For my “convenience” and because in this way they can show ads and clickbait

Also: I SET A FUCKING GROUP POLICY THAT DISABLES THE SEARCH BAR; WHY THEY FUCKING IGNORE IT???

  • @nottheengineer@feddit.deEnglish
    162•2 years ago

    Classic microsoft move.

    Linux has gotten great over the years and keeps improving while windows gets worse and worse every day. This has been going on for many years now.

    I switched already and suggest you give it a shot as well. It’s honestly much easier than windows if you know the basics and understand how things are done there.

    • chingaderaEnglish
      -9•2 years ago

      Not every distro of Linux has gotten better, for the most part this comment is innacurate. That said, I have generally had the same experience here, but I use arch btw.

      • @4am@lemm.eeEnglish
        -7•2 years ago

        Downvoting the arch meme? Are the Linux people grumpy today?

        • chingaderaEnglish
          1•2 years ago

          I just wanted to talk out of my ass here and drop a joke lol. I think it was the HC Linux people disagreeing that not all distro have gotten better. It was bs fluff for the meme lol

  • AlteredStateBlob
    73•2 years ago

    More and more I am considering taking a vacation with the specific goal of migrating to Linux. I’ve got decades old workflows linked to certain programs and tools that I know for sure only exist in Windows, so I’ll likely have to still run it in a VM for those, but my system setup is just kinda the place I call home the most, yet my patience for all this nonsense is rapidly declining.

    • @zzzz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      45•2 years ago

      Do it, my friend. I took the leap ~5 years ago and have not once regretted it. You’re right, you have Wine and Windows VMs available, if need be. But, honestly, I bet you end up replacing those work flows with better ones within Linux before long.

      • AlteredStateBlob
        8•2 years ago

        I mean, I’d like to. But some of my work requires me to use stuff like Adobe products and I find it massively easier to keep up to date with what these tools can do, if I can just muck around in my private projects (I actually care about) and then transfer the knowledge to my work stuff. I’ll mull the idea some more time. Not really interested in dual booting at all, though that might be a solid solution, but windows simply deciding to kill everything else, even if its on a different disk entirely is not a prospect I relish.

        • stevecrox
          11•2 years ago

          If its for work I would suggest picking a “stable” distribution like Debian, Kubuntu or OpenSuse.

          A lot of people recommend Arch or Fedora but the focus of those is getting the very latest releases, which increases your chance of stuff breaking.

          A lot of people will suggest niche distributions, those can be great for specific needs but generally you will always find Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL support for commercial apps.

          I would also suggest looking at the KDE Desktop, many distributions default to Gnome but it is unique in how it works, KDE (or XFCE) will provide a desktop similar to Windows 11.

          Lastly I would suggest looking at Crossover Linux by Codeweavers.

          Linux has something called WINE, its an attempt to implement the Windows 95 - 11 API’s so windows applications can run on linux.

          WINE is how the Steam Deck/Linux is able to play Windows games. Valve embedded it into Steam and called it “Proton”.

          WINE is primarily developed by Codeweavers and they provide the Crossover application that makes setting up and running a Windows application really easy.

          People will mention Lutris but that has a far higher learning curve.

          There is an application database so you can see in advance if your applications would work: https://appdb.winehq.org/

          • AlteredStateBlob
            5•2 years ago

            Thanks for the long response. I was thinking Mint maybe, had some experience with it a few years ago. But it’d replace both my private and work stuff over, so some gaming, too (mainly through steam). Stability is key to me. My current Windows install hasn’t needed anything for 4 years or so, so I’m absolutely not going for Arch. I need this stuff daily, I cannot waste time trying to troubleshoot for hours or relying on backups, etc.

            • Captain AggravatedEnglish
              4•2 years ago

              Yeah I honestly wouldn’t use Arch or indeed any rolling release distro for any machine that’s used for revenue. Go with a stable release distro. Mint is one of the very few I even bother considering, there’s a reason it’s been as popular as it has for so long.

            • stevecrox
              3•2 years ago

              Mint was a reaction to Gnome 3, the unique workflow upset a lot of people and the people behind Mint decided to build Cinnamon desktop (its Gnome 3 made to look/work like Gnome 2). They needed a distribution to build/test their work and so based a distribution off of Ubuntu and called it Mint.

