21 ms·

I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. It simply isn't it's job. Maybe, as an option or optional add-on, but not the way MS does it. I

I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. It simply isn't it's job. Maybe, as an option or optional add-on, but not the way MS does it. I use 10 now, as locked down and 'fixed' as I was able to make it (custom ISO via NTLite with a bunch of crap removed and some fixes steamrolled in), but really I look forward to ditching it altogether - which is a shame. For all the MS hate in the OSS community, I always thought Windows did a lot of stuff well (when it was good at least). The telemetry, changing things for the sake of changing things and forced crap constantly being added is enough. I'm so in love with awesomewm at this point, and the fact that I can customize and program every part of my UI, allowing me to have something absolutely perfect and tailor made.

voldacar 4y ago
Could you share your ISO or the process you used to make it? Was it easy or is there a bunch of esoteric stuff you have to fiddle with? I'm switching to 10 for my new PC build and I'm about to do a ton of research on decrapifying the OS
midoridensha 4y ago
>I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. It simply isn't it's job. Yes, it is. The job of a proprietary OS is whatever that company says it is. If it's shoveling annoying ads to users, that's its job, and having annoying ads is a very sensible thing in a proprietary OS since the company is driven by profit, and they can make more profit by including lots of annoying ads. If you don't like the product your vendor has sold you, then you should choose a different vendor. A Free OS that doesn't come from a company with a profit motive won't have this same problem.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  The whole "just go elsewhere" idea doesn't really work in a total monopoly like Microsoft has on desktop OSes for some use cases. There is not, and has never been an alternative to windows for all use cases. Most notably: a gaming rig (One of few remaining use cases for stationary home PCs these days, so perhaps the most relevant for the idea of the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop). If you want to reply that Linux is a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig these days then please reconsider. It's just not. I actually don't understand how Microsoft reasons around these things. There is zero way that these news links actually "pay for themselves" in income vs customer alienation. There must be something else to it.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    Sure there are still cases where you can't switch, but the gap is ever closing and is already very very narrow. Proton covers most games, and WINE covers most windows software, and plenty of big software has native versions for multiple OSes. I think if more people tried Rather than just assuming they would probably be pleasantly surprised.
    - alkonaut 4y ago
      I think its' perfectly fine in many games. In others there is a performance penalty of several percent, a slower fix rate for OS specific bugs, or graphics drivers lagging several weeks or even months behind the Windows release specific for the game.
      - Zurrrrr 4y ago
        That seems to be very much the exception. In many other cases Linux gives significantly better performance and less issues. Linux is very much a viable gaming platform these days, and Windows only has a minimal advantage in that area.
        alkonaut 4y ago
        It's a lot better than it used to be, but it's still far from great. Especially with anything non-steam or anything that uses one of the newer Anticheats (which are basically rootkits). Here's the top of the list of 2022 most sold PC games (US chart): #1 Most sold 2022 (CoD MW2): Nope https://www.protondb.com/app/1938090 https://www.protondb.com/app/1938090 #2 Most sold 2022 (Elden ring): Sort of (Steam deck apparently great, Desktop less than pefect) https://www.protondb.com/app/1245620 https://www.protondb.com/app/1245620 #3 Most sold 2022 (Madden NFL 23): Barely. No online play and worse perf https://www.protondb.com/app/1760250 https://www.protondb.com/app/1760250 And so on and so forth. But if we give a little more time it could be better. So look at 2021 most sold PC games instead #1 Most sold 2021 (Apex Legends): Yes. Fixed in 2022 with official anticheat support 3 years after release. https://www.protondb.com/app/1172470 https://www.protondb.com/app/1172470 #2 Most sold 2021 (BF 2042): Nope https://www.protondb.com/app/1517290 https://www.protondb.com/app/1517290 #3 Most sold 2021 (CS:GO): Works (Although some of the user reports look really painful). https://www.protondb.com/app/730 https://www.protondb.com/app/730 Looking at protondb the number of titles that get a "Platinum" rating meaning they work out great of the box without tweaking, is extremely low. (proton/steamdeck isn't the only way of running Linux games of course).
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  > Yes, it is. The job of a proprietary OS is whatever that company says it is. That's just semantics. The job of an OS is to be an OS, not to be an advertisement delivery mechanism. At least primarily. Just like a car is primarily for driving, not sampling random smells, even if a carmaker makes a car that can do that.
- avsteele 4y ago
  We are the customers. Of COURSE its appropriate to give feedback on what parts of the product we like/don't like. The assertion that, because they put ads in, that it is the business-optimal thing to do is weird.
