Are people just going to keep reposting this misleading shit headline of a post until no one reads the article and just goes along with it?
Are the people constantly reposting this even reading the article and realizing how illiterate they look?
The click bait will never die my friend.
We should never tire of pointing it out though.
We must fight!
Finally, I can proudly proclaim that I’m no longer bound Microsoft’s bullshit. Been a rocky start, but I’ve been happily using Kubuntu on my Surface for a while now, and it’s going awesome
Hey, great for you! Which Surface do you have and did you get the camera(s) working properly?
It’s a Surface Go 2, 8GB RAM, I think - maybe 4 - and a couple years old now. Haven’t tried, actually, since I rarely if ever need the cameras. However, I read that getting the cameras to work is a bit of a hassle. Not impossible but annoying
I have a lenovo yoga 14s which is similarly transformable. Are there good resources out there for installing linux on these kinds of laptop, or are they mostly focused on surface laptops?
Honestly Windows on it is just a nightmare and I’d love to ditch it.
Nothing I could find immediately. I found an Arch Wiki entry which shows that most features work out of the box. Not sure if that’s your exact model and can’t comment on how reliable the information presented is too.
Thanks! Looks like on the talk page there’s doubt about whether it even has a touchscreen, which is a little discouraging. I guess I can just try, but It’s good to know a resource like this exists.
And around 20 years ago I did go all-in Linux.
So, turns out that they final push that convinced me to start learning Linux is the ol’ Text Document.txt of all things. Swear to God, I thought that it would be the automatic updates nuking my unsaved work (again), but here we are…
How much shit are people going to endure before realizing Windows isn’t for them any more?
Dump the damn thing and use Linux. Yes, Linux is friendly, easy to use, you can play most games, you don’t need your proprietary programs because there are Free alternatives that are just as good that might take you a moment to adjust to (don’t cry about how it’s different, that’s Baby Duck Syndrome), and so on.
And Microsoft facilitates fascism and government spyware and all sorts of evil crap. So does Apple. And Google. Throw away your phone, use Linux on your PCs, free yourself.
Linux is as messy and more as the apartment where I live (really bad).
If you want the operating system to make sense, use OpenBSD (no Wine, no Linux emulation, thus only native games) or NetBSD (there is Wine and Linux emulation, but limited) or FreeBSD (generally can do the same as Linux), but all three port graphics drivers from Linux with significant lag, and hardware support is worse in general.
And Microsoft facilitates fascism
There’s a lot of Linux in systems that governments and militaries use.
Throw away your phone,
Yes, right. Also change job so that an Android device for 2FA weren’t a requirement. And get used that I can’t communicate with someone over TG/WA/VK in transport.
And still be surveilled, because the information you give about yourself without an Android phone is sufficient, carrying one is a symbolic decapitation of your privacy and dignity, “symbolic” is the word.
What a sycophantic shitlord.
Something insulted you in my comment or you feel the urge to take sides in things you most likely haven’t compared? Linux is a mess compared to BSDs. Anyone who used them all can confirm this.
You mean the entire fucking world where *BSD is basically dead and Linux is fucking everywhere? Yeah… sure, buddy.
*BSD has always been a poor alternative to Linux because of design decisions, poor hardware support, and a garbage license that allows non-free software to “steal” (take) and use your code irresponsibly. *BSD sucks.
Someone is just jealous of Linux’s success but is so caught up being a contrarian shitlord that they can’t admit the truth.
You mean the entire fucking world where *BSD is basically dead and Linux is fucking everywhere? Yeah… sure, buddy.
This is not a valid argument and also you are quite ignorant of what’s everywhere and what is dead.
*BSD has always been a poor alternative to Linux
The other way around technically, one came before the other and was a more mature system, with ongoing lawsuits however.
Also SunOS 4 and Ultrix are BSD, if you didn’t know. Commercial high-end OSes before Linux even started. About “poor alternatives”.
because of design decisions,
You don’t know what you’re talking about, anything but this argument. BSDs’ design decisions allow them to solve the same problems orders of magnitude cheaper (in human effort) than Linux. That’s how they still survive.
Under FreeBSD there are GEOM, netgraph, properly working ZFS since long ago, proper separation of base system and packages, the ports system, Linux emulation for legacy software, all orderly and clean. Under Linux the horrible mess starts with Debian netinstall.
