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> To the best of my knowledge, it's impossible to get a start menu without all the tips and ads

It's actually so easy I've forgotten how I did it, but I removed all of that stuff (including Cortana) within the first 5 or 10 minutes of booting into Win 10 for the first time about 3 years ago. I think you just right-click on it and remove it.

Much of the hate towards Win 10 is just FUD from people who didn't bother to try even basic things to customize it to their liking before claiming it can't be done. I let that get to me and held off on updating from 7 for awhile, but I've been on 10 for a few years now and it's been rock-solid and problem-free.

The biggest problem - automatic updates that take over and restart the computer without your permission, potentially bricking it - is something that I avoided by getting Pro. There is some merit to the argument that your OS shouldn't by default delete your work, run code without your permission, and possibly brick your computer unless you pay.

It is a very good OS worth the cost, and if you do pay for it then that's not a problem at all. But the fact that they take such a bludgeoning approach on the people who get it for free does still seem wrong. The reasoning behind it makes sense though (almost all users are online and need updates for security or else their compromised machines become part of the problem). And the solution, pay to control when updates occur, doesn't make sense at the technological level, but at the human level it does. Those who care enough about it to pay for that are the ones less likely to be security problems.

> Wrong. For people who disabled Cortana, it kept re-enabling itself automatically after updates. I think that problem is mostly gone now, but it was definitely an issue all the way up till earlier this year.

I'm pretty sure this only applies if you disabled it through the UWP configurator applet. I vaguely remember this happening to me once. I disabled Cortana in group policy or the registry editor and it never happened again. And you're undermining your own argument by admitting that the problem doesn't actually exist anymore anyway...

> The article has one tiny line-item about fragmentation and it was about architecture. I agree that it's not an issue for most people, but OP is making a comment about a design problem. You are mis-representing the argument by talking past it.

The article's brief mention of fragmentation issues was wrong. It doesn't get a pass just because it was a brief mention. A huge list of issues looks impressive until someone breaks it down and points out how many of the issues aren't valid.

I have no idea what you mean by "architecture" or "design problem." The article claimed that disk fragmentation is an issue, and it's not.

> When Windows 10 first came out there were a TON of devices, including very popular printers and scanners, which had no support.

This was a big issue with Vista, but much less so with 10. Even at its absolute worst, Windows 10 was vastly better than Linux for driver support on the desktop. MacOS doesn't really count because of all their first-party hardware. If there's no superior alternative I don't see a valid point against Windows here.

> when the author wrote this, it was true. He should probably update the site.

Oh... I was assuming it was just published since there's no date in parens in the HN story title. I felt like the article was being disingenuous in repeatedly mentioning old issues that have since been fixed, but if the article is older then that changes a lot.

> To the best of my knowledge, it's impossible to get a start menu without all the tips and ads without using a 3rd party Windows-10-decrapifyer/debloater kind of thing.

I wonder how I did that. I never install regcleaners or similar tools. I disabled some setting and manually right-clicked and deleted a handful of tiles in the start menu. That was many Windows 10 updates ago. I have never seen anything in my Start menu that I didn't expect to be there since.

The problem is they could come back (depending on your region) and advertising settings are spread out so you may have to go through the settings disabling them all. Basically any option that's labelled as a "tip" or "suggestion" might be a license to advertise. The start menu one is:

Settings -> Personalisation -> Start -> "Show suggestions occasionally in Start".

There was also an issue with a feature update that reset some settings. Feature updates basically do a reinstall of the OS and then copy your settings back over so sometimes things get missed (accidentally or on purpose, whichever explanation you prefer). The solution is to delay feature updates for at least a week or two. By that time these issues should have been fixed. Personally I delay feature updates for 30 days.

Just right-click and unpin each item, and there start menu won't even show the panel

The tricks to getting a tile-free start menu is to remove every single tile. The start menu then collapses down to a more simple list of programs. I've run with this for years, and no tiles have ever appear, or tips