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Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone
- cebert 2y agoThere was a popular discussion thread yesterday on the steps Google took to ruin search (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976) I see a lot of parallels to how Microsoft is ruining Windows. I used to love Windows and it had a profound impact on my life. However, now that it’s in late stage enshitification, I am doing everything possible to avoid using it. It’s astonishing how Microsoft keeps making Windows worse. They just need to leave it alone and keep patching security updates.
- janandonly 2y ago> late stage enshitification I like that. I am going to use this moving forward.
- EForEndeavour 2y agoIt's a delightful word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- fuzzfactor 2y agoCoined in 2022, we've made it to late stage without much hesitation.
- nrdxp 2y ago[flagged]
- mtmail 2y agoOver 70% use Windows. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/ https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
- flohofwoe 2y agoAnd in some "niches" like PC gaming it's 97% (per latest Steam hardware survey).
- snvzz 2y agoWhat happened to Linux these last 4 years? It had stagnated at 1.5%-ish for a good decade. But as of four years ago, it started to go up, higher than ever before, reaching 2% in 2021 and 4% this year. Is the YoLD finally nigh?
- Narretz 2y agoWhich Linux (for Desktop) though? The fragmentation is still hurting Linux big time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoDebian with kde or xfce
- vitro 2y agoMint / Mate works for me.
- snvzz 2y agoArch Linux with Plasma 6.
- azangru 2y ago> It's not the early 2000s, Linux is fine. It's not the early 2000s; and you still can't just walk into a store and test-drive and buy a laptop with linux on it.
- jajko 2y agoIts not fine, and similar statements make situation much worse, since some actually believe it and then get bad disappointment and never look back at the choice
- Propelloni 2y agoWell, this depends on your point of view. GNU/Linux has been very fine for more than a decade now, but it obviously is not a MS Windows clone. Not because it is less capable -- quite to the contrary -- but because it is less opinionated how things should be. Now I could go into a rant about tradeoffs and choices and how freedom is hard and so on, but I don't feel like it.
- jcfrei 2y ago"Linux"? You mean the thousands of different operating systems, each with their own GUI, package manager and often incompatible software? Never running out of the box - because of some weird bug or lack of support for the specific hardware you happen to have? If you run some headless server it's fine but not for desktop computing.
- mrjin 2y agoWell done M$. One more reason to move on to Linux.
- janandonly 2y agoI switched to macOS in 2020. This feels more-and-more like a good choice. I rather pay a (hardware) premium and at least be treated as a customer then as a cash cow.
- api 2y agoApple seems to be doing the best thing too and mostly leaving macOS alone and letting it just be quietly competent. It’s an… OS, with a nice UI, that… works! Linux can do the same thing. The Linux desktop can beat Windows just by sitting still while MS destroys its product.
- jackbrookes 2y agoApple delivers ads (for e.g. Apple Music) in the Settings app of iPhone. Wouldn't be surprised if macOS ends up with similar things.
- mostlysimilar 2y agoAdvertising an Apple-owned app within another Apple-owned app is not the same as Microsoft putting 3rd party ads in the primary interface for launching applications in the OS.
- r00fus 2y agoThese two examples simply don't compare. How often do I see the Settings.app vs. the frickin Start menu
- kotaKat 2y ago[flagged]
- archerx 2y agoThat’s why I disabled updates for all my win10 machines and will never upgrade to win 11 much less 12.
- dartos 2y agoI mean. Calm down? It’s an Ad. They’re not physically, emotionally, a psychologically damaging you. You literally agree to all of this when accepting the windows license. Use osx or Linux if you don’t like it. Don’t just shout “RAPE” on the internet because a company is showing you ads. Go touch some grass.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago> They’re not physically, emotionally, a psychologically damaging you. I contest this claim. Ads create envy, which create overconsumption, which leads to environmental degradation. Furthermore ads which try not to look like ads tend to take advantage of people who are not smart. Also, things that are given away for free, but ad-supported, have been shown to create market distortions where "you are the product", and also facilitate loss of privacy through ad-driven surveillance and shady data-broker deals.
