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Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

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Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#131

Post by AnthonyMouse »

quanticle wrote: post #118
Silhouette wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense if the benefits were more than the costs. Which, for the average people, aren't. I'm not so sure any more. The average home user probably does most of their stuff online these days, and you can see your friends' photos on Facebook or write a message in Google Mail or access your online banking or watch a show on Netflix just as well on pretty much any platform today. What desktop applications do…

>There are a lot of niches, and no doubt some of them still rely on Windows desktop software or Windows drivers for related hardware, but they're niches because most people aren't that interested in them. Each individual niche is tiny, but once you add up all the niches, it adds up to a significant part of the market. Windows has a huge "tail" of niche software on it, and just finding substitutes on Linux is a daunti…

> Each individual niche is tiny, but once you add up all the niches, it adds up to a significant part of the market.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

> Is that an actual trend?

It points to a solution anyway. Have one family PC with Windows to run the one niche app you need, but don't put Windows on anything else. Even if the other devices are laptops and not tablets, it still works.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#132

Post by boondaburrah »

cm2187 wrote: post #32
chc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works well if your hobbies include manually editing obscure config files and replacing perfectly good hardware, and if your hobbies do not include playing games. I frequently explore the possibility of switching to Linux, and while it's not the garbage fire it was 15 years ago, it's still just not a peer to Windows for the way I use my computer.

I agree. Linux is a world full of obscure acronyms and undiscoverable CLI commands. RTFM or nothing. I would like to switch to Linux (particularly when I read these things) but I just don't have the time to learn all the basic things the hard way and deal with all the compatibility issues.

See, this is exactly the problem I have with Windows. It's full of obscure exes and undiscoverable settings (wtf is the registry? fuck). It's like I'd have to have years of experience (since 98 or something) to understand fully. Also it has compatibility issues out the butt with hardware that 'justworks' on linux.

With windows 10, this has gotten /way/ worse. Sure bluetooth works out of the box, but sometimes it just disapperates. I'm doing like, rain dances and getting tons of wrong answers out of google, only to find out that somehow Windows decided to turn the radio off, and there's actually no way to re-enable it except booting into linux because when the radio's off, windows says the hardware is physically /not there/.

I install it for a while, play some steam games, then usually just boot it out and go back to linux.

It's generally hard to switch operating systems, not just one way.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#133

Post by boondaburrah »

chc wrote: post #12
csdreamer7 wrote: post #6

> how to turn them off Switch to Linux. Windows 10 Home is now $119 and tracks you. Microsoft is trying to sell you a product and monetize your behavior. They are pursuing a way to maintain their cash cow and have an avenue to push Google out.

This works well if your hobbies include manually editing obscure config files and replacing perfectly good hardware, and if your hobbies do not include playing games. I frequently explore the possibility of switching to Linux, and while it's not the garbage fire it was 15 years ago, it's still just not a peer to Windows for the way I use my computer.

I have to replace perfectly good hardware more often under windows than linux, with osx being the worst offender (though to be fair, hackintosh isn't what they had in mind).

With windows's new mandatory driver signing, some of my hardware will never work with newer windows. I have to either dig up a copy of 7 or XP, or throw it out. Even on 7 it's a pain. The same hardware works fine under linux.

Also, your "manually editing obscure config files" is my registry hell. I'm pretty sure every operating system sucks (I'd say OSX's equivalent is defaults.write)

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#134

Post by boondaburrah »

kefka wrote: post #30
djsumdog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a primary Linux box, but my Windows box is still used for games. For the PC gamer, the indie game market on Linux is growing, but it's still not the same as the Windows market. Microsoft had one of the last minimal-bloat systems up until Windows 10. I don't want to enter a world where we need to start ad-blocking the entire OS via custom DNS servers. Microsoft is still making money of the initial OS license wi…

And I seem to remember when Microsoft squeezed out the market of accelerated sound cards, like SoundBlaster Live. It effectively killed their audio market overnight, with the fact that everything had to go over their DRM stack. We could have had machines with DSPs for sound, GPUs for accelerated array math, and general purpose CPUs for everything else. But MS decided that for us... Even though us Linux people can use…

Perhaps that's why I use Linux or OSX for any serious work. Windows really fucked up the sound subsystem. I can't get anything outside of "7.1 output, maybe 1 or 2 channels in" to work without horrible hops and skips. Like Microsoft never thought I'd be trying to record 24 channels at once.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#135

Post by boondaburrah »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #46

Serious question: does MS sell a version of Window 10 outright that doesn't include all of the snooping? I've been a Windows user my whole life but I will NEVER use an OS that collects data on the OS level.

