Microsoft wants to hide the 'Sign out' button in Windows 11 behind a Microsoft 365 ad
2 years ago by Frellwit to c/technology
Ding ding ding!
Like how Adobe puts minimal effort into protecting from cracks for their software.
They'd much rather have little Jimmy and a million others pirate PS at home and get used to the workflow, so that businesses pay out big recurring fees for Adobe's tools, which they will if that's what everybody knows how to use.
Piracy is their weapon. If not for piracy, ex-USSR countries wouldn't transition to Windows till around 2009, and I'd expect that in such an alternative reality they wouldn't then too.
Piracy is the solution when what you think you're buying is not what you're getting and the company that you're buying changes the product without your consent.
With me it was when they killed off my favorite browser. I'm now using the reanimated bushy red corpse of it.
Netscape?
MS has done shady things but Netscape's own top employees have written about how Netscape destroyed itself with the version 4 rewrite. Joel Spolsky has also written about how complete rewrites are always a mistake.
Their corporate side failed too. If you weren't fortune 500, Netscape wouldn't talk to you. I was spending $50k a year with Netscape and they wouldn't fix a bug unless I paid for an additional $75k a year support tier. ( The bug was Netscape 4 didn't support dialing with area codes! )
Meanwhile during the late 90's Microsoft devs put their personal emails in the readme.txts and would quickly patch any bugs or add features if you emailed them.
All the small isp's (which were over 50% of the market) gave up on Netscape because of this.
What was your favorite browser?
I feel like you're describing Windows here lol
Windows does manage it quite well with the OOBE to be fully functional with regular hardware. Only special stuff like (d)GPUs and external stuff might require special drivers.
Basic sound, networking, (multi-monitor) video and peripheral support works very good.
As does practically every Linux distro. I install it, it just works. Don't even need to hunt for GPU or printer drivers like I do for windows.
Cool, but didn't everyone tell me I should use Mint, for a bunch of reasons including "it's arguably the most beginner-friendly"?
Desktop Linux requires buying a USB / DVD, inserting it into your machine, and hitting OK several times. If you can't do that, you also can't install Windows.
Verification is optional, but recommended. This is true for all OSs. Don't do it if you can't.
Note that I said to buy a USB or DVD with Linux. Burning your own is easy on Linux, but Windows puts up a lot of roadblocks. (One wonders why.)
GRUB works fine, but again, you only have to deal with it if you want to dual-boot.
Some sound cards used to not have first-party Linux drivers, so you'd have to find some third-party workaround. This is the only real problem among the ones you listed, but even this is pretty rare nowadays.
Linux mint user here.
Sound works even better then windows, Printers needed terminal work to install, but forums were very helpful. https://safereddit.com/...
Thanks for trying linux!
I don't use pop os or gnome personally and I'm not part of any cult or whatever.
I found a accessibility setting that changes stuff to be white but I don't think I got what you wanted 🥀
I know kde plasma has a white general look, and can be themed much more than gnome in pop os seems to be.
it also has 3 finger click in its setting under the touchpad option
Also, try Fedora 39 kde spin https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/ I mention this because fedora has the new linux tech in it so your laptop might behave better with this os.
My dad is 60 and uses Mint for years now. That enough "grandma" for you?
Linux and Nvidia really need to sort out their shit so I can fully dump windows.
Luckily the AI hype is good for something in this regard, since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
Its mainly Nvidia's shit. The only reason Nvidia is caring about Linux now, is that is the platform AI models use.
it has that? You can use the nvidia utility to enable that on most any distro, or just use Pop_OS! 24.04 when it releases.
I've tried what popOS had around 6 months ago, and it wasn't what I wanted. I needed to manually launch apps with the GPU. I want it to work like it does in windows where when the igpu gets too much load it dynamically switches to the dgpu.
i specified Pop_OS! 24.04 because in the new version with the cosmic dekstop, theyre going to add a seamless synamic gpu in the new version (thatll be out in a month or 2)
also, you CAN get that behavior on linux now.
this part of a linux experiment video shows how to do it, i cant confirm if it works as i do now have a laprtrop with an nvidia gpu tho
I've been running NVIDIA under Linux for about six years now, with no more issues than one would encounter running hardware/drivers from a number of manufacturers under a number of platforms.