              As a bit of explanation, there are only a few projects which attempt to build an entire linux distribution from scratch. This involves finding code from thousands of sources, work out packaging, etc… We call these ‘base’ distributions, Debian is the base distribution for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is the base distribution for Mint.

              Ubuntu tends to be slightly ahead of Debian in the software versions it uses and automatically enables the ‘non-free’ repositories. Ubuntu tends to push some Canonical specific things like Snaps (which everyone hates)

              I believe Mint rolls the Canonical specific things out of Ubuntu and you get the latest version of Cinnamon.

              Its all a bit…

            • @ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3•2 years ago

              I know it has a shitty “95-ish” look to it, but https://distrowatch.com/ is quite possibly your best resource in finding out at a glance which of the distros you’re interested in are stable or rolling, and how popular they are. Go down the page hit ranking on the right, and start clicking: you will see the root build of every distro, whether it’s stable or rolling, the last release date, links to reviews, etc.

              It won’t get you to your final decision, but it will get you to a shortlist. And then you can start making LiveUSB sticks to test drive your distros of choice in RAM without having to install anything. There are very few distros that require a full install to try out; if you run into one you can always use old hardware or a spare disk, etc. Mint has a LiveUSB of all its DE choices, Pop!OS has a LiveUSB, you just need the USB sticks and something like Rufus to make them with, and you’re ready to test drive.

              Well worth the trouble, IMO. Good luck.

          • @PainInTheAES@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2•2 years ago

            Just a heads up OpenSUSE is phasing out leap so it won’t have a stable release “soon” unless the things with ALP shake out well.

          • @ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0•2 years ago

            As someone who is currently in the process of moving everything to Linux, this is a genuinely helpful comment. I have it saved now, lol. Thank you for taking the time to write this out, much appreciated.

        • SimbombaEnglish
          7•2 years ago

          There might not be a Linux native version of the adobe products available but theres a fun script that lets it run from what I experienced flawlessly on several distributions

          • anguoEnglish
            5•2 years ago

            Could you give more info on that?

              • anguoEnglish
                2•2 years ago

                Thanks! I’ll give it a try next time I have time to spend in front of my own computer (not anytime soon…)

            • SimbombaEnglish
              2•2 years ago

              Sure if I can find it On it as soon as I am able to

        • @Rodeo@lemmy.caEnglish
          4•2 years ago

          windows simply deciding to kill everything else, even if its on a different disk entirely is not a prospect I relish.

          I’ve been dual booting for almost ten years and distro hopped a fair bit and never had that happen. Not once ever. I’ve screwed up my fair share of installs too. I think it’s one of those things that used to be a problem 20+ years ago, but is now basically a meme.

        • @Anamana@feddit.deEnglish
          0•2 years ago

          I’m a fan of Linux, but my personal experience was filled with headaches on how to solve compability issues. It’s just a pain that some things don’t work as well as they used to with a clean windows install. So I traveled from Windows to Debian to Dualboot (win/debian) to Windows. And tbh I never looked back since then. Took too much time just to keep things running properly.

          If you depend on Adobe products I would at least opt for Dualboot if I were you. Otherwise you have no safe option to return to if things don’t seem to work out as you wished.

      • @Sanity_in_Moderation@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3•2 years ago

        I’m doing it. I build a new pc every 5 to 10 years. The new monster has posted. Need a few small cables before I really get started. I was going to put an older copy of win10 pro on it. But I’m going to take the Linux leap. The tower will be free of windows from day 1.

        Nobara simply because the author also wrote Proton, the Steam linux gateway. (Open to suggestions).

        All AMD.

        Gaming. Streaming. Internet. Video files. Voice recording. Occasional simple documents. That’s 99.99 percent of my usage.

        • @uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          I would suggest OpenSUSE Thumbleweed, but I did not use it for many years. And my current distro(Gentoo) isn’t well known as entry-level. Though for me personally it was.

          Also for gaming never use PulseAudio, lag is unbearable.

