A reminder to manage your startup apps

McAfee is actual malware at this point anyway

Imagine needing an antivirus
This comment was made by Linux gang
- Even Windows doesn't really even need a 3rd party anti-virus anymore. The built in windows defender has gotten so good as to really be all you need for active protection unless you're insanely stupid and keep bypassing it. Use Malwarebytes for deep file scans once in a blue moon, and you're golden.
- Imagine thinking you’re immune to malware
- Hasn’t a bunch of malware spyware and other malicious shit been found all over decades old Linux stuff the last couple months?
CCleaner is too nowadays. How far it it has fallen...
CCleaner also hasn’t been necessary since at least Windows 7. I remember working in a PC repair shop when people would just arbitrarily run CCleaner on its most aggressive settings whether it was needed or not and it would always break more things than it fixed.
- And even if it was, why tf have it open on startup? It should be run like, manually once a month at most.
And almost Every. Fucking. Manufacturer. Installs it as bloatware :/
- They get paid to do so. It's not like they just install McAfee at random.
I almost felt the same way about MalwareBytes. I know it's actually useful but it hassled me so much about upgrading to premium that it was more annoying than having actual malware.
What do you mean at this point?! It's been malware for almost two decades!

Delete mcafee and ccleaner pls

Ccleaner slaps if you have to use a spyware OS
- The developers of CCleaner got acquired by Avast in 2017. I haven't kept up with what they did with it, but Wikipedia tells me that they had a malware breach and later also intentionally installed Avast Antivirus on user PCs.
  So, if you're looking for an application to keep your PC free of crap, this ain't it.
  Avast in general is an extremely dodgy company and I would not want any of their software on my PCs.
- Instead of CCleaner, just use BleachBit. It’s free and open source and definitely not shady.
- Yeah, two pieces of spyware!

For those that don't know, theres a tab in Windows task manager called Startup that let's you modify what apps get started when you log in.

You can also look at the services.msc tool and check all your startup services.

Sysinternals Autoruns is like the task manager "start up" super charged.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
Disclainer, misuse can seriously fuck windows. Use with caution. Do not uncheck microsoft crap, no matter how tempting, or anything you're unsure about.
- +1 for autoruns
- Do not uncheck microsoft crap, no matter how tempting
  The temptation is real though
Thanks(!!!) for the reminder. I knew about it but just never think to go in there. I just now disabled a ton of things I don't need running.
Msconfig is also handy for disabling services as you can hide default MS services

is this a windows thing that im too linux to understand

When your Linux machine is so efficient on resources that it doesn't even try to run your video card or wifi dongle...
My linux desktop: "Nvidia? Hmm. Yuck, no thank you."
- I got some good drivers with flatpak (I think) but I dare not update my Nvidia drivers or lightdm will complain. Next PC will be an AMD card thank you. (probably going to be a few years though)
yes

People install McAfee, Epic and CCleaner?

Epic is nice for free shit and drm free games.
- Still not an enough reason to install that Tencent spyware imo.
- Until the launcher wanted to add kernel level "anti cheat". Then Lemmy told me about Heroic... :-D
- And fortnite which despite all the memes is a fun game.
Epic
You meant EA Origin?
Epic is used by devs
People playing use Heroic

Each one bringing it's own little version of Chrome along for the ride.

USE LINUX

Jesus fuck...
- Lol it's everywhere here
- News just in, Jesus Christ fucks for Linux. News at 5
c'mon man knock it off
signed, a fellow linux user
- You've gotta let FrankTheHealer shout from the rooftops. He has windows to heal
Normally I'm cool with all the suggestions to use Linux when Windows is making itself worse. It provides a FOSS alternative that avoids the new anti-feature.
But this is not an attack on Windows. Linux has startup apps as well.
- Linux apps generally don't ask for this permission unnecessarily though. I remember back when I used windows everything I installed was bundling its own update manager that runs at startup etc.
- I've never had any startup apps (Linux mint)
- Nope you need systemd or something else to start them as far as I know.
How about no
WE HEARD YOU.
- Ow, would you all stop screaming already? It is hurting my ears. 🙁
This is such an own goal it's almost a meme at this point.
You know why Linux doesn't have this shit? Because it hasn't attracted the ire of the marketing team. Do you know why that is? Because the fraction of target users using Linux is TINY. It's not worth the expensive engineering effort, especially when you consider the demographic using Linux is unlikely to fall for this shit.
The more you win the "use linux" argument, the more the argument won't make sense. The day Linux gets enough user share to justify it, is the day all this shit starts happening on Linux.
- Also it's much easier to disable on Linux and not every distro uses the same program to start apps on boot so most annoying programmes can't find it. Discord (which I would ideally move away from if my friends didn't use it) certainly thinks it's enabled on startup somehow.
  Windows seems to start some startup apps before you log in also worries me as that means malware could start before you are able to remove it and I don't know how to reach tty mode before reaching a gui so yeah...
- They hated him because he spoke the truth
Nope
Gnutard
- He didn't even /anything with his Linux. I think that charge is incorrect

Laughs in KDE

Laughs in tty
- Laughs in windows.

