Even Windows doesn't really even need a 3rd party anti-virus anymore. The built in windows defender has gotten so good as to really be all you need for active protection unless you're insanely stupid and keep bypassing it. Use Malwarebytes for deep file scans once in a blue moon, and you're golden.
Windows 11. It’s not that hard to completely remove. I have also removed Bluetooth and lots of other non essential functions. There are plenty of tools on GitHub that can do it. You can also just use a custom ISO.
Hate to tell you this, but Linux nor MacOS are safe without AV
It's just Windows, by far, has the largest share of active systems so everyone targets it. Both MacOS and Linux have their own share of bonafide viruses though
Hate to tell you this, but nuh-uh! My Linux server is just going through a phase where it likes to collect porn ads and share credit card info with Russia!
It's still not actually needed for experienced users though, I haven't had a virus in over 10 years, so it hasn't had anything to catch.
Boy oh boy did it freak the fuck out about the exe I compiled myself from a python script I wrote myself, though. Had to specifically exclude it from defender to stop it from quarantining it every time it ran. All it does is check to see if a link on a website has been updated since last look...
This is the main takeaway that people seem to be missing: follow good computer hygiene, and you'll be fine.
Keep your shit updated, and don't download/run things you don't trust. Keep an unintrusive anti-virus running in the background as a backup just in case there's a supply chain attack, but don't rely on it to make your decisions on whether to open a file or not.
Nobody is immune to it, but it's a lot less common for sketchy websites to provide malware downloads specifically targeting Linux PCs. The market share is nonexistent, the average user is more technically inclined, and the desktop environment ecosystem is full of variations that make it difficult to develop a one-size-fits-all solution.
It simply isn't worth it for most malware creators to focus on Linux desktops. Servers are a different story, but that malware is planted by humans or automated intrustion tools.
That being said, none of this precludes stupidity. If somebody downloads Oppenheimer-1080p.mkv.exe and opens it in WINE, you can bet your ass that the ransomware malware will do its job just fine.
Don't download shady exes, run ublock origin, force https, use a vpn, and reroute your DNS lookups. It's super easy to not download viruses and malware.
I agreed with you up to the "use a vpn" part. That's just wasting money and adding extra steps for the sake of paranoia.
If you're using SSL/TLS and not blindly bypassing invalid certificate warnings, you're not going to have your device or accounts compromised by the hacker boogeyman.
You have a good reason to use a VPN: bypassing region restrictions (or piracy). The people subscribed to a VPN service for security reasons usually don't*.
* Excluding those living under a censorship heavy government.
They hide your browsing from your ISP (and probably your government)
They hide your origin and substitute another for web sites.
I'd say a VPN is only useful to people engaging in crime, or things that look like crime and those buying services that are priced differently around the world
That provide no protection against things you might click on
I don't think it was just some college kids, I could have sworn their professor was specifically getting his students to perform as bad actors to support some super-biased research papers he was trying to publish.
Yeah but this wasn't recent, this one was like 4 or 5 years ago unless it happened again. If I remember correctly it got the entire University's email address banned from contributing to the kernel
Oh yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, two completely separate instances. Although, from the sound of it, there are a surprising number of people who seem to think that sabotaging Linux and hacking Linux are the same thing. I mean, I guess a pirate can sail on any ship, right?
Yeah but antivirus software doesn't pick up zero days, which is what you should really be concerned about.
I had some Chinese radios a few years ago, they were proper radios that you could program for all sorts of stuff. I had the software on a USB stick, then plugged it in about 5 years later - pinged up with all sorts of viruses that weren't detected previously.
They don't catch zero-day exploits, as those are vulnerabilities in programs that were discovered to be used in the wild. They will eventually catch the malware dropped through those exploits, though.
CCleaner also hasn’t been necessary since at least Windows 7. I remember working in a PC repair shop when people would just arbitrarily run CCleaner on its most aggressive settings whether it was needed or not and it would always break more things than it fixed.
Oh I know, but still they couldn't find some other software to get paid by? Like damn diversify already, find something fresh and interesting you can get paid to install lol
Like WebTangent or whatever it was called, it was bloatware, but it was bloatware games that were kinda fun. I would always play a few games before I purged that one, but I haven't seen it in years now
I almost felt the same way about MalwareBytes. I know it's actually useful but it hassled me so much about upgrading to premium that it was more annoying than having actual malware.
I think you missed the reference. They weren't referring to children as a lack of familiarity with OS functions, they were referring to children as an ignorance of programs you should ever or never install. If you have mcfee on your computer, TODAY, you should just set your computer out on the curb and never touch an electronic device again.
And then, when the program next updates, it silently re-enables its "startup with the computer" option, because fuck you. Of course, it updates every day, just to ensure you never "accidentally" disable it's automatic startup!
The developers of CCleaner got acquired by Avast in 2017. I haven't kept up with what they did with it, but Wikipedia tells me that they had a malware breach and later also intentionally installed Avast Antivirus on user PCs.
So, if you're looking for an application to keep your PC free of crap, this ain't it.
Avast in general is an extremely dodgy company and I would not want any of their software on my PCs.
After avast broke my windows installation TWICE I'm staying FAR away from anything they make. I wasn't the only one affected, it was a widespread issue at the time. Don't trust them with your stuff.
Disclainer, misuse can seriously fuck windows. Use with caution. Do not uncheck microsoft crap, no matter how tempting, or anything you're unsure about.
Most raid drivers are fine to uncheck, if you have no raid. There's one that isn't really a raid driver and causes a bluescreen if unchecked but i've forgotten which.
