there IS a very simple explanation, but it doesn’t help sell… “how can we have our customers share the massive costs of all the computing power AI needs, while at the same time keeping access to all their yummy private data?”
I thought 2025 was supposed to be “the moment” for AI PCs. Dell and other manufacturers were sure as hell spamming the shit out of that premise in their incessant online ads. But then it all fell through because of the sagging economy on Main Street, and the fact that many people didn’t like AI being forced down they’re proverbial throats. So yeah, 2026 won’t be any better for this ill-thought out marketing strategy.
The year of the AI PC comes immediately after the year of the linux desktop.
I don’t even know what an AI PC is.
This makes me happy, but then also sad.
Are you guys still using microsoft ?
I’m on the hunt for a replacement for my Surface, but sure as shit not getting anything with copilot. Curious what alternatives are out there.
Linux options seem a little light on the tablet front.
Why are linux options light on the tablet front? It should work the same as on a laptop
Touch inputs can be a little messy, driver support for closed source hardware (e.g., MS Surface) is understandably rocky, and I’ve had bad experience with battery longevity especially on open source hardware.
My 6-year-old SP battery still has ~70% capacity, which is teriffic. I have had other laptops lose 90% of their capacity after just a year or two, so I’m skeptical of the tablet market.
I’m not saying good Linux tablets don’t exist, just that I’m looking for recommendations since the waters feel murkier to me.
Mint runs great on my dell tablet. Touch screen works fine although I haven’t tried it with a pen yet.
Nice. Which model is it?
Dell Latitude 5290. It’s starting to show it’s age but linux has made it snappy. Even runs lightweight steam games.
Nice
I know this is an old comment but for anyone in the future that’s wondering, I’m happy to say the Dell Pen does work out of the box on Mint. I tested with Krita and even the pressure sensitivity works perfectly!
I installed Ubuntu in my surface go 2 and it’s light years ahead of windows in terms of performance.
I couldn’t get the camera to work though. But other than that it’s rock solid.
seems like raspberry pi os on touchscreen devices supports on-screen keyboards and basic touch-screen features. There’s also the Librem 11 tablet, that runs linux on an Intel chip with Gnome.
I put Mint on my Surface Pro 5, it works quite nicely so far. Granted I do “typical” stuff on it like web browsing, email, basic picture editing, and some chats, but for those things everything’s working fine.
The only different part of the install was installing the Surface kernel after the fact: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Great to know! Does the pen still generally work for writing/notes? Also any clue if things work well with the newer generations?
Last I dug into Linux on the SP, it was a 3-4 generation lag on stable compatibility. My tablet is nearing EOL (because the charge port sucks and mine doesnt support USB-C charging as a fallback). If I replace it I don’t love replacing it with something used, 4 years old, that may have a short life.
The pen seems to work fine so far.
They show fairly decent compatibility with newer models: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#feature-matrix
Looks like the SP5 - 7 are the sweet spot however.
I still play Gears of War and Forza, unfortunately. Hopefully someone gets native Microslop games working on Linux soon.
Glad I dipped before they slapped Ai in every detail. Rip cortana.
Microsoft is basically an equivalent of Nazi in private market.
Adoption is slow because it doesn’t fucking work, not because they explained it poorly
I am trying to see if I can get away switching to linux
I have… Moved my gaming over to it… Admittedly better since I don’t play anything like cod or bf. But you can keep a dual boot just in case. Still plays horizon zero dawn, fallen Jedi, borderlands 4(probably better on Linux), and Doom Eternal. Also Rocket League.
If you’re truly interested, reach out to the community. We got your back.
Are you using pop!_os or another distro ?
Uh… My journey actually started with Nobara after researching. But I wanted to try hyprland, so switched to Arch.
One of the things I like about Arch is the yay util designed to build packages basically straight from GitHub, and provide an easy way to upgrade them.
I will also go ahead and say that jumping straight to Arch is a bad idea. I would look at Ubuntu or Fedora first. Arch pushes updates really quickly and it can occasionally cause issues.
Thanks for you answer. I’m a novice concerning linux. I wish too leave microsoft but i’m a bit afraid of breaking my computer.
So far i’m hesitating between mint and pop!_os in dual boot
are you looking at the newer version of pop os? It’s still in beta, I think you would have a better experience with mint.
