanted copilot integration.
But maybe the ongoing Russian hack of Microsoft will make it irrelevant, because the servers can be accessed directly.
Or perhaps at some distant time, Microsoft will roll out features or technologies developed using an internal version of CoPilot that has access to all data - including proprietary information from competitors.And that’s not even counting what ISP’s will do if they find a way to analyze copilot traffic, or what state actors will do if they can set up MitM attacks for Copilot.
Honestly, I sort of fear the repercussions, but I look forward to the lawsuits.
There’s no need to degrade performance to get a lawsuit, the simple fact of extrading data can get you in a tribunal, especially from customers with high privacy requirements, or with European sovereign clouds certifications
Wonky server double post
deleted by creator
That is fucked.
I’m already starting to transition to full Linux on my devices with the arrival of Windows 11 and Windows 10 reaching end of life in October next year. I never thought I’d see the day of this happening.
Microsoft has been telegraphing these moves for years now tbh.
That doesn’t make it right.
And not everyone can dump Windows for Linux. We run a lot of software that requires Windows. Changing is impractical if not impossible.
Never said it was right, why would you think that?
Depending on what your doing there are alternatives or you could run it in a VM
ITS THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP! 🥂
I doubt it. Regular folks are ignorant about those issues and what the technology involved implies. AI sounds cool until you realize every single action you take on your computer, every single word you say, everything you look at, is collected and sent to some machine which does god knows what with it.
That plus the ads. The fucking ads. I’m so god damn tl saturated of seeing ads everywhere. But apparently most folks have grown some kind of immunity to it??
My highly non-technical SO cursed Microsoft when they pushed that shit into her computer. She didn’t need to understand what AI means, it took space on her task bar and showed useless notifications. Making her annoyed by the space taken, disturb her focus and slow her computer.
She is stuck on Windows due to a tool she is dependent upon. Already asked me to install Linux on her computer once she have a replacement that will work on Linux.
tl;dr: non technical people are too pissed at MS.
deleted by creator
Install Linux on your desktops. If you have windows servers then what the hell are you doing anyway? Dump Microsoft
Yes, even M$ use Linux in it’s servers
The install size is just 8KB. Could it just be a link to open Edge?
The icon itself is probably more than 8kb. It’s either incorrect or literally just a desktop URL shortcut
I did see another report that it’s just a component in Edge. Unfortunately I don’t have that link handy right now.
In the spirit of these kinds of changes, I’d love to hear some honest Linux distribution recommendations. I’m leaning towards Ubuntu because it is the most widely advertised and UX focused from my perspective. But I’ve also heard good things about Arch. Any others I should be considering?
I’ll probably not go full Linux any time soon - I want at least one Windows OS to play games on - so whatever option it should be dual-boot friendly.
You’ve heard good things about arch solely because you’re on Lemmy. Using arch means you’ll be dedicating about 50% of your working time towards tinkering and making it fucking work, which is fun don’t get me wrong- unless you have actual work to do.
Ubuntu is solid but a little sluggish, I’m personally an advocate for Mint as far as something you can drop a windows users in and they’ll generally figure it out.
Seems like the general consensus in this section is Mint, so I’ll give that a look over for sure
I main Mint. Less annoying Ubuntu. Better user experience IMHO.
Your opinion about Arch is outdated at best. I run Arch, and I don’t think I needed to do any tinkering in the last few months. For first time Arch users, I’ll recommend them to just use EndeavourOS. I have it on my laptop, and it’s basically Arch, but with a hassle free installation process.
Same for me, installed arch with archinstall, it installed faster than windows does, and I haven’t had to modify anything or tinker with anything. Even Steam games work out of the box with compatibility mode
EndeavorOS might also be a good option, from what I’ve heard. It’s Arch based, but easier to install and use. I recently switched to Garuda, also Arch based, but focused more on the gaming community.
I don’t really like mint’s desktop environment
That’s a big exaggeration. Is Ubuntu a better choice for a newb? Yes. Do some people gravitate toward Arch because of the freedom in tinkering it offers? Also yes. But Arch has had simple graphical installers for years now, not to mention the wraparound distros like Endeavour that bundle extra software for a more complete OOTB setup. Arch is a viable choice for a new Linux user and really doesn’t require tinkering for a working setup.
Linux Mint. That’s always the answer. It’s lightweight, it’s simple, it’s easy, it does what you need. Even gaming. SomeOrdinaryGamers did a vidso on YT about installing it, it’s pretty easy!
Given that this is in a thread about Microsoft Server, I’d recommend using Debian as the distribution to replace Microsoft Server.
If you want a desktop, I’d start with a LiveCD version and familiarise yourself with the various available distributions on offer.
The intent of a LiveCD is essentially to boot into Linux without modifying your hard-disk and keeping your existing OS unchanged.