I got some good drivers with flatpak (I think) but I dare not update my Nvidia drivers or lightdm will complain. Next PC will be an AMD card thank you. (probably going to be a few years though)
Unironically you're missing the point. The point being, it's not a problem for many apps to start because oh how powerful PCs got. The problem is when some apps use so much resources that regardless of how powerful your PC gets, it's wasteful to have them opened all the time.
Reason for that problem is them using unoptimized frameworks such as Electron and CEF (seriously, check each app on the image).
And main reasons for that are:
Google posing browser component as a GUI framework.
Devs not caring (or being lazy) enough to do native coding.
I wish every person would realize the above so we could force developers do their job better.
Ironically, even if OP missed the point, the apps pictured are resource hogs and all of them don't need to run on starup other than Defender.
Sure, leave OneDrive/Dropbox on if you use it. Leave Spotify if you just need your music to start blasting the second you reach the desktop. If opening Steam and waiting ~30 seconds for the lord Gaben-given daily update is too much of a problem let it do its thing on startup, but who in their right mind needs Soptify, OneNote and all the gaming clients slowing down startup of literally everything?
And CCleaner, McAffee and Adobe can go fuck themselves along wirh Nestle.
Devs not caring (or being lazy) enough to do native coding.
"Waaaah waaaah, how else am I supposed to make crossplat code?" - Whines the coder whose product is only available for Android, as an electron app no less, for that one never heard of Dart+Flutter (if i'm not mistaken, the most recent Ubuntu installers interface were made with it), or Delphi/Lazarus (yes, those two use Pascal language), or even Tauri or Neutralino if they code in Javascript.
Tried some nice tool (tabame) that uses Dart/Flutter and it immediately uses 250 mb of RAM. No graphical content except some icons in the GUI. As I was going to replace task manager which uses 60 mb, I was not happy.
That's a lot of ram usage. Decided to try myself and on the first startup, 118mb ram. Ouch. It did fall to ~50mb after some setup, but that's still quite high, especially compared to my task manager eating around 25mb while open. I somehow also managed to spawn 2 tabame processes, so I guess the program still needs to iron some kinks, to say the least.
Everyone is making fun of the apps included in OP, but it’s besides the point—apps that demand resources at startup are the worst if you don’t need them. I ruthlessly deny permissions for anything installed, it’s like Gandalf in there holding the bridge and pushing presumptuous asshole apps over the bridge.
For good reason, made the switch around the same time joining lemmy and haven’t looked back.
prep a live usb and try a few different window managers on whatever distro you align with, (hearing lime is easiest for beginners) youl know when you arrived home.
Normally I'm cool with all the suggestions to use Linux when Windows is making itself worse. It provides a FOSS alternative that avoids the new anti-feature.
But this is not an attack on Windows. Linux has startup apps as well.
Linux apps generally don't ask for this permission unnecessarily though. I remember back when I used windows everything I installed was bundling its own update manager that runs at startup etc.
KDE starts whatever was left open on my distro, and that did cause issues with apps that minimize on close, but I learned to close from taskbar and I understand why those apps do that. I actually had a harder time getting my vpn to start on startup
This is such an own goal it's almost a meme at this point.
You know why Linux doesn't have this shit? Because it hasn't attracted the ire of the marketing team. Do you know why that is? Because the fraction of target users using Linux is TINY. It's not worth the expensive engineering effort, especially when you consider the demographic using Linux is unlikely to fall for this shit.
The more you win the "use linux" argument, the more the argument won't make sense. The day Linux gets enough user share to justify it, is the day all this shit starts happening on Linux.
Also it's much easier to disable on Linux and not every distro uses the same program to start apps on boot so most annoying programmes can't find it. Discord (which I would ideally move away from if my friends didn't use it) certainly thinks it's enabled on startup somehow.
Windows seems to start some startup apps before you log in also worries me as that means malware could start before you are able to remove it and I don't know how to reach tty mode before reaching a gui so yeah...
misuse can seriously fuck up windows. Disabling things that shouldnt be, is bad. Many of the services are required by other aplications to run. Do not disable any Microsoft services you dont know what they do - otherwise disable as many as possible until the computer stops working.
If you can not read or just want to uncheck everything you see, this is not for you:
There's definiaty some you can and should be disable, but I'd use O&O for that.
Unless you actually know what each service does, its best to leave them alone.
Ya know any services that can be disabled in general and how to safely turn them off and back on if something doesn't work? I hate how Windows Services eats up so much of my really powerful computer.
I actively avoid it on principle. Same with EA, Ubisoft, and Activision. Buy stuff that aligns with your values and don't cave just because we need to try the shiny new thing.
A few free games every year isn't enough to get me to forgo any of that.
"a few free games" it releases a free game every other week basically lol, not that they all are golden eggs but like, that's a lot of games. I never got the avoid on principle argument, if anything only claiming the freebies is taking more from the company then just pretending it doesn't exist
Epic pays for the freebies on the expectation that X copies will be redeemed. If more people redeem the game than that, they don't pay any extra. If less people redeem the game than they paid for, they overpaid (to the benefit of the developer).
I never got the avoid on principle argument
A bullet point summary of why people dislike Epic:
Epic Games' CEO, Tim Sweeny, is an absolute knob.
He acts out the role of the messiah coming to save PC gamers from the Steam "monopoly"
Epic's actions demonstrate that he wants to monopolise PC gaming
Epic has a slide deck (released as part of their Apple lawsuit) that outlines their strategy involving paying influencers to "disrupt organic engagement" in their competitors (specifically, Steam).
Epic purchased, gutted, and resold Bandcamp.
Epic, as a company, unethically monitises Fortnite by using dark patterns to trick kids into paying for skins.
