a beta build of Windows 11 in the Canary Channel includes the option for the first time to uninstall the Camera app, Cortana app, Photos app, People app, and the Remote Desktop client.
Still no Microsoft edge though…
No longer providing a browser with a consumer operating system is a bad idea. How would you install another browser?
They just need to stop plugging and advertising it so relentlessly.
The package manag- oh it’s windows right
It has built in package manager now (
winget install Mozilla.Firefoxwould install Firefox on clean Win11 installation).This is interesting news to me. I’ll have to poke around to see if Windows 10 got one too.
IK I was just poking fun at windows, but the average user (a grandma or other non-tech literate person) won’t know it even exists, plus it doesn’t resolve the issue that, aside from a few maybe legal scripts, you can’t uninstall edge. Still a step in the good direction though.
So YoU hAvE tO uSe ThE cOmManD lInE
No, the cli is just a wrapper around the microsoft store app
Fun fact: Every Windows command line command actually just spams
xdotoolthrough theX11server onWSLin order to do the equivalent action through the Windows GUI.Excuse me, more info on this, some sources? Thank you very much for your time.
Sure it’s okay they come with a browser, but you should be able to uninstall edge after you’ve downloaded another browser
That’s the Windows 95 lawsuit all over again. They forced internet explorer on people, got sued for creating & exploiting a monopoly, lost, and had to offer people the chance to remove it.
They claimed it’s integral part of the OS, and so were forced to un-integrate it.
I’m sure they will find a way to give users a choice to get rid of Edge, if they
really wanted towere forced yet again.
I’m a CG artist and I dual boot Fedora on my workstation and run it on my file/license server. I’m very familiar with Linux and it’s great for a lot of things.
A ton of my software runs much better than on windows and I would stay in it if I could, but unfortunately I have software needs that don’t run on Linux and can’t work in a VM in full capacity.
MacBook / Linux Server combo is meta.
I’m sorry, but “I dual boot Fedora,” has to be one of the most hipster/nechbeard sounding phrases I’ve ever heard. Not to besmorch your choice at all, just the way it sounds is hilarious.
I’m sorry, but “I dual boot Fedora,” has to be one of the most hipster/nechbeard sounding phrases I’ve ever heard.
First of all, if you want to insult someone, at least get the spelling right.
Secondly, there’s nothing “nechbeard”-y or hipstery sounding about it at all. It’s a tool. You use tools to do work.
If you want to assign some weird social construct to it to validate your own choices, that’s fine. Just keep those opinions to yourself because no one cares about them, and they make you look small.
When I said I don’t besmirch the choice, I meant I didn’t think it was actually pretentious or obnoxiously awkward, etc. The phrasing just made it sound like a bit a tech-minded comedian would do to mock such people. I don’t think they are actually a hipster or a neckbeard, nechbeard, or neckbread, just that the wording was funny.
They always knew. When the time comes they’ll force everything back with even more bloatware and even less freedom to choose because that’s the corpo way. This is just another long-term power grab.
Yeah agreed. They’ve been pushing this (and losing) since the days of Windows phone. We don’t want the phone and we don’t want the apps.
The more steam deck and proton get games working on linux, the less need I have for this bloated windows.
It’s truly ridiculous how much Linux gaming leapfrogged with the Steam Deck. I’m contemplating installing a debian partition for my main PC since I don’t really play a lot of games that need anti-cheat.
The madlads really did it.
I installed Fedora on a seperate SSD, and I now dual-boot alongside Windows 11. It took a bit of time and tweaking until I felt comfortable with using Fedora as my daily driver, but it’s been great.
Everything is smooth and fast, and I have all the apps I need. Well, almost. I subscribe to Game Pass, and have a couple of Steam games that don’t run on Linux, so I have to boot into Windows when I want to play those games. Other than that, it’s all great.
Yeah gamers are 95% good to switch.
Gamers and microshit have incompetiable values.
If devs started making anticheat for Linux it would get closer.
If they stopped making launchers it would be easier too.
how do i game on linux without a steam deck? (for windows games)
Is really just:
- Install any Linux Distro
- See if you have the drivers for your hardware already installed
- Install Steam
- Change the setting for Enable Steam Play on Steam
- Download the game and play it.
