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Comment by Topgamer7 | Hacker News Reader

I haven't run windows in half a decade at this point.

I had Win11 running in a vm, and just the amount of ads it would show in the task bar or notifications at idle leaves me flabbergasted.

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While using Windows 11 for my gaming PC (my only windows device) I used a debloat script [1] to keep it free of all the garbage it came with. I eventually moved to EndeavorOS and never looked back.

[1] https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

They keep putting new stuff in as well!

Most recently, ads on your lock screen which aren't obvious how to disable.

And, even when you do find out how to disable them, they randomly re-enable them after updates or reboots just so you stay miserable.

Ah yes, the Facebook dark pattern. "Oops we reset it to defaults! Again! So sorry!"

Except nobody apologizes anymore; we've gotten used to it.

What's more flabbergasting is that there are no real alternatives to Windows that are as accessible (price wise and technically speaking). Macs are too expensive. Linux is out of the question for the average user since drivers tend to not work out of the box on several machines, and more importantly because Microsoft Office does not work on Linux. Most people (who aren't retired) need a computer where they can create and edit documents (pptx, docx, xlsx) that they can share with others. Linux prevents them from doing this. Using only Google docs has not caught on for the average user, sadly.

>Using only Google docs has not caught on for the average user, sadly.

I'm not sure I'd agree. Most people I know use Google docs by default since nearly everyone can access and unlike M365, it's free.

But most enterprises that I've had experience with use Microsoft Office and not Google Sheets?

> because Microsoft Office does not work on Linux.

Hasn't Microsoft Office (or whatever concoction of 365, copilot and other eterprise-ish words they call it today) been turned into a web app over the last 15 years? Isn't it perfectly usable for like 99% of users?

Indeed, I'm regularly dumbfounded that enterprise users put up with this. In a business environment, it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

They should be using Windows 11 Enterprise, where those features can be disabled easily with Group Policy.

> implying the outsourced IT dept. or anyone with authority over them gives a fuck anymore

Enterprise licenses have some of this disabled by default. At minimum, a competent IT group can configure these by group policy.

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