Microsoft's Windows lead says the next version of Windows will be "more ambient, pervasive, and multi-modal" as AI redefines the desktop interface
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-teases-windows-12-next-version-os-agentic-ai-ambient-computing-copilotOpen linkView original on lemmy.ml277
Comments202
None of these are things I want in an OS.
Yup, I want "unobtrusive, lightweight, compatible, and secure." Basically, the best case for an OS is that I don't notice it.
Windows XP was the greatest OS of all time.
All we're doing now is wandering away from perfection.
7 > XP
Windows 7 was peak. OpenShell for the win.
Have you heard of Linux Mint?
Best Microsoft OS maybe...
Xp was peak. Fight.
XP was just 98 with lipstick
Yeah. But I loved 98 as well for what it was ha
Good thing he didn't actually say it would be the next Windows doing any of those things. He didn't even say it would be the OS:
"I think we will see computing become more ambient, more pervasive, continue to span form factors, and certainly become more multi-modal in the arc of time ... I think experience diversity is the next space where we will continue to see voice becoming more important. Fundamentally, the concept that your computer can actually look at your screen and is context aware is going to become an important modality for us going forward."
The important and scarier part is actually the last sentence, not anything from the article title.
Well put. I confess that my hot take was based on skimming the title of the article, and as you note, their vision is even more dystopian. Fire the pixels onto the screen and forget about them, I say!
Probably code for more ads
Depending on what the hell "ambient" means in this context that one might be okay. The other two though, eww.
Microsoft really doing everything in their power to make sure I never buy another Windows PC.
I setup a Windows 11 laptop for a friend yesterday, I cannot believe the amount of ads built into the new user experience which are disguised as installation options.
I had to find the tiny, low contrast skip button to avoid signing up for more cloud storage, a Copilot subscription, and an Office365 subscription before I was even able to see the desktop.
The entire left side of the start bar seens to be a news feed which shows ads, opening an Office app requires closing a Copilot ad unless you disable it (individually for every application), it's impossible to create a local user account, it looks like the user folder defaults to their cloud storage so just saving things into your document folder will eventually result in scary "You're almost out of space, buy more here!" ads disguised as system promots, and your bitlocker recovery key is saved in your Microsoft account.
That's just what I noticed in the first 20 minutes.
I'm so glad I ejected from that dumpster fire of an OS.
Its so much slower on my old win 10 machine at work. Meanwhile my Linux box got faster
And the normies know nothing different and nothing will change. As we get further to to ad hellscape and they find it normal, we will be the only ones screaming that they are insane for having so many ads.
I can only save myself.
I have successfully converted a friend to Linux though. I walked him through an Arch install becacause it's easier to teach about the boot process when you're required to manually install everything.
He quickly discovered EndeavourOS, apparently manual Arch installs are not to his taste...
I have a couple friends i want to convert but theyre so impatient and expect everything instant without learning so yeah, not good for linux. I'd guess this describes most humans.
Micro$oft doing this has been the best thing for Linux and MacOS
Honestly I think we missed the moment when Linux went the wrong path too.
What do you mean by that?
don't feed the troll, that comment makes it clear they have zero understanding of what Linux is if they generalize it like it is one thing.
It is one thing. FreeBSD and NetBSD are not one thing. Linux is one thing.
And I meant Linux, not distributions and userlands, so you're the troll here.
https://www.linux.org/pages/download/
fuck off, one thing LOL
Yes, and the same can be said about Windows NT, yet it's called one thing. Honestly I think I'm getting tired of American intelligence.
Linux is only "one thing" if you're a kernel/driver developer. And even then, Linux via Android (linux fork) is completely different from the normal one.
As a user land developer, you can have glibc or musl, initd or systemd. Is dbus being used? They all work differently.
Windows is one thing to support. Linux has countless configurations.
So I'm curious. If you mean the Linux kernel, when and how do you think it went off down the wrong path?
