I’m certain this can be disabled in windows at any moment as without it loads and loads of criminal evidence would be available for discovery and litigation against the wealthiest people and businesses across the world.
A real fear is being a worker in a world with micromanagers inspecting your workweek, 3 second snapshots at a time.
Microsoft turns things back on all the time though. It doesn’t matter what you set if they can unset it whenever they want.
Windows as is, is a valid, fast and private OS. The lack is that it is by default a bundleware, full of telemetries, spyware, services which nobody needs, trials and other crap “to improve the user experience”. All this can be gutted by an advanced user. The alternastive for those which need use Windows, is to install one of the WindowsX series, an independent modification and optimization, without all these M$ crap.
valid, fast and private OS wut?
Yes, as said, the problem isn’t the OS as is, it’s all the crap, spy- and bloatware which M$ put in it.
@Zerush @muusemuuse all of that “crap, spy- and bloatware” is baked into the OS and the only reliable way to remove it isn’t not use Windows.
The problem is 100% the OS.
It isn’t, I use currently W11 24H2 with less than 0,9GB on disk, no unwanted nettraffic shown in Portmaster. Full BOOT in less than 5 seconds and snappy responses. No problems with it, no unwanted apps in the updates or other issues. This certainly wasn’t the case as default in my new laptop. Well “un-microsofted” Windows, not even with it’s original UI.
Tools that claim to lighten windows are almost always riddled with malware. You should never ever trust them. Those project build a base of loyal users, then change and add in malware later, compromising the system.
Windows is not a system you modify like that. It’s actually surprisingly Mac like in how you have to handle it. Be responsible. Build an OS up and out, bow down and back.
The hellzerg Optimizer is FOSS and well known since years, do not confuse with proprietary tools, like those from IObit or Ashampoo, these are certainly not recommended. Anyway, also with the default Windows GodMode you can do a lot, also with the Regedit, if you know well what you do (somewhat risky)
All this can be gutted by an advanced user.
Quick way of accomplishing the “de-bloating” of windows is by 1) managing your own DNS and blocking telemetry connections network wide (quite easy to do with PiHole + Docker Engine) or 2) installing Glasswire and blocking connections on the specific device however, I believe Glasswires Firewall is subscription based so this may be a turn-off for people.
Either work and are more efficient than digging around your Windows install and finding all the different variants of the same bloatware.
I use Portmaster, there go nothing in or out without my permissions.
Ah I figured Portmaster was only for Linux, I dabbled around their software and found it quite good!
I think the reason I stopped using it in lieu of OpenSnitch was because 1) most features were locked behind a subscription and 2) already had PiHole running so the firewall wasn’t something I really needed.
Regardless thanks for letting me know it works for Windows, I’ll started recommending it over Glasswire!
There are no need of subscriptions in Portmaster, it’s FOSS. Well, the subscription is only if you want to use additional also the inbuild SPN service (optional service), which need an paid subscription like any good VPN (server cost money). I Prefer to use Portmaster over Pi-Hole, because Portmaster permits per app settings, Pi-Hole don’tm apart is way easier to setup, with already a good default settings, its almost download it, run install and peace. Then maybe open it, browse your listed apps and block their traffic if needed with an click.
Simplewall works quite well too! And it’s free.
Windows has a built in firewall, so why install a paid one?
Not nearly as user friendly for the non-networking types hence why I recommend one with a fancy GUI.
Edit: Also, I suspect Microsoft will do Microsoft things and hide/prevent their telemetry from being blocked, ultimately I don’t know the state of Windows right now as I’ve made the switched to Linux many years ago.
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Well, there are several methodes, WinX is one of the options and naturally can’t be OpenSource, because Windows isn’t, even not in this debloated version. As you said, there are several FOSS tools to do it, maybe the best is the hellzerg Optimizer, very capable to eliminate the bad Windows habits and apart improving the system-
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No offense, but isn’t this kinda pointless considering most of use use android phones? And don’t think Apple is any better either folks.
