Wednesday, April 24th 2024
Windows 11 Now Officially Adware as Microsoft Embeds Ads in the Start Menu
Microsoft over late-Tuesday started distributing the KB5036980 optional update to Windows 11 users, which effectively makes the operating system adware (software that displays ads to support its author). The update gets the Windows 11 Start Menu to display ads in the "Recommended" section that suggests apps and games for you to download from the Microsoft Store, subscribe to Copilot Pro, etc. While the update is currently optional, the changes contained in it will be made part of next month's "Patch Tuesday" update.
This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft is advertising software, the OEM versions of Windows 11 can be customized by PC manufacturers to pre-install bloatware, or suggest apps or services for users to buy within the Start or Apps menus. You usually uninstall the pre-installed bloatware, and dismiss recommendations. Today's update is different, in that even the Retail versions of Windows (without the bloatware) start receiving ads. Luckily, these ads are not inescapable, you can disable them. Head over to Settings > Personalization > Start, and uncheck the toggle that reads "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."
Source:
The Verge
This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft is advertising software, the OEM versions of Windows 11 can be customized by PC manufacturers to pre-install bloatware, or suggest apps or services for users to buy within the Start or Apps menus. You usually uninstall the pre-installed bloatware, and dismiss recommendations. Today's update is different, in that even the Retail versions of Windows (without the bloatware) start receiving ads. Luckily, these ads are not inescapable, you can disable them. Head over to Settings > Personalization > Start, and uncheck the toggle that reads "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."
173 Comments on Windows 11 Now Officially Adware as Microsoft Embeds Ads in the Start Menu
The only distro developers that seem to more or less understand the need for the creation of a standardized experience are the Ubuntu devs, and it's gotten to the point people don't want to use Ubuntu anymore because it's "plain jane" and "there are better distros out there". I'm gonna be honest, I have a Fedora server here that I set up with the help of a friend a couple of years ago. It was exceedingly difficult to set up, the whole procedure to get something as simple as a SMB share and a Minecraft server running on it is so incredibly complex that it involves manually setting filesystem permissions, network access permissions, the creation of a dedicated user account specifically for that purpose, manual configuration of iptables, etc. - let's even go back to my fstab gripe, something as simple as adding storage to this server requires manual configuration of the filesystem table, because it won't just pick up on whatever SATA drive I install, much less provide an easy way to automatically mount and share it with reasonable read and write permissions. Bro ain't nobody got time for this. If this server ever fails, I'm simply not doing it again. I'll buy a prebuilt server tower from Dell and install Windows Server on it.
Using a DIY gaming desktop further exposes the problem with dependency hells, runtime versions that have issues coexisting, crude drivers (or in case of GeForce, NVIDIA's hostiity to FOSS), common lack of availability of tweaking resources (for example, overclocking your GPU on Windows is like, download afterburner and move a few sliders, but on Linux? Hahahah), the whole problem with all sorts of new techs being developed with Windows in mind, etc.
It's just a shitty experience unless you're using a Steam Deck with its tailored experience and mute expectations of what its "shitty hardware" (yes yes, I know it's a handheld, but you get the point) can do, or at a very minimum, carefully selected each of your computer's components around Linux compatibility, which 99% of the time means "buy AMD at the expense of anything else".
My tl;dr rant aside, until Linux devs step up their game and make open standards, ease of use and accessibility their core development goals (it will never ever happen), Microsoft will get away with anything, and whatever market share they bleed will go to Apple and Linux on a 99.5-0.5 split.
To be fair, I didn't know this for a very long time, so I developed the habit of doing everything in fstab. And if you have a non-standard storage scheme, then of course you'll need to be familiar with fstab and/or the terminal. You may very well be using something elaborate on your home server; personally I use ZFS on mine--but the ability to use a wide range of storage schemes isn't a disadvantage for Linux relative to Windows. Quite the opposite.
Relative to something like Mint, Fedora in some ways tends to hide or discourage the easiest solution. There are upsides and downsides to most any distribution. Unfortunately the sheer number of distributions only adds to the new users' confusion. Once you learn the ropes, you realize that there really are only a tiny handful of Linux flavors worth discussing--Debian-based (e.g. Ubuntu, Mint), Fedora, and Arch-based (e.g. Manjaro). Just about every distro falls into one of those categories, and the differences between distros within the same category are largely superficial.
You can also run software that isn't natively available on/for your distro via Flatpak, which is natively available, or in the niche case when that isn't good enough, with a fantastic little tool called distrobox--so the choice of your main distro isn't even really important WRT to popularity/support, anymore. And, of course, Docker remains the best solution for most any home-server software, but that's getting a little far afield of the general-purpose-usability discussion. My point: gone are the days when you were expected to build large amounts of software from source.
The attitude of the Linux community can be annoying; fully agreed there. You mention their fixation on freedom above all--I don't know that that's the first thing I'd complain about, tbh; I'd probably complain first about anti-social gatekeeping and an almost clownish bias towards tiny security advantages over usability. But all of this stuff is mostly confined to internet arguments. Refusal to package any non-free software by default is a Fedora-specific design decision; maybe that's where you developed the complaint.
