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Comment by mattbee | Hacker News Reader

The key to having a nice time with Windows is 1) to give it loads of memory (32GB+ surely) and 2) to run a debloater script the moment you pick up a new system e.g. https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

All the rubbish from the last 20 years - ads, OneDrive, Copilot, Office upsells, Candy Crush in the start menu - it can just disappear, leaving a pretty stable system that hasn't actually changed much.

Apart from the awful control panels, anything else you don't like is probably replaceable. I really love startallback.com which brings back the regular start menu and lots of other little fixes.

Obviously everyone deserves a computer that doesn't try to sell to them CONSTANTLY, and I wish Windows were better out of the box. But it doesn't take much adjustment to get there.

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If only our technology were advanced enough that we could have an OS that didn't constantly undermine the user's intentions.

This looks great. In your experience, do you run it once and that's it? Or do you need to re-run as updates add or re-introduce "bloat"?

You definitely should run it after updates.

Personally I don't think I've ever re-run it. I think I've clicked a few buttons as I've seen alerts about new options appearing. But ultimately it's just a bunch of powershell commands to remove packages and set options. So I'd assume it's safe to run regularly.

Thanks. I was asking because I was hoping to run it for a relative's computer that I am reinstalling Win11 on now, and they would not be capable of re-running it after the fact.

> give it loads of memory (32GB+ surely)

Make that 64 if you’re obliged to run Teams. I wonder how many power plants the US could retire if we all stopped using it.

I wonder what exactly Microsoft did with “New Teams” that was supposedly written in Rust and uses the system browser engine or whatever instead of Electron. On release it seemed better, but now it seems as bloated, slow and annoying as the Electron one. MS Teams seems to have some incurable infection.

If I could, MS Teams would be the second tool I’d eject out (after Outlook and Exchange). But the company I work in is tied to MS 365 and will not give up on Teams and its useless cousin SharePoint.

Or buy an IOT LTSC license to have an officially debloated version.

How? It's only available to companies.

There are sites that will happily sell you keys, though I don’t feel qualified to comment on their legitimacy.

You could also sail the seven seas and run an AutoKMS script, though that might (and probably will) include some malware.

If your options include paying for piracy or pirating for free, always pirate for free.

https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

Or don't buy a licence and use it anyway.

Linux is not getting better in those respects, either. DE's are crazy bloated. For everyone bitching about control panels, tell me how is it done in Linux? In the WM control panel or the DE control panel? Or some obscure .conf file you must edit by hand? Your guess is as good as mine and it's beyond disorganized. If I want to change a font it's a game of three card monte.

Linux desktop environments remind me what TempleOS would look like if it was designed by committee.

Bloat is what you call any feature you're not actively using.

Only difference is on Windows nobody wants those "features".

There's a difference between features you don't use and pre-installed Minecraft and ads.

Try a distro like Fedora. I mostly use Arch, but I’ve found Fedora to be an excellent out of the box experience.

Have to disagree.

Gnome for example has been working hard to simplify things (maybe a bit too hard?). The gnome settings panel is significantly simpler than win11 and osx dito.

If you want to dive deeper there is a separate tweak app (not as simple), no reason fiddling with .conf files.

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