Microsoft did a tremendous amount of hard work to convince me to make the effort to migrate away from Windows at home and at work. They want to lease me a word processor. They want to put ads in my digital filing cabinet. They want to take 30% of my software revenue, and when they realized they couldn't have it, they said they'd settle for 12%. No dice.<p>There are zero Windows machines in my home or in my business right now. In fact, there are no Microsoft products. I migrate clients away from Windows when possible, and refuse to work with those who are tightly integrated with MS products. I do occasionally work a job where something has to work on Windows or with MS SQL, but I only accept if that can be done in a platform agnostic way.<p>I previously held onto Windows at home because despite my age I still love games. At least, I love the idea of them, if I ever get time to play.<p>Now, recently I had a startling realization: it's actually easier now to get many of the games I love running on Wine (with or without steam) than it is on Windows. The performance is great. (edit: I love you, Lutris, you make gaming easy.)<p>Even for tools where Windows is essentially mandatory (music production), the situation is such that I now would rather run old software on an old version of Windows as a dedicated DAW machine than to subject myself to new Windows.<p>Anyway, great job Microsoft, you converted a customer into someone who will take time out of their day to bad-mouth you on the internet.<p>All that could have been avoided by just not behaving like an asshole.
Last week I allowed it to "upgrade" to Win 11 22H2. Part of the upgrade involved silently resetting a heap of my default apps. When the upgrade was done, Firefox was no longer my default browser, it was changed to Edge. Also, the default apps for PDF, JPG, PNG, TXT, MKV, and probably others that I haven't yet discovered, were set to their MS equivalent apps.<p>Microsoft, this was not a nice thing to do to a user.
Linux/*BSD may still be that awkward friend who sometimes misreads your intentions and causes awkward moments or knocks glasses over, but at least tries to respect you (snapd excepted). Windows these days doesn't seem to respect you.<p>There's a difference in my mind between struggling to make your computer do something (because nobody made it easy yet) and struggling to make your computer do something (because a marketing team decided to try to stop you). Resolving the first scenario feels like working for myself, the other feels like fighting an adversary.<p>I try to not use products that don't respect me. That's fundamentally what keeps me almost exclusively on FOSS. Better alignment of incentives for what I'm trying to do.
I left Windows for Mint about 2 months ago and it's just so much better. All that stupid bullshit you have to deal with on windows just went away, I felt actual relief. No more ads, no more forced updates because you walked away from your computer, no processes that it forces you to run so that it can spy on your mics. It just works. If you want it to look like windows 7 you can, if you want it to look like an iPad you can. I've made mine into a weird hybrid of windows 7 and OSX which I love. My start button actually shows my programs instead of loading bing and showing me 100MB of pictures of nigerian football players.<p>The only thing that was stopping me before was games, but games all work on linux now. Other than one or two that require specific anti-cheats that use 0days to hijack windows, there's basically nothing that doesn't run on linux now. In fact, a lot of my games actually work better because proton dynamically patches out bugs from the original windows implementations.<p>I don't think I've found any software or anything that I use that hasn't got a linux version. Windows is dead to me, I haven't used it since.
Bad time to be pushing this crap with the Linux desktop wooing the gaming/ power user overlap crowd now that steam deck is on the
scene. I have been using Windows my whole life but now I have a PC dedicated to Linux for the 1st time and I'm thinking about seeing one up for my wife, as I'm sure Linux will be perform better on the older laptop I'm considering 'upcycling'. People forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the nerds who will actually try something new, then evangelize it to the world - see chrome for example
What really kills me about the ad-spam being added to menus everywhere is that eventually they start having problems and drag my computer to its knees. I end up with behaviors where the Start Menu takes several seconds to appear, or a search will stall, and when navigating folders in the File Explorer have very serious and noticeable drag, taking one or two seconds. So far I’ve eventually been able to figure out how to turn them off with registry edits and fix the delays, but it seems to be getting harder to do, and MS is definitely omitting controls from the control panel.<p>It very well may be superficially my fault these things happen, due to customizations or features I’ve enabled or disabled, or software I’ve installed, or due to my company web policies and firewalls, but I have no way to track down the causes. The true culprit though, IMO, is the blurring of the line between application software and operating system. Allowing all these hooks into basic OS functionality seems like a bad idea. It’s crazy that opening the menu to log out or shut down will first go out to the web to scrape some news headlines or shopping suggestions for me, crazy I say!
