Theoretically, when it’s up and running. How do you intend to get to that state, though? One has to install it first. And I think that alone is a massive filter.
inb4 someone says:
I did it, and I found it extremely straightforward.
I’m sure you did, Mr. “I hate how much Reddit is pandering to the braindead to the point that I joined an experimental social media platform”, I’m sure you did. Clearly, you are a qualitative sample of people who use Windows computers.
Sarcasm aside, look at how railroaded and coddling the Windows 10 installer is. I am certain a large plurality of Windows users’ initiative would completely evaporate having to navigate that. And now we want to throw a Linux installation at them?
Factor on top how the vast majority of computer users in all forms that computers take simply take for granted that the OS the computer comes with is a part of the computer. Normal people don’t upgrade OSes unless the OS itself railroads them into it (which Win10 already does aggressively whenable), or they buy a new PC that happens to come with it pre-installed. The knowledge required to negotiate an OS wipe and reinstall is not something most people possess, and I expect presenting that knowledge to them on a silver platter is something they’d hastily recoil from.
We’re in a catch-22 here. Even if all the pieces for the fabled Linux Desktop are arguably here, actually getting it into the hands of those who would benefit from it most remains prohibitive.
This is also ignoring the elephant in the room: A massive swath of these Windows PCs (Maybe even most of them? I have no backing figures, just a hunch.) are not personal computers, but office PCs that belong to a company fleet. There’s a reason Windows utterly dominates the office–Windows rules the IT sphere, at least where personal devices given to employees are concerned. Active Directory? Group Policy? Come on, guys. None of the companies who depend on these management tools are pivoting to Linux anytime soon, and you know it. And if their cheap, bulk order desk PCs don’t support Windows 11, they are absolutely getting landfilled.
The only effective mitigation I could think of would be to start a charity that takes obselesced office PCs, refurbishes them to Linux, and provides them at low or no cost to those who need a low cost or free PC. It would get Linux into more hands, but it would also strengthen a stigma that Linux is nothing more than the poor man’s OS. The Dr Thunder to Window’s Mountain Dew.
The way I see it is 240 million computers have two different courses. One is to just drop the hardware, the other is to update the software. What is granted is that, if you decide to update the software, you will have to research how to do it. You may end up just buying new hardware, or hiring someone to do the job, but there’s a chance to just go for it.
If people go for upgrading their OS for themselves, then they have to research how to do it, and when they do it, they will probably find out that some thing called Linux could fit their needs. If Linux enthusiasts don’t say shit, they will install Windows for sure, otherwise, maybe they will install Linux. I’m not saying this is the year of the Linux desktop and/or this is a huge opportunity to convert PCs to Linux.
I recently installed elementary os on a Dell laptop and Fedora on an older super shitty Dell laptop. Honestly I know it was a bit of luck but both installs could’ve hardly gone smoother. The install itself? Easier than windows and absolutely faster. Out of the two computers, assuming patience with learning a new thing, there was barely friction and this could’ve been done by most people with a little gumption.
I told the laptop owners that the touch screen wouldn’t work on the newer one. Just assumed that was a weird hardware software combination that would be very difficult if not impossible to get working. They were ok with that because essentially both computers were slow trash and we were trying to salvage them. Lo and behold though-- the touchscreen worked out the box with literally no effort. It didn’t behave how the owners wanted (like it did on windows), but 15 minutes of googling and a reboot and the touch screen was working exactly as it did on windows. Obviously Linux isn’t for everyone but when 1) it’s gotten this good and 2) the alternative is trashing a computer, it really saddens me to see a long diatribe shitting all over the possibility of salvaging a lot of these computers rather than throwing them away.
this could’ve been done by most people with a little gumption.
My point was not that installing Linux is intrinsically difficult, it’s that people who have “a little gumption” to figure it out are a far rarer breed than you seem to believe.
Also, I wasn’t intending to “shit all over the possibility” of salvaging old PCs. I support that! I think Linux (Mint, specifically) would be a perfect drop-in for most light use Windows users, as it is a stable and friendly solution to common needs. I was just raising the part most people overlook: actually getting it running. Not just the technical challenges, but the mental ones, too. The people who stand to gain the most from a free and stable OS are paradoxically the same people who are the least equipped to find and set it up.
