Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the Settings app.
This will likely arrive in the July update for Windows 11, or at least it’s almost certain to do so. It was present in the latest preview update Microsoft just released for the OS (and quickly paused due to a bug, but that’s another story). It’s also worth noting that the ad has been present in earlier test versions of Windows 11.
I’ve never actually seen an ad in Windows… Like, literally ever. The worst I’ve seen is Windows trying to trick me into making edge my default browser.
If I believed all the articles on Lemmy, every part of the OS now has embedded ads, and the OS itself is recording everything I ever do against my will and without my knowledge.
I see ads pretty much everyday in Windows. They’re not as attention grabbing as traditional ads and I think this is part of why some people don’t see them.
Yea same here. In all my years using a computer, I’ve never seen such a thing aside from “preinstalled” apps. Is this a regional thing?
Windows is selling data from what you do and making money and you just aren’t noticing the ads are tailored to you.
It’s the type of thing that seems harmless, unless you are a woman searching for an abortion provider and Microsoft sells that, and then an ultra-right wing religious majority comes to power and decides to retroactively put to death all women who have had an abortion and use that data to put you to death.
This surveilance mechanism is mostly harmless… until one day it’s not.
I’ve personally seen ads in the start menu. It was my last straw, convincing me to move to Linux full time.
0 ads too, windows 11 last update. Lemmy circlejerk is pretty much this. These threads are either fake news or ragebait, and the comments are just uninformed/untested opinions.
That without saying that win11 ltsc exists now. At least is something to test.
Win 8 was aggregious. 10 is more subtle (little notifications now and then)
Enterprise is better
The second part is probably true, but ya, also don’t encounter too many ads except for like some default game programs or something installed with the OS that are easy to remove from the Start menu and then you never see them again.
when was the last time you installed windows? Also, what version? If you’ve only ever had it set up for you, then you may have only used windows that had already been cleaned of all the bullshit. This includes pc s provided by your work.
For win10, the install iso provided by microsoft puts ads for games in the windows store in the default start menu. I have installed many win10 pc s over the years, and candy crush (among others) is always there.
Should I point out the irony of this complaint being posted on a site with ads every other sentence and doesn’t even show what the windows ads looks like?
It’s a valid complaint and all I just laughed as I scrolled past all the blank “ad here” blocks to read the article.
Lemmy: why aren’t people using Linux? It’s so easy
Also Lemmy: webp huh?
What’s webp and why should I care?
WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency. Google announced the WebP format in September 2010, and released the first stable version of its supporting library in April 2018.
The format has spotty support across applications and some vulnerabilities were discovered that required patch efforts last year. It’s not clear why you should do anything.
I don’t want to help Google control yet another aspect of the internet.
What’s there to control? It’s a completely open format. No royalties, no control, nothing.
Google’s image format
It’s smaller than png which a company that shows images really likes because it’s cheaper so to force adoption they convert a bunch of images to .webp on google images
The problem is that 1. It hadn’t been adapted anywhere so people would have to convert it back to png to use 2. It is worse in every aspect to jxl files so Google has had to block the adaptation of jxl on the web as much as they can (jxl retains more quality and is half the size of webp)
Currently only webkit browsers support jxl out of the box. Firefox has had it in their nightly builds for years now but have never moved it into standard
If Google wants to push webp because it is smaller than previous formats, and jxl is even smaller than that, why would Google have an interst in blocking jxl?
Not saying Google did not or does not block jxl, just your chain of logic as to why they do that does not make sense to me.
Because it’s not theirs
It doesn’t make sense which is why people believe Google has ulterior motives. I haven’t seen any real reason not to use jxl as the new format; but I also haven’t looked that far into it. ¯\(ツ)/¯
JXL is new (like 2 years old), webp is older (> 10 years). Adding support for a thing takes time and resources, which is lower priority when there are good-enough formats already supported.
