Just recently moved onto Linux. Most likely not coming back when these kind of things just keep happening. I'm really surprised how well everything works. 120Hz HDR 4k Nvidia no issues on Wayland. Kubuntu 25.04/Plasma 6.3 is very nice. EasyEffects/PipeWire makes audio better compared to Windows. Steam/Proton/Wine works very well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits. Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth I can't think of anything that's worse than Windows while many things are better.
craftkiller · 22m ago
> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth
FWIW I use a DualSense controller connected to my Linux computers all the time without issue and without having to do anything special. In fact, Sony is the author of the DualSense driver on Linux[0]. Do you connect anything else over bluetooth? I'm wondering if your bluetooth setup might just be broken in general rather than specifically for DualSense controllers.
Ditto; ~20 years of dotnet dev, 1000+ games on steam. Couldn't be more baked into the ecosystem. Its just the work laptop left with windows now, and the team is working to support a non-windows dev env.
reddalo · 43m ago
I work on a mac, but I have Linux at home.
I've started using LibreOffice at home and I'm surprised at how snappier it is compared to Word. Exported PDFs are even lighter that the ones Word do.
bdhcuidbebe · 56m ago
> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth
This is a gotcha. The issue is probably that your user dont have the permissions to interact with udev devices.
I moved over to Linux about a year or so ago when Microsoft announced they were going to start pushing their AI shit on every Windows system. I created a small partition intending to just give it a shot but ended up never moving back since 99.9% of everything I tried just works. It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone and right now the only reason I keep Windows on my work machine is because there's still specific dev pipelines I can only do on Windows.
crinkly · 33m ago
Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop. Nothing even remotely comparable. So it's Mac for me, but I get you.
yodon · 51m ago
More than anything, Microsoft is incompetent at messaging and communications.
This is a feature that has been among the most loved aspects of its main competitor for more than a decade.
Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.
tsukikage · 6m ago
OneDrive has to manage synchronising the cloud with multiple, potentially independently updated, local copies. This is a much harder problem than anything Google have tried to tackle, with more ways for things to go wrong compared to "no internet connectivity? No documents for you!"
This has the effect that (to a first approximation) everyone knows someone with a horrific OneDrive data loss story, no-one particularly trusts OneDrive with anything actually important, and so no-one wants to be forced to use it for everything.
Xelbair · 43m ago
It's even simpler.
People who wanted that kind of treatment and walled garden already moved to apple's ecosystem, and people who do not want this stayed with windows.
Now more and more of my non-technical friends are moving towards linux because microsoft is pushing them away.
ubermonkey · 58s ago
I've no idea what you mean by "walled garden" w/r/t MacOS, but I understand it's an article of faith on HN.
Again, for the Nth time, you can run any software you like on a Mac. You can do anything you want. App store? Of course. Direct vendor download? You bet. Build from source? No problem.
Further, this line is out of place here because Microsoft is FAR more invasive about pushing cloud-first storage than Apple has ever been. No app on my Mac default to saving to iCloud. NONE.
8fingerlouie · 15m ago
I think the main competitor for Microsoft Office is Google, which indeed defaults to saving documents in the cloud.
Apple, as far as i know, still gives you a choice.
stuaxo · 42m ago
Their competitor is cloud native, so where else would it be stored?
This is still a local app, so it doesn't feel like a natural default.
mc32 · 36m ago
It should be the default for corp accounts. But even home users would benefit form seamless document retrieval (recovery).
Corp users’s biggest IT headache is lost Word or Excel files.
clejack · 36m ago
While incompetence might be an issue, I think the greater problem is that Microsoft is rolling back control and generally sucks at UX.
Why does this app that's been working just fine as desktop software need to save anything to the cloud by default? It's conceptually odd.
I've used Google docs from the beginning, but I actively choose what docs I want on that platform.
All MS had to do was add "save to cloud" as an additional save option along with "save" and "save as" (maybe renamed as "save to desktop") then auto save could activate where your last save location was. This would be good design.
TechSquidTV · 28m ago
Microsoft could announce that they've made kittens live forever and people would complain.