We have a long road ahead of us to normalize the procedures of obtaining and installing a new OS in the public eye. Linux can be as user friendly as you like, but it’s all for nothing to the average Joe if he doesn’t understand how to get it. Or why he should even bother getting it, for that matter.
I guess by “Windows installer” I actually meant the setup wizard that runs the first time you boot an OEM machine from the factory. The thing 99% of Windows users actually see. Not sure if that’s significantly different.
And if you want to claim even that is terrible, I really have to question by what metric you’re measuring. Is it because it doesn’t give you the options you want, like creating an offline user account, or because it’s full of bloat screens for products like OneDrive? Sure, I guess. But I’d say having these criticisms are very specifically the kind of things that make you an outlier compared to the average person I’m talking about. These are things normal people don’t bat an eye at. Giving them more control just intimidates them.
And yeah, I’m sure you agree, “provided [they] can create a USB” is a huge ask for a lot of people. Child’s play for us, but weird and scary black magic to most. Guides can and do make it crystal clear what to do, but as long as it feels spooky to download and run the magic programs, no one will feel comfortable doing it.
the setup process for the first run of a new windows machine is called the out of box experience. its truely awful in the way it railroads you but a setup process is a lot more approachable than an installer.
Honestly people who can’t open a PDF and refuse to learn shouldn’t use a computer in the first place.
But, assuming most people aren’t complete morons and can actually do stuff if they decide to sit down, Google how to do it and actually do it instead of declaring “I am stupid” and not even try, then even just telling or better yet showing people there’s an alternative to throwing your perfectly functioning laptop and buying an expensive new one will go a long way to get new users and save some e-waste.
Of course, installing an OS isn’t easy, for linux specifically the hard part is entering the BIOS to disable secure boot and then go into the boot menu to select the USB. After that it’s a lot easier. Of course they can also be directed towards Linux computers, like system76’s, or Tuxedo’s or Laptops with Linux’s if necessary.
Naturally to get Linux to dominate the desktop we need the EU to say “know what fuck you, your PC can’t come with a preinstalled paid OS” paired with people learning Linux is an option when buying the PC and seeing that it is free vs what like 135€?
But, assuming most people aren’t complete morons and can actually do stuff if they decide to sit down, Google how to do it and actually do it instead of declaring “I am stupid” and not even try
Extremely charitable assumption, I’d say.
I do think most people do in fact possess the ability to follow instructions and succeed at installing Linux from USB. But it all falls apart at the key word “decide”. Very few people choose to devote the low, but nonzero, effort required to pull it off.
for linux specifically the hard part is entering the BIOS to disable secure boot and then go into the boot menu to select the USB
I would say, for the demographic I’m thinking of, the hardest part is actually getting the installation media in the first place. Not because it’s challenging to do, but just getting over the mental barrier of this (to them) extremely unorthodox method of installing software.
Like, first you have to find the thing and download it. Which, fine, that’s typical so far But the thing you download isn’t some .exe you run. No, you need to put it on a flash drive. So you need one of those lying around, either empty or with nothing important on it. But you don’t just copy the installl file onto it the ““normal”” way, nooo… you also have to separately download some strange utility that burns it onto the flash drive in some special way or else it won’t work. Only then do you have to tickle the BIOS.
I understand if you or anyone else reading rolls their eyes at that description because these steps are so boneheadedly simple. And I agree, they are. But it’s not so much a question of whether it’s hard to do, it’s a question of whether it feels safe and natural to do. Which, to you and me, it is. But to the kind of person who, as you say, shouldn’t even be using a computer in the first place (but they must anyhow, because trying to live in our modern information age society without one closes too many doors), it’s an uncomfortable, dark ritual.
Get them to flash it with Ventoy, then they can copy and paste the ISO. Bit easier for dummies and let’s them put more .iso files in it without the “but why can’t I do more than one”.
The BIOS is a lot scarier to noobs. You have to press a button very fast, go into a scary menu that looks different than anything else and full of weird options, to disable something that has secure in its name, and then something about boots to turn on the PC from the USB? But my computer has no boots!
Now this was made easier by windows which can be told to reboot directly on the BIOS or media drive, but it is still more daunting to newbies than to use a program to flash a USB in my experience.
