Our best hope is that companies outside the US stop buying Microsoft. People will need to produce computers for them. Then we in the US can import them and run Linux.
Asus and Dell announce new mini PCs for Windows 365 | Goodbye local OS
Submitted 22 hours ago by xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-and-Dell-announce-new-mini-PCs-for-Windows-365.1236853.0.html
Comments
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
MrPnut@lemmy.world 42 minutes ago
At least Linux runs well on old hardware (and still supports)
PangurBan@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I’m so sick of Microsoft I actually installed Fedora KDE Plasma.
Genuinely, it’s nicer than windows lol
The occasional forum crawling is a bit annoying, but overall it works really well, has more features and looks slick.
Ain’t ever going back.
Zink@programming.dev 1 hour ago
Excellent! It’s hard to believe how much easier the Linux experience can be than Windows. Take your PC and boot Linux Mint from a thumb drive. If you like it, it can be installed in like 5 clicks. (assuming you already prepped the machine, backed up, etc. I dual booted at first but that only lasted about 2 weeks before I wiped windows)
I have personally since moved to Debian KDE Plasma. It’s a target platform at work, and it’s more of a server machine at home. Plus doing a few more things via CLI or via finding old forum posts or documentation is fine by me.
I might try Garuda on the new PC we’ve been putting together, though. It looks like a well polished gaming-focused OS that is also Arch-based to get me into that whole family of distros. (because Valve went that way of course, and in the future I’ll always want a PC that can seamlessly run SteamVR. Plus computers are fun.)
Sturgist@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
The occasional forum crawling is a bit annoying
I was on windows since 3.1, dual booted various distros of Linux the past 15 years, and removed windows from my computers over a year ago.
I would have to crawl forums to find fixes for stupid shit in windows once in awhile, less than Linux 15 years ago, but more than Linux in the lead up to getting rid of it. The thing that really pissed me off was the most egregious issues with win10/11 that id be looking for solutions to would always be changed back on the next update.PangurBan@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Even Steam works perfectly fine.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
The only games I can’t play are games that install rootkits that I don’t want anyway. Now I don’t have to explain to people that I don’t want malware on my PC and can just say “Ah, shucks, can’t play, Linux” 10/10 recommend.
theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Plasma is great, I’m loving Kubuntu.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Unlike Dell, Asus did mention a few more details - the system will pack DDR5 memory, HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and 2.5G Ethernet. Exact details regarding the USB and HDMI port were not offered, however.
Isn’t the amount of memory kind of a tiny bit more important than which generation it is?
humancrayon@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
If the pc has specs to run something from the cloud it has specs to run a local os.
kamen@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Depends on what you do and depends on how it’s set up.
At a previous job we had thin clients set up to connect to some remote desktops, and indeed they were running an OS locally, but had barely enough resources to run the OS and the client app.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 14 minutes ago
I’m sure you’ll could find a version of linux that would run on them. I’m not a linux aficionado but I’ve found cut-down flavours useful in the past when I’ve needed something that could run on a crippled potato.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 20 minutes ago
Yep, just looking at it screams thin client. This will have just enough for networking (wifi/bluetooth), running three monitors (no gaming), some 3.5mm audio, and usb 2.0. If it’s business focues, probably some remote mgmt stuff, and maybe a default VPN client.
orioler25@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I feel bad for the poor bastards that will certainly have these forced on them at the office or at school.
thingAmaBob@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Apparently my job will be getting rid of our personal local network drives (we each have our own only we can connect to) and moving that to Microsoft one drive. Our IT guy hates the new changes, but the orders come from way above. Not sure how well it will work…
Lycist@lemmy.world 18 minutes ago
We use onedrive at work… everything goes onto onedrive, and then daily we have people bitching that onedrive has deleted their files.
phx@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Don’t worry, to make it work,he’ll only need to open the firewall to the Internet for dozens of MS subdomains and thousands of IP’s in ranges that can randomly change from day to day. Totally more an issue for systems which might have been segregated from the Internet before!
/s
Hozerkiller@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
So a thin client?
clubb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
Yes. You run windows remotely, probably through that 2.5G ethernet.
