Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it's just renaming it
84 points
2 hours ago
| 11 comments
| neowin.net
| HN
wing-_-nuts
38 minutes ago
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I have windows on my desktop pc because it's easier to get executable mods (downgraders, engine fixes, etc) working on windows than linux. There's also the matter of 'kernel level anti-cheat' games not working.

But if I just judge windows vs linux, on even ground, W11 is painful. I've main'd linux on my laptop for ~ 25 years. There was a time when it was a jank experience that I put up with for better devex, but that ended in the late 00's. From that point forward, unless you were trying to get bleeding edge hardware to work, linux has been hands down better.

It's enough that I've considered giving up online play all together just to have a nicer computing experience.

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californical
34 minutes ago
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I just run two drives - one with windows and one with Linux.

I treat the windows one as a console essentially, not even logged into my password manager or email or anything. It is only for games. Basically an Xbox, with all sorts of normal annoying UX, but it doesn’t matter for all of the ~2 minutes until I can launch a game

Separate linux drive for everything else.

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ghighi7878
28 minutes ago
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I have a windows machine connected to my TV for games. Thats it. 1000 Euro machine with 500 Euro GPU. Also use it for govts windows only thingies.
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wing-_-nuts
30 minutes ago
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That's ...not the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Now I just have to wait till prices come down on ssds again. While I can of course afford it, it wounds my soul to pay the AI / tariff tax on components.
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fhd2
21 minutes ago
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I typically install both systems on the same disk, different partitions. Then work with additional SSDs strictly for game storage. Only annoying bit is that some games _need_ to be on C, but very few in my experience. If you have enough space to shrink your Windows partition, that could work without waiting for an SSD. Though I guess the one OS per disk setup is ultimately cleaner.

Been dual booting for >20 years now. It's nice that some games work on Linux pretty well these days, and of course I had fun messing with Wine manually to get some stuff to work decades ago. But it really doesn't bother me too much to reboot when switching between gaming and literally anything else.

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pawelduda
14 minutes ago
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I repeat this story every now and then but I "maintain" a 18 years old laptop with Ubuntu (mainly for Internet) for non-tech savvy user. I put it in quotes because I just run apt update every now and then - that's it. Just works. The only bottleneck is how resource-hungry browsers got over time but it remains usable. Ubuntu was installed sometime back in 2017 and there was no need for fresh reinstall since then.
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connicpu
15 minutes ago
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For me last year was the tipping point, with Windows 10 hitting EOL I refused to move to the buggy mess of 11. All the games I regularly play are now nearly flawless in proton and games that refuse to run on Linux just don't exist for me anymore. Admittedly I already didn't play the kinds of highly competitive online games that like to use KLAC, so might be a tougher sell if that's your jam. Most of my game time goes to FF14 and GW2.
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MiddleEndian
21 minutes ago
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Anecdotally, my (smart but doesn't really care much about computers) fiancee was able to get all dozen of her mods for The Sims working on Bazzite Linux without any help from me besides a chmod +x to one script.

But we don't play any online multiplayer games, so YMMV on that one.

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lemonish97
1 hour ago
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From the article: "Additionally, AI features in Notepad settings has been renamed to Advanced features and it allows users to toggle off AI capabilities within the app."

I honestly don't mind this, as long as it's not being forced. And I believe this feature exists only within their npu PCs.

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hootz
1 hour ago
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But it's just so unnecessary. Everyone has always expected Notepad to be a simple utility as it has always been, why does it need optional AI features? It just feels like bloat.
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Sharlin
1 hour ago
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Reminder that this is the company that decided to replace Paint with something called "Paint 3D", the laggiest and bloatiest "literally nobody wanted this" drawing app I've ever seen.
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Rohansi
45 minutes ago
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It was never replaced. Paint 3D was an entirely different app for 3D art only. It's also been gone for a few years now.
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Sharlin
36 minutes ago
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It was absolutely sold as a replacement. And it's gone now because literally nobody wanted it, used it, or understood why it existed. Sure, you could still find the old Paint in a disused lavatory behind a locked door with a sign "beware of the leopard". It wasn't even installed by default, unlike the 3D version, or do I recall incorrectly? Even MS isn't so stupid as to ship two separate accessories both called "Paint" in the same OS by default!
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wlesieutre
19 minutes ago
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And a weird obsession with making it impossible to customize the sidebar in Explorer, so there was a “3D Objects” folder stuck there permanently unless you’re the kind of user who doesn’t mind a trip to the registry editor.