At least that’s my perspective as someone who interacts with product owners (i.e. the type of people deciding what features get prioritized).
Foss users should start making jxl only websites just to fuck chrome users and google.
Why should I help Google saturate the internet with yet some else they control?
If you order the shit soup, don’t act surprised if it tastes bad.
These people are CHOOSING to use Windows. They need to just STFU and use Linux or enjoy the shit soup they keep ordering.
It is bullshit, and people will complain while continuing to use Windows so why should Microsoft care?
Lemmy folk forgetting that not every person cares enough to switch OSes.
If you ever work tech support even at a basic level, you’ll see. It’s not even boomers or genZ. I helped a grown ass human who was my age at 40yo how to install a Firefox extension.
Can y’all IT people please stop with the condescending “you don’t know how stupid people are about computers”, it seems like there is always one of you showing up in a comment thread to tell us that we can’t have the future literally all of us want including you all as well… because WE are too stupid and lazy about computers.
I helped a grown ass human who was my age at 40yo how to install a Firefox extension.
Were you as condescending to them in person as you are being in referencing them right now? Why is not knowing how to install a Firefox extension some indicator of foreclosure on the possibility of that person becoming computer literate along whatever metrics you define? There are plenty of smart people out there who can learn how to use a computer for very complex tasks who have just simply never learned about extensions for Firefox. This is a very feasible and normal reality.
Do you know how to change the oil on your car yourself? Do simple plumbing jobs? Could you run a classroom of middle schoolers and keep them all focused while keeping your eye on the shy sad kid in the back who tends to disappear if you don’t engage them? What about basic healthcare changes or cooking? What about outdoor work or basic small engine maintenance? Do you even know shit about the most basic species of trees in your backyard? Do you know the species of songbirds you often hear outside your window? Do you even pay attention to that? Do you know how to drive a dirt bike extremely fast on a rough dirt road? Do you know how to adjust for the violent explosive power of turbo lag in a car with a turbocharger so that torque oversteer doesn’t launch you off the road? Do you know how to sew and repair basic garments? To weave? Can you even fish? Like could you literally even just catch a fish to save your life right now if I handed you a fishing rod unassembled with no instructions?
My point is, don’t go looking for confirmation of how stupid or lazy people are or how limited their capacity is to evolve and grow by casting the shapes of their ignorance onto the floor and trying to read some magic language from that.
Maybe they don’t know because they are hopelesssly stupid, but maybe not? If they are intelligent and they don’t know computers then those are the perfect people to teach linux. Then it is their first language instead of windows, many linux distro are perfectly fine for this at this point.
See here is the bottom line, legions of IT people show up online always arguing they think they know that the average person is too dumb, lazy and uninterested in computers for Linux adoption to seriously take off in the personal computer market and challenge Microsoft, but y’all don’t know shit about humans. You are experts in computers who think that makes you experts in human potential.
Go take some theater classes (or get an degree in education) and get educated before you start drawing conclusions about people when you really haven’t spent time closely studying how people engage with their potential and what situations facilitate that in basic human interaction and framing of conversations (both literal and abstract).
I’m sorry if I snapped at you but I think it is existentially important to recognize here that we don’t know what people are capable of, you can’t know the essential capacity of people to change, don’t try to predict it. Focus on creating the material opportunity for change and the rest may follow depending on what people desire, no matter to us, we desire to create that positive opportunity for change because it is the right thing to do, not because we like the future growth charts of the things we believe are important and vital.
I think you’re missing the point here. It’s more that people couldn’t even be bothered to search up how to do something (that takes seconds) that they want to do first, and instead just rely on someone they think is an expert without putting in any effort at all.
Your examples don’t really make sense either as a lot of these are paid professions for larger tasks that most people simply don’t want to do. There’s a huge difference in searching online “how to install a Firefox extension” vs “how to do an weave”, etc.
End of the day, the average person doesn’t care and if they truly did they’d have the initiative to have just researched it and done it on their own.
