I've tried Mint and Ubuntu and other flavours I can't always remember, various different frontends, I've used Raspbian, octopi, I've installed alternative Android OSes, and none of them have alleviated the pain of installing an OS that fucks up basic things on a regular basis.

Hell, just yesterday I was following a tutorial on how to install an audio amplifier on a retropie and it just failed. The audio test keeps going wrong in different ways each time I try. Every piece of hardware and software involved was known to the tutorial and matched to mine exactly, and still something unknown went wrong and I'll have to hunt down the reason. Something to do with GPIONext.service not starting properly. It's going to be a painful couple of hours mashing my face against this issue until I can figure it out, at the very least.

Like, nice pitch but I've heard too many times "this flavour of Linux is the perfect beginner distro!" only to find that no, this platform has more rough edge than surface and a fresh coat of paint hasn't changed that.

All I'm saying is that if a ubiquitous AI spy is the future of Windows then I guess I am forced to deal with that pain if the only alternative I can envision is to walk into the sea and never return.

I went to Linux because a colleague next to me handed me a Fedora DVD after having issues with company Windows.

I installed Linux many times on various hardware configurations since then.

I don't think I've ever had a pain installing it, perhaps once when Ubuntu had messed up installer with custom LUKS setup.

Just like Apple gives you the optiom to disallow tracking but their definition of tracking leaves a lot of room for data to be collected and shared with 3rd party

"For as massive as it was, even Marvin with his planet sized mind couldn't pinpoint the exact moment the pain in the diodes down his left side turned to pleasure. The safe word remained well behind his moist lips"...

I think this is key. There’s many ways Microsoft can provide your data without literally providing it. For example, they can build a profile about you and sell that instead.

Like that, but filtered through an AI.

Features: questions like "Hey, where's that file I worked on last week", "What was that recipe I found the other day" or "hey can you pull up a copy of this document from 3 days ago so I can compare them" all work. Its nice to be able to just do that, and you can apply all the normal AI editing things to them, too. They're all available.

Downside: a black box AI system the user doesn't have full control over has the right to record literally everything you do on your computer. They promise its local, for now, but not only is Microsoft not trustworthy in that regard, even if they're honest we don't know if or when they'll change that policy. I would not be surprised if the next step was "A small amount of none identifiable information is transmitted to our servers" snuck in, and they used that permission to have Microsoft Recall answer queries for advertisers directly, technically without ever identifying you. Advertisers could directly ask your own computer for all the info they'll ever need.

And, yes, Mac still has Time Machine. Linux has its own version, too. Both are very handy and I've used them each personally. In my personal opinion, a basic search with time machine does enough of Microsoft recall's job that I'm not going near it, but honestly at least you're getting functionality out of them selling your data, so it could be worse.

Time Machine (which is an excellent feature on macOS btw and isn't advertised nearly enough by Apple), but Recall sounds more like an automatic clipboard history that saves more than just text and copied images, not something that lets you roll back to a previous state.