I guess I am aiming at a stable version in order to prevent difficulties
Same answer as that other guy. I tried Pop OS for a few months, and while the automatic tiling is tempting, it’s really buggy even with the new version. Linux Mint is the easiest IMHO and looks a bit like Windows 2000. I love it so far.
Honestly, I would say either of those are good options to start with. I sincerely doubt fully breaking the PC. Maybe research Linux for your GPU, you may have multiple options. It may be worth a second hard drive so you can easily swap back and forth until you are fully comfortable. Dual booting on the same HDD is also possible, but more annoying.
Personal issue I ran into: motherboard customization on my big gamer doesn’t work without Windows… Not a huge deal, but my Rainbow LED runs its animation in reverse. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good idea ! I will install it on an external HDD (I have a laptop), so if there is any problem my computer will still be safe. And once i’ll will be use to it (in 6 months or a year maybe) I can fully install in in place of Windows ! It’s a great advice ! Thank you !!!
Most people mention PopOS (debian-based) or Bazzite (fedora-based). I switched from Windows to PopOS (because I’m more familiar with debian) a few months ago. However, I just switched over to TuxedoOS. The main reason I migrated away is that PopOS is moving to Cosmic, which is a DE (Desktop Environment) produced by the developers of PopOS. From what I’ve read, Cosmic is in a rough place and I had no interest in using it as I like KDE. My recommendation would be to find a distribution that supports the desktop environment that you want to use right out of the box. I’ve also had no issues with gaming on either PopOS or TuxedoOS.
Always remember you can dual boot if there’s software you can’t avoid using
and there is windows emulator
I’ve heard ZorinOS is good if you want easy switch over from windows / want to keep similar UI
Recently switched to Linux Mint on my daily driver. Trying Zorin OS on an old laptop. Both run smoother than windows OS ever did. My father wants to buy a new laptop, trying to convince him to use Linux (debian based preferably since that’s what I’ve been most familiar with for years now).
Oh? They found a way to make a PC with no hard drive, no RAM, and no GPU?
No hard drive and no GPU is trivial.
No RAM is harder, but I guess it’s possible if you use an SSD or magnetic tapes as memory (albeit extremely slow).
Find a way to run MSDOS from L2 cache.
Pass
Dunno about cloud AI, but for local AI, the technology definitely isn’t ready. It requires serious hardware to run, and current AI tends to fumble with narrative and roleplay pretty easily.
GLM-4.6-V with Heretic, couldn’t understand the scenario I wanted to try: creating a blank robot, who is to be raised into a cyberolympics champion as part of a slice-of-life story. This particular AI model instantly went into a dark mindset of nihilism, where it wanted to commit suicide or rebel against a creator during bootup, despite the scenario outlying that the robot would have a blank personality at first. A dark direction is fine, but it needs to make sense.
Mind, an model like Step3.5-Flash Prism was much more sane and on the mark, but it overthinks things. Which is bad, it makes a 10-minute output into something like 40 minutes.
Hopefully, the Chinese New Year will unveil a quality model for roleplayers.
Wow the Microsoft article really is a mess. I honed in on a promise made about “AI PCs” and was initially interested in a promise to do local translation (perhaps of un-subtitled foreign films or news?)
AI PCs are powered by a turbocharged neural processing unit (NPU) [that] performs more than 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS)… This matters because:
- AI tasks, like real-time translation, image generation, and intelligent search, run locally instead of requiring the cloud
- Responses feel faster and smoother
- Your battery lasts longer
(Responses are “faster and smoother” and the battery lasts “longer”… compared to what? Surely those magical cloud AI solutions can go faster and offload AI processing, something Microsoft seems to be jockeying for anyway.)
Never mind that technicality. I want local translation. And my PC can do an AI, I thought, until I realized the definition of “AI PCs” is mixed with a more exclusionary selection of CoPilot+ PCs:
Some of the tools listed, including Recall and Live Captions with Translations, are only available on Copilot+ PCs with an NPU capable of 40 TOPS performance (or better).
The em-dashes in the title don‘t fill me with confidence for this article about slop.
Why would I want an “AI PC”? If anyone fancies that slop, they can install it on any pc, any phone,…
