Win11Debloat is a simple script that removes pre-installed windows bloatware | Hacker News Reader

Win11Debloat is a simple script that removes pre-installed windows bloatware

github.com

123 pointsmariuz186 comments

Had a quick skim. Hmm, Teams, OneNote and Remote Desktop considered bloatware, gaming apps not. Not sure of the target demographic for this. Perhaps worth considering very carefully before running in productivity or office environments, assuming you have access.

I have to use that bloatware every day. Teams is pretty much the definition of it. I agree with the script.

Yeah, I agree. I think games do count as bloat generally, so should be removed by default.

Maybe have a few more questions in the custom mode:

- Remove Teams

- Remove OneNote

- Remove RemoteDesktop

- Remove Games

I would answer yes to all the above but Remote Desktop.

A GUI with a tree view would be best for the custom mode. Then you can drill into the categories.

Try this it has a gui its called sophia app. https://github.com/Sophia-Community/SophiApp

It also removes the Video player which is odd because like, I feel like that kinda should be built into an OS?

No, no it shouldn't.

Really? You think that a modern consumer/professional operating system, upon double-clicking a video, should do nothing? That's a thing that you would ship to an entire planet full of Regular People and say "Yes, this is the Right Thing. You should be happy about this result"

This is about debloat. I don't want Microsoft's garbage utilities.

Yes, exactly.

A video player should be easily installed via the operating systems package manager.

Rando: "Gud, why's there no video player installed? How do I get to play my video player?"

Gud: "Just use the operating system's package manager."

Rando: "What's that? How do I find it?"

Gud explains what it is and how to find it.

Rando: "Wow, finally found it. What do I do next?"

Gud: "You search for a video player. Try [...]."

Rando: "I can't find it. This sucks. Why is there no video player installed by default? Makes no fucking sense."

Two hours later you've managed to achieve installation.

Rando: "I don't like this player. I want a different one."

Yeah. No. A video player should be installed by default.

Period.

Normally you would select which software to install during initial setup.

And FWIW, there is no way it would take me 2 hours assisting someone with installing a video player. Maybe 10 minutes.

Rando: "I don't like this player. I want a different one."

Gud: It's the player installed by default.

Gud spends the next two hours helping Rando install a non-default video player (and possibly battling Microsoft for the default apps for all of the different file types associations).

I can't reply to Gud below, but their comment really shows they haven't worked with real users at all. A lot of people on hacker news assume everyone is in the demographic of hacker news for some odd reason.

It absolutely can take 2 hours to help someone with a task it would take you 2 minutes to do (with 1.5 of those minutes watching progress bars)

Some people are just dumb as rocks. Some, if you say to click a button labeled whatever, they will instead close the window. Some will just get up and walk away while you're talking to them. Some arn't dumb, but are just trying to stretch time to keep from having to go back to work. Some people won't tell you their laptop turned off because they're not plugged into power.

> Some people are just dumb as rocks.

Or maybe they have become apathetic for what's on offer.

Its not like anyone documents what data is sent back to base by an app, and its not like anyone is even looking at how to use the firewall to block data phoning home, in order to protect privacy and reduce the attack vector from opportunists with network access.

This all seems like a side show.

How is any of that relevant to walking a use through self install of an app. From an app store or managed software centers, or wherever.

The app store demonstrates the computer in which it runs is not yours.

Presumably these users would be in a managed environment.

Yes. It didn't help obviously.

This was exactly what the EU ruled way back, yes

The EU government ruled that but no customer actually wanted it. The Windows N versions existed for legal reasons but that doesn't mean anyone bought them.

Wouldn't it be a sensible default to open and play the video with the web browser?

No. Browsers burn more power (20-50% more, assuming that hardware decoding is working. It's even worse if it isn't) and have fewer features. The default video playing interface in browsers lacks the ability to even display subtitles and change audio tracks. These should be table stakes for any video player.

The Linux hivemind on HN would say that's OK, but that mindset is also why Linux has such a dismal consumer base. There should be a video player built it by default, yes, but it should also be easy to remove if you so choose.

Don't know when you last tried a Linux distro but most Linux distro's come with a video player out of the box and have done for the better part of the last 10 years at the very least

Correction: most Linux distros come with 12 video players out of the box (and at least 7 calculator apps)...... the philosophy of "we can't decide so just include them all" is pretty strong.

That's usually from installing multiple window managers which all pull their own dependencies. It should be possible in principle to install enough of a window manager without installing unnecessary packages.

There may be 12 video players in the package repositories but I can't think of any distro that installs with 2 video players.

xine, phonon and mplayer ? slackware at least

Distros not shipping with programs like video players installed by default isn't the reason Linux hasn't found mainstream traction. The real reason is because Linux simply doesn't solve the sort of problems most users need solving; there aren't many compelling reasons for a casual computer user to use Linux in the first place. For normal users, not technical/power users, Linux could work fine but Windows or MacOS also work fine, so they'll stick with what they and most other people know already. Oh you get the source code? Most users don't know what that is, they don't have a reason to care. You get the power to customize things? They don't want to. These things are important and valid to some people, but not important to many more. And that's fine. I've been using Linux for about 20 years and I love it, but I don't recommend it to normies anymore because I figured out that it wasn't doing them any favor. If Linux gave normies some great advantage over the alternatives then more would use it, but that's just not the way it is.

Nothing's stopping you from rebloating your OS after running this debloat command.

Not as long as VLC exists.

Yes, but the Windows one isn't great. Something about codec licenses and having to install extra stuff from the Windows store make it sub par now.