I’m reading this on a Microsoft Surface that I flashed with Linux Mint. Quite satisfying!
Message to Microsoft:🖕
How’s that working for you? I’ve got a surface, and I like it, but I know that Windows is not exactly an efficient piece of software.
Probably could be more slick, but working fine for my everyday needs.
The touch screen didn’t work immediately, I had to search up for a command line solution to that. But most won’t face that if they flash onto other (non-Surface) hardware.
Can’t spell “copilot” without “cop”.
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I just want to tip my fellow colleagues that need to use windows for their job (and also maybe have invested thousands in pc games).
This is my favorite tool for debloating and uncrappifying and more. If you have others please reply with yours. 😊
Or install an OS without most of the crap? https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
I use linux so idk how that is but I heard is lightweight in bs
Hey, thanks for the laptop IT guy! Yeah everyone around the office has been very welcoming, I’m happy to be here. I’m pretty handy with computers so hopefully I won’t be bothering you too much haha…. Yeah anyway, I know you just imaged this laptop, but the thing is, I really don’t like all the fluff in the Windows updates, can I instead provide my own Windows image? It’s straight from Microsoft but you get it through a site called MASS GRAVE. And then you can apply the group policies and enable the drive mapping scripts and reinstall the secure company network client infrastructure —
I think when most people mean work they mean corporate where you have zero control. I’m just happy they let me use PowerTools. At home, manually amputating pieces of Windows has been a bit fiddly but no less fiddly than what people think configuring is still like.
It’s annoying, but for most people, even among the technically inclined, it’s fine. For now. I’m more likely to pivot to Linux than to OSX eventually.
Nah, I’ve done my share of home brewed ISOs in my day. That was fun for younger me. Work is standard Enterprise MS stuff. At home for lab, customization and trying the bleeding edge features a standard manually de bloated windows is fine. I’m too old, practical stuff to make work just work is fine. Plus I can toss on a game without having to jump through hoops.
You youngsters can rebel against the big corps. I’ll cheer you on from my rocking chair.
Took this crap off my computer and installed Fedora as my daily. If I need to run Windows, I’ll run it in a VM.
When I originally switched, I kept an ultra clean windows 2000 VM going for a solid decade. Any time I needed it, I could install stuff, do the work, and then blow away the crud that always builds up with Windows. I would suggest using the oldest version of Windows you can practically use, de-bloating it, and taking vm snapshots.
You could even firewall it using another VM or the host if you wanted. Put windows in jail, erase its memory, and cut it off from the outside world so it behaves, lol.
I have yet to need Windows for anything and I switched when my WinXP machine decided booting was too difficult.
Fedora’s like the Windows of Linux.
No it’s not
Yes huh.
What aspects then? You can’t just throw out a baseless statement without justification and think others will agree with you.
Why would you assume I expect others to agree with me?
because you gave no justification for calling fedora the windows of Linux. Simple as that.
Even if Copilot was suspended, the idea was put into the heads of managers and executives. My work laptop current has three applications constantly locking files as they track everything I do and every file that gets touched and upload it all to the servers. Git now takes a ridiculous amount of time to check in and push files since it creates tons of small changes to the cached files that a the tracking applications block further changes or uploads until they can record the information. It takes about 30 seconds to a minute to check in a single small file. Something that used to take a second or two at most. Worst part is if I’m in a WebEx meeting, the fighting over caches in it and git and any other processes,often causes deadlocks that crash the machine. I’m constantly apologizing for being late for meetings because the laptop crashed and had to reboot. It’s gotten to the point that they finally gave me a much faster laptop rather than just excluding cache and git folders and such from the tracking because the people who want literally everything tracked don’t know what cache or git is, much less how much useless data they’re gathering or how the AI that analyzes it all is going yo get distracted by the garbage and not find any useful data anyway. Microsoft needs to get in the game to push the others back out.
