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Microsoft enables booting PCs directly into cloud PCs
- contravariant 3y agoThe way things have been going lately it wouldn't surprise me if the true goal is to turn operating systems into an online only subscription.
- lopis 3y agoIt's a bit scary to be honest. Linux is fairly easy to use because it piggy backs on the popularity and relative standardization of PCs thanks to Windows. If Windows were to go fully cloud-based and computers would become simple terminals, the availability of cheap Linux machines could suffer. Not a likely scenario, probably more a microsoft wet dream.
- dtx1 3y agoAs long as the speed of light in fiberglass is what it is, Gamers will be enough of a Market to prevent that.
- wkat4242 3y agoOn the other hand, cloud gaming has been more of a market than cloud PCs for consumers. Because you need a basic PC to connect to it which is enough for most usecases anyway. But not for gaming so there it makes more sense.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y agoCloud gaming will always be hampered by the simple reality of really of poor internet connections being very common.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago20m people use Xbox cloud gaming. NVIDIA GeForce Now has 25m users. I'd say those are some stats worthy of appreciation.
- dtx1 3y agoWorthy of appreciation maybe but no one is gonna reasonably play things like CSGO on a cloud server. The difference due to latency is instantly noticeable and very obvious.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoI addressed this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36057449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36057449 It's also bold to assume that everybody plays twitchy FPS. CSGO runs on Linux, the Steam Deck uses Linux in the OOBE, I'm sure that if push comes to shove and MS stops offering native Windows, people who want to play CSGO will just use Linux in the same way that people use emulators and FPGAs and CRT PVMs (hello) to play what they want and have the best experience. However, what's probably more likely is that latency-dependent games becomes less and less popular if cloud gaming takes over, because more people are probably going to be playing a game that's included in their cheap monthly subscription rather than spending $XY. Making a twitchy niche latency-dependent game makes less sense than reaching as many people as possible where they're playing. I can't imagine a world where Microsoft kills native Windows though, it just doesn't make sense. How environmentally friendly it is or is not is also a consideration with streaming a desktop.
- dtx1 3y ago> It's also bold to assume that everybody plays twitchy FPS. Never said "everybody" but enough do. https://steamcharts.com/app/730 https://steamcharts.com/app/730 Current active players 1,458,036 for CSGO alone
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
- asjfka 3y agoLinux is part of the problem. Linux never has been an OS for personal computer and it's security model is backward and even nefarious for this purpose. Linux, like all Unix and Unix-like is an OS for a big central computer connected to many dumb terminals. What happens here is Windows taking lessons from Linux and Unix. If you want to save the idea of a personal computer you want an OS that empowers users instead of protecting the computer from them.
- squarefoot 3y agoThat is exactly the reason for moving everything to cloud and SaaS: software that is being bought is paid once (when not free), while the one hosted remotely is paid for use, many times, even if it's free (hosting costs). Doing the same thing with operating systems is just the next iteration. We're slowly going back to the mainframes era: a central server that holds everything surrounded by dumb terminals that can't work without connection to the above server. To me this equals to throwing down the toilet 50 years of IT advancement and open networks culture in the name of profit.
- 2snakes 3y agoIs there an actual technical reason for doing this besides the subscription model success? Better analytics?
- glmdev 3y agoIn _theory_ using a thin-client and booting into a cloud machine means you can "upgrade" your machine in a couple years w/o having to replace the thin-client. Could be easier for grandma, could reduce e-waste, will definitely be used to pigeon-hole us into an endless hell of subscription software.
- sebazzz 3y agoIn practice it means your compute time is being micro-time sliced to the maximum so it will probably perform incredibly bad.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hammyhavoc 3y agoIt won't happen for a lot of industries. I get a rock solid 0.7ms roundtrip latency using an RME RayDat. I can't play guitar decently with anything more than 4ms of latency. Hybrid? Maybe. But even so, I think it'll still make more sense to just own the hardware and not rely on WANs with variable latency. For the average schmoe or office worker? Probably makes sense to have it on the cloud, especially as how well Xbox cloud gaming works for most people.
- isanjay 3y agoSomething about windows copilot screems either subscription or ads
- c00lio 3y agoThey reinvented thin clients. Expensive ones, with an extra Windows license needed I suppose. How revolutionary...
- jaclaz 3y agoThin clients on a local network are one thing. These over a (possibly flaky) internet connection is another. Maybe in some countries/cities/locations where there is a "perfect" conection they may work, otherwise the 365 part of the name will need to be changed to the low 300's.
- c00lio 3y agoNot to mention the frequent cloud outages, even when your workplace has perfect internet connectivity.
