Microsoft is starting to integrate AI shortcuts, or what it calls AI actions, into the File Explorer in Windows 11. These shortcuts let you right-click on a file and quickly get to Windows AI features like blurring the background of a photo, erasing objects, or even summarizing content from Office files.
Four image actions are currently being tested in the latest Dev Channel builds of Windows 11, including Bing visual search to find similar images on the web, the blur background and erase objects features found in the Photos app, and the remove background option in Paint.
Obligatory “learn to use your computer and install another OS” post. You’ll probably find that your computer becomes MORE useful, not less.
Most people don’t realize how slow Windows is. When you try something else, you realize how much time you have been spending just waiting for Windows to do things. Our computers can be a lot faster than Windows lets them be.
A couple of weeks ago I rebooted into Windows for the first time in well over 8 months, as I needed to use a piece of software I don’t have on Linux (it’s available, I’m just refusing to pay for it and no alternative method has materialised), and getting anything done was incredibly frustrating.
First everything had to update, and I was forced to log in to a bunch of stuff. My web browser spontaneously vanished, as did Discord. No idea why. Opening Explorer consistently took several seconds because it always decided to poll my external drive before displaying anything, even if I didn’t do shit in my external drive.
Explorer being slow applies on my work PC too, and I have to use Windows on that. Every day I wonder how it’d be to put Linux on it.
Nautilus just opens the moment I click on it. Always.
This feels weird. Everything will want to update on any system if you’ve not had it online for 6 months. And the majority of the login requests are going to be your previous credentials being invalidated because they’ve been offline for so long. You’d see similar behavior on Linux.
Applications vanishing isn’t really something that happens on any OS really so I do have to question what you did to cause it. Uninstallers don’t just silently pop off at random. I’ve not even heard anecdotal tellings of that happening previously.
I’ll agree with you on Explorer though. It’s slow as molasses, and I hate utilizing it whenever I have to. It just feels bad.
I guess my point is, complain about Windows itself, and things directly tied into Windows. When you pull out “software I didn’t start for six months wants to update” as your first complaint it doesn’t really help your argument.
When you pull out “software I didn’t start for six months wants to update”
Did the software “want” to update or “force” an update? There’s a meaningful difference there and windows often doesn’t give you a choice or do anything else while it’s updating.
“Everything” implies much more than the OS and related Windows updates.
And honestly, Windows forcing updates is a good thing, as has been said time and again. Do you recall the days of Windows XP, where so so many machines were sitting on relatively ancient versions, and exposed to a huge number of vulnerabilities? That is what lead to the current update situation.
And to those that argue that users should be able to manage their own updates, there are numerous ways for a power user to do just that. But the bar for entry is “high” (no UI) to prevent normal end users who will never actually manage their updates from turning them off.
This is my personal machine that I own, there is no reason for my operating system to “hide” options from me. If I want to never update my system or delete core operating files that’s my fucking problem to deal with.
You know what else windows hides from normal users? How to disable information tracking, ads, and this AI bullshit.
I have had Windows corrupt a hard drive because it forced an update that exceeded the available storage.
If they only forced security updates by default, I would agree with you. But they don’t.
O.o how long ago was this? I literally just had an issue on a VM where Windows 11 refused to update due to disk space constraints.
The big difference is that updates in Linux happen in the background and aren’t very intrusive. Your hard drive will be used here and there as it unpacks packages but the difference between say, apt, and Windows update is stark. Windows update slows everything down quite a lot.
I recently swapped my Dad’s Windows computer with my old machine, which I installed Linux on ahead of time.
I told him it was a faster machine - which it was just slightly in the hardware sense, a very minor upgrade. A half-truth to encourage the transition.
But of course, it’s running Linux, not Windows.
Next day he phones me up really happy that it’s “so much faster than the old machine!”
And it really is a lot faster, but it’s not the hardware. It’s just not getting bogged down with all the crap Windows constantly does in the background.
Either way, mission accomplished.
Installing gpu drivers on linux was night and day. Everything around drivers on windows is such a hassle and I’m shocked they haven’t bothered to look into it. Sure there’s geforce experience but that software is just another form of bloat meant to collect telemetry.
I’m having the best time computing on linux again. It had been about 10 years since I last had it since I kind of just forgot about it or thought it wouldn’t fit my needs. I hardly boot to my windows drive now except to play pubg.
No one asked for this.
Some senior exec at Microsoft asked for this.
He didn’t ask.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
He could not find back his porn and needs AI so he can ask to find the right clip?
This seems more like a warning to me.
It’s a threat. To your security. To your data. To you in general.
So? Windows/MS …What’s new then?
Today I had to disable Copilot in Notepad.
Notepad.
The shitty word editor that you use to jot down your shitty writing before copypasting it into somewhere else to put actual work into it.
You’re telling me I can’t change the shitty line-spacing in shitty Notepad, but I can get a top-of-the-line corporate LLM to help me with my purposely shitty writing?
#keepnotepadshitty
I love notepad for deleting all formatting so word doesn’t take a massive shit when I paste things into it from other documents.
i’m so tired of ai
You know it’s funny that Microsoft took this feature from Apple from macOS. But here’s the thing right? This shit requires a super computer npu to run and meanwhile my 2012 MacBook Pro with a core i5 3rd gen running opencore legacy patcher can just do this stuff in the exact same way. For the features one would actually wanna use this for.