Word has defaulted to saving in OneDrive (if you turn on autosave and you're signed into an MS account) for years now, I think since the Office 2016 > Office 365 update. The only real change I see is that the document will now be given a name with the date instead of just 'Document 1'. Maybe it's a little more aggressive about turning on autosave for you? The autorecover location is still in appdata.
N-Krause · 1h ago
The next reason, following hundreds of others, to start using Linux for the Desktop.
If my non technical SO can do it, you can do it as well.
farmin · 58m ago
Yes I moved away from Windows to MacOS but couldnt get used to the UI and they have now sprinkled bad AI tools throughout. I use KUbuntu now which feels a bit like Windows 10 and really is all I need. But what I really want on my Thinkpad with KUbuntu is the perfect open/close screen management like the Macbook has and changing from second monitor to no second monitor often causes issues and doesnt just work argh.. Maybe one of these linux first laptops will fill the void.
pmontra · 1h ago
Hopefully, but most likely a lot a people will shrug or won't notice. Others will start using Libre Office and discover that it's more than enough for their very basic tasks.
rpdillon · 1h ago
Yep, I'm constantly astonished by adults that insist that Linux is too hard to use on the desktop. My entire family has been using it for years. I raise my kids on it. Works great.
reddalo · 41m ago
My family has also been using it for years, but I'm the one who always had to install, update, fix problems, etc.
I think the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Linux is not using Linux itself, it's installing it on a computer. 99% of people don't know how to format a USB device, or how to enter the BIOS.
N-Krause · 31m ago
To be honest, I think most non-technical people that are not close to someone technical probably don't even know about Linux and/or just don't care about it.
If it isn't a problem it's not worth fixing. A lot of people don't even know where they are saving their stuff to, so if it's in the cloud or on their device doesn't really matter to them.
rpdillon · 8m ago
I made this point elsewhere in this discussion, but it really does matter to them, even though they don't know it.
Ubuntu's Wubi was a great attempt at a "try Linux" solution, but - Canonical being Canonical - killed it.
chistev · 42m ago
What reasons did your non technical SO have for switching?
N-Krause · 36m ago
I am using Linux personally for the last 5 years or so. When she bought a new laptop I told her that she wouldn't need windows for her use case and the (free) Linux would be more than adequate.
She is mostly using it for education (university), browsing internet. Just casual stuff.
She then proceeded to install and test the programs she needed and everything worked basically out of the box, so now she continued to use it because it doesn't matter to her what she uses, as long as she can use it.
(She is using Fedora on a Framework laptop)
ommz · 1h ago
Seems like Microsoft's Modus operandi the last few years has been:
Make anti-consumer move -> get backlash -> repackage same egregiousness while stalling & deflecting -> repeat cycle
Steamrolling their users then getting rewarded with their stock going stratospheric. Excellent!
kotaKat · 20m ago
I just wish they’d wine and dine me after getting fucked so much.
jgalt212 · 1h ago
That's pretty much it. If MSFT stock was punished for such actions, they would stop today.
mrweasel · 31m ago
> Steamrolling their users then getting rewarded with their stock going stratospheric
Welcome to the world of modern capitalism. I'm seriously starting to question if a company can survive on the stock market by creating a solid product and caring about the users of that product.
nubinetwork · 1h ago
We recently started rolling out 11 at work, and we have all sorts of group policy hacks to disable stuff... one thing I noticed is that despite copilot being disabled, the button still appears at the top of every office app. I'll have to check on the weekend, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hard enable this option as we have our own OneDrive instance to replace our terabytes of network shares.
Semaphor · 1h ago
FWIW, I don’t have any copilot buttons anywhere (checked Excel, Teams, Outlook), on 24H2.
sombragris · 1h ago
I wonder what would lawyers and doctors writing very sensitive, liability-ridden info would have to say about this move.
No comments yet
nerdjon · 38m ago
If I am reading this right I assume this is only if you have onedrive enabled?
If that is the case, I think it makes some sense if you are already setup to use that to default to saving there since it makes it easier to find your files on other devices and they be safe. Theoretically if you have it setup you already agree to the risks of storing data in the cloud.
however... The real problem to me is that onedrive is enabled by default and that they are now requiring you to login with a microsoft account to use Windows. If both of those were not the case this makes complete sense.