Of course, that’s why we need to be there for tech illiterate people to teach them how to read, without assuming they’re mentally challenged because they’re not stupid they just lack the willingness to try something that looks scary the first time you do it (like most things in life). If I got my mother, who can barely figure out how to open the file manager on windows, to install Linux Mint and some software in it over a phone call, it’s possible with anyone.
I’m reading and agreeing, really vibing with what you’re saying. Then you have to go and fumble it on the last line. Come on, man! Every soda afficianado knows Dr Thunder is the poor man’s Dr Pepper
Edit: My bad. I did the thing where I read like the first two sentences and didn’t read the rest. Reading the rest of the reply basically acknowledged my refute.
The majority of this waste is coming from businesses that now need to upgrade. That’s why there are IT departments to figure it out for the tech illiterate. As long as they can open their email client, a text editor and excel, you’ve overcome 90% of what a business needs for their computers.
You are right, Grandma Jones with her 800x600 resolution screen, 10 downloaded tool bars and Microsoft Edge ain’t going to get it, but Grandma Jones is still using XP, a CRT and a Gateway Computer she bought back in 2006
But a ton of people can open a PDF and will be able to select an USB stick from menu and click next, next, next… It’s not completely different, you still use a mouse, a keyboard, you click on things, you get some feedback from it… When a new kind of mobile app arrive, I can see someone using no more than 5 apps in life having problems, but this doesn’t mean only them exists, we do not talk about switching everyone here. People change houses, how are they figuring out where is the toilet if doors have different color and are in different positions?
Also a reason why any software like Microsoft Windows or Office should be banned from public education, especially primary schools.
Pretty much this. Linux users often forget that, when it comes to specifically operating systems, the vast, vast majority of people are used to what they know, and literally instinctively reject change of any kind.
Most people do not even know what an operating system /is/.
Any one who has ever worked in IT knows this, that the vast, vast majority of computer users are laughably technically incompetent, to the point that they usually get angry when you try to explain basic foundational concepts to them.
Then add on top of that decades of marketing that conditions most of the small minority of people who bother to attempt to learn anything about software and hardware into basically believing slogans, tag lines, and going gaga for tech that has some acronym or cute name, which they understand nothing about beyond the most surface level description.
Summing up, while it is possible to convince a person to switch to a new OS, it is maddeningly difficult at best nearly all the time. People basically demand a perfect product, even though they cannot even come close to beginning to describe what its features would be, and will instinctively assume they know more than actual tech experts all the time.
That being said, if you could run a business of basically buying or acquiring used laptops for cheap, refurbishing them with a stable linux OS, and then reselling them, you might be able to have a successful business, but the problem is that flashing OSs all day long is extremely, mind destroyingly boring and unfulfilling.
My 80 year old dad has been using a XUbuntu for years and never even noticed. The only reason he knows he’s using Linux at all is because he saw a news story about Windows tracking and asked about it. He was quite happy not to be affected.
Back in the day X was a great protocol that reflected the needs of the time.
Applications asked it to draw some lines and text.
It sent input events to applications.
People also wanted to customize how their windows were laid out more flexibly. So the window manager appeared. This would move all of your windows around for you and provide some global shortcuts for things.
Then graphics got more complicated. All of a sudden the simple drawing primitives of X weren’t sufficient. Other than lines, text and rectangles applications wanted gradients, rounded corners and to display rich graphics. So now instead of using all of these fancy drawing APIs they were just uploading big bitmaps to the X server. At this point 1/3 of what the X server was previously doing became obsolete.
Next people wanted fancy effects and transparency (like drop shadows). So window managers started compositing the display. This is great but now they need more control than just moving windows around on the display in case they are warped, rendered somewhere slightly differently or on a different workspace. So now all input events go first from X to the window manager, then back to X, then to the application. Also output needs to be processed by the window manager, so it is sent from the client to X, then to the window manager, then the composited output is sent to X. So another 1/3 of what X was doing became obsolete.
So now what is the X server doing:
Outputting the composited image to the display.
Receiving input from input devices.
Shuffling messages and graphics between the window manager and applications.
It turns out that 1 and 2 have got vastly simpler over the years, and can now basically be solved by a few libraries. 3 is just overhead (especially if you are trying to use X over a network because input and output need to make multiple round-trips each).
