Leave Windows 11 Idle for 24 Hours and Watch What Happens

Kind: captions Language: en You probably think your gaming PC belongs to you, but leave Windows 11 idle for just 24 hours and it'll send over 3,000 telemetry pings [music] to more than 100 different servers, all running in the background while you are doing nothing. It operates like a digital wiretap, reporting system metadata and tracking identifiers the second you turn your back. Most people think Windows is shifting to local AI to keep everything on device, but leaked documents reveal a much darker endgame for Windows. [music] One that completely eliminates your ability to own your PC. And while everyone is distracted by handheld consoles, one has [music] been building the only real escape route out, and Valve didn't need permission to do it. Chapter 1, the glass [music] house. Microsoft has spent two years selling its Copilot Plus PCs as a victory for privacy. [music] Everything runs locally, your data never leaves your machine. But the reality looks very [music] different. The PC security channel ran tests on a clean Windows 11 system. No user logged in and no apps were open. The machine was just sitting on a desk. [music] Inside 24 hours, the machine reached out to dozens of different servers, and it wasn't just Microsoft. It was pinging third-party ad networks and market research firms. Some of them most users would never [music] have heard of. Even turning the privacy settings all the way down didn't make a difference. The only way to make it stop is through policy [music] controls that consumer versions of Windows don't include. Recall sits on top of all of that. Its Copilot Plus AI feature takes a picture of your screen every few seconds whenever something changes. Each picture gets saved to a local database on your hard drive. The pictures are searchable. You can type in the thing I saw last Tuesday and just pull it up. The contents of those pictures are the real problem. Emails, websites, bank logins, private chats, password manager pop-ups that appear for half a second. Whatever's on the screen ends up in the database, indexed, [music] and sitting in a place that anyone with access to your machine can find. Recall doesn't care what it is, it saves them all regardless. [music] Microsoft says the database stays on your computer, but security researchers found early versions of it could be pulled off by simple recovery tools. Windows Hello sign-in and a filter that's supposed to skip over sensitive data have been added since then, [music] but in August 2025 independent testers ran the filter and found it still missed things [music] it was built to catch. Even if you trust the local part, there's still the policy problem. Right now Recall does not sync to the cloud, but that can change [music] with a single update. Most users would never notice. A computer that takes a picture of itself every few seconds is no longer yours in the way you thought it was. It is a witness. Chapter two, the performance [music] tax. Microsoft really pushes the performance of its products. Windows is the home of high-end PC gaming. Direct storage loads faster. The auto HDR looks better. The Xbox app is parked right there in your taskbar. But there's a cost the hype never mentions. Various journalists and reviewers have spent years running the same games on the same hardware using Windows 11 and Linux. The Linux build of choice is usually Bazzite, [music] an OS designed to replicate Steam OS. And on paper the results look almost identical. Windows fans always like to point to the average frame rates as proof, but that hides the thing you actually feel while playing. What matters is the 1% low. That's the worst moment during gameplay. The sudden freeze when you turn too fast or are in the middle of a gunfight. Your brain notices it instantly even if the frame rate counter says otherwise. This is where Linux starts embarrassing Windows. Using the exact same hardware and settings, Linux consistently delivers lows that are 15 to 20% higher than Windows 11. None of this is a mystery. The background services, the forced update checks and telemetry pings, even Copilot doing things you never asked for. Each one is tiny, but stack them on top of a machine trying to push 240 frames per second, and they all add up. You paid for that performance. Windows is spending some of it on things that have nothing to do with your game. You spend thousands of dollars building a high-end gaming rig only to have its raw power skimmed right off the top by the operating system you're forced to install. If Linux now matches or even beats Windows in performance, then there is really only one excuse left, multiplayer [music] games. For years that was the deal breaker. Not because Linux couldn't run the games, but because anti-cheat systems would [music] block you before you even got into a match. And once that barrier disappears, Windows becomes a choice. Chapter 3, >> [music] >> the anti-cheat illusion. For a long time the answer to why don't more people switch [music] to Linux was always the same. You could play single-player games fine, but the moment a multiplayer game used anti-cheat, Linux players got locked out. You'd load up the game and get denied before the main menu even displayed. And that's why people stayed on Windows. Their games relied on it. But then something [music] changed. Epic added Linux support for Easy Anti-Cheat. Then software like Battle Eye followed. Games that were unsupported suddenly started working overnight. It took about 4 years for it to become the norm. Back in 2019, if someone told you they were playing Apex Legends or Halo Infinite on Linux, you would have laughed at them. Those games didn't work outside of Windows. Now people launch them on the Steam Deck while lying on the couch. It's the same with older PC games. They actually work better on Linux now than they do on modern Windows. Games from the 2000s that break on Windows 11 because [music] of old launchers or compatibility issues run perfectly through compatibility layers like Proton. It was a coordinated effort that happened away from the public eye. Someone paid for the engineering, called the developers, wrote the code, and then built the testing pipeline. The technical reason to stay on Windows has mostly faded for the games people open every weekend. The games that still refuse Linux are mostly competitive multiplayer titles. Giants like Epic Games, Riot, [music] and