Bringing it back to the whole thing about Linux, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have to help debug a user’s Linux installation when they already need help with installing a browser add on? I work with tech and Linux on a daily basis and I already find it frustrating doing it for myself (fuck Nvidia drivers). No way am I gonna recommend it to someone else.
Bringing it back to the whole thing about Linux, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have to help debug a user’s Linux installation when they already need help with installing a browser add on? I work with tech and Linux on a daily basis and I already find it frustrating doing it for myself (fuck Nvidia drivers). No way am I gonna recommend it to someone else.
Are you honestly going to still claim at this late date of 2024 that a decent popular linux distro is actually going to be MORE of a headache than Windows?
…?
Have you tried Windows recently?
Exactly. Look at Reddit/Lemmy where people ask questions instead of searching, when they could’ve gotten their answer faster by searching using their question as a query instead of posting it (i.e. LMGTFY). People are lazy in very weird ways, some are happier to call tech support than read an article, even if that call takes more than 2x as long as the search.
Excellent rant, I hate that doomer mindset. Old people used DOS, kids figure out vpns to get on gambling sites. People aren’t stupid they just haven’t had a reason to learn, or didn’t have someone to make them care.
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I think the examples are a bit too far fetched:
I’d wager most people use a computer/phone on a daily basis, which is why having a basic understanding of it seems like knowledge we should all have.
Inversely, most people don’t need even have a turbo in their car and many don’t even have a car, so any knowledge relating to that is probably useless for them.
That being said, even if someone is less knowledgeable in a field, respect should always be the baseline, as you illustrate, they’re probably skilled in something else!
I’m saying that as an IT person that’s aware that I’m making money mostly because people don’t bother to learn all this, so in the end I don’t mind that much.
Awesome post. As a former IT person who has worn many other hats over the years, I couldn’t agree with you more.
Lemmy folk forgetting that not every person cares enough to switch OSes.
Right, so if they don’t care they’re not going to complain very much about it. If they are going to complain what are they going to do about it? If it’s “just complain and nothing else” then Microsoft doesn’t care.
So are you volunteering to install Linux on everyone’s machines when they get a new computer? And answer their tech support questions when they inevitably need that one program?
I’m volunteering to install Linux on my machine instead of just bitching about Microsoft while continuing to use Windows.
I don’t see how pointing out the reality of “if you’re not going to stop using Windows then Microsoft doesn’t care what you think” somehow makes me responsible for every computer in the world.
The thing is that they still hold an iron grip on most creative users as all their software doesn’t yet work on Linux. So we are left with little to no choice between enduring windows and Linux fanatics screaming “Just find an alternative software and relearn everything you’ve spent years learning and perfecting in your preferred one”
Do those programs not work on WINE?
It used to be somewhat better: Corel Linux and Creative apps existed…
I wholeheartedly believe that all forma of unsolicited or public advertising should be completely banned. Nothing good comes from it, it is only a nuisance to everyone.
But have you thought about a legal person’s right to fuck your eyes and brains?!
Also, what about their freedom of speech… Shit lord
Ads are probably closer to brainwashing than they are to legitimate free speech. Things that are legal can also be problems.
Because they are not “ads”
They use the same propaganda tactics that governments in 20th century perfected
Gets people going
Imagine If I worked for Kellogs and I hired a guy to follow you and yell about how good corn flakes are every time you look at your phone, every time your TV shows go on a break, and every time you pass a billboard in your car, or a marquee on a building. Even if we assume that person does nothing else illegal somehow, that could easily still be harassment, which is definitely not free speech.
Tell that to the courts that’s who decided this degeneracy is acceptable.
Don’t get me started on them spying
I’ve long know I wouldn’t make a good lawyer because you can’t say things like “Listen here you little shit” even when you’re right.
