Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu

So Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. They have a stranglehold on corporate America, power a huge the cloud infrastructure, hold one of the largest sources of telemetry/user data, and are the defacto standard of PC environments worldwide.

Why in the fuck do they need to pivot to ads? I’m genuinely curious. Even if they lost 50% of their entire business they would still be one of the most profitable companies in the world.

Because when you have shareholders, there's no such thing as "we're profitable enough". Shareholders always demand more. Ads means more profit, at least in the short term. Next quarter profits are all that matter to public companies.
It's obscene, but it's the way it is.
- It's not just that they demand more, they demand more/faster growth all the time. It doesn't matter that the economy has slowed down to borderline recession, it doesn't matter that they pretty much captured all the market they can, they still need to make more and more money every quarter otherwise they're considered a failure even if they are one of the biggest companies in the world.
Because they were "leaving money on the table" instead of getting it for their shareholders.
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 Because for capitalism, profit is not the end, only a means to the end. The end is to accumulate sufficient capital to absorb all competitors and achieve total control of markets.
- Yea but like, their competitors, when it comes to operating systems are Apple, which isn’t anywhere near small enough to be obtainable by anyone and Linux and Linux-Derivatives, which are also unobtainable due to their open source nature.
I think it’s the same reason games offer a cash shop for things you can get in-game. Sure they’re making billions but why not billions plus ad revenue? I don’t agree with the practice but the answer always comes back to money.
Better question is "why not"?

Cool

I'm learning more and more about Linux while using Linux Mint

It's pretty cool NGL

asdfasfasf

HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON OLD MAN

Although not the same, this has been going on for about two years now. Jensen Harris, a former MS engineer, criticized the ads as well as the design of the new Start Menu, over here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1564399431545667585.html

It just highlights the downward spiral to user hostility becoming the standard. Pretty sad.

KDE Plasma 6, and their distro KDE Neon, are both really good.

There are many very friendly Linux communities on Lemmy who can help you get set up.

Windows 11 looks like a crappy knockoff of KDE with all the good bits removed and replaced with spyware and adware.
- It looks much better actually, with the fancy blur and transparency effects. Not to say it works better than Linux, and I'm sure it must be possible to customise KDE to look better.
I had the same issue holding me back from giving up Windows, until I discovered the Python keyboard module.
How to bind key presses to it varies, but here's a recipe for Ubuntu, as an example:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/525482/how-can-i-assign-a-keyboard-shortcut-for-the-script-that-i-have-created#525495
Overall, it's not quite as elegant, as AutoHotKey, but it's ultimately a more powerful, since there's so much else I can also do from the same Python script.
Edit: Most notably, I don't recall AutoHotKey having any nice way to tell which apps are open, and Python can quickly call out to ps. It's been on my to-do list to leverage this to let me map keybindings according to what is open (i.e. a favorite game, or a move player.)
- KDE can do that without third party software I believe.
Fedora+KDE ftw. I switched my un upgradeable windows PC to fedora and I couldn't be happier.
@tsonfeir But Linux does not have AutoHotkey. This is the biggest deal-breaker for me by far. AutoKey seems be the closest thing, but it's such a massive pain to even try to use by comparison.
- I doesn't have auto hotkey because for the most part, you can control Linux from the command-line without someone having to invent a new scripting language from scratch to control it.
  I heavily recommend you familiarize yourself with bash and the system commands you'll need to send key presses, move windows, spawn and kill programs, etc.

I have a feeling that this year is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.

I don't think so
- So maybe next year will be the year of the Linux desktop
It's been the decade of Linux on the desktop for me
If there is a recommendation that satisfies:
A nice looking UI with good fonts, and a clean interface.
The ability to run random Windows applications with minimal fuss.
All without needing to use the terminal, then that will likely win the battle.
- Just get over it and learn
  I also have to use terminal in Windows, and up until recently it was an awful useless terminal too
- A nice looking UI with good fonts, and a clean interface.
  Pretty much anything beats Windows in that regard.
  The ability to run random Windows applications with minimal fuss.
  I mean if you REALLY can't find a FOSS alternative, Bottles has been extremely successful and easy for me...
  All without needing to use the terminal
  This is the biggest hangup for me. Even if there is a GUI, most instructions will send you into the terminal nonetheless.
- Honestly Wine and Bottles are both pretty great at running windows programs these days, I wouldn’t worry to much about that so long as you check and make sure the critical software you need works.

The French National Police also use Linux machines with its modified Ubuntu distro Gendbuntu.
Plus, Russia uses Astra, based on vanilla Debian.
Which distro are the Germans switching to?

If they could inject the ad's into your veins, they would.

Good thing I use Ubuntu for >90% of my computing now.

Yeah Canonical has never put ads in Ubuntu.

