Windows 11 Now Comes With Its Own Adware (engadget.com)
- Reference: 0173627666
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/24/1559252/windows-11-now-comes-with-its-own-adware
- Source link: https://www.engadget.com/windows-11-now-comes-with-its-own-adware-124531977.html
> It used to be that you could pay for a retail version of Windows 11 and expect it to be ad-free, but those days are apparently finito. The latest update to Windows 11 (KB5036980) comes out this week and [1]includes ads for apps in the "recommended" section of the Start Menu , one of the most oft-used parts of the OS. "The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps," according to the release notes. "These apps come from a small set of curated developers." The app suggestions are enabled by default, but you can restore your previously pristine Windows experience if you've installed the update, fortunately. To do so, go into Settings and select Personalization > Start and switch the "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions and more" toggle to "off."
[1] https://www.engadget.com/windows-11-now-comes-with-its-own-adware-124531977.html
I installed Linux (Score:2)
I toggled Windows off. I also bought a mac mini.
Re: (Score:2)
So now you're getting higher prices whenever you try to buy airline tickets on Expedia, or toilet paper on Amazon? Asking for a friend...
Once again (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I don't use Windows at home.
After W7 I went to Linux and haven't looked back. It's bad enough I have to put up with Microsoft's excuses and incompetence at work, I definitely don't want to deal with that at home.
Re: (Score:3)
I tried for a number of years to convert - too many missing drivers, too many text files to be edited with VI.
That's no longer true, it's equivalent to a Windows install now. If you can handle one, you can handle the other.
Re: (Score:2)
For home use Linux is the way to go for non-developers. But most of those people moved even to a worse system, Cell Phones. The spyware on Cells make Windows look like a locked down NSA System.
With that said, I do not like the direction of Linux these days, I have been evaluating the BSDs for the last few years and I have to choose between 2 variants when I decide to move off Linux.
The enshittification continues (Score:5, Insightful)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Too bad Wayland ruined Linux (Score:1)
And the fact that people like being cucked to proprietary software instead of donating to open source.
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Right now *BSD is treating me great. No Wayland, no System==D, life is good. When I must use Linux I use Devuan, but I imagine when some corporate "stakeholder" in Linux (like Zoom, lol) stops support X11 and moves to Wayland it's going to get interesting. I say "interesting" blithely because it won't be me who is interested, since I'm fat and happy with BSD and going nowhere.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What exactly is the appeal to X11, in 2024?
I've not been a serious Linux desktop user for a number of years now, but when I was, Wayland was far more appealing than X11 on every basis: performance, remote desktop capability, overhead, security.
Re: (Score:3)
> What exactly is the appeal to X11, in 2024?
My list goes something like this:
** XDMCP still works. Yes, I use it. Often. No, VNC isn't a valid replacement for it (it only ships canvas/bitmaps, not individual applications)
** I don't agree that Wayland is stable. It has not been stable when I try it.
** X11 still appears to be supported by all the chipsets and systems I care about
** Wayland breaks a lot of apps and forces code and library changes on others. This is unwelcome.
** There aren't enough Wayland-friendly apps that can replace what it brea
Re: (Score:2)
If you need XDMCP then by all means use the software that suits you, but the rest of your points are utter crap. Let's address them:
** You don't agree Wayland is stable? I've never had it crash once. Actually switching to Wayland when X.org was the default in Ubuntu solved a monitor resolution issue I had.
** Wayland supports all chipsets and systems I care about too. What are you are specifically missing? Saying something works as intended isn't a counter claim to something else.
** Wayland breaking apps is
Re: (Score:3)
> *yawn* okay boomer. - Am I obnoxious? Yes, I treat people with the respect they treat others, and this is all the respect you deserve.
So someone has a use-case and experience different than your own, so they and that don't (more/any) deserve respect? He didn't disparage you or your use-case, merely stated his experiences. Your statement above says a lot about you, and it's not great. Not sure why you care so much about X11 vs Wayland, but you need to let it go and realize that everyone has different needs, and comfort levels, and they're not (necessarily) good/bad, better/worse, but mainly just different. In short, grow up.
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I see you completely ignored XDMCP. Okay, well that matters. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. If Wayland's modular nature can backfill any role Xorg was doing, why not provide XDMCP support via one of those? VNC isn't a replacement. It doesn't do the same things as XDMCP. Since you asked for a notable application that breaks easily with Wayland I'd point you to X2Go. I use it frequently and QT often crashes or refuses to render properly under Wayland.
