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I feel like I'm on crazy pills when I complain about these things and all the other intrusions Windows pops up at me every time I use the operating system... Ye

I feel like I'm on crazy pills when I complain about these things and all the other intrusions Windows pops up at me every time I use the operating system... Yet, the people who use it (mostly gamers), seem to think it's all fine and the operating system is great.

klodolph 4y ago
If you’re a gamer, how do you interact with the computer? You launch Steam, see a bunch of ads, launch Epic Game Store or GOG Galaxy and see a bunch of ads, so why wouldn’t you see ads in the start menu? Hell, you have to log in to an account for the “GeForce Experience”. Just to keep your graphics card drivers automatically updated. As soon as you’re in a game, the game is full-screen. You’re not switching apps, you’re not creating anything, you’re just consuming content, and ads are a part of how we consume content these days.
- kderbe 4y ago
  > you have to log in to an account for the “GeForce Experience”. Just to keep your graphics card drivers automatically updated. TechPowerUp's NVCleanstall makes it easy to automatically update Nvidia drivers without any login, and also to remove any Nvidia application bloat you don't want. (I exclude GFE and only install the control panel, for example.)
  - crtasm 4y ago
    I was using something similar to that, then recently found I can update with chocolatey https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/nvidia-display-driver https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/nvidia-display-dri...
- troymc 4y ago
  It would be nice if there was a univesal ad blocker that worked everywhere...
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    To be effective it would however need all applications plus the underlying OS to be Open Source, since hiding code that phones home on an encrypted covert channel, for example using the same addresses and ports used for updates, then shows ads to the user, is a lot easier on closed systems. How could the user know, for example, that among the 350 MB of updates the OS just downloaded, half of it are actually adverts that will be shown according to certain conditions such as date and time, sites visited, online searches, email contents, software installed or removed, etc.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > ads are a part of how we consume content these days. They aren't a part of how I do it.
  - 31337Logic 4y ago
    So what? Even if that's true (and it isn't for me, btw), that doesn't make it right, and that's what we're discussing here.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  You're right. Everyone keeps whining "privacy and usability" this and "I already paid for the OS" that. To them, I say: shut up! Don't these people know that computers are only about consuming content? We should be advocating for an even greater ad-filled future for everyone to enjoy Why aren't we seeing ads in context menus? Why can't I yell "Burger King" into my mic every 10 minutes while streaming to get access to higher bitrates? Why hasn't Microsoft put ads on the BSOD? Why am I not paying a microtransaction every time I start up my computer to get it to skip an ad and boot faster? We are still missing out on some serious advertising potential! Every eyeball that isn't looking at a corporate logo is selfishly wasting time
  - fasterik 4y ago
    >Burger King Reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Y333JkwXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Y333JkwXQ
- Anarch157a 4y ago
  Steam, EGS and GOG are stores. Ads are expected in stores. The OS that runs my computer is not. I would expect ads on Windows when I open the built-in app store, but not on the Start Menu.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    Additionally I see ads once, when I start Steam and before clicking over to the library from the storefront. To compare, I might see ads every time I bring up the start menu.
    - crtasm 4y ago
      Plus you can set Steam to open directly to your library (Settings -> Interface) and disable the popup window of new releases (same page).
- nightski 4y ago
  Personally I never see these ads on Windows even though I think they sound terrible. I must just have the right group policy settings or something.
  - WeylandYutani 4y ago
    Same, gamers know how to tinker with this stuff. Modding Windows lol.
- RajT88 4y ago
  > Just to keep your graphics card drivers automatically updated. Auto-updaters are a bane unto themselves of annoying crap running in the background. As are "quicklaunch" agents, or anything which claims to be some sort of "agent" to improve the user experience of their software. Most of it delivers very little value, and who knows what the hell data it is hoovering up.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  > ...you launch Steam, see a bunch of ads, launch Epic Game Store or GOG Galaxy and see a bunch of ads. I think it's actually different. These are game stores. When I start Steam or EGS I expect to see game promotions (and *only* game promotions!) and targeting actually works there (e.g. I discovered a couple of games there I then bought and enjoyed). And finally, at least in Steam I can start directly into my library view, skipping the home screen 'ads'. I would call all that completely acceptable, devoid of the usual dark patterns.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I use Windows and largely my computer usage these days is gaming and some related activities, and things are most definitely not fine and I don't know of anyone else who thinks they are. What they are, is basically all we have. Thanks mostly to WINE and Valve, Linux gaming is now almost completely tolerable, but it certainly isn't perfect and there are huge gaps in capability (VR, for one). So as much as we hate what Windows has become we are unable to switch to it without making some pretty big sacrifices. Instead we use LTSC editions, O&O ShutUp 10, and some other third party utilities to mitigate the bullshit.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Lack of VR on Linux is why my custom tower spends most of its powered-on time booted into Windows at this point. I play Beat Saber custom maps for exercise and that's not easy to replace.