    • @Holzkohlen@feddit.deEnglish
      16•2 years ago

      Best of luck. I can’t go back to windows any more. Well, I still dual boot for one game and the digital features of my national ID cause OF COURSE that software is windows only. 😒

      • hotbathenthusiastEnglish
        5•2 years ago

        In case you didn’t know or haven’t tried yet: AusweisApp2 does exist for Linux. But I assume, like me, you tried unsuccessfully already. For me, the Linux drivers of my card reader don’t work…

        • silly goose meekahEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          I think if you have a new Perso it should be possible to utilize the NFC module in your phone

      • AlteredStateBlob
        3•2 years ago

        I think we’re both German. My ID doesn’t have that yet, I dread the day where I can’t renew it without all that nonsense.

          • AlteredStateBlob
            2•2 years ago

            Germany introduced some digital ID functionality so you can do certain things online rather than having to go talk to someone in person, but that means that your ID isn’t just a card anymore but has some digital elements to it as well. And apparently the apps to use that stuff are Windows based.

    • @thepreciousboar@lemm.eeEnglish
      5•2 years ago

      You’ll be surprised how much you can do with wine and mono. But even so, switching and getting a vm is a viable option

    • torpakEnglish
      5•2 years ago

      I did the switch twenty years ago, starting with dual-boot and Wine. Nowadays dual-boot is gone and I never use Wine outside of gaming.

    • @trailing9@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2•2 years ago

      It would be nice if lemmy made it easy to create a community or such for every program and let people join to collect the necessary knowledge together.

      • silly goose meekahEnglish
        4•2 years ago

        huh, is it not easy to create a community? I created one a few months ago and all I needed was a name for it.

  • sadreality
    55•2 years ago

    I switched to Linux after this sort of tricks.

    They also will fuck with your “privacy and security settitings” on updates.

    If you try blocking search and start pinging home. It will make windows endleally spazz which causes stuttering in games.

    They forced me to switch to Linux pretty much

    Thanks satya microshit…

    Imagine treating a paying customer like this

    • kubica
      16•2 years ago

      One thing I did was go through hoops to disable the bing searches from the menu.

      Instead I should have switched to linux long ago.

      • @Uncle_Iroh@lemmy.worldEnglish
        -2•2 years ago

        People like you is why they do this shit in the first place. The entitlement of wanting products for free basically forces companies like Microsoft to become the huge advertisement pushing cunts that they are now.

        • @grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          25•2 years ago

          Nah, failure to enforce consumer protection and anti-trust law is why they do this shit in the first place. It doesn’t matter if you paid for it or not; even when you do pay, they exploit you anyway because they can.

          • @captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5•2 years ago

            Yeah cars are one of the most expensive things you’re likely to buy, pull subscription bullshit, and spy on you like crazy, sometimes including your sex life. I pay about a gaming pc of cash upfront for my phone and still get spied on and advertised to by its os.

            And yeah I bought windows a year or so ago because I bought a new motherboard and needed an os and didn’t know linux was this good now. About a hundred bucks and it comes with all this bullshit that drove me to linux

        • sadreality
          9•2 years ago

          Just to clarify. If you bought a device. The maker aka you paid a fee.

          Person above either using water market version or pirated it but more likely got it pre installed

          Either they don’t understand windows economics with that stupid “comment”

          • Hyperreality
            -5•2 years ago

            Windows 10 was a free upgrade from 7/8. 7/8 was a free upgrade from XP. I mean, XP was installed on something, but I certainly haven’t paid for windows in decades.

            Apparently it’s still a thing:

            https://www.techspot.com/news/100334-microsoft-closes-windows-7-11-free-upgrade-loophole.html

            And if you think about it, why would private customers pay for windows, given it’s loaded with spyware? I’m already paying to use it with my data. No different than using google software.

            Sure, I prefer windows because I’m used to it and I’m lazy, but why pay for something that’s arguably inferior to open source software?

            • sadreality
              3•2 years ago

              If you think that “private customers” have not paid for it… There is not much to discuss here chief

        • @narc0tic_bird@lemm.eeEnglish
          6•2 years ago

          They do it because of greed and the everlasting thirst of large companies to grow bigger and bigger.

