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Windows 10 Debloat Script

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Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#51

Post by shrimp_emoji »

noir_lord wrote: post #33
FluffyKitty wrote: post #8

I have to ask, for anyone that cares this much, why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux? I know the usual argument is that you need Windows to game, but why make your gaming instance your main work instance too? Why not dual boot and use Linux for work and Windows for gaming?

I do dual boot. I have windows for gaming/VR but zero development. I have Fedora for literally everything else including C#/WPF development (I run my dev environment for windows inside a VM as it makes it very simple to backup and I know that the somewhat irritating setup is perfectly replicated). Essentially at this point Win10 is relegated to been a massive console OS. I could likely run a lot of my games on Linux…

I doubted Proton for so long. It's not problem-free, but I get 144 Hz in Elite Dangerous, and all it takes is the "force this game to run in Proton" checkbox in Steam. Wow.

I was encouraged to try it after I saw its platinum rating on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/

I don't think I'll ever do GPU passthru though; that's 3hard5me.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#52

Post by giancarlostoro »

zlynx wrote: post #38
giancarlostoro wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Windows 10? I closed everything except Firefox (and this HN tab), which is taking up 600MB of RAM, and now it's at 4.6GB of RAM. Before with two instances of GoLand, Slack and Discord open it was over at 8GB of RAM.

On a Windows 10 VM set to 2 GB of RAM, Windows idles at about 1.1 GB. On a 16 GB Windows it uses about 7.5 GB. All of that seems to swap out or go away somewhere if I get busy with Visual Studio. On a 64 GB Windows it seems to idle at about 9.6 GB used. Of course, this one isn't a purely work machine and has Steam, Origin, Ubisoft's thing, etc, etc. So Windows 10 is pretty variable. I imagine it has something to do w…

Except my system has 16GB and it idles at 4GB. My old system with 8GB idles at 4GB even my system at home with 16GB idles at 4GB. I dont understand why it would idle at 8GB.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#53

Post by jzzskijj »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

I tried running this and then I remembered why I stopped tweaking Windows, I wind up running into odd issues. Windows stopped being unstable for me years ago when I stopped fidgeting with features. I'm better off disabling as much as I can through the normal settings they provide. I don't know if it's just I'm doing something wrong but it's been my experience. I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out…

Hah, indeed. "An all knowing colleague" suggested in Slack to use DisableWinTracking* tool for greater privacy and security. I had already done the most of the usual privacy enhancing stuff manually to Windows 10, but decided to try if the tool would know something more. Some weeks later IT realized there are several desktops in our domain which stopped installing Windows updates on a same day. And some administration tool couldn't reach those computers anymore. Basically we ended up wasting about 20-30 man hours on getting those desktops to function properly again without reinstalling.

*) https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#54

Post by kyriakos »

mehrdadn wrote: post #5
giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

I tried running this and then I remembered why I stopped tweaking Windows, I wind up running into odd issues. Windows stopped being unstable for me years ago when I stopped fidgeting with features. I'm better off disabling as much as I can through the normal settings they provide. I don't know if it's just I'm doing something wrong but it's been my experience. I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out…

> I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. It... doesn't? I feel like last time I tried it was less than 2? Did you only install Windows or a ton of other things too? This is what it looks like "out of the box" after disabling memory compression and the pagefile: https://imgur.com/a/D5b8bk5

I run Windows 10 on a 10 year old htpc with 3gb ram. Leaves enough memory to run a few background services and kodi with zero problems.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#55

Post by giancarlostoro »

floatingatoll wrote: post #49

Do your friends a favor and never run this or any like it on their systems "for their benefit". This is a prime example of "expert user footgun problem". The phrase "debloat" is a marketing-hype word that's being used to bait you all into someone's personal view of how computers should be. Expect to be forced to reinstall Windows 10 a few days or weeks after running any such script. Whenever I tech support any of my…

Agreed. You are better off trying out Linux and using that if it meets your needs than breaking your system if thats an option. Or even considering using a Mac if its an option you can afford. Anything above breaking your OS.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#56

Post by crispinb »

FluffyKitty wrote: post #8

I have to ask, for anyone that cares this much, why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux? I know the usual argument is that you need Windows to game, but why make your gaming instance your main work instance too? Why not dual boot and use Linux for work and Windows for gaming?

> why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux?