jgaa 4y ago
> I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. Then, how is Microsoft supposed to properly track your interests and sell that information to their "partners"? It's been a long time since Microsoft made an operating system. What they make today is basically a spyware-platform where you can run applications if you are really disciplined and persistent. I don't understand how people keep up with it. I've used Linux on my desktops and laptops for decades now.
- damnesian 4y ago
  > I don't understand how people keep up with it One word: Adobe. Once the Adobe suite goes completely online, Windows will be considered a lot less essential in the office, at least on the client end.
  - margorczynski 4y ago
    Most big corps are based on Office365 - Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams. And all of that integrated tightly together. I don't think most big companies will move away from Windows completely, there is simply no worthy competitor to replace the office suite and to have it all integrated from top to bottom.
- S_A_P 4y ago
  You forget that it organizations are now able to install even more spyware made by Microsoft called o365 that is used to track worker productivity and a host of other tools such as netskope that make windows take 45 seconds plus to launch an approval dialog to escalate privileges.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  I used to dualboot with Slack and some version of Windows, since the early 2000s, although I stopped somewhat when VMs became a thing anf then WSL. I genuinely liked Windows 7, but 10 was a start down a bad path and 11 is just too far gone.
- sircastor 4y ago
  I’ve wondered for a bit if there’s a future where Windows turns into A Linux distribution with some extra tools and runtimes for legacy executables. Microsoft has some really expensive software it has to maintain. Office is also maintained on multiple platforms, but it feels like Windows is starting to be a drag on the company - lots of resources for not a lot of income. As wild as it would be, offloading a lot of dev to the OSS community would free up resources to differentiate their product.
arunsivadasan 4y ago
Just checked out awesomewm. It looks really interesting. Thank you !
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  You're welcome! It's really cool and IMO has a leg up on alternatives like i3 because the whole thing, every aspect is entirely programmable. Enjoy :)
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Neat. Will check it out, been looking for a successor to wmii for a while, and dwm is a little too basic.
  - chaorace 4y ago
    Counter-review: the level of control is unmatched, but it's a little too extreme, I feel. Even something as simple as a volume widget isn't included OoB. Yes, there are libraries of widgets out there, but not many -- and not always the best quality (memory leaks are unfortunately common, seems to be a screwy lua/GTK interaction). More importantly: the core framework just outright omits many of the core features that I've come to expect in tiling WMs. There's no support for i3-style window stacks, for example; I've tried several community solutions, but they're all trapped on a too-high abstraction layer and inevitably end up fighting with the WM in ways that you simply never need to deal with in first-class implementations. All in all, I'm planning on returning to i3wm. For me, it's a bigger struggle to try building up a usable environment from scratch than it is to start with a solid foundation and then replace the undesirable components (i3bar => polybar, bindsym => sxhkd). AwesomeWM is very fun to work with thanks to the great APIs and documentation, but I can only wholeheartedly recommend it if you need absolute and total power over the UI, since that's AwesomeWMs whole schtick.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      I've been using it for several years at this point and haven't encountered any memory leaks (it already uses so little). As for widgets, I've had no trouble with that, there's quite a few fantastic collections and I've found everything I've needed. Sure, stacks are not supported out of the box, but it is an easy thing to add if you want it. I think they are entirely consistent and bug free, as much as anything else - some specific apps might have an issue but you can also write a rule to deal with them as needed. I'll take a completely customizable lightweight interface that I can tailor every aspect of every time, especially when it's so user friendly (for what it is).
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I wouldn't mind a built-in RSS reader that I can use to display NPR, National Weather Service, or other sources. It should definitely start as a blank slate and allow the user to add sources. Build it into Edge browser. A button on the browser allows adding the source to the reader. Sites not containing feeds can invoke bing chat or some AI to wrangle the page to the feed. This can be done in a user respecting and useful way but that doesn't make $
- OwlsParlay 4y ago