neogodless 4y ago
> Yet, the people who use it (mostly gamers), seem to think it's all fine and the operating system is great. A lot of assumptions in such a short sentence. I suspect there's more than a complex set of opinions around Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, using Windows for gaming, thinking it's all fine, thinking lots of things suck, thinking it is a great operating system, thinking it's a shame it does things outside of the ideal scope of an operating system. Anecdotally, most of the time I don't see the annoying things on my primary Windows 10 Professional machine. Upon a clean install, there were some nuisances that needed cleaned up. But the vast majority of the time, it is customizable as I desire, while being rock solid / stable, rarely needing reboots to apply updates, and when I go to play games, they just work, and they run super well. I still hate those nuisances, and I hate that a reboot risks a dark pattern trying to push Windows 11. I hate Windows 11. It currently holds exactly zero advantages (for me) over Windows 10, and lots of disadvantages. I really like Linux Mint, but I gave it a solid 2 months on my primary gaming machine (which happens to be a laptop) and it fell short in a few key areas. It has a lot of warts, and some games were unstable, performed poorly, or wouldn't connect to multiplayer. I also had no control over the brightness of my screen while using my discrete GPU. For the purposes of gaming, Windows 10 is vastly superior for the set of games I play. And it's a shame, because I do really like the Linux Mint experience for most things, including most games, but the issues are more problematic than the ongoing issues that I have with Windows 10.
- nightski 4y ago
  Actually I am very frustrated by the advantages it does have, because I want to stay on 10 badly. But there are two nice ones - - WiFi 6(e) 6Ghz band support is only in Win 11 - Direct GPU access from WSL2 for things like CUDA/ML programming is Win 11 only
  - neogodless 4y ago
    Sorry - I meant to say "advantages for me" specifically!
jmuguy 4y ago
I only use Windows for games, and I don't think its fine, which is why I only use it for games. And its like another commenter said - you also have to deal with Nvidia's trash application, all the game stores, Discord (which I swear has more bullshit popups pushing whatever monetization every time it updates). I just try to ignore all that crap as much as possible. Any time I'm forced to do something more than cut over to the PC on my KVM and launch the game I want to play, I cringe.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> Yet, the people who use it (mostly gamers), seem to think it's all fine and the operating system is great. I hate Windows these days, but the specific AMD video card in my gaming desktop has buggy drivers in Linux and reliably crashes the whole machine about once every four hours (or, much faster if I actually play a game on it—that's if I'm just web browsing and hanging out in terminals and such) versus my having had zero OS-level crashes on the same hardware over almost three years under Windows 10. So... Windows it is. IDK, the driver may be fixed now, but the bug had been outstanding for 18+ months when I encountered it, so, I wouldn't bet on it. It seemed to have very little traction. And at this point it's really not worth my time to try, since the machine's working OK as-is, aside from Windows being crap. Since all I do on Windows is game, having to avoid some ads isn't that big a deal. I spend nearly all my time on it in fullscreen programs anyway, hardly interacting with Windows at all. So it's "great" in that it actually works correctly on my hardware, and ~all my games work just as they should. It's shit in every other way, but if it's effectively just a game launcher, oh well. I do anything important on other operating systems.
artursapek 4y ago
most people just accepts ads as a part of life
kulahan 4y ago
I have no real idea what the issue with Windows is. It certainly has drawbacks, but... so does every OS. I hit power, my computer boots up in 10 seconds or so, I launch a game, and I'm ready to go. I think Windows puts ads in the little notification center, but I turned that off ages ago. It seems fine to me.
wvenable 4y ago
I customize my Windows and almost completely avoid all this crap. If you use another OS, you might have less of this crap to deal with but overall ever environment needs some customization and whether or not it's more or less is hard to determine.
robryan 4y ago
A lot of it can be disabled. I am indifferent to it, it is still the best OS overall for games and I just boot it up for games.
esafak 4y ago
When you've been fed junk for so long you forget what food tastes like.

