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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

I went ahead and installed Linux the moment I realized I had to go through a ton of hoops in order to install Windows 11 offline. I'm only ever going to use Windows for work machines that someone else is paying me to use, and even then, I might just start asking for a Mac instead. I'm over this awful OS nonsense they're doing to Windows. Whoever is in charge of the OS clearly does not care.

If I were manning the ship at Microsoft for Windows, I'd make the OS slimmer and far more lightweight.

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I recently installed Windows 10 in a VM to port a program to Windows (Was a horror story). On the left side in the start menu I have ads and other crap: "Trending searches", "Trending videos from the web", "Games for you", "Trending news" and some other stuff like a reminder for the International day for Monuments and Sites.

On the right side I have a weather/news widget from some really shady or local newspapers about "celebrities", a lot of clickbait, stock data etc.

And obviously the first time I opened Edge I was greeted with some annoying banner, that I should login etc.

A default installation of an OS should only come with the bare amount of software necessary. If they had asked: "Do you want to have news/recommendations? - Yes/No,never ask again" it would be really okay as there was no forced consent, but installing it by default is simply a bad decision. (From a users' perspective, it probably makes sense from a corporate perspective as otherwise they wouldn't do it)

All of these gross advertising decisions baked into the operating system disgust me. Not to mention all the tracking they probably do to you on top of it.

The best solution I've found is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. It feels like an alternate timeline where Microsoft didn't dive headfirst into manipulative advertising practices. None of those pointless bloatware apps, no blatant advertising loitered across the OS.

I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.

> The best solution I've found is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise

What is the difference between this one and LTSC?

According to MS, the IoT edition is "missing" many "features" --- which in other words "doesn't have the crap you probably don't want if you only want an OS."

It is missing absolutely nothing useful. It also will receive security patches through 2031, unlike the normal LTSC distribution which gets 5 years of support. You have complete control over which updates, if any, are installed.

It is a big pain in the neck to get an LTSC or LTSC IoT license.

It is worth it.

> I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.

No, they're paid handsomely by others who are trying to manipulate the way people think.

It seems there is enough pushback from Microsoft's enterprise clients because the W10 LTSC versions lack all the adware and most of the spyware that is pushed on the regular versions. Of course, they are not advertised anywhere and buying licenses through regular channels is impossible for a home user or a small company.

I haven't compared resource usage between my previous W10 Pro VM and my current W10 LTSC VM but it seems to start up much faster, and of course the aggravation from using it is way lower.

Ironically, my employer just replaces all of Microsoft's crap with its own crap, pushed out to every client through GPOs and SCCM and other tools. So we get full screen banners, sometimes by launching PowerPoint and showing a slide, about things like cybersecurity awareness or [minority group] History Month. And it takes many minutes to boot up and login and get a functional desktop with all that, plus the scanning by McAfee and Nessus and Tanium.

Well, with your employer that's work time you get paid for. I don't know why anyone would subject themselves to this for free though.

I was a systems engineer supporting Windows and software running on Windows at a large corporation for a decade. My only complaint at the time was that the CLI was so inferior to Unix/Linux.

MS' increasingly poor UI/UX decisions starting with Windows 8/Server 2012 have caused me to relegate Windows to a "legacy support" role in a VM on any new hardware I buy. They really had to work to overcome all of that good will, but they've been relentless.

I've been using linux as my primary desktop for the past 20 years. Is it perfect? No, but it's damned powerful for development, fast, and fully customizable.

Ironically, my love of linux on the desktop has also kept me gaming on console. I've strongly considered building a pc and the thought of having to use windows (proton has come a long way, but a lot of games I'd like to play aren't supported) is enough to give me pause. I get the feeling that I'd mainly use WSL except for gaming.

Yeah, dual booting for gaming is a pain. That's why I do most of my gaming in a Windows 10 VM these days. I pass through a GPU and use looking glass for I/O and it's great! I just have Windows living on one of my virtual desktops and can instantly switch between games and host applications.

The only thing holding me back from doing that is that anti-cheat and (iirc) also nvidia not playing nicely when used in VMs..

I suppose I am fortunate that I don't have any desire to play things like online shooters. I can report that it runs FFXIV perfectly through.

I haven’t been able to find good guides on doing GPU pass through sanely. Suggestions?

I'm not sure I'd describe the process as "sane", but I basically did as described in this guide[0], followed by following the setup guide for Looking Glass[1].

[0](https://github.com/vanities/GPU-Passthrough-Arch-Linux-to-Wi...) [1](https://looking-glass.io/docs/B6/install/)

I've used Linux on and off for a few years, but at my former employer, Ubuntu was all we used, so I got used to just using it for longer than I ever did. I used to install it on dying laptops to give them new life. I considered the laptop end of life as soon as all the modern distros stopped working properly or driver support died though. I don't want to fight to make basic things work, that's my OS' job, not mine.

just curious which games those are that are not supported? I recently switch to linux from windows and havn't found a single one I couldn't play. My steam list is 167/171 supported and have been thoroughly impressed with how far linux gaming as come.

You think a Mac is better, but it really isn't. In fact, MacOS and iOS are further ahead in terms of dark patterns like this. FOSS OSes don't have these patterns, but they have other issues of course.

OS X is better though. Been using it exclusively for quite a while now and my experience has been very smooth. I’m extremely thankful I don’t have to use windows anymore.

So far, you can remove all of these on Windows 10 and I recommend doing so. I do agree with the sentiment that I might finally learn Linux just to avoid all the ads.

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