Posted by throwaway270925 11/19/2025
it's made me want to get into core boot and find Linux laptop hardware that hums along.
It really feels like evertying is ligned up for the year of Linux in the Living room and yeah, it's really good to see.
I've only had to fully reinstall once every ~2 years or so, and it's usually due to some problem with my DE/system not booting that I can't be fucked to troubleshoot. That's mostly my fault for running GNOME on a rolling distro. I just back up my home dir to the storage drive and I'm back up and running in less than an hour. Other than that, it just continues to work and I can be reasonably assured that if I don't touch it, it'll be fine.
oh no
Based on the marketing it seems to run a sandboxed copilot instance that can impersonate the user to take actions, with their permission?
Something like "hey copilot install Putty"? and it does it?
I can relate to the reluctance to adopt AI features into the OS -- but I would also like to understand how they work and any utility they might provide.
I agree that a "good" implementation of agentic AI can have a lot of benefits, to casual users and power users both. But do I have any trust in Microsoft being the company to ship a "good" implementation? Hell no.
Windows has been getting more and more user hostile for years now, to casual users and power users both. If there's anyone at Microsoft who still cares about good UX, they sure don't have any decision-making power. And getting AI integration right is as much a UX issue as it is a foundation model issue or an integration hook issue.
From the MS support doc:
> "An agent workspace is a separate, contained space in Windows where you can grant agents access to your apps and files so they can complete tasks for you in the background while you continue to use your device. Each agent operates using its own account, distinct from your personal user account. This dedicated agent account establishes clear boundaries between agent activity and your own, enabling scoped authorization and runtime isolation. As a result, you can delegate tasks to agents while retaining full control, visibility into agent actions, and the ability to manage access at any time."
MS showed a little bit of something like it at Ignite yesterday, but for enterprise automations, the AI spun up a Windows 365 instance, did some stuff on the web, then disposed of it when it was done.
My concern is that the Windows Credential itself doesn’t have a ton of value (opening windows apps) but the browser cookie jar (e..g Edge or Chrome) , which the Credential unlocks, has tremendous value — and threats.
The core problem is lack of granularity in permissions. If you allow the agent to do browser activities as your user, you can’t control which cookie / scope it will take action on.
You might say “buy me chips” and it instead logs into your Fidelity account and buys $100k worth of stock.
Let’s see how they figure out the authorization model.
I don't know if I would use the word approachable
IMHO, stuff is moving fast enough in the Linux gaming world that any distro built around taking its time to update things (i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) is liable to be a bad time. Anecdotally, I've found that redirecting new users interested in gaming away from those distros has dramatically improved their satisfaction.
Many of the Arch or Fedora derivatives fit this paradigm well.
Enable the proprietary drivers if you have Nvidia graphics during the install.
Install system updates when the pop up appears on first boot.
Install Steam from the Ubuntu App Center.
Open Steam, install a game and play it. Most of them will work without issue unless it has invasive kernel anti-cheat.
The install-to-game time on Linux is actually substantially lower than it is on Windows now.
NVIDIA and AMD can decide to undermine it if Linux doesn't yield enough profits for them.
Even if only one of them undermines linux, linux gaming might have trouble progressing and game developers might just ignore Linux gaming.
Microsoft could also undermine it if they really wanted.
Can you elaborate what you mean, here? AMD has Mesa drivers for Vulkan 1.2+ compliance; their GPUs will support DXVK and Proton until the hardware breaks, even if they quit today. Nvidia's situation is slightly precarious, but the community has Nouveau and NOVA as hedged bets against them going rogue.
And I can't see why they would ever go rogue - supporting Proton is so easy that many manufacturers do it by accident. Remember, even Apple Silicon supports DXVK on Asahi, despite Apple neither documenting their GPU, writing Vulkan drivers for it or designing their raster hardware around open standards. I'd be shocked if AMD or Nvidia managed to make a card that runs DirectX but refuses OpenGL and Vulkan bytecode in any form.
Personally, I don't think it will get worse than it is now. Some games are locked to some platforms, be that Windows, PS5 or Switch, and many great games can be enjoyed in Linux.