If you've never endured a corporate cybersecurity training session, here's the gist: every USB stick is a gift from god. If you find one, errant in the street, it's your solemn duty to slam that thing into the nearest available port with such enthusiasm it fractures your wrist. If that USB stick is labelled "From North Korea"? Even moreso, probably. It's travelled a ways to get here.

I have been playing with RedStar OS 3.0, a homegrown national Linux distro of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (though plenty of machines in the country stick to various versions of Windows). In what security experts are calling "A really good idea, Josh," I have been tinkering with it in a virtual machine—or several—on my PC. It's all very normal and fine and not worth bothering the IT department about.

You might be thinking "Haven't you done this before?" in which case I salute your memory. Yes, I have mucked about with RedStar OS, all the way back in December 2022, when I investigated which pariah state OS is best for gaming.

What led me back? Two things. The first, I am not running vanilla RedStar OS this time. I'm running RedStar OS 3.5 (or trying to—more on that later), a, uh, fan mod of base RedStar that claims to hack out the spyware, more easily switches the OS to root, quickly turns most of the GUI English, and—notionally—adds "a new 64bit kernel, new compiler, new 64bit libraries, and a lot more."

Which is quite a big deal, really; RedStar 3.0 is long in the tooth. It's based on Fedora 15 (for reference, Fedora's most recent release is 44) from 2011, and in its default mode runs using a 2.6 version of the Linux kernel. RedStar 3.5 promises to cram a 5.something kernel in there, alongside various other more recent gubbins, which I thought might ease the process of playing games on the thing. Or, indeed, using it.

Which leads me to my second reason to return to RedStar: I know what all that means, now. When I first touched RedStar back in 2022, Linux was mostly a mystery to me. Now? I'm a loyal openSUSE Tumbleweed user, familiar with at least the basics of running a Linux system. I felt that these two factors, combined, would make my return to RedStar OS much, much smoother sailing than it was four years ago.

A horrible nightmare from which there is no escape

The first riddle with which RedStar OS presents you is running it. Back in 2022, this was agony—a process of booting and rebooting a virtual machine until it inexplicably didn't crash at launch.

This time? A little easier. Installation proceeded smoothly using Virtual Machine Manager. Alarmingly easy, really. The VM booted from the .iso, the installer ran fine—presenting me with three possible timezones to choose from in the DPRK, Japan, or Russia—and the VM seamlessly rebooted into a full RedStar OS session. Briefly.

Issue one: I could not login. I really wanted to login. I'd set up a user account during the install process and everything. But during the boot process RedStar would, invariably, crash as soon as it got to its login manager, glitching out into a green/blue mess that did little except remind me of the proud nation of Sierra Leone.

But it's fine, right? I'm a Linux guy now. If the GUI login manager was crashing, I knew I could probably force the machine to kick me to the tty—the purest form of the command line, completely free of modern graphical nonsense—by holding Shift, Alt, and randomly pawing at function keys.

This… worked? This worked! RedStar booted me to the CLI like it had never even heard of a graphical user interface. Then, uh… then what? What was the plan from there, Josh?

It wasn't completely stupid. My original plan was to login via the tty then get back into the graphical desktop environment—basically taking a detour around the suicidal login manager—using the 'startx' command. Except that didn't work. Startx told me in no uncertain terms that I could sod off with that sort of low trickery, leaving me logged in but graphics-less.

This was a problem because I was not, at this point, actually using RedStar OS's modified version. The modifications that hack out the spyware run after you successfully login the first time, meaning I was A) not even as far as I managed to get back in 2022 and B) potentially faxing the entire contents of my SSD to an office in Pyongyang.

RedStar OS has a documented feature of rapaciously watermarking media files that are in any way exposed to it—documents, images, audio and the like The reason for this, presumably, is to easily trace media within the DPRK itself. If someone has media they shouldn't have, you can trace it to the machine that originally produced it, and possibly any other machines it touched along the way.

Which, hey, my computer already has the eyes of my own government and probably yours (if you are from the US) on it, so the notion of the Kim family knowing I have an .mkv of War and Peace in my Downloads folder doesn't concern me overmuch. Maybe you can put so much spyware on your machine that they all get in each other's way, like the diseases in Mr Burns' body.

But it didn't thrill me, either, and I was anyway eager to see what a modified RedStar ran like, regardless of whether the unmodified version was stitching a Josh Wolens nametag into my Steam version of Desperados. This led me on quite a long and winding road which concluded with me attempting to hack myself root access in the CLI before I realised I had comprehensively lost my mind.

I turned to the official RedStar OS 3.5 Discord, where after some searching I found out that my problem was the QEMU-based virtualisation of my VM software, upon encountering which it seems RedStar's login manager immediately executes itself.

I tried again, this time with VirtualBox.

Into the fire

The good news: it worked! Whatever Ellison-based blood magic Oracle injected into its VM software made RedStar's login software very happy, and it was a mere jiffy before I was sat happily in the glow of its familiar green desktop.

The bad news: it worked! My travails with RedStar did not end after the login screen. Mercifully, the first stage of the 3.5 modifications—the ones that strip out the spyware and grant you the root access necessary to start getting real weird with the system—kicked off faultlessly. The 3.5 iso is, on top of being the installation media for base RedStar 3.0, also the host for the mod files, and all you have to do to make them work is disconnect and reconnect your VM's disc drive.

But the second stage? Harder. This is the one that's meant to comprehensively remodel the OS, adding in the 64-bit kernel and libraries that might, possibly, have made my quest to play a game on the damn thing a little bit easier.

I tried. I really did. The second-stage mods take a long time—we're talking hours, and the three separate times I tried to get them working (which probably cost me six hours, all told) all crashed at the same point, leaving me with a spyware-free but still deeply archaic OS.

Making matters harder is the fact that RedStar essentially can't connect to the 2026 internet. In its default form, it's designed exclusively to work with the DPRK's nationwide intranet, the Kwangmyong, and trying to point it at addresses outside of that confuses the hell out of it. An advantage of the first-stage 3.5 mods is that they automatically scrub its usual IP tables, making it able to chat to the global internet.

But it can only do that via certain internet-facing terminal commands (like 'wget') and its built-in Naenara—Korean for 'our country'—browser, which is based on an ancient version of Firefox. Do you want to use Google? Buddy, you're in luck, because that's the only website that Naenara can load in 2026. Anything else throws an error.

My aged and inert OS was at least in English, thanks to the mods, but it was otherwise dead in the water. Even the built-in yum package manager—which I could perhaps have used to install extra stuff to grease my way to playable videogames—only spoke to a single, very limited software repository, which was in Korean, strangely enough.

I still made a valiant effort. I downloaded an ancient version of Tux Racer, wrote its files to an .iso, and loaded into my RedStar VM, but the damn thing's Makefile—which should have prepped a playable version of the game—refused to play ball, even after I installed a thick wedge of new libraries with yum (not entirely sure where those even came from, I must admit, and prefer not to think about it).

All I was left with was RedStar's default library of apps: a songbook/music notation program, a reskin of GIMP called Hwansang, and various others, including a version of Korean chess, which is the closest I got to running games on this thing.

Things got bad enough that I even turned to Google Gemini—I know, I know—to see if a data centre the size of Houston could help me out. The data centre the size of Houston could not, and seemed to have remarkably little data on running videogames on North Korean operating systems. So much for the future.

Without a break

My attempts to finagle RedStar 3.5 into working ended as a damp squib, I'm sorry to say, and as much I'd like to conclude this piece with something climactic. I am deeply, profoundly in love with the idea of a version of RedStar OS that has been aggressively retrofitted to more-or-less function on modern machines, and I will be keeping my eye on the RedStar OS 3.5 project as it goes on. Come hell or high water, we're gonna get The Witcher 3 running on this thing somehow.

As for its current version? Well, I think Linux is good enough to replace Windows now, but against all expectations I do not think a 2011 version of North Korea's domestic OS is the version of Linux to do it. I'll say this, though: back in 2022, my struggles with RedStar were as much due to my own unfamiliarity with Linux as they were due to the peccadilloes of the operating system itself.

Today, I'm pretty comfortable saying that absolutely nothing is my fault. In general, but also as regards RedStar. I've come a long way since 2022, and Linux has come a long way since 2011. It might have eaten an entire day of my life, but I'm glad RedStar reminded me of that.

Whether you're coding or simply looking for an important file on your desktop, a single typo can create an outsized amount of frustration. Thankfully, Microsoft is working on a number of improvements for Search within Windows 11, including the ability to see through your typos.

The Insider Experimental Preview Build 26300.8687 for Windows 11 that dropped last week introduced the 'more forgiving' version of Search. Microsoft explained then, "Search is better at handling typos, dropped letters, extra letters, and partial words for apps. Queries like 'utlook' can still find Outlook" (via Windows Latest).

On top of that, Search will also prioritise local files over web results in the future. Previously, in response to a hastily typed query, Search had the mocking habit of returning a Bing result with the spelling corrected. Thankfully, Microsoft's partner director of design, March Rogers, said on X, "If you want you can turn off web suggestions entirely."

Most normie Windows 11 users would have to wait a bit before enjoying improvements first rolled out in an Insider preview build. However, I'm rocking OS build 26200.8655 (an older, non-Insider build that dropped earlier in June) and when I type something arcane like 'pwerp,' Search already knows I mean 'PowerPoint'.

That said, when I tried another of Windows Latest's typo tests, I found Search really wasn't sure what to make of 'tskm' in my version of Windows 11.

Search's improved typo parsing and more locally focused results are definitely small improvements in the grand scheme of things. But both contribute to making Windows 11 that much more usable, as well as Microsoft's stated recommitment to making the OS better.

User experience counts for a lot, after all. It's just as well Microsoft has decided to pump the brakes on answering every design question with features like Copilot, as I don't feel all that confident in the spelling abilities of AI.

Users of Windows 11 beta have had access to this for a while now, but with its latest OS update, Microsoft has brought its Low Latency Profile (LLP) to general users across the globe. By giving your CPU a brief kick up the pants when you fire things up, certain apps and tools will now launch quicker than before, giving older PCs that 'fresh installed Windows' feeling.

The update in question, KB5094126, is a cumulative one, so your computer may have already received the LLP. But, if it's been a while since you've done any changes, all you need to do is head to Settings > Windows Update and click on the 'Check for updates' button.

Once the update has installed and your PC has rebooted, the new feature should be up and running in the background (unless your location hasn't been selected to receive KB5094126 just yet). There's nothing that you need to do, as Windows will handle everything for you. According to Microsoft, the LPP feature "accelerates app launch and core shell experiences such as Start menu, Search, and Action Center."

It does this by briefly forcing the CPU to run at its highest possible clock speed for a few seconds when any interaction trigger is detected. To avoid any problems with heat or battery usage on laptops, the processor is rapidly returned to a lower-power state. Unless you actually track the CPU's clock speeds all the time, you won't even notice the change.

Well, that's not true, as you should notice that things like the Start Menu, search function, and general apps should fire up a touch snappier. How much so will depend entirely on your PC's specs, though. For example, if you have a high-end gaming PC, you probably won't notice any difference whatsoever, other than a small bump in the CPU clock speed.

So to check out the Low Latency Profile, I used a budget gaming laptop: an Acer Nitro V with an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS and 16 GB of DDR5-4800 CL40. While not old, this kind of hardware setup is pretty much what LLP is intended for. Unfortunately, it turns out it had already installed the system a while back, so all I can show you is the aforementioned clock speed changes.

As you can see, the processor briefly jumps by around 100 to 200 MHz when the Start Menu is activated, and again when the Windows key is pressed to close it (though the clock speed increase isn't as large). There's no noticeable change in the CPU utilization, of course, because the workload involved here is trivial.

On my Core Ultra 270K Plus main PC, the processor's speed jumps by 500 MHz, so you'll see very different results, depending on your computer's setup. The end result will be the same, though: a snappier-feeling Windows.

However, don't think that the LLP will make games load any faster. Something like Solitaire might, but the latest Call of Duty will still take just as long as it did before the update. That's because games on PCs are mostly constrained by the very sequential nature of how Windows handles data, unless DirectStorage is involved to bring in a touch of parallelization.

Still, it's nice to have Windows acting like a genuinely modern operating system and making better use of the hardware you've got. Low Latency Profile won't turn your gaming PC into a hot-snottin' monster, but it will put a bit more spring into its step.

With its latest update for Windows 11, codenamed KB5089573, Microsoft has finally started to fully roll out something that it began late last year, and something that phones have supported for even longer. It's a Bluetooth feature called Shared Audio, and as long as everyone's hardware ticks off the right boxes, you'll be able to cast music and the like to two separate devices.

I always keep Windows on my main PC fully up-to-date, for work reasons, but I wasn't aware that Microsoft had finally rubberstamped the new feature until I read about it at Windows Latest. Unless you had a PC from a very narrow list of options and used a beta version of Windows, there has been no way to have more than one headset playing the same Bluetooth audio stream on a Microsoft-based computer.

That changed last year, when Redmont released a preview of Shared Audio, but now every Windows 11 user gets it. Well, you might have to wait a little while, as Microsoft does have a habit of dragging its heels with rolling updates, but with luck, your PC should be good to go if you have the latest update.

Basically, you just need to have two Bluetooth audio devices (headsets, headphones, earbuds, etc) connected to the same PC, and you should see the option to enable Shared Audio in the Quick Settings dropdown menu (just to the left of the clock in the system tray).

However, this will only be the case if all of the following are true: (1) The PC is using Windows 11 v26200.8524; (2) the PC supports Bluetooth LE audio broadcast; (3) both audio devices support Bluetooth LE Audio; (4) both audio devices have "Use LE Audio when available" enabled in Windows' Bluetooth options.

Ordinarily, at this point, I'd be showing you various images from my own PC as to how to check all of these things, where to look, and so on. However, despite being all updated and with two Bluetooth LE Audio devices connected, my Windows 11 install doesn't have the Shared Audio feature yet. The images I am showing are those produced by Microsoft.

Truth be told, it's not something I'd personally use very much anyway. Phones have been able to do this for a good while now, and in the rare circumstance where I'd want to share music or a video audio track with another person, I'm most likely to be using a phone to do this.

But if you like to sit with a buddy or significant other, and watch a movie together on a laptop, at least there's now a chance that you won't need to share earbuds or suffer the tinny sound from the PC's rubbish speakers. It's a neat feature to have, even if we've had to wait far too long for it.

It's gratifying to know that 84% of PC Gamer readers are sensible folk who would never allow their operating system desktop get into the sort of state you can see in the image above. And it's more gratifying still to know that a third of you are in the zen club where you have have a completely clear, clutter free desktop with nothing on it. This is the right choice. This is the way.

Though I will admit I'm a lazy member of the zen club and don't actually clear my desktop, I just click that button in the Windows context menu which hides all the icons from my desktop. I'm comfortable with the knowledge there's a viper's nest of writhing icons and folders under there, just so long as I don't have to look at it.

Yes, this past week we asked you lovely PC Gamer readers: How do you organise your operating system desktop? Because we're obviously convinced that a clean desktop is a clean mind, but wanted to know about how everyone else organises their systems.

How do you organise your operating system desktop?

Votes (%)

I remove everything from my desktop

26

I have only a few regularly used icons on the desktop

24

I neatly organise them in specific areas and folder

20

I just let the files and shortcuts fall where they may

16

I just hide the desktop icons, sweeping them under the rug

7

I use an animated wallpaper, so keep it clear of icons

4

I use third-party software to organise them

3

Votes (%) Data

Product	Value
I remove everything from my desktop	26
I have only a few regularly used icons on the desktop	24
I neatly organise them in specific areas and folder	20
I just let the files and shortcuts fall where they may	16
I just hide the desktop icons, sweeping them under the rug	7
I use an animated wallpaper, so keep it clear of icons	4
I use third-party software to organise them	3

Adding it all up, a hefty 84% of you are pursuing good desktop hygiene and either clearing it entirely, or at least managing the volume or layout of icons littering your screen.