In all honesty, I've encountered far more issues regarding HP printer drivers under Windows.
I've been using Nvidia under Linux for the last 3 years and it has been massive pita.
Getting CUDA to work consistently is a feat, and one that must be repeated for most driver updates.
Wayland support is still shoddy.
Hardware acceleration on the web (at least with Firefox) is very inconsistent.
It is very much a second-class experience compared to Windows, and it shouldn't be.
CUDA works fine here, in all honesty it's never given me any problems. NVENC works fine, DLSS1, DLSS2, and DLSS3 all work fine, RTX runs at acceptable FPS compared to AMD under Linux - and NVIDIA Reflex is supported as of VKD3D-Proton 2.12 and DXVK-NVAPI 0.7.
On top of that, FSR is also fully supported - as is HDMI 2.1.
I only use Firefox, and hardware web rendering works fine. Hardware video acceleration isn't working yet, but running back to back tests at 1080p with hardware video decoding under VLC, the difference between hardware video decoding and CPU rendering is about 5% CPU usage on average running a desktop PC with adequate power supply/cooling capacity as opposed to a laptop with limited power supply/cooling capacity.
The only problem with Wayland under KDE 6 is the lack of any form of sync, but explicit sync has 'finally' been merged, and should be supported under the 555 branch of drivers. Once explicit sync is supported, I really have few Wayland issues left to complain about.
Overall, I really don't experience any showstopper issues that have me wanting for Windows in the slightest.
My old HP printer won't even install on Win10 anymore. The have also removed the driver from the HP website. I'm sure you can still find it on some sketchy website, but I'd rather just use Mint on a laptop for printing all the 3 documents I print each year. Not to mention that windows updates take FOREVER on this low powered dual core laptop. On Mint it's seconds.
since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
It's always been important. Nvidia will never have actual open source drivers. They do this thing where they intentionally hobble your GPU unless you pay them even more money for a more expensive GPU.
Check out NVK and Nova.
how long is having a GPU you can't use without an OS going to he worth staying off Linux?
the only thing Linux can't play is drm'd shit, and rootkit anti cheats. find a pirated version; bet it'll run.
Which everyone should be avoiding anyway, regardless if they use windows or not. . so it shouldnt be a problem for any gamer.
As much as I like Linux, and use it almost exclusively on desktop/laptop, every time I see something like this I am reminded how much I hate the fact that Apple of all companies is about the last bastion of commercial and consumer operating systems who isn’t trying to derive the bulk of their revenue from advertising.
Even Apple is falling. Their ad business (yes, they have one) makes billions and is the fastest growing part of the company. The app store is already quite ad-riddled, and the other parts of iOS are geared to get you to subscribe to all the Apple services.
In some sense yes, but advertising for its own stuff is advertising too. It nudges you to use their whole ecosystem.
The most annoying thing for me is that you can't remove the iTunes component in mission control (the settings deck).
It does nudge you...but it's not full screen ads that take multiple clicks to get through every week. I was a Windows zealot through W7...W10 got bad...W11 got me to start using Apple and Linux.
...and this here, folks, is the problem.
This is what happens when they know you won't leave.
"But muh games...and Linux is too difficult and weird"
I say to those: well then you've made your choice, didn't you? It's going to keep happening, like it's been since the 90s.
Why is the target of your comment towards people that use Windows?
I am not sure why People on Lemmy feel like if they point something out to people who can't see the comment is going to get them to change their mind.
I have and use both Linux and Windows. I prefer both for different reasons.
I know I'm talking into the void. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm too tired of trying to do that. Just trying to get people to realize they made the choices they have to live with.
