Microsoft is silently installing Copilot onto Windows Server 2022

People in this thread seem to be missing this point.

This is windows server, not windows 11. The consequences is not "I'll have an annoying taskbar icon on my home computer", this is enterprise level interference that could affect large systems and thousands of users.

Linux Mint isn't an alternative to windows server.

Stop resisting!!

Oh they can, as we see

I am jack’s complete pikachu face

Why is anyone surprised by this??!

That’s all true for consumer OS as well

No enterprise is going to want to deal with that and realistically they’re the only ones with the pockets to fight that battle.

oh god, win10's dying next year?

i really need to transition the rest of my shit to Linux soon

Microsoft has been telegraphing these moves for years now tbh.

ITS THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP! 🥂

The icon itself is probably more than 8kb. It's either incorrect or literally just a desktop URL shortcut

I don’t even see a link. Though I guess I should look inside Microsoft Edge.

Edit: I cannot find anyway to get to it in either the desktop or Edge. I do not have a signed in Microsoft account on this machine, so that may be why I don’t see it. I’m not willing to sign in to see.

I did see another report that it's just a component in Edge. Unfortunately I don't have that link handy right now.

Man... Anybody remember "Back Orifice"? The late nineties were weird.

At 8kb it's certainly not an AI model.

I doubt they need to install something new for a back door

Makes MS seem desperate. Fordicing it down everyones throat and displaying ads in the OS...

More like open windows that were painted to make shutting them almost impossible.

You’ve heard good things about arch solely because you’re on Lemmy. Using arch means you’ll be dedicating about 50% of your working time towards tinkering and making it fucking work, which is fun don’t get me wrong- unless you have actual work to do.

Ubuntu is solid but a little sluggish, I’m personally an advocate for Mint as far as something you can drop a windows users in and they’ll generally figure it out.

Linux Mint. That's always the answer. It's lightweight, it's simple, it's easy, it does what you need. Even gaming. SomeOrdinaryGamers did a vidso on YT about installing it, it's pretty easy!

Given that this is in a thread about Microsoft Server, I'd recommend using Debian as the distribution to replace Microsoft Server.

If you want a desktop, I'd start with a LiveCD version and familiarise yourself with the various available distributions on offer.

The intent of a LiveCD is essentially to boot into Linux without modifying your hard-disk and keeping your existing OS unchanged.

I'll note that many of these images are available for DVD or USB. Some will offer a mechanism to store data on your existing drive without wiping anything.

With USB drives being fast and cheap, you can also often use a LiveCD to install onto an external drive.

Finally, you can install a virtual machine on your computer and use it to run your Linux tests.

Are you looking for a Windows, server, replacement or desktop replacement? Your experience will differ depending on which one you're trying to replace.

For instance, if you're trying to replace Windows active directory services with a single Linux server, might have a bad time. I'm in the process of migrating from AD to FreeIPA, PowerDNS, and isc-dhcp (or something similar for DHCP).

I wouldn’t recommend arch as a first distro imo. I don’t see what the advantage would be for a newbie.

Personally I would recommend Fedora.

For a distro that just works, Linux Mint.

"Dual boot friendly" means installing Linux on its own hard drive, just so you know. If you don't do that, it's likely the next Windows update will screw up the Linux bootloader. Maybe that's gotten better, but it's what I'd recommended from past experience.

In the spirit of these kinds of changes, I’d love to hear some honest Linux distribution recommendations. I’m leaning towards Ubuntu because it is the most widely advertised and UX focused from my perspective. But I’ve also heard good things about Arch. Any others I should be considering?

Depends on your needs and preferences. If you want an easy Linux distribution Linux Mint is a good choice. Arch Linux is indeed good but default Arch is not that suitable for new Linux users unless you're willing to read documentation. You can go for Garuda or EndeavourOS to have Arch with easy installers and GUI.

Linux Server Distros:

• Ubuntu Server = easier but with more bullshit out of the box (eg. snaps)
• Debian Stable = a tad bit harder because it's cleaner out of the box.
• Fedora Server = clean and easy, documentation may be a bit harder to follow, less community tutorials.
• Arch & others = Just no. You don't want a rolling release for a server. You want older and thus stable, tested, software and drivers.