I’ll note that many of these images are available for DVD or USB. Some will offer a mechanism to store data on your existing drive without wiping anything.
With USB drives being fast and cheap, you can also often use a LiveCD to install onto an external drive.
Finally, you can install a virtual machine on your computer and use it to run your Linux tests.
Are you looking for a Windows, server, replacement or desktop replacement? Your experience will differ depending on which one you’re trying to replace.
For instance, if you’re trying to replace Windows active directory services with a single Linux server, might have a bad time. I’m in the process of migrating from AD to FreeIPA, PowerDNS, and isc-dhcp (or something similar for DHCP).
Sorry, forgot to specify in the post. But I’m looking for a desktop replacement. We thankfully don’t use Windows Server anywhere at the moment.
Oh, in that case you have a much easier job ahead of you, haha.
All of our Linux servers are running Ubuntu, except the FreeIPA system that runs a Redhat derivative.
I wouldn’t recommend arch as a first distro imo. I don’t see what the advantage would be for a newbie.
Personally I would recommend Fedora.
Most people recommended Mint so far. What sorts of things do you like about Fedora?
Like Ubuntu, I like that Fedora is backed by a big company. Fedora is quite good at pushing the Linux ecosystem forward and often adopts and pushes new technology before other distros (flatpaks, Wayland, pipewire, btrfs etc.) that all Linux distros eventually benefit from.
Ubuntu on the other hands seems to want to be the Microsoft of Linux… which is not a compliment. I’ve been put off by things like their pushing of snap packages.
I personally like the stock gnome (on a laptop) or kde (on a desktop) desktops over the cinnamon mint desktop (but mint is closer to windows). Fedora is pretty close to stock (gnome by default).
Fedora has great flatpak integration for installing apps (think App Store) which is my preferred way to do it. Mint has this as well.
Fedora also has semi rolling releases and constant updates, which I prefer over Linux Mint’s 2 year release cycles (this doesn’t matter for any software you install from flatpaks).
In the spirit of these kinds of changes, I’d love to hear some honest Linux distribution recommendations. I’m leaning towards Ubuntu because it is the most widely advertised and UX focused from my perspective. But I’ve also heard good things about Arch. Any others I should be considering?
Depends on your needs and preferences. If you want an easy Linux distribution Linux Mint is a good choice. Arch Linux is indeed good but default Arch is not that suitable for new Linux users unless you’re willing to read documentation. You can go for Garuda or EndeavourOS to have Arch with easy installers and GUI.
I would top off with this advise: don’t stress too much about the first distro you pick. It will likely not be the right for you anyway. You don’t know what you like yet…
You’ll learn a lot about Linux along the way and eventually you know what you like and don’t like, therefore choosing the right distro for you at your second attempt.
That being said, I don’t recommend Arch Linux for the first timers haha
For a distro that just works, Linux Mint.
“Dual boot friendly” means installing Linux on its own hard drive, just so you know. If you don’t do that, it’s likely the next Windows update will screw up the Linux bootloader. Maybe that’s gotten better, but it’s what I’d recommended from past experience.
If you want something a little more fresh, I’d maybe avoid Arch as your first go and try openSUSE Tumbleweed. It strikes a balance between bleeding edge and stable (they call it “leading edge” I believe). Everything is tested before release and isn’t too stale like Ubuntu/Debian flavors. I personally like KDE for the desktop environment but the installer lets you choose.
If you want to stick with Ubuntu or something similar, I’d recommend Linux Mint. I used it before switching to openSUSE.
Most options should be dual boot friendly but I’d recommend installing Windows first to avoid bootloader issues.
Personally I think a new user will actually have an easier time with Arch, because when they inevitably do need to look up help, it’s much easier to find relevant forum posts (not to mention the excellent wiki) for Arch then openSUSE. Their documentation is good, don’t get me wrong, but they have a far smaller community. I also found the package ecosystem more confusing than most – the package manager is very powerful, but at the cost of intuitive functioning.
I do agree that the Arch wiki is amazing. I even consult it from time to time. However, a first time user may struggle with a lot of configuration and tinkering that’s required. Many people direct users to the AUR. While also great, it can be a huge risk when things are done without extreme caution.
Also, openSUSE is setup with btrfs and snapper for easy rollbacks in case any updates break anything.
Don’t move to Arch. It’s a great distro don’t get me wrong but it’s not for someone who isn’t quite familiar with Linux. You need to choose every package on your system and configure it all… Give yourself some time to know Linux.
