Microsoft is testing ads in the Windows 11 File Explorer
bleepingcomputer.com
bleepingcomputer.com
Looks like a new generation of engineers and designers is ready to learn this lesson the hard way again!
Yet somehow PMs never realize that if they let the features be visible in the corner, I would click on them in 10 seconds when I am done with what I am doing and would actually want to read them.
No, I don't need an "easier way to do X, Y" or whatever else your obtuse program manager decided would get them a promotion.
I'm operating a 2-ton vehicle in traffic, so THE EASIER WAY would be to not obscure 50% of my phone screen, making me take eyes away from the road for an extra 2-3 seconds.
Hint for anyone reading this at google - it's in the name. Maps. That's all I want from your app, UNLESS I am specifically searching for Food/Hotels/Groceries. Also, please stop doing a UI redesign every year.
No, I don't need a pop-up if you want to reroute me around an accident. If it's faster - just reroute me, if it's not - don't.
I am not worried about people using a GPS on the road, I am worried about the people I've seen who are scrolling through their social media feeds and watching videos that play in the feeds and everything. Or the people sending big text messages, the people who are having conversations with passengers and for some reason always have to look at the person to speak rather than keeping their eyes on the road, etc....
It makes a difference for people (like myself) who very much don't want the route to change automatically. It means that some attention has to be paid to the app so you can tap the screen in time to make it stop, and it means that you have a time-limited action that you must perform. Two things that add to the cognitive load and distraction.
> No, I don't need a pop-up if you want to reroute me around an accident. If it's faster - just reroute me, if it's not - don't.
That is what I am addressing. That it already does automatic rerouting without user interaction being required.
Different people do have different needs, and it's clear that Google Maps attempts to reach a wide audience since it's both a map, business directory, and navigation service.
If it must ask, offer "always pick faster route" and "always follow planned route" buttons on first use and in a menu somewhere.
I think we all know by now Google goes for the simply route that asks the least of a user. Google is well known for not providing much customization and basically forcing you to use it a certain way. And clearly this model works with the popularity they have. I know us powerusers don't always like this kind of thing, but for regular users this is the way that seems to work best.
I don't actually hate the new features themselves.
Throughout all these comments i just hear George Carlin....'people that should be.....'
Google Maps used to be that, until PMs took over pushing random new features. No, Google, I did not open your maps app so I could see "what's new", and have no desire to do that. Even the search history is broken -- it now uses some inscrutable logic to decide whether or not a previous search is worthy of inclusion into the past searches list.
For example Food/Hotels/Groceries is an ideal place to show ads - which is the primary actual purpose of Google Maps as far as Google is concerned.
The PM couldn't care less about whether it interrupts your flow - he just knows that interrupting the flow of millions of people will net them that next promotion and a nice "increased engagement by double-digit percentages" bullet point on the resume. The company executives don't care either, because they know that boasting about the increased engagement figures will make their stock price go up.
By the time the degraded experience causes actual repercussions for the company (if it ever does - it won't if they've got a monopoly), both the aforementioned PM and executives will be long gone and will already have cashed out.
Also, there are few to no replacements. Because at some point, the last generation decided Windows was the only real OS. Oops!
Probably is the case, however, a learned lesson sticks better than a taught lesson. Or at least that's my hypothesis as to why our industry ends up operating in a cycle of relearning past lessons.
On servers there is Linux and Windows Server, with a few minor 3rds (BSD maybe?).
On phones there are 2, 3rd place quit.
In the cloud there are 2 providers in AWS and Azure. With Google a distant 3rd.
Are you spotting a trend? Seems like each platform will support 2 to 3 players, usually with one dominant, one subordinate, and possibly one or two also-rans.
When the platform is new there's lots of variety, but as the sector matures so the 2 winners emerge.
Turns out that OSs are only as good as their developer community, and developers will support 1 or 2 platforms, not more. So 3rd place exists on scraps with few users and fewer developers.
This has nothing to do with what a generation decides - each platform has a winner and a follower, and little else.
To change the OS you have to change the platform, or invent a new one. Or maybe 2nd can overtake first (chrome over firefox/ie) but examples of that are rare.
So don't be blaming a generation, the players are just the players - the game is the game.
1: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
But it merely reflects my point that there tends to be one big player in most markets. Android / ios is also skewed (globally) but ios is very much a player.
You don't have to be number 1 to be in the game, but past number 2 it's very hard to break in. And if number 2 is strong, close to impossible.
Removing the start button was a classic example, and there is or was plenty of unrest in the walls of Microsoft around all the data being collected.
I am more than confident there are 10s of thousands of employees that are either resigned in disappointment or actively annoyed at what Microsoft has done here with these ads, just like the Skydrive ads before them.
Disclosure: worked for Microsoft a long time ago. My views, obviously, do not reflect their values.
It's very troubling to me how a device (that I paid a lot of money for mind you) would do this without any sort of courtesy, and in such a disrespectful manner. This is the issue with modern software development, even the things we buy can be suddenly changed at the drop of a dime into a subscription service cash cow for big industry and we'll have no choice of escaping it all. Consumer Protection has failed us totally because they too invested deeply into these extortionist big corporations. The ads will only get worse year after year because it's all shareholder driven, and they will likely lobby other software and hardware manufacturers to not support alternate options like Linux. Good luck everyone.
But I'm finding it hard to believe that there isn't some escape hatch there. I absolutely cannot imagine that MSFT's corporate customers would play ball with something like that, and they still represent a powerful interest group where MSFT's decision-making is concerned. So there's got to be some escape hatch. Is it a Home vs Pro thing?
It's a vicious cycle.
Please don't bootleg Windows. Even a pirate install counts as an install. Linux is so much better.
That said, yeah, at this point Windows is becoming so bad that even I, a vocal Linux Desktop critic, must admit that soon Linux will at least be the less shitty of the two.
[0] at least not for the people who are still using Windows. Obviously some amount of this comes down to how and why any given person uses a desktop computer at all.
It's also good if you just need to do one or two things and they happen to work on Linux. Some people install it on their grandma's internet PC.
Even a majority of Steam games seem to work on Linux now, via Valve's fork of Wine.
Depends on he kind of developer. Web developer? Probably. Game developer? It's a joke.
> Even a majority of Steam games seem to work on Linux now, via Valve's fork of Wine.
That at least is true, it's getting a lot better. However, VR is still a hell of a lot more problematic on Linux even if you're using Valve's hardware.
Like I said, a lot of it comes down to how and why you use a desktop computer in the first place.
I think it's better at technical things for any kind of developer or technical person, generally. (Even at non-technical things in some cases: KDE, as a desktop environment, wipes the floor with Windows's desktop environment, from the taskbar to the file manager.)
But if one developer's "better" includes "playing <AAA game with anticheat>" or "using Photoshop" or "using VR", the betterness is sharply decreased.
I count myself extremely lucky my need/want matrix has happened to align such that I'm much more comfortable on Linux than on Windows, but that alignment is sadly RNG. :p
No, [Ardour, LMMS, Darktable, ...] aren't going to do as replacements (for the nth time), but it's not at all their fault. I also don't fault them or Linux as a whole for the people who badger about it while ignoring the needs of the person they're pestering, but not everyone is able to make that distinction, and it comes to reflect poorly on the software.
