Let’s put it this way; when Microsoft announced its plans to start adding features to Windows 10 once again, despite the operating system’s inevitable demise in October 2025, everyone expected slightly different things to see ported over from Windows 11. Sadly, the latest addition to Windows 10 is one of the most annoying changes coming from Windows 11’s Start menu.
Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced a so-called “Account Manager” for Windows 11 that appears on the screen when you click your profile picture on the Start menu. Instead of just showing you buttons for logging out, locking your device or switching profiles, it displays Microsoft 365 ads. All the actually useful buttons are now hidden behind a three-dot submenu (apparently, my 43-inch display does not have enough space to accommodate them). Now, the “Account Manager” is coming to Windows 10 users.
The change was spotted in the latest Windows 10 preview builds from the Beta and Release Preview Channels. It works in the same way as Windows 11, and it is disabled by default for now because the submenu with sign-out and lock buttons does not work.
Learning Linux gets more tempting every day. Either that or government needs to pass laws against shit like this but I doubt that will ever happen.
Let me give you a tip. Theres nothing to “learn” it’s just a different way of clicking on some things. If all your gonna do is use steam and Internet browser just do it. There is nothing magical. Just use popOS or Ubuntu. They’re made for ease of use.
Mint is great for beginners IMO
I use Mint on all my devices right now. Mint is great! My favorite part being it’s an operation system that stays out of your way.
I mean, there’s a LOT more to it than just, “a different way of clicking on things”. Let’s be honest and help define proper expectations. You will be messing around in the terminal a lot. Even for installing simple programs, you’ll at minimum be copy-pasting a bunch of commands from the developer’s website straight into the terminal to install most stuff. There are package managers, to help alleviate some of the pain, but there are multiple ecosystems and each one has it’s own contributors, meaning that overall development and technical knowledge is gated behind silos.
I love Linux, but let’s be honest, it’s not exactly user-friendly.
Well, I was gonna run win10 until its service life ends next year. I guess MS want to speed up the timeline a little.
Arch here I come.
Join the free side. We have penguins.
Buy an expensive license
Install the software on hardware you own
Company puts ads on it that weren’t there when you bought the license
2024 is wild. Run Linux.
It’s kinda like AAA game companies waiting for a couple of weeks after a title’s release (and all the reviews are done) before rolling out the micro-transaction market (and the corresponding game-balance adjustments).
Funny how when Windows XP had dial-in activation we warned that this would drift over to games if we tolerated it, and then it did.
100%. Every time consumers tolerate something, it will get worse. On the other hand, it seems so simple to tell people “just don’t buy a product that does X”, but in practice, it’s almost impossible to get people to stop giving these companies money.
I jumped ship to PopOS a few months back.
There are some issues, like Bluetooth not starting without some terminal commands, I think I have to wipe or otherwise mess around with my 1TB NTFS storage drive to mount it and stuff like that.
But all the games I’ve tried to play work fine.
CPU: 3700x GPU: 4090
Windows 10 will be my last Windows operating system. It’s been fine and it works well enough. I’ve already started setting up a drive with Linux Mint 22 for use moving forward.
In the same boat. Mint has some growing pains but for mainly web browsing I’ve been enjoying an OS that doesn’t feel like a ad billboard or a data snitch.
Yess yesssss let the linux flow throughhhh youuuuuuu. Manjaro XFCE here. Play with the distros in Oracle Virtual Machines and find the right one for you. Linux desktop is seriously worth the effort. Check out Yakuake as a Quake style drop down terminal to get to hacky stuff. Learn everything about Linux. It’s fun!
Protip: Install Windows Server as your desktop OS. It comes without all that crap.
Protip: Install Linux because FUCK MICROSOFT!
Some people need to use actually good productivity applications on their computers.
LibreOffice, Inkscape, OpenShot, GIMP, etc. just aren’t particularly good. No HDR support is embarrassing at this day and age.
