this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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The myth about ads in the Windows start menu is strong on Lemmy. I've not once got an ad in Windows. There is certainly bloatware but nothing is actively pushing ads to you. My Windows 11 start menu looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/4bBHT3V.png It's simple and has no ads. The only thing you could argue is an ad is my weather and news widget that comes with Windows 11 but I had to explicitly activate that and I wanted the feed to be there.
It's not a myth - I just fired up the install of Windows I have in a virtual machine. It's a clean install, downloaded direct from Microsoft with a license key the gave me through their Developer Program... absolutely nothing has ever been installed on it, and the start menu has ads for:
They are definitely ads - when you click on them it takes you to the Microsoft store page... except for Office 365 which I assume is part of OneDrive - I can forgive that one, since it's part of their free cloud storage service and probably should be integrated into the OS. If you're not doing cloud storage of some kind, you should be.
To argue those are ads would be equal to arguing anything preinstalled on Linux is ads or anything preinstalled on your phone is ads.
The difference is that these programs are not preinstalled. They are shortcuts to install said program.
Which you can click away in a matter of seconds and never encounter them ever again, even after updates.
Did you also know there is an option to disable suggested apps, which removes every and all notifications you may consider ads?
Did you disable it, or do you like complaining too much?
Oh I have it disabled. Pretty much among the first things I do with any new windows install is disable and uninstall as much bullshits as microsoft preloads. It gets pretty annoying though how much there is you have to opt out of. I also like complaining about them so you're not too wrong there.
At least they are still better than samsung in that regard who preload facebook on their phones as a system app thereby preventing the user from uninstalling it.
Most distros have a whole app that shows you recommendations for programs to install.
The spotlight lock screen also has ads, but you can set it to any other lock screen to disable it. There are also ways to keep spotlight and disable the ads, and the ads are at least hidden behind a mouse hover and not immediately visible by default.
I have not seen start menu ads aside from the default bloat, but I also replace it with Start11 so I rarely see the default start menu anymore.
Still, if I'm going to own a $200 license for an operating system, I want no ads at all.
Eh, I don't see the lock screen as ads. They aren't trying to sell anything. They are telling you some neat daily facts.
I swear I've seen an ad on it before, but I may be misremembering. Either way, I haven't seen the text in ages anyway, so it doesn't bug me much.