As for ports of the stuff I do use, it seems the fault is in the lack of cohesion. It's not free to assign developers to port to even a reasonably narrow subset of toolkits and libraries to target the most users, and having a lawyer go over the licenses to see about packing it in costs money. And they're not likely to ever recover that cost in sales: the people who want it are already using the Windows or Mac version, and the people they might sell to are already productive and skilled with Linux options.
They have been for me. Darktable does not feel like a compromise. The ability to edit skin from RAW made the need for other editors pretty small. I go to Hugin to stitch panoramas but that's about it.
If you want actual evidence, you'd need to control for some variables like windows being preinstalled and about the only ads it got was Microsoft advertising "why not Linux" in the past. Right now you need to spend some effort to even give it a go.
For us techies, having to occasionally fall back to the terminal to fix a hiccup is worthwhile not having to deal with Microsoft's recent BS.
For a non-technical user however, Microsoft's BS means they can still accomplish their task, albeit slowly and without privacy, while Linux will leave them completely stranded if something breaks because they have no clue how to fix it.
It doesn't help that the Linux world spreads itself thin on reinventing the same square wheel 10 times (and arguing/fighting about which wheel is best - think systemd vs other inits, desktop environments, etc) completely ignoring (or denying) the fact that the wheel is square.
Is Windows really much different in this respect?
My partner is not at all interested in tech, and they use Fedora Silverblue (at my suggestion) because it's less intrusive than Windows and it's hard to break. It seems to behave weirdly less often than Windows did.
(The only thing that didn't just work was the printer, but we poked around in the printer settings a bit, and now it works.)
If Windows did just work, they wouldn't have been willing to switch to Silverblue.
The same line of reasoning concludes that McDonalds is better than home cooking.
(People are lazy and easily swayed by cheap psychological tricks)
Teams for Ubuntu works well enough.
Most people would still have a hard time switching to Ubuntu, but then again most people (outside of HN audience) have no use for the file manager, or are using work computers that somebody else is maintaining. The people who a) need Windows, and b) need to use something other than the browser, are a tiny minority who are also tech savvy enough to figure out some way to deal with this.
Where I see it as a dark pattern is, someone is trying to figure out how to do something on their Windows computer, and the first thing they see is an ad that looks like a help message, inviting them to install something that they have to pay for and exposes them to even more ads. It's like Clippy but takes your money.
I don't know what else to tell you. I am a moron, lazy and get easily frustrated.
I don't work in IT.
Installation is 15 minutes and everything just works perfect. There is no way people can have all these problems with Linux here if I can figure this out. If it was any type of frustration I would just stick with Windows.
I think many people here must just make things up about all these linux problems because it makes no sense to me at all.
I don't even know what a single directory outside of my /home directory is for.
With Linux, anything that goes wrong is almost certainly of own design.
Sorry, not for my needs, it's not. My powershell-gutted w10 pro runs the software i need with remarkably little fuss. I keep trying Linux every few years, but nope, not yet. So, dis-connected from the netm and piracy it will be.
After using all OSes, Linux is still lacking vendor support that Windows has, so one needs les time and lower level knowledge then on Linux to setup some things.
What we need is bloat free Windows, only kernel and package manager like Chocolatey/scoop/winget.
If it wasn't for MS Teams, Windows would be gone for a while now. No way I "upgrade" to Win11. Luckily, both laptops run professional Windows liscences, the backup one with only local accounts. So I hope that protects me from much of MS pressure to upgrade.
Being used to local software, with local accounts and without "telemetry", I see the benefit of tue cloud. Less for storage, but Steam is actually a charm for example. Overall so, I think software took head dive when it came to user experience, privacy and performance. The fact that my OS will be serving ads now in the file explorer can only be part of one of Dante's rings of hell...
Perhaps it's worth trying out?
Zoom on linux works well for me however.
Employer provided hard- and software is a different story all together.
This was a very stark comparison to my experience on my machine that I use Win 11 Pro on, which has none of the advertising fluff, TikTok isn’t pre-installed and pushed onto me when I open the start menu. It just has the things I want, that I added, and use frequently in the start menu. I didn’t use any of those uninstall scripts that tend to gouge into the OS, but it was upgraded from Win10, which had been installed ~3 months earlier.
1. Settings (Win+I)
2. System
3. Notifications
4. [ ] Suggest ways I can finish setting up my device
Android is a great base, and some OEMs customise it to hell, and add their "bloat". Some is genuinely terrible, some is interesting. There's always Google and Motorola phones ( at the very least) which give stock experience, and popular FOSS versions you can flash yourself if you fancy them more.
Compared to the iOS experience, if you don't like it, you're holding it wrong ( does iOS finally support anything else besides all your apps are plastered on the home screen, with optional folders? As someone who grew up arguing with people who just put everything on their Desktop, i twitch thinking of that).
I have no seen this in my enviroment?
https://office365itpros.com/2021/04/01/microsoft-push-ads-te...
Most of the annoyances are removed from there, and you can stick with an older version and not be forced to take the "feature" updates, 1809 works well.
The only issue i had is their new Terminal app is not supported, i forget why. Last i read they were working on support, maybe it works now.
A local KMS activator will license it, then you don't worry about adverts in Explorer, for a few years at least...
It does! It's a bit trickier than just getting it from the MS Store, because that's not a thing in Windows 10 LTSC, but you can install some dependencies and get Terminal from GitHub[1]. I just set it up a couple days ago on an LTSC virtual machine, and it works just fine.
[1] https://nerdschalk.com/how-to-install-windows-terminal-from-...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/stat...
The LTSC versions get 10 years of security updates.
I even checked endoflife.date, but it looks like they aren’t aware either!
It's like quitting social media - mildly inconvenient, vastly better for your mental health.
But it’s basically impossible to buy for small numbers of computers legally. And when it’s possible, it’s crazy expensive. (no, those licenses on eBay are not legal.)
Also the base Windows is not updated, so you end up with weird issues with games, that expect newer Windows; but sometimes also normal software. And Store is not there, which you might actually miss.
--
"Microsoft recommentds Windows 11 for your device"
"blablabla it's the best"
"Learn more -- Decline upgrade -- Get it"
--
Pressing "Decline upgrade" yields a new screen:
--
"Not sure about Windows 11?"
"blablabla it's the best"
"Skip for now -- Get Windows 11"
--
And "Skip for now" brings me to my desktop.
I wonder if disabling TPM could be a solution.
This is not necessary, only a very niche like 1% of computer users use Linux as their primary OS
This particular cause of abysmal, insulting UX is common in new teams with no experience among the staff, but there's just no word for how embarrassing it is that Microsoft suffers from it so often too.
it's not just the nagware, the whole system experience is shit because it's so inconsistent.
I run a english language / italian keyboard, and every update it decides to reset my keyboard to english layout.
search results are still this bad, with unrelated results shadowing good matches: https://i.imgur.com/uJY7uCJ.png
windows security often gives me a notification. the notification say: "no action needed"
it's like they just put interns in cages and set them to program away, building stuff for the sake of accounting new lines of codes.