The only option mere mortals can get their hands on is Win 10 EDU, which has to be downloaded through schools IIRC. (enterprise isn't an option for us individual types) EDU can be managed with Group Policy, like Enterprise. Apparently Group Policy is the only way to configure it to stop snooping.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#136

Post by recursive »

lutusp wrote: post #72
cutler wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux sometimes isn't even compatible with standard open source software. Recently I installed Lubuntu LTS on a 5-year-old Celeron laptop and was dismayed to see LibreOffice with clunky grey window borders looking like a 1998 Java applet. The menu bar was also blacked-out. The owner was not impressed.

Your basic point is legitimate, but in passing I want to say that in Linux distributions you can change the windows decorators/formats to suit yourself, often including a theme designed to resemble Windows. Not to detract from the point you're making, which is quite valid.

On Windows, you can change the presence of ads in Explorer to suit yourself also.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#137

Post by exergy »

bubblethink wrote: post #93
jaxn wrote: post #80

This is very disheartening. As a direct result, I am spending some time tonight researching running Linux on my Suface Book. I have been impressed with what seems like a new Microsoft. I even made the switch from OSX to a Surface Book as my primary laptop. I used OSX for a decade and ran Linux as my primary OS before that.

>As a direct result, I am spending some time tonight researching running Linux on my Suface Book. Probably not the best hardware to run Linux on. There's an entire subreddit comprised of woes of people trying this https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/ . Try something very new like Fedora 25/upcoming 26 or the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04.

I don't exactly have the surface book, I have the surface pro 3, but I'm able to dual boot with Xubuntu and Mint without too much trouble. Of course, it wouldn't be Linux if wifi wasn't tricky to set up, but touch works, Bluetooth works, the detachable keyboard also works.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#138

Post by aptwebapps »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #104
NelsonMinar wrote: post #103

Note there's ads in lots of other parts of Windows 10 too: the Start menu tiles, the preloaded programs, and the Notifications area. There are different ways to turn each of these off. They are multiplying. Fuck everything about this. My computer is my tool and my work environment.

The lock/login screen too.

We've gotten quite attached to the random login screen pictures in our house. At some point they started adding textual explanations after you clicked so you could read a little about what you were looking at. I was surprised how disappointed I was yesterday when instead of the usual explanations it was an ad for some Adobe product. I'm used to ads in the browser but this was personal somehow.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#139

Post by jlgaddis »

lutusp wrote: post #62

There's an opportunity here for a young, ambitious programmer -- create a PowerShell script that automatically goes through the Windows registry, creating/resetting options to disable all advertising (Start menu, File Explorer, OneDrive, Edge's annoying gripes when you launch a competing browser, and others). I suggest this because as time passes the manual approach to disabling the many sources of Windows advertisin…

You can easily find an overwhelming number of projects similar to what you describe on Github and across the web.

The problem is that Microsoft is constantly adding and/or changing the options, settings, registry keys, etc., and they don't exactly publish a nicely compiled, authoritative list of all of them.

The folks writing these scripts (or even just documenting the settings) are working by trial and error, reverse engineering, and so on, to find the relevant knobs to tweak and switches to flip to get rid of these "features".

If they do manage to get lucky and come up with a working solution, it's out-of-date as soon as the next update drops.

Like you, this advertising isn't a problem for me. I was introduced to Linux in 1995 and it's been my primary operating system (along with a few OS X "phases") since then. I have friends and family, however, who can't switch (for various reasons), and so it still annoys me to no end that Microsoft does this kind of stuff.

Re: Windows 10 is bringing ads to File Explorer – how to turn them off

#140

Post by good_vibes »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #126
good_vibes wrote: post #85

I guess have to stay with Mac and make it a Linux machine. Glad I saw this, I had a ZenBook in my Amazon 'save for later' cart.

You may have done yourself a favor. I have a Zenbook Pro UX501VW, and getting Linux to run well on it has been unusually challenging. Although as time goes on and newer Linux kernels and nVidia drivers come along, a fresh install should get easier.

Wow, thanks. Already had a rough year with Apple. My MBP is about a year old and Apple already had to give me a new display and logic board for it!

I wanted to ditch my iPhone and Macbook this year. I still may after I do some more research on an encrypted Linux setup.

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