By the way, you don’t even know your own team, Eric S. Raymond of the “cathedral vs bazaar” glory notoriously disagreed with you, despite the comparison being supposed to put Linux on top. His point was that if you allow thousands of monkey developers, they might not do things so well, but they’ll do so much more that it’s justified, and thus Linux wins due to having shittier architecture, but developing faster.
poor hardware support,
Go use Windows then, it has almost perfect hardware support.
and a garbage license that allows non-free software to “steal” (take) and use your code irresponsibly.
So Google uses GPL code responsibly, right? Microsoft? Apple? Meta?
This argument is obsolete.
I dunno where the circus is, but the clowns are already here.
Holy fuck, I swear. This is exactly why I tell people that if they think Linux people are delusional, they know absolutely nothing about delusional because they’ve never seen a fucking *BSD luser try to argue his way out of a wet paper bag and fail.
So the idea that the overwhelming majority of every single place/person/entity that wants a free UNIX-like OS with a choice choosing Linux over *BSD is somehow not valid? Sure, buddy. *BSD had its time to rise up and win over Linux and it did not. It failed because of the reasons I said. It has zero advantages over Linux and so many disadvantages.
Of course, *BSD came first, but even back then, *BSD wasn’t the primary system, UNIX and other systems like MINIX and the ones you mentioned were so much more popular than *BSD ever was. But when Linux arrived, *BSD began to die out. *BSD was a poor afterthought, even before Linux. There’s a good reason the “*BSD is dying” meme appeared very early in internet culture even back when Slashdot was a huge thing, because it was absolutely based on the reality of the world.
Don’t make me laugh about *BSD’s “design decisions”, ones that basically create a system that is much more difficult to work with because it has a much more simplistic base than the much more robust Linux ecosystem. The idea of separation of base system and packages has nothing to do with efficiency and more to do with a simple design option, something Linux can also do with atomic distributions, which while not quite equal to what *BSD does but has the same idea of separation of base OS and packages, have their certain advantages but aren’t flexible enough to do more advanced, low-end system work, which gives Linux an advantage by far.
ESR’s Cathedral and the Bazaar arguments have been repeatedly argued against as a good model for Free software development for a very long time, and Linux wins because of more flexible development done by more people but with a very strong and centralized point of vetting said code for most Linux software, which means it’s not just “thousands of monkey developers” randomly throwing code at Linux. Your use of ESR as an argument against Linux shows how out of time you are with understanding Free software and how it all works to come together to create a great system.
No one wants to use non-free hardware support, troll.
If Google, Microsoft, Apple, or Meta were caught using GPL against its license, they’d be sued to oblivion and they know it. That’s why they don’t. If you think GPL is unenforceable, you are a fool. Meanwhile, ALL of those companies are, in fact, using the hell out of *BSD licensed code and you fucking know it. Your garbage development model helps those garbage companies exist.
Your argument is obsolete, and the clowns are all in the *BSD tent.
You are an angry little contarian who hates popular, mainstream things and you are trying to justify it with bullshit. Grow up.
I don’t want to continue this useless conflict, your comments read as if chatgpt wrote them.
Just a few bits to help you:
UNIX and other systems like MINIX and the ones you mentioned were so much more popular than *BSD ever was.
UNIX obviously was more popular than specifically BSD UNIX, but you don’t seem to understand that one is a subset of the other. You might want to read of “Unix wars” and how BSD UNIX became just BSD and then a bunch of *BSDs.
Minix was an education kit.
No one wants to use non-free hardware support, troll.
You are, in fact, using mostly non-free firmware, as in “binary blobs”, for a lot of your hardware to function under Linux.
It has zero advantages over Linux and so many disadvantages.
You keep writing such sentences about four distinct operating systems, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Don’t make me laugh about *BSD’s “design decisions”, ones that basically create a system that is much more difficult to work with because it has a much more simplistic base than the much more robust Linux ecosystem.
This sentence means nothing.
If Google, Microsoft, Apple, or Meta were caught using GPL against its license, they’d be sued to oblivion and they know it. That’s why they don’t. If you think GPL is unenforceable, you are a fool.
I said it’s enforceable and they are still using it just as “responsibly” and they do with BSD, MIT, ISC licenses, which is the point.
OK, done
Crying about it being different isn’t baby duck syndrome; saying it’s better/worse compared to what you’re used to is.
People just don’t want to spend hundreds of hours re-learning things that already work for them.
