as a linux user (so, genetically superior in every way) i do not have this issue. hahaha…ah.
… sudo app install … a friend?
Maybe it’s my Win 11 Pro or the fact that I took 2 minutes to go to Settings and click a few toggles, but I don’t have any of this. 🤷♂️
A lot of these annoyances can be disabled somewhere in the Settings, but the problem is that there are so many of them tucked away all over the place. Windows 10 (I haven’t used 11) was better than Windows 8 in terms of how unified the settings were, but I remember a few instances where I had to go rummaging through the skeletons in Windows’ closet in order to change some stuff (e.g. having to go through the old-style control panel rather than the Settings).
Furthermore, Windows has the annoying habit of changing settings after updates, and it’s an unnecessary inconvenience to have to go traipsing through the settings again and again to revert unwelcome changes. Even if it’s only the minority of settings that get changed, and if those changes aren’t too frequent, it’s still draining on one’s executive function to make your PC actually behave how you want it to. People get burnt out, and then this contributes to them struggling to find the time and brain to go through changing things.
Mostly though, I am just irked that it’s necessary to go into the settings to turn this stuff off. I am a very techy person, and thus I enjoy tinkering (or perhaps "I enjoy tinkering, and thus I am a very techy person), and stuff like this annoys me so much because I know that I’m in the minority when it comes to willingness to wrestle my tech into the shape I want it. Most people won’t go to that effort, even if it’ll only take 2 minutes — the key thing here is that many of them don’t know it’ll only take a couple of minutes, and I don’t blame them for that.
Good software needs to have sensible default settings. If that were the case, then I think we’d see more non-techy people figuring out what particular settings align with their preferences. As it stands though, configuring Windows to work in a sensible manner is a Task, and the activation energy required for that means that many won’t do it.
I know I have to turn this shit off every time, and I even have a program that reverts my settings in one click. But I still forget every damn “security update” until I notice that fucking copilot is on again. I will never, ever find it acceptable for my changes to be reverted on a regular basis. When any other program fails to keep my settings, it’s a bug and it’s a bad enough one that I usually don’t use the software. But Microsoft keeps doing it on purpose and it absolutely infuriates me that there isn’t more of a backlash.
I really wish I could get more of my stuff working in Linux to make a complete switch. I don’t even need all of it; I’ll give some stuff up.
Smart phones do this too, and now even searching for the setting initiates an app/web search that, many times, won’t provide a link to the local setting that you’re looking for.
This without even mentioning updates that suddenly make apps uninstall-able for…reasons. Looking at you Google/Samsung.
Love how this is what the world’s talented and well paid humans are making.
Talented in what
to be fair, the talent and paygrade doesn’t matter if the management is ass. Modern dey corpos are a disaster in that regard
Unrelated to that exact image but I’m gonna rant about other windows shit because I feel like it.
Windows decided my page file needed to be 80 GB. I do not want it to be 90 GB. I go to the start menu and search up “page file” to see if there’s a settings menu. First result is a random file in an application’s directory that can’t be opened/displayed by any program on my PC, then a list of other unrelated files.
So I open Control Panel, hoping to find it where I did before, and I click on
System. What do you know, that menu no longer exists, and redirects to Windows Settings. Where do I go from here? Maybe the giantInstalled RAMsection because the page file is just a (overly simplified) method of extending your memory to your disk? No, of course not, that menu’s not actually a menu, it’s just a stat counter.Instead, I have to go to Device Specifications, then the section titled
Related links, then clickAdvanced system settings. Oh whaddaya know? Now I’m in the settings menu that used to be behind the originalSystemoption in Control Panel!Now I’m in the Advanced tab of that menu. But where do I go from here? That’s right,
Performance Options, and then anotherAdvancedtab!!!Then I have to click the
Changebutton, where Windows has… conveniently enabledSystem managed sizeso it could choose to set my page file to 80 GB.I edit, it, hit
Ok, have to hitApplyin the other menu too, have to close out the no-longer-needed Settings and Control Panel windows that only served as a maze to get me here in the first place, and THEN I can restart my computer to reduce the size of the page file, even though it is currently not in use by any program, and all data is in RAM, and the file could reasonably be shrunk by the system at any time.After the restart, this process begins all over again, because this is my third attempt, and Windows automatically reverts back to managing the size itself, and sets it to 80 GB. I have 5 GB of storage space left on my disk.
at this point arch linux is more user-friendly
As I say, when you’re hunting around for something in Windows and you come across a dialog box that came straight from Windows XP… you’re getting close.
I empathize with this slightly non-ideal situation.
