Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu
theregister.com
theregister.com
What is Microsoft really thinking here? You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account. So those people deliberately chose that -- they didn't avoid the MSA because they were unaware of the benefits, they did it because they were aware of the drawbacks and want to avoid them.
Harassing them seems more likely to make them angry than to make them change their minds.
"This gives us conversions, this gives us money, what are you gonna do, pay 3000$ for a Mac?"
So the magnitude or logic of the gain doesn't factor much unless a policy hits the news with a stickiness of several months.
Some of us use computers for creative work and don't want to pay absurd markups for soldered on SSDs and RAM.
Most of the files I need are never permanently stored on my laptop so I'm pretty glad IT prioritized a good Graphic Card that support my 4k monitor + 1 ext 1080p display of my home config on top of the internal 1080p.
While yeah on my 7 years old personal mac laptop though, the 256Gb now seems limited because of my personal Photo Library. (Which is by the way the standard MacOS/iOS Photo library which is both available offline/synced/backed up using actually useful and configureable OS provided basic tools as opposed to adversial adware)
If I need to hold 2TB of samples and have room for 2TB of video I'm working on and prefer it onboard, I can't get that at any price on a MacBook Air, and a soldered on 2TB is hundreds more than plopping a 2TB in my laptop's spare slot. In fact, I can max it out with 8TB storage and 64GB RAM for the markup to get a 2TB SSD/16GB RAM Air.
You see the problem. I'm not saying everyone needs it, but the broad claim that a $999 Air is perfectly usable has some large and varied edge cases. If a $999 Air were enough for me, then I would have put a new battery in my old laptop and put Linux on it instead of upgrading. Apple's lineup was considered and dismissed for the absurd markups on storage and RAM.
There just...aren't any issues. I don't doubt that all these horror stories I hear are true for the individuals, but I just don't experience it.
A few years ago I was in a similar situation, but decided in the end to not allow myself to be tethered to an operating system, and did away with all the software I couldn't use elsewhere.
I myself use Logic Pro, and have files from Logic and GarageBand from over - (holy crap I'm getting old) - 17 years ago, that still open and play in Logic - (minus the occasional missing plug-in) - and I've used Logic for so long at this point that there is literally almost no barrier between my imagination in terms of composition, engineering and production and the actual software and hardware.
To switch to a solution such as Bitwig not only removes access to the 17+ years of files I've got (who knows how many years of files the original commenter has) - it makes it so I can no longer, e.g. just send a Logic or Ableton file to a fellow producer - which I often do, and is often done; for collaborations - it removes access to the incredible library of software instruments included with Logic that I've slowly became a veritable genius with over more than a decade...
Ultimately, unless you pretty much started with Bitwig, or Ardour, etc - I couldn't ever see a seasoned producer who has settled into their closed-source DAW of choice ever seriously considering this.
It's nice to know I have an escape hatch if I ever start having any of the negative experiences people report with Windows. I just...don't. I've used it since it came on a stack of floppies and it's just been a breeze. Even doing weird destabilizing stuff at worst left it in a state I could fix easily. Usually by just rebooting or unrolling a driver. Things are even better now with Reliability Monitor since it helpfully correlates errors with what caused it most of the time. And those once-useless troubleshooters are actually useful now.
edit: Out of curiosity, I checked. 978 Live sets since I started using it in 2018. It just barely edges out my Reaper set collection from before I moved to Live.
I understand why people don't want to, it took me a good few years between wanting to move onto Linux and actually doing so, but in the end I'm glad for it. If your priorities are different thats fair enough, but I'm never going back.
Logic is a phenomenal piece of software with an incredible value for it's price and feature set, and I've still got an Ableton instance as well, the VSTs or AU's work perfectly in both.
I've honestly never had issues with my Mac/Logic setup so I've been using it for more than 15 years. I will probably continue using some variation of this setup for as long as I continue to produce music.
Hell I'll do literally anything in my power to run Linux, including reverse engineering Windows software. I refuse to accept ads in my OS.
If I were manning the ship at Microsoft for Windows, I'd make the OS slimmer and far more lightweight.
On the right side I have a weather/news widget from some really shady or local newspapers about "celebrities", a lot of clickbait, stock data etc.
And obviously the first time I opened Edge I was greeted with some annoying banner, that I should login etc.
A default installation of an OS should only come with the bare amount of software necessary. If they had asked: "Do you want to have news/recommendations? - Yes/No,never ask again" it would be really okay as there was no forced consent, but installing it by default is simply a bad decision. (From a users' perspective, it probably makes sense from a corporate perspective as otherwise they wouldn't do it)
The best solution I've found is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. It feels like an alternate timeline where Microsoft didn't dive headfirst into manipulative advertising practices. None of those pointless bloatware apps, no blatant advertising loitered across the OS.
I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.
What is the difference between this one and LTSC?
It is a big pain in the neck to get an LTSC or LTSC IoT license.
It is worth it.
No, they're paid handsomely by others who are trying to manipulate the way people think.
I haven't compared resource usage between my previous W10 Pro VM and my current W10 LTSC VM but it seems to start up much faster, and of course the aggravation from using it is way lower.
MS' increasingly poor UI/UX decisions starting with Windows 8/Server 2012 have caused me to relegate Windows to a "legacy support" role in a VM on any new hardware I buy. They really had to work to overcome all of that good will, but they've been relentless.
Ironically, my love of linux on the desktop has also kept me gaming on console. I've strongly considered building a pc and the thought of having to use windows (proton has come a long way, but a lot of games I'd like to play aren't supported) is enough to give me pause. I get the feeling that I'd mainly use WSL except for gaming.
[0](https://github.com/vanities/GPU-Passthrough-Arch-Linux-to-Wi...) [1](https://looking-glass.io/docs/B6/install/)
You can see the same with all those dialogs that only have "Yes, do $THING" and "Remind me later".
At some point, it gets into “creepy pervert” territory.
A full screen dialogue box with no other way of dismissing it but “maybe later”.
“Switch on notifications and we'll find new releases that you might like, so you don't have to.
Sounds good
Maybe later”
No shred of concern for consent.
I get if you’re a scrappy startup growth hacking taking ethical shortcuts. But a public service broadcaster should have better standards.
(edit - to be clear, scummy behaviour is scummy behaviour whoever's doing it)
Nope.
Scrappy startup or established corporation, it doesn't matter. Taking ethical shortcuts makes you a Bad Guy.
Interestingly the image host you link to with that screenshot refuses to remember that I don't want to install their app on my device.
It seems you are the one who does not understand consent.
No. Fucking. Thanks.
This is why there are no more "No" selections. The developers--from marketing to the people who ask ChatGPT to spit out the required Python code and then paste it into a GitHub repository--all have financial motivations for you to say "Yes".
"Sign up for our newsletter?"
"Yes! I want $10 off my first purchase of $200 or more!" "No, I hate saving money."
Funny thing -- in my head, that sounds exactly like "No, I hate manipulative assholes."
Few vote with their wallets anyway, so it's a winning strategy.
Not buying their products.
Sooner or later will be, as their agressive provider shoves more and more crap down their throat without resistance it will only make that provider more and more determined feeding even more crap for fortunes. Not being satisfied and stop. It will continue into the eternity if can. When something is forced on you that you do not want or even harmful for you then not the submitting is the answer but to push back. Be lazy or be fcked! Those are the choices. We seen it before in the history.
MS's deal with computer manufacturers makes them pay more if they want to not install Windows on all of the computers they sell. And when some decided to just sell computers, you know, unbundled, the way that maximizes consumer choice, they were framed as criminally enriching from piracy and lots of governments felt into them with all their rage.
It's not the client's fault that corrupt powerful people use violence to take down their rights.
Sir this is a Wendy's.
Or at least, a thread about start menu ads. Touch grass and gain perspective.
There's nothing forcing you to use the OS that was installed on your PC; these aren't phones where the OS is largely baked-in and can't be easily replaced or reflashed. It's quite trivial to install a different OS on a PC. People have been doing it for decades now.
If Dell/HP is able to sell you a computer for less money by bundling Windows, then obviously MS isn't making a lot of money from OS sales, but rather from other stuff, which is why all the ads are included. People want cheap, so they're getting an OS which is cheap, and paid for partly from ads. If anything, people should be happy: they can get a computer cheaper by just accepting the adware/bloatware-laden MS OS, which they can then delete and replace with Linux.
So far.
> People have been doing it for decades now.
Feels like that may be coming to an end.
It’s a sad fact of reality but that’s how it is. You want to change things? Then you need to organize people to back your cause. But then if you succeed you become one of the powerful. And as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
If they had hundreds of millions of people, or OEMs, sending them $150 USD per license, it would be unlikely for them to put in ads. As in windows 7.
But when it's almost freely given away...
If that's a problem it's one created by Microsoft themselves. They're the one that sets their license fees. Their execs set stock guidance.
Not really. I recently bought two used tower computers, and they came with Windows preinstalled. I have no use for Windows and formatted the hard drives immediately. But nonetheless, Microsoft still got some money from me in this exchange.
I didn't get to decide.
Well, that's what it originally meant. Nowadays it's been twisted to mean reacting to every minor complaint and demand in order to retain existing customers, no matter how unreasonable or costly the effort. Rather than helping increase productivity it's become a weapon to punish subordinate sales staffs.