- dartos 2y agoI really hope you’re just being intentionally dense
- RiverCrochet 2y agoDoes your response follow Hacker News guidelines?
- loa_in_ 2y agoOne can hope all their heart desires
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dudisubekti 2y agoI would at least tolerate this if Windows license is free. But it’s not.
- aloisdg 2y agoDo you which OS is free?
- dudisubekti 2y agoAndroid comes to mind. My low-end Xiaomi backup phone is a good example. It’s so dirt cheap I’m quite sure most of my money goes into the hardware itself. I could debloat it, but eh, it’s just a cheap backup phone so I can tolerate the ads and bloats.
- userbinator 2y agoLinux
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bluescrn 2y agoAnd they expect people to ‘upgrade’ (downgrade) from Win10 to Win11? Win11 is clearly the new Win8. Still hoping it can be skipped entirely and that a more desirable Win12 will eventually be announced.
- red_trumpet 2y agoIt's, still true, every other windows release is shitty. Just look at them: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11.
- bonton89 2y agoWindows 11 is only marginally worse than the baseline terrible set by 10. They screwed up the UI again and continued gradually ratcheting up Microsoft account requirements and new ads. If 11 hadn't have been released the later items would have just come to Windows 10 in the form of a feature update. 10 was full of spyware from the outset but for some reason people argue that it is better than 11 in this regard in a weird bit of revisionist history. The biggest problem with Windows 11 is it dumps hardware support for anything remotely old.
- ChoGGi 2y ago10 is manageably terrible, but moving most stuff to the new control panel is annoying to say the least. If you use an alternate shell then you get an error msg as it expects explorer/start menu.
- JohnFen 2y agoPersonally, I think Windows 10 is the exception to this pattern. I don't think that it counts as a "good" release -- it just got rid of a couple of the more horrific aspects of 8. That said, I haven't been forced to use it yet, but it does look like Win 11 will be even worse than 10.
- bluescrn 2y agoAfter Win8 and it's attempt to push a locked-down touch-centric mobile OS upon users of a 'real Windows', Win10 was 'more than good enough'. A lot of the unwanted parts of Win8 lived on, but they could mostly be ignored, they weren't aggressively shoved into your face
- rado 2y agoEveryone including corporate?
- azangru 2y agoThe article says those recommendations are very easy to disable in the settings? If so, doesn't sound like a big deal to me.
- KSteffensen 2y agoWill they continue to be easy to disable?
- pcdoodle 2y agoThe tyranny of the default. As others have said: consent. When they bought their computer, it looked like normal windows and now it's CRAZY WINDOWS being pushed on non technical users. Dump it.
- TiredOfLife 2y agoSeems easier to disable than the ones in KDE
- findthewords 2y agoDue to these changed I've reverted to Windows 10. W10 feels like an "adult" OS in comparison, free of frills and distractions. W11 is an experimental sandbox.
- hotstickyballs 2y agoW11 has better WSL support though
- benterix 2y ago...so that you can finally work efficiently in a Linux environment watching ads /s
- prmoustache 2y agoIf the point is to use linux why not using if in the first place?
- PedroBatista 2y ago"Start Menu ads"... I would love to read/listen the internal conversations at Microsoft about this thing.
- aloisdg 2y ago"Hey guys do you want more money quickly?" - "What about long term?" - "Dunno. I want my bonus and I am outta there".
- TiredOfLife 2y ago"You know the thing that we had in Windows 10 that recommended store apps to people? Let's bring it also to Windows 11"
- ykonstant 2y agoI hope my question is not too trite, I am asking here in case others benefit: I have been running Linux exclusively for over 10 years now, and I need to set up a Win10/11 environment for my sister. To that end, I installed Win10 offline in a VM with virt-manager, but I do not have an activation key. Or rather, I have several coming from old computers of mine, but I am not sure if they are valid; I don't use those computers any more. So, here I am, with a Win10 VM at my fingertips. Do you have any advice or suggestions on how to tweak or configure the machine or the installation, preferably in such a way that gives me control over what the OS does? One interesting example is, can I configure the network to discard stuff sent to Microsoft servers with minimal disruption?