I guess its nice that Linux and Windows can share a mutual frustration around shipping video codecs.

An alternative is Optimize-Offline[0] which uses deprovisioning to remove packages from a Windows install ISO.

This is a method which mimics Windows' official methods which should prevent things being re-added when updating.

There are also tweaks to remove the TPM requirement and allow Windows 11 to run on older unsupported CPUs.

[0] https://github.com/gdeliana/Optimize-Offline

Edit: To mention there is also an option to bypass the online account requirement.

Not sure if your link is really a viable alternative. The first line of the Readme says it is for Windows 10:

> Optimize-Offline is a Windows Image (WIM/ESD) optimization module designed for Windows 10 versions 1803-to-2009 64-bit architectures.

Works with windows 11, I have it on an unsupported gen 6 intel desktop + a newer laptop. This version is a fork of the original thats no longer maintained but they didn't update the readme.

Interesting. But seems to only support Windows 10?

Works with windows 11 too.

I have a love and hate relationship with this type of tools.

On one hand, I want to remove all that I don't need and keep my privacy on my computer; on the other I don't want to have to fiddle and google why the Windows update failed.

Because, I stopped counting how many times one of those registry changes/app removal actually broke Windows update.

In the end, I just run other software like StartAllBack that I can easily uninstall if it causes issues when updating Windows.

How's StartAllBack compare to other software like Start11?

Afaik is the only one that supports a vertical sidebar.

What about top

The one thing I miss about Vista is the ability to have the whole My Computer menu bar across the top of your desktop.

Yeah, works as well. But IIRC most taskbar replacements support that.

I wish there was one of these Start replacement programs that expanded the functionality instead of just giving back what Microsoft has taken from us. How about a Taskbar that auto-hides but only after a certain amount of time? How about a Taskbar that expands to show additional rows when you have a lot of windows open and hides itself when you don't?

It has some other features, I just don’t need them. I was perfectly happy with the Windows taskbar as it was, all that was missing was a sane position for it, as, unlike the MS devs, I do not have a portrait monitor (at least that’s the only¹ reason I can think of for forcing people to use a horizontal taskbar).

¹: Yes, that’s hyperbole.

I use Sledgehammer to control when Windows Update runs and which updates it installs.

> times one of those registry changes/app removal actually broke Windows update.

If there is an option in Registry, it's clearly an acceptable use-case.

The truth is that Microsoft developers are lazy (like most devs) and just fail to test their updates properly - or even intentionally ship broken software, in order to force this or that option back to its (typically privacy-invasive) default.

That's not true at all. The contents of the registry are not a documented public API. They have no support guarantee. Some keys are documented, but those are not what these tools modify and are not the ones that cause problems.

"I deleted a whole bunch of stuff in xorg.conf and my graphics started flickering" is not the fault of Xorg needing more tests.

These options are more like "I deleted a whole bunch of stuff in xorg.conf and my apt-get can't apply patches to KMail". An update-delivery mechanism shouldn't break because the user doesn't want to see ads or run Teams at startup.

If the problem is that Windows Update cannot work unless all patches apply flawlessly, then that's a failure of design.

If the problem is that the patches themselves assume that things they provide as options might not be set how they wish them to be set, then that's a failure of testing.

> If the problem is that Windows Update cannot work unless all patches apply flawlessly, then that's a failure of design.

Not at all, it's better for an update to just immediately fail due to unsupported changes made to the OS than potentially leave the system in a unstable state.

Windows was going to move to an image-based OS where updates would be atomic, but sadly that never happened (Windows 10X)

The fact that failing to update some Notepad functionality could leave the system "unstable" says a lot about the engineering culture at Microsoft, I guess.

Humbly submitting Chris Titus' Debloat tool as well for comparison. I've enjoyed using Chris' tool, as the GUI design makes it easy to a-la-carte select which you want removed and not, along with recommendations. Makes it very clear to see what's being removed.

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

It looks neat, but running off of his site directly via an administrator elevated powershell is an awful security practice.

That was an instant dealbreaker for me. Someone who pushes that can't be given basic trust for literally anything else.

At the very least, he could've hosted the script on github.com, which is far less likely to be hijacked than his personal domain.

He sells it wrapped in an EXE for $10. That provides incentive to not make things easy or follow any best practices.

Some bad advice in there...

    Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force

Should be:

    Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope Process

Turning off that feature permanently is a bad idea.

You're trying to convince a bunch of people that think

  curl | sudo sh

with random scripts off the internet is perfectly okay.

What better alternatives do you recommend?

Signed executables

Are there signed executables that do what Win11Debloat and similar tools do?

I know that ShutUp10 is signed[1].

1. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

> What better alternatives do you recommend?

Install packages only from the operating system's package repository or from another trusted repository.

If the software installer is only available as a script, download the script manually and check its contents instead of piping it to a root shell (and maybe run it in a VM instead). That way, you can know if the code is trying to do something nefarious. Piping to Bash can also be detected server side, so a server can serve malicious code when it is piped and good code when it is not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11532599

This is kind of the problem with Windows-y thinking, yes.

"Oh the security stuff is in the way, why does it need that, MSDOS doesn't have it, no-one needs it"

If you turn the complexity curve of debloating and custom Windows ROMs about 90 degrees, it's the same as the backwards bend Windows users are doing to avoid jumping to something easier like Linux Mint.

No, then they tell you about all the not-working AAA-games they boycott and why that somehow hinders them of using Linux, which they by the way already tried in 1995 and it didn't work out back then so why should it now?

If we're expecting consistency, the overlap between "AAA games boycott" and "Linux users" should be fairly significant. I'm doing my part, though I must say, the utterly whelming stock of third-person movie-games is making it a LOT easier.