Epic has a tendency to pay for timed exclusivity rights of crowdfunded games as a way to force people onto their platform.
Epic support is known to often permanently lock your account when compromised, rather than help get it back.
Tencent is a significant shareholder of Epic. (For those that care)
The "avoiding them out of principle" argument comes from people refusing to be a statistic that benefits the company.
This is not important to many people, but "actively hostile to Linux users". Like, vocally nasty about it. They're not only publicly dicks about it, their launcher software self-immolates regularly.
this is my only real annoyance with the out of the entire list that was posted, I dislike that they have zero Linux support at all and go out of their way to disable any type of compatibility layers, the rest while I agree are bad, I don't see them bad enough to shoot myself in the foot and not grab freebies. I won't spend money on the platform cause steam is 10000% superior in every area but, free is free
The irony of criticizing epic for wanting to monopolize PC gaming when steam already did that, and did it intentionally from the very beginning as well
I can't speak for others, but my problem with them isn't that they want to monopolise PC gaming. It's the blatant hypocrisy of trying to paint itself as being good for PC gaming while doing so.
A few free games as in games I actually want to play. Claiming freebies makes you access their eco system which makes you a customer whether you spend money or not.
Who the hell uses the Spotify app?? If you use it from the browser, ublock eliminates advertising perfectly. Why would I want to use the app where I can't block it?
Yea it does. Bring up task manager and go to the startup tab. There will be an item there called git something-arather. Disable that item and discord doesn't start with windows.
Steam and Discord? Yes. Everything else in that image? I think OneDrive and Windows Defender are the only things there that I have installed, and OneDrive is only on my laptop and only used for work purposes.
I don’t understand the whole stigma around OneDrive. People act like it’s bad, but if you set it up right, it acts just like Google Drive or Dropbox or WhateverTheFuckCloudStorage.exe..
The stigma is that windows tries to shove one drive down your throat.
When I first set up windows 10 a while back, they told me that a Microsoft account was required to make it function. I sighed and followed along and then saw how every time I opened the start menu, it'd say "your files are out of sync! Activate OneDrive to make sure your files stay safe."
It's a dark pattern. If I wanted OneDrive, I'd install it.
Now I have to jump through hoops anytime I do a fresh windows install to ensure that it allows me to use a local account....which should fucking be the default.
Everything I try to save a file in word it defaults to an old college one drive and I no longer have access so I get an error. Desktop. Just save it to desktop.
Fuck one drive and fuck tying a windows log in to a Microsoft account.
Exactly. And then when you do use it, it suddenly moves all your backed up files into a folder you can't rename. It's really wonky. I only use OneDrive because my university gives bulk OneDrive storage for free.
For me, one drive somehow got out of sync on one location and proceeded to delete a bunch of files without notification or interaction on my part. I know my case is probably very rare but I just have never been able to bring myself to trust them again.
I'd like to mention that windows also wants your location, advertises in a paid product and you don't even know what data Microsoft is getting from you also they make it more difficult to use the product by running random apps you don't need like phone link or other qol apps that cause problems like edge literally opening with your Google chrome data if you uninstall it.
So instead companies would be limited to less powerful spyware but users would likely still install dumb stuff and give anything root permissions that asks for them.
it is steam, keepassxc, protonvpn and corectrl for me, I have st them up to do that myself but the pop ups while launching are still annoying. At least I have -silent flag on steam so it starts in the background without showing a window
Gog Galaxy just doesn't function on mine, I can download and install game but when I try to run it it just auto crashes I gave up on it. The only reference to it is some weird Windows 7 error but considering I'm running on 10 it doesn't make any sense that that would be affecting it.
the worst of them all tbh, god forbid one of their apps needs an update (and you haven't toggled off the auto updates which are on by defaut), your PC will be half functional until the update finishes. Adobe is a notorious resource hog
it's even funnier when said update breaks their app. One time I had photoshop update and they somehow broke the exit button, it literally gave me an error when I tried to close it, only task manager could save me. They just do not test their shit at all
Just gonna add this bc I'm still holding a grudge about it... Adobe doesn't let you uninstall their apps unless you have a current subscription.
So if you did have one and it expired and you decide you don't want to renew it, the only way they'll let you delete their apps (which take up quite a bit of space, on my laptop at least) is if you first pay for another subscription.
I was able to delete most of it by manually sorting through my file manager, but it took at least an hour total, and there are some files I still can't get rid of. Ugh.
Adobe doesn't let you cancel your subscription plan if you have a payment due. It doesn't even let you remove your banking details if your payment failed.
Well, the website says you can't, and it won't let you do it. But if you yell and scream at the AI support chatbot for long enough so it lets you talk to an actual person, well they can do it for without a problem and with no questions asked.
Their service is built for the purpose of squeezing as much money out of you as they can, I'm guessing the options to delete your own files and to have support do something for you exist only so they don't get taken to court and can go "😇" at the end of the day
edit: they also don't let you remove your account if your payment failed :) even if it failed so hard it cancelled your plan, they still expect money, and as long as they do the option to remove your account just redirects you to updating your billing details. This can again be solved by talking to support. So there is no actual reason for it, it's just there to get you to pay them
McAfee is actual malware at this point anyway
Imagine needing an antivirus
This comment was made by Linux gang
Even Windows doesn't really even need a 3rd party anti-virus anymore. The built in windows defender has gotten so good as to really be all you need for active protection unless you're insanely stupid and keep bypassing it. Use Malwarebytes for deep file scans once in a blue moon, and you're golden.
I don’t even use windows defender. Never had any issues. (My windows PC is primarily for gaming)
Do you have windows 8, 10 or 11?