Though I will say, more concerning is that 16%—a worrying number of you dear readers—are leaving the clutter unchecked. Maybe it's my own moderately fastidious nature, but I thought fewer people would leave their desktops open to the whims of app installers and assorted downloaded files. But then I look at the physical desktop of my own workspace in PC Gamer Towers, and I probably shouldn't be that surprised when I've got random courier invoices on my desk from years ago and random parts of coolers and PCs that have long since gone to the great recycle bin in the sky.

So, okay, maybe I'm a monster in my own way, too. What about the rest of you, how do you organise your desktop? Do you keep it clean and clear or are you free and easy about what happens behind the various windows on your screen? Or do you have tips to share with the rest of us?

This week I want to go back to the recycle bin again, and I'm asking when you last cleared it out.

Microsoft has been leaning hard into the idea that what matters with Windows is getting the basics right, as opposed to bolting on more AI gunk. An early example of that drive is a recent announcement involving more configurability for the taskbar and Start menu in Windows 11.

In a blog post titled, "Improving Windows quality: Making Taskbar and Start more personal," Microsoft kicks off with the taskbar, which is "where your PC experience comes to life" according to the post.

The big news here is the ability to now place the taskbar along any edge of the desktop. Yep, top, bottom, left and right, every option is being made available. What's more, you'll be able to align the Start button and icons in all four arrangements, "top-aligned or centered when the taskbar is on the left or right, and left-aligned or centered when the taskbar is on the top or bottom."

Of course, this is functionality that was largely available in previous versions of Windows, but removed for Windows 11. If you go for a vertical taskbar, you'll be able to choose between both a thin bar similar to the standard Windows 11 config along the bottom, or a wider bar that allows for fully labelled buttons for each running application.

There's also an option for an even thinner taskbar than usual, which will come in handy on lower resolution displays where space is at a premium.

As for the Start menu, the changes involve both configurability and quality. The former include section-level toggles to independently show or hide Pinned, Recommended, and All, plus settings to tweak the size of the Start menu and the option to hide your name and profile picture for privacy purposes.

As for "quality," Microsoft says it is improving the content that appears in the Recommended section and changing the name of that part of the menu to Recent to "better reflect what the section primarily shows, including recently installed apps and recently used files."

Microsoft is also improving the accuracy of recent files shown in the Start menu. "We are refining which files appear and how they are ordered to reduce less relevant items and better reflect what you have been working on," Microsoft says.

As for when these changes will be made available, Microsoft says they'll come first to Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel over the coming weeks. The company hasn't given a date for a full public release, but it'll probably be made available within a few months.

In my performance analysis of the PC version of Forza Horizon 6, I found that the game ran very well on a wide range of PCs, with nary a bug or glitch. However, these were all using Windows, and many Linux gamers are finding that the game has considerable problems on that platform. Fortunately, the maker of the software that translates Windows game code to work on Linux has perhaps discovered the root cause of the issues.

As spotted by GamingOnLinux, Hans-Kristian Arntzen has recently submitted a whole bunch of tweaks for merging with the latest version of VKD3D-Proton. This bit of software is called a translation layer, and is akin to someone converting instructions from French to English. In this instance, it's translating the Direct3D 12 into Vulkan, so that games using the API can run on PCs using Linux.

But along with the code, Arntzen has offered one or two thoughts on Forza Horizon 6's coding, starting with a fairly damning overview: "This game is extremely broken."

To the average PC enthusiast, a lot of what the developer is criticising won't mean anything, because it's all related to the very deep levels of code and processes that the game's engine is doing. One thing did stand out to me, though: "There are also bugs with 'use-before-alloc' where the application allocates resources after submit and writing descriptors pointing to them to the descriptor heap while GPU is in flight."

In the world of Direct3D 12, allocating resources, writing everything required into them, and then telling the GPU it's all ready is an absolute must for avoiding odd behaviours, rendering glitches, or full-blown crashes. You absolutely don't want to be flinging out a command list to the GPU before or during that whole process, because it could be requesting the wrong data or a resource that isn't even there yet.

A lot of the issues also seem to relate directly to code for AMD RDNA 2 or newer GPUs, though it turns out that GeForce RTX GPUs have issues too. Nvidia is aware of this and has said that it will release a fix in "an upcoming driver release."

Linux gamers have been reporting numerous problems with the game via ProtonDB, though interestingly, the handful of comments from Steam Deck owners are mostly quite positive. This latter point is important because if Xbox Games Studio never intended for Forza Horizon 6 to run on devices using a translation layer, it wouldn't have bothered working with Valve to achieve Steam Deck verification.

Using Proton Experimental and disabling ray-tracing in FH6 seems to help quite a bit, and given just how popular the game is right now, I dare say that Valve and Arntzen will eventually get on top of things. How much Xbox Games Studio will chip in is anyone's guess, though, given that it's their mess in the first place.

In a nice bit of news for True Linux Patriots everywhere, Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency has dedicated €1.3 million of its Sovereign Tech Fund (about $1.5 million / £1.1 million) to the KDE free and open-source (FOSS) software community (via Phoronix).

If you know KDE for anything, you likely know it for its Plasma desktop environment, one of what I think of as the Big Two Linux desktop environments alongside GNOME (GNOME, by the by, also got a €1 million injection from the same fund in recent years).

Plasma comes as the default desktop option on Steam Deck and is a first-class citizen on distros like Fedora, Bazzite, CachyOS, Kubuntu, openSUSE, and, uh, KDE Linux. Naturally. But the KDE community makes a whole lotta stuff: the Dolphin file manager, the Kdenlive video editor, Krita art studio, the Discover software store, and most importantly: KMines. Along with a billion other things. Precisely the kind of thing Germany—and Europe—would like to encourage, especially given recent moves by the bloc to escape the embrace of US tech firms.

The new funds are earmarked for specific tasks, named by KDE on social media. They are:

• Improving KDE Plasma & KDE Linux QA Infrastructure
• Improving KDE Plasma’s Recoverability Mechanisms
• Implementing Factory Reset Functionality for KDE Linux
• Improving Security Infrastructure for Organisational Usage across KDE Plasma
• Improving Data Backup and Restore Systems
• Strengthening Configuration Management as Core Desktop Infrastructure
• Improving Network Shares Experience
• Building KDE PIM QA Infrastructure and an End-to-End Testing for IMAP4 and WebDAV
• Supporting IMAP4rev2
• Supporting WebDAV Push Notifications
• Standardising Account Configuration
• Improving KDE PIM Suite Desktop Integration with Flatpak-Based Delivery

Nothing about making kernel-level anticheat work in there. Weird. I guess the German government probably forgot to write it in their notes to the team.

KDE is, as you might expect, rather chuffed to get €1.3 million in the post, and in its announcement wrote that "the world is beginning to turn away from expensive and insecure spyware-riddled software imposed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple, et al.

"KDE offers the world a better way. For 30 years, KDE has been providing the free and open-source software essential for digital sovereignty in personal, corporate, and public infrastructures." No doubt this is at least partially what Germany and Europe writ large like about it.

Plus, any leaps KDE makes as a result of this funding will be usable by anyone: "KDE’s software is competitive, publicly auditable, and freely available. It can be maintained, adapted, and improved in-house or by local software companies. And modifications (along with their source code) can be freely distributed to all users and departments within an organization… There are no subscriptions, no spying on users, no disclosure or resale of data that users choose to voluntarily share with KDE, and no secret training of AI models with said data."

It's an interesting time on the computer, folks. Are we all bound for the sunlit uplands of a fully FOSS future? Well, probably not: Windows is still quite widely used, I'm led to believe. But you're certainly hearing a lot more about Linux than you used to. Onwards Linux century.

There's a sadness in the technosphere right now, ain't there? This overwhelming disappointment that sort of lingers at the back of your mind like unkempt cable management. Enough journalists have called out the enshittification of PC gaming (or platform decay as us sophisticated lot call it), I'm certainly not the first in that regard. But back in January of this year, I finally had enough of it in Windows, and sacked off the legendary operating system entirely in favour of Pop! and that's a big bloody deal for me.

I've been using Windows since around 1998. At the age of seven, it was my first insight into the world of PC gaming. Since then, I've navigated the trials and tribulations of Microsoft's best efforts day-in, day-out. From Win 98 all the way up to modern-era 11 and every service pack in between.

I've gamed for hours beyond count, crafted all manner of UIs, websites, and programs with it, finished my degree thanks to it, and it's been a critical part of my time in tech journalism. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to become editor of Maximum PC magazine, or even gotten a job there to begin with. Yet through all the ups and downs, and the best efforts of my Linux-touting colleagues trying to push me to the big open source OS in the sky, I just refused to try any of the open source distros out. At least that is until recently.

Let's face it, modern-day Windows is just a bit crap. You fork out all this money for an official license, one that's meant to provide you with complete access to a clean, fast, modern-day OS, without issue (and it's not cheap, for the "official" non-OEM one), and yet what you get is an excessively degraded experience compared to what it once was. One that honestly feels like it's just continually getting worse, no matter how many times you reinstall it.

From over-eager back-end telemetry forever pinging Microsoft's servers on your use habits, to the aggressive Copilot AI integration that may or may not be reading your card data, or all of the other intrusive ads begging you to sign up to Microsoft 365, Teams, Candy Crush, or some other madness, there's always something to disrupt your flow. And that's not even mentioning the constant stream of Windows Updates rammed down your throat every three and a half seconds, that could potentially brick your entire rig at a moment's notice. So yes, I felt it was time for a change. Finally. After 28 years.

And the thing is, Linux now has so many distros dedicated to gaming, to privacy, to Nvidia compatibility, to productivity, that there's a flavor for everyone. And better yet, they're built from the ground up to not only be efficient, but to minimize that friction that often comes with being a Windows refugee. You're not going to be sat in terminal for 22 hours a day, pretending you've travelled back in time to 1988.

So then. Pop! OS. Why? How? What are the drawbacks? That's what I'm here to explain, very specifically, my experience with it. I'll be clear, I'm not a huge Linux expert, I haven't tried all the distros. I'm very new to the world of open-source OS's, but I chose Pop! as it feels like a good middle-ground between the lot of them. It's mature, the Cosmic UI is beautiful, and with the Steam Deck really normalizing Proton now, making gaming far smoother, it really is the perfect time to give it a go with an OS that kinda holds your hand a bit.

The setup

The good news is you can just try this out. You don't need to fully commit and fry your entire Windows install to give it a whirl. Instead, we can use Dual Boot to effectively dabble with both, the only compromise being you'll need to shrink an SSD and get a bit of partition space back. Admittedly a bit of a commodity these days, but y'know.

My advice? Back up anything you consider mission-critical, and make sure Windows is fully up-to-date first. Then you'll need to identify what hardware you're running. With Pop! OS, System76, (the devs behind it) has a wide variety of ISOs available, depending on if your GPU is AMD or Nvidia. If you're running Big Red, grab the standard "Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS" ISO from its download page system76.com/pop/download/ or if you've got a big ol' green GTX 16 series or above, nab the "Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with NVIDIA" variant instead. Then, and because I'm getting bored of these wee paragraphs, you'll need to do the following:

• Download the Rufus bootable USB stick utility, ready to create your bootable media.
• Grab an 8 GB USB stick (it will get wiped, so do bear that in mind).
• Flash the correct ISO to your USB, and leave Rufus to use its default settings.
• Go into disk management on Windows, and shrink down one of your partitions, ideally by 250 GB or so. Leave it unformatted (Pop! OS actually uses a different file system to Windows ext4 vs NTFS).
• Ensure Fast Startup and BitLocker is disabled so your drives aren't encrypted.
• Head into BIOS, find secure boot, and change it to "Other OS". If Fast Startup is located here, turn that off too.
• Then boot from your Pop! OS Installer USB
• Follow the installer, choose Custom Install, and create a partition from your empty space.
• Let the magic happen, and finish the installation process.
• Then once you've logged in to the full desktop, open Terminal (Windows key + t) and type in:sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -yIt'll ask you for your login password, type that in (you won't see the input), hit enter, and then Pop! OS should perform a full update, including drivers, apps, the lot. Huzzah, that's it.

Life of Pop!

Using Pop! OS is such a breath of fresh air. It feels so clean, responsive, and low latency compared to Windows; it's uncanny. It's actually one of the few things that makes Dual Boot challenging to stick to. Spend half your day in Pop!, then switch back to Windows for work, and everything almost feels laggy in comparison. Even the mouse. And that's with a Ryzen 9 9900X, RTX 5080, 64 GB of DDR5, and a WD SN8100 at my disposal.

Most of this is due to how these operating systems are built. A very simplified explanation is that, effectively, Windows has decades of compatibility layers piled on top of one another to get it to work. Explorer, for instance, is critically interwoven with the shell and the OS, whereas Cosmic just sits on top of the OS, almost like an extrapolation layer. You could remove it or swap it out entirely for an alternative like KDE or Gnome, and the OS just doesn't care. Try to do the same with Windows, and the whole thing comes crumbling down.

File systems, too, are massively different, with Linux opting for ext4 over NTFS, which is excellent at rapid file ops (predominantly what operating systems tend to live and die on). There's zero back-end telemetry involved too, and updates don't affect the entire OS just to get things running properly. It's remarkable the difference that makes in day-to-day use.

Customization is a godsend as well. You can alter the UI directly by changing the style, edges, fonts, colors, border size, all sorts. And all the mod cons and window snapping are built in here, along with window stacking (at least with Cosmic, which Windows still lacks). There's also an impressively built-out app store, with an ungodly number of apps you can directly install. Or alternatively, you can download .deb packages from official sites and install them like you would an .exe, or just direct download through the terminal with the right command. You can sandbox them too, installing them as Flatpaks. If you don't want that program to have access to your entire system, effectively limiting what permissions you decide it has access to. Even VPNs are built in. Once you've got something like NordVPN installed, it lives in the networking tab as its own thing.

It's not all smooth sailing, though. The biggest issue by far is ironically still that app availability. Despite Linux's popularity increasing quite dramatically in recent months, there's a whole host of apps that just don't exist here, and never will. Adobe, Affinity, Battle.net, Office 365, iTunes, Notion, all conspicuous in their absence. And then there's the RGB element too. There's no Corsair iCUE or Logitech, Razer, Armoury Crate, NZXT Cam, Elgato software, none existent. The list is honestly quite large, and mostly because the marketplace here on Linux is still remarkably small.

That said, there are alternatives out there: GIMP, Krita, OpenRGB, LibreOffice, as a huge army of dedicated volunteers keep the software alternatives up and ticking. Plus for software with a web interface, like Tidal or Google Drive, you can install them directly from your browser as PWA apps anyway, so they sit there on your desktop behaving pretty much identically to any modern program anyway, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds.

And that's not to say it's impossible to get those programs working theoretically, either. You can use software to do that through translation and compatibility layers. Things like Lutris and Wine effectively translate Windows API calls into their Linux equivalents on the fly; you can get Lutris to effectively run Affinity and Battle.net, too, but the implementation is quite clunky to get right and it can break, particularly with authentication.

Valve's spent a lot of time and energy working on Proton as well (its own fork of Wine designed to translate DirectX to Vulkan), which is by far the biggest contributor to modern gaming on Linux, even being possible.

Nvidia sucks, all hail DLSS

The biggest issue for the longest time with Linux has been Nvidia compatibility. Linus Torvalds has "spoken" about this in-depth, but effectively, on the gaming side (not the enterprise side, because you know data centers run Linux practically exclusively), all of the GPU drivers were closed-source. Despite AMD and Intel moving to open source variants near decades ago.