This kind of crap is what made Windows 10 unusable for me. Everything was infuriating.<p>I’m not a fanboy of anything either. Win2K was great. macOS 10.1-10.4 was wonderful. BeOS, RISCOS, IRIX, NeXT, and even DRDOS have warm places in my heart.<p>These days, I use macOS because I find it the least annoying. It still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but it isn’t quite as hostile as Windows. Linux and BSD are “fine” but there are other issues that I have with those ecosystems as far as usability is concerned.<p>I really hope SerenityOS continues its fast paced development and becomes usable for daily computing…
This is in the email that microsoftadvertising.com is sending unsolicited to the support email account of one of my sites:<p>“Microsoft Advertising
88 MILLION new desktop searchers joined last year<p>Search is at the center of online shopping
88-90% of online shoppers used search. Meanwhile, only 39% used social in their shopping journeys.
Two.
Most searchers are open to switching brands
In fact, 3 out of 4 searchers we studied visited multiple brands' websites while they shopped.<p>Entice them to buy from your business with Dynamic Search Ads.
Three.
Online shopping journeys vary greatly
On average, 45% of purchase journeys lasted 30+ days. But some, like grocery shopping, lasted only 2 days.<p>Target ready-to-buy shoppers with In-market audiences.“
I've used Linux and Windows for more than a decade each. I know about desktop Linux' shortcomings and I was using Windows 10 in the last few years because it worked better than Linux for me. There is just too much stuff going on and performance suffers (especially when dealing with Docker for Windows). It also feels that I'm a guinea pig for PMs at Microsoft to experiment on new revenue generating features, but my operating system is not a place where I would want them. It hurts my focus.<p>Windows 11 finally sent me back to Linux. Despite a few bugs and annoyances here and there, I'm doing my work on Linux more productively than I was on Windows 11. Time to move on for me.<p>In the end, it feels like I'm not an important customer to Microsoft anymore (as a "power user"). It feels that their target audience are clueless grandmas that can be easily scammed into their products. I don't want this to sound aggressive. It really does feel that way.
Windows is adware. A couple weeks ago I recently wrote a rant about the reasons I no longer use Windows on any of my machines [1], but I recently installed Windows 10 on bare metal because I have a work project coming up that likely requires me to use Windows. One of the first <i>new</i> obnoxious things I noticed was that search box in the taskbar had a bright and colorful gift icon inside it. Clicking on that icon brings up links to holiday-themed advertisements like "Top 10 Tech Gifts This Holiday Season". Mind you, I provided zero information to Microsoft and had yet to even open a web browser. I also made certain my internet was disconnected prior to the installation setup to avoid being strong armed into creating a Microsoft account, and disabled as much telemetry as they allow beforehand. This was not a dev or beta release, this was the latest version of the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft's website. It's not just sad, but it gives me a gross feeling.<p>[1] <a href="https://chuck.is/windows" rel="nofollow">https://chuck.is/windows</a>
It's truly amazing how Microsoft insists on making Windows worse with each release. It makes me miss the old odd/even releases where at least half of them weren't bad.
It's such a shame because Windows is a good operating system for a lot of desktop use cases that happens to be smeared with shit all over the user interface. Honestly I'm expecting them to introduce mini advertisements in the task bar any time soon. It's not like those pixels are being used for anything when there aren't many windows open right?
I can't believe that right click Menu has has "more" option which shows basic features of that context menu, like what the fuck? what's even the reasoning with this<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-WEBd8obc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-WEBd8obc</a><p>But select text and search in browser option seems to be really reasonable.
Is there a version of Windows that lets you pay your way out of this bullshit? I may need a Windows machine for work next year and this shit is terrifying. I haven't touched Windows since around 2006 so I'm not familiar with their offerings. They used to have a consumer and a professional edition of Windows in the olden days with the latter being far less annoying.