So 1 and 2 turned into libraries and 3 was just removed. Basically this made the X server disappear. Now the window manager just directly read input and displayed output usually using some common libraries.
Now removing the X server is a breaking change, so it was a great time to rethink a lot of decisions. Some of the highlights are:
Accessing other applications information (output and input capture) requires explicit permission. This is a key piece to sandboxing applications.
Organize the system around frames to avoid tearing except for when desired (X doesn’t really have the concept of a frame).
Remove lots of basically unused APIs like fonts, drawing and many others.
So the future is great. Simpler, faster, more secure and more extensible. However getting there takes time.
This was also slowed down by some people trying to resist some features that X had (such as applications being able to position themselves). And with a few examples like that it can be impossible to make a nice port of an application to Wayland. However over time these features are being added and these days most applications have good Wayland support.
Laugh at or complain about Ubuntu all you wish… but this type of effort really puts Linux as a compelling competitor to Windows for enterprise desktop users. Rather than paying for the Windows software license and then Microsoft or 3rd party support for the OS on top, the fees would be for dedicated operating system and package support against criticial vulnerabilities. Wouldn’t a business rather have something that “just works as it is” over the long term, rather than something that leaves sysadmins holding their breath every Patch Tuesday with Microsoft randomly shoehorning in “features” here and there that have to be shutoff in GP editor?
More people using Ubuntu means more will be comfortable switching away from mac/Windows. Plus the free software components benefit from having a dedicated team securely supporting the packages over the long term.
The longstanding issue that remains is all the industry-specialized software either crappily-coded or riddled with DRMs and whatnot don’t support Linux well yet.
This is valid for end users too. Ubuntu Pro is free for up to 5 machines. People can install 22.04 and stay on it for 10 years or 24.04 for 12 years. That’s the kind of boring stable desktop operation that only Windows XP has managed to muster and people loved it. It’s perfect for the kind of folks who hate having to do major OS upgrades, as well as people who support others for free. Cough … family IT … cough. You bet your ass the family members I support would stay on 22.04 for a looong time!
I just jumped ship completely (last was dealing with scanner & printer) with windows, where can I find replacements for the 5 people I “follow” on youtube (ukraine war reports & beginner chess)? I mean is there even an alternative?
Nobody has the attention span to read them - as proven by the declining buy-in on YouTube videos longer than a TikTok reel - let alone write them. Written media will continue to rapidly decline.
Not sure why you went on the defence, my generation is the reel addicted monkeys that stopped learning anything and instead started spouting off “knowledge” from doomscrolling. We’re the ones that are killing printed media, and we’re the ones either airing or producing worse and worse garbage on TV as well.
We’re killing our own attention span year by year and none of us want to be uncomfortable for a second by admitting it’s a problem.
I feel like a I’m an old dinosaur yelling at the clouds because I can’t stand most video content. There’s a time and place for it but an 8 paragraph op-ed would suffice for content like this.
For me it’s the bloody “video essay” format. Hyper narrated, spoken straight to the camera. Waste of traffic, waste of storage, waste of attention. People think the argument carries more weight, or is just more persuasive, when someone is speaking at you with some vaguely related visual in the background. But really a written piece could be pulled apart so much more quickly.
Unfortunately OpenAI’s Whisper doesn’t do written transcriptions fast enough on my workstation yet for me to use it full time.
I just got rid of my last Windows installation, and I got rid of all my Apple devices a couple years ago. The Linux life is so nice!
On the other hand, I just setup a Windows gaming machine for a friend (I would have pushed Linux, but I live far away and can’t commit to being tech support). There were so many hoops to jump through to cut through all the crap:
I had to set the region to somewhere in the EU so that my friend can uninstall Edge sometime in March, 2024 without breaking other functionality
I had to run a hidden script at a specific point during the install to allow me to not have to use a Microsoft account
I had to disconnect the non-boot drive and reinstall because the Windows installer uses motherboard drive ordering instead of UUID to decide which drive to put the boot partition on.
I had to run Win Debloat Tools to get rid of all the crap Microsoft adds to their OS
I had to find a 3rd party driver update tool because the motherboard manufacturer’s software is terrible and installs a bunch of extra crap.