In 2022, finally, Nvidia launched its open-source kernel modules for the GTX 16/RTX 20 series and above, and after a bit of a bumpy start, it's at last matured into something that's beginning to compete with its Windows counterparts.

Gaming results

Windows 1080p / 4K

• Cyberpunk 2077 RT Ultra No DLSS - 92.91 / 31.66
• Cyberpunk 2077 RT Ultra DLSS Quality - 111.35 / 53.03
• Total War: Warhammer 3 Battle Benchmark - 219.4 / 93.4
• Black Myth Wukong RT Off DLSS - 88 / 44

Linux 1080p / 4K

• Cyberpunk 2077 RT Ultra No DLSS - 81.29 / 28.18
• Cyberpunk 2077 RT Ultra DLSS Quality - 127.25 / 50.12
• Total War: Warhammer 3 Battle Benchmark - 173.1 / 70.5
• Black Myth Wukong RT Off DLSS - 73 / 37

Performance as a result of those open-source drivers is a bit of a mixed bag. So I took three games effectively and ran them through four testing scenarios.

Now it is worth saying straight-up that these benchmarks are completely isolated compared to the way we usually do things here at PC Gamer. Typically, we use Nvidia FrameView on Windows to analyze performance, as it registers the frame rate pushed to the screen, rather than the frame rate the in-game benchmark tools/game engine reports. Unfortunately, (or unsurprisingly), there's no support for it on Linux, so for comparison's sake, we're forced to use the in-game engines instead for consistent results and a fair frame of reference.

I've also only listed average fps here, just to keep things simple, and they're tested in identical conditions across both platforms. Cyberpunk 2077 on the Ray Tracing Ultra preset, with DLSS switched off, and then set to Quality. Total War: Warhammer 3, on the Ultra preset, and Black Myth Wukong, set to Very High, with Ray Tracing off, and the upscaling quality slider set to 100 (using DLSS). All games were tested for three runs, and then averages were taken from there, with results at 1080p and 4K.

What's fascinating from these figures is that, on the whole, despite Proton effectively acting as a bit of a middleman and potential bottleneck, translating those DirectX API calls to Vulkan, the overall fps loss across all titles technically isn't that high, and certainly not noticeable from an actual gameplay perspective, at least in two of the titles.

At 1080p, the performance drop is around 11.1% across all four scenarios, and 16.3% at 4K. There's a couple of outliers here that need pulling, too. The biggest being Cyberpunk with DLSS at 1080p, where Pop! OS actually beat Windows, pulling an average fps score of 127 versus 111. That's not bad by any means. It's hard to know why that's happening; my best theory is that Windows is facing a bit of a CPU bottleneck here, which Linux somehow jumps over, thanks to lower resource usage on the overall system. Or there's some DLSS shenanigans going on with Proton that we can't quite explain.

And then there's Total War. Or as I like to call it, "oh god oh god why?" Compared to the other benchmarks here, it lost out to its Windows counterpart by a staggering 21% at 1080p and 25% at 4K. If you actually remove that from the results, the average difference drops to just 3.7% at 1080p, and 10.4% at 4K. Again, this seems to be a major API/CPU bottleneck predominantly, so if you're a big strat gamer, Linux might not be the right answer for you. At least if you're using CA's game engines anyway, which are a bit notorious for API calls anyway.

Marry, kiss, format partition?

My time with Linux has been eye-opening, genuinely. Pop! OS is such a beautiful place to be. There was never a day when I got back to the office that I wasn't looking forward to booting up my PC and getting to do some work in the Cosmic environment. It just runs so seamlessly. Yeah, I did have the odd bug here and there, but it wasn't anything a quick Google search or terminal command couldn't fix.

But, and here's the annoying part, specifically for me, so much of my current work is dependent on apps and programs that only exist in Windows and not Pop!. Affinity and benchmarking software, in particular, and other programs like that, kinda forces me back into Microsoft's clutches. The backwards compatibility that makes Windows so bulky, and grotesque, and inefficient at times, gives it such versatility that it's quite hard to ignore that as a positive in a weird roundabout way.

I would say the performance drop concerns me a bit (particularly as I've got about 2,000 hours in the Total War franchise), but there are alternative distros out there that are far more adept at gaming than Pop! Is, particularly in terms of CPU performance. Pop! is effectively designed as this handholding Goldilocks build, almost perfect for a bit of everything and easy to manage, but if you want the absolute best performance, you can get, certainly in-game, something more advanced like CachyOS, or Bazzite, or even Nobara, might be a better fit.

I'm not done with Linux yet. Not by a long shot. Those cutting-edge performance distros have got my interest piqued, and I need to get my fingers dug in there too, but sadly, for the time being, I've just gotta stick with the burgeoning old beast that is Windows 11, if only to keep those bills paid. I suppose we should be thankful that at least we've got Chris Titus Tech's WinUtil to get most of the crud out of the thing, but until major developers get their crap together, it looks like I'm stuck here until then.

If you've ever felt anxious about the security of your machine while you wait for a solution to some vulnerability, a proposed change to the Linux kernel may interest you. Pitched by Nvidia staff Sasha Levin, it's effectively a killswitch that could shut down some functions while waiting for a more official solution.

As spotted by The Information, Levin writes, "Killswitch lets a privileged operator make a chosen kernel function return a fixed value without executing its body, as a temporary mitigation for a security bug while a real fix is being prepared"

Levin notes that when a security issue becomes public, many users of Linux are technically made more vulnerable until the patch is sent out into the world. You would naturally have to stay more vigilant and use the killswitch manually when issues are made known, but it gives some extra agency over your rig. Though the main focus are the commercial users that are most vulnerable, not your everyday Linux user.

Levine continues, "For most users, the cost of 'this socket family stops working for the day' is

much smaller than the cost of running a known vulnerable kernel until the fix lands."

This killswitch was suggested just a week after researchers caught a root exploit called "Copyfail". Effectively, this exploit can escalate user privileges by replacing code, and that user can exploit escalated user privileges to attack machines. Over on the Cybersecurity Reddit, one user says, "That script is stupidly easy to run and gain root."

There was a period of time in between Copyfail being spotted and patches rolling out where users were left more vulnerable than before, and this is the perfect use case for the likes of this killswitch.

It's naturally not the most elegant solution to problems, given it simply shuts down parts of the machine, but that level of granular control could be a good thing, especially in the hands of the already rather granular Linux community.

Not everyone is fully on board with it, though, and understandably so. One Reddit user, with over 100 upvotes, argues it is "Useful as a last-resort mitigation, but scary if people treat it like a patch. Easy to imagine this breaking production in creative ways."

Even more negatively, another argues it's a "security feature that may be worse than the vulnerability."

Some believe the 'nuclear option' is far too extreme, and even when it works, it could incentivise some to simply lock down functions rather than actually patching their machine. And that's before mentioning users could shut down processes they probably shouldn't with it. It seems like the nuclear option could be good or bad, depending on who has the button.

A few days ago, Windows Latest reported that a new Low Latency Profile in Windows 11 could make budget rigs perform better. Effectively, it ramps up CPU usage for certain high-priority tasks, which allows it to open and interact with elements of Windows 11 much quicker than before. Since it was spotted, it has been called out for putting a bandage on a wider problem, but a member of Microsoft staff has come to its defence.

Scott Hanselman, VP and member of technical staff for Microsoft AI / GitHub / Windows, has taken to X to defend this Windows update.

"Apple does this and y’all love it," Hanselman says. "See it yourself. Let windows cook."

To let Windows cook is to acknowledge that it is still in process. This means Microsoft is still continuing to work on its Low Latency profiles going forward. Hanselman says, "All modern operating systems do this, including macOS and Linux. It's not 'cheating'; this is how modern systems make apps feel fast: they temporarily boost the CPU speed and prioritise interactive tasks to reduce latency."

Following up on this original tweet, Hanselman says, "Your smartphone already does this. Constantly. Every touch wakes cores, boosts clocks, renders a frame, then drops back to idle milliseconds later. You’ve discovered dynamic frequency scaling."

The Low Latency mode is currently in early testing for Windows Insiders. Early testing shows that the CPU boost opens apps like Edge and outlook 40% faster, and the Start menu all the way up to 70% faster. CPU usage spikes up to almost its max to open up apps, then spins back down again afterwards, and Windows Latest spotted peaks of almost 100% in use.

If you have a beefy rig already, you may not notice a slight increase, but if you have limited cores and performance to work with in the first place, being able to reallocate power at the right moment feels like a smart move.

Windows 11 already sees quite a lot of hate, partially because of the litany of bad Windows 11 bugs over the last year, Microsoft's insistence on using AI, and its own controversies outside of Windows. This could explain why some are very against the new mode. Microsoft taking any shortcuts to better performance leads some to believe it may not actually improve Windows 11 on a structural level. In fairness, just last week, it was revealed that Windows 11 is full of old code.

Whether or not that belief holds any water is still to be seen, but the likes of Linux have benefited greatly from Microsoft's past mistakes. Personally, though, with the memory crisis gutting rigs, I'm happy to take any free performance boosts I can get.

You know those clunky old dialogue boxes that get exposed if you click a few too many layers deep into the Windows 11 UI? The ones that make you think, sheesh this thing is ancient underneath? Well, a senior Microsoft executive has just confirmed that Windows 11's antediluvian innards are indeed far more extensive than that.

In a new video posted on X (via PC World), Russinovich explains how the Win32 API remains central to the functionality of Windows 11, despite dating back to Windows 95.

"Did anyone in the 90s expect Win32 to still be a first-class API surface in the year 2026? And I think I can safely answer, no. Nobody, I think, would’ve expected that because we were thinking flying cars and moon stations by the year 2026. Not Win32 that was designed back in Windows 95 days," Russinovich says.

If you're wondering what Win32 is, well, it's basically a set of pre-written functions or calls that software can make to the operating system. When an application needs to draw a window on screen, read a file, process a mouse click, render text, or respond to a keyboard press, it doesn't need to include the literal code to do accomplish those tasks.

Instead, applications call on these pre-written Win32 functions, such as CreateWindow(), ReadFile() , GetCursorPos(). And they all date back to Windows 95.

Microsoft has actually tried to move on from Win32. With Windows 8 in particular, there was a big push to move to a new API layer known as WinRT. The Windows 8 "Metro" UI largely used the new WinRT API layer and the idea was that, eventually, this more modern shell would become the primary way people used Windows.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Windows 8 was not exactly a roaring success and Windows 10 largely retreated back to the traditional Win32 shell. Part of the problem is that applications have to be rewritten to support WinRT (which itself sort got subsumed into Universal Windows Platform for Windows 10 and then was then rebranded as Windows App SDK and WinUI 3). Simply switching Windows to WinRT would have broken all legacy apps.

So, Microsoft ran Win32 and WinRT in parallel and, to cut a long story short, there was relatively little adoption of the latter. And so here we are in 2026, no flying cars, no moon bases and pretty much every mouse click you make in Windows invokes code from the early 1990s.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has confirmed that services are back up and running following a major DDoS attack that left some of its infrastructure, including websites and repos, unavailable for five days.

DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attacks are intended to disrupt the everyday operation of servers and networks. They're often quite effective, too, leveraging a flood of requests from IP addresses that are tough to distinguish from genuine ones, with the intention of overwhelming a system. That's what Canonical has been dealing with over the past five days, only recently confirming that it has restored services.

"At this stage, we have implemented mitigations and restored services affected by the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack," Canonical says.

Though some services may still be affected as they spin back up: "You may experience partially degraded performance on some of the services as we continue to work diligently on resolving the situation."

Canonical's status page now notes all components as operational. Though it couldn't have been an easy fix, as the attack was first reported on May 1, perhaps beginning as early as April 30, and it wasn't until May 6 that Canonical announced it had largely mitigated the attack.

The attack reportedly knocked out key repos, including those for security updates, for Ubuntu. That puts users of the operating system, such as myself, in a tricky spot. Local mirrors offered some way to access key updates, however, and not all services were down at all times. Such is often the case with a DDoS attack.

The reason for the attack is not clear. Some suggest a group by the name of The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq claimed the attack, reportedly taking to Telegram to announce its action. Though it's not clear from Canonical if that was the case, nor did the group suggest why it was attacking the open-source operating system. Presumably, there are bigger fish to extort than a Linux distro, even if it is one of the largest and most popular.

Gaming on Linux has never been better—but that doesn't mean your distros are free from security threats. Case in point is a severe vulnerability nicknamed 'Copy Fail,' which allows a local user to dig into the guts of the OS and give themselves root privileges merely by writing four bytes of controlled data into the page cache of any readable file.

The security research team at Theori disclosed the vulnerability last Wednesday, though CISA reports that threat actors have since been observed using the exploit in the wild. The security flaw has been given the designation CVE-2026-31431 and marked with a high severity score of 7.8 (via Bleeping Computer).

This is because Copy Fail could potentially leave a large number of Linux users exposed—if you've not updated your kernel in a hot minute, now would be the time. Theori puts it succinctly in its write-up, summarising, "A single 732-byte Python script can [be used to] obtain root on essentially all Linux distributions shipped since 2017."

As such, CISA added the vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog. In accordance with 'Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01', this move in turn requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies based throughout the USA to update their systems by May 15 in order to protect their systems against this active threat.

CISA warns, "This type of vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and poses significant risks to the federal enterprise."

Cybersecurity firm Theori also offers a more digestible Copy Fail guide. This includes the security research team's original Proof of Concept script so "defenders can verify their own systems and validate vendor patches." It's worth clarifying that this script requires local access to a machine running Linux, and that the security vulnerability is not an example of remote code execution.

The team found the same script works in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Amazon Linux 2023, RHEL 10.1, and SUSE 16, but obviously, plenty of other Linux distros are also affected.

This news follows claims made last week by Canonical—the company that created Ubuntu—that its web infrastructure was under a "sustained, cross-border attack". Though the Copy Fail vulnerability was disclosed by Theori around the same time, the exploit may not be to blame. Canonical has yet to provide an update after its X post on May 1st.

If you hang around with cool enough people, you might have heard it's the year of Linux on the desktop. But you heard wrong. It's the century of Linux on the desktop—it's apparent to anyone who can read the auguries: dads are becoming Linux-pilled, you can make HDR work now, and Framework says more people are buying the Ubuntu version of its latest laptop than the Windows one. Ignore that big Copy Fail vulnerability that got unearthed (and which many distros have since patched) recently. That's… look, no one's perfect, okay?

Anyway, here's another portent of Linux's inevitable ascent: Discord has finally made it less tedious to update its app on your distro of choice. In the bad old days—that is, the 11 years between Discord's first release and yesterday's patch notes—Linux users whose desktop Discord client needed updating would be confronted with a pop-up but no way to actually conduct the update quickly.

Where Windows users could hit a button and have Discord update itself, Linux users who weren't using the official Flatpak pretty much had to reinstall the whole app to get the latest version. Which was not great.

But no more. Quoth Discord: "Are you a Linux user? If so, are you sick of that lovely modal we made to tell you that there’s an update you need to go manually install? IF SO, boy do I have good news for you. We’ve ported our Rust-based updater to Linux, allowing Linux to update itself just like on Windows."

Great news for anyone who hasn't already swapped the official app out for Vesktop. In addition to parity with Windows insofar as updates are concerned, Discord has also made the app easier to install across distros. The website now offers an .rpm package for users of Fedora, openSUSE, and other distros that, uh, use .rpm packages, as well as .pkg.tar.zst for users on Arch-y distros.

