Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the Settings app.

This will likely arrive in the July update for Windows 11, or at least it’s almost certain to do so. It was present in the latest preview update Microsoft just released for the OS (and quickly paused due to a bug, but that’s another story). It’s also worth noting that the ad has been present in earlier test versions of Windows 11.

234 points

I wholeheartedly believe that all forma of unsolicited or public advertising should be completely banned. Nothing good comes from it, it is only a nuisance to everyone.

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79 points

But have you thought about a legal person’s right to fuck your eyes and brains?!

Also, what about their freedom of speech… Shit lord

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22 points

Ads are probably closer to brainwashing than they are to legitimate free speech. Things that are legal can also be problems.

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19 points

Because they are not “ads”

They use the same propaganda tactics that governments in 20th century perfected

Gets people going

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6 points

Shit lord

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35 points

They should, but that’s never going to happen unless political lobbying is made very illegal (like life ruining and business bankrupting illegal, not slap on the wrist, cost of business illegal)

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2 points

Life sentence. Solved.

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25 points

We should be able to charge them for ad time. You want to paint an advertisement on my car you have to pay me. Why should it be any different when you want to put ads on my work computer screen when I’m working with clients?

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13 points

I get what you’re saying but that still gives them unsolicited permission to post ads in the first place.

I want an operating system, not an ad system that also happens to be an operating system

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23 points

And it’s not like w11 is free, the price of a PC with Windows installed comes with its’ license’s costs. It’s not told to the consumer so they won’t even know they are using a product they paid for, for them it’s what a clean basic PC looks like. And that’s what prevents many to care about it the same way they can be frustrated by a paid streaming plan with ads. To take is as a given, and shifting the Overtone’s window of fucked up services even further.

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1 point

I don’t like solving things with regulation, because that’s always a victory in one battle making the enemy stronger for all the following ones.

But doing this EU-style, like browser choice, only with operating systems, can be a solution.

People love cheap and easy things. That’s how social media won over normal web. Seeing the choice between “install Fedora for freeeeeee” and “install Windows for 20$” significant amount will choose the former.

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1 point

At the very least, the price of OEM OS should be disclosed before one buys it.

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18 points

if i cant grafitti the walls why can corporations?

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4 points

Because they own that wall. The owner of a wall (or poster space for that matter) can do whatever.

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2 points

And what do we get to own? Nothing… My OS… My… bandwidth… My RAM? Nope.

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1 point

sounds like time for even more grafitti to cover their ads

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13 points

Especially in a paid service, like why do I pay for these services if you’re still going to advertise, track, or datamine? I know the answer is greed, why profit off of one option when you can profit off of all of them, but I, the consumer, am fed up with the customer abuse.

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7 points

Shit, I’m a web developer and I’m fed up with all the ads, tracking and stalking that goes on. It’s so ingrained like “why not use Google for analytics?” or “just host it on Amazon.” 90% of the services we use at work I refuse to use at home (and go as far as outright blocking them).

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2 points
*

Exactly.

Fortunately, my company doesn’t put ads in our product because it’s essentially a B2B product and customers pay a lot to use it, and our product being unusable could cost individual customers potentially millions if it blocks their day-to-day activities (we deal with regulations). We do use spyware though (e.g. fullstory), which makes sense given that lens, since being able to solve problems before they report them has a lot of value for our customers. If we did anything unethical, I would push back and potentially quit, since I’m not interested at all in manipulating customers (ads, dark patterns, etc).

I don’t think the tools we use to catch issues in the field make ethical sense in other contexts though. So yeah, I block a lot of the stuff we use in our product, and we don’t do anything to actively counter blocking in our app either (if you block it, you don’t get the pre-emptive bug-fixing).

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6 points

You probably agreed to all of this in the billion page TOS so it’s no unsolicited.

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5 points

A regulatory change would obviously need to prevent them from hiding that kind in intentionally too long legalese TOS. It has to be a clear single acknowledge, not obfuscated or bundled with functionality.

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5 points

But how will the wealth addled convince us pleblians to spend money on worthless garbage? Or convince us that we’re ugly and not good enough so we buy their products? Oh the humanity!

In all seriousness, advertising has had way too much of an influence on our culture and it needs to be properly regulated. I’m sick of being negged by beauty product ads.

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3 points

SoMeBoDy HaS tO tHiNk Of ThE sHaReHoLdErS!!!