> The overwhelming majority of apps don't care what system you run them on.
That is true. Xlib and other libraries are, in
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So don't use VNC, use RDP. It works better than XDMCP ever did.
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I use Linux servers all the time, but not the desktop. I'm not terribly familiar with Wayland. But I'm curious about what you say about "remote desktop capability". IMHO, that was the one *huge* benefit of X11. Remote capability was granular down to the window. Every X11 program was capable of putting its display on a remote machine. You didn't have to export the whole desktop, and you didn't end up with an add-on program (a la VNC) that just bit-copied the whole screen elsewhere. Remote displays were a
Re: (Score:2)
Remote XDMCP has always been very latency sensitive (IIRC) and requires a lot of other bits in place before you can use it: firewalling, secure tunnels. That includes a remote X server (client). The interactivity and interoperability is poor on anything but local networks, and was unusable on broadband connectivity the last time I tried using it 15 odd years ago.
The benchmark here is RDP, and has been for at least 20 years. At least with RDP on Windows, it's quite straightforward (or at least used to be). A
Re:Too bad Wayland ruined Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
It's good that the open source community offers so many options that everyone can find their favorite. But still, the level of zealotry in the community is so strong it is comical.
I am using Ubuntu. System D has never harmed me. The corporate backing of Ubuntu has never harmed me. It has "just worked" better than the other distros I have tried (Suse long ago, and Fedora slightly less long ago), does everything I want it to do, runs Steam and plays steam games just fine, etc.
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Glad you're happy. Some folks who spend more time on the metal at the system level do not. Using the term "zealotry" implies the people you don't understand are somehow unhinged or making bad judgments. They aren't. They probably have other needs and values besides "Steam works, what gives?" I know I'd include myself in that.
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SystemD indirectly harmed me. Had a bunch of 'buntu desktops that the users weren't very careful with. Unclean shutdowns were the norm. Upgraded to whatever the systemd enforced version was. Figured there was no harm since it was as vanilla as could be, who cares what the init system is? Well within a couple of days I was trying to lead remote users through running fsck from the emergency shell because someone at canonical thought a generic recovery shell on any pre-boot error was a good idea. For all syste
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> Wayland may be technically superior but the maintainers seem less inclined to solve problems people have and chase ideals they have.
A common complaint which completely misses the point. The ideals exist to prevent Wayland turning into X11. A lot of the things given the WONTFIX treatment are precisely the things that architecturally were intended to be omitted from the compositor.
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I want to go nowhere too. Would you be so kind as to explain a few things about *BSD?
I did a preliminary dive into whatever bsd Digital Ocean had... my takeaway was that it would probably make a good file server but I didn't want to take the time to learn the firewall ... would be happy to commission as a webserver (nginx preferrred atm) and or email server ... I'm rather invested in iptables.... and secure private systems.
Then on the desktop, I didnt' want to take time to learn the package manager.. so tha
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm rather invested in iptables
I get it. In Linux I have had to learn ipfwadm, ipchains, iptables, and now nft. One of the reasons why I like BSD is that all the network filters share the 99% of syntax with Darren Reed's old 'ipfilter' which includes PF and NPF. I personally think the expressions in PF and it's clones are the most readable and easiest to write. However, again, I get it, it's all about what you're most used to.
> I didnt' want to take time to learn the package manager.
The CLI package management tool 'pkg' has very easy syntax (basically like Apt in Debian/Devuan). I wouldn't let
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the tips. Learning PF is key, obviously, for servers. I'll put that off for the time being. I'm not averse to learning, I just don't have the time atm. Not scared of command line at all, quite the opposite.
I'm downloading the xfce version of Ghost, right now. I'll install it in a vbox and have a look around.. and have a look at the Handbook.
Much appreciated... you may be hearing from me again :-)
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No consumer should ever have to give one second's thought to Wayland or SystemD. Nor to KDE, Gnome, X11... all this technical blather is straight up in the way and stupid. If I want to run a DAW, I shouldn't be concerned with ALSA/JACK. Having to know anything about any of this is a barrier to entry.
Until that shit fades into the background, desktop linux is doomed to single digits. And rightly so.
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I can completely understand where you are coming from. This is the perspective of someone who is interested only in the OS as a tool and what it can do for you on the desktop. Not everyone has the same value system or wants ease-of-use as their primary goal (I have other values more important to me), but I do agree that until things are easier for the average user, desktop adoption will be out of reach.
