Tldr: Remote desktop, Cortana, camera, people app are all getting uninstall buttons.
“Are you suuuuure you don’t want to use Edge? Are you suuuuure you don’t want it to be the default handler for .pdf and .svg files? Are you sure? Are you sure you’re sure? Just in case, we’ll pin it to your start menu again and put a shortcut to it on your desktop. Just until you’re sure.”
Its seemed… better lately. But I used to get skype back every single update when 11 first came out.
You could always uninstall Teams and still can, regularly via the Settings app.
Why remote desktop? I can understand the rest. But who uninstalls default apps and doesn’t use remote desktop?
The remote desktop app isn’t installed by default. At least I’ve never seen it installed by default.
Remote Desktop is dead. Azure killed it. TeamViewer is the replacement (and yes you have to pay for it) or you pick another third party vendor for your RDP needs.
It sure took them a while, but they seem to finally allow folks to personalize their experience. I’m not going to complain about it, though – this is definitely a good change.
Nothing. But having the option to uninstall them like any other app is nice for whenever it might be relevant.
Wait, so of the five apps they will “let” you uninstall now, one makes little sense to have in the consumer edition (remote desktop - which is effectively enabled in Pro only) and one is getting deprecated (Cortana - bye bye!).
Maybe someday they’ll discover checkboxes and use them to not have to install these apps in the first place.
“What’s a checkbox? Oh, you mean that thing we use to trick users into ‘consenting’ to telemetry?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. "
My issue is the Solitaire and games. We have Win11 for Business (Switching to Enterprise soon) and I have to run a powershell script during Intune/oobe to rip out all the bloat.
my work is transitioning to it soon, I’ll have to find similar scrips soonish.
I have an amazing resource for this kinda stuff. As soon as I an remember it and find it I’ll drops comment here.
Windows 11 ships with a shitty featureless version of the remote desktop client. You have to download the “real” or “full” version from the Windows app store.
I found this out incidentally a few weeks ago and it is annoying having the app you need and some random imposter app with the same name clogging up search / start menu.
Have they fixed the store version so it can do multiple monitors yet? Also local folder redirects?
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… 🤷♀️
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.
RDC could be a good option to uninstall for businesses where the machine acts as a terminal and you don’t want those devices launching RDC to begin with Not sure why it hasn’t been allowed already.
Let’s cut the crap: it’s not that they “realized” nobody wants it – it’s that they’ve come to accept the blowback against their reputation has gotten too big to outweigh the potential pros of preinstalled bloatware supporting their strategy.
Do you think titles like that are a result of a severely myopic mind, unable to even comprehend why a corporation would willingly do something that their users dislike, or just clickbait?
I think it’s a soft heading - they could be more honest and blunt, but a history of reporting like that may jeopardize any relationship they might have with Microsoft - with regards to press releases or advertising money and stuff like that.
I don’t find it plausible that the people at pcmag, who’s reported in this domain for a long time, can’t see past such light corporate fuckery.
The title suggests that Microsoft has come to a conclusion that nobody wants their inbox apps, which is not the case according to the contents of the article. This title would have been true if Microsoft had come with a statement saying that “according to user feedback blabla we have decided to add the uninstall option”. The reason might as well have been technical but this is yet to be disclosed. The term bloatware can also be seen as subjective as we normally define software that we personally don’t have any usage of as bloat, the fact that nobody will uses it is highly unlikely. So I would say that the title of this article is misleading and quite opinionated, most likely because the author is upset about the bloat in the Windows OS he is experiencing.
Snarky anthropomorphization primarily serving clickbait and liability-limiting, I think, pretty clearly.
Really, the headline could just be “Microsoft To Allow Removing Preinstalled Apps”, or “Bloatware Apps will be Removable After Windows 11 Update”, or something like that. But the way they worded it lets them both sound more sarcastic to people who are pissed off by the scummy practice, and at the same time also sound plausibly less direct in calling Microsoft out.
I mean, every OS out there beyond (maybe?) some hardcore Linux distros preinstalls this stuff though. Some (but not all) will let you remove it. None really make it “easy” or give you choices during install.
I think it’s just easier to treat all apps the same than special casing some and then having to install other hacks to get around the first ones for managed systems. It’s cheaper to treat them all the same.
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…
First off love the way you described them. Secondly, it reminds me of how microsoft keeps trying to charge my empty fake credit card I use for Xbox game pass. (You need to put a credit card to get any free month so I use a dummy). I get an email when they charge it literally twice a week like PLEASE JUST A SCRAP OF MONEY
Or they thought forcing them on you made them money and care about nothing else. Now they’ve realized it’s a net negative.