Of course, like in windows, something could go wrong and you need to tinker a little bit to fix it but for the vast majority is just like that.
Just adding: if you have an AMD GPU, the drivers are now included in the Linux kernel, so there is no manual install needed for those. For nvidia, you do still have to jump through some install hoops.
The easiest way is to install Steam on your Linux distribution of choice. Next you activate steam play in the steam settings to use the proton compability tool which allows playing windows games on Linux. You can check ProtonDB to see how well your game should work and see if tinkering or additional settings might be needed. A lot of steam games will just work. If you don’t want to use steam, you can also try Lutris or Wine directly, but this approach will need ALOT more setting up and tinkering.
Linux gaming will sometimes cost you more effort but I think it’s worth it to get away from Microsoft and have my freedom to set up my system how I like. Feel free to ask if you have more questions.
Been a Linux-only gamer for a year now. The hype is real and PC gaming has changed forever. Most people just hesitate to actually leave Windows behind, but the grass on the other side is much, much greener.
I made the switch and everything I want to play works. Some of it needed a bit of tweaking, though. Luckily instructions exist, and some began working with new Proton updates. It’s a good time to be a gamer on Linux.
I just hope feature parity happens before MS make their move to reduce windows pcs to literally zero clients that simply stream ´your´ OS to your screen from the cloud.
Don’t need a pc for much but god damn if I don’t want to play my games on my pic when I want. Online, offline, whatever.
It’s pretty much at parity. The only straggler I am aware of is ray tracing on the AMD side (supported on their driver package, but not yet with the driver included in the Linux kernel). I never use it anyway because I have a 6600 XT and don’t want to play a slideshow.
I’m all for less bloat ware, but come one. The camera app or remote desktop are the least shitty ones. Its borderline to call them even bloatware.
I mean I’ve never used either of those apps and my computer doesn’t even have a camera.
Sounds like textbook bloatware to me… 🤷♀️
“if I don’t use it, it’s useless”
Bloatware doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useless, but if even a reasonable percent of people don’t want or need it or shouldn’t be preinstalled. That’s bloatware.
It’s bloat because a lot of people will never make use of it, so it’s taking up more space (bloating it) for no appreciable gain. It should be easy to install if you do want to make use of it, but not literally every piece of software should be installed just because some people will use it.
It coming pre-installed is also harmful to third parties. Many will just choose the MS version because it’s already there, rather than potentially find another group who’s made similar (maybe even better) software for the same purpose.
By that definition
grepandawkare bloat on Linux.At least I can uninstall either of those programs with a single command
To be clear, they seem to be saying that those apps will still be preinstalled. They’ll just be easier to uninstall if you want to do so.
"option for the first time to uninstall the Camera app, Cortana app, Photos app, People app, and the Remote Desktop client. "
I ignore them. Since January 2022 I’ve used exclusively macOS & Linux and you can’t go wrong with that. macOS for my daily driver work laptop (M1 MacBook Pro) and Arch Linux for my home server, though I do enjoy using it a lot for work and if this mac ever stops working I will definitely build a framework Linux laptop. Nothing comes close to FoSS, don’t have to put up with most of this proprietary business-oriented software.
But do you use Arch?
I use Arch (btw) on my daily driver too, but I recently switched to Mint on my server. Too much of a hassle to constantly update on Arch. Though I do miss the AUR.
M1 MacBook. I’m using it right now. I have an ungodly number of tabs open in both Chrome and Edge. Photoshop is apparently open for some reason. Also steam and 5 other apps.
The thing is like 3 years old and doesn’t even stutter waking up. Idk what this thing is made of but I would genuinely believe it if they came out and said it’s alien technology.
Mmm that’s not really realizing anything.
You know what sort of tom fuckery I had to get into to get my gaming laptop working? I had to find a sketchy windows 10 LTS IOT ISO, run some registry hack then find and install all my drivers just because the regular working consumer edition of windows is such a bag of bloat…
For hardware I paid for…! Next time I’m just going with system76 right out of the gate. I just kept reading reviews about things not working right or still being in development so I bought a mainstream laptop with a warranty.