I ran into this as my IDE is also constantly touching temporary files to maintain its state. It wasn’t copilot though, it was one drive. So I moved my work files into a local-only location, and then periodically rsync to the synced folder, excluding .git and other folders that have no business on a synced folder.
Why would you even have git repositories in OneDrive in the first place? Or are those local-only repos without an actual server to push to?
Because the workflow for a lot of people is to have projects in folders which are synced to Onedrive. That allows for collaboration with colleagues that are not using git, as well as backup/archival of files and access from different computers or online sharing. My workflow of using rsync to periodically copy the files (–exclude .git) works, but isn’t ideal. If I forget or someone else edits something, I have to manually deal with conflicts. I guess the real answer is just “not everyone is a software dev.”
No bro! I promise bro! It’s just because Michaelsoft isnt tracking and indexing that info. I promise this next micromanaging software won’t be as bad! The next one will be as good as teams bro! I promise!
Windows is malware. If you give the slightest shit about your privacy, switch ASAP
Is ASAP Linux a variant of Asahi that I’m not hip enough to get?
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It’s incredible how much processor windows telemetry uses.
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time for player 2 to join
I’m not going to use this myself but I don’t know why everyone’s complaining about it so much. It requires opt-in, it does all the processing locally, and if someone nefarious gets to the point they can read this stuff then they’ll already be able to record your screen, log keystrokes, etc. I expect it won’t be straightforward to view the data as well, it’s not just gonna be a folder full of jpegs.
I’m glad that people are actually trying to make interesting features still. OSs have been so boring years now, it’s good to see people actually trying to introduce standout features even if they are controversial. More of this I say.
…if someone nefarious gets to the point they can read this stuff then they’ll already be able to record your screen, log keystrokes, etc.
No screenshots -> less data. Less data -> lower breach severity.
(Unless you have an unusual threat model)
if someone nefarious gets to the point they can read this stuff then they’ll already be able to record your screen, log keystrokes, etc.
The point is, that with Recall, they can do this back in time. A regular keylogger can only see what you do after he was installed. If you realize that your computer was compromised fast enough, then you can react. With Recall, everything you did in the last months is open to the attacker.
It requires opt-in,
Because GDPR requires it to be so. Ask people overseas if they can turn that feature off.
With the current government they have in the US, is this really something that the anybody should be comfortable having?
Also, nothing is stopping malware from turning it on without your consent, because the technology will be backed in into the OS by default.
and if someone nefarious gets to the point they can read this stuff then they’ll already be able to record your screen, log keystrokes, etc
So we should just ignore that Microsoft just created a new attack vector that nobody asked for?
I expect it won’t be straightforward to view the data as well, it’s not just gonna be a folder full of jpegs.
Source?
I’m glad that people are actually trying to make interesting features still.
What’s interesting about this? Not only are you training AI models using your data without getting paid for it, I don’t understand what use case you can have by asking Microsoft what porn you were watching at 2 am of February 19th. For important stuff that needs remembering, you can just go back to your browser history. Its easier to search there than to remember the specific time you were doing something anyway.
Literally, nobody wants this.
OSs have been so boring years now, it’s good to see people actually trying to introduce standout features even if they are controversial. More of this I say.
Okay so this is that mindset that seems to permeate the Tech industry through and through, these days. The idea that things that are working fine, need to be forcefully “improved” even when it’s not necessary.
A pen can’t just be a pen anymore, it needs to connect to the cloud so that the ink levels can be properly measured and new ink sent to you on a subscription basis to make sure you never run out of ink.
A juicer needs its own proprietary juice bags and it won’t work with different ones, and how does it know you’re not using the brand’s originals? Why, it must be connected to the internet of course, otherwise it won’t juice.
Your car can’t just be a car anymore, it needs to have integrated mics and an internet connection so that the manufacturer can listen to all your calls and ear your sex sounds, and then sell that to advertisers who will know whether they should sell you a MagicWand or fisting lube, based on whether the moaning sounds they heard coming out of your car sound masculine or feminine.
So on and so forth.