What percent of users ever found that useful? I think I’m being generous to guess one in ten thousand.

Absolutely braindead management running Windows development.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/remove-3d-objects-folder-wino...

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Sharlin
14 minutes ago
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Yeah, the "3D Objects" thing is just surreal. You can't make this stuff up.
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whynotmaybe
53 minutes ago
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Must be some Mandela effect but I'm sure that Paint.net was supposed to replace mspaint when it was started.
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cwnyth
47 minutes ago
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Paint.NET wasn't Microsoft's, but was an independent app: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET
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Sharlin
48 minutes ago
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It was supposed to be a third-party replacement, sure, but certainly not an official one. It started as a student project. It's just the prefix that tricks your brain to associate it with MS's own .NET branded applications.
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saghm
38 minutes ago
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To be fair, the .NET brand is already super convoluted (there's .NET framework, the .NET core, .NET runtime, the .NET desktop runtime, the .NET sdk, and I'm genuinely not even sure which if any of these might refer to the same thing), on top of it weirdly sounding like something internet related to a casual user.
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Sharlin
22 minutes ago
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Yes, "Copilot" is not the first brand that MS has tried to stick to everything while being just as confused about it as (inevitably) the consumers. Although somehow they did manage to keep .NET mostly aimed at developers - besides the actual frameworks there's Visual Studio .NET and other dev tools, but I'm actually a bit surprised that they never had "Office .NET" or "Outlook .NET" or even "Windows .NET Edition" or something like that. Maybe they still had some sane people in charge of marketing and brand management back then.
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xp84
4 minutes ago
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They did brand the Microsoft accounts themselves, from “Passport” to “.NET Passport” for a while. That was before they were “Windows Live IDs.”
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hydrogen7800
54 minutes ago
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Ugh, I can no longer press win key and type "p a i enter". I now have to find the old paint manually.
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hilariously
25 minutes ago
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win+r - mspaint - enter
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hydrogen7800
12 minutes ago
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Thanks! Also useful for an old win10 machine I have, and probably shouldn't be using anymore, that no longer responds to clicking the start menu button...
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esafak
11 minutes ago
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They don't even do substring search??
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xp84
3 minutes ago
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Apparently there’s a proper app launcher in PowerToys.
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mlnj
48 minutes ago
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I remember how Skype, an awesome piece of software transformed into Lync, which worked fairly well, slowly transformed into whatever MS wanted to call it year after year, slower and more buggy than the year before.
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saghm
40 minutes ago
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If I'm understanding correctly, you have to go into "advanced" features to turn off AI? So someone who doesn't think they're an expert who needs advanced features might not ever go and look there? I'd argue that "advanced" features are something that a casual user would expect to be off by default and need to go out of their way to enable.
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mcdeltat
37 minutes ago
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"advanced" in 2026 is closer to "using the app how you want to as rather than the way that will generate the corporation maximum profits"
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noir_lord
35 minutes ago
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Be better if there was a global "Disable AI" option easily found in the settings that is a flag everywhere.

Some of us (including very much me) simply do not want Copilot/AI anything and playing whackamole with settings is annoying but we'll do it anyway and it leaves a bad taste.

Since it's the software equivalent of been in a filing cabinet in the basement behind a door that has a sign saying "Beware the Leopard".

In reality it's a moot point, I disable AI features and Windows is a gloried steamos box for me at this point, I do my actual computing booted into Linux and have for decades.

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Topfi
37 minutes ago
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The "AI" additions to Notepad are not limited to systems with an NPU. Why would they be, it's powered by LLMs running on Azure [0].