klodolph 4y ago

If you’re a gamer, how do you interact with the computer? You launch Steam, see a bunch of ads, launch Epic Game Store or GOG Galaxy and see a bunch of ads, so why wouldn’t you see ads in the start menu? Hell, you have to log in to an account for the “GeForce Experience”. Just to keep your graphics card drivers automatically updated. As soon as you’re in a game, the game is full-screen. You’re not switching apps, you’re not creating anything, you’re just consuming content, and ads are a part of how we consume content these days.

kderbe 4y ago
> you have to log in to an account for the “GeForce Experience”. Just to keep your graphics card drivers automatically updated. TechPowerUp's NVCleanstall makes it easy to automatically update Nvidia drivers without any login, and also to remove any Nvidia application bloat you don't want. (I exclude GFE and only install the control panel, for example.)
- crtasm 4y ago
  I was using something similar to that, then recently found I can update with chocolatey https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/nvidia-display-driver https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/nvidia-display-dri...
troymc 4y ago
It would be nice if there was a univesal ad blocker that worked everywhere...
- squarefoot 4y ago
  To be effective it would however need all applications plus the underlying OS to be Open Source, since hiding code that phones home on an encrypted covert channel, for example using the same addresses and ports used for updates, then shows ads to the user, is a lot easier on closed systems. How could the user know, for example, that among the 350 MB of updates the OS just downloaded, half of it are actually adverts that will be shown according to certain conditions such as date and time, sites visited, online searches, email contents, software installed or removed, etc.
JohnFen 4y ago
> ads are a part of how we consume content these days. They aren't a part of how I do it.
- 31337Logic 4y ago
  So what? Even if that's true (and it isn't for me, btw), that doesn't make it right, and that's what we're discussing here.
Minor49er 4y ago
You're right. Everyone keeps whining "privacy and usability" this and "I already paid for the OS" that. To them, I say: shut up! Don't these people know that computers are only about consuming content? We should be advocating for an even greater ad-filled future for everyone to enjoy Why aren't we seeing ads in context menus? Why can't I yell "Burger King" into my mic every 10 minutes while streaming to get access to higher bitrates? Why hasn't Microsoft put ads on the BSOD? Why am I not paying a microtransaction every time I start up my computer to get it to skip an ad and boot faster? We are still missing out on some serious advertising potential! Every eyeball that isn't looking at a corporate logo is selfishly wasting time
- fasterik 4y ago
  >Burger King Reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Y333JkwXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Y333JkwXQ
Anarch157a 4y ago
Steam, EGS and GOG are stores. Ads are expected in stores. The OS that runs my computer is not. I would expect ads on Windows when I open the built-in app store, but not on the Start Menu.
- Arrath 4y ago
  Additionally I see ads once, when I start Steam and before clicking over to the library from the storefront. To compare, I might see ads every time I bring up the start menu.
  - crtasm 4y ago
    Plus you can set Steam to open directly to your library (Settings -> Interface) and disable the popup window of new releases (same page).
nightski 4y ago
Personally I never see these ads on Windows even though I think they sound terrible. I must just have the right group policy settings or something.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  Same, gamers know how to tinker with this stuff. Modding Windows lol.
RajT88 4y ago
> Just to keep your graphics card drivers automatically updated. Auto-updaters are a bane unto themselves of annoying crap running in the background. As are "quicklaunch" agents, or anything which claims to be some sort of "agent" to improve the user experience of their software. Most of it delivers very little value, and who knows what the hell data it is hoovering up.
flohofwoe 4y ago
> ...you launch Steam, see a bunch of ads, launch Epic Game Store or GOG Galaxy and see a bunch of ads. I think it's actually different. These are game stores. When I start Steam or EGS I expect to see game promotions (and *only* game promotions!) and targeting actually works there (e.g. I discovered a couple of games there I then bought and enjoyed). And finally, at least in Steam I can start directly into my library view, skipping the home screen 'ads'. I would call all that completely acceptable, devoid of the usual dark patterns.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

