- cross-posted to:
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
Its not really AI its just a string manipulation program, that, rather pointlessly, summarises paragraphs. The sort of thing you see done in BASIC in old program listing books.
Notepad is their digital safe space? Come on.
For folks who cannot do this due to it being a work-controlled machine or otherwise, you can use notepad++. (Obviously id rather this be a tipping point to ditch all the junk at once, but sometimes that isnt feasible)
That said, i find i still need a throwaway notepad for fast trashy notes. In that case ive just uninstalled the new notepad and re-downloaded the legacy notepad then re-aimed “notepad.exe” to the legacy one.
There are a few guides out there, just search your standard “how to get legacy notepad”
No need to download anything really.
- Go to System -> Optional features and verify that Notepad is listed and if it isn’t add it.
- Go to Apps -> Advanced settings for apps -> App executions aliases and disable Notepad.
- Enjoy the classic notepad again.
Ah you are indeed correct. I’m probably thinking of classic paint, not notepad.
Either way, i have the downloader for ye old notepad and paint tucked away on and off my machine for future sake when my company middle management decides they want to try to push the new AI tools down our throats for productivity again.
Or, you can just turn Copilot off from the settings panel.
That said, i find i still need a throwaway notepad for fast trashy notes.
My sibling in Talos, what do you think the tabs in N++ are for?
I have >100 tabs in my N++ install because it’s so easy to throw some trash note in there forget about it, then be able to search all open docs for some random keyword I threw in there.
I use n++ for fast notes that I might need later, such as quickly making a step-by-step instruction as I go along, and notepad as a glorified clipboard for stuff I don’t want to be available later.
Having more than 100 notepad++ tabs would trigger the neat freak in me and force me to go through them all to save the important ones and delete the unneeded ones.Yep precisely this.
Notepad is where stuff i dont care about 5minutes from now goes to die.
Notepad++ is stuff ill probably take to my grave, or at least til next week.
Having more than 100 notepad++ tabs would trigger the neat freak in me and force me to go through them all to save the important ones and delete the unneeded ones.
Yeah, I periodically (try to) do that, but the ADHD takes over before I get more than a dozen or so tabs in. So I’ve got all kinds of historical notes that may or may not be important. But that’s what the ‘search all open documents’ button is for!
You might wanna either backup %appdata%\Notepad++\backup\ or go to Settings->Preferences->Backup and change the directory into a folder that is already hitting your backups. Personally I have it aimed at a folder that is cloud synced (and that cloud has a local backup on my NAS).
Good recommendation! I usually just copy that folder around when I need to, but auto backups are always better.
Yeah you don’t even need to save every new tab that you have random stuff noted down in. They’ve recently added a new feature to pin tabs as well, so I’m actually considering just making a notes.txt file somewhere and pinning that instead of all the new tabs I end up with.
Interesting. I saw the icon, but I’ve never bothered to look into what it was for/how it worked. Thanks for giving me something to look into!
At work I have to use Windows, Notepad++ is my safe place. It is fast, there’s plugins for years, and it handles (with some wait time) 100 000 line long documents.
Kate exists on windows and linux
I like Focuswriter, it’s a little more feature rich than Notepad, but it stays out of your way and has that same “Just me and a blank page” vibe.
does it leave behind formatting upon copy/pasta like notepad does?
Use Copilot to write your own Notepad. With Blackjack. And hookers.
Cantankerously and all at once.
Now that’s the way to do it!
As a Linux daily driver, LibreOffice is ass. I’ve tried, but it just feels like a cheap, not nearly as good alternative to Microsoft Office. Hate to say it
OnlyOffice is a bit more polished and similar to MS, have you tried that?
Having used LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, I find that if you need a full office suite, (and fortunately I don’t anymore), LibreOffice has more ‘stuff’ in it and perhaps a bit better comparability with Microsoft 365 than OnlyOffice. Still, I had no real beef with OnlyOffice. It’s a somewhat lighter on space the LibreOffice for sure.