          They literally gave Windows 10 and 11 away for free if you had Windows 7 or 8.

          Many if not most people pay for Windows in the form of licensing costs included in the price of a device, mainly laptops. Most laptops come with Windows preinstalled, and Microsoft earns with every laptop sold with Windows preinstalled. People building their own PC and getting an OEM key for cheap off of eBay or pasting a one-liner into PowerShell are the minority.

          Do you really expect people to go out of their way to purchase a retail Windows license when they already have a perfectly valid and activated version of Windows preinstalled on their device?

          And now that Windows 10/11 is a nice mix of adware, bloatware, nagware and spyware, do you really think it’s worth $199 (for the “Pro” version)?

          It’s a business model Microsoft deliberately chose. Guess what? They were doing just fine before doing what they do now, despite of a few “software pirates”.

          I’d happily pay even a subscription fee for Windows if Microsoft didn’t try to shove their crap down my throat every chance they get.

          • @captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2•2 years ago

            I wouldn’t pay a subscription fee for windows without the bullshit, but that’s partly due to the value of their competition. Without the bullshit though I’d likely be ok with buying a new version every major pc upgrade or if the new edition offered a serious value improvement. Otherwise I’d hold on until such a situation. The move from 10 to 11 was whatever until I got the ads. I’d also probably consider linux every time I have to pay to upgrade. But their bullshit converted me to give it a second chance and I won’t go back. Linux happens to stand on its own merit now.

  • @Czarb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36•2 years ago

    But don’t you want to have what I’ve come to enjoy: Printer roulette?

    Win, “printer”, enter…come on Printer and Scanner control panel, baby wants a new printer queue to kill that stuck job…dammit edge, no I don’t want to search bing for an inkjet.

    Win, “printer”…, enter…come on Control Panel, you can do it…HP Smart Panel, you piece of crap

    • @RandomPancake@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4•2 years ago

      It amazes me that print management continues to be so spectacularly bad in Windows. It’s been terrible since my first days using Win 3.1 and it has never gotten better.

      • @Frays6142@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        I literally cannot print from my windows machine but all of my Linux machines print each and every time, it drives me literally insane.

      • @DarthBueller@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        I’d say it’s come a long way since Windows 3.1 and the days before PnP, to the point that I can actually clear my print que, where not that long ago clearing your print que seemed to be an option MS offered to allow us to experience the rage that arises from unadulterated powerlessness. Hell, half the time it even switches default printers based on whether I’m at home or the office. Now, if Adobe could make it easier to distinguish from settings that will only work in the printer’s driver settings, vs. the Adobe application’s print settings, we’d be halfway out of perdition.

    • @Daryl76679@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2•2 years ago

      This won’t fix your app roulette problem, but you should be able to disable searching the web with the search bar in group policy

    • @Moonrise2473@feddit.itOPEnglish
      1•2 years ago

      pro tip: win+r and run this GUID to open the windows xp printer control panel in windows 10/11

      ::{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}

      Then drag the icon on the desktop to create a link

      • @Dra8gin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        I just played Red Dead Redemption 2 the whole train ride on my Steam Deck that runs on Linux. Bless you Valve!

      • Resol van LemmyEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        Windows has really become a bloated mess.

        And I’m one of the people who actually liked Windows Vista.

        • @clanginator@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5•2 years ago

          I mean for sure but I play games with my nephews so for me dual booting Windows is worth it, and it’s certainly something to consider when deciding how you’re gonna set up your system, as much as that sucks.

          I hope it’ll change on games that do, or they’ll set up a workaround for Linux, but for now if you care about a game that uses it, ysk beforehand so that you can decide whether to dump that game or dual boot.

  • silly goose meekahEnglish
    35•2 years ago

    really looking forward to getting another SSD and just installing linux on it so I don’t have to deal with that kind of bullshit anymore. The bullshit I will be dealing with will not be privacy related, just compatibility related.