I’d rather be struck by lightning than use cloud computing through Wi-Fi.
Hozerkiller@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
Sorry I meant that along the lines of “this is already a thing just marketed differently.” Hyping up something that already exists as something new just feels odd and forced. Like if I made a car but called them “vroom vrooms” and marketed them for driving down Young street only.
MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah I was gonna say. Dell has been making Wyse Thin Clients for a long ass time. This isn’t anything particularly new other than using W365.
Surp@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Fuck you MS
peaceful_world_view@lemmy.world 49 minutes ago
Yes, terrible disease.
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Back in the late 80’s we were calling “diskless” computers “dickless” computers. It was a different time, but the message is still correct.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Back in 2008-2009 I shared this crazy idea with my peers that Microsoft was moving towards an “always connected” OS that would probably be hosted on their servers, because you can make more money charging someone for access to their data than charging them once for their OS.
they laughed it off and told me that nobody would fall for that.
…who’s laughing now assholes?
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 5 hours ago
It was never crazy and people were predicting this since the 90s. It’s essentially a return to the dumb terminal & mainframe paradigm that was in use prior to desktop pcs.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
Goodbye local Windows, you mean. Except I said goodbye two years ago and never looked back or missed it. Windows does nothing I need, and does it poorly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still petty enough to hope this effort is a miserable failure, but ultimately I don’t care all that much.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 18 hours ago
I’m still petty enough to hope this effort is a miserable failure
I hope this is effort is a miserable failure … because if it catches on, it could spell the end of desktop PCs in general as a consumer product.
Desktops will always exist, because you need the local processing power (and the cooling to support it) for certain professional workloads. But if everyday computing and even gaming becomes mostly done on thin clients fully dependent on internet servers, then desktops will become more and more of a niche, professional product. Which means they’ll become more expensive and harder to get. Replacement parts will become more expensive and harder to get. A desktop PC will be an expensive industrial machine, hard to justify the upfront price of for an average consumer. (Especially when a cheap thin client with a “cheap” monthly subscription can do essentially all the same things.)
It may also slow the adoption of open-source software because these thin clients are likely to be locked down and not able to install any other software without putting up a fight, if it ends up being possible at all. And if most people get used to the paradigm of renting their computing power from the cloud, they’ll be resistant to change that and go back to locally run software on their local machine that they then have to buy because their old thin client hardware can barely run anything, even if you do manage to install other software on it. (Imagine how hard it will be to convince someone to install Linux instead of using Windows if the first step of installing Linux is that they have to replace all their hardware with much bigger and more expensive hardware…)
XLE@piefed.social 17 hours ago
(Especially when a cheap thin client with a “cheap” monthly subscription can do essentially all the same things.)
Right now, one year of Microsoft 365 costs a full hundred dollars… and there is still a strong desktop market.
If you’re right that the tech industry is willing to price consumers out of personal computers - and it looks like they are - I can only imagine what will happen to those subscription prices.
obz3n@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
If you think about it: It is very wasteful for all of us to have local computation power at home. So many wasted resources as most people use their PCs only the fraction of the time. Same can be said for cars and many other appliances.
Maybe the solution are shared cloud resources, but obviously not owned by those big corporations, but owned by the people on a local, regional, national level?
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 17 hours ago
Goodbye local Windows with Linux having a 3% market share means entirely different market & society too, regardless of our Linux desktops that can’t get new parts.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
I’ll just point out that 3% market share is still bigger than the entire market when started building PCs. And that’s assuming they can make this attractive to anyone. Single point of failure for your entire company? Single supplier who has you over a barrel when they want to raise prices? Who in their right mind would go for that.
We’ll see. The fact that it’s on offer doesn’t mean people will bite. I’ve seen the industry try so much stupid shit that people said no to. Free computer full of ads? No. Scan cat? No. Packing LEDs into things that don’t need to light up or be hotter? Well… they got us there.
DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 19 hours ago
Assuming the bootloader is not super locked down or even nonexistent, think Wyse thin client levels of locked down.
apple_train@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
These won’t amount to much, windows 365 is expensive. Companies really only have a use case for these over dedicated hardware for specific use cases that make sense, of which there isn’t a lot vs dedicated computers.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Going back to the dumb terminal days of the 60s & 70s
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
Now with added surveillance and advertising!
tigerjerusalem@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Well, when the AI market crashes they will have lots of unused datacenters… Guess they found an use for that after all.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
This is horrifying in that it signals a concerted push towards getting consumers on cloud computing.
But in terms of self hosting your own computer these actually look great, especially if they’re subsidized to get you into a subscription fee. As long as we can break into the bootloader and run Linux on these, they look to be very capable and efficient small compute box. Self hosters and homelabbers will be licking their lips.
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 9 hours ago
These fuckers themselves have increased the price of PC components and now they have the gall to release this cloud-only PC to “alleviate the problem of the current market scenario”.
I have a sneaking suspicion that these PCs will have some sort of protection so that nothing other than Win365 can run. Maybe a locked bootloader/secureboot?
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I have a sneaking suspicion that these PCs will have some sort of protection so that nothing other than Win365 can run. Maybe a locked bootloader/secureboot?
Yes. Very probably.
Of course, no security mechanism lasts indefinitely in the hands of a persistent hacker with physical access.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I’m really worried about this, I don’t think it’ll become a universal standard by all means but I can see Microslop forcing this onto people as a kinda next step from all the hardware limitation bs.
They would finally have total control over your OS.
Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
They’ve been pushing the thin client for years and it’s never taken off. You and I wouldn’t be the target for this machine and neither would gamers or content creators. This is for business or grandparents.
monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It’s never taken off because of relatively inexpensive and abundant hardware. But these will be attractive to people who need something now and want something inexpensive.
Grandparents are the immediate target but eventually if they force the hardware supply shortages soon some people will need something.
Imagine students with low budget.
The next 5 years are going to be really interesting.
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
They’ve been pushing the thin client for years
I think it’s been decades at this point, and I hope it never takes off.
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 10 hours ago
They need to lower the price of the hosted desktops then, it’s still way more cost effective over time to buy a laptop/desktop for a 3 years cycle than to rent a monthly virtual desktop. The only business that wants it are opex obsessives that hate any capex.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
gamers or content creators
I can totally see them targeting those demographics as well, cloud gaming has been kinda popular in the last few years. Content creators could be sucked in with promises of getting pro performance without the price, possibly bundled with creative software.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Self-hosters will be all over these
jabjoe@feddit.uk 8 hours ago
They did since it was online. It’s closed and online, the OS “owner” are the only true admin. If it’s closed and online, your “commands” are just “suggestions” compared to theirs.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Why do you care? If you are using microsoft now it’s already a bad idea.
I don’t use Microsoft so I don’t really care what kind of crap they do.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Especially for businesses. At work you’ll have no choice but to use something like this.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
I see this going nowhere
For a few hundred bucks I have a mini PC with which I can do anything I want
This thing, even at half price, would only allow office365, with monthly payments.
Who the fuck would want that and not just spend a few bucks more and have an actual computer?
JigglySackles@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Same people that lease cars and buy macs I guess. Ones that don’t care about anything other than the small subset of things they need and don’t want to hassle with anything else and have expendable income.
QuandaleDingle@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
And so, the technofiefdom begins.
HubertManne@piefed.social 8 hours ago
yeah Im so glad I finally went to linux for my personal computing. Really should have done it about a decade earlier.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
And when your Internet goes down, you can’t even work locally.
Genius!
I’m sure CoPilot in the cloud already took that into account though and goes off on all sorts of tangents with the user disconnected.
What could possibly go wrong?
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 16 hours ago
“Don’t you guys have internet?”
pycorax@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Considering this is very clearly targeted enterprise, there’s probably some sector of a company that works on data that’s only in the cloud anyways. They’re likely the ones asking for this. I highly doubt this would become a norm across the enterprise.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 18 hours ago
yes but how often does your internet go down? I agree with the sentiment and I hate this but we should think about this from an average user perspective when we make our argument. Internet doesnt go down, I’ve had more electricity outages than internet outages in the past 5 years. if you live in a city its a rare thing.