Nowadays, they don't even try to do "the right thing", or at the very least, the meaning of "the right thing" has been corrupted in many parts of the tech industry. "Growth and engagement" is seen as a completely normal and valid business model and pervasive stalking (that would make spyware from a decade ago super jealous) became socially-accepted.
You used to buy a desktop which you would take home and sit in front and do your work.
Now you buy a desktop which you take home and you get the seller sit on the other side of it, looking at your work, asking your questions, taking your papers, rearranging everything according to their newest ideas.
It's absolutely horrible.
My personal opinion is:
Microsoft told us they see Windows 11 as the "last" version. From now on Windows is a service that pushes continuous updates. The OEM deals are still generating revenue but the strategy shift means no more selling retail upgrades.
It makes total sense that Microsoft would now prioritize adding new revenue sources. I would expect more "parterships", ads, telemetry/tracking, and so forth. The money is just too juicy and Windows is slowly transitioning to be a cost center instead of revenue center which makes the pressure to find revenue even higher. Plus with PC upgrade cycles getting longer and the overall PC market somewhat leveling off (days of 50% yoy growth are long gone) revenue was going to stagnate no matter what.
Microsoft employs a lot of smart people. They know users don't want any of this. The desire to find new revenue is a higher priority. Anyone not on-board with the "Windows client versions are now a 'marketing channel' and 'partnership opportunity'" will leave or find themselves reorg'd to "align business priorities".
Is writing some new feature going to move the needle after the OEMs fill the system up with spyware/adware? It isn't going to increase PC sales by 20% this year so it isn't going to generate more OEM license sales and zzzzzzz (look the VPs already fell asleep during your presentation).
Is fixing bugs going to get kudos, or just create more support tickets as your bug fix accidentally breaks some old garbage "business critical" software relying on the broken behavior? It sure isn't going to sell more copies of Windows since that isn't something MS does anymore.
But putting ads in Explorer and generating $50m in new revenue? Now that will get you a promotion and bonus!
> Microsoft's developer evangelist Jerry Nixon made the announcement at the company's Ignite conference in Chicago last week.
That's a bit more than "a random dev".
I don't doubt he thought he was telling the truth, or that there was a general sense within the organization that windows 10 was going to get continually updated rather than having new editions every 3 years. Windows 10 did adopt this model for 6 years. But painting it as some sort of official promise from the organization seems tenuous.
Hint: people don't buy Macs because they're at version 11 (or 12 now), they buy it because the experience is much more polished than whatever Microsoft has been puking out in the last decade.
Really? It's hard to see how they could say that without getting laughed out of the room, considering they said the same thing about Windows 10.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/the-vista-capable-de...
The mistake was in the strategy: "Let's combine touch interfaces with desktop interfaces. Tablets are the next computing revolution." Oops.
Nah, it's just some manager who needs a pay raise.
There is a whole GNU/Linux ecosystem [as well as a few others], mature and reliable. I even feel sorry for the user who, for one reason or another, prefers to be spoon fed by the Windows system. As you can see, there is a price to pay for the convenience of ignorance [hey, everybody uses Windows!].
Or it may be that general computing, the noble goal of bringing computing for the masses, is just an illusion, and cannot be done without gatekeepers like MS.
The industry builds what the industry wants.
Don't play Fortnite. Skip the game that was designed to rip off your money instead of entertaining your kids, and teach your kids something useful like programming their own games.
Vista broke 30% market share meaning that MS can push terrible UX and get away with it. Further, in the Vista era there was a more palpable reduction in performance that doesn't seem to be happening.
MS has made their calculation, and it may lead to more revenue.
You mean product managers? I’m not sure what engineers and designers have to do with this. My guess is that they know it’s stupid, tried to shut it down and failed.
Did you say alexa?
- ads in file explorer
- ads on the lockscreen
- ads as notifications
- ads in the start menu
- ads in the "change file association" dialog
- ads in the apps (e.g. solitaire)
- mandatory updates that cannot be disabled and reboot your machine without asking
- pc turning itself on in the middle of the night OR when in my backpack to install updates
- un-disableable spyware ("telemetry")
Literally. And adware by the mid-00's definition. Like, I can't understand why they'd do this. I really can't. What a joke. Do people still work on the Windows project who are proud of what they do anymore?
You gotta think, there's an actual team of real, live, people at Microsoft who decided that getting paid enough would be worth it to put this shit in and degrade millions and millions of people's daily experiences using their software.
If I ever become that person, may I rot. I just could never see selling out to that level and living with myself.
People don't care about malware, except for those malwares that rip their bank account off.
Some recent frustrations with the big 3 OSs:
1. MacOS: The File>Save dialog has a unchangeable 35 character limit for what can be viewed in the file name field. WTF?! It's like these jokers have never worked in a real office where people create documents with dictated naming conventions like [Customer Name]_[Project Name]_[Project subtask]-[Date]. Maybe they think it is a way to force businesses to use Tags? Dear Apple, your OS seems toy like.
2. Linux: There is an age old Ubuntu bug (which bleeds into many Ubuntu based Distributions) where the installer wipes out the bootloader of a drive that you aren't even installing the OS on. Dear open source community: your desktop OSs are still hobbyist tweaker mode. I
3. Windows: First data mining telemetry and now you are going to show me ads? Dear MS, you keep trying to be Google or Facebook and all it has done is undermine a once serious OS.
(note that this is just a "what pissed me off this week list" and not intended to be a comprehensive criticism)
I'm surprised the parent comment has this issue. They are either using BIOS, or the automatic disk mode (and just complained about the installer doing things automatically on their disk). Avoiding this scenario is UEFI is as simple as creating a exFAT partition and mounting it to /boot. Any calamares-based installer will let you do that.
I love this comment so much.
Linux is my go-to, but the idea that it's "as simple as..." cracks me up.
I ask mainly because I came to a realization not too long ago that I stopped using Windows back when 7 was released. It's been a bumpy road, but my last few installs in the past half-decade were more for fun (spring cleaning) or trying out a new distro, and not because I borked my system running errant commands.
Especially if you're not using bleeding edge hardware, almost all things just work.
I know you'll bring up the usual refrains of "hey how about that hibernate function in linux?" or "how are your video drivers lately?", and while they're all legitimate points, Windows has got its own fair share of "wtfs" that Windows users are all too quick to gloss over.
Maybe I'm being a bit of an old man here (mid-30s), but I remember booting into a fresh XP install and having nothing work properly. No video drivers, no ethernet, no wifi, no sound... it usually led to a full day of installing drivers. You'll probably say Windows is better now, and it probably is. Again, I just haven't used Windows in over a decade.
I don't remember the last time I logged into a fresh linux install and didn't have ethernet.
Same goes for MS Surface hardware - you _can_ get it working, but there are more hoops to jump through.
Try it on less locked down and more open hardware and you'll have more reliable results.
It's perfectly fine and hobbyists make *amazing* things; but it remains very niche and tinkerer/hobbyist level.
For everyone else, there's, Windows, Android, iOS, Chromebooks and Mac... I think in that order, even.