But can you imagine how insane it would be if you were told to do something like copy/paste
swapoff /swap && truncate -s 8G /swap && swapon /swapinto a terminal? TEXT? Like a caveman? The horror! The heresy! How can anyone be expected to do something so complicated! This is entirely unreasonable UX and the reason why Linux is straight up unusable.Btw here’s 15 bazillion commands in a
.psto perhaps disable some of the ads in your start menu until the next time your computer reboots.I agree with the sentiment, and it would definitely make a lot of troubleshooting easier, but you do gotta remember that 99% of people are so non-technical they won’t read anything going into their terminal, or if they do, they won’t know what it means.
You could just as easily replace that with
sudo rm -rf /*and they’d run it just as quickly, and that’s my worry.IMO we should just have settings menus alongside commands for most things any normal user might have to encounter, since that’s just a more user-friendly interface in terms of preventing accidental bad command execution and also just letting people find things on their own without having to look up a command every time if they don’t want to learn a short book’s worth of terminal commands.
The kind of person who blindly runs commands also blindly runs any .exe or .bat they download from github which is not any better.
Of course in an ideal world there’d be a perfect GUI for everything, and we’ve gotten a lot better at that in the last few years. But it’s not like windows is lacking in things that are only configurable through CLI or the registry (which is even more opaque). I’m not saying Linux is perfect, just pointing out the hypocrisy.
Had to go through this the other day. At the third consecutive “advanced settings” menu I wondered if this was some kind of sick joke
The descent into advanced Advanced menus really is the cherry on top of this shit muffin.
All this yes. If you’re actually looking for help, you have to also click “set” after changing the page file settings.
Would you recommend MS make it easy for idiots to fuck with the page file?
Yes?
If my page file is set to 80 GB by default but isn’t being used by applications because my actual RAM utilization is always under 80%, and they have a dedicated settings menu for it, you’d think they could make getting to that settings menu not take a minimum of 8 separate clicks (assuming you have memorized exactly where to go from the start, and never click the wrong button or link), 4 separate menus, 2 nested “Advanced” menus, and multiple fields and checkboxes to tick off and edit after all of that, just to say “Use less of my disk for the page file”. This could literally be a slider in Settings.
The page file doesn’t cause major system instability if you adjust its size, unless you’re constantly using much more RAM than your system has, and the page file is manually set extremely small.
It just helps keep your system more stable by offloading excess data that can’t be stored in RAM to your disk. My entire computer, even under heavy load, never needs more then 2-5 GB of space on top of my RAM, and that’s when I’m running games at max settings, my browser with 40 tabs open, and multiple instances of 3D design software in the background, hardly a common enough occurrence for Windows to justify going “eh, maybe they’ll actually need 80 GB, you never know”, and never letting me change it even after I restart.
. . . how about that.
This is the same kind of response when someone denies global warming/climate change because they looked outside and the weather around them appears normal.
That’s a pretty wild stretch.
It’s a like for like comparison, although I guess mine was done in 2026 so the meme is outdated.
All the problems these people bitch about with Windows never happen to me. Maybe it’s because I started with a plain vanilla ISO, no preloaded crap. 🤷🏻♂️
Best part? When I mention that I’m not having these problems I get downvoted.
I’ve definitely had this happen to me on Windows, more than once. I can’t remember what I searched exactly, but I typed it in and hit enter, assuming I’d get the installed app with whatever name I typed, but instead it opened the browser with some online search results. Very annoying.
I’m sure it can be turned off, and it probably isn’t as common as it’s portrayed online, but it does happen, and honestly… It should never happen. The start menu is not the place for generic Internet searching. Period.
I don’t know where you are, but it might be something about being within the EU. I am in the EU, and never get any of the ads and other shit people complain about. Like the biggest complaint I see about smart tv’s is that they’ll show ads on the smart screen, or install random apps, and neither my current Samsung tv, or my previous LG tv has ever done anything like that.
I have to use Windows at work and it’s inconsistent. Sometimes I can do a search in the start menu and it’ll immediately pop up with exactly what I was searching for. Other times I’ll get something like the OP shows. And other times it just returns nonsense results. I don’t get it.
it wouldn’t show you this ad unless you typically watch this sort of thing. the advertising is personalized, although I believe you can opt out of that in the control panel.
I believe the claim that Windows search is “indeterminate”, and won’t give the same answer each time. I’ve had things I’ve tried that turned out like that.
I can’t believe the stuff windows users put up with.
Eh, people put up with much worse shit than this in the grand scheme of things.
they shouldn’t have to though. windows didn’t used to be like this. it’s sad to see the way it’s been enshittified.
It all makes so much more sense when you accept the fact that the vast majority of the population doesn’t know what the Windows Terminal is, but instead can tell you every detail about Taylor Swift’s engagement.
Sorry for your loss. Linux is there for you though.
I wonder if it caches the web result because their other shit isn’t bloat-y enough.
Stop trying to use your computer and get back to consuming damn it. Why are users so difficult!
I remember how the startmenu didnt suck on windows 7 and just worked. Good times. That was also the last time where you could find most of the options in one place.