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Oh for sure. There are people that want particular things, and care about those tools. I'm one of them. Yeah, my complaint is that one of the barriers to adoption is a mental perception of complexity.
Well... not just "mental". Mostly mental, though. When it comes to day to day use, most people simply wouldn't need to know anything about SystemD. The idea that they might have to is destructive to the cause.
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What you are asking for is a fully integrated UX approach.
Sadly, there's no distro that will do that for you. There's [1]too many standards [xkcd.com], and [2]there will always be the person that boldly types: "Yes, do as I say!" and blow up everything despite the warnings [reddit.com].
Fixing that problem would require a distro to either consolidate around ONE desktop manager and design everything around it. Or build their own. The closest we've ever gotten on that front is something like the old Mandriva Control Center, which tried
[1] https://xkcd.com/927/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/r8a0y6/my_opinion_on_the_do_as_i_say_problem/
Re: Too bad Wayland ruined Linux (Score:3)
Not all distros, try Slackware, I like it enough that I dont bother with other distributions anymore
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since its a leap forward and away from long used X11, it does have problems, but it'll surely get better and hopefully better than X11 ever could.
Just like the switch to WebExtensions for Firefox: while it reduced the choice of extensions (and many can't still be ported), gone are the days of extensions breaking with each Firefox version, installing or updating an extension requiring restarting Firefox or even one tab crashing or freezing both all Firefox tabs and its interface.
Windows start menu (Score:1)
Windows 11 start menu was ad/spam ridden from day one.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't use it enough, but they had to overflow the ads into cortana didn't they?
Whenever someone says "curated" watch out! (Score:1)
"These apps come from a small set of curated developers." In other words, developers who are willing to pay for the ad space.
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Exactfuckinly!
Is it really that oft used? (Score:2)
It's pretty rare I open the start menu for anything.
"Users' colons must now stay internet-connected." (Score:3)
I'm convinced that for the past couple decades Microsoft has been secretly run by someone who made a bad deal with a genie, ended up cursed, and is purposely trying to tank the company to get out of it. But nothing they're trying is working as it should, and they sweat as they look at the marketing research.
"Come on! Come ON! They're buying Vista? VISTA?! My God, what else can I even DO?"
Just an other reason to use Linux (Score:3)
Microsoft wants your money!! they will create incompatibilities(DrDOS), lie (Fear Uncertainty Doubt, FUD), and charge for security.
Come on, how hard can they insist you never it? (Score:3)
I've been saying for years, to paraphrase: “Windows 11 is an ad delivery service, given away as shareware.”, this new Microsoft BS, takes that statement and doubles down on it. Windows 11, or Windows in general, is meant to be an Operating System, which means after installing it, I should only have enough tools and applications to get going. Anything else is my responsibility, including making sure I have the licenses I need to use the products.
Go and grab a professional Operating System like Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Solaris, FreeBSD, or several others and install them, what do you notice? What you'll notice is that bloat, and the crap, are gone. When I open the application's selector in Gnome 46 on Fedora 40, what don't I see? I don't see Ads, I don't see links to download applications with privacy abuse records that make North Korea smile, I just don't see garbage. I might see LibreOffice installed, I'll see some default applications that range from good to “why, I guess.”, but I don't see useless, pointless, nonsense crap.
To paraphrase another quote I say often: “Windows is for people who pretend to do work, Linux / Unix are for people who have to get work done.” Microsoft keeps position Windows as the OS for laughs and to be discredited, and it's discredited, it's one step away from door knocking to explain it's a child predator (and it is a predator of children).
The Price to Turn off Ads (Score:2)
Any bets on how much MS will charge to turn ads off? $50 a year? $200 a year? Will it be a tiered system in which you pay more and more money to have MS analyze less and less of your data?
Re: (Score:1)
> Any bets on how much MS will charge to turn ads off? $50 a year? $200 a year? Will it be a tiered system in which you pay more and more money to have MS analyze less and less of your data?
You didn't read the whole summary. It was one fucking paragraph and you couldn't even manage that.
Re: The Price to Turn off Ads (Score:2)
Maybe not now, but eventually.
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Whatever. TFS, the summary , tells you how to turn it off. Nobody with an ounce of intelligence lives with ads in Windows 11.
Excepting maybe the start page on the Settings app. That has ads for OneDrive, Office365, and Copilot. Know what I do with those? I ignore them and get my shit done. Hell, I have to scroll the page to see Office365 and Copilot. And the OneDrive ad just tells you your cloud storage isn't working.
