I find this mildly infuriating, I only use Windows for work, I even personally purchased Windows 11. Local account and disabled as much as I could. I personally do not like Windows or Windows in general.
Well, now I do an update and they throw this up like I need to walk thru these steps (again). Not even a "Skip"/"Don't remind me again". Windows is not what it used to be and after disabling half the Microsoft stuff I'd expect not to be bothered again. It's really a built in ad more then anything.
2023-08 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5029351)
That's a good recommendation, I actually did run a windows debloater/spyware before. This just happened to be snuck in with an update I guess? I should probably do it again at this point.
I wouldn't use Windows if I didn't have too...I do run Tails and Ubuntu as well but unfortunately 40hrs+ a week on Windows...it sucks.
Question: if you already don't like Windows, I assume you don't care about the new features that come with new updates. So I wonder - why do you update at all? Set everything up as you want it, remove all the hot garbage as you see fit, and disable updates.
Skipping software updates is not a good idea, let alone OS updates. Inbetween all the terribly annoying bullshit they insist on foisting off on people, they do provide security patches and so on.
my frustration is that there are ads in the first place
Fair enough, a very good point.
Personally I've been using customized / debloated versions of windows for a couple years now and have not looked back. Every time I spin up a stock Windows VM I'm shocked how atrocious the experience is. Though I understand that a Windows ISO modified by an unknown third party can be scary to some.
There's been a pretty recent development in the Windows Customization community which released a new toolkit, essentially allowing you to write YAML-based scripts with custom instructions how to modify a live windows installation, which makes the process completely open-source and transparent. I can link some of the projects pages if youre interested to learn more.
Give them a break. They just moved from Windows, you just need to relearn to breath after that. Moving to another distro is a small step in comparison.
Not new to Linux, it's literally what I've been dealing with for work for the last decade. I just meant that I moved the last of my personal machines away from Windows.
I have run into zero issues installing packages from other places. The snap store is a bit annoying but not a big deal. I've been on and off using Ubuntu since ~2005 so that's why I went with it over another distro.
Speaking from experience here. I've done this on over a dozen different computers with zero issues over a three month span. It was part of a proposal for transitioning our company computers to Windows 11 while cutting out the junk. None of them had any problems running without Xbox services, Cortana, bloatware games, activity tracking, etc.
We ended up using Microsoft Intune for restricting Windows 10/11 to our standards. But that's not really available for consumers and debloaters are safe to use instead.