The reason why people shouldnt want this in my opinion is not because its day to day worse but because its worse long term. These companies will offer it at a low price to entice you then yank the rug out from under you. You will never be safe with an option like this because at any time it can be taken from you and one day there might not be an alternative market of computers to purchase.
flightyhobler@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Congratulations. My home internet was down the whole day yesterday. My power goes out at least once or twice per month due to the current nature of the power line structure. I live in Europe.
CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
yes but how often does your internet go down?
I have a 1Gb connection. I work in software development. I live in a nice neighbourhood. My internet goes down all the time.
lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
yes but how often does your internet go down?
About once a month. Not for very long, but it is an annoyance. Xfinity usually does maintenance between 1am and 2am, and the Internet will be out for about 30 minutes to an hour. About once a year it goes down for at least half a day.
My OS hasn’t gone down at all in 20 years. I don’t want that to change. If an OS stops working for an hour once a month for maintenance, it’s a piece of refried shit.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
The dodgy WiFi gear from my fiber provider requires a hard re-set at least once a week. I had to do that just today.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
What happens if the local ISP/electrical/whatever decides there need for maintenance?
Not every company can afford redundant high speed internet.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Ah yes, it’s around the time for thin clients of this cycle.
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 19 hours ago
It’s funny because we switched from thin clients to fat clients some 30-40 years back.
mech@feddit.org 4 hours ago
Except at the company I work for. We switched from thin clients to laptops last year.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
About 15 years ago we started transitioning from on-site computing to cloud. Now we’re reversing the trend under the guise of “edge computing”.
jve@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
You’ll own nothing and be happy.
wendigolibre@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
Buy all the ram, inflating prices. Sell thin clients and access to computing power/ram. What a scam.
Railcar8095@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
What in the name is the flying spaghetti monster is Windows 365? An even less private version of windows that won’t work is you don’t have internet?
xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day 13 hours ago
The OS is fully running on the cloud. You will be given a VM. Everything stays there. You may have to take permission to download a file from the VM onto your local device. You don’t get any choice about telemetry.
XLE@piefed.social 7 hours ago
Am I interpreting this wrong, or do the specs look like absolute crap? I would expect a thin client would need hardware this good:
2 vCPU
4 GB RAM
64 GB Storage
SeaSgt@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
They are all such cunts!
IWW4@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
It is a Thinnet client. They have been around for at least 26 years.
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Remember when you used to host your own citrix? Pepperidge Farm remembers
IWW4@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Lol citrix… now that is a name i have not heard in a very long time.
Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Walk into any office or business that runs off the cloud or a local server and they will likely have dozens… I mean dozens of these lying around.
I know the gaming community looks at these like a vampire looks at a rosary but it isn’t new tech or even a new concept.
whaleross@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Back 25 years ago the company I worked for was looking into changing the computers for thin clients, then powered by JAVA, aaand of course dynamic workplaces that gets reinvented every seven years or so.
In the end they decided not to because people wanted to feel that they had their desk with their computer and not a floating office limbo as daily reminder that they are replaceable labour.
But most of all, their stationary computer had a CD ROM so they could listen to their own music while working.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Businesses will adore this. I can guarantee a lot of us will be forced to use these at work, like Teams and CoPilot.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 5 hours ago
Business’s will not adore this. Cloud PCs in M365 or Azure cost money, often as much per year as it would cost to just purchase a pc to begin with.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
So do all the Microsoft subscriptions they already buy, yet they’re extremely popular anyway?
glitchdx@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I used to work at a thrift store a decade ago, it was pretty common for people to drop off laptops (some of them pretty sick at the time), I’d ask why and the response was always “we have ipads”. I doubt things have improved since then.
actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
I look forward to thrifting one in a few years, then installing Linux on it.
toiletobserver@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Unless the pc is free, why the fuck would anyone use it?
terrific@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
Someone will install Linux on them and use them as a cheap barebones computer. I’m sure with a bit of jiggery-pokery they can be repurposed to something useful.
daikiki@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
It’s like a Chromebook, but for Windows. Only it doesn’t run Windows. Please buy our garbage.