Hacker News Reader

Comment by joduplessis | Hacker News Reader

Adjacent point, but I recently bought a Windows laptop (after 10 years on Mac). I've been blown away by the sheer amount of advertising & upsells at OS level. Some of it you can turn off, but others you can't seem to (for me at least). I don't ever remember Windows feeling like you're borrowing it from MS.

View on HN

Seriously. I thought Mac was getting bad but upgraded to win 11 on my gaming pc. How is that acceptable for business environments? One wrong click and you’ve got a new subscription it seems.

Business versions are stripped of that stuff in my experience, no? The home version is rife with it. I haven’t been on windows in a few years though.

> feeling like you're borrowing it from MS.

Thank you!!

That describes the feeling i've had with so much software in recent years, i just wasn't sure how to say until reading it from you.

My standard suggestion is to use Windows Server - which has none of that bloatware and advertising. The free OS you get from a vendor is free for a reason.

I left windows for Linux back in the middle of the XP days. I came back to this for contracting work and setting up a shared VR gaming computer in the living room. The absolute shit level of treatment windows users tolerate is mindboggling.

On the corporate laptops I am lent the advertising is generally minimal, but non-zero, and that surprised me. If I search I don't want whatever you are selling I want files on this computer or maybe documents on the corporate network. That struck me as inappropriate, but the constant bombard of noise on the personal computer is outrageous. Ads in the start menu, news going to sites with ads, popups, and that is before software, steam has its own too, but at least it moderates to one ad each launch.

Installing Gentoo is easier than avoiding ads on windows.

I need Windows for work, but same - dual booted Ubuntu right away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com