Thankfully, all I really need anymore is AbbiWord and Gnumeric for my now simple and infrequent needs. Soooo much faster and lighter than a full office suite.
I don’t understand what people are using office for that libre can’t do. Are we not just putting words on paper?
It’s probably advanced Excel users, mostly. Also, people who heavily use the collaboration features of MS Office.
Collaborative features makes sense. But if I am ever needing ‘advanced’ excel, I am not going to be using excel.
I wouldn’t say it’s ass, but it’s definitely not office.
I even installed it on my work laptop because Microsoft office is ass. I have 1 pet peeve and that is the horizontal scrolling in Calc.
If you don’t need to do anything fancy it’s pretty okay. But I also wouldn’t use it for more advanced stuff.
As someone who’s used Apple’s Pages as my primary word processor app for the past 18 years, I’ve spent the past 6 months or so using only LibreOffice in order to get myself to a place where I’m not reliant on Apple hardware.
And oh my fucking god, LibreOffice is dog shit in comparison. It’s horrifically unwieldy, to the point that it’s only marginally easier to use than Word. And Word is God’s continuing punishment of all mankind for what we did to Jesus. Word is ebola tearing through an orphanage. Word is Kid Rock covering the collected works of U2.
And LibreOffice Writer is just a little better than that.
It kills me that Pages is locked to Apple hardware, because it’s just so nice to use.
Back when I last used it (we’re speaking ~8 years ago), I was actually happy using it instead of MSO. …until I opened a Word document and all the tabulations and spacing went to shit. I don’t know whether it got fixed yet, but as soon as they always look identical to the pixel, opened in either editor, I will finally ditch Word.
I guess the same goes for Excel/Calc. Once all the functions are called and work the same, all the formatting looks the same in both, I’ll stick with Calc.
(It might come across as I’m being MS elitist, but it’s quite the opposite - I would love to switch, but if the admin requires docx, I have these two to choose from. I understand it’s not Libre’s fault, but I can’t do much, either)
From what I heard, MSOffice documents saved on their proprietary format will almost always find a way to not look quite right, because haha fuck you, pay for Office365
i installed arch on my laptop almost 10 years ago
I have to fix something maybe once a year and I only update once a week, if i remember
reboot maybe one time in a month
the myth that you need to fix Linux constantly needs to die
My fiance is constantly fighting with windows 10 and 11 because shit breaks on there all the time. The challenge isn’t that Linux breaks more often, or that troubleshooting it is harder, it’s that if you have experience with how Windows breaks, and how to troubleshoot windows breaking, Linux breakages and troubleshooting feels entirely alien.
I feel that, but in the opposite direction. I’m used to Linux, so the weirdness of Windows is alien to me, and every time I have to try to fix a family member’s computer (“hey you’re good with computers, aren’t you? Could you take a look at a problem I’m having?” I’m a sap like that) I feel absolutely baffled as to what’s broken and how it’s even possible for that to break in the furst place.
“the fuck do you mean the windows can’t detect the laptop’s builtin keyboard?”
Like the error you used to get at boot on AT vintage machines “Keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue”.
To be fair, back in the day I had plenty of times where Linux refused to recognise the harddrive it had just booted from. Computers are wierd, and their software is built by humans.
Went out for supper the other night with a buddy of mine who came to visit from out of town. He’s a systems technology trainer coordinator at a community college. (Basically, he teaches the teachers about new technologies before they have to teach it to their students the next term.)
We were talking about tech at supper, specifically windows, and I realized that I have been on Linux for so long that I completely lost any knowledge of how to do any of those things in Windows. And I’m honestly okay with that.
Sadly I have to disagree. If I have an issue on Windows, I just can never find an answer because every result on my search is the microsoft forums, which of course never has any solutions that work.
On the other hand, specifically for arch, the arch forums always have the answer for me because there are actual smart people on there.