But until they stop enabling one drive by default and making it a pain in the ass to disable this is bad.
pjmlp · 59m ago
While I am not fan of this, remember that most people that dislike Microsoft are using Google Office cloud only products.
lanfeust6 · 4m ago
Source: pulled out of thin air
bdhcuidbebe · 51m ago
Who cares?
When did Google offer an non-cloud installable app and changed it to upload to the cloud?
pjmlp · 37m ago
Because usually everyone that throws stones forgets about their own roofs.
I bet all those cool SV people "we're better than Microsoft" aren't using Libre Office on a GNU/Linux system.
Maybe it is time for some donations?
terminalshort · 1h ago
My computer broke while I was traveling a few years ago, so I bought a cheap Windows laptop at Walmart. It took me an hour to figure out get that thing up and running without setting up a Microsoft account online. I even had to change a freaking BIOS setting! I bet you can't even do it at all now.
gregoryl · 53m ago
You still can; its a pain in the ass tho. They keep changing it, I suspect in the hope that out of date tutorials will deter less technical users.
postdoc74 · 1h ago
I don't know what's new on this. For the last two years all Office apps I own have insisted on saving to OneDrive first. I have always had to explicitly click on the path and select another folder. Every. Single. Time.
balder1991 · 19m ago
And on Mac things like TextEdit and Apple’s own office tools save them on iCloud by default.
JanneVee · 1h ago
I'm old as dirt but I recall one of the arguments for TPM was showed down our throats was the ability to tie documents to machines and organizations. Something something... industrial espionage. Now we know that is a lie. They just wanted to fill landfills with old working computers.
Borg3 · 52m ago
Nah.. Ill grab any old HW between 2005-2015 they throw up :) Who say I need to run newest windows on them, eh? :)
nickslaughter02 · 2h ago
In other news, government documents from around the world uploaded to a US operated cloud.
bhawks · 1h ago
| If you mind that Word documents are stored in the cloud by default, you need to modify the default setting.
Now that would require the competent configuration of the software by the government and proper usage by the individual. So leak guaranteed.
guappa · 1h ago
The competent OS uses sane defaults.
delfinom · 1h ago
Well, the NSA thinks its competent for their own needs :3
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> government documents from around the world uploaded to a US operated cloud
“Word customers who do not want their documents to be saved to the cloud by default need to become active to change the default save location.”
croes · 1h ago
And hope that the next update doesn’t reverse the settings
ur-whale · 1h ago
Looks like the list of reasons to avoid window like the plague is growing longer every day.
vehemenz · 1h ago
Office 365 is a macOS and web-based application too. The implications of cloud-based document storage as the default is greater than just another bullet point in Windows' decline. This will affect anyone, anywhere Office 365 is used.
crinkly · 57m ago
Glad I don't have to use Word any more or Windows. Everything is in TeXShop+LaTeX for me now. Just files on the disk as it should be.
rahen · 30m ago
I use Emacs (org-mode with TeX and Beamer exports) for almost everything, it's my office suite among other things. The only time I still need LibreOffice is for diagrams and charts, and even that is slowly being replaced by Mermaid.
More training data for MS, and more useless intel for the NSA.
Silhouette · 1h ago
If this report is accurate and the change is made quietly and automatically as it predicts then how does this not end up with the mother of all lawsuits? We have several clients in sensitive industries and contractually it is very clear that we must not upload data for those projects anywhere. Surely many others do as well. Anyone working in industries like healthcare or security could get in a lot of trouble for uploading data even once.
staticman2 · 36m ago
If you are working in Healthcare or security wouldn't Onedrive be disabled and therefore it can't autosave to the cloud?
bdhcuidbebe · 1h ago
Impressive. Now corporations and governments have one more reason to abandon ship.
charcircuit · 1h ago
This is already how alternatives like google docs work, being cloud first so I think it makes sense for Microsoft to follow as its natural to want to be able to read, modify, and share documents from various computers.
rpdillon · 1h ago
This is a naive take because it ignores the presence of the third-party doctrine. The moment any file is uploaded to the cloud, you lose an expectation of privacy. When we decided to put everything in the cloud, I think most people sort of forgot about this, but it doesn't make it not relevant.