You might think your take is unique, but it really isn’t. It aligns perfectly with everything that companies want nowadays, which is to get your data at all costs.
For me, I want none of that shit. To the point that I go out of my way to make sure I only buy stuff that doesn’t connect to the internet.
Which, BTW, this is the privacy community, I thought there was a common understanding of how abusing these features are, but I guess not.
I expect it won’t be straightforward to view the data as well, it’s not just gonna be a folder full of jpegs.
Source?
Tbf, I (and I’m a random third guy not the guy to which you’re replying, for clarity’s sake), also doubt it’ll be a folder of jpegs…but I think it’ll be fairly trivial to exploit whatever it is, and it’ll take way too much storage (storage cheap now, whatever, I know I’m old but I don’t use cloud and I’ve got other shit to spend money on than HDDs or SSDs, which I do also need as a pirate/data hoarder and don’t want to waste space on).
I don’t understand what use case you can have by asking Microsoft what porn you were watching at 2 am of February 19th.
Well you see I have my browser set to delete history on exit because of security so this would override that and keep the history…that I…deleted… Wait…
Lmao idfk why people would possibly want this either.
Well, that someone nefarious who gets access can then only steal from that point on. Recall will allow him to find out you were having a wank last Tuesday at 7PM.
Disable Recall with these instructions:
https://oracle-base.com/blog/2024/11/10/windows-recall-how-to-disable-spy-mode/
I always keep an old windows iso file just incase I need to use it.
Slap it into a VM. Name it jail. Call it Windows with bars.
Listen, telling other members of a privacy community on lemmy to “just switch to Linux bro” is an enormous waste of time. What this problem needs is outreach beyond tech communities. Ever see those basic ass shorts on Facebook or whatever for “top 7 tips and tricks for becoming an Excel master”? That’s the stupid shit this problem needs. Some broccoli haired tiktoker needs to get in front of people and show them that Linux is not scary. That people have a third option aside from Windows and Mac.
Then, when increasing groups of confused people filter into these threads asking how to uninstall an app, we need to be fucking nice and not admonish them for being new. Lead them through the DE, not CLI. Seriously, want to break 5-6% of OS marketshare? Hold people’s hand through it.
After that, then maybe…just maybe, the likes of Autodesk and Adobe will perk up and start supporting Linux.
A. Fuck Adobe
B. I tend to direct people to Linux Mint. It’s so user friendly and similar to Windows its perfect for the Windows Refugees to start out with. It’s what I installed two months ago after having used Windows since Windows 95.- Illustrator
- InDesign
- Photoshop
- AutoCAD
- Revit
- Civil3D
- ReCap Pro
- Outlook
- Bluebeam Revu
- Large Format printer support drivers
- AMD drivers
- Steam VR
I can run outlook and MS 365 in a browser so it’s really the other stuff I need functional to be able to switch.–
You are using all of these yourself? What kind of crazy job is that?
Architect.
I use mint and only had one game so far with a problem. The game was 20 years old and couldn’t scale to an ultrawide monitor.
So far most things just work. Except the locked streaming services that force anti-Linux. For that I just sail the high seas.
I want to dump Adobe very badly but it’s still the industry standard for creative firms everywhere
Linux bros have been told this for literally decades. They’ll never get it. As long as I can’t use my air pods or even the built in fingerprint reader for my laptop, plug and play, I won’t even try making the switch.
Linux is serverware with a barely working GUI and people are still talking about “just switch”.
I agree with the first part of what you said, but I disagree with your last sentence.
I have been using Linux on my desktop PCs and laptops since 2017 and it’s been working great for me, even playing games. Honestly, I probably play more games on Linux than I did back when I was on Windows lol
Linux is everywhere and doing everything already. Windows only continues to exist because business majors are in charge and they are fucking dumb.
My airpods and fingerprint reader (framework 16) work fine on Fedora, sometimes it just be like that.
Did you give it a try recently?