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106 points

They haven’t gone overboard with THIS one, because they already went way the fuck overboard years ago and never got back on board

Man I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and make my next machine a linux one

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32 points

Imma make the jump once they force me to 11. I’ve been saying this for years but they finally got something cooking i truly can’t abide. That screenshot of what you’re up to every ten seconds is fucking terrifying to me and that’s not even considering govt snooping. I ain’t about to leave a record of my porn consumption for my wife to see lol! Linux is finally juuuust about idiot proof and game friendly enough for me. Can’t wait to be one of those smug guys that says ‘just use linux lol’

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20 points

Microsoft has made the choice very easy for me. I still have an i7-7700k that works just fine. But that’s “too old”, so when Windows 10 hits end of life, I’ll be switching over to Linux.

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18 points

I recommend Linux Mint. It’s very beginner friendly and you don’t need to use the console too much if that kind of thing bothers you. The GUI even looks very similar to a Windows 10 environment.

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17 points
*

I second Linux Mint

I installed it on my Grandma’s PCs not too long ago and even she enjoys it. She’s almost 80.

We are having issues with her printer but it’s one that has known issues with Linux in general (it’s a fancy Epson laser printer, scanner, fax machine combo with bad Windows support) but I’m hoping to rectify that soon.

I would say the GUI reminds me more of Windows 7 than 10 which I really dig

Edit: spleling

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8 points
*

I didn’t wait. I did it earlier this year and haven’t booted from my Windows 10 drive since then. My entry drug was Linux Mint. But I quickly switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed after because I wanted something that ran the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment (I prefer how it looks and handles multiple displays). It isn’t that hard to learn the basics you need to use Linux, as long as you use a decently stable distro that you won’t need to troubleshoot at every update. In my limited experience, you only need more in depth knowledge when you try messing around with more “cutting edge” and less “stable” distros and are installing experimental features.

I can’t believe that Microsoft is expecting everyone to get rid of their computer to switch to 11 once the support for 10 expires next year. I even revived an 15 year old laptop that only had 4Gb or RAM by installing Mint on it (and switching its HDD with an SSD I had kicking around). It’s fast and perfectly usable for everything but modern games now

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1 point

Not knocking your choice, OpenSUSE is a grand daddy OS, but if others are looking for a good KDE experience I find Fedora KDE Spin, which is not anweird fork yoi can get it from Red Hat themselves, is very good and come out of the box with all the latest and greatest like Wayland and Pipewire by default.

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3 points

I hear you. It’s been a burutal long slog of putting up with their crap for as-long-as-one-has-done-it no matter when anyone gets out. I made the switch to mac and linux many years ago and after a brief transition period, everything personal-computer-related became wonderful somehow. Well . . . “neat”, anyway. Leaving behind extensive and difficult experience with everything from 3.1 to 95, to 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, and 10. (skipped 8 for obvious reasons.) It had its good times but they’re long gone. Good riddance. Best of luck to anyone still out there.

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19 points

I switched to Linux mint. No ragrets. It takes a bit of fiddling and a teensie bit of a learning curve. But it’s way easier than Microsofts endless deluge of shit.

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11 points

I’ve had a good track record with PopOS.

Steam works with about 90 ish percent of my games and all the software I use, there’s a Linux version or proton can run it. Plus the OS is rock solid.

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7 points

+1 to PopOS. My only gripe is that they and Nvidia still haven’t figured out how to move to Wayland, but once that happens (and we can all switch to cosmic), I’ll be a happy camper.

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3 points

I might be the minority, but as long as they are stable and I can work with my programs, thats all I care about.

I use my pi to experiment, but I use PopOS as my daily driver nowadays.

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8 points

I took the plunge about a week ago with Pop!_OS. It took a good 3 or 4 days before I started to feel really comfortable with things. (Which is probably because I’m really picky)

If you have the time to try it out (and remember, always dual boot so you have a fall back and can switch back when you need to) I recommend it. The last remnant remaining for me is Photoshop, and there’s a GitHub page for downloading it with very few steps now.

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2 points

Try out krita, rawtherapee, darktable, for photoshop stuffs, depending on what you need.

The Adobe stuff always held me back before but I finally just started messing with linux and trying stuff out. I don’t need photoshop for professional use so I was fine spending the time trying to find alternatives for what I needed

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3 points

Unfortunately I use Photoshop pretty heavily. I’m trying to split my different use-cases of Photoshop into different applications.

