I got this same pop up ad on my work computer. Beyond stupid.
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Honestly I've been eyeing Linux more and more, but it also scares me a little. What I'm mostly worried about is losing any functionality I've gotten used to.
I've been using Mint since November. Love it. It's made using my PC new and fun again. There are only two things I cannot figure out yet, and that's putting roms on my PS2 hard drive, and connecting my TI-86 calculator. Luckily, those are both things I can do on my XP machine.
I use Mint. I'm not a tech savvy person at all. It was so easy. I love it, being free from windows is a breath of fresh air. Never have ads down my throat, my OS doesn't use MY computer to spy on me. Break the chains of capitalism!
Happy cakeday
Do it. I was where you are 2 months ago. Everything isn't perfect to where it was but I don't mind it and am not looking back.
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I'm a big Linux advocate these days and my best advice is to set realistic expectations. If your intent is to recreate your Windows experience exactly, you'll always be left disappointed. There's simply nothing better than OneNote at what it does, but I migrated my note taking habits over to Obsidian and I'm perfectly happy there now. Turns out I didn't need 90% of OneNote's immense functionality.
At the end of the day though, Linux is FOSS: it's made by people, for people, to solve the computing problems people have. There are a variety of solutions out there. Reexamine your workflows and be open to fitting new solutions to them, there are just SO MANY choices out there for how to handle most problems.
Aside from that, there's always going to be a small learning curve. People tend to view that as simply a hassle that takes time to overcome and while that's not entirely wrong, it very much undercuts the real value of learning how to operate and maintain the OS that you most likely use every day, all day. It's extremely hard to accurately describe the value of investing that time and having an OS that isn't bloated with corporate nonsense and fighting you to dictate your workflows into their intended patterns so they can agitate you with ads and paid services at every step. There's a reason we all come out sounding like zealots and while I acknowledge it can feel a little cult-ish, who you gonna trust? Your online nerd community or a corporation who has shown time and time again that they do not value you as an individual user?
Well said. I switched to Mint on my laptop recently and just the serenity of not being pestered by the OS constantly fills me with contentment. Also, the fan was running constantly due to Windows background processes before and now it is silent unless I'm doing heavy work. Feels good.
Your comment nailed it. I just switched a couple of weeks back and it really wasn't awful. There is a bit of a learning curve, mostly around setting up your system the way you want it, but there are so many good text and video tutorials available.
Now I have a system that just works, has improved my laptop's battery life by over 20% (the fan is no longer cranking the whole time it's on), and actually has greater functionality than when I was on Windows without all the shit I don't want.
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Also me whenever a new version of windows came out or I just to reinstall for some reason. It never felt the same as it was.
I've switched to Linux a long time ago. You'll get used to it and it will be the new normal if you give it a chance and understand that it is different.
People worry too much about it, just give it a spin.
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Man, this is genuinely painful to watch unfold... Yeah, yeah, Linux, I know, already started migrating, but let your feelings speak for a second, sib!
Think back to how much joy and sheer functionality Windows used to encompass. Even Vista, I swear! It was a poorly optimised mess bloated to hell and back with overlapping features, but it was bursting with a genuine desire to innovate. I honestly don't remember ever having as bad a time with Vista as I do with 10, even when I used to run it on an overheating MSI.
Not to mention XP and 7, which were, I dare say, the best operating systems I've ever used, almost interchangeably if we go for XP SP3 with more unofficial tweaks. I'm not trying to diminish the improvements brought on by 8 and 10, they did have some much needed upgrades for vital features and functionalities, that's undeniable. But everything good came wrapped up (or, rather, jumbled up like 10 sets of wired earbuds you just found in a pocket of the coat you pulled out of the washing machine) with sooo much intrusive crap, that it defeats the purpose...
Gotta grieve that shit...
I'd been a Windows user for around 30 years and I'd probably qualify as a fanboy. I'm sure I hit all seven stages of grief to some extent over Windows' enshittification.