Linux Gaming cannot come fast enough.<p>I'm so ready to uninstall Windows on my only Windows machine which happened to be a gaming computer, however there are just a few games that I want to play from time to time that does not support Linux.<p>For now I can live with Windows 10 which had a workable WSL so I can pretend that windows have a terminal (Some modding needs code!)
Windows as a curated platform is a lost case at this point. They probably don't make enough money from it to justify investment.<p>Their market is the enterprise world where they have a lock in, plus gamers and PC users who cannot afford a Mac. It shows.<p>Not a problem for me. I have no issue using a bad OS if a company is paying me for using it, and at home I don't use Windows.
For the love of god, if anyone from the windows design team is looking at this, give us taskbar on the side with ungrouped icons and titles, and fix the autohide. It is painful to use windows on laptops without it. That's been my windows setup for over a decade and it was straight up removed from win11 whilst calling it an "upgrade".
I have hope for Linux running on more desktops now that I've seen Proton in action. But there's still things here and there that stop me from switching, even if every game I want to play runs flawlessly.<p>One of the biggest issues is peripherals. None of the manufacturers write their software to work on Linux and they don't make their protocols open so others can easily do the work instead. Reverse engineering works to an extent, but that requires significant effort. I'm not going to be okay with losing functionality of my hardware.<p>Last time I checked, the HRTF options were also lacking on Linux. Meanwhile there's multiple choices on Windows (I'm currently enjoying SteelSeries Sonar) including built-in support for object-based 3D audio with multiple renderer options.<p>And the latest killer for me is lack of HDR support. I have an HDR monitor and I'm not going to settle for running it in SDR mode. I'm not even sure I'd want to switch if Linux supported HDR but didn't have an equivalent of Auto HDR (which I think does a decent job at scaling the luma of SDR games outside of the SDR range)
Windows Start Menu is a PITA, can't count how many times it doesn't find installed programs.<p>It was much better when it didn't try to be smart.
Windows 10, unless things change will be my last windows machine. I use it for testing with msvc, and my tax software that i like. But all this imposition into software i paid for isn't how i want to use my computers. Like Windows is pretty solid, it is MS by doing this has lost all credibility as a company that views me as their customer. I don’t need them
Well, how much are you willing to pay for Windows?<p>Consumers already spoke with their wallets: they don't want to buy OSes. They're expected to be free.<p>The only reason macOS isn't this aggressive about advertising is because it's locked down to profitable hardware and linked together with a proprietary ecosystem of even-more-profitable hardware.<p>Diving into these, I still think this article is a bit dramatic.<p>1. Recommended Websites: Do you even look at your start menu? I don't. I hit the Windows key and type in the first few letters of the app I'm trying to open. The Start Menu could be completely blank and I wouldn't care.<p>2. Search Highlights: You don't even need to have a search bar in your taskbar at all<p>3. Suggested Actions: Can be turned off entirely<p>4. Warnings in the wrong places: Easily ignorable text in another piece of UI I never look at.<p>5. Please use our search filled with ads: Again, remove the search icon from your taskbar. It doesn't have to be there at all.<p>Don't want any of this? Install Linux.
What about using a custom shell on Windows 11? I remember using LiteStep, bbLean and geoShell on my old Windows 98 and XP. If they are no longer developed, this might be a niche market for Windows 11 users who are tired of constant "improvements". I bet some users would be very happy with "classic" Windows 7 shell too.
Microsoft is a services company. Expect only more of this.<p>By the way, Apple is also a services company.<p>The difference here is that most of Apple’s customers want to use at least some of their services.
The EU Digital Services Act (article 25) bans dark patterns for online platforms: <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2022.277.01.0001.01.ENG#d1e3169-1-1" rel="nofollow">https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...</a><p>What a shame it doesn't straightforwardly apply to operating systems
Between the adds infiltrating every part of the os and the arbitrary decision to not allow my computer to run windows 11 (no TPM, though it is plenty fast) I have had enough. I've daily driving Linux for 7-8 years with only occasional windows use. There are certainly some rough edges with Linux, but it is perfectly workable.
Lots of people have told me (not <i>to me</i> specifically of course) that paying for software was the magic thing that would rid software of ads. But isn’t Windows a payed-for product? It seems more likely that such organizations will do whatever they can get away with.<p>Another example is Spotify with their podcasts suggestions (that you can’t get rid of). Why would I, who is not from America, want to listen to the wife of a former American president?
