Ugh Linux people. Not everyone wants to deal with it and want to play whatever games they want without feeling like they’re hacking the pentagon just to play their favorite game. Not everyone has the knowledge to do it nor do they particularly want that knowledge. They want things that work out of the box, they came here to ask about a windows specific annoyance, not what OS to switch to. Shut the fuck up about Linux for two seconds.
Devil’s Advocate: I have been unable to play the sims ever since EA moved it to the EA games launcher. Origin was poorly written, but the new launcher barely works on windows, let alone on Wine.
There’s been multiple times that I had an issue with a game launcher on windows bugging out and not being able to play my game, but then seeing it work just fine under linux with proton. There’s still some issues the devs need to work out, but we’re getting to the point that linux is more reliable
Honestly I do agree with Linux being more reliable overall. That being said, I do think the biggest benefit Linux has given me is reinforcing a habit of backing up all my stuff constantly, since I never know when I’m going to try something stupid on an impulse.
Haha, true! I’ve learned the hard way to try the really whacky shit in a virtual machine first, they’re quite handy for that. After lots of trial and error though, and learning what will break things and what won’t, I’ve been on the same install for several years now actually. But yes, back ups are still smart lol
I hear your annoyance, and I get it, because the “real” question is “How do I stop this from ever happening again on Windows?”
But the bottom line is, no matter what workaround or registry fix is found, nothing stops MS from making changes and popping this crap up yet again in some other obnoxious and shitty way.
If you run Windows, you have to accept some level of this bullshittery.
No amount of registry editing and weird app installing will permanently remove the obnoxious ads from Windows. And Linux is the only OS that can feel like Windows. (Zorin, Mint, any old KDE distro etc)
And honestly? Linux isn’t that hard anymore. Like, installing stuff can be done through graphical app stores that are easier than using Windows. Gaming on Linux works out of the box and has done for 5 years now.
This post is more like an apple user asking why their phone screen can’t be replaced without buying a new device, or a ford f150 owner asking how to get more than 5mpg in fuel economy: you tell them to (consider) a different choice of product
Ok , first switch to Linux. Wait wait here me out :) Do a dual boot system and switch in between until your ready to move. Your windows install should be windows ameliorated , i.e windows AME. This removes everything from Windows , included updates. Can’t use latest office and unsure about gaming issues. I got it since I had one corp software I was forced to use.
Only way to actually stop windows shit.
I’ve been using bing for the past 6 months or so, ever since the chat gpt integration.
In 6 months, I’ve earned enough points to get a $5 taco bell gift certificate.
Overall, the quality of results that I get are… Not as good as google. I find myself frequently re-searching things on Google because I actually do not find what I’m looking for on bing. And then on Google, the perfect result is the first or second listing.
Now, Google is integrating bard into searches. Sometimes it sucks, yes. But it is basically just as good as the bing chat gpt thing. So… Yeah. I’m going to go back to Google search soon.
For more conversational things that require more up-to-date knowledge and things that I need to verify the facts/sources for, I’ll use bing ai. It’s actually quite good for that.
I fed a couple of Simon stalenhag’s works and asked it to generate a new cover for No Man’s Sky (Stalenhag made the OG one) based on his style but with oil painting. This was one of the outputs.
It’s really cool how fast it’s come around to be integrated with the rest of the environment. Can’t wait to see what they do next with it. I have a feeling Microsoft and Google will make commercial offerings for personal AI models that will be trained on company data and you’ll be able to use it without worrying if you’re exfiltrating data to OpenAI by using it.
Oh man that’s such a cool image! And yeah, its super cool what they are doing. I’m excited for DALLE2 to improve to the level of midjourney haha, but even now its pretty great!
And yeah I agree with you on the direction its going. Specialized models are definitely where its going to go.
Oh dude, its really freakin good. Its like, 2 generations past DALLE2 at this point. If you are interested in AI art stuff, I recommend checking it out!
My suggestion is to download something like Windows Privacy Dashboard and disabling/uninstalling as much telemetry options as possible.
I’ve never got that kind of ad push, so i have to ask where you got it? Was it from using the search bar beside the start button? If so, maybe completely disabling and uninstalling Cortana might fix it.
Got this via Mastodon which will not let me search for the source.
If you’re in the US, when you set up Windows for the first time, select English (Europe) or English (World), not English (US). That will stop it installing all the bloatware that USians are not protected from but everyone else is.
