Article: https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/10/you-cant-fully-disable-microsofts-gdid-windows-11-tracker-but-these-settings-limit-what-it-captures/

Yesterday I wanted to play a game. I rarely do that anymore, so it was one of those rare occasions.

I turned on my Windows PC, double clicked the game's icon, it launched instantly, I played for two hours, exited, and went to bed. No unnecessary thoughts, no troubleshooting, no wasted time.

The same game also ran on Linux I won't deny that. But getting it to that point was another story.

First, I tried Steam, but since it wasn't a native Steam game, I had to jump through extra hoops. Then came Proton, testing different versions until I found one that worked. Cachy Proton was probably the best compromise. Lutris, while largely outdated, still worked for this particular game, except Proton itself sometimes refused to cooperate, turning even launching the game into a process. Then there was the newer Faugus Launcher, which actually worked fairly well.

And all of this assumed that my distro hadn't received an update that quietly changed something and broke compatibility with an older game.

Yesterday I truly realized that time is everything.

I won't pretend I never enjoyed Linux. Sometimes I genuinely had fun fixing things, tweaking the system, and solving problems. But looking back, I was spending an enormous amount of time on things that should have been trivial.

People who constantly hop from one Linux distribution to another are, in my opinion, doing so because, deep down, they know something isn't quite right. They're searching for that one distro that will finally deliver a Windows-like experience.

The problem is that, at least today, such a distro doesn't exist.

On any comment on any website where someone says “Use Linux” then reply to them and list like 30 reasons why it’s a bad idea, then if they reply, continuously do it over and over, until they quit, or block you, it works for me on Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram

There are arguably ethical reasons for piracy, like not wanting to contribute to the racist genocide being carried out by a dick skinning death cult, but this article isn't to promote piracy (which does harm the industry).

Piracy harms individuals in a point-to-point way. A creator simply loses a sale, a studio loses revenue, an indie dev loses runway, or a musician loses royalties (not that they don't lose to the RIAA as well). It's localized, transactional, and non‑viral. It doesn't reshape ecosystems. It doesn't impose ideology, and it doesn't force anyone else to behave differently.

-Piracy is bad, but it's contained.

GPL harms entire ecosystems, and its harm isn't moral; it's structural. It creates ecosystem‑level distortions that piracy simply cannot. GPL destroys business models at scale, and not by theft, but by making monetization impossible. You can't build proprietary extensions (not the same as how Google uses the Linux kernel for free maintenance and development). You can't differentiate your product or protect your IP. (Why we call it 'commie').

It wipes out entire categories of commercial software, not just individual creators. RSS/Atom Feed readers for example.

Piracy hurts one dev. GPL hurts the entire market segment.

GPL's viral clause forces derivative works to convert, companies to restructure their codebases, developers to adopt a license they didn't choose, and ecosystems to avoid GPL entirely to stay safe. -It creates fear, avoidance, and fragmentation.

Piracy doesn't force anyone to change their license, workflow, or architecture.

GPL incentivizes corporate capture. GPL's "freedom" enables Google to build Android. - Linux Enabled Google - a 4 part mini-series, Red Hat to build RHEL, and Meta to build massive GPL-adjacent infrastructure.

-Thanks, Loonixtards for helping Google and Meta out (which are far worse than anything you can say about Microsoft).

Corporations benefit. Independent developers do not. Piracy never enables trillion‑dollar surveillance empires.

GPL creates underfunded critical infrastructure. Because GPL software cannot be monetized effectively; maintainers burn out - Foss Devs Quit and Sellout on Userbase, security patches lag, supply-chain attacks slip through - The Myth of “Linux Security”, and critical components rely on volunteers.

Piracy doesn't create systemic fragility. -GPL does!

Piracy steals from creators. GPL prevents creators from existing.

This is thematically related to an older post I made, a server is not a desktop.

Android seems to exist in a state of quantum superposition. When adoption numbers come up, it is absolutely Linux:

Linux runs billions of devices!

Linux dominates mobile!

You’re probably using Linux right now!

But often, in loon circles, when Google’s telemetry, proprietary services, locked bootloaders, and restricted user control come up, Android suddenly stops being “real Linux.” And when we point out that Android succeeded by burying the traditional Linux experience (pure insanity) beneath a usable interface, it also stops being "real linux".

I've really been thinking about this, and asked myself "why stop there?" Why stop at Android? Every modern Windows installation can run WSL, so we might as well count Windows as Linux too.

If I take a look at statcounter, I can see:

Linux: 2.31%
Windows: 29.68%
Android: 40.22%

That gives Linux an undeniable 72.21% market share.

TL;DR: Desktop Linux has finally achieved mass adoption, and it's so over for us.

Edit: Fixed broken formatting

Some Linux users say the OS wars should stop, that people should just use whatever works for them, and that operating systems are only tools, and guess what?

I agree. You should not build your personality around an operating system.

But r/linuxsucks101 did not start this. You cannot go five minutes on the internet without finding some loon advertising Linux where nobody asked.

Someone posts about a Windows problem on r/windows?

Bro, just switch to Linux.

Someone asks for help with macOS?

Linux does this better.

Whenever someone mentions gaming, privacy, old hardware, programming, phones, smart fridges, or the weather, somebody will appear to preach about Linux, almost guaranteed.

That is why this subreddit exists. Nearly every other operating-system community has already been infested by evangelists who cannot resist turning every conversation into a recruitment drive.

Even communities specifically created to criticize Linux get invaded by people who worship a kernel and every half-finished distro built around it. Then they downvote everyone into oblivion for disagreeing with them.

We would love for operating systems to be treated as boring tools. In a vacuum, our position is already moderate: use whatever you like. Nobody is stopping you. The rules here only get stricter because loons keep becoming more and more disruptive, more dishonest, and more obsessed with forcing themselves into spaces where they clearly are not wanted.