Defender has been on in the background this entire time and you don't even know it. It is on by default and incredibly hard to truly disable.
Windows 11. It’s not that hard to completely remove. I have also removed Bluetooth and lots of other non essential functions. There are plenty of tools on GitHub that can do it. You can also just use a custom ISO.
All of them use the wim_uninstall thing, right?
XP is best!
It’s been good since Windows 7. The reason Windows has so many updates is for security.
It's only good at detecting windows&office activation tools. I have never ever seen it detect anything other than those.
first party antivirus is still antivirus
Hate to tell you this, but Linux nor MacOS are safe without AV
It's just Windows, by far, has the largest share of active systems so everyone targets it. Both MacOS and Linux have their own share of bonafide viruses though
Hate to tell you this, but nuh-uh! My Linux server is just going through a phase where it likes to collect porn ads and share credit card info with Russia!
for Reeeeeeeeeeally small values of 'share'.
"Wait! There was Lion! And .. .. .. "
It's still not actually needed for experienced users though, I haven't had a virus in over 10 years, so it hasn't had anything to catch.
Boy oh boy did it freak the fuck out about the exe I compiled myself from a python script I wrote myself, though. Had to specifically exclude it from defender to stop it from quarantining it every time it ran. All it does is check to see if a link on a website has been updated since last look...
This is the main takeaway that people seem to be missing: follow good computer hygiene, and you'll be fine.
Keep your shit updated, and don't download/run things you don't trust. Keep an unintrusive anti-virus running in the background as a backup just in case there's a supply chain attack, but don't rely on it to make your decisions on whether to open a file or not.
golden rules of PC hygine:
don't use an admin account as your main account
if you haven't directly triggered it yourself, the answer to that pop-up is "no"
Imagine thinking you’re immune to malware
Nobody is immune to it, but it's a lot less common for sketchy websites to provide malware downloads specifically targeting Linux PCs. The market share is nonexistent, the average user is more technically inclined, and the desktop environment ecosystem is full of variations that make it difficult to develop a one-size-fits-all solution.
It simply isn't worth it for most malware creators to focus on Linux desktops. Servers are a different story, but that malware is planted by humans or automated intrustion tools.
That being said, none of this precludes stupidity. If somebody downloads
Oppenheimer-1080p.mkv.exeand opens it in WINE, you can bet your ass that the ransomware malware will do its job just fine.Don't download shady exes, run ublock origin, force https, use a vpn, and reroute your DNS lookups. It's super easy to not download viruses and malware.
I agreed with you up to the "use a vpn" part. That's just wasting money and adding extra steps for the sake of paranoia.
If you're using SSL/TLS and not blindly bypassing invalid certificate warnings, you're not going to have your device or accounts compromised by the hacker boogeyman.
My VPN saves me 100s of dollars a year I would otherwise be spending on subscription services.
You have a good reason to use a VPN: bypassing region restrictions (or piracy). The people subscribed to a VPN service for security reasons usually don't*.
* Excluding those living under a censorship heavy government.
Some VPNs advertise they stop malware so I get why they say that but you're right.
They hide your browsing from your ISP (and probably your government)
They hide your origin and substitute another for web sites.
I'd say a VPN is only useful to people engaging in crime, or things that look like crime and those buying services that are priced differently around the world
That provide no protection against things you might click on
There are far more uses for a VPN. For instance if I want to access my NAS while outside my home.
Hasn’t a bunch of malware spyware and other malicious shit been found all over decades old Linux stuff the last couple months?
I don't think it was just some college kids, I could have sworn their professor was specifically getting his students to perform as bad actors to support some super-biased research papers he was trying to publish.
Yeah but this wasn't recent, this one was like 4 or 5 years ago unless it happened again. If I remember correctly it got the entire University's email address banned from contributing to the kernel
Oh yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, two completely separate instances. Although, from the sound of it, there are a surprising number of people who seem to think that sabotaging Linux and hacking Linux are the same thing. I mean, I guess a pirate can sail on any ship, right?
Yeah but antivirus software doesn't pick up zero days, which is what you should really be concerned about.
I had some Chinese radios a few years ago, they were proper radios that you could program for all sorts of stuff. I had the software on a USB stick, then plugged it in about 5 years later - pinged up with all sorts of viruses that weren't detected previously.
They don’t pick up anything that they don’t know about, so once the zero day is known the antivirus/malware can find and remove it I thought.
They don't catch zero-day exploits, as those are vulnerabilities in programs that were discovered to be used in the wild. They will eventually catch the malware dropped through those exploits, though.
CCleaner is too nowadays. How far it it has fallen...
CCleaner also hasn’t been necessary since at least Windows 7. I remember working in a PC repair shop when people would just arbitrarily run CCleaner on its most aggressive settings whether it was needed or not and it would always break more things than it fixed.
And even if it was, why tf have it open on startup? It should be run like, manually once a month at most.
I mostly used it to clear out various caches and cookies, and invalid or no longer necessary file type extensions, folders and so on.
Was very handy for that, and usually freed up a surprising amount of disk space (back when a few gigs more or less made a huge difference)
And almost Every. Fucking. Manufacturer. Installs it as bloatware :/
They get paid to do so. It's not like they just install McAfee at random.
Oh I know, but still they couldn't find some other software to get paid by? Like damn diversify already, find something fresh and interesting you can get paid to install lol
Like WebTangent or whatever it was called, it was bloatware, but it was bloatware games that were kinda fun. I would always play a few games before I purged that one, but I haven't seen it in years now
I almost felt the same way about MalwareBytes. I know it's actually useful but it hassled me so much about upgrading to premium that it was more annoying than having actual malware.
