The adware isn't just Edge, Windows in general has gotten out of control. The other day I spent a few minutes on high alert because I got a notification about a "Grand Prize Giveaway". I assumed I somehow had malware, but no, the only malware I had was Windows itself [0].
Apparently this was part of Microsoft Rewards, which you can opt out of... in your Microsoft account. If you jumped through the hoops that are now required to get a local account, tough luck.
I love the gall to title the popup as "Suggested." As if this was somehow based upon a careful examination of my habits and profile and some matching algorithm managed to reveal this new and wonderful opportunity that I was _sure_ to want to receive.
Redmond product managers all appear to add pure negative value to me. All of their products do this routine of triumphantly blasting things that I would never want right on top of my experience under the guide of somehow helping or benefiting me.
Windows 10 started this with Candy Crush in the start menu and it drove me to desktop mac/linux to the exclusion of windows where I could, there are exceptions. It’s the last place I want distractions/noise/adverts/...
The way MacOS throws notifications for shit like app store software updates at the top right of the screen (by default) drives me up a wall lol. It feels like there's always something wanting to float around up there on one of my computers these days.
I miss the old days when Mac OS X was the ultimate "leave me alone and let me get my work done" OS.
At least the do not disturb modes have reasonable options and actually work. My last few months of using Windows at work I just stopped trying to disable crap because every time I would wake up to a forced update it would just reset anyway.
Because windows sysadmins are way more common, I feel like it's impossible to avoid being in the disaster path of an inexperienced windows sysadmin (or security person or IT person) -- even if the mean well! And stuff! ... one day you won't be able to get any work done because they enact some silly change that BREEAAAKS EVERYTHING.
Oh god, don't get me started. Had to help my 80 year old dad get his new windows 11 laptop setup recently. All he wants in his golden years is to click an icon and play solitaire from time to time.
Now it's all in one Microsoft store app with a collection of classic games, fine. But when you click minesweeper it doesn't start minesweeper, it opens the microsoft store, even after it's installed.
And he accidentally clicks a banner ad instead of the Spider freecell icon because they're identical and placed over each other. And instead of just changing the number of decks he has to answer questions about settings, coins to collect or something... it's insane.
My dad is a brilliant 73yo electrical engineer but he gets fooled by those fake ad “download now!” buttons when looking for, say, an old driver for old hardware. It makes me mad that people are making money taking advantage of people who don’t know better than to click the ad, esp when it installs adware.
My go-to recommendation for older folks is ChromeOS. Say what you want about their privacy and stuff, but my mom hasn't been able to download any malware, and it's very easy to use and do office stuff on.
I did this for my elderly dad, and told him to contact me if anything was amiss. He had some hardware issue with a cheap USB mouse and told my mom about it. My mom promptly took the whole thing to some box office store tech support place. They told her they couldn’t install the drivers for the new mouse she bought, and their proposed remedy was to charge her to wipe the laptop with Windows. She did so “as to not trouble me.”
Everyone with the potential to cause you trouble if they don't contact you soon enough, must be told repeatedly to contact you as soon as possible. I emphasize this repeatedly with clients and family. It's enlightened self-interest, and I emphasize that it will be faster for me and much faster for them to involve me sooner.
Valid point, in a logical world. But some 80 year olds are just so hard headed that instead of calling one of their THREE children who work in IT they just head into the closest electronics store and buy the laptop recommended by their favorite sales rep. And then they call us to complain about it.
He would scoff at my suggestion to install anything other than what he's known for 30+ years.
> He would scoff at my suggestion to install anything other than what he's known for 30+ years.
Very fair. I've started earlier, but I've been trying to remind my parents that if they want to have a good relationship with their, non-existent as of yet, grandkids - they need to have a good relationship with new tech. That's what the grandkids are going to want from them.
Im glad people find success with Linux. But in my decade of professional use and trying to use it at home, I’ve got to squint very hard to see it as remotely viable.
I need an OS where I never ever have to think about the OS. I’m there with my very limited time to do something. Not figure out compatibility or updates or why my monitors don’t come online in the same order and same resolution every time or the fear of closing the lid or plugging in a TV for a bit. This month’s issue is that a quarter of the time my wifi just doesn’t exist as a feature and I have to reboot.
I want to hook myself up into an alternate reality where I’m just frozen in time with OSX 10.6 =)
Get an AMD gpu. If you don’t need a strong GPU get an Intel CPU that has an integrated GPU.
Install fedora silverblue. Use your computer how nature intended. You can do everything from the GUI.
If you’re using your PC as your development machine then you’re probably already fucking around with it. Especially on windows (PATH variable is a very fun one there)
I got an AMD gpu recently, as I had just recently switched to Linux. Seems there is a bug in the AMDGPU driver as I will get a driver crash during roughly 1 out of 10 game starts for certain games. After trying everything I could think of I switched back to Windows and have not had any crashing for a week.
I had Nvidia card before that whilst it had other issues on linux, at least it didn't crash.
> I need an OS where I never ever have to think about the OS.
After one malware too many I confiscated my wife's Windows PC and gave here my old PC and installed Ubuntu on it (FWIW I don't use Ubuntu, I use Debian since the nineties).
It's been, what, 18 months? If my wife can use Ubuntu, I think nearly anyone can.
It's been literally fire and forget: zero issue.
Now it's desktop Linux, as in actually running on a desktop (with an Ethernet cable), with a dual-monitor setup (I prefer a single ultra-wide monitor but the wife prefers to have two monitors).
I got a call from an ex-girlfriend about a year ago. We had been broken up for at least 5 or 6 years. Hadn't spoken since then. She calls out of the blue to ask if I can come try to fix her computer; she had taken it to the local repair shop and they didn't know what to do with it. She remembered that I had done "a bunch of weird stuff" to it, so she though I might be able to help.
I opened it up, and sat before me was Ubuntu 12.04. It hadn't been updated since before we broke up. The only real issue was some weird stuff going on with the networking, so it wouldn't connect to WiFi. Got it fixed, and I assume she's still going strong with it.
That said, I absolutely wouldn't trust modern Ubuntu (at least back to 20.04, maybe farther) to remain so stable. Ubuntu is now nothing more than a Rube Goldberg machine.
Yep, and the ads are especially frustrating for me because I personally forked over $200 to buy Windows Pro when I built this gaming PC. This isn't a case of ads supporting a free product, it's ads layered on top of a piece of software that was decidedly not free.
I think we're just over one decade for true Windows-integrated crapware. I don't believe they were really doing this before Windows 8. When it first started it was mostly limited to ads embedded in a handful of preloaded "Modern UI"/Windows Store applications, but MS has gotten progressively more brazen with it over the years.
Apparently this was part of Microsoft Rewards, which you can opt out of... in your Microsoft account. If you jumped through the hoops that are now required to get a local account, tough luck.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/15z6rol/windows_g...