A side note, windows and their products always have terrible documentation, which can add to the frustration at times.
I think you’re both right.
If you’ve always grown up Windows, then you generally know the steps to go through to try and fix it, which are oftentimes laborious and sifting through useless answers like
sfc /scannow
until you finally find some command you need to run likeonedrive.exe /reset
and about 12 other steps to get your OneDrive syncing (example problem).Now you switch over to Linux as a fairly new user, oh my audio isn’t coming from my speakers but is from the jack. Uhhhh, the Settings show it all there and working? Oh, here’s a forum answer but it tells me to edit my pulseaudio.conf file? Where the hell is that? Oh, I found it but it’s read only? Oh, I have to type
sudo nano /etc/pulseaudio.conf
into a terminal? Woah, what the fuck is this text editor?? I guess I use the arrow keys to move, but no mouse support? Alright I’ve edited it but what the heck Ctrl S isn’t saving? Oh, the legend at the bottom says Ctrl O, and uhhhh, yeah overwrite? Now Ctrl X to exit, and uhhh, okay it’s still not fixed but maybe a reboot fixes it. And if we fast forward 4 hours it turned out to be an audio driver.You get my point. Linux is just different enough where if something breaks, and its something weirdly specific, its a lot of unknowns the user has to rapidly learn where they know these annoying troubleshooting things in Windows already. Linux does have really good forums and answers and documentation but its a learning curve regardless and that can be too much for a really casual user who doesn’t have the time or will to follow through.
It’s especially tricky when one is generally only trying to install xnix on a device that is no longer supported by MS/apple.
Though it seems to be less of a problem for me when I install Ubuntu distros. I recently installed the LT Kubuntu on a Surface Pro 3 with no hiccups, despite how intensely proprietary EVERYTHING on surface devices turns out to be.
I was fine using Windows 10 for a long while. Windows 11 has freaked me the f* out with how intensely the Borg has removed all abilities to customize app installs and wholly eliminated the ability to remove bloatware and have it stay removed. Windows 11 is basically a huge very effective advertisement for every OS that is NOT windows.
I am a system admin and have to run a ton of Windows servers, I feel it. If you don’t keep up on the patch notes shit can get bad without even realizing it. I hate Windows for all the crap that is layered on it but it wouldn’t be so bad if Microsoft didn’t change shit just to change it and move stuff around without a good reason. The forcing of things is what really makes me upset. IDK about your AI shit Microsoft! ITS NOT HELPING
I am a system admin and have to run a ton of Windows servers
I feel your pain, I am a “Linux System Administrator” and the amount of Windows server crap I have to deal with on a daily basis…
- Why is XBOX Live services running by default on Windows Server???
- Why is co-pilot running by default on Windows Server??!?!?
- And what M$ engineer thought, aah yes the best possible place for a recovery partition is at the end of the main OS partition???!?!?!?!?!
- And lastly, what the actual fuck were they thinking when they put Windows 11s shit UI on Windows Server.
On the less ranty/negative side:
- AD isn’t horrible, while I prefer freeIPA, I can’t complain too much.
- powershell other than being wordy commands, is kinda nice.
why is XBOX live services running on windows server
You reminded me of when i was at an MSP and we had this dental client. And they had some actually pretty cool software that processed 3d X-rays and generated a 3d model and would point out various types of potential issues. Now this was like ~2014 so before photometry or AI was really a thing so it was really impressive.
But to compute that stuff in real-ish time (like under 30 seconds, so by the time the patient walked back to the exam room) you had to offload the processing to a Windows server, but that worked fine.
But like everything, Windows updates continue ever “”“forward”"’ and eventually they added the Xbox game bar. I didn’t think anything of it and just left it running. About a year later and a few updates to the dental software later I am looking at their server and figure “hey, I should disable this. Its a server after all”.
Bad mistake. Their software stops working so now they can’t take any type of scans. I’m trying to figure it out, I’ve got a team of engineers looking at this with me. We can’t figure it out. Everything looks fine except the process just won’t start. No error message, no wrong looking logs. The executable just never starts.