That's far from true. On reasonably non-esoteric desktop hardware it's robust. On most laptops (unless you're using an external 4K screen) it's also perfectly fine.
There are hobbyists within the hobby.
I don't know how you arrive at that, unless you're trolling or haven't gone that deep on Linux. Linux is a far better development environment for many languages and ecosystems than Windows, and Mac (granted of course that you'll have a much better time on Windows with .NET, etc). I've been forced to use both now and again in various jobs over the years and have always gone back to Linux.
Mac is better for non-programming office software, and Windows has better games support.
I made a poor definition of "personal machine". It did not include development. Developing software at home and for fun is, of course, a relatively niche hobby; but, I will grant you that Linux is a very, very good development environment.
Mac OS X is pretty great for photographers and cinematographers, etc.
At least as of 2020 (https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...), Windows had 87% market share, Mac OS had about 10.7, and Linux had 1.7. IT looks like it was based around UserAgent checking? Which means it would include software developer's worker machines when they log into random websites, as well.
You're using the words "better experience", etc; but, perhaps the problem here is that we're not using the same definition of "hobbyist". Product quality had nothing to do with hobbyist in my definition. It was more "support expectations".
> Developing software at home and for fun is, of course, a relatively niche hobby
My multiple decade tech career is not exactly a hobby. Developing software, perhaps relatively niche among white collar workers.
> perhaps the problem here is that we're not using the same definition of "hobbyist"
I don't know what you're trying to prove, but smaller market share does not equate to hobby status. That's like saying that driving a Volvo is a hobby. Anyway, it's been a discussion but not particularly profitable, so have fun in another thread :)
I hate when people trying to defend Linux prepend their "defenses" with "most X", "reasonably Y". Because once the the counterexamples of stuff not working in Linux show up, they just shield on "well, I didn't say all of them", "well, it works for me".
Look, I've been a Linux developer and power user for 20 years, I've compiled Linux Kernels several time, I've tinkered with OSS, ALSA, Pulse, WinModem firmwares, USRobotic modems, SSD/Trim params, Bluetooth, printers, games, graphic cards, countless Linux versions and whatnot.
My current PC is Linux Mint exclusively (I even play on it using steam ), but being realistic, it is NOT the case that Desktop Linux is "robust" on PCs or Laptops. There is always something, there will always going to be an issue that will make you have to tinker with it one way or another always.
Just to give you an idea of the problems on my P15s running Windows:
* I have to run ThrottleStop to stop the built-in thermal limits from limiting my computer's performance to 500 MHz.
* I have to run TpFanControl so my laptop doesn't sound like it's initiating a jet engine test at my desk (this is with or without ThrottleStop so don't blame it)
* The Xbox app frequently freezes my entire machine (I wanted to try out Xbox Game Pass on a work machine, I know sorry)
* My little nipple trackpoint will sometimes stop working, requiring a full system reboot
* The Task Scheduler often freezes up
* There's a printer driver that errors when updated by Windows Update. It prevents other system updates from being installed. I had to hide the driver, which requires a PowerShell script
On my macOS work machine at my job previous to this one:
* full system freezes when waking while docked to my Samsung ultrawide
On my current Linux laptop, a XPS 13 that shipped with Ubuntu:
* very rarely doesn't wake if it screen blanks without me closing the lid
* I've had audio issues in Zoom a few times
If you want to use Windows, that's fine but maybe just point out that you prefer using Windows and not subject the rest of us to your tirades against why Linux users are suffering under their own illusions. Those illusions are well-shared by our Windows-using counterparts.
Kindly put, I really think it's important to cultivate a diversity of people using OSes. If someone enjoys macOS or Windows more, more power to them. My only regret would be to see a mono-culture of OSes at work develop.
I use Debian (current stable and Sid) and Arch Linux on my workstation (12000 series Alder Lake i7), laptop (X1 Carbon Gen 9), desktop pc at my birth home (Ryzen 3000 series + AMD GPU) and desktop pc in my flat (haswell i7 + NVIDIA 1080), and while I'm pretty good with Linux I'm also having a very low tolerance for basic things (audio, wifi, bluetooth noise-cancelling headset for travel, graphics) not working.
All of aforementioned works everywhere, graphics work even fine for the quite new Alder Lake iGPU, and I use Windows quite a bit for testing as customers still use it, it's just bad how much broken stuff there is on Windows that needs magnitudes of more hacks than I had ever to do on Linux, or how (relatively) often a machine just stops booting at all without any HW fault (I've got 0% tolerance for that one).
But apparently the bar is set low for Windows while being very high on Linux. All needs to work out of the box 110% perfectly like everybody's subjective use case expects on Linux.
Suspend is a battery sucker, but surprise surprise, this also happens on Windows because of s2idle shenanigans.
That's just not true. To give you additional anecdata: my (non technical, fairly old) father was constantly struggling with his Windows install and I was having to help out every few months. I put him on Ubuntu and showed him how to accept patches. It's been rock solid since. This was back in 2010.
Then I reinstalled windows 10 on the same computer a couple of years later and the installer couldn't even format my drive to install it, just threw bland "not working" errors until I manually formatted and installed the windows bootloader from a rescue drive.
What's your point?
I've had MacOS kill a day trying to get gdb working but I could never get it properly working with codesign despite following multiple tutorials to do exactly that. I've also had Windows decide to do things like sliently update my tablet rotation driver to one that actually doesn't work with the hardware. They can all be unnecessary time sucks.
Apple Macs also have notoriously difficult firmware (only made to boot macOS or Windows via Bootcamp with special drivers). You should try something designed to cope with its pure awfulness like the rEFInd bootloader instead of GRUB or whatever systemd uses.
Jokes aside, every O/S essentially needs periodic maintenance, in the form of workarounds, that needs to be applied on every major update. That's just how it works - O/Ss and hardware became too complex to get a handle.
I've found that Linux distros require a lot of work upfront, and relatively little every couple of years (assuming a distro with an LTS release schedule).
I think Mac is similar, except that the work upfront is considerably less.
I'm also familiar with Windows, but I frankly find new developments very offensive, in particular, those on Windows 11, so I ended up sticking with a relatively untweaked Window 10 (used only for specific use cases, thankfully).
The only solution in order to have a very stable system, is to choose a platform and stick with it. Given the ease of switch, I do see engineers switching machine and O/S, illuding themselves of finding a more stable experience, and ending up instead with a lot "upfront" work each time, without managing to stabilize the system.
Take this as a glowing endorsement of Linux Mint. Try it. You won't waste time with bullshit.
- maybe a lot of companies dont do it because there is no awareness that customers want it? - maybe companies do not know how to develop cross platform
So ppl shd tell manufactures that they would be willing to pay money for linux applications.
Also the cross platform development should be smoothed and well documented. Like write a document (and give some talks) how to easily migrate a win32 programm to. Linux and a dot net program. If it is not easy, make it easier.
Also do the same for licensing/copyprotection on linux.
Absolute bugger no. Freecad is the best, and it's pretty bad.
