this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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They've really painted themselves into a corner with their AI investments. It's starting to look like the total addressable market is a small fraction of what they'd need to break even on their atrociously ill-advised investments into the sector, and now they're becoming increasingly desperate to shoehorn a technology that nobody wants into everything they can.
Literally everybody who has an inkling of an idea of what's going on in the AI space knows how this ends, but somehow the board and c-staff at MSFT are not counted amongst the inkling havers. In a few years they're going to have to write off countless billions that they've wasted on this idiocy and nobody will be surprised but them.
Apparently when Satya Nadella took over, Steve Ballmer told him "don't screw up". In terms of stock price and profits, he absolutely hasn't. In terms of producing products that consumers might actually want to pay for, he has failed completely and Microsoft has never been in a worse position. But those two things are completely disconnected now so it's fine.
Why have windows calculator when you can have windows calculator with AI guess what you want to calculate, get it wrong, spy on you, and use that spying to serve you targetted ads all at the same time? #innovation
Ya know, I'm not a linux "supporter" in the traditional sense. I usually find it annoying when people hijack these threads to say they use linux.
But man......even though I don't have a clue what I'm doing in linux, I'd rather be on linux than windows 11.
We have passed the point where it has to be complicated. If you choose something like Garuda, Bazzite, or Mint, it should be a pretty straightforward switch.
And contrary to windows, it's learn once, use forever.
Except all those times where you learnt how to do something when you set it up years ago, and haven't touched it since because it just bloody works. Then when you need to upgrade to a new machine you have to learn it all again.
Been using Linux for thirty years and it still happens.
You would have known it better under windows as it would have bacame obsolete or just stopped working every other 6 months, needing your attention 😁
I still type
ifconfigby habit. Some kid the other day told me that you can judge a person's age and Linux experience by whether they expectifconfigandnetstatvsipandss.... I'm just glad they kept the parameters the same in
sswhat if I use ip and netstat?
I'm on ZorinOS, which I'm told is very similar to Mint.
It's similar in that it has an application launcher at the bottom, a windows-like start menu, and aims to be simple.
Zorin has a modern UI where Mint is more windows-7-ish. They don't have the same file explorer, settings app, app store, generally the core apps are different.
Look they're quite different, it's hard to make a full comparison, just run a Mint .iso in gnome-boxes if you're curious.
Zorin is working out really well for me, esp on my older machines with slower processors and less RAM that choke a little on fuller distros. I enjoy the KDE Plasma distros, for example, but they're a little too heavy for my older boxes and I was getting a lot of video stutter and unexplained shutdows, etc. I don't get that with Zorin or Mint. For me Mint works just as well as Zorin and picks up all my hardware just as handily, it just feels a little basic for what I'm used to. But Zorin hits just right in every direction for my needs. It's a good distro for Windows noobs, that's for sure.
I still get freezes. Then when I try to power off and power back on, it won't boot. Then a day or two will go by, and it boots.
Just for clarity, when you say it won't boot, where in the boot process does it fail? Do you get as far as loading the BIOS, do you get a little way into the OS and then it crashes, or does it just not start at all?
I ask because depending on how far it gets into the boot process, you may not be looking at a software problem at all. Generally speaking, you have to get past the BIOS and into the bootloader before assuming the problem has to do with your choice of OS.
The way it normally boots is first it shows the dell logo, then a black screen. Then a Z at the bottom of the screen. Then the Z turns into the word Zorin, and then it boots.
The way it doesn't boot, is the dell logo shows, then the black screen, but it just hangs there forever. The Z never comes. It just stays on the black screen before the Z.
The Dell logo is the BIOS loading, the black screen is your bootloader and the beginning of your OS loading, and of course the Z is Zorin loading. While it could be hardware, to be honest where it's hanging for you makes me wonder about how well your Zorin video driver suits your actual hardware, based on some similar issues I had with Fedora doing the exact same thing that you describe.
