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.
As soon as they announced ads were gonna be in the start menu, i noped out of windows. I only use it for work which doesn’t bother me because im not doing anything private on my work pc.
I switched to Fedora 40 with KDE and never looked back. My only real gripe is with making music. Getting the VSTs to work and setting up yabridge is kind of a headache that i still need to do 😮💨 aside from that, Linux has been my daily driver for quite a while now and im happy i switched even though im still learning.
I have not dove into yabridge yet. What DAW did you go with?
After poking around I decided to go with Bitwig and skip trying to go with getting Ableton working with Proton or Wine. I’ve actually been enjoying some of their default VSTs as I practice my piano again, but I do miss my paid VSTs a lot.
Have been really looking around at the vsts that have native Linux support though. Was really glad to see of u-he’s VSTs worked natively.
I’m a huge fan of reaper. Nice clean daw for a good price imo. It being cross platform was a bonus. I started making music on Windows and the best part of switching to Linux was that reaper just works after figuring out how the hell to install it lol. Some Linux stuff im ok at but im still figuring things out.
And same here. I’m a self pianist like my grandfather was. I really like addictive keys for playing piano and was happy to see the standalone version works with bottles. But without yabridge setup, i haven’t been able to make much recently.
Ive been looking to find a replacement for addictive keys thats native to Linux or works well at least.
I will have to take a look at Reaper!
Its $60 for a personal/small bussines use and a great daw. Would recommend. But whatever daw works best for you is great too :)
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I kind of expect ads in an app store, but I also don’t use the ms app store.
The last Windows 10 update automatically installed copilot without asking. Immediately deleted that shit
Thank you for letting me know. I will too.
A friend said it didn’t for him, but for me it was in slot 1 of the taskbar
It’s not on mine yet.
So some a/b testing maybe
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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.
And it doesn’t work with half the programs I use on a daily basis.
There’s ways to make A LOT of things compatible these days, or you could run a VM for your Windows apps.
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.
Regedit is about 10,000 times more complicated than Windows users think the Linux terminal is
Amen, I consider myself pretty savvy with Windows under the hood. Most of the time when my users see me ripping around in the registry to fix something they think I’m some crazy skilled hacker\programmer lol. It’s funny.
Until you have problems with hardware or something, generally I’d agree.
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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.
So just to help a little bit without getting too technical…
df -his your friend to find out which physical drive or partition relates to which directory (called the “mount point”)If you want, you can set up each drive/partition to be mounted a bit Windows-esque.
For example:
- Drive 1, partition 1 will almost certainly be root
/ - But drive 1, partition 2 can be mounted to:
/mnt/d/ - And then drive 1, partition 3 can be mounted to:
/mnt/e/
And so on.
You’ll need to look up
fstabto understand how to do that.I understand it’s tricky to get your head around initially as I felt exactly the same coming from Windows to Linux.
Once you get your head around partitions being able to be mounted anywhere, it actually becomes really handy
- Drive 1, partition 1 will almost certainly be root
I have three drives in my computer. So they’re labeled C:, D:, and E:
That’s the default configuration but there’s actually no guarantee that those drives map bijectively to physical devices.
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.
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.
The dog whistle of “maybe it’s not for you” is pointless, since all we’re doing here is talking about preferences and opinions of design. Whether something is “complicated” or “poor design” is very subjective across many fields. It’s easy to laugh at someone pushing at a “Pull” door, but less so if there’s a pushbar there and they don’t speak English.
I could easily be facetious and suggest “Maybe Windows is just too complicated for you” but that’s similarly needlessly talking down to people’s intelligence. The topic only came up because it’s frustrating there’s no operating system out there that:
- Has wide support
- Doesn’t nag you with AI features
- Designs its filesystem paths in a way that is consistent, informative, and readable between devices, regardless of user preference or configuration.
For now, issues like the last one are what keep me on Windows, and I’m not even claiming they’re easy to solve.
Well keep dreaming then. If that is what keeping you on Windows, you will never leave Windows. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to create a new OS with drive letters.
/thread
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.
I think I did it back in xp, I was trying to figure out when support was added.
I don’t think it’s super advertised that it’s a capability which definitely doesn’t help its usage, heck I kinda forgot about it even though I used it until your comment triggered a memory.
I just booted up a Windows 2000 VM to check … it’s there in the disk management tool. It looks a bit weird with the drive icon in Explorer, but ok.
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.
You can buy linux desktops these days too.
Right but most people have no clue, they’ll go to their local store which I guarantee you doesn’t have Linux computers. Online buyers will go on amazon and buy from “known and reputable” brands like Asus, Dell and such. Don’t get me wrong, I love linux and have been using it as my main OS for nearly a decade but to say it’s easy to get/install for your average user is just wrong. Everyone always overestimates what the average user is actually like. Your average user doesn’t even know what an OS or Linux even is.
As someone that has tried nearly every Linux desktop flavor\distro, Mint is GREAT for the novice. Or a pro even.
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!
Sounds like they’re reaching feature parity with Apple and Google. Both already do that so I’m not surprised. I never use Microsoft’s App Store so I’ll never see them.
Apple?
What about Apple? Sorry, I don’t understand what you’re asking.
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.
Isn’t something like half of Windows purchases from businesses though?
And I feel like the younger crowd isn’t even buying PCs. Just tablets and phones.
So, nothing will change, because businesses don’t care if Jerry from accounting has to look at a bud light advertisement as a recovering alcoholic.
And PCs might fade away like typewritters did.
But don’t worry. Printers will still exist wirelessly. They’ll still have a finicky driver that breaks if you even look at the printer, and it’ll still use ink that costs as much as a mortgage on a subscription model.
Because fuck trees!
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.
Especially considering the news on poor adoption rates for windows 11, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case. It could also be an explanation as to why we are only seeing these ads added to w11 right now.
Any recommendation I didn’t ask for is an ad, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
I recommend you to try turning it off and on again.
Windows really is the worst OS. You pay 150$ for the license when you buy a laptop with it pre-installed and then on top of that, they spy on you and also show you ads.
Linux is free, does not spy on you and does not show any ads.
Is Microsoft so in debt that they need to sell ad space in every pixal of their products? What is going on.
The rate of profit is declining and the managers are looking for anything and everything to prop it back up. A German guy wrote about this like 150 years ago.
Dumb businesses majors who only know “growth”
the 2nd most valuable company in the world? Hardly.
No they’re just switching business models, from paying for an OS outright to OS as a service
In that case you don’t pay for windows anymore, right? Right???
It’s not enough for a company to have a lot of money, they have to have all the money.
Remember: under capitalism companies are legally obligated to pursue every last dollar they can possibly get, regardless of the damage it will do to the product, company, customer, or bystanders.
Remember: under capitalism companies are legally obligated to pursue every last dollar they can possibly get, regardless of the damage it will do to the product, company, customer, or bystanders
This is not true. Please stop repeating this lie which has become the excuse for companies to be even more evil
Debt? This is capitalism, baby. Where every year’s profits have to be bigger than last year’s or else it counts as you failing, no matter how enormous the profits were last year.
The hell? This leads only to inflation.
That’s the CEO’s next paycheck
Human sacrifices please the line. 💹
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 (yet)
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I’m surprised they didn’t put ads in the blank area of the taskbar.
Or on the entire desktop. Ad wallpapers when?
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.