I'm an excitable sort who is prone to read too much into things, but still, I can't help but find this focus on Linux—even giving it an entry in the patch notes' highlights section (which isn't the first time Linux has been there, but still)—a bit promising, particularly in light of Linux recently hitting relatively big numbers in the Steam hardware survey. Slowly but surely, it's becoming big enough for consumers that major software developers can't afford to ignore it. Bring it on, I say.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows Windows with a commanding 93.47% share of users on the platform, but below that muscular statistic lies a far more embarrassing one: Only 67.74% of Steam users are on Windows 11, almost five years after its initial release.

Perhaps even more surprising, six months after Windows 10's official end of life, more than a quarter of Steam users (25.53%) are still on the moribund OS, which had its own official release almost 11 years ago. I find it difficult to see this as anything but a massive blunder for the default PC operating system, though the hardware market is also contributing to Microsoft's adoption problem.

With the notable exception of a whole lot of Copilot AI nonsense, Windows 11 has stabilized into functionally the same user experience as Windows 10 after a rocky beginning. That's not bad, but it's hardly a compelling reason to upgrade.

Windows 11's early tarnished reputation made for a heady mix with its real poison pill: Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0, a hardware-level security measure required by Windows 11 and not present in earlier processor generations.

A hardware upgrade solely to access a stagnant version of Windows is a tough ask under any conditions. It's especially onerous now: Hardware prices are skyrocketing and top of the line rigs struggle to run poorly optimized PC ports. But paradoxically, withered processors and graphics cards are able to be stretched for 10 years or more, depending on the graphical compromises you're willing to make.

I don't think the next phase of the Linux gaming renaissance is in danger of commencing any time soon, either: After cracking 5% of Steam users in March's survey, the April Steam Hardware Survey showed them dropping back to a still-impressive 4.52%—so not a catastrophe, but the numbers just aren't going to the moon (yet).

Windows is still in a tight spot, with even governments like France committing to alternatives. I see parallels to the divisive Windows Vista and 8 being followed by the unifying forces of Windows 7 and 10 respectively. Microsoft could turn things around with a crowd-pleasing Windows 12, but in the era of Copilot and Recall, I'm not convinced it still has that three-seam fastball.

I'm dating myself here, but the operating systems I remember most clearly banging my head against in my youth were Windows 95 and Windows XP. Obviously, plenty of computer interface history predates the panel-style design we're so familiar with now, and Microsoft has announced fresh efforts to preserve this.

Microsoft has shared the source code for 86-DOS 1.00, a precursor to MS-DOS, via GitHub. Uploaded on the vintage operating system's 45th birthday, a recent blog post explains that this preservation effort was a more serious undertaking than simply unearthing a bunch of ancient floppy disks and lifting the data. It turns out that the source code for this early version of 86-DOS was not stored digitally.

Instead Tim Paterson, the original author of DOS, had held onto print-outs of code for a variety of things, including source listings for assemblers and "some well-known utilities such as CHKDSK". In order to present this code as downloadable files on GitHub, someone had to transcribe or scan this material, and then reconstruct the code from the printouts.

Per the blog post, "A dedicated team of historians and preservationists led by Yufeng Gao and Rich Cini has worked to locate, scan, and transcribe the stack of DOS-era source listings from Tim Paterson, the author of DOS."

For those that don't know, 86-DOS was originally created by Tim Paterson for an Intel 8086-based computer kit sold by Seattle Computer Products. The Internet Archive hosts even older source code, preserving 86 DOS Version 0.1 alongside a scan of a floppy disk sporting a Seattle Computer Products sticker (via Ars Technica). Even earlier in development, the OS was called QDOS, which was short for "quick and dirty operating system" and leads me to forevermore read 'DOS' as 'Dirty Operating System.'

Microsoft licensed 86-DOS for the IBM PC 5150, and hired Tim Paterson to keep developing the OS in 1981. The operating system was renamed MS-DOS in 1982, though it carried on with 86-DOS' version numbers.

For the computer science history buffs, Microsoft has previously made MS‑DOS 1.25 and 2.0 open source, alongside MS-DOS 4.0. You can poke around the files via the same DOS History GitHub repo. That's cool and all, but as a child of the '90s, I'm most excited to have a nose through the open source code for 1995’s Microsoft 3D Movie Maker. Take me back to being a polygonal rat.

It was only a brief mention, but in Microsoft's recent earnings call, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Amy Hood explained that the ongoing memory crisis is expected to impact revenue from Windows purchases. Specifically, that is, from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

"Windows OEM revenue," Hood says, "should decline in the high teens with roughly six points of impact from a prior-year comparable that benefited from Windows 10 end of support, six points from inventory levels that we expect to come down for the quarter, and six points from a lower PC market as prices increase due to memory cost."

OEMs make pre-built PCs, and when you buy from one of these companies, if they don't come with Windows 11 by default they'll usually give you the choice to pay extra to have it installed. If you say yes to this, you'll have an 'OEM' version of Windows, which is the same as regular Windows but is tied to your device rather than you as a user—you can't transfer it elsewhere.

OEMs pay Microsoft to be able to put Windows on the systems they sell, so that's what Hood is referring to here. Often, these will be large batches of machines for companies to buy in bulk, but they will also be gaming PC system builders, for instance.

The problem is the RAMpocalypse is driving up component prices, which means OEMs have to pay more and then pass on this cost to customers, which means less sales as home users and even companies decide to hold on to their current hardware for longer. Which means, ultimately, that OEMs likely aren't going to be buying as many Windows licences from Microsoft, as the CFO is here predicting.

Microsoft isn't entirely blameless here, of course, as while it's not solely an AI company, it has been implementing AI on a vast scale through Azure cloud and in partnership with OpenAI.

The effects of the memory crisis are far from an abstract possibility, as we've already seen system builders complaining of high memory prices. We've also seen the effects on RAM prices ourselves, of course. And while some chipmakers might be cautiously optimistic about the future on this front, plenty of others—especially system builders further downstream—aren't seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

Gloomy stuff, but at least Microsoft says it's focusing on improving Windows fundamentals. If hardware is taking a hit, perhaps software can soften the blow.

I'm not sure whether it's because of the RAMpocalypse and resultant PC component prices, Windows 10 (partial) EOL, Valve's Linux-based Steam Machine announcement, or something else, but there seems to be increasing focus on operating systems and software compared to hardware this year. Perhaps it's just that people were finally getting to their wits' end with bloated, buggy software. Microsoft is taking note, though, and is looking to "win back fans and strengthen engagement."

That's according to the company's CEO, Satya Nadella, who said in an earnings call: "When it comes to our consumer business, we are doing the foundational work required to win back fans and strengthen engagement across Windows, Xbox, Bing, and Edge."

Nadella continued, "In the near term, we are focused on fundamentals, prioritizing quality, and serving our core users better. You see this in the work underway across our consumer products. With Windows, we recently announced performance improvements for lower-memory devices, streamlined the Windows Update experience, and brought back focus to core features and fundamentals that matter most to our customers."

"Our north star remains the same", the CEO said, "delivering customer value with the highest quality and top-class innovation."

Microsoft began ending support for Windows 10 late last year, which seemed to spur a fresh spate of complaints about Windows 11 from many users. The sentiment seemed to be, 'if we're being forced onto Windows 11, at least make it good.'

Then, last month, Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's Windows president, explained that the company was going to focus on making Windows better in some fundamental ways that users have actually been asking for.

Previously, there'd been what seemed like two years straight of AI-focused updates that people hadn't asked for, without addressing any underlying issues that many users actually care about, such as general desktop performance and bugginess.

Davuluri said Microsoft will be focusing on such areas and also scaling back AI in areas where it's not needed. And it seems that this isn't just talk, either, as certain AI tools have already been cut, and there have been some nice changes to core Windows apps and features, such as Windows Update. Though the extent to which those AI tools are actually cut rather than simply moved or partially cut (as with Notepad and Snipping Tool) is debatable.

Regardless, the "foundational work" already seems to have begun. I suppose Microsoft will just have to hope it's enough to slow the slowly rising tide of Linux emigrees.

Windows Update is both a blessing and a curse. Sure, each fix it installs might end up solving whatever issue you might be having with your Windows 11 machine, but the tool itself has been known to be downright obtrusive at times.

This is why Microsoft has been busy rolling out some changes, starting with the latest Windows Insider builds. MS details all of the upcoming Windows Update, err, updates in a new blog post, and top of the list is a section entitled "more control." That's a pretty good start.

"Updates are an important part of keeping your PC secure and running smoothly", Microsoft says. "But at the wrong time, they can also critically break your flow."

Preach. To rectify Windows 11's update-misbehaving ways, Microsoft has already begun rolling out a "skip updates" feature to the Out of Box Experience (OOBE), which means you can now bypass updates during installation to get to the desktop quicker.

Our Jess has tested the feature and found it to work exactly as intended. We set up a lot of machines here at PC Gamer (no way), so when we say it's "neat", what we really mean is "thank goodness for that."

There's also a new upcoming option to pause updates, with a built-in calendar interface that lets you choose a specific day of the month to update your machine. This calendar goes up to 35 days in the future, but can be endlessly extended for 35-day periods.

The biggest feature on the list, though, is a Power menu change. You'll soon get options to shut down or restart your machine without being forced to install a pending update, no matter the circumstances.

It's kind of mind-blowing to me that this is presented as a revolutionary feature. I can't count the number of times I've needed to pack up my laptop in a hurry and mistakenly hit the "update and shutdown" option, rather than just closing the lid, locking me into an update process that could take two minutes, or the best part of half an hour.

MS also says it'll classify its update titles with more detail, so you can see whether they'll apply to specific features on your machine. And lastly, updates will now be grouped together to prevent frequent reboots.

"We know this has been a major pain point for Windows users, so as of today, we’re unifying the update experience to reduce the number of reboots you see every month," says MS.

"We are starting by coordinating driver, .NET, and firmware updates to align with the monthly quality update, reducing update experience to a single monthly restart."

Yep, that sounds good. The new updates are part of Microsoft's solemn vow to improve the Windows 11 experience, after user complaints regarding Microsoft's focus on AI updates over usability reached a fever pitch.

I'd say it was a pretty good start, but my machine still automatically reboots after being told to update and shut down, despite MS saying the issue was fixed some months ago. Is there somewhere I can raise a ticket, Microsoft, or will the end of this article do?

Whenever I think of old-school programming, I think of people like Dave Plummer, the creator of the original Task Manager. Working for Microsoft in the 1990s, he built that app, which we now very much take for granted, brick by metaphorical brick. That isn't to say there was zero hackiness involved—far from it, as with much pre-2000s code.

Case in point is something I just learned about the original app: Plummer accidentally left his phone number inside it. "It's one of those tiny bits of old code that tells a story," he says.

It all started by him noticing, when developing the original app, that CPU utilisation was sometimes adding up to over 100%, which is "just not possible if the math is being done right."

After checking the math was right on his end and finding nothing wrong, the other possibility was that there was a bug in the kernel, as that's where the data was being pulled from. But it was difficult to get any of the kernel developers to take this idea seriously in part because of the "pecking order" at Microsoft in the '90s: "the kernel is where the silverbacks live."

"I was just a UI guy drawing little pictures of CPU usage. So, as you can imagine, when I proposed to the kernel guys that, 'hey, maybe it's your bug', they were what I would charitably call unsympathetic to my plight."

Plummer used 'asserts' in the code to help diagnose the problem, meaning if the correct and proper conditions weren't met—if the 'assertions' didn't hold—while the application was running, "it throws a fault and it stops in the debugger so that you can inspect the machine to determine exactly why your assertion proved false."

He added an assert that specified CPU usage shouldn't be above 100%, which was intended to help diagnose when and where the problem was occurring in the code. However, "it was a weird case that hardly ever happened and it never fired on my machine, of course, or on any of the machines of the other people on my team."

"So I did the one thing that I felt gave me the best odds of finding out if anybody hit this case. I put my name and home phone number in the assertion. That way, no matter who in the company hit it or when or where in what building, they would be given my contact info and let me know about it."

He never got a lead though, and before long he forgot all about it.

"And then we shipped the beta. Now, I don't know exactly how many people get the Windows beta, but if it's not millions of people it's certainly thousands of folks. And now they would all be armed with code that would display my home phone number in a dialogue if things went sideways."

Apparently, though, despite still having the same home phone number to this day, no one has ever called—not until he mentioned it on YouTube a couple of years ago, anyway. I don't like to imagine how the 'oh crap' realisation that he'd potentially doxxed himself must have felt.

These are, I suppose, just some of the lengths that were gone to in order to deliver those first versions of the operating systems and software that we're so familiar with today.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the bug, apparently that got caught on a lab machine and the kernel devs confirmed it was a problem on their side and fixed it. Sometimes it's the silverbacks after all.

Keeping up to date with drivers, fresh fixes, and security patches is key to keeping your gaming PC running smoothly—that is, until an OS update seemingly breaks everything. Case in point, a number of Dell and HP users found their diligent efforts to stay on top of Windows 11 updates rewarded with blue screens and boot loops.

Following April's KB5083769 update for Windows 11, several users took to Microsoft's Q&A support forum to report the issue. Those affected have reported seeing "a mosaic of weird pixels" upon initially booting after the update, followed by a blue screen and a boot loop where their machine would keep attempting and failing to repair the issue (via PC World).

Another poster claims that three people in their company have been hit by the problem, and that in one case, the employee's recovery environment is "so messed up I can't get them into it." Exceedingly unlucky machines like this aside, uninstalling the latest quality update via recovery tools and pausing updates altogether has fixed the issue for some. Even then, some users report their OS is seemingly determined to install the KB5083769 update.

It's just as well Windows 11 machines now let you skip updates during first-time set-up. Speaking of booting up fresh devices, Microsoft is apparently also "working on" removing the requirement to log in to one of its online accounts, too.

Saying it cares "deeply about Windows and [wants] it to be better," Microsoft has been attempting to rebuild user goodwill in a number of ways. That has included pumping the brakes on its AI feature rollout and pivoting to a more "intentional" strategy when it comes to Copilot integration.

Unfortunately, for those unlucky enough to have suffered the KB85083769 update fumble, the road to rebuilding their trust in Microsoft has just got a whole lot bumpier.

People have had a problem with how Windows 11's Task Manager shows CPU usage stats for a long time. While recent discussions have revolved around the idea that the app only bases its reporting on base clocks, Dave Plummer, the creator of the original Task Manager, explains in a recent video how it might actually be more to do with average calculations and complicated "little lies" and "compromises" in underlying calculations.

Last month, Microsoft announced a fix for this in recent a Preview build for the operating system. The company said: "We are changing the way Task Manager calculates CPU utilization for the Processes, Performance, and Users pages. Task Manager will now use the standard metrics to display CPU workload consistently across all pages and aligning with industry standards and third-party tools."

After being sent his original source code by Microsoft, Plummer has cast some more light on what's really going on. And to be honest, the wording from Microsoft would make more sense alongside Plummer's assessment than a base/boost clock mix-up.

The essential picture that Plummer paints is that Task Manager creates a useful fiction out of more data than we might think to give us our CPU utilisation figure.

One difference between how we might think it operates and how it actually does is regarding the refresh or interval time. CPU utilisation isn't calculated for each GUI refresh, because this isn't always reliable.

Instead, the amount of time used for each tick's calculation is "how much total CPU time was actually accounted for and consumed by all processes between the last sample and this one."

So that's the first thing to note: even the time-frame for each measurement isn't as straightforward as time between GUI refreshes.

The second and main thing to note, however, is that when it comes to the usage calculation, there's a lot of averaging going on:

"The CPU number in Task Manager is a moving little obituary for the immediate past. It tells you what just happened over the last refresh window, not what happened at the moment that your eyeballs landed on the row.