Bungie refuse to let their aggressive anti-cheat software run on an open-source system. [music] It's purely a security and business decision. All of this lines up with something else nobody quite saw coming. Chapter 4, the hardware anomaly. Steam Deck came out in early 2022. By February 2025, The Verge reported total sales around 4 million units. That is roughly half of every handheld gaming PC sold in those 3 years. The other half is split between the Asus ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and the MSI Claw combined. Valve hit that number with almost no traditional advertising, no celebrity push, no billboards. The Deck moved through word of mouth and people showing their friends. The price is part of the story, too. A base Steam Deck starts at $399. A comparable Asus ROG Ally with Windows can cost more than double depending on the specs. Also, the Windows version often gets worse battery life on the same hardware. Valve priced the Deck as a default choice for anyone curious about handheld PC gaming. They sold the hardware close to cost price and made most of their money on games sold through Steam. The operating system numbers are where things get strange. In March 2026, Valve's own Steam hardware survey logged Linux at 5.33% of all Steam users. And that was the first time it crossed the 5% [music] mark. April 2026 settled back to 4.52% after a bounce. Either way, the line is going up. In early 2024, Linux was [music] sitting below 2%. By 2026, it was above 4% and holding. Windows over the same period dropped from 96% to 92%. That is the biggest sustained [music] drop the survey has ever shown. Steam has around 130 million monthly active users. About 6 million of them now play on Linux instead of Windows. That number [music] used to sit in the hundreds of thousands. Now, it's bigger than the population of Denmark. But, while Valve was creating an entirely new [music] wave of PC gamers, Microsoft mostly stood still. And that is the weird part. Nintendo and Sony sell consoles. Technically, Valve sells a console, too. The difference is that every Steam Deck is a personal computer running a complete Linux operating system. Every person who buys one meets a working alternative to Windows, often [music] without knowing it. And once people realize the Steam Deck was just Linux underneath, something else started happening. They installed [music] the same operating system on their desktop PCs. The handheld became an on-ramp. You can buy a Steam Deck because it's convenient, and then you realize [music] the exact same experience can run on the gaming tower sitting under your desk. Valve built a device that teaches millions of people they can live without Windows. It created a change in the default behavior, and Microsoft had to react. Chapter 5, Project K2. In late [music] 2025, Windows Central reported on an internal Microsoft program code-named Project K2. The program is organized around three stated pillars: [music] performance, reliability, and craft. The code name K2 is apt. [music] K2 is one of the hardest mountains in the world to climb, and that name alone hints at how difficult the problem has become inside Microsoft. But, the changes [music] coming out of it are real. A taskbar you can finally move to the side of the screen. A file explorer that loads faster. Update prompts that stop interrupting you in the middle of a game. Companies do not start multi-pillar quality programs when things are going well. Project K2 is Microsoft admitting that Windows 11 has become unreliable and intrusive enough that part of its audience is leaving. K2 is presented as a fix, but over the same months Microsoft launched K2, Windows has been moving in the opposite direction. Telemetry has increased. Microsoft account sign-ins have become more central to setting up a new PC. K2 fixes the surface complaints, [music] but underneath things stay the same. And this all comes with a cost. A one-time Windows license pays Microsoft once. A subscription pays them forever. The math is so one-sided that Microsoft is not making a brave choice, they're making the same choice Adobe made with Photoshop and Autodesk made with AutoCAD. Their Office team did it with Microsoft 365. The pattern is well known and the outcome is predictable. What makes Windows different is the size of the audience that depends old model. PC gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry built on three assumptions. You own your hardware, your games sit on your drive, and you have control over your machine. A version of Windows where you have to sign in and start playing and where the heavy lifting happens on Microsoft servers doesn't fit that audience at all. You can see this direction in real product moves. Xbox cloud gaming is a subscription. [music] Game Pass is a subscription. The Microsoft Store is built around a Microsoft account. Setting up a new Windows 11 PC without [music] an internet connection used to be a single skipped checkbox. Now it takes a workaround that Microsoft patches out every few releases. Each change pushes the average user further from owning their computer and closer to renting access to one. The timing of all of this stops feeling random. Recall fits into a future where everything you do gets logged for an AI to search. The telemetry stream fits into a future where Microsoft charges by what you use. Local game libraries, local save files, mods you install yourself, playing offline, none of that fits where Windows is going. >> [music] >> Some of it will survive through legacy support, the rest will fade. While Microsoft has been building this cage, Valve has spent over 10 years building the only working exit. Chapter 6, the silent [music] build. Valve's last 10 years don't really make sense if you look at them like a hardware company. You need to look at them as a software company. Proton is what makes Windows games run on Linux without the developer having to rebuild them. It turns the game into something Linux can understand. So, old Windows-only games just open and run. That last part is the bit that matters. Games don't have to change to move platforms anymore. SteamOS is Valve's version of that idea at the system level. It is a Linux operating system that [music] seems simple on the surface, but it doesn't come with the tracking or background data collection people associate with Windows. What you do on it stays on your machine. Steam Input does the same [music] thing for controls. It