I may be spoiled in that I don't play AAA multiplayer games, but I do play AAA single player and indie single/multiplayer (usually the type where one of the players is also the server, e.g. Terraria).
Been running Linux on my systems for more than a decade, and - especially since Proton/SteamDeck enchantments made their way upstream - I haven't had any major ssues (except having to wait a while to play RDR2-PC in Ubuntu because of a weird game-specific graphics card driver issue, but even that was fixed in due course).
Fuck Windows, and fuck the assertion that it's the only way to run games.
Proton really did marvelous shit.
Made it so easy that even an idiot (like me) could get games running on linux without much headache. Especially nowadays, even big game titles working almost flawlessly on release day.
Again it might be that I pretty much don't play competitive online games because if there's anything that ruins gaming it's random strangers, but I have had practically no problem playing games over the last ten years.
What about people who needs NURBS tools and Affinity/Adobe class art softwares? Where do they go that corporations decided Windows and Mac are only to be supported? And believe me, plenty of them hates Windoze and I'm one of them.
Run windows on a VM.
Those will not run under/with emulation?
My issue is more Rhino and Solidworks. If Blender actually can render NURBS and retesselate from NURBS to polygon, I can pretty much ditch Autodesk Maya as that's the only reason I use Autodesk Maya.
Develop own software or support indepndent sw development however you can.
If you really need something, think about your personal dependencies and try to build some resilience / backups , one way or another.
Whatever your craft, a pathway towards ownership and control of tools and maintenance should be a traditional part of mastering the craft.
So that you can eventually do things like extend the toolset, or adapt tools to niche circumstances and advance things along.
If you don't have that pathway, then you might end up trapped as an apprentice or journeyperson and will continue to be exploited by those who control the things you depend on.
If there's no freedom and no way to develop competition in the supply chain, then you probably would benefit from - collective organisations such as trades-guilds, or professional associations or trade-unions to counter the power imbalance, and represent your needs - but they can also get captured/bribed so those probably need a bit of effective democracy / transparency/accountability or something. I'm not going to suggest govt regulation, becasuse that's super easy to capture and national-election democracy is a weak control, but you might get some progressive govts like some European ones that'd think about doing something suppoting foss projects, maybe.
It might not be easy, but you have to look for and support those types of features for the good of your industry.
Corps will eat their industry for a quick $, it's the workers, tradespeople and masters of the craft and some small businesses who care about the long term. And maybe any enlightened customers if you're lucky enough to have them.
As an example, for physical 3d cad, personally I don't like freecad much it's complex and not very intuitive; but it lets me do all the maths I want in python, with my own made up data structures / object model. So i'll use and support freecad 100% over all the other more user friendly CAD that i've seen - it really is the freedom, and not being so dependant.
Yep,dual boot.
There has to be a point of diminishing returns for them with this kind of behavior. This is just so aggravating.
I'd wager they are hoping to entrap as many people as they can on the platform, with their TPM restrictions, and store restrictions, and account restrictions, that sunk cost fallacy will keep the overwhelming bulk of people stuck in their web.
I'd also wager that enterprise probably doesnt have any of this bullshit
Can confirm, I run enterprise at home and have yet to see some of these shenanigans I've seen posted.
But there's still enough I hate about Windows 11 that I'm slowly transitioning to Linux and then just running windows in a VM for things there aren't good alternatives for.
Ads have always been a cancer.
Not exactly. When the webmaster you knew put a banner in the corner of their site with ads from one and the same source, in one and the same place, not popping up and not bothering you, it really felt fine. I even felt the urge to click that and see where it leads.
Remember also Opera free version with that ad banner.
Yeah. I used to run a website back in the very early 2000s that a local bicycle seller/repair shop used to pay me to have a little static banner for. It was just an image, that's it. No tracking, no malware, no silly animations or covering content, etc. It was unobtrusive.
Did I get a huge amount of money? No. But it paid for maintenance, and a bit to spare. It made me feel like the effort I was putting into the site wasn't wasted. It was relevant to the site content (cycling club in my town) and so was probably an effective advertisement.