I had to install a 3rd party Nvidia driver update tool because their official one requires making an account and gives a bunch of unwanted ads as notifications.
It’s seriously bonkers. It makes you really appreciate Linux as a whole and package managers in particular.
Whenever people talk about how difficult Linux is to install i ask them if they’ve installed Windows lately. They all say “yes”. I do not believe a word of it, though. If they had done so–or more likely, tried to do so–there’s no way they’d have that opinion. I’m sure they’ve gone into their OEM’s recovery menu and hit “reinstall” or whatever, but that’s a very different process.
It’s funny because I’ve built like six Windows machines and the install process is always a snap. You just select what drive to install to, what telemetry options you want on/off, and then press start.
You don’t even have to have an Internet connection/Microsoft account if you don’t want to, you can just create a local one.
I don’t understand how you guys have such a hard time with it. Certain distros of Linux are pretty easy to get going, but Windows is only hard if you refuse to leave your Linux knowledge bubble, ever.
Sure we can talk about how you have to go in and do X and Y in order to get it configured how YOU want, but that shit applies in Linux too.
I don’t know when the last time you tried to install Windows was, but when I installed Windows 11 Pro yesterday, there was no obvious option to install without an internet connection and a Microsoft account. To make that option appear, I had to hit shift+f10 at the country selection screen to open a command prompt and run the script located at “oobe\bypassrno.cmd” to have the option “I don’t have an internet connection” to pop up and allow me to bypass needing a Microsoft account.
That’s fine, and people said the same thing about Windows 10, and Windows 7, and Windows XP, and…
If you control for bloat, tracking, and ads, the install process for Windows versions has gotten steadily more difficult as time goes on. Installing Windows 11 is a snap, too, … if you don’t care about all the crap they added.
The thing us Linux users are complaining about is not how easy it is to install if you accept the enshittification that Microsoft forces, but how difficult it is to install without it.
It’s “hard” to us because we actually uncheck the telemetry settings and care about not having a Microsoft account on, including the additional debloating afterwards. For the average user, clicking next every step, ignoring the data harvesting effort and creating / using a Microsoft account is part of the experience and “normal” to them.
I’ve tried switching to Linux exclusively multiple times, and I always end up falling back to Windows on my desktop. I have multiple Linux servers and VMs, but there are two main barriers. First is gaming. Last time I tried, I couldn’t get RTX working in some titles, EA launcher was broken, and it was generally just buggy. The second reason is for coding. I’ve been coding for Windows for almost 20 years, and I am hugely reliant on Visual Studio. I just can’t find a comparable alternative for Linux.
I’d ditch Windows in a second if I could make Linux work for me, but so far I haven’t had much luck.
I have a friend that does .NET development on Linux. So I guess that’s possible. I know he uses JetBrains Rider as an IDE instead of visual studio. I’m sure there are some other hoops he jumps through, as well, but I never really dove into it with him. I always used Visual Studio in Uni, myself. I also have a Windows partition for gaming and music production.
.NET is infuriating enough on Windows. Any time I have to work with a .NET library, I always write a wrapper with a C or C++ interface first. Your friend who does .NET development on Linux has far more patience than I can ever hope to have.
I had similar issues. My Nvidia GPU was the main thing hold me back for so long. I finally upgraded to an AMD RX 7900 XTX and cycled my Nvidia GPU to my home server for transcoding, gpu compute, and KasmVNC GPU acceleration.
I also decided that ray tracing, HDR, and games that don’t support Linux just aren’t important to me, but it took me a long time to become okay with that.
For development, I guess I’ve been lucky in the type of work that I do in that Linux is a perfect fit. I find Windows to be far more of a hassle than it’s worth, but if you do game development or Windows-specific development, I can see that being a barrier.
RTX is one of those things that just isn’t optional for me. I may be in the minority, but I am far more concerned with how games look than how they run. As long as my FPS is above 30 or so, I’m generally okay with performance. I feel like Windows will always support those “extra features” like RTX before Linux, unfortunately. I really comes down to market share, I think; the developers at Nvidia and AMD are going to target Windows first, and the people who maintain Proton are stuck in second place. You’ll have to pry Windows 10 out of my cold dead hands, though; I liked Vista better than Windows 11.