What do you mean at this point?! It's been malware for almost two decades!
CCleaner? Adobe? Origin? McAfee? What is this, some kind of child's computer?
Someone who doesn't understand you can disable all those from starting with your pc
Someone who doesn't understand that pirating EA products is always morally correct
But muh billion dollar company might lose $20?
I think you missed the reference. They weren't referring to children as a lack of familiarity with OS functions, they were referring to children as an ignorance of programs you should ever or never install. If you have mcfee on your computer, TODAY, you should just set your computer out on the curb and never touch an electronic device again.
Until I read the original comment, I didn't know that was the symbol for McAfee.
Since windows 7, with defender, there's not even a use for a third party anti virus for the majority of users.
This must have come pre installed with the system. Nobody installs McAfee of their own volition, right?
A lot of systems come with McAfee on them. Especially all the shit you can buy on Amazon from the "vendor stores".
Implies that removing them is difficult
You don't want to remove GoG completely, but I'll be damned if I let it just start on every reboot.
And then, when the program next updates, it silently re-enables its "startup with the computer" option, because fuck you. Of course, it updates every day, just to ensure you never "accidentally" disable it's automatic startup!
what child could afford an adobe subscription?
Acrobat reader is free and does this.
Also, when I was a kid I sure as hell was running some pirated Photoshop and other stuff.
One that pays in TRY or ARS (1.64 and 1.40 USD respectively) ¬‿¬
Same kids who max out their parents credit cards on FIFA lol
"If this was a human being, I'd shoot it in the face"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXXTeq06s4M
Or grandma.
Delete mcafee and ccleaner pls
The developers of CCleaner got acquired by Avast in 2017. I haven't kept up with what they did with it, but Wikipedia tells me that they had a malware breach and later also intentionally installed Avast Antivirus on user PCs.
So, if you're looking for an application to keep your PC free of crap, this ain't it.
Avast in general is an extremely dodgy company and I would not want any of their software on my PCs.
The best Avast product
Other thsn the blatant lies written on it, I agree!
They just typoed "from"
The US FTC just posted a big article about their recent unscrupulous activity, actually!
After avast broke my windows installation TWICE I'm staying FAR away from anything they make. I wasn't the only one affected, it was a widespread issue at the time. Don't trust them with your stuff.
Instead of CCleaner, just use BleachBit. It’s free and open source and definitely not shady.
Or BCuninstaller if you're a bit more tech savy.
Yeah, two pieces of spyware!
For those that don't know, theres a tab in Windows task manager called Startup that let's you modify what apps get started when you log in.
You can also look at the services.msc tool and check all your startup services.
Sysinternals Autoruns is like the task manager "start up" super charged.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
Disclainer, misuse can seriously fuck windows. Use with caution. Do not uncheck microsoft crap, no matter how tempting, or anything you're unsure about.
+1 for autoruns
The temptation is real though
Most raid drivers are fine to uncheck, if you have no raid. There's one that isn't really a raid driver and causes a bluescreen if unchecked but i've forgotten which.
That's what I like the most about some software companies, the names are either cryptic, or conflicting, and nobody seems to know what is what 😅
Thanks(!!!) for the reminder. I knew about it but just never think to go in there. I just now disabled a ton of things I don't need running.
Msconfig is also handy for disabling services as you can hide default MS services
People install McAfee, Epic and CCleaner?
Epic is nice for free shit and drm free games.
Still not an enough reason to install that Tencent spyware imo.
When I was on Windows that shit failed to connect to the Internet half of the time anyway. Biggest reason I preferred steam out of the two.
Until the launcher wanted to add kernel level "anti cheat". Then Lemmy told me about Heroic... :-D
Yeah, I use Heroic Launcher just because I'm a Linux user. Anything native is always better than running it in wine, nothing against wine.
Is Heroic not using wine? I thought it's similar to lutris.
It is but only for the games. If you ran epic games launcher on Linux it would have to be on wine because there's no native app from epic.
And fortnite which despite all the memes is a fun game.
Hay, no judgement here.😁
You meant EA Origin?
Epic is used by devs
People playing use Heroic
is this a windows thing that im too linux to understand
When your Linux machine is so efficient on resources that it doesn't even try to run your video card or wifi dongle...
My linux desktop: "Nvidia? Hmm. Yuck, no thank you."
(For those who don't know, that's Linus Torvalds, the guy who made Linux, and the quote is real.)
Thats actually the guy who made git
I got some good drivers with flatpak (I think) but I dare not update my Nvidia drivers or lightdm will complain. Next PC will be an AMD card thank you. (probably going to be a few years though)
yes
Each one bringing it's own little version of Chrome along for the ride.
Laughs in KDE
Laughs in tty
Laughs in windows.
Ew, uninstall most of that
Unironically you're missing the point. The point being, it's not a problem for many apps to start because oh how powerful PCs got. The problem is when some apps use so much resources that regardless of how powerful your PC gets, it's wasteful to have them opened all the time.
Reason for that problem is them using unoptimized frameworks such as Electron and CEF (seriously, check each app on the image).
And main reasons for that are:
Google posing browser component as a GUI framework.
Devs not caring (or being lazy) enough to do native coding.
I wish every person would realize the above so we could force developers do their job better.
Ironically, even if OP missed the point, the apps pictured are resource hogs and all of them don't need to run on starup other than Defender.
Sure, leave OneDrive/Dropbox on if you use it. Leave Spotify if you just need your music to start blasting the second you reach the desktop. If opening Steam and waiting ~30 seconds for the lord Gaben-given daily update is too much of a problem let it do its thing on startup, but who in their right mind needs Soptify, OneNote and all the gaming clients slowing down startup of literally everything?
