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Remove and prevent 4 GB Gemini nano install into Chrome, on Windows 11:
- Start
- regedit
- Backup registry by exporting it
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies
- right-click Policies, New, Key
- right-click Google, New, Key
- Chrome
- right-click Chrome, New, DWORD (32-bit) Value
- GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings
- right-click newly created key, Modify
- set value to 1
- OK
- Restart computer. https://pureinfotech.com/stop-chrome-gemini-nano-download-windows-11/
Or, you know don’t install software from companies owned and operated by psychopaths, like Google and Microsoft.
“Linux is hard” but godawful reg key hacks are fiiiiine, eh.
I have to use Windows 11 at work. Whenever I complain about it to any of my friends, they say, “it’s easy to work around that. You just have to…” and then they say to modify some registry key, or set up a group policy, or run a powershell command, or use some cleaning tool.
But even if it’s easy to do that, it’s not easy.
- You have to know about the key or the cleaning tool, and there’s a different one for every problem.
- You have to keep up to date with the new user-hostile behavior introduced to Windows every month.
- You have to keep up to date because Microsoft removes those circumventions, because they don’t want you to be able to remove their trash.
- You have to vet the tools, make sure they’re not malware. And continuously make sure it’s not replaced by malware in the future. There’s no central repository of Windows programs like there is for Debian or Ubuntu, so if you just web search for the tool name every time, you might click on a malvertising link in the search results instead.
And, most of all, you need to be allowed to do such things in the first place.
I, for one, am certainly not allowed to play in the registry of computers I don’t own at my office job.
Naw, Linux is easy, until OBS won’t start virtual camera because V4L has dependency on the previous kernel which is pretty old.
if you did’t run it right after the update, you might not even put together it was a kernel issue.
No easy errors, start obs from cli see v4l errors out, start digging into v4l, it’s not hard, but you have to know about it, then you have to know grub well enough to select an old kernel.
Yeah, that’s a relatively easy issue to debug. It goes to show that it’s really about where your familiarity level is.
Personally, my familiarity level is maybe 2 out of 10. Don’t really know what I’m doing with Linux, only made the jump a few weeks ago. I’ve had to google some stuff but it’s still much less hassle than windows. I just got bored of seeing all those ‘switch to linux durr’ comments so I gave it a try, turns out they were right.
Those comments really do get tedious. But there’s no billion-dollar company pushing desktop Linux and buying podcast ads and whatnot, so … there’s really no other way to get the word out.
If there is one thing AI is useful for, it’s to make sense of and learn Linux.
It can be good at sifting through the top search results, but if people stop posting those questions because of AI where will the answers come from?
Hopefully nowhere so I no longer have to read comments like “its good for making sense of Linux”.
These people don’t care how LLMs function, nor that information is true, false or complete nonsense. It strokes their false ego.
It’s spectacular at working with nixos. I can tell it to do whatever to the declarative configs, if it f’s it up, i have git backups.
I think the overlap between people who think using Linux is hard and the people who would open regedit in the first place is basically zero.
I’m in the overlap where I can easily follow reg edit direction and similar tutorials but can’t actually diagnose it myself. I wouldn’t have a clue. These known regedit edit workaround posts exist and are spread because there’s a ton of people in this overlap. We just aren’t vocal because it’s not one of our hills to die on.
But I can deal with cars, fix older models, and avoid buying an internet-connected model. Shit, I even learned how to fix drum brakes to maintain my options. I also disconnected my smart TV and grabbed a retired pc with win 10 pro or whatever to get some control back over that.
I do what I can, but at the end of the day, I still need to relax at some point.
Honest question, not necessarily for you but for maybe one of those people that actually understands the registry - how do those people figure that stuff out? Like, do software authors actually publish their registry config, or do people have to decompile/reverse engineer things to figure out what registry settings a given program might use?
keys tend to be organized (that’s a horrible word for whatt he registry is lol) in a handful of locations depending on context. so those chrome keys are next to the other chrome keys. in enterprise we mod that area pretty often.
the 2 was to discover a new key are:
- reg watcher that takes a baseline, then you install soemething, and you see the diff.
- in the case of no new key has been added (like for this new setting), most softwares have support articles aimed at Enterprise Admins who need to control deployments granularly. So the regkeys tend to be available.
Sometimes some dev figures it out, sometimes word spreads from the devs themselves on Discord/etc. Sometimes if you contact Support they have that workaround (after escalating to engineer). Not that you can easily get to Google Engineers, but you have a much better track with say a paid Workspace account.
