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I can’t believe a paid OS needs a tool like this. Here’s a GUI tool called OFGB (Oh Frick Go Back) to remove all the ads in Windows 11. It’s understandable if a free OS or app needs ad support, but this is just crazy github.com/xM4ddy/OFGB
[Screenshot Of a GUI Tool To Removes Ads From Various Places Around Windows 11]
Makes me wonder how long till video game load screens are sold as ad space.
Thanks for putting this idea forward to the industry.
Oh, please, do you really think they didn’t have this idea already?
EA games have done it already, since early 2000s. Practically any EA BIG game has in-game ads for real brands, all over the overworld billboards
Delete this comment
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NBA 2K has had ads in it for a while, though I can’t remember if they’re specifically in the loading screen or not.
you ever play a mobile game on an android phone?
“loading” screens
Makes me wonder how many seconds till they realise the users won’t be able to tell if the game is still loading or it’s just monetised delay. Bonus points if a user finds out, lobbies to get it banned and then they just include bullshit extra processing to justify it.
The future looks so bright.
If its a pc game people will just find a way to turn that off and tell everyone else how to do it.
You can turn off stuff that the programmers allow you to through a settings menu (that they wrote), configuration files (that they make their program to read) or fiddling 3rd party stuff that it’s using (like your driver settings, external libraries, etc.).
Similarly to how GTA V’s (could be GTA Online) extreme loading time was caused by a very inefficient way of loading data. Users couldn’t change the algorithm themselves; they could investigate what was going on, but the developers were the only ones being able to actually change it to a recommended version.
Obviously the story is a bit different with an open source code which you can compile for yourself.
Conditioning everyone to see their computers as media consumption kiosks instead of the powerful, productive machines they are. That’s where MS OSes are headed. They tried too early with Windows 8 Metro, but they haven’t lost sight of that concept.
“My TV shows ads so it’s only natural my computer does too.” - I bet a lot of people already think like this.
Pretty soon it’ll want to use your idle cpu net and disk for undisclosed purposes as part of the EULA.
The Telemetry collection service does a good job of that already, especially on laptops where it wakes them from sleep, and eats through the battery while idle in a backpack. I’ve been stung by this many times since Windows 8 - I now unplug then hibernate my last remaining Windows laptop, work-issued.
Also moved as much personal gear as possible over to various Linux distros a while ago, except my PC where some games cannot detect my sim peripherals & freetrack emulation under WINE
Ick
I want to make a script for Linux that adds ads everywhere. It would be tricky with Wayland but not impossible. It could start by installing browser extensions.
There is a special place in hell for you lol.
If they were fake ads like in GTA and Cyberpunk, it could be fun, provided you could turn them on and off anytime.
I’ll use the Google Ad platform
From there I’ll encrypt all your files and make you watch an ad per file to access your data
It has a 1 in 500 chance of serving you a 300 hour ad you cannot skip, and if you attempt to restart the system to get rid of it, it’ll make a note of that and restart the ad from the beginning after the next reboot.
Uh sorry, this is a big file. Here’s the second, unskippable ad.
Na just throw ads into system logs. Or do what Ubuntu does and throw an advert every time you run apt upgrade.
Have you tried installing any packages from NPM recently?
9474733 packages are looking for funding
And call the script “Windows”
I was thinking more along the lines of “optimizer”
they used to call this malware
“It’s okay when we do it.”
If its pre-installed, its typically called “Bloatware”.
And I remember having bloatware on my machine going back to the 90s. The first really high quality gaming computer I got was a Sony Vaio and it had tons of bullshit excess software I had to mop out of it before I was ready to really use it.
Is it actually malicious, though? Ads by themselves aren’t malicious.
Adware then, which is generally unacceptable in a large full featured paid product.
Not sure if my AdBlock is responsible for not knowing about any of these ads even existing or EU.
Settings ads? I had no idea it got THIS bad.
When it’s against the law to not maximize profit for shareholders we get into some really disgusting territory when you can’t innovate anymore and need to squeeze every dime out of everything.