      • silly goose meekahEnglish
        4•2 years ago

        which distro do you recommend for gaming? I’m looking at fedora games, drauger OS or Pop_OS

        • @Amends1782@lemmy.caEnglish
          5•2 years ago

          I cannot strongly recommend enough pop_os. For reference, it was my last distro of choice, but its been my all time favorite out of 10+ I’ve tried in 2 years

        • @Dlayknee@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          I set up a test rig with Fedora to see how the gaming went and didn’t have any issues with Steam or a handful of AAA games. Of note though, my test machine has an AMD GPU so I didn’t have to deal with any Nvidia driver shenanigans.

        • @Omega_Jimes@lemmy.caEnglish
          2•2 years ago

          My gaming rig is running Nobara Project right now and I’d highly recommend it for gaming centric use.

    • @Anamana@feddit.deEnglish
      2•2 years ago

      That’s probably the best way to try it. First get comfy and still have a fallback solution if you don’t like it.

  • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35•2 years ago

    Windows, on my work computer, decided Monday morning was a good time to turn my default pdf reader to Microsoft Edging. Turns out you can’t delete Edging from add or remove programs.

  • @TornMD@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34•2 years ago

    Welcome to Windows update. Where they revert any settings you make to the OS that won’t benefit them.

  • @TalesFromTheKitchen@lemmy.mlEnglish
    33•2 years ago

    Same with ‘compatibility telemetry runner’ after every update I have to disable it and delete the .exe from system32. None of the permanently disable tricks work. Plus I always have to run “oo shutup” to disable the other privacy stuff. I wish I could switch to another is, but most of my software is windows only.

    • silly goose meekahEnglish
      6•2 years ago

      isn’t WINE for running windows only stuff on linux? or is the software you use actually utilizing some windows specific API?

      • @TalesFromTheKitchen@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5•2 years ago

        Yeah I’ve heard Wine has gotten really decent. Maybe I should give it a shot. Change is always a bit hard, when it comes to habits.

        • silly goose meekahEnglish
          3•2 years ago

          absolutely agree on that last part. but yeah, apparently valve really accelerated the development of those translation layers for the steam deck.

    • @FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5•2 years ago

      Could it be possible to place a read-only dummy .exe in its place? I think FS attributes should be respected by the update process.

      • @i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.caEnglish
        2•2 years ago

        They ought to be. You might have to change ownership of the file to some other local user (and disable permission inheritance for that file so admin can’t touch it), but I bet this would work for most use cases except like a system restore.

  • @Reygle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30•2 years ago

    When using Microsoft products and accepting their incomprehensible terms and conditions, you have no say and your opinion doesn’t matter.

    Group policy doesn’t matter, domain administrator, GPO rules, all of it- none of it matters.

    You’ll get dogshit and you will like it. (Friendly reminder that it was extremely overpriced also) That’s the tax you pay for being in their horrible, horrible “ecosystem” from hell. Enjoy! Grease up or take it dry, you’re “taking it” either way.

  • @wazzupdog@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25•2 years ago

    Let’s also not forget the update also installed fucking edge again even with registry keys telling it not to. Fuck Microsoft.

    • @RandomPancake@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7•2 years ago

      I use Linux for my daily driver. It has really come a long way even in the last five years, but especially compared to 10-15 years ago. For the most part, stuff just works out of the box.

      My ONLY beef is that many of the games I play (Civ 5, Banished, Sins of a Solar Empire, Frostpunk) are not stable and/or have performance issues under Linux, so I occasionally need to boot into Windows. For example Civ 5 works great until around 20 turns in when the lag between turns grows unbearable. That really sucks in multiplayer.

      • @theonyltruemupf@feddit.deEnglish
        6•2 years ago

        I am so blessed that all the games I want to play run great or at least fine on Linux. I wouldn’t want to have to go back to Windows.

        • @RandomPancake@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4•2 years ago

          Yeah I just want to be clear – Linux has come a LONG way with gaming. If anyone tried it a few years ago and just gave up in frustration, give it another try now. It is MASSIVELY better.

  • meseek #2982English
    20•2 years ago

    PC people: Many of you are now realizing what “Windows as a Service” means. Your OS is harvesting every bit of your data and sending it back to the MS Mothership.

    And you’re kind enough to pony up the cash to supply the hardware for it to run on.