I daily drive linux (arch btw) with all the adblocking bells and whistles and I was dumbfounded when I saw my grandma's PC with all the clutter and ads. Really makes you miss the old era.
I daily drive linux (arch btw) with all the adblocking bells and whistles and I was dumbfounded when I saw my grandma's PC with all the clutter and ads. Really makes you miss the old era.
You don't even need add blocking for most open source software: the threat of forking backs a culture where the software is just there to to its job and not to sell something.
I started using the f-droid app "store" recently and it's amazing: bare bones stuff that just does what you want.
I meant user experience as a whole including browser and proprietary apps. The amount of ads I perceive a day using my PC can be counted on my fingers.
And it's not just something we would consider calling ads, but just the clutter on the web.
- Limited offer modals - "Hey we have a useless AI chatbot" popups - Cookie banners - Newsletter popups - 3 tiered subscription offers for everything - Sign in to XYZ with google - This site wants to know your position
And don't even get me started on things you can't change as a user like really bad full text searches and stuff.
And I'm still yet to find that hot single in my area.
When was the ad-free era on Windows (Home)? I don't remember it.
My memory of 24 years ago is a bit fuzzy, but I don't recall any ads on XP; the main complaint at the time was the UI was "fisher price".
Jellybean start menu
XP had crapware trial versions but you could disable them and there were never ads on the actual UI.