That's quite a fantasy you've cooked up there.

There is nothing demonic about happily gaming on the supported software platform. I have Windows because I play games built for Windows.

I have Fedora on my laptop.

Edit: oh yeah, a fresh KDE fedora install with encrypted volumes can't open the file manager without doing a one time cli to create a thumbnails directory. And I can't watch h26(4|5) videos in YouTube, supposedly unless I enable a 3p repo and install a package which gives me a dependency conflict.

Yeah this is me. I've been using Windows since version 3, and was a windows dev for many years before focusing on linux and open source. Now Windows is basically for steam games, media consumption and displaying my work laptop using NoMachine (VNC on steroids, since windows is in control of my two Dell 27" displays and a nice keyboard and mouse).

Hasn't Steam Deck pretty much solved that problem by shoveling such insane amounts of money into Wine/Proton that it is able to pretty much run everything you want in terms of games?

Unfortunately there are a select few (though popular) games like Valorant that won't run because they require anti-cheat software with Windows kernel-mode drivers.

That said, it does support _a lot_.

Unfortunately very much not the case.

There are still a lot of issues playing games outside of Steam, and not every game is available in steam.

As someone else said there are some issues with anticheat (but some do work).

It is also not unheard of for a game to have an update and it break the proton compatibility. Meaning anyone who wants to play the game has to wait for proton to update with a fix.

But also, not every game on Steam works either.

I have been surprised how easy it was to get my not-too-technically-savvy mum to use Manjaro. She spends the vast majority (if not all) of her time in the browser, so there's no difference.

She’s since died, but my grandmother ran a minimal Linux distro I installed for her (I think lubuntu) for years and I think in 6 years or so had only one issue that needed help (someone to read the error message and okay the fsck).

Otherwise, I doubt she noticed the difference from her prior Windows usage.

I wouldn't have gone for Manjaro, but Linux environments with user friendly interfaces are great for many more people than they would appear to be at first glance.

You'll need to play tech support every now and then ("I have a new printer, and...") and you'll need to teach people the basics, but a lot of occasional computer users will be happy with modern Linux.

However, if you use your computer for your job, you'll either have an interest in learning how to accomplish it, or you'll have an awful time using Linux. Microsoft Office still has an edge over any open source product out there. Games work (sort of) through Steam, but if your games come from Epic you'll need to dive into the world of alternative launchers and compatibility layers to play them (if they even work at all). VPN/RDP software can usually work, if you put in the effort to learn about how they work under the hood and what configuration files you need to edit.

This leads to a pretty wacky parabolic usability graph, where Linux is great for the people with the least amount of interest and knowledge about computers and for computer experts, but bad to unusable for those in the middle between the two.

Desktop Linux has been bridging the gap, with more and better GUIs and better defaults, but as long as we'll have loud, hardcore "everybody needs to know the terminal or they shouldn't use Linux at all" Linux users I'm afraid ChromeOS will eat Linux's lunch before anyone even notices.

I disagree, you are comparing a one time setup vs re-learning how to use your computer.

Not to mention any later compatibility issues you may need to diagnose, particularly with gaming. Not everything works with Proton and there are other stores than just Steam.

A debloated Windows is still Windows. Bundle this with a "use these debloat settings for gaming" and it could be just clicking a couple of buttons for the majority of users.

Windows breaks all the time for lots of people. My brother has a weird issue with his computer where it gets temporarily stuck in a boot loop if "fast startup" is enabled in Windows. After I figured this out I turned it off and it was fine(and booted faster!). Then Windows update happened and the setting was switched back on again. I'm not sure how to solve it other than periodically making sure it hasn't magically been turned on again.

For small-time users who aren't on a domain, there is no solution to reverted settings and other manifestations of contempt besides running LTSC.

SWIM set himself up as an official IoT OEM to get legitimate licenses for his own use, but most people will have to pirate it. This is nobody's fault but Microsoft's.

I suspect that Microsoft's options were partially limited by people pirating Windows.

To the extent that's true, I think the blame is shared.

But that's just a footnote. I hold deep antipathy to Microsoft employees who made Windows into user-hostile spyware.

I don't think Microsoft has ever cared in the slightest about people pirating Windows. It's all about market share, as far as they're concerned, and market share is where you find it.

If we are going to talk about OS's failing to boot I have had this plenty of times with various Linux installations in VM's or raspberry pi's.

So not really sure I would specifically hold that against Windows. However I do agree that Windows turning on a feature with Updates is particularly annoying.

Personally the only time I have had that issue on my or my partners computer (at least in the last 10ish years) was when I updated my Nvidia driver and the installer didn't clean up the old one properly. While that is partially Windows fault I struggle to blame Windows specifically for a poor installer.

I have had nothing but trouble with Linux and Nvidia drivers. I am willing to put up with it because I love Linux distros but I do not recommend Linux to anyone because it still hasn't got enough polish the average person can use it without loss of generality.

Windows has it's own set of problems. However, it's intuitive enough that Grandma can pick it up reasonably quickly. There's something to be said about that.

The day Linux Mint has a competent win32 and directx api (Wine is not there yet and may never be) I will switch.

Windows is inconvenient at times but if I have to choose between inconvenience and not being able to use my programs... what's the point of having a computer if it can't run your programs?

Out of curiosity, what programs?

I know how this works: I give a list of programs, and someone comes and says "half of those run more or less well on wine, and then the other half have native alternatives that work more or less well".

Meh, I keep a Windows installation around for gaming myself, so I'm not hardcore about it. More and more of my work and personal stuff does move over to Linux every year though.