- pch00 2y agoShutUp10 might be what you're after: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
- addandsubtract 2y agoI'm not sure what your question is exactly. If you want to bypass the activation, google Windows MAS. But Microsoft also offers a VM version for evaluation purposes[1] Beyond that, there are also custom versions of Windows that come preconfigured with the bloat and spyware removed. I've been using ReviOS[2] on a mini gaming PC for the past year and have had no issues so far. [1] https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt... [2] https://github.com/meetrevision/playbook https://github.com/meetrevision/playbook
- gklitz 2y agoUpcomming, windows 12 will end up being a down-payment with “seasons” subscription to keep using the software fully. And micro transactions like “the ability to open documents in notepad the next two hours”, But on the plus side they’ll have daily reward loot boxes that give you a new PowerPoint or word document or similar valuable offerings.
- baal80spam 2y agoWindows Season Pass incoming?
- sphars 2y agoI'll just wait for the OS of the Year edition
- fuzzfactor 2y agoLooking forward to the Playoffs myself.
- M95D 2y agoI'll wait for the GOG release.
- nathanaldensr 2y agoIs this a speculative assertion, or do you have evidence of this? I'm genuinely curious. EDIT: Ah, I'm seeing the sarcasm now. I guess I didn't read it closely enough.
- i_read_news 2y agoThe fact that it’s not immediately obvious to be sarcasm tells us about the state of Windows.
- arvigeus 2y agoIf it wasn’t for your edit, I would assume you are sarcastic too!
- knighthack 2y agoI'm glad I permanently moved to Linux 2 years ahead of this.
- xnx 2y agoI've been very happy happy with https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu as a Start Menu replacement. If ads have rolled out to my Windows install, I wouldn't even notice.
- mostlysimilar 2y agoI don't mind if my coworker throws feces at me every time I walk into the office, I'll just wear protective clothing.
- brudgers 2y agoI have Windows 11 on this laptop. I spent about five minutes turning off ads including reading the article and writing this comment.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt’s not enough for HN readers to move to Linux. We need to influence the casual computer users we know to also try it, or at least have them move to Apple to hit Microsoft’s bottom line and force them to change course.
- JohnFen 2y agoI no longer give advice or encouragement for people to use or not use any particular OS. What I started doing years ago was to tell friends and family that I don't use Windows (true, at home. Not true, at work) and can't provide any real tech support to them. If they use Linux or BSD, I'll happily help them with difficulties.
- lousken 2y agoubuntu 24.04 will be released tomorrow and fedora 40 released today, perfect timing
- Kon-Peki 2y agoIt should be obvious by now that it has been years, if ever, that Satya Nadella has opened the box on a brand-new Windows machine and used it for any length of time. Back in Detroit's "Malaise Era", all of the executives received company cars that had first gone through the workshop to correct defects. The executives had no way to personally experience the problems that regular customers saw and felt; even worse was that they only experienced a product that had been worked over and prepped - leading them to think that their product was better than it really was. MS (and probably even Apple) is heading for disaster, and their cloud revenue is probably going to mask it until it is too late.
- simonblack 2y agoWindows 7 was 'peak Windows' - becomes truer every single day that goes by.
- tonfreed 2y agoJust installed arch on my desktop last night. Going to daily drive and see if I can escape the windows madness. Only part I'm really worried about is all my music production stuff, going to have to try out all these new VST wrappers
- snvzz 2y ago>Only part I'm really worried about is all my music production stuff Pipewire being decent at JACK helps, so does using Arch's `linux-rt` kernel package.