They're doing the same thing with C#. The amount crap they have added to that language over the years is mind boggling - yet, we still don't have sum types which is the one thing that every C# developer I have worked with _really_ wants.
I just wish they sold windows professional. Like an actual Windows professional that has no ads because you paid extra money. You can buy a Microsoft surface device and Windows is still filled with adware because there’s no professional version of Windows.
A lot of this works fine on KDE, but Linux and BSDs provides multiple desktop environments and people can pick what they like. MS cannot really do this as it relies on being the standard GUI everyone knows. Even things like the taskbar being in the "wrong" place confuses a significant proportion of people.
As for stuff "we" do not need, who is "we"? MS needs the stuff, which really means some decision maker within MS is persuaded it is needed, and their incentives do align all the well with those of users.
This is so annoying. I just had a Windows update, and had to decline Office and backups again. The worst one I've encountered is moving your home folder items to OneDrive without consent.
On the plus side of Windows added features, PowerToys has some nice tools!
For the audio device switching mentioned in the article: Try downloading Soundswitch: Fixed this for me. (Note: There's a scammy-looking software that also goes by this name; be careful!)
You can get all that and more with any modern Linux distribution without the telemetry, surveillance and without a forced cloud-linked account trying to constantly upsell you something without having to worry about most malware. Begging Microsoft for scraps in 2025 is just weak. Enjoy the slavery.
Well, as much as I like to join in taking a dump on Microsoft, this sort of thing is inevitable, in any OS, any software, any product:
The longer a product goes, the more features it gets (or loses) that some people want, some people don't.
It would be nice to have an easy to modify checklist of what stuff you want to keep/remove on a default installation.
I think the current state of iOS is pretty good in regards to that: You get a somewhat-sane default pack out of the box, and you can remove crap like Freeform and Journal (which should have been part of Notes to begin with) and install other Apple apps from the App Store if you need em.
I boot into my Windows partition for work-related activities often, and hear about the demise of Windows all the time.
Am I the only one who doesn't see it? I have all of the annoying stuff disabled, and basically have installed nothing besides the standard productivity/office tools. For me it's just a clean setup that stays out of my way. I'm running an 11 EAP build, and even then it doesn't crash, the software just works, and I never tinker with configuration or anything.
I trust people are in fact having issues, I just can't relate. Maybe it's how I'm using it.
I wish Microsoft reverted to its 1990s style of making tools for power users that don’t get in the way. Windows 2000 was peak Windows to me. Security issues aside, it was a solid OS. It also had a non-flashy interface that got out of my way. No annoying notifications, no distractions: just pure Windows. Windows 2000 respected the user.
Today’s versions of Windows seem less respectful of the user. Microsoft is treating Windows as a platform to advertise Microsoft’s products rather than as strictly a productivity tool. Even if a lot of users these days use computers more like entertainment and communication devices rather than productivity tools, software should still get out of the user’s way. Software should shut up and do what the user commands.
Unfortunately there are other software systems that have the same philosophy. Google constantly nags me regarding logging in and switching to Chrome. Even macOS has gotten a lot more nag screens in the past decade compared to the glory years of Jobs-era Mac OS X.
It’s amazing how so many organizations are dependent on Windows, macOS, and Google for their productivity, yet these platforms have become more annoying to use over the years, becoming impediments to productivity.
7 is really good. I do something similar. I'm forced to use a windows laptop supplied by a client to connect to their network (and I shouldn't connect between my home devices and it). So I'm often working on Windows.
I tend to have (on two monitors):
Built in monitor, any desktop- MŚ teams, Outlook and Notepad.
Second (4K) monitor,
Desktop 1-tmux in WSL.
Desktop 2-Web browsers
Desktop 3-spare
Desktop 4-My Ide (10+ Windows if vscode with WSL plugin)
Desktop 5-Excel,Word etc.
AutoHotKey let's me change between desktops with win+X key (where X is a number) and moving an app to a specific desktop is only win+shift+X away.
I've been using a similar setup on Linux for many years, except outlook/teams is replaced by my Cctv window. The only problem is on Linux if you have focus let's say in desktop 1 monitor 2 (tmux in alactity), you them do win+2 to go to screen 2 into a browser(still monitor 2), you then press win+2 hoping to go back to desktop 1 alacritty... Your focus ends up on monitor 1 in the Cctv window.