I have installed Linux more often than Windows and MacOS and it’s not even my main operating system. What Linux offers me is a bunch of similar desktop environments all running the same mediocre applications. I want to get stuff done, not fiddle with window managers and packet managers all day.
Installing Linux to express your feelings about Microsoft might be emotionally therapeutic, but that’s about it.
Been using it just fine on my Desktop. Blender 3D and Krita are equally as good, and in some cases better, than the subscription based programs. Libre Office has the same functionality as MS Word, but supports more formats. Every other daily use program, such as Firefox or VLC runs just as fine on Linux as it does anywhere else. I’ve had virtually no issues running games from my Steam library, even ones that aren’t officially supported.
Sure. Everyone’s requirement for a desktop is different. Blender is very good for sure and Krita is decent. However for painting and drawing Krita doesn’t hold a candle to Procreate on an iPad. As for games, if you’re not a super serious gamer, there’s tons of stuff that runs on Linux nowadays for sure.
My phone records 4K video in HDR, which I then can neither view nor edit properly on Linux. Do you have VLC 3 running with working HDR support?
IDK man, I’ve been using it exclusively on my main desktop at home and I’ve been getting along just fine with those “not particularly good” applications.
Well, it depends on what your cases are. It’s great that Linux can fulfill your needs.
I have to use a windows 11 machine for work, and it genuinely surprises me how terrible it is. I don’t understand the opposition to local accounts - if I’m working somewhere with public WiFi/capture portal, I have to use my phone as a hotspot first.
The PIN log in seems to roll a random number and decide each morning whether it is going to work or not.
I also got a laptop with 11 on it for gaming. So much spyware I’ve had to uninstall, configuring anything is a nightmare. I was trying to adjust my mouse sensitivity/figure out why the scroll wheel is either 0 or to the moon, but even when you dig into the control panel, half the settings are missing.
I also had to turn off my WiFi and google commands to make a local account, because otherwise Microsoft accounts are mandatory.
Every change seems to make the experience actively worse for the user.
Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced a so-called “Account Manager” for Windows 11 that appears on the screen when you click your profile picture on the Start menu. Instead of just showing you buttons for logging out, locking your device or switching profiles, it displays Microsoft 365 ads. All the actually useful buttons are now hidden behind a three-dot submenu.
How the fuck are people OK with this?!
I don’t think you get a choice.
What are you gonna do about it? Install Linux?
Every time I see crap like this makes me even happier I ditched it a year and a half ago. If you switch to Linux and started with mint but don’t like it, give PopOs a test drive. It’s been flawless for me.
My main issue is my home computer is for gaming. Have you gamed on Linux? If so, are most games compatible?
somehow I guess it’s still not common knowledge yet but basically everything that doesn’t need a kernel anti cheat will work. or maybe not newer dotnet crap but usually those aren’t games. mods and cheats are hit and miss and require some setup, but mostly work anyway. for most games protondb lists what works with and without tinkering but even some of the stuff listed as not working actually does in my experience. pcgamingwiki info is still usefull for a lot fixes to known problems on all platforms.
amd graphics should work out of the box but sometimes the newest cards have issues for a while after release. Any modern distro will not need extra setup as long as the maintainers aren’t too far behind.
nvidia requires manual intervention for most distros but some have installers that default to nvidia graphics. expect some jank, there’s a lot of weird shit that can go wrong with kernel modules not matching the kernel version among other things.
other hardware can also be problematic and people like myself who have been selecting hardware specifically for linux compatibility may give the idea that nothing is wrong.
I recommend nobara or bazzite for gaming setups that will require little to no addititonal work to play games and most hardware that is possible to work just working out of the box or with a guided config.
If you want to go with a non gaming oriented distro (trust me don’t unless you do it on a spare comp or vm for experimentation), then debian, or mint debian, one of the easy arch installers even, but don’t do ubuntu. Weird shit will inevitability happen eventually and the old guides and crap ai articles with outdated information from the mail order ubuntu cd days will make it way too confusing to fix unless you are a web search sorceror.
