When is an ad an advertisement and not a recommendation? Microsoft clearly likes to use the term recommendation for what others may see as an advertisement.
There are recommendations in the Start menu, Settings app, Lock screen, File Explorer, Get Help app, and other areas of the operating system already. These are often not that useful. App recommendations in the Start menu are limited to Microsoft Store apps.
Now, Microsoft is testing recommendations in the Microsoft Store app. If you never use the app, you won’t be exposed to these. If you do, you may notice recommendations popping up when you try to use the built-in search.
First spotted by phantomofearth on X, two or three recommendations are shown whenever search is activated in the official Microsoft Store app.
People need to stop complaining about the ads and they need to start complaining about the existence of a Windows monetization team.
Kill that team now while the revenue is small and the shareholders won’t throw a giant hissy fit.
As long as that team exists, they’re going to be putting ads in shit. Cut the head off the snake.
Microsoft put themselves in this position when they started giving out Windows 10 for free. It was effective in bringing most of the market onto the new version, but it set an expectation which it now feels like they can’t break, so they’re also giving Windows 11 away. Now to offset that missing revenue, they have to do something to extract value from users.
I don’t see how they could stop this without replacing it with something more exploitive.
I’d be happy to buy the OS too, but I want it to be a one-time payment and to quit with ads and all telemetry.
That’s so old fashioned grandpa. Just give them a straw and let them sip out of your bank account like everyone else. You sound like the kind of person that lives in a house with a yard.
Seriously though, subscription models seem here to stay and they’ve just made for an incredibly adversarial relationship between industry and consumer.
This, so much. Hell I’ll pay the old prices to never see an ad or pop up.
Microsoft is the only company that charges for an operating system so frankly I don’t understand why they feel entitled to that income anyway
Google and Apple are definitely charging for that software development. In the case of Apple, it is being folded into hardware prices or used as a loss leader for pricy subscriptions / apps.
Google is also making a buck on subscriptions / apps, but instead of hardware, they’re also making money from licensing software to 3rd party Android manufacturers, and because Google gonna Google, they want that ad revenue.
And I would also argue that a lot of Linux distros make money from professional services and what not.
Most of the big boys aren’t doing the work for free
It’s effectively bundled with Apple hardware (which also dramatically lowers their development costs; they don’t support anything they don’t ship and are perfectly willing to abandon hardware once it no longer supports the level of hardware features they feel the new OS version needs). I’m not sure it’s that different.
Android is free (maybe? Do phone manufacturers pay for Google play branding?), but they make their money by having the lions share of software going through their storefront. Microsoft is never going to do that with Windows.
I’ve recently made the switch over to LinuxMint and I was shocked. Installing a popular Linux Distro is EASIER than installing Windows 10/11 at this point. Seriously. The Linux installer is super noob friendly, very quick and straight to the point, it doesn’t need you to create an online account and you don’t need be wary of accidentally giving any corporation the rights to steal your data.
And all the software I use (Steam, Discord, Spotify, Firefox, Thunderbird, …) were all downloadable from the GUI Installer and worked right away OUT OF THE BOX. No fiddling in any Terminal was required.
Seriously, it’s easier than installing Windows at this point.
Installing Linux has never been particularly difficult, not in the last 15 or even 20 years anyway. I’ve always found it easier and more straightforward than the contemporary Windows installation process.
The challenging part is wrapping your head around the Linux/Unix way of doing things when things can’t be done through the GUI with just a few clicks.
I think about this sometimes. What stuff can’t you do in a Linux GUI that an average person would be able to do in Windows? For the sake the simplicity, lets limit the GUI to Cinnamon, Plasma, or Gnome.
Obviously, there are obscure GUIs out there, but in the main ones, I think just about everything can be done without CLI.
I’d amend that to say I wouldn’t count “regedit” or group policy muck to be “easy” by virtue of having “a gui”. Those are areas where technically there’s GUI that might be CLI-only under Linux, but hardly friendly enough to make a difference.
I know the filesystem is simple to Linux users, but the semantic form of physical drives getting a letter always made more sense to me.
I have three drives in my computer. So they’re labeled C:, D:, and E:. You can’t place a file on “The Computer” - it’s stored on some particular drive. If I install a game on the E drive, and then later somehow remove that drive and bring it somewhere else, that game remains on that drive, even if it’s no longer E.
On Linux, as best I understand it, if I have three drives, two of them are at /dev/hdd0 and hdd1. But they’re not actually there, they’re accessed at /media/hdd0 after mounting them (or at least, that’s the convention, and if it’s someone else’s computer, good luck). Then you either begin every game installation path with that annoying prefix, or you start configuring a dozen symlinks. If you place an item in /home/documents/notporn, then who knows which drive it’s on because you don’t know what symlinks someone set up to make that folder.
Windows does have symlinks too now, which has been nice for hacking a few installation directories, but I appreciate that it’s an exception, and everything else follows relatively logical division of space, rather than this hybrid system where the filesystem isn’t just stored files but also devices, programming concepts, and more.
I know the filesystem is simple to Linux users, but the semantic form of physical drives getting a letter always made more sense to me.
