What's an alternative to explorer?
Unfortunately, just switch to Linux is not an option.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
What's an alternative to explorer?
Unfortunately, just switch to Linux is not an option.
What do you have against Linux?
As much as I love it, it just doesn't work for some people or situations.
Pfft, proprietary propaganda. How hard is it to let go of every app you're familiar with, learn half a dozen scripting languages, and memorize a hundred different commands in vim?
What you say is true, though I've become so jaded with Microsoft that I don't think there's any software or situation I'd use Windows for; I'd sooner switch to Mac.
Linux doesn't have the breadth of programs available that Windows does. Programs developed for Windows are sometimes better than their FOSS equivalents. Eg. I pay for Office, partially so my parents can use it and partially because it's just a better set of programs than any of the FOSS equivalents. I generally only find the Linux programs are better when it comes to computer management and maintenance.
So I run Linux for servers and Windows for PCs.
I pay for Office, partially so my parents can use it and partially because it’s just a better set of programs than any of the FOSS equivalents.
Years ago I switched from MS OfficeXP to Open Office and then to Libre Office. For years I lamented how I missed Excel and the Libre Calc just does not cut it. Then I started working for a university in 2017 and I had to install MS Office on all of our laptops for presentations, I was so excited to have Excel again. Boy was I wrong. Libre Office was so much better, as was the entire suite. Maybe it is just familiarity.
To each their own. Personally I can't stand MS Office, I think Google Docs is easier for most nontechnical people these days anyway. For the rare cases when Office is needed, the web version works fine on Linux.
LibreOffice works great, and WPS Office is proprietary but at least it's free.
Personally I write my documents in markdown and use pandoc to convert them into PDF or docx or whatever. It's like writing the source code and then compiling, I like it.
I'm sure you've looked into all that, but for anyone else who is interested in alternatives those are my recommendations.
You can prevent recall from running and collecting data, you just can't remove it entirely without breaking some features. I don't think you can replace the file explorer, it's your desktop n stuff as well as file exploring, but preventing recall from running might be your best bet. Or, alternatively, if you don't use the features that you lose in file explorer by removing recall then you might be fine just removing recall and continuing on.
I was thinking about disabling explorer from running or at least kill it at boot up. And then using an alternative file explorer and task bar.
This is absolutely insane
My condolences to all Windows 11 users.
It's becoming common knowledge that:
"I assume every online service is not if; it's when is it going to be breached? Right? So I operate under that assumption, that everything is going to be breached at some point. And so that's why Recall was so scary to me where it's like, I don't care how secure they say it is, like you look at Spectre and Meltdown no one thought these things were going to affect millions of CPUs and here we are, right?
[Level1Techs] Microsoft Is KILLING Windows | ft. Steve @GamersNexus
I guess I just have to keep Windows 10 with a custom group policy that disables all updates either forever or until I learn Linux.
Linux gaming is getting to the point that I could consider the switch, but I hear scary stories about Nvidia drivers.
Microsoft has been the single most effective marketing asset for GNU/Linux distributions in recent years.
I'm so fucking glad I switched to Linux this year.
Okay, this might be a non-issue: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/issues/2697#issuecomment-2403792309
To those that arrive here from any Youtube or Twitter posts, please know that disabling Recall via DISM works fine, and preserves the modern File Explorer (though some might consider this an anti-feature). CBS correctly disables it, and the disablement is preserved through reboots, just like with any other feature.
Edit: of course, the big problem here is that it's still present (even disabled) and hence malware could turn it back on without you realising. Ugh.
A lot of unpopular "features" and behaviors used to have DISM, policy, or registry workarounds. And MS seems to love to kill those workarounds during later updates.
If MS isn't letting people uninstall it, there's a reason for it, and I'd be willing to bet that users will one day find that it has been magically re-enabled by an update.
Linux is here to welcome you
Man, I cling to Windows like nobody else, as I didn't have any advertising issues and such, but this will be the final straw.
It's already enough of a spying system but I refuse to have it as a spy on crack.
Time to read into distros.
how the fuck could they have possibly done things in a way that makes explorer tabs depend on recall?
if they can’t even separate out recall from the rest of the operating system then i have absolutely no faith it will be secure.
It's so you can't rip Recall out without ruining Explorer, and possibly other things
it was vastly easier to install linux mint than it is to figure out registry editing or whatever the fuck i'd need to avoid this
Nah, mate, Linux is hard, you need to know what a Wayland is. In comparison, Windows is very simple and lightweight, you only have to run a dozen Powershell scripts and edit the registry weekly to get rid of ads.
Ahahaha, holly fucking shit.
They literally added some OS in their spyware.