I tried Krita, and was immediately put off by how you have to input text in a different window, and can’t see it live. GIMP’s UI feels so different.

I’ll add rawtherapee and darktable to my list to try, and I’m still giving Krita and gimp a chance. You can’t expect to just slide right into a new program in a day after spending a decade in something else.

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1 point

Another easy solution for Photoshop is to run a virtual machine.

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1 point

Yeah but the VM takes time to “boot” up and the folder structure isn’t as clean, right?

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5 points

If you wanna game and want everything to work, get bazzite, i wanted to install arch, had huge probs with my nvdia card (i know, but it was gifted with the cudas in mind) so i used bazzite since i loved the steam OS look. I am so pleased, it works amazingly, and there was 0 problems during installation.

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2 points

The only thing stopping me is stupid vanguard for league. I’m close to just getting a clean league only mini pc and having my main one be Linux. I’ll have to check out bazzite. I play the usual minecraft, terraria, ff14, indie games mostly so hopefully they run fine. I don’t think I’ve played a AAA game in like 7 years.

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5 points

Perfectly understandable. Any anti cheat is a big nono on this system. But tbh, i am so much more relaxed after stopping league i consider it a bonus guardrail XD

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1 point

playing ffxiv Dawntrail out of the box just fine right now in Pop OS linux

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2 points

Man I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and make my next machine a linux one

Make a compressed backup and try with this one. You’ll feel good.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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78 points

People are abusing Google’s ad distro platform to get malware onto people’s machines. I see Microsoft signed up for the same firestorm of possibilities.

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21 points

I hope someone sues Microsoft.

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68 points

I updated my work laptop, and they put their shitty copilot button on the bottom right and TURNED OFF MY SHOW DESKTOP BUTTON.

nothing more to add, just wanted to vent with people who may understand my rage with windows lol

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10 points

As tech support this has made my job a bit more annoying.

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4 points

If you have adapted to it, rejoice! They are changing it back. Copilot will be a button beside Start button now.

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3 points

It’s time to ditch Windows and all move to macOS or (even better) Linux

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19 points

MacOS has different flaws but has major flaws nonetheless. Linux is the one that truly lets you own your computer, you decide everything.

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2 points

I agree, I use Linux. But “normal people” aren’t able to install an operating system, and they can’t easily go to the shop and buy a Linux computer. They can buy a mac though. Still better than nothing.

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3 points

I believe Win + D will do the same as that missing button.

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1 point

Yea it annoys me too, you can switch it back, but I can’t do that every time I’m working on someone’s computer.

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1 point

yeah, I switched it back. for a split second, I just couldn’t believe they had the audacity to do that… lol

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1 point

I went with a Mac for my last work computer refresh. Had Windows before that. Don’t have a Linux option.

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62 points

Microsoft, stop. My computer can only be so switched to Linux.

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32 points

I have run out of things to install Lunix on without getting fired.

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9 points
4 points

Sounds hard, I’d just toss a Pi in it and call it a day.

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2 points
*

I could probably install Linux on my work MBP, but my boss would make me test on macOS, so it would kind of defeat the point.

At home, everything is Linux except my SO’s desktop, and that’s a job I’m unwilling to be fired from.

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15 points

Been 100% linux for like 6-9 months now, these stories make me thankful for finally making the switch.

I’ve tried to make the switch 3-4 times in the past and was stopped by 2 main things:

  • Drivers / Laptops were tough to get set up
  • Gaming

The experience was so much better this time and I really have no regrets. I don’t imagine I’ll ever run Windows again outside of a VM

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4 points

I’ve been using Linux off and on for about 15 years now. It’s so much easier to use now compared to when I started. I understand why people might’ve avoided it in the past. But the list of excuses is getting pretty small these days.

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3 points

I’ve been full time for a year and a half now. I tried switching a bunch of times before that and same problems as you. I love it now, it’s a pleasure to use my computer and know that it’s not doing any bullshit behind the scenes.

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2 points

I’ve kept Windows installed on a spare drive for years now. I don’t remember when I last booted into it on purpose, it was certainly more than a year ago, and was just to install Minecraft Bedrock to play with his friends (his friends bailed). My kids have only ever used Linux. :)

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