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 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
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)
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.
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).
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
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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 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).
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
As tech support this has made my job a bit more annoying.
I believe Win + D will do the same as that missing button.
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
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.
Edit: about Linux, it’s not viable if you’re outside IT or rely on commercial software. That’s a debate for another post.
Why wont we have viable alternative ? We already have
Agree with everything expect for the viable alternative. Linux is viable for many people
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.
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
Thanks, ill check it out
- 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.
This is not me. But the kinds of people I’m encountered in my social circle. I’m in the CS/Research industry, so all my tools are linux compatible and have been a Linux user for the past decade.
I think it’s better to have a realistic expectation of Linux rather than consider it a 1:1 Windows alternative. I agree with your last para fully.
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 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.
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.
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?
Win 8 was aggregious. 10 is more subtle (little notifications now and then)
Enterprise is better
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Lemmy: why aren’t people using Linux? It’s so easy
Also Lemmy: webp huh?
Because you can’t just double click on an .exe file and choose switch now without many more questions etc.
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.
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).
Microsoft has gone too far:
Just now, with this?
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.
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 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
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.
I switched to Linux Mint Debian edition when the Reddit thing happened. I’m glad I did before Windows got this bad.