It’s a FT job though to maintain a set of controlled software in an enterprise environment. Constant fiddling/tweaking. SOmetimes it’s a RegKey, sometimes a GPO setting, sometimes you’re modding a config file in AppData, or adding some lines to a Logon Script. And a lot of the info spreads by word of mouth still and to really answer your question - sometimes, no one knows where the hell it came from but after days of searching, you’re happy some random forum post finally worked and you hope to never have to touch it again. Then you close your ticket and move on to the next one.
I don’t miss it lol
There are tools that let you hook the registry and see what keys programs are trying to read from.
Ah ok cool, that was the sort of middle ground option I was missing
Yup. I don’t think it’s hard. I used to have a dual boot setup. I’m just lazy.
And by that I mean, lazy enough that messing with regedits is something I’m already familiar/comfortable with and can do relatively quickly.
Too lazy to (re)learn an entirely new OS and file system (it’s also why I’m still on Win10 because fuck Win11), learn what programs of mine are compatible and not compatible, dealing with grub/kernals anytime I need to diagnose an issue, etc.
That being said, Windows will eventually piss me off to the final breaking point/straw where my anger/spite will outweigh my laziness. And THEN they’ll be sorry!
But until then… Opens up regedit with a sigh
Tell that to my Windows desktop support coworkers, hah.
It’s really all about what you’re familiar with.
Hell, even borking my linux install was a relatively painless experience. I was updating from Fedora 43 to 44 and noticed at one point that my keyboard had power but nothing was displaying on my monitor. Capslock still responded so I wondered if the update had messed up the video display or something and restarted after seeing someone say that they saw the same and restarting seemed to actually kick off the update.
Well, for me, it fucked the dnf5 install, which I tried fixing from the command line for a bit before deciding to just grab the 44 iso and install it fresh. I kept my home and game partitions and just reinstalled the root dir, then created two new accounts, renamed one of them to my old username and took over the old home dir, logged in and it was like the update had just worked. Only thing I need to do to get back to where I was is reinstall some packages or software. All the settings are stored in my home dir, so even the ones I don’t have yet will get their old settings back when I do get around to installing them. All I had to do was install steam and it launched like it normally does, all my installed games still there.
And I’m pretty sure I could have even done this with a different distro and whatever was the same would have preserved settings, too.
No cloud involved or even saving any files specifically. I did ask an LLM what I should preserve to make sure I wasn’t missing anything but everything it suggested waa already in home. It could have gone even quicker if I wasn’t overthinking it so much, but it was just like an hour or so before I was back up and running once I started the install process.
Im laughing at the image of linux users trying to sell someone on linux by talking about how painless of an experience borking their computer was.
It really goes to show that giving people the tools to solve their problems is the better route. Windows has the same thing, if they bork the root partition you can hit repair and it tries to attempt to do what you describe but if it fails to automatically detect and resolve then thats it your fucked. But it might be a simple problem that the user could correct and fix if they were given the option or included in the process.
I’m considering switching to Linux and at this point I’m trying to ignore the “recommendations” of this sort.
didnt make the switch, but it feels like theres more and more shit to disable on fresh installs
Omg!!! You’re absolutely right! Running through YouTube tutorials from India or Linux terminal videos from India is exactly the same!
Honestly you only need like a handful of commands to install, update and remove applications. It’s not like your compiling each package by hand (unless you’re into that sort of thing). Also those commands can be located in the documentation.
I’ve spent countless hours in the registry. Linux filesystem is cakewalk compared to the bloated abomination that is system32.
- Uninstall Chrome
- Uninstall Windows
- Uninstall boot loader
- Uninstall cmos
- Uninstall ac unit
- Wait at least 30 sex
- Begin new life with linux
Begin new life with linux
- Find a package you need.
- It’s only distributed as a docker container.
- Install docker.
- Docker installs it’s AI assistant.
- Install podman.
“zsh: regedit: command not found…” I use arch btw. 😂
And of course you made sure we know you use zsh because of course you do
I use fish btw
I use women btw to fill a gap in my life i cant see
That’s the joke!
no no no; since you are using zsh you will need to use ragedit not regedit.
zsh
Good.
And Apple, don’t forget Apple.
Macintosh.
after setting up a windows machine started taking days instead of a few minutes, I quit using it. so many bloated spywares you’d never get them all
This sounds like something a flag can solve…
I was about to type something something about just switching to Linux and at least Firefox but you already got there in the end
The increasing enshittification of every service pushed me to GrapheneOS long before Google could force this shit on me
The article doesn’t really say but this is just for desktop chrome right now right? I’ve long had chrome disabled since graphene isn’t an option unless I build it myself but I do worry about that pesky web view that snuck it’s way into everything.
Man I sure do wish Linux mobile was a thing. I really want a full on Linux phone.
This is very alarming. My eyes have never been opened so widely as they are in the last two months since I started ungoogling and FOSSing. This post has veritably split my eyelids.
