Ask HN: How do you make Windows 10 tolerable? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you make Windows 10 tolerable?

5 pointstarnod6 comments

I have recently bought a new laptop which is not compatible with Windows 7, so I have installed Windows 10 Professional. Although 10 has some improvements over 7, my impression of Windows 10 has so far been overwhelmingly negative.

For example, I am shocked by the number of useless pre-installed apps that come with Windows and demand attention, e.g. with top-level Start Menu icons. Most of these are at best irrelevant (e.g. OneDrive) and at worst completely inappropriate for a work machine (e.g. Xbox). Even worse, it seems that this is just the beginning: Windows will automatically download more inappropriate apps in the future. [A]

What changes have you made to your Windows 10 install to make it suitable for professional work? For example, I am looking for ways to:

1. Remove all of the irrelevant apps cluttering my machine, and prevent any more from being downloaded. Control of what is installed on my computer should rest with me, not with Microsoft.

2. Remove advertising from the operating system. I can't believe anyone considers this acceptable.

3. Ensure Windows is respecting my privacy. I already changed the relevant settings [1] to off/basic when installing Windows - is there anything else I should do?

4. Prevent the OS from restarting to install Windows updates, except when specifically told to do so.

With Windows 10, I'm so pleased that I can do most of my work in Linux and macOS. However, as long as some of my customers use Windows, I have to keep it installed.

What can I do to make Windows 10 "Professional" worthy of the name?

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[A] I don't understand this at all. On the one hand, Microsoft sell "Signature Edition PCs" [2] which avoid the problems caused by PC manufacturers' "pre-installed junk". At the same time, they have started propagating the same junk themselves?

[1] http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2017/4/4d9dfa9f-69ec-4378-9688-8e7cd7e8d009.jpg

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/pcsignatureedition

I've honestly had a strange experience with Win10. On my home PC I built I installed Win10 from an OEM disk (not the off the shelf edition) and I'm not sure if that made it different, but I loved it then. Worked flawlessly, just deleted the stupid XBox icons and was never bugged again.

Then I got a work issued laptop with Win10, and it's been ATROCIOUS for me. I don't have any ads or whatever (is this gonna be a new feature?) but my permissions model is royally screwed. For instance, I had to activate root administration controls on my user, cause you know, it's my computer. And some how because of this, I can not run the built-in Calculator app. That's right, can't run the calculator because I'm an admin. I had to write my own. So it's been hit and miss. But so is my story with every OS.

I use the settings to configure the system including tuning which applications have permission to create notifications and which applications have permission to access system features like the address book, location data, and calendar. The control is fairly fine grained. Settings also allows using a local login, turning off Cortana, changing the default search provider, and so forth and so on. The control is pretty fine grained. All that with the caveat that my experience is that 8.0 was better than 7 and 8.1 was better than 8.0 and 10 is better than 8.1.

When I first switched to Windows 8.0 I freaked out and thought it was an unusable mess because Windows 8 was different. I thought I would never be able to use it productively. Then for some reason after a few hours, I reframed it as just learning another piece of software or another programming language and gave myself permission to learn how to use it. I spent less than an hour (and probably less than half an hour) going through the "Tour" and reading a couple of things online and then I pretty much got it. The long and the short is that for me, learing how to use Windows 8 (and 10) made me appreciate what works.

Maybe there are three or four or ten gigabytes of stuff on the disk with Windows 10 that I don't use. The days when that mattered to me are gone. I care about using it my computer not managing files on it. If some app does something I don't want, then I deal with it.

Good luck.

I lost the last piece of respect for Microsoft back when they started the forced windows10 upgrades and switched to Ubuntu. I don't agree with the telemetery, keystroke recordings and overall loss of control from windows7 to some piece of malware masquerading as an OS. Keep in mind, Windows7 itself had to be neutered and configured properly(all these services, registry tweaks and settings), but windows10 is whole another zoo of problems which i don't want to touch.

Install Linux. Install VirtualBox. Install Windows 10 in VM. Use Windows only when necessary. Done.

When I left my last job, I decided to ditch Windows as well. I use a MacBook Pro for laptop and Linux on the desktop and on all my servers. Although some people still send me .doc and .xls files, I can open them with LibreOffice and make sense of them. Although it takes a bit of research, I have always been able to find better programs for my work than the bloated and over-priced software that Windows requires.

Dont use windows.

I use mac. It´s arguably better in everything except games.

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