And CCleaner, McAffee and Adobe can go fuck themselves along wirh Nestle.
I mean I didn't disagree with that.
I guess every user who doesn't care enough to check the autorun settings as long as it works. Probably most non-IT specialists.
"Waaaah waaaah, how else am I supposed to make crossplat code?" - Whines the coder whose product is only available for Android, as an electron app no less, for that one never heard of Dart+Flutter (if i'm not mistaken, the most recent Ubuntu installers interface were made with it), or Delphi/Lazarus (yes, those two use Pascal language), or even Tauri or Neutralino if they code in Javascript.
Tried some nice tool (tabame) that uses Dart/Flutter and it immediately uses 250 mb of RAM. No graphical content except some icons in the GUI. As I was going to replace task manager which uses 60 mb, I was not happy.
Wish sciter would be more popular.
That's a lot of ram usage. Decided to try myself and on the first startup, 118mb ram. Ouch. It did fall to ~50mb after some setup, but that's still quite high, especially compared to my task manager eating around 25mb while open. I somehow also managed to spawn 2 tabame processes, so I guess the program still needs to iron some kinks, to say the least.
Everyone is making fun of the apps included in OP, but it’s besides the point—apps that demand resources at startup are the worst if you don’t need them. I ruthlessly deny permissions for anything installed, it’s like Gandalf in there holding the bridge and pushing presumptuous asshole apps over the bridge.
Wow... It's such an awesome feeling that I can't relate to this meme 🥰
USE LINUX
Jesus fuck...
Lol it's everywhere here
For good reason, made the switch around the same time joining lemmy and haven’t looked back.
prep a live usb and try a few different window managers on whatever distro you align with, (hearing lime is easiest for beginners) youl know when you arrived home.
For me that was here
That was not even the longest winded "I use Arch btw."
If you hate learning useful life skills, don't use Linux! I use Arch BTW. 😉
Yeah I also switched because of here and longtime frustration with windows.
Nice dots!
News just in, Jesus Christ fucks for Linux. News at 5
I'll buy that for a dollar
That’s a spicy meat-a-ball!
c'mon man knock it off
signed, a fellow linux user
You've gotta let FrankTheHealer shout from the rooftops. He has windows to heal
Normally I'm cool with all the suggestions to use Linux when Windows is making itself worse. It provides a FOSS alternative that avoids the new anti-feature.
But this is not an attack on Windows. Linux has startup apps as well.
Linux apps generally don't ask for this permission unnecessarily though. I remember back when I used windows everything I installed was bundling its own update manager that runs at startup etc.
Laughs in portage/zypper/apt/pacman
I wonder if you could integrate pacman into Gentoo. What a beautiful monstrosity it would be!
Or paludis
I've never had any startup apps (Linux mint)
It's okay if you want to click things all the time
KDE starts whatever was left open on my distro, and that did cause issues with apps that minimize on close, but I learned to close from taskbar and I understand why those apps do that. I actually had a harder time getting my vpn to start on startup
So what, when you turn on your computer it goes straight to the BIOS menu?
Nope you need systemd or something else to start them as far as I know.
WE HEARD YOU.
Ow, would you all stop screaming already? It is hurting my ears. 🙁
Nope
How about no
This is such an own goal it's almost a meme at this point.
You know why Linux doesn't have this shit? Because it hasn't attracted the ire of the marketing team. Do you know why that is? Because the fraction of target users using Linux is TINY. It's not worth the expensive engineering effort, especially when you consider the demographic using Linux is unlikely to fall for this shit.
The more you win the "use linux" argument, the more the argument won't make sense. The day Linux gets enough user share to justify it, is the day all this shit starts happening on Linux.
Also it's much easier to disable on Linux and not every distro uses the same program to start apps on boot so most annoying programmes can't find it. Discord (which I would ideally move away from if my friends didn't use it) certainly thinks it's enabled on startup somehow.
Windows seems to start some startup apps before you log in also worries me as that means malware could start before you are able to remove it and I don't know how to reach tty mode before reaching a gui so yeah...
They hated him because he spoke the truth
Gnutard
He didn't even /anything with his Linux. I think that charge is incorrect
Only thing missing from this atrocious set of spyware is Valorant's properiarty Vangaurd rootkit
Fuck riot. Don't play their trash
But... but... then how will they collect telemetry for targeted advertising?
For those that have this issue,
Disclaimer:
misuse can seriously fuck up windows. Disabling things that shouldnt be, is bad. Many of the services are required by other aplications to run. Do not disable any Microsoft services you dont know what they do - otherwise disable as many as possible until the computer stops working.
If you can not read or just want to uncheck everything you see, this is not for you:
Sysinternals Autoruns is like the task manager "start up" section on 5 doeses of steroids. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
It is but you don't want to recommend it to anybody who doesn't know what they're doing because they can seriously break their computer lol
My bad, I normally leave a disclamier, but I forgot.
Please disable all Microsoft services. Your PC and privacy will thank you... (Unless you decide to use something somehow even worse)
There's definiaty some you can and should be disable, but I'd use O&O for that. Unless you actually know what each service does, its best to leave them alone.
Ya know any services that can be disabled in general and how to safely turn them off and back on if something doesn't work? I hate how Windows Services eats up so much of my really powerful computer.
The only Microsoft service I have is vscode and that's open source... You don't need any Microsoft services.
vscodium fyi
true I should probably get that.
The joy of Windows.
Y'all know about changing your startup programs right?
I have almost all apps disabled on startup.
If i want it running i will start it, i assure you.
it's pirated adobe, right?
Right?
My boss pays for it.
So.. kinda?