If you want a distro for general use:

• Linux Mint = easiest of the bunch, but it has old packages that may not offer the best environment for gaming.
• Fedora Based distros = middle ground between ubuntu based distros like Mint, and rolling release distros like Arch.
• Arch based distros = bleeding edge drivers and packages (for better or worse), best for gaming. Manjaro could work for you, as it is not fully Arch.
• Bazzite OS = It's an immutable Fedora based distro but with Arch customized to make it work like Steam OS all inside a container. It's unbreakable, easy to use, and game-ready. Has AMD & NVIDIA images ready to go.

My recommendation is to flash Ventoy on a thumbdrive load it up with all the recommended distros, and proceed to test drive the ones you think might work for you, and only time will tell which one is the best for your specific needs.

Don't move to Arch. It's a great distro don't get me wrong but it's not for someone who isn't quite familiar with Linux. You need to choose every package on your system and configure it all.... Give yourself some time to know Linux.

Ubuntu is a great distro with a great out of box experience. The company behind it though has been making some choices I don't much care for so I've moved away from them. (They created a pretty crappy new packaging system, then started making the old, reliable packaging system use the new one without user consent)

OpenSuSe Tumbleweed is a great option. It has sane defaults, and nice versions of KDE and GNOME (two popular types of desktop environments, I'd recommend KDE if you're new to Linux - it's closer to the desktop philosophy you're used to. GNOME is great too but it's very opinionated and non-traditional, not for everyone.) It's also a "rolling release" distro, which means there's no big releases it just gets updated over time and provides you with very up to date packages. It's known to be quite stable which is unusual for a rolling-release distro (like Arch, for example).

Fedora is also a great choice - just follow a guide on how to get some media codecs on it (Fedora is big on not including software that isn't 100% open, but it's easy to add the few things you'll need). But it provides a great package manager, great KDE and GNOME versions, and all around very sane and stable. This is a traditional release distro with new versions every 6 months. You'll still get security and minor software updates between releases.

Whatever you choose, I think you'd be very surprised at what you CAN play under Linux with no problem. Outside of a few games (mostly due to anti-cheat which unfortunately rules out some - but not all - of the more popular multiplayer competitive games) there's really not much that doesn't run on Linux already nowadays.

I would go with Linux Mint if you don't want to tinker with it much, but Arch will allow you to be in the bleeding edge easily if you install things from the AUR but you could stay in the stable channels as well.

Regarding games, I'm mostly a Single Player kind of guy and basically everything I have tried so far just works if it's installed from Steam, for others you can use Lutris or Heroic Launcher but tinkering might be needed.

All of this just to say: I use Arch btw. It's been practically 2 years already since I haven't boot into Windows for gaming.

If not vanilla Ubuntu, I'd still suggest trying an Ubuntu derivative like Linux Mint or POP! OS. Ubuntu has a huge community, so in the event you run into issues it'll be easier to find fixes for it.

What you'll find is that Linux distros are roughly grouped by a "family" (my term for it anyway). Anyone can (theoretically, anyway) start from a given kernel and roll their own distro, but most distros are modified versions of a handful of base distros.

The major families at the moment are

• Debian: A classic all-rounder that prioritizes stability over all else. Ubuntu is descended from Debian.
• Fedora: Another classic all-rounder. I haven't used it in a decade, so I won't say much about it here.
• Arch: If Linux nerds were car people, Arch is for the hot rodders. You can tune and control pretty much any aspect of your system. ... Not a good 1st distro if you want to just get something going.

There are many others, but these are the major desktop-PC distro families at the moment.

The importance of these families is that techniques that work in one (say) Debian-based distro will tend to work in other Debian-based distros... But not necessarily in distros from other families.

If you want something a little more fresh, I'd maybe avoid Arch as your first go and try openSUSE Tumbleweed. It strikes a balance between bleeding edge and stable (they call it "leading edge" I believe). Everything is tested before release and isn't too stale like Ubuntu/Debian flavors. I personally like KDE for the desktop environment but the installer lets you choose.

If you want to stick with Ubuntu or something similar, I'd recommend Linux Mint. I used it before switching to openSUSE.

