When is an ad an advertisement and not a recommendation? Microsoft clearly likes to use the term recommendation for what others may see as an advertisement.
There are recommendations in the Start menu, Settings app, Lock screen, File Explorer, Get Help app, and other areas of the operating system already. These are often not that useful. App recommendations in the Start menu are limited to Microsoft Store apps.
Now, Microsoft is testing recommendations in the Microsoft Store app. If you never use the app, you won’t be exposed to these. If you do, you may notice recommendations popping up when you try to use the built-in search.
First spotted by phantomofearth on X, two or three recommendations are shown whenever search is activated in the official Microsoft Store app.
People need to stop complaining about the ads and they need to start complaining about the existence of a Windows monetization team.
Kill that team now while the revenue is small and the shareholders won’t throw a giant hissy fit.
As long as that team exists, they’re going to be putting ads in shit. Cut the head off the snake.
Are we speaking metaphorically or literally? sharpens blades
Yes
Ad injection will continue till public morale improves
Microsoft put themselves in this position when they started giving out Windows 10 for free. It was effective in bringing most of the market onto the new version, but it set an expectation which it now feels like they can’t break, so they’re also giving Windows 11 away. Now to offset that missing revenue, they have to do something to extract value from users.
I don’t see how they could stop this without replacing it with something more exploitive.
I’d be happy to buy the OS too, but I want it to be a one-time payment and to quit with ads and all telemetry.
That’s so old fashioned grandpa. Just give them a straw and let them sip out of your bank account like everyone else. You sound like the kind of person that lives in a house with a yard.
Seriously though, subscription models seem here to stay and they’ve just made for an incredibly adversarial relationship between industry and consumer.
I hate the rent-seeking economy.
There is nothing free in this life…
Linux is free.
Monetarily yes, but not free of time, in fact time it’s the most precious resource we have.
A one-off time ‘investment’ of switching to Linux will save you from all future cases of searching for how to wrestle with the latest Windows crapware. If you switch, you’ll be in time-debt for a few months, and after that you’ll be ahead - and you’ll stay ahead indefinitely. You’ll also have the piece of mind that you are not being spied on and monetised by your OS.
Personally I use Linux, and TBH as I value my free time it’s why I say it, if you need something that just works and don’t want to mess around looking for fixing trivial errors on the internet I would suggest using windows to 95% of people, I hate windows but I must admit if it’s about stability at exchange of looking ads with not tech ability definitely it’s the most recommended.
Linux it’s amazing but it’s not for everyone.
I think this overstates the “you must futz with it” of both Android and the common Linux desktop. Broadly speaking, both are pretty much fine out of the box for most people and the stuff they are likely to want to do to Windows is similarly easy to do with a likely default desktop environment (I’d say KDE more likely than Gnome, since Gnome opts to try not let you do a lot of stuff and demands you have to do “weird stuff” for some customizations). You don’t have to play with “expert tiling-only window manager N” or go off the deep end tweaking to the Nth degree.
Same with Android, though with even less likelihood of anyone bothering to go “off script”. 99% of Android users never touch adb, never do an oem unlock, never boot an aftermarket OS load.
The fact that you can, does not imply you must.
Your argument sounds OK, but is probably stuck a bunch of years in the past. I observe the opposite lately.
Like I want to do something trivial on windows, like move the fucking taskbar on the left side of the screen, I have spent time searching and it still does not work. At lest on Linux if something does not work you have a leg to work on and a community to help. Have you seen the windows forums when encountering an issue? It’s tragic.
Microsoft is the only company that charges for an operating system so frankly I don’t understand why they feel entitled to that income anyway
It’s effectively bundled with Apple hardware (which also dramatically lowers their development costs; they don’t support anything they don’t ship and are perfectly willing to abandon hardware once it no longer supports the level of hardware features they feel the new OS version needs). I’m not sure it’s that different.
Android is free (maybe? Do phone manufacturers pay for Google play branding?), but they make their money by having the lions share of software going through their storefront. Microsoft is never going to do that with Windows.
Back in the 90s Apple charge for OS upgrades. I saved my allowance money to get OS 8 and was super happy when I got OS X 10.2 for Christmas. Once they could reliably deliver upgrades over the Internet they stopped charging for it.
You could say that about any product or service. “They don’t charge for a steering wheel on your car it’s bundled in.” But that’s not a useful or meaningful distinction.
The issue here is windows famously charged until very recently (and still sort of does) which distinguishes it from those that don’t charge.
But Windows is the product. Hardware is a small part of their revenue, and most of their install base is hardware that isn’t theirs.
MacOS is also part of Apple’s product, but they pretty much only sell higher margin premium hardware that both pays for and streamlines the OS development process.
Windows OS is not the product.
I’ve recently made the switch over to LinuxMint and I was shocked. Installing a popular Linux Distro is EASIER than installing Windows 10/11 at this point. Seriously. The Linux installer is super noob friendly, very quick and straight to the point, it doesn’t need you to create an online account and you don’t need be wary of accidentally giving any corporation the rights to steal your data.
And all the software I use (Steam, Discord, Spotify, Firefox, Thunderbird, …) were all downloadable from the GUI Installer and worked right away OUT OF THE BOX. No fiddling in any Terminal was required.
Seriously, it’s easier than installing Windows at this point.
As someone that has tried nearly every Linux desktop flavor\distro, Mint is GREAT for the novice. Or a pro even.
The issue is that you have to install it. Most users don’t have a clue how to install windows either, but it came with their PC.
Installing Linux has never been particularly difficult, not in the last 15 or even 20 years anyway. I’ve always found it easier and more straightforward than the contemporary Windows installation process.
The challenging part is wrapping your head around the Linux/Unix way of doing things when things can’t be done through the GUI with just a few clicks.
I think about this sometimes. What stuff can’t you do in a Linux GUI that an average person would be able to do in Windows? For the sake the simplicity, lets limit the GUI to Cinnamon, Plasma, or Gnome.
Obviously, there are obscure GUIs out there, but in the main ones, I think just about everything can be done without CLI.
I’d amend that to say I wouldn’t count “regedit” or group policy muck to be “easy” by virtue of having “a gui”. Those are areas where technically there’s GUI that might be CLI-only under Linux, but hardly friendly enough to make a difference.
I know the filesystem is simple to Linux users, but the semantic form of physical drives getting a letter always made more sense to me.
I have three drives in my computer. So they’re labeled C:, D:, and E:. You can’t place a file on “The Computer” - it’s stored on some particular drive. If I install a game on the E drive, and then later somehow remove that drive and bring it somewhere else, that game remains on that drive, even if it’s no longer E.
On Linux, as best I understand it, if I have three drives, two of them are at /dev/hdd0 and hdd1. But they’re not actually there, they’re accessed at /media/hdd0 after mounting them (or at least, that’s the convention, and if it’s someone else’s computer, good luck). Then you either begin every game installation path with that annoying prefix, or you start configuring a dozen symlinks. If you place an item in /home/documents/notporn, then who knows which drive it’s on because you don’t know what symlinks someone set up to make that folder.
Windows does have symlinks too now, which has been nice for hacking a few installation directories, but I appreciate that it’s an exception, and everything else follows relatively logical division of space, rather than this hybrid system where the filesystem isn’t just stored files but also devices, programming concepts, and more.
I know the filesystem is simple to Linux users, but the semantic form of physical drives getting a letter always made more sense to me.
That’s one of the things that semi-experienced Windows users need to wrap their head around, but I strongly disagree that drive letters are somehow inferior to a hierarchical file system structure. I mean, the A:, B:, C: … convention was originally just intended for the first IBM PC with 1 or 2 floppy drives. It was never intended to support complex storage configurations, whereas the hierarchical file system was designed for Unix systems that had to handle multiple magnetic drives from the start. It is a much more flexible system to organize your file storage.
On Linux, as best I understand it, if I have three drives, two of them are at /dev/hdd0 and hdd1. But they’re not actually there.
That’s because there is a difference between a block device and a mounted file system. Windows just obscures that difference from you with its archaic drive mapping system.
All your block devices and partitions on your block devices will be in
/devwith a meaningful name. You can list them with thelsblkcommand. If a partition contains a file system that Linux knows how to use, you can mount it anywhere you like.they’re accessed at /media/hdd0 after mounting them
No that’s not “convention” at all. Some desktop environments may decide to mount undefined drives there, but there really is no convention, ultimately you mount it where you want it to be mounted.
If you place an item in /home/documents/notporn, then who knows which drive it’s on because you don’t know what symlinks someone set up to make that folder.