Well turns out at some point along the line they picked up a dependency relying on Xbox game bar for this program to run. So the solution was to just leave the service running lmao.
This is honestly more of a story about bad programming than windows server nonsense but you made me think about it. I wish I figured out what was actually depending on game bar but I left shortly after that. Actually before the patch was pushed out haha
None of their docs for 10 or 11 are gaurunteed to be accurate either because they keep changing where things are in what menus to “be more intuitive” only it wasn’t intuitive before, and it’s not intuitive now, and when you do a web search for a problem you get instructions from 2 months ago that reference settings and options that don’t exist anymore. (this is me agreeing with you by the way, I’m piling on, not refuting)
I genuinely think at this point if you, dear reader, have a computer, and you want to use your computer, you should be strongly considering installing Linux Mint, MX Linux, or AntiX depending on your hardware not because it will be easier to use than windows, but because it won’t be any harder to use than windows, and you can start building up the knowledge and skills for how to use and troubleshoot linux just like you did when you first started using windows, and it will be easier long term because Windows is just going to keep getting worse and worse and more unusable and less documented and harder to troubleshoot and use.
I accept that I am biased by that I have years of Linux experience, but I switched my 68 year old mother to Linux because she couldn’t update her laptop anymore because of Microsoft shenanigans and she finds MX Linux to be neither harder nor easier to use. It simply is, to her. There are things she doesn’t know how to do on it, but those are things she already didn’t know how to do on windows.
I got my mother in law on Mint linux a couple years ago, it never gives her any problems. It is the way to go with the seniors
100%. We tried it first but her laptop was simply too low powered to run it so we stepped back to MX Linux, which is somewhat of a light to middleweight distro. I really wanted her on Mint since it would be more her speed, but even the XFCE edition was too much for the machine. Also, credit where credit is due, when mom found out MX Linux was developed in conjuction with the antifascist distribution (AntiX) she really wanted to go that route, or even all the way to AntiX 🤣
Tried with my mom, she wanted to go back to windows because it had the games she wanted to play - the mobile shit ported from google play to microsoft store
Tbh, I disagree. Troubleshooting on windows for me became “reboot or reinstall it.” Back in the days before 10 sure, but after it just got to the point where even microsoft support doesn’t know how to do anything either.
In contrast, I have a problem on linux, I google, I find a stackoverflow page with the answer in a few terminal commands which are usually explained, sometimes I go check that program’s manual or help page before I use it, but the command usually does fix the issue.
And it’s not like you never have to use the terminal on windows, flash drive corrupted by windows and needs to be restored? Diskpart is here and it sucks but it works, CLI though. Editing conf files too, had to find (that was the hard part) and edit a conf.json file last week for a friend of mine who was installing a windows service.
(i agree entirely but if you say that to people who think linux is scary, they think you’re being a dismissive jerk)
Same experience here. Despite rolling release and everything.
I don’t know what you’re talking about because when I tried Linux it was a nightmare. The only thing that worked properly ironically was the printer. It’s straight up would not play sound, if I plugged in headphones it would play sound but it would not play sound through the speakers. There were lots of people telling me I needed to install new sound drivers, or run arbitrary commands. None of them fixed it.
It ended up being a problem with the USB driver. That’s ridiculous, I shouldn’t have to mess around with a driver for an internal component.
Sounds like my experience from a while ago.
Yeah, wondering myself if this guys experience was also from a long time ago or maybe just an obscure device or something.
What distro?
With the apparent rise of immutable spins, it might get to be even less since user space is separate the OS space. I’m trying Aurora on my laptop to see if there is any advantage to running an immutable spin over the standard distros. I’m kind of torn about it right now, there are some advantages to both and some downsides to both.