Must be, i am 69% sure the paid versions of adobe are exclusive ment for the kind of large businesses that can afford MacBooks for some employees.
Nice.
Does the Creative Cloud logo show up if you've blocked outgoing Adobe traffic in your firewall?
This is 2024–the cracks use real CC now.
meanwhile linux users
also who uses epic games
Well I use the website to get the free games. I barely missed any so far and played like 5 of them using Heroic.
Better sales than Steam and free games all the time? What idiot is actively avoiding them?
I actively avoid it on principle. Same with EA, Ubisoft, and Activision. Buy stuff that aligns with your values and don't cave just because we need to try the shiny new thing.
A few free games every year isn't enough to get me to forgo any of that.
"a few free games" it releases a free game every other week basically lol, not that they all are golden eggs but like, that's a lot of games. I never got the avoid on principle argument, if anything only claiming the freebies is taking more from the company then just pretending it doesn't exist
Epic pays for the freebies on the expectation that X copies will be redeemed. If more people redeem the game than that, they don't pay any extra. If less people redeem the game than they paid for, they overpaid (to the benefit of the developer).
A bullet point summary of why people dislike Epic:
The "avoiding them out of principle" argument comes from people refusing to be a statistic that benefits the company.
This is not important to many people, but "actively hostile to Linux users". Like, vocally nasty about it. They're not only publicly dicks about it, their launcher software self-immolates regularly.
this is my only real annoyance with the out of the entire list that was posted, I dislike that they have zero Linux support at all and go out of their way to disable any type of compatibility layers, the rest while I agree are bad, I don't see them bad enough to shoot myself in the foot and not grab freebies. I won't spend money on the platform cause steam is 10000% superior in every area but, free is free
The irony of criticizing epic for wanting to monopolize PC gaming when steam already did that, and did it intentionally from the very beginning as well
I can't speak for others, but my problem with them isn't that they want to monopolise PC gaming. It's the blatant hypocrisy of trying to paint itself as being good for PC gaming while doing so.
A few free games as in games I actually want to play. Claiming freebies makes you access their eco system which makes you a customer whether you spend money or not.
That's a lot of games I can't play based on what you've said.
Yeah and if you don't have similar principals to mine it'll continue to feel like a sacrifice that may or may not be worth pursuing.
Truthfully I don't feel like I'm missing out at all. Those developers have been pumping out trash for years.
Helping steam keep its monopoly isn't much of a principle.
But I like proton... (I know I can use proton for non steam games)
Who the hell uses the Spotify app?? If you use it from the browser, ublock eliminates advertising perfectly. Why would I want to use the app where I can't block it?
the desktop app is the only version on pc that allows higher bitrate playback
The odds of hearing artifacts in modern audio codecs is miniscule.
ive only ever used the app for 15 years now.
I fucking hate browser based apps and will use an alternative wherever possible.
Isn’t it an electron app?
CEF so similar, but I meant more apps literally in my browser.
Ah understood
Hey I never thought about that thanks!
My brother pays for a family account, so meh, why not
Your brother pays for my account to. Solid dude.
https://github.com/mrpond/BlockTheSpot
It unlocks all premium features for spotify aside from downloading music, which includes no ads.
You can still easily block ads on the desktop (and Android) app.
Install browser tab as app and open it at startup would be why there is an icon
spotx-bash is good too
Gross, Windows.
Deleted
Daily driving Windows in 2024 is like eating McDonalds for every meal.
I mean, sure, it is popular...
Unless you're not an idiot lol.
To be fair they didn't say they used Linux, so you're sorta wrong in this case.
I use fedora btw.
Jokes on you they're running FreeBSD
Literally wrote that comment on a MacBook, lol.
Eew Apple
Don’t worry, it’s just the front end for the Linux server since it has a nice track pad.
Lol
Discord doesn't respect the Windows startup settings. That whole platform is a fucking cancer on the human race.
Yea it does. Bring up task manager and go to the startup tab. There will be an item there called git something-arather. Disable that item and discord doesn't start with windows.
Oh, so they're just insidiously hiding what you actually need to disable? You understand that's worse, right?
They're being informative, calm down 😂
If they were just being informative they wouldn't have led with "yeah it does". Or they would have phrased it differently.
discord shows up as just discord in the start up menu for me
... I just disable it in their settings without issue.
Reminds me of OneDrive hiding their don't start with Windows option.
It's such a fetch thing to do now.
Give Revolt a shot
I mean, there are a lot of other apps that put their start-up behavior here, too. And there's a setting in Discord not to start at boot
Largely I agree that their platform is cancer, but not because of their startup settings
Nah, I'm gonna be launching Steam.
In Soviet machine, steam launches you
Steam and Discord? Yes. Everything else in that image? I think OneDrive and Windows Defender are the only things there that I have installed, and OneDrive is only on my laptop and only used for work purposes.
I don’t understand the whole stigma around OneDrive. People act like it’s bad, but if you set it up right, it acts just like Google Drive or Dropbox or WhateverTheFuckCloudStorage.exe..
The stigma is that windows tries to shove one drive down your throat.
When I first set up windows 10 a while back, they told me that a Microsoft account was required to make it function. I sighed and followed along and then saw how every time I opened the start menu, it'd say "your files are out of sync! Activate OneDrive to make sure your files stay safe."
It's a dark pattern. If I wanted OneDrive, I'd install it.
Now I have to jump through hoops anytime I do a fresh windows install to ensure that it allows me to use a local account....which should fucking be the default.
Everything I try to save a file in word it defaults to an old college one drive and I no longer have access so I get an error. Desktop. Just save it to desktop.