What the hell is microsuck going to do in another 10 years? Infinite growth is more of a fantasy than working Communism yet we swear it will work somehow…
If you absolutely MUST use Windows, use it with AtlasOS.
Otherwise, Debian w/ KDE Plasma is your panacea.
It disables security features!
That was what I read.
I’ve read about that one
Then there was a similar tool and some discussion about one or the other being either buggy or problematic?
Also - I remember NTlite or similar was out there and lots of talk of Chris Titus’ debloater - haven’t used any at least not in over 5 years
That was probably Atlas, it disables a bunch of security features as part of debloating, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless it’s an offline device
That was it!! Thank you!
I hadn’t heard of Atlas… Looks like it’s a debloating tool? Does it work well?
Debian FTW
I have win11 on my gaming pc and i don’t see any ads. Maybe because i use local account.
It’s kind of embarrassing to see so many linux nerds talk about ads in Windows 11, like navigating the settings menu is difficult.
I use linux and Windows. I haven’t seen an ad in windows since i installed and disabled them.
1: you shouldn’t have to
2: you have to go to like 6 different places to get most of them and there are still ads for microsoft products baked into the settings menu
It’s embarrassing to see people actively defending the wealthiest corporation in the world baking ads directly into your operating system.
It isn’t hard but it is tedious because each of the ad settings is in a different location. Like taskbar has its settings which aren’t configured in the Settings app where you can turn off the ads. Settings has places in search and another in privacy. Look at the OP image. It’s 9 different settings that need to be found and turned off.
9 settings all easily accessible via the search bar in settings.
Idk im not seeing the absolutely gigantic issue that anti-windows people make it out to be - at worst, it’s a minor nuisance.
The issue is ads are for supporting free software. Windows is not free therefore should not be showing ads.
I have never seen an ad. I’ve not put any effort into debloat. It’s this all just bs?
Edit: Plenty of down votes for asking a question. Great community guys.
Perhaps you just have a different view on what is or is not an ad. For example when I see a link in the start menu for an app that I did not install, I consider that to be an ad. The most common time this happens is for Office. (Or Microsoft 365 or whatever it is called now.) Also, when I see a ‘suggestion’ to sign into a Microsoft account to use OneDrive - I consider that an ad. Microsoft aren’t telling me about OneDrive to improve my life. They are telling me to improve their profits. And when I type something in the start menu to launch an app, any result that comes up that is not something I put on my computer is an ad. It often will suggest particular websites for example.
These are the kinds of thing that we’re talking about. I’m sure if you’re using Windows on a home computer you will have seen these things. (I assume you’re talking about ads in Windows. It would be quite something else if you’d never seen any ad anywhere.)
This is my start menu in Windows 11, so I’m also curious about all the hubbub. I will admit I had to get rid of a load of unwanted links when I first got the computer but I’ve never seen adverts beyond that and that it suggests Microsoft Edge in certain contexts.
You in EU?
Yes!
Look, I agree, but let’s not kid ourselves on our experience not being shitty too 🤣. We’re capable of using it only because we’re really good at computers, but there are literally millions of people who don’t even know or care about knowing how to change desktop background
there are literally millions of people who don’t even know or care about knowing how to change desktop background
I’ll cede “know”, but I heavily dispute “care”.
Plenty of Boomers are painfully aware of how awful the internet has become over the last decade. Hell, they got to experience it before the rest of us precisely because folks who never knew how to migrate off AOL or Yahoo got enshitified first.
My own mom hates using the computer in no small part because she takes too much of what she sees at face value and ends up with tons of spyware, bloat, and scams rampaging across her laptop. I have to clean it out for her every few months, and I’m constantly fighting with her over what’s actually garbage and what she’s convinced she needs.
But the end result is that she just… won’t check her email because she hates it. She won’t answer her phone because she’s afraid of scam callers. She won’t trust ANY website, so she doesn’t use Amazon or Uber or Netflix.
It isn’t that people like my mom don’t care. They care immensely, because modern technology has become unusable for people like her.
Put linux on her computer, i think it would make her a lot less annoyed
I’ve never tried to install linux on an Apple before.
If it is an intel based machine, it’s no really much different than any other machine. The only difference would be in how you get to the boot menu. That’s about it.