There are several parties at this party. One is the person who bought a computer with an operating system on it; possibly they even paid for the operating system itself, though more likely they are using the operating system that came on the computer they're using. Another party is the one who bought a license from microsoft; occasionally they're the same party but more typically it is some sort of vendor who did this. And there's also the party that's giving microsoft money to put advertising in front of the "consumer."
So -- it isn't clear to me who in this context is "always right"
Consider this relationship:
Toyota makes a car to the specifications of general motors, who brands the car as a "Pontiac Vibe" and sells the car to a Pontiac dealership. The Pontiac dealership then sells you the car at mostly a wash because you're also financing the purchase and they want to sell "your" loan to a loan bundler and reseller.
So -- everyone gets a cut, and almost nobody's actually got a direct interest in how the schlub who buys a car feels about the car.
Tesla is a rather famous example of a car manufacturer that doesn't have a dealership model. Do you imagine that GM or Toyota is somehow less interested in how their cars are either liked or disliked by their target audiences than Tesla is? That seems pretty hard to imagine.
Microsoft is selling your eyeballs to advertisers: You are the product not the customer.
Vendors are buying windows from Microsoft and installing it onto a computer and selling that computer to you. You are buying a computer not windows. If you need support you talk to the vendor, not microsoft. The vendor is the customer to Microsoft, not you.
And regarding cars -- car companies make lots of crappy cars and sell them to dealerships who have to buy them regardless of if they want them or not. The dealerships are the customers of the car companies. You are a customer of the dealership. 99% of the time if you've got a problem with the car, the manufacturer is going to be of limited use to you.
> Vendors are buying windows from Microsoft and installing it onto a computer and selling that computer to you. You are buying a computer not windows.
Sometimes people are buying Windows[1].
It is possible to be the customer for the OS and the product for the ads at the same time.
---
1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-home/dg7gmgf0kr...
Except - like with the car examples above - eventually customers get pissed off or frustrated enough to switch to a different OS (or car manufacturer).
Thus Apple and Linux distro's picking up a lot of ex-windows users. KDE plays well to this audience. :)
Also, likely microsoft has realized there's zero long term revenue in operating systems -- you'll have been forced to move all your data to their Office 365 environment and will be paying them rent regardless of if you use a windows or a mac or a linux or an oracle desktop.
I think if steam decks gets a good linux desktop, similar to windows in look and feel, that can be run on a desktop, parallel to windows. Its over, very suddenly, very brutal.
And here it is: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/download?ver=steamdec...
A challenger appears. He is unburdened by the need to advertise. Its super effective.
The individual who buys and reads the newspapaper is referred to as the 'Consumer'.
... or, keep improving the product to the point where most people actually find it useful, which is obviously an option for Microsoft, with cash reserves to fund centuries of development. Find out what the downsides are, and fix them, or offer actually compelling benefits.
Heck, I'm very hard-set against it, but I just heard about Apple starting to offer savings accts with 4.5% interest. If MS started paying that much, with trustworthy security and no upper limit, I might sign up (i.e., if you pay me enough, I might also accept your other parts of the offer).
It must be damn valuable for MS to have us have accounts, and if so, they could actually afford to provide better returns than banks, because the return to MS would be [banking profit] + [network profit].
Some product ideas can't be made desirable and useful no matter how much improvement they get.
You'll also always have some who see through it.
You, a windows 11 licensee, are a captive market for microsoft to sell your eyeballs to advertisers.
"I am going to sell clicks to advertisers and the cost of customer acquisition is negative $10 per customer -- they pay us to get advertised to!"
[0]: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Farfetch%27d_(Pok%C3...
What I find interesting/hilarious is how often someone will reply to me saying that my life would be so much easier if I just gave in and used them anyway, or (worse) how I'm being wrong in some way by being selective about who I support with my money.
That borg-like "you will be assimilated" sort of commentary is fascinating, disturbing, and goes far to illustrate how there are ordinary people who absolutely don't want you to exert your economic authority.
I've learned not to underestimate the extents to which people will go to rationalize their cognitive dissonance. In person, my tactic has just been to self-censor more - I guess I'm tired/lazy and don't want to be bothered unnecessarily.
I couldn't agree more. As someone with decades of infosec experience, I stopped trying to get my family members (especially those who don't have any technical background) not to use abusive products/services, especially on their smartphones years ago, because I got sick of having to hear about how wrong I was from folks who wouldn't know good security hygiene if it came up and bit them.
It just wasn't worth the argument.
As in most situations (not just tech/infosec), some lessons can't be learned from others, the mistakes must be experienced personally to actually get it. Those lessons are different for everyone, but are pretty ubiquitous. I've certainly been there myself.
Edit: Corrected prose to actually make sense.
What makes you think I don't? Check my comment history, that should disabuse you of that notion.
>Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.
That's often true. But I've banged my head against that particular wall too many times already. You did catch the part where I said "family" right?
This assumes that consumers have a choice to say no. I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could. I want a phone that doesn't come with Google's software and won't severely limit what I can do with it like apple would. Could most people find and afford one? Some surveillance companies like facebook and Experian don't give you any choice at all. They collect (and leak) your data even if you never sign up for anything with them. If I only have one option for broadband in my city it's unreasonable to expect me to go without functional internet access, even if I hate the one company available and know they'll sell my browsing history.
At a certain point people are basically forced to use companies or are at their mercy even if they'd rather not be.
Honestly, most people could if they really wanted to. People come up with all kinds of reasons why they can't but ultimately it just boils down to not wanting to be inconvenienced.
Your other examples are a lot harder to do something about but that doesn't mean you can't do anything. Do you really need a smartphone at all? Third party data harvesting is bad and should be regulated out of existence but you can limit how much those companies affect you. Broadband does work a bit better in some parts of the world where the last mile cables are considered common infrastructure so go campaign or heck you could start your own ISP or support someone else that does. Can any single person fix all of this on their own? No. But you can resists wherver possible. You can choose better companies where they are available even if that means paying slightly more. You can get involved politically, especially locally. You can say no to services that are not really essential.
You CAN say no even if that has a cost.
Sure, you can have it, nobody is going to tell you that you can't. But be honest to yourself; nobody ever died of hunger for not having one.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to limit their employment options, risk their safety, and increasingly cut themselves off from normal society just to avoid the harms of owning a cell phone, when those harms are impacting everyone at little or no benefit to the public at large, and when the worst offenses could be mitigated through regulations.
autoexec: > I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that many many people have died who wouldn't have if they'd only had a working cell phone on them at the time. A cell phone could very well save a person's life.
Emphases added.
> What is it with so many antiprogress people on HN?
There aren't a great deal of antiprogress people on HN. There are a bunch of people who may disagree about what counts as "progress", though.
It's hard to say something is a "need" if it has existed for only 18 years and still has viable alternatives. That doesn't mean it should automatically be discarded, but it's disingenuous to act like it's actually necessary.
- Does every program need to support offline account? (what about MMO games?)
- Does every program need to support online account? (tongue in cheek, for people who prefer online services)
- What if I don't want to install a particular Windows update because I dislike something about it? Right now I can stay forever on an obsolete version (I assume), but that's not "equally represented" - my computer is broken now.
I think it's very hard (or borderline impossible) to do what you ask for. Even in Open Source, where choice is almost a religion, not all options are equally easy for users.
Regarding the options I'm sure you have seen many cookie prompts. Often the Accept all is inviting, and the Reject all is smaller text, or outright hidden or unavailable. But there are cookie prompts that just have uniform buttons for Accept all, Reject all. Simple.
Now, I realize that no matter how I phrase this, it can (and would) be abused. I'm not clever enough to avoid that. But as I look at history, humans don't play nice just because. Many of the nice things that we have now all stand on regulation, which previous, bad behavior prompted. For a little example, the common charger for phones. If phone companies can be regulated into one charger standard, I'm sure we could also make software options look and behave equal.
MMOs are all about connecting to other other people, hard to do that offline. Reductio ad absurdum is not a valid argument for social issues.
I do however think that all multiplayer games should publicise their server components, at least when the operator shuts them down.
> What if I don't want to install a particular Windows update because I dislike something about it? Right now I can stay forever on an obsolete version (I assume), but that's not "equally represented" - my computer is broken now.
Security updates and bug fixes should not mean forced functionality changes, yes.
Your selections are never final. Your settings can always be reset on the next update. Your choices can be withered down, like a stone by water.
You are the least important part of these monopolies dukeing it out for the crown. You lost your ability to choose years ago.
What happens now, is just formalities and preparing future generations for the new normality.
The capitalism that worked for the common men, was dead the moment the wall dropped.
I've heard comments like "behind every no is a yes" made with a straight face, as if it wasn't insanely horrible and gross.
Are you saying they're in some different era now?
Maybe they'll have a different model for windows-in-EU vs elsewhere?
No idea how it compares to other distros, I never tried any. It is a breath of fresh air compared to Windows 10 so!
Fedora works flawlessly in my experience.
Great community and excellent documentation wiki that'll hold your hand every step of the way.
If you're literate enough to be able to read the wiki, you can manage to install, use every day, and get good at, Arch Linux.
"Most" beginners just lack the patience and energy or motivation and cannot or do not want to follow instructions or read documentation at all.