If it were really as simple as reading the official documentation, then yeah, I'd concede this point. The reality is that finding the correct solution to a (non-corner case) problem is a spaghetti splat mess of links all over the internet with no guarantee that they are the answer you need.
I have been doing this stuff for more decades than many on this site have been alive so I am capable of dealing with some arcane shit. BUT I know all too well the value of time and Linux is still in the "hobbyist tweaker" category. I'll use it for some things, but I am looking for a Desktop OS that I can actually do work on, not kill time tweaking.
Can you link bug report? Personally I never encountered it (and while I had some corruptions over time I would say that Windows is even worse here and I would not call it to be in hobbyist tweaker mode)
This link talks in detail about the problem and its solutions (all of which were more time suck than I was willing to commit): https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=287353
Thankfully fixing it wasn't too bad, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place. No other distro I've installed shares this problem.
I'm glad I use an OS where I don't have to know the internals.
Seriously?
1. Paid apps normally support Ubuntu out of box, but it's rarely a case for Arch. AUR is not a "professional" place at any senses.
2. Arch is a rolling distro that breaks completely randomly. Major breakages are introduced by both the distro and upstreams.
I've never seen any colleague, customer, or supplier get provided anything other than a Windows laptop.
I remember when we Mac users made fun of DOS with their 8 char file names (HFS supported 32).
Now we can have even longer filenames, but macOS only shows them truncated...
For years I've been customising Windows installs towards that state with hacky scripts and PE environments. It's the near perfect distribution of windows for me, kept just tantalisingly out of reach.
Linux on the desktop is not really doable. Why? GPO/Intune polices. Interoperability with other companies/customers.
Same for Mac. JAMF or Intune MDM would need to be added.
I've never had an issue with this "35 character file save prompt" limit, and I cannot imagine it would be a dealbreaker even if I did.
Telemetry is irrelevant to getting "real work" done, assuming its implemented in a way which doesn't impact performance, and I've never had an issue on Windows. What you're talking about is privacy concerns, which are very, very legitimate; and have nothing to do with "real work".
Some things are more productive in Mac, others are more productive in Windows. I'll die on this hill: Microsoft Paint is a top 5 productivity application for me. If I need to quickly take an image, layer a second image on top of it, resize, and add some text; there's nothing more productive than Paint for that. The result looks like shit, but its productive. The ability to hit Win+Shift+S, screenshot a part of the screen, then immediately paste it somewhere? Huge. MacOS has nothing like this; it has all the same basic tools, but they don't tie together to enable the same velocity; even the screen clipping tool takes like 5 seconds for the image to leave the screen corner and hit the filesystem. Notepad is another example; I open notepad and can immediately start typing. On MacOS, I can open Notes, CMD+N to get a new note, it defaults to formatting for the title but at least that works; or you can do TextEdit, and you're presented with a "create a new document" dialog; no thanks. Little moments which add up.
But where does MacOS pull ahead? If I need to edit a video? Windows has nothing for me; maybe DaVinci, but its hyper-pro level tooling. iMovie is great, and years ago I splurged on the buy-once-and-done FCPX subscription: its fantastic. Photo editing beyond what Paint can do? No, I'm not paying $200/month for Photoshop; maybe you can try GIMP, but I'm using my $20 og Pixelmator purchase from a decade ago, it works great (ugh I guess I should support them and buy the new one). All the UNIX tooling of course. Need some light CAD? I love Shapr3D; and I'm super happy to see its coming to Windows soon, but traditionally its been an Apple-only thing. In short: MacOS owns Prosumer-tier software; Pro-Pro tier stuff tends to be on Windows+Mac (like, Adobe), but there's a ton of cool software right below that which is Mac-only.
Linux is the one OS where I have broad issues getting work done. If I'm developing a website or a web app? Sure, it works as good as anything else (better than Windows to be fair). But go beyond that and there are dragons. A juxtoposition of trying to make mediocre web apps or libre software work for workloads which should be native. CAD? No Fusion360, no Shapr3D... Tinkercad I guess? Vectary, kinda ok. LibreCAD, I'm sure was productive in 1997. Spreadsheet guru? Calc & Google Sheets have come a long way, but they're still in another realm compared to Excel; but I'm a big personal fan of Numbers, as it doesn't try to be Excel and instead serves a slightly different kind of user.
I have worked at or consulted for hundreds of clients from SMB to the world's largest enterprises and the majority would have a major worker uprising on their hands if they had to deal with a 35 character limit to easily working with document names. Please try to work with a handful documents with names that exceed 35 characters and you will get it.
Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+4 (default shortcut, you can change it to Cmd+Shift+S, if you wish)
Then stop using Ubuntu. But, to be fair, the whole Ubuntu/Debian installation scene is quite a facepalm. The installer is overly complicated and completely undocumented. Also, they didn't really account for any serious customization.
Compared to what? Arch?
Maybe that's true, but ...
I had a very similar thing happen on Windows 10. I set up a new SSD in order to install a new version of Windows with the idea that I would switch out the old SSD to an external drive.
No big deal. So, I installed Windows on the new drive. Set everything up. Life looked good. I removed the old SSD.
And the system wouldn't boot. WTF?!?!
Turns out that if there is already a Windows bootloader then the Windows installer will put your boot information on it even if you tell it otherwise. You can't force an install and bootloader onto a new drive if it detects an existing install anywhere.
I had to remove the old drive, remformat the new drive, and completely reinstall so Windows would install the boot partition and boot loader properly.
I was "rather cross" to quote my UK brethren.
Never saw that happen on any Linux installation (mostly using Debian, with one Arch Linux instance to avoid getting to accustomed to the Debian Way, though).
What I often saw once I still dual-booted Windows 7 and (IIRC) OpenSUSE ~11-14 years ago was that Windows destroyed the Linux bootloader entry, while on Linux GRUB + os-detect automatically setup one for Linux and Windows, so I always had to install Windows first and then Linux as else stuff was broken due to Windows not caring about existing user data at all.
Same story with USB pen drives, once I used a FAT formatted one on Linux and then plugged it into Windows it always had "format drive" selected by default, mounting was a slightly hidden menu entry (so it could read it just fine, it rather was a bad UX pattern)
However, for those who are willing to accept the problems to try something different, it's surprisingly un-bad. Majority of Steam stuff does work, via their fork of Wine; if it's not officially compatible, you can enable it anyway.
As usual Microsoft doesn't show a clear direction, unless that direction is infighting.
For me, MSFT was the last standing giant that was not going to do it. And yet...
I guess I was too naive :(
why you working with the home edition then?
Absolutely no self-awareness there.
I think it's the shitness of the ads in Solitaire, those very low quality "You won't believe how she looks now". Pure scraping of the barrel.
I wouldn't mind if I got punted ads for stuff like coffee or Philips LED lights. Fortunately I've been able to block Solitaire's worst offenders, the ones for those lootbox games that play at the highest volume possible. And you can't even mute them permanently because each new one that pops up somehow creates a new "Application" in the Volume Mixer.
Yes, Windows 8 had a lot of bad UX decisions, but those were well-meaning, if totally misguided. Ripping out the (excellent) Windows 10 Solitaire in exchange for the ad-filled monstrosity that was Microsoft Solitaire collection was just malicious.