I’d have to check the specs, but I believe its an M1 or M2.
If it is M1 or M2 Asahi Linux is the way to go, but it is still in development and probably not ready for your mom
Does lemmy have any communities for unintentional “yo mamma” jokes?
Linux on an Intel-based MacBook Air was my daily driver for years. It worked perfectly fine; battery life was lower than on macOS though.
I have. It mostly works, but the network drivers are a pain at best and simply non-existent at worst, often forcing you to add a USB dongle.
It’s not too bad. They probably wouldn’t have Windows either if they had to set it up themselves. My dad has been using Ubuntu for years, but he doesn’t know it. It’s just a laptop that works as far as he’s concerned.
I would argue there are facets to many people’s life that they leave “at default” because they “don’t care enough to fix it how they want”.
Take random Linux User XYZ; They still have to nudge their front door to get it open after unlocking, because they’re not a home improvement afficionado that wants to look up door repair videos on YouTube and attempt to put a stabilizer of some kind on the hinge. Or, they might accept the terrible interface in their car because they don’t know of easy ways to get it replaced with something simpler. Or, they don’t have their money invested anywhere because they don’t like/trust researching investment tips.
For us, it’s just that computers are something we’ll always tune to our preference. For others, it’s other things.
I just saw a post the other day from a guy who dumped fedora because it couldn’t be installed with a Bluetooth mouse.
Allegedly the installer requires a mouse click, and he had no other pointing device. They also said the keyboard navigation was not helpful and was also unable to switch to a console to manually pair his mouse.
I think it might be possible to get around all their menus with just tab and enter, but it’s less of a pain with a mouse last I tried.
He’s right, the installer should either make mice work or have a GUI that doesn’t expect them.
Yeah, these Linux ads are getting really annoying.
How dare people post about Linux in /c/linuxmemes
Genuinely where is the line for people still putting up with this stuff?
I think that it’s one of the benefits of monopoly. People don’t think “I wonder if I should start checking out alternatives?” but instead “Damn, that’s annoying. I wonder if there’s a way to fix this?” Alternatives never even enter their head. See, there’s already a tool for the problem in the post!
How the heck did those tools developers figure out how to remove those various ads in windows? Did they do it the hard way, fired up a debugger to reverse engineer how those ads were displayed? That takes some dedication. We in the Linux land have it easy because the source code is available to mess with.
It’s not difficult. Corporations won’t put up with this shit and MS knows it, so there are (almost) always documented registry entries or GPO policies you can set to disable this crap.
But you shouldn’t fucking have to. Which is why I’m now on Tumbleweed instead of Windows for my daily driver.
I would love another plug and play experience like I get with windows so I can spend my very limited time on playing the games I like out of the box. Any ideas on how I would do that please?
Get a Steam Deck.
No seriously, Steam Decks run on an immutable Arch (edit: I thought my steam deck was a Ubuntu distribution until just now when someone corrected me, see how much of a fool I am and yet I still find my steam deck easy to use when I am exhausted and don’t want to troubleshoot/learn new shit!) distro of Linux. Immutable means every update addresses the core of the operating system in a way that you can’t fuck up anywhere as easily as a normal operating system.
The desktop UI is great, there is a flatpak App Store pre-installed, I mean you can search for Xonotic or any other utility you need and install it in 30 seconds flat. It is just a Linux desktop with decent presets.
The thing is the Steam Deck doesn’t boot to desktop, it boots to a big picture mode where the UI looks like a console. It is easy to browse your games and it feels like you are using a very focused, locked down device from the likes of Apple or Nintendo, not a full blown portable Ubuntu computer running a slick wrapper around one of the most extensible constructions of software ever made (no unfortunately the Steam Deck isn’t a LISP machine).
The clever bit though is that SteamOS (basically a Ubuntu distro) has Proton which is designed to emulate windows (closely related to the other windows emulator WINE). This allows you to play the vast majority of windows games on your Steam Deck and because the windows games are ran in a virtual environment…. when you press the power button to sleep your Steam Deck it just pauses that virtual environment which means that ALLL kinds of games old and new that were never designed to be abruptly paused and resumed end up with wayyyyyyy less issues on the Steam Deck than they would if you were running them in Windows natively and trying to do the same thing (with say a microsoft Surface or something).