These sudden additions also correlated with the first CVE [1] in Notepad since its inception, so maybe their attention isn't where it should be.

I for one very much mind this and many other inclusions including the metastatic takeover off Office. OneDrive also was forced upon and severely worsened functioning software, despite not being "AI", so there is precedent at least.

[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enhance-your-wri...

[1] https://infosecwriteups.com/the-dumb-editor-that-got-too-sma...

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tosti
1 hour ago
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IMHO they're just hiding the wolf in sheep clothing. Can't complain about AI if it's not called AI. Modern problems require modern solutions, you get the idea. The snark in TFA about shareholders and stakeholders hits the nail on the head.
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jgalt212
32 minutes ago
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> I honestly don't mind this, as long as it's not being forced.

This is indeed a step forward. With QuickBooks, there is currently no way to disable their extremely intrusive AI. I may just vibe-code a browser extension to block it. Fight fire with fire.

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_HMCB_
56 minutes ago
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Seems like what Apple does with Writing Assistant. At least in this case, it’s opt-in. You have to click. I don’t run Windows so I don’t know if this implementation is vastly superior or not.
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protoster
1 hour ago
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> At the start of the year, Microsoft generated a lot of goodwill among Windows 11 fans when it announced its big plan to fix the operating system in 2026

The only thing generated was boatloads of incredulity and some laughs.

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benterix
1 hour ago
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Yeah, I remember the same. Also, "Windows 11 fans" sounds like an oxymoron.
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tosti
1 hour ago
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It could relate to the amount of *pu and system fans needed to run so much bloatware :)
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bilekas
50 minutes ago
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Might be considered "Windows 11 Hostages" instead given they've dropped support for using anything else.
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tosti
1 hour ago
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luxuryballs
20 minutes ago
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I hope this is better than seeing that Copilot logo infecting every menu, I’ve had to use registry hacks to get rid of that thing.
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benterix
1 hour ago
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> At the start of the year, Microsoft generated a lot of goodwill among Windows 11 fans when it announced its big plan to fix the operating system in 2026.

Interesting, I can't recall a single voice "Oh I'm so happy they changed their corporate strategy" but many of "I'll believe it when I see it".

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shevy-java
1 hour ago
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Ah, you make a great point - I made almost the same comment a moment ago, because I remember that Microslop babbled about "we will listen to the community" some weeks ago. Guess it was indeed at the start of the year.

So those who were skeptic were right - one can not trust Microslop. Its AI addiction is too strong already. It sold its soul to AI. There is no way back for Microslop anymore. All Win11 users will have to support AI. AI up all the things! \o/

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jmclnx
1 hour ago
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No surprise for large companies, one company even renamed itself but its approval ratings still stayed in the basement.

A fortune 500 company I worked for renamed internal projects many times when the original failed. But they continued dumping money into those black holes. One dollar eating project was renamed 3 times and was on its way for a 4th rename when I left. That project was started between 2005 and 2010. I was not involved with it, but everyone knew it would fail.

So M/S renaming copilot ? I expect a few more renames as time goes on :)

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kotaKat
35 minutes ago
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It's almost as if Microsoft really loves to assault and abuse its users and claim its for our own good.

I'm tired of being a victim.

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shevy-java
1 hour ago
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Didn't Microsoft say it will listen to the community, some weeks ago? And now it looks as if Microsoft did not tell the truth. To be fair: I think Microsoft actually has no alternative option. They sold out to AI and all Win11 users will have to support the hype train. I am so glad to have switched to Linux a long time ago.
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whynotmaybe
49 minutes ago
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Well, they heard that we don't like copilot in notepad so they removed "copilot" from notepad.

And right after that they added a brand new feature called tolipoc that will revolutionize the way you analyze your logs or modify your 17 year old cmd file!

Want to create a file with the current date and time? No need to google for it, tolipoc will do it for you!

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a1o
25 minutes ago
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Is the last sentence a reference to the .LOG classic notepad hack?
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xacky
1 hour ago
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Copilot has been reduced to "Internet Explorer" status, where it is the "AI to download another AI".
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