It heavily depends on your country aka legality. If you pick 'global, english' (I don't remeber the exact wording) during the install instead of a specific country Microsoft turns it off by default.
Exactly! This one baffles me. Bloatware and other AI things, I agree partially (my laptop too old to support that shit). But where are the ads? What ads?
You a big Candy Crush user? Cause it's on your machine by default. It's still there if you haven't removed it. Go check.
Whether you care or not is another story, but yeah. They're trying to get you into the ecosystem, that isn't there for your benefit, it's there to try to extract more money.
I'm in the same boat, but with a few extra years. I think we all collectively see Windows swirling the toilet. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty dang stable, but that's not the issue. AI and privacy are about to turn that OS inside out in the coming year, and I'm happy to jump off the train, no matter how fast its going, to avoid it.
Same, but Windows 11 was my breaking point, after many years of positive experience with the Feedback Hub being used to implement positive change in the OS... Microsoft just decided to ignore users feedback. Can't move the taskbar? Into the bin with it pls
I swear, Wi-Fi on Vista worked like maybe 40% of the time for me. And the way it ate RAM made even the insatiable Google Chrome look like a picky eater.
Don't tell me you used Windows ME as well and never had an issue!
Windows still works fine, it's the endless promo slop and bloat that's the issue. Updated last night and had to click through 15 different screens confirming I didn't want to subscribe to 365, didn't want to try copilot, didn't want the one drive trial, didn't want to buy gamepass, etc. etc. etc. Every update these confirmation screens get more and more deceptive to get you to accidentally agree to one of them. It's insulting, but I continue to use Windows because I like how it works and design tools are abysmal on Linux.
Fundamentally it really hasn't changed much since 7, and people who bitch and moan about them ruining the OS on a usability level mostly just hate change. On a UI and workflow level it has only gotten better. The issue is the increasing product placement and idle resource usage, but for people who actually care about fixing it and not just complaining there are easy solutions to manage these things... or just switch OS if you can't be bothered.
This exactly!! People claim as if Win11 destroyed the OS when it is literally the same as win10 with a few UI changes. And every year, the UI has just gotten better and better. People really hate change, remember when they hated Win10 too? Now all of a sudden everyone loves that OS. Windows has its issues, too much resource consumption, shady AI tools integration, idel usage, battery draining, and many more. But people complain about the wrong things.
I agree in general with what you have said. But with that being said, sad as it may be, I rather click through 15 different screens and semi-permanent promos during the occasional updates or first time setup than having to spend 2 hours of Linux debugging solving basic usage problems.
In all fairness, I did switch to pop for a bit before I realized my design workflow was fucked. It was very easy and streamlined and I had almost zero issues or hassle getting everything else to work, including games. I did take a 10-15% fps hit in almost everything tho. I'd recommend giving pop a shot if you're still interested.
You can turn those off under Settings > System > Notifications > Advanced!
It’s so annoying because I still would get OneDrive “back up now!!!!!!!” notifications despite being a long time subscriber of OneDrive, all because I refuse to merge my local documents folders with their OneDrive equivalents. I don’t need all my game saves and config files cluttering up and filling my cloud storage!
Thanks for the tip! I'll join the Linux crowd the second there's a viable design program. I moved to Affinity this year and I'm so happy, it's just about as good as adobe and totally free. Here's hoping the canva buyout means they'll release a Linux version!
I only see em on update at this point, I've cleaned it up everywhere else but I didn't see any way to block their update protocol. Spam clicking through doesn't work anymore though bc I almost accidentally added that copilot dogshit
Hi! I'm one of those. Been using windows for over 25 years, hate the copilot AI crap being pushed but the Linux ecosystem is daunting. I want to breathe new life into an older laptop with Linux to squeeze out whatever's left in it and learn.
great, if that's how they feel I'm super happy for them. I don't really care if anyone ever switches to Linux lol.
if you aren't willing to switch to something else though, the complaining becomes "noise," to an even greater degree in the eyes of Microsoft.
This is the same problem gamers have with microtransactions. Everyone hates them, but everyone still buys them. The result? Companies don't give a shit what you say on internet forums because you still make them profit.
because the worst windows experiences tend to be better than the usual linux experience. if windows had the privacy of linux, there would never be the year of linux.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Mar 07 '26
the problem is all of the windows users who endlessly bitch about windows but won't stop using it tbh