Every time I poke my head out of my $FREE_OPERATING_SYSTEM I continue to be surprised and horrified at the level of abuse people are forced to endure just to use a computer.
Like damn, y'all live like this?
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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libre
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It's the same with browsers. For now I'm sharing a desk at work with someone who refuses to let me install ublock origin. How the fuck do people put up with half (or more) of the browser window being autoplay ads?
Everytime I have to use the internet without ublock I'm just like "Why is the internet suddenly so annoying??!?!?!" it's so shitty i don't know how anyone puts up with it.
can you
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make a new profile
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run a different browser
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install it without telling them (hide the icon)
install it without telling them
"noooo I like having companies cram ads in every possible place they can"
Sounds like you're sharing a login too, otherwise your browser profile wouldnt affect them...
Yeah, it's a small-office situation.
Make a new profile from about:profiles and create a shortcut with target like this: "C:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox.exe" -new-instance -P "ProfileName"
Once upon a time if you pressed F1 on the desktop a full manual showed up that started with "how to use a mouse" and ended with registry hacks. It was contextual so if you were in the calculator it showed information about the calculator.
Today if you press F1 it opens Microsoft™ Edge™ with a Microsoft™ Bing™ search for how to get help with windows. The results include some shitty youtube videos that somebody uploaded with that exact phrase.
I use Linux Mint on my laptop but I also use my wife’s laptop with the latest version of Windows some. The contrast is stark. Mint just works - simple, intuitive, no fuss. Windows is just so bloated, it’s amazing. I’m old enough to remember using Windows 95 and on. It wasn’t always this way with them, but I don’t know how people can stand using it nowadays.
I switched to Linux exactly 10 years ago, last windows SO I used was Win7, coudln't really complain about it back then for the uses I had.
But trying to use it now is a nightmarish foreign land, for example:
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It had a stupid text thingy bottom left showing latest currency rates "0.2% up USD to MXN".
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Searching for an installed program also showed a ~~google~~ Bing! search of the said word
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Nobody has been able to set the clock properly. If you set it to Argentina timezone, it shows 3 hours more, if you set it to the hour that should be, sometimes works, but next time you boot it it might be 3 hours in the future or three hours in the past, or overriden the setting option.
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For search, you may need to select the correct program for 1st time for it to remember, the next time you search it should be the first/best result. May need to disable cloud search from search setting (from "..." icon when searching).
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Currency rate can hidden (Taskbar setting -> Toggle Widgets to Off). https://www.lifewire.com/disable-news-and-interests-taskbar-in-windows-11-5190865
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Timezone will be wrong if you dual boot with Linux, it's best to make Windows use UTC time. https://www.howtogeek.com/323390/how-to-fix-windows-and-linux-showing-different-times-when-dual-booting/
Huh it's a dual boot yes
Don't forget that windows 95 was a trick to kill the competing DOSes. Microsoft has always been monopolistic scum.
I had to see if this was true, and I guess this has been going on for quite a while since the first result was a 
post from six years ago...
Christ. I assumed it was like a tiny banner ad. That's wild.
There is the permanent banner ads and also the unskipable 45 seconds full screen ads from time to time. The counter stops ticking if you switch to another window. But it works if you dual window.
Pardon the reddit ad.. but what the actual fuck?
It takes about five minutes for the game to connect to Xbox Services to fully load the game... it now takes FIVE 30-Second Ads loading (with countdown timers for the ad close buttons)...
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
Are you fr this sounds like a really good joke
I couldn't believe it either. I froze, told to myself "ok I'm clearly doing something wrong" and searched further but no, all the basic "we'll-teach-you-how-to-use-a-mouse" microsoft games (solitarie, minesweeper, etc) are now optional downloads from the "Windows App Store" and have ads unless you pay.
I'm sure this windows version is legit non-pirated
I refused to believe it for half an hour
All my future computers are going to be Linux, Microsoft has been showing their whole ass the last couple years and really just outdoing themselves with how much they can enshitify everything
Clash of Clans ass operating system.
When Minesweeper from 30 years ago is better than your ad bloated mess in 2024
If you want to play Minesweeper, check out Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. His implementation ("Mines") is free, open source, available on a variety of platforms, and guarantees that puzzles can be solved without guessing.
Also, somehow I've only just realized that he's the creator of both PuTTY and NASM.
Minesweeper is not the point, the point is most windows people are so cucked they might pay extra for fucking minesweeper or else they get ads in the fucking brand new OS they just bought for fuck sakes what the hell
FOSS should be part of computer classes in public education. So many people grow up in a world of only proprietary software and can't comprehend anything being free without a catch.
I remember being pissed off back in the day that my school had computer classes where the curriculum explicitly said that we were to learn Microsoft Office. Imagine if your mandatory education in anything else was about learning to use a specific proprietary product. It would be weird af.
Idgaf about MS or minesweeper but you'd think they'd have enough pride or sense not to shit all over their own history. Incredible.
This shit is what convinced me a few months ago to switch back to OpenBSD, literally I opened Solitaire and saw the microtransactions and ads and that was it
Video games honestly aren't worth the constant struggle and mental assault that is the Windows user experience
99% of games work in Linux now and the ones that don't are the most awful online-only, rootkit anti-cheat pieces of shit anyway.
iRacing tho 
True
I'm just sad there's no WINE on OpenBSD... at least not anymore... :(
And no one releases binaries for OpenBSD so the only games on here are either open-source or run on some VM that we can port (not that the ABI is unchanging like on Linux anyway)
I need to find the energy and set aside a few weeks to go on a great and difficult journey to reconcile WINE and OpenBSD one day
Always nice seeing another *BSD user around, though I'm not cool enough to run it on the desktop for various reasons. Now we just need some *BSD emojis...
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I wrote a minesweeper clone in c for a programming class in high school. It wasn't nearly difficult enough to justify monetization, and that was like ~~ten~~ fifteen years ago now.
that crossout of ten to fifteen felt like violence didnt it?
It's rough lol. Even ten felt like an exaggeration, and then reality hit me like a truck.
I remember my mom doing one in Visual Basic in the early 2000s. Her minesweeper clone worked, but that was the class that convinced her not to learn to code.
Two sentence horror stories
I've got like a nice used car tied up in proprietary Windows software for audio and photography (I played myself) but there will be a tipping point where I hate Windows more than I like money
Car? broom-broom type?
I had to read it twice for what it's worth but to rephrase for them, they spent so much over the years on audio visual software for Windows that the total sum spent could have instead purchased them a quality used automobile. However if/when Windows gets worse they may eventually have to stop using the programs they invested a significant amount of money on just due to how awful the OS has become.
@[email protected] is this an accurate paraphrasing for our comrades who have some trouble with indirect language?
yeah that was it
"I hate Microsoft" 
I've been playing https://minesweeper.online/ for a while now, if there's any ads uBlock Origin takes care of them. Maybe once a day you get a popup that gets in your way for like 5 seconds asking for money but that's it.
I remember at one point they had to reverse engineer the original pinball from XP because nobody had the source code.
Propietary bullshit, not even once
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