If your unsure,
df /home/documents/notpornshould tell you exactly what drive it’s on, but ultimately it’s up to you to know how you’ve organized your storage.BTW I’ve said this before, but Linux is probably harder for users who know Windows just well enough to be dangerous than it is for relative beginners, because there are so many concepts and things they take for granted that they have to unlearn.
As an interesting fact, windows totally supports mounting positions to folders and as far as I recall it’s been able to for a very long time, remember doing it as a teenager and thinking it was cool AF.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/assign-a-mount-point-folder-path-to-a-drive And https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/orphan-topics/ws.10/cc772671(v=ws.10)
Yeah, I believe that was introduced as far back as Windows 2000. It never really caught on though.
While it might be suitable for server environments with 400+drives, all home setups will have fewer volumes than there are alphabet letters, so it’s a suitable setup there.
Someone else identified how you can run an extra command to identify actual location of a file, and while that’s useful, it’s an extra step that’s unnecessary when the design of the location string itself also identifies that. Unless you can tell me which drive /home/supra-app/preconfiguration/media is on - without running something different. (Vs windows: C:/Users/Someone/AppData/supra-app/preconfiguration/media) That’s what the design of WWW URLs was for - you never have to ask which domain a website is on, and it can even inform you about whether a site is trustworthy.
I don’t think you’re helping your case by showing there’s no drive location convention at all. A friend plugs a USB device in your computer while you’re busy in the kitchen. He’s fine if he just uses a UI autopopup, but if he needs the full path, he has to ask you where you’ve set up auto-mounting, if you have at all.
The thing is, you are absolutely free to use a
/c,/d,/emounting scheme, but you are not shackled to it like you are in Windows. Personally I like to organize my data in one big root (/) file system on my NVME drive and then/datafor my bulk storage on HDD and/nasfor my NAS shares. I never have any problems knowing where my data is.BTW, I notice all your complaints revolve around “OMG it’s different” and “OMG the user can choose to do things differently… so complicated”. That is kind of the point of Linux you know?
At some point you just have to accept that it’s different and move on, or decide that it’s too complicated for you and use something else.
BTW, I wonder why people never make this complaint about Apple devices? It also has a hierarchical file structure without drive letters, after all it is also a Unix variant.
So anyway, welcome to computing 101, first you’re going to create a new folder for your stuff. So let’s do this, grab the mouse, and;
Right click->watch ad->New Folder
Mr Bob! The mouse bit me and now I can’t stop the commercials!
I have used Windows 10 for years and recently switched to Windows 11 and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad in my day to day OS use. I don’t do the registry edits or turn off the telemetry stuff, either. I don’t know what I’m doing differently but I’m not seeing these ads that apparently infected Windows.
The home edition of windows has these ads baked in, but the pro/enterprise editions seem to be able to avoid this for now.
I have home.
This is not gonna stop until the consumer puts their money where there mouths are and stops using Windows until Microsoft back peddles. Money is all a company understands so that is where you need to hit them if you want them to listen. But as a group the consumer has a very weak constitution when it comes to having to do something that is good for them in the long term but causes them short term inconvenience. A lot of parallels to the modern corporate world in that.
Could it be that consumers are putting money where there mouths are and this is just Microsoft desperately trying to increase their margins since their business isn’t growing anymore?
I mean the more people move away, the more likely it is Microsoft would milk the ones who can’t.
Wait till they’ll start rolling video advertisements each time you open File Explorer to “fund the development”
I’m so done with companies claiming my house for their ads.
It’s my house i decide what makes it in as i pay the rent and i bought these devices, so fuck off.
The last Windows 10 update automatically installed copilot without asking. Immediately deleted that shit
I’m so happy that I will never have to deal with this on my home computers. At work we can at least disable it all via policies. But my god has Microsoft lost its way. What happened to making professional business products?
Recommendations is just an euphemism marketing joke. Every serious journalist would call them what they are, ads.
I’d be curious at the percentage of windows users actually using the store app.
As for the context of these ads, the store would kind of make more sense than within your settings landing page, start menu, search dialog, browser nagware, solitaire app etc.
I already run Linux on my laptop. The one thing keeping me from getting rid of Windows on my big machine is Forza games. Motorsport does not seem to work at all with proton/wine
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Install any popular Linux distro. They are all so much better than any proprietary OS. And if you are running relatively common hardware, everything will just work.
Not any. Better avoid Ubuntu. They have advertisements too.
Any recommendation I didn’t ask for is an ad, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
I’m surprised they didn’t put ads in the blank area of the taskbar.