I’m in the EU and use Windows 10 LTSC so I mostly clear off of this bulshit. A few months ago I bought a cheap refurbished laptop to use occasionally and decided from day 1 it would be Linux Mint only since I only use it for the basics.
A few months later and I’m surprised how far Mint came. It’s so easy to use. Customizing it was a bit harder but nothing major. And to my surprise…even games. I threw a couple of games at it and everything the computer can handle would run. I was from the time where gaming on Linux was a no-no.
When LTSC support goes, I’ll most likely go full Linux. The only problem is the Adobe software but maybe I can fix that with a virtual machine.
…decided from day 1 it would be Linux Mint only since I only use it for the basics
What kind of out of the ordinary things cannot be done with it?
I switched from Windows 3.11 and I’m still puzzled by this.
Cannot be done with Mint? I’ve OS hopped every few years - currently running Windows 11 at work and Mint at home. I much prefer the Mint install. That said, I’m a video producer - and video production just isn’t there yet on Linux. CUDA’s a pain to get working, proprietary codecs add steps, Davinci’s linux support is more limited than it seems, KDenLive works in a pinch but lacks features, Adobe and Linux are like oil and water, there’s no equivalent for After Effects… I don’t doubt that there are workarounds for many of these issues. But the ROI’s not there yet. I’d love to see a video production focused distro that really aimed for full production suite functionality. Especially since Hackintoshes are about to get even harder to build.
The way your comment reads, you’ve been using Windows 3.11 these past decades. 😂
I always love when people pretend to be mystified that someone has trouble running programs on Linux when I, a non Linux user, see plenty of examples of people having trouble getting programs to run on Linux scrolling through “Everything” on Lemmy
Finally they are actually using there brains. They need to make Windows 10 as bad as possible to get people to switch.
I’m unironically beginning to view Microsoft as one of my favorite companies. They treat their cattle just right. Hopefully they’ll start arbitrarily deleting local files.
Is there anything the cattle won’t tolerate? LETS FIND OUT
Hopefully they’ll start arbitrarily deleting local files.
They already do that. If you click “yes” on everything they recommend like good cattle, they’ll upload the contents of your user folders to OneDrive and delete the local copies.
IS THE ENTIRE FUCKING ECONOMY BASED ON ADS??? WHO THE FUCK IS PAYING FOR ALL THESE SHITTY ADS??? WHO EVER YOU ARE, GET FUCKED WITH YOUR PRODUCT!
Queue everyone downgrading to Windows 8 in 3, 2, 1.
No no no, you want Linux desktop. Install Oracle VirtualBox and play with the different linux desktop distros and find the right one that’s best for you. It’s fun. It’s not filled with spyware and adware and isn’t bloated with Microsoft’s crazy antics. And, it’s free. Once it’s installed check out this: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle to de-herpes your internet experience and 👍
Or just use Hyper-V since it’s natively available and one should refrain from touching Oracle with a ten-foot pole. I know it’s just a means to an end but better to avoid bad vendors if at all possible.
There once was a time when I would have recommended VMWare, since Workstation is now free for personal use and HyperV is missing crucial direct hardware throughput, but… It’s shit now. Doesn’t work properly under W11.
Why does every tech company seem to have reached the ‘collapse’ part of enshittification simultaneously? Couldn’t they have staggered it a little?
linux ftw
ShutUp10 for the win.
(Linux for the real win).
Shutup10 for sure.
Linux, nah. It still can’t do what we need it to do, so it’s not the proper tool for the job.
Chicken and egg. Linux is roughly 4% of the OS space. If more people would get on board, it would become a better tool. I use both. Windows because I have to. Linux because I want to.
If they advertise, then the OS needs to be free. I’m not paying for an OS that profits off me too.
I don’t recall ever paying for Windows, so there’s that. Once in a while I had a genuine license that came bundled with something, but most of the time, I don’t.
Aside from pirating, if you got Windows with a new pc/laptop, then you paid for Windows in the price of the device.