My new gaming build is Linux-only, PopOS to be precise, and the experience so far has been smooth. AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU and stuff just works. And thanks to Valve's investments, all the games that I care about just work, too. I'm also pretty sure that no upcoming triple-A game is going to ignore Linux, now that all the cool kids with money bought a Steam Deck.
The best feature in Windows 11 I've seen so far is the downgrade feature; after I gave it a spin and found the new taskbar to be intolerable the revert to Windows 10 was remarkably painless!
Windows is in the business of selling software to business clients (And slowly migrating to being a cloud provider business).<p>The only reason Windows happens to have 'home' editions and pervasive software in schools is to perpetuate the 'familiarity' argument when Businesses are doing procurement.
I see ‘secure’ laptops at F500 companies now that have search ads in the start menu.<p>How did IT not push back against MS here?<p>Huge security issue.
For all those who stay on Windows only for games, google for vfio
it's a virtual machine with Windows for games
Uses a dedicated graphics card, has like 3% cost.<p>Bonus is you don't have to care about updates and viruses/trojans.
Disk C with OS is just a raw file, that you can copy at will.
I maintain a tiling window manager for Windows[1]. It's the only thing still keeping me on Windows right now. I run NixOS on WSL, and I have a separate NixOS desktop partition that I iterate on from time to time.<p>Once I can make my tiling window manager X11-compatible, I think that will be it for me and Windows. The last update totally screwed me to the extent that I had to go into the registry and manually set my user profile path to get all my settings back, all because the update couldn't handle a symlink in the C:\Users dir, which I had to use because there is no sane way to do something as simple as changing the user directory name.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi</a>
These are the least of the abuse that history shows us you should expect.<p>But, this Sunday afternoon, you can burn this Debian installer to a USB stick, use it, and be mostly done with MS forever:<p><a href="https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/11.5.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-dvd/firmware-11.5.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso" rel="nofollow">https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...</a><p>(I did that a couple decades ago, and still haven't regretted it. I regret many tech choices over that time, but I don't regret moving from MS to an honest Linux distro.)
This can all be summarized as: Microsoft is going down market.<p>Of course if Apple starts with this stuff they too will start going down market and open an opportunity for someone else to own the high end.<p>If I pay for it it better not have ads. If something I pay for starts adding ads I cancel.
The horrifying descent of Windows is one of the great tragedies of our time. It's never been <i>great</i>, but it's generally been OK. This is monstrous.<p>Every single exec involved in this should be publicly named and shamed, and driven out of the tech industry.
Sorry for an emotional expletive-laden post here, but this enrages me so much. My computer is my main professional and creative tool, and for MS to do this shit without my permission or control (like it already does with fucking Edge and OneDrive nags every time it installs an update) feels so exploitative, greedy, and evil.<p>And stupid - their execs are chasing myopic short term gains with aggressive stongarm tactics, while long-term I and probably a million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again.<p>So few companies out there seen to care about their long term reputation.
Why would you pay for this? Why would you even associate with a company who will not even sell you, a private individual, an option that does not include this?<p>What about using Linux on the desktop is "difficult" enough to justify paying money to Microsoft for voluntary software servitude?<p>* They will not tell you what data they collect about you<p>* They will not allow you to disable data collection<p>* They will not permit you to define the default browser you use<p>* They will not permit you to avoid advertisements disguised as valid system alerts<p>* They will delete your privacy settings without notification<p>* They will lock down your hardware so you physically can't install or modify the software
At my last employer, I built a thing that let us target warnings on various pages of the admin about the user’s configuration. Things like “hey you don’t have backups turned on and this is the fifth post you’ve made.”<p>It was incredibly fine-grained. Then the marketers got a hold of it, which is fine because surely they’d understand targeted ads. Nah. 75% of people just slapped a message on the user’s homepage, whether they could use the feature or not.<p>Seeing basically the same thing being built for windows settings makes me sigh. Mostly because people don’t have the ability or disciple to use it correctly.