Ads aren't automatically evil, but the way they exist now definitely is. I wouldn't dream of browsing the web without Firefox+Ublock origin.
The unbridled greed of companies has made me go out of the way to remove them all from my life. If they had been more restrained, I'd have happily accepted some ads as being the price I pay for using the web.
The way they exist now is similar to taxi drivers in airports. You simply know that if something is being advertised this way, it's likely not what you need and probably a scam. So anything you don't find intentionally and not via ads becomes useless, so ads become useless.
I used adblockers back then too. Else some sites would cause infinite pop-up windows to open (I assume to get pay-per-click revenue). Even plain banners would significantly increase loading times on 56k connections.
🤮
The best part is when spammers and ad generators realized how easy it is to use GPT to automate and increased the number of spam bots and ads.
Another day, another piece of enshittification by MS, another reason to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds, if you can spare a few minutes.
*Ads for MacOS/chromeos
I don't see any enshitiffication features and ads in Windows 11 that Lemmy and tech news are reporting. I wonder if it's because I'm in the EU.
Yeah, the start menu ads were / are 'only' in the beta build.
New features get released into the developer preview. It's basically beta test windows. It's what the tech sites watch to see what new features/etc have been added/removed/changed. Usually they end up making it into the release builds, but sometimes they end up not doing it, or the change doesn't apply to certain regions.
May I suggest getting a mini PC if the home PC is going to be used by everyone else at home?
I want my power button to cut off the power instantly. I want my log off button to be instant. Add any delay and I start pulling cables!!!!!!!!!
I got to go, lock this computer, so I can do a thing! Oh shit, its not locking... fuck... Security says I can't leave a unlocked console.... POWER!
Adding needless friction is terrible! Don't do it.
Alpha move right there
Is that bad for the computer? Because I didn't even think about this in a corporate environment until your comment. All our employees would be pulling cords or batteries, they all march out at exactly 430.
KDE Plasma uses largely all the same shortcuts as windows. The most important ones in my opinion being super+arrow keys to move and tile windows.
What I love the most about Windows is just how easy it is to find all the user settings I need to change. And I super appreciate how they configure things that work so perfect for me. It's like I never need to make decisions of my own, they can read my mind. /S
theyre turning the deskop into a mobile platform which is inherently difficult to mod. this is so they can provide it as a service to any device.
I've held off on saying it until now (I haven't), but now I'm going to call it (again):
This is the year of the Linux Desktop.
(It feels like someone influential at Microsoft is trying to protect my reputation and force my prediction to come true.)
I finally switched my gaming rig two weeks ago. Been great so far, except VR and I'll admit, the Xbox Game Pass missing...I wish gog or someone would come up with something like it, because there have been a lot of games I started and didn't finish because they just haven't been my cup of tea...
Now if Autodesk would get their shit together as well, things could be happening at work as well.
I think subscription would go against gog and its DRM policy (how would they enforce a subscription period without DRM), specially because gog is like the last place where we can have something that resembles owning a game nowadays.
That's why I said "someone" and "something", because I'll be the first to admit I have absolutely no clue on how that would look like. Humble Bundle Choice is something I do like, but it's steam only...while that's cool in terms of proton, steam deck and so on, Steam is still a service that has to work, because without I can't use the products. With gog I can just save those files and use them whenever and wherever I need to... Windows, Linux...doesn't matter much.
i had gamepass working via browser on my computer.
my controller, on the other hand, never worked in the browser, so it kinda made it pointless thatn gamepass worked
I setup my ROG Ally to dual boot Linux about a week ago and have had plugged into a monitor and I have not had any issues using it in desktop mode. If not for Easy Anti-cheat I’d being a thing I wouldn’t have much reason to keep windows on my main pc.
If not for Easy Anti-cheat
Linux, through Steam, has EAC.
Just search the Steam store (it's free).
Still depends on the specific game dev enabling the linux support option, which many seem to not want to do.
