I wish they release a tool for their system to work properly. Like connecting to Bluetooth headphones or no full cpu load out of nowhere.
Those are premium windows 14 features.
Instructions unclear, advertisements added to start menu 
The bug bash quests can be found in the Windows Feedback Hub, and partaking in the bug bash often concludes with a badge in the Feedback Hub that acknowledges your participation.
Imagine doing free QA for a multibillion dollar corporation. I hate Microsoft so much.
No one is forcing you. Actually, you need to jump through many hoops to get into the program. And Microsoft tends to pay nice rewards to people who find critical issues.
So a bug bounty that pays significantly less
We getting to the point where some Linux distros are objectively better systems... all around. Having way less issues with PopOS than I did with Win11
True, I've been using NobaraOS and have no problems at all, I moved my mom from windows to ZorinOS and she only noticed because her laptop no longer "freezes up" randomly, and I'm talking about a surface book that runs better on Linux than on Windows. Gotta love the irony
Hah, same here. Nobara for me and Zorin for mum, works like a charm. If only mainstream OEMs pre-installed Linux and promoted it more... But I guess this is fine too. One day, when I have enough capital, I'll launch my own Linux Desktop company and be the change I want to see.
Yup, just moved to Mint on my laptop since I’ve been getting some issues with Windows draining the battery quick despite it being in “good health” according to Dell, and just general performance hiccups across Windows.
Super low CPU and RAM usage, snappier performance for word processing and surfing, and a longer battery life? With no tracking features to boot? All for free? Hell yeah I’ll move over to Linux lol.
Are those “hidden features” just more ads?
Could also be tracking and monitoring, I think those counts as Microsoft features.
So what are the hidden features? The article doesn't say and I scrolled through all the comments and nothing popped out at me other than a bunch of comments of people bashing windows and sucking their own dicks over Linux?
sucking their own dicks over Linux
This one trick explains why people who use Linux love it so much!
The hidden features are flags that Microsoft enables or disables for random users as part of A/B testing. The article contains a link to the various flags that can be enabled depending on your edition and version of Windows.
Usual info-free article with clickbait headline. Tinfoil-heads will call it a "troll / honey-pot", designed to attract and identify 'troublemakers'.
And from that comment section, it's working.
I just want it to stop self-destructing every two hours when I’m running it as a VM under Linux.
Maybe that's one of the features you can enable.
Ah, you must have it set to Windows Millennium Edition mode
Do you have snapshots enabled for that VM? If so, try turning them off.
The biggest thing I want is to just move the task bar to the top of the screen. I can't use my finger on my Surface tablet unless I remove the keyboard. Such idiocy..
Use StartAllBack. Not only does it restore the old Taskbar features, it also lets you do even more things, like have the Start button on the left but keep the icons centered, and customize the transparency level (among other things). You can even use your favorite era of Start menu (7, 8.1, 10). Personally I'm using Win7's Start Menu with Windows 11-related buttons added in (like Settings).
(Edit: It does cost $5 after a 90 day trial, but that's less than the cost of lunch, and with all the features you're getting I'd gladly pay 10x the amount.)
Jesus Christ, just reading about Microsoft developing something called Moments made me nope out of that article.
Obv there’s worse things in this world, but goddamn it if Microsoft isn’t reclaiming its crown slowly. I think people forget/zoomers never knew, but Microsoft was once, rightly, one of the most hated corporations on earth. They were taken to court, in the United States!, for monopolistic practices. You gotta be doing some insaaaaane shit to get hit with that type of case in the US post-Reagan administration.
Microsoft’s name was basically equivalent to dogshit from the mid-90s until maybe the mid 2000s. Maybe 2010? Hard to put a finger on it. Windows 7 certainly did a lot to get people to calm down from a steady hate-boner.
I just wish, I fucking WISH, that if MS is gonna do this weird “make your pc your phone too! Dur hrr!” shit that they’d offer a Windows Lite ™️ edition where you can opt out of the little stupid assistant thing. No, Clippy, I don’t need help, fuck you very much. Let me opt out completely, without having to fuck with reg editor and CLI, from all types of ads, tracking, “offers for free shit,” all that shit. Just provide a barebones OS, let me add the programs I want, stop popping up telling me the .exe is a trojan sent to murder my dog just because you want me to download shit from your precious proprietary store, just stop all that shit. Something akin to Windows XP or Windows 7 type era. Neither OS was perfect and certainly many features in modern OSes are nice, but the simplicity found in them just because at the time they kind of HAD to be simple in order to function, is something I’d love for MS (and Apple too for that matter) to embrace.
But since none of that will happen, the next best thing I can hope is developers start making more and more programs run natively on Linux distro. Linux has come very far in my lifetime and I’m honestly excited that I can now use Linux basically for everything and only keep Windows installed as dual boot for a few specific tasks. I just hope it keeps growing in coming years. Hopefully demand from gamers for the steam deck and such drives more and more support for Linux. I can you one thing though… if my Windows updated and tells me “set up Moments! Click here!” I’m nuking that shit from orbit immediately. I don’t care what it does, I will never use any of that shit Microsoft packs into Windows. Probably sounds grump old man or whatever, but I just refuse. Stop adding dogshit no one asked for! This goes for basically all devs! Rant over, but I’m still pissed!
Microsoft’s name was basically equivalent to dogshit from the mid-90s until maybe the mid 2000s.
I'm old enough to remember well the Microsoft hate. It's not so much they've changed their ways, but Google has now taken the trident and diverted attention away from them.
Yes, this right here. It's really the same ol shitty Micro-fuck, ~~Google just wanted to be king of the shit-mound for the most morally and ethically bankrupt corporation of this age.~~ [edit] Google and Facebook are just vying for the crown of "biggest asshole corporation in the world"
Nice try, Microsoft, trying to get people to use Windows 11. Just focus on fixing Windows 12 and cut your losses.
Does it make Windows 11 not total dogshit?
Oh wait, no, it's still Windows 11.
It says that the tool is being shared around online but I can't find it, anyone know where to get it? Just curious is all.
Isn't this the same as BMW locking away functionality that exists in the product you purchased?
Not at all. It's to by-pass the A/B testing of features part of the early insiders ring. And as the article says, there are already unofficial tools to do the same thing. Now we just have the 'official' command line tool made by MS, nothing more.
Does the calendar taskbar flyout count as a hidden feature? Perhaps it would be more useful to leak a tool that can disable windows features. Ads, internet-spam, gutter-news, etc.
But mainly I just want the calendar agenda back in the taskbar.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