  This, I find even trying to ignore news sources doesn't work. I continually try to prune the more tabloid papers like Daily Mail / Express / Sun but no avail.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Yeah... I like parts of Edge, and tried to train the news feed on the new tab screen, but eventually just disabled the news from showing up on that screen. I'm sure it's the same underlying service for the Windows News feeds.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Defaulting to nothing won't happen, because too many users won't know it's a feature that exists and they can tune. That said, making it RSS driven and letting any user who cares replace it would be a good idea.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Default to a placeholder that tells them how it works or a link to a microsoft blog explaining the feature.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      Why bother doing that? No one is going to read an article about a feature they don't use and imagine using it and then go out of their way to sign up. People will see something in use, say "I wish it was all NPR" and go change it.
chillfox 4y ago
I have always used Windows for my gaming PC, but last year when I got a new one I went for Linux. I was just tired of having to constantly reset my settings, remove ads/candy crush from the start menu.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  Yeah it's ridiculous. The nerve to keep forcing something on a user after they have clearly rejected it. Honestly that kind of crap should be illegal IMO. After a lot of GPO settings and hacks I've tamed W10 to be acceptable, but it's still crappy on principle.
  - chillfox 4y ago
    Oh, I am sure I could wrestle Windows into submission if I wanted to. I just don't want to fight with my computer. If Steam was not available on Linux then I would likely still have abandoned Windows and just limited my gaming to whatever runs on a Nintendo Switch. Anyway, My husband decided to stick with Windows for his gaming computer (same hardware as mine) and my Linux computer (with ZFS) can load every game in under half the time it takes his machine. It did take a day to figure out the magic environment variables to better performance in games, but now that I got them I just copy paste them for new games.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      > It did take a day to figure out the magic environment variables to better performance in games, What are your main? If you don't mind sharing?
      - chillfox 4y ago
        PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 gamemoderun %command% That the main thing I add for most games in Steam.
- kibwen 4y ago
  I've already resolved that my next gaming PC will be a docked Steam Deck. I'm through with Windows.
thesuitonym 4y ago
It really ought to not exist, but if there has to be a news section, it needs to come with a few (like four or five) of the most respected news orgs in your locale, and be very easy to switch in or out. But otherwise, I agree with you. Windows should not be in the business of syndicating news. That should be the job of a third party widget (maybe provided by MSN!) that you install if you're interested.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  At this point I'm so used to using Feedbro with Firefox to get my news, getting it as part of the OS doesn't even occur to me. I'm not too sure how useful that would be either since I'd likely just end up clicking on a link. I agree with you though if it exists it should optional and from credible (or from user selectable) sources.
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
Come over to Mint, it has the feel of windows but it’s fully customisable and works out of the box.
- 0xffff2 4y ago
  I'm an Ubuntu user at work and a Windows (desktop)/Arch (server) user at home. Wikipedia says that Mint is based on Ubuntu, but it doesn't really explain why I would use it over Ubuntu itself. What does Mint add?
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
    > What does Mint add? For you, nothing. The UI is just more Windows-esque. It's often recommended to Windows users to make their transition to Linux desktops easier.
- TinkersW 4y ago
  I have installed mint recently, dual boot with windows. I mostly like it, but it does have one major downside.. the 4k font scaling is terrible compared to windows. When I adjust font scaling on windows it only modifies font size. When I do it in mint, it messes up a bunch of other things, and games start running at the wrong screen size etc. So I still ended up mostly using Windows almost entirely because of this issue.. (These search ads/news can be disabled that this post is talking about, so not a problem for me).
- neogodless 4y ago
  Yeah, I really like Mint, and I wish everything worked, but there was just enough not working (for my particular configuration and use cases) that I went back to Windows 10. https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm
naikrovek 4y ago
[flagged]
- glitcher 4y ago
  > I seriously want to know why people hijack threads I see what you did there.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  HN user discovers comment sections and social (media) interaction at the same time.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  You seem new to the internet. Welcome!
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    not new of course just fed up with unprompted show & tell on this site. get some damn friends, people, find a healthy outlet. or be as you are and be alone forever.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      Yet the comment is highly upvoted, and given how common it is for most users to do the same, maybe this just isn't the right hangout for you.
Fnoord 4y ago
