Makes sense for Microsoft. Copilot is already capable of being model agnostic (both GH Copilot, obviously, and M365 as well). They're an enterprise software & services company, they want to sell integrated AI tooling in their stack, powered by whatever models their customers want rather than any specific model.
Models are quickly becoming a dumb pipe, like an ISP. Just a commodity. The labs should rightfully be terrified, eventually the value isn't going to come from the model itself but the tools & integrations built on top. Non-tech businesses and non-tech employees don't want to buy API access to a model, they want to buy off the shelf software with its capabilities packaged up into a pretty, easy to use GUI.
I don't know about that, a lot of those bloated enterprise solutions are becoming obsolete fast, and integrations becoming a moot point as these models advance.
Maybe for startups or simple orgs, but in any regulated industry/high compliance requirements they are still useful or outright required.
Claude Team w/ Cowork still only lets you set R/W permissions globally for each MCP connector for the whole team, they still don't offer config on a per-user basis. The enterprise controls are sorely lacking first party. Maybe fine for most startups or flat orgs, but any established enterprise with strong identity & access governance is going to have an issue with that. You can make it work, but you need to make your own agent/harness and give it an identity in Entra or whatever else you use, so for a non-tech company without a dev team, right back to square one of preferring to just buy a COTS solution vs trying to hand out direct model access with minimal governance.
(M365) Copilot sucks but Microsoft is putting a ton of work into agent governance & identity that sorely lacking elsewhere.
One interesting point I've seen online is that the steam machine is more of a budget Mac than a pc. As valve controls the whole stack including the OS which creates a very streamlined experience that just works.
Linux has gone mainstream a long time ago - from dvd players to android phones. It just hasn’t succceeded on old preexisting markets ( personal computers ) but has taken large parts of most of the newly created ones ( servers , mobile devices , embedded devices etc )
I feel like this is a little nitpicky. Clearly they are talking about mainstream for the average home computer user as a daily driver OS. Even with the steam deck it’s barely touching 5%. It’s still obscure and mysterious to the vast majority of the population in a way windows and macOS aren’t.
I've been a techie my whole life, and for me, the mysterious OS is macOS. I haven't used it since high school (late 90s), which is when I picked up linux at home.
I was never able to afford mac products as a young person, and now that I can, I wouldn't part with linux.
This is still not what we are talking about. This has nothing to do with ease of use when set up or the practical considerations of swapping. Linux is not mainstream in the consumer world. People do not really know what it is. It is still mysterious and personal computer installation is far from turnkey.
To many people the internet and internet explorer ( or edge ) are the same thing, and for almost everyone I know , the daily driver is the phone or tablet OS not the laptop/desktop OS. And I’m not even talking about the ones who live in a browser.
I started using Linux in 96 and for many years it was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. It never happened , and I’m not sure it’s that important these days , given the gigantic presence Linux has, and the way people interact with computing devices in general these days .
Edit / clarification : there are a lots of computer professionals on HN, and as such see actual pcs / Macs etc a lot. Many people don’t and just see their phones.
The core difference there being, those settings will stick on Linux, and Microsoft will happily revert them next Windows feature update without telling you.
Valve's vertical control over SteamOS, the UI, and the hardware specs indeed gives the Steam Machine that taste of Mac. Not sure if Apple would have gone for something like that if they ever made a console: one key difference is that Valve keeps it open like a regular PC which is a major benefit to keep the device alive down the road for years to come.
Yes, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct driver for Linux and set it up. Having steam machine be start and play like steam deck really brings the console feel on PC. Moreover it's still Linux which you can use for other things, so people doesn't feel loss for this.
> Yes, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct driver for Linux and set it up.
It's interesting that you say that, because it isn't how drivers normally work on Linux. Finding, downloading and installing drivers is very much a Windows thing.
Nvidia has been historically tricky, but in the last two years or so (maybe longer), I have not needed to do any manual work for drivers. Sometimes, you may see some diminished performance on hardware that is brand new until drivers catch up, but that is usually just about waiting for an update on driver you already have.
I've been of the belief that 2026 has been year of the Linux desktop. As a user of MacOS for work and Linux at home, and being a former user of Windows for decades for video games, Linux has come so far that I think it has surpassed the mainstream OSes in terms of experience. The barrier to entry isn't really troubleshooting anymore, it is that we don't have any dominant desktop environment. Which is "bad" for adoption, but has been great for iteration by teams who are not bogged down by the need to support legacy users who don't want things to change.
The only reason why Linux hasn't gone mainstream (talking about desktop pcs) is because of schools and prebuilt-pcs.
Majority of pc users don't even know what OS they are running.
Yeah, I still don't understand why they don't just use enums and have to invent a special "union" keyword instead. C#'s enums are extremely underpowered to begin with and the syntax they designed here way more convoluted and uglier to say:
enum Pet {
Cat,
Dog,
Bird
}
var description = Pet switch
{
Dog d => d.Name,
Cat c => c.Name,
Bird b => b.Name,
_ => "no pet"
}
The other issue is they introduced `null` to pattern matching on their union example when the whole point of pattern matching is that you can pretty much mostly remove `null` from the language altogether with Result<T, E> available, as Rust has shown.
It sounds like they didn't reuse the enum keyword for this for the most backwards compatibility and to avoid confusion. Your example enum is an `int` today. Either you break existing code expecting an `int` sized thing or you need additional syntax and can't use the "clean" form that you are hoping for.
The null patterns predate these unions and the relevant section of the documentation is showing that you can use nullable unions, not that you have to or should use them. Other examples also show a fully closed Result<T, E> type that yeah would be great for projects hoping to eliminate more nullable code.
I'm currently experimenting with a stack combining assistance, ASP.NET Razor Pages, and htmx, specifically to avoid dealing with the complexities of the modern frontend stack.
AI eliminates a lot of the tedium, grinding tasks, while HTML partials and htmx complement each other perfectly.
Not having to manage frontend framework, SSR states is incredibly liberating. Sprinkle in some vanillla js and redraw specific parts of the page as needed... done
There was a period that was very true when Ninjago were a thing. But in the last decade while they sometimes still come out with new pieces there is still a tonne of reusability and creativity in Lego pieces.
No wonder openai and anthropic are terrified