If the process wakes up, goes berserk for 100 milliseconds, and then goes back to sleep, Task Manager may show a small average or even a rounded zero depending on the refresh window and how much total capacity existed during that interval. That's not because it missed or didn't see the work. It's because it diluted the work over that whole window."

In other words, "modern CPU usage is more like how full was the freeway rather than how many miles were actually traveled."

Which to my eyes and ears sounds a bit like the difference between bandwidth and speed. Which made a lot more sense in the past, when there were fewer cores to wrangle and much less frequency variance.

"The old Task Manager," Plummer says, "was built in an era where the time used was a pretty decent proxy for what work got one. But on today's processors with dynamic frequency scaling, turbo boost, thermal throttling, and deep idle states, that connection has gotten a lot looser."

So, when the numbers feel a little slippery, it's not because the tool is broken so much as the hardware stops being simple enough for a single percentage to tell you the whole story."

As far as Plummer is concerned—and I suppose he would think as much given it's concerning his application's lineage—Task Manager serves its purpose at the cost of pinpoint accuracy. After all, there are plenty of things someone could mean by 'utilisation'.

"Task Manager's approach was cheap, fairly robust, and understandable enough for normal humans, which actually matters because a performance tool that requires a graduate seminar before breakfast has already lost the room."

Plummer has previously said that Windows "really does suck for some people" and has explained how he would fix it. Essentially, he would have a separate Windows mode that you can use if you're a power user, which removes some guardrails and so on. That might go some way towards retaining Windows users during the current significant minority user migration to Linux which we're personally witnessing.

Or, there's always the chance that Microsoft will actually improve Windows 11 like it says it will. I won't be holding my breath, but you never know.

Though Microsoft claims it's actively working towards rebuilding user goodwill, many PC gamers are calling time on Windows. It helps that Linux is the best it's ever been for gaming, thanks to dedicated distros such as Bazzite. However, historic Steam survey results suggest the Big Switch is a ways off yet.

Redditor xVarrick compared Steam Hardware & Software Survey results from March 2024, March 2025, and March 2026. Their resulting bar graph simplifies the data by combining all OS versions and distros under unified banners, but still makes it pretty clear that the vast majority of Steam users have continued to stick with Windows; 92.33% of Steam's user base are using some version of Windows as of March 2026.

That said the Windows user base did shrink overall by 3.77% between March 2025 and March 2026. While that's not exactly eye-watering stuff, a correlational increase of 0.77% can be seen in macOS users. As you may already suspect, Linux enjoyed the greatest uptick, with an increase of 3% bringing it to a total 5.33% slice of the pie.

Steam's most recent all-time peak of concurrent users was 42,686,616 according to Steam.db. So even though 5.33% doesn't feel massive, just 5% of all concurrent Steam users still represents about 2,134,330 gamers who are playing on a Linux distro of some kind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Steam's latest survey puts SteamOS Holo 64 bit top of that particular pile.

But back to Microsoft—as Nick observed last July, Windows 11 has been with us for almost five years and for three of those, it was never the OS of choice amongst Steam users. Comparing survey data from October 2021 to July 2025, Windows 11 only overtakes Windows 10's Steam user count in October 2024.

OS distribution in Steam from March 2024 to March 2026 from r/linux_gaming

Support for Windows 10 officially ended in October of last year (unless you either pay $30 for Extended Security Updates, or live in the European Economic Area, in which case you'll get those updates for free). So it's definitely an interesting wrinkle that 27.03% of gamers sticking with Microsoft are still using Windows 10 as of March 2026. Good luck to 'em, I say—though this particular group has also shrunk by a massive 14.57% from the month before.

Safe to say, many of those users likely upgraded to Windows 11, as that OS saw an uptick of 13.09%. However, strict system requirements mean that many with elderly Windows 10 machines are faced with either figuring out how to bypass these requirements via tools like Flyby 11 and Rufus or—dun dun dun—making the leap to Linux. While I'm not among this crowd, I must admit that Linux's customisability is making serious headway in eroding my loyalty to Windows.

For a long time, setting up any fresh Windows device would incur the time sink of installing all of the latest updates. Windows 11 has garnered a number of these over the last few years, so there's no choice but to go find something else to do for about 30 minutes (or more, depending on your internet connection), right? Well, a new feature now lets you delay that limbo.

Now when you boot up a Windows machine fresh out of the box, you'll be asked if you want to carry out all of those updates later (as first spotted by AriaUpdated on X). I've since checked this out myself, booting up a freshly factory reset Gigabyte Aero X16 gaming laptop to see if I'd have the option.

As you can see from my pictures, the option to 'update later' was available on this 2025 machine. Clicking this option takes you to a confirmation screen that requires you to either click 'update later' again, or 'Complete Updates Now.'

If you have the time to spare, it's always best to update a new desktop or laptop with the latest security and stability updates for Windows 11. If you skip these during setup, then obviously your Windows 11 machine won't enjoy up to date protection. Sitting through these updates is still time-consuming, but at least the installer offers games to pass the time, including Microsoft Edge's Surf. Still, it's a bit of a shame that it's not quite as easy to speedrun a Windows 11 install without 'skips' like it was for Windows 10.

Anyway, the option to skip this and do it at a time that suits you puts a bit more control back into the hands of users. It's the latest step in what Executive Vice President of Windows + Devices Pavan Davuluri described last month as part of a strategy to reduce "disruption from Windows Updates."

At the start of the year, Davuluri had also said, "You will see us focus on addressing pain points we hear consistently from customers: improving system performance, reliability, and the overall experience of Windows [throughout 2026]."

Skipping updates streamlines the first-time setup process significantly, bringing Windows 11 more in line with its speedier rivals such as ChromeOS and macOS. I'm sure the Linux crowd will tell me their distro of choice still leaves it in the dust, though. With custom lock screens like this possible in Linux, I could definitely be tempted to make the switch. But for now, I think I can spare the time to hang around and see if Windows is serious about rebuilding user goodwill.

Natalie Vock, a Linux developer for Valve, has recently taken to their GitHub with a simple fix allowing rigs with less VRAM to run games better. Turns out applications in Linux will hog all the resources they can get, though if you have an Arch-based distro with an 8 GB card, things are about to get better for you.

To put it simply, you will need to get "some kernel patches as well as additional utilities to make use of the kernel capabilities properly." Vock recommends using the Arch-based CachyOS and installing the packages "dmemcg-booster" and "plasma-foreground-booster." From here, your games should start to run better on graphics cards with 8 GB of VRAM.

As Vock explains it, during testing, their system tried to "use more VRAM than there was available at all, so something had to give. Instead of telling the app that memory allocation failed (which would mean a near-certain application crash), the kernel decides to kick some memory out of VRAM to make everything fit. This degrades performance."

Vock notes that, to the kernel driver, all memory looks the same. It doesn't necessarily differentiate what it should be focusing on and why, so this fix uses cgroups to 'protect' certain uses of memory and figures out "how relatively important GPU memory allocations are."

If you aren't on CachyOS, the package files are available in AUR, and can be installed with either the CachyOS kernel package on a non-CachyOS system with a repository, or by compiling your own kernel.

As Vock suggests, "Maybe wait a bit" if you don't use an Arch-based distro, going on to add, "Eventually, I’d expect this to trickle down into more distros." They've also clarified that they plan on updating the GitHub if/when other distros get the trick working.

With the memory crisis currently raging and threatening to continue raising the price of memory, storage, and GPUs, now would be a painful time to upgrade, so holding out with that slightly older card should be a tad easier if you are on Linux.

With the 8 GB Steam Machine still expected to launch in the future, and powered by Arch-based SteamOS, one can assume it will see benefits from this fix, too. It might be why a Valve developer was looking into it in the first place.

"Instead of performance slowly degrading over time, games should perform much more stable - as long as the game itself doesn’t use more VRAM than you actually have."

If there's one thing that's been consistent about Linux, it's that when there's a new release of the kernel, it's done without fanfare or fuss. The same is true about the version system used: We're up to version 7.0 now, but that doesn't mean it's a whole new thing, just an update of the last release, with a whole bunch of improvements and additions.

I say 'bunch', but what I really mean is a very comprehensive collection of changes. Far too many for me to list here, in fact, but if you want a detailed insight into the more significant things, head over to Phoronix for the lowdown.

But just to whet your appetite, you're getting things like an automatic self-healing system for XFS-formatted drives, better drive health monitoring and file system reporting, performance optimizations in how the kernel manages memory, plus support for future CPU and GPU architectures, including Intel's Nova Lake.

Popular Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora are in line to use v7.0 very shortly, but it probably won't be long before the vast collection of distros currently in use will incorporate the new kernel. It'll certainly be interesting to see if and when SteamOS integrates the release, though Steam Decks shouldn't expect to see their handhelds running any better as such.

If, like so many other PC users, you've become fed up with the state of Windows, you might be wondering whether switching to Linux is worth it. If you are, you'd be making a sound decision, as our Dave and Joshua would tell you, and if our recent poll on the matter is anything to go by, quite a few people are certainly considering it.

I'm unlikely to be one such person, partly because a raging masochist when it comes to technology, but it's mostly because I clash hard against change (and yes, I bounced off Windows 11 like a pebble off a mountain). My age and brain wiring both conspire to make Linux something that I admire from a distance, all while I'm cursing Windows for hiding a basic option.

But don't use me as a gauge for doing a Linux conversion. Countless PC enthusiasts and gamers have done it already, so give it a go. After all, when was the last time you heard someone proudly announce that they use Windows?

Task Manager is a piece of software you almost only have to open up when something is going wrong, and its creator, Dave Plummer, knows this well. As detailed in their latest YouTube Video, "If the system feels sick, if an app is hung, if the machine is gasping, Task Manager does not get to arrive fashionably late, staggering in under the weight of its dependencies."

He elaborates, "It has to be there now, and it has to feel crisp. It has to look calm even when the rest of the system is not." Plummer says that the software came in at under 80 kB when he originally wrote it and that it was "insanely fast".

Plummer details working on 1 MHz Commodore 64 games and how that experience trained them to think about programs in specific ways. He says, "Once you spend your formative years on a machine where every instruction has to justify its existence like it's applying for a loan, you never fully recover from that. Every line has a cost. Every allocation leaves footprints. Every dependency is a roommate that eats your food and never pays rent."

The Microsoft vet notes that Task Manager is now around 4 megabytes, which is around 50 times bigger. Naturally, Task Manager no longer needs to be as small as it originally was, given how much computers have progressed since Task Manager's launch three decades ago.

Plummer states, "I'm not here to say that modern engineers are just dumb because they're not. Their world is vastly more complicated now." Task Manager was only reportedly so small purely because "in that time and place, small was fast and fast mattered."

The Windows stalwart describes that the first thing Task Manager does is communicate with other instances of Task Manager, and investigates them. Instead of simply seeing if it's running, it communicates to the program and shuts it down if it doesn't get a reply.

It also only enabled and worked with part of its program if that was needed to run. Now, Plummer argues users "pay every cost upfront all the time for every user, whether or not they benefit. Old code, like Task Manager, has the opposite bias. Nothing got to tive in the hot path without a fight"

Notably, Plummer reflects on how he has changed as a programmer and designer since making Task Manager. He says that one of Task Manager's unique features is that it replaces runtime startup code with something bespoke, to avoid the baggage that comes with operating like a standard bit of software. Plummer says, "It's the sort of thing you do when you're young enough to think that manually replacing the runtime startup code is a reasonable afternoon activity."

Plummer does, however, argue that Task Manager differs from many modern utilities in scope and intent. It's not just that modern programs are bigger, in Plummer's eyes, but that they often "lack the instinct for refusal. They don't ask 'does the user benefit from this work right now?', they ask, 'can the hardware do it?' and those are not the same question."

Admittedly, he does balance this, arguing not to romanticise the code, and he also acknowledges "there are definitely parts of the old Task Manager where I can see the younger Dave strutting around the office thinking he's a lot more clever than he really is".

The Task Manager creator left Microsoft in 2003, but he has spoken extensively about his work on Task Manager, coding Pinball on Windows NT, and has levied some complaints at the current state of Windows.

He also, back in February, showed off his AI dashboard with synthwave music, saying "this is probably what Task Manager would look like (and sound like) if I were still around", whilst admitting "it's a good thing I knew to stay in my lane, design-wise."

Part of my hardware fiend origin story involves watching the anime Serial Experiments Lain at far too young an age and being haunted by its prescience ever since. The total amelioration of digital and physical worlds aside, I still daydream about customising my login screen to look more like the fictitious OS from the show—though obviously that's much easier with Linux.

Case in point, one Redditor has made a slew of slick-looking Linux lock screens fashioned after a number of popular games. Whether you enjoy crunching blocks in Minecraft or Terraria, or would rather feel all philosophical staring at a NieR Automata-inspired login screen, Darkkal44 has got you covered with the appropriate Dotfiles over on their Github.

Built for use with Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) or Quickshell in Linux, the project is called Qylock. The anime sickos like me are well-served here too, as a selection of the included lock screens mimic a number of gacha games that owe a huge debt to popular Japanese animation, such as Honkai: Star Rail, Genshin Impact, and even time-travelling strategy RPG Reverse: 1999.

For my sins, I am a Windows-user—especially after reading how Linux betrayed our Jacob at last year's Gamescom. To be fair, I don't really have the time or space to get into all the times Windows has done me dirty personally (though a highlight includes the time Puppy Linux helped me get at files on ye olde dead gaming laptop).

Customisation options like the aforementioned lock screens provide just one more nail in the already mostly sealed coffin of my commitment to Windows. Should I finally make the jump, Qylock also offers a Windows 7-style lock screen to make the move feel slightly more familiar (you may also remember our Wes wrote about how an entirely different mad lad recreating Windows 8's tiled UI in Linux earlier this year).

As some folks tell it, gaming is the best it's ever been on Linux. Besides a fresh Proton Experimental build earlier this week making it much easier to play a bunch of old Capcom games in your distro of choice, our Josh has written several times about his adventures with Bazzite. Notably, he praises this distro in particular as "tailor-made for gaming and also tailor-made to stop idiots (me) from doing something likely to detonate their boot drive."

That certainly sounds appealing to me—especially as Josh has since figured out how to get HDR to finally play ball with Bazzite thanks to the tool ScopeBuddy. For better and worse, Linux is a tinkerer's paradise. Unfortunately, I am very lazy and so I'll be rewatching Serial Experiments Lain while bemoaning everything I dislike about Windows for a little while longer.

With the latest Beta Channel version of Windows 11, build 26220.8165, Insider Preview members will be able to set much bigger drive partitions when using FAT32. Instead of the current default limit of 32 GB, you'll now be able to go all the way up to 2 TB. Just like you could do two years ago.

It's only a short note in the release blog for the new Beta Channel build, but it says everything you need to know: "We’re increasing the size limit for formatting FAT32 volumes via the command line from 32GB to 2TB."

The thing is, when I read this statement, the first thing that popped into my head was 'hasn't Microsoft already done this?' And the answer to that question is yes, it has, almost two years ago. Admittedly, that was in a Canary Channel build, which is basically like a beta Beta Channel, but at least the new release means the change is likely to roll out into public versions of Windows fairly soon.

Not that you need to rely on Microsoft, if you want to set a FAT32 partition greater than 32 GB in size, because there are countless tools on the interwebs that let you do this, such as GUIFormat. And you should also note that this doesn't change FAT32's 4 GB limit for file sizes, as that's inherent to the number of bytes used to store the length of files in the directory.

But for those PC users who still need to have FAT32-formatted drives for old PCs or some funky homebrew setups, or even just for prepping a USB thumb stick that's bigger than 32 GB for doing a BIOS update, at least you'll soon be able to do it on Windows, without recourse to using another piece of software.

