[EMM_386]

"And wow is it nice not to have all the ads and crapware in our faces anymore."

I don't understand this - and I'm not being a Windows defender here, I use Linux when I can (and promote its use).

But my Windows 11 installation has zero ads and zero "crapware". And it's a Dell!

Everything that I didn't want on the machine was removed when I purchased it (two years ago). I see no ads. If I did, this can be fixed easily by even non-technical users with OOShutUp10 or similar - or just edited with a registry change.

I've been using Windows since 3.1 and there were some ugly years but that is not the current state-of-the-state. I'm just calling it like I see it at this point.

[kentonv]

The UI is full of Bing and Copilot tie-ins that I consider to be essentially ads. Recommended content in the start menu. The weather widget that shows you news headlines. The lock-screen-of-the-day with the text description that if you accidentally click on it, you open some Bing page. The Edge default home page. Everything is trying to push me towards engaging with Microsoft's online services, which I have never used and have no desire to use. These are ads.

It's probably the case that I could turn all of these off by hunting down the right config options, and if I used Windows as my primary desktop I'm sure I would. But it's just on my game machines which I don't want to spend a lot of time maintaining, and new crap keeps popping up in updates. It's exhausting.

A Debian Linux desktop, in comparison, is not trying to push you to anything. It's a breath of fresh air (not a term I use often but really fits here).

Note: I never made it to Windows 11, only Windows 10. But my understanding is that these things are getting worse, not better. And while not exactly the same thing, there has been a lot of talk lately about how the file explorer has become so bloated and slow that they have to preload it into memory at startup so that it can respond quickly when you click it... omg, I do not want that.

[ahartmetz]

I'm surprised to hear that you were talking about Windows 10. Windows 11 is MUCH worse than 10 with the ads and seems to be the first one where people are complaining en masse. It also comes with a start menu that's both dumbed down and has performance issues. Yes, the start menu. It's slow.

I just know it from a new laptop where I'm keeping the preinstalled Windows for occasions that require it (very rare these days).

[d-us-vb]

The real problem is with trust and encroachment. I think a lot of people that spend a fair amount of time on their computers start to feel like their OS is their home and they go on excursions through apps. Previously, ads were limited to apps you had to go to yourself. Ads showing up as wallpaper in your house would be unsettling, and it reveals that your homeownership was illusory from the start: you never really controlled anything.

Yes, you can use cleanup software to fix the symptoms, but that's not the real issue here.

Edit: further research revealed my original first point was a false assumption.

[kwar13]

We must be using different Windows 11 then. Last I booted up Windows instead of shoving Cortana everywhere now it's shoving Copilot. The telemetry sent would make spyware jealous.

The "current" state does not matter. What matters is that MS can shittify your experience at any time. Your machine can stop working if you don't agree to MS "updates". On Linux you have the assurance that the state of your machine can be preserved and you know exactly what's being installed on it.

[immibis]

> The telemetry sent would make spyware jealous.

FTFY: Windows is spyware. The fact that you paid for spyware or it came on your computer or it has useful properties (like Bonzi Buddy) doesn't make it not spyware.

[Aurornis]

> But my Windows 11 installation has zero ads

I did a clean Windows 11 install a few months ago. I expected to be bombarded with ads and all of the other things I kept reading about in comments here, but it’s been fine.

I do find it interesting that so many of the comments about how bad Windows 11 is are coming from comments that also admit they aren’t using Windows 11. Not everything in Windows 11 is my favorite design choice, but the anti Windows 11 comments have taken on a life of their own that isn’t always based in reality.

[hasperdi]

I never used Windows 11, but with 10 they had craps like Candy crush etc that comes back after large updates.

They don't have annoying bundleware with Windows 11?

[scrollop]

DO you see messages or icons for Teams, cortana, AI, onedrive accounts? These are ads.

[fullstop]

You can turn them off, but the start menu definitely shows you "recommended" content by default.

[knowitnone3]

so you're saying you'd have to download some obscure software just to remove defaults from the OS and that's a plus? The fact that you even know about such software tells me you've already gone thru steps to neuter Microsoft.