I downloaded this program a couple of years ago. It can block a whole range of dubious functions, even Copilot apparently (I really need to update my version).
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Same here. I was reluctant to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 from the moment I started getting popups attempting to force me to do it, but I eventually relented because a hardware upgrade required it, and 10 is what I’m using currently. But setting it up was a major hassle, akin to culling bloatware and trying to customize a million well-hidden settings on a new phone. Unlike 7, which was just an OS meant to be used as a tool, Windows 10 is primarily designed with Microsoft’s needs in mind rather than the user’s. It can be adjusted to work as a perfectly functional OS, but only through a major effort to fight its primary purpose as a data mining advertising vehicle. I’m reluctant to ever switch over to 11 at this point because I’m worried they’ll have made it so it can’t be adjusted that way any longer.
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I accidentally upgraded to Win 11 when my SSD died a few months ago, as far as i know i’ve been able to turn off all of the Microsoft nonsense. My major annoyance though is that they’ve changed how the Start menu looks/functions and i really dislike it, i would have to install a 3rd party took to change the functionality and i haven’t bothered to do so.
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Do you happen to know of a good video primer for doing that, or did you just know how on your own? (If so, that’s awesome!)
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I looked up like 3 different articles for nonsense to turn off. But I also looked around on my own in the settings, I got most of it but I did miss a couple of things. Also had to look up how to uninstall Teams because it won’t let you normally
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Windows has just become an ad delivery system now and they can force install things or deprecate features without your god damn say so, and i am fast becoming intolerant to it. Thing is they’ll make it just bad enough that people complain on forums like this but not quite bad enough they spend the effort to jump ship. I recently had a laptop (Dell Inspiron) donated to me that someone didn’t want so after previously toying with Linux i wiped the disk and installed Mint Cinnamon and it just works. Barely had to configure anything and solutions to any teething troubles were easily found online. I mostly use open source software anyway so the switching costs to me were negligible.
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I mostly use my computer for browsing and gaming, I’m sure I could use Linux but so far I haven’t hit the annoyance limit to make me want to switch. It is good to know that it’s more user friendly these days, my friends that used it long ago had to fiddle with their OS often. They were more technically savvy so it didn’t bother them I would’ve hated it.
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Oh, i remember the days when Linux was clunky as hell and required quite a bit of TLC to get working. I am aware it still has plenty of issues and will continue to do so since it needs to run on so many different hardware configurations but if you find a PC or laptop with good compatibility then i think you’re golden and gaming is nowhere near the roadblock it once was. I mean, even the Steam Deck runs on a flavour of Linux.
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This is encouraging. I’ve been considering leaving my tower computer in its current state for gaming purposes for eternity (I suppose eventually I wouldn’t be able to play the newest games but I honestly have so many unplayed games already at this point that I could probably get by for the next couple decades) and switching to Linux for my laptop. If I could switch to Linux for both without losing game compatibility, that’d be even better, though.
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You know about Proton? It’s the compatibility layer (not an emulator!) that the Steam Deck uses to ensure all the games work on it and there’s a database that keeps track of supported games.
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About Linux: Is funny how tables have turned. It used to be that Linux ran apps well, but games poorly, and nowadays Linux runs games decently but apps (ie: photoshop, word) poorly.
I saw Windows 11, saw that was, essentially, a subscription delivery model for office 365, onedrive, Xbox Live and whatever Microsoft concocts and decided that was not for me. It helped that Word 365 ate a full day of work thanks to an unfortunate combination of factors 
So I moved to Manjaro (I already was using a similar flavour of linux in the steamdeck) and never looked back. Been using it for already… 20 months? without much to complain. I only booted into windows a couple times to run a couple tools that don’t emulate well.
Still miss Word, TBH. LibreOffice is a poor substitute for a power user. And I guess the same happens with most other tools, though I feel quite confortable with FreeCad for 3D modelling pieces for the printer and Inkscape for simple Vector work – I do miss Illustrator, but my 2012 version was getting a bit long in the tooth anyway. Still need to find something equivalent to Paint NET: GIMP is horribly unintuitive for someone who’s used to “the old ways” and Krita is nice but specialized tool that really is not good when the only thing you want to do is whip a quick meme.
All in all I will call my migration a success. I still have some pains for missing features, but don’t miss them too much on a day to day basis, and it encouraged me to start migrating other features back into home (netflix, google photos, drive, and soon, google docs and specially google timeline, now that the company is enshittifying it to hell).