Does everyone have ADHD or something? Do you have tardive dyskinesia and suddenly jerk the m
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i do appreciate linux users who are perfectly fine with hours of text configs and bash prompts to get their system "just right" could not be assed to find and toggle one setting
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If the setting I toggled maintained the state I set it to, then I would have been far less inclined to switch to Linux. But at the time I migrated to Linux, Windows settings that I explicitly changed had a way of consistently finding themselves back to a state that Microsoft seemed to prefer. It happened often enough that I no longer felt like I was in control of my computer, so I switched to an alternative that respected my wishes. Maybe MS doesn't do that as much these days, I wouldn't know, but at thi
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Presumably it would the average price they would make from you if you didn't turn it off. That's logical, so therefore, probably not really a good guess either.
HOWEVER, we're seeing this in the EU right now with Facebook. Fwict, Facebook, because of new EU regs, is offering people this deal: pay 250EUR or you get advertisments. Again, my assumption is that 250EUR is approx break even point for FB advertising...
I don't use FB and don't even like them, but to be fair there are expenses to providing services.
Well, at least (Score:2)
"switch the "Show recommendations for tips, app promotions and more" toggle to "off."" - well, at last until M$ turns it back on whenever they feel the need to do so, or worse yet, removes the option. Switch to a different OS people, it's the only option that can't be manipulated by M$.
IT guy from years back (Score:1)
IT guy I worked with years ago was more right than we knew at the time. He always said, "Windows is a virus". M$ certainly seems to doing their level best to make good on that sentiment.
What is this ignorant bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
No Windows 11 does not "now" come with adware. That feature is old. It predates Windows 11 itself. Even Windows 10 was putting recommended apps (ads) in the start menu. And the toggle to turn it off and on dates from Windows 10 and was brought over in Windows 11.
I can't wait for the writer to go outside when it's raining and declare "after 40 years in journalism I just discovered water makes things wet!"
New theory (Score:2)
They want people to leave windows, and they're desperate for people leaving windows. This is why they're doing everything in their power to make windows as terrible as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
No, MS just believes they have the market so cornered and their customers are so complacent that they can inflict anything onto them and they won't lose any significant marketshare. And based on many statistics, they seem to be mostly correct.
I Wonder How Much These Ads Cost (Score:2)
I'd love to see Ubuntu take out an ad that states something like "Hate Ads Like This Infecting Your Computing Experience? Ubuntu Has No Ads and Fewer Distractions!"
Adventure (Score:2)
I first read the headline as "Windows 11 Now Comes With Its Own Adventure ".
And I thought "oh, a Windows-native version of [1]Adventure [wikipedia.org] would be neat to try out." Then my brain caught up with my eyes and was disappointed. I'd much rather have Adventure than Adware.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adventure_(1980_video_game)&oldid=1219427261
We blighters in the trenches at home ... (Score:2)
... look for the "disable" solution and move on. The article tells us how to shitcan this feature. That's what we did with copilot and all the other bullshit since Windows became viable back when Moby Dick was a minnow.
How disgusting (Score:2)
But in line with their overall product quality and respect for their users.
Not again! Security hole just waiting... (Score:2)
I was pushed an update to W11 on my work laptop some weeks ago. Due to the industry I'm in, our security and lockdown policies are actually reasonable, despite really tight. Use a USB stick? Disabled. Local admin? Forget about it. Ransomwareattack? We consider ourself a target, so we have the procedures to handle it the day it happens. But with W11, it suddenly comes with an endless list of sponsored links to God-knows-what in that extra menu, just waiting for a vulnerability to pop up. The typical MS "we
The same ads as Windows 10 (Score:2)
This is not new. Just disable the recommendations and move on, just like with 10
Re: (Score:2)
Isn’t Enterprise Windows a subscription model with a minimum number of seats ? That's a hard no if it is.
They're telling you to pirate it (Score:2)
Yes, it's a site license model where you pay per seat with a rather large minimum number of seats. But the commenter you're replying to is telling you to install it and activate it using illegitimate servers. They're advising people to replace their (presumably OEM-licensed) copy of Windows Home with a pirated installation of Windows Enterprise.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is undoubtfully a true crime against humanity. Oh, the ruthlessness, the cruelty! There's poor Microsoft carefully improving peoples' computers with advertising, "telemetry" and unwanted crapware to save their developers' children from poverty and starvation but these ungrates have nothing better to do than changing from one paid license to another. What would Jesus say?!