All those supposed "popups" you can disable. "Bloatware" you can uninstall and are added by the laptop manufacturer not Microsoft, and "advertisements" only happen once on a fresh install.
Almost like those supposedly tech savvy people don't know what a setting is.
It is fine if you prefer Linux over Windows, but don't go about just straight up lying about it.
Candy crash in start menu along with a thousand other ads, inabiltiy to delete internet explorer and cortana until recently, asking to buy microsoft365 after every update, constant telemetey and tracking with no option to opt out completely, and so on.
This is just factually inaccurate corporate shill talk. In windows 10 I had to completely gut the Microsoft store using regedit to actually stop the ads that come directly from Microsoft. And then you can't use the Xbox app (for access to game pass) which is basically the only reason I would want windows to start with (among other things it completely breaks) ... And that's a pc I built with a "clean" windows install.
When it "upgraded" itself to windows 11 despite opting out several times, and being bombarded with more ads and constant bs pop-ups, the last straw broke the camel's back for me. Moved all my computers to Linux only and haven't looked back.
It's nice the EU is doing what it can to curb Microsoft's invasive crap, but it also appears it only helps people in the EU and NA customers still get the bloated "OS" displaying more ads than an old geocities warez site.
I mean, I use a Windows 11 machine for work and play...spend probably 10 hours a day on the thing most days, and the only popups I ever remember getting are from Steam and the Epic game store...the most annoying thing I can remember that wasn't vendor bloatware (that I removed once and haven't thought about since) was disabling onedrive.
A short while ago i've decided to switch to linux. Just a sudden urge to freshen my experience. You know what? It's easier to setup a fuckig linux than to disable all those shit on windows. Idk, it just was always so tiring for me to open regedit and gpedit, find all this bullshit i need to disable, and so on. I don't know ho, and why, but even simple configuration is a pain. And even after that you won't be able to uninstall windows defender, for example.
Also, tiling window managers rule, just as the ability to configure the keybindings. And the file system is not as cancerous: there are no bunch of different appdatas programdatas and lots of other places where the apps' cache is stored.
I hope more people will start to switch to linux, so microsoft won't be a de-facto monopolist. Even after that I won't switch back tho, linux became far more comfortable for me, and it became so after a weirdly short acclimatisation period.
Five years ago I installed Windows 10 direct from Microsoft's online store onto my Ubuntu laptop so I could play some Windows-only games.
It was fine for a while, but after some updates the Start menu began shoving ads (I believe Candy Crush was a big one) into my shortcut panels.
It's true that I could go deleting them one-by-one, and probably hunt down settings to disable them, but I find it repulsive that I paid for an operating system only to be personally made into a product for Microsoft on top of that. I've decided I'm never going to spend another dollar on such predatory behavior, even if it means I'm throwing away a significant portion of my video game library.
I recently watched my dad install windows 11 (his sixth or so time). It took him over an hour of typing commands into the terminal and navigating through 50 different menus to install windows and disable all the shit that comes with it, all on supported hardware. I don't understand how people justify this when linux takes 10 minutes to install and doesn't come filled with ads and telemetry.
It's a familiarity problem, those exact same people would turn around and after doing that insane install process and tell you that Windows Works without issues or a bunch of manual tweaking on like your stupid Linux. They don't see it as a problem or tweaking just because they are so used to it whereas they would have to relearn that for Linux
A local school near me replaced the computer suite with new machines and just left the old ones in a big cage outside to rust. Something about being “too expensive” to properly dispose or recycle.
Bullshit. No school with the ability to install Linux on a computer would lack the ability to redeploy them, sell them on or donate them.
I remember working years ago with a guy who once told the most fucking tedious story about his trip to the post office. When he detected that noone gave even the most faint shit about his milquetoast existence he just blurted out "and then I stopped an armed robbery" and refused to elaborate. That last bit about the creek sound like that.
Although you do have a point, the school could as likely have contracted a third party to do the deployment, and cut ties fast as soon as things went awry. Then the last part seems reasonable, although embellished.
It really amuses me how much people like linux when they actually use it. It’s one thing to hear it’s good but another to just use it and see how great it is
That's true, it sucks. Although that happens once and it's done. But I always have to find ways of making gnome usable, like where is the minimize button?
It's nice using linux, I'd love to. But the thing is I'm not saying windows is good, I'm saying linux is complete shit too. Everything has some dumbass issue or other and it's on the cusp of breaking. And we have to use all of the crap
Discord starting at startup and windows forces it into focus so I have to click back on the thing I was doing... Like 3 or 4 times. Repeat for anything else that starts at startup.
At one time I had set a song to play through a slowly-loading media player so that I could leave and when the song played I knew my computer had loaded.
Now on Linux, everything loads just the same but doesn't force switch the focus.
I'll give you the focus stealing, it's crap and it's never going to be solved. But you can choose startup applications. Oh, and my computer boots in no time even though I have an old install with a crapton of stuff I need to autorun. It's not about the os
That's one thing I hate on windows. Don't switch focus for me. Or let me startup apps minimized or something. I don't want to be typing away in something, then mid sentence it's switched to another app that takes a little while launcher to launch
I dunno about running a steam deck like a computer.
I have one and while the gaming experience is top notch, and I'm sure general usage like surfing is fine, I can't imagine spending $400-600 just to use it like a computer, especially when things like Raspberry Pis exist as cheaper alternatives.
Can't wait for the European DMA to kick into effect on windows. While Steam Proton works quite well for most games, some are sadly unable to run on anything except Windows.