TL;DR:
The Windows File Explorer is now dependent on Microsoft Recall being installed on Windows 11 24H2 editions and likely later.
This means that if you wish to use newer versions of the Window file explorer, you have to install recall on your system. Recall is a deeply-rooted, non-negotiable feature on all modern versions of Windows.
Solution
If you wish to strip out recall from your system, you are no longer able to use the built-in graphical file explorer and must use a third-party tool, and if you're not allowed to do that on the machine, then you are forced to have recall running on the system as it doesn't appear on any graphical settings pages.
The other solution is to prepare for transitioning into a free operating system such as GNU/Linux with distributions such as Linux Mint which is designed specifically for that transition. You can also run an older version of Windows and refuse to update.
Errata
Turns out that this issue has been exaggerated and that there are ways to disable co-pilot on Windows machines (or at the very least, command Windows to do so). Also it's debatable whether this program does any harm on non "copilot" computers but you can be the judge of that.
why on earth would I "upgrade" from Windows 10 to this piece of shit? is there any reason whatsoever?
Windows 10 hits end of life next year, so Windows 10 users will become the Windows 7 users of today as software and updates slowly stop coming to them.
Microsoft could also just... forcibly update your machine. It's their operating system after all.
goddammit, Windows 10 is the first Microsoft OS that I forgot I was using because it just hums along in the background mostly without being a fucking nuisance
they finally get something right and now they're scrapping it ugh
Genuine question, what makes you say this about W10 but not W7? Windows 10 has plenty of annoying shit that wasn't in 7. For one thing, 7 never tried to nag me about signing into a microsoft account.
I finally got Win10 to stop with the "sign in to windows" BS. Don't remember how, though.
I managed to kill Edge two or three times but the OS always seemed to die 2-3 months later so I gave up on it. : p
Because I don't remember my experience with W7. Come to think of it, maybe that means it was even less annoying and we've been going downhill ever since.
Stockholm syndrome.
Would like to remind everyone that Stockholm Syndrome is literally "Women be crazy" because a psychologist who never interviewed the Stockholm bank robbery hostages decided that was the only reason why the hostages were chill with the robbers, who were not trying to kill them, while being pissed off with the government, who literally called one woman and told her it was her duty to die in a police shootout to save the bank or some shit, was that she had fallen in love with her captor due to trauma or something. Like the government almost killed them all a number of times over some money, and they ended up trying to help the robbers with negotiations so the government wouldn't just kill them all and let god sort it out.
This essay brought to you by reading wikipedia at 3am for most of my life.
If I were to explain it more specifically (sans people are dumb level takes), when something is part of the dominant hegemony (Windows has almost become synonymous with the personal computer, something still connected to a Pax Americana mythos) and people aren't educated on different options then all people have are anecdotes and personal wisdom. Windows as a brand and as a force in computer technology warps everything around it, not the other way around. That's why we see so many conflicting opinions on Windows, there's not a leg for people to stand on and judge their experiences objectively. People's lives depend on the very thing that's hurting them.
Add a huge splash of US hegemony to the mix and you can see how Silicon Valley is the technological Hollywood of the world. Communal efforts to create software for the common good is one of the main ways to combat this because it gives us an external vocabulary outside of the silicon valley ideology that's taught to us. I only really started to understand how computers work when I delved into free software projects.
I totally agree, Just wanted to point out the origin of "Stockholm Syndrome". Most folks don't really know where the term came from, the part about the psychologist trying to explain away the very reasonable behavior of the hostages.
I cannot make my Windows 10 PC not forcibly update, reboot, and close all my shit without saving it. Every fucking month. Sometimes I'll find a way to disable it, then they'll push some weird telemetry thing and re-enables it a month later. One time Windows refused to acknowledge my generic drivers without re-enabling updates, so I had to do it to plug in my fucking mouse.
It's actually the most annoying piece of shit 'feature' I've ever suffered on Windows. Neither 7 nor XP did that shit.
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They can. But I turned off TPM so they won't. Top tip for lazy arses like me that don't want to engage in a protracted battle, just make your laptop not meet requirements.
Isn't TPM a fake requirement anyway? I'm pretty sure you can just lie that you have a TPM and it'll update and work fine, so that may not stop them.
I mean. Any requirement is fake given they have set arbitrary limits. But right now no TPM is enough to stop the upgrade, and that's a useful as I need it to be. I have a couple win 11 boxes, but the 10 is still more reliable for gaming, vr, and not shoving ads down my throat. It can stay on 10 until it's moved to Linux.
IoT LTSC should be good until 2029, I think? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2019
(Thats an extra 5 years to switch to Linux :3)
Same. But hey, the Linux community just got one person bigger.
TBH it's not really that much better or worse than Windows 10, I'm having pretty much the same experience as with Windows 10.
If they really make this AI shit mandatory I'm switching but apparently it's misinformation that this cannot be disabled.
Does Win11 not introduce anything ridiculous like having two control panels where the newer one is just a straight downgrade and often necessitates using the original one anyway? I would've thought it'd be filled to the brim with stuff like that.
Also on win10 the control panel still forcibly defaults to "small icons" even though on win7 it would remember the last setting selected.
Wasn't it the same in Win 10? Either way you can still use the old menus and the new ones are good enough for basic configuration at least. I dunno overall it just doesn't feel much different than Win 10 other than superficial things.