For development, I’m locked into Windows at work, but my job isn’t specifically software development; it just happens to be a useful skill to have in my career. I do far more coding at home, and I certainly have the option of switching to Linux. I think I’ve just been spoiled by Visual Studio’s all-in-one approach for so long. My #1 concern is debugging. I haven’t seen an Linux IDE that allows for stepping back through the call stack and checking variable states inside the IDE quite like VS does it.
To be clear, I’m not bashing Linux at all. I’ve been a homelabber for longer than I can remember, and I have a total of 3 physical machines and VMs that run Windows compared to a total of probably 20 that run Linux, FreeBSD, or some other POSIX variant. I have so few Windows machines that I actually own legal licenses for all of them. I do feel like the people who say “Just run Linux on your desktop PC; it can do everything Windows can” are looking at the operating system through rose-colored glasses. Linux will always be the best choice for anything that doesn’t require having a monitor attached, but otherwise, it feels like it’s playing catch-up to Windows.
For sure, there are compromises no matter what you pick. I just hit the point where Linux checked enough boxes for me to ditch Windows. I hope that it gets to that point for you eventually!
Hey, why get rid of valueable computing devices 😃 there is nothing more fun than a rolling distro like arch pr openSuse tumbleweed on old apple hardware
😁 i live a free computing live where I collect trash (mostly from my father and thus apple devices) and install Linux on them to make them treasures
Linux desktop users might be the most delusional bunch in all of tech. Statements like this are why Linux is never going to be as easy to use as osx/Windows.
Bro it’s cool if your needs are best served by Windows or OS X but please don’t lump me along with childish ideologues like OP. I’ve switched to Linux on my work Desktop about seven years ago, yet that didn’t make me feel the need to go full-communist about it, nor do I hold it up as some kind of free market success story.
Damn, still hovering around negative two thousand? You can do it! Don’t let people get you down by ignoring your trolls. You are a troll, you are beautiful, and your contrarianism is annoying af! Don’t ever let anyone tell you different. I’m sorry people aren’t downvoting you at a rate high enough to smash that goal. You will get there.
Omg you did it! Bi-millenial troll-fuckery award goes to LemmyIsFantasticForBeingAnnoying!!! -2000 karma and counting! Imagine all the people having a good day when they scrolled down and saw some stupid shit take you wrote! So much fun!!!
And before you say anything, the tag only exists to identify a commenter who shouldn’t be taken seriously, which is absolutely well earned on your part. Side benefit is mild return trolling. You gotta admit -2000 karma is a ridiculous milestone, intentional or otherwise
Windows 11 Pro is $200. There are ways to get it cheaper, but that is what Microsoft charges for it…and they still collect a bunch of data and serve you a bunch of ads.
Even if you pirate it, you still pay with the immense amount of data they take, even if you opt out of a bunch of it (which you can only do temporarily anyway).
Its perfectly okay to have both Linux and Windows, and keep Windows for 5-10% use cases, excluding work/school needs. Always remember Pareto’s principle, and never try to force through things where unnecessary friction hinders you for benefits that are nothing more than ideological masturbation.
98 for me. One day, it borked the file system one last time. Never looked back. Have to use Win 10 at work, though, and I hate how cumbersome and slow it is
I used a bootable Ubuntu usb to save the contents of my windows hard drive after it failed. I successfully brought the files onto an external drive and installed Linux after. It was so fun. It still is.
The GTK3 port has been in the making for a very long time. Long before anyone even mentioned GTK4. Porting an application to a different GUI toolkit is a lot of work.
And it shouldn’t be. Sure, there are some new features you may want to take advantage of, but it’s lamentable that GTK doesn’t try harder to maintain backwards compatability.
You know who does major version changes well? Go. Excellent backwards compatible over a decade of very active development, and when there are recommended or required changes, the compiler provides tooling to update source code to the new API.
GTK2->GTK3 was a major leap. For something like a GUI toolkit, changes and advancements are inevitable. A GTK4 port would be much less difficult, as the developer-facing changes are an order of magnitude smaller.