> what's the point of having a computer if it can't run your programs?

The point of having a computer is to be able to program it actually. This is not a TV appliance. So I would say the correct answer is port your programs to a better OS.

Despite the slow enshittification of the Windows GUI, I still prefer it to the mess Linux has on the GUI front. Linux is great for CLI and headless. Hence I combine both.

Which parts are a mess?

I don't think I could use Linux if it weren't for Linux Mint/Cinnamon specifically, as I haven't had good experiences with other desktop enviroments. It has one or two quirks, but at this point it's far less quirks than a fresh Windows install and the list of config options I had to change/the .reg file I started accumulating

> Which parts are a mess?

Usability conventions between GUI applications. Keyboardability. GUI automation à la AutoHotKey. Font rendering. X vs. Wayland.

Ah, I relate with some of these. Though, most of it has just been intermittent annoyances. There are things I've been able to do with X and xdotool I wouldn't have been able to do on Windows. GUI conventions have all been sane, but most things I use were things I ran on Windows (Krita, Insomnia, Discord, Obsidian, etc).

Honestly, no more or less problems than Windows. But I've found it so much easier to debug by having readily available logs and man pages. I think this might just be my use cases though.

Modern Windows has problems with all of these as well due to the divide between classic Win32/MFC/etc programs, modern UWP/WinUI programs, and Electron programs (which each have a completely unique user interface).

Right, but I still mostly use win32-based programs, so there is a great deal of uniformity there.

xdotool is AutoHotKey for Linux. (ydotool on Wayland, if you've switched for some reason.)

On any Linux DE, you have native configurable key shortcuts (binding commands to keystrokes).

On KDE, Win+right-click for resizing a window from anywhere in the window (no need to click the edges) is awesome. Win+left-click for moving a window from anywhere in the window (no need to click the title bar) is awesome. Ctrl+Alt+Esc to turn your cursor into a little skull and crossbones and instantly kill whatever program you click the window of is awesome. Dolphin is amazing compared to Explorer (tabs, split views, rich file metadata displayed right below filenames).

Alt+tab to summon krunner, a tiny temporary window in the middle of the screen. Type the name of an app, Enter, and it launches. Type a math equation, and it evaluates it. Type "define" and a word, and it pulls a dictionary definition.

Clipboard history in the tray (works with pictures!). Related, Flameshot, which puts Window's Snippet Tool to shame. Like on Windows, Win+. for the emoji picker, but with more modern emojis than Windows currently supports. Customizable emoji fonts, too, unlike on Windows (Twemoji, the one Discord uses, is the best).

Gwenview is better than Window's Photos, and Okular is better than Adobe Reader.

Windows UX has nothing on KDE's UX, and I never wanna go back to an OS that can't translate billions of dollars to features I can get for free because it treats me as a dataminable cost center.

Slow?

It started with Windows 8, which was released 11 years ago. If the enshittification keeps roughly the same velocity, I’d estimate at least another decade or so before it crosses my personal pain threshold.

Microsoft’s cloudification strategy may become another factor.

My pain threshold was crossed this past week when Edge added a Bing search bar to the middle of the Windows desktop. Even though the default search bar 4 inches away already searches Bing, and the Weather applet by the clock now has sensationalist news forced into it.

I've been using default Gnome and PopOS's Gnome version as daily drivers for years, probably like 10 years or so. I also keep a Windows partition for gaming and use Windows at work.

Can't say I've had any problems.

Well, one glaringly obvious problem is that you're using GNOME.

Mind elaborating, or just want to contribute empty snark? I know there's a bit of a meme about Gnome being terrible, but it works really well for my workflow, and plays nicely with my multi-monitor setup. It's also been super stable for me.

I like having the super key bound to a single quick animation that: 1. Let's me see all my windows in context 2. allows me to quickly access files and applications via the keyboard by typing their name

Like, it's barebones, but I can keep it very uncluttered. At first I was bothered by the lack of desktop icons, but came to really like it. It works super well for switching between local work and remote environments (via remmina). Over the years I've run Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, and Unity among others, and I really fail to understand the Gnome hate.

Which mess?

I see choice. My choice may not be the same as yours. Most major desktop projects allows you to have a clean and powerful desktop whose ergonomy is superior to those provided by current proprietary OSes.

What are some ways in which they are superior?

I optimized mine for speed. I use i3, and while I have to manually install stuff like xfce4-clipman-plugin and volumeicon, and have to manage displays with arandr, everything is snappy, even on my 8-year-old laptop.

Every now and then I look at someone using a Windows computer, and I am flummoxed how people put up with the slow, sloppy and ad-ridden Start menu experience. You can't even type "shut down" to get the shut down option, instead it offers to search the App Store. In addition to the Store, there are Weather widgets, a MS account, and Cortana shoved up your throat, Alt+Tab cycling through Edge tabs, when you have Ctrl+Tab... ugh.

I use dmenu, and all my apps are searchable and launchable instantly; no bullshit spinning circles while it phones home halfway across the globe.

Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36970679

OneDrive hijacking your file system

Cortana interrupting

Ads for Games on the start menu

Rage Bait news in the start menu.

Insistence on using Edge

---

No you can't uninstall these and make the problem go away. It requires linux tier skills to figure out how to uninstall edge. But worse than linux tier, you must keep disabling things in the registry since the updates reenable.

I was this person. I would have switched _years_ earlier had I known that with Linux Mint I would get Windows-like desktop, hotkeys, and explorer, taskbar, etc, which was so much better than my experiences with Ubuntu and Unity and other desktop environments. Cinnamon (Mint's desktop environment) is really nice.

