My solution was to migrate to Windows 10/11 Enterprise. No ads, no nothing. The LTSC versions are even better but they’re a little too barebones for my use case. Keep in mind that those SKUs cannot be activated legally but as with anything: There are ways to circumvent that issue.
You make it sound as if I have to evade the police and steal it from a store lmao. It’s pretty openly available and even a simple utility like RUFUS can disable all the shit in the iso itself before making it a bootable drive.
These links to install things like Candy Crush are only seen until you remove them. Once removed, you never see them again. This is no different to a lot of physical products and software products - including FireFox.
Software managers in some distros like Mint have ‘Featured’ apps that highlight some applications; applications like WhatsApp, Dropbox, Spotify, Skype, etc - smells like adverts to me.
I don’t use the Microsoft Store on Windows, nor do I use software managers on Linux. But what do you expect with these, it’s like going to eBay and complaining you see adverts.
Okay. Original person this whole thread spawned from. I think you all went down the rabbit hole of “what’s an advert” and lost the entire point of my comment which is lack of choice.
But before I address that choice thing let’s address the “Ads” of Linux as you would call it. The “Featured” apps in a lot of software managers for Linux are selections that come from folks who manage the distro wanting to ensure that people know that “Linux can do that stuff that Windows can”. The “Feature” is not there to promote Dropbox and pray get some money, it’s there to point out to people “we can do that here as well, just FYI.”
So you may feel that the featured in the software managers is “ad” but you can ask the folks who run the distro how they arrived at what’s there and pretty much every case it’s so they can show that the distro has some feature parity with what people are expecting. Now you do mention Firefox and they are indeed hawking their own product. Interestingly, Mozilla maintains a page about just this thing. And it’s come up time and time again in mailinglists. Distro builders absolutely have the option to disable this in their repo, but by default build, it’s allowed and default options is how a lot of distros choose build the package. And it’s this later part that leads me to the point of my original comment.
CHOICE. Long story short because I feel I’ve already made this comment pretty long. You don’t get choice in Windows. There’s not some magic build that you can use to do away with all that Candy Crush and what not and still be this side of the TOS for the OS. And for Linux there is choice. It’s less about ads and more about “do you get a say in any of this?” With pretty much every Linux distro, you always have the option to become a contributor in some manner. (As an aside) This is actually the friction that a lot folks talk about with how RedHat and the Fedora project have been doing things lately. They’re sort of removing this option for the general public to have a line of commentary into the project. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but even with the notions that they’re toying with, it’s been met with pretty strong reactions against what they’re doing. And lots of distros have pointed out, that they are going to be doing the opposite of what RedHat is doing going forward on that front. (but I digress)
But that all said, looking at Windows. You don’t get a say in the build process. There’s not an option for you to rebuild the software stack to your liking for distribution between your machines. There’s what the SKU offers and then there’s just finding some other OS. And yes, that’s not ignoring that enterprise Windows allows pretty much all of these things to not be a thing via group policy objects in the active directory, but it still sticks to the core aspect of only if your SKU offers that option and you need to use that SKU in accordance with the TOS for that SKU. Those are your options. That’s the thing and while I’m sure the debate about “what constitutes an ad or not” is a noble one to have, I think you all lost the entire point of my original comment to debate this point that’s not really a point that anyone was making to begin with. And also your view on that point of “what’s an ad” is poorly informed from the Linux distro makers perspective. There’s a need to point out to users coming from Windows or Mac and trying “Linux” for the first time that “we can do that too”. That’s distinctly different from Microsoft’s goal of letting you know that you too can sign up for OneDrive.
I haven’t gone down a rabbit hole at all. There are only three very short and sweet comments from me on the subject.
I think it’s interesting that people frame it differently depending on whether it’s Linux or Windows. Product placements in Windows are called adverts. Product placements in Linux and software people run on Linux are called helping the user.
I’m just here to defend the position that Windows doesn’t serve adverts. At least to me on any of the Windows computers I’ve used in the past several years on both pro and home editions. I haven’t used any of these tricks or scripts that attempt to cripple Windows either. I’ve only disabled web search in the start menu because I think it’s a stupid feature. And yes there are product placements on the start menu by default but they’re never to be seen again after you delete them in the first 30 seconds on the very first boot up.
I use Linux and Windows, so i’m not a hardcore Windows user come here to troll. Although, it feels like I would have received less negativity if I had trolled. 😂
With Windows and adverts, maybe it’s a your mileage may vary situation based on your region or something. All I know is, I see zero adverts on Windows.
Have you ever gotten a windows update? (The sponsored bit came back regularly with most updates for me, I’ve barely used windows though.)
Also by software managers I’m guessing you mean the ones with a GUI or do you install everything manually?
These are annoying as heck but I don’t consider them ads at all. Sure they probably launch some ad riddled page, but no direct ads in windows.
They can all be turned off and I am a bit annoyed that our desktop team hasn’t turned them off in our org’s standard images. I cringe anytime I have to remote in to troubleshoot with a user. Thankfully it isn’t very often.
I see zero adverts. What you describe is news to me. I wonder if it’s regional?
I use machines daily that are Win11 home and Win11 pro.
The only change I’ve made to Win11 is turn off web search in the start menu.
You don’t have to remove candy crush etc from your start menu? Lucky you. I certainly did.
My solution was to migrate to Windows 10/11 Enterprise. No ads, no nothing. The LTSC versions are even better but they’re a little too barebones for my use case. Keep in mind that those SKUs cannot be activated legally but as with anything: There are ways to circumvent that issue.
But… DAE Windows bad!?
