Thin Clients With a Twist, Y'all Ready?

[WildWestDesigns]

“Windows 365 Link” is Microsoft’s $349 thin client for Windows in the cloud

Small, plastic thin client is Microsoft’s first “Cloud PC,” launches in April.

arstechnica.com

Unlike the more traditional NUCs that people may be thinking of, these little thin clients are just mainly used for bootstrapping local peripherals, but Windows is in the cloud, not running locally. Right now, this is geared for more business type of people, I would say not (yet) the business people needing to run intensive programs, however, I would highly surprised if that isn't the end goal. Adobe and the like already have people used to subscriptions. A lot of programs are really just browser based apps (either Electron (Figma, Drawtify maybe known in here, dunno) or using Webview (Canva, which I know is known around here)). With things like WASM, very easily see Ps and even Maya in the browser (only good thing about this is don't have to worry about what OS one is running, but really the browser is the OS now).

More and more, I'm glad that I got off the Windows train, but I can easily see this coming down the pipeline even for people in here. Still a few yrs out, but I would be highly surprised if this isn't pushed.

 

[weyandsign]

Looks like a waste of plastic, $349 plus $372 per year subscription? WildWest did you ever try EndeavourOS or CachyOS (both arch based, btw)? I've been using both and really like both of them, along with Tumbleweed. I use a hot swap dock and have different SSDs for whatever I feel like running today.

 

[Solventinkjet]

 

[Graphic Extremes]

This is so true, I hate the cloud and I want to be responsible for my files, not anyone snooping through them...

 

[WildWestDesigns]

WildWest did you ever try EndeavourOS or CachyOS (both arch based, btw)? I've been using both and really like both of them, along with Tumbleweed. I use a hot swap dock and have different SSDs for whatever I feel like running today.

I was always a vanilla Arch fan. Only reason that I moved away from it was a saner libc (yes, I know, bad me using such a vile unsafe language such as C) linkage (I write some programs, my own in house tooling as well game jams and even some visual read along programs of characters that my wife and I created), so I mainly run KDE Neon or MX Linux. SUSE, I have no good experience with. Live ISO worked fine, but once installed, I couldn't even get TTY.

This is so true, I hate the cloud and I want to be responsible for my files, not anyone snooping through them...

This has been the culmination of a long march towards this end and most people willfully went along with it for one word...."convenience". With a little "safety" mixed in, which it really isn't, but I digress.

 

[Pauly]

This is not overly terrible. Great for companies who are light weight, and all they use is web apps like 365 or google workspaces.
Lower power consumption, less internet bandwidth as it's only displaying the screen.

Especially great for non tech people.

Non tech people = Dont know what linux is.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

This is not overly terrible. Great for companies who are light weight, and all they use is web apps like 365 or google workspaces.
Lower power consumption, less internet bandwidth as it's only displaying the screen.

Especially great for non tech people.

Non tech people = Dont know what linux is.

I would somewhat agree with that, if things like medical records weren't sent over the WAN or any other type of personal records. And as very recent history has shown, the companies that are in charge of making sure security is kosher, aren't any better compared to the non techies out there just winging it. Only difference is, non techies are only screwing up things for them, not for thousands/millions of others out there.

Thin clients over a LAN (which would mean that the OS is run locally), I could get behind. To me, that is a normal production business environment.

Keep in mind, the OS is not on the machine, it is on a server running on another computer, to which someone else has control over (and the governments of wherever they move your information thru (including backups)). "You" don't know have control over your files or even what programs "you" install unless they are ones that are curated for you. Imagine the security implications of that. While I know some people believe that they have nothing to hide, so what is the problem (I would argue that's a horrible take, but to each their own).

I think Outlook had a warning that telemetry of that program was shared among a few hundred "partners" to help improve the experience of Outlook. I would had to see how that extrapolates over an entire OS that isn't even run locally on the computer.


Edit to add screenshot: Correction 842 partners that have dibs on one's data. Of which, any of those could be a vector for a data breach and "you" don't have control over it at all.

Also, don't have to know what Linux is or not. This isn't that issue at all. Unfortunately, a lot of things have been lost over the years and even newer generations of people that grew up with tech (I did not, analog childhood here) have nowhere near the knowledge. The fact that a lot of them don't know file hierarchies, how to do system file searches or even how to save a file locally is quite the problem.