I switched from W10 to Fedora KDE a little over a month ago, and the amount of troubleshooting I had to go through during this time is unlike anything I’ve ever faced with Windows. I think I have a handle on things now, but the switch to Linux as a casual user was not as seamless as I’d been told over and over.
Others experience may be different of course, but in my experience Linux is not as easy to use as Windows.
Still happy with my choice to not swap back to Windows though.
I have the exact opposite experience: I recently installed Fedora (stock, so Gnome) and had 0 issues. It was easier to install that Windows. The sidenote is that I have a Framework laptop, so my hardware is fully supported. And I was a Linux user before, so nothing looks alien to me. I didn’t need the terminal to get everything working, including wireless printing.
What I will offer from my limited experience is that the Mint install I have will begin to topple over after a few weeks if I don’t run updates, whereas my Mac will soldier on without missing a beat if I miss several months of updates.
Vivaldi
Ahm, sure?
Yeah, was wondering about that. I’ve just installed it for the first time and while it looks OK, i’m wondering what the catch is.
Any privacy or security holes that one might to be aware of?
Just the usual one: it’s a proprietary fork of Chromium.
Ah.
I used notepad precisely because it lacks features beyond writing text, this is such an anti feature
SublimeText might be a good next option. :)
Yeah I have that as well, and I’m surprised how fast and light weight it feels compared to something like VS code
Isn’t notepad++ better?
Not if you want less features. 🤷🏻♂️
Personal preference. :) I use it bare bones but like having the option to extend when needed.
> Vivaldi
Vivaldi is great.
The people who like Vivaldi are the same people who don’t like eating ass
Thanks for sharing this perspective, u/Cold_Brew_Enema.
The musician? Sure. The browser? Not so much.
Notepad++ is what real humans use
AI sure killed the motto KISS. Copilot for notepad is literally using a nuclear reactor to light a single bulb.
The new moto is “keep giving me money stupid”
How wasting billions on AI accomplishes that goal, I don’t know but I’m sticking with FOSS apps and platforms just to be safe
Gotta scoop all the data from everywhere on your machine, even the temporary notes you don’t save.
They’re not temporary any more, they keep coming back, I keep forgetting and then my PC reboots and I need to make a quick note and have to wait for 50 zombie text files to rise from the dead.
The first nuclear reactor was used to light a single bulb. Presumably it was either an incredibly inefficient bulb or an incredibly inefficient reactor.
Anyway this is all just an extension of everything having an app.
Using an actual nuclear reactor to light a single bulb is literally using a- I’m kidding. I leave lemmy for a couple hours, come back and see a total armageddon, all because there are picky people about the use of words.
And WIRED writes that bsky can’t take a joke. Geez loueez.
Figuratively
The use of “literally” is part of the figure of speech you’re pedantically referring to. Saying “figuratively” would be redundant, as everyone knows Copilot is not a nuclear reactor, and also declaring that you are using a figure of speech “weakens” it (like /s for sarcasm). By saying “literally” they are saying “wow, this fits so well that this isn’t even a metaphor anymore”.
If you want to correct everyone for saying literally instead of figuratively, correct every teenager saying “I’m actually dying rn 😂” with “ackshually you’re not ACTUALLY dying, as I can see you are still alive typing tips fedora”Oh. I thought “literally” was just referring to the fact that many of those data centers pull from nuclear grids.
I do apologize for using exaggerated words to beautify my sentences, tostiman, sir.
That too.
- Literally has meant figuratively since it first appeared as a word in the 1700s and this usage is listed in every major dictionary
- https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/energy/three-mile-island-microsoft-ai/index.html
Literal is the exact opposite of figurative…
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/figurative
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/literally
That’s one of it’s senses, yes, but how many of those definitions are the opposite of figurative?
The correct definition is the opposite of figuratively. This has been an ongoing linguistic war for nearly a century, and your WRONG thoughts on how it should be used only serve to further the enemies cause.
Napoleon! Enemy anti-literalists have infiltrated another thread—we need reinforcements now!