makes whatever controller you plug in behave like it belongs in the game, even if the game was never designed for it. Most people never see any of this working. [music] They just press play and it works. Nothing about the experience tells them that they have left Microsoft's world, but they have escaped it. Valve started building all of this before anyone had even heard of Project K2 or Recall, back when most [music] people still thought Linux gaming was a joke. They invested anyway at a scale [music] that only makes sense if someone inside the company believed Windows was going to keep moving the way it has been. Proton's first release was in 2018. The Steam Controller came out in 2015. SteamOS in its first form goes all the way back to 2013. None of these were immediate reactions to a Microsoft announcement. They were a long-term bet placed years before the bet started paying off. Steam Deck was [music] never just a handheld. It was the way Valve got their alternative operating system into millions of hands while the alternative [music] still looked like a fun gadget. Chapter 7, the trap closes. Line every piece up on one timeline and the story stops feeling like a series of separate moves. Between 2021 and 24, the biggest anti-cheat systems started allowing Linux. In 2022, the Steam Deck brought a working Linux gaming machine to millions of people. >> [music] >> From 2024 to 2026, Steam's own data showed Linux users doubling. It shows Valve had a clear direction. Set them next to Microsoft's moves and the coincidence falls apart. Recall was announced mid-2024. By then, Proton had already been in active development for 6 years. Project K2 started in the second half of 2025. By then, the Steam Deck had been selling for 3 years and Linux had already passed macOS on Steam. Every major Windows change that pushes users toward the cloud and toward subscriptions arrived after Valve had already built the way out. Valve didn't react to any of this, they saw it coming. The investment in Proton and SteamOS started [music] when this future was visible only to people watching the industry closely. By 2018, Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft's own Office team had already pulled their flagship products into subscription models. It was clear where the rest of Windows was going. Rather than fighting Microsoft, [music] Valve got to work for a decade. They made deals with developers and had the patience to put the whole thing in front of users before anyone felt the urgency. Most of it happened in the open. Most people were watching something else. The Steam Deck was the delivery vehicle designed [music] to look harmless, priced so millions would try it without thinking twice. By the time anyone framed it as competition, it was already in people's hands. Chapter 8, the Sovereign OS. Valve is not competing with Xbox or Apple. Valve has built something stranger and more important than another console line. They have built the last Sovereign OS. A Sovereign OS is an operating system where you own your own hardware in the real sense [music] of the word. The system doesn't send your data without asking. Your files stay yours. The storage stays under your control. Using your own machine does not require signing into a company's account. The company behind the OS earns its money from something other than tracking you. By that definition, traditional desktop Linux is the [music] only major consumer operating system space left that qualifies. Windows has crossed too many lines. macOS with its Apple ID and steady push to iCloud is in the same kind of cage. ChromeOS was never sovereign, it was always a window into Google services. Phones are not sovereign at all. Even SteamOS makes you log in to get started. SteamOS stays small not from lack of demand, >> [music] >> but because every other major company picked the subscription path and Valve walked the other way. Valve can afford this because of how they make money. Steam takes a cut of every game sale. That is the whole business model. Microsoft makes money in a different way now. They earn when you live inside their products. The longer you stay, the more they make. It's why Windows looks the way it does. Two business models, two operating systems, both built on the logic of how their owners get paid. That same divide appears when the two companies talk about the future. On one side, Microsoft talks about cloud computing [music] and copilot becoming the main way that people use a PC. Valve talks about hardware that they can ship, games you can store, and [music] tools they can put in players' hands. One future is mostly a gateway into Microsoft services. The other is still mostly a computer. This isn't a story about Valve being the good guys. Valve is a private company doing what's in its long-term interest. The exit they built is careful defensive engineering, not a gift. But that exit exists, it works, and millions of people are already using it and the community around it keeps growing. >> [music] >> The real fight is not about market share. The real fight is about what a personal computer is allowed to be, a tool you own and control or a rental from someone else that can change the terms whenever they want. Microsoft is answering that question one way, SteamOS is answering it the other way. There is not much middle ground. Most gamers will not think about this on any [music] given day. When a game they own stops working without a Microsoft sign-in, then they'll think about [music] it. The day a cheap key reseller copy of Windows stops activating because the policy changed, then they'll think about it. The day a Game Pass title gets pulled halfway through their play through, they will think about it. None of these are hypothetical. They have already happened to gamers. Every user is about [music] to make a choice, whether they think about it or not. Not in some far-off future, but in their next PC purchase, in the [music] next Windows update prompt, the next time a subscription screen asks for a credit card. The alternative is already sitting on store shelves and running on millions of machines today. The question is no longer whether Windows fails, [music] it's whether you will still own your own PC when it does. Microsoft isn't the only battle Valve is facing. They're now locked into a fight [music] that could determine their future. Find out whether they can survive in Valve is doomed, the $900 million lawsuit, or watch this.