I’ve been called a sovereign citizen as an insult, though I’m just a voluntarist (not sure if ancap or generic anarchist), and that sometimes was past the point of me saying
things like “Listen here you little shit”
but I’ll admit “the society” wasn’t persuaded. Though sometimes it felt that possibly more than half of the people present agreed, but were confident that the majority doesn’t.
It’s actually a very good propaganda strategy - even if most people disagree with you (as the bad guy), what’s important is that they believe that others agree and thus keep their heads down.
Sure way to get some time in the hole haha
When corruption is the process, no amount of good argument will win tho.
Shit lord
if i cant grafitti the walls why can corporations?
Because they own that wall. The owner of a wall (or poster space for that matter) can do whatever.
sounds like time for even more grafitti to cover their ads
And what do we get to own? Nothing… My OS… My… bandwidth… My RAM? Nope.
Oh I own my computer, and I don’t get ads as a result. It’s not impossible. A Linux DE does not have ads and your browser can block them with various methods.
Yup. If you use Windows, you need to accept what Microsoft does, because they control the OS. If you use Linux, you only need to accept what the software you install does, and there are a lot of options to select from.
Feel free to complain when Microsoft does something stupid, but don’t expect Microsoft to do anything about it. If you want control, use something that preserves that control.
Especially in a paid service, like why do I pay for these services if you’re still going to advertise, track, or datamine? I know the answer is greed, why profit off of one option when you can profit off of all of them, but I, the consumer, am fed up with the customer abuse.
Shit, I’m a web developer and I’m fed up with all the ads, tracking and stalking that goes on. It’s so ingrained like “why not use Google for analytics?” or “just host it on Amazon.” 90% of the services we use at work I refuse to use at home (and go as far as outright blocking them).
Exactly.
Fortunately, my company doesn’t put ads in our product because it’s essentially a B2B product and customers pay a lot to use it, and our product being unusable could cost individual customers potentially millions if it blocks their day-to-day activities (we deal with regulations). We do use spyware though (e.g. fullstory), which makes sense given that lens, since being able to solve problems before they report them has a lot of value for our customers. If we did anything unethical, I would push back and potentially quit, since I’m not interested at all in manipulating customers (ads, dark patterns, etc).
I don’t think the tools we use to catch issues in the field make ethical sense in other contexts though. So yeah, I block a lot of the stuff we use in our product, and we don’t do anything to actively counter blocking in our app either (if you block it, you don’t get the pre-emptive bug-fixing).
They should, but that’s never going to happen unless political lobbying is made very illegal (like life ruining and business bankrupting illegal, not slap on the wrist, cost of business illegal)
Life sentence. Solved.
We should be able to charge them for ad time. You want to paint an advertisement on my car you have to pay me. Why should it be any different when you want to put ads on my work computer screen when I’m working with clients?
I get what you’re saying but that still gives them unsolicited permission to post ads in the first place.
I want an operating system, not an ad system that also happens to be an operating system
And it’s not like w11 is free, the price of a PC with Windows installed comes with its’ license’s costs. It’s not told to the consumer so they won’t even know they are using a product they paid for, for them it’s what a clean basic PC looks like. And that’s what prevents many to care about it the same way they can be frustrated by a paid streaming plan with ads. To take is as a given, and shifting the Overtone’s window of fucked up services even further.
I don’t like solving things with regulation, because that’s always a victory in one battle making the enemy stronger for all the following ones.
But doing this EU-style, like browser choice, only with operating systems, can be a solution.
People love cheap and easy things. That’s how social media won over normal web. Seeing the choice between “install Fedora for freeeeeee” and “install Windows for 20$” significant amount will choose the former.
At the very least, the price of OEM OS should be disclosed before one buys it.
Doesn’t quite cut it.
Now if there’s no other option or if the variant with Linux is labeled as “other” or “no OS”, and listed separately, normies still choose Windows 99% of cases. Sometimes they pirate it.
They should have a clear choice in the store from a few OSes with details. Summaries with screenshots will do.