Edit: Since reading this thread I have installed Shizuku + Canta and removed Chr9me and about 50 other pieces of bloatware from my phone.
Props to @zerozaku for the suggestion.
How unsurprising anymore in this hellish world where corporates hate your desire for anonymity… but try to hide theirs, such as dark expense accounts, tax evasion, secret offshore banking accounts, connections with crime and hate groups, etc.
uninstalled Chrome a looooong time ago on my Win 10 machine
Uninstalled Chrome and Windows a looooooong time ago on my computer
You had Chrome installed?
You guys have computers?
I am a meat popsicle.
Hey, when I was a kid I had a slide rule.
Back in my day, computer was a job, and all you had was an abacus. We liked it that way. None of this newfangled al-gebra nonsense.
I’ve used Firefox since 2004 and never once thought about using Chrome.
Well I’ve used Firefox before it was even publicly released. Checkmate.
It’s funny because they’re trying to find ways to cut cloud costs by offloading to users, but when that’s not a concern, they shove everything into the cloud and then ensure no local running option is available or viable.
They want all of your data in the cloud so they own it.
They want all their crap on your device, so you pay for it.
Bingo
When something is free, you are the product.
You’re forgetting FOSS. That wisdom only applies when the product is made for financial incentive and is free, and not always then either.
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My Google chrome took 10GB space on system disc so I needed to unistal it. Now I use only Firefox.
All solved with one simple step, DON’T INSTALL THIS GARBAGE!
At least all the carbon emissions will be offset by Windows being carbon aware! Right? Right…?!
“Windows Update is committed to helping reduce carbon emissions.”
Now, excuse me as I generate a picture of a man with 15 fingers on my browser, using my computer with chatgpt built intp it, while next to my phone with Gemini built into my texting app and assistant and maps app and photos app and
It’s like the new Bitcoin miner.
It’s worse even, at least a Bitcoin miner would get you Bitcoin, this gets you slop for the same amount of GPU cycles
Alarming, but not surprising.
The setup that works for me is LibreWolf as primary browser and Firefox ESR if a site doesn’t work.
I don’t do web development or anything, but I haven’t run into anything that hasn’t worked recently. Librewolf works for almost everything, but if some stupid login page doesn’t like some privacy thing that librewolf is doing, I’ll try one more time with some more loose permissions, then it’s over to normal firefox.
i honestly feel proud that i left chrome years ago, when they removed manifest v2, it pushed me to switch to other browsers based on firefox, currently i use librewolf
A less harmful Chrome derivative:
Can someone ELI5 why they are doing this? I thought all the AI shit was in the cloud?
AI runs in the cloud because it needs a powerful server to run the biggest (i.e. “smartest”) models.
The cloud servers are doing nothing special that another powerful enough computer could do, just a huge amount of data processing.
You can run an ai chat on a steam deck or directly on a phone, if it’s not too demanding (“smarter” models are bigger data files, so won’t fit in the memory of a small device).
Today, for instance, I had a phone call from “Spectrum Internet support” and part-way through the call my phone blared an alarm and said “possible scam” on screen.
The phone itself interpreted the conversation as sus.
https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/15654065?hl=en
For Pixel 9 and later devices: Scam Detection is powered by Gemini Nano on-device
The cloud being a bunch of computational power (servers). A bunch of phones in a network also can be utilized for said computational power. Passing the savings on to you! ;)
I recall this. Pretty much the same idea, but this time it is opt-out(or is it actually?)
They need their features to work offline too probably.
It’s also cheaper, if they can offload a portion to the user’s computer.
Cheaper for them, that is.
What I want to see is throttleable models, kind of like progressive JPEG, where the default model is “nano” and it has a watch function that analyzes if more tokens might be needed for a certain task and scales up as needed — identifying if the resources are too much for the device and offloading to the cloud (with explicit permission) only if (but always if) needed. Over time as the technology improves, larger models move to the endpoint.
And then people could have a basic set of sliders: on-device only, on-cloud only, or somewhere in between, based on the user’s preferences.
That’s basically model routing, and has existed a while. Open AI’s GPT-5 and llama-swap do that, for example. If the task is simple, it uses a smaller, less intensive model, and only uses the slower, larger one of the task is more complex.
Though most tend to operate with models on the same device/service, rather than a model run elsewhere.
In an internet browser?
Yeah, even there. A page loading is one thing, but browser features are somewhat independent of the content. There’s also a good chance this is being used as a hook for other Google products like Drive or Docs (which are basically websites under the hood) to allow offline file management, creation, etc.
It’s a bad choice, but it wouldn’t be the first bad choice Google has made.
Well everything else is in it.
Shit, Chrome supports the use of COM ports. It’s an OS within an OS.