Me neither. Which is why I am using Open Shell (with DLL hack on Windows 11, without on Windows 10) [1]. Although since I prefer to have the option to have my menu bar on left, which is a reason I don't want Windows 11. ..but its the popularity of Android and Google which put Microsoft to this direction. They get away with it, why not Microsoft? On my Nvidia Shield TV, I have to watch about 33% of my startup screen with commercials. Commercials which sometimes aren't meant for my children. What have we come to that we accept this behavior from a TV? And Google gets away with this. (I'm not trying to downplay Microsoft's behavior, however.) [1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
- tracker1 4y ago
  You can shift it back to the left, I'd still probably stick to a 3rd party menu adapter though.
xnx 4y ago
Are Fortune 500 companies installing current versions of Windows? How do they disable all this junk (and how do I do it myself)?
- gorkish 4y ago
  Windows Enterprise LTSB with some GPOs
  - themadturk 4y ago
    This. It doesn't stop the crap in Edge (which is easy to turn off once you know where the magic button is), but I never see any of this stuff at the OS level on my work machine. (My home machine is a Mac, so I don't see it there either.)
    - gorkish 4y ago
      Downside is having to use LTSB which often hangs onto its bugs a lot longer than it ought to.
asveikau 4y ago
Want to say that MSN headlines have appeared in Windows for a long time. Vista had an RSS reader sidebar where the defaults were set to MSN.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Telemetry in Windows has some value for users. Specifically, Windows has a system for systematically shimming the standard library (which is the documented API for OS services) to fix problems with applications. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/demystifying-shims-or-using-the-app-compat-toolkit-to-make-your/ba-p/374947 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-t... Telemetry returns information about applications crashes to the "mothership" and MS is pretty quick to update the application compatibility database to fix problems.
- n8cpdx 4y ago
  Modern telemetry is completely unnecessary for that. In the Vista era, the OS was able to detect programs that crashed and give the user the choice to report it. It could even, with consent, check to see if there was already a known solution, which might involve an updated version or might involve changing compatibility settings. None of that needs the MS personal info vortex and none of that requires trampling on consent. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-wikis-components-files/00-00-00-00-05/6685.1.png https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/cfs-filesystemfile... https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/1pca.png?height=200p&trim=2,2,2,2 https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/1pca.pn... http://s3.jasonlitka.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bluescreen_1.png http://s3.jasonlitka.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bluescre...
- whoopdedo 4y ago
  I'd love for that to be the case if it actually translated to fixing problems. For instance, in all of Windows 10 I would frequently get an error if I used the media device system tray to eject a USB drive, as I had been taught ever since Windows 98. However, if I instead ejected by right-clicking the drive in Explorer it would work. Obviously Explorer was preventing the drive from unmounting and the systray eject should be changed to notify other apps and give them a chance to close their handles. It got to where I would intentionally do the "wrong" thing hoping that the telemetry would make its way to Microsoft and they could notice the problem. So I was thrilled when I saw a headline saying that removing media would be fixed in Windows 11. The article informed me that Microsoft's solution was (pause for effect) to remove the system tray icon. Apply palm directly to face. I'll admit that modern Windows is more stable than in the past. But how much of that is simply the benefit of memory safety in C#? Also stricter oversight of third-party drivers.
opportune 4y ago
I just want MS to release a windows 7 clone with under-the-hood improvements from subsequent releases. All the consumer-facing changes since 7 have been utter crap - it’s hard to think of a single change that I like. I just want windows 7 with WSL. If not for games I would NEVER run modern windows at all. It is explicitly anti-user. It violates my consent all the time with their Edge shenanigans, and it pushes all the MS services like Cortana that I simply do not care about. At this point it’s hard to say that windows takes less fiddling than Linux to set up, if you include the time spent fighting the OS and time spent disabling Microsoft’s crap
bodge5000 4y ago
> For all the MS hate in the OSS community, I always thought Windows did a lot of stuff well (when it was good at least). This is my biggest complaint about Windows (which I no longer use), in that it had the chance to be, and once was, an opportunity to bridge the gap between MacOS and Linux. More open than the former, more opinionated than the latter.
drpixie 4y ago
Microsoft seem to have dropped any pretense of being a software company, and Windows of being an "OS". Windows is pretty much the same old same old but with more and more and more ads. It gets a big "gee whiz" when they change the backgrounds images and the shape of app windows! Their various apps are becoming more and more simplistic, apart from throwing ads into any conceivable screen. I find Windows and MS apps extraordinarily frustrating to use.