But how will the wealth addled convince us pleblians to spend money on worthless garbage? Or convince us that we’re ugly and not good enough so we buy their products? Oh the humanity!
In all seriousness, advertising has had way too much of an influence on our culture and it needs to be properly regulated. I’m sick of being negged by beauty product ads.
You probably agreed to all of this in the billion page TOS so it’s no unsolicited.
A regulatory change would obviously need to prevent them from hiding that kind in intentionally too long legalese TOS. It has to be a clear single acknowledge, not obfuscated or bundled with functionality.
SoMeBoDy HaS tO tHiNk Of ThE sHaReHoLdErS!!!
Tbh me switching to Debian (using the KDE desktop experience) is feeling better and better, my PC runs over 3x faster, I have way more control over my own device, and everything works better than ever!
They haven’t gone overboard with THIS one, because they already went way the fuck overboard years ago and never got back on board
Man I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and make my next machine a linux one
Imma make the jump once they force me to 11. I’ve been saying this for years but they finally got something cooking i truly can’t abide. That screenshot of what you’re up to every ten seconds is fucking terrifying to me and that’s not even considering govt snooping. I ain’t about to leave a record of my porn consumption for my wife to see lol! Linux is finally juuuust about idiot proof and game friendly enough for me. Can’t wait to be one of those smug guys that says ‘just use linux lol’
Microsoft has made the choice very easy for me. I still have an i7-7700k that works just fine. But that’s “too old”, so when Windows 10 hits end of life, I’ll be switching over to Linux.
Why wait?
Not important enough to me at this point to spend the time changing over. Windows 10 does what I need it to and still gets security updates. When one of those two factors changed, then it will be worth my time to change over.
I recommend Linux Mint. It’s very beginner friendly and you don’t need to use the console too much if that kind of thing bothers you. The GUI even looks very similar to a Windows 10 environment.
I second Linux Mint
I installed it on my Grandma’s PCs not too long ago and even she enjoys it. She’s almost 80.
We are having issues with her printer but it’s one that has known issues with Linux in general (it’s a fancy Epson laser printer, scanner, fax machine combo with bad Windows support) but I’m hoping to rectify that soon.
I would say the GUI reminds me more of Windows 7 than 10 which I really dig
Edit: spleling
I third Mint. Very easy setup (just check your system is compatible before you try).
Also it’s ‘laser’ (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).
I didn’t know laser was an acronym! Cool!
I know right. I wonder if there are any other words that are unexpectedly acronyms.
Funnily enough my phone corrected it to Lazer when I typed laser the first time
Just another fun quirk of the Google keyboard on Android lately, autocorrecting words to the incorrect spelling
No worries. Thought it was a typo. Bizarre correction for it to make.
Oh yeah it was a typo but it was autocorrected weird, the keyboard on my phone has definitely been making some odd choices for corrections lately.
At least it’s better than search results via Google, those have gone to shit lately
I didn’t wait. I did it earlier this year and haven’t booted from my Windows 10 drive since then. My entry drug was Linux Mint. But I quickly switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after because I wanted something that ran the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment (I prefer how it looks and handles multiple displays). It isn’t that hard to learn the basics you need to use Linux, as long as you use a decently stable distro that you won’t need to troubleshoot at every update. In my limited experience, you only need more in depth knowledge when you try messing around with more “cutting edge” and less “stable” distros and are installing experimental features.
I can’t believe that Microsoft is expecting everyone to get rid of their computer to switch to 11 once the support for 10 expires next year. I even revived an 15 year old laptop that only had 4Gb or RAM by installing Mint on it (and switching its HDD with an SSD I had kicking around). It’s fast and perfectly usable for everything but modern games now
Not knocking your choice, OpenSUSE is a grand daddy OS, but if others are looking for a good KDE experience I find Fedora KDE Spin, which is not anweird fork yoi can get it from Red Hat themselves, is very good and come out of the box with all the latest and greatest like Wayland and Pipewire by default.
