Technology

Blogspam that links to a 'news' website that just regurgitates this reddit thread. Somebody explain to me why is this upvoted so heavily.

I'm surprised Windows users even want windows 🤷

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Given the reality that Linux simply isn't viable for some people (including myself), I highly recommend using this tool.

https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

Between this, and manually uninstalling a lot of bloat (or using a specific type of windows install) and a few other tweaks, windows becomes significantly more usable.

Disabling garbage in the task bar, removing Cortana and indexing services, etc etc, it can also add a fairly decent uplift in performance.

I'm sure there is still telemetry being collected but significantly less and less impact on my user experience and day to day performance.

Oh and make sure you turn off auto/feature updates!

It's a useful feature but it doesn't need space on my taskbar or a special button on my keyboard. That's just marketing BS. The same as with the huge search bar, because I can just press the start button and start typing and it does the same.

Unfortunately Microsoft is incredibly bad at marketing. They generally succeed only at pissing users off. Now they're doing the same again with copilot and dumping a ton of totally different products under the same name.

I asked it how to get rid of it.

It decided my aggressive language was not okay and kept ending the "conversation" which only managed to piss me off even more.

If I want to curse at my f$king computer, I'm going to curse at my f$king computer. I paid for the damned thing, and it is a thing, not a person, I can yell at it all I want and not hurt it in any way so this policing of what we can say to it is all the more bizarre to me.

Have Windows users ever wanted a single thing they added since XP? It seems like every time I upgrade they add some cluttery nonsense I can't get rid of. I moved to Windows 10 for software compatibility, and I still hate it.

I put Copilot on MY taskbar —Microsoft

This is like staying in an abusive relationship and then complaining about how abusive their partner is. Get the fuck out of there. Linux works like a charm. OK, now come at me with your bullshit excuses of "Linux bad" "mah games", "my Adobe" blah blah blah. Staying in this abusive relationship is what makes microshit what it is.

i know you hate to hear this, but you wont get rid of these shenanigans unless you move to linux.

proprietary software devs will always be looking for more ways to monetize you.

It's not clippy and if it replaces the pointless error diagnosis system currently running I'm all for it. I've had no issues with it as a product in ides just basically advanced spell check.

How many times are we going to have to teach you this lesson, old man. Don't fuck with the task bar.

i have it on mine and i actually use it. i don't see what's the big deal; it's tucked over in the far bottom right of the screen out of the way and it's not intrusive.

I asked it how to uninstall itself. It responded with the command line. I copy and pasted (this was probably dangerous, given that LLMs lie, but whatever). Now I no longer have it on my task bar. This is sort of like the open edge to get Firefox deal I’ve always had when using a fresh install.

There's a new proof of concept malware that when an AI processes it causes arbitrary code execution and spreads itself to everyone on the victims email list.

This requires no input from the user

Yes please put more of this crap into every crevice of the OS.

I think that, regardless of brand, most users just want the most basic (almost blank slate) OS that can run the programs they choose to install.

And that is close to, if not completely, impossible to get if you don't have a mind for Linux.

I actually thought Microsoft was doing pretty well 2015-2020, then these past few years some of their decisions have felt really anti user

You get AI tools shoved down your throat everywhere nowadays. Whether you want it and it's useful or not.

This is beautifully familiar.

Am I seeing too many similarities between how Twitter/X was taken over and singlehandedly being irreversibly ruined?

While Windows is stubbornly becoming increasingly user-adversarial (advertising, constant intrusive updates, forced transition from your favorite browser to Microsoft Edge, etc.) and unintuitive (sometimes even counter intuitive) interface design, placement and inaccessible settings.

Well, delighting in schadenfreude, I won't complain. Microsoft is inadvertently helping me help transition many friends, family and colleagues to various flavors of Linux systems, namely Linux Mint (whichever desktop they prefer) and/or Pop!OS most of the time, but also occasionally Fedora or a particular flavor of Ubuntu.

I never recommend Arch or rolling release systems or immutable systems to first time Linux user so as to preemptively avoid additional layers of complexity, learning curve, downtime and troubleshooting.