I'm just not having any of the problems people are experiencing and I'm on the latest Win 11 (22H2). It hasn't changed my file associations or popped up, or stolen focus, or advertised anything to me and it gives me valuable information about how long my computer will be inaccessible if I update it, and lets me choose when. I replace the task bar (explorer patcher) and start menu (open-shell) and I have "do not disturb" on constantly, if that helps anyone. Windown and I just leave each other alone.<p>I'm not trying to call anyone out. I'm sure the negative experiences are genuine. However, it's worth pointing out Microsoft made some progress in improving things for some users, despite shockingly poor choices (task bar, I'm looking at you), and dark patterns for some users. It's still the closest thing to the "best" OS for a personal computer, depending on what things are important to you in the moment. I want that to be GNU/Linux/BSD but for me the FOSS OS' are just too distracting (always some sort of config chore needing to be done to address screen tearing, or why the touchpad won't work, or how to get the bluetooth stack working, or how to keep the configs in sync between machines, or how to reliably store and back up my files). It's an unfair playing field.<p>I used a GNU/Linux flavor (debian -> Ubuntu -> OpenSuse -> Arch) as my primary OS for around 5 years, before the build up of cortisol became too much.
Debian Stable user here. I had Windows 7, and it was a toss-up between using it and sticking with Win 7. There was always this feeling that using Linux was just a bunch of faffing around. I can't quite remember why I finally decided to go for it. I think I said I'd try it as an experiment for 6 months to see how I would get on. I should point out that I'm no Unix/Linux newbie and had installed Slackware on a machine back in the early 90's.<p>I've been through a whole bunch of distros. I'd generally recommend Ubuntu, but I grew increasingly frustrated with it.<p>Debian Stable works for me. It has a vast repo, all nicely integrated into a coherent whole. Unix(ish) is unsurpassed as a development platform.<p>The reason I say this is, as long as Zoom and maybe Skype work on my computer, which is over a decade old, it has enough for what I want. VS Code is also OK, unlike the abomination that is Eclipse. I can never stick to VS Code, but think it's a sensible choice if it works for you.<p>Windows 10 sounds like a nightmare from what I've heard. The constant updating, all at inconvenient times. I heard that Win 10 is allowed access to your data. Quite why folks didn't kick up a much bigger stink about this I don't know. Corporations are OK with MS sniffing through their documents? For real?<p>Win 10 seemed like a social experiment to see how hard they could kick consumers in the nuts and still get away with it. Win 11 seems to turn the insanity up to 11.<p>If anyone thinks Windows is any good, then all I can see is that they're suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Non-commercial Linux distros are a breathe of fresh air.
I usually stay on Microsoft's happy path, running the latest versions of the OS on fully supported hardware. And I rarely change default settings, I'm not bothered by an icon for one of their games in the start menu.<p>But those little icons for holidays, etc, that showed up in the search bar really bugged me. It bothered me so much that I searched for a way to get rid of them. If Microsoft manages to annoy a fanboy like me, they've really missed the mark.
Another ad we got unsolicited from Microsoftadvertising.com to our support email.<p>Microsoft Advertising
719
MILLION
DESKTOP SEARCHERS<p>Get ready to meet them.<p>When you know your audience, you can learn how to reach them. Let's take a closer look at the Microsoft Search Network audience.
Start reaching them today ><p>They’re getting established<p>60%
are ages 25-44<p>53%
are married<p>53%
graduated college or above
They’re making big decisions<p>2.6M
are planning last-minute travel<p>3.1M
are researching a car purchase<p>2.2M
are looking at a home loan<p>They’re spenders<p>32%
spend more online than the average internet searcher<p>48%
are in the top 25% of household incomes
This convinces me that leaving for Fedora 100% at home was the right move. It surprised me how it’s so far a _better_ desktop OS than Windows for me. Really. There are stuff all over the place working more smoothly, even things like hardware video decoding and interacting with windows. It’s so solid too. I have an Xbox for games and miss nothing.
