Microsoft is testing full-screen Microsoft 365 ads in Windows 11 for expired subscriptions
Microsoft started testing a new way to alert Windows 11 users about their expired Microsoft 365 subscriptions, and you are not going to like it.
Linux: No ads, it's free and easier than ever to install.
Install??
Mac guy, and I remember trying Linux inside Windows and installing it while using it. For someone with 30 years of experience with Windows, Linux was a fucking joke — as in the mockery it made of everything I knew about Windows. It felt like magic. It’s not very deep though — people need to realize Linux is still very much a project. macOS is a complete product, but it’s not free and it’s tied to proprietary hardware. Still, these days I see the choice between macOS and Linux. Windows doesn’t even make the ballot for me.
"EVs don't work in cold climates, I know because I tried an electric mower 20 years ago that didn't work in the cold so I've ignored all development in the last 20 years"
Same fucking logic buddy.
Tell me you haven't used a Linux desktop recently without telling me.
"I remember". Using that phrase tells me it wasn't recently enough. And "using it inside windows" tells me you tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or that you don't know what you are talking about.
You may be a MAC fan and that's OK if that works for you, but I haven't needed to use anything else but Linux since 2004 (initially there were always pickups, though) and I've been runing it without issues since probably 2010.
Of course, it made a mockery of everything you know of Windows because it's not like Windows. Neither is it meant to be used like one nor is it heading in that direction (not to mention that Windows is one monotonous thing, like if you know your hands across one install of Windows, you know it all. The same is not true about Linux. A Void Linux user might still not be as adept at a Gentoo install).
You are contradicting yourself. First you call it magic and then you call it not very deep. If it's the latter, why do so many production servers run on Linux?
Some Linux distros like Debian have a fantastic reputation for stability. Sure, bugs still exist. I personally struggle with a distro agnostic bug that breaks workflows often on my current setup. But things have come a long way. And it's better than Windows non customizable privacy invading approach any day.
The twin advantages Windows has is wrt games (though that is slowly being covered) and more importantly, specialized software. I know folks IRL who have to use Windows just because their work requires it.
RHEL, SUSE (SLES), Ubuntu, Alma, Rocky, CENTOS Stream, I could go on for hours with enterprise distros that blow Windows out of the water without flinching. And if we go to specific use-case distros, that's a list for anyone to go over for days, while Windows is aiming to be THE OS, and failing miserably at this. This has been the case for at least a decade now.
Mac? I can see how some people could be geared towards it, not because it's any better than the worst Linux distro, but because it's made for lazy people that have no idea how anything works.
"In my 30 years of experience", with what? With windows trying to run some other OS inside it like an app? Don't 30 years of experience allow you to understand the amount of resources overhead that requires and how it's just a VM or LXC, not bare metal that you're running? And even then, it still worked.
All the stuff in your comment screams 'I want to scream that I know about something I know nothing about". Go back to your mom's basement to doomscroll 4chan.
Braindead.
RHEL, SUSE (SLES), Ubuntu, Alma, Rocky, CENTOS Stream, I could go on for hours with enterprise distros that blow Windows out of the water without flinching. And if we go to specific use-case distros, that's a list for anyone to go over for days, while Windows is aiming to be THE OS, and failing miserably at this. This has been the case for at least a decade now.
Mac? I can see how some people could be geared towards it, not because it's any better than the worst Linux distro, but because it's made for lazy people that have no idea how anything works.
"In my 30 years of experience", with what? With windows trying to run some other OS inside it like an app? Don't 30 years of experience allow you to understand the amount of resources overhead that requires and how it's just a VM or LXC, not bare metal that you're running? And even then, it still worked.
All the stuff in your comment screams 'I want to scream that I know about something I know nothing about". Go back to your mom's basement to doomscroll 4chan.
Once you people have finally had enough, Linux and/or Libre Office will be right there. Waiting.
I did this over a year ago. Man, I love that my computing is boring again. No distractions. The machine does what I tell it to do. It's lovely! Boring is lovely.
With due respect, no. Office suites on Linux aren't on par with MS Office yet (and the latter sucks a lot, but not for the lack of features). MS Office and Origin Pro are the actual reasons I keep a Windows VM laying around (on Arch, btw).
There are some tools that can make Linux feel more like home too for those who want to transition slowly
Also Microsoft: “Why aren’t people upgrading to Windows 11?”
From Fedora 42? Sounds like a downgrade.
They really need to name the next version "Windows 76". That should have the people throwing money at them.
This is so funny. My wife purchased a Yealink headset for work, and her laptop runs W11. When we got the headset I tried it on my Fedora 42 laptop and had a meeting for about 30 minutes, only because I wanted to see if it would run on Linux. Of course, nor only did it work, it was plug & play, and was spectacular in sound quality and mic noise cancelation.