It is objectively easier to stick with something you know than to learn something new, so that’s what most non-technical users do.Pretty much everyone in IT should learn linux at some point though.
If you are in IT I’d hope you know some version of Unix. Consumers I wouldn’t expect them to know, they just want it to work and don’t care about configurations and how it works.
I have always been partial to gedit, kate aint bad either.
(neo)vim for life :)
Fucking click bait garbage article, but thankfully the article has a tldr at the top that basically contradicts the headline and saves you minutes of time to realize you’ve been baited;
TL;DR: Microsoft has introduced a paywall for Notepad, requiring a Microsoft 365 subscription to access new features like the AI-powered Rewrite tool.
Better headline: Microsoft forces you to pay to suffer through using their AI tool that no one asked for, application otherwise unchanged.
This seems like something that should be kept local. What’s the point of all these NPUs otherwise
LLMs in general is a tool no in one asked for
!linux@programming.dev could use more folks!
The title is quite sensational compared to the content. They only added an AI Rewrite feature for notepad that requires a Microsoft 365 subscription. Considering the cost of AI, and the fact that it will very probably run in the cloud, it is very reasonable that it isn’t free. Everything else about notepad remains free / included with the price you paid for the OS.
I agree, but the idea of adding AI to notepad is quite insane in its own right
I think the idea is that you can use it for reformatting small sets of data I guess.
“make all the dates in this CSV iso-8601”
“make all the dates in this CSV iso-8601”
This is a use of AI/LLM processing that I could agree with, if it could be trusted. Since it cannot, better to open in vim and regex replace, or process with Python.
That said, I’d rather store as epoch and display as ISO-8601 as the arithmetic is much less prone to error in epoch than any other format.
Yeah look I’m not an AI advocate at all. If I were confronted with this my first instinct would be to manipulate it in a spreadsheet because they can juggle data types like this pretty effortlessly.
The CSV / dates thing was just an example, but I still think it’s a good one. My assistant at work would 100% use notepad like this rather than using a spreadsheet.
It’s also worth pointing out that notepad + LLM would be a lot more flexible than a spreadsheet. Just paste whatever there and explain what you want in plain english. You don’t need to parse your request into regex or spreadsheet formulas. For you and I, we might have spent years interacting with regex and other things such that it’s a pleasant challenge when it arises. For 20 year old me it would have been a tedious impediment to whatever I was trying to achieve.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. The general inaccuracy/untrustworthiness of LLMs makes me very uncomfortable in their use for data processing and transformations. I’d rather take a while to get it right than to potentially hand off a CSV with glaring problems due to use of an LLM.
Genuinely very useful, however I feel that can be achieved without a login and paid AI subscription.
You’re right of course.
Like the other commenter said for this specific problem you’d use a spreadsheet.
It’s just an example though and there are others, like maybe removing url encoding from a string or something.
Again this can be done in some other tool without much fuss, but the versatility offered by notepad will be useful for a lot of people.
Heck, it probably can be done with a regex. (Yeah, I know)
There’s no need to kill three forests just to do the exact same work you could have done by opening your dataset in Excel.
Adding layers to paint was what surprised me
That’s actually very nice, one of the few Microsoft programs that I genuinely miss - layers are a quality of life feature that is actually really nice to have 👍
Why? I mean, one of the main features of generative AI systems is to generate text (the quality of which I won’t get into), why not add this to something like Notepad. I agree that Notepad should be thought of as a lightweight, well, notepad, but still might be useful as a quicker alternative to Word.
The fact that Microsoft is trying to shove Copilot down our throats at every possible step is idiotic, I agree, but having an AI as part of a notes app doesn’t seem too weird.
They give Copilot out for free so it’s weird that they’re charging for the Notepad AI feature.
Hell, just copy and paste the content into Copilot and ask it to rewrite it, I bet it’ll just be doing the same thing but for free.
I use Vim, actually
There always has to be one…
Same.
Just use
edif you’re feeling so fancy
Notepad++ is my text editor of choice as someone who just edits the occasional file. I’m not a programmer or anything, but it’s nice to have those autocomplete and syntax highlighting features for config files. Helps me keep track of stuff better when editing.
Sublime can do all of that as well, but it’s more performant, has better shortcut keys, and IMO it has much nicer navigation for larger files (gives you a sort of eagle-eye’s view of the entire document next to the scrollbar). That’s all very much a personal preference thing of course.
