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Arm Targets 50% of Windows PC Market Share in Five Years, CEO Says

British chip designer Arm expects to capture more than half of the Windows PC market within the next five years, CEO Rene Haas said in an interview. The company's optimism comes as Microsoft and its hardware partners gear up to introduce a new generation of AI-powered PCs running on Arm-designed chips, potentially reshaping the Intel-dominated industry. Haas attributed Microsoft's commitment to supporting Arm's technology through enhanced developer tools as a key factor in the anticipated market shift.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Transférer sa licence Windows dans une VM

N. D. M. : nlgranger nous explique dans le journal qui est repris pour cette dépêche comment virtualiser un système pré-installé. Son expérience personnelle est relatée ici à la première personne (je). Rappelons aussi à tout hasard que si la licence de ce système d’exploitation propriétaire permet apparemment une utilisation dans le cadre d’une telle virtualisation, celle-ci doit être faite sur une seule instance et sans utilisation comme serveur (ce que rappelle aussi le tutoriel mentionné plus loin, mais sur une version précédente du système). Et qu’il n’est possible de faire qu’une « seule copie du logiciel à des fins de sauvegarde ».

Je viens d’acheter un PC et bien que j’aie fouillé et patienté longtemps, aucune offre sans OS n’arrivait ou ne convenait donc j’ai cédé à la vente forcée d’un PC avec Windows.
Dans ce petit tutoriel, je vous explique comment déplacer cette licence Windows OEM vers une machine virtuelle (VM) sur le même PC. Si vous avez déjà une licence achetée à part, il vous suffit de la spécifier à l’installation, on s’intéresse ici au cas des licences OEM préinstallées sur la carte mère.
L’intérêt de déplacer Windows dans une VM, c’est de ne pas bloquer une partie de l’espace disque avec une partition qui ne servira quasiment jamais. Là on peut déplacer l’image disque vers un stockage externe (disque ou clé USB) ou recréer la VM au besoin.
Dans ce tutoriel j’utilise libvirt via le GUI virt-manager, mais je me suis largement appuyé sur cet excellent tutoriel pour Proxmox d’Oliver Poncet que je vous invite à consulter.
Je précise immédiatement qu’il n’est pas nécessaire d’avoir gardé le Windows préinstallé sur la machine, ni même de l’avoir démarré une seule fois.

Dépendances

Pour parvenir à vos fins, il vous faudra les dépendances suivantes (en espérant ne rien oublier) :

  • dmidecode pour lire les infos de la carte mère
  • libvirt
  • qemu/KVM
  • swtpm pour émuler un TPM
  • edk2-ovmf pour émuler un UEFI avec Secure Boot
  • Le fichier.iso de Windows 11 disponible sur le site de microsoft.

Sous ArchLinux : pacman – S dmidecode libvirt dnsmasq qemu-desktop swtmp

J’ai utilisé virt-manager pour me faciliter la vie, j’imagine qu’on peut s’en sortir en ligne de commande directement avec qemu.

Installation

Récupérer les informations utiles

Pour valider automatiquement votre licence, Windows utilise des informations disponibles depuis la carte mère.

D’abord, le numéro de série, modèle, etc. :

$ sudo dmidecode
…
BIOS Information
    Vendor : LENOVO
    Version : NCCN16WW
    Release Date : 02/02/2024
…
    BIOS Revision : 1.16
    Firmware Revision : 1.16
…
System Information
    Manufacturer : LENOVO
    Product Name : 83E3
    Version : Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9
    Serial Number : 9F5OEMTZ
    UUID : a0a73af8-a886-4fbf-8f0d-5fd32c264a16
    SKU Number : LENOVO_MT_83E3_BU_idea_FM_Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9
    Family : Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9

(j’ai édité le serial et l’uuid)

Ensuite des informations enregistrées dans des tables ACPI :

sudo cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM > ~/VMs/MSDM.bin
sudo cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/SLIC > ~/VMs/SLIC.bin

Créer la VM

La procédure démarre comme d’habitude, on suit l’assistant de virt-manager jusqu’au moment où il faut bien demander à modifier la configuration avant de démarrer.