Unironically you're missing the point. The point being, it's not a problem for many apps to start because oh how powerful PCs got. The problem is when some apps use so much resources that regardless of how powerful your PC gets, it's wasteful to have them opened all the time.

Reason for that problem is them using unoptimized frameworks such as Electron and CEF (seriously, check each app on the image).

And main reasons for that are:

Google posing browser component as a GUI framework.
Devs not caring (or being lazy) enough to do native coding.

I wish every person would realize the above so we could force developers do their job better.

Ironically, even if OP missed the point, the apps pictured are resource hogs and all of them don't need to run on starup other than Defender.
Sure, leave OneDrive/Dropbox on if you use it. Leave Spotify if you just need your music to start blasting the second you reach the desktop. If opening Steam and waiting ~30 seconds for the lord Gaben-given daily update is too much of a problem let it do its thing on startup, but who in their right mind needs Soptify, OneNote and all the gaming clients slowing down startup of literally everything?
And CCleaner, McAffee and Adobe can go fuck themselves along wirh Nestle.
- the apps pictured are resource hogs
  I mean I didn't disagree with that.
  who in their right mind needs Soptify, OneNote and all the gaming clients slowing down startup of literally everything?
  I guess every user who doesn't care enough to check the autorun settings as long as it works. Probably most non-IT specialists.
Devs not caring (or being lazy) enough to do native coding.
"Waaaah waaaah, how else am I supposed to make crossplat code?" - Whines the coder whose product is only available for Android, as an electron app no less, for that one never heard of Dart+Flutter (if i'm not mistaken, the most recent Ubuntu installers interface were made with it), or Delphi/Lazarus (yes, those two use Pascal language), or even Tauri or Neutralino if they code in Javascript.
- Tried some nice tool (tabame) that uses Dart/Flutter and it immediately uses 250 mb of RAM. No graphical content except some icons in the GUI. As I was going to replace task manager which uses 60 mb, I was not happy.
  Wish sciter would be more popular.

Ew, uninstall most of that

Everyone is making fun of the apps included in OP, but it’s besides the point—apps that demand resources at startup are the worst if you don’t need them. I ruthlessly deny permissions for anything installed, it’s like Gandalf in there holding the bridge and pushing presumptuous asshole apps over the bridge.

Wow... It's such an awesome feeling that I can't relate to this meme 🥰

The joy of Windows.

But... but... then how will they collect telemetry for targeted advertising?

For those that have this issue,

Disclaimer:

misuse can seriously fuck up windows. Disabling things that shouldnt be, is bad. Many of the services are required by other aplications to run. Do not disable any Microsoft services you dont know what they do - otherwise disable as many as possible until the computer stops working.

If you can not read or just want to uncheck everything you see, this is not for you:

Sysinternals Autoruns is like the task manager "start up" section on 5 doeses of steroids. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

It is but you don't want to recommend it to anybody who doesn't know what they're doing because they can seriously break their computer lol
- My bad, I normally leave a disclamier, but I forgot.
Please disable all Microsoft services. Your PC and privacy will thank you... (Unless you decide to use something somehow even worse)
- There's definiaty some you can and should be disable, but I'd use O&O for that. Unless you actually know what each service does, its best to leave them alone.

Only thing missing from this atrocious set of spyware is Valorant's properiarty Vangaurd rootkit

Fuck riot. Don't play their trash

Gross, Windows.

Deleted
- Daily driving Windows in 2024 is like eating McDonalds for every meal.
  I mean, sure, it is popular...
- To be fair they didn't say they used Linux, so you're sorta wrong in this case.
  I use fedora btw.
- Literally wrote that comment on a MacBook, lol.

Who the hell uses the Spotify app?? If you use it from the browser, ublock eliminates advertising perfectly. Why would I want to use the app where I can't block it?

the desktop app is the only version on pc that allows higher bitrate playback
- The odds of hearing artifacts in modern audio codecs is miniscule.
Hey I never thought about that thanks!
My brother pays for a family account, so meh, why not
- Your brother pays for my account to. Solid dude.
https://github.com/mrpond/BlockTheSpot
It unlocks all premium features for spotify aside from downloading music, which includes no ads.
You can still easily block ads on the desktop (and Android) app.
spotx-bash is good too
Install browser tab as app and open it at startup would be why there is an icon

Y'all know about changing your startup programs right?