- PretzelPirate 3y agoDevelopment using remote machines is very common in the finance and Healthcare industries if you're a contractor. You do all of your work by using remote desktop onto a machine hosted in some datacenter that could be hundreds of miles away from you. The latency can sometimes cause issues, but for the most part it works and people are able to get things done. If Microsoft can get the latency down to what I get using Game Pass, I won't even notice that I'm using a remote machine as long as I have a working internet connection.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoWhilst I appreciate the humour, the "365" wouldn't need changing because your WAN is not what MS is selling. That's not how SLAs for SaaS work. I'll see myself out!
- dusted 3y agoThe beginning of the end. What term to use about such non-general-purpose appliances ?
- hulitu 3y agoIt is called electronic waste.
- dusted 3y agoor maybe even "a waste of electronics"
- squarefoot 3y agoDumb terminals. Just like the Motorola X-Window ones I briefly used in the early 90s, that essentially were doorstoppers without a connection to their central server. There were technical reasons behind the adoption of that kind of infrastructure back then as processing power and storage were extremely costly, but today there's no reason to go back that route if not for pure and simple greed.
- timeimp 3y agoAh yes, but will it let me show seconds on the clock in the taskbar / system tray? That is the real measure of a remote PC.
- 5- 3y agoi had the pleasure to see a corporate windows laptop in action recently. the amount of official spyware on it that enables oversight is astonishing, and it doesn't really function offline (at least during boot it definitely wants to fetch some stuff off the mothership). it also works just as well as you could imagine -- once somehow the 'delete' key got logically stuck, perhaps through a remote access facility, and the user sat there in shock as outlook kept deleting the mail. also, the constant prompts to 'urgently' close the business software for an update... so a return to thin clients seems to be a healthy direction to me. (i'll just keep using my linux laptop).
- aksss 3y agoThe constant prompts to apply security updates after user has been dismissing them for 15 days running. Yeah, always a conundrum how enforce update policies, especially if you want to make attestations about devices connecting to or hosting company data. I’m not sure how to make it any better - assuming the constraints of some updates needing programs to close or reboots - other than the current process of nagging for a while and then forcing if the nagging hasn’t worked.
- samsquire 3y agoOne of my thoughts in my journal is the idea of "cloud integrated desktop", that lets me create cloud resources with a GUI and outsource computation to clusters of machines. I can right click a program and click "Outsource" and send it to the cloud. For example, I could have my data synchronized and indexed remotely (on cloud instances I control), for searches to happen against the cloud for finding resources fast locally. The searches would be extremely performant because there is more cloud resources than the local machine. Search can be parallelised and distributed. Another idea of a cloud integrated desktop is to have my settings, open programs and their states synchronized with the cloud, a bit like Linux workstations that you can resume execution from anywhere.
- c00lio 3y agoAlready exists in some way: https://techbase.kde.org/KDE_PIM/Akonadi https://techbase.kde.org/KDE_PIM/Akonadi Store your home directory remotely, have a remote MariaDB/PostgreSQL holding the index and it does exactly what you describe. However, that is not the standard configuration of course.
- samsquire 3y agoMy dream would be some Linux distribution that lets me sign into AWS and creates the relevant cloud infrastructure for me as part of installation or setup after installation. I would want it to be standard and recommended.
- dopylitty 3y agoI’ve thought of taking this a step further and making an entire posix OS on top of an AWS account with a sort of web based terminal. If you think about it an AWS account is the equivalent of a virtual machine running an OS. It has users/groups (IAM), storage, processes (lambda), a scheduler (EventBridge), containers (EC2). It would be a fun exercise to build an abstraction layer on top that emulated a posix OS.
- danielrpa 3y agoGoogle is one company that has traditionally focused on light clients (Chromebooks) for its employees and now wants all developers to use cloud desktops. This is just a logical extension of this trend for Enterprises.
- pshirshov 3y agoThat resembles me the Sun thin clients. I really regret that Sun was acquired by Oracle.
- wkat4242 3y agoThey were really cool yes. The Sun Rays. Just stick your smart card in any terminal and all your stuff was there instantly.
- Alifatisk 3y agoThat sounds like a really cool thing, me being able to walk around everywhere and just swipe my card to any computer to access my stuff. Of course, this is a double edged sword.
- PeterStuer 3y agoBack to mainframes and terminals. "Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again"
- nehal3m 3y agoThe loading cursor turns.
- lasereyes136 3y agoAwesome quote
- southwesterly 3y agoNo good will come if this.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoI'm sure plenty of good will come from it. I'm sure people who don't need significant performance all the time will get access to that performance without needing to buy an expensive GPU, and it will put computer access into the hands of people who only have locked-down iPhones or iPads. It's not for you or me. That's valid. But to ignore that a significant number of people could actually benefit from it is disingenuous.
- bilinguliar 3y agoThere may be a time in the future when you will be suspected of a crime if you are looking for a local hard drive to buy. - Why do you need local storage? Do you have anything to hide?