Well, apparently you need to illegally use the enterprise edition to make it tolerable, so…
You make it sound as if I have to evade the police and steal it from a store lmao. It’s pretty openly available and even a simple utility like RUFUS can disable all the shit in the iso itself before making it a bootable drive.
Naw man. This is a linux enthusiast sub. It’s just how they are. Kinda fun to wind them up, though. XD
Still, you have to violate the TOS and forego any kind of official support to get a usable product…
Why do you even need official support for windows?
These links to install things like Candy Crush are only seen until you remove them. Once removed, you never see them again. This is no different to a lot of physical products and software products - including FireFox.
Software managers in some distros like Mint have ‘Featured’ apps that highlight some applications; applications like WhatsApp, Dropbox, Spotify, Skype, etc - smells like adverts to me.
I don’t use the Microsoft Store on Windows, nor do I use software managers on Linux. But what do you expect with these, it’s like going to eBay and complaining you see adverts.
And those install links are ads. MS doesn’t put them there with out benefit. Otherwise they might offer links to Steam or LibreOffice.
Imagine lol.
Interestingly you don’t address the mentioned product placements in Linux. Okay, ciao.
Okay. Original person this whole thread spawned from. I think you all went down the rabbit hole of “what’s an advert” and lost the entire point of my comment which is lack of choice.
But before I address that choice thing let’s address the “Ads” of Linux as you would call it. The “Featured” apps in a lot of software managers for Linux are selections that come from folks who manage the distro wanting to ensure that people know that “Linux can do that stuff that Windows can”. The “Feature” is not there to promote Dropbox and pray get some money, it’s there to point out to people “we can do that here as well, just FYI.”
So you may feel that the featured in the software managers is “ad” but you can ask the folks who run the distro how they arrived at what’s there and pretty much every case it’s so they can show that the distro has some feature parity with what people are expecting. Now you do mention Firefox and they are indeed hawking their own product. Interestingly, Mozilla maintains a page about just this thing. And it’s come up time and time again in mailinglists. Distro builders absolutely have the option to disable this in their repo, but by default build, it’s allowed and default options is how a lot of distros choose build the package. And it’s this later part that leads me to the point of my original comment.
CHOICE. Long story short because I feel I’ve already made this comment pretty long. You don’t get choice in Windows. There’s not some magic build that you can use to do away with all that Candy Crush and what not and still be this side of the TOS for the OS. And for Linux there is choice. It’s less about ads and more about “do you get a say in any of this?” With pretty much every Linux distro, you always have the option to become a contributor in some manner. (As an aside) This is actually the friction that a lot folks talk about with how RedHat and the Fedora project have been doing things lately. They’re sort of removing this option for the general public to have a line of commentary into the project. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but even with the notions that they’re toying with, it’s been met with pretty strong reactions against what they’re doing. And lots of distros have pointed out, that they are going to be doing the opposite of what RedHat is doing going forward on that front. (but I digress)
But that all said, looking at Windows. You don’t get a say in the build process. There’s not an option for you to rebuild the software stack to your liking for distribution between your machines. There’s what the SKU offers and then there’s just finding some other OS. And yes, that’s not ignoring that enterprise Windows allows pretty much all of these things to not be a thing via group policy objects in the active directory, but it still sticks to the core aspect of only if your SKU offers that option and you need to use that SKU in accordance with the TOS for that SKU. Those are your options. That’s the thing and while I’m sure the debate about “what constitutes an ad or not” is a noble one to have, I think you all lost the entire point of my original comment to debate this point that’s not really a point that anyone was making to begin with. And also your view on that point of “what’s an ad” is poorly informed from the Linux distro makers perspective. There’s a need to point out to users coming from Windows or Mac and trying “Linux” for the first time that “we can do that too”. That’s distinctly different from Microsoft’s goal of letting you know that you too can sign up for OneDrive.
I haven’t gone down a rabbit hole at all. There are only three very short and sweet comments from me on the subject.
I think it’s interesting that people frame it differently depending on whether it’s Linux or Windows. Product placements in Windows are called adverts. Product placements in Linux and software people run on Linux are called helping the user.
I’m just here to defend the position that Windows doesn’t serve adverts. At least to me on any of the Windows computers I’ve used in the past several years on both pro and home editions. I haven’t used any of these tricks or scripts that attempt to cripple Windows either. I’ve only disabled web search in the start menu because I think it’s a stupid feature. And yes there are product placements on the start menu by default but they’re never to be seen again after you delete them in the first 30 seconds on the very first boot up.
I use Linux and Windows, so i’m not a hardcore Windows user come here to troll. Although, it feels like I would have received less negativity if I had trolled. 😂
With Windows and adverts, maybe it’s a your mileage may vary situation based on your region or something. All I know is, I see zero adverts on Windows.
Okay fair enough.
Have you ever gotten a windows update? (The sponsored bit came back regularly with most updates for me, I’ve barely used windows though.) Also by software managers I’m guessing you mean the ones with a GUI or do you install everything manually?
I’ve never experienced those links coming back. I only ever see them again when I buy a new computer/laptop or if I reinstall Windows.
And yeah I mean the GUI ones.
Ok, maybe they changed that, they were definitely coming back for me and I HATED it.
These are annoying as heck but I don’t consider them ads at all. Sure they probably launch some ad riddled page, but no direct ads in windows.
They can all be turned off and I am a bit annoyed that our desktop team hasn’t turned them off in our org’s standard images. I cringe anytime I have to remote in to troubleshoot with a user. Thankfully it isn’t very often.
DEFINITION FOR ADVERTISEMENT
noun
a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, or on the internet.
a public notice, especially in print.
the action of making generally known; a calling to the attention of the public
Just because it may not be trying to get you to buy Coca-Cola doesn’t mean it isn’t an ad.