this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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I have not looked for stats but I'd love to see what the actual usage of the Microsoft Store is. I know I have never found a use for it and went as far as disabling the MS Store via GPO because I got tired of seeing it and for learning experience.
I have never found a reason, for myself, where I would need to use the MS Store... ever.
Meh, there are a few decent apps on there I use where the distribution is easier or solely through the MS Store. EarTrumpet for better audio management from the taskbar, PaintDotNet, Custom Context Menu for Win11 to add context menu entries. Maybe a few others. It's not something I open often but it's not entirely without use. It would probably be better if it wasn't full of garbage apps/books/etc
not sure about the android stuff but MS store has good functionality in certain instances. For example, if you have a Bluetooth xbox controller that's acting up you can use the Microsoft Xbox controller app to sort it out really easily/intuitively.
Also works great for getting subsystem for Linux OS installs without a lot of fuss provided your machine is capable.
Just did that this week to get a new controller set up with my Steamdeck, works great.
Proprietary Microsoft apps dont really count towards the stores usefulness, they are obviously going to try and shoehorn you into their store their stuff.
Most other apps on Windows are usually distributed manually through executables or installers.
You needed it for WSL last I used WSL, which was admittedly 5 years ago. It was a weird thing, having to ask our sysadmins to get us access, as Docker needed it at the time. Its front page was mostly Candy Crush calibre stuff even then.
I use it for a couple utilities since they do auto-update. I also used to install Firefox and Discord from there since it's faster than going to the website and downloading the installer manually but now with winget, I found that more convenient.
It seems important for as I've seen it being used in updating some system components so disabling it outright might not be a good idea.
Why not use winget or chocolatey instead? They allow for auto updates and have much wider library. Winget can even pull from msstore if necessary. There's even a convenient WingetUI that consolidates them and others (winget, choco, scoop, npm, .net, pip, etc.) to a single app manager.
I already mentioned that I am. My only issue with winget is that it doesn't update automatically, you need to do it manually and the list of updates includes a lot of apps that you didn't install through winget sometimes so it becomes a pain to exclude some apps. Winget UI seems interesting but I personally find it quite ugly.
I have rarely used it.
I used it for some Microsoft product that you had to buy to be able to view the thumbnails of iPhone pictures natively in Windows Explorer.
I also used it for setting up WSL with Ubuntu or some other Linux Distro.