Microsoft is testing ads (recommendations) in yet another location of its Windows 11 operating system.
When is an ad an advertisement and not a recommendation? Microsoft clearly likes to use the term recommendation for what others may see as an advertisement.
There are recommendations in the Start menu, Settings app, Lock screen, File Explorer, Get Help app, and other areas of the operating system already. These are often not that useful. App recommendations in the Start menu are limited to Microsoft Store apps.
Now, Microsoft is testing recommendations in the Microsoft Store app. If you never use the app, you won't be exposed to these. If you do, you may notice recommendations popping up when you try to use the built-in search.
First spotted by phantomofearth on X, two or three recommendations are shown whenever search is activated in the official Microsoft Store app.
I've recently made the switch over to LinuxMint and I was shocked.
Installing a popular Linux Distro is EASIER than installing Windows 10/11 at this point. Seriously.
The Linux installer is super noob friendly, very quick and straight to the point, it doesn't need you to create an online account and you don't need be wary of accidentally giving any corporation the rights to steal your data.
And all the software I use (Steam, Discord, Spotify, Firefox, Thunderbird, ...) were all downloadable from the GUI Installer and worked right away OUT OF THE BOX. No fiddling in any Terminal was required.
Seriously, it's easier than installing Windows at this point.
I'd be curious at the percentage of windows users actually using the store app.
As for the context of these ads, the store would kind of make more sense than within your settings landing page, start menu, search dialog, browser nagware, solitaire app etc.
Install any popular Linux distro. They are all so much better than any proprietary OS. And if you are running relatively common hardware, everything will just work.
I'm so happy that I will never have to deal with this on my home computers. At work we can at least disable it all via policies. But my god has Microsoft lost its way. What happened to making professional business products?
This is not gonna stop until the consumer puts their money where there mouths are and stops using Windows until Microsoft back peddles. Money is all a company understands so that is where you need to hit them if you want them to listen. But as a group the consumer has a very weak constitution when it comes to having to do something that is good for them in the long term but causes them short term inconvenience. A lot of parallels to the modern corporate world in that.
As soon as they announced ads were gonna be in the start menu, i noped out of windows. I only use it for work which doesn't bother me because im not doing anything private on my work pc.
I switched to Fedora 40 with KDE and never looked back. My only real gripe is with making music. Getting the VSTs to work and setting up yabridge is kind of a headache that i still need to do 😮💨 aside from that, Linux has been my daily driver for quite a while now and im happy i switched even though im still learning.
I would say a “recommendation” is an ad when an accountant is involved instead of (or in addition to) a curator. Even if it’s Microsoft recommending Microsoft’s products, department budgets probably track that internally (though I’m sure the official accounting is done in a way that shifts profits to a tax haven).
The ads are in the app store. I don't really understand why that's a problem. Although I'm probably the only tool out there that actually likes Windows 11.
I have used Windows 10 for years and recently switched to Windows 11 and I don't think I've ever seen an ad in my day to day OS use. I don't do the registry edits or turn off the telemetry stuff, either. I don't know what I'm doing differently but I'm not seeing these ads that apparently infected Windows.
Sounds like they’re reaching feature parity with Apple and Google. Both already do that so I’m not surprised. I never use Microsoft’s App Store so I’ll never see them.
I already run Linux on my laptop. The one thing keeping me from getting rid of Windows on my big machine is Forza games. Motorsport does not seem to work at all with proton/wine (yet)
While I hate ads as much as the next person, I'm having trouble getting outraged by ads in an app store. "Recommendations" are kinda par for that course. Sure, it would be nice if those "recommendations" actually reflected stuff I was interested in and not just who paid Microsoft the most for ad placement. But, I also aggressively turn off telemetry (and actually don't use Windows at home). So, it's not like I expect useful recommendations anyway.
I’m just riding win10 until I finally nab a new gpu and 5700x3d. Htpc and media server are running mint, I think I’ll change the server distro next time I upgrade the hardware though
Listen, bill gates just needs to buy more arable land. This, of course, is your capital to earn by being good and not using linux or Firefox to banish these innocent little ads.
Microsoft seem determined to make us hate using Windows 11, which was all that hard to begin with. If Macs weren't so expensive, and Linux such a pain in the ass, I'd happily switch.