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Comment by achn | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft made their consumer OS basically “free” and in doing so loaded it with so much telemetry, data collection, bloatware, and dark patterns, that it is unusable without significant and ongoing intervention.

So, no, I would not want them to have to find alternative income streams from their server OS.

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It was temporarily free. Buying a license now is $100. I use Macs, but I've been wanting to buy a Windows license to run in a VM, and I couldn't believe how expensive it is.

With the amount of data collection and ads in it, it should be free.

Are all of these things included in the versions of Windows they make available on Azure..? I wondered that, but wasn't going to make an account just to find out.

My kid wants a laptop for gaming... he's been using my MacBook Air for KSP and Minecraft for a long time, and I won't be buying a new machine until the new models are out and proven... so I've conceded to getting him a gaming laptop for the time being.

It'll be Windows. It'll probably be our only Windows machine for the foreseeable future, but I know we'll have to de-clutter it when it gets here. And I still need to research that.

Is there a HN approved way of doing this?

I recall there being various solutions that cleaned older versions of Windows, but perhaps did so a bit too aggressively (disabling services left and right in the XP era), so experts recommended against using them. I have no idea about the current state of affairs, but may find myself in the same boat soon and need to know.

> Is there a HN approved way of doing this?

Yes. Not using Windows to begin with.

Getting windows signature devices is a good start. It doesn't get rid of the baked in telemetry, but it does ensure you're getting a fresh copy of windows (with Candy Crush and whatever store apps they decide to install) without any of the bloatware OEMs like to install.

My windows laptop runs the LTSC edition (likely in violation of the licensing terms) which is meant for super strict environments like ATM and POS machines. It does not get user experience updates and comes extremely barebones - but to me it Works exceptionally.

>loaded it with so much telemetry, data collection, bloatware, and dark patterns, that it is unusable without significant and ongoing intervention.

It's very much usable for everyone that ignores telemetry and bloat, which is most people. Telemetry gathered likely makes the experience better for people.

Approximately 30GB footprint for WIN10 vs approximately 1GB for Linux.

That some can 'ignore' this fact (which has other similarly astonishing dimensions) does not make it irrelevant -- the impact/implications are real.

Windows typically gets installed with all the supported drivers. NVidia's blob alone is over 600MB.

a 30GB install does not make it "unusable" on most machines.

Same for the Linux kernel. It includes all drivers.

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