I regret not doing it sooner, my development life has become more focused and easier.

Yeah Cinnamon was really the turning point for me.

The reality is Windows 95 more or less nailed the last paradigm we needed in desktop computing, and everything else is minor refinements.

Cinnamon apes that very sensibly.

>it's the same as the backwards bend Windows users are doing to avoid jumping to something easier like Linux Mint

No need to be snarky for a cheap shot at windows users who never bothered you with anything, not everyone is trying to avoid jumping or trying to jump.

Get out of your (tech) bubble and touch some grass, plenty of Average Joe users are contempt using what's familiar and works for them out of the box with their Lenovo/Asus laptop, and use their free time for other things instead of learning about new GNU/Linux operating systems, because they have other hobbies and uses for their time, so no need to talk down on them off your IT high-horse.

The group of people who can't go 5 minutes without bashing Windows 11, are just a loud minority (who don't use Windows 11 anyway lol) that goes unheard of in the "real world" where people have other stuff on their mind than worrying about their OS.

Just live and let live, and use the energy you put in bashing Windows 11 online, towards something actually productive. Windows 11 users who are really unhappy will seek the change themselves.

I didn't read the GP comment as bashing.

I read it as simply asserting that the levels of effort were closer than some Windows users realize.

The vast majority of Average Joes Windows users don't seek out debloating tools on GitHub though, but the HN hivemind is too self-absorbed and out of touch to realize this. Most users don't even know what GitHub is except maybe some website programmers use.

And the users who do seek out debloating tools, it's because they need/prefer Windows over Linux mint despite them having the skills to learn to use Linux.

It's not about effort, it's about necessity/preference/habit.

Oh, the sensitivity of the Windows defender.

I'll keep repeating this. I've been doing "installing operating systems and intro to IT courses" for well over a decade now, for many different types of users at many skill levels.

Out of the box Linux (e.g. Mint) is an across the board better operating system for anyone who doesn't need anything specifically tied to Windows. It's easier, it just works.

I admit that it's not all "Linux people are awesome" as much as I would like -- it's "most everything most people need is available on the Web," which Linux is very good at.

The Linux experience is roughly equal to the Mac experience, and Windows is third. Inertia is presently Windows Desktop only advantage.

>> anyone who doesn't need anything specifically tied to Windows

This is the elephant in the room.

That's no excuse, they can learn to use Gimp and FreeCAD instead of using Photoshop and AutoCAD. /s

I'm with you on this, but again, far fewer people even need things as heavy as Gimp/Photoshop with the web alternatives around. Stuff like Canva, even.

The accounting and finance departments of every business run on Excel. The Microsoft office suite is an absolute bare minimum requirement for people who work in those worlds, and it's the main reason Windows sticks around there.

(Office 365 may be changing that, though.)

In my experience, there's far less of this than one would think.

E.g. Yes, even my workplace requires crappy Outlook email, but the web is just as bad-slash-good.

It's telling that MS Windows users react so defensively to what was a very reasonable comment.

Reasonable from who's PoV?

I dual boot because Linux still can’t play a huge number of games.

Linux is for work. Win11 is for gaming

Eh, depends on "easier".

For day-to-day tasks as a technical user I use a Mac but wouldn't find it to be an issue to use linux for most of my work.

However, my strictly-gaming PC runs Windows. It's by-far the easiest, least-effort, and overwhelmingly the most supported choice. I'm not wanting to put on the sysadmin hat when wanting to decompress after work.

>the backwards bend Windows users are doing to avoid jumping to something easier like Linux Mint.

As a Windows user, I need and want Windows. Not a free knockoff that will have me messing with the computer just so I can maybe do something with it.

Just curious, does mint have an easy to set up cloud file system (easy as in login, click “yes backup”, and done) does it integrate with the word processor and spreadsheet software so that atomic changes are saved in real-time creating an easy version history? Do those same programs have online equivalents that allow multiple users to edit at the same time as me?

Forget gaming, 90% of what I use my personal computer for is described above, I don’t find it fun to spend an afternoon trying to wrangle syncthing or spider sync into something that it wasn’t meant to be just to get a workflow that is first class in windows.

Look up Free office; it's a 99% identical clone of the Microsoft Office suite for Mac and Linux, and it's free.

Couple that with Dropbox (which has version history for files on its paid plan), and you're good to go. Dolphin, the best file manager, also integrates with Dropbox nicely.

I don't know why anyone Linux-literate would recommend Mint though. Try KDE instead. I recommend Manjaro, which is a managed rolling release that always has brand new software. KDE is the best desktop environment on Linux, the most powerfully customizable and feature-rich as well as the most Windows-like. (Mint uses Cinnamon, which is much worse, fringe, and crashy than KDE. Linux Mint is what children use as their first distro lol.)

I looked up freeoffice, while it does have many similarities, the main thing I need: collaborative editing and auto-save don’t appear to be part of the features of the free version.

Additionally, if Dropbox version history works the same way it did with MS365, I don’t need it in my life. We had that at work, there were constantly different versions of the same doc being created, and it was never clear which was the latest.

Also the fact that there is a “best” file manager and it’s not the one that comes with the OS means this isn’t for me. I don’t enjoy spending every other weekend tweaking my tools to be just so, I just want sane defaults so I can do the thing I want with the tool. I know some people really enjoy the tweaking and for them, that’s the main reason to even have the tool, but for me, I like my tools to just work.

Some people are stuck due to driver support. As streaming has been growing, ElGato has zero official support for Linux. I solved this by relegating Windows to a tiny 1 liter PC after enough Windows anti-patterns.

