The tips, ads, and recommendations you see will be more generic and may be less relevant to you.
And this is treated as a bad thing?!
The number of ads you see won’t change, but they may be less relevant to you.
Send only info about your device, its settings and capabilities, and whether it is performing properly.
In other words, even after turning off all the settings, your data still gets collected.
The rest of the installation process wasn’t fun either. It was worded in this weird, condescending tone, like “Let’s get everything set up for you”, and “Let Cortana help you get things done!”.
Thank goodness for FLOSS and GNU/Linux.
Every time I have to install Windows, even in VMs I install Atlas with it, getting rid of all bloat and unnecessary shit. But even with that it’s a horrible experience compared to what KDE and Gnome deliver.
You can use Win10Privacy to bodily castrate nearly all built-in spyware and telemetry.
Downside is that it’s a damn powerful program, with few guardrails, so if you don’t have good knowledge of Windows internals you run a non-trivial risk of accidentally lobotomizing an important feature of your install by enabling the wrong setting. I mean, all settings can be easily reversed, but you gotta know which specific one did the nerfing in order to undo the oopsie.
For example, even the midrange firewall settings are mostly safe, except… a single one of them completely kills Microsoft Office Click-To-Run. It won’t install, and it won’t launch even if you installed it before you applied Win10Privacy. So if Microsoft Office is an essential (Access or Excel absolutely needed, for example), be careful.
There is also privacy.sexy. they have a bunch of scripts to do just about everything you want to increase windows privacy. They have a GUI that will help you customize the scripts and you can roll back if you want.
Link to the program?
Link to the program?
Yeah, Windows sucks. I recommend the LTSC version for minimized tracking. But even then, I had to use third-party software and hacks to minimize it further. I don’t ever plan to go back after switching to Linux.
LTSC sounds great or else there must be something like MicroXP for windows 10/11 where someone has debloated it down to the bare bones.
@BananaOnionJuice @Neon_Shadow Tiny11 is a project where windows 11 has been stripped down to the absolute barebones, there may still be some telemetry that needs to be disabled (O&O shutup is good for that). It’s designed to work on older machines with as little as 4gb ram, so it would be perfect for running in a VM, in fact that’s what I’m planning to do.
What’s that
LTSC is the enterprise/business version that have extended period for patches with less bloat. It’s similar to LTS with Ubuntu.
Yes I was doing similar a few weeks ago. I was investigating how to get netflix app running on linux, tried a Windows VM, basically stopped at roughly this screen due to bile reaching my mouth.
Ended up installing Zen kernel, switching to KDE(Wayland) and using Waydroid. Far easier than having to read those words or figure out what you actually have to do. I’d assume you have to regularly regedit often to keep this shit under control.
On the wierd condescending tone I also noticed a few years ago at work (compulsory MS) the MS programs started being very rude and overstepping the boundaries of informality: “Want to save this file?” “Fuck you excel, you can’t talk to me like that. You think I’d ever be friendly with someone who so wantonly fucks up my data types?”
They must think stockholm syndrome has spread to most of the user base.
I’m confused. What is rude about “Want to save this file”? What would be the non rude way of asking it?(English is not my first language)
A complete sentence like that would nornally have a “subject” - in this case it should refer to me in the “second person” by using “you”. Failing to refer to me as the subject makes the sentence incomplete and seem informal. The sentence literally does not respect me.
Such informality would usually only be used in conversation with a friend or acquaintance. It’s jarring to me to see that in written English, especialy coming from a computer.
A more formal and complete sentence would be: “Do you want to save this file?” That’s formal and not rude, but if you want to be more polite you’d say : “Would you like to save this file?”
I can’t really explain why “Would you like . . .?” is more polite than “Do you want . . . ?”, it just is in my experience. Perhaps that’s not globally true though many might disagree.
FYI since you’re asking about English, “no rude” would normally be written as “non-rude” or you can just use the opposite word “polite”.
It’s like a mini game to get the choices right
Can not recommend. The levels were very difficult but short and the final reward was shit
I had a need for one piece of corporate windows program once. Installed Windows AME , only way to really get rid of all crap. All the debloating software and scripts get easily reversed by windows otherwise.
I remember installing Windows XP. sigh.
I had one of the 23 machines in the world that ran Windows ME flawlessly. :(
Hey now, mine ran it flawlessly after three days of tinkering and then rebooting twice a day afterwards.
I was lucky if everything worked. Usually it had troubles with peripherals, network, or even the USB drive it was on. But none (?) of this crap.
fair. i used Windows 2000 a crapton, and I think 2000 was the king of true Plug N Play. that bitch would take ANYTHING. hell, even these days I’ll stick modern Kingston USB 3.0 drives into it, just to see if it works, and it won’t even bat an eye 🤣
Or you could have tried Windows 10 AME. It has none of this stuff.
OSes are tools. You should not care. Use the one best for a particular job.
That reminded me of TinyXP - a modified version of Windows XP to be like some 100MB install, instead of the typical 2GB of default bloat.
Good shit.
nLite, eXPerience, WinPE days were old. AME is not built like that. It is debloated and stripped of components that results in same thing as the custom ISO builds of yesteryear though.
