This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
To get pedantic for a second. The title of this post is "Microsoft gives..." as if this was an altruistic act that Microsoft decided to do for some people, when the article states they did it to comply with a law.
A much better title would have been "EU Forces Microsoft to Give Users More Control:" It returns the credit to the people who deserve the credit and clarifies that it wasn't something Microsoft did willingly.
Not pedantic. The specificity, imo, is extremely important here, and the poor phrasing really bothered me, too.
In other words: Users of proprietary OS like Windows have so little control over their own devices that it's newsworthy when the vendor allows you to uninstall 2-3 bundled things out of many more. But only in some countries! It's pathetic.
Funny what happens when you have a government that actually gives a shit.
Thats what happens when you get unionised.
(because the EU is a type of Union)
But I thought Edge was so crucial for the system to function it can't be removed? That's what MS told me at least, and I definitely trust them
No that's internet explorer. They "removed" it, but really it's just hidden in a way so you can't run it directly.
Windows 11 does not allow Edge to be removed. There may be some roundabout ways to do it, but the system actively puts up a LOT of roadblocks. It’s extremely trashy.
Europeans have the Freedom to Uninstall SPYWARE? LoL COMMIES here in America we have TRUE FREEDOM of being FORCE FED SPYWARE with NO Other options!
Please let them also remove all the XBox nonsense. The other day my laptop from work that runs Windows 11 Pro gave a big ass prompt if I didn't want to try XBox Game Pass with the new Doom game. It's basically an ad for games on a Pro machine, ridiculous.
You know what is truly ridiculous? It's when I installed Windows N (the version without all that bullshit), but each time I launched a game, it complained that some Xbox app was missing. When I finally said, 'Fuck it, let's install that crap,' I learned that it isn't even possible to install on that Windows edition. Yet they would still show me the error about the missing app nonetheless. Every. Single. Time.
You can already do that:
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxApp" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider" | Remove-AppxPackage -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI" | Remove-AppxPackage
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\GameBar" -Name "AutoGameModeEnabled" -Type DWord -Value 0
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\System\GameConfigStore" -Name "GameDVR_Enabled" -Type DWord -Value 0
If (!(Test-Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR")) {
New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR" | Out-Null
}
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR" -Name "AllowGameDVR" -Type DWord -Value 0
You're welcome
That's a ridiculous step by step guide. Let me see if I can simplify.
Step 1: plugin your ventoy flash drive with Linux distro
Linux gives all global users more control: Uninstall Windows, say goodbye to Microsoft
I love being in EU
The best control: uninstall Windows.
🇪🇺the🇪🇺land🇪🇺of🇪🇺the🇪🇺free🇪🇺
The home of the brave, and the land of the free.
Microsoft is grudgingly forced to give...*
This is why when u pirate windows u always pirate the European version. Not that I condone pirating windows that would be immoral and wrong.
uses Linux to pirate Windows
deletes the iso because it sucks
just because I could!
Pirating windows and adobe is never wrong.
Pirating Windows is wrong, but the lesser evil compared to buying Windows. Ideally, you shouldn't do either
Microsoft: "Suck it, Americans"
And again; repeat after me: install Linux already. Just get it over with, demand Linux work stations at work,use Linux for yourself and for the first time ever experience freedom on your computer
I feel like this is one of those calls that get so repeatedly people get numbed.
Something along the lines of climate change, economic crisis, etc.
They are all true, but people are passivated.
For real though; GET THE DAMN LINUX. SPIN IT UP IN A VM. TRY THE LIVE VERSION. DUAL BOOT IT WITH WINDOWS. YOU LOSE NOTHING, WINDOWS IS STILL THERE. JUST TRY IT FOR ONCE.
It is painful to see people struggle with things that are easily solved.
Perhaps sometime in the future, more people will try Linux and see how good it is. My recommendation based on my own experience:
Want stable, just working. Robust workhorse: Try Debian
Want newest, nicest, good for gaming (need a tiny bit of tinkering if you run Nvidia): Try Fedora
Want easy to install, but a bit older and slower, but requires no tinkering: Try PopOS
Don't like settings, tweaks and fuzz: choose Gnome desktop 😊
I'm morbidly eager to see how they'll handle the Win 10 EoL (yeah, yeah, it ain't dyin', just not getting updated, same thing to me tbh) in October. I bet it'll be a shitshow.
No more security patches. That should be dead to you if you don't want to host thousands of parasitic bots & malwares
So being able to uninstall apps on your computer is news?
No no, on Windows it is not your computer, it is "This computer". The days of "My computer" are long gone.
For those curious, if you can get a European Windows product key, you can install the "N" version of Windows. Be warned, it only works with certain product keys....
The standard Windows installer should give the option of "Windows 10" or "Windows 10 N" (or similar). The N version is basically bloatware free out of the box....
The regular version has a bunch of promos pre-installed, like candy crush, and other things that most people couldn't give a shit about....
Recently I've been playing a "fun" game with my work laptop where I'll remove copilot, and a few days later it will appear again. Weeee. In that case, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a policy in place to enable copilot on my works systems.... I'm sure someone who works here, probably higher up the food chain than me, wants it enabled, and the ham fisted policy maker can't create a policy just for those who want it, so everyone gets it because the bosses son Shane decided that he wants to see how much of his work can get done by AI so he can do even less while on the clock.
Too little too late? Some European businesses have already made the change to open source. Shit should be free to anyone doing business with it anyway.
IF YOU'RE NOT IN THE EU, you can use O&O ShutUp to help you turn off the more intrusive aspects of Windows with ease.
So.. they’re doing exactly what apple was forced to do.
Wanted to play a game on my kid's computer that had windows 11 N or some shit. Couldn't play because it needed the "media pack", which in its turn installs everything N stands for. Clown world.
Windows users are a revenue stream, not customers. M$ views it's users as a sort of raw material that can be processed with dark patterns for ads and subscriptions. And like everything else, Americans are treated with the most disrespect and coercion.