Aware, but it's worked for the games that's required it so far for me. Worth a try.
What does that mean. What does "the year of the Linux desktop" mean, really? And why is it different than last year?
It means that this year, Linux on desktop will make big strides (again)!
And why is it different than last year?
When I declared it last year, I was a year early, because this year will be bigger.
Autodesk! All the others! Can you now, goddammit, for the sake of the mental health of your customers, start building your tools on platforms other than this crap? PLEASE? I mean I'm seriously considering building a parallel system running Linux for all my other office needs and just touch my Win-pc to run my CAD. I hope MS will continue in this way and ai-mercialize their OS more and more so hopefully the software providers will have enough at one point.
At that point you might as well just use a windows VM for CAD. With desktop integration you hardly have to notice you're using windows.
I've certainly considered that, but have a hard time imagining a comparable performance with large assemblies. Any hands-on experiences?
I have used a windows vm at a previous job for a closed source IDE we were required to use. I've never used AutoCAD, so I'm afraid I can't help you there.
FreeCAD is of course the tool of choice for my hobby projects. All of our workgroup's students get an introduction. But while its a great tool, you'll notice the lack of ... management (?) in the background. I'm not bashing or even judging. I very much appreciate all the work put into it. But it's simply ... not there yet to be considered a serious alternative to one of the big players.
By the time they do that, they'll have introduced a third settings app, and only four options from the current Win8/8.1/10/11 one will have been ported to it.
Or make Teams a not piece of shit. Even worse they had teams on Linux in the past. Now have new teams and new outlook, which are just electron...give it back to Linux please.
I tried building a Steam box with the bootleg version of SteamOS from the deck... Can't remember the name of the distro. Steam Games ran great for the most part, but getting Epic, EA and Ubisoft to work was a nightmare. If Linux can get that sorted, I'd never use Windows again.
You don't need the bootlegged version of SteamOS, there is ChimeraOS (GitHub).
Also Steam runs great on a lot of distros, I use Arch Mint btw. ;-)
For Epic Games, GOG and Amazon you can use Heroic Games Launcher (GitHub).
Heroic is amazing. Rather than running the crappy Epic client via Wine, you just install this native piece of software that then launches each game via Wine/Proton/whatever else and pretty much just works every time, complete with things like EAC
I mean doesn't sound like you're missing out on anything tbh
Right. Snob all you want, but I thoroughly enjoyed Div1 and 2. AC Origins was also a lot of fun, especially for someone that grew up fascinated by ancient Egypt.
Civ6 is on EGS... Battlefield 1and5 on EA, plus the Mass Effect series...
But hey... Those games are awful, right... The chi chamber is loud today.
Are those games not available on Steam and GoG? And like I said, you do you. I cant stand EA and Epic, but everyone has their own lines in the sand that they will or wont cross. I specifically called EA and Epic garbage though, not the customers who'd be willing to do business with them
Most EA and Ubisoft games I've played run fine on Deck. Just need to run the game in desktop mode first and then it boots in the Steam UI side of the OS just fine.
So, literally every game I've bought on steam is playable on my Manjaro box.
Additionally, a recent KDE6 upgrade messed up my config and necessitated a full system reinstall. After remounting the partition where my steam games were installed on in the old sys, they....just worked. Even the ones that don't cloud sync, saved games all there, DLC all there.
I don't know how long reinstalling ~1TB of games would take on windows.... a lot? Pretty sure you have to fully reinstall them, not just "point steam to the drive where they live"
Frankly I just don't see why people tolerate windows anymore. It's just laughably bad.
I used to keep my steam games on a separate windows 10 partition and it worked exactly as you describe after a reinstall, it was all there. It’s still incredibly cool that this works on Linux and we get to use it as daily driver without being forced to dual boot for games. A windows installation still lingers on my desktop but it’s been years since I booted into it.
If you have games in a separate partition, then you will have no need to reinstall it even in case with reinstalling Windows, though.