I tried Fedora KDE spin first but it didn’t work out for me. IDK if it was my hardware configuration it didn’t like but the first time I booted it, it spammed me with crash reports. I poked around it for a few minutes, not being able to go far without things crashing again and again. I installed the updates and rebooted it hoping it would fix it but it got much worse after that. I couldn’t do anything else as it immediately crashed at startup. I couldn’t be bothered to look any further into it and switched to OpenSUSE which has been rock solid for months and still going. I’m running Plasma 6.1 with Wayland on it with no issues as well and I know Plasma 6.2 is coming soon. It uses pipewire as default as well. To be honest, IDK what Fedora would do better for my uses, except maybe for a faster package manager.
I’m certain that my Fedora experience isn’t typical but for me at least it was a disaster.
Yeah that doesn’t sound typical, but you’re right if you’ve got those going on OpenSUSE then I don’t think you’re missing anything major. If Fedora ever gives me trouble I might give that a try. I just wasn’t interested in PopOS or Mint as a lot of other people were because I want those latest core components and don’t really like GNOME.
I hear you. It’s been a burutal long slog of putting up with their crap for as-long-as-one-has-done-it no matter when anyone gets out. I made the switch to mac and linux many years ago and after a brief transition period, everything personal-computer-related became wonderful somehow. Well . . . “neat”, anyway. Leaving behind extensive and difficult experience with everything from 3.1 to 95, to 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, and 10. (skipped 8 for obvious reasons.) It had its good times but they’re long gone. Good riddance. Best of luck to anyone still out there.
I switched to Linux mint. No ragrets. It takes a bit of fiddling and a teensie bit of a learning curve. But it’s way easier than Microsofts endless deluge of shit.
Man I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and make my next machine a linux one
Make a compressed backup and try with this one. You’ll feel good.
I’ve had a good track record with PopOS.
Steam works with about 90 ish percent of my games and all the software I use, there’s a Linux version or proton can run it. Plus the OS is rock solid.
+1 to PopOS. My only gripe is that they and Nvidia still haven’t figured out how to move to Wayland, but once that happens (and we can all switch to cosmic), I’ll be a happy camper.
I might be the minority, but as long as they are stable and I can work with my programs, thats all I care about.
I use my pi to experiment, but I use PopOS as my daily driver nowadays.
the issue I have had with PopOS is multi-monitor support, I cant rotate my rotated second monitor except through the nvidia settings, and my settings get wiped after a reboot, its a known issue for years, other than that I havent had any problems, I have been slowly finding replacement software for everything that I used on windows
Interesting, I have that setup, but then again I have an official system 76 machine that is still supported. I have three monitors with one rotated for dev work/teams (ugg).
I took the plunge about a week ago with Pop!_OS. It took a good 3 or 4 days before I started to feel really comfortable with things. (Which is probably because I’m really picky)
If you have the time to try it out (and remember, always dual boot so you have a fall back and can switch back when you need to) I recommend it. The last remnant remaining for me is Photoshop, and there’s a GitHub page for downloading it with very few steps now.
Try out krita, rawtherapee, darktable, for photoshop stuffs, depending on what you need.
The Adobe stuff always held me back before but I finally just started messing with linux and trying stuff out. I don’t need photoshop for professional use so I was fine spending the time trying to find alternatives for what I needed
Unfortunately I use Photoshop pretty heavily. I’m trying to split my different use-cases of Photoshop into different applications.
I tried Krita, and was immediately put off by how you have to input text in a different window, and can’t see it live. GIMP’s UI feels so different.
I’ll add rawtherapee and darktable to my list to try, and I’m still giving Krita and gimp a chance. You can’t expect to just slide right into a new program in a day after spending a decade in something else.
Another easy solution for Photoshop is to run a virtual machine.
Yeah but the VM takes time to “boot” up and the folder structure isn’t as clean, right?