So I set it up on her W laptop, and here comes the "download this", "install drivers" and "install apps" bullshit that I had all but forgotten about since I made the leap to Linux over 8 years ago. All this only to have it regularly disconnect mid-meetings (spoiler, she ended up using the integrated speakers and mic the rest of the week).
Windows is made to spy, intrude and annoy users. Even the devices 'made for Windows' work way better and easier on Linux, and with way less friction.
My kids are now 12 and 10 and have always used Linux exclusively. Only now they are being exposed to Windows at school, and they both hate it so much that they get home and have chosen to do some distro hopping over the weekends 🤣🤣
“Nobody wants to Windows anymore!”
They are seriously making the case for Linux with everything they do
Windows 10 had already done a great job of that, but Windows 11 has really amped it up. I only have a single Windows machine in the house at this point for specific corporate stuff I need for work.
Now that GeForce Now can play most anti-cheat on cloud gaming I see no reason ever to have a Windows machine. Mint btw.
Advertising has no place in an operating system. Full stop.
Advertising has no place period.
One of the single greatest tragedies of modern life is that we accepted ads invading our personal and public spaces. Going outside for a walk and having to see a large outdoor, literally an advert on the sky, should be a crime against humanity.
Hear, hear. If you occupy a public space, you have to behave in a manner that everyone can accept. I, for one, do not want to go to a beach to watch a sunset and have a boat with a cartoonishly large LCD display line up on the horizon flashing advertisements.
Windows disagrees.
I swear, Microsoft YEARNS to fail. Dunno who is running the show over there but they're doing a great job of being terrible for their brand.
they're losing so much money on AI/datacenters, they are just flailing at this point.
Lmao. Genius, hope whoever suggested this got a raise. Can imagine the meeting where it has been decided. "Hey, have we thought about fullscreen ads for something we want to push on people?” "Genius idea, Maxwell! Go home to your wife and kids and tell them a big fat bonus is coming to their smart father!”
"In fact, go to my home and fuck my wife. Full screen ad? Brilliant!"
Luckily at work we are allowed to install a dual boot, or even single boot with Linux. The one obligation is to run the corporate antivirus and vpn client (and yes we had malware detections of Linux binaries).
Dual booting for the last 6 months, now 100% on Linux (Mint). Can’t say I miss anything from windows, maybe ms office’s polished apps but I can’t care less. Nowadays everything runs in the browser, it has become « the OS ». And almost every browser is a chromium variant that’s it.
Laughs in Linux
I hope it last, web enshitification may bring us back to the 2000s where that one site requires internet explorer, this one won’t allow DRM content on non windows platforms…
It’s just around the corner.
Malware for Linux exists, and has for a long time. It's just not as omnipresent as windows malware, even adjusting for market share.
Also, often has different goals to windows malware
Yes they were mostly xmr miners, or reverse shell (pretty much like all those windows RAT)
Help LibreOffice developers replace Microsoft 365: https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/
Or if you have skills + time: https://whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org/
I know that coding time is much more expensive than I can afford, but if I had the money I would clean up and fully-feature their macro system.
"Microsoft testing new ways to lose customers".
It's well known that piracy was what made Word (.DOC) and Excel (.XLS) the de facto standard.
If the kids at home can't use windows, they'll find something different. And when enough of them find if, when they become decision makers they'll stay away from Windows.
Imagine how different the landscape would be had MS cracked down on Piracy for their flagship programs.
iMacs in schools weren’t for nothing, and neither are the weirdly good deals on Apple products for students and teachers. At a time when people are learning about these programs and using the machines pretty aggressively the good product company comes along and gives them affordable-ish equipment with a nice stable OS.
Tim Cook Apple being kinda underwhelming and being way more expensive than Steve Jobs Apple is not helping their image but they still have decent deals and are able to ride said image for a very long time thanks largely to Jobs understanding what you’re talking about.
Back to Microsoft, they don’t seem to understand that the general consensus on them has mostly always been that Windows is cheap and not amazing but certain programs run on only it. Now they want to make it cost a tonne of money/have ads? Jobs’ Apple products where expensive but they were high quality. Microsoft just can’t pull the same shit with their dogshit legacy-coded 30 year old hack-job OS and consistently mediocre-to-bad products. And they have to do it while competing with Linux amongst the very people who were doing most of the loud fan-boying for their shit for so long!
If the kids at home can’t use windows
Wait why can’t they use windows?
Thank goodness I have zero use for any of their products.
I swear, if Microoft pulls a few more of these no-good shenanigans, I might start pondering on considering the possibility of perhąps trying out Linux
Try out librewolf or softmaker (there is somewhere a free version) and other alternatives of programs that you need that at best are foss and at worst also run on linux.
That way you get a smoother learning curve
With Linux Mint it's so incredibly easy. Believe me.
