This is why Linux rules tbh, little to no rules what so ever in terms of customizing your desktop whilst also not having shit like this too like having so much bloat and constant ads, like telling you to install edge everytime whilst protecting your privacy too.
More seriously, I was thinking more of foss desktop environments and user programs (which are basically the same all over) than about the actual os - thanks for correcting me
Although not the same, this has been going on for about two years now. Jensen Harris, a former MS engineer, criticized the ads as well as the design of the new Start Menu, over here: threadreaderapp.com/…/1564399431545667585.html
So Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. They have a stranglehold on corporate America, power a huge the cloud infrastructure, hold one of the largest sources of telemetry/user data, and are the defacto standard of PC environments worldwide.
Why in the fuck do they need to pivot to ads? I’m genuinely curious. Even if they lost 50% of their entire business they would still be one of the most profitable companies in the world.
@SuperSynthia@dvdnet62 Because for capitalism, profit is not the end, only a means to the end. The end is to accumulate sufficient capital to absorb all competitors and achieve total control of markets.
Yea but like, their competitors, when it comes to operating systems are Apple, which isn’t anywhere near small enough to be obtainable by anyone and Linux and Linux-Derivatives, which are also unobtainable due to their open source nature.
Not every larger company is automatically evil, just because they exist within a capitalist market. A lot of them are, sure. At least to some extent. But there still are privately owned enterprises that do have a conscience.
Also, calling them “capitalist” enterprises seems redundant.
@accideath I'm calling them capitalist enterprises to emphasize that they are capitalist enterprises. They accumulate capital. That is what they are and defines what they do.
A capitalist enterprise does not decide it has enough and can retire and take up gardening. It is not a person. It does not have a conscience.
A privately owned enterprise can. Publicly traded ones can’t. A privately owned enterprise also doesn’t need to make more money, if the owner doesn’t want that. A publicly traded company that has to answer to its shareholders has to make more money and to keep growing to appease said shareholders. If you don’t have shareholders you don’t have to do anything like that. That doesn’t mean, of course, that any privately owned company is automatically good – many aren’t – but it does mean that they have the capability to not be evil.
@accideath We started by talking about Microsoft, and I was explaining that there's no such thing as "enough" profit for a capitalist enterprise.
There are many organizations that are not capitalist enterprises. There are small businesses and cooperatives where the owners deliberately keep profits low. The small business doesn't have a conscience; the owners may. And it leaves them vulnerable. Small businesses destroyed or absorbed by larger ones is the third oldest story in capitalism.
As long as we‘re in a capitalist market, which we are and probably will be for a while, any for-profit company, however small or big it is or however private or public it is, is a capitalist company. You have to be in order to make profit. At all. And yes, usually, the bigger they are, the worse they are. But not every for-profit company is evil, thus not every capitalist company is evil.
And businesses do have a conscience. It’s the sum of their owners‘ consciences.
And also, you do not need to be evil to be successful although it is probably easier.
@accideath No, an organization does not have a conscience. It is not the sum total of the consciences of its owners. It is not a collective person. It is an engine.
One of the reasons to be clear about this is that you can quite easily find people who believe that Microsoft, for instance, is doing good in the world. I used to work for Microsoft and met career Microsoft people who obviously sincerely believed in it.
You have to first understand how the engine actually works.
That would suggest even more, that the conscience of a company is the sum of the conscience of every decision making individual affiliated with the company. Companies can have values (and I‘m not talking about the “we‘re family here” values from the company handbook but the values that are actually enforced and acted upon. Those translate into the conscience
I think it’s the same reason games offer a cash shop for things you can get in-game. Sure they’re making billions but why not billions plus ad revenue? I don’t agree with the practice but the answer always comes back to money.
Because when you have shareholders, there’s no such thing as “we’re profitable enough”. Shareholders always demand more. Ads means more profit, at least in the short term. Next quarter profits are all that matter to public companies.
It doesn’t have to be, of course. Taking a look at the long, sordid history of how the privilege of incorporation has been perverted in this way, it becomes clear what needs to be done to fix it.
Basically, abolish corporate personhood by overturning the sequence of court decisions cited in the article that got us to this point. Or, as the last sentence in the article hyperlinks to, pass these Constitutional Amendments.
It’s not just that they demand more, they demand more/faster growth all the time. It doesn’t matter that the economy has slowed down to borderline recession, it doesn’t matter that they pretty much captured all the market they can, they still need to make more and more money every quarter otherwise they’re considered a failure even if they are one of the biggest companies in the world.
the shareholders don’t get that. the top managers, CEOs etc. get it. some of them may be shareholders as well, but that’s not how they fill their pockets.
Isn’t it obvious? Start Menu is being used by every windows user but is not generating any revenue Serving ads will enable them to better support the platform and provide more advanced features. Ad supported version is better than making it a subscription like some third party apps have done. Start8 I think, basic copy of Microsoft’s Start Menu but paid.
I’d believe Google has a larger data collection as it’s includes both google hardware and software products.
Google can also connnect the dots between an extreme amount of user data and services.
I keep seeing headlines like this all the time. I’m over here like “This has already been a thing for years”. Whenever I’d setup a win10 pc for someone, I’d have to clean the ads out of the start menu as part of the setup. So I ask again, how is this any different from the bullshit we’re already dealing with?
If Microsoft does that I’m wiping out my laptop and going back to Linux*
only reason I moved away is I bought a new laptop to replace my 2010 Mac mini that ran LinuxMint, and the laptop came preloaded with Windows 11 and I decided to just keep using it as-is as I liked the UI.
