I didn’t even let my latest laptop boot to Windows when I first turned it on, the Linux USB stick went in right away. But for those who use Windows for one reason or another, always perform a clean install; manufacturers love including all sorts of crap by default.
My laptop booted in to Windows once. I missed my first guess on the key to enter setup and USB storage didn’t have a higher boot order than internal storage.
I wanted to check if everything worked correctly out of the box (and not have trouble with any warranty if it didn’t), and doing the initial round of bios updates was easier on windows. So, I booted to windows, played around a bit, and then installed Linux.
I didn’t even let my latest laptop boot to Windows when I first turned it on, the Linux USB stick went in right away. But for those who use Windows for one reason or another, always perform a clean install; manufacturers love including all sorts of crap by default.
My laptop booted in to Windows once. I missed my first guess on the key to enter setup and USB storage didn’t have a higher boot order than internal storage.
I wanted to check if everything worked correctly out of the box (and not have trouble with any warranty if it didn’t), and doing the initial round of bios updates was easier on windows. So, I booted to windows, played around a bit, and then installed Linux.
theres also these fantastic tools: https://privacy.sexy/ https://github.com/builtbybel/Bloatynosy/releases https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
Not FOSS: https://winaero.com/download-winaero-tweaker/
Someone’s curated list: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy