this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
612 points (99.4% liked)

Technology

60012 readers
2166 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The only way to get away from this is to use some kind of FOSS operating system

Been doing this for like 10 years now. It was easy to see the future of windows when windows 8 and 10 started sending user data to their cloud. Next step is always serving ads.

And people pay for Windows too. :)

It's not too late to switch to Linux but you are very late if you haven't done it.

[โ€“] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You can turn off Microsoft's ads, browser nagging, and data faucet, but as long as you are dependent on them for Windows Updates, that gives them an opportunity to undo your fixes and turn them back on.

FOSS has a similar problem in which the program author can sell out to a less-friendly entity, and when you update the software it starts misbehaving (see Audacity, Simple Mobile Tools, etc.)

This is why I use Debian stable branch. Disadvantages: outdated software (but still get security updates) Advantages: outdated software (but still get security updates) ๐Ÿ˜…

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The thing is, people have been saying "you can turn off feature x" since at least 10 years now, and while that is true for a while, the operating system keeps getting shittier. There is no reason to keep using something like that unless you have to. :)

[โ€“] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Agreed. I dual-booted years ago; start menu ads made me wipe the Windows, and Edging their way into people's computers made me realize how meaningless the antitrust lawsuit was.

It's a slow march toward subscription OS and when it's their computer, people probably won't be able to use the nice one-click registry hacks to remove the ads and spyware.

If there's anything particular about your Linux OS that you don't like, there's likely a different distro that does it the way you want, or dig in and learn how to change it.