I have almost all apps disabled on startup.
If i want it running i will start it, i assure you.

it's pirated adobe, right?

Right?
- My boss pays for it.
  So.. kinda?
Must be, i am 69% sure the paid versions of adobe are exclusive ment for the kind of large businesses that can afford MacBooks for some employees.
- Nice.

meanwhile linux users

also who uses epic games

Well I use the website to get the free games. I barely missed any so far and played like 5 of them using Heroic.

Steam and Discord? Yes. Everything else in that image? I think OneDrive and Windows Defender are the only things there that I have installed, and OneDrive is only on my laptop and only used for work purposes.

I don’t understand the whole stigma around OneDrive. People act like it’s bad, but if you set it up right, it acts just like Google Drive or Dropbox or WhateverTheFuckCloudStorage.exe..
- The stigma is that windows tries to shove one drive down your throat.
  When I first set up windows 10 a while back, they told me that a Microsoft account was required to make it function. I sighed and followed along and then saw how every time I opened the start menu, it'd say "your files are out of sync! Activate OneDrive to make sure your files stay safe."
  It's a dark pattern. If I wanted OneDrive, I'd install it.
  Now I have to jump through hoops anytime I do a fresh windows install to ensure that it allows me to use a local account....which should fucking be the default.
- I find it annoying. It pops up with its nag notification to set it up like every day. Just fuck off. If I want it set up I will.
- For me, one drive somehow got out of sync on one location and proceeded to delete a bunch of files without notification or interaction on my part. I know my case is probably very rare but I just have never been able to bring myself to trust them again.

Origin side loads even when you disable it's start up service (super annoying)

If you're talking about "ea background service", you can disable it by deactivating background downloads in the settings.

🪟🤡

Laughing in GNU/Linux

I have the same pile of apps, but they start in 20-30 seconds not 2-3 minutes.

i have a potato laptop with only 4gb of ram, safe to say most startup apps are off

Could you upgrade the ram or is it ddr2?
- https://downloadmorerem.com/

what's the purple ring

GOG Galaxy.

Common windows L

Win+L? Ok session locked
- Super+L for me but the Windows OS just has a lot of losses

Buying a NVME was the best decision I made about tech.

And this is why I keep nothing in my startup hshah

Wow sounds like a lot of effort... I personally like being greeted by a login screen, rather than having to open one myself...
- I don't really use anything specific every time I open my pc, so it works for me

People still use CCleaner?

it is steam, keepassxc, protonvpn and corectrl for me, I have st them up to do that myself but the pop ups while launching are still annoying. At least I have -silent flag on steam so it starts in the background without showing a window

Is this something that I'm too Linux to understand?

the only one acceptable is steam, discord, maybe spotify, the fuck is that gay cloud and the pink ring?

the fuck is that gay cloud
Just because it's creative doesn't mean it's gay! (it's Adobe creative cloud)
- the worst of them all tbh, god forbid one of their apps needs an update (and you haven't toggled off the auto updates which are on by defaut), your PC will be half functional until the update finishes. Adobe is a notorious resource hog
  it's even funnier when said update breaks their app. One time I had photoshop update and they somehow broke the exit button, it literally gave me an error when I tried to close it, only task manager could save me. They just do not test their shit at all

Should have installed linux

Throw in the official Runescape launcher

welp looks like i'm overdue my bi-annual reinstall of Michaelsoft Binbows dot dot dot

You could also just get something else...

If it's gotten that bad, wait until you check all of the services those programs so cavalierly keep running in the background.

I recognize most of these, but what are the purple ring and the rainbow one?

The ring is GOG, a game launcher and the rainbow is Adobe creative cloud.
Purple ring is GoG Galaxy, a games launcher for GoG games with support for plugins to launch games from other games launchers as well.
Rainbow one is Adobe Creative Cloud, a program to manage Adobe services such as Photoshop and Premiere.
- Gog Galaxy just doesn't function on mine, I can download and install game but when I try to run it it just auto crashes I gave up on it. The only reference to it is some weird Windows 7 error but considering I'm running on 10 it doesn't make any sense that that would be affecting it.
Ah yes, modern iconography. Such a simple shape, that even googling "purple ring logo" yeilds no useful results.
Rainbow is adobe creative cloud
the purple ring is GOG Galaxy, another game store/launcher. No clue what the rainbow one is lol

Windows 10/11: Ctrl+alt+delete, click on task manager, click on autostart applications (left panel), setup your applications for autostart

Ctrl+Shift+Escape open task manager directly. Very useful hotkey

Only 3 of them even run on my OS. Good.

Startup Apps

i have 25 apps on startup try me.