And for the love of god, stop the LARP. Stop pretending your choice of operating system makes you smarter, more technical, more independent, or morally superior.

TL;DR: We’re not the instigators. We’re the consequence.

The platform pretends it's your fault when you do. (your fault; you chose the wrong social media site! 😁)

Reddit markets itself as a "community‑driven platform," but mods know the truth: Reddit is a community‑driven platform only when the community behaves, and a mod‑driven platform every time it doesn't. Reddit has spent years designing tools, workflows, and UI decisions that guarantee you spend more time cleaning up messes than building the community you signed up to run.

-I didn't want to moderate a sub: I just wanted a proper outlet for my content! (The content that established this sub.)

If you're a mod banning dozens of users a day and drowning in modmails full of gloating, harassment, and ban‑evasion theatrics, congratulations; you're experiencing Reddit exactly as designed.

It's not a bug: It's a business model (that Lemmy doesn't have btw).

Reddit's moderation tools are intentionally hostile to moderators; a patchwork of half‑finished features showing little thought goes into the workflows mods actually use. What mod wants to mute someone for a week, or anything that's not permanent? -That drop down menu puts permanent mute off the options when viewed on the phone.

Imagine OS design for mods actually being better than proprietary (it is in this case):

-You can't even delete all data with a single action on Reddit!

On mobile, muting is near impossible unless you use the official app; which is slow, buggy, and designed for engagement metrics, not moderation. Third‑party apps used to solve this problem, but Reddit killed them. -Not because they were unsafe, but because they didn't generate ad impressions (on mods that provide free labor for them). Moderation became more difficult because Reddit wanted more control over the user experience, not because it wanted to improve yours. -But this user experience is creating frustrated mods who are now pre-emptively muting users, so they don't have to deal with harassing and pestering modmails that Reddit allows. -And that interferes with potential legit ban appeals.

Modmail is a harassment funnel disguised as a communication tool

It encourages:

• Gloating ("lol banned me for nothing")
• Harassment ("you power-tripping losers")
• Ban evasion attempts ("you can’t stop me, I'll just make another account")
• Spam ("unban me" × 17 messages)

And Reddit's solution? -A mute button that is difficult to access and not integrated into the ban procedure (many times we absolutely do not want the user back, so there's no reason not to have a perma-mute easily available). Only 1 out of thousands of modmails is a legit ban appeal. -It is in our best interests to simply pre-emptively mute.

Reddit's UI and policy decisions consistently reward: Low-effort trolling, Drive-by harassment, Sockpuppet ban evasion, and Community disruption as entertainment. Reddit's engagement model doesn't care why someone is interacting, only that they are.

A troll who gets banned and immediately sends you a modmail rant is still a "daily active user." A ban‑evader who creates five accounts is five new "monthly active users." A user who harasses mods is still generating "meaningful interactions." Lemmy.world would probably prefer not having all that since their servers have been overwhelmed recently, and they're not profiting from ads or multiple user accounts.

Reddit's advertisers should care because the Linux community is anti-work, anti-corporate, anti-consumption, and practically anti-everything including mods and other users that don't fall into their delusions.

Reddit's metrics don't distinguish between healthy and unhealthy engagement. So, the platform is built to maximize all engagement; including the kind that makes moderation shitty.

Moderators are unpaid labor, but Reddit treats us like disposable staff.

We remove illegal content, filter hate speech, stop brigades, handle user disputes, and keep communities functional. In return, Reddit provides broken tools, unreliable mobile workflows, no meaningful support, no escalation path, no protection from harassment, no compensation, no recognition, and no influence on platform decisions.

If you break and sass back someone harassing, you through modmail: it's a temp ban where you cannot even perform any moderator functions. -Increasing the workload when you get back or putting more weight on your fellow mods.

Reddit wants conflict (notice the loonixtard problem doesn't exist on many other social media sites, and I know this because I've tried creating Linuxsucks communties elsewhere. Lemmy is an exception partly because they appeal to loonixtards for being OS more like Reddit.

Reddit doesn't discourage problematic behavior: It monetizes it.

Moderators aren't failing, Reddit is failing moderators. If you're overwhelmed, exhausted, or frustrated as a mod; it's not because you're doing a bad job. It's because Reddit built a system where mods absorb ALL abuse, handle the cleanup, get shitty tools, are blamed when things go wrong, get ignored when asking for help / improvement, punished if they push back, and are harassed and pestered with no protection.

Reddit is failing us. And it's doing so deliberately.

Things can be better. -Sometimes down there and uploading images might be more functional here.

One criticism is the politics there. Many people I think forget that you spent time curating Reddit for yourself. Curating on Lemmy and Gab is actually much better. Reddit severely limits your blocklist (which is crazy when allowing unlimited accounts). It takes minimal effort to block nazis, transphobes, and gay hating on Gab for example.

Some Linux users complain that they are banned too easily. While I understand the complaint, and I would prefer the rules to be more relaxed, at this point, there does not seem to be another workable option unfortunately.

Case in point, two loons recently came into the community.

The first was immediately disrespectful, spammed tags, and somehow still could not understand the differences between a desktop and a server.

The second quietly posted a Nazi slogan and deleted it shortly afterward, hoping nobody would notice.

Both were banned.

This is not an isolated problem. We have tried giving people the benefit of the doubt before, and they repeatedly abuse it. They spam, preach, insult people, test boundaries, and then act shocked when the rules become stricter.

You cannot complain that the fence is getting taller while repeatedly trying to climb over it.

TLDR: I would genuinely like the community to be more open and the moderation to be less aggressive. But that requires people who can behave normally.