It's all a very minor update, of course, and arguably one that Microsoft should have rolled out years ago, but I'll take it. Now, if Redmond can just see to it that Windows will let me have the taskbar at the top of my screen, without using third-party software, then I'll be a slightly happier chappier.

Oh wait, it is doing that! Finally...

In a seminar on April 8, a handful of groups from the French government got together to discuss digital sovereignty and "accelerating the reduction of its extra-European dependencies." One such act is to move away from Windows, the US-made operating system, entirely.

The solution? Linux.

As noted by Tom's Hardware, and detailed in a report, the French government has announced "its exit from Windows in favor of workstations running on the Linux operating system".

This is declared by the Directorate General for Enterprises (DINUM), alongside the Directorate General for Enterprises (DGE), the National Cybersecurity Agency of France (ANSSI) and the State Procurement Directorate (DAE).

Importantly, there are plenty of reasons to want to switch to Linux. Unlike Windows, this operating system is free and open-source, and it's popular for its customisability and efficiency. Traditionally, it's used by developers because of the granularity of control available to them.

As well as this, there are plenty who simply do not like Microsoft or Windows. Its constant introduction of AI tools (though it does appear to be rolling back Copilot branding and has even removed AI from the Snipping Tool), without or without encouragement, plus its role in geopolitics, certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

However, the French government isn't switching from Windows because of quabbles or efficiency. It is simply trying to move its tools over to ones not owned by other states. The nature of Linux means that one can easily set up their own distro with little outside interference and without being reliant on American companies.

The French government also plans on moving its 80,000 agents in the National Health Insurance Fund over to 'sovereign solutions', and it reportedly plans to do so by the end of 2026.

David Amiel, the Minister of Public Action and Accounts, says, "The State can no longer simply acknowledge its dependence; it must break free. We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny."

He continues, "We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control."

If you've ever gone to open up some built-in Windows app and wondered why Microsoft has bothered to add a Copilot button in it, you aren't alone. After hearing community feedback, MS is reducing Copilot branding, starting with the likes of Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets, and Notepad.

As reported by Windows Latest, the latest preview of Notepad (version 11.2512.28.0) is removing the Copilot button up in the top right. Now, it will instead have a pen icon called "writing tools", which then opens up the same AI writing functionality.

Effectively, though it will be removing some of its Copilot branding, it won't be entirely removing the tools that come with it. You will still be able to use AI in most of your apps, it just won't be quite as obnoxiously branded.

The Snipping Tool, however, does appear to have entirely lost AI functionality, so that's a win for the AI sceptics.

This change was choreographed in a Windows Blog post last month. In it, writer Pavan Davuluri says, "You will see us be more intentional about how and where Copilot integrates across Windows" and "As part of this, we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points."

We have seen Notepad remove its Copilot button, but we haven't yet seen the same for Photos, Widgets, and Notepad. One can assume, based on the blog, that they, too, will follow suit.

This may be a 'forest through the trees' moment for Microsoft, though, as some users' problems with Copilot aren't just with the name and logo. I, for one, don't particularly want AI tools thrown at me upon bootup, without asking for them.

The Windows president said at the end of last year that "Windows is evolving into an agentic OS", which effectively means the plan is to pump it full of so many AI tools that it can just run itself. And yes, an agentic OS would in fact need access to many of your files and would need the ability to rummage through them.

Still, there's a level of self-awareness here that Microsoft is demonstrating. Let's just hope it gets the full memo on AI next time. Given its investment in the tech, that seems unlikely, but one can dream nonetheless. Or swap to Linux, I guess.

Is there nothing sacred? Are all things destined to be consumed by AI slop? Apparently so, for now even Valve is turning to the artificial side with reports of references to "SteamGPT" appearing in the company's source code. The end, verily, is nigh, no doubt courtesy of life imitating Valve's murderously passive-aggressive Portal game art.

In all seriousness, fair to say Valve has hitherto been one of the least AI-adjacent tech outfits since the whole LLM-transformer-chatbot-video-generation-agentic-overlord thing really took off in the last few years. So, this would be at least something of a pivot.

First up, X poster @gabefollower spotted references to SteamGPT in various Steam-related code. There are multiple entries that appear to be related to a wide range of tasks, from task queues and code testing, to account management and security.

There are also references relating to Valve’s Trust systems including, reportedly, trust scores, account age, account buckets, related accounts, confidence values, and inference results. In short, there's an anti-cheat angle here, too.

However, it's worth noting that there does not appear to be much in all this that unambiguously indicates Valve plans to unleash a chatbot on unsuspecting Steam users. Instead, this is all seems to tilt toward some kind of internal tool for use at Valve.

That said, some outlets are interpreting this a move by Valve to lean on AI as a tool for customer support. The idea is that Valve receives thousands of support queries daily and SteamGPT could be used to lighten that load, especially during the likes of major sales events when staff can become overwhelmed.

The anti-cheat aspect will trouble some observers, too. To filter increasingly sophisticated cheating vectors, one presumes that any AI tool would need pretty comprehensive monitoring access to player profiles, activity, gameplay and more, perhaps even at local system level. Some, for sure, won't like the idea of that.

Taking a sober view of it all, there's probably no need to panic. Indeed, there's likely also no need to take a purist view about all this. Thus far, from an external perspective at least, Valve has hardly been an enthusiastic passenger on the AI bandwagon.

Equally, however, there are bound to worthwhile use cases at Valve for AI tools and using AI as a tool for specific fairly narrow tasks as opposed to some kind of omnipotent being is certainly how Valve seems to be approaching things, if the snippets of code referring to SteamGPT are anything to go by.

Indeed, Valve's mooted Frame Estimator tool that predicts gaming frame rates based on given hardware configurations could be another example of AI used narrowly for a specific task. Moreover, if any gaming company can use AI to its advantage to make gaming more intriguing, immersive and—in just the right way—foreboding, it's surely the one that sired GLaDOS.

Seemingly driven by a dose of playful spite and curiosity, one developer has managed to successfully port macOS to a Nintendo Wii, partly because one person said it was impossible.

To take you back to the start of this story. Five years ago, when asked if one could get macOS on a Wii or Gamecube without virtualisation, one Redditor said, "There is a zero percent chance of this ever happening. If you truly understand the hardware-specific nature of OS X [now macOS] and the fact that the Wii does NOT actually use the same CPU, let alone GPU, you'll realise this."

That same user continued to double down, saying, "Go ahead and downvote me. I am correct on every single thing I said, especially about the CPU. That's a custom CPU and GPU in the Wii, and there are no published documents about them."

Developer, Bryan Keller, felt 'encouraged' by this and took this chance to prove that one guy wrong for that thing they said half a decade ago. They note that the Wii uses a PowerPC 750CL processor, which is an evolution of the chip used in some G3 iBooks and G3 iMacs, so "I felt confident that the CPU wouldn’t be a blocker."

The memory, on the other hand, is a bit unique. The Wii uses 88 MB total, which is 40 MB less than the 128 MB of RAM that Mac OS X 10 officially calls for. Luckily, it will run with 64 MB, so memory proved to not be a problem either.

In order to actually get the software to run on the device, Keller wrote their own bootloader, loaded the kernel from an SD card, and created a device tree to pick up on all those bits of hardware, which it would then pass control to the kernel. Effectively, this bootloader serves as a bridge between the Wii hardware and the operating system.

Keller isn't nearly done here, though. To get macOS running on the Wii, they also had to write their own drivers. Instead of using PCI to connect to various part of the system, the Wii uses a custom system-on-a-chip (SoC) called Hollywood, so Keller wrote a Hollywood driver, as well as an SD Card driver, Framebuffer driver, and they even managed to get help from a stranger on old messaging service Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for a patch to get their mouse and keyboard working on the Wii.

Once this was all done, they managed to finally boot the OS on the ageing Nintendo hardware. What they'll do with it from here is anyone's guess, but it's an accomplishment nonetheless.

Keller says, "There’s something deeply satisfying about accomplishing something that, at the start, you weren’t even sure was possible."

In fairness, they did reportedly have the idea to do this back in 2013, but if one Redditor declaring it's impossible has helped them to 'do the impossible', that seems like a good outcome of a throwaway comment made five years ago.

"In the end, I learned (and accomplished) far more than I ever expected—and perhaps more importantly, I was reminded that the projects that seem just out of reach are exactly the ones worth pursuing."

If you are on Linux and are the type to play a game arguably hours too long just to finish off the achievements list, I've found the perfect thing for you / your worst nightmare. Sentinel is a new tool you can download on GitHub that will add an achievements system to your games, even if you play them on a storefront other than Steam.

In fact, the creator "m0rpheus23" on Reddit has shared that its major use is to specifically work with games downloaded outside of Steam. In concept, it's quite a simple bit of software, really. Once downloaded, you simply choose to use the Steam Web API or an external data source (like SteamHunters), and the tool will grab achievement data there.

From here, it monitors Steam saves and cross-references them with data gleaned from the achievement sources and awards the achievement when it thinks you've done so. A GIF is shown off in the GitHub of someone playing Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and unlocking an achievement the moment they shoot an arrow at a fire pit, so it does appear to work in real-time.

This does mean that if you are playing a game that doesn't have achievements online in some form, you won't be able to add them, but most games on Steam have achievements now, so it's a very wide pool of applicable games. Like traditional achievements, you will get notifications on your screen, and it even has tracking for multi-step achievements.

If you use the Steam API, it will also give global percentages, just like you get on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. It also comes with custom notification sounds, should you prefer more of a ding to a ping.

Sentinel - An Achievement Watcher for Linux Proton Games from r/linux_gaming

Notably, Sentinel also doubles as a game tracking tool, combining your library alongside achievement progress. M0rpheus23 notes that it even works with launchers like Heroic, which means it can track your Epic Games Store games, even if you don't want to go through Epic directly.

If you are unaware of achievement hunters, they are a surprisingly vocal segment of the gaming market. Platforms like RetroAchievements add achievement tracking to retro games, and have been in operation for 14 years now, adding support for over 10,000 games, with just under 600,000 achievements total.

And I do get this. I don't hunt for achievements on Steam very often, but I do get a light endorphin rush when I hear the unmistakable ping of a PlayStation platinum trophy. If you are the same and playing on Linux, Sentinel could be worth a download. There are even plans to get it running on Steam Deck in the future, so you can achievement hunt from the comfort of your toilet even easier.

Linux is something that has been on our minds, and honestly on our gaming PCs quite extensively over the past few months. Since Valve dropped it into the Steam Deck, and Proton became the way forward for gaming on Linux distros the world over, there has been increased interest in the open source operating system. Is it a viable alternative to Windows, can it actually cope with gaming on high-end hardware, will you be stuck copy and pasting random code into a terminal from here until the end of time?

Yes, yes, and probably.

But there are other questions, the most pertinent is one that we put to the you, our dear readers over the past week: Would you, will you, are you making the switch to PC gaming on Linux?

For the hard of peeping among you, the results from that frustratingly ill-compressed image are as follows: 29% of the responders to the week's poll said they had already made the switch over to gaming on Linux; 26% said they actually don't mind Windows after all, and 14% said they planned to make the switch this year.

Then 10% of respondents each said they were either waiting for better multiplayer game support—Linux still suffers from being locked out of any game that has kernel-level anti-cheat support—or they were waiting for the Steam Machine to come out. Bon chance waiting on that.

Bringing up the rear, so to speak, we've got 6% saying that no, they don't like change, with 5% of respdonents saying they've been there already and got burned. Hey, me too, and I still went back.

It is obviously worth noting that the respondents add up to a grand total of 2,333 people, so the sample size is limited. Which means it behooves you to jump into the comments and make a noise about where you stand on this great debate.

We did have another quiz running last week, too, asking the question: Could Nvidia convince you to use DLSS 5? I'll give you the results to that soon enough, but I think you can probably guess how that one went already...

This week we want to know what resolution you game at. Are you a 4:3 Counter-Strike sicko, have you stuck resolutely to 1080p, or are you all in on ultrawides? Let us know.

Yesterday, April 1, Artemis II launched to start its mission to orbit the moon and lay the groundwork for future lunar missions. Important stuff. I'm sure NASA has got all its systems in order, no kinks to iron out, no oversi- oh no, wait, never mind, I see the Artemis II is hooked up with Outlook. And it looks like the Microsoft email and calendar suite is already causing problems for the astronauts:

"I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working. If you want to remote in and check the Optimus and those two Outlooks, that would be awesome."

Those are the words that recently sounded from Artemis II as one of the astronauts conveyed the issue back to NASA. Though it's worth noting we can't be certain the problem lies with Outlook rather than one of what I'm sure are many other systems at play in a spacecraft. NASA says they'll remotely connect to the computer to see what the problem is.

I can't imagine that much crucial will rest on whether Outlook is working or not, but it does at least go to show even the best and brightest among us can be victim of the simplest IT troubles. Largely because we're at the mercy of our tools.

Those tools will hopefully be improving soon, though. Microsoft has said that the company will be making '100% native' Windows programs, which is a change from the usually more laggy WebView apps, which are essentially browser apps wrapped up to run on Windows. Given the latest Outlook app is a WebView one, hopefully that will get a native re-build, too.

The improvements shouldn't be limited to apps, though, as Microsoft has recently said it's going to work on improving general Windows 11 performance and rolling back AI features. Part of that includes moving non-app elements such as the start menu to the WinUI3 native UI framework rather than WebView and React.

Hopefully no more software issues surface on the Artemis II mission, and hopefully Microsoft has all its improvements ready to ship before the Artemis III launch next year.

Steam Hardware Surveys come with copious caveats, including some courtesy of Valve itself. But the latest results for March are still intriguing, including a big jump in the proportions of gamers running Linux and a regression to the mean for the survey's GPU stats.

First up, that Linux result. According to March survey figures, the proportion of gamers on Steam running Linux increased from 2.13% in February to 5.33% in March.

That's enough to be well ahead of MacOS on 2.35%, though obviously still miles behind all versions of Windows on 92.33%. For the record, Arch Linux tops the Linux charts with 0.34%, with Linux Mint 22.3 next on 0.27%.

The SteamOS 3 as used for the Steam Deck is, of course, based on Arch Linux, likely explaining its top ranking position on the Linux list. Other notable trends include a pretty hefty shift away from Windows 10 in favour of Windows 11, with the latter up by over 10% and the former plummeting by 15%.

Exactly how accurate these figures are is an open question. But the idea that Linux is chipping away at Windows is not novel. There's a growing sense that the Windows quality of experience, for want of a better characterisation, is increasingly on the slide. And the obvious alternative is Linux.

Even Microsoft itself seems to have realised this, what with its recent messaging being all about improving Windows' fundamentals as opposed to loading it up with ever more AI slop. As it happens, several of the PC Gamer massif have also switched to Linux.

As for the GPU results in the survey, after February's suspicious looking win for the Nvidia RTX 5070, the numbers seem to have returned to normality.

The RTX 5070 jumped from 2.87% of Steam gamers in January to 9.42% in February, making it the most popular GPU on Steam. In March, the 5070 has reverted to, yup, exactly 2.87% again, placing it 5th overall.

That means the RTX 3060 returns to its likely rightful place at the top of the table, despite falling off slightly between February and March, from 4.6% of gamers to 4.1%.

AMD's latest RDNA 4 GPUs remain barely visible in the results, meanwhile, with the RX 9070 just making the top 100 in 99th place and the RX 9060 not appearing at all.

Arguably, that could be down to AMD Radeon cards being lumped together under the generic "AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics." But even that amounts to just 2.4% of gamers and number nine in the rankings.

