Its funny that windows users are asking for the most basic shit like searching their own computer and Microsoft is like nah im going to give you bing and ads
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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Gotta love how they have more than 70% of the market, yet they still need to see line go up, because otherwise they might actually have to improve the product π«¨
The engineer assumes far too much good faith by Microsoft. He focuses on the idea that Windows was built for casual users and the online vocal power users that want to stretch the normal use of the system don't like how their strange choices are handled and yell online setting the narrative. His advice boils down to, 'give a power user mode that lets you control the telemetry, turns off ads and searches in your start menu, lets you boot without an online account, bundle all OEM installed apps in one bundle, respecting changing defaults like web browser." Like, sweetheart, I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this, Microsoft didn't stumble backwards into including ads and locking out offline accounts, they are incentivized to be shit like this.
He suggests in addition to buying windows it having a monthly fee for this pro mode to allow for such freedoms, "because they can't just give windows away forever hoping to make it up on OneDrive fees." Cool, I'd rather stick to linux, thanks.
"because they can't just give windows away forever hoping to make it up on OneDrive fees."
Now thid is clearly bullshit. What makes Windows sales again, barely 1/5 of the company's cloud business?
Well Windows sales might, but that's why you gotta pay for pro mode that removes all the ad shit. Otherwise they would lose out on the additional 2/5 or whatever that comes from their ad-ware
The ads are for their own services though, doubt they're earning any direct profit from advertising their own services.
It's not beyond the realms of belief that they do, such are the ways of corpo accounting. OS dept could be billing OneDrive dept for the ads to subsidise the OS dev.
Hardcode mode
So if my PC crashes, I have to get a whole new one and start at the beginning?
Of course not! You just need to be willing to allow Microsoft to record you while doing some full penetration.
"Hardcore mode". Its really not as hard as it seems to people.
Would the person employing this mode called a superuser?
Sudo ultimatepower
Of course it's fucking Dave, piece of shit https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s-office-sues-settles-washington-based-softwareonlinecom
Is hardcore mode where if the computer crashes it automatically deletes any files you had and resets the OS to a clean slate?
Installing your OS and data on a RAM disk
essentially a live image
Prefer my roguelite os, I can only install updates every time I nuke my system.
suicidelinux?
There was an article on a tech news site recently about how to unshittify windows. Just like 4 pages of stuff to turn off and uninstall.
People in the comments unsurprisingly were like "Linux is free and getting better all the time". People were mad. So mad.
Yeah.
Like, im sorry your old fav turned to shit and is shit now, but it is shit now. Let's look for options that aren't shit and aren't turning to shit.windows users:
how DARE you!
In the beginning was the command line - Neal Stephenson
Hacker with bullhorn: βSave your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!β Prospective station wagon buyer: βI know what you say is true...but...er...I donβt know how to maintain a tank!β Bullhorn: βYou donβt know how to maintain a station wagon either!β Buyer: βBut this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music.β Bullhorn: βBut if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!β Buyer: βStay away from my house, you freak!β
I've decided I'll juat use a Mac for work and play PC games on a docked SteamDeck. No more need for windows.
Last night I had to go into powershell to delete an mp3 because for some reason I couldnβt just right click and delete because I needed admin permission. I built you Iβm not an admin Iβm god
Linux has you sudo all the time so that's not weird.
If you are using sudo all the time something has gone wrong
I just set my computer to auto-login as root when it boots up. I never have to use sudo!
If you aren't trying new packages and distros are you even Linuxing?
As a Silverblue-based distro user, I don't need root to do any of that.
It might be roundabout weird because using Windows you expect any request performed by the user (except perhaps modifying system32) to be accepted without questioning.
Linux (with a few exceptions) gives the user the expectation that the reason they need sudo is that it is the safety glass confirmation around the potential self-destruct button (even if sometimes needed for mundane things)
Yeah not sure that one holds up. I'm happily on Linux now, but permissions are something that often creep up and I need to sudo often.
Was it copied from an old hard drive?
It was an old download but itβs weird because everything else in the folder deleted except that single file.
I have had issues when it was copied from an old hard drive where the files were downloaded by another account name. Windows knows the account IDs don't match so your permissions are limited. If you don't like command line you can often go into properties , security, advanced, then use take ownership option, or select user name and check the full control option
i had that, but with a font file. so dumb.
That video came up in my youtube recommendations last night, and I watched it. Pretty good, although if you've used Windows in the past ten years there aren't going to be any real surprises in there. It sucks for all the reasons people usually complain about, and it's all getting worse lately.
I am less sympathetic about it. He says it's a love letter wrapped in a complaint, essentially saying 'Windows is shitty because of all the enshitification they've done', yeah bud, we know.
Though, the central reason for everything should be the most important part: capitalism.
Indeed, itβs 100% about respecting the user. Windows does not.
When did it not suck exactly?
Maybe win 2000?
XP was the start of the enshitification, I knew I couldn't stay on windows with that release.
Although after Bill (how can this sell more windows) left and they were very open about being a DATA collection company first, a computer service company second, I thought they might simply offer windows for free.
With all this shit in it of course because that is how you satisfy data collection.
But I guess they figured why kill the revenue stream of windows itself.
Windows 7 was legitimately decent. I think it was also the automated upgrade to Windows 8 that was my red line and got me to successfully switch to Linux.
Now? It's sucked for a very long time.
Microsoft needs to get on this. I would pay money out of my own pocket to be able to upgrade my Windows 11 to hardcore mode at work just so I didn't have to deal with all of their AI and tracking bullshit.
And actually I know the company I work for would pay to upgrade all of their employees to the same level. Like they're sitting on millions of dollars of profit to just be able to turn off the bullshit they're forcing on us.
Windows 11 ltsc is Windows with all the copilot stuff removed. Doesn't even have Windows store. It is what the Pro version of Windows should have been. Was impressed after installing it since even Windows 10 after clean install had bunch of crap like tiktok and messenger to remove. LTSC is the closest to what Windows used to be back in Windows 7 when an OS was just as OS opposed to trying to push people to make online accounts to log into.
create problem, offer to fix problem if you pay... seems kind of like extortion, or in the very least abuse of monopoly powers
I'm willing to look the other way on this one.
Every time I image a PC, I have to run so many Windows 11 Debloat scripts and fixes to get rid of useless AI shit and then it just comes right back and it's such a pain. It's such a pain. I would gladly pay an annual amount of money to not have to deal with that pain.
Shit headline. The correct one is "Former Microsoft engineer explains why Windows sucks 'now'."