A lot of linuxy or FOSS sort of stuff is still buggy despite being better than it was ten years ago. No one talks about it. Purism phone, pine phone, Linux gaming, the steam deck, etc. They all have major flaws or sometimes breaks in functionality. Where mainstream has breaks 1/10 even the best Linux setup has breaks 1/5 of the time minimum. And that’s great but it still sucks that you have to look elsewhere because mainstream is a monetization sponge in all senses of the phrase.
Is there a way to disable the ads, news and recommendations yet? Until then I’m not upgrading.
Every two windows version is a disaster. 95 nice, 98 sucked, XP was great, vista was a flop, 7 wow, 8 eurk, 10 marvelous, 11 is shit… They don’t learn. But this time the goal is to make more money through adds, widgets and preinstalled bloatware.
98 sucked, ME also sucked, 2000 wasn’t too bad, XP was excellent
ME would like a word.
95 was middling just novel, OSR2 was actually good. 98 was ok, 98se was excellent ME was a complete unmitigated disaster 2000 was excellent in all shapes XP was horrid, SP2 was good
The rest about right but honestly i think it’s just that the second SP is when Windows gets good, not that every second one is good.
And there was no saving ME or 8…
Alternatively, you can get a copy of Win 10 LTSC that doesn’t have any bloatware pre-installed.
You can also select language English (World) and that also doesn’t have any bloat for what I’ve seen
That cool. So stuck on a decade old OS.
Windows is a cancer y’all let run rampant while worrying about side loading, App Stores and removable batteries.
Meanwhile MS has doubled down on their monopoly, all the while going all in on the “Windows as service”, which as many of you have discovered, is about ads and telemetry over actual improvements to the core OS.
flips water bottle
Windows 10 is not a decade old, it had several major release that were not marketed as new versions because the “last version ever” craze was on.
You’re right; 8 years. And in 2025, support ends (aside from security patches) and the OS is retired.
🙃
Windows 11 was released in 2021. Like I said, Windows 10 had several major releases, so its age shouldn’t be counted from the first windows 10 (things like creators update, redstone update etc). Also, what kind of maintenance do you want besides security patches for Windows? Surely not some Cortana BS xbox game bar something something ad popup?
I have to use Adobe Creative Suite for my job. By have to, I mean have to, because I get client files that are in proprietary formats, and my RIP software is only available for PC. It doesn’t matter if I would prefer going back to XP, or even 3.1; that’s simply not an option for me professionally.
Also, my work station doesn’t belong to me, and you can be that if I changed the OS to a linux distribution I’d be looking for a new job pretty goddamn fast.
They always knew, they just didn’t care.
Im running Windows 11 on my new laptop. Every major update it’s like:
- PLZ LET EDGE BE UR BROWSER
- BRO PLZ, OFFICE SUBSCRIPTION
- LOCATION?
- Let me just install tiktok and FB apps.
My laptop officially supports Ubuntu, think I might make the switch full time. I don’t game on my laptop and most of it’s use is browser, plex and emails…
Or they thought forcing them on you made them money and care about nothing else. Now they’ve realized it’s a net negative.
They will just be replaced with something else that you can’t remove.
Using Windows primarily for gaming, I eventually got tired of some of the issues I had with it (ads appearing in the start menu). I gave Linux a try and it was so so for a while. I kept going back and forth but it’s been 2 years now and I haven’t had Windows installed and can play 90% of my games without issue. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. But for those that primarily use their computer for gaming and non-windows specific applications (like web browsing or other various things), Linux is offering some competition for desktop people.
I would but the only thing holding me back is the lack of HDR support in Linux. Windows 11 is currently the only desktop OS to implement it properly (10’s HDR is a joke), so I’m stuck with it
Great point. I still don’t have an HDR monitor but that could be nice. Plus, if everything’s working for you no need to switch it up! It’s great that Microsoft is adding the ability to remove some of the programs a lot of people don’t / wont use without having to copy and paste powershell commands. I remember there were some scripts / instructions on how to uninstall what would otherwise be uninstallable programs by opening a powershell as an administrator. I don’t have anything against Windows, I just got tired of having so many ads put into my start menu and ads in the weather widget they added to the task bar after I paid $100+ for the OS way back when. But I’m not sure how their handling the “price” of Windows now.
They’ve always realized, they’ve just never cared.
They always knew
It’s the integrated AI spying on you that is real concern