Dans les options du BIOS, choisissez la config avec Secure Boot activé, chez moi le fichier se nomme OVMF_CODE.secboot.4 m.fd.

Ensuite il faut éditer directement le code XML qui décrit la configuration de la machine. Si c’est la première fois dans virt-manager, il faut cocher une case dans les paramètres de l’appli pour le rendre éditable.

Pour commencer, modifiez le nœud racine XML pour spécifier le schéma, sinon certaines options seront rejetées :

<domain type=“kvm” xmlns: qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'>

Mettez aussi à jour l’uuid pour qu’il corresponde à celui indiqué par dmidecode:

<uuid>a0a73af8-a886-4fbf-8f0d-5fd32c264a16</uuid>

Ensuite, il faut indiquer à qemu d’intégrer les tables ACPI :

<qemu: commandline>
<qemu: arg value='-acpitable'/>
<qemu: arg value='file=/home/ngranger/VMs/MSDM.bin'/>
<qemu: arg value='-acpitable'/>
<qemu: arg value='file=/home/ngranger/VMs/SLIC.bin'/>
</qemu: commandline>

Puis il faut ajouter les informations de la carte mère :

<sysinfo type=“smbios”>
<bios>
<entry name=“vendor”>LENOVO</entry>
<entry name=“version”>NCCN16WW</entry>
<entry name=“date”>02/02/2024</entry>
<entry name=“release”>1.16</entry>
</bios>
<system>
<entry name=“manufacturer”>LENOVO</entry>
<entry name=“product”>83E3</entry>
<entry name=“version”>Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9</entry>
<entry name=“uuid”>a0a73af8-a886-4fbf-8f0d-5fd32c264a16</entry>
<entry name=“serial”>9F5OEMTZ</entry>
<entry name=“family”>Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9</entry>
<entry name=“sku”>LENOVO_MT_83E3_BU_idea_FM_Yoga Pro 7 14AHP9</entry>
</system>
</sysinfo>

Installation de Windows

La procédure est désormais habituelle.

Pour éviter d’avoir à utiliser un compte Microsoft, vous pouvez couper Internet au moment où Windows redémarre pour la configuration du système. Lorsque l’assistant en arrive à la connexion au réseau, tapez Maj-F10 pour ouvrir le terminal et exécutez la commande oobe\BypassNRO. Le PC redémarrera sur un assistant qui rend la connexion facultative.

Au démarrage, vous pourrez remettre Internet et vérifier que la licence est bien activée.

Commentaires : voir le flux Atom ouvrir dans le navigateur

Windows 11's New Recall Feature Has Been Cracked To Run On Unsupported Hardware

Last than two weeks after it was announced, "Windows enthusiasts have managed to crack Microsoft's flagship AI-powered Recall feature to run on unsupported hardware," reports The Verge. From the report: Recall leverages local AI models on new Copilot Plus PCs to run in the background and take snapshots of anything you've done or seen on your PC. You then get a timeline you can scrub through and the ability to search for photos, documents, conversations, or anything else on your PC. Microsoft positioned Recall as needing the very latest neural processing units (NPU) on new PCs, but you can actually get it running on older Arm-powered hardware. Windows watcher Albacore has created a tool called Amperage, which enables Recall on devices that have an older Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, Microsoft's SQ processors, or an Ampere chipset. You need to have the latest Windows 11 24H2 update installed on one of these Windows on Arm devices, and then the tool will unlock and enable Recall. [...] You can technically unlock Recall on x86 devices, but the app won't do much until Microsoft publishes the x64 AI components required to get it up and running. Rumors suggest both AMD and Intel are close to announcing Copilot Plus PCs, so Microsoft's AI components for those machines may well appear soon. I managed to get Recall running on an x64 Windows 11 virtual machine earlier today just to test out the initial first-run experience.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft: Windows 24H2 Will Remove Cortana and WordPad Apps