This never happens on Windows. When I go back to a desktop X the focus stays with where I've left it.
It took me hours with Windows 10 and PowerShell to scrub all the crap out of the default OS install. I don’t even want to know what that process would be with 11.
There are ways to get rid of all the nonsense by uninstalling it via Powershell or by blocking it via GPO/Registry. But the main issue here is that Microsoft changes the settings every now and then and all of a sudden, something that you considered disabled is fully enabled again.
Other issue is that some things just cannot be uninstalled. Because of the GDPR I've seen companies run AppLocker & Co. to block Microsoft sh*t from running that they couldn't get a hold of otherwise.
I can see ReactOS getting a lot more developers and a huge budget if this goes on...
I'm also in agreement that server-side, Windows 2000 server was peak.
XP/Window 7 were peak end-user OS's, once you got over the Fisher-Price look of XP.
The constraints you had in terms of user-UI were a massive advantage in terms of user-understanding. Now we're in a stupid era of the browser is the UI and everything is non-conformant with everything else in terms of looks/expectation/behaviour.
The version of MS-Office prior to the stupid ribbon-shit were also the peak versions. It's all been downhill since then with Windows ME and Windows 8 being exceptionally low points.
I'm about to shift to FreeBSD as my main driver as the Linux distribution fragmentation and wane in reliability/dependability and repeatability has given me the shits (how many apt-get equivalents are there now...?) I used to like Debian back in the day but now it and its derivatives (e.g. Ubuntu) give me the shits and Red-Hat and Fedora likewise, and Debian itself won't even install a working desktop. Apparently raising a bug for Fedora gets put into "Closed - not a bug" because IBM don't give a shit about quality anymore - even though the install resulted in an unbootable OS and I spent hours raising a proper bug report. Pop-OS was reasonable, but scaling where some apps have both big and little font sizes intermixed still mean its a clusterfuck of a kludge.
It's 2025 and apparently trying to mount network shares in fstab before the network interface is up isn't a bug. It's still not year of the desktop for Linux.
FWIW, I liked Apple in the 1980's - not so much since then.
I still appreciate all the contributions of those individuals out there is both GNU/Linux and the BSD'd trying to make the world a better place for themselves/others and sharing the results.
The other day my Windows locked behind an advertisement for Microsoft's backup services, trying to trick me into surrendering all my private data to their servers.
They even added a typical dark pattern that on clicking "No" another "But... We recommend it, are you sure?" appeared.
What a disgrace to push such an ad on people's computers. This abusive behavior is their company culture.
My partner uses Windows and I occasionally provide my amateurish tech support. One thing not mentioned in this article is the right click situation. I can't really describe what's wrong because I've not used Windows regularly in ten years. All I know is it is very confusing and basic tasks are hidden behind an extra click. I'm sure this is another mcrib situation but I wanted to mention it. There's probably a way to change it. But there are so many things like this and they usually come up when I'm trying to solve some other problem and don't have time to get distracted finding the setting. Is it so hard to make basic functionality the default and let users add on some of these features if they want to.
I've said it many times in the past: the OS is a toolbox, just like a carpenters toolbox.
I use it to keep my apps (tools) in. I use the apps (hammer, saw, screwdriver etc.) to get a job done, then I put them away. The job of the OS isn't to recommend that I use Hammer v2.0 or to update my toolbox to the latest version.
The OS is, or should be, out of my way.
I agree with others here: Windows 2000 was peak OS for me!
45 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 54.6 ms ] threadAs for stuff "we" do not need, who is "we"? MS needs the stuff, which really means some decision maker within MS is persuaded it is needed, and their incentives do align all the well with those of users.
On the plus side of Windows added features, PowerToys has some nice tools!
For the audio device switching mentioned in the article: Try downloading Soundswitch: Fixed this for me. (Note: There's a scammy-looking software that also goes by this name; be careful!)
Edit: lol, I got down voted. Do you think these things are not possible on linux?
The longer a product goes, the more features it gets (or loses) that some people want, some people don't.
It would be nice to have an easy to modify checklist of what stuff you want to keep/remove on a default installation.
I think the current state of iOS is pretty good in regards to that: You get a somewhat-sane default pack out of the box, and you can remove crap like Freeform and Journal (which should have been part of Notes to begin with) and install other Apple apps from the App Store if you need em.
