The worst part about wsl is that it doesn't work on windows 7 :(
There has been so much work done to improve the kernel over the last 7.5 years. You don't see mac users complaining that iOS integration doesn't work with Snow Leopard; iOS (the name) did not exist when Windows 7 was released. You certainly don't see snow leopard in the wild anymore.
Stop. Using. Windows. 7.
It seems that the entire tech industry is gently pushing the population to accept broad surveillance as a fact of life. You want to chat to your social circle on facebook? Sure, just hand over all your personal and location data. Want WSL? Sure, just sign here to give us the legal right to rummage around your computer without your knowledge whenever we feel like it.
You are not getting the performance you could be out of your PC. Your computer isn't as secure as it could be. You don't have the latest features. Some of those UI changes you mention are actually nice, btw.
Your PC is not spying on you; it is not scandalous that a web search via Cortana sends what you type to Microsoft. Telemetry is also not scandalous; Microsoft has had telemetry in Windows & in Office for well over a decade (coming up on two).
Perhaps I should consider a career in tech journalism; With all the scandal around Windows 10's approach, I can only imagine how people will react to literally everything they ever do in their browser. You never use your web browser, do you?
Also, telemetry is not scandalous but it can be subpoenaed or hacked, and given its omnipresence and sheer depth, I wouldn't want less-than-trustworthy people gaining access to it.
Microsoft could have made its privacy settings simple -- an elegant on/off switch with the more legacy-style "click here to report this exception" behavior. Instead they complicate the matter and overwhelm the user with a ton of seemingly pointless options by default, when it should have been a toggle and an "Advanced..." button.
By throwing previously voluntary reporting into the same big telemetry bucket as everything else, they've diminished their product and forced users to accept an inferior experience when such integrations are unwanted (like my example above). Also, they never should have allowed marketing to get involved -- allowing advert pigs to switch people's desktops around is a massive overreach. You know the only reason it happened was to make more money from already-paid users.
Win10 only gets my vote when an upstream netmeter and port-monitor show only essential network activity -- occasional Windows Update queries, local network scans, and so on -- during a long period of idling and local (non-network) use.
There are some scripts on Github that claim to rip out a lot of this stuff. They look promising, though I haven't tried yet: https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script
"Q: Can I run the script repeatedly?
A: Yes! In fact the script has been written to support exactly this as it's not uncommon that big Windows Updates reset some of the settings."
Sorry but what do you even mean with this? Most of yours points already don't make a lot of sense, but this one jumped out at me. I've been running windows 10 while it came out and have literally not seen a single advertisement. Nor have I been bothered with cortana a single time. Not even sure what it is/does as I've never bothered to look into it or use it.
For now at least, you can disable both in Windows Settings and they don't seem to come back automatically. I don't know in the future though.
P.S.: before OP, this is on Windows 10 Pro.
The start menu does have those flashy windows 10 app tiles, but I just reduced the size of the start menu until those went away.
I remember having to disable at least the first two items (Lock Screen and Suggested Apps). And instead of simply reducing size of Windows 10 start menu, I completely uninstalled all UWP included Apps.
The really infuriating thing is that Microsoft seems to re-enable some of those settings in each major update, and this is no fun.
In fact, consent is the very heart of that particular issue. I do not consent to any of this cloud-flavored bullshit, yet I am forced to deal with it to stay modern in the platform I am most comfortable on.
Also, how do those arguments "not make a lot of sense"? Your insults could use a bit more subtlety.
One of the main points of Windows 10 is that it's maintained and updated from the cloud, and part of the telemetry is for development purposes. Windows 10 isn't unique from that point of view.
The base level of Windows 10 telemetry is mostly security stuff, which is why it has to be encrypted and protected. And of course, if you install a third party AV product, you'll find it has even more intrusive hooks into everything, and it probably connects to back-end cloud analysis service as well.
What do you think Microsoft does with all this stuff from more than 400 million PCs when it has virtually no advertising business outside Bing?
At least a couple vendors in the medical and car repo verticals doing exclusively remote support and activation require systems are fully updated before they'll deploy their wares.