Ooooh, there’s also nLite, if you wanted to make a custom version for yourself!
Those were fun times!
removed by mod
Lol
Explain to me how this is a valid reason or argument. This looks to me like circlejerking, a primitive internet behaviour.
This is not reddit or 4chan.
removed by mod
Oh, the people who don’t use enterprise editions of Windows…
I’d buy it IF THEY WOULD SELL IT TO ME!
The best legal version of Windows I have figured out that you can actually buy as a regular consumer is Windows Server Essentials 2022. (maybe they’re up to 2024 now?)
Server Essentials is regular Windows 10 GUI with absolutely no spyware, OneDrive, or pre installed ads hiding as shortcuts. It doesn’t even require a TPM. The only nonsense that comes pre installed is Edge.
Updates are for 10 years minimum and they only install when you tell them to.
500$ for a Windows license just to have it not have bloat preinstalled? Hmm pass XD
Windows server obviously isn’t intended for consumers so no, it’s not cheap. The pricing for Windows Server datacenter is extremely high at 6 155 USD
Windows Server Essentials is $300. It is a cut down version of server. It’s pretty much regular Windows that includes an extra Windows license for an extra VM. If for some reason you needed to run two copies of Windows legally, that brings the cost down to $150 per VM.
Yes I know what essentials edition is. I just wanted to point out that datacenter edition is very expensive because it’s funny.
Btw, essentials is actually 500 USD and standard is 1070 USD
The price on the MS website isn’t the price you can buy it in stores. For example MS lists Windows 11 as $139 when it’s $119 at Newegg.
I bought Sever Essentials from Lenovo for $285.
Yeah, the price is lower if you buy the OEM versions.
I personally believe the msrp to be the actual price though.
It was $300. It’s Server Essentials, not the full Server. Server Essentials doesn’t have network controller or unlimited Windows VM licenses.
Buying Windows? What kind of lunacy is that?
I’ve been running so long with “Activate Windows” in the lower right corner on one of my computers that I don’t even notice it anymore.
But for other PC’s, as a rule, I don’t pirate executables because of the virus risk.
Oh and that seems to be ltsc or an older win 10 build too! If you want the creeps get a normal win 11 home iso and try it out with a burner account… You might be surprised what they got in charge for you. (A lot of ads and tracking with up selling, tho I don’t know how much Home edition costs, pro costs like 130€ or so and has the same crap built in but the ability to make an offline account(they still ask you to “upgrade” to online))
No the offline account trick still works.
You have to use CLI to get around it, I don’t consider that functional for the average user
No for sure thats criminal, but its possible. Rufus makes it easy with a single click to bypass it. But when not using that silly media creation tool Windows may not boot on Thinkpads etc.
Thinkpads with Windows are a joke, they are basically nonfunctional without all these lenovo drivers for anything.
Or you just use Rufus to create your USB installer. It provides the ability to add that option to the installer just before the burning process. Mouse clicks only, no CLI needed.
One of the many reasons I always run privacy.sexy every time I need to install windows (on both bare metal and inside a VM).
privacy.sexy
I second this, I use it all the time.
I use O&O ShutUp10++ (oosu10) to do the same thing. Makes Windows feel like Windows, instead of an ad machine.
Whenever people complain about ads I have NO idea what they’re talking about.
Edge will say it’s “maintained by your organization”, which seemed spooky, but that’s just a side-effect from having some privacy.
And the link to OOSU10, in case anyone wants it: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
Edge will say it’s “maintained by your organization”, which seemed spooky, but that’s just a side-effect from having some privacy.
Ooooooh, so that’s why I started seeing that shit. I thought I had a virus, lmao. Cheers.
I shall yoink that, thank you very much.
Yoink it so effing hard!
What the fuck. How have I never seen this before?
All of this exists on Macs too, doesn’t it?
As soon as you start running a pihole on your home network it makes really stop and think and want to eradicate all unnecessary data tracking. Windows was so chatty. Science only knows how much of a consumer profile they create and sell on you for just wanting to use a computer.
Additionally… Smart TV’s are the absolute worst too.
Amazon Kindle, too. If there’s a pihole, it freaks out and starts retrying the mothership in a loop until it drains the damned battery. Airplane Mode quiets this, but I hate how aggressive these devices have become.
What happens if you redirect all traffic to a sinkhole, rather than to 127.0.0.1? Do the devices still freak out when they talk to a web server which returns a 404? Just morbidly curious…
.
deleted by creator
Maybe also not Ubuntu or RHEL? I heard they also collect telemetries and hard to trun off. Unsure.
.
Ubuntu will ask you if usage data can be collected and sent to canonical when you first log in after installation. You get to look at the exact data that would be sent before making a decision and if you say no, then they’ll comply with that and never ask you again.
Great to know
The telemetry is opt in so feel free to use them. (Correct me if i am wrong)
This is most people’s reaction to using Windows for any reason.
removed by mod
Yeah, those granpas asking me to fix their machines are like, “and, what do we do with my OneDrive which I don’t understand what it is?”
Let’s narrow it down to normal ppl :) 'Cause those having nothing to hide are enabling enshitification.
