I work in IT, and every time I do an install (sometimes new computers, sometimes not) for someone I see Microsoft’s little News widget they put on the Taskbar, the one that pops up a huge window if you mouse over it. Every time I see that, I ask the person if they ever use it, and they always say no. Then I ask them if they want it gone, and they always say yes, usually with some kind of relief. It’s a matter of two clicks to do it, easier than going into the settings menu like your screenshot, but every computer I haven’t been on previously has it. Now, I’d wonder why Microsoft would put something on the Taskbar that is, in my experience, universally disliked. To me it reeks of the pathetic, groveling, “I’ll suck your dick” energy they have when someone installs Chrome.

Windows 10 changed a lot over the course of its lifetime, and while some feature are good, like Dark Mode, they’re mostly useless or downright bad. So putting something that most people will never use and will greatly confuse and annoy the average user in a place that has been dedicated to a single function for at the very least Windows 10’s entire lifetime (I think it’s there in 8 and maybe 7 also) for seemingly no reason other than to fuck with people’s muscle memory is just one more move very worthy of griping about, no matter how easy it is for users to turn off. Because 99% of users just won’t, because they aren’t confident enough to go futzing around in the settings. But they’ll still get whatever god awful popup this button shows every time they try to show desktop like they’ve been doing for over a decade. It’s yet another change that nobody asked for, nobody will use, and that the user will have to remember that it’s different now for no reason.

The difference is that Linux generally adopts new technology because it enhances the user experience in some way, and not because it maximizes ad revenue and telemetry.