Most options should be dual boot friendly but I'd recommend installing Windows first to avoid bootloader issues.

Debian stable on servers. Debian testing on the daily driver.
Gives you a rock solid server, that will pull absolutly no suprises.
And your daily driver gives you a playground for what comes in the next upgrade.

The most important answer seems to be missing:

You don't need to do any distro hopping or even care. Unless you picked a dead one or need something really obscure. They all have the same things and you can install anything on anything. Mostly. Difference is who's doing your installer and packaging and security and how.

You can, if you want to. And live systems are handy. Try what your like. Learn to change what you don't. All the tools and docs people have are out there for you and tens of thousands of people are busy making more.

Install Steam’s Proton and just run whatever windows games you want*, no more need to dual boot.

*unless they have kernel-level anticheat and isn’t Linux compatible

Probably avoid Arch if you don't know what your doing and are unfamiliar with the risks.

Are you looking for a server OS or a desktop consumer OS?

Can't see this going wrong.

"Hey Copilot, make me a domain admin"

Yes, even M$ use Linux in it's servers

Lol

Data-mine the information you intentionally did not put on the cloud.

To configure your active directories and stuff. Wouldn't it be great to automatize everything to the point that when something breaks you have no idea what to do because you have no idea what is done and where

People moving away from Microsoft is literally how Microsoft will be held accountable though

All these discussions turn into that because WE KNOW that no one will convince MS to stop doing whatever they want, specially after investing literally billions on this kind of technology, the idea of MS "being held accountable" is something that realistically will not happen, and literally the only leverage people have against them is to just stop playing their game. Oh yeah, it's not easy, but given the fact that MS have made it so that you'll HAVE to fight the tech and relearn stuff every time they unilaterally decide to change things you might as well put effort where it will make a difference and free you from their BS

I think it’s safe to say that the Lemmy user base trends a bit more “computer nerd” than the general public. So we generally have more people that already use Linux, and more people that could reasonably benefit from switching.

Plus of course moving off of windows is one of the most effective ways to show your displeasure with Microsoft.

Unfortunately these services also open up security issues

Who exactly is the target audience for this? Home users running Windows server? This would get flagged for sure in an enterprise environment and no self respecting admin would ever install something like that.

When the switch to run it on a server is "/unsafe" I think I'll pass 🤣

This is a ridiculous statement. Copilot should be opt-in, not opt-out and the setting is new.

Perfectly reasonable by the sysadmin to not have that already set.

There are 5 million ways to configure windows and each have an absurd and almost by-design level of convolution. You can't possibly expect people to know about a new GPO immediately

Let me see if I understand your logic. Microshit decides to push something sneakily on servers, and the OP mentions that he just found out about it, and never once does he mention that he doesn't know what to do about it, but and you assume he doesn't know, but and choose to blast him over your assumption.

Did I miss something?

Anyone who cares about this and doesn't require a Windows server is already using BSD/Linux/etc

Samba AD DC

Will uninstall actually get rid of it?

maybe for a couple months

I don't have a Windows 11 machine available, so I can't get you the exact command, but this should get you there.
It should remove it from all users on the laptop, and (hopefully!) prevent it from coming back:

Open Powershell and run:
Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Where-Object {$_.displayname -like "*Copilot*"}

Copy the Package Name entry and run the following command, with PACKAGENAME replaced by what you just copied:
Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online -packagename PACKAGENAME

In the EU you can just uninstall it.

Try asking it. 😆

Microsoft has a whole suite of exfiltration tools such as telemetry and searchapp. Check out what searchapp does next time you search for anything. Those searches are going to microsoft online services, what about thr index?. So youve reached the tip of the of the spyware operating system.

You could try running it in wine

This guy got it working: https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceengineers/comments/dqgg7u/guide_space_engineers_dedicated_server_on_linux/

It's a making scheme like windows 95, 98, & 2k. They don't call it Windows 11 server.

TRUE ACTUALLY

Windows server 2022 gets updates

You will become AI

Is this sarcasm or outright ignorance?

SystemD-less Debian lol what year is this.

^ Calls on someone for not using the superior OS // Proceeds to point people to a pointless, barely maintained and buggy fork of Debian. lol