TBH holding to windows has sense if you work with graphic design or use specialized software that can only run on accelerated windows. Otherwise, migrating from windows 7/10 to KDE plasma is less traumatic than to windows 11. And has less Ads.
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BTW: I work with computers yes but always been a windows user since windows 95, and before that, a MacOS user. Have no love for the Command Line and I had clear that I had to go often CLI deep for tinkering I was out. I am happy to report that though I had to go there a couple times, we can leave behind the need for using the command line for fixing every small thing that happens.
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Same here. 
I miss my MS Office Suite and OneNote, which I used to use daily. 
It’s been a few years, but I’m mostly over it. Now when I see the crap on my Dad’s Windows 10 desktop, I back away slowly and consider how lucky it was to escape when I did. 
Thank goodness, my brother locked Dad’s system down to avoid any unplanned updates.
Yeah, I used to work with them, too, back to Windows 3.1. Gotta say, Microsoft provided me with a nice living, fixing all the crap they enabled people to install and do. Whenever I see the Windows NT BSOD at a drive-thru, or catch a glimpse of older versions in government offices (or worse, in the office of a healthcare provider), coming out of retirement crosses my mind…briefly. At this stage of life, my sanity is more important. That, and trying to play defense against the inevitable wave of data leaks or ransomware-enabled identity theft coming at consumers like a tsunami.
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I use Blender—only for meshing for 3D printing—do you know how they compare?
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‘What many of us feel’: why ‘enshittification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year
The dictionary’s committee described enshittification as “a very basic Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes which elevate it to being almost formal; almost respectable”.
Without those affixes – if one were to say, for example, merely that X has got a bit shit – the deliberate degradation of the platform is erased.
With those affixes, the impression is conveyed of the platform owners tampering with their own product until the bad stuff, like guano on a rock, eclipses the original form.
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It is perhaps 100% perfectly apt for this thread and this timeline that someone could award an “honourable mention” to rawdogging.
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I am curious as I’ve heard about Proton and that Linux can run some games now. But in the past it was always like “Here’s a list of a few dozen games that mostly kinda sorta work on Linux now.” And of course some new games sold on Steam have Linux compatibility built in and tested.
But I do have stuff going back to the 90s in my collection, up to fairly recent stuff. Some from Steam, some from GOG, some from whatever website or disc they came from. And I don’t really trust the hype that nowadays Linux can just handle any Windows program you throw at it the same as if it were running natively with 30+ years of backward compatibility.
Of course I do prefer Linux for command line stuff and some development things. And for general stuff like web browsing, it’s great.
I’ve considered on my next build having one Windows SSD and one Linux SSD and a boot menu to choose between them. I don’t really know how Linux would handle things like reading from the Windows registry if something were installed in Windows but I wanted to run it in Linux though. I wouldn’t want to install two copies of everything.
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These are two different beast. From my limited experence in blender i assume the modeling part is a sculpt tool, as in you make the model, and tweak as needed in a organic way.
FreeCad is a plan tool. You make a plan:
And this plan becomes a model:
Because you’re saving the instructions in order (take this plan, extrude it, then take this other one and use it to make a hole, then mirror the whole thing, then add a chamfer here…) you can go back any step, change measurements or tweak things and regenerate the model, which is something you really cannot do with a sculp tool.
On the other hand there are limitations to this kind of plans. First of all, as you add steps, the chances to break the model if you go back in time and change something increases (search “topological renaming”. All plan-based tools have this problem to some degree but FreeCAD was very bad until recently) and you’re somewhat limited in complexity. Do not expect to make organic sculpts because that’s beside the point.
Also, for some reason, FreeCad sucks at adding letters to 3D Models. This should be an integrated curve tool in the solver, but they have you go to a special workbench, physically select a font from the hard drive, render the paths, move them around… imagine the worst possible case scenario, then some.
But you get to do things like this:
And I haven’t tested the new version, that is supposed to have finally an assembly workbench (freecad tasks are divided in workbench. I mostly work in part design workbench) that works properly for large assemblies, so I won’t have to fit my parts manually.
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Since Steam started pouring money over it, the main reason Proton cannot run a game is because the company behind it doesn’t want to (ie: anti cheat dlls, specific linux checks). So, if is single player, chances are it will run, and while technically emulation, I swear games run faster on my Linux side than on Windows, probably because there’s less overhead.
There’s been a bit of fightback recently, specifically from Epic’s side, we will have to see if they start putting artificial limitations on running games on Linux just because.
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