The last few times I even had to disable it, there was no setting for it. RegEdit was the way to disable the search-in-start-menu stuff.

But regardless, I’m still talking about seeing this issue on a fresh install. That’s definitely not something that happens because I fiddle with settings.

I saw it all the time. It drove me nuts. I’m not sure how you literally never see it, because my clean and fresh installs of windows always worked this way until I did a RegEdit update to kill the websearch in it.

I always dug into RegEdit to disable this crap. And somehow, each time, it was a different series of steps.

Just leaving the valley of despair, i suppose?

It’s not a terrible idea. ChatGPT is great at summarizing info, especially stuff you’d use manuals for. I make sure to ask it where certain info came from (so I can try to verify) OR having it explain its approach so I get it in the future.

oh fuck that’s even worse.

Look, if it takes you 2 days to debloat windows, linux is gonna take a real fucking while to learn right.

Honestly, using Linux Mint lately and it’s been far smoother than my previous linux attempts. Granted, there’s much better tech today to help, but yeah it’s been nice. My only sadness is not getting my singular Xbox App game playable on linux.

What’s made Arch better for you?

oh good to hear. I heard about windows doing jank stuff on update recently and was really worried I’d have to fight with it soon.

I mean, if you were intending it as a joke your phrasing works just as well.