What's next for Windows?

Dakota Tebaldi · May 25, 2023

Dakota Tebaldi said:
The new update is supposed to put tabbed widgets in their own section separately from the news feed. This will only be good if you can turn the news feed THE FRICK OFF completely.

Well hey.

Microsoft announced during its Build 2023 developer keynote on May 24 that it will finally allow users to disable the Microsoft News feed that's found in Windows 11's widgets board via an update coming later this year, finally offering a layout that only shows your widgets.

Currently, the widgets board on Windows 11 doesn't have an option to turn off the MSN feed, meaning your widgets are mixed with news and video stories pulled in from the Microsoft News website. While you can hide stories you don't like, you've never been able to outright remove the news feed.

But that will change later this year when Microsoft rolls out an update to Windows 11 that enables a new "widgets only" layout, removing the MSN feed entirely. Users will be able to choose between different layouts, some with and without the MSN feed present.

Well, IF that's the case, then I approve.

ETA: FWIW, the widget window redesign that dropped yesterday just cobbles all of the widgets onto the left side of an expanded Widget panel, with the right side being filled with the MSN news feed. But you don't have to have the Widget panel expanded; by default it stays like it was originally, with all my chosen widgets filling the panel and the news feed only visible until it scrolls down. Mine is going to stay that way until later this year whenever this alleged option to turn the news feed off completely is pushed out.

Bartholomew Gallacher · May 25, 2023

Dakota Tebaldi said:
When I became interested in trying out Linux I read about that - that people were saying Windows was messing around with drive partitions when they tried to set up a dual-boot Windows/Linux drive. I think I dodged that by getting a new SSD just for the Linux, so it and Windows lived on their own separate drives rather than just different partitions on the same drive, and so far it has worked and I haven't had any conflicts.

Well Windows did indeed such things, that's a fact. It just replaced LILO/GRUB with its own boot manager, this was way before the days of UEFI.

If you wanted to avoid that, pulling the HDD cables was helpful. Or having a boot CD/USB stick with Linux at hand to later re-install GRUB/LILO, which is something to do not for the feint of the heart.