Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone

Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.

Luckily you can disable these ads, or “recommendations” as Microsoft calls them. If you’ve installed the latest KB5036980 update then head into Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.” While KB5036980 is optional right now, Microsoft will push this to all Windows 11 machines in the coming weeks.

Microsoft’s move to enable ads in the Windows 11 Start menu follows similar promotional spots in the Windows 10 lock screen and Start menu. Microsoft also started testing ads inside the File Explorer of Windows 11 last year before disabling the experiment and saying the test was “not intended to be published externally.” Hopefully that experiment remains very much an experiment.

Sanctus,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

How did the default attitude toward the user get so hostile? The amount of toggles you need to set just to have a smooth experience with minimal tracking is insane. The people in here defending it by the fact it can be disabled are missing the point: we shouldn’t have to deal with it in the first place.

sudo42,

This is a direct result of our Wall Street economy. Wall Street demands that each corporation’s stock price shall increase every quarter. No matter what. If that means the customer is unhappy or that a corporation must consume itself from within. Doesn’t matter.

kevincox,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

Pretty simple. Stock go brrrr.

kalpol,

MS doesn’t care about the desktop operating system except how can they control it like Apple and iphones. All the money is in O365 and Azure these days.

aniki,

You shouldn’t. I haven’t. Microsoft is a plague and a choice.

grue,

You’re not wrong, but there’s a larger issue here: the fact that there’s an alternative does not make what Microsoft is doing okay. This shit ought to be prohibited by consumer protection law.

krimson,
@krimson@feddit.nl avatar

Yeah it’s not just Microsoft. Fucking ads in my doorbell app, Google TV, etc.

Putting ads in a product you paid for should be illegal.

qjkxbmwvz,

I hate it as much as the next guy, but I certainly don’t see why it should be illegal (and disclaimer — Debian on all my personal machines, macOS for work).

Should it be illegal for books to have a list of similar material from the author/publisher? Should food staples not be able to list recipes on the back?

I completely agree that pulling the rug out from under the customer should be illegal (i.e., effectively changing the terms of service for an already-purchased product), but having a shitty product shouldn’t be illegal IMHO.

LucidNightmare,

It really goes like this:

I buy product. Product has no ads, and works really well.

After updates, my device starts showing ads and works worse than it had before.

I bought the device. It is my device. I should be able to do what I want with my device, that I spent my money on, the way I like it. If that means I don’t want your shitty ads, then I should be able to avoid or opt out of those by default.

From your thought:

You buy cookbook. Cookbook has what you need already, which is why you purchased it.

The one you purchased it from comes and “updates” your book by scribbling in ads for it’s other recipe books, and they did it really sloppily to boot.

Now, when you are looking for a specific recipe that you knew was in the book before, instead it is an ad for their other recipe book in place of where the recipe you were looking for was.

Sure, you can still find your recipe somewhere in the book, but as you flip through the books pages you see more and more and more ads for their other recipe books, and oh, now they are also showing you ads from some of their sponsors.

You paid for the book. It is rightfully yours to do with it as you please.

The recipe book company already got your money, yet they are insistent you buy more from them, and have even gone as far as defacing your book.

You should be upset.

qjkxbmwvz,

Yeah I think we’re in violent agreement to an extent — as I said in my last graf, if it’s effectively changing the user agreement, absolutely not ok. But if it’s a shitty product to begin with, then I’m just not going to buy it in the first place.

So yeah, Windows doing shitty things for users who have already paid for the product is definitely not cool. But for all users going forward to have a shitty experience? That’s… shitty, yeah, but I personally don’t think it should be illegal?

tabular, (edited )
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

Hardcopy images in a book are a bit different from the typical proprietary software doing who knows what on your personal computer. Not saying ads should be illegal but I would argue for software freedom where you can remove ads from any software running on your computer - like you can rip pages out of any of your books.

qjkxbmwvz,

Yeah, I guess it’s a matter of what the analogy is to “page.” I would say my computer is the book, and the pages are the software. If some developer wants to make a piece of shit ad ridden software, well, great — but I won’t install it :)

Stovetop,

TBH I am fully expecting a world where, in the next 10-15 years, some company will make a car that plays unskippable audio ads every X number of miles/km which can be disabled for $9.99/month.

Your company can’t afford the ad-free version of Zoom, so this meeting is sponsored by Papa Johns®. Try the new Cheesy Papadia virtual background.

Before you can place this emergency call, here’s a word from our sponsors at Nord VPN.