Am I the only one who doesn't see it? I have all of the annoying stuff disabled, and basically have installed nothing besides the standard productivity/office tools. For me it's just a clean setup that stays out of my way. I'm running an 11 EAP build, and even then it doesn't crash, the software just works, and I never tinker with configuration or anything.
I trust people are in fact having issues, I just can't relate. Maybe it's how I'm using it.
Today’s versions of Windows seem less respectful of the user. Microsoft is treating Windows as a platform to advertise Microsoft’s products rather than as strictly a productivity tool. Even if a lot of users these days use computers more like entertainment and communication devices rather than productivity tools, software should still get out of the user’s way. Software should shut up and do what the user commands.
Unfortunately there are other software systems that have the same philosophy. Google constantly nags me regarding logging in and switching to Chrome. Even macOS has gotten a lot more nag screens in the past decade compared to the glory years of Jobs-era Mac OS X.
It’s amazing how so many organizations are dependent on Windows, macOS, and Google for their productivity, yet these platforms have become more annoying to use over the years, becoming impediments to productivity.
I tend to have (on two monitors): Built in monitor, any desktop- MŚ teams, Outlook and Notepad.
Second (4K) monitor, Desktop 1-tmux in WSL. Desktop 2-Web browsers Desktop 3-spare Desktop 4-My Ide (10+ Windows if vscode with WSL plugin) Desktop 5-Excel,Word etc.
AutoHotKey let's me change between desktops with win+X key (where X is a number) and moving an app to a specific desktop is only win+shift+X away.
I've been using a similar setup on Linux for many years, except outlook/teams is replaced by my Cctv window. The only problem is on Linux if you have focus let's say in desktop 1 monitor 2 (tmux in alactity), you them do win+2 to go to screen 2 into a browser(still monitor 2), you then press win+2 hoping to go back to desktop 1 alacritty... Your focus ends up on monitor 1 in the Cctv window.
This never happens on Windows. When I go back to a desktop X the focus stays with where I've left it.
I don't know how much was trimmed down but ads are gone and reportedly it has better performance.
Other issue is that some things just cannot be uninstalled. Because of the GDPR I've seen companies run AppLocker & Co. to block Microsoft sh*t from running that they couldn't get a hold of otherwise.
I can see ReactOS getting a lot more developers and a huge budget if this goes on...
XP/Window 7 were peak end-user OS's, once you got over the Fisher-Price look of XP.
The constraints you had in terms of user-UI were a massive advantage in terms of user-understanding. Now we're in a stupid era of the browser is the UI and everything is non-conformant with everything else in terms of looks/expectation/behaviour.
The version of MS-Office prior to the stupid ribbon-shit were also the peak versions. It's all been downhill since then with Windows ME and Windows 8 being exceptionally low points.
I'm about to shift to FreeBSD as my main driver as the Linux distribution fragmentation and wane in reliability/dependability and repeatability has given me the shits (how many apt-get equivalents are there now...?) I used to like Debian back in the day but now it and its derivatives (e.g. Ubuntu) give me the shits and Red-Hat and Fedora likewise, and Debian itself won't even install a working desktop. Apparently raising a bug for Fedora gets put into "Closed - not a bug" because IBM don't give a shit about quality anymore - even though the install resulted in an unbootable OS and I spent hours raising a proper bug report. Pop-OS was reasonable, but scaling where some apps have both big and little font sizes intermixed still mean its a clusterfuck of a kludge.
It's 2025 and apparently trying to mount network shares in fstab before the network interface is up isn't a bug. It's still not year of the desktop for Linux.
FWIW, I liked Apple in the 1980's - not so much since then.
I still appreciate all the contributions of those individuals out there is both GNU/Linux and the BSD'd trying to make the world a better place for themselves/others and sharing the results.
When a user opens a 2nd file explorer, it should open next to the existing one, not on top of it.
They even added a typical dark pattern that on clicking "No" another "But... We recommend it, are you sure?" appeared.
What a disgrace to push such an ad on people's computers. This abusive behavior is their company culture.
Of course they are.
Copilot and Recall are not what most users want, but they are what Microsoft wants:
https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
I use it to keep my apps (tools) in. I use the apps (hammer, saw, screwdriver etc.) to get a job done, then I put them away. The job of the OS isn't to recommend that I use Hammer v2.0 or to update my toolbox to the latest version.
The OS is, or should be, out of my way.
I agree with others here: Windows 2000 was peak OS for me!