Thanks for asking. I'm using Debian and didn't know either. :p

I too have used arch btw. Currently using pop (deb) tho. I hop around from time to time.

I personally don't use a full IDE, but KDE's Kate.

or run windows in a VM

Yes and no. While you are legally in the clear, in practice no one read those because of the huge amount of legalese.

True consent is only obtainable if the person consenting understands what it means. Or else it's just legal consent.

Say I buy a tomato. Tomato is sold to me as tomato, grown in a green house. It's a good tomato.

I bring it home and I cut into it to make salsa and find a razor blade. I didn't see any markings on the outside. I don't know how it got there.

I go back to the store and say, "Dude, what the fuck is up with the razor blade?!"

They say, "Oh, we noticed a lot of people buying tomatoes to cut them so we decided to include a razor blade! You're welcome!"

I say, "But I don't want a razor blade. I just want the tomato!"

They say, "Oh....that's too bad. We think you'll really like the razer blade."

I say, "I don't care. I want a tomato without razor blades."

They say, "ok. Just make sure you present this very specific, very distinct bar code to the check out person."

I go and buy another tomato, present the barcode.

I bring it home and it has a different type of blade inside it.

I go back to the store and they say, "Well, you opted out of blade model a. This is blade model b."

I consented to buy a tomato. Not to buy a razer blade.

I consented to install Windows OS, not fucking copilot, Cortana, Xbox central, etc.

I should have full control over my OS, regardless of who makes it. Even Ubuntu Linux had some sketchy adware that had to be removed (this was like Ubuntu 18 or something can't remember).

Most people are too tech illiterate to understand it all. I doubt people would agree to such a level of data collection, if they knew more about it. I believe it can be compared to making illiterate people sign a contract, when they can't even read it.

As if users understood anything related to their computer.

Yeah this reminds me of the time I argued with a guy who stood firmly by the opinion that because Facebook has terms of service that people agreed to, there was nothing wrong or unethical about Facebook business practices and everyone who used it deserved what they got

Your comment sounds like penguin preparing for Sunday dinner

If you guys have nothing to talk about but how you hate Windows, maybe you should find a hobby or something.

And Linux users don't have to share their hate for Windows in all communities yet they do 🤷

Has it been proven to happen on Windows 11? Not that I can point to specifically. 11 hasn't been in general use long enough to see a real pattern of behavior.

I was a mixed Windows and Linux user through the full life cycle of the Cortana implementation. The number of times they changed or moved Cortana related settings through the years was just ridiculous. It finally came down to having to manually change registry settings to keep it from scanning your files and messing with basic local search, and even if you did that you had to make sure the registry values were still set after version updates because they would get unset without warning.

I have no trust left for Microsoft, only suspicion.

Toggling on data collection without informing the user would mean billions of dollars worth of fines in Europe, so I doubt that happens regularly.

More like a few thousand euros symbolic fine and an angry letter saying "don't be an ass again pls our infrastructure depends on you" after years of blatant abuses and anti-consumer practices, followed by an ambiguous law (with positive effects affecting only european users) they will definitely not manage to circumvent withing the next week and a half. Not this time 🤡.

The problem here is the fact that most people just do not give a fuck about this; that's why there's no coverage in the (mainstream) media, why the only people who cares end up just leaving windows and why this kind of options are usually opt-out and they can actually afford to silently re-enable them cuz who's gonna check anyways? Random people ranting on meme communities about my fancy malware?

My windows install enjoys rebooting itself unexpectedly a lot. There is no chance I ever checked a box that said "update then reboot my computer at some time in the future"

That's certainly true, and there may even be advantages to this because security issues might get fixed more quickly, but it doesn't change the fact that the annoyance factor is at least as high as that of Windows used to be, and there is no convenient option to have it taken care of automatically, say, at shutdown.

Instead of making fun of Windows, it would serve Linux far better to actually address this issue, even if that means copying what Microsoft did here.