Fuck one drive and fuck tying a windows log in to a Microsoft account.
Exactly. And then when you do use it, it suddenly moves all your backed up files into a folder you can't rename. It's really wonky. I only use OneDrive because my university gives bulk OneDrive storage for free.
I find it annoying. It pops up with its nag notification to set it up like every day. Just fuck off. If I want it set up I will.
For me, one drive somehow got out of sync on one location and proceeded to delete a bunch of files without notification or interaction on my part. I know my case is probably very rare but I just have never been able to bring myself to trust them again.
Origin side loads even when you disable it's start up service (super annoying)
If you're talking about "ea background service", you can disable it by deactivating background downloads in the settings.
🪟🤡
Laughing in GNU/Linux
I have the same pile of apps, but they start in 20-30 seconds not 2-3 minutes.
what's the purple ring
GOG Galaxy.
i have a potato laptop with only 4gb of ram, safe to say most startup apps are off
Could you upgrade the ram or is it ddr2?
https://downloadmorerem.com/
Lol nice parody
https://downloadmorewam.com/
I prefer the “putting your swap on gdrive” joke
The site won't load for me, but does this download dedotated wam?
It does indeed.
Common windows L
Win+L? Ok session locked
Super+L for me but the Windows OS just has a lot of losses
And mouse to top right for me. With windows is usually the users who screw up, the worst of the product itself is that it advertises at you
If Linux had the bulk of users we'd be seeing idiot things users installed on Mint
I'd like to mention that windows also wants your location, advertises in a paid product and you don't even know what data Microsoft is getting from you also they make it more difficult to use the product by running random apps you don't need like phone link or other qol apps that cause problems like edge literally opening with your Google chrome data if you uninstall it.
So instead companies would be limited to less powerful spyware but users would likely still install dumb stuff and give anything root permissions that asks for them.
Buying a NVME was the best decision I made about tech.
And this is why I keep nothing in my startup hshah
Wow sounds like a lot of effort... I personally like being greeted by a login screen, rather than having to open one myself...
I don't really use anything specific every time I open my pc, so it works for me
So your ui is a program started on startup
Yeah I boot to BIOS then decide which OS I wanna run, I keep stuff separate
Ok fair enough. I'll stop being pedantic now.
Nah you valid I'm weird as shit haha
Throw in the official Runescape launcher
it is steam, keepassxc, protonvpn and corectrl for me, I have st them up to do that myself but the pop ups while launching are still annoying. At least I have -silent flag on steam so it starts in the background without showing a window
People still use CCleaner?
If it's gotten that bad, wait until you check all of the services those programs so cavalierly keep running in the background.
I recognize most of these, but what are the purple ring and the rainbow one?
The ring is GOG, a game launcher and the rainbow is Adobe creative cloud.
Purple ring is GoG Galaxy, a games launcher for GoG games with support for plugins to launch games from other games launchers as well.
Rainbow one is Adobe Creative Cloud, a program to manage Adobe services such as Photoshop and Premiere.
Gog Galaxy just doesn't function on mine, I can download and install game but when I try to run it it just auto crashes I gave up on it. The only reference to it is some weird Windows 7 error but considering I'm running on 10 it doesn't make any sense that that would be affecting it.
Ah yes, modern iconography. Such a simple shape, that even googling "purple ring logo" yeilds no useful results.
Rainbow is adobe creative cloud
the purple ring is GOG Galaxy, another game store/launcher. No clue what the rainbow one is lol
Is this something that I'm too Linux to understand?
the only one acceptable is steam, discord, maybe spotify, the fuck is that gay cloud and the pink ring?
Just because it's creative doesn't mean it's gay! (it's Adobe creative cloud)
the worst of them all tbh, god forbid one of their apps needs an update (and you haven't toggled off the auto updates which are on by defaut), your PC will be half functional until the update finishes. Adobe is a notorious resource hog
it's even funnier when said update breaks their app. One time I had photoshop update and they somehow broke the exit button, it literally gave me an error when I tried to close it, only task manager could save me. They just do not test their shit at all
Just gonna add this bc I'm still holding a grudge about it... Adobe doesn't let you uninstall their apps unless you have a current subscription.
So if you did have one and it expired and you decide you don't want to renew it, the only way they'll let you delete their apps (which take up quite a bit of space, on my laptop at least) is if you first pay for another subscription.
I was able to delete most of it by manually sorting through my file manager, but it took at least an hour total, and there are some files I still can't get rid of. Ugh.
oh it gets worse my friend.
Adobe doesn't let you cancel your subscription plan if you have a payment due. It doesn't even let you remove your banking details if your payment failed.
Well, the website says you can't, and it won't let you do it. But if you yell and scream at the AI support chatbot for long enough so it lets you talk to an actual person, well they can do it for without a problem and with no questions asked.
Their service is built for the purpose of squeezing as much money out of you as they can, I'm guessing the options to delete your own files and to have support do something for you exist only so they don't get taken to court and can go "😇" at the end of the day
edit: they also don't let you remove your account if your payment failed :) even if it failed so hard it cancelled your plan, they still expect money, and as long as they do the option to remove your account just redirects you to updating your billing details. This can again be solved by talking to support. So there is no actual reason for it, it's just there to get you to pay them
Windows 10/11: Ctrl+alt+delete, click on task manager, click on autostart applications (left panel), setup your applications for autostart
Ctrl+Shift+Escape open task manager directly. Very useful hotkey
Only 3 of them even run on my OS. Good.
Startup Apps
Should have installed linux
welp looks like i'm overdue my bi-annual reinstall of Michaelsoft Binbows dot dot dot
You could also just get something else...
i have 25 apps on startup try me.