Microsoft says the Cortana, Tips, and WordPad applications will be automatically removed on systems upgraded to the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 release. From a report: This was shared in a Thursday blog announcing that Windows 11, version 24H2 (Build 26100.712) is now available for Insiders in the Release Preview Channel. The company removed the Cortana standalone app from Windows 11 in preview build 25967 for Insiders, released in the Canary Channel in early October. It first announced that it would end support for Cortana in a support document published in June and deprecated it in another Canary build in August. In September, Microsoft announced that it would deprecate WordPad -- automatically installed on Windows systems for 28 years, since 1995, and an optional Windows feature since the Windows 10 Insider Build 19551 release in February 2020 -- with a future Windows update. In November, the company also informed users that the Tips app was deprecated and would be removed in a future Windows release.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Satya Nadella Says Microsoft's AI-Focused Copilot+ Laptops Will Outperform Apple's MacBooks

"Apple's done a fantastic job of really innovating on the Mac," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview this week. . Then he said "We are gonna outperform them" with the upcoming Copilot+ laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung that have been completely reengineered for AI — and begin shipping in less than four weeks. Satya Nadella: Qualcomm's got a new [ARM Snapdragon X] processor, which we've optimized Windows for. The battery lab, I've been using it now — I mean, it's 22 hours of continuous video playback... [Apple also uses ARM chips in its MacBooks]. We finally feel we have a very competitive product between Surface Pro and the Surface laptops. We have essentially the best specs when it comes to ARM-based silicon and performance or the NPU performance. WSJ: Microsoft says the Surfaces are 58% faster than the MacBook Air with M3, and has 20% longer battery life. The video includes a demonstration of local live translation powered by "small language models" stored on the device. ("It can translate live video calls or in-person conversations from 44 different languages into English. And it's fast.") And in an accompanying article, the Journal's reporter also tested out the AI-powered image generator coming to Microsoft Paint. As a longtime MS Paint stick-figure and box-house artist, I was delighted by this new tool. I typed in a prompt: "A Windows XP wallpaper with a mountain and sky." Then, as I started drawing, an AI image appeared in a new canvas alongside mine. When I changed a color in my sketch, it changed a color in the generated image. Microsoft says it still sends the prompt to the cloud to ensure content safety. Privacy was also touched on. Discussing the AI-powered "Recall" search functionality, the Journal's reporter notes that users can stop it from taking screenshots of certain web sites or apps, or turn it off entirely... But they point out "There could be this reaction from some people that this is pretty creepy. Microsoft is taking screenshots of everything I do." Nadella reminds them that "it's all being done locally, right...? That's the promise... That's one of the reasons why Recall works as a magical thing: because I can trust it, that it is on my computer." Copilot will be powered by OpenAI's new GPT-4o, the Journal notes — before showing Satya Nadella saying "It's kind of like a new browser effectively." Satya Nadella: So, it's right there. It sees the screen, it sees the world, it hears you. And so, it's kind of like that personal agent that's always there that you want to talk to. You can interrupt it. It can interrupt you. Nadella says though the laptop is optimized for Copilot, that's just the beginning, and "I fully expect Copilot to be everywhere" — along with its innovatively individualized "personal agent" interface. "It's gonna be ambient.... It'll go on the phone, right? I'll use it on WhatsApp. I'll use it on any other messaging platform. It'll be on speakers everywhere." Nadella says combining GPT-40 with Copilot's interface is "the type of magic that we wanna bring — first to Windows and everywhere else... The future I see is a computer that understands me versus a computer that I have to understand. The interview ends when the reporter holds up the result — their own homegrown rendition of Windows XP's default background image "Bliss."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows XP Can Run On an Intel CPU From 1989 Thanks To Dedicated Modder