voldacar 4y ago

Could you share your ISO or the process you used to make it? Was it easy or is there a bunch of esoteric stuff you have to fiddle with? I'm switching to 10 for my new PC build and I'm about to do a ton of research on decrapifying the OS

midoridensha 4y ago

>I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. It simply isn't it's job. Yes, it is. The job of a proprietary OS is whatever that company says it is. If it's shoveling annoying ads to users, that's its job, and having annoying ads is a very sensible thing in a proprietary OS since the company is driven by profit, and they can make more profit by including lots of annoying ads. If you don't like the product your vendor has sold you, then you should choose a different vendor. A Free OS that doesn't come from a company with a profit motive won't have this same problem.

alkonaut 4y ago
The whole "just go elsewhere" idea doesn't really work in a total monopoly like Microsoft has on desktop OSes for some use cases. There is not, and has never been an alternative to windows for all use cases. Most notably: a gaming rig (One of few remaining use cases for stationary home PCs these days, so perhaps the most relevant for the idea of the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop). If you want to reply that Linux is a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig these days then please reconsider. It's just not. I actually don't understand how Microsoft reasons around these things. There is zero way that these news links actually "pay for themselves" in income vs customer alienation. There must be something else to it.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  Sure there are still cases where you can't switch, but the gap is ever closing and is already very very narrow. Proton covers most games, and WINE covers most windows software, and plenty of big software has native versions for multiple OSes. I think if more people tried Rather than just assuming they would probably be pleasantly surprised.
  - alkonaut 4y ago
    I think its' perfectly fine in many games. In others there is a performance penalty of several percent, a slower fix rate for OS specific bugs, or graphics drivers lagging several weeks or even months behind the Windows release specific for the game.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      That seems to be very much the exception. In many other cases Linux gives significantly better performance and less issues. Linux is very much a viable gaming platform these days, and Windows only has a minimal advantage in that area.
      - alkonaut 4y ago
        It's a lot better than it used to be, but it's still far from great. Especially with anything non-steam or anything that uses one of the newer Anticheats (which are basically rootkits). Here's the top of the list of 2022 most sold PC games (US chart): #1 Most sold 2022 (CoD MW2): Nope https://www.protondb.com/app/1938090 https://www.protondb.com/app/1938090 #2 Most sold 2022 (Elden ring): Sort of (Steam deck apparently great, Desktop less than pefect) https://www.protondb.com/app/1245620 https://www.protondb.com/app/1245620 #3 Most sold 2022 (Madden NFL 23): Barely. No online play and worse perf https://www.protondb.com/app/1760250 https://www.protondb.com/app/1760250 And so on and so forth. But if we give a little more time it could be better. So look at 2021 most sold PC games instead #1 Most sold 2021 (Apex Legends): Yes. Fixed in 2022 with official anticheat support 3 years after release. https://www.protondb.com/app/1172470 https://www.protondb.com/app/1172470 #2 Most sold 2021 (BF 2042): Nope https://www.protondb.com/app/1517290 https://www.protondb.com/app/1517290 #3 Most sold 2021 (CS:GO): Works (Although some of the user reports look really painful). https://www.protondb.com/app/730 https://www.protondb.com/app/730 Looking at protondb the number of titles that get a "Platinum" rating meaning they work out great of the box without tweaking, is extremely low. (proton/steamdeck isn't the only way of running Linux games of course).
Zurrrrr 4y ago
> Yes, it is. The job of a proprietary OS is whatever that company says it is. That's just semantics. The job of an OS is to be an OS, not to be an advertisement delivery mechanism. At least primarily. Just like a car is primarily for driving, not sampling random smells, even if a carmaker makes a car that can do that.
avsteele 4y ago
We are the customers. Of COURSE its appropriate to give feedback on what parts of the product we like/don't like. The assertion that, because they put ads in, that it is the business-optimal thing to do is weird.

