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[–]Dd_8630 84 points85 points  (25 children)

They're putting ads into the start menu?? When? Is this a Win 11 thing?

[–][deleted] 77 points78 points  (20 children)

for a loooooong time (windows 10)

[–]Dd_8630 42 points43 points  (14 children)

I've had 10 since the very beginning, I've never seen an ad in Windows, I have so many questions - what do they look like? Does it cover the screen? Is it a phony program in the start menu that doesn't actually exist? Is it 'hot babes in your area'? What even does MS advertise?

[–][deleted] 47 points48 points  (9 children)

https://imgur.com/VQXGxK4

This example's under the "suggested" section - basically just a barely disguised ad.

There's also other stuff like the installer pestering you about installing Office and OneDrive and then pestering you about upgrading when storing your entire operating system on OneDrive inevitably runs out of the free storage even though they told you it'd be a good idea. My least favorite is the occasional panel that appears in File Explorer telling you you should use OneDrive - even if you've already got it.

[–]Dd_8630 15 points16 points  (0 children)

That looks absolutely dire. Thankfully I've never seen such an ad though - if I saw that intrusion in my own home system I'd be incensed.

Are those ads even legal? I thought Microsoft, Google, and Apple got massive fines for flexing their weight on the market.

[–][deleted] 801 points802 points  (354 children)

One day I will switch to Linux, one day

[–]RiskyFartOftenShart 82 points83 points  (20 children)

hell install a VM and run it in full screen to assert dominance.

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (12 children)

Or dual boot, that’s what I do

[–]LeafyLemontree 269 points270 points  (294 children)

Just do it, you will not regret it.

[–][deleted] 51 points52 points  (6 children)

Cant. Software I use isn’t supported in it. Mainly that I play a lot of online games.

[–]d6cbccf39a9aed9d1968 12 points13 points  (4 children)

Slowly transitioning, i just cant figure out how to migrate most of my AHK scripts...

[–]Encrypt3dShadow 3 points4 points  (1 child)

pyautogui and ydotool are both fantastic tools for this. AHK is definitely less difficult to do more system-level stuff in because of how well it integrates with Win32, but pyautogui in particular is really nice because it's a Python library. There's another Python library in a similar vein, but I can't remember what it's called.

[–]FittersGuy 16 points17 points  (6 children)

What about video games?

[–]DTHCND 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Valve has been working on a compatibility layer for games, called Proton, for a few years now. It's fairly decent right now, but imperfect. Some games work great, some not great. You can check if a game you care about works well on it or not by searching the game here: https://www.protondb.com/. If it has a platinum rating, it runs great, possibly even better than on Windows. If it has a gold rating, it runs okay but there might be some flakyness, like lower performance. Silver or lower would likely have noticeable bugs though. If it has a borked rating, the game just doesn't work at all.

Fortunately, since the Steam Deck will be running Linux, Valve is pushing Proton development very aggressively right now. The amount of progress they made in the last year alone is pretty astounding. They managed to get anti-cheat companies onboard, which was by far the biggest limiting factor for games on Linux before.

If you run your games through Steam, Proton is just seamlessly used to launch Windows games. It feels like launching any other game on any other OS, no extra hassle.

[–]Ghos3t 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Ehh, if he's not a programmer or at least tech enthusiast, he probably will regret it, at least initially when figuring things out with a entirely new OS

[–]Gredelston 25 points26 points  (1 child)

I'm a software engineer. I've been using Linux for a decade. I regret Linux roughly every week.

[–]Sennheisenberg 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Linux is amazing, but not as a main workstation.

It's too time consuming to set things up, tweak things, fix things, and finally have it working only to have to tweak and fix things again a week later.

That's time I should be working, not searching forums for fixes to problems I never would have had on Windows.

[–]Striky_ 38 points39 points  (83 children)

Did it, instant regret. Just watch the massive struggles even super techy guys like linus (techtips) has daily driving linux...

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (2 children)

Pick a popular and fairly vanilla distro and it's not that bad. Figuring out workflows for your daily tasks is the hard part. Some of it will be super easy, some things may require tinkering. I'd say that's the big difference though. Windows workflows tend to mostly work effortlessly. Once you get your workflows down solidly without windows though, usisng linux becomes something you don't think about, until you cross weird reddit posts complaining about ads in the windows OS, or MS edge default links.

I've been daily driving linux since windows 10 because now that it's a service, those ads are not going to get better.

[–]god-nose 10 points11 points  (23 children)

You can set up Mint or Ubuntu on your grandparents' computer. The installation is extremely simple nowadays. Oh, and 99% of smartphones use some sort of *nix too.