I had a win 10 VM set up and it “booted” faster than my regular win 10 drive. I then switched to a win 10 LTSC VM and it “booted” a solid 10 seconds quicker on top of that.
If you wanna game and want everything to work, get bazzite, i wanted to install arch, had huge probs with my nvdia card (i know, but it was gifted with the cudas in mind) so i used bazzite since i loved the steam OS look. I am so pleased, it works amazingly, and there was 0 problems during installation.
The only thing stopping me is stupid vanguard for league. I’m close to just getting a clean league only mini pc and having my main one be Linux. I’ll have to check out bazzite. I play the usual minecraft, terraria, ff14, indie games mostly so hopefully they run fine. I don’t think I’ve played a AAA game in like 7 years.
Perfectly understandable. Any anti cheat is a big nono on this system. But tbh, i am so much more relaxed after stopping league i consider it a bonus guardrail XD
playing ffxiv Dawntrail out of the box just fine right now in Pop OS linux
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Microsoft went too far in 2001 when they included a new online activation feature in Windows XP which spearheaded the future of drm and enshitification. They’ve been one-upping themselves ever since. All the most recent stuff is just more icing on the shit cake.
Agreed, XP was the turning point - I decided I will never let such an intrusive software on my private computers, so I switched from Win2k to Linux.
People think I’m nuts when I say Win2k was my favorite Windows. I switched to Linux before Vista came out. People say WinXP was good, but really, it was just tolerable.
High five, brother :) I think the XP crowd was just the generation of “one step more tolerant towards privacy intrusions” / not quite computer knowledgeable enough to understand the implications of letting your operating system phone home. In terms of user interface, it was indeed tolerable - you could still configure it to look and behave like Win2K mostly, which is what I had to do for work for quite a long time.
Compared to Win2k, it would just be a resource-hog. :/
I’d say that the ‘modern’ era of Microsoft Enshittification started with IE4 as well as Windows 98. The Channel bar put ads on the Windows 95 & 98 desktops. It was easily disabled, but even that far back, Microsoft was starting to work on making their stuff suck just that much more.
Next was Windows ME blocking DOS access, while still running on DOS, making the OS a bit … unstable, followed by your point of Software Activation in XP.
Windows 2000 was amazing, though. Something really inspiring belief in good corporations and bright capitalist future. LOL
I liked Win2K, yes - then Linux :)
Great shit analogy, Bo Bandi.
Thanks, Mr.Layhe
Stallman warned us, we didn’t listen.
I’m glad to see BadVista still up https://badvista.fsf.org/blog/view/?set_language=en
I updated my work laptop, and they put their shitty copilot button on the bottom right and TURNED OFF MY SHOW DESKTOP BUTTON.
nothing more to add, just wanted to vent with people who may understand my rage with windows lol
I believe Win + D will do the same as that missing button.
As tech support this has made my job a bit more annoying.
I went with a Mac for my last work computer refresh. Had Windows before that. Don’t have a Linux option.
If you have adapted to it, rejoice! They are changing it back. Copilot will be a button beside Start button now.
It’s time to ditch Windows and all move to macOS or (even better) Linux
MacOS has different flaws but has major flaws nonetheless. Linux is the one that truly lets you own your computer, you decide everything.
I agree, I use Linux. But “normal people” aren’t able to install an operating system, and they can’t easily go to the shop and buy a Linux computer. They can buy a mac though. Still better than nothing.
For the money you save by buying similarly good hardware that isn’t from apple you can pay someone to install an OS
Yea it annoys me too, you can switch it back, but I can’t do that every time I’m working on someone’s computer.
yeah, I switched it back. for a split second, I just couldn’t believe they had the audacity to do that… lol
People are abusing Google’s ad distro platform to get malware onto people’s machines. I see Microsoft signed up for the same firestorm of possibilities.
I hope someone sues Microsoft.
