• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I was in a computer shop a couple of weeks ago and it seems the windows handheld makers are doing the same shit they have on their laptops - it was filled with pre-installed bloat, including some shit Norton antivirus 1 year subscription.

    Something you never see reviews mention, which is crazy.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Isn’t it interesting how operating systems have a culture? From my early days of working with windows, it was completely normal for every other program to want to run itself at startup, no matter how useless it was to do so. And people just accepted it. They thought that computers literally get slower over time or something. Oftentimes I’d glance at someone’s system tray and see 15 icons or so.

      On Mac and Linux though, this behavior is far less acceptable. Today on Mac it is by far worse than ever but still probably better than it was, say, on windows 98. On Linux I could literally install 50 apps in a row without any asking me (or doing it without asking) to run on startup.

      It’s just up to what users will put up with. So windows consistently getting shittier shouldn’t really surprise us. People have put up with that from the beginning. Both in terms of the app ecosystem and the os itself.

      Like we went through at least a decade on windows where most free apps people used would literally attempt to, or force malware on your machine, in the form of toolbars or other useless shit running in the background. People were so complacent they wouldn’t even uncheck those boxes when offered a choice in the installer. We really need better education in this world.

      • lengau@midwest.social
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        4 months ago

        Yeah on my Linux machine I’ve had like 2 apps want to run on startup, and both of them had little checkboxes in their tray menus to disable that behaviour. If anything the bigger struggle has been that every time I change machines or distros I have to manually get yakuake to start on login again.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I have had the same issue a couple of times actually. Had to learn how to setup systemd services for one of them!

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      4 months ago

      Antivirus doubly doesn’t make much sense on handheld. Today’s malware is more stealthy and focused on stealing your data, but what sensitive data are you storing on a gaming-specific handheld?

      I guess there’s your Steam account, but the risk profile just isn’t the same, and it comes at the cost of performance which is already much more limited in this form factor.

      • zurohki@aussie.zone
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        4 months ago

        I’d argue that power is more the issue. All that processor time the antivirus spends scanning and rescanning is a chunk of battery gone.