BestBouclettes,

The choice is hard to make when Microsoft’s garbage has been shoved down your throat for decades, it’s the default pretty much everywhere and the only viable alternative, for 99% of the population, is Apple.

Governments have been way too lenient and passive towards Microsoft for far too long

stinerman,
@stinerman@midwest.social avatar

the only viable alternative, for 99% of the population, is Apple

This is largely because Windows and MacOS come preinstalled and that’s how the vast majority of people interact with operating systems. If you had to choose your OS, I’m sure there’d be more choice in the market. Not necessarily Linux, but just more choice in general.

BestBouclettes,

That’s pretty much my point, 99% of computers sold are sold with Windows on it and the leftover percent is 99% Apple and maybe 1% Linux.
And that’s mostly because no one did anything when Microsoft licensed their crap to big OEM.

If any given computer sold was Linux (or any other free OS to be fair) by default and Windows as a paid option, it would change the market massively I believe. It would take time obviously but I’m convinced it would work in the long run.

tabular,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t choose your childhood education. Microsoft and Apple offer schools deals to create adults dependent on it - after all they’ll be using it in work too.

aniki,

so?

tabular,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

This greatly affects the likelyhood of people choosing a particular OS later in life.

chiliedogg,

Fewer people are buying PCs now that Smartphones have replaced the need to have one for most uses, but Microsoft still has to make more money every quarter than the quarter before because the stock market doesn’t value stable profits.

gravitas_deficiency,

It got here because it’s super profitable, and that’s all the C-suite cares about, and they’re the ones calling the shots at the end of the day.

I also think that engineering ethics has, in general, been strongly de-emphasized, and true holistic ownership of technical products is now usually held by business and finance types instead of engineers, with all the negative consequences that that entails.

Edit: also, don’t forget the Peter principle

tabular, (edited )
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

Having control over other people’s computing gives you power over them: you can gain from their detriment. It’s not like everyone is uncaring or greedy but even people with good intentions do not have infinite willpower to resist temptation. When the user doesn’t like a change from an update their choice is usually to put up with it. Defending ads in a menu or opt-outs that should be opt-ins in hidden menus is less mental work than learning what an operating system is and that you can use a different one.

By sharing the source code instead you give up that power - if you fail to be good to the users then other devs can work on it without you.

Sanctus,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t give up anything by sharing source code. If anything, you share your power with the world. All other perceived outcomes are attributes of capitalism baked into your thought pattern.

Gigan,
@Gigan@lemmy.world avatar

Windows sucks. I wish I could put Linux on my work computer.

Sakychu,

I brought an acer leptop a couple of years back and acer made it nearly impossible to install any other os then windows onto it

northendtrooper, (edited )

Because of Intel RST? I just had to deal with that but was able to get a dual boot of mint on my acer.

edit For those who come across this who has the same issue as I did. Video: youtu.be/sGJL62ZYRTU?t=77Text: Boot to your BIOS. Get to the MAIN tab and hit CTRL+S to show hidden bios option. Disable Intel RST. Exit and Save. Re attempt to install Mint.

Sakychu,

Let me preface that with I’m a bloody linux and every releated noob and it’s been like 5 years so my memory is a little fuzzy: I never figured out why Ubuntu didn’t run but it just didn’t, after i got mint working i realized that there are no drivers and a leptop with out touchpad/wifi isn’t why I needed it in the first place…

It was an aspite 3 a315-41g. I quickly googled to refresh my memory and I read something about that, I can’t recall if I tried it out though. I needed to changed a few settings so maybe I tried.

northendtrooper,

Ah, I have the aspire a315-56. Mint was pretty painless for me after the RST issue. I didn’t have to worry about wifi/bluetooth/touchpad drivers at all. Right out of the box its been smooth (for linux) for me.

Sakychu,

Interesting what distro did you use?

northendtrooper,

www.linuxmint.com/download.php

GuStJaR,

If I see your company or app advertised on windows 11, you can be sure I will be actively avoiding said company/ App. Even if I need the services advertised, I will be looking for an alternative just because.

heavy,

No candy crush for this guy!

DrWeevilJammer,
@DrWeevilJammer@lemmy.ml avatar

Or 1Password, apparently

BrianTheeBiscuiteer,

Don’t disagree with the sentiment but I didn’t think companies had this much leeway in how their ads were displayed.

db2,

I have the same policy for pop up ads.

Joker “you get what you deserve” scene image

Rexios,

I’m not sure these ads are even paid for by the developers of the apps that show up. It looks like this is an ad for the Microsoft Store in general, as Microsoft gets a percentage of any sales.