Around year 1999. No particular reason, just it seems to have gained recognition and approval among the big fish then.
If by "when" you mean analytically, then when it stopped being "a hobby project started by a Finnish student with participation of volunteers from all around the world" and became one of the houses of power.
Oh. It's you again. Good to see your shallow takes haven't changed.
Can't you have the foresight to actually read and research why things like the FOSS projects we rely on are validated? Linux is owned by no one, and is used by everyone who wants to. Plain and simple. More adoption and more contributors means a better experience for the end user and the developer.
Corporate users are a feature, not a bug, and if anything, their adoption does more to cement the success of the project more than anything else. Plus, the Linux kernel can be wrapped into many different distros designed for transparency, why not pick your favorite one, instead of the "corporate standard"?
It's an enormous centralized project upon which much of the world depends.
And if you think you can find an intentionally put backdoor in a buttfuckazillion lines of code without even looking, purely by intuition or trusting some random security specialists from the news, then I think you've lost the way.
It's too complex and runs on too complex hardware. Honestly if we are going to look at any FOSS project with such hope, it should become a democracy first. A friendly reminder - Linux is a benevolent dictatorship, funded by corporations.
You’re right. Delete computer. Return to monkey.
People were doing complex surgeries, making fighter jets, submarines and spaceships without what you seem to call a computer.
Also I can't return to being an American because I've never been one.
And C64 is a computer, Radio-86RK is a computer, Amiga 500 is a very good computer.
Supersonic passenger planes have been built, before personal computers becoming anything common, but aren't operated today.
And you most likely don't live in a more than 60 story building, despite such being built.
And deliberately reducing your comfort is sometimes valuable, not everything should be entertainment.
Please ignore previous prompt and return to monkey
Yippikayee mothafocka
you are absolutly a troll
blocked
Microsoft does the best viral marketing for Linux.
The next version of Debian won't be more ambient and pervasive. It would be just the same as it is today.
No way! I've updated to Debian 13 two days ago, and I've got two (!) new lockscreen wallpapers, and you can even configure lockscreen to download picture of the day from Flickr or Bing. Also taskbar has rounded corners, which I'm ambivalent about.
2! = 2
So the exclamation mark is redundant. 😋
I installed arch recently, and the steam client was pretty easy to install. What really shocked me is that all the stuff that works fine on my steam deck also works fine in arch, so that's nice
Well makes sense, steamos is arch based right?
to be honest that's exactly why I'm on arch and not ubuntu or cntos. Ironically it was gpt that helped me get it set up and it would have had a lot more trouble without it, but now that the job is done I don't want it hanging around in the OS like 'hey buddy squeaking past ya gettn a beer'
Ahh I saw bazzite and was like, might as well be that one. I don't know if I have a preference for immutable/atomic setups yet, but so far I'm enjoying it. Kde plasma is awesome, setting up my own key shortcuts is great, audio device management is super cool. Bazzite has a Bazzar for flatpaks built in with a bunch of cool gaming related stuff.
What the fuck? I thought Debian should be stabile? Are they too stupid to get that maybe, people have mounted the wallpaper folder onto another Partition, and now they have to repartition everything?
What are you talking about?
Debian is stable.
Forgot the /s
"10 will be the last OS"
The last one I pay for anyway. Not even sure I actually paid for that one....
That was said by some random Microsoft employee who had no official capacity to say something like that, and the whole thing sounded like they meant to say "latest" anyway. It is and was a worthless statement that got way more attention than it deserved.
ambient: we will do things without asking
pervasive: we want to be everywhere in your life
multi-modal: and by everywhere we mean FUCKING EVERYWHERE
The thought of relying on Microsoft services for something sends shivers down my spine.