If you do not have enough dedication, just go with a beginner-friendly distribution or whatever.
I have used Arch as my main system for 6 years now (was Gentoo before) and never had anything of the sort.
How does this even happen?
Update was documented, but I didn’t look. Did my `pacman -syua` as I normally did on a daily, and rebooted to a totally borked system. This is when I was a grad student and really needed that laptop that week.
I still love Arch, but I can’t trust it anymore as a daily driver.
Gentoo would break a lot when I used it, and I also learned a lot by getting it to work when it broke.
But I do not blame Gentoo for it. It was mostly my fault, for using ~x86 ("testing" keyword) instead of x86.
Arch Linux is not a great choice for someone who just wants to use Linux. There's a lot of learning just to install it, while less expert-oriented distributions can have a system up and running in 20 minutes with very little expertise on the part of the user.
When ignoring the short term, what's the advantage, if any, of using a system without mastering it?
I say this as someone who has run Linux on the Desktop for over 20 years. I do not give a crap about knowing the ins and outs of everything on my system. I have zero interest in learning how bluetooth & Wifi & and all of the hundred other subsystems on my computers work. 99% of the time I want to install the OS, and get on with work.
Sometimes that work means getting down and dirty with a subsystem when I want it to do things that isn't on the normal happy path, but the rest of the time, I want Wifi to autoconnect with a saved password and my bluetooth headphones to autoconnect like a normal person and not futz around learning the intricacies of every daemon and config file in the OS.
It's same reason I pay someone else to service my car. I have fully capable of learning to do it, but I don't care. I have better things to do with my time and money, and there's only so many hours in the day.
(Several edits because I misplaced lots of words pre-coffee)
I disagree about cars though. Back when I had a car, I did my own work, because it took less time and would be done properly. Unless you have a chauffeur or something (or take Uber I guess, but that costs more money), it takes a lot of time to have someone else service your car: you have to drive it to the shop, then sit there for a while until they can get to it, then sit there while they do the work, then sit around a while longer until they can finally check you out (while also trying to upsell you a bunch of crap), then drive home. Then you find out later they messed something up, got grease on your carpet, etc. Even if they fix that, that's even more time you have to spend. It was a lot easier for me to just do it myself. Someone will probably say something about "loaners" here, but that's usually for larger jobs, not just oil changes.
I also want to learn Rust, Zig, Nim, D, Go, GLSL, Lobster looks interesting, some game frameworks (Bevy, Monogame, Raylib and Pyglet come to mind), Supercollider, Flutter, LLM's, Ruby on Rails, and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.
Learning linux simply has to wait its line in the queue, and unless I happen to master it naturally using Fedora, with that queue ever growing, I'm not sure its time will ever come. Maybe, but then I want to say that for all the above too.
No and no.
e.g. [https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Infos/News/Which-Linux-op...]
A few years ago, I ran Fedora w/ KDE Plasma. What _seemed_ to be random is the GTK fonts throughout the UI changed to a mono-spaced font regardless of what the control panel showed.
It "resolved itself" within a few weeks.
I don't know if it was an update that caused and subsequently resolved the issue, or something else I did.
This was just one of many hair-pulling examples I ran into across KDE Plasma and Gnome on Fedora.
I have different frustrations with both Windows and macOS.
Windows caught up quite some time ago to macOS. I don't see Linux as superior with font handling. Certainly lacks on the rendering side of things (DPI etc).
> comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser
Wouldn't know. I use Win 11 Pro so those updates don't seem to have come down to it (yet?) and use Win 10 Ent at work where those will never arrive.
How so? I use Windows 10/11 at work and macOS at home, and Mac's font rendering is light-years ahead of Windows IMO. The font rendering subsystem is why macOS is the go-to choice for graphic designers IIRC.
Nah, it was for the color accuracy of _classic_ Mac OS. Windows caught up in the Vista timeframe.
Agreed.
However, I can continue to feed the Microsoft maw, or I can make a different choice. I choose to tell Microsoft to pound sand.
Installing and running docker on windows was a nightmare lol
And snaps are basically an all in one packaging solution, the main evil relevant to you are forced updates and officially speaking there is no way around it last I checked, at best you can set a grace period. Also they put files in weird locations so good luck trying to edit their settings, etc.
How many people have discovered macOS or iOS behaviors with accidental keypresses, swipes or gestures, or long holds on a button or ... bleh.
A similar number to those who have discovered them on Windows, I'd wager.
Own and iPhone and you are reminded quite often of the benefits of an iCloud subscription.
Try setting up an iPhone w/o an apple account for that matter, or using an Android phone (that hasn't been de-googled) without a Google account.
Not to mention, users expect their files to be with them everywhere. IMHO Microsoft should make OneDrive free with some obscene high file limit and default My Documents to it, and they should have done this back in the Windows XP days.
This is still very doable (or, it was when I got a new phone a couple of years ago). It wasn't even hard to avoid using a Google account.
And then you launch any of the included apps. Chrome wants you to sign in, calendar wants you to sign in, photos wants you to sign in, not to mention Google photos pushes notifications ads trying to sell photo albums.
The photo app will also try to sell you a premium subscription to store your photos online.
The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.
Microsoft noticed that people liked having their photos automatically backed up and being able to share them with friends and family. Same goes for documents, being able to push a "share" button on a family finance planning Excel sheet is a lot easier than emailing it around.
There is a lot of crap in the start menu that needs to be removed, and the constant attempts to change the default browser to Edge needs to stop, but "please backup your documents so you don't get all angry at us when your HD dies" is not what I'd call an intrusive ad.
Yes, if you're going to use those apps, you may as well sign in with a Google account. I don't use them, though. There are plenty of better alternatives to all of them.
> The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.
No, it's really not limited. It does take a little more setup to install the apps you want, though.
Sounds like your headphones are issuing a play command during the connection process. My car does this. It’s very annoying.
So you might not want music. You turn down the radio and turn it off. Next ignition you find your paired phone starts up Spotify on command from the car and starts playing.
It means you have to never pair your phone. Worse than annoying. Who wants that? At the very least keep volume at 0% if that's what I set it last ignition.
https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
> noTunes is a macOS application that will prevent iTunes or Apple Music from launching.
Simply launch the noTunes app and iTunes/Music will no longer be able to launch. For example, when bluetooth headphones reconnect.
You can toggle the apps functionality via the menu bar icon with a simple left click.
I don't use a mac anymore, so don't quite remember the specifics, but a quick search brings this up (old, so may not work anymore): https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching-...
The issue being discussed here is that certain bluetooth headsets send the play command when they connect. Hence the open source software to prevent that errant play command from launching a media app, if you happen to own a bluetooth headset that has the issue.
You make it sound like there's code to show you ads when you connect a BT headphone. I can't confirm this despite using it daily.
This doesn't happen with AirPods. Nor does it happen with a Sony headphone. So it's not behavior baked into the OS.
I'm also sure you meant Music.app, not Apple Music. When I open Music.app on a Mac, it shows me the local songs. It's also possible to hide Apple Music in Music.app.
While there should ideally be a toggle in the OS to be able to ignore play commands completely from bluetooth devices (to deal with such defective ones), but I don't see it as outright malicious unlike putting spam in the start menul
Bose's highest end headphones.
> While there should ideally be a toggle in the OS to be able to ignore play commands completely from bluetooth devices (to deal with such defective ones), but I don't see it as outright malicious unlike putting spam in the start menul
Windows does the "proper" thing here and starts playing whatever media was last being played, which while annoying, at least is an attempt to follow the standard. (And Windows really goes the extra mile to remember what was last playing, sometimes resuming sound in a browser tab I haven't looked at in several days!)
There's a standard that blesses automatically running a media application when headphones are connected?
Unless it can be disabled, that behavior is beyond obnoxious.
And sometimes calling up some random contact on Teams because it sticks around in the "media" panel. Good times.
This does not happen to me w/ my bose bt earbuds ... curious.
I had to use a jailbreak tweak to fix this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.itortrix.stopplayin12/
I've owned a good dozen BT headphones, non-Apple and Apple branded, and every iPhone since the 3GS.
I've had this happen zero times.
I did have a VW car that insisted on starting to play music every time BT connected. My current Hyundai doesn't do this.
It's your headphones sending the "play" signal, just like with cars. The car connects to the phone and says "let's play music" -> everyone complains about Apple.
Every OS update forces me to go through pages and pages of privacy invading settings before letting me use my own computer again. Each time the UI for those settings change with fresh new additions of dark patterns. Each of those settings must be carefully disabled or I'll end up with a key logger on my system.
It's not done even after it shows me the desktop either, proceeding to add Edge to the desktop, taskbar, and the default browser settings, all without even asking.
No other OS comes even close in terms of hostility.
It's not a model dialog, but it is a call to action that doesn't go away.
Maybe the desktop doesn't do this _yet_?
Not sure what MS wants to achieve with all of that.
Wow. Even the sentence itself is incredibly indirect and obfuscated. They aren't able to own it and say "We are exploring new ways to promote the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account by adding badges to the Start menu for users logging in with local user accounts." or "We are adding badges to the Start menu to bug users with local user accounts to switch to a Microsoft account."
You get a nice little upsell/upset every time you go into certain Apps. They call them "suggestions".