Like in 2015 i was weirded out how a multibillion dollar company wasnt able to just make a new app for settings with feature parity to the old thing for their major new OS release. 10 years later: lmao.
Even the windows 10 startmenu didn’t suck if you took the time to customize it - The Metro tiles were nice, with grouping and folders making everything pretty neat and reducing the need for the standard program list to a minimum; I made mine 3 columns wide, which made pretty much every app i regularly needed available on the fly, using horizontal space that’s much more available than vertical one.
I just use OpenShell to make all of my Windows 10 machines’ Start menus into Windows 7 start menus hahaha. It even fixes search!
I haven’t any windows machines left (at least physical), and i’m pretty comfortable with KDE Plasma, although i’m sure i could make my start menu nicer. Damn, now i have to look into it lol
The one thing I REALLY enjoy about the start menu kind of doubling as a Bing search is I can type in unit conversions and it’ll do them then and there without busting out a calc or opening a web browser. All other cases are like this where it’s annoying nonsense.
But other operating systems (as well as Windows with power toys if you hit alt + space) do this without having to integrate a search engine into the system search lol
I want to upvote and downvote you at the same time lol.
I’d expect a serious OS to have this by default, without internet. gnome-calculator can take in typed input for any conversion - volume, weight, currency; without an internet connection, right on the calculator screen.
Do you hit alt+space at all? I accidentally discovered it just recently, hit it by accident, hit escape real fast, but then the mental picture registered in my head and I was like hmm, but couldn’t figure out what I hit. The software I use for work has all sorts of ctrls and alts in it, and soi resigned myself to having to stumble upon it again, which fortunately I did. It’s mainly a quick and easy calculator, you type some equation, and then you can have it automatically go to your clipboard.
This may just be a power toys thing, I have no idea, I use tools that are beyond my ability, whatever happens happens.
It’s a power toys thing indeed
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I’m amazed the AI didn’t suggest a cancer clinic near you.
They can do whatever they want, it’ll be without me.
I’m not saying that my Linux installation was super easy to set up, but once set up, I’ve had fewer problems than Windows.
That’s been my experience too. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to game on Linux. There have been some games where I had some issues, but the same could be said for Windows too. I think the gaming specific aspect is roughly equal between the two operating systems.
The nice thing about Linux though is that when it does go wrong, I am better equipped with the information and tools to be able to effectively troubleshoot and fix the problem. At least, in theory — I am still learning, so I often find myself wading through logs that I don’t understand, with little progress. It does at least feel more empowering though, to have the abstract option of being able to fix my problem, even if I am not able to grasp that opportunity in practice.
I for one do miss my system restarting in the middle of some work to apply an update.
You can do that in Linux too! Just put an entry in crontab to reboot the system sometime during your working hours.
I just installed Linux the other week and it WAS super easy to set up for me. I was really surprised but everything just worked
The hardest part was getting my Windows-only games to play properly in Linux. Rocket League was relatively easy, but Skyrim was a real pain to get working. But now that Skyrim is working, it strangely feels either the same or slightly better than it does in Windows.
The Windows start menu is completely useless now. I know they pushed using the search to find apps, but I never used it that way except as a last resort.
I’ve been on Mint for just over a year, now. I’ll never go back.
By find apps, do you mean the ones I installed already or ones in their marketplace or whatever?
Because I’ve never been able to have it find my own god damn programs that I installed locally and fully given up on ever using the start menu.
I despise that it defaults to a web search if it can’t find what I’m looking for, which is most often a very real setting that I know exists…
How does it not work? My Win11 start menu is flawless, start typing receive app, no ads.
This is shocking to me. I’ve got a success rate of maybe 20%, the other times it will search the web for something, list a top option that’s completely unrelated to my search while the app with the the exact same name as the term I searched is right below it. Granted that second one is fine-ish, but I’m used to Linux where muscle memory gas me pressing enter as soon as I’ve typed what I want, and if I do that on windows it starts the wrong app.
Try running MMC…
I know this is the wrong audience, but you can type cmd into explorer’s address bar and it will launch a terminal in that directory (I think this works with any command in your path)
But OP wanted Terminal, not cmd.exe They’re not the same thing.
type “wt” instead of “cmd” then
I’m more of a shift-right click > PowerShell kind of person, but this is good to know
I’m a windows key “cmd” enter person
I still need to use Windows for work so I appreciate it, I didn’t know that one
Indeed. Also, tried this when I saw it and was surprised that, not only did the Terminal app show up first, but I saw no ads in the start menu at all. Turns out the settings I set on my Windows 11 partition back in 2022 are still there, and I just don’t see stuff like this.
Like yes, I prefer Linux and wish Windows 11 didn’t have so much crap like this, but… It’s so easy to turn most of it off and move on. Changed them once when I set up this machine and haven’t touched them since. Maybe I’m lucky, but I never had an update change back settings, either.
this is actually incredible, thanks
this has been a thing since early 2024.
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