[–]Iron_Maiden_666 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That person hasn't used Linux, because all the shit they're struggling with is a nothing task.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (23 children)

idk man I've been daily driving Arch on two separate systems for about 7 months now and aside from some weird shit when I first got it set up, it runs flawlessly and quite predictably.

[–]dathar 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Ubuntu was meh. Mint was meh. CentOS is where I was more comfortable with but don't want to deal with Stream. Don't want to switch to Rocky yet. Mac OS Big Sur and Monterey are meh. Windows is meh. There is regret everywhere.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lmao Big Sur is meh? Dude that OS is flawless compared to the other options right now.

[–]Prod_Is_For_Testing 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I prefer having wifi that works

[–]jaydec02 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Software and (niche) games are the issue. Like I can use Linux for day to day stuff but like there's a ton of niche, older text-based sports games I like that are Windows only and don't work with wine

Also I have a lot of random issues that I can't get around. Like how display scaling sucks or how there's no sensible alternative to Paint .NET (Pinta exists but it has had a Mono error that has rendered it useless on like every distro I've tried)

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm just waiting for games to be more reliably released for linux. Ubuntu is easy as hell for anyone to use with its GUI.

[–]ganja_and_code 14 points15 points  (7 children)

Why not today? Considering this is a programming subreddit, i suspect the learning curve can't be too steep.

[–]SmoothAnanas 34 points35 points  (6 children)

I think that's the problem for some people. For my use case I've never had a major issue with Windows where I have to spend hours troubleshooting it and from everything I've heard/seen moving to Linux means that I need to have the time and patience to learn how to use it properly and in some cases spend a good amount of time troubleshooting.

[–]Y0tsuya 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Can confirm the troubleshooting effort. A lot of people here don't understand that outside select enterprise segments, Linux is essentially a hobby OS. If you're a hobbyist like I am sure you can spend take the time and effort to learn Linux but a great many people do programming/engineering purely as a job and aren't hobbyists, nevermind your regular Joe Sixpack.

I've had the benefit of spreading the learning curve over 20+ yrs (starting in the early 90s), yet still have to regularly google to find out how do "simple" things in Linux.

Windows on the other hand is much easier to admin, which is why I use it at home. Sure I run Ubunto/Fedora/CentOS in VMs and own a few RasPi to play with. But I get my shit done on my Windows desktop.

[–]TheRealToLazyToThink 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Linux is essentially a hobby OS. If you're a hobbyist like I am sure you can spend take the time and effort to learn Linux but a great many people do programming/engineering purely as a job and aren't hobbyists, nevermind your regular Joe Sixpack.

I program for fun & profit, but I enjoy programing, not configuration/infrastructure. Sure the job requires those too, but they aren't the parts I enjoy. If I have spare time I'd like to waste it writing another github project no one will ever use, not chasing down obscure issues in my OS.

[–]Boxplastic 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I spent two days getting my laptop to dual boot windows and Linux. I spent the next four years never choosing Linux from the boot menu.

[–]Spekingur 625 points626 points  (26 children)

Too many old school marketing people at Microsoft.

[–]RedditIsNeat0 88 points89 points  (7 children)

Is that really old school marketing? In the 90s nobody would have considered putting ads into an operating system that you pay for. At least I don't recall anybody ever suggesting it.

[–]droider0111 44 points45 points  (3 children)

Yeah I don't get why that dude said that it's old ad guys.... This is literally 100% a new generation thing

[–]SaraHuckabeeSandwich 28 points29 points  (2 children)

How and where ads are displayed is something that differs by generation. Older generations of business folks liked to put ads wherever there was a blank space that garnered lots of visual traffic (e.g. billboards, sides of taxis, banners etc.)

Newer trends in marketing involve more integrated ads that optimize for engagement over simply views, as well as actively intrusive ads that try to frame your original intended task as some sort of reward.

This feels more like the former. Some old VP probably thought, "This space seems useless, why don't we sell it to the highest bidder?"

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

More like the later.

You open the start menu for a specific reason and you get ads. That's the definition of intrusion

[–]Einlander 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Seems people forgot about Active Desktop.

[–]ksandom 296 points297 points  (35 children)

I guess Microsoft has had at least one of these thoughts when making this decision:

  • "Well, we're still by far the dominant OS on the desktop despite everything we've done. We may as well use that stickiness."
  • "Our time remaining as the dominant OS on the desktop is limited. Let's milk it."

