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.
Microsoft, stop. My computer can only be so switched to Linux.
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 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.
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 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 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.
Microsoft is so confident in its desktop marketshare that they allow themselves to push the overton window on what users will tolerate.
The only competitor they can lose users to is Apple. And even then not everyone can afford an Apple computer, especially in the rest of the world
Forget Apple. Without buying any new hardware, i managed to replace Windows with Ubuntu just a month ago. My most hated moment on windows was the time i saw the onedrive ad in file explorer… That felt way too intrusive.
Dont forget that the vast majority of users either doesnt know Linux, distrusts Linux, has heard rumors at any point in time about some feature or component not working as perfectly as under windows, is uninterested in computers beyond their daily usage function, or finds themselves in a social circle or job environment hostile to Linux.
What Linux needs to get widely adopted is settle for one central distro, iron out all bugs and compatibility issues and do a bunch of testing with windows users to determine what differences they are confused by. The goal must be to create total feature and compatibility parity with windows, and make the whole process so incredibly simple that even absolute morons with zero interest in computers can both use it instinctively and not miss anything their windows used to do. Then run a massive adoption campaign.
Now I know many aspects of this are directly opposed to the fos ethos, but if Linux ever wants to claim market share they need to spend big on it and pick up the users where they are; in a place of zero user ability and a lot of ignorance.
finds themselves in a social circle or job environment hostile to Linux.
Ugh. Tell me about it.
I haven’t tried to run the latest Corel graphics suite in Wine recently, but the last time I did it exploded in my face so spectacularly I think my eyebrows still haven’t fully grown back. I really need that to work for… work. Basically everything else I already use is FOSS anyway.
What Linux needs to get widely adopted is settle for one central distro
One central distro guarantees its eventual enshittification. I’m happy with the knowledge that if my distro enshittifies I can just move to a different one.
I’m not saying we should shutter all the others or make a Linux for profit corporation, just that if there is a sort of “base” Linux that can be used and referenced as universally as windows, with the same capability, stability and compatibility, catering to the same crowd of dumbest possible user, that would go a long way in my opinion in getting Linux more widely adopted.
i think the only way Linux is increasing it’s market share beyond fringe enthusiasts (that’s us) is by more devices coming with it pre-installed. expecting anyone outside of the tech space to change the operating system their device came with is a pipe dream
Cosmic desktop can do this. They already have similar history.
Get it in the schools. It’s a bad habit from many people’s childhood that they need to break. Make that original habit not suck.
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Sysadmin? You haven’t needed to be a sysadmin to run Linux for years.
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For what, may I ask? Can you give an example? I’m on Debian, arguably a less friendly distro than most, but I haven’t had to touch the terminal in two weeks. And it was just to ping a server somewhere, something you need to do on the command line in Windows as well.
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Why the hell would you need to open the terminal for any of that? It’s in your settings
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Yes it is. You seem reluctant to tell anybody which distro you’re using (even downvoting the person who asked), probably because you know they’d point out that it is in fact there.
Below I’m showing you how it is on my laptop running GNOME, the most used desktop environment. It’s similarly easy in KDE Plasma and Cinnamon. Even the more niche DEs like Pantheon, Budgie, XFCE, and LXQT have had that functionality for many years.
Change audio devices
Switch power profile
Bonus switch power profile
I really don’t know why you’re lying about this. The terminal is not something you’d ever need to open for this.
What’s your distro?
You really don’t. I don’t know what on earth you’re doing that requires it.
And I have to do bullshit like go onto powershell and the heap of shit that is the Windows registry from time to time, too. Shit, you need to enter commands to install windows with an offline account now, it’s insane.
I wish Microsoft could make Windows as user-friendly as most Linux distros are. It seems like you need to be a computer scientist to use Windows sometimes.
Don’t know what you mean. Have people on opens use here, and they do just fine without the command line.
Saying Linux is for sysadmins (or similar) is like saying Framework Laptop is only for repair technicians.
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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.
The thing that irks me the most is that those things work. They’ll see a little complain from the most vocal ones, and that’s it. The revenue will increase, their shareholders will be pleased, the OS will be worse, and we’ll have no viable alternative.
Unless governments start to regulate the hell out of tech companies, it’s only downhill from there.
Regarding Linux, what commercial software are you dependent on? More and more, it’s all online, even Office.
Adobe Creative Cloud, which despite the name is pretty much local. And although Microsoft Office works online, it has a series of issues that the desktop version doesn’t have, like broken formatting on Word.
Ah. Yeah, I don’t know of a way to get ACC on Linux.
