What the hell?!?!?! This is a server OS! It needs to be as light as possible and for the sake of server stability and security, admins carefully choose the installed apps. Microsoft can’t just install new applications on a whim.
This is fuged up.
People in this thread seem to be missing this point.
This is windows server, not windows 11. The consequences is not “I’ll have an annoying taskbar icon on my home computer”, this is enterprise level interference that could affect large systems and thousands of users.
Linux Mint isn’t an alternative to windows server.
Yep. I no longer have to administer Windows servers (everything I do is serverless these days) but I did for many years.
Adding anything to a server without vetting it against policies is a huge no no. Back when I was doing it, a big part of our monthly update deployment was updating the test environment first so we knew we weren’t about to break a bunch of shit for us and our customers. Not just “does this brick Windows server”, but “do our applications still function” (usually yes, but the answer was no on several occasions over shit smaller than this).
I don’t know what adding copilot does. Is it going to accidentally break some custom application by accident because it’s tied directly into the system? Is it going to report shit that I’ve already opted out of due to our data policies and possibly fuck up our audit compliance because of government regulations (defense, medical, and energy sectors have huge responsibilities in that area, just don’t ask how I know)? How does it interact with our in-house developed software?
Fuck, I dunno. That sounds like a nightmare for infrastructure and ops, several managers, government regulators, and a payday for legal.
For sure, if you need paid support (which if you aren’t a tech giant, a fledgling startup, or a system with no need for uptime metrics, you probally do) the you have:
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (aka SLES and only still Libre option in this category unfortunately)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
- Ubuntu are
if don’t need paid support then Debian, OpenSuse, Rocky, or Fedora are all good picks.
Almost any Unix can be an alternative for Windows Server. Never understood why it was used, other than tech illiteracy of lowly tech workers who only knew MS stack.
The usual answer to that is “active directory”. It’s not uncommon to have one windows server alongside other Linux servers because of AD.
That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
No enterprise is going to want to deal with that and realistically they’re the only ones with the pockets to fight that battle.
If introducing Copilot to server degrades service enough to trigger an SLA downstream, you can absolutely bet lawyers will get involved.
Or if CoPilot starts exfiltrating data to Microsoft so their server farms can ‘analyze’ it.
I’m not heavily involved in the space, but I’m given to understand that MS isn’t very clear about what happens to your data or how it gets used or shared.
Perhaps Microsoft will be smart enough not to allow the general public to query trade secrets or government data that’s been pulled via unwanted copilot integration.
But maybe the ongoing Russian hack of Microsoft will make it irrelevant, because the servers can be accessed directly.
Or perhaps at some distant time, Microsoft will roll out features or technologies developed using an internal version of CoPilot that has access to all data - including proprietary information from competitors.
And that’s not even counting what ISP’s will do if they find a way to analyze copilot traffic, or what state actors will do if they can set up MitM attacks for Copilot.
Honestly, I sort of fear the repercussions, but I look forward to the lawsuits.
That is fucked.
I’m already starting to transition to full Linux on my devices with the arrival of Windows 11 and Windows 10 reaching end of life in October next year. I never thought I’d see the day of this happening.
oh god, win10’s dying next year?
i really need to transition the rest of my shit to Linux soon
win10’s dying next year?
Windows 10 reaches End of Support on October 14, 2025, unless you opt for the paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program (prices not released, that I saw), which some businesses with “legacy” apps do.
That doesn’t make it right.
And not everyone can dump Windows for Linux. We run a lot of software that requires Windows. Changing is impractical if not impossible.
it’s becoming much much easier every year to switch to OSS alternatives or at least Linux compatible software. There’s basically nothing categorical that can’t run on Linux, even gaming is making tremendous strides.
I doubt it. Regular folks are ignorant about those issues and what the technology involved implies. AI sounds cool until you realize every single action you take on your computer, every single word you say, everything you look at, is collected and sent to some machine which does god knows what with it.
That plus the ads. The fucking ads. I’m so god damn tl saturated of seeing ads everywhere. But apparently most folks have grown some kind of immunity to it??
My highly non-technical SO cursed Microsoft when they pushed that shit into her computer. She didn’t need to understand what AI means, it took space on her task bar and showed useless notifications. Making her annoyed by the space taken, disturb her focus and slow her computer.
She is stuck on Windows due to a tool she is dependent upon. Already asked me to install Linux on her computer once she have a replacement that will work on Linux.
tl;dr: non technical people are too pissed at MS.
ok sure, most servers are already running linux for a good reason.
The install size is just 8KB. Could it just be a link to open Edge?
I don’t even see a link. Though I guess I should look inside Microsoft Edge.
Edit: I cannot find anyway to get to it in either the desktop or Edge. I do not have a signed in Microsoft account on this machine, so that may be why I don’t see it. I’m not willing to sign in to see.