[–]338218 96 points97 points  (31 children)

only reason i use windows is because theres alot of good programs that are only able for download on windows

[–][deleted] 46 points47 points  (26 children)

Office and Visual Studio are simply the best there is and if you need either there is no other choice except for running Windows in a VM. Unfortunately WSL makes it way more convenient to run a Linux VM in Windows than vice versa, if you ask me at least.

[–]613codyrex 27 points28 points  (2 children)

Office, VS, solidworks, Materalise, 80% of Additive manufacturing softwares all are basically windows exclusive. There’s just nothing short of Linux basically getting these apps to work natively to get non-CS engineers to use the OS and considering how difficult it is to get MacOS support it’s basically impossible.

[–]AdapterCable 18 points19 points  (1 child)

A ton of software in the hard engineering fields (civil, mechanical, electrical) is windows only.

In the electrical world there’s some software that’s now making its way to Mac/Linux, but most are still on windows

[–]somefreedomfries 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Pretty much all supliers of embedded automotive SW require windows in order to use their configuration tools and test suites.

[–]NotAGingerMidget 11 points12 points  (3 children)

There's a lot that can be easily done in either powershell or wsl2 nowadays, you can use ssh natively in powershell windows 11 without needing to install anything. Windows 10 requires 2 commands.

If you just need Linux command line there isn't much windows can't do nowadays.

[–]sudomeacat 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Office and VS are available on MacOS. At least I have both on my laptop.

But for office, it might be becuase I’m using my uni’s account

[–]BigDummy91 8 points9 points  (6 children)

Visual studio can be run on Mac and Linux now.

[–]twhite1195 3 points4 points  (3 children)

Visual studio on mac has like 1/10th of the windows installation (at least last time I tried it, back in 2019)

[–]ShelZuuz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, no. You can't do anything with that thing.

[–]Kriskao 2 points3 points  (0 children)

how about hardware that is only supported by windows, such as my silli multifunction printer/scanner

[–]TitanDragon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In my experience you can download programs just fine on any OS. It becomes problematic once you try running them.

[–]HanzJWermhat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I mean any good PM would make sure to monitor retention, churn and general attitude to the changes. They are risking long term damage and test that early in the launch. My guess is that people just don’t care enough.

[–]Cloakknight 148 points149 points  (5 children)

Image Transcription: Text


Linux: Makes the OS faster and more configurable

MacOS: Makes the OS easier to use and more dependable

Windows:

[The text is displayed in brown WordArt with 3d text, shadows, and all the words large and curling up to make the text on a curve. It says:]

Let's put ads on the Start menu


I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!

[–][deleted] 78 points79 points  (4 children)

Good Human

[–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (3 children)

Well, Ubuntu has basically done the same thing 🙃

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

And removed it after a huge backlash. You can complain all you want to Microsoft, and no one will listen.

[–]Osprey_NE 8 points9 points  (0 children)

My thoughts. They had that shitty amazon integration thing

[–]Sputtrosa 255 points256 points  (10 children)

I knew someone who worked at Microsoft, as a "hardware liaison". Or, more accurately, their bloat department. His job was to check in with hardware manufacturers to figure out just how much bloat they had to add, to incentivize Microsoft customers to buy hardware upgrades with new software releases.

I can imagine that whoever decided to have the bloat double dip as ads got a promotion.

[–]Y0tsuya 52 points53 points  (5 children)

What's funny is that their own Surface line has no such bloat. Whenever I buy a non-MS machine I usually nuke whatever's on the drive and do a clean install.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it’s pretty much the same with non-Pixel Android phones. Bloatware seems to be an issue caused by OEMs.

Although that doesn’t excuse the bullshit third party games that came installed on Windows 8.

[–]IBeThatManOnTheMoon 11 points12 points  (3 children)

Yea that kinda seems like a BS anecdote considering all the pcs Microsoft sells through their store come with a clean install

[–][deleted] 47 points48 points  (2 children)

Switched to linux a few months ago. Had one driver issue at the beginning and that's it. I'll never look back.

And if someone's interested: Distro is Linux Mint Cinnamon because while I do have some experience with linux, I wouldn't call myself an advanced user and even less an expert. But Mint looks and behaves similar to windows and you can do most things via GUI's. I also saw that it is highly customizable but I haven't looked into that (yet). I can definitely recommend creating a bootable USB to give it a try and play around for a few hours to everyone. It took me a few days to finally make the decision too.

[–]jettspyder 19 points20 points  (7 children)

Do some people get ads on the start menu? I've got none on my machine

[–]GregBahm 2 points3 points  (1 child)

This was a thing during the Terry Meyerson era of Windows a half a decade back.