>> If you turn the complexity curve of debloating and custom Windows ROMs about 90 degrees, it's the same as the backwards bend Windows users are doing to avoid jumping to something easier like Linux Mint.

Let me know when Linux is running games that have Easy Anti Cheat or stuff from Blizzard. It's the day I will ditch my windows gaming rig. Until then, kindly STFU.

StarCraft 2 and WoW ran great before Blizzard made the launcher not work. On the plus side, I mercifully no longer want to play the mediocre games of that horrible (soon to be owned by Microsoft like Bethesda? kekw) company. :D By being so unbelievably scummy and shitty for the last few years (aligning exactly with my shift to Linux), Blizzard and Bethesda have gone from my favorite game companies to my most hated, which is awful kind of them for eliminating the dilemma of dual booting.

It's a Blizzard problem, not a Linux problem.

No iCloud Drive on Linux is an Apple problem right?

If I write software and I don't support macOS, it's not a fault of macOS.

Agree 100%, but it's also not a "problem" as you said with Blizzard. Blizzard as an entity made a decission to support only popular operating systems (Windows, PS5 OS and Xbox OS) for probably monetary reasons. That is not a "problem" but a choice on their end. That still doesn't justify GP's comment of "Just use Linux! It's betterer!!!!!one11eleventyone!". In an utopic world, everyone with a half brain would ditch Windows if the software they need would run fine on [insert other OS here]. In the real world, it's not possible.

Blizzard games work pretty well with Lutris. It handles all the Wine config stuff for average users who just want their game to work, but power users can tweak it. I've had Diablo 2 Resurrected and StarCraft 2 running for years with no hassle.

https://lutris.net/games/diablo-2-ressurected/

You clearly haven't checked in for a while. I've been playing Blizzard games and EAC games for multiple years now. They work great unless the dev specifically rejects EAC support. D4 and Dragonflight worked flawlessly on launch. Squad and other EAC games are also totally green.

If you don't have a video card, I agree.

If you have a video card... It takes a few hours to figure it out.

But yes, then you are free from Microsoft's hold.

Whatever, I'll bite.

I'm a software developer. Some reasons I'm on Windows.

1. Font rendering

Programmers, admins, devops, people in tech basically stare at text all day long. Some people seem to be oblivious to font rendering issues on Linux. If you're one of them, lucky you! I'm not looking for imperfections just to pick on them, my eyes do notice them though.

1.1 Subpixel smoothing.

Was not a thing for a long time. I'm perfectly aware it wasn't due to technical reasons but because of patents on the technology. Withholding my judgment on the patent system overall, I'll just say knowing the reason didn't make it any easier on my eyes.

Yes, you could rebuild libfreetype with `#define FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING` or hunt down and install an Infinality package. If you were on a distro with libfreetype compiled without that `#define` (as in almost all of them except Ubuntu), the very next thing you'd be faced with is the fact that packages relying on libfreetype check `ftoption.h` for the flag at compile time. Which makes sense -- how else would you check for a `define`? The result of this was that Firefox, KDE, Qt, and GTK apps wouldn't take advantage of subpixel rendering in libfreetype, unless you set out recompile all of them too (as I used to do). So much for the model of only single copy of a shared library in the system, I guess...

But that has finally changed for the better 3 or 4(?) years ago. Now `FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING` is defined by default in all major distros, afaik.

Alas, my eyes still can't stand Linux font rendering, which brings us to

1.2 Font kerning

It's simple really, the spacing between letters looks uneven. Apart from making rendered text look ugly, it makes reading harder by breaking the visual rhythm of the text. I feel, it increases eye strain too.

Head to this page for a visual illustration of what I'm going on about: https://pandasauce.org/post/linux-fonts/#the-ugliest-part

Let me take a moment to remind you, our jobs involve staring at text all day long. Don't know about you, but to me good font rendering is a huge deal.

1.3 Config files

Let's see, this Arch wiki page[^1] lists how many configuration files related to fonts? There's the fontconfig library with user configuration files in `~/.fonts.conf.d/`, there is XOrg's `~/.Xresources` for apps that don't support fontconfig, and then there is the gnome-tweaks, and xsettingsd utilities. This list is likely not exhaustive either.

And it's not like you can ignore some of this configs and utilities, if you want consistent font rendering across the system, you'll have to futz around with most of them. A nice bonus, font rendering of Qt apps can and does break if run them in GNOME. Font rendering of GTK apps can and does break if you happen to start one in KDE. As they say, in Linux you can configure everything, and you will be configuring everything.

But you're learning how your OS works under the hood? Yeah, no, not really.

Learning how hardware works is interesting and potentially beneficial for your career prospects, same with learning how a kernel works, or, you know, even learning the fundamentals of font rendering can make you a better programmer.

Learning to handle a bunch of config files scattered all over the place just to get fonts render half-decently is nothing but a waste of time. And I shudder to think just how much I personally wasted.

That's it on fonts, but there's more on Linux.

2. Drivers

Linus made an intentional, strategic decision early on: the kernel is not going to maintain backward-compatible ABI for drivers (don't confuse this with user-space backward-compatibility though). The idea was to put pressure on hardware vendors to make their drives open-source and add them to the kernel's source tree.

The year is 2023, and it seems that decision back-fired just a little bit, at least for Desktop systems. But who knows, let's have a bit of patience, because important change doesn't come easy and fast. That said, while I don't care much about 3D acceleration, I really enjoy my laptop's touch-pad just working and its battery not draining because the discrete and integrated GPUs have no problems working in "hybrid" mode under Windows.