Well I get the linux dev tools, which is all I really want from linux, in wsl. Windows works well on my machine, and I find it less trouble than linux. I wouldn't say I like it, but there isn't a good desktop OS in 2019 - it's a matter only of 'least worst'

(That said, I'd never run this silly script)

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#57

Post by noir_lord »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #51
noir_lord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do dual boot. I have windows for gaming/VR but zero development. I have Fedora for literally everything else including C#/WPF development (I run my dev environment for windows inside a VM as it makes it very simple to backup and I know that the somewhat irritating setup is perfectly replicated). Essentially at this point Win10 is relegated to been a massive console OS. I could likely run a lot of my games on Linux…

I doubted Proton for so long. It's not problem-free, but I get 144 Hz in Elite Dangerous, and all it takes is the "force this game to run in Proton" checkbox in Steam. Wow. I was encouraged to try it after I saw its platinum rating on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/ I don't think I'll ever do GPU passthru though; that's 3hard5me.

It’s gotten better but yeah there still issues, that’s why I like dual booting, windows gives me no issues for gaming if that’s all you do and Fedora has been rocksteady back to 25 when I switched, my work machine has gone from 26 to 30 via in place upgrades which I always expect to fail but so far never have.

I may play with Proton at some point though if the games I play are properly supported, mostly though my gaming time is spent on the Rift S playing Project Cars 2, combined with a nice force feedback wheel and pedals (Logitech G920) its a really good experience, I didn’t expect VR to be so compelling actually, it’s not perfect but damn is it impressive when you are going the Nurburgring in the dark as snow blows past your car and you look left and see a car coming up in your mirrors.

I think I’m a convert and I’m eagerly waiting for what the next generation can bring.

Elite Dangerous is incredible in VR as well btw.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#58

Post by simonh »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #50
pranau wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. Let me uninstall Cortana please Microsoft. I'm sure there's other crap I don't want but I fear if I can't just hit 'Uninstall' it wont go well, or an update will bring it back. So much misinformation in this and the replies that address this. Windows needs a minimum of 2GB RAM to run. But it scales its memory footprint according to the available…

That is strange do you have any further points of reference on the matter? Preferrably a resource from Microsoft if possible.

Linux does the same thing, they both use RAM to cache disk reads for performance.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#59

Post by neilv »

FluffyKitty wrote: post #8

I have to ask, for anyone that cares this much, why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux? I know the usual argument is that you need Windows to game, but why make your gaming instance your main work instance too? Why not dual boot and use Linux for work and Windows for gaming?

One could also go single-boot GNU/Linux for almost everything, and compartmentalize gaming on a console.

Bonus: much fewer online multiplayer cheaters on a current-gen console.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#60

Post by kevingadd »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #50
pranau wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. Let me uninstall Cortana please Microsoft. I'm sure there's other crap I don't want but I fear if I can't just hit 'Uninstall' it wont go well, or an update will bring it back. So much misinformation in this and the replies that address this. Windows needs a minimum of 2GB RAM to run. But it scales its memory footprint according to the available…

That is strange do you have any further points of reference on the matter? Preferrably a resource from Microsoft if possible.

You can verify some of this by examining a lot of the running memory bloat in https://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe (official diagnostics tool by sysinternals, a microsoft subsidiary), just make sure to elevate to see full process info with 'show details on all processes'.

On my machine a bunch of UWP apps are loaded passively in the background. A few are UWP apps I use occasionally, a few aren't. I don't know what heuristic they use for this. You might look at that and go - hey, wasted memory and CPU! However:

These apps are fully suspended, so they can't use any CPU at all. You can observe this in the procexp CPU column. Because they are fully suspended the OS can also instantly evict them when it detects memory pressure, similar to how the page caching system in OSes retains cached file contents in scratch memory to speed up I/O - if the memory used for caching files is needed for applications, the cache will be evicted to make space. Cortana, for example, is using 180mb of RAM for me right now but it is fully suspended so it can be evicted immediately to make room for another app. The upside is that when I hit start and begin typing Cortana search responds immediately.

The downside to this automatic eviction setup for background apps is that they will show up in memory usage statistics even though they're not really tying up that memory. It makes your system's available RAM a bit misleading. There are other modern apps that also respond to memory pressure - I believe Firefox will automatically compact its memory, you can manually trigger that in about:memory to see what it does.

I can also confirm that increasing the amount of RAM in my machine increased how much of it Windows was willing to use for preloading apps and caching pages, but I feel like that's not surprising.

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