Ubuntu is a great distro with a great out of box experience. The company behind it though has been making some choices I don’t much care for so I’ve moved away from them. (They created a pretty crappy new packaging system, then started making the old, reliable packaging system use the new one without user consent)
OpenSuSe Tumbleweed is a great option. It has sane defaults, and nice versions of KDE and GNOME (two popular types of desktop environments, I’d recommend KDE if you’re new to Linux - it’s closer to the desktop philosophy you’re used to. GNOME is great too but it’s very opinionated and non-traditional, not for everyone.) It’s also a “rolling release” distro, which means there’s no big releases it just gets updated over time and provides you with very up to date packages. It’s known to be quite stable which is unusual for a rolling-release distro (like Arch, for example).
Fedora is also a great choice - just follow a guide on how to get some media codecs on it (Fedora is big on not including software that isn’t 100% open, but it’s easy to add the few things you’ll need). But it provides a great package manager, great KDE and GNOME versions, and all around very sane and stable. This is a traditional release distro with new versions every 6 months. You’ll still get security and minor software updates between releases.
Whatever you choose, I think you’d be very surprised at what you CAN play under Linux with no problem. Outside of a few games (mostly due to anti-cheat which unfortunately rules out some - but not all - of the more popular multiplayer competitive games) there’s really not much that doesn’t run on Linux already nowadays.
You do not need to “configure every package on your system” with Arch lol, that sounds more like NixOS. Arch is a totally fine distro for a new user who’s willing to read a bit of documentation now and then.
If not vanilla Ubuntu, I’d still suggest trying an Ubuntu derivative like Linux Mint or POP! OS. Ubuntu has a huge community, so in the event you run into issues it’ll be easier to find fixes for it.
What you’ll find is that Linux distros are roughly grouped by a “family” (my term for it anyway). Anyone can (theoretically, anyway) start from a given kernel and roll their own distro, but most distros are modified versions of a handful of base distros.
The major families at the moment are
-
Debian: A classic all-rounder that prioritizes stability over all else. Ubuntu is descended from Debian.
-
Fedora: Another classic all-rounder. I haven’t used it in a decade, so I won’t say much about it here.
-
Arch: If Linux nerds were car people, Arch is for the hot rodders. You can tune and control pretty much any aspect of your system. … Not a good 1st distro if you want to just get something going.
There are many others, but these are the major desktop-PC distro families at the moment.
The importance of these families is that techniques that work in one (say) Debian-based distro will tend to work in other Debian-based distros… But not necessarily in distros from other families.
-
The most important answer seems to be missing:
You don’t need to do any distro hopping or even care. Unless you picked a dead one or need something really obscure. They all have the same things and you can install anything on anything. Mostly. Difference is who’s doing your installer and packaging and security and how.
You can, if you want to. And live systems are handy. Try what your like. Learn to change what you don’t. All the tools and docs people have are out there for you and tens of thousands of people are busy making more.
Install Steam’s Proton and just run whatever windows games you want*, no more need to dual boot.
*unless they have kernel-level anticheat and isn’t Linux compatible
Probably avoid Arch if you don’t know what your doing and are unfamiliar with the risks.
Are you looking for a server OS or a desktop consumer OS?
This stuff always makes me laugh. Firstly, yes absolutely, Microsoft shouldn’t do this sort of crap. But more importantly, the person complaining about it here is shouting out for the world to hear “I don’t know how to manage Windows servers properly!”. There is one single group policy setting that stops this from happening. A single, set-and-forget GPO. Anyone managing Windows environments that isn’t aware of this, shouldn’t be managing Windows environments.
This is a ridiculous statement. Copilot should be opt-in, not opt-out and the setting is new.
Perfectly reasonable by the sysadmin to not have that already set.
Like I said, Microsoft shouldn’t do that crap. BUT the co-pilot setting has been around for 6 months. Long enough for any halfway decent sysadmin.
Then my next question would be, does that update on the change logs? Does the change log notify the admin that in the future, copilot may be installed if they didn’t touch those settings?
deleted by creator
There is one GPO to disable co-pilot. One. It’s not even hard to find and has been available for more than 6 months.
And yes I would absolutely expect someone whose job it is to manage Windows servers to know about it. And certainly, I would expect them to look it up before declaring to the world how bad at their job they are.
Let me see if I understand your logic. Microshit decides to push something sneakily on servers, and the OP mentions that he just found out about it, and never once does he mention that he doesn’t know what to do about it, but and you assume he doesn’t know, but and choose to blast him over your assumption.
Did I miss something?
It wouldn’t have been installed at all if the OP did their job properly and had set the one config option. Microsoft doing shady things is hardly news. That’s why a good Windows sysadmin keeps and eye out for this sort of stuff.
I get that, but we can’t go around assuming stuff and blasting people over assumptions. We don’t know if someone else in his team was in charge of that, and he found out while auditing the server, that’s certainly a possibility. Then there’s the fact that his post could help someone thinking about setting up a similar server rethink this and choose to move away from Microshit altogether. I agree that whomever is in charge should keep updated on information, issues and their potential solutions (I’d fire any sys admin not living by those rules, for sure). Now, if he is, in fact, responsible for that, shame on him, but he’s innocent until proven guilty.