Before migrating my desktop over (to arch btw) exactly a year ago I did a trial by fire during our end-of-summer get-away and installed Mint on a spare laptop with the aim of working one day remotely and also finishing a group project during a summer course which I had to do leading my team on teams (because lol universities).
The only thing that it failed on was getting the laptop's built in speaker audio working, which I've heard can happen with certain models. I just used a headset instead.
Oddly enough, I have three other similar laptops, running OpenSUSE and Fedora on them, and the audio works on them flawlessly.
You should try a live USB and/or a spare laptop to trial whatever distro people recommend. Distro hopping is child's play, once you figure out how to disable secure boot.
Eh, I can't really leave Windows
They sent me a survey. I told them they're driving me to Linux and libre office.
What they heard was:
"I'm not considering giving any money to your competitors."
So they were probably happy.
They have this in Windows 10...to advertise Windows 11.
Will they run in WINE?
Tricky. Microsoft currently use two different executable formats and only one of them is compatible with WINE. That still doesn't mean that a compatible one will work properly though.
On the other hand, people who make ads want their ads to be literally everywhere, so they might make it Windows 3.11 compatible with all library functions baked in just to be safe. WINE would almost certainly run that.
dont think so
Do it! At this point Linux can do anything windows can do, I want them to fuck it up as much as possible, Fuck Microsoft !
At this point Linux can do anything windows can do
IT guy here, this is just not true at all.
So far I have never seen anything on Linux being able to replace functions like GPOs.
FreeIPA + any mechanism to deploy configuration files.
Or, go full circle and manage thin clients connecting to a central Linux mainframe x)
Actually, i’m learning to Go to do just that. GPO’s are basicly just configuration management. And there’s Ansible, Chef, Puppet. These all work on Linux.
Of course they are. Coincidentally, newer devices being bought in 2025 are increasingly shipping with fully locked UEFI that prevents you from installing anything but Windows.
I thought that was illegal.
I have never seen this nor can I find any examples of this online. Any examples?
increasingly shipping with fully locked UEFI that prevents you from installing anything but Windows.
This is false information.
I tried to do a dual boot on my bf's new laptop, he was li-curious, it ended up being such a hassle he just switched entirely. He prefers the Mac like interface on Wayland.
Wayland isn't the desktop environment (window compositor). That's probably Gnome, as it's very mac like.
I have a windows game box, it nags me to backup my photos when I visualise 1 (one) image.
What a shit OS it has become lol.
Laughs in libreoffice.
Since I made the switch these kinds of news are hilarious! Yes, make Win 11 into hell! Your customers are your shareholders, users are too be exploited! How long can it last? Who cares, only the next quarter counts!
I'm in a constant battle to keep it removed off our office machines. You can't remove it completely since its cached and installed with every user login. In order to get rid of it we would have to pay for the enterprise version. Just another rip off from macroshit.
(laughs in Debian)
This will drive more people to Linux. The forced migration to Win11 is already doing wonders with Linux adoption.
Are there any actual statistics showing this ongoing migration, or are we just assuming?
It is up to aproximately 4% on desktops worldwide. source
So glad I just switched to Linux.
Subscriptions? Who pays a subscription for Windows?
For Microsoft 365 / Office 365.
Massgrave PS script solves this. Yes for 365 too. Some ISPs block it so have to use a VPN to run it.
This shit is making me more & more glad I switched back to Linux. I’m even thinking of actually learning to code to continue its support. These businesses are just fully mask off at this point.
The sole reason for me owning a windows pc is that I use vMix which requires it as well a a nvidia graphics card. What I did is clean bloatware with Win11Debloat. Up to now nobody has been able to tell me how to effectively run vMix on Linux.
The answer to this is usually to use an alternative. Reading the description and searching around a bit, isn't this essentially what OBS Studio does?
Essentially yes. I am very experienced with OBS Studio and now I am adding vMix to my portfolio because it’s capable things OBS cannot do. vMix is programmed to do the videoprocessing directly on the GPU while the CPU is only handling audio and the UI. Unfortunately this works only on Windows systems.
So glad I completely gave up on MS after Windows 7.
Complete clickbait article headline: the title should have been “for subscriptions where the payment method for the renewal failed”, not just for “expired subscriptions”. It’s to notify people who didn’t mean for their subscription to lapse that their payment method was refused.
Doesn’t make as “good” of a story then though, does it?
Disgusting $hit. Hopefully this will drive more people to Linux.
And that’s why, sir, Massgrave exists.
At this point if Microsoft released windows 12 for like 200$ with out any of the adware spying shit I probably would buy it. Hell make it 500$. They would probably make more than what they do selling your data.
Linux is free
Why do they need to test it? M$ has been doing this on the Xbox platform for over a year now.