Dear baby jesus. If I weren’t a Linux user I’d scream to stop all of this AI stuffing
Then again, I’m a Linux user and I’m just laughing.
Join Linux, come to the dark side, we got cookies
possible issues:
- blurred a part of the photo that shouldn’t be blurred, data loss
- erased the wrong object, data loss
- deleted large chunks of content in my docs/ppts/spreadsheets I wanted to keep, data loss
This is a really bad idea
letting AI do whatever it wants to your files is not very good…
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I was actually delighted when Windows 11 added tabs to notepad and explorer, and layers make MSPaint worth using.
But all of these things became buggy messes. Explorer showing ads for OneDrive and inexplicable behavior, On more than one occasion, the address bar would become unusable, and I deeply resent having to use the mouse to do simple tasks.
Now I know that this was prelude to Copilot.
So now I daily drive Debian making me a computer user, not a resource for billionaires to mine.
Tabs in Notepad is a nice touch. It allows multiple notes in one window and caches those notes if you close without saving, yet still stupid simple. Except that fucking copilot icon staring at me in the corner…
Layers in MS Paint just feels like unnecessary feature creep.
Thanks to that stupid AI (or more pathetically, something more basic?) notepad takes forever to load now. One of the main advantages it used to have: gone.
If Linux was more compatible with a lot of programs/games there would be absolutely no reason to install windows ever again
Linux is compatible with a lot more than it used to be, and for those stubborn programs, there are usually FOSS alternatives, or emulation/compatibility layers. Hell, my machine runs games faster through Proton on Linux in 1440p than it did natively on Windows in 1080p.
Wine or Proton will make just bout anything you run on windows run.
I’m not missing anything, even games run fine with Wine/Proton. Also, a lot of the Linux games a really fun! (I personally enjoy Xonotic and SuperTuxKart. I also like to play custom roms with mgba) The only thing I’m missing is pretty much ONE really niche network program thing which didn’t have a Linux version. Everything else either has a Linux version, is a Windows game that can be run with Wine, or has some Linux alternative (think inkscape, kdenlive, okular)
What networking program? If it’s not some proprietary protocol I bet there is a Linux tool that does it.
A VPN. I couldn’t get V2rayA (the vpn uses v2ray, there’s a win + mac app for that specific vpn but not linux) to work. I might have to have another crack at it soon…
edit: Clash Verge (rev) works like a charm! Hooray!
I don’t understand why a VPN needs special software to work honestly but I guess that’s valid. It’s likely it would “work” in wine but idk if it will be able to do what it needs to.
not special software, but it has an app that lets you log in on win and mac. On Linux, I was able to log in and see all the servers but when I set it as proxy it didn’t work :( I might try again later
edit: Clash Verge is supported by the VPN, but I thought there was no Linux app (turns out there is!) and it works fine! Hooray!
Yeah but having to use third party software to run games is annoying and it’s probably buggy and you more than likely get errors
I mainly play WoW and I doubt that’ll run effectively.
Just looking up online how to install it already looks tedious.
I mainly play WoW and I doubt that’ll run effectively.
I mean all I’m using is Steam, adding them as “non-steam games”. I’ve also found some game art to make it look nice. For me at least, I haven’t run into any issues besides at one point one of my games was missing a few shaders causing it to render improperly (I forgot to move the files from my Windows installation, but after I did everything worked!)
It wasn’t difficult to install at all! I just installed steam (for fedora you need to make sure you enable third-party repos when furst installing the OS) and that’s basically it. I’ve also installed Wine manually (not very hard, just “sudo dnf install wine” on fedora) to run a few non-game programs like some compiled .exe programs I made a few years ago by running “wine [program name]”. It’s crazy how simple it all is now!
Just get lutris and I expect it works just fine. Worked fine for overwatch, so i expect WoW too.
But you’re right, launchers are usually the biggest issue when its comes to compatibility. Especially that completely useless piece of shit Rockstar peddles.
I rather run everything in third party apps than deal with Windows again,. But each his own of course.
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might be difficult for the layperson to agree to that,
Well, you either switch and learn to use compatible software or you can keep complaining about enshittification for the rest of your life.
This is a whole new level of data mining, which is why they want it. Now they will scan everything that’s open.
they want to justify the cost of using AI, which they admit to not generating any profit, they are trying to sell off as much data as they can, so they can offsett the cost of power/water intensive AI.
Yeah I’m glad i chose Mint instead of Win11
I love how even this flagship feature is just one more lazy shortcut to another app that bloats the context menu 😅
Context menu bloat was solved in W11 by hiding all those actions you do use behind a “more…” button 🤦♂️ TIHI
man I’m so glad I’ll never use windows again.
Don’t get me wrong - this is awful and is just another misstep in a long line of missteps by Microsoft.
But I also can’t help but chuckle at this. It is so clear that “AI” as it has been developed today is hitting a peak of what it can do. These corporations are desperate to shove it in every product they possibly can to drive sales and valuations to make shareholders wet and yet the only things they ever advertise AI being capable of are crap like summaries, background removal, background insertion, grammar/typo checking, list making, web searching, etc. Most of it being crap that I have never once heard of a person being even remotely interested in… and why would they be? Why would someone want to edit their photos to add a different sky, new people, etc to create memories that never happened?
I disagree. If this is in your system, they’re going to use every file on your computer to train their AI. That’s my guess.
I’m sure they will. It’s Microsoft, so I’d expect nothing less than that.