For these and many other ongoing support reasons, I’ve been giving various Macs to my extended family since about Vista. For my grandfather, my mother in law, her daughter, and the various nephews, I can generally trust that a slightly locked down Mac with auto-update enabled will pretty much work as advertised.<p>What I find more encouraging trend wise is that I’m now seeing more alternative devices in the offices I work in. Even 5 years ago the standard device in the various banks and insurance shops I consult with has been a dell latitude or an hp elitebook, whereas now solid bet most of the devs have a macbook, and even a few linux boxes for the more adventurous orgs.<p>I’m not saying the macs are in any way perfect, and I’m sure they’ll eventually try many of the same things, but for the moment they have a user experience in a different league and i can’t see myself moving on from them for quite a while.
It's 2022. Who runs Windows? Consumers moved to iOS and devs moved to Linux/macOS.<p>The only thing I have that needs Windows is a service DVD for a motorcycle and autocad fusion. Both work great in VMs for my occasional use. The VMs contain all the user toxicity from spreading to the rest of my environment.
"Not-so-great"? How about "absolutely fucking horrible"? What's with this "softening" of language these days? Is "doubleplusungood" next? I've been noticing it more and more lately on technical articles and it really pisses me off because it's trying to downplay the insanity of the situation and if anything only encourages MS to continue down this terrible path ("they just think it's not-so-great, no worries...")<p>To get them to listen and change course, beyond mass migrations away from Windows, I don't think muted complaints will work; we need to complain more, louder, harder. With the same amount of energy they're shoving this shit down our throats. To paraphrase Linus Torvalds: Microsoft, fuck you!
I stopped when they forced the microsoft account onto everyone, fun fact I changed the only email I use to auth with my msft account a few years ago... I can only login with the new it sends 2FA to my old one<p>the old one isn't listened in my account as additional emails or anything
I use CAD software for work. Starting in my current role I was given a laptop with Windows 11 preinstalled. I discovered my CAD software wasn't compatible with Win11 and had to downgrade to Win 10. Without fail, once a month, when I restart my computer, Windows prompts me to "upgrade" from Win 10->11 for free. There is no way to shut this feature off that I know of and frankly I just click NO three times and move on. Windows hasn't been this bad since Vista. I miss Win7.
Most people will go along with this. Most people don't care. Those that do have already left Microsoft for Apple a long time ago. HN is not representative of the general population, and these comments really show how out of touch people are on this site.
My personal most hated features of W11.<p>Removing most right click options with clicking show more or some obscure icon.<p>Constant notifications making the bottom right of the screen unusable.<p>So many ways to pin a window moving it to just drop it feels like threading a needle.
I give Bing a try a couple of days ago.
Shocked by how *extremely* cluttered it is(give it a try) Like every 'Don't' list of UX101 comes to live.<p>It's disgusting and at the same time, disappointing, consider their attempt to make user experience more cleaner in their other product.
We use windows at work because people need MS Office, CAD, and because it is the easiest platform for me to develop desktop apps for our scientific equipment.<p>Win 10 issues in this vein were a bit annoying but no too terrible<p>I've been dreading having to move to 11 someday. All the bad parts of 10 get cranked up. We can't even create local accounts (as is appropriate for a single-user / shared machine.)<p>I have been liking other Microsoft software the last few years. But why are they ruining Windows for any professional use?
Ugh... Why? Who is the human that this will benefit. What are MS execs smoking? Obviously it is the good stuff.<p>They lost the mobile phone because of their stupidity. Now trying to lose desktop too?
Reading these comments is kind of funny to me. Why does this surprise anyone? Microsoft has been doing things like this for decades. Remember in the 90s, when they blocked out non-IE web browsers and had a major lawsuit against them for it? And remember they introduced product activation, aka asking permission to run software you legally purchased.<p>This is just another entry on a long list of reasons I personally do not use Microsoft unless I have to.
Firefox (mobile) was pushing ads at me on [what is supposed to be] my home screen last week (Addidas and Nike being put in the first two slots).<p>Why would Microsoft not advertise in their browser when supposed competition is doing the same. Like, switch to Google and get their tracking, switch to Firefox and get their ads, ... "might as well stay with Edge" becomes a more realistic proposition every day.<p>[I'd personally probably move to links before using Edge, but that's just me.]