You haven't really highlighted any of the linux advantages here.
You haven't really highlighted any of the linux advantages here.
I wasn't really on that side quest, I'm only asserting it's (apparently) as easy as Windows is. If you don't see "not having to use windows" as an advantage, or if it's actually an impediment to your non-game-related computer use, that's totally fair; subjectivity is absolutely part of this. I'm just glad it all works for me in my life and that I'm lucky enough to be able to get to work on the platform I prefer.
Yeah, it's definitely better now then it was before believe it or not. I honestly just avoid them at all cost even on windows. I hate games that ship their own launcher even though I bought it on steam
Bottles and Lutris would help in this case for you.
Different now - works flawless with lutris
I run both the Epic Store as well as the EA App via Bottles, and I had both up and running in about ten minutes.
You can also install both launchers under Steam via Proton. The process is a little more involved, but far from difficult.
In total, I expect this to cost about a minute or two of my life if they never remove the ads. This figure is fairly typical for daily windows users, of which ~400kk are on win11. Microsoft will steal ~1.5*400,000,000 minutes with these ads. Ads that nearly no one will even consider clicking. 600,000,000 minutes=10,000,000 hours=1140 years. Multiple lifetimes in aggregate, all to be thrown away for nothing. I’d like to send a very strongly worded knot tying tutorial to Satya Nadella and Brad Smith.
That why I pay my gold partner friend for a copy of enterprise he gives to his developers.
Wait, so this is not about the power menu, it's about the pop up when clicking on your account picture bubble if you're signed in to a MS account. They aren't adding a step to logging out of your local Windows user, just to logging out of your Microsoft account if you're using that as a login for Windows, OneDrive and Office365.
The "Lock" button also has a new home—it now sits in the power menu alongside "Shut down," "Restart," and "Sleep" options.
THAT is where the Lock button was? Not gonna lie, I've been Windows-L-ing so long I didn't even know they had moved that to the account bubble.
I'll be honest, the article is a bit overdramatic. Yeah, they are surfacing your services there to upsell you on the ones you don't have, but it's actually not a useless piece of info (currently finding your subscriptions is an ordeal) and none of the functionality is gone. It is true that a lot of UX things around Win11 have gotten worse, though. I'm currently using additional software to replace the taskbar (which will do the Start menu, too, if you want) because the inability to move it to the sides is ridiculous on the OS you're most likely to pair with an ultrawide monitor.
I'll be honest, the article is a bit overdramatic. Yeah, they are surfacing your services there to upsell you on the ones you don't have, but it's actually not a useless piece of info (currently finding your subscriptions is an ordeal) and none of the functionality is gone.
Look up "boiling a frog"
They count on this exact reaction.
Every time they implement these little bullshit changes, people inevitably go "It's annoying but it's not that big a deal." And then they do more of it a few months later.
The article isn't being hyperbolic because it's reacting to the overall trend that this is yet another step forward in. Because the writer and everyone here knows it will get worse and worse over time.
Dark patterns are, by design, slow and incremental so as not to trigger too much pushback at once. People need to start being more aware of it and pushing back on it when they see it.
And yes, that information is probably useful to some people, but that doesn't in any way justify hiding the options that used to be there.
Do you know the term "trust thermocline"?
Basically it described a problem with the boiling the frog technique. There's a point for every user at which they're fed up with the bullshit, lose all trust in you(r company) and are hard to impossible to get back as a customer. Every customer leaving has a little unnoticeable effect on you, but with time there will be so many people that you lost that all your tactics to lock your users in will fail.
Look up "boiling a frog"
It's a widely-understood phrase/metaphor. Nobody is saying Microsoft literally boils millions of frogs.
What is it with Redditors/Lemmings taking a turn of phrase, interpreting it extremely literally, and completely missing the point?
That's what the win XP search dog was for.
They'd send it out hunting for frogs so that they can boil them all.
Bill Gates first programme was a reverse frogger game, he'd get to drive the cars and score get points for squishing frogs.