“No means NO! The user did not activate their account and we should respect that not harass them!”
Would never happen.
At some point in your career you decide you don't have to suck up anymore. Could be day one; could be year 10. But it should happen.
You are not kidding. I bought my parents two computers and set them up from scratch, taking pains to create local user accounts (because they don't have Microsoft accounts). On one of them, I have no idea how, the sole user ID still managed to be a POS "Microsoft account" created with an arbitrary number of characters from my dad's E-mail ID or something.
The endless badgering to log in with a "Microsoft account" that nobody wants or needs is enough to make me not use Windows. It is beyond offensive at this point.
Dear Microsoft: NOBODY NEEDS ANOTHER "ACCOUNT." This offensive hounding, in combination with the fact that Windows is a disgraceful mess from form to function now, makes it an afterthought in my household. I'm a software developer, and I don't have a single installation of Windows running in my home (and office).
Why? Because I don't want sync.
I treat each of my computers as separate, individual, unique machines. Synchronizing the data on them is fucking insane to me because I can't rely on a given machine to be the computer I expect it to be.
And yes, I have separate Google accounts for my phone, tablet, etc., because I do not fucking want sync.
For the sync I want, I tolerate iCloud. For everything else, I roll my own.
I think the sad reality is that more often than not this is how large corporations win, users do cave on average. Only the most passionate, the most engaged ones, the ones posting here for example will refuse to give in...
Windows has become inferior to Linux in every other way. More upgrade headaches, worse resource utilization, worse desktop environment, more crashes, data collection, and now embedded ads.
These technology companies have really demonstrated over the past few decades that they are unable to maintain reliable products over the long term. Every piece of good software (and even hardware in many cases) degrades almost immediately into an inferior product due to laziness and greed.
These companies would rather destroy their flagship products chasing the smallest prospect of extra revenue, than leave what works alone and innovate on something new.
It was the same for me until a month ago. Thanks to the recent developments of WINE and Proton, gaming on Linux has been reliable enough that I could switch entirely to Linux and not look back. Couldn't be happier about it.
Unless you only like to play the most recent AAA releases, I suggest you give it a try.
A quick search tells me that the "anticheat" malware that comes along with this game is not supported to run with Proton.
This is all to say that my main gaming rig runs Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Gnome, heavily tweaked, to look and behave like MacOS and.... Its a dream.
Heck, in fact I like it so much that I prefer it to MacOS in every possible way. The only issue is, still, the lack of Adobe support.
And that is why I still have an Apple machine.
Give it a try. You will be surprised by how well so many games run.
I'm so close to dumping windows and my final concern is gpu and multi monitor support. I only ever run linux on servers or VMs, so no real experience on bare metal.
Dual monitors will work well if they're similar, but I wouldn't mix hi-dpi with low-dpi or different refresh rates. I've heard most of that doesn't work or is poorly supported.
About high refresh rate games: I have gamed on 144hz/120hz (one gaming monitor and another OLED TV) but I prefer to lower it so I can increase quality of graphics.
Multi monitor I can't say I have much experience with them connected at the same time but I have used the OLED+Gaming monitor few times but I can't say I do it often.
What I do very often is to leave the machine running and use RDP/Steam client to connect to it and game/work.
Linux support, and Ubuntu and Gnome for that matter, improved leaps and bounds since last LTS.
That said, there is still a latent unease from my last misadventure with a Linux gaming PC from 2017, which ended in a LOT of restarting into Windows whenever the guys wanted to play a game I couldn't get working
My only speedbump at this point is non-steam games, specifically in my case overwatch2 and diablo4. Can I run the battlenet launcher and it's games on steam os .. can i do it and not be banned by their 'anti cheat' spyware?
EDIT: Yep [1], it looks like that page is for the old SteamOS
Would you mind sharing your setup? I would absolutely love to get something like this going on my Linux boxes.
But having to swap between either physical computers or dual-boot is just asking too much for me. I like my convenience. Having one OS that does whatever I want is good. Linux is getting closer with stuff like WINE, but I play too much obscure, old, heavily modded, or just games that have issues as it is - and don't want to add the OS into the mix. I like not having to worry about my OS being the problem. Just the other day I found out Old School Runescape's new launcher won't have Linux support, and I play that daily. :/
Some of the defaults in Windows suck, and I've had to disable some tracking and other crap I didn't like, but other than that it's been seamless for as long as I've had computers. That's good enough for me, even if it's a hodgepodge mess in terms of design.
This is sort of my ballpark. Generally, I play new games on PS5. When I'm playing on the computer it's either something on RetorArch or an older PC game (case in point, I'm currently playing a modded Heroes Of Might and Magic III on Linux).
For older games, I found that it runs as well as on Windows, sometimes better. When I had a Windows machine, quite often I had to tinker with compatibility mode to get shit to run properly, while on Linux I've been having no issues.
You mentioned OldSchool RuneScape, and for that you can just install the Steam version directly. Seems to be fully supported by Proton with no issues [0]
Funnily enough I found myself in the same situation but with the reverse outcome. The computer I currently use daily dual-boots Fedora and Windows 11, but I don't think I've touched Windows in months, probably not since I first set it up actually.
I do sometimes get issues with very specific games, but my philosophy is that I'd rather miss out on a piece of software than have it tie to me a specific OS, though it sounds like your more into gaming than me so I can see why that'd be more of an issue for you.
Works well without activation, if you don't mind the overlay. But what I did is that I pointed it at a KMS emulator, which is a piece of software that responds to every activation request as a positive. The internet is full of lists of servers like these, but I host it myself - basically just built and compiled this one: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd
Install Heroic Launcher and Steam and you're basically in a better place than most Windows users. Proton rarely struggles with anything.
BUT I don't play AAA online multiplayer shooters, so I'm a bit of a weirdo that way.
Proton GE and Bottles works well for 95% of my ‘Windows’ games. I have no trouble running Steam, Blizzard and EA stuff.
What I'm more concerned / annoyed by is the trend of Windows fighting with you. For example, try to disable the real-time antivirus protection. The UI makes it look like it's off, but then it turns back on by itself. Then you go to group policy to make it explicit that you don't want it. It's off for a bit and then it freaking changes the group policy (resets it back).
First time I noticed it do this I though I got hacked because I couldn't imagine the OS doing something so malware-ish, but it does. What's the point of having a setting at all?
ITYM pro-competitive. It was Microsoft's behaviour that was anti-competitive.
It used to be a clean simple application, now it's adware - literal adware in the professional version of a non-free OS.
Utter fucking madness.
I quit in disgust and had another go at Tumbleweed.
Windows 11 made KDE better.
It's a neglected heap of legacy garbage, maintained just superficially enough to maintain profitability from its inertial marketshare (i.e., how everything runs on it already and how it's a massive coordinate problem to ever change that).
The KDE Dolphin file manager is way better than Explorer, feature-wise, and has been for probably over a decade. Dolphin was made for free by like five Dutch guys. Explorer is from a multi-billion dollar corporation that's buying every service and other company you know. I guess it's not profitable to improve user UX, so you have ridiculous artifacts like how much Explorer still sucks and how long it's sucked. :D (I think it only got a dark theme, like... 5 years ago? Linux file managers have had those for decades.)
If you're lucky enough to experience a change in your priority matrix such that things Windows is bad at (like programming) become more salient to your well-being than things Windows is good at (like playing AAA games), I recommend trying Linux (shout out to Manjaro) out. I'm glad I experienced that change, allowing me to flee to Linux and never look back.
Windows has never been an elegant OS.
And using the old-style “theme” or whatever it was called, you could use that tidy and consistent UI throughout XP in stead of the garish “Fisher-Price” look, via Vista in stead of the annoying and distracting transparency, and well into Windows 7 in stead of whatever the “native look” of that version may have been like (I have no idea, switched to the old look first thing I did).
It only finally went to shit with Windows 8, and unfortunately restoring the Start Menu wasn't enough to make 10 good again.
Reply edit: Guess you could putty into Linux, but not worth the hassle at that point.
mintty can do some things better than many terminals on Linux, even: https://mintty.github.io/mintty-gnuplot.png
How did they work around the console limitations of older Windows?
Also, the transparent effects didn't help anything and look silly in hindsight. They also took out color customization and you couldn't have a dark theme for the next ten years!
Of course the type ahead search in the Start menu was a big improvement, and elevation for security. But as always one step forward, two steps back with modern Windows.
One of my favourite is how it overrules me in renaming a file. Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode. Refreshes or something, ruining what I do along the way. Renaming files is a hit or miss thing, unpridictable. Something pretty essential thing solved pretty well more than half a century ago, managed to be ruined by MS.
In case you're curious what's actually going on here, it happens when one of the status symbols (e.g uploading or synced) on a file in the same folder changes, which causes the view to refresh and the text box to be cleared. That's why it happens much more often when renaming multiple files.
I remember finding a bug report about it years ago, with lots of people complaining about it and no response from MS. Infuriating.
Or how about Modern office programs, where saving something to disk instead of the cloud is now many clicks away.
They have to break your workflow for their bonus.
The auto sort by date and group by most recent in their file explorer that you have to either use a third party app to turn back into sort by name and group by none, or - do that selection for literally every folder on its own.
That's a fucking train wreck. Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea? WHY?