Everything will be a web app. That was once the assumption for the PC, even if the emergence of smartphone apps shifted the emphasis somewhat. But now Microsoft wants to put the focus back on running apps actually built for the Windows operating system.

Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect at Microsoft, recently made an appeal on X (via Windows Latest) for software devs to form a new team that will build Windows apps. When queried over the specific nature of those apps, Huyn was very clear. "100% native", he said.

That "100% native" claim will take some proving. It implies apps that are built with WinUI with no WebView content. The latter, essentially, is a mini browser that apps can use to display web content.

Many Windows apps and indeed elements of Windows itself, including even some parts of the Settings app that seem like they were natively coded for Windows, are actually running on WebView underneath it all. Generally, that's because it's faster and easier to serve up content and application services via a browser than to code an app. Indeed, Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot are WebView apps.

Likewise, even third-party devs that once coded native apps have been moving to browser-based alternatives, an obvious example being WhatsApp. That particular move is arguably a good example of why web apps can be problematic. Just for starters, running a WebView 2 app means spooling up a Chromium browser instance in the background, which can be much more memory-intensive.

Some users report that just loading up the WhatsApp login screen with the WebView version soaks up 300 MB, whereas the old native app used under 20 MB. With the new version of WhatsApp up and running, it can consume multiple gigabytes of memory, while the native app typically remains under 300 MB.

This move follows a broader public push from Microsoft to improve what you might call the "fundamentals" of Windows 11. Instead of leaning even further into AI frills and features, Microsoft is working on aspects such as reducing the disruption from Windows Update, making the taskbar more configurable, and even removing the need to log in online via a Microsoft account when setting up a new Windows 11 install. Yes, really.

Funnily enough, this all ties in neatly with an observation made by a former Microsoft operative. Former Windows development lead Mikhail Parakhin said he'd previously worked on a so-called 20/20 project, which aimed to reduce both the Windows install size and idle memory consumption by 20%.

Microsoft hasn't committed to those targets publicly, but it has made "lowering the baseline memory footprint for Windows" a core Aim. Shifting as much app code as possible from WebView to native would certainly help with that.

All in all, this seems like yet another indication that Microsoft has now got its priorities right with Windows. Instead of ramping up the AI slop, Microsoft appears to be focusing on the nuts and bolts of the OS itself. If that's true, it's very, very good news indeed, especially when you consider how much system memory costs these days.

AI must have been doing push-ups in the dead of night lately, because a lead Linux kernel maintainer says it's pretty recently started to come in very useful. Not necessarily for coding—although I'm sure that landscape is constantly evolving, too—but rather for generating security reports.

Speaking to The Register, Linux Kernel dev Greg Kroah-Hartman explained that while previously "we were getting what we called 'AI slop'... something happened a month ago, and the world switched. Now we have real reports."

"All open source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they're good, and they're real... All open source security teams are hitting this right now."

The question is why these actually useful AI-generated or AI-aided reports have started streaming in so suddenly, and unfortunately, the answer is unclear:

"We don't know. Nobody seems to know why. Either a lot more tools got a lot better, or people started going, 'Hey, let's start looking at this.' It seems like lots of different groups, different companies... There must have been some inflection point somewhere with the tools. Did the local tools get better? Did people figure out something? I honestly don't know."

Anecdotally, though, Kroah-Hartman can attest to AI's usefulness for developer-related tasks such as code reviews:

"I did a really stupid prompt. I said, 'Give me this,' and it spit out 60: 'Here's 60 problems I found, and here's the fixes for them.' About one-third were wrong, but they still pointed out a relatively real problem, and two-thirds of the patches were right."

"The tools are good. We can't ignore this stuff. It's coming up, and it's getting better."

I'm as much of an AI-sceptic as the next person when it comes to certain use cases or the industry at large, but there's no denying it can be incredibly useful for particular tasks. Apparently, Linux kernel maintainers already have an AI code review system called Sashiko baked into their workflow.

It can all seem a very simple and easy proposition, with little downside, from the perspective of an end-user such as a dev using Sashiko or someone chatting to an LLM. But we should remember that that's glossing over the tons of energy, resources, and market effects that have gone into laying the preconditions for those interactions: namely, server production, energy consumption, and the dreaded RAMpocalypse.

But if all those resources can be used for something, I'll take security reports and code reviews over, say, AI filter-esque DLSS5. Though I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, there.

Today feels like a good day for Windows 11 fans. After the revelation that Microsoft might remove the requirement for an online MS account to set up Windows, along with reducing AI pervasiveness and even making Windows Update less of a pain, now we learn that Microsoft once aspired to reduce both the idle memory usage and installed disk size of Windows 11 by 20%. So, could this be back on the cards?

Responding to the blog post we covered earlier today outlining Microsoft's plans to improve the quality of Windows, former Windows development lead Mikhail Parakhin welcomed the new direction and recalled a project of his own that never came to fruition.

"Back in the day, Jeff Johnson and I had this 20/20 project," Parakhin says, "reducing Windows' idle memory consumption and the fresh install size on disk by 20%. We never got to finish—great to see this focus on fundamentals again."

Notably, current Windows and Devices VP at Microsoft, Pavan Davuluri, did not specifically mention an effort to hit 20% targets for memory and storage footprints of Windows 11 in the recent Windows Insider post. However, such a goal would fit pretty comfortably with many of the other measures aimed at improving Windows' "fundamentals."

More to the point, Davuluri does call out resource usage with "improved memory efficiency, lowering the baseline memory footprint for Windows, freeing up more capacity for the apps you run" among the listed ambitions.

In the current context where memory and storage pricing are thoroughly out of control, this feels like an absolutely on-point effort from Microsoft, even if you'd probably be well advised to retain a healthy scepticism regarding delivery. Believe all this when you see it, in other words.

Personally, I really like the sound of the section in Davuluri's Windows Insider post headed, "More fluid and responsive app interactions." Davuluri says the aim here is "improving the shared UI infrastructure that Windows experiences rely on, reducing interaction latency and overhead at the platform level."

My sense, or at least my hope, is that this will mean UI responsiveness and fluidity will finally be fully prioritised within the Windows kernel. At risk of being unceremoniously marched off PCG, anyone who uses both MacOS and Windows can't help but notice that the former feels much smoother in terms of how the interface moves and responds.

I've always assumed that Apple pays more attention to how UI calls are prioritised, ensuring that limited CPU cycles are given to UI processes that dictate the responsiveness and frame rate of the UI. I also think that Apple is better, though not perfect, at setting priorities in a way that minimises UI freezes while waiting for various background events to complete, like network or disk traffic.

MacOS's advantage is such that, in UI terms, it often looks smoother at 60 Hz than Windows does at 120 Hz-plus. Anywho, all this talk of a leaner, lighter, more responsive Windows 11 will be music to the ears of many PC enthusiasts. Here's hoping Microsoft delivers.

This sounds almost too good to be true. But Microsoft has indicated that it is "working on" removing the requirement to log in to an online MS account during initial setup of a new Windows 11 installation. As if that isn't enough, Microsoft also says it is going to reduce disruption from Windows Update and even scale back on its Copilot AI assistant. Yes, really.

Most of the developments are covered in a new Windows Insider blog post by Pavan Davuluri, Windows and Devices VP at Microsoft. The blog post candidly, if indirectly, recognises what many of us have been feeling of, late, namely that the quality of Windows 11 has been on the slide.

"Over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better," Davuluri says, before detailing a list of improvements that maps pretty well with what most PC enthusiasts would most like to see fixed.

The item that doesn't appear in the blog post, however, involves the aforementioned MS account requirement for Windows 11 installs. Another Microsoft VP, Scott Hanselman, was queried about that on X (spotted by Videocardz) and his response was unequivocal. "Ya I hate that. Working on it," Hanselman said.

The first thing to note is that the X post in question has been up for four days and remains up at time of writing, so hopefully that indicates it wasn't a rash, ill-considered quip that clashes with official policy. Indeed, it does square with the broader sentiments of what the official blog post indicates for the future of Windows 11.

The reduction of Copilot integration will see it removed from apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad, for instance. Meanwhile, reducing the disruption from Windows Update will include, "the ability to skip updates during device setup to get to the desktop faster, restart or shut down without installing updates and pause updates for longer when needed, all while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications." Hallelujah.

Then there's the taskbar. "Repositioning the taskbar is one of the top asks we’ve heard from you," Davuluri's blog post says. "We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it easier to personalize your workspace." Hooray.

Other fixes include a "faster and more dependable" File Explorer, "more control over widgets and feed experiences," a simpler, more transparent Windows Insider Program and an improved Feedback Hub.

It's a very welcome sounding list that implies the current Windows 11 team at Microsoft is better aligned with the needs and preferences of users. The removal of the online account at login, reduction in Windows Update hassle and scaling back of Copilot certainly tick my personal three most wanted boxes for Windows.

Of course, at this point the account login element hasn't appeared in an actual Microsoft outlet or publication, so it's probably best viewed as semi-official for now. But here's really, really hoping that it's for real.

Occasionally, there's some Windows news that gives a little glimmer of hope for the operating system. A recent statement from Microsoft, however, does not mark such an occasion—not because it's bad, but rather because, for a change, it offers far better than a mere glimmer. This is Microsoft actually promising to deliver on all the main bases that we've been asking for over the last few years.

The blog post, written by Microsoft's Windows president Pavan Davuluri, kicks it off with exactly the right tone: "I want to speak to you directly, as an engineer who has spent his career building technology that people depend on every day." And then an admission that people "want [Windows 11] to be better."

That's a great start, admitting there's a problem, but what's to be done about it? The sceptic in me, that's been conditioned by the last few years of Microsoft messaging, braced for 'more AI.' But Microsoft is promising no such thing. Instead, it's promising exactly the kinds of changes that we've been arguing for here at PC Gamer, along with half of the web. These will be previewed in Windows Insider builds over the next month or so.

Here's how Microsoft breaks it down:

• More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions
• Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus
• Reducing disruption from Windows updates
• Faster and more dependable File Explorer
• More control over widgets and feed experiences
• A simpler, more transparent Windows Insider Program
• Improved Feedback Hub, available starting today

In addition to these and some other specific changes, Microsoft explains that it will be making general improvements to performance, something I'm particularly happy to hear. For instance, it's "moving more experiences", such as the start menu, to WinUI3, a native UI framework that should be much snappier than WebView and React apps. It's also promising to improve file explorer latency and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) performance.

Getting back to the list, Microsoft's AI note might sound a little vague, but the company explains that it actually involves rolling back some AI features where they're not needed: "As part of this, we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad."

The Windows update promissory is also pretty concrete. The new idea for Windows update, Davuluri says, "includes the ability to skip updates during device setup to get to the desktop faster, restart or shut down without installing updates and pause updates for longer when needed, all while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications."

This, and more, constitutes Microsoft's "commitment to Windows quality", and is certainly a better direction than banning the word 'Microslop.' It's also better than feeding us said slop, such as by making "every Windows 11 PC an AI PC", of course.

The change in focus isn't completely out of the blue, given that Davuluri had previously said that this year, "you will see us focus on addressing pain points we hear consistently from customers: improving system performance, reliability, and the overall experience of Windows."

The problem was that this was a little hard to believe, given all the previous—yes, slop-heavy—updates and general decline in performance. I concluded my previous reporting on Davuluri's statement by hedging my bets, saying the changes are promising "assuming it's not all talk."

Well, it seems it is, indeed, not all talk, as Microsoft has gotten specific about what's being changed, and it's exactly what is needed: less AI, better performance, more customisability. And we won't even have to wait too long for it. Could this signal a return to form for Microsoft's OS? I sure hope so.

Nvidia GPUs don't always play nicely with Linux. Well, with recent driver issues, they don't always play nicely with Windows either, but it's been a bit of a pain for those swapping over for some time. If you are among those with an Nvidia GPU who use Gnome, things should be about to get much smoother.

For the unaware, Gnome is an open-source desktop environment for Linux, and the default interface seen in the likes of Ubuntu. Named 'Tokyo', after the Gnome Asia summit in 2025, Gnome 50 has just been unveiled, and it comes with a whole host of new features—but the most important for gamers will be better Nvidia GPU support (via Phoronix).

Under the 'Display Handling Improvements' section of the patch notes, it notes "Nvidia Performance Boosts", mentioning "Workarounds for Nvidia driver quirks." This means Gnome gamers should notice "smoother window animations and general desktop fluidity for users with Nvidia GPUs."

One of the biggest changes for those looking to swap from Windows to Linux is all those quality of life benefits Microsoft gets as the biggest platform holder. Nvidia will likely have Windows in mind first and foremost for its consumer tech, and the same is true for many developers.

However, there's been a shifting tide recently regarding Linux adoption. A chunk of the PC Gamer team have swapped over to Linux (mostly) successfully, and it's easy to see why. Microsoft has been through some rough times as of late, to put it lightly, and if you're thinking of ditching its ubiquitous OS, this should make things easier.

Google recently added official Chrome support for Linux on Arm, and Opera GX has recently announced a version for Linux. Today, actually.

It wasn't all smooth sailing in some of our team's swap to Linux, with our Jacob Fox running into a major problem at Gamescom that was eventually saved with a Windows USB. But Linux has plenty of upsides that aren't just "well, I don't want to use Windows". It's free, fast, and highly customizable, which might explain why a lot of developers like it so much.

Gnome 50 adds better VRR support, strong color management, HDR screen sharing, improved remote desktop, and a whole host of other features. And the best part of it all is that there are no unneeded AI features or new subscriptions.

There's a lot of spinning plates any operating system needs to manage—but when things go wrong, smashed crockery is often the least of an end user's concerns. For instance, some Windows 11 users were left considering going full 'bull in a china shop' when the OS seemingly locked them out of their own C: drive.

Those affected are greeted by the blood-pressure raising message “C:\ is not accessible – Access denied," when simply trying to access their own files from the drive. They may also encounter the message by trying to launch Office apps and web browsers, or even just by checking system utilities. It's a major issue, but currently only affecting a very specific population of PC users.

Microsoft says the issue is only affecting Samsung machines, as the issue is likely arising due to the Samsung Galaxy Connect app. Specifically, "The issue has been observed on Samsung Galaxy Book 4 and Samsung Desktop models running Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2."

That's right: the issue isn't only present in one of the most recent Windows 11 builds, but also the slightly older 24H2 version. Furthermore, the issue doesn't just lock users out of common interactions with the C: drive, but "in some cases, users are also unable to elevate privileges, uninstall updates, or collect logs due to permission failures."

The issue has not been completely fixed yet, but both Microsoft and Samsung have taken action to mitigate the bug. For a start, the Samsung Galaxy Connect app is currently unavailable to download from the Microsoft Store. Samsung has also republished an older, stable version of the app "to stop recurrence on additional devices."

Those who are currently affected by the issue don't yet have many options as the two massive corporations work on fixes. Microsoft writes, "Recovery options for devices already impacted remain limited, and Samsung continues to evaluate remediation approaches with Microsoft’s support."

Though the issue is limited to Samsung machines, it's still pretty major. Following Windows 10 being put out to pasture last year, Microsoft recently reported that Windows 11 now has one billion users, a figure that's 'up 45% year-over-year.' One billion is far from small potatoes, though we don't yet know exactly how big a chunk of that pie is affected by this issue.

If you've recently made the switch to Linux with your Arm64-based processor, but miss Chrome, I've got some good news for you. At some point in the next few months (Q2 according to Google), you will finally be getting official Google Chrome support.

As pointed out by Google, this follows Chrome support for Arm-based macOS devices in 2020 and Arm-based Windows devices in 2024. Many Apple devices are Arm-based (though they will naturally use macOS), and Snapdragon chips are Arm-based, too. Most Snapdragon laptops do come with Windows 11 built-in though, so it requires a little work to swap over.