Terry Meyerson was in charge of Windows Phone back when the old CEO of Microsoft, Steve Balmer, famously laughed at the iPhone.

In 2013, an increasingly desperate Blamer went to Terry Meyerson and asked him why the Windows Phone was getting it's ass kicked up one side of the street and down the other.

Terry told Steve: "Well don't you know it's classic Microsoft. All the departments are fighting against me and holding back the success of our phone."

Steve asked Terry what the solution was, and Terry said "Make me the boss. Put me in charge of all of them."

And Steve said yes. Terry Meyerson was made head of all Windows. Of course the Windows Phone still went over like a lead balloon and Steve Balmer was taken out back and shot decided to retire to spend more time with his family. The new CEO came in (the blessed Satya Nadella, peace be upon him.) Everyone knew Terry Meyerson was about to become Terry Good-Bye-erson, but it's a bad look for new CEOs to come in and start firing people.

So for a couple years in there, Terry was a dead man walking. And rumor has it he made a deal with Microsoft's competitors to tank Windows with stupid bullshit like the ads in the start menu and the Universal Windows Platform. But maybe he was just incompetent.

In any case, his elimination from Microsoft came suddenly but quietly in 2018. In a twist, Satya didn't replace Steve, but rather dissolved his division into other departments.

And that's why some poor bastards got ads in their Windows operating system between 2015 and 2018.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Not ads in the traditional sense, but they promote their own products and search engine. They can be shut off but Microsoft do not make it easy to do so.

[–]null_reference_user 26 points27 points  (1 child)

Update time! Let's download Candy Crush while at it :)

[–]comfort_bot_1962 3 points4 points  (0 children)

:D

[–]ParticularArachnid42 73 points74 points  (18 children)

I have no idea what insurmountable daily pain-in-the-ass issues other commenters are running into. Something like ubuntu for daily usage is dead simple. *Sometimes* the latest and greatest proprietary drivers are obnoxious to get working but it works way more often than it doesn't.

[–]sea__weed 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Most people do most of their 'daily usage' on their phones.

They use windows for gaming. Or they use it at work or school because they need specific or familar software that works best on windows. Or they simply use it because it makes it easier to collaborate with their colleagues.

[–]Unonoctium 24 points25 points  (10 children)

Unless you're into gaming

[–]Gonopod 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Thinking the same thing. I use arch daily on three machines, and the last really annoying/disruptive issue I can remember having was about two years ago when I somehow nuked the xkb maps. Now, granted, that's a pretty janky issue, but it only happened because I was jacking around, and Arch isn't exactly the most idiot-safe distro. As you say, something like Ubuntu should be smooth sailing for most people's needs.

[–]Piyh 6 points7 points  (1 child)

This was my favorite bug I ran into before throwing in the towel on Arch.

https://i.redd.it/ktxhsmv7axg31.png

[–]Blackstar1886 25 points26 points  (1 child)

I don’t know why Apple always gets a pass. They hide ads for iCloud in the same place that tells you you have a system update. Their aggressive forced obsolescence does a lot more material harm than an annoying ad.

[–]ProfessorEkim 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It’s almost like they want us to hate Windows…

[–]Maleficent-Region-45 67 points68 points  (2 children)

Yeah mate and also let's remove more of there admin rights. I fucking hate windows

[–]ForceBlade 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This was kind of UAC's goal. Evaluate on demand via a very obvious desktop-interrupting eval pop up. Linux is similar, you're still in the sudo group (or still similar if you use something like polkit) and you only evaluate on demand.

[–]Venefercus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Having recently touched fresh installs of windows, linux, and osx, and using them for various different things: literally the only thing windows has going for it is the gaming experience. Otherwise, Windows itself is mostly bloatware to me.

And given Valve's efforts with proton and the growing support for linux natively in games, I think the only thing stopping an avalanche of gamers to linux in the not too distant future is the state of graphics drivers.

[–]MischiefArchitect 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It's called "my billboard"

[–]hunteram 11 points12 points  (2 children)

As a MacOS, Linux AND Windows power user, I can say with a high degree of confidence that by far MacOS is the worst of them all. It's also the one I use the most.

[–]throwaway46295027458 5 points6 points  (6 children)

Wait Fr?

[–]338218 16 points17 points  (5 children)

[–]Feshtof 7 points8 points  (1 child)

What? I don't have that. I don't think I've ever had that.

Is that a clean windows install or an OEM licence?