jgaa 4y ago

> I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. Then, how is Microsoft supposed to properly track your interests and sell that information to their "partners"? It's been a long time since Microsoft made an operating system. What they make today is basically a spyware-platform where you can run applications if you are really disciplined and persistent. I don't understand how people keep up with it. I've used Linux on my desktops and laptops for decades now.

damnesian 4y ago
> I don't understand how people keep up with it One word: Adobe. Once the Adobe suite goes completely online, Windows will be considered a lot less essential in the office, at least on the client end.
- margorczynski 4y ago
  Most big corps are based on Office365 - Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams. And all of that integrated tightly together. I don't think most big companies will move away from Windows completely, there is simply no worthy competitor to replace the office suite and to have it all integrated from top to bottom.
S_A_P 4y ago
You forget that it organizations are now able to install even more spyware made by Microsoft called o365 that is used to track worker productivity and a host of other tools such as netskope that make windows take 45 seconds plus to launch an approval dialog to escalate privileges.
Zurrrrr 4y ago
I used to dualboot with Slack and some version of Windows, since the early 2000s, although I stopped somewhat when VMs became a thing anf then WSL. I genuinely liked Windows 7, but 10 was a start down a bad path and 11 is just too far gone.
sircastor 4y ago
I’ve wondered for a bit if there’s a future where Windows turns into A Linux distribution with some extra tools and runtimes for legacy executables. Microsoft has some really expensive software it has to maintain. Office is also maintained on multiple platforms, but it feels like Windows is starting to be a drag on the company - lots of resources for not a lot of income. As wild as it would be, offloading a lot of dev to the OSS community would free up resources to differentiate their product.

arunsivadasan 4y ago

Just checked out awesomewm. It looks really interesting. Thank you !

Zurrrrr 4y ago
You're welcome! It's really cool and IMO has a leg up on alternatives like i3 because the whole thing, every aspect is entirely programmable. Enjoy :)
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Neat. Will check it out, been looking for a successor to wmii for a while, and dwm is a little too basic.
- chaorace 4y ago
  Counter-review: the level of control is unmatched, but it's a little too extreme, I feel. Even something as simple as a volume widget isn't included OoB. Yes, there are libraries of widgets out there, but not many -- and not always the best quality (memory leaks are unfortunately common, seems to be a screwy lua/GTK interaction). More importantly: the core framework just outright omits many of the core features that I've come to expect in tiling WMs. There's no support for i3-style window stacks, for example; I've tried several community solutions, but they're all trapped on a too-high abstraction layer and inevitably end up fighting with the WM in ways that you simply never need to deal with in first-class implementations. All in all, I'm planning on returning to i3wm. For me, it's a bigger struggle to try building up a usable environment from scratch than it is to start with a solid foundation and then replace the undesirable components (i3bar => polybar, bindsym => sxhkd). AwesomeWM is very fun to work with thanks to the great APIs and documentation, but I can only wholeheartedly recommend it if you need absolute and total power over the UI, since that's AwesomeWMs whole schtick.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    I've been using it for several years at this point and haven't encountered any memory leaks (it already uses so little). As for widgets, I've had no trouble with that, there's quite a few fantastic collections and I've found everything I've needed. Sure, stacks are not supported out of the box, but it is an easy thing to add if you want it. I think they are entirely consistent and bug free, as much as anything else - some specific apps might have an issue but you can also write a rule to deal with them as needed. I'll take a completely customizable lightweight interface that I can tailor every aspect of every time, especially when it's so user friendly (for what it is).

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

I wouldn't mind a built-in RSS reader that I can use to display NPR, National Weather Service, or other sources. It should definitely start as a blank slate and allow the user to add sources. Build it into Edge browser. A button on the browser allows adding the source to the reader. Sites not containing feeds can invoke bing chat or some AI to wrangle the page to the feed. This can be done in a user respecting and useful way but that doesn't make $

OwlsParlay 4y ago
This, I find even trying to ignore news sources doesn't work. I continually try to prune the more tabloid papers like Daily Mail / Express / Sun but no avail.
- tracker1 4y ago
  Yeah... I like parts of Edge, and tried to train the news feed on the new tab screen, but eventually just disabled the news from showing up on that screen. I'm sure it's the same underlying service for the Windows News feeds.
HWR_14 4y ago
Defaulting to nothing won't happen, because too many users won't know it's a feature that exists and they can tune. That said, making it RSS driven and letting any user who cares replace it would be a good idea.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Default to a placeholder that tells them how it works or a link to a microsoft blog explaining the feature.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Why bother doing that? No one is going to read an article about a feature they don't use and imagine using it and then go out of their way to sign up. People will see something in use, say "I wish it was all NPR" and go change it.

chillfox 4y ago

I have always used Windows for my gaming PC, but last year when I got a new one I went for Linux. I was just tired of having to constantly reset my settings, remove ads/candy crush from the start menu.