But switching to Linux has given me all the good feelings about my computer. So I'm good now.
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I didn't even let my latest laptop boot to Windows when I first turned it on, the Linux USB stick went in right away. But for those who use Windows for one reason or another, always perform a clean install; manufacturers love including all sorts of crap by default.
My laptop booted in to Windows once. I missed my first guess on the key to enter setup and USB storage didn't have a higher boot order than internal storage.
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I literally just want Windows 7 again but with security updates, driver support, and back end technology upgrades.
For now I'm settling with Window's current state with some Linux use mixed in with the intent to nearly fully migrate for my next desktop build. I'll only use Windows for whatever games refuse to budge on anti-cheat, assuming by then I'm even still interested in playing pvp games at all considering how enshittified they are with engagement based matchmaking and FOMO battlepasses.
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It's not entirely clear from the post, but allow me to provide some further context as I received this same pop-up myself.
I had purchased a legit Windows 10 Pro license with my own money for a custom built PC. Was always a trim installation because that's how I roll. Still got this out of nowhere when I booted back into my Windows partition the other day, was unclear what app or process pushed it. Some update either added a new app responsible for pushing these desktop level ads or enabled a pre-existing notification feature I had previously disabled. Just a typical Win10 toast notification a few moments after logging in. Dismissed it quickly and did not care to investigate, but that's about as bad as you can really get, IMHO. They've slowly been pushing the bounds, but here we are: ads straight to the desktop.
Multiple full screen intrusive ads for win 11, one during a fucking interview, pushed me to finally install Linux last weekend. No regrets, I'm loving it
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Horrendously racist term aside, I feel for this dude. I've logged into Microsoft's support forums more than a few times specifically to call out and report the mindless idiots who keep marking their own unhelpful comments as "solutions."
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Recently I installed Linux mint on my laptop, and then my main PC died so I replaced it with windows 11. I've had the unique experience of setting them both up from scratch alongside each other.
Windows 11 took longer to set up (4 days), but was 80% via GUI, and the 20% I did in PowerShell was mostly using winget with very few failures. I used ChatGPT for some planning and checklist and also used it to craft a PowerShell script that would silently install about 35 applications that I was too lazy to do manually by downloading the exe's, but I could have gotten there without it.
Mint took 2 days to set up but was 80% terminal, and I would not have been able to install half the things I wanted without the help of ChatGPT crafting baffling workarounds for me that I would not have found on my own.
In the end, both systems are 95% how I want them, with 5% unattainable due to their own unique issues.
I'll continue to use both for now, and see how I go in a year or so.
Edit: I must add that I am extraordinarily fussy about my OS configuration, it needs to look, act, and respond exactly how I want it to or I'm dissatisfied
The fact it took you that long to set up either OS tells us you're definitely the problem here.
I got mint up and running with zero terminal input. It was so slick. Idk what you did, but maybe just try booting mint up yourself and leave chat gp out of it.
Which additional software in all did you install after boot though?
Real basic. Steam, VLC, and a torrent client. Setting up a VPN was probably the toughest part. But even that was easy.
I think a lot of people get into trouble trying to do a partition, which windows will try to hunt down and breach. In the name of ~~security~~ capitalism.
I just single-booted mine, so no Windows partition, but I use my laptop for video editing, graphic design, and a bunch of other tasks, so I have to install a range of other software and productivity apps like Autokey, Flameshot, image resizer, fancy file nenamer, Figma, rustdesk, bitwarden, and like at least 20 others. Not all of these went easy, especially since there are some Linux software that runs on debian based systems using .deb files, and others that aren't designed for use with Mint at all, so it's hard or impossible to get these going.
This is why I run MAGA Linux with the Kristi Gnome desktop. Problem is my Java imports cost more.
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Today I booted my work laptop to be greeted with a fucken ad glazing AI and trying to tell me its the future. Its junk microsoft and you cannot convince me otherwise.
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