This is amusing. They might as well replace the wallpaper with an ad.

They have on the lockscreen already, so not too far off

Killing myself one day🤦‍♂️

MESSAGE FOR EVERYONE : Just switch to Linux 😃

Why yourself? Let M$ kill itself.
Anti Commercial-AI license

Thank you microsoft for doing bad changes to the windows operating system im sure linux users will enjoy this

Yeah, lol people forgot what ads are. News feeds, Xbox and other office apps you haven't bought yet, are also ads, just their own products.

The second Win 10 stops receiving security updates, it's Linux for me.

I remember people saying the same thing with Windows 7
You can start the switch early to get used to it 😉

This is why Linux rules tbh, little to no rules what so ever in terms of customizing your desktop whilst also not having shit like this too like having so much bloat and constant ads, like telling you to install edge everytime whilst protecting your privacy too.

linux rules because it's the only os built for its users rather than some company stocks
- BSD?

If you have to stay on windows check out: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

I have been using it on my work laptop over a year. Nice piece of software 👍️
Better
https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer/blob/master/README.md
- This looks like it is solving a different problem but also useful. If you are saying it is better to disable everything and keep the original start bar. I prefer disabling everything and keeping a consistent start bar style from yesteryear. Either way thanks for the link. I'll added it to my tool list!

It's time to switch.

I’ve used Linux on every PC except my gaming PC for years. This year I made the final leap because of decisions like this from Microsoft.

Very few games have failed to work, the ones that have are all from Epic and they fail because of their shitty anticheat software. The only other things I feel the lack of are paint.net and the Affinity apps.

EAC is now largely compatible with Linux, but devs have to enable support per game.
I recommend browsing protondb to see how (if) people have made games with anticheat work, you might need to change proton versions, add launch options etc.
How many PCs do you have, lol. And Gimp and Inkscape are pretty good art programs.
- 5 in use. Main Gaming PC, Laptop, Game server pc, media server PC, and another for testing things out. Whenever a family member upgrades I get the old one so most of these are pretty old.
  I have gimp and other graphics tools, I also have a LOT of hours of use in the ones I mentioned so there are things I know how to do quickly in those programs but not in their counterparts.
Pinta is a fork of an older version of paint.net: https://www.pinta-project.com/ I have no idea if it is any good. I just thought that this might solve your problem.
- I have Pinta, it’s ok but lacks a lot of the plugins I used and hasn’t been too stable. The graphics editing thing is something that will,just take time for me to rework my workflows. Gimp is great, I’m just not used to it.

I stopped using Windows in 2008 (juggling between a mixture of Linux and Mac OS). One of the reasons, is that at that time I thought Windows was legitimately a mess.

Over time, I thought it got a bit better when seeing it on friends's computers.

Due to laziness, Windows 11 got installed on my office computer (which I use 1% of my time) and I thought it was honestly pretty good (as in, I never thought about switching back, but it was fine to use it when necessary).

Now that they plug in ads, I'll certainly want to switch back /s

I think that this betrays their plans: Windows will go "free with ads", with an ad-free version that is subscription only. That doesn't hurt their bottomline since the governments and companies of the western world will still go subscription in order to get support. The ones who don't have enough money for that (individuals, small countries/companies, small municipalities), they will go "free with ads". I mean, practically, Windows is free even right now. They have oem serial numbers that activate the OS for free, legally, to be reused. So why not make it profitable, it's their thinking. Also, on newer builds of Win11 you can't avoid logging in without an msn account.

Aight time to try and learn Linux for the 10th time and see if someone without strong console knowledge can use one now.

If you just want to browse the web and edit work documents you have nothing to fear.
If you just want a game and don't want to be too awfully picky about what you're playing you have nothing to fear
If you want to play anti-cheap games and host docker components you're going to have to do a little console here and there.
If you want to stream to YouTube and twitch, You're probably not going to have as much of a good time. You can still do it but there's work and compromises involved.
- Streaming is practically plug-and-play, at least on my installs.
I've been using it for a few months now and only rarely I used console and it was just to paste some commands for something. So yeah, I don't think that you really need to know howbto use console if you don't need to do anything that specifically needs it.
- Rarely is still too much for me.
  If I do regular joe stuff, I don't want to be required to go into the terminal.

The wierd part is, if i think about my star menu usage in win10, there hardly is one. The important programs are on the task bar. The Startmenu isn't as much needed as used to be. Still sucks though.

I coincidentally installed Linux Mint today and I'm not going back.

I keep seeing headlines like this all the time. I'm over here like "This has already been a thing for years". Whenever I'd setup a win10 pc for someone, I'd have to clean the ads out of the start menu as part of the setup. So I ask again, how is this any different from the bullshit we're already dealing with?