Wine is getting pretty good. If I really have to run a Windows executable, I can.
I'm even developing something that has to work cross-platform. I compile in Rust with
--target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu
Reading the system logs is always a good place to start.
Then I've had some full freezes where precisely nothing at all works, but those happen very rarely and I wouldn't be surprised if that's a hardware problem.
Then there's full RAM. Yes, linux still hasn't figured out how to not flop on its head dead when RAM fills up; though usually the mouse pointer isn't immediately frozen.
I would say I can't believe they are doing this but I can completely believe they are doing this.
I remember how much I liked Windows 2000 and then they had to "fix" it.
It's been downhill since then. Ads, subscriptions, and trying to make desktops look like phones.
Windows 7 is still 12% of the installed base, and that's not counting the ones that don't phone home to Redmond.
https://mobile.twitter.com/flobo09/status/150264586620470477...
:(
https://nitter.net/flobo09/status/1502645866204704773
No need to login either.
I have seen
https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect
linked here so I use it.
Empty spaces filled with ads, telemetry with zero opt-out, data watched by thousands of eyes, DRM for home appliances.
At what point will people do something about this? I have a feeling that even though all of us use technology for hours every day, only a few have even a basic understanding of what they are doing. Everyone else isn’t even aware of what’s happening and blindly click away their rights.
Depends on person, I upgraded from Windows 7 to Lubuntu for example because Windows 8 appeared to be unacceptably bad.
70% of the population is overweight, if people can’t bother to care about their body / health then why would they care about being spied on by telemetry or denied access to their licensed content via DRM?
It feels shitty to think about, but it seems like this is just a tech extension to some of the flaws in society, rather than a problem that’s unique to tech.
People would have an easier time of that if there wasn't so much brightly coloured cheap sugar at bargain prices arrayed around the checkout of supermarkets and advertised all over. It obviously works or they wouldn't do it. Pretending it doesn't work and the target/victim is at fault for being influenced by it is awful. If you'd never heard of soda in your life, you wouldn't think to ask "what's the most intensley sugary fizzy acidic liquid I can drink?". If you'd never heard of Pepsi you'd never think to ask "What is the drink of my generation?" or "What is Michael Jordan endorsing? I bet the only reason he's good is his sneaker brand, I need some of those".
It's the situation of the bully standing in front of you, facing you, walking backwards, pointing at you, calling you names, poking you in the chest, pausing so you have to stop moving to avoid tripping up, pretending to spit at you so you wince, then laughing, sidestepping in step with you so you can't dodge them, interrupting your conversation with your friends and it's all fine and socially accepted - as long as you're a sufficently virtuous Ayn Rand libertarian this won't annoy or frustrate you. If it does and you retaliate, ever, in any circumstances (and it will be there when you are weakest, tiredest, most desperate, waiting) then HAH! Gotcha! you're inferior, clearly you just 'can't be bothered' to take the high road and now we can righteously take your money because you fell for temptation so we earned it.
And literally nobody will say anything in your defence because Calories In / Calories Out and I'm All Right, Jack, fuck you got mine, worksforme won'tfix. They'd have to have, you know, empathy.
But anyways, my point wasn’t about the contributing factors of obesity, but rather that if people are struggling with their health how are they expected to be worrying about things like privacy
Say more?
EDIT: screenshot:
Reminds me of the Office365 trial tile in Windows that doesn't actually do anything but when you open the start menu it is always there in accounts that are newly signed in to a computer. It's not really in the way, but it is always in your face until you remove it (but then it does stay away).
While it is probably advertising for a service, it's not a generic place for arbitrary advertisements. I believe the difference between "there will be random ads here" and "you bought a thing, this is what you get with it for free if you want it, or you can remove it and never see it again as a normal option" is pretty big.
https://i.imgur.com/64sP9yh.jpg
My iCloud account isn't new. It's many years old. The device I have is old but only 3 months old. I bought it from someone else and it's still under warranty so maybe that's why.
> I believe the difference between "there will be random ads here" and "you bought a thing, this is what you get with it for free if you want it, or you can remove it and never see it again as a normal option" is pretty big.
That's a fair point. I do notice Apple going in the wrong direction though. Even the "search" tab in the App Store now shows ads for random apps (before doing a search). That's fairly odd.
The random searches I've seen always have to do with my previous searches in that box. I think this is probably a case of Apple not having a good App Store search suggestion engine. (This happens in the Podcasts app as well.)
- normal search for the list of apps that exist
- paid search positioning on top of that
- previous searches you made
- suggested results just for you
On one hand I don't care all that much, on the other hand I know there are people that do go browsing the store looking for new stuff to try out, and using search seems to be the only reasonable way to go looking for things with so many apps being available.
I'm not sure if you get them if you never touch Apple Wallet, I always get them when I transfer to a new phone or reset my current phone and need to setup my cards again before they can fully transfer.
It's annoying, but never felt it was comparable to Microsoft.
Nowhere near as evil as what the other guys are doing, though.
Here’s how it looks:
Still only once per account though. If you have a family setup it's actually only once per family even, I'd imagine it reverts back to once per account if you leave the family.
So basically, if you don't like seeing it, activate it and then immediately cancel it, and it should never come back.
Explorer is something Windows users interact with constantly, putting ads right next to the actual content view is SO different to ads in settings, at least to me.
As others have mentioned this isn't the only ad Apple has tinkered with recently, I don't think they should be off the hook by any means, I just think Microsoft have been way more dubious recently.
Try the new Safari
Fast, energy-efficient, and with a beautiful new design
Now, they had a different notification in the past for MobileMe that was truly an ad because you didn't have to be an existing customer for an upsell nor did it come with the OS by default (this was after iTools got rebranded by Apple), and it just wanted you to go to their website to look at the product and maybe buy it, download it and install it. (this was mostly the pre-iCloud-Drive backup solution that was itself a holdover from iTools)
I think technically anything that points you to a place where money could be made is an advertisement, and even advertising mDNS devices on a local network is doing the "hey you, there is a thing over here"-thing. But there is a big difference between creating a universal spot in software to load arbitrary advertisements for new products vs. in-product purchase options (which obviously tend to lean more into the upsell category of ads than the nudge for mindshare category of ads).
The whole 'try safari' thing is one I do actually see on new accounts, and sometimes on first startup with browsers, but IIRC once dismissed they don't come back again. Heck, it even is less persistent than the post-install highlights notification you got from major OS upgrades.
Perhaps the Browser-notification is best compared with Microsoft's OneDrive notification in the Security settings where they suggest that using a free OneDrive account is the "One True Way" to stop ransomware.
It's not only a new installation issue either; I've had this laptop for 7-8 months. It's only happened 4-5 times, and I assumed (without verifying) that I get it whenever Safari has updated. For what it's worth, I have turned off notifications from Safari; this is the OS itself saying "I see you're using another browser; have you thought about using ours instead?"