This has been an ongoing linguistic war for nearly a century
So after over a century of people using it that way some other people got a stick up their butt about it, cool. Doesn’t make it wrong.
People who get het up about “literally” are fabulous.
If Dickens, Twain and Joyce can use it as an intensifier, then that’s awesome enough for me.
Of course literally is often overused figuratively, flogged like a dead metaphorse; but used literally, literally is often literally redundant anyway.
I think it’s got a third use now though, which is even more fun, using it to troll languague purists who think language drives communication rather than the other way round. That might well have motivated Mark Twain too.
Sanction is the exact opposite of sanction, but you never see people moan about that for some reason
Table can mean “to discuss a topic at a meeting” (British English) or “to postpone discussion of a topic” (American English). Canadian English uses both meanings of the word
Canada . . . seriously? I can’t sanction that type of behaviour.
That’s the problem with being influenced by both British and American English. We have both senses in New Zealand English too, although I think the US one is slowly winning out and the British one might one day fall out of use.
I wonder, why is ‘literally’ so special?
Someone steps out into unexpectedly cold weather and says, “It’s freezing out here.” But it’s not below freezing.
Someone that hasn’t eaten all day takes a bite and says, “I was starving, this is the best burger I’ve ever tasted!” They weren’t really starving, and they probably didn’t just rank every burger they’ve eaten.
We exaggerate and/or use words incorrectly for the effect so often, people are constantly using words “incorrectly” but then they say, “I’m literally dead right now.” and dictionaries change their definitions and people point out semantics. It’s like literally is figuratively magic.
Yeah, somehow “literally” is the only word in a figure of speech that cannot be part of the figure at all! They are so smart for pointing that out
It’s almost like language is radically democratic and words only mean what we largely agree they mean, with fluctuating cases based on particular contexts.
Good luck. As of this writing, I have UNINSTALLED copilot from Windows 11 Pro FOURTEEN TIMES in the past 3 weeks. I continually turn off its access to running in the background and terminate and its services in task manager multiple times a day. I’ve blocked the app in my non-MS antimalware suite. I have uac enabled to block unauthorized apps. I have disabled it in my startup apps repeatedly, to no avail .
I have disabled Edge browser everywhere possible, but Edge still manages to open itself up and REOPEN COPILOT even though I’ve disabled Edge multiple times and it is literally not the default app for even a single file type.
It’s no longer POSSIBLE to install a single Office app, or uninstall single office apps. I do not need and do not want to bloat a ton of my SSD boot drive with Access and Designer and Publisher. The windows store standalone version of Outlook cannot load or save .pst backups.
MS has returned to even worse than its evil Borg ways. But now it’s one of several threats to the continued existence of privacy anywhere for anyone.
Down with #enshittification #deshittify the #internet. Up with #CryptPad #Nextcloud #OnlyOffice (and to a lesser extent the commercial version #CollaberaOffice). Up with #StandardNotes and #ProtonMail, #ProtonCalendar, #ProtonDrive, #ProtonVPN, and #ProtonPass. Sad RIP to any and all security patches for #RIPLibreOffice (libre users - switch to security-patch-maintained software asap!)
Up with companies based in countries with strong privacy protections, that provide zero-knowledge services, and that do zero or minimal logging and discard logs swiftly (yay for thegood.cloud)!
LibreOffice is dead? When did that happen? I just installed it on my new system a few months ago.
Hey I want to know too what happened to libreoffice?
Men will literally uninstall Copilot fourteen times instead of using Linux.
My dude, I spent my first six hours on Linux Mint trying to get my touchpad to actually work.
I only fire up my Linux dual-boot when I’m feeling bored and think “you know what my day needs? A lot more frustration.”
My dude, try more than one distro & also try them live via USB before you install them onto bare metal. You might have more luck.
Ah, Linux community.
“So, you’ve got a problem where you spend a lot of effort squeezing basic functionality out of an OS? I’ve got the solution - even MORE effort!”