Microsoft, stop. My computer can only be so switched to Linux.
I have run out of things to install Lunix on without getting fired.
I could probably install Linux on my work MBP, but my boss would make me test on macOS, so it would kind of defeat the point.
At home, everything is Linux except my SO’s desktop, and that’s a job I’m unwilling to be fired from.
Have you installed it on an NES yet? Because that kinda happened: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/you-can-sort-of-run-linux-on-an-nes-demo-shows-a-unix-like-os-running-completely-on-the-nes
Sounds hard, I’d just toss a Pi in it and call it a day.
That’s pretty much what they did anyhow, just with way more steps.
Been 100% linux for like 6-9 months now, these stories make me thankful for finally making the switch.
I’ve tried to make the switch 3-4 times in the past and was stopped by 2 main things:
- Drivers / Laptops were tough to get set up
- Gaming
The experience was so much better this time and I really have no regrets. I don’t imagine I’ll ever run Windows again outside of a VM
I’ve kept Windows installed on a spare drive for years now. I don’t remember when I last booted into it on purpose, it was certainly more than a year ago, and was just to install Minecraft Bedrock to play with his friends (his friends bailed). My kids have only ever used Linux. :)
I’ve been using Linux off and on for about 15 years now. It’s so much easier to use now compared to when I started. I understand why people might’ve avoided it in the past. But the list of excuses is getting pretty small these days.
I’ve been full time for a year and a half now. I tried switching a bunch of times before that and same problems as you. I love it now, it’s a pleasure to use my computer and know that it’s not doing any bullshit behind the scenes.
What’s next Microsoft? Replace the windows os loading windows page with a 30s ad? Or have defender uninstall apps if a competitor pays enough? Maybe capture a screenshot of my screen every 3 seconds for AI analysis?
Maybe capture a screenshot of my screen every 3 seconds for AI analysis?
Yep yep. Was hoping someone would call me out on that. 😝
Come on man, stop giving them good ideas!
Nah. I’ve been advocating for Linux for decades. For decades I’ve been trying to convince people to switch on its own merits, but none of that has been effective.
It took Microsoft sabotaging their product for me to see the needle shift. So I’m done trying to convince people with carrots, it’s time for Microsoft to convince the masses with sticks.
Yeah I think the masses are going to be a tough sell on Linux until computer manufacturers start offering Linux builds with a pre-installed instance.
I’m sure there are places that do it but there’s probably money to be made in just setting up Linux on machines for people.
Yeah I think the masses are going to be a tough sell on Linux until computer manufacturers start offering Linux builds with a pre-installed instance.
Everyone’s family needs a tech geek to install Linux on a brand new computer.
You can get laptops on Amazon now with Ubuntu pre-installed. :)
I’ve managed to de-google completely and mostly de-microsoft, but I use cloud streaming (shadow) for gaming and anything else that’s more than my shitty laptop can’t handle and there’s no way to use Linux on the cloud part. Only thing I can’t do anything about yet, and doubt that’ll change anytime soon or at all.
Yeah, the only solution there is to buy better hardware.
If comsic desktop gets a perfect launch, it wouldn’t be an over exaggeration to say, some amount of people will switch
The Next Great Thing™ will not make a number of users that is significant to any real world scenario move away from Windows. The only approach that might have a chance to do that is something that looks and feels as close as possible to Windows. Yes even the parts of Windows that are bad. All of it, except the most glaringly obviously horrible stuff (like ads in menus). And that also includes all the programs a significant number of users care about either running there out of the box without having to jump through any hoops or a replacement fulfilling the same “looks, feels and operates almost identical” criteria.
People care about something feeling familiar and not having to relearn stuff a lot more than about shiny new features.
Considering ms has changed the look and feel of windows itself over the years, sometimes pretty drastically, there’s some leeway there.
I like pop_os, I run it on my laptop and will definitely be using Cosmic, but I think people are putting too much hope in it.