Then, when I voice my confusion about the instructions, the next answer is usually "you call yourself a computer guy, but you don't want to learn this 2453-line code in the Terminal? What the heck?" Honestly, no. I want to do things that take me a few clicks in Windows. I don't have half a year to memorise code for an otherwise 5-minute task.
If I could live without the horrible Terminal, and my Linux friends trying to make me use it for the simplest things, I would have made the switch a long time ago.
That should have already been unchecked if one's been paying attention.
Six pages of drama and the 20+ year old "Microsoft has finally done it. I'm switching to Linux when %oldwindowsversion% is out of support"
Whinging. Whinging never changes.
My point was calling Windows 'Officially Adware' is clickbait. It's one option to select in the settings to disable.
The impulse and need to monetize every last aspect of digital interaction is getting really, really tiresome.
I still remember my first Linux version. I had to download it from Nic.funet.fi. Also the whole compiling toolchain and then the work started. Compiling the Gnu copiler and after starting to comile Linux on its own. This was about three days of work at least. It was at the days of the Amiga 2000 when I owned a pc-card with an 80286 om it or so. At that time i developed software on an Amiga in Mnemocics/Assembler. Even K&R C was a plaything for me.
Nowadays most people tell that they are keen in PC and IT. But when one loks a bit deeper he can examine that this is a lie. A typical windows developer uses dotnet. But they don't know what a compiler or interpreter is and what both are good for. They don't know anything about different data structures and when or how to use it. The basement one should have to develop good and versatile programs aren't existing anymore. Especially at windows. The programs have to do everything. The user don't want to interact with a OS and they are not willing to learn it.
M$ does support exactly that with their windows. The older users did not use Unix'es like AIX, Solaris, HPUX,... They haven't had the knowledge for and they did know about that. Nowadays the users think they can do. But they aren't still able to use google to research about the needed tools. Their brain doesn't work the "unix/linux" way. They are not able to segment problems into small pieces and solve them seperately. They are overwhelmed about the problem. This isn't positive or negative. It's just factual.
Linux/unix is a whole different system with a different underlying philosophy. First one has to change his mindset before using it. The typical attitude of a Windows User is the question why one should change this mindset. Especially as both have a mouse and a gui. Windows users can move a mouse and click some boxes. It's like driving. A truckdriver can easiy drive a car. But a car driver has real issues driving a truck. Both have wheels and an engine. Nevertheless windows users don't want to realize that they are only keen in driving this small car.
Evolution is fine, but MS are trying to reinvent the wheel.
Edit: Terminal, Command Prompt, PowerShell, you name it, is a thing from the 1980s, unless you're a developer. As a home user, you should never have to rely on these things. A home user should never have to remember any code.
Every time we find a workaround for one simple thing that we want done, it's 50/50 that an update will either permanently undo that desired behavior or straight up kill the install. Memory management is so bad that I can't even get a solid hour session of projecting to a wireless display over Miracast or whatever without my base install Win10 tablet choking on something background related after closing out and randomly rebooting after a few minutes. That's not when stripped out, it's the behavior on full fat Win10. Maybe it runs out of ram. Win10 on 4GB is almost like Win7 on 2GB minus the immediate out of memory bang the moment you load desktop. I still make it work though. I'll do it (and have). Nightmare scavenging mode featuring pure unobtanium (AMC/Jeep era parts). It's not for anybody. Overbuilt a wildly insane MPFI engine and manual transmission combo with a spare in case I ever care to experiment with low friction technologies. The only thing I've noticed is HPUX gaining traction in recent years with a few snooty DevOps types and for what it is, their dailies sound completely insane but the job gets done and everyone is happy, which is more than I can say about the issues in Win10/11 that bring us here. Is it a rite of passage? Maybe so, but it's clearly not something everyone should have to deal with when they just want their system to work right. I'm not so screechy about this and that just yet. My mouse has too many buttons and my screen has too high of a framerate for me to chuck everything for a dumb terminal.
Soon...
I just don't think "f* GUI and let's turn everyone into a programmer like it's the 1980s" is the right solution for the problem. Linux should support (nearly) all of its functions through GUI to make itself attractive to Windows users, and not rely on the community to tell everyone to either put up with the Terminal, or get f*ed. Of course, if a power user can work more effectively through the Terminal, that's awesome, and they should. But the Linux devs and community should realise that ordinary people aren't power users, and even some "more casual" power users (what I'd like to call myself) find memorising code a massive pain.
So asking why MS would pour resources into GUI development when most user-facing changes they have been announcing and pushing for almost two decades now were strictly changes to said GUI experience is a baffling take.
To clarify, I'm not against the existence of the Terminal. I'm against the idea that even a regular Joe, like myself, should learn it for basic OS functions that can be accessed through the GUI on other OSes.