It depends on the context. Sometimes when I'm looking at photos, I really do prefer sorting by date. Similarly, when I'm looking at the Downloads folder, I'm probably most interested in the thing I just downloaded, so having that near the top makes a lot of sense and would gladly prefer that than having it sorted alphabetically.
However, if I'm just looking at a directory of documents, alphabetical wins for sure. If I'm looking at a music collection, I'd probably want to sort by artist name alphabetically, but not necessarily filename.
It amazes me that Windows gets worse with every update. I'd rater use an updated Windows Vista than Win11, yuck!
Not because it is good, but because Microsoft can't keep up with the others when it comes to messing up file management.
iOS: you essentially don't have files, just internal storage for apps
Android: you have files, but they are making it really hard to access them
MacOS: actually not that bad, but they still try hard to hide the filesystem from you
Linux: it is a UNIX system, files are everything and you have free access, but the experience tends to be inconsistent because there is no standard toolkit
With Windows, you have full access to the filesystem (depending on your permissions of course), the UI has become inconsistent lately, but there is almost always a way to get to the common file picker, and the explorer shell is quite nice: you can open file, copy, move, drag and drop, etc... with relative consistency. These operations seem trivial but if you have used some bare bone Linux desktops, you will realize that they are not.
https://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/mac-os-x-fin...
Browsing the full path of a file using columns is extremely useful (at least to me as a developer).
Yes there is. Only it's called “Details” view (if I understood what you meant correctly.)
Press the [Alt] key to make Explorer’s menu appear, then View, then Details. IIRC. HTH!
click on file, in the top menu bar. Instead of a drop down menu, a ribbon apears from the left. The word file is nowhere to be seen.
click on save, two columns appear, filling the entire screen. Left column: Onedrive, Sites, This PC, add a place, browse. Right column: a list of sharepoint locations, that i have visited recently, without any tree structure. I don't want to use any of the cloud solutions (onedrive, sites, any sharepoint), I want to store it locally.
click on This PC. The right column changes: file name, extension, new folder. But it doesn't tell me where I am on this PC, even though it shows me a couple subfolders. But it doesn't show my my current path. So I look back into the left column.
click on Browse. I get the old save menu, with a fully functioning explorer.
Whatever gains you're perceiving from this on your profit chart isn't worth the compounding deterioration of your products experience.
The company could totally lose all windows revenue tomorrow and barely notice it. In a few years it will probably be into the single digits of percent revenue and near total irrelevance. Windows is dead as any meaningful business for the company.
The irony is that this bullshit will drive developers away, because they are some of the least likely to put up with it.
I watched rabid Windows fans that had been developing for many years slowly become disappointed apologists during the decade of 2010. They still use Windows and trust .NET and SQL Server, but they have had their joy slowly beaten out of them by Microsoft’s change of focus.
Balmer yelling “Developers developers developers” on stage in 2000 was a sign of how important developers used to be to the company.
I think Microsoft should get back to their roots and create a Windows Developer Edition for individuals & small businesses: remove all the consumer shit, fix the tasteless look, pre-install developer tools, charge $100 per year for it (with discounts to onboard anyone developing targeting Windows OS). Nice if they could come up with a GUI to compete with Electron (or at least an HTML slimmed down with inefficient features removed?). They need another VB6 too! (Disclaimer: I’ve not really used VB6). Pushing your developers into the arms of Apple Mac’s seems like a poor long-term strategy.
I wish they would admit that, for better or worse, Linux is the desktop to corral around. A proprietary OS for BYO hardware is very simply a Bad Idea, both in terms of developers (because you're at the mercy of the OS developer's documentation only) and in terms of users (because software will always theoretically be more stable on an OS that a developer can crack open).
So, rather than creating a Windows Developer Edition and charging for it, I would love to see them sunset Windows into a legacy/Enterprise-only OS that they charge a hefty fee for. And then I'd love to see them build a Linux distro that deeply interops with their services (i.e. their real money-makers) that they release for free.
This new "Windows" would be the new OS that comes pre-installed on laptops by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. It could look essentially the same -- perhaps their desktop environment could be called Glass (get it?) -- and it could still run win32 apps via Wine (which they would be a massive contributor to in this fantasy world of mine). A headless version could of course be available for servers running Azure. Etc etc etc.
They could charge for support (i.e. the FOSS playbook that's been pushed the 70s). They could of course continue to create proprietary apps and modules that they charge for, I don't care -- for example, a CoreAudio/CoreMIDI competitor that only audio professionals would really need. I'm not naive enough to think that proprietary/non-free software will ever go away, but the OS is simply not the place for that. Platforms of all kinds benefit from being FOSS.
I know that there's a great kernel down there, but Windows is just a mess. Just kill the damn thing. Let it die. I ran Windows 11 since it was released and recently switched back to 10 because 11 is just so unbearably bad, and I still only use Windows at all as little as possible, only when I have to for certain work.
None of this will ever happen of course, but a man can dream.
>> This new "Windows" would be the new OS that comes pre-installed on laptops by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. It could look essentially the same -- perhaps their desktop environment could be called Glass (get it?) -- and it could still run win32 apps via Wine (which they would be a massive contributor to in this fantasy world of mine). A headless version could of course be available for servers running Azure. Etc etc etc.
They created their own derivative of the Chrome browser, so why not create their own derivative of ChromeOS that does what you are saying? :)
I still have a single windows box and it's more or less a game console at this point and since getting a steamdeck I'm not sure it makes a ton of sense to keep it. Steamdeck+ps5 probably gives me all the gaming I want with less hassle.
> Microsoft Office rewrite in React.js nears completion
Seems like even Microsoft is hedging their bets when it comes to Windows.
I don’t, however, love Electron. I’ve built a couple apps myself with it, it’s just that the DOM is too slow.
If someone manages to create an engine that could remove the lag that you get when rendering and manipulating large amounts of HTML that would be fantastic. But right now it’s a subpar experience when compared to native apps.
I decided not to have Windows at home (I'd choose Pro version as preference for several reasons). It is enough suffering with it working hours, I feel relieved almost every day when I can turn it off finally.
They make no money here. Not from license, nor from advert or other whatever they try to push down the throat.
The original Zune UX was a work of art by comparison. The buttons were on the face and recessed, so not only did they not get pressed accidentally, you could control your media right through the outside of your pants without even reaching into your pocket.
Yeah, because it was a gods-be-damned mobile experience in a desktop operating system.
Even though I run Linux on everything else I haven't tried and or messed with it on a tablet. I do not consider my Steam Deck as a tablet - I do use it a lot as one but 99% of the time I enjoy the controller input over touch.
I just can't find a replacement for my Yoga 2 8". The front facing speakers are amazing and every new version of this tablet runs android which is an auto skip for me.
Since the manufacturers all gave up on the 8" Windows tablet form factor, I think the only path forward is larger but skinnier tablets. Same trend as phones, alas. For a while my main computer was a 10" Lenovo, but now I've bitten the bullet and moved to a 13" Surface Pro. It's a great piece of kit performance-wise and reasonably tough (my screen is smashed up from backpacking/camping, still works) but it still feels less "cool" and cyberpunky than those cheap and cheerful tablets with a full OS on them used to be.
People like this don’t get promoted in large established organisations. They have to be there from the beginning. All of the “asshole CEOs” are in this category. Think of Jobs, Gates, Elon, or Bezos. They all built massive corporate empires by not accepting garbage from their underlings, but this kind of brutal criticism is not nice. Eventually they get replaced by nice managers like Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, etc… and quality starts heading downhill.
It’s a corporate cycle that’s been going on for centuries.
I guess they've all been beaten into submission and/or managed out by now..
Unfortunately, doing that only reinforces the impression that that the people who use it like these abhorrent additions.
If I'm paying for the product, I don't expect to be flooded with ads.
I earn my living on a Mac, do my photography hobby on a Mac-- Windows exists (for me) only for games, and Linux is closer to parity every day.
When 8 and 8.1 came out, I upgraded immediately because I thought I'd need to get with the times eventually. I suppose, in retrospect, 8 wasn't that bad. It had questionable design choices, but not anti-consumer design. Even Vista wasn't anti-consumer, it was just very unpolished. Perhaps it's easier to accept mistakes than it is to put up with malicious behaviour.
Maybe they could also put some adverts for products and services that are relevant to my interests into other parts of the operating system. I would personally enjoy the opportunity to see exciting new products in Explorer search results, or while making changes in the Registry Editor, for example. Just my 2c!
I'm using Windows on the said laptop and just in the last couple of months they have started adding more and more "interactive" horseshit that is simply meant to peddle their Edge browser and Bing search engine.
I mean, did you know that Microsoft Teams can hijack your Dev Console and interpret a HEX color code as a phone number? It literally hijacks the console and interrupts you from doing any kind of debugging.
My next purchase is 100% going to be Apple again since I've heard great things about the new chips and keyboard issues seem to be solved also. Microsoft is just doing dumb stuff right now, like really dumb and anti-user. Needless say, they have no shame to do this towards their paying customers, too.
Even if we just look at it from a hedonistic perspective. I play games to be happy and destress. Windows' abusiveness and anticheat software make me unhappy and/or stressed. For pure hedonism I'm better off with Proton and a smaller selection of games.