Now, for me (and perhaps you too) I see it much more as a collection of interconnected hardware devices, with various firmwares in ROMS and Flash EEPROMs, boot loaders and operating systems on mass storage devices, and a few ISAs, ABIs and APIs to make sure it all works to a certain standard. In practical terms, that doesn't really matter to anyone else, not to Apple, but also not to Microsoft, HP, Dell etc. So we're back at "the thing is a black box appliance" and as such, the base advertised features should be properties of the appliance as bought by the customer. This also means that any deviation from that will either mean someone has to spend (or waste) time and energy on telling an angry customer that their BitCoinBrowserXXL is the reason the battery is empty after an hour, and that it is their own fault, or that the device is defective, or that the advertisement was false. If you are a for-profit company, would you not cut that "waste" of support by 33%?
There is always the fear that the company is doing an evil thing and wants to harvest your life, but if Apple wanted to do that, they could. It's more likely that it's just part of the energy saving subsystem to direct users to optimal usage scenarios and things like "dim display automatically" and "use safari" are part of those scenarios. There really isn't much else gained by using Safari, not by Apple and not by the user. So either both gain a "yes the battery does last longer and the computer is responsive", or they both lose that. There is no PII telemetry in Safari, and cross-device data sharing (like Bookmarks) are encrypted within the iCloud Circle if you are using that, so Apple can't see that either (except if you also enable iCloud Backup on an iOS device), so for data harvesting, it's not really an incentive.
What would be an interesting option is a "do not use notifications to suggest optimal software-hardware interactions" checkbox somewhere so they can just list side-effects near the actual preferences instead of all over the place.
Apple sends push notification advertising Emmy nominations: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/15/apple-sends-unsol...
Apple caught spamming iPhone 12 owners with free Apple Arcade offers: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/10/28/apple-arcade-free-o...
Apple is advertising its monthly iPhone installment plan in the Wallet app: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/12/16/iphone-financing-wa...
!!! Street signs, right into your bedroom !!!
The popup will often have a 3 second delay before it interrupts you due to the performance issues of their ad servers, so you open the app store and just wait there for the inevitable popup to appear before you can dismiss it to continue using the app.
The "Get news and special offers" option is disabled in the app, but none of that matters, the popup ads at app start are there on all Samsung Galaxy devices I've tested.
All sarcasm aside I really don't understand why anyone would voluntarily use a Samsung phone.
MKBHD talked about this recently, https://youtu.be/qWIkBMNKj1s?t=614 timestamp included. I do not own a Samsung phone, so I can't speak to the amount of ads, but it seems they were not sleeping all these years and made the experience a benchmark for other android-flavored phones.
They became solid, somehow boring and just work. Feel free to correct me, it is just a thought.
I have to use Azure at work, and in my experience it's a worse version of AWS/GCP:
- standard MS random indecipherable errors in the GUI (error 0x68482233: consult system administrator)
- extremely slow UI performance in the GUI
- extremely slow VM performance running their OS (even though it has 4 VCPUs, 32gb of RAM and a giant SSD)
literally the first part of your post:
> I really like Windows, Azure and O365 and believe they have no real competition
That is why they keep doing this. Despite Microsoft's past, it seems like you still advocate for them. This would be like someone still advocating for Hitler.
It's still manipulative bullshit, but it's not the gaping security hole that it sounds like it 'ought to be. Even so... this type of behavior is what made me drop Windows over 5 years ago now.
For now.
I think it's incredibly naive to believe it would stay that way. Or maybe I'm just cynical.
EDIT: Considering the fact that the Start menu displays ads for 3rd party software, nah, I think it's naive to assume the ads in Explorer would always come from MS.
Without strict guarantees and control over the way this content is delivered to end user systems, how can we know that a similar type of attack could not happen? This time in a potentially administrative level file explorer?
[0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-has-a-subdomain-hija...
Sounds like you're not really against ads, but any sort of stuff that can change runtime behavior (eg. feature flagging) or retrieves content dynamically.
Additionally, a paid Operating System pushing additional premium features on increasingly more and more pixels is a little egregious. My file browser should be boring and not contain surprises.
It's obviously still painful to change habits. And I won't downplay how Linux can often be difficult to get working perfectly.
The problem with Windows is that it just feels downright user hostile. Ads here and there, MS products constantly pushed, wizards everywhere, taskbar icons for every piece of hardware. It's like you are renting your PC instead of owning it.
What?
On my gaming PC there are: - Two for audio (if we count the built in one and the one from the driver) - One for Bluetooth - One for fan management - One (or maybe two?) for graphics - One for driver updates.
When logging in I can see these icons showing up one by one, obviously unnecessarily using resources and just cluttering the UI.
Then when you click the icons they each use a different and often "loud" UI framework, some have embedded ads. Some icons you have to double click, others right click.
You can close many of them, and even disable a lot of them - but not all.
Overall it's just not a clean experience.
Some days ago I just randomly downloaded uTorrent and I was scared by the amount of ads they embedded. I think it's a taste of what Windows will be like if they take this direction.
Side note, if you're not aware you should use qBittorrent, Transmission, BiglyBT or Deluge for torrents.
Not saying it will be great, but screw the system if it only works against us.
You could even address it at router level if things went really sideways.
One is, whatever your opinion on ads on file explorer see might be, using the triangle/exclamation mark Hazard signage for ads is absolutely unacceptable.
The other is, is it just me, or is all the negative press about Microsoft these days caused by the Windows division?
Another thing is that people forget about software ownership.
You don't own your computer's OS, Microsoft does,and according its abusive terms of service that no one cares about, they can do whatever they want with their products, including show you ads or anything that disrupt your experience, because the OS is made to serve them, not you.
Better question: Where in windows won't there be any ads? Will there be ghost ads behind the command line interface? Will they sell space on the BSOD?
I may have a good way of capturing this sentiment:
"We are Putin ads in File Explorer!"
Edit: this segmentation fault is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends. Use the code SIGSEGV at signup to get a free bonus!
Me too but the world has moved on. Even Microsoft don't care about that anymore [1][2][3].
[1] https://www.justin-credible.net/2017/05/15/the-visual-studio...
[2] https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/blog/2022/0...
Don't buy a Mac - they may not have ads but they have their own problems. Your best option is apparently to buy a PC and run Linux.
I will likely be recommending it -- we really do NOT have an alternative to Windows (and I know someone will try to be clever about it and make any number of suggestions that aren't going to actually work for us) -- but I can imagine some fairly large software vendors starting to consider Linux compatibility just because of how noxious this is.
(Yeah, I know that's not entirely true. Still, I find it kinda hilarious that I might have to switch from a paid operating system to a free one in order to get away from ads.)
I can’t imagine Enterprise versions of Windows will have this enabled.
I think the classic truism that you are either the customer or the product is outmodded. Companies are normalizing double-dipping and making you a product even when you are paying them.
Free Windows licences through MSDN (if you work at a .NET/Microsoft shop) ftw. Running Enterprise on my personal machine.
If I'm going to violate the terms of the license, at least I'm going to do so for free.
The chances are minimal that I will install wither Win 10 or 11 on my machine. Why should I pay beaucoup dollars for an OS that thinks it's their machine, when I can get a free, no-hassle one that does what I want it to do?