RmDebArc_5,
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

They also may be included if you pay for your app to be on the homepage of the Microsoft store

kautau,

Yeah if your app has in app purchases or requires payment it probably can show up here. Probably in the contract you sign to put your app in the Microsoft store

CaptKoala,

Meirl

palordrolap,

The only place this will be active is on the computers of home users who don't know how or don't care to deactivate it. The computers of the common clay of IT usage. You know. Morons.

And to tie that meme in with an older one: A fool and his money are soon parted.

GuStJaR,

I appreciate the Blazing Saddles reference 👌

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I’m getting extremely close to making a tiny partition for windows (so I can play gamepass) and then using a Linux distro for my day to day. Are there still issues with Nvidia drivers on Linux? Its been a long time since I’ve run Linux.

Temperche,

PopOS handles nvidia drivers perfectly.

apfelwoiSchoppen,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

I recently installed Nobara with Nvidia on my three year old alienware desktop because of Windows 11 turning to advertising shit. Nobara is finicky enough that I might jump over to PopOS. Lots of shearing and frame skips in video, let alone in gaming. I don’t have this issue on my other laptop with PopOS on it.

aniki,

Sounds like you’re not using the proprietary binary blob.

apfelwoiSchoppen,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

Are you referring to the additional installs in the Nobara Welcome App?

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/be847b9b-bbdf-495a-a2e8-7485e362b5cd.png

aniki,

I dunno what DM that is but if it’s gnome, in the about it will tell you what graphics card you’re using and what kernel extension

apfelwoiSchoppen,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

System Details Report

Report details

  • Date generated: 2024-04-24 17:43:52

Hardware Information:

  • Hardware Model: Alienware Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition
  • Memory: 64.0 GiB
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900 × 24
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 3080
  • Disk Capacity: (null)

Software Information:

  • Firmware Version: 2.2.1
  • OS Name: Nobara Linux 39 (GNOME Edition)
  • OS Build: (null)
  • OS Type: 64-bit
  • GNOME Version: Not Available
  • Windowing System: Wayland
  • Kernel Version: Linux 6.8.5-201.fsync.fc39.x86_64
Kbobabob,

I made it through two whole top level comments before getting to a switch to Linux comment.

aniki,

So you’re saying we should do better?

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

It was my turn this week!

freeman,

Indeed it’s so weird the practically only alternative to Windows comes up when discussing Windows issues.

Perhaps BSD or ReactOS should be mentioned more. Or people told to buy a whole new Mac and throw their computer away.

Sabata11792,
Sabata11792 avatar

I did the same for the few game I can't run. Nobara installed working drivers in 1 click. My GPU runs a bit more than it should on the desktop but the last driver update made a big difference.

Im planning on switching the Window install back to 10 since 11 is too shit.

MonkderDritte,

But a tiny partition will not do for Windows.

warm,

Tried the same thing, but ended up running into issues with Linux constantly and needed to use Windows more than I wanted, so just ended up back on Windows 10. Once all the shit is disabled it's perfectly fine. Linux is getting there, but still only really good for general web browsing/office suites (unless you wanna play around in the command line for ages).

ChaoticEntropy,
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

It’s frustrating that the answer to any of the questions/issues I have are generally reams of commands and walls of text that I only partially understand. If I find answers at all now that all discourse is being sectioned in to walled gardens like Discord. 😬

warm,

Ah yeah, it's hard to find good support for Linux. Lot's of people with their heads in their asses, who will say "why are you bothering going through Windows settings to disable tracking when you can just use Linux!", then proceed to tell you to enter a million different commands in the terminal to try and get basic functionality you had on Windows.

The sooner they start being more welcoming to new users, the sooner the market share will grow.

corodius,

I haven’t had driver related issues with nvidia for a long time, last was some kde wayland stuff fixed a while ago, before that using x no issues for a long time

camr_on,
@camr_on@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve had the rare issue with my 4070ti that probably wouldn’t have been a problem with AMD, but most things run great. Using endeavorOS

subtext,

I have not tried it, but I’ve heard good things about bazzite as a good steam deck clone that has a strong community committed to Nvidia support.

Worth looking into at least!

3laws,

steam deck clone

No way Jose. If anything their approach is inspired by Fedora Atomic, which is the cornerstone of Bazzite.

Other than that, yes, a very very solid approach for daily usage for casual gamers.

Blaster_M,

Bazzite is a neat concept, and I run it too. Still haven’t gotten VR to work properly, though (Quest 2)

natecox,
@natecox@programming.dev avatar

Oh it’s my time to shine! I just installed bazzite onto my ROG Ally yesterday.

