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Comment by greenavocado | Hacker News Reader

You can get a completely minimalist Windows 11 by grabbing an ISO from Microsoft then reprocessing the ISO by feeding it into this utility: https://github.com/christitustech/winutil (Win11 Creator Tab) to get a NEW ISO which you then install. The end result is an extremely clean and stable Windows 11 installation.

  The resulting image can remove telemetry, bypass hardware requirement checks, and enable local account setup out of the box.

Official docs:

https://winutil.christitus.com/

https://winutil.christitus.com/userguide/win11creator/

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To anyone reading this: please don't use ISOs downloaded from not-official sources.

Use an autounattend.xml, the mass graves, and a WinGet JSON to customise an online image.

[1]: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

[2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/package-manager/wi...

The tool linked by the parent doesn't download ISOs from non-official sources.

Did you even read what I wrote?

I did. You said:

> to get a NEW ISO which you then install

This is not good.

LOL. The entire ISO transformer code is open source.

You provide an official Windows 11 ISO and the tool modifies it to get the new ISO. The tool is open-source here: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

I don't see the issue.

Not so good at reading comprehension, are we?

Do be aware that an autounattend.xml can cause Windows setup to execute arbitrary code. Their provenance matters too. It's relatively easy to encode scripts (or even binaries) into the XML to run during or after Windows setup. You can eyeball them, for sure, but I bet most people don't.

Indeed. I mention this in light of the high-profile supply-chain attacks recently across diverse platforms (Arch AUR, Shai-Hulud, etc). Any online tool that purports to modify an entire install medium should be heavily and continually scrutinised. I'm not saying the developer can't be trusted, but the infrastructure and people in general can't.

Fine, but this is Chris Titus we're talking about, not Red Star

I use uup dump myself, which downloads the components directly from MS and builds the ISO locally

NTlite has also been around for more than a decade, although it has a freemium model.

That won't help you get to the minimum of Win10, though

Yes it will, please re-read carefully. winutil removes hardware checks.

I think he meant resource usage

Even cleaner when you don't install Windows at all :P

Why would people put themselves through the painful process of keeping themselves safe from their own computer?

Not everyone has the luxury of moving off of Windows. Solidworks, for example, has no Linux or Mac port.

Though I do agree, if your workflow is supported by any non-NT based OS, that's probably a better option

Anything I need windows for is work related and runs on my locked down (and actually very cleanly stripped down) windows 11 laptop. Its amazing how much Microsoft hates the consumer but bends over backwards for volume license purchasers.

They do still force the volume licensors with their bullshit. However IT admins are used to dealing with Microsoft's bullshit and they can find ways to automate de-enshitification.

TBH many volume licensors do actually want to use Windows as a service and just pay a negotiated fee per license.

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