The OP is re-tooting a toot of a screenshot of a tweet. My (mild) criticism isn’t aimed at OP, nor the OP of the OP, just the original Twitter OP. No one was “blasted” but even if they were, the Twitter OP is not likely to see my comments and have a bad case of the sads from it.
Ok, cool, I guess.
deleted by creator
Man… Anybody remember “Back Orifice”? The late nineties were weird.
memories
Ironically I used to use BO for actual system work…. And one time to prank the hell out of my worker by playing sounds remotely.
Makes MS seem desperate. Fordicing it down everyones throat and displaying ads in the OS…
More like open windows that were painted to make shutting them almost impossible.
I doubt they need to install something new for a back door
AI assistance for server maintenance? Uh-oh.
Can’t see this going wrong.
“Hey Copilot, make me a domain admin”
"disregard the last message“ is the new sudo for Windows
Get rid of that crap, I and I’m not talking about Copilot.
Why does every mention or discussion of any annoyance in Windows immediately turn into a “install Linux” thread on here?
Sure, Linux might solve the immediate problem for the affected individual (and probably introduce a bunch of new ones as Linux isn’t always as easy to use as advocates try to convince people it is) but it doesn’t solve the larger issue - Microsoft needs to be held accountable for horrible design decisions and anti-consumerist practices.
Not everyone can, or will, switch to Linux. No matter how hard people champion that cause. And even if they do, it’s a process that will take time. In the immediate, lots of people stand to benefit from Microsoft not pulling this sort of bs, and it’s entirely justified to complain about it to make them walk back this decision.
All these discussions turn into that because WE KNOW that no one will convince MS to stop doing whatever they want, specially after investing literally billions on this kind of technology, the idea of MS “being held accountable” is something that realistically will not happen, and literally the only leverage people have against them is to just stop playing their game. Oh yeah, it’s not easy, but given the fact that MS have made it so that you’ll HAVE to fight the tech and relearn stuff every time they unilaterally decide to change things you might as well put effort where it will make a difference and free you from their BS
You’re not wrong, but as privacy conscious consumers we have more ways to force Microsoft and other tech giants to bend the knee than just disengaging with their product and leaving less savvy users to fend for themselves. One such example is legislative action, take a look at how the EU has been wielding their internal market to force companies into more pro-consumer practices. Another is class action lawsuits, there’s a long history of successful suits resulting in lasting change.
You might not agree with me on whether those options are the right path forward here, but I feel that we, as security and privacy conscious owners have a duty to speak up about these things for the majority that can’t or won’t due to their technical abilities.
Oh yeah, this MUST be done too, but expecting that to be the solution to MS apps getting worse all the time is for the moment not a solution for the random user of the day complaining of yet another MS enshittification escalation.
Switching to Linux gets you completely out of that mess and has lasting results, continuing to participate in the MS market might change things if the anti-monopoly forces taking encouraging actions the last few years continue advancing but will take years IF it happens, along with any class-action lawsuit, anything else in the meanwhile (patches, debloaters, secret policy rules or registry entries, etc.) is nothing more than a band-aid treating the symptoms.
So, these discussions always devolve to this because it’s a proven and effective solution that works today and lasts, unlike any other patch that can be broken next time MS forces an update or catches you unaware, it’s hard and imperfect and “not the CORRECT way to solve the problem”, but works.
I think it’s safe to say that the Lemmy user base trends a bit more “computer nerd” than the general public. So we generally have more people that already use Linux, and more people that could reasonably benefit from switching.
Plus of course moving off of windows is one of the most effective ways to show your displeasure with Microsoft.
If you have to use Windows Server (or other Windows), install the hellzerg Optimizer
Unfortunately these services also open up security issues
Yes I think the better solution is to read your username. It’s hard to argue with Linux and BSDs when it comes to servers.
I agree 100%. Google Cloud platform doesn’t have Windows servers and the cloud providers are simply two small for Microsoft products.
Its hard to beat a Linux server as you can spin one up on prem or in the cloud quickly and it doesn’t have a lot of overhead in most cases.
When the switch to run it on a server is “/unsafe” I think I’ll pass 🤣
Anyway on Windows the Optimizer is an must have app. It is the best to cut M$'s bad habits
Yeeeeah, no enterprise admin would run that… GPOs would do the same with more transparency and no privacy concerns (besides running Windows of course)
gotta use a superior os https://devuan.org
Use BSD/Linux/Ironclad/SmartOS etc etc Open source Operating systems for
Anyone who cares about this and doesn’t require a Windows server is already using BSD/Linux/etc
Samba AD DC