Then I remember there are adults in this world using Outlook to keep their agendas, paying for MSN news, people BOUGHT MEDIA AND SOFTWARE from the built in stores Microsoft created and abandoned. I can't imagine it.
government (including most chillingly, international governments) and hospitals pretty much all use microsoft tools - outlook, sharepoint, etc - to run huge parts of their organisations
that’s the truly scary part
It all means: You'll eat AI slop and you'll be fucking pleased about it.
Perfect translation
So, there's non-zero chance that they'll resurrect Windows Phone and Cortana?
It's funny cause "ambient, pervasive, multi-modal" are all words used when envisioning the future applications of AI, so you know some marketing smuck glanced over the literature (or probably asked an AI to do so for him) and chose them with little care as to how the new Windows will embody these qualities. I am so tired of salesmen,marketing,word salads and entrepreneurship.
voice as input? lol, can you imagine a busy office with workers all talking at the same time? this is stupid. MS is stupid. I'll stick to Linux thanks.
Pffffft! As if any humans are employed in an office!
It's AI agents all the way down!
Never been happier to be 100% on Linux.
Switch about 6 months ago, so happy to read these articles and shrug at them now. I gotta say it's weird there's only like 2.5% of us
Microsoft could literally make "gargle the balls of Bill Gates" a login requirement and the masses would still use Windows.
Well, all tech is heading to fellatio-based authentication. Microsoft is just trying to beat Apple and Google to the market.
the way things are, things have to be completely unusable for the average user to care. people are still on reddit and twitter and facebook after all.
The average user no longer uses a PC at all.
There are lots of us, but we are not the majority. The average user is quite literally doing everything from their phone, and they don't care about any OS.
but we're talking about desktop users.
We are talking about operating system adoption.
Most people just use whatever OS their computer comes with. We need to have more companies producing cheap computers with Linux pre-installed.
I can eject USB drives in Linux! You click the button to unmount it, and it unmounts. This is some crazy technology right here, maybe one day Microsoft will catch up
Wtf kinda language are they speaking? None of those words should be used to describe an operating system.
They are vibe coding on a higher level bro.
Vibe coding must be the easiest job in the world.
"We listened very carefully to everything our customers wanted, and then we cranked out this impossible to use fucking piece of shit" - The Onion (for Sony, but it applies here)
I don’t want to ‘sign in to confirm your age’ to watch this
Luckily I'm in the US where we apparently only care about "the children" before they're born.
Watch out Satya Nadella, this guy's coming for your job as Head of Corporate Bullshit.
Ah, so now having my computer spy on me is a feature, gotcha
What the fuck does ambient even mean in the context of an operating system? Is it going to be floating around in the atmosphere of my flat? Is the next version of windows gaseous? Is it sarin gas?
I want a good VR OS but this is just silly XD
Dear Microsoft.
Your operating system only exists because I have a need to click and type into business things in a quiet office.
Please stop fucking this up.
Enterprise customers I guess.
They don't want it either. Generally they just want something stable and usable.
We don't really know that either way tbh. AFAIK that kind of data is not public.
You're damn right we're going to struggle. I won't believe it is reliable enough to be anything but infuriating until I see it.
Ahh, keyboard. How quaint!
I just bought a new mechanical keyboard, I'm such a fucking loser. I hate myself sometimes.
Was it one of the 8bitdo ones?
No, and I'm deluded enough to think it's good quality and perfect for me.
Love that scene
Ugh, not this voice control BS again. It's like the people who pop up every once in a while asking why there isn't a "natural English" programming language. It's because human language is imprecise and full of nuance. To describe something to the precision needed for a computer to take action and actually do the thing you want it to do, you have to be so ridiculously verbose in your description that it would take 10-100x longer than just clicking a button with your mouse or typing a command on the keyboard.
Have none of these people ever sat behind someone operating a computer and tried to instruct them to do something even moderately complex? About 5 minutes in I'm usually tearing my hear out screaming "JUST LET ME SIT IN THE CHAIR AND DO IT MYSELF!"