I am still learning Linux myself so I am not the best person to tell you what to do, but I know where I'd start if I were in your shoes: use the lshw command (see below) to get the details on your actual hardware, specifically the graphics chip; see if anyone else is having similar problems with the same graphics hardware; and in the meantime put Mint on a LiveUSB and run Mint for a while to see if it performs better or ends up doing the same thing.
That's just beginner tips off the top of my head; I know you will get better advice if you run your problem by the Linux communities, esp because they can tell you how to capture the load process to see exactly what's causing it to hang, and I'm just guessing. But at least you now have some hints of where to start.
Quick primer on lshw: To use lshw to see your hardware specs, type at a command prompt:
sudo lshw -shortIf it says it's not installed, to install it type
sudo apt-get install lshwThat will get you started, I hope. Either way, whatever you do will get you further toward a solution, whether that solution is a different distro or tweakling this one. I hope this helps.
I've held out a while but this is just getting ridiculous. I'm taking the leap.
As I use my home machine mainly for gaming, which version is best for me?
If you want a locked down PC you can't break, and to install all your software using a GUI, choose Bazzite. If you feel comfortable on the terminal, use CachyOS.
I'd say you're first job is to determine what you don't want. Google the differences between distros and pick the philosophy you like. Some have corporate backing, some favor stability, some stay cutting edge, some are more community developed, etc.
I started with Bazzite (Fedora) and switched to Garuda (Arch). What got me to each was researching "best gaming Linux" and later deciding I didn't want immutability.
I mainly just wanted it to work right out of the box, but now that I have it I also love that Arch is always keeping me up to date. There is still a lot of fear mongering about Arch, but Garuda was just as easy as Bazzite, which is recommended for beginners all the time.
I think Garuda is amazing, and recommend it wholeheartedly, but no matter what you choose there will be some learning curve, so pick something that sounds cool to you so you stay motivated to figure it out.
It's OK, you're on Lemmy, we all use Linux here so you're among friends (or bitter enemies if your distro of choice is Ubuntu)
collapsed inline media
A good low (basically zero) risk way to start is to flash an image of say Ubuntu onto a flash drive. They're usually bootable. So you can boot into Linux right off the flash drive.
This obvious takes a performance hit compared to actually installing it, but it'll let you confirm that it actually works on your hardware.
And IIRC you xan choose to just keep it (so install it) right from there.
You can also load it up, and then do wild stuff and install, upgrade things (which will disappear ofc.).
That USB boot is crazy cool if you think about it IMO.
The way I see it, they think GenAI is the new portal to information, the way search has been for the last 25-30 years. They want to control that portal, because it’s worth trillions over time.
This is why they’re cramming it into everything and worrying about use cases later. It’s a land grab.
That kinda makes sense. Thank you for sharing your optics.
I heard that phrase "optics" for the first time in the TV show Succession. Is it something that ordinary people use or just wealthy people?
It's mainly used by people who work in public relations or robotics
Or politics or really any field where the perception of actions are as, or more, important than reality.
I work as a senior IT Operations kind of job, with a 15 year background in IT support. I was trying to thank him for his perspective without sounding sarcastic ☺️
Edit: perspective might have been more apt.
It has been glorious watching Microsoft do this, they deserve this dead end and much worse honestly.
I mean... I don't know I guess it gives me hope how incompetent the people at the top of Microsoft truly seem to be?
The modern world is really demonstrating how success has nothing to do with skill or competence.
What do you mean people don't want machine learning chatbots spewing out bullshit in every facet of their lives and technology use?
We really need to get rid of the "AI" buzzword and refer to machine learning chatbots as what they are.
Parrots with a stolen dictionary.
But they made Google dance, right? Maybe that’s all Satya Nadella needed out of it.
Cant write off something that isnt even in the books...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cdJQ8UyVLA
You are wrong daikiki. AI is a tech that is going to change everything, it's the "computers" of this era, they are investing in a technology that will boom. Even if you don't think it will they will push it, see what google is doing, they rigged up the search results and now you necessarily have to use AI to get good answers, it's also there by default so you can't really avoid it.