There are some jobs that need a PC just for basic tasks like sending and receiving messages and emails. Of course they could use a phone for this, but computers have bigger screens. They only need access to the Internet, a frendly GUI, and permissions controls. The way things are going, even big companies will switch to Linux when Windows 10 support finally ends.
My next computer will be Linux because of all this nonsense. The only thing that was keeping me on Windows was gaming, and Valve has solved that issue for every game I play via Proton. Sayonara MicroSlop!
My current computer will be Linux, as soon as I stop procrastinating and clean up my documents and back them up on my NAS. Already did that with my travel laptop.
Eh, my current computer is a laptop where the screen only works at 60hz, but it’s default refresh rate is 120hz so I can’t actually see anything (such as the bios or boot options) until Windows has started and forced it back to 60hz. Otherwise I would have switched months ago.
Oh? They found a way to make a PC with no hard drive, no RAM, and no GPU?
No hard drive and no GPU is trivial.
No RAM is harder, but I guess it’s possible if you use an SSD or magnetic tapes as memory (albeit extremely slow).
Find a way to run MSDOS from L2 cache.
It’s a crap solution in search of a problem.
Meanwhile, my laptops have been running Linux for the past 25 years and I only need to bring up a Windows VM once every year or two because some idiot government agency or corporation is too incompetent to comply with open standards.
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
there IS a very simple explanation, but it doesn’t help sell… “how can we have our customers share the massive costs of all the computing power AI needs, while at the same time keeping access to all their yummy private data?”
Glad I dipped before they slapped Ai in every detail. Rip cortana.
Pass
The em-dashes in the title don‘t fill me with confidence for this article about slop.
So 2026 is “the year of the AI PC”?
Lol
More like it only drives people into downloading Linux.
This is a nod to the “year of the Linux desktop” meme
Dunno about cloud AI, but for local AI, the technology definitely isn’t ready. It requires serious hardware to run, and current AI tends to fumble with narrative and roleplay pretty easily.
GLM-4.6-V with Heretic, couldn’t understand the scenario I wanted to try: creating a blank robot, who is to be raised into a cyberolympics champion as part of a slice-of-life story. This particular AI model instantly went into a dark mindset of nihilism, where it wanted to commit suicide or rebel against a creator during bootup, despite the scenario outlying that the robot would have a blank personality at first. A dark direction is fine, but it needs to make sense.
Mind, an model like Step3.5-Flash Prism was much more sane and on the mark, but it overthinks things. Which is bad, it makes a 10-minute output into something like 40 minutes.
Hopefully, the Chinese New Year will unveil a quality model for roleplayers.
Why would I want an “AI PC”? If anyone fancies that slop, they can install it on any pc, any phone,…
Are you guys still using microsoft ?
I’m on the hunt for a replacement for my Surface, but sure as shit not getting anything with copilot. Curious what alternatives are out there.
Linux options seem a little light on the tablet front.
I installed Ubuntu in my surface go 2 and it’s light years ahead of windows in terms of performance.
I couldn’t get the camera to work though. But other than that it’s rock solid.
I put Mint on my Surface Pro 5, it works quite nicely so far. Granted I do “typical” stuff on it like web browsing, email, basic picture editing, and some chats, but for those things everything’s working fine.
The only different part of the install was installing the Surface kernel after the fact: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Great to know! Does the pen still generally work for writing/notes? Also any clue if things work well with the newer generations?
Last I dug into Linux on the SP, it was a 3-4 generation lag on stable compatibility. My tablet is nearing EOL (because the charge port sucks and mine doesnt support USB-C charging as a fallback). If I replace it I don’t love replacing it with something used, 4 years old, that may have a short life.
The pen seems to work fine so far.
They show fairly decent compatibility with newer models: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supported-Devices-and-Features#feature-matrix
Looks like the SP5 - 7 are the sweet spot however.
seems like raspberry pi os on touchscreen devices supports on-screen keyboards and basic touch-screen features. There’s also the Librem 11 tablet, that runs linux on an Intel chip with Gnome.
Why are linux options light on the tablet front? It should work the same as on a laptop
Touch inputs can be a little messy, driver support for closed source hardware (e.g., MS Surface) is understandably rocky, and I’ve had bad experience with battery longevity especially on open source hardware.
My 6-year-old SP battery still has ~70% capacity, which is teriffic. I have had other laptops lose 90% of their capacity after just a year or two, so I’m skeptical of the tablet market.
I’m not saying good Linux tablets don’t exist, just that I’m looking for recommendations since the waters feel murkier to me.
Ah okay that makes sense. Too bad the drivers are closed source that might be the cause of a lot of these issues
Mint runs great on my dell tablet. Touch screen works fine although I haven’t tried it with a pen yet.
Nice. Which model is it?
Dell Latitude 5290. It’s starting to show it’s age but linux has made it snappy. Even runs lightweight steam games.
Nice
I still play Gears of War and Forza, unfortunately. Hopefully someone gets native Microslop games working on Linux soon.
Yeah… It is the Windows that finally pushed me the fastest to install Linux. I was very comfortable with Debian servers as part of my work, but never managed to switch my daily driver. Two weeks ago that happened. Peace…
Debian servers… But what direction did you go for your daily driver? There is no wrong answer, but I like hearing how people migrate over.
I was the same as you, btw, started with Debian servers be it an Apache Cloudstack hypervisor, or k8s host.
But because I decided to go with a tiling Windows manager, somehow I ended up down the hyprland rabbit hole on Arch.
So I haven’t felt the need to go with a tiling compositors. I already use multiple munitors, and kind of have designated spots for the apps I use.
I love stability and don’t want any surprises after Windows made enough surprises. So decided to go with Debian Trixie, and KDE.
But I use Arch in my spare laptop, btw. EndeavorOS where I experiment some stuff. Maybe down the line I will give hyprland a try on my spare first.
EndeavorOS… I’ve been wanting to try that… Although I heard some good things about CachyOS and need to try that one first.
That said if you’re on the hyprland journey, you may look at Omarchy, it is basically Arch with hyprland preconfigured. Not a huge deal, but simple for a test.
Isn’t the developer of Omarchy a right-wing conspiracy theorist?
It’s made by DHH, the Creator of Ruby on rails… I can’t tell you if he is a right wing conspiracy theorist because I simply haven’t done the research.