Zurrrrr 4y ago
Yeah it's ridiculous. The nerve to keep forcing something on a user after they have clearly rejected it. Honestly that kind of crap should be illegal IMO. After a lot of GPO settings and hacks I've tamed W10 to be acceptable, but it's still crappy on principle.
- chillfox 4y ago
  Oh, I am sure I could wrestle Windows into submission if I wanted to. I just don't want to fight with my computer. If Steam was not available on Linux then I would likely still have abandoned Windows and just limited my gaming to whatever runs on a Nintendo Switch. Anyway, My husband decided to stick with Windows for his gaming computer (same hardware as mine) and my Linux computer (with ZFS) can load every game in under half the time it takes his machine. It did take a day to figure out the magic environment variables to better performance in games, but now that I got them I just copy paste them for new games.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    > It did take a day to figure out the magic environment variables to better performance in games, What are your main? If you don't mind sharing?
    - chillfox 4y ago
      PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 gamemoderun %command% That the main thing I add for most games in Steam.
kibwen 4y ago
I've already resolved that my next gaming PC will be a docked Steam Deck. I'm through with Windows.

thesuitonym 4y ago

It really ought to not exist, but if there has to be a news section, it needs to come with a few (like four or five) of the most respected news orgs in your locale, and be very easy to switch in or out. But otherwise, I agree with you. Windows should not be in the business of syndicating news. That should be the job of a third party widget (maybe provided by MSN!) that you install if you're interested.

Zurrrrr 4y ago
At this point I'm so used to using Feedbro with Firefox to get my news, getting it as part of the OS doesn't even occur to me. I'm not too sure how useful that would be either since I'd likely just end up clicking on a link. I agree with you though if it exists it should optional and from credible (or from user selectable) sources.

MagicMoonlight 4y ago

Come over to Mint, it has the feel of windows but it’s fully customisable and works out of the box.

0xffff2 4y ago
I'm an Ubuntu user at work and a Windows (desktop)/Arch (server) user at home. Wikipedia says that Mint is based on Ubuntu, but it doesn't really explain why I would use it over Ubuntu itself. What does Mint add?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  > What does Mint add? For you, nothing. The UI is just more Windows-esque. It's often recommended to Windows users to make their transition to Linux desktops easier.
TinkersW 4y ago
I have installed mint recently, dual boot with windows. I mostly like it, but it does have one major downside.. the 4k font scaling is terrible compared to windows. When I adjust font scaling on windows it only modifies font size. When I do it in mint, it messes up a bunch of other things, and games start running at the wrong screen size etc. So I still ended up mostly using Windows almost entirely because of this issue.. (These search ads/news can be disabled that this post is talking about, so not a problem for me).
neogodless 4y ago
Yeah, I really like Mint, and I wish everything worked, but there was just enough not working (for my particular configuration and use cases) that I went back to Windows 10. https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm

naikrovek 4y ago

[flagged]

glitcher 4y ago
> I seriously want to know why people hijack threads I see what you did there.
sebzim4500 4y ago
HN user discovers comment sections and social (media) interaction at the same time.
Zurrrrr 4y ago
You seem new to the internet. Welcome!
- naikrovek 4y ago
  not new of course just fed up with unprompted show & tell on this site. get some damn friends, people, find a healthy outlet. or be as you are and be alone forever.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    Yet the comment is highly upvoted, and given how common it is for most users to do the same, maybe this just isn't the right hangout for you.

