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Windows 10 Debloat Script

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171–180 of 188 posts

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Windows on my personal laptop - not because I love it, but because it certainly used to have a huge strong-hold on media and games apps, which I wanted a way of consuming. I no longer game, but as I understand it, support for Linux has greatly improved. Also I used to watch Sky (UK), which is only available for Windows users (first because they were literally using Silverlight up until about a year ago, and now…

Spotify works fine on Linux in my experience though I mostly use Spotify on my iPhone, not on my Linux desktop but I sometimes use it there and don’t have any complaints. Linux has excellent support for VPN. VPN providers on the other hand may be bad at providing proper guidance for Linux users. In that case I suggest either switching to a VPN provider that has the guides you need, or searching for good guides made b…

Yep, Spotify I use every day on Linux and it does work fine, but it's not quite as easy to install (though this is the best it gets on my list).

VPN support would be fine wrt OpenVPN, but I'm using NordVPN. To be fair I just checked and they also have a .deb so that's fine too.

Drive is a pain, Dropbox suggestion is good. IIRC I've used "Grive" before, and it worked, but wasn't a delight to use.

Definitely agree on hardware. Even the XPS range from Dell which offers Linux pre-installed has been pretty choppy in the past. I'm using a Thinkpad now and imo it's the best option.

I can't do macs, that's the one thing!

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#172
post #163

There is an easier way (for those with access to the version of Windows involved): Windows 10 N LTSB / LTSC N = No media things built-in, so you'll need to install VLC if that's a concern. LTSB / LTSC = Long-Term Servicing Branch / Long-Term Servicing Channel. This is really the killer thing but it comes with catches. You'll get an absolutely stable Windows and to achieve that a load of things are removed by Microsof…

> N = No media things built-in, so you'll need to install VLC if that's a concern.

Is an understatement, if you play games expect to install the media pack or have many break. Some apps in the office suite also rely on them so if you use that you've created trouble for yourself. Also RDP client/server can't run hardware accelerated since that uses the video playback API.

> And for the HN community... lack of Microsoft Store means that you are not running Ubuntu on Windows.

Not true, the store is a front end and LTSB still supports appx: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#173

Another mention would be TronScript which is described here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/index It can be downloaded from one of these mirrors: https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/downloads

That looks like it runs lots of anti virus software which is usually a huge offender in slowing a computer down.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinfoil theory incoming: NSA pressures windows to have the largest attack surface possible by default. With the hope that any given targeted system will have at least one piece of default bloatware still running, presumably they have 0-days for most all of them.

Even putting aside the tinfoil hat. The NSA would never pressure anyone to have a larger attack surface, that would just make it easier for competing nations and attackers to discover flaws, which would render their own efforts moot

if Russia discovers how to hack Cortana and keeps it private, that in no way impinges on NSA's ability to use the same hack to compromise, say, an Iranian system. The more possible avenues for attack, the better (for attackers).

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are memory-heavy applications able to detect true available memory? I could see an app that tries to scale itself to available memory running with reduced performance or refusing to run if it sees non-page-cache but evictable memory as unavailable.

You are over complicating. In general applications don't manage their ram usage based on available resources they just take what they need until your system starts swapping. The OS manages memory and evicts cache to make use for applications when they request it. The good thing about a cached file is that it is available on disk to be reread any time you like.

I've used applications that will specifically allocate (available memory * x) or similar because they or their plugins can't handle ENOMEM or the Windows equivalent, and they do not want to swap.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#176
post #44

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. 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…

Win10 runs like crap on 2GB. They only support it to appease the bottom end of the market and stave off the threat of alternative low cost platforms.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#177

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…

Don't forget the fact it's firewalling or null routing Akamai's CDN, which will cause seemingly-random services/programs to fail. There doesn't seem to have been a lot of homework performed either; some of those IPs resolve to host names that will be blocked by the HOSTS file changes. I came across one of these scripts with typos in host names which I submitted pull requests for, which were ignored, and then copied t…

I completely missed that. How idiotic.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#178

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…

> And suddenly you can't face-login to your Windows 10 computer any longer, but hey, it's "bloat" I would want to get rid of this even if it didn't cost any resources.

A friend I know who can code circles around me depends on it everyday. Your desire against it is no sole excuse to label it “bloat” when it sees real-word usage and has value to others than you.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#179

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…

Amazingly incorrect observation. All "non-bloat" mentioned above is mostly one big pile of shit that you generally do not need and might need only on specific machine AND in specific context. Running this concrete debloater might produce some unwanted side effects which are easy enough to fix, but it sure as heaven makes a system at least x2 faster ALL THE TIME. Yeah, spotify is a bloat if you don't use it, just as c…

My years-old iMac runs Windows 1904 just fine, and about three years ago Defender stopping thrashing my disk to death. I’m not sure what they improved but clearly it’s a lot more at peace with itself. I’ve made a point never^ to expert user pebcak it, and last April’s update was quite chill and this April’s as well. I did a pass at install time to remove apps I don’t plan to use. The most dramatic things to happen have been an EFI bug in Windows back in 2017 that I had to workaround^^ and when I found that PUBG’s uninstaller left some stupid DRM thing behind years ago that I had to extract manually from the 1904 updates logs to find and remove earlier this year. It just works, otherwise, cloned forward through three Macs to date! And if it can work on an iMac without powershell drama, then surely it can work on any normal PC.

^ One time I cloned it to an SSD and tried some fancy ACPI patching to hack eGPU support into my old hardware, but I ended up deleting it because it offered no improvement over “boring stock install” after days of work.

^^ There was a Windows update in 2017 that assumed your system has only one EFI bootable partition, and would panic if you had 2+, so I taught myself how to hide the rescue partition from Windows to avoid a reinstall.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And suddenly you can't face-login to your Windows 10 computer any longer, but hey, it's "bloat" I would want to get rid of this even if it didn't cost any resources.

A friend I know who can code circles around me depends on it everyday. Your desire against it is no sole excuse to label it “bloat” when it sees real-word usage and has value to others than you.

And you know what? You're both right. So give the user an option to remove the feature, and honor their choice.
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