Hell yeah. I just wanted to add another option. I have no opinion regarding Sublime and choice is a good thing. There’s something for everyone.
Notepad has long been a testbed for new technology in Windows. This isn’t just a sign of enshittification, it’s a warning that they want to do more.
The recent update was the first time in decades they’ve touched it. How has it ‘long been a testbed of new technology’ ?
The year of the Linux desktop has arrived.
Thanks god that I’m not using windows for 4 years now, and at least notepad++ exists.
Why would a bot be using notepad?
It’s like they want people to use npp instead
Fine. Notepad++ is better anyway
I prefer Sublime
It’s a lot more feature filled and frankly not very nice looking if all you want is a simple replacement for Notepad. Notepads (with an s) is much better imo.
Thanks for mentioning Notepads, never heard of it but it looks interesting. I already use quite a few different note taking apps, but still often start with Notepad when I don’t know where the info will eventually end up…
Is it though? I still always open notepad for random text stuff. What is better in ++?
- Keeps your progress if you exit without saving
- Supports tabs so you don’t have 5 separate notepad windows open
- syntax highlighting for programming languages and markdown format
- plugin support
- can handle extremely large text files (I’ve opened 50gb text files and used ctrl+f to find terms and it worked fine)
- superb tools for manipulating text (e.g., use reg expressions). Super easy and flexible in making mass edits.
- dark mode support. That alone makes it superior lol
If you just need a quick window open to make a note you might actually prefer Sticky Notes over Notepad!
Ah thanks for the first proper answer. Sounds good, I will give it a try.
A lot of those are features of notepad.
Specifically: tabs, dark mode, and retention of unsaved documents. They’re apps for very different purposes, but Notepad has had some nice little updates over recent years.
+10000 for notepad++, its he swiss army knife of file editing tools. Adding:
-
Plugins: CSV being read as a small dB table you can query is a game changer. Or have a JSON plugin that auto formats and queries as well as opens the JSON in a clickable nested window.
-
Pinned tabs: pin important tabs, I use one as a todo list.
-
Search for text within files in a folder: need to find a specific bit of text in one of dozens/hundreds/thousands/millions of files somewhere? Its lightning fast and works a treat
-
Search and replace with regex: amazing feature, use regex patterns to find complex parts of your files and replace them with something else Bulk operations: remove newline, replace line breaks etc
-
Multi format support: see line breaks from different OSs like Unix and windows and amend them Portable install: you dont have to install it, you can use a portable version
So much more, get it and you won’t look back.
-
Your first two points are part of Notepad now too. Everything else you’ve said is true though, including the find and replace function supporting regex. It’s amazingly powerful for editing.
It also supports line numbering, which seems like a small thing but is really helpful.
A few of those features are available on Notepad as well, just FYI.
Out if curiosity, which ones? Because I don’t see any of those features and am on W11…
On my W11 work machine I got dark mode, saving unsaved drafts and tabs
Ahh interesting. Is that a Windows 11 thing? I haven’t taken the plunge
Just to point out that on Win11, Notepad also:
- Keeps progress without saving
- Supports tabs
I use a bunch of text editors / note taking apps regularly (or semi-regularly) and Notepad is one of them (among others also Notepad++, VSC, Obsidian, Geany, Notion…).
the only thing I need it for is to select text vertically (by holding left alt). there are a few similar ones for linux but some crash and the rest don’t have a dark theme, so I still use it with wine.
Holy moly, that works? I needed precisely that feature earlier! Nice.
Notepad++ isn’t trying to shoehorn in AI for starters. It’s clear Microsoft is praying the current gimmicky narrative of AI will let the masses not realize this is a privacy nightmare.
Notepad does that neither for me and has not for >20 years. So is there something that is actually better or not?
Yes, it objectively is. And so are various other text editor options that are out there.
But just speaking about Notepad++, you can scale it down to a very simple text editor (like Notepad), it you can easily ramp it up to a much more feature rich one. And for me, the ability to have a vertical list of files is a big plus. As is its ability to optionally show line numbers.
So it is better because it can do more, but I assume not too too much? Because then we can also use word?
They have different use cases. Notepad++ is for manipulating text, strings, and code. It’s got very powerful tools for it.
Word is for making things look pretty. You can change typefaces, fonts, size. You can add pictures and diagrams and arrange them on the page.