My experience: Gnome it ships with is too opinionated with no basic configuration options without installing 200 extensions which may or may not work, no option to turn off the touchpad when an external mouse is pugged in, no hibernate option because z-ram or something, no fractional scaling because "pixels aren't fractional" to quote Gnome devs, Wayland broke screen sharing in some apps and extensions while switching to X11 gave me screen tearing and made touchpad gestures stop working, had no HW acceleration in Chrome, SNAP and APT shit the bed needing me to spend hours going through forum posts for fixes and tinker with the command line, OOM daemon can just straight up kill your main productivity app you're currently using, the list goes on. This is not a great UX.
All those issues are productivity show stoppers for me, and in Windows 11 Professional they just work for out of the box without the need to install any extensions or tinker with any config files. Also better battery life.
Hot take: I can ignore/disable ads but I can't ignore an OS where much is broken or is never meant to work.
I thought this was supposed to be the flagship Linux distro but I'm sorry to say that it's more janky than the car Homer Simpson designed.
Still like Linux but via ssh and on a server or embedded system.
But in practice, Chuck Norris compiles his own personal fork of Linux by hand.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110818104209/http://dearandroi...
[2] https://snipe.net/2009/07/16/if-chuck-norris-had-designed-li...
Tbf most of the issues you describe are with Gnome. I've been using linux for 7 years and I touched Gnome once for 5 minutes and hated it.
Never had any of the other issues you mention. Screen tearing in X11 is very easy to avoid for example, literally two lines in a config file, much simpler and faster than all the registry key garbage you have to do on windows.
That doesn't mean they don't exist for other users. SNAPs are garbage. I need hibernate. Hibernate does not work on Ubuntu. I need fractional scaling (125%) for my eyesight. That does not work well on Ubuntu or even on other distros, while it's absolutely flawless on Windows. I need HW decode for watching youtube videos on my laptop. That doesn't exist by default in any Linux distro. Your average user won't want to fiddle with Wayland, VA-API and chrome flags, read on the Arch wiki, just to get something that works out of the box on Windows.
You can't tell me with a straight face that those are not relevant issues for an OS for the average user, even though you personally might not have them because you're a tech professional proficient in Linux who lives in the terminal or something.
>Screen tearing in X11 is very easy to avoid for example, literally two lines in a config file
Yeah, two lines which can brick your display output if you don't know what your doing and just blindly copy-paste stuff off the internet that's out of date or not compatible with your distro or hw/driver configuration. Let's be real here, no average user is gonna want to fiddle with the terminal to not have screen tearing because you know who doesn't have screen tearing out of the box? The Windows 11 installation the came on your Walmart laptop.
>much simpler and faster than all the registry key garbage you have to do on windows
Screen tearing is non existent on Windows and I haven't had to touch registry keys in over 8 year, and I'm sort of a power user. I feel like your view on Windows seems outdated and based on FUD you read online not on long term personal experience.
Right, but it also doesn't mean issues with the OS. They can be issues with the desktop environment.
> I feel like your view on Windows seems outdated and based on FUD you read online not on long term personal experience.
I used windows for a long time, but not in years. So do tell me for example, if I wanted to shrink the task bar to say, 25px height, which is much smaller from what Windows allowed me in the past, how would you do this?
Additionally, many of the guides I'm reading for removing ads and telemetry are much more involved than adding those two lines to the X config. Some of them involve the command prompt, and some are just links to third party proprietary software. I'd rather have screen tearing than telemetry and ads, and if this mythical "average user" feels the opposite way, I'd wager say that's a user failure, not an OS failure.
There could be for me as an average end user I don't care that every Linux Distro is a bazaar engineering project where the OS and DE are not built and seamlessly integrated together by the same company like Windows and MAcOS.
>I used windows for a long time, but not in years.
I have.
>So do tell me for example, if I wanted to shrink the task bar to say, 25px height, which is much smaller from what Windows allowed me in the past, how would you do this?
I mean now you're moving the goalposts and clutching at straws. You cant with a straight face tell me that the faults with Linux/Ubuntu such as lack of browser HW acceleration, lack of fractional scaling, lack of hibernate are comparable to the fact that you can't set the taskbar to an arbitrary size. The former is actual issues, the latter is a lack of configuration options. Those are not the same.
>Additionally, many of the guides I'm reading for removing ads and telemetry are much more involved than adding those two lines to the X config.
Like I said, I can live with telemetry if the OS lets me get work and entertainment done. I can't live with a GNU/Neckbeard OS where basic stuff doesn't work properly and makes my life hell.
>I'd rather have screen tearing than telemetry and ads, and if this mythical "average user" feels the opposite way, I'd wager say that's a user failure, not an OS failure.
I feel the opposite. I need a sane, humane OS first, that actually gets the basics right so I can get work/play done and get on with my life. What good is the lack of telemetry if the screen tears and everything is blurry, or too small, or too big due to lack of fractional scaling? Now you're damaging your eyesight but at least you don't have telemetry.
At least telemetry doesn't damage my eyesight like Linux can, and if you think your eyes are less valuable than telemetry, than I think that's a user failure, not an OS failure.
What you don't care about doesn't change the fact that it's a real distinction. Being used to being locked to one choice because Microsoft says so doesn't mean that someone's ignorance about what an operating system is, and what its graphical interface is, makes them the same thing.
I'm not moving the goalpost, I asked you a question, and you can't seem to give an answer, probably because you know that to perform such a simple task, I'd need to modify registry keys.
My OS lets me work, get entertainment, and does not have telemetry or ads. And my eyesight is not damaged by the god awful imposed visual choices that microsoft makes.
If you're still using it in 2023 you have only yourself to blame. It's not like there aren't better options at your disposal...
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options 'none'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background primary-color '#004000'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background secondary-color '#306030'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background color-shading-type 'vertical'
As long as that's how it goes, it will never be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
But as long as there is a conversation between Windows and Linux that includes using the terminal, you've lost the "normie" segment of the population, which is going to preclude most people from even considering it.
This fact is invariably met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth by Linux bros who think that there's no problem at all with it.
They can suffer Windows or MacOS, it means nothing to me.
It is right there ready to use.
But yeah, mouse scroll speed is an excellent example of the harm GNOME does to GNU/Linux adoption.
The sunken cost fallacy applies IMHO, but too many corporate IT managers just assume Windows systems and Windows AD is the the only way to manage a large set of corporate users.
What do you recommend? I wouldn't try to manage an org of over 1k people without AD, it's just a nightmare.
Edit: When I started writing the response, parent had no replies. I didn't mean to dogpile.
It's actually ^this^ perspective that most fits the "daytime television" analogy. The old fogies have precisely that attitude, and they're primarily who still watch daytime TV.
Now that most of the population aims their eyeballs at something other than TV, TV has become a wasteland of geriatric-targeted ads/political propaganda (old people vote) with a pittance of content mixed in. It's being stripped clean of what flesh remains, in its final death throes until its remaining viewers completely die off.
MS Windows is on the same trajectory, which started with MS failing to get Windows on smartphones. Now that so many grow up using non-Windows mobile devices instead of home PCs, Windows will only become increasingly desperate, dated, and tasteless in its revenue/power-generating schemes.
Hopefully FLOSS can prove more robust against this cycle... It's not like we don't see similar patterns emerging with Mozilla embedding ads/"suggestions" in Firefox tabs, or Canonical putting ads in Ubuntu. But at least there will always be alternatives thanks to the ability to fork and compete when the source is available.
- Work apps that weren't compatible
- Awful screen tearing issues
- Bluetooth dropping out (mouse) and glitching (audio) all the time
- Games didn't work (and you can't screenshare with audio on Linux in Discord)
I'm sure I could have fixed these but after getting to the third page of Google looking how to solve a problem it was just easier to go back to Windows which I've (touch wood) never had stability problems with, it just works. I've never had it automatically update in the middle of the day, install apps that I didn't want by itself or delete any of my files.
It boggles my mind how someone can have the opposite experience.
Were you dual booting Windows and Linux?
Linux assumes and sets the system clock to UTC, while Windows assumes and sets the system clock to local timezone. This quite often leads to one of the two incorrectly determining the time because of an incorrect assumption.
As for my personal experience, Linux is cursed. The thing breaks down if I so much as look at it weird; I don't trust anything mission critical to it anymore.
Windows, besides being practical and versatile and customizable, has been a paragon of reliability for me. Even Windows ME performed admirably for me way back in the day; no, I'm not joking.
For what exactly? For many, many things, windows is your ONLY option. Switching to Linux or Apple would mean kissing away so much software availability.
Windows ads can be disabled pretty easily.
iOS App Store ads cannot be disabled at all and are often for utter trash.
The Microsoft Store is entirely optional, and app installs/updates can be entirely handled via winget/chocolatey (or installs in some other form). The iOS App Store cannot be avoided for installing apps or for manually updating apps, and its ads are more akin to forced ads in the Windows Update settings pane.
Where are you seeing ads in the main UI?
I occasionally see a small ad near the top of "Settings", usually for an Apple service. I don't recall ads on the home page or lock screen, or in the main Apple apps I use (Camera, Photos, Files, Health, Fitness, Watch).
I have never seen any ads anywhere in iOS. I'm utterly confused by this comment?
See https://www.macrumors.com/2022/10/22/apple-announces-more-ap...
