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

> The point about switching to an alternative isn't an engineering reaction, it's a political suggestion that is based on sending the right message. When MS does something you find objectionable, the way to signal that you strongly disagree in a capitalist system is to vote with your wallet. Continuing to use Window only sends the message that the recent changes are acceptable.

No. What I meant to say is that only engineers or technical folks without business experience say these kinds of things.

My mission as a businessman is to get shit done. It also happens to be my mission as an engineer. I could not be bothered to worry about these OS issues. Windows allows me to buy 50 workstations, load them up with a pile of engineering software and get shit done. From a business perspective that is the right decision and the right solution. Quirks don't matter.

Switching OS isn't a consideration or an option because it is irrelevant. The goal is to spend 10 to 12 hours a day working with specific applications to get specific work done, not to spend 10 or 12 hours a day playing with the OS. That's a huge difference in mindset and focus.

> I'm sure it isn't, but that was one of the risks in building a business that depends critically on a product you have zero control over. MS has a very long history of doing things their own way, and usually in their own interest.

You are absolutely wrong on this one. MS has ALWAYS protected their users. The stability afforded to business users across decades is probably without match. In sharp contrast to this Apple has gone through a number of episodes where they pretty much said "screw all of you, all your software is now dead", most notably with the transition in and out of the PowerPC platforms. MS has never done that.

No, MS has always been the soundest investment. Not even Linux can match the stability of the platform. Over the years there have been driver issues as well as UI confusion. In many ways Ubuntu is the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux and it still has faults and is a challenge to use outside of technical environments.

> Accept that you may have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad investments? You invested in tools that depends fundamentally on a risky platform.

The truth is exactly opposite your statement. The platform has never been risky because MS understands business and the hundreds of thousands of dollars invested are perfectly safe. We still have some very expensive software from a couple of decades ago that runs very well under Windows Vista, 7 and 10.

Also, I don't think you understand that these tools are simply not available on any other platform. There's a reason for which all the major MCAD companies have product that runs on Windows. It's because their multi-million dollar investment across decades is safe there and goes nowhere on other platforms.

Look, I wish Windows had a Linux foundation and a bunch of other things under the hood. That's me, the geek, speaking. Me the businessman fires-up a VM with Ubuntu and, as they say, is happy as pigs in shit. My job isn't to play with the OS, it's to get useful work done with the tools we need to use to get product out the door.

When will Microsoft stop with this shit, and do a 180 degree U-turn? What does it need?

It's unbelievable how MSFT turned Windows from the great Win7 to the worst spyware operating system in human history aka Win10 in just 5 years. Is it just greed? Is it that they failed with Mobile (WinPhone is dead and has 0.1% world wide market share) and Android amd iOS have a bigger market share than Windows 7? (Win10 has way smaller market share). On desktop Windows 7 has like 50% market share, where as Win10 is around 20%. Is it that they failed with XBoxOne, now Sony and Nintendo eat MSFT former console market share as breakfast.

I bought two highend notebooks one a MacBookPro, the other with Win7 Pro preinstalled. The will last for the next five years. I stay with Office 2010 and additionally installed LibreOffice. I skip Win8 and Win10, and I am running Linux in VMs.

What's really disgusting is that in future many smaller companies like law firms, doctors will leak your private confidential data to Microsoft - as Windows 10 collects audio from connected microphones, collect keystrokes from connected keyboards, and indexes all files on local drives and sends a lot of data home to many different domains (some are owned by Microsoft, some have very dubious names and owners).

The GNU/Linux systems get to be in the VMs hosted by Windows? That's the other way around, man!

> We have technical debt in software. Investing in holistically proprietary and locked down ecosystems in enterprise, where you are talking millions in software and more in labor training, you are incurring your own form of technical debt.

I understand, yet the challenge is exactly the same every time. Say, for example, you launch a brand new electric car company and need a bunch of integrated software and automation tools to help you do everything, from running the business to designing the cars, manufacturing, supply chain management, document processing, etc.

You have two choices: You can be an operating system, FOSS, free beer, free speech, pink unicorns for everyone zealot. Or you can go buy shit that works and get on with the business of getting shit done.

The difference is this: A business should only be concerned with delivering it's products and services and doing so on a timely manner while staying ahead of the competition. A business should not waste one microsecond on "technology jihad". That is not their job.

It is up to entrepreneurs who are "believers" to identify opportunities --if and where they exist-- and work hard to create solutions that appeal to the businesses who need them. It's a tall task, because success might require replacement solutions across a wide range of disciplines. This guarantees that multiple solution providers would have to engage in this "holy war" (sorry, sticking to a bad analogy at this point) in order for the car manufacturer to be able to even consider making a switch.

And then there's the other factor: Even if you could switch to an alternative universe and make it seamless within your organization it could still be a terrible business decisions. Why? Because if the vendors and suppliers you have to work with depend on communicating across company demarcation lines by using files produced by specific types of software you are almost assured a great deal of friction if you don't use the same tools. Don't believe me, call-up 100 machine shops and ask them if they accept Siemens NX or SolidWorks files and see what you learn. And both of those platforms run on Windows.

> people, on Windows, do care when Microsoft behaves against their interests and forces those decisions upon them.

Any professional is very careful about OS and software version transitions. Microsoft has had glitches here and there but they have always been nothing but rock-solid-reliable in their support of the needs of their business customers.

We might be looking at another glitch, I don't know, but I don't really care, they'll do the right thing. Not saying this because I love MS. It's just a matter of historical fact. Thinking back over 36 years, I can't remember the last time MS boned anyone. I can remember multiple times where both Apple and various Linux issues did.

Feral has really put a good effort to get alot of AAA games on Linux. XCOM, Mad Max and Shadows of Mordor I have played alot of on Linux. XCOM 2 and Deus Ex is next.

Virtual GPU support in KVM is something I am looking forward to maintain Win7 on a future Ryzen system.