I've noticed that there's been a certain amount of historical revisionism, too. People are saying how great Win 10 was. Win 10 great?? Are you mad? I've read complaint after complaint as to how bad Win 10 is. Microsoft has done a real number on peoples' expectations about what constitutes good and bad. Meanwhile, on Debian, the OS just stays out of my way.
Mozilla has been giving off a "feudal overlord" vibe for some time now, too.
I do use VSCode on Linux on occasion, though. It's actually quite a nippy piece of software. I dread anything involving Java like Eclipse. Of course, real programmers use vim anyway.
* They are "to the side", not pop-ups and not blocking or pushing primary content into canned sardines.
* One can close/minimize them to make room when needed.
* They are clearly ads and can't be mistaken for normal content, because you know sleazy marketers (ad purchasers) will try to trick viewers.
* One can pay more to get an ad-free version, or even tiered so one can choose multiple levels between parting with money and annoyance level.
* User can change spam level/features down the road without a big change-fee.
* Does not mine personal info to target ad content, or at least offer a clear and easy way to opt out of targeted ads and related personal content mining.
* Doesn't use "dark UI patterns" to trick users out of money, into loss of privacy, etc. (Amazon is doing more of that, it's friggen annoying.)
What will replace it? Android on PC?
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
You have linked to the desktop market. Yes there rules MS, but the desktop market is being destroyed by the phone market where MS doesn't even have an offer.
I'm hoping this comes to an end soon with Valve backing Proton due to the Steam Deck. I don't think I'll be upgrading to Windows 11 at any rate, I'll keep Win 10 as long as possible then migrate to Linux and live with the consequences if a minority of my games won't run on it.
I think Windows did well in the last year due to its strength in the WFH/education market and the convertible laptop market. If we look at stats from the last year we might think that traditional desktop PCs have a bright future but this is ignoring the broader picture. People are buying Windows PCs to do stuff like using desktop office applications that Microsoft seems to want to replace with rewritten web versions in the long run.
Windows faces a rock and a hard place sort of situation with its x86_64 dependence. It’s a long term liability but a transition to ARM or whatever would remove much of the competitive advantage Windows has. It’s solution to complete with Apple and it’s ARM convergence is to emulate ARM + Android and offer ARM windows alongside x86 windows which is a bit half-assed and disjointed.
Windows is also losing its software moat more and more every year regardless of what it does.
I mean, I think you can make a case for the future of WindowsNT but moves like the record levels of adware in Windows to me project a lack of confidence in the long term future of Windows given the indifference to poisoning the platform. It doesn’t make me go “Wow Microsoft is out to prove the haters wrong who underestimate the benefits of WinNT!”
This is a question I ask myself as somebody who has used Windows continuously since Win95. If it was just the x86 aspect I might be able to shrug it off as unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but when I see stories like this it really wears down my confidence in Windows.
Microsoft can shove it.
I'll certainly enjoy the throwback to simpler times.
After I uninstalled them, I went to hide them from the Store to prevent the same issue, and nope. Microsoft won't even let you hide apps that you accidentally installed now from the Store. This is in addition to not being able to delete apps from your account either that you installed from their pathetic Store.
Don't get me started on them collecting everything you click on and search for in Windows as well even if you disable telemetry by simply logging into a Microsoft account for the Windows Store (for example, if you use Xbox for PC).
There is also all the multiplayer games with anticheat that wont work or ban you on Linux. Destiny 2 for a recent example. And I understand them at one point.
It's annoying as hell but feels on par with the course they've been going with Windows anyways.
This comment is a joke, to be clear. But the idea of irrelevant infobars / ads in Windows Explorer is ... pretty daft.
A thing that MUST be enforced by law with sanctions severe enough (significant percentage of global income from the ads themselves) to discourage any abuse.
Either way, there are 1000 other FS managers on Windows. The only obstacle is matching the integration Explorer has. They have the advantage of being an in house app.
Other file managers have identical integration to basic functionalities like opening a folder today. What’s stopping Microsoft from closing out these features?
chess.com is worse performance, bloated to the moon w/ ads and popups, costs money, not open-source. And lichess.org is the opposite in every way (free, way higher quality, zero ads).
I can't believe MS would put ads in system tools. What the hell are they thinking!? I've used linux for 5 years now and not looking back!
I have been waiting for so long for Linux desktop to gain mass popularity. This move from Microsoft will finally make my dreams come true.
2022/2023 will be the year of Linux desktop!
That makes its worse than "just" an annoying generic distraction to consumers, it's a massive legal liability in it being anti competitive behavior.
Although not sure I'm surprised, even MacOS/iOS are full of ads these days.
…where? Mac and iOS don’t have any ads, anywhere, except in a couple of apps (Apple News, App Store, and if you want to be pedantic, Apple Music).
Apple TV+ Free for 3 Months
Apple Arcade Free for 3 Months
I have no way to get rid of those, as far as I can tell.
On my OS is one, in my car while driving is another, I really hope we're not moving towards world where ads are literally everywhere.
I'm hoping that Steam Deck will change this to Linux (Proton) for games, macOS for work and Linux for servers.
My guess is the pro version will never see this pollution.
I honestly can't believe anyone uses this pile of shit OS anymore.
I left Windows because adware and spyware became such a prevalent problem that I just got tired of dealing with it.
But when the OS itself is the adware, I just...I honestly don't even know what to say. You couldn't pay me enough to use Windows. You really couldn't.
Hopefully the tick for Windows 12 will be better than this tock.
Linux?
And ignoring that, Windows is already a paid product, and a very expensive one at that ($100+ for a new license).
Since at least Windows 7 they could have done nothing other than changing colors and styles and still print money.
I’m not saying that Windows shouldn’t evolve. But since Windows 7, basically everything is just worse. I can’t see a single thing that I could qualify as "better". I just lost more and more control as the time passes. Heck I can’t even resize and move the taskbar anymore.
There is a lot of thing I like in my current job but the day I’ll quit, quitting Windows will be a relief.
And I’m saying that as someone who grew up with Windows, learned computing with Windows, played with Windows… Although I prefer Linux/macOS, I’ve never been "anti" anything. But Windows 11 is just insulting me on a daily basis, I can’t stand it anymore.
You also don't have to pay to install macos on non-mac hardware.
By any reasonable definition, macos is free/gratis.
No, they didn't.
> You also don't have to pay to install macos on non-mac hardware.
You "don't have to pay" because Apple doesn't allow it. If we're going to talk about bypassing restrictions and violating licensing agreements, you "don't have to pay" for most software because you can find a cracked version online for free. That's not an argument.
It seems they claimed to officially (which is what I remembered) but did not in practice. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/windows-7-to... https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/upgrade-to-windows-10-fre...
In any case, this discussion is clearly just bickering over semantics. Apple has never asked me for money for an OS. Microsoft has asked me for money for an OS many times. Apple does not make money charging for unbundled OS sales. Microsoft makes money charging for unbundled OS sales. You can pontificate all you want about what it really means for something to be free, but from a practical perspective, no one treats MacOS as an independent product that you can go to the store and buy. MacOS doesn't "cost money" any more than the infotainment OS in my car "costs money"; i.e. not in a sense that most people would identify with.