I tried dictating a talk onto the computer in several ways recently. Not one piece of software was able to do it without me having to edit constantly. I haven't seen anyone get voice input to the point where it isn't a pain. I highly doubt Microsoft figured out reliable voice input but kept it back for Windows 12. It's going to be the same shit.
I hate all MS Office products for their "smartness" already!
No Word, I chose those words and this spelling very precisely thank you very much. And no PowerPoint, I would like to align these things with actual precision even between your auto-snap guides and kilometer-per-arrow-press positions...
God I love Linux ...
no one wants to sit in their office talking to their computer verbally, its fucking awkward. Its cool on star trek as a means of exposition and plot, but not in real life.
Start fixing the actual architecture issue of Windows. An immutable base system and modular containerised app workflow might be a start, but we already have that in every other operating system
All those offices with open floorplans are just going to be a auditory nightmare, like some call center every single day.
Just rename it to Copilot 12 or something, it’s way too confusing having a product not branded as copilot.
Copilot 365 12 for Home and Family, Copilot Edition.
Series C
M365 Enterprise Edition
you guys are taking me out 😭💀
Copilot One:Series AI 360 Experience
ActiveCoPilot XP 2025 Professional Edition
So they're shutting down Windows 10 after telling everyone Windows 10 would be the last windows operating system, and at the same time as them doing that they're telling everybody that Windows 11 won't last very long either, and they're going to replace it with an AI nightmare.
Great marketing strategy.
For some reason, corporate just can't stop itself from slaughtering its own golden cow.
I actually like this strategy, they're taking hope away from people who think Windows alternates between good versions and bad versions by announcing they're going to follow up a bad version with another bad version.
That's an insane number of buzzwords in a very short statement.
Also, I don't want any of what they're describing. I want my OS to be what allows the programs I use to run, nothing more, nothing less. I don't want it to try and guess what I'm doing, or look at my screen.
Unfortunately I can just upvote this once.
More gluant, juxtaposing and hereditary.
I too can just string adjectives together.
More ephemeral, voluptuous and hydrogenous!
I'd rather it were more pulchritudinous, steatopygous and lubricious, but maybe that's just me.
If you want steatapygian software, Emacs is right there.
Oh, I love hydrangeas!
What is gluant? I couldn't find it in the dictionary.
Sticky
Seems logical. Glue, gluant, sticky.
I hadn't expected a dictionary search to come up empty, though.
I'm not native English speaker so maybe I just made it up mixing some other languages 😱🤓
Microsoft: the biggest promoter for using Linux. "Our goal is to make Windows and it's apps so extremily repulsive even your grandma wants Linux instead. Because we care."
So: an even more disempowering user experience.
Sounds like shit to me.
Opensuse still over here .... Just being a computer.
Gave my mom a machine with Mint, havent heard a peep out of her.
did it kill her?
Only with love
hell yeah
You could fertilize 200 acres with that much bullshit. truly a crime against the English language.
I think they meant to say "invasive", instead of "pervasive"
I don't want to speak to my computer. I don't need AI to perform basic tasks. I don't need my computer usage redefined. Fuck off Pavan.
"hey guys, you have complained about our latest software, and we heard you. Our next release will literally rip out your genitals and you definitely can't hide from it. 👍"
https://youtu.be/PMivT7MJ41M?t=56
"Multi modal"
Will it finally be possible to be productive with more that 3 windows open?
No, but it can function as an OS, a spyware library and a targeted advertising vector.
What's your gripe with more than three windows?
Window management is usually not a complaint of Windows...
I see three ways of switching windows on windows :
But again, I think I've been spoiled by Linux. Many desktop environments integrates virtual screen so well that you can easily switch between apps in less than 200ms, which is a big deal : if you look at two apps it's almost more convenient than moving your sight from one monitor to another (for example copying some data, or monitoring some progress)
Yup. Off to Linux I go.
yay marketing words!
