This feels awfully as a desperate move...

Are M$ numbers dwindling lately or are they just scared there is a rise in Linux users (even non tech savvy) and this is a desperate move to capture more peope?

I find it tedious to have to disable Microsoft crap that is switched on without my knowledge in windows. Get a copy of Autoruns to disable most of that crap at startup.

I never understood why anyone would pay for office 365 or use something like hello. Like Libreoffice is free and does the same job with less bullshit. And last time I checked windows is not running on any ones phones so why push the leftover failed features?

Im going to bat for Microsoft here, coming from someone who uses both for work+home.

How many tech enthusiast/pcgamers are paying customers of Microsoft? I'd bet that most of us are using grey market OEM keys or reusing a license we've had upgraded from a previous install.

Communities like ours love to harpe on about how 95% of people are not bothered by the invasiveness of the telemetry and advertising, yet those are the very same people that are likely subscribing to Office365, not changing their default browser from Edge, and not installing an adblocker.

These are, in a sense, the "paying customer" to whom any profit driven company would be trying to improve experience of. Setting up cloud backup, signing in to your PC with your phone, using an online account are all good things from a general user perspective. I'd bet they have the telemetry to back this up.

I wish MS would release a SKU which was targeted towards the tech enthusiast, but how would they make that profitable? Not to mention I think a lot of us have a few fundamental misunderstandings on the current situation, some examples;

1. Telemetry is essential to modern software development, people don't submit enough bug reports and nor should they be expected to for things like device drivers.
2. The store/store apps is a better delivery model for software than going to a website to grab the setup.exe. It enforces standardisation, simplifies the process for devs to push updates and isolates user applications from the underlying operating system.
3. Even these days you can configure Windows to not include a lot of the stuff people complain about if you're ok with Powershell. At one point in time, being a power user in Windows for both home and work was just about knowing where the GUI buttons are. Now it is about being comfortable in a command line.

I need to purge myself after all that corporate shilling.

Note to be less pessimistic about this:

This is exactly how you are supposed to handle system settings being added to, removed or modified. You re-display a limited version of the first-run setup dialogue to the user. It feels familiar, they see it every so often, but you reduce it to the relevant pieces.

You may not like what MS changes, but from a user workflow this is sort-of the best case.

Distrowatch.org

It's time to come back to the light. I'm soon making the switch to Linux for good. I was waiting for gaming to become much more accessible... But I was messing up before because I was downloading the wrong drivers.

I've been learning how to use it by keeping my main machine on win10 while my laptop is on pop os. Using that to test my games and learn.

I've been using it long enough that once I get a good break from life, I'll be going thru the steps to switch my gaming PC over.

Even if there was the option to skip. I go through the whole setup each time all the way to finishing it. Yet it still comes up again the next time. It's infuriating.

Not sure what I expected from Microsoft though. I got a 365 subscription about two years ago. OneDrive never worked properly. It wouldn't sync, and the so-called "Personal Vault" would reset itself everyday while keeping the contents. Forcing me to go through the setup whenever I used it. The email though, was by far the worst. About a year ago everyone would start receiving an absolutely insane amount of spam/phishing emails. I was getting around sixty a day. I have no idea what Microsoft did to fuck things up so badly though.

So that's why my disk space has gone down so much

I got a new Asus laptop and had to set up windows to be able to get into the advanced boot settings and install Kubuntu. I am so glad I did

This has always, always, always been the case for me since I got a laptop with Windows 11 preinstalled on it. I dual boot Linux (openSUSE) and rarely use Windows, and this screen pops up like 5% of the time when I boot to Windows.

Thank god i use GNU/Linux

It's been like that for at least a ear.

Install. Linux.

Yes.

Yes, install Linux, yes, it's better, yes, it's a little different, but yes, you will like it better.

Bloat ware? Gone. Antivirus shit? Gone. Spyware? Gone. Reboots for bullshit reasons? Gone. Forced updates? Gone.

Yeah, but it's so complicated and games don't work because there are no drivers!

Bullshit. Drivers exist now for just a out everything and most drivers are put of the box, not like windows requiring installs. Most of not all games now work.

But I needy software X!

Many, not all, but MANY software packages out there have open source equivalents that many times are equal or better than what you're using. If not that, Wine will allow you to run a huge amount of windows software transparently on Linux. YMMV of course but "I need software x!" barely has been an excuse anymore for using windows.

Did I mention it's actually free, no piracy involved (though if that is your thing, lots of software available for that too)

Windows sucks. Microsoft software in general sucks. Microsoft platforms suck (looking at you there, outlook, teams, office, and SharePoint, oh my frigging god what pieces of shit you are)

That ubuntu-22.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso starting to look lit af 🥵

Remember, there are always alternatives..