Fnoord 4y ago

Me neither. Which is why I am using Open Shell (with DLL hack on Windows 11, without on Windows 10) [1]. Although since I prefer to have the option to have my menu bar on left, which is a reason I don't want Windows 11. ..but its the popularity of Android and Google which put Microsoft to this direction. They get away with it, why not Microsoft? On my Nvidia Shield TV, I have to watch about 33% of my startup screen with commercials. Commercials which sometimes aren't meant for my children. What have we come to that we accept this behavior from a TV? And Google gets away with this. (I'm not trying to downplay Microsoft's behavior, however.) [1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

tracker1 4y ago
You can shift it back to the left, I'd still probably stick to a 3rd party menu adapter though.

xnx 4y ago

Are Fortune 500 companies installing current versions of Windows? How do they disable all this junk (and how do I do it myself)?

gorkish 4y ago
Windows Enterprise LTSB with some GPOs
- themadturk 4y ago
  This. It doesn't stop the crap in Edge (which is easy to turn off once you know where the magic button is), but I never see any of this stuff at the OS level on my work machine. (My home machine is a Mac, so I don't see it there either.)
  - gorkish 4y ago
    Downside is having to use LTSB which often hangs onto its bugs a lot longer than it ought to.

asveikau 4y ago

Want to say that MSN headlines have appeared in Windows for a long time. Vista had an RSS reader sidebar where the defaults were set to MSN.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Telemetry in Windows has some value for users. Specifically, Windows has a system for systematically shimming the standard library (which is the documented API for OS services) to fix problems with applications. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/demystifying-shims-or-using-the-app-compat-toolkit-to-make-your/ba-p/374947 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-t... Telemetry returns information about applications crashes to the "mothership" and MS is pretty quick to update the application compatibility database to fix problems.

n8cpdx 4y ago
Modern telemetry is completely unnecessary for that. In the Vista era, the OS was able to detect programs that crashed and give the user the choice to report it. It could even, with consent, check to see if there was already a known solution, which might involve an updated version or might involve changing compatibility settings. None of that needs the MS personal info vortex and none of that requires trampling on consent. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-wikis-components-files/00-00-00-00-05/6685.1.png https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/cfs-filesystemfile... https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/1pca.png?height=200p&trim=2,2,2,2 https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/1pca.pn... http://s3.jasonlitka.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bluescreen_1.png http://s3.jasonlitka.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bluescre...
whoopdedo 4y ago
I'd love for that to be the case if it actually translated to fixing problems. For instance, in all of Windows 10 I would frequently get an error if I used the media device system tray to eject a USB drive, as I had been taught ever since Windows 98. However, if I instead ejected by right-clicking the drive in Explorer it would work. Obviously Explorer was preventing the drive from unmounting and the systray eject should be changed to notify other apps and give them a chance to close their handles. It got to where I would intentionally do the "wrong" thing hoping that the telemetry would make its way to Microsoft and they could notice the problem. So I was thrilled when I saw a headline saying that removing media would be fixed in Windows 11. The article informed me that Microsoft's solution was (pause for effect) to remove the system tray icon. Apply palm directly to face. I'll admit that modern Windows is more stable than in the past. But how much of that is simply the benefit of memory safety in C#? Also stricter oversight of third-party drivers.

opportune 4y ago

I just want MS to release a windows 7 clone with under-the-hood improvements from subsequent releases. All the consumer-facing changes since 7 have been utter crap - it’s hard to think of a single change that I like. I just want windows 7 with WSL. If not for games I would NEVER run modern windows at all. It is explicitly anti-user. It violates my consent all the time with their Edge shenanigans, and it pushes all the MS services like Cortana that I simply do not care about. At this point it’s hard to say that windows takes less fiddling than Linux to set up, if you include the time spent fighting the OS and time spent disabling Microsoft’s crap

bodge5000 4y ago

> For all the MS hate in the OSS community, I always thought Windows did a lot of stuff well (when it was good at least). This is my biggest complaint about Windows (which I no longer use), in that it had the chance to be, and once was, an opportunity to bridge the gap between MacOS and Linux. More open than the former, more opinionated than the latter.

drpixie 4y ago

Microsoft seem to have dropped any pretense of being a software company, and Windows of being an "OS". Windows is pretty much the same old same old but with more and more and more ads. It gets a big "gee whiz" when they change the backgrounds images and the shape of app windows! Their various apps are becoming more and more simplistic, apart from throwing ads into any conceivable screen. I find Windows and MS apps extraordinarily frustrating to use.