Yeah,there is one dude in the Linux group here that is just a complete jackass. Half answers your question, and most of it is just telling you a line of code with no other input and basically treating you like an ass hole for even asking. I don’t remember his name, I have him blocked, but absolutely hated seeing Linux posts with this fucking turd each time. Very demeaning and completely ruins the community. I feel like his personality is just trash and he’s always in a “roll your eyes / deep sigh” mood.
You’ve described like…half the IT guys I’ve worked with over the years. You’ve got them on one side, and the super awesome, slap you on the back fun IT guy. Nothing in between.
There’s one (at least) of them in every special interest group.
But why even care if some random loser gets fucked by Microsoft? It’s like the religious idiots out there who don’t believe in global warming and hate trans people: you can’t deprogram stupid. It’s like waging a war against bears taking a shit in rivers.
I don’t understand why Linux users are like this.
Elite smugness
It’s an operating system, you fucking dweeb. Your weird moralizing only alienates potential users. And guess what? Without users, a thing dies.
Linux has plenty of users who appreciate it for what it is, not how you can make it look and act like Windows. Linux doesn’t need those people.
The lack of self-awareness in this comment is depressing
Dweeb!?! How do you know that? Leave me alone you malevolent hacker.
I don’t think this community is a stronghold of linux, as you can see in the comments. We need to start from somewhere.
I wish I could just keep upvoting this.
I’ll add, want to see your average person roll their eyes and say “nope”, just tell them they have to manually edit a bunch of config files to get going. How much about your car do you need to know to start your car and get somewhere?
I’m halfway competent, spent 10 years in IT and even compiled my own kernel back in the early 2000s.
My last 3 attempts at running Ubuntu turned into complete and utter failures, including having to totally reinstall the system over the top of itself because the system became so corrupted it wouldn’t even boot.
And, I barely got steam to work on it. I wasted hundreds of hours and ended up with a barely functional computer that couldn’t print, didn’t support my computers wifi card, and 90% of my work programs aren’t available.
Oh, and someone please support AMD video cards.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Truth hurts I guess? I have worked in IT for more than 25 years, installed Slackware from floppies in the 90s and have tried Linux countless times since. Every. Single. Time I end up wasting my time trying to fix hardware drivers or being forced to accept the programs I want to use don’t work on Linux and the alternative programs are just plain worse.
Oh and I have used Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, Fedora, Mint, Slackware, Pop! Os, Alpine, Gentoo.
Personally I’m tired of people telling disgruntled Windows users to switch to Linux.
Linux is not your backup plan, it’s not a “Windows alternative”. Yes, there are projects out there that try to make Linux easier for Windows users, and honestly they can fuck right off. Way too many people are trying to dumb down this incredibly powerful operating system to expand the market into the “gamers” and the “grannies who want to browse the web and send e-mail”.
Just… just stop.
Why do some say “its not a windows alternative”? As someone who replaced windows with it, that doesn’t make sense to me. I can do almost everything in Linux that I did in windows, and it keeps getting better. There’s no negatives to be had from making it more user friendly and approachable to those who want to ditch windows. You can keep using Arch or whatever distro youre using… You dont have to use one that makes things easier for non linux users. Im happy with the variety of projects. As someone whos learned a lot about linux after switching, this just sounds like gatekeeping to me.
I thought the whole point of Linux was that there was one for everyone? A computer itself is an incredible potent tool, but most people just want to use Facebook and YouTube.
Is this legal in EU? I mean not the tool itself but just enabling it by default.
GDPR regulation mandates that there is at least informed consent. So MS has to ask users if they want all their data to be uploaded. This includes of course a disable option. But knowing big tech companies, they’ll find a way to make users press that Okay button.
From the comments it seems like you have to opt in to the screenshots. But I’m sure they do it at the bottom of a three thousand page EULA or something so most users will wind up opting in by default
Probably in the same dark pattern bullshit they do to get you to turn the rest of their crap on.
Yes, you can modify your property to your like, Windows needs your consents, not the other way arrount.