Google says, "This move addresses the growing demand for a browsing experience that combines the benefits of the open-source Chromium project with the Google ecosystem of apps and features."

The mention of the Google ecosystem is a good one here, as it could possibly ease the gap of swapping from Windows to Linux. Given that your Google account keeps your bookmarks and password data, you just have to remember how to get into your account to get access to all of your Google data.

For the likes of Google, it will want to make the swap from one OS to another as seamless as possible, as it will just lose out on any users swapping to unsupported devices. Google argues, "Launching Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices allows more users to enjoy the seamless integration of Google’s most helpful services into their browser."

Many of us here at PC Gamer have made the swap to Linux, too, and Snapdragon chips are getting mighty impressive. Just under two weeks ago, Snapdragon's X2 CPU popped up in Geekbench, and it's a bit of a beast. Notably, Nvidia is working on a chip comparable to Intel and AMD's offerings, which is also Arm-based, so we could see even more Arm machines in the future.

Making it easier to switch over to Linux feels like a smart move for anyone other than Windows right now. Given dissatisfaction with Microsoft as a company, and the potential of even more AI in Windows, neither the company nor the product have the best reputation right now.

Google finishes its announcement, stating, "This launch marks a major milestone in our commitment to the Linux community and the Arm ecosystem." It continues, "We look forward to seeing how developers and power-users leverage Chrome on this next generation of high-performance devices."

Naturally, you don't even need to wait for Google to launch its Linux ARM-compatible browser. Maybe swapping to Linux is a good time to swap to Brave, Zen, or Firefox too.

I am surprised at just how damned grotty this thing is. I pulled the old XPS laptop out of my wardrobe because I've started wearing cardigans and have therefore become a bit of a Linux bore. I was keen to see whether I could resurrect an old system—whose end times had come regarding shifting to Windows 11—with a lightweight Linux distro.

But I was not prepared for either how grubby this old machine had got in the worryingly cold and damp darkest recesses of my built-in wardrobe, nor how lightweight the specs of this actual system really were.

It's sticky. And, I think, kinda moldy. And I'm not certain how that can happen to a laptop and it still turn on. Seriously, there really is something odd about the material Dell used around the keyboard of this ol' thing, and it hasn't dealt well with the intervening years in solitary isolation. But a little isopropyl and this thing is going to feel good as new. So, here we are with a resurrected little Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that now feels far more zippy and sports a way better battery life than it had back in the Windows 10 days of mid-2019. Well, it does sometimes, but as I found out, time is a harsh mistress on Li-Polymer batteries.

I'm writing this piece right now on the ancient Dell machine and the system feels snappier than it has any right to with just 8 GB of LPDDR3 memory. And I've not made it an easy task, either, because I'm doing this on a 2-in-1, and Linux does not have the best history of touchscreen support.

But I will say things didn't look good when I first tried to boot up this old XPS.

Powering the device on with a power cable connected and I'm confronted by a series of solid pages of colour cycling through on rotation. Eep. Moldy laptop looks like it's got a dead LCD.

Having done a bit of research, it seems like these old XPS machines will go into this sort of display debug page if there's an issue with the monitor panel or electronics, but there were a few things to try and see if I could get past it. Which I tried. Unsuccessfully. I power cycled the laptop, and it was still screwed. I unplugged the battery itself, and powering on it was still screwed.

But then I came across a buried reddit note about how the debug mode can appear if you hit the 'D' key during boot. Now, obviously I wasn't doing that myself, but the suggestion that turning off the machine and hammering that key a whole bunch of times before rebooting started making sense. Especially as I was looking down at the unpleasantly sticky mess that is this li'l laptop.

And, sure enough, brutalising the 'D' key to unstick it actually worked.

A relatively short time later and the surprisingly unfamiliar Windows 10 desktop greeted my peepers. It's been a while since I last touched a Windows 10 device, and I'd forgotten what it was like. Now, I've not become a Linux bore because of any deep-seated antipathy towards Microsoft, and don't really bear any ill will towards Windows 11 at all. But I was surprised at how old Windows 10 looks to my eyes.

I will say, however, that after a full day of updating the essentially deprecated OS as far as I could go the old XPS 13 was still surprisingly capable. Open up a few Chrome tabs too many and you'd know about it, but other than that it was already more effective than I expected from looking at the System report.

This thing is rocking an Intel 7th Gen chip, a Core i7-7Y75, from 2016. Aside from being a decade old now, it was already a relatively low-rent, low-power chip back at its launch. It's a dual-core processor with a clock speed of just 1.3 GHz (oof), though with a boost clock of 3.6 GHz.

And yet it's still a perfectly functional little browsing, media watching device. In the interests of sustainability, then, let us bring it up to date.

Where any switch to Linux can live or die is in the distro choice. There are simply so many, and so many options within them. But I'm a simple man, and easily swayed by looks, and have been very taken with the Cosmic desktop (tiling for the win) created by System76 for the Pop!OS distro I use on my Blade 14 laptop. But I wanted an immutable distro so I didn't end up breaking this poor old thing needlessly.

So, I eschewed people smarter than I recommending more lightweight Linux options in favour of Origami Linux. And with just one hiccup, it installed with ease in lightning speed.

That hiccup? Well, remember the whole thing about USB Type-C being able to be plugged in whichever way you choose? That's a lie, by the way. While the plug is indeed symmetrical, the electronics are not, and my old USB-C hub, which I used to give the XPS 13 a Type-A port for the purposes of installing Origami, needed swapping around before it could find the USB stick with the Linux installer on.

Props to Jacob for reminding me of that as I sat at my desk cursing at the machine.

Origami is a good-looking OS (thanks to that Cosmic desktop environment) and even just the simple fact I can shift the panel to the side rather than take up precious vertical desktop space on this 13-inch 1080p display makes a surprisingly big difference. Take that, you immovable taskbar of Windows 11.

I've also been using workspaces on Windows for a while, especially when I'm on my laptop with a solitary screen for comfort. But sliding between full desktop displays is so much zippier on Linux, and Origami is even able to do it with this 10 year-old weak-heart Kaby Lake CPU.

And you know what else it can do? Sleep. That's something that's made such a difference switching my laptops over to Linux, actually being able to close the lid, go away for a day or so, and come back to flip it open again and easily resume where I was without running the battery dry. Or actually just having to reboot.

That's my consistent sleep/resume experience with Microsoft's OS, and Linux has effectively banished it.

But it's not even just about aesthetics and core functionality, I'm actually getting a healthy extra level of battery life out of this ageing machine now that I've swapped for Linux. Using my own little battery life tester app, I'm seeing just over two hours in total battery life in Windows, with between 20 and 22 W power draw over that time.

Origami dropped that power draw to just 12.49 W on average over the time I was testing, and meant the system—while playing the same live TV stream over Wi-Fi at 50% screen brightness—lasted nearly three hours instead.

But you know what sometimes happens to decades old laptops? Their batteries die. Sadly that's now the case with this ol' XPS 13. Because while on different battery life tests I'm getting two hour 45 mins or nearly three hours sometimes, I've also seen the battery sometimes go down to 60% charge and then suddenly drain all the way to zero.

That just happened while I was writing this, too. I put the machine aside to tackle another task, putting the machine to sleep on 64% battery knowing that I could just pop it open again in half an hour and be ready to go. But… it wasn't. I opened the lid to see the battery suddenly down to 1%.

So yeah, this battery is toast, and now I can't trust it. Which is a really sad end to this story, because, as you can see, for a while I was super excited to see the state of this old device given a new life, now sadly taken away. Thankfully, though, this era of XPS 13 still gives you easy access to the battery, and replacing it with a fresh one is a simple matter of dropping $30 on a new battery and a little light screwdriver work. Sustainable laptopping win.

All is not lost, then. Now, what does need to be lost is the mold on this chassis, and maybe I can even see it blossoming on the screen itself. Now, where did I put that isopropyl?

Every now and then, someone brings up the haunting spectre of an AI-focused Windows 12. While recent rumours about the fabled, unicorn-like OS have since been debunked, it's not difficult to imagine an operating system that may one day be developed by AI, and all the horrors that might entail.

Or indeed, you could just develop one now and see how it turns out (via Hackaday). Enter Vib-OS, a vibe-coded operating system described as a "from-scratch, Unix-like operating system with full multi-architecture support for Arm64 and x86_64" coded with Claude.

You say Unix, I say the future of a Windows that never was—and hopefully, shall never be. Thankfully, I don't have to test out whatever spaghetti code the AI deemed was suitable to run an OS, as YouTuber tirimid has done all the hard work for me. And the video, you'll be pleased to hear, is an absolute riot.

Tirimid likes testing weird operating systems, and has a nine-point checklist to run through of tasks to complete in each of them. First up: booting!

Setting up a virtual machine, tirimid installed the iso with 4 GB of memory allocation and a four-core processor. Unfortunately, the installer began looking for a macOS-specific utility, despite compatibility listings for various virtual machines.

However, hunting around in the commands revealed more installation options, each of which appear to be broken in different ways. After much fiddling, tirimid managed to finally get the OS to boot... after over an hour's worth of hunting through forum threads and much head scratching.

Discovering a Mac-like OS, tirimid attempted to connect to the internet. Finding a lack of options, he instead discovered a downloads folder—that proceeded to add extra forward slashes to the address bar every time it was clicked, and nothing else. As did the rest of the folders, it seems.

Giving up on the internet connection, tirimid began working his way through the rest of his task list. While the GUI worked to a fashion, and a basic text editor app appeared to be functional, creating a new folder for text files proved problematic. Both a New Folder button and a New Folder prompt in the right-click menu did precisely nothing.

That text editor, by the way? No arrow key navigation. The horror. Python and Nano support seemed non-existent, despite being listed in the supported languages, which also meant no coding for our intrepid host.

Good news for gamers! The OS is said to support Doom, and... nope, that doesn't function either. Snake does, though. Very, very badly, with an incredibly fast snake that would put a black mamba to shame.

Give the video a watch for the full scoop (there's a hilarious moment with the calculator app near the end), but I have to summarise some highlights. Like the fact that the file manager and settings icons open the same window. Or that apps only update when clicked, so the clock appears to travel through time,

My favourite part, however, is that the "browser" icon activates an image browser, not a web-browsing program. That's such a wonderful, very AI mistake to make, and it almost makes the entire project worth it to my eyes. Oh, and the F1 to F8 keys change the wallpaper. Now that's the sort of utility I'd love to see added to the next version of Windows.

Sufficed to say, I don't think anyone will be using Vib-OS as their main operating system of choice anytime soon. While I'm sure it's possible to vibe code a good iteration with plenty of user testing and hands-on development thrown into the mix, this one... this one really isn't that.

It starts to make you feel all fuzzy about Windows 11, though, doesn't it? It really could be worse, after all.

Long-time Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been surprisingly candid in a recent chat with Morgan Stanley, highlighting, in as many words, how much the company has to thank both Intel and Apple for.

This came in response to a question—well, more of a statement than a question—commenting on Nadella "embracing openness". For instance, regarding Microsoft's stance towards Linux on Azure and its relationship with OpenAI.

Nadella responded: "There are very few zero-sum battles, and I think we overstate that a lot… somebody else’s success doesn’t need to be your failure if you can ride it. It’s sort of a thing that needs to be talked about more… Like, without Intel, I don’t know if Windows would have happened, right? Without Mac, I wonder whether Office would have happened."

"I’m always looking for, first, what’s the non-zero sum, where we can add value to our customers? Then, of course, there are zero-sum battles, and we’ll compete."

It's clear that the Microsoft CEO is referring to the origins of Windows and Office rather than any kind of ongoing dependence. In the case of Windows, there's a reason "Wintel" was, for a long time, common techy parlance. MS-DOS was made for the first IBM PCs that were running Intel CPUs, and thereafter for quite some time Microsoft's operating systems were the de-facto for home computing, in Intel machines.

The Mac-and-Office link is a little weaker but still pretty strong, because Excel was originally released for Mac computers, and the first version of Word with a GUI was also released for Mac before Windows. This was most likely because the original graphical Mac OS, System 1, was more user-friendly and popular than Microsoft's first graphical follow-up to MS-DOS, Windows 1.0.

Oh how far we've come... I suppose? Take a Windows 11 room temperature reading, and you'll most likely find it lukewarm at best, thanks in part to the all-out AI PC rebranding and redesigns and seemingly perpetual privacy creep. On the former front, that topic and related ones took up the bulk of the Morgan Stanley discussion—surprise, surprise—with a brief respite for this candid admission.

There have recently been some rumours that an AI-laden and "modular" Windows 12 might land this year, too, but this is heavily disputed. Either way, 2026 is seeming increasingly like the year of Linux, and I'm not sure Nadella will be as thankful for that as he is about yesteryear's Intel and Mac. But that's enough snark from me, let's leave a good comment be.

New versions of Microsoft's Windows OS don't come along very often. But could 2026 be the year of Windows 12? A new story from PCWorld summarises what it calls the latest "leaks, internal project references, and statements from hardware partners", which point to Windows 12 being a much more configurable and modular OS with a fancy new interface and a 2026 launch date. And, yes, it will inevitably be shot through with much deeper AI integration.

First up, the "modular" thing. It's said Windows 12 will have a new architecture known as "CorePC". The idea here is the ability to build or scale different versions of Windows for specific applications. Think desktop, mobile, tablet and, yes, gaming, including Xbox. This modular approach will also, apparently, enable Microsoft to better support a so-called hybrid mix of local and cloud computing.

The look and feel of Windows 12 is also expected to be substantially different and new. One of the most dramatic interface changes is reportedly a new "floating" taskbar with rounded corners and transparent glass visual effects. Superficially, it sounds a lot like the Dock in Apple's MacOS, at least in terms of looks if not so much in functionality.

It's also said that the system tray and clock move to the top-right corner of the display, with a Copilot-powered search bar located centrally at the top of the screen. Better support for touch control is also said to be a significant feature in the new interface.

Of course, the other major focus for Windows 12 from the get-go will be AI. Instead of an optional add-on, as in Windows 11, AI is said to be foundational with "OS-wide integration" of Copilot+ for Windows 12.

While it's tempting to view this as a worrying or negative development, especially given how hit-and-miss Microsoft's Copilot+ implementation in Windows 11 has been, there could be some very useful features if AI is implemented well. The conventional search experience in Windows has always been patchy. But Windows 12 is expected to support "semantic" searches, which could allow you to find folders and files without knowing the exact file name.

Previous leaks have indicated that Windows 12 could become a "voice-controlled chatbot," but there's less of an emphasis on that eventuality in the latest leak round-up. Whatever, full support for the AI functionality is said to require an NPU with at least 40 TOPS of performance. So, for those who are AI resistant or sceptical, perhaps avoiding system configurations with built-in NPUs could become de rigueur.

It is theoretically possible that Microsoft could limit Windows 12 to PCs with compliant NPUs. However, given that Intel's current Arrow Lake CPUs have an NPU limited to 13 TOPS and AMD's desktop CPUs don't have an NPU at all, a launch of Windows 12 restricted to systems with 40 TOPS-plus NPUs would mean no Windows 12 on the desktop, which seems an unlikely strategy.

Microsoft is said to be planning various other tweaks for Windows 12. As you would expect, that includes tighter Xbox integration. Better power management is also on the list. But exactly how radical Windows 12 proves to be, we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully it will indeed be released later this year, and there isn't long to wait.

Personally, I'd quite like to see really good support for high-DPI displays, something that was supposed to be a major part of Windows 7 way back when it was still in its "Longhorn" development stage, but has never really materialised. I'd take that over more unreliable AI slop, that's for sure. Let us know below your most-wanted upgrades for Windows 12.