1. The App Store is not a "core UI element";
2. Even if it was, it's reasonable to see ads in a _store_. It's somewhere you go specifically in order to buy things and see companies' offerings. It's in the name -- a store. Like others have pointed out, no other portions of the OOB experience have ads.
(The first one doesn't particularly matter, because I'm forced to use the iOS App Store regardless of how you classify it, the second of which I forcefully disagree with - I am opposed to any ads that I cannot opt out of seeing. I don't go to the store to see ads, I go to download exactly the apps I want, and to update apps I already have installed - in both of those situations ads are unavoidable.)
(And other portions of the OOB experience do have ads - as noted in my link, both the News and Stock apps, although I don't use either. And apparently soon the Maps app if it doesn't have ads already.)
Maybe there's some MDM that can be practically used to manage personal/household iOS app installs without the App Store? Happy to take suggestions there.
There are certainly things to complain about on iOS, but in this case you’re just inventing a non-issue.
I've prefaced all my comments on this subject by pointing out that I'm describing my experience. And in my experience, despite my best effort to avoid ads, I'm forced to see more (and lower quality) ads on iOS than I am on Windows.
It would also “make sense” for “sudo apt install firefox” to show me an Google-sponsored ad to instead consider Chrome.
Nobody is saying the App Store ads aren’t annoying, but I am saying that it’s nowhere near the same level of intrusiveness as these Windows changes, because you can easily avoid the App Store, and when you do open it you know what to expect.
I would love it if Apple provided an alternate method to install and update apps on iOS that didn’t involve the App Store.
The relative intrusiveness of start menu ads is, for me, much lower than the App Store ads, as the start menu ads (and its connectivity to the web in general) can easily be toggled off.
Also, if you signed in at some point and later sign out, the notification doesn’t appear. My work machine isn’t connected to an iCloud account.
For many years, I had hoped they'd pull an apple and run linux under the hood with a graphic shell that made it look like Windows. But times have moved on, and it will never again be an important enough product for them to fix in that manner now.
It's really just the shitty UI more than anything else. The ads and paid placement are an embarrassment, and they still have an inconsistent UI going back to Windows 8. I guess you could throw in telemetry too.
I have just as many gripes about MacOS - probably more. I have really disliked that OS for several years now. I feel like I have to conform to it rather than have it work for me.
These days, I'm a happy Linux user. It's not perfect, but it's the best of the big 3 for me.
These things make it mediocre. Sure, it's not the dumpsterfire filled with radioactive cobalt that it was back in 1995 or so when I started using it... but if that's the best it can say, it's sort of like Cleveland's "At least we're not Detroit!" tourism campaign.
> I have just as many gripes about MacOS
Me too, as far as that goes. Not a fanboy. But it's tolerable, and I'm mostly too lazy to get a linux install up to a point where it wouldn't make me want to tear my hair out. If someone could do that for me, I'd definitely like it better than Mac. Just too far down the list of priorities for me I guess.
Apple does this.
But both advertising and direct rent (e.g. pay us $10/month for your OS license) have theoretic limits. $10/month sounds awesome (from both a creator and consumer perspective) for a product that might have otherwise cost hundreds of dollars, until you get into the domain of a million companies doing the exact same thing. $10/month * n subscriptions becomes unviable at some point, and probably a relatively low point for the vast majority of people. It's kind of similar to what happened to Netflix. As more Netflix competitors emerged (and Netflix itself began to struggle), the cost to simply watch what you want skyrocketed, and consequently - so did 'piracy.'
And similarly with advertising. People can only physically watch so many ads. And for every advertised product, the value of advertising for a new company becomes relatively less. In other words if you're the only person advertising, in existence, everybody's going to know about you. If there are a million comparable products being advertised, then even a large advertising budget may yield negligible returns.
It's a tragedy of the commons, or more precisely - of the commoner.
I'm happy with my move to Fedora!
I know it isn’t feasible for non-tech folks, but I haven’t looked back once since I left Windows for good. I haven’t touched a Windows PC since I left my last job last year, and I couldn’t be happier.
Now hopefully they aren't 3rd party JavaScript ads (yet), but I still dont like the security implications of this.
come on now
- Slime Rancher
- Stanley Parable
- Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4
- The Forest
- Counter Strike
- Heavily modded Minecraft
- Arma 3
- Insurgency
- Insurgency: Sandstorm
- Squad
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- The Witcher 3
- Kerbal Space Program
- Papers, Please
- DOOM
- My Summer Car
- Portal 2
- Others I don't remember
The number of games that don't work on Linux is shrinking every day, DXVK and Wine are getting way too good. Take a look at proton DB for reference on compatibility [0]. You can input your Steam profile and it will show you how many of your games are playable and in what state. Currently in the Top 100 played games on Steam 78% of them are rated either Platinum or Gold. In the top 1000 that drops a bit to 75%, with only 3% of them being unplayable.
Oh yeah and all the games I've listed I played on Wayland (except the competitive shooters) :)
I know it's being worked on, but it's a little crazy to think that on most Linux systems you still don't get a permissions popup when your calculator app wants to turn on your microphone. You can't grant access to your contacts or email on an app-by-app basis.
I say most because it has been largely solved on Android, for example.
You could also play a bit with writing SELinux or AppArmor policies, although I grant that most people don't give a fuck and just want to get their computing done.
Opting for a Wayland-compliant display server instead of XOrg will also provide you with similar benefits such as preventing applications from capturing your key-presses without you knowing or recording your screen without your permission.
edit: I have no idea how I forgot about this, but immutable file systems are a thing now and they work pretty well, you can go for something such as Fedora Kinoite [0], Fedora Silverblue [1][2], OpenSUSE MicroOS [3], or VanillaOS [4] where all applications you install will be Flatpaks.
[0]: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/emerging/
[1]: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/
[2]: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/
I used Linux Mint, added KDE, but had issues[0] that were showstoppers. Everyone blamed my Nvidia GPU, but that's what my laptop has and it would be very expensive to replace with a comparable all-AMD gaming laptop.
As a "non-expert" Linux user, deciphering the distribution decoder cards has been difficult. Maybe I want newer kernels for better hardware support, but rolling releases mean dealing with more bugs?
[0] Loss of brightness controls, frequent hangs on booting, many games worked great, but a few were very bad. Long-form - https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm
The EU (or some other authority) should force Windows licenses to be a separate purchase. The machines could still come with Windows preloaded, but then require a license key to unlock.
It would open the doors for competition and force MS to make Windows a compelling product that users would want to pay for.
I agree. And MS agrees too - which is why they do the bundling thing with new computers, deals for schools, bribes for governments, and making their moat as wide as they can.
The EU already does a funny thing with the licenses too. They come with the computer yes, but they are not married like how they are in the US. They are legally required to be able to be separated after purchase. So, the second hand market is full of licenses like this - you can pick up a Win 10 for $7, Office 2019 for $11, and so on.
https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall
one more tip re W11: when you installing fresh copy, go for offline option (no MS account) - you can find online manual on how to enable it. Your Windows will look totally different and work faster if you go with offline version (MS assumes its a computer without network access)
EDIT, think I finally found out the option under Profile Preferences:
"Automatic sign in on Microsoft Edge
If you're not signed in currently on Microsoft Edge, we'll automatically sign you in by using your sign in info from other Microsoft sites like Outlook."
https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/
Stardock usually makes a replacement start menu too.
I obtained copies of Windows through some University thing with Windows Vista and Windows 7 and then those keys have somehow just worked up until Windows 10 and then they gave me Windows 11 upgrade for free. In case you were wondering how I have not ever paid for Windows.
Replacing the Windows shell, especially in Windows 10/11, with their constant updates, isn't something I'd recommend for non-experts, but I don't even do it myself anymore because it seems like none of the replacements are ever consistently supported in the long term.
I've used Classic/Open Shell since Windows 7.
It seems to just work for me. I've had no problems.
I have a little nuc-style Windows 11 box for my TV, and I'd say we're in the typical "wait to update" period with Windows 11.
Microsoft always introduces unwanted changes (Vista bling and lag, the entire Windows 8 desktop, the dumbed-down Windows 11 start menu), and then reworks the system to produce a compromise that institutions, businesses and conservative users can tolerate. Just the other day, I noticed the return of task manager access from the taskbar.
By the time I adopt Windows 11 for work, I suspect that the worst design changes should be fixed and the third-party add-ons should work perfectly. That's been my experience in the past.
Amusingly, I have a product which runs on Windows. I develop it on Linux, cross-compile in Rust, and test and package using Wine. Works fine, with no need to run Windows myself.
Now if I can get the cross-compile to work for MacOS...
Where MS has changed the Windows UI look and flow a million times since I started using it with Windows 3.0 or so, I still recognize extremely similar or exactly the same UI on my MacBook as on a MacBook I owned in 2013, and on the Macs I used as a kid in like 1990! It's absolutely awesome that the UI is improved, but the same-ish.
Meanwhile in the App Store guidelines:
> 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.
Not a great look, and it tells you that Apple is willing to compromise on their principles to make a buck. Here’s hoping your privacy isn’t worth selling out too.
Windows is cramming their tabloid-news-by-MSN into the operating system in multiple places and making it a lot harder to get rid of, so for now macOS is still the better of the two. But I‘m not happy with either of them.