Fun fact: it is not an entirely new idea. Microsoft did something similar with Active Desktop in Windows 98 but was later removed.
The wierd part is, if i think about my star menu usage in win10, there hardly is one. The important programs are on the task bar. The Startmenu isn’t as much needed as used to be. Still sucks though.
Best way to make the switch is by immersion. I’d also like to add it’s best to do it when you’re not being forced on a timeline, and you have time to deal with it. All my personal machines made the jump 7 years ago and I don’t regret it.
I considered it before I switched from 7 to 10, but since 10 still makes it possible to create an offline account and disable most of the spyware and other bloat, I opted to stay with Windows for another generation of OS. 11 is different though, it’s several steps too far into proprietary hell.
I think the same, Win10 is still “domesticable”, because of this it will be the last Win I’ll use, maybe in Octubre 2025 in dual boot with Linux, for local use. Win 11 is already beginning to take over the user’s PC as its own and Win 12 probably only admitting apps from the MS Store, naturally most proprietary paid apps or free with ads or hidden costs (Free*)
I switched from Win7 to Linux, but you are right, few stuck to their guns on that threat. My only Windows machine now is a work laptop that I have to use for some tasks. Admittedly, even Win 10 is looking good now compared to Win11. MS is doing a bang up job as being consumer antagonists.
I’ve been using it for a few months now and only rarely I used console and it was just to paste some commands for something. So yeah, I don’t think that you really need to know howbto use console if you don’t need to do anything that specifically needs it.
I live near exclusively in the console because it’s my work and I love it, it’s WAY more efficient than the GUI, but last time I actually NEEDED the console? I can’t remember, honestly.
Also are you trying to say you never needed to figure something out on windows? Granted, I don’t read much about it because fuck Windows, but I remember windows Registry headaches, is that still a thing? Just copy paste these base64 codes in the registry in these UUID keys, which literally would be impossible to learn, and it will fix it, super easy!
At least not for the regular joe stuff I do.
Obviously I tinker with my install and am not shy about reverting to a backup if I know it will be highly intrusive.
For the not so regular joe stuff close to the pro-sumer region you probably will have to research just about anything if you want to achieve something.
You have to learn a little for any task, so people saying that they don’t want to learn something is a bit weird.
Linux really isn’t more complicated than windows. Actually, after 25 years of Linux desktop, looking at windows it’s frustrating complication after complication.
I am not desinterested to learn.
It just doesnt make sense to always have a need to enter the CLI for stuff regular users want to do.
Let the power toys be under the hood, no problem with that. But the regular folks don’t even grasp the idea to find out how to change the IP of their regular windows PC for something they want.
Linux is currently developed by tech enthusiasts for mostly tech enthusiasts. Who tells the (by the way awesome) maintainers to stop and think what they develop in that particular way?
Even a group of maintainers might fall into the trap to develop something in such a way that it overwhelms the regular user.
IMO what it needs is resiliency against those users and more aim to make it idiot proof (for them) and make it more an actual daily driver that first has a GUI for the most common tools and then the CLI if needed
looking at windows it’s frustrating complication after complication.
Tell that a Windows admin and that admin might say the same about you and your OS.
In the end, everyones wants it their way.
I had to often look up how to do stuff on windows because of it’s trash UX so it’s an absolute W for me. But I can understand that terminal may look too scary/complicated to some ppl.
Oh Windows is certainly not exempt from the issue. Not at all.
Personally I don’t have any issue with the terminal but sometimes I am totally not in the mood to research yet another time why or how to run anything.
Also I prefer Word way too much over Libre/OpenOffice.
Only if they had a word-like theme and translation to achieve what I want in a word-like behaviour it could tempt me to switch the tools.
If you just want to browse the web and edit work documents you have nothing to fear.
If you just want a game and don’t want to be too awfully picky about what you’re playing you have nothing to fear
If you want to play anti-cheap games and host docker components you’re going to have to do a little console here and there.
If you want to stream to YouTube and twitch, You’re probably not going to have as much of a good time. You can still do it but there’s work and compromises involved.
Cheers, I’ll give it a go. Unfortunately I’ll have to navigate my way through the Denuvo BS that Capcom loves shoving down our throats.
On the plus side I’ve been using the libreoffice suite and frankly speaking it’s more or less comparable to what Windows offers for my needs. Their excel equivalent feels really jank though.
In about half a dozen distros VFL does not work out of the box for OBS.
If you flat pack your OBS and don’t do it exactly right with all the plugins at once, the plugin sandbox causes issues in OBS.
If you’re running an OBS bot camera things get extra spicy.
In most cases high color support is not allowed.
If you’re trying to do stream Deck stuff that can be an issue.
Don’t get me wrong I’m glad it wasn’t a big deal for you but for your average person coming in complaining that terminals are too much, they might be in for a less than stellar experience.
I think that this betrays their plans: Windows will go “free with ads”, with an ad-free version that is subscription only. That doesn’t hurt their bottomline since the governments and companies of the western world will still go subscription in order to get support. The ones who don’t have enough money for that (individuals, small countries/companies, small municipalities), they will go “free with ads”. I mean, practically, Windows is free even right now. They have oem serial numbers that activate the OS for free, legally, to be reused. So why not make it profitable, it’s their thinking. Also, on newer builds of Win11 you can’t avoid logging in without an msn account.
That is the Trap. Pre-installed Windows is not free, you pay for it in the price of the PC, the same PC without OS is almost ~€100 cheaper. A lot of vendors offer now PC only with FreeDOS, where you can select to install Linux, paying only the CD or USB or install Windows, paying it’s license (€100-120).
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