FWIW I use a DualSense controller connected to my Linux computers all the time without issue and without having to do anything special. In fact, Sony is the author of the DualSense driver on Linux[0]. Do you connect anything else over bluetooth? I'm wondering if your bluetooth setup might just be broken in general rather than specifically for DualSense controllers.
[0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sony-HID-PlayStation-PS5
I've started using LibreOffice at home and I'm surprised at how snappier it is compared to Word. Exported PDFs are even lighter that the ones Word do.
This is a gotcha. The issue is probably that your user dont have the permissions to interact with udev devices.
See https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev
This is a feature that has been among the most loved aspects of its main competitor for more than a decade.
Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.
This has the effect that (to a first approximation) everyone knows someone with a horrific OneDrive data loss story, no-one particularly trusts OneDrive with anything actually important, and so no-one wants to be forced to use it for everything.
People who wanted that kind of treatment and walled garden already moved to apple's ecosystem, and people who do not want this stayed with windows.
Now more and more of my non-technical friends are moving towards linux because microsoft is pushing them away.
Again, for the Nth time, you can run any software you like on a Mac. You can do anything you want. App store? Of course. Direct vendor download? You bet. Build from source? No problem.
Further, this line is out of place here because Microsoft is FAR more invasive about pushing cloud-first storage than Apple has ever been. No app on my Mac default to saving to iCloud. NONE.
Apple, as far as i know, still gives you a choice.
This is still a local app, so it doesn't feel like a natural default.
Corp users’s biggest IT headache is lost Word or Excel files.
Why does this app that's been working just fine as desktop software need to save anything to the cloud by default? It's conceptually odd.
I've used Google docs from the beginning, but I actively choose what docs I want on that platform.
All MS had to do was add "save to cloud" as an additional save option along with "save" and "save as" (maybe renamed as "save to desktop") then auto save could activate where your last save location was. This would be good design.
Word has defaulted to saving in OneDrive (if you turn on autosave and you're signed into an MS account) for years now, I think since the Office 2016 > Office 365 update. The only real change I see is that the document will now be given a name with the date instead of just 'Document 1'. Maybe it's a little more aggressive about turning on autosave for you? The autorecover location is still in appdata.
I think the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Linux is not using Linux itself, it's installing it on a computer. 99% of people don't know how to format a USB device, or how to enter the BIOS.
If it isn't a problem it's not worth fixing. A lot of people don't even know where they are saving their stuff to, so if it's in the cloud or on their device doesn't really matter to them.
Third-party doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
She then proceeded to install and test the programs she needed and everything worked basically out of the box, so now she continued to use it because it doesn't matter to her what she uses, as long as she can use it.
(She is using Fedora on a Framework laptop)
Steamrolling their users then getting rewarded with their stock going stratospheric. Excellent!
Welcome to the world of modern capitalism. I'm seriously starting to question if a company can survive on the stock market by creating a solid product and caring about the users of that product.
No comments yet
If that is the case, I think it makes some sense if you are already setup to use that to default to saving there since it makes it easier to find your files on other devices and they be safe. Theoretically if you have it setup you already agree to the risks of storing data in the cloud.
however... The real problem to me is that onedrive is enabled by default and that they are now requiring you to login with a microsoft account to use Windows. If both of those were not the case this makes complete sense.
But until they stop enabling one drive by default and making it a pain in the ass to disable this is bad.
When did Google offer an non-cloud installable app and changed it to upload to the cloud?
I bet all those cool SV people "we're better than Microsoft" aren't using Libre Office on a GNU/Linux system.
Maybe it is time for some donations?
Now that would require the competent configuration of the software by the government and proper usage by the individual. So leak guaranteed.
“Word customers who do not want their documents to be saved to the cloud by default need to become active to change the default save location.”
https://ridaayed.com/posts/create-diagrams-in-emacs-org-mode...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine