AAAA

Windows is slowly transitioning from a paid and solid OS to freemuim spyware bloated dumb OS.
- Slowly? This crap has been going on for years.
  
  Isn't a process happening gradually over years "slowly"?
  
  Would that not be slowly? What would you call slowly in this context?
  
  Decades.
  
  I don’t recall such issues with Win98 or XP

Even though Windows is very user-friendly. I think Windows 11 might be my last. The amount of anti-privacy that’s implemented and what I have to do just so it doesn’t constantly phone back home is kind of ridiculous.
Off to pick my flavor of Linux.
- I find it strange that people call it user-friendly, despite it doing a lot of things hostile to the user.
  
  Just more in the neighborhood of being used or understanding something because it has been given to them from a very young age on. So getting familiar and used to it very young age on makes it "friendly" even though it is more "familiarity".
  Linux is always going to be really awkward at first but over the course of time you learn and shy away and develop your own kinda workflow and that's the beauty of it in my opinion.
  
  Because user-friendly means that even a tech-noob can easily set it up and use it right away without much researching.
  If an OS requires ANY AMOUNT of command line, you have lost about half the population.
  If an OS asks any remotely difficult question with techno lingo, you have lost an other quarter.
  If an OS doesn't work out of the box the way it should (like all their hardware functioning including audio), you have lost all the other not technology inclined people.
  Windows is setup that it requires none of that. It may do something that you find horrific, but most people do not care as long as it works.
- newbie or somewhat experienced user?
  
  I would say I know the basics of Linux due to owning a Pi and messing around with it time-to-time but no where near experienced.
- If only the Xbox controller wouldn't randomly disconnect on Linux. No, i bought it because i read it works well here.
  
  This is my biggest downfall with Linux, lack of integration with gaming but I’ll learn to leave without it, I guess.

Sir, do you have a minute to talk about Linux? 👉👈
- Literally op is Satan so...
- Wat

"YOU KNOW WHY I CLICK LATER? BECAUSE THERE'S NO OPTION TO CLICK NEVER! I'D LIKE TO CLICK NEVER! I NEVER WANT TO DOWNLOAD THESE STUPID BULLSHIT FUCKING UPDATES EVER AGAIN!"
- Then click that you aren't interested.
  That setting may not scream in your face, but it is far from hidden.
  https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/137645-turn-off-get-even-more-out-windows-suggestions-windows-10-a.html

I have a feeling people here like Linux...
- on lemmy are you shure ?
  
  I use a Mac!
- I have Arch btw
- New convert here, it's mostly dope. Edit: here as in on linux
- I was actually going to put it on an older laptop the other week, but Ubuntu wouldn't run on it.
  This was after spending an hour trying to get into the BIOS, only to find that the keyboard doesn't actually work before the Windows splash screen comes up... I mean who the fuck designs it like that?
  Also the drive bay doesn't fit the SSD properly, so it just boot loops if you use the little caddy. Refuses to even Post.
  Now I hate computers again.
  
  What laptop was it so the rest of us can avoid this tomfoolery in the future?
  
  Hold shift when you click restart in windows, you can access the firmware through windows recovery.
  
  This was after spending an hour trying to get into the BIOS, only to find that the keyboard doesn’t actually work before the Windows splash screen comes up… I mean who the fuck designs it like that?
  Does your laptop have multiple usb ports? And did you try them all?
  I had this issue even on my PC until I tried a bunch of different USB ports and found one that worked.
   
  Uhh I just realized that since it's a laptop the keyboard is part of the laptop... Well I'll still leave this in case it helps anyone
- We don't have a choice.
  Please do not let Linux find out I said this, I have kids.

proton is pretty much there, thinking to jump ship to linux - already use it in all my work for decades
- 2024 the year of Linux. As long as we can avoid the toxic “don’t use Mint, use Arch instead users”.
  
  Also the memey "xxxx the year of Linux". Because that's been going on for 40+ years now. 😅 You use it, or you don't. Your OS is a tool, not a belief system.
  
  But you should be using Arch instead ot Mint.
  (I use Arch BTW)
  
  I mean, if you like knowing what your machine is doing, Arch is one of the best options.
  
  Honestly, I've been thinking about switching to Linux with my next system since about a month after I built my current system, over 4 years ago. That's how long it took for me to be sick of Microsoft's bullshit in Windows 10.
  That said, I'm not looking forward to figuring out how to get into Linux. It's probably easier than I think, but having done 0 research (as I don't need a new system yet), the impression I have is that there's a ton of stuff I'm going to have to figure out before getting started.
  
  Don't use Mint or Arch, use Void!
- shit dude, that's about the only place where I have to use windows 😂.

psst... I hear you're looking to ditch Microsoft. You might like what you see over at c/linux
- uuu, nice, smooth 😏 👍

This grinds my gears. Apple does the same: my work MBP nags me daily to enable iCloud backups but I have no way of doing it because Apple login is disabled by my administrator. Consequently, I cannot reach the settings page to tell Mac to fuck off.
- You can't ask IT to disable it for you?
  
  I should, you're right.

- Why buy a new system when you can just run Linux on the existing system
  
  Because the majority of people don't want to expend the time nor effort installing Linux.
  It already starts with choosing your distro ...
- The point is to transition to a subscription based OS. You subscribe, pay a monthly fee for services like Teams, Outlook, etc.
  The LTSC editions probably won't ship with that bullshit, so it's probably safe to say that they can still be usable even after completely transitioning to a subscription based OS.
  
  Bully for them, but I don't use Teams, Outlook, Office365, Onedrive, or Skype anyway. So the only way Microsoft is going to make a dime off of people like me is to charge a subscription for the base OS, which I ain't paying.
  
  [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
  
  Aren't LTSC a pain to get (legally) when you're not a corporation or something like that?

www.debian.org
- Is there a newbie way to install it? It looks pretty convoluted...
  
  The best way to install is to use a LIVE edition. This is useful beacuse you have a nice installer intergrated and you can try it before you have to install the OS on the computer.
  For download of this edition, see www.debian.org/CD/live
  From there, if you come from Windows, I would raccomend KDE, as it is stable and customizable. Search "KDE screenshot" to see what it looks like, and if you like it.
  If you want this, here the direct URL to download: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.2.0-amd64-kde.iso
  Debian should also be lite enough for older machines, and it is the most stable distro I've tried. With this OS, there are already web browser, media player, office suite,... but you can also download Steam, emulators and lots of software
  For help you can DM me.
  
  It's easier than installing Windows. The problem is that someone hasn't already done it for you.
  
  Check out ubuntu if you want something thats easy to install. It's very popular, it's based on Debian and it has corporate backing but no spyware
  
  get your perferred iso
  do a checksum if available (basecally check the signature of the original file with yours, the checksum often is available on the website)
  get beleana etcher or i think rufus can also do linux isos but i'n not shure
  get an usb stick with min 4gb
  flash iso onto usb stick
  stick usb stick into perferred pc
  boot onot that usb stick (for my motherboard it's F10 but that can be different for you)
  boot into the live iso and the installer should pop up
  read the instructions of the installer carefully
  you are done enjoy your new os
  although i would recommend playing around with different distros in a vm to see waht you like and if all your needed software is available
  
  It is Linux, so no

Only good thing about windows being so bad is that amazing feeling when I finish my homework in Solidworks (🤬) and boot back to my Linux desktop.
- Can't you just virtualize it?
  
  Virtualizing applications that use 3d graphics can be a pain
  
  My laptop barely runs windows unvirtualized and I don't have a PC :(

I see this is your first day with a Windows computer. Welcome.

If I had known it was possible to make a local account instead of having to use my outlook for my desktop, I totally would have gone that route a couple years ago. Only plus side I can think of for not doing it is that I have immediate access to my outlook.
- Outlook would store your credentials anyway.
  
  Only if you use it.
  
  I doubt I would have even logged into my outlook if I didn't set up my Microsoft account, so it helped me there at least.

I've always been a power user but never minded Windows until W11. Luckily WSL was a great gateway drug for me and I ended up switching to Linux full-time after living inside WSL for a few weeks.

Why don't you just turn those notifications off?
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/137645-turn-off-get-even-more-out-windows-suggestions-windows-10-a.html

Highly rexommed Mint Cinammon or Pop!_os
- Honestly I'd say OpenSUSE tumbleweed. Good distro, very up to date/bleeding edge, has YAST which can help newbies who are not familiar with terminal, has btrfs snapshots which saved my arse a couple of times. I don't wanna trigger Arch users, but I find it way more stable than Arch. It gives me almost 0 headaches. Sometimes when I get home I want my PC to just work and I don't want to spend my time troubleshooting it. It's not as customizable as Arch though. If you still find it a bit much for a starter distro, you won't go wrong with Pop_OS, it's a good distro imo, but atm it's too old. No clue when they're gonna release their next update with CosmicDE, but when they release it, it's probably gonna be in a beta state for a while.
- I suggest Kubuntu, great ui, solid base, niche problems can be googled away
- I suggest Manjaro. Arch made easy.
  
  Use EndeavourOS if you want easy Arch, Manjaro is kinda bad.
  But really if you want an easy system, go with Mint or Fedora. Arch isn't designed for ease nor first-timers.
  
  I have enjoyed manjaro. My sons first laptop ran manjaro with WINE for his gaming. It never gave him too many problems

Is there even a single benefit of this? I don't want anything to do with one drive.
- The benefits are:
  Data that can be analyzed and form basis of ad profile
  Can track you when you are on the move.
  Vendor lock-in as you may find that most features are tied to the microsoft account (onedrive, office, outlook)
  
  Hey, wait a minute...
- Syncing settings between devices
  Bought Windows Store Apps transfer
  Syncing Cortana related things
  And of course OneDrive, but you already said you don't care.
  Honestly, if you don't care about those, it is perfectly fine to just use Windows with a local account. But there definitely are benefits if you are looking for a more Apple-like "everything is connected" vibe.
  
  This is all accurate. However, there's one other thing, which is essentially SSO.
  Basically if you sign in with a Microsoft account, you can sign into your PC with your Microsoft account username and password, which can be easier to reset from another device than going through the password recovery process for Windows.
  Apart from that, your bitlocker keys are stored on your Microsoft account if you have that enabled on your main drive.
  As an aside: if you have bitlocker enabled on your PC, be sure to back up the recovery key. Print it off, or save it to a USB drive and email it to yourself (the system won't let you save it on the encrypted drive for obvious reasons), or something. Bitlocker isn't bad, I just feel like Microsoft doesn't do a very good job at making people aware of the pitfalls of it when things go sideways. Basically, if you need to pull the drive for any reason as part of a recovery operation, then you'll need the recovery key to decrypt the data and gain access to it for the purpose of recovery.
  Fair warning: anyone who purchased a prebuilt PC in the past 3-5 years should check on it (longer realistically), and make sure they have that recovery key. Most prebuilt PC companies (like HP/Lenovo/Dell) generally have bitlocker on by default and Windows does a wretched job of telling you any of this.
  Bitlocker isn't bad, it's full drive encryption. That's a good thing for the most part and you should use it, especially with mobile systems, but please make sure you have that recovery key. I work in IT support and it's starting to happen that drives fail, and the client doesn't have the recovery key, so I can't even try to recover the data for them. It used to be trivial, just load the drive into a working system and grab what you need, but with bitlocker, even if you get a corrupted file that's required for Windows to start, but the disk is otherwise fine, your data goes away and will not come back without that key.

I have a Win7 on my PC which I only use for gaming but Steam is telling me it'll stop working on Win7 in about 80 days or so. I installed Win7 on it for a reason but soon it'll be my first ever computer running Linux.
- This is the way
- I'm just curious... You are ok with not installing any security updates for months (or even years)?
  
  I guess so. I don't really think about that. As long as stuff works on my end I don't worry about updating it. I'd be happy if I could just install the security updates because updating the OS generally just breaks stuff and slows things down.

There's a tool for making bootable windows USB drives called Rufus that gives you options to remove things like requiring a Windows account, TPM requirement for Windows 11, secure boot, etc when you're cloning the iso to the USB drive.
- Oh wow! I’ve used Rufus a handful of times to make bootable windows USB drives and I never knew this
- Still bugging people about to connect an account

Windows 10 pushed me into finally jumping into Linux a few years ago. I've been happy ever since it feels good to change what you don't like about a system.
- which distro did you end up on? I started 2 weeks ago with Arch (bad first choice, but i learned a lot), moved to Ubuntu (seemed way too bloated and hard to customize), then PopOS (worse than Ubuntu), and now I'm moving from Manjaro back to Arch. I think that's where I'm gonna stay now that i know how to fix it up and use it.
  The only thing i miss from Windows is Adobe, everything else is so much better on Linux. I love how i can customize literally anything and everything, and if i need something specific i can just make it
  
  I personally landed on mint in its cinnamon flavor. It loosk great, is customizable l, click of a button to get nvidia card working and works just the way I want
  
  I started at Elementary OS which I just thought looked cool. Then I lived in Manjaro but had some issues. So I finally jumped to EndeavourOS, It has been smooth and a great experience. Yeah for me I have to use Windows for my Elgato Capture card which is annoying.
  