It is pretty fantastic so far. Not perfect but very good.

Also, it doubles as a pretty OK developer machine because it comes with buildutils, unlike the steam deck. I was able to get my Nix dotfiles set up on it and do a little Rust work to try it out.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve used both Linux Mint and Manjaro, and my Nvidia card has done fine in both. I switched to Mint from Windows because it was easier and faster to set up under Mint (Windows was missing a bunch of drivers and the OEM’s site didn’t have updated ones). The only configuration I had to do was select the proprietary driver (and Mint has a nice little GUI for that). If you’re on the fence, I highly recommend trying Mint.

Diplomjodler3,

Seconded. Mint is the best distro for anyone who wants to get started with Linux with the least amount of hassle. Installation is a breeze and it just works.

GreatAlbatross,
@GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk avatar

Thirded. I set Mint as the default boot, then have a copy of windows available as an alternative OS option when required.

TipRing,

I installed Mint last night as a dual-boot and had a few issues, the boot loader would not load into Windows Boot Manager and when I manually selected Windows Boot Manager in UEFI Windows booted but hard locked until it reindexed the drive I partitioned for Linux.

The Mint OS works fine, to be clear. My issue with the dual boot is mostly getting Windows to play nice.

owenfromcanada,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

Dual boot is definitely more tricky to get going. I just set up a Windows partition again to play a game that uses Easy Anti Cheat, and it took some time to have everything working happily.

admiralteal,

Not really. With the super easy, friendly distros it basically just goes.

I switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon a while ago expecting to just fool around a bit but mostly boot back into windows to do stuff. I've now found that the ONLY thing I need to go back to windows for is when I'm forced by dumb policies to use an MSOffice product, which fortunately doesn't happen to often (and no, LibreOffice is absolutely not a sub for MS Office. The spreadsheet app is worse than google docs, and I'd rather work in typst than have to deal with the libreoffice writer -- especially as soon as I need to display an equation/figure/table of contents. Of course, I'd rather work in typst than deal with MSWord too...)

That said, I don't really play games anymore. Games may still require frequent windows visits. But... I've been looking forward to a complete edition of horizon forbidden west and all accounts say it's linux compatibility is near perfect, so maybe things aren't so bad these days on the gaming front.

SeaJ,

I switched to Pop OS a year ago and the Nvidia drivers are fine. There are definitely some things that are a pain in the ass. My fingerprint scanner won’t work even though it is in the list of ones that work in fprintd and I don’t feel like going through the process of submitting a ticket and troubleshoot it. Getting some games to run properly in WINE can also be a pain. Overall though, I’m fine with it.

ShieldsUp,

Well I changed my nvidia settings from on demand to a lower value and rebooted Mint a few weeks ago. Then there was no display at all and several hours/days of searching led me to reinstall Linux again and I did not have good backups. There was probably an answer there, but my frustration with Linux is real!!! I still refuse to use anything else and flop between manjaro and mint. I think having proper system backups and a live USB ready to go is helpful…I’m much more defensive running Linux because I keep getting shitty surprises, but I still feel better about it over using windows.

mzesumzira,
@mzesumzira@leminal.space avatar

If you like arch based, may I suggest you try Garuda?

It’s a gaming distro, which I don’t know if you care about, but it’s very stable, should work with NVidia and has many quality of life features.

TypicalHog,

I’m on 10 still. (And if I wasn’t a gamer and sucker for games that don’t work on Linux - I would be on Arch)

Eximius,

Proton works wonderfully these days.

Shape4985,
@Shape4985@lemmy.ml avatar

The cope iv heard from friends that this is okay behavior

BendyLemmy,
@BendyLemmy@lemmy.world avatar

Fundamental error - as usual with Windows news.

These ‘Start Menu Ads’ aren’t rolling out to everyone, I have zero ‘Start Menu Ads’. In fact, I have Zero Ads in my operating system.

Why must Windows news always assume that everyone runs Windows? Isn’t this the main bug with all operating systems?

CoolGirl586,

Then don’t read Windows news.

psuresh,

And they called Google scroogle😆

markpaskal,

I just can’t stand the lack of hibernation or hybrid suspend on laptops with Linux. Otherwise I’d much rather have a Linux distro on my nice laptop and windows in a VM if at all.

kalpol,

Running Opensuse, suspend/hibernation works fine. Older hardware though

raptir,

Both of those work on Linux. wiki.archlinux.org/title/…/Suspend_and_hibernate

nexussapphire,

I wonder if some distros disable it for some reason.

raptir,

It is disabled in the default configuration because you need enough swap space to enable it - which is an overkill amount of swap for any other use case.

markpaskal,

Most distros ship with hibernation disabled and they have since Ubuntu 10.04 or so if my memory serves correctly.

raptir,

You just need to allocate enough swap space for hibernation.