Throw all your important stuff onto a drive thay doesn’t contain the OS. Then remove the drive and wipe the computer. You can set it up again and choose the non-bloatware options.
From what I’ve seen online, it must be done during installation. So short answer, no.
As others have said, you could also backup your data and do a fresh installation (from a boot media, not from Windows itself just to be extra safe).
ThioJoe also has a video talking about this English (Europe/World) thing and also provide a Powershell script to delete Windows bloatware. This option could be interesting if you don’t want to reset your whole installation.
You must switch back to English (US) after installation if you want access to Microsoft Store (and even if you don’t, you probably should because most apps are now there).
I’ve seen a few tools to suppress most telemetry such as ChrisTitusTech’s winutil or O&O ShutUp, maybe you could give that a try. Microsoft is really pushing hard Bing & Edge…
Also, as a Linux user, I must obliged to the rules and say there’s alternatives out there if you want to try something new. :-) !linux
Ah okay, I didn’t know people used it that way and I don’t do XBox game pass or anything like that. It makes sense. My only real experience with windows store apps has been my work computer trying to install a “personal use” version of Microsoft teams from there and apparently I had to get the professional version through M365 downloads.
It's definitely a US thing, I'm on English (Singapore) and have not seen an ad, ever. I was perplexed by all the complaints of ads in the start menu and wherever, until someone pointed to me that it was a US thing.
The above is my solution until taking the other advice on this thread and transitioning to Linux. Only thing holding me back there is gaming (which already works great for most people, I had trouble with my GPU). There are so many things about Linux that are just better than Windows now, and a high number of use cases these days are met with Firefox and libre office.
What GPU issues were you having btw? If they’re driver related you could use a distro that has Nvidia drivers baked into the ISO by default like pop_os, just use their Nvidia ISO for the install.
AMD actually, newer 7900 xtx I think. It wasn’t a problem with the Linux desktop environment, but games crashing. At the time I didn’t have much time or patience to get it set up :/
Win 11 just isn’t going to happen though, too many good options now. If something doesn’t work by then 🤷♂️, guess it isn’t that important.
Thank you, I can’t remember what I did try though, and it had been a while since I had Linux as my primary OS. I was still trying to figure out how proton worked with steam and whatnot.
By the time I get around to trying it again my card will be sufficiently aged I probably won’t need to worry about it :D
I’m both an AMD (7900XT) and NixOS user. AMD drivers are known for being a bit wonky when they’re brand-new on Linux.
I continue to have a particularly bad experience with anything Flatpak (I chalk that up to its Ubuntu influences, rather than Linux in general), but everything else works perfectly.
7900xt user here on Ubuntu lts: what worked for me was finding some Valve engineer’s ppa that has mesa drivers with modern chip support. I was honestly pretty pissed at how much work it was to get my gpu working in Linux after hearing so much about how good it has gotten. My experience was basically the same as ten years ago: a pain in the ass.
I’d like to mention Windows 10 LTSC here. It’s an official Windows 10 Edition from Microsoft, designed for enterprise and embedded usage. Therefore it has no bloatware, no annoying feature updates, no ads and only the absolute minimum of telemetry. If you don’t like Windows but somehow have to use it, this might be the right choice for you.
If you use modern hardware it doesn't behave quite well and gets worse battery life. If you use any tools from Microsoft (WSL, Office, Windows Terminal, etc) most of those are incompatible or a pain to install. If you use anything from the Microsoft Store, including Game Pass, since it just doesn't include the Microsoft Store.
That’s somewhat wrong. I had no problem installing WSL, Office or Windows Terminal, and they all work fine. The only thing that’s actually a problem is the missing Microsoft Store, but since I’m not using it anyway it doesn’t bother me.
Technically true, though you can start a free trial of Prime and claim all the games, and then (supposedly) they’re still yours to keep after the trial expires. A small hoop to jump through, but it should mean free games!
Some definitely do have DRM. I explicitly ended up buying Devil May Cry on Steam despite getting it with Prime because it opened the Twitch launcher every time I tried to play, which messed up Steam Input or whatever I was trying to use at the time.
Amazon is a storefront, not the subscription. They actually do give out free stuff once in a blue moon, so just saying [Amazon] is not clarification enough. On reddit, subs like this would say “complimentary with Prime” or something like that.
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