That’s one of the things that semi-experienced Windows users need to wrap their head around, but I strongly disagree that drive letters are somehow inferior to a hierarchical file system structure. I mean, the A:, B:, C: … convention was originally just intended for the first IBM PC with 1 or 2 floppy drives. It was never intended to support complex storage configurations, whereas the hierarchical file system was designed for Unix systems that had to handle multiple magnetic drives from the start. It is a much more flexible system to organize your file storage.
On Linux, as best I understand it, if I have three drives, two of them are at /dev/hdd0 and hdd1. But they’re not actually there.
That’s because there is a difference between a block device and a mounted file system. Windows just obscures that difference from you with its archaic drive mapping system.
All your block devices and partitions on your block devices will be in /dev with a meaningful name. You can list them with the lsblk command. If a partition contains a file system that Linux knows how to use, you can mount it anywhere you like.
they’re accessed at /media/hdd0 after mounting them
No that’s not “convention” at all. Some desktop environments may decide to mount undefined drives there, but there really is no convention, ultimately you mount it where you want it to be mounted.
If you place an item in /home/documents/notporn, then who knows which drive it’s on because you don’t know what symlinks someone set up to make that folder.
If your unsure, df /home/documents/notporn should tell you exactly what drive it’s on, but ultimately it’s up to you to know how you’ve organized your storage.
BTW I’ve said this before, but Linux is probably harder for users who know Windows just well enough to be dangerous than it is for relative beginners, because there are so many concepts and things they take for granted that they have to unlearn.
So just to help a little bit without getting too technical…
df -h is your friend to find out which physical drive or partition relates to which directory (called the “mount point”)
If you want, you can set up each drive/partition to be mounted a bit Windows-esque.
For example:
- Drive 1, partition 1 will almost certainly be root
/ - But drive 1, partition 2 can be mounted to:
/mnt/d/ - And then drive 1, partition 3 can be mounted to:
/mnt/e/
And so on.
You’ll need to look up fstab to understand how to do that.
I understand it’s tricky to get your head around initially as I felt exactly the same coming from Windows to Linux.
Once you get your head around partitions being able to be mounted anywhere, it actually becomes really handy
The issue is that you have to install it. Most users don’t have a clue how to install windows either, but it came with their PC.
Right but most people have no clue, they’ll go to their local store which I guarantee you doesn’t have Linux computers. Online buyers will go on amazon and buy from “known and reputable” brands like Asus, Dell and such. Don’t get me wrong, I love linux and have been using it as my main OS for nearly a decade but to say it’s easy to get/install for your average user is just wrong. Everyone always overestimates what the average user is actually like. Your average user doesn’t even know what an OS or Linux even is.
The problem with buying a Linux box is the cost. Discounting Chromebooks, (which have their own nasty issues with privacy), there are really no inexpensive ready to buy at Walmart priced, pre-installed Linux distro computers.
If you are willing to drop $1000+ for a pretty much mid grade computer, then you have a few choices. Otherwise, Linux distros are DIY. Which takes an effort most are unwilling to do - no matter how easy and how few clicks it takes to install.
Personally, I think all those cheap mini-PCs on Amazron should come pre-loaded with a distro. That would be the a great way for people to become familiar with Linux as a whole.
As someone that has tried nearly every Linux desktop flavor\distro, Mint is GREAT for the novice. Or a pro even.
There’s ways to make A LOT of things compatible these days, or you could run a VM for your Windows apps.
I think a VM is a bad solution. Maybe if it’s a very rarely used program, but typically the stuff people need that don’t work in Linux are for work which is why people HAVE to use them.
If I did that, I’d just be working out of a windows vm 99% of my computing time, so it doesn’t make sense for me.
Waaay easier. I tried to fix a work computer that someone but bitlocker on. I couldn’t do shit with windows so I threw Mint on it to format it. Loaded right up, worked great. I go to put windows 11 on it and the HD doesn’t show up… It needs drivers that I’m struggling to find. I have to run the driver setup on a different windows machine, find the driver and put it on a usb. Problem is, there’s no model number on the computer and I can narrow it down to the series that has 20 different ones. It’s unreal the pain the ass to just get it to install, meanwhile, linux has been working great on it while I mess with it here and there to try to get windows back on it. (work computer that needs windows for our software support)
Omg I’m so mad about this
lol jk I use Linux
I use Linux at home and am disappointed with this news. I can’t help having to use Windows at work.
I’d be curious at the percentage of windows users actually using the store app.
As for the context of these ads, the store would kind of make more sense than within your settings landing page, start menu, search dialog, browser nagware, solitaire app etc.
If I remember correctly some (mainly Microsoft made apps) are store only and some system apps are updated through it so probably a large part of users use it
This is a fair point, an I had considered this to be a case but the store is capable of automatically updating apps in the background. I believe this is the default behaviour but I could be mistaken.
There is also a chance a user may be directed to the store if they’re required to buy the HEVC or install the AV1 system plugins.
The more relevant question IMO is what proportion of software (or by revenue) is installed through the Windows store.
Because compared to android (even counting Amazon fire and whatever other third party devices), I’m guessing that’s pretty low.
Any recommendation I didn’t ask for is an ad, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
