You can turn off advertisement during installation, and set up privacy measures like don't give up hardware id for advertising.
I had no problem with windows restarting itself during work hours. After you install all drivers, it would only restart during night time while I was sleeping.
About central repository, is true. You have windows stores, but is very incomplete. The best tool I found to help me was chocolatey, and it saved me a few hours. https://chocolatey.org/