I use Windows and largely my computer usage these days is gaming and some related activities, and things are most definitely not fine and I don't know of anyone else who thinks they are. What they are, is basically all we have. Thanks mostly to WINE and Valve, Linux gaming is now almost completely tolerable, but it certainly isn't perfect and there are huge gaps in capability (VR, for one). So as much as we hate what Windows has become we are unable to switch to it without making some pretty big sacrifices. Instead we use LTSC editions, O&O ShutUp 10, and some other third party utilities to mitigate the bullshit.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Lack of VR on Linux is why my custom tower spends most of its powered-on time booted into Windows at this point. I play Beat Saber custom maps for exercise and that's not easy to replace.

neogodless 4y ago

> Yet, the people who use it (mostly gamers), seem to think it's all fine and the operating system is great. A lot of assumptions in such a short sentence. I suspect there's more than a complex set of opinions around Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, using Windows for gaming, thinking it's all fine, thinking lots of things suck, thinking it is a great operating system, thinking it's a shame it does things outside of the ideal scope of an operating system. Anecdotally, most of the time I don't see the annoying things on my primary Windows 10 Professional machine. Upon a clean install, there were some nuisances that needed cleaned up. But the vast majority of the time, it is customizable as I desire, while being rock solid / stable, rarely needing reboots to apply updates, and when I go to play games, they just work, and they run super well. I still hate those nuisances, and I hate that a reboot risks a dark pattern trying to push Windows 11. I hate Windows 11. It currently holds exactly zero advantages (for me) over Windows 10, and lots of disadvantages. I really like Linux Mint, but I gave it a solid 2 months on my primary gaming machine (which happens to be a laptop) and it fell short in a few key areas. It has a lot of warts, and some games were unstable, performed poorly, or wouldn't connect to multiplayer. I also had no control over the brightness of my screen while using my discrete GPU. For the purposes of gaming, Windows 10 is vastly superior for the set of games I play. And it's a shame, because I do really like the Linux Mint experience for most things, including most games, but the issues are more problematic than the ongoing issues that I have with Windows 10.

nightski 4y ago
Actually I am very frustrated by the advantages it does have, because I want to stay on 10 badly. But there are two nice ones - - WiFi 6(e) 6Ghz band support is only in Win 11 - Direct GPU access from WSL2 for things like CUDA/ML programming is Win 11 only
- neogodless 4y ago
  Sorry - I meant to say "advantages for me" specifically!

jmuguy 4y ago

I only use Windows for games, and I don't think its fine, which is why I only use it for games. And its like another commenter said - you also have to deal with Nvidia's trash application, all the game stores, Discord (which I swear has more bullshit popups pushing whatever monetization every time it updates). I just try to ignore all that crap as much as possible. Any time I'm forced to do something more than cut over to the PC on my KVM and launch the game I want to play, I cringe.

yamtaddle 4y ago

> Yet, the people who use it (mostly gamers), seem to think it's all fine and the operating system is great. I hate Windows these days, but the specific AMD video card in my gaming desktop has buggy drivers in Linux and reliably crashes the whole machine about once every four hours (or, much faster if I actually play a game on it—that's if I'm just web browsing and hanging out in terminals and such) versus my having had zero OS-level crashes on the same hardware over almost three years under Windows 10. So... Windows it is. IDK, the driver may be fixed now, but the bug had been outstanding for 18+ months when I encountered it, so, I wouldn't bet on it. It seemed to have very little traction. And at this point it's really not worth my time to try, since the machine's working OK as-is, aside from Windows being crap. Since all I do on Windows is game, having to avoid some ads isn't that big a deal. I spend nearly all my time on it in fullscreen programs anyway, hardly interacting with Windows at all. So it's "great" in that it actually works correctly on my hardware, and ~all my games work just as they should. It's shit in every other way, but if it's effectively just a game launcher, oh well. I do anything important on other operating systems.

artursapek 4y ago

most people just accepts ads as a part of life

kulahan 4y ago

I have no real idea what the issue with Windows is. It certainly has drawbacks, but... so does every OS. I hit power, my computer boots up in 10 seconds or so, I launch a game, and I'm ready to go. I think Windows puts ads in the little notification center, but I turned that off ages ago. It seems fine to me.

wvenable 4y ago

I customize my Windows and almost completely avoid all this crap. If you use another OS, you might have less of this crap to deal with but overall ever environment needs some customization and whether or not it's more or less is hard to determine.

robryan 4y ago

A lot of it can be disabled. I am indifferent to it, it is still the best OS overall for games and I just boot it up for games.

esafak 4y ago

When you've been fed junk for so long you forget what food tastes like.