  I started 2 weeks ago with Arch (bad first choice, but i learned a lot), moved to Ubuntu (seemed way too bloated and hard to customize), then PopOS (worse than Ubuntu), and now I’m moving from Manjaro back to Arch.
  Sincerely, check out Fedora/KDE. It just works, and it's backed well.
  
  I'm not suavevillain, but I recently switched to PopOS after a love hate relationship with Windows. I would leave Windows, then come crawling back for one reason or another, this stint is the longest I've had staying away from it.
  I personally like PopOS. But for a less bloated environment and easy to spin up system, you could look at Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.com/).

I see loads of things on here about what Windows does that gets on people's nerves. Why don't I see any of it on my install? I get no ads, annoying pop-ups etc. afaik it's just win11 pro.
- It's pro, that's why.
  
  Hahahaha, if only pro was anything more than home with some added features. If you want the version without ads you need enterprise + a domain or intune.
  They probably just turned off suggested links, and tips.
- Did you do anything to your system? I have a Win10Pro, but the first step after installation is to disable a ton of stuff, uninstall and delete a ton of applications, etc. making a lot of that alien to me too.
- Consider yourself lucky
  
  Consider yourself *European with actual privacy rights ftfy

I've never seen a pop-up like this on Windows and I work in IT for a living. I don't do anything special with my personal OS install so idk what the difference is.
- It only happens on Windows Home versions, it does not happen on Pro versions which you are probably using.
  You can still just turn the notification off in the home version:
  https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/137645-turn-off-get-even-more-out-windows-suggestions-windows-10-a.html
- This appeared this week on our home Windows 10 machine as well for the one account that does not use a Microsoft account. It's a new behavior.

My windows 11 has the same notification but it pops up in the center of the screen on top of everything about every hour.
- I know this won't be popular, but I just upgraded my decades old, unused Hotmail account to outlook, signed in to Windows during install, and have never seen anything about logging in since I did so years ago...

I think you need to look a linjx distro for you

GNU/Linux

just create a "fuckyoaccount" over at protonmail and log in.
I was an early adherent to unique passwords for every login. Now I'm doing a unique email as well. Works a treat, and fucks up their marketing too which warms my heart.
- please dont abuse protonmail.
  abuse mailfence
  
  Just make a throwaway outlook account to cost them server cost and sign it up for every spam you can find.

anyone want bet when this is going to end? i cant remember any release after xp that not had users cry about shit M$ did. winME...epic...so many sad customers. and while win7 kinda worked ok like a cheap toy you bought it was a telemetry desaster ...oh, and with IE and M$paint that were already shit in winXP. so my questions is: how many generations does it take until ppl stop falling for their crap? i once read animals need like 3 errors to change behavious in a test with electric shocks on two of three exits of a cage. three. that should have stopped most animals to use windows after 98, xp and 7. so if you use win8 or win10 or later....i better stop here

Use O&O shutup
- Nah. Breaks many important system parts. It just makes it bugged and unstable.
  
  May be you dont know how to use it? I've used it, my friends use it and we never had any issue
  
  Not a single problem with o&o shut up for me. What exactly becomes bugged & unstable?

Unrelated but what is that start menu?? Mine looks absolutely nothing like that

Maybe in the next 30 years ReactOS will reach a windows 10 level, hopefully sooner.
- I'm not sure its development team will live that long
- Nah, ReactOS is a waste of time and effort. It's like constantly trying to guess what the other person is holding in his hand by doing questionares with the guy... you're bound to lose if he's always 10 steps ahead of you.
  On the other hand, Wine, thanks to Proton, is doing quite well.
  
  Proton works great for gaming because the narrow set of gaming-related API allows Valve and CodeWeaver to focus their effort to make sure most games run well. Windows has a lot more API though and a good percentage of them is still doesn't work that well in wine, which means many apps still have issues or outright unusable in wine. For example, I think iTunes for Windows still doesn't work in wine.

Use tiny10.

Tell it to suck your dick

Starting to like these posts. They help me block the linux bros to clean up my feed
- You might as well block all the FOSS bros. Just stop using FOSS.
  (FYI Lemmy is FOSS. The fact that people trying to get away from corporate greed also want to get away from other corporate greed seems like the expectation, not the exception.)
  
  You can hate one FOSS implementation without hating the concept.
  Honestly, the worst thing about Linux is the community of entitled elitists snobs that whine about anything that isn't Linux.
  At one point I was tempted to install a distro on my home machine to expand my technological knowledge. But if it turns me into one of those fuckers, then I rather keep my social life. Doesn't matter if Linux is a divinely perfect OS or not.