I think they're holding a good balance here. For example, I do enjoy an alert from the burger slinger down the road when they put up a sale - but I had the choice between opting in or not.
Meanwhile, on Android you don't have the choice, all you can do is mute notifications from that app in the future (and lose out on important notifications) or remove it entirely.
One thing I wish Apple would copy from Android is having apps categorize their different types of notifications and let you turn them on and off individually. And then enforce that in the App Store review. I don’t need Uber to send me Uber Eats offers, but I don’t want to block useful notifications by turning all of them off.
They recently added a “time sensitive” categorization that you can let break through Focus Mode rules, but IMO that’s not granular enough.
https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/notifications...
I will also note that whenever an app would't provide the option to turn off promotions on my android i'd just make buzzkill filter to only allow notifications with the word "order" meanwhile any functionality like that wouldn't be possible on ios, i cant even change the notification noise for most apps!
I actually enjoy Microsofts other products like VS Code, Xbox, Etc. But Windows has never been my favorite OS, and now I actually dislike using it.
I really feel sorry for the people that are not techies that then they just get hit by the next furious wave of ads when they proceed to browse the web, without installing any browsing counter-measures.
When I go back in time in my mind and remember the old days where I played on Windows 95/98/XP platforms, those were damn clean OSes by today standards. I can't understand how they have gone this way and ruined what is supposed to be their flagship product.
They were fined for this exact practice a long time ago. To simply do it again in this fearless way is really telling. They're confident that they can get away with it.
Well it's because they can, and people are not going to do anything about it. Most people don't know about or cant reinstall the OS. So the publics real decision is between an expensive MacBook, or well Windows. To make things worse most people are so used to ads, tracking and other bullshit, this is just par for the course... white noise.
If you really want a change, your going to have to get the major OEMs to start distributing Linux on mass, but you bet that if that ever took off there would be trackers on their distros in a heartbeat.
What _is_ bloat to people? Is it because it has Candy Crush pre-installed? The Settings menu? The install is bigger than Windows 3.11 so it's bloated?
Make me more productive & I'll gladly go find how I can upgrade my Microsoft services when I need to, no ads needed that add negativity to my opinion of Microsoft.
Same with their Bing division, which was mentioned yesterday somewhat on the terrible decision of forcing people to view awful clickbait, low quality news articles. How about find out what someone is interested in first, then show information that is top quality only. Why a company like Microsoft is wanting to hang out in the gutters with low quality journalism stories is beyond me... Is the ad revenue worth tarnishing your brand & pushing people away?
Create value for me & I'll give you way more of my data than I should.
Microsoft is slowly rolling out ads in the Windows 11 start menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35545566 - April 2023 (201 comments)
Windows 11 KB5023778 update adds promotions to the Start menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35346137 - March 2023 (251 comments)
Microsoft is turning Windows 11's Start Menu into an ad delivery system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33694202 - Nov 2022 (143 comments)
Microsoft tests 'upsells' of its products in Windows 11 sign-out menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33532448 - Nov 2022 (32 comments)
Microsoft is showing ads in the Windows 11 sign-out menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33513622 - Nov 2022 (15 comments)
Microsoft mulling cheap PCs supported by ads, subscriptions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497625 - Nov 2022 (8 comments)
OneDrive Ad in Windows 11 Logout Menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497269 - Nov 2022 (26 comments)
Microsoft accidentally reveals that it is testing ads in Windows Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30711277 - March 2022 (168 comments)
Microsoft says Win11 Explorer ads were ‘not intended to be published externally’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30701289 - March 2022 (23 comments)
Latest build of Windows 11 has ads inside File Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30689526 - March 2022 (12 comments)
Microsoft is testing ads in the Windows 11 File Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30675908 - March 2022 (504 comments)
Is there any software in linux that can insert my signature in a PDF, like adobes "fill & sign"?
You can fill and sign, but also redact (actually removes vectors under the redaction blob), combine multiple PDFs and rearrange pages. Does everything I would ever want to do with a PDF and it’s hidden inside what most people think is just the image viewer.
But I think M/S only cares about Corporate Accounts, which is where the big bucks is. If I remember correctly, Corporate Windows builds do not have any of this crazyness.
So, I guess this is just to squeeze as much as the can from private people and to get private information they can sell.
Due to this, I have recommended my relatives on old Windows machines to move to MACs. I would suggest Linux or a BSD, but I do not need the headache of training/supporting them :)
It’s one individual (or two? Or a small team, but really not that big of a group) who is rotten to the core and is so career-obsessed they don’t understand that they are making lives of millions of people worse with this, so that they can just show their PowerPoint to higher up.
It is a personal responsibility of a PM / engineer (unlikely) to not come up with this cancer.
Versus building new tools or experiences, etc. etc.
This is on some specific people's conscience, nobody made them do it in a way an angry tiger makes people try to run away. It was some one or two people's choice.
Were there other people in their place, we would have never had this problem.
[1]: I develop one of the two main Windows twms (https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi)
Gaming? Install Heroid Launcher and Steam - you'll have a better experience than on Windows.
Wine is crazy good these days as well for all the other corpo crapware we all rely on.
Enjoy not having to reboot daily for stupid updates.
The more people switching means MS will have to get their act together and Linux will get better support from big companies. Win win.
Why am I paying $100+ for Windows Pro if they’re still gonna plop ads onto my desktop by default?
Unpopular Opinion: I still prefer Windows to both macOS and Linux by an extremely wide margin. For both normal use and development.
I’m extremely annoyed at all of the ad crap. And I probably wouldn’t recommend anything other than an iPad to my mother. But for devs Win11 is honestly somewhere in-between “just fine” and “ pretty good”.
The play/pause keys should work with any media player, (and might, or might not) but they’re in no way advertising random crap on your face when you’re trying to work.
Don't need to buy a Pi either, it can run on a laptop or desktop just fine.
It's great for catching anything that can't be by an in-browser adblocker, like in the OS or on other devices.
NextDNS is very easy to set up. Pihole always feels like it'll be yet another thing to manage.
I have occasionally disabled it, thinking it may have been the cause of some internet trouble, but so far that's never been true.
I hear people say this about PiHole all the time but I have a hard time believing it. I run into a couple sites a week that don't work right with Firefox standard privacy settings and UBlock Origin. I certainly don't want to add another troubleshooting step when web sites break.
I pay for and use both Eero Secure (intercepts DNS requests sent to non-NextDNS servers) and NextDNS (set on my clients so it's also effective when away from home).
OneDrive and Office is the subscription for Windows. Having worked in a repair shop I can tell you that the layperson thinks the OS is synonymous with "their data" and "their applications." If you said to them verbatim that you're "reinstalling their OS", and you give them back a computer with all their "Recently Used" menus empty, missing programs, all default settings, browser favorites are gone, their Outlook PST is missing, and the Office Key you ripped off the machine was an OEM license that won't activate through normal channels: that individual is going to be very cross with you.
Turns out it's really hard to sell retail customers "nothing for something", and to the average person an empty Windows install is useless. Gate their productivity suite (input) and storage (output) behind a subscription, though, and suddenly you have a customer hooked for life.
I've also seen this playout with Apple Users: their iCloud subscription lapses, or their storage on the free tier runs out, and it stops syncing photos and videos. Eventually the phone takes a dive in the ocean, or a toilet, or just dies of old age. The user goes to the Apple store and is emotionally devastated when they sign in to iCloud on their new phone only to find it is missing the last year of their life. Users aren't going to swear off Apple products, the backup and usability story on Android is a nightmare by comparison, they're just going to let the Genius Bar upsell them into the $2.99 protection racket.
---
It's also worth noting that Windows Enterprise is already a subscription. To use Enterprise (GA servicing channel) you need to have an Windows E3/E5 license, or active Software Assurance. The problem is these subscriptions only work because Microsoft has the power to audit VL customers, and those customers tend to have the pockets to pay up remediation or legal fees. _The only reason Windows Home/Pro are not subscriptions is because Microsoft never figured out the economics of auditing retail consumers._
If consumers are leasing their storage and programs from you, though, it turns out you don't need to audit them.
I'm curious what percentage of Windows users are only using it for gaming? Are there any stats on that?
It was probably bound to happen, because the question kept popping up all innocent looking: "Hey, want to install a security update... and while you're at it, Windows 11?"
Well, back to me being fed up. I've installed Linux (Ubuntu, since it turns out DisplayLink drivers suck on anything else), and I'm quite happy with it. It works and it doesn't brother me too much. I don't see any reason to install Windows again.
From what I've heard, it's not a cash cow anymore.
Anyone have any insight?
But let's say you use Microsoft Windows, but don't want a Microsoft account. You're going to leave Windows over this? And go where?
Wait, is 2023 the fabled Year of Linux on the Desktop, at long last?
I haven't used Windows in many years, and I'm not trying to defend Microsoft here. Still, the framing of this piece seems silly. Very rarely is any single thing reason enough for the average person to completely switch operating systems. The cost of switching is too high.
Most people don't seem to be using the best possible desktop experience. Their desktop is decided by an employer, or whatever is pre-installed, or who knows what. But an ad in the start menu doesn't seem like it's likely to budge that number much.
0. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
[citation needed]
And is also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35325280
Have you tried Debian?