KDE also does #1, showing web search results when typing in the launcher. Probably just trying to be helpful rather than trying to push bing or edge or data mine my searches. But still it doesn't belong there IMO.<p>However I'm sure I'll find a setting to turn it off if it annoys me too much. That's what I love about KDE. I don't normally use the launcher much anyway so I haven't really bothered looking for the setting.
The browser protection extension was recently retired, adding a message that users should switch to edge. [1]<p>The pop-up is occurring every time I launch the development environment at work.
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DefenderATP/comments/z7xmtq/eol_for_chrome_microsoft_defender_browser/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/DefenderATP/comments/z7xmtq/eol_for...</a>
How can a company like Microsoft actively try to push away users from their products and gain from it?<p>I am minutes away from switiching over to Fedora at this point.
Due to a range of software compatibility, and the new scheduler, I'm going to have to upgrade to windows 11 soon.<p>For those who upgraded: is there an edition (like win10 LTSC), which disables all these nonsense, and creates a livable computing environment?<p>If not, is there something like w10privacy for windows 11?<p>if neither, what's the current-best guide of setting up, and locking in a livable environment?
I used to run a windows box occasionally for gaming, but have completely replaced it with PopOS. Proton is truly amazing tech IMO. My whole steam library runs as well as it did on windows.<p>Posting this here for others that might not have known. I could have switched away from windows for gaming long ago but Steam oddly doesn't promote / enable Proton by default.
Windows update frequently break my laptop. For instance, one time the speakers just stopped working. That eventually got fixed. And recently (and still broken) .local mDNS lookups I use to ssh into my Linux desktop to code no longer work.<p>I dread what my laptop will be like when I hear it whir awake when closed.
The company software auto updated my machine to Win 11. There were many issues but two of them really struck out<p>1. The right click context menu change<p>2. The highlight around windows on Alt + Tab got very hard to see<p>I just gave up in a week and got a new machine with Win 10 from IT. Had to install everything from scratch.
I use windows server at work and even the newest ones are pretty agreeable. There might be a real case to be made to just user a server license for desktop. I wonder what the drawbacks of that are these days for say gaming or trying to use it on a laptop?
I am a happy Windows "user". Specifically, I use it for its superior battery/power management on laptops, and mainly as a VNC client to connect to Linux desktops. As long as I'm in control of the firewall, it's also free from ads.
>More attempts to impose Edge<p>I don't particularly mind this. Apple already forces Safari down our throats at every turn. And Edge is honestly a pretty great browser. Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better choice on Windows at this point.
If you've noticed that when you search in Windows 11, there's a big delay in the results coming up (or worse, they come up for a split second, then disappear for a while before coming back again), it's the web search that's the problem.<p>You can turn it off to get fast search back:<p>Regedit: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows<p>Sub-key (folder) "Explorer" - create if it's not there.<p>New > DWORD (32-bit) -> DisableSearchBoxSuggestions<p>Set value to true
If you're gonna pirate (well, use leaked activation keys) then install the enterprise version which has less of this crap to deal with.<p>I hate start menu ads and edge default pages because they have animation which beings rdp to a crawl.
I still haven’t recovered from when Microsoft changed Classic to Tiles. It was a shock to years of muscle memory. There were plenty of hacks to get the Classic UI emulated. Start > Programs you are dear to heart.
Windows was fine 10 years ago when I switched to Mac, but it seems like every time I look back, the OS is more hostile. They basically took every reason to use an ad blocker, and baked those into the OS.
I just run W10Privacy program every now and then, and it disables all the ads, telemetry and bloatware in Windows. Takes 5 minutes. No such program exists for Android or iOS, it just can't exist.
I have the same sorts of gripes with VS Code; stubbornness from the people running the project at MS and refusal to listen to the userbase. It seems to be a pervasive trait at MS.
It’s quite ironic reading about the complain of the “recommend webpage section in the start menu” while getting 20% of my screen (iPad) stolen by a “destiny 2” ad…
I don't understand how microsoft can be bring so much in the Open Source world and this kind of things in the OS world. Seems completely out of touch.
Speaking of all this, on my windows 11 machine I get McAfee popups, and for the life of me, I can't track down where they come from or how to turn them off. My son has a windows 10 machine and has the same problem. Why does Microsoft put up with this? I only use windows when I have to because of crap like this.