An anonymous reader shares a report: For those of us who came of age in the early days of personal computing, the names "Intel 486" and "Windows XP" evoke a nostalgic whirlwind of memories. The 486 was the hot new CPU of the early 90s, while Windows XP became a household name and Microsoft's most popular OS over a decade later. But did you ever imagine these two icons of different eras could be merged into an unholy union? Well, start brushing off those vintage 486 rigs, because a modder has actually made it happen. Going by the name Dietmar on the MSFN forums, he has somehow managed to get Microsoft's beloved Windows XP running on the ancient 486 architecture. It's worth mentioning that these two were never meant to coexist. The first 486 chips hit the market way back in 1989, while Windows XP landed over a decade later in 2001. The 486 represented a major breakthrough when Intel unveiled it in 1989. Packing over a million transistors, it remained Intel's primary x86 chip until the arrival of the Pentium in 1993. Such was the processor's longevity that Intel continued manufacturing it for embedded systems until 2007. Still, 486 systems were simply too underpowered to run XP, which needed at least a Pentium-class processor from the 586 generation - or any compatible chip that ran at 233MHz or higher. Meanwhile, the i486 could only do 133MHz. It also needed at least 64MB of RAM and at least 1.5GB of storage.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Now Has AI-Powered Copy and Paste

Umar Shakir reports via The Verge: Microsoft is adding a new Advanced Paste feature to PowerToys for Windows 11 that can convert your clipboard content on the fly with the power of AI. The new feature can help people speed up their workflows by doing things like copying code in one language and pasting it in another, although its best tricks require OpenAI API credits. Advanced Paste is included in PowerToys version 0.81 and, once enabled, can be activated with a special key command: Windows Key + Shift + V. That opens an Advanced Paste text window that offers paste conversion options including plaintext, markdown, and JSON. If you enable Paste with AI in the Advanced Paste settings, you'll also see an OpenAI prompt where you can enter the conversion you want -- summarized text, translations, generated code, a rewrite from casual to professional style, Yoda syntax, or whatever you can think to ask for.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows 11 Recall AI feature will record everything you do on your PC

Microsoft annonce "Recall", un truc dans Windows 11 qui va enregistrer TOUT ce que vous faites sur votre PC, tout le temps, et une IA ira voir dedans afin que vous puissiez lui poser des questions dessus.
PAS.
DU.
TOUT.
FLIPPANT.

Cette technologie vous est présentée par l'entreprise qui récupère vos clés de chiffrement BitLocker, qui a implémenté de la télémétrie jusque dans la purin de calculatrice et dont le navigateur avait envoyé à Microsoft "par erreur" toutes les URLs que vous avez visitées.

PS: il existe un logiciel sur Mac qui est également capable de tout enregistrer.

EDIT: Tous les spécialistes en sécurité sont d'accord pour dire que c'est un cauchemard.
https://securite.developpez.com/actu/358111/La-nouvelle-fonctionnalite-Microsoft-Recall-pour-Windows-11-serait-un-risque-pour-la-securite-d-apres-des-chercheurs-qui-y-voient-un-oeil-ouvert-sur-la-vie-privee-des-utilisateurs-et-un-potentiel-infostealer/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsofts-new-windows-11-recall-is-a-privacy-nightmare/
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/05/microsoft-ai-recall-feature-records-everything-secures-far-less
(Permalink)

Set up a Dev Drive on Windows 11 | Microsoft Learn

Tous les devs le savent : Windows est très très mauvais pour la gestion des fichiers sur disques. Typiquement, NTFS est très mauvais quand il s'agit de gérer beaucoup de petits fichiers.
(Chez nous, un build Sencha met 2 minutes 30 sous Windows, et 30 secondes seulement sous Linux pour la même opération.)

à tel point que Microsoft a inventé le "Dev Drive", un lecteur virtuel et un système de fichier spécialisé (ReFS) pour permettre aux développeurs de builder plus vite.

Plus d'infos sur ReFS : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/refs/refs-overview
Visiblement ReFS est capable de faire certaines choses spécifiques à btrfs ou zfs : checksum des données et métadonnées, réparation automatique des données, clonage de blocs, etc.
(Permalink)

Windows 10 Reaches 70% Market Share as Windows 11 Keeps Declining

Windows 11's market share dropped in April 2024, falling below 26% after reaching an all-time high of 28.16% in February. According to Statcounter, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, while Windows 10 gained 0.96 points, crossing the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023. Neowin adds: Some argue that Windows 11 still offers little to no benefits for upgrading, especially in light of Microsoft killing some of the system's unique features, such as Windows Subsystem for Android. Add to that the ever-increasing number of ads, some of which are quite shameless, and you get an operating system that has a hard time winning hearts and minds, and retaining its customers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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