I regularly play Steel Panthers WinspWW2 on my Steam Deck. I run it on dosbox which either comes preinstalled on the Steam Deck or is available on the “app store” I can’t remember (not really a store because no one is selling anything).
https://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/WW2/WW2_page.html
^look how shit this website looks, this is an ANCIENT game running on DOS and it honestly barely runs on native windows anyways, you can’t full screen it without it crashing on windows.
All I had to do was add the launch file to steam and now I can open up my steam deck, scroll down to WinspWW2 and start playing the best turn based tactical strategy game ever made… on the go…… that came out in 1995 and has been updated continually since and is basically being kept functioning by an elaborate janky lifesupport system that most people with windows computers don’t even want to bother with because the experience of playing the game is too annoying….
It just runs on my Steam Deck tho!
The virtual dos environment lets me not have to worry if the game will crash when I pause and alt tab to a different program or abruptly put my device to sleep without giving the game time to save or something…. the Steam Deck just suspends the virtual environment and from the perspective of WinspWW2 no change needs to happen. The program just sits open and frozen waiting for me to press the power button on my Steam Deck and keep playing.
Not saying you have to do nerdy shit with your steam deck, what I am saying is that you can do whatever you want to with your steam deck and not have to worry that a company like Microsoft is going to take a dump on a nice thing you had worked out between you and your gaming setup.
Get the Steam Deck it is the best of both worlds, slick and polished when you want it to be, customizable and extensible when you need it to be.
- (W)INE (I)s (N)ot an (E)mulator. It’s not a virtual environment either. It’s just a compatibility layer that wires up calls to Windows libraries to their Linux counterparts. Proton is an enhanced fork of WINE.
- Sleep mode is just… sleep mode, and consumes 10% of your battery per day.
- DosBox runs on Windows, too.
- The Steam Deck is a weak ass PC. I love mine, but it does not compare to a modest gaming PC.
I haven’t gamed on Windows since buying my Deck, but you’re testimonial here isn’t very convincing. It’s a portable gaming device that requires a dock (or hub) to even play on a monitor. It’s underpowered by design. Not even all top Steam games run on it.
you’re testimonial here isn’t very convincing. It’s a portable gaming device that requires a dock (or hub) to even play on a monitor. It’s underpowered by design. Not even all top Steam games run on it.
Damn sorry I can see why you don’t like it and those are valid points about doing a bad job with my testimonial, I don’t really know that much about any of this I just type things into google and yell excitedly at the words that pop up most of the time when I am programming (I am looking to learn how to automate this with AI).
Also ok my confusion in thinking WINE is a virtual environment and an emulator when it isn’t, is something anyone could get confused about, if they wanted to make sure everyone knew they should have Put It In The Name and instead they named it after that sour grape drink I would always see my parents friends drink who think the New York Times is a genuinely progressive news organization.
But whatever, I am a fool as I keep telling people and if anything my post should be more convincing because I love my steam deck and find it easy to use even when I am downloading and installing utilities in desktop mode like Qutebrowser and tailoring custom keybindings to use it. I can still figure this out, which is a miracle if a very mundane one at that.
You are clearly right here, and if I was going to make a good argument for the Steam Deck I should have come off as someone who evidently loves their Steam Deck and wants to chat with people about it in a critical fashion where commenters with various different perspectives acknowledge the ups and downs of the device and it’s inherent limitations while refraining from the need to correct newbies sharing their love for the device on incorrect technical details that other newbies aren’t going to care about.
I haven’t gamed on Windows since buying my Deck
Wait
Yeah, your overall point is 100% correct and well made. Just a few things that don’t really matter to an end user they were complaining about
Does anyone happen to know what Mastodon client this is? I’m assuming this is on iOS
TIL you can view and reply to lemmy posts from mastodon
That’s the point of the fediverse and activitypub - posts from one platform are federated to other compatible platforms. I know this also includes kbin, but there’s probably other platforms.