I think it was called Grand Theft Amphibian or something. The dude just really hates frogs.
Autism, personally speaking.
I knew it was a metaphor, but it's also a lie and does not actually happen.
That's actually the result of "looking it up", which was the instruction.
What is it with you that makes you so incapable of reasoning that someone might know what it means and also want to point out that it's bullshit?
Yeeeeah, but this isn't a dark pattern, though. That's what I'm saying.
The article really wants it to be, but... well, it's not. The option to log out remains in the same place as the rest of your account info, and the account info they are surfacing is actually useful and relevant to how much money you're spending. They are making it easier to subscribe, for sure, but also to cancel, which used to be pretty hidden away.
I get that this fits into a wider pattern for both MS and other major software companies, but if they inch towards the boiled frog at this pace we're probably fine.
Now, if they ever try (again) to make MS accounts mandatory for Windows or to move Windows to a sub, we can have this conversation. As others said below, when you try to inch people towards dealbreakers you can find yourself losing ground very quickly. Especially if a new comparable alternative surfaces at the same time.
Is there something like PowerToys Run for KDE? That's one of the utilities I would miss the most when switching to Linux.
Yeah, KRunner, and it's been around longer than Powertoys.
I never really used it on Windows so I don't know if it has all the same features, but there's probably some way to make whatever you need from it work.
The whole point of PowerToys was essentially to implement the features Windows was missing that the Linux DEs had already.
I use Pop_Os on my desktop, but that’s nowhere near PowerToys. Even the search is barebones when you compare it with PowerToys using the Everything search plugins.
Also PowerToys has a lot more to offer than the search: mouse shake features, keyboard remapping, a great window manager with shortcuts, files preview and much more.
I know there are some decent alternatives in MacOS, but I haven’t found a proper replacement for that on Linux.
kde really has a LOT of power, most of the stuff you mentioned afiak. its not a 1 to 1 clone of powertoys obviously, so it has a lot of stuff thats not in powertoys, and is lacking some stuff thats in it,l but the kde desktop also has support for plugins, so you should be able to fill in the gaps
The problem is mostly that those niches count up, so that quite a lot of people fit in one of those niches.
I happen to fit in 3 niches at the same time: VR, Music and Professional design.
VR? No linux. Music production? Depending on your VSTs, No linux. Playing Music live? Depending on VSTs, No linux. Professional design? No Linux.
I currently actively trying to switch to Linux, despite its apparant shortcomings in above applications. It's quite the challenge. Wine seems to install quite some stuff, but from what I've read it's a crabshoot if stuff breaks after every update...
graphic/media professionals adobe users
Explain what you mean by bloat please
There is nothing you can't uninstall on Linux. Linux distros, let alone desktop environments, really can't qualify as bloat
There are even enough mainstream distros to let you choose one that meets your needs with little or nothing you need to trim
Next up, an ad anytime an executable is run!
So they want people to pull the plug instead of signing out properly. If they don't can this before it leaves the Beta Channel, they're going to need to beef up their tech support, because the many office workers who use Windows mostly as a launcher for Excel won't have a clue.
Jesus Fucking Christ. They really want people to switch to Linux, don't they?
Microsoft should stop trying to become another Apple. This is not going to work.
as soon as they require a microsoft account to use versions of windows, they are apple... minus the mobile, but plus a metric shittone of things apple doesnt.
not that any of that is good, microsoft should die in a fire.. but theyve spent 20 years building an OS-as-a-service platform and its coming to fruition. they might be slow, but rest assured they will get their captured, vertically integrated audience.
You don’t need an apple account to use a Mac. If you just want to enter a username and set a password, that’s all you need to do. If you want everything synced between another Mac or iPhone and so on, sign into iCloud. But you don’t HAVE to, just skip it.
Great to know. Not that I ever fucking use that menu, opting to use the sleep button on my keyboard instead.