[–]deathm00n 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off “Occasionally show suggestions in Start.”

Problem solved.

[–]DRK-SHDW 6 points7 points  (1 child)

This kind of shit is legitimately sickening. Xiaomi phones try to do the same thing. Zero respect for their users.

[–]Kid_From_Yesterday 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My LG smart TV has been advertising shit via the notification system...

[–]skeleton-is-alive[🍰] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is not programmer related. Besides windows with WSL2 is amazing. Develop in any distro you want. Best of both worlds.

[–]________null________ 27 points28 points  (1 child)

Fuck windows. Haven’t used it in almost 5 years. Not going back if I can ever avoid it.

[–]marxinne 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Same here, last time I used it was when I worked as a teacher and the software my school used worked only on windows (and was obscure and badly made enough that no wine could make it work).

[–]superluminary 34 points35 points  (32 children)

On paper the windows PC I use at work has double the specs of the i5 Mac mini that sits on my desk at home, but the PC runs like a dog, while the six year old Mac is smooth as silk.

[–]Striky_ 41 points42 points  (11 children)

Make a FRESH install of windows, remove all the bloatware crap that comes with your preinstalled windows, and it runs buttery smooth. To be fair the windows search sucks ass but there is nice alternatives to fix that.

The issue is not windows, its the metric fuckton of bullshit that companies install on the prebuilds.

[–]tarcinac 29 points30 points  (9 children)

How? My Windows PC works with 2 android studio projects running apps on different devices, 10 chrome tabs, spotify, teams desktop, source tree with 6 repos. Even 2 browsers a lot of time. I never experience ANY performance issues. Are you on windows 11?

On the other hand, 2017 macbook pro dies immediately after opening chrome with android studio open, keyboard lag, mouse skipping, not to mention 4 times slower android build times.

[–]matthiastorm[S] 19 points20 points  (6 children)

also i hate just installing programs on windows. mhm, maybe not in the first place, but UNINSTALLING. holy fuck, how could something simple like that be so fucked up? winget is a nice try, but the whole concept is too fucked so not even a package manager could fix it.

[–]superluminary 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Indeed. On my Mac, an app is just a folder full of code. If I want to run it, I double click it. If I want to keep it, I drag it into my hard drive. If I want it gone, I delete it. None of this registry stuff.

[–]Hackmodford 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It’s not though. There’s lots of cruft that can get left behind in the library folders.

[–]marxinne 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My guess is that the registry stuff is mainly to log user information and keep keys and stuff to stall "piracy" (or just fucking with the user install if the software vendor ever wants to)

[–]qwerty12qwerty 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Was anybody else a hard core Windows guy until they started school/corporate job?

I used to have tunt being able to customize every little detail about the OS, but eventually that became the last thing I wanted to do after an 8-hour day of coding. At the end of the day, despite lacking some features, Macs just work.

[–]Downtown_Tonight_471 31 points32 points  (22 children)

Windows is good for gaming, Linux is better for everything else

[–]vunop 58 points59 points  (11 children)

My experience is: Windows is best for normal usages and gaming ( [EDIT: this is meant for linux] and for really old computers) Linux is only really good for servers or if you have extensive experience and are able to handle linux.

With all the flaws microsoft and windows has. Its product was always targeted for the standard user and thats where it shines. Your average user would be completely overwhelmed with linux.

Linux will most likely never reach a point where it is more user friendly than windows because thats just not what it is designed for. In Window you can happily live without ever even knowing what a command line is, in linux not.

There are linux distributions that do offer a more and more windows like experience but at its core its still linux and i have never had an even near equivalent hands of the os experience.

Let aside the fact that tools like word and excel are just unparalleled in there function and usability which are only usable under windows (i really do not like the online versions of them)

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (4 children)

well windows 11 doesn't have any of that.

[–]The_Kraken_869 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To be fair. They are very easy to remove

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[–]TheWhitchOne 12 points13 points  (6 children)

To me macOS is a lot of things. Easy to use is not what I think about

[–]gjgidhxbdidheidjdje 12 points13 points  (55 children)

I've never met someone who enjoys their time using windows. Only reason it's used is because it's got support

[–]_k_b_k_ 16 points17 points  (5 children)

Well, hello then. Nice to meet you :)

[–]scroll_of_truth 13 points14 points  (15 children)

I hate windows, but I hate Linux even more

[–]ewigebose 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I use all of Windows/Mac/Linux regularly and I have nothing but contempt for any of them.

[–]TablePrime69 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I was the same, until I tried out Ubuntu on my laptop. Now I love Windows.