- Adobe Creative Suite. They will probably never release a Linux version
- Industry standard music production s/w
- Offbeat collection of educational/research s/w, creators of which don’t know that Linux exists. They sometimes don’t even support MacOS
- Office Suite which is compatible with MS Office shenanigans
You’re correct on all counts, but you’re also not a typical desktop user, you’re definitely a professional or power user with specific needs.
The average user needs the ability to use a web browser and that’s honestly about it. That’s why Chromebooks are so popular with schools. A basic Linux desktop is quite capable for a standard user.
For the things yoi need you’re correct that it’s not 1:1 and you’d need to move to open source alternatives or tinker with VMs/WINE to get those apps working and it would be a chore.
Autodesk for myself, apparently its super dependant on .net and other windows framework so its not like they are going to make it linux compatible any time soon.
It looks like it runs perfectly via WINE from a few quick Google searches
Agree with everything expect for the viable alternative. Linux is viable for many people
Why wont we have viable alternative ? We already have
Microsoft has gone too far:
Just now, with this?
Must’ve been asleep for the recall shenanigans
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
SoMeBoDy HaS tO tHiNk Of ThE sHaReHoLdErS!!!
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.
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.
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 have you thought about a legal person’s right to fuck your eyes and brains?!
Also, what about their freedom of speech… Shit lord
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 degeracy 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.
Microsoft already knows that people keep windows around either because they want multiplayer games or are scared of linux.
Or random application availability and/or ease of use.
Two cases in point:
- Photo Mechanic. It makes it really easy/fast to sort through tons of photos. There are some Linux compatible alternatives, but they’re just not as good
- Fusion 360. There are a couple of things you can do to make it work, but since Linux isn’t officially supported the install process can be a bit fiddily and there’s no guarantee that an update won’t break things.
Things are certainly better now than they have been in the past, but if you’re somewhat time limited (eg your computer is more of a tool than a thing to spend time tweaking) Linux can still be a bit offputting - especially if some of the core applications you use aren’t officially supported.
Win11 becomes a less and less appealing switch day by day… When I can no longer hold into Win10, I think I’ll just have to jump ship to Linux.
Win10 is already quite privacy poor, but Win11 is straight up intolerable.
My machine cannot run 11 because of the arbitrary hardware requirements so I was looking down the barrel of Win10 being no longer supported next year.
I proactively installed Linux Mint on a second SSD I had kicking around just to see if I could live with it without making any commitments. I never looked back since then. I switched to OpenSUSE soon after though but that was because I wanted something that ran the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment because I didn’t like how Cinnamon was handling multiple monitors. But I haven’t booted up my Windows 10 drive since then, other than to migrate some files I needed.
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
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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.
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 Lazer 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
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).
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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 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.
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.
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).
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
Solution is easy - just don’t use windows
I know that this expression desensitises people to something serious, but it describes Microsoft - the “it”/corporation - perfectly: rapist mentality. It shows how eager Microsoft is to disregard consent, users saying “no, I don’t want it”, and to forge itself over the users as long as it gets some benefit out of it.
Including new obnoxious advertisement slots into an already released product - one that you paid for - is only a result of that mentality.
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.
I switched to Linux Mint Debian edition when the Reddit thing happened. I’m glad I did before Windows got this bad.
I made the swap after they forced Windows 7 update behavior to change. You used to be able to download updates but you got to choose when to install them. Then they changed it to either they’re on and fully automatic, or fully off.
At the time, I was running a computer repair company, and my work computer running Win7 was running a data recovery on an accidentally formatted drive for almost two days. After I had left and the program finished, Windows was all “Oh, the computer is idle now. Let me give you a 15 minute warning that I’m going to install updates and reboot if you don’t cancel”.
After the second time, I formatted my work computer. Shortly after, I did the same to my gaming PC. Haven’t looked back once.
I love to hear it. Linux has done pretty much everything I’ve needed it to to and it’s great to see a lot of programs are available for Linux natively.
Hopefully they’ll end up with an incredible amount of user telemetry telling them that they’ve created the least adopted version of Windows in the history of the company.
That’s what Windows 11 deserves, they need a punch in the face from users.
I wish, but what are the end users going to do? Switch?
Apple is expensive, and all Linux users will eventually have to use a command line. Sure, if you’re on lemmy you’re probably fine with the occasional terminal window, but most older folks aren’t, and many in the younger generation aren’t familiar with any os that doesn’t come on a mobile device.
Power users have an alternative in Linux, but most will just shrug and accept it. Who has time to learn how to use and install a new OS? Ads are everywhere, it’s become ewww the norm.
ewww…
Fwiw, it may be arguably easier for you to switch than to have to run a debloater script after every Windows update, at this point.
they’ve created the least adopted version of Windows in the history
could be tough to beat “Windows ME”… ;-)
