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Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

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Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#221

Post by ocdtrekkie »

blibble wrote: post #141
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the new Microsoft games are actively maintained with new content and features on a regular basis, whereas the classic Minesweeper/Solitaire EXEs (which you can easily copy onto a Windows 10 PC) weren't modified beyond bugfixes for somewhere around a decade and a half. Microsoft Jigsaw is perhaps my grandma's favorite thing ever, and the $20 yearly cost for premium (ad-free) is well-worth it to her.

> FWIW, the new Microsoft games are actively maintained with new content and features on a regular basis, whereas the classic Minesweeper/Solitaire EXEs (which you can easily copy onto a Windows 10 PC) weren't modified beyond bugfixes for somewhere around a decade and a half. it's not a good thing as they're using the opportunity to infest these programs with ads Solitaire on Windows now has ads, and don't get me sta…

...What do you have against the new calculator? I use it really heavily and am a fan. I have to do some stuff with hex, so I drop into some of the additional modes from time to time even. There's no ads in the new calculator for sure.

Adding ads is definitely an irritation, but my point is, they are funding a supported, maintained product with Solitaire. It's more than just Solitaire now. It currently has five different games, not including features like daily challenges and the like. It gets updated reasonably regularly.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#222

Post by falcolas »

gmueckl wrote: post #173
thomastjeffery wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An open source project ... will never be able to compete with ... pays developers ... There are plenty of examples where they have done just that. Blender is probably the most obvious.

Blender is just the worst example that you could have picked. It is a tiny toy compared to the commercial packages in that field. It is like GIMP: just enough for those with simple needs. KDE 3 would have been a much better example. But these days are gone, too. What about R and Jenkins? Are there paid developers working on these?

> What about R and Jenkins? Are there paid developers working on these?

I feel confidant in saying that yeah, there probably are. They're being paid to implement features and fix bugs found by their companies, who use R and Jenkins.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#223

Post by thomastjeffery »

psyc wrote: post #170
juliangoldsmith wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. You reboot your computer, and press a key to pick which one you want.

Now explain to a not-super-technical user how to configure GRUB to boot Windows by default, or how to remove GRUB when they give up on Linux.

A not-super-technical user can learn to do these things.

Is the liberty a free OS provides worth the effort to that user? That's entirely up to them.

It's easy to disregard change as too difficult to approach, especially when coming from such a controling and abusive environment (Windows/OS X). In reality, GNU/Linux is so much easier to use than Windows; most people have simply learned the latter first.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#224

Post by funkymike »

dyukqu wrote: post #212
soared wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivial for someone who could use linux. 99.9% of computer users don't even know dual booting is possible. Also my laptop literally cannot have linux installed on it thanks to UEFI.

You have to disable both "fast startup" and "secure boot" in order to install linux. (I installed Ubuntu 17.10 alongside Win10 few weeks ago on my UEFI laptop.)

I gave up on dual booting on a regular basis when Windows 10, once again, turned fast startup back on with a forced update. Now I use linux for everything at home.

Windows 10 is basically malware at this point.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#225

Post by Slansitartop »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #213
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #157

For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility that wanted an entire system doing malware analysis. The bare servers were running Linux, but some of the software used Windows so there were Windows VMs there. Usual KVM stuff. Bear in mind this is a closed system and the Windows VMs were ephemeral, i.e. had t…

I agree that Windows as we have known it is done. Now it is simply a free service to learn more about us consumers to build the Bing product. People don't realize that Bing is growing and becoming a serious contender in the market: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microso...

> People don't realize that Bing is growing and becoming a serious contender in the market

Do you have a more recent source for that? Your link is from 2016.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#226

Post by allenwalker2160 »

blibble wrote: post #150
TwoNineA wrote: post #3

I set up my brother in-law's new HP laptop he got from Costco and I had to spend over 2 hours removing crap from it. The amount of crapware installed (and a lot of them are MS apps) is unreal.

most of it will come back when he gets a new major update it's a feature!

I have never seen any of those coming back after 2 major upates on Window 10 Home. I keep checking after each installation but I cant find those.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#227

Post by sofaofthedamned »

Amezarak wrote: post #207
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But apart from AD the rest of Windows is primitive compared to the competition. Windows usage will decline - Azure will increase - it's all a case of how it works out for Microsoft in the end.

The NT kernel is very advanced and in many ways "better" than the Linux kernel. Backwards compat on Windows is fantastic compared to competitors. Even Powershell, though niche, can hardly be called primitive relative to the average default Linux shell. This is especially apparent to me, since I work in an old csh all day. :) If anything is primitive, it's passing around strings instead of objects. Saying Windows is "…

See my other replies - PS isn't primitive but it isn't bash.

Bear in mind I can administer any program on the system with bash. I can't do that with PS. There isn't that ecosystem where everything has systemd/init.d bindings, etc.

Put it another way - if I was to start a new internet based company now i'd give everybody Chromebooks, use either GApps or O365, there would be a domain nowhere near it. Do you disagree this is wrong for the majority of situations?

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#229

Post by dimensi0nal »

Groxx wrote: post #87
xeromal wrote: post #81

I'd recommend running Windows Server 2016 or Windows 10 LTSB to avoid the entire mess. I run WS 2016 for my dev machine and I haven't had any issues and I don't have to deal with the damned Windows Store.

Any problems with Server / LTSB for gaming? (honest question - that's the sole reason I have windows anything and I'd be thrilled to get rid of all the absolute nonsense they've been throwing at me)

LTSB is fine, but some things will refuse to run on Server.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#230

Post by Amezarak »

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #227
Amezarak wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NT kernel is very advanced and in many ways "better" than the Linux kernel. Backwards compat on Windows is fantastic compared to competitors. Even Powershell, though niche, can hardly be called primitive relative to the average default Linux shell. This is especially apparent to me, since I work in an old csh all day. :) If anything is primitive, it's passing around strings instead of objects. Saying Windows is "…

See my other replies - PS isn't primitive but it isn't bash. Bear in mind I can administer any program on the system with bash. I can't do that with PS. There isn't that ecosystem where everything has systemd/init.d bindings, etc. Put it another way - if I was to start a new internet based company now i'd give everybody Chromebooks, use either GApps or O365, there would be a domain nowhere near it. Do you disagree th…

> Bear in mind I can administer any program on the system with bash. I can't do that with PS.

What do you mean by "administer"? I can certainly launch applications, kill them, get various process properties, monitor it, etc.

> There isn't that ecosystem where everything has systemd/init.d bindings, etc.

System services are registered on Windows. Get-Service, Stop-Service, Restart-Service, Set-Service, etc all work fine and can be done remotely. You have more power with more arcane commands that I would have to look up (wmi stuff.)

> Put it another way - if I was to start a new internet based company now i'd give everybody Chromebooks, use either GApps or O365, there would be a domain nowhere near it. Do you disagree this is wrong for the majority of situations?

Yes. I think having a real, full desktop is important for most people's productivity if they're doing any serious work. Yes, it's possible to be a developer working on a Chromebook SSHing into everything. No, I don't think that's even close to ideal.

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