Anyone who can should switch to Linux. Most of us can, I have done so on my laptop. I have tried gaming on Linux too and it's fucking fantastic though I personally had an edge case issue that barely anyone will ever meet and had to go back. Do not let that discourage you from trying, however. Cyberpunk, as an example, was wonderful on Linux. No issues. As soon as my issues are sorted, something that will happen sooner or later, I will switch that pc in an instant!
Is there somewhere a guide in how to get started with gaming on Linux?
Tbh it's pretty easy. Install Linux, install Steam.
Try Linux Mint, specifically. Very easy to install, runs on everything, just works. And gaming really is as easy as installing Steam, even for non Steam games.
Mint is great! Not my personal choice but it does work out of the box and is easy to use!
What of Indie games that I download from the developer's page or other stores?
Also, how is the update process of Mint these days for make versions? Is it a complete reinstall of the system? I might opt for a rolling distro for that purpose.
The Quest is Android based, which is Linux based, so kinda if you're cool with two layers of megacorp between you and the kernel.
WTF happened to Microsoft? What a fall. Is this a leadership thing?
They were always about screwing over consumers to make money. The only thing that changed is that they've become increasingly unsubtle about it.
Their way to screw customers with W2K was very persuasive. Such a clean UI, everything looking so relaxed and, eh, not commercialized. That startup sound. Those wallpapers.
Later I learned that that's also when they released those Unix services for Windows (may have swapped words), with which you really could have something practical with an X server and POSIX-compatible applications and so on.
And compared to W9x it was very stable.
I feel like they go through cycles of "hey, we just remembered we have de-facto monopolistic power, what are we doing with that? Let's do stuff with that" And "everyone got mad at us for anticompetitive practices again... Let's lay low and play nice until governments stop threatening to break us up"
Turns out you can make more money by reducing usability and user choice in an entrenched product because hardly anyone will baulk and jump ship to a different product.
Usually they just over-pay for their computer because you can't really buy a system without Windows pre-installed (unless you build it).
I have so many computers that came with Windows installations that I never even booted into.
Which retail store have you ever walked into that had a PC on display with no OS?
There are absolutely online stores that do that, but they're usually gamer-focused, so there's three issues;
Note: I'm taking about laptops, because it's all I've bought for the last decade or more;
The non-gamer focused stores rarely (if ever) have the option (Lenovo, Dell, Microsoft, etc).
The gamer focused stores usually sell hardware that runs Linux like shit because the hardware needs extremely specific drivers (which isn't necessarily an issue for Linux, but if it doesn't exist yet, you're either building them yourself, or waiting for someone else to do so).
- Note: Most Clevo systems - that are private-labeled by the likes if IBuyPower, OriginPC, etc - run Linux really well. Some of these sellers make custom hardware, or sell other private-label systems, so your milage may vary.
The gamer focused stores are usually patroned by people who are all in on Windows gaming, because they don't do much else with the system, so they don't experience the kinds of annoyances that power users would gripe about (which is why the above point doesn't compel those sellers to do anything different).
- And before someone corrects me: Gamers are not inherently power users, they just have powerful systems. It used to be that powerful systems were only buildable and maintenable by power users, but that hasn't been true for years. If all you do is install and click "play", you aren't a power user.
As for desktops, I really couldn't say. Haven't been paying attention for years. It's possible that you could buy a system without a hard drive, never mind an OS.
Question: if you skipped signing in to Microsoft when you set up Windows, does this f'upgrade still happen?
It's what Microsoft opted to call their office suite now. So Office365 is now officially Microsoft 365 in an effort to acknowledge that your office work has now completely left their focus and they are only concentrating on themselves
its 'msoffice as a service'... and it sucks donkey balls. imagine tryin to manipulate a giant dataset in a web version of excel in a browser tab. annoying enough in the binary, impossible in 'office365-excel'
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With how aggressive Microsoft is becoming with ads, services, and data collection they could at least make Windows itself free.
But no, you still have to pay £100+ per license to have the pleasure of putting up with this crap.
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