Yes, it shouldn’t. Unfortunately, the developers of GTK thrived on changes to the API during the GTK3 era. I don’t know why Go devs don’t (and I am indeed very glad that they don’t). Perhaps it’s because of the different structures of the development teams or perhaps because GTK has more hazy goals. 🤷♂️
According to the GTK team, trying to maintain backwards compatibility dragged the whole project down. I agree that a basics' automatic porting tool would've been nice.
Like, I know the megacorps that control our lives do (since it’s a cheap way of adding value to their products), but what about actual users? I think many see it as a novelty and a toy rather than a productivity tool. Especially when public awareness of “hallucinations” and the plight faced by artists rises.
Kinda feels like the whole “voice controlled assistants” bubble that happened a while ago. Sure they are relatively commonplace nowadays, but nowhere near as universal as people thought they would be.
Not a single soul wants this. They just want to use every foul trick to get you to use copilot (by accident even) just like they do with bing and their other garbage.
I think it's those stupid hard coded buttons on my remote that I accidentally press every so often then have to repeatedly try and back/exit out of the stupid thing it launched that I cannot remove/uninstall from my tv.
If you can figure out how to get the remote open, you’ll probably find that the buttons are all part of the same flexible rubbery insert (unless it’s 10+ years old). Put a little tape on the bottoms of the ones causing you problems. The insulation should keep them from working, and it’s 100% reversible if you ever do find a use for them.
If it’s one of the older, more expensive remotes with individual switches, then, yeah, pliers and superglue. 😅
Maybe I'm a pessimist but this is going to really resonate with the people who are "looking forward to AI" because they read headlines, but haven't actually used any LLMs yet because nobody has told them how.
I want a voice controlled assistant that runs locally and is fully FOSS and I can just run on my bog standard linux PC, hardware minimum requirements nonwithstanding
All I want is a real life iteration of J.A.R.V.I.S. and several billion dollars so I can blurt out cool ideas and have them rendered and built in a couple hours.
Current LLMs are manifestly different from Cortana (🤢) because they are actually somewhat intelligent. Microsoft’s copilot can do web search and perform basic tasks on the computer, and because of their exclusive contract with OpenAI they’re gonna have access to more advanced versions of GPT which will be able to do more high level control and automation on the desktop. It will 100% be useful for users to have this available, and I expect even Linux desktops will eventually add local LLM support (once consumer compute and the tech matures). It is not just glorified auto complete, it is actually fairly correlated with outputs of real human language cognition.
The main issue for me is that they get all the data you input and mine it for better models without your explicit consent. This isn’t an area where open source can catch up without significant capital in favor of it, so we have to hope Meta, Mistral and government funded projects give us what we need to have a competitor.
Sure, all that may be true but it doesn’t answer my original concern: Is this something that people want as a core feature of their OS? My comments weren’t that “oh, this is only as technically sophisticated as voice assistants”, it was more “voice assistants never really took off as much as people thought they would”. I may be cynical and grumpy, but to me it feels like these companies are failing to read the market.
I’m reminded of a presentation that I saw where they were showing off fancy AI technology. Basically, if you were in a call 1 to 1 call with someone and had to leave to answer the doorbell or something, the other person could keep speaking and an AI would summarise what they said when they got back.
It felt so out of touch with what people would actually want to do in that situation.
I suppose having worked with LLMs a whole bunch over the past year I have a better sense of what I meant by “automate high level tasks”.
I’m talking about an assistant where, let’s say you need to edit a podcast video to add graphics and cut out dead space or mistakes that you corrected in the recording. You could tell the assistant to do that and it would open the video in Adobe Premiere pro, do the necessary tasks, then ask you to review it to check if it made mistakes.
Or if you had an issue with a particular device, e.g. your display, the assistant would research the issue and perform the necessary steps to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
These are currently hypothetical scenarios, but current GPT4 can already perform some of these tasks, and specifically training it to be a desktop assistant and to do more agentic tasks will make this a reality in a few years.
It’s additionally already useful for reading and editing long documents and will only get better on this end. You can already use an LLM to query your documents and give you summaries or use them as instructions/research to aid in performing a task.
A year ago local LLM was just not there, but the stuff you can run now with 8gb vram is pretty amazing, if not quite as good yet as GPT 4. Honestly even if it stops right where it is, it’s still powerful enough to be a foundation for a more accessible and efficient way to interface with computers.
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