That's probably it for the list of "global" things that are broken (just my opinion) in Linux. Mind you, not for the lack of material, I'm just out of steam by now. Just one thing to add about Mint in particular.

3. Linux Mint distro user-friendliness

Last I checked, Mint had updates grouped into five categories numbered from 1 to 5. 1 being the least risky, 5 labeled Dangerous and colored red. The funny part is, many security updates would land in "5 - Dangerous". So, there you're having a security hole in your system, but it's dangerous to install an update patching it. Does it sound user-friendly to you? There was even a bit of drama around this subject back at the time[^2].

---

[^1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/font_configuration

[^2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20131206095859/https://lists.ubu...

I don't remember which one I have used in the past, if it was this one or not. (I think it is but not 100% sure)

But this really is not for someone who does not really understand Windows. I ended up having a ton of issues gaming on my computer after this and it took a few tries to get it right.

Personally if you don't mind the less than legal options, I highly recommend Windows 10 LTS. I use it on my Steam Deck and it has been amazing. Since it is an official build from Microsoft I have not had any compatibility issues and when something is missing I can easily install it.

Been debating on moving my primary computer over but I have not wanted to go through reinstalling everything.

Side note, a debloated or LTS version of Windows runs great on my steam deck and I find that I sometimes get better performance than for the same game running under Steam OS. So tools like this can really optimize your setup if you are trying to squeeze as much performance out of your machine as possible.

LTSC versions of Windows are literally missing major features and APIs, you should not be surprised if certain apps don't work on this version of Windows. It's designed for kiosk applications, not general purpose computers.

It's missing all the new stuff that no one really wants.

I can't find anything saying it is meant for Kiosk applications that more that this is simply a long term support version of Windows that also removes a lot of the things that are not necessary in an enterprise setting.

Now yes it was missing some of the things necessary for gaming but when I installed the Xbox app it easily also installed the other missing components.

Windows on my Steam Deck gets daily use from me with the LTSC version and have had no issues.

From https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/ove...:

> The Long-Term Servicing Channel is not intended for deployment on most or all the PCs in an organization. The LTSC edition of Windows 10 provides customers with access to a deployment option for their special-purpose devices and environments. These devices typically perform a single important task and don’t need feature updates as frequently as other devices in the organization

Nothing about that really screams "kiosk" to me.

That to me says a purpose built computer, which both my desktop and steam deck sole purpose is to play games.

I don't need regular updates either, I need a stable OS. Most games are not on the bleeding edge of technology and need the latest Windows features, especially if those features are not back ported to Windows 10.

Again will point out that I am running this daily on my Steam Deck for gaming and have had zero issues with compatibility.

It's fine that it's working for you, but I was describing what its intended purpose is. If you're happy with using your wrench to hammer in nails, I'm certainly not going to stop you!

Look like it's MS way to shoo people away from this version (Which contain no bloatware)

Right? It was clearly written in a way to convince most people not to use it but it's a perfectly viable Windows installation for most people.

I mean there is some truth that it is missing stuff, I had to install some gaming libraries. But it just installed it when I missed it, it was easier than dealing with dependencies in some repo's I have worked with. And this was on a touch screen without a keyboard and mouse on my Steam Deck.

I am pretty sure anyone that has ever installed anything on Windows could figure out how it works.

Now the only catch is if certain things you install have to install enough things that you are suddenly back to a normal Windows installation (for example, it doesn't come with the Windows store but when I installed the Xbox app it relies on that). But that same catch exists for any debloat tool as well.

Unless you play candy crush saga, there no way it go back to "normal"

What missing here?

I been using it as main OS at work for 3 years (.net shop)

> LTSC versions of Windows are literally missing major features and APIs

That's the point. Nearly all of the new "features" they've added are either useless or actively user-hostile.

Don't just parrot their marketing/sales BS, obviously they don't want a majority of their normal users running a version of the OS they can't just shove any new crapware into whenever they feel like. That looks bad on the balance sheet.

I swear I wanted to smash my work computer being permanently molested by some xbox overlay when using some random shortcut. Wtf were they thinking?

I mostly use Macs, and without wasting your time with the details my CTRL-C equivalent in the Terminal is WindowsKey-C. Well, I was in Powershell on Windows 11 yesterday and needed to CTRL-C something and muscle memoried my Mac shortcut and it popped up some sort of chat GUI with no [X] button. What the heck is this stuff? Who wants these features?

I do have to say after much reluctance I upgraded my PC from Windows 10 to 11 and it's much more than a reskin. I even shoehorned it on my 4th gen i7 laptop and it's never run better. I'm looking forward to trying this tonight to get rid of some of the cruft.

If you don't have a video card, it takes minutes to change to Linux.

If you have a video card, it takes hours.

Still better than M$.

I dual boot (currently Artix) but the gaming experience is still best on Windows.

What is M$?

BloatyNosy (similar to ThisIsWin11) is better: https://github.com/builtbybel/BloatyNosy/releases

It seems this requires you to use a GUI? I find a customizable script that I can run in one go and repeatedly preferable.

Has anyone here tried this? When projects like this normally pop up I see people talk about potential issues with future Windows updates.

I'm in a bit of a tricky spot, in the next month or two I'll be building a new PC and I really don't know what to do about the OS. Windows is familiar, easy, and I know how to fix things with it, but the increasing amount of bloat and needless online integration is putting me off Windows 11 (my current W10 doesn't have the start menu online search thank God).

