Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu.

Luckily you can disable these ads, or “recommendations” as Microsoft calls them. If you’ve installed the latest KB5036980 update then head into Settings > Personalization > Start and turn off the toggle for “Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more.” While KB5036980 is optional right now, Microsoft will push this to all Windows 11 machines in the coming weeks.

Microsoft’s move to enable ads in the Windows 11 Start menu follows similar promotional spots in the Windows 10 lock screen and Start menu. Microsoft also started testing ads inside the File Explorer of Windows 11 last year before disabling the experiment and saying the test was “not intended to be published externally.” Hopefully that experiment remains very much an experiment.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I mean, you’re not wrong. Anticheat is pretty much the one thing that Linux doesn’t play nicely with. Given, it’s largely on the game producers to fix, not on the OS. But it’s still a valid complaint from an end user perspective.

        If Linux fans truly want to encourage migration, stifling valid complaints isn’t the way to do it. The issue with everyone going “oh it’s so easy, it’s so much better, you won’t regret it at all” is that as soon as a user encounters a hangup they’ll be more inclined to just abandon it altogether. Because if everyone is going “oh it’s so easy” but you’re not having an easy time with it, then you’ll quickly conclude that maybe it’s just not the right fit for you. And the people going “lul just don’t play those games then dummy” need to get some friends. Because when all of those friends are playing the shiny new game but they’re locked out of it due to their choice of OS, they may consider dual-booting Windows just to be able to keep up with their friends.

        But this is Lemmy and the Linux fanboys can’t tolerate a single toe out of line. So I guess it makes sense why you got downvoted.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          But it’s still a valid complaint from an end user perspective.

          If Linux fans truly want to encourage migration

          it’s technically a valid complaint, it’s not a linux problem though. Don’t come crying to us when your game doesn’t work, we’ve literally made 90% of all games ever work under linux with zero effort for the end user.

          It’d be like buying a proprietary macbook for instance, and then when you find out that the only people who want to service it, are the people who sold you it at an aggressive price, who will then still, ask you for even more money. Only to complain about right to repair not letting you repair your device, even though it’s an apple issue.

          What do you want us to say? We can’t physically test every game to ever exist, and premeditate every issue to ever have possibly occurred to someone. Part of linux is literally learning how to solve these problems, that’s why linux is such a great system OS, when you have problems, you can often just fix them yourself.

          I mean sure maybe linux is too hard for you, how hard did you try to understand it? Maybe it’s not the right fit for you, but then i would expect people to just not care about linux. Rather than call it shit, because they didn’t understand it.

          Also, dualbooting is a valid option, a lot of linux users even have a dedicated windows machine somewhere in their house just because of how shitty everything is these days. Nobody is saying you can’t do that.

      • httperror418@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Hopefully those games go to steam deck as that seems like a way to have a market share they might then cater for (I can’t play BF on Linux due to the antichear requirements)

    • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Windows 11 made my girlfriend’s laptop so slow, even she asked me to install Linux, and she is not even a techy type.

      • ArtVandelay@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I installed pop os and libre office on my wife’s laptop not long after Pop was released, and by now I don’t think she would know what to do on Windows or Mac. So proud of her.

      • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        For now it just works. I have no complaints. I ran into just a few tiny snags and was able to resolve everything with a google search. It’s installed on my 10 year old desktop.

    • CaptKoala@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Welcome to the good life, with the exception of VR and (rootkit) anticheat for multiplayer, it’s all smiles over here.

      Hope Mint treats you as well as it’s treated me! (Even though most of my tinkering breaks stuff, reinstall incoming I suspect)

      • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I don’t play anything multi-player so it’s not an issue. And I have to little time to play single player games I can simply ignore stuff that’s not compatible.

        As far as VR, I am holding out hope that valve will make a Quest like VR headset.