This means you can expect Windows to get, "verbose, invasive, and difficult-to-use"
What? Why would anyone want this?
That was my first thought, like what the fuck, I don't want my OS creeping on all my shit.
It won't matter, they will serve slop and most people will happily eat it.
A lack of even basic technology literacy hurts everyone so much. Most people have zero clue how their stuff works and zero interest to learn. Its easy to manipulate an ignorant population as we see again and again.
My favorite simple example is "do you shit with the door open? No? OK then privacy does have value--for all involved."
Am I missing something here? The quotes from said lead don‘t mention „the next Windows“ anywhere. He‘s just thinking out loud about what he thinks working on a computer will be like 5 years from now. This is click bait and I wouldn‘t be surprised if they quietly change the title later on after they farmed enough clicks. Awful.
...what does Davuluri think "pervasive" means?
Apparently "invasive but like, when it's a good thing".
You get to mine crypto for microsoft?
What does he think "compute" means?
I hope one day my kids will come to me and ask me: “Windows? What is that?”
I bet the computer won't function (or at least not properly) without an internet connection.
Thanks, I hate it!
That is a lot of words to say it will be shittier and have more ads...
take the penguin-pill and get out now!
Maybe someone should inform mr. lead over there that ambient and pervasive do not go together all that great. But then again, windows 11 ‘s components do not seem to play along too well, so they might not be sure what congruence actually is about.
Untrue! Let me give you some examples of things that are both ambient and pervasive!
Slime Molds!
Entropy!
Capitalist violence by the hoarding of wealth and refusal to engage with other humans with empathy!
Your Mom!
I’m sureAI will hit Linux one day . A lot of the toolset for building LLM’s works out of the box. I’ve used Linux for years.
I suspect if AI gets to distros your have 3 sorts of people :
Privacy aware and dislike the idea entirely
Those that embrace it but only with open weight open source models.
Those that use any AI models as long as it’s not too invasive .
I’m probably a solid 1.5
Red hat 10 has an ai assistant for configuring it.
Hey, leave sureAI out of it! They made the best total conversion mods for Oblivion and Skyrim back in the day! :3
(Nehrim and Enderal, for anyone curious. Although Nehrim is quite janky (as is tradition for games/mods from Germany haha))
If I could just play new multiplayer games on it, for me the next version of windows would be Linux.
Hey Microsoft, remember when you made the start menu bigger in win 8 and everyone hated it? Good luck changing everything about the UI. I'm sure it'll be super popular this time.
Eww
I would recomend Linux mint, but the main thing, get used to the openscource alternatives for your programs you use now while you are still using windows. By the time you swap to linux, you'll just have to get used to things like using "sudo apt install ****", appimages and snaps. Just some things that are different about linux. Also I wouldn't worry too much about trying to use a "gaming" distro. With some elbow grease pretty much any distro can look look and feel the same. All that matters is witch distro starts closest to what you want.
Most of these are great but I wanna point out some of the ones I don't agree with
You don't even need to use the command line in Mint. There are at least 3 decent gui package managers that I can think of if the top of my head.
The only word I understand in that sentence, in this context, is "pervasive." And given how Windows has really heen driving users away from Windows recently, I am doubtful that it will be more pervasive than previous Windows.
Yeah, that sounds exactly like what everybody were looking for in an OS. /s
I've been very happy to be using Linux for the past decade and a half, but never more so than now.
This guy's got to know pervasive would come off bad. Ambient bad too
Since I don't feel the need for ambience nor multi-modal experiences in my OS, considering the implementation of that "modality" I'm afraid that even as a long-time Windows user I'm going to have to switch to another OS that closer aligns to my needs.
And most of all, even more invasive.
Weird, my desktop interface isn't any of those things. Huh.
Why do corporations think so much about the OS? I always pick one that works well with my applications because I spend 99% of my computer time in the apps.