Recently I got sick of Windows 11's bloat + poor performance on my ThinkPad and Iinstalled Linux. I got a month and a half out of Fedora until something happened and half of my flatpaks would crash seconds after launch – even with terminal logs and the entire internet to sift through, I knew that I was way above my head. Currently I'm on Mint and hoping I don't run into anything like that again. I can use Linux, but I know the limits of my knowledge.

I can take a semi-disposable nature with what I put on my laptop, if I have to install another Linux distro I'll do it in a heartbeat. But with my desktop, I can't take the same approach. And again, Windows is familiar enough to me that I can diagnose + fix issues easily. I'd just like to know people's experiences with running scripts like this.

Imagine the goodwill Microsoft could garner with advanced users if this was a simple mouse click during the installation.

Advanced Install > Minimal Install

How much is the goodwill of those advanced users worth (incrementally over today) compared to the rev-share and advertising dollars they’d lose by regular users choosing this after watching a YouTube or two?

Yeah, I’d like it, but it’s not hard to see why Microsoft doesn’t want to offer it.

It would cost them too much money. Everyone is in for rent seeking these days... back in ye olde days (aka early '00s) you could actually buy operating systems or software, and you could keep using them virtually forever if you were fine that after a year or two you wouldn't get any bugfixes, and no new features at all.

Nowadays, people simply don't have the money to shell out hundreds of dollars for Windows, Office or the Adobe Suite (the CS6 Master Collection was like what, 8.000$?) any more, and so it's cheaper on paper for everyone to either have subscription models (like Adobe or MS Office) or "freemium" models (Windows). Obviously Microsoft has to make up the difference in income somehow, and they chose to go the advertising route. Offering an easy way to get rid of all the invasive advertising and tracking would kill that golden goose.

That's the Microsoft which will kick you back into setup wizard on every major update and try to reset default browser, search and document editing apps to Edge/Bing/Office-Outlook?

>Hide the 'Include in library', 'Give access to' and 'Share' options in the context menu.

Uh no? How are you supposed to set up network shares.

And why is it removing useful apps like 3D Viewer and Remote Desktop?

Windows’ product marketing teams are doing more to drive me towards Linux than any actual benefit Linux offers. The only things keeping me on Windows are Microsoft Flight Simulator and some obscure wargames.

I'd love to have a way to remove Edge. But it seems impossible.

there's a really easy way to remove edge, just install Ubuntu!

True ahah. And that's what I did. I'm dual booting my desktop but I do need Windows for gaming.

Have you tried to do an internet search? There are simple step-by-step tutorials that tell you how to do it (and no 3rd party software is required).

Note: it can get reinstalled automatically after an update, but you can add a registry setting to prevent that.

Yes that's my issue, it always come back (like weekly). I was not aware I could add a registry entry. I'll try, thank you :=)

Another way to debloat windows is not to have windows at all

I've been using SophiApp[0]/SophiScript for the last 6 months whenever I take a look at a Windows computer. I appreciate the GUI for case-specific toggling of certain features. Like it or not, the people we help sometimes want some of these things.

0 - https://github.com/Sophia-Community/SophiApp

I dont see restoring old right click context menu

You can do this by deleting the default value (should be 'C:\Windows\System32\Windows.UI.FileExplorer.dll') under the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InProcServer32

though IIRC a tool to escalate privileges is needed to be able to modify the key.

The tool I posted elsewhere in the thread has an option to restore the old context menu but its overkill to create an ISO and do a complete re-install just for that xD.

My question to this is "why go through the trouble of doing this when there's operating systems where you don't need to do a debloat step"

I realize the answer is that people use Windows because the software they use requires Windows, but it just irks me that this is the solution to not wanting a "bloated" OS.

There are versions of Windows that do not have the bloat issue. Enterprise or Education are good options.

I was considering getting Enterprise edition, but the side by side comparison between Home and Enterprise did not mention the lack of bloat.

It showed literally only 1 checkbox about some security thing.

Ended up going with Linux since it seemed OneDrive/malware was inevitable.

I may be wrong, but this tool seems more trustworthy to me https://www.oo-software.com/en/ooappbuster

You always have to be careful with tools that modify Windows, you may have issues, specially with Windows updates.

I like using the VMware Horizon OS Optimization Tool. Its quite powerful at removing bloat and unneeded features for running windows smoothly in a VM, with granular control. Installing windows in Audit mode was also a useful discovery, that this tool recommended doing for a fresh install.

Is this any better than decrapifier? https://community.spiceworks.com/scripts/show/4378-windows-1...

Having been bitten in the past, i'm always terrified that tools like this contain malware.

There's precious little code to read....

A bit too late for me.

I got nailed with deleting a 5gb documents folder on OneDrive. It deleted my local 25GB documents folder.

In the recycling bin was 5gb of files, the other 20GB of files are gone.

Installed Linux, which sucked for a few hours, but I'm so happy to be free of Microsoft!!!

I could really go for something like Ninite that let me easily customize win11. It's about turning stuff off but also enabling some of those optional windows features like hyper-v.

Just let me install, fire up ninite, that util, and we're off.

I use https://christitus.com/debloat-windows-10-2020/ a bit more options

A friend introduced me to him at a bar, they were old friends. I had no idea who he was but kept thinking he really looked familiar. Very nice guy!

What makes this superior or more easy than https://privacy.sexy/?

Best debloat technique is to just switch to Linux

relevant https://blog.frantovo.cz/s/1576/Niklaus%20Wirth%20-%20A%20Pl...

Why does win11 even exist, after w10 having been introduced as the final OS? What crap does it contain that couldn't be put into 10 via updates? Why would you use it voluntarily? I'm honestly curious.

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