BendyLemmy,
@BendyLemmy@lemmy.world avatar

You’re joking, right?

My computer is set to 1. Warn me at 9.25 to accept or cancel suspension at 9.30. 2. Set volume to 10% and suspend at 9.30 (just in case it gets woken up, I once woke it up at 4am and had a radio application wake up the family). 3. RTC Wake set to 5.59 4. 6.25am my wakeup music plays.

I have suspend, also hybrid - where it will suspend, and after a certain time (useful for laptops, mine’s set for 12 hours so I never hit this unless I go on holiday) it’ll hibernate.

markpaskal,

I would be very surprised to hear that your distro does all that by default.

Sniatch,

Think I will try Linux for real now

Regrettable_incident,

Yeah I’ve been thinking that too. Not sure I have time to learn it though so I keep sticking with windows. But I really have to make the effort to switch.

Sniatch,

I will just dual boot at the beginning and play around with Linux for a bit.

oatscoop,

I’d suggest a cheap used or spare laptop/desktop with a beginner friendly distro like Linux Mint Cinnamon to learn on. Just use it for casual stuff – you’ll pick up what you need to learn as you go.

That way if something breaks or you don’t know how to do something while you’re learning you’re not “stuck”.

Tryptaminev,

I just switched to Manjaro with KDE Plasma. The most complicated thing to set up was forcing steam to run games with the nvidia drivers, which took 5 minutes of adding a start parameter to my games.

From a consumer perspective i even find many things easier than in Windows. It works out of the box. The package manager provides every tool you need, and if you want to change a setting, it is as easy as typing the name of the setting into the start menu.

Seriously, if you do not want to dive deep, you can do everything without more complication than under windows, often even easier.

maeries,

Come to the dark side. We have cookies no ads

cordlesslamp,

Linux is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be… unnatural.

therealspelly,

DO IT

KomfortablesKissen,

Try Mint, it’s nice :)

WeLoveCastingSpellz,

I reccomend fedora KDE

A_Random_Idiot,

Nobara.

Its Fedora, but for gaming.

WeLoveCastingSpellz,

That’s what I am running! Just we don’t know what the other comentors main intentions are and if they’re gaming or not

A_Random_Idiot,

Two big things to do before you decide that.

  1. Do you run nvidia graphics? cause they are a PITA and influence your distro choice (you’ll want a distro that has nvidia drivers baked in.)
  2. If you game, go to www.protondb.com and check out a handful of the games you play. 99% of games work on linux with steams Proton (lets windows games run on steam), the only ones that dont are ones with invasive anti-cheat, so use protondb to see if any of your important games have issues.

and as a final note of encouragement… I made the swap years ago, it was daunting…and there were a couple issues, but overall, far more easy than I ever expected it to be. (for me, cause I built the PC with the switch to linux in mind, so all my hardware is AMD). I am not a sysadmin or anyone who had any significant experience linux before my swtich, and I switched cold turkey after a brief weekend of basic researching. In other words, I’m a moe-ran. So if I can do it, pretty much anyone can. Good luck with it if you do try to make the switch :D

Sniatch,

Thanks for the advice, my PC is already full AMD so I guess that makes it a bit easier? :D lucky

A_Random_Idiot,

It does. AMD support is baked into the kernal.

graeghos_714,

I got my first notification on my Win10 Pro box today about support ending too

Aux,

Enterprise editions exist, just saying…

Adulated_Aspersion,

I’m calling it now.

Windows 11 will be the new Windows 8. Or NT. Or millennium.

arin,

There were no ads on Windows 8, NT, or ME

theherk,

NT? You mean Vista maybe? NT was a massive product line that was pretty popular, and the kernel touches most releases to this day.

scottywh,

Yeah… NT was hugely successful and it’s been the core of every Microsoft OS for over 20 years.

Wintex,

I installed PopOS this week. Let’s see if my experiment works better than this experiment from Microsoft.

Adramis,

Is there a way to GPO this ‘feature’ off? Worried about some of our users getting confused.

ziggurat,

Possibly, but these will change on the regular

Honytawk,

Of course, all those things just have a toggle.

They get paid to implement the ads, not to enforce them.

And even if they hadn’t there would be a third party program somewhere that turns them off.

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