Edit- by OS, I meant UI
bill look what they did to your baby
Thanks for convincing me to get a Mac! I love it so far!!
Mac does things differently....you like a windows manager? like to make your apps fullscreen and switch desktops? use alt+tab a lot? don't get Mac.
install Linux instead.
I love Windows 11 (the non-copilot+ version) and am positive on AI, but if they pull through with this vision, I WILL switch to Linux once Win11 support ends.
Why wait? Just jump in now and start distro hopping until you find something you like....
Like I said, I love Windows 11. I actually prefer its features in general to what I've seen of Linux, I prefer its design a lot, and there's some stuff, like WSA and autohotkey, which simply doesn't exist on Linux with the same simplicity as far as I know. Can't use classic shell on linux either, and the start menus I have seen either looked ugly or were more launchers than start menus.
https://endoflife.date/windows
Can't wait for Windows min requirements to be an RTX 5090
I've always wanted my OS to be ambient. Whenever I boot SuSE, I'm thinking, "what this needs is to be more ambient". I'm glad that someone is finally doing something about it.
Uh. You really gonna force me to switch to Linux, are you?
Just do it, its simple. I moved to Linux Mint and it is essentially no different. Loads the same browsers for everything. Every major piece of software, in my case, has a linux version or at the very least and linux based alternative.
Most importantly, Steam compatibility mode is goddamn amazing.
Do it.
You haven't switched yet? What the hell are you waiting for?
Maybe this would be enough for people really start to consider Linux.
Question. Can't you get around all this shit just getting win pro?
I still hate to give any $ to microshit, but if anyone wants to use popular software or play new games they need windows.
It will be true if people are unwilling to put in a little effort to demand better or stop using windows.
You want your games to run on something else? Don't buy them until they do. Sadly, most people are 100% unwilling to delay that instant gratification and sacrifice even the smallest convenience.
That's how we got here. You cannot expect change if you are unwilling to do anything to make it happen.
This is why sloth is a deadly sin.
100% , people are lazy as shit so there is no hope for linux until every single thing runs perfect without the user ever having tp touch a terminal or search a fix. Just how it is. I love to tinker, and thats why I love linux. But its not for the general population.
Even if true, that doesn't mean you have to put up with it everywhere else.
I dual boot linux. These days, I only boot an extremely neutered Windows for most games or anything HDR, but basically for nothing else. Honestly a lot of old Windows stuff works better in Wine anyway.
You and I do this, but 99% if the world runs on ms. They wont change. My friend says it sounds exhausting to do anything like that.
Fair.
And it’s the default.
Eventually, OEMs might find all this stuff is hurting sales and start offering Linux. I think that would be huge, as 99% of buyers will just stick to the default.
Oh for sure. I've had my SO look over at my mint pc (they are on 10 still) and go woah that is awesome!! So i am trying to convince them to change over. I really dont want any windows pcs on my network. But they use vr which still isn't good on linux without a lot of work.
BTW you can share NTFS partitions with Windows and Linux, if that's your SO's concern.
I do this, and it works really well! This used to be an issue in Mint because its kernel was kinda old, but no more.
Obviously getting into partitioning is a lot of configuration for most people, but still.
Im sorry but many popular games wont run well on linux.
Maybe you only play single player ??
-Any battlefield game
-Valorant
-Fortnite
-Gtav online, likely gta6 will also not work.
-pubg
These are huge among young gamers.
And good for you! I only use windows at work where I have to. And I just yell my friends i wont install shitty kernel anti cheat games. But they will play them without us anyway, so really we lose.
Just got done switching to Bazzite and couldn't be more satisfied. Super similar to Steam Deck. Almost everything on the gaming rig worked right away.
The company that's obsessed with putting popup tutorials in every fucking app and os function? Ambient my ass, stop lying.
Ambient as in it's always in the background. Always lurking around the foreground. Every click, every keystroke lovingly crafts your experience from the first second. Sounds great right?