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“Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

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Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#191
post #162
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, bleeding-edge laptop support is still a toss-up, but it's getting better, IMHO! I think that's where this sentiment often comes from: people who cut their teeth on XF86Config tweaking and compiling NVidia kernel modules from source and shopping for just the right PCMCIA wireless adapter are now amazed when a fresh Ubuntu install has working 3D-accelerated graphics, 802.11n (with GUI for configuration), Bluetooth…

> Maybe the bar was just really low, and you've got a strong argument if you say it shouldn't be anymore, but we are making progress... I was one of those people for longer than I can remember. Last year I decided that it was time for me to make this argument. I don't regret the time I spent learning, tinkering, and sometimes wrestling Linux into working. However, while Linux has made a ton of progress, the gap betwe…

Apple has really pushed the bar up in terms of what users expect from their computers out of the box, and that has affected Windows as well, so in some sense Linux has been swimming upstream? treading water?

In the mid-90s I remember endlessly fiddling with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to squeeze out that extra 30kb of conventional memory to run some game. Buying peripherals was such a crap shoot that 'Plug and Play' was something that needed to be advertised, and much of the time you were still stuck manually juggling IRQs, moving cards to different slots, etc.

Nowadays, one can buy any Windows or Mac computer/peripheral and generally expect it to work, with some bare minimum of reading reviews.

So while Linux has made tremendous strides in terms of driver support (you mean my wifi actually works now?), things are still very far from zero conf that users have become accustomed to.

Time is valuable, and 2-10 hours spent experimenting with various driver packages, editing text config files, recompiling the kernel, etc. is literally money out of the user's pocket, not to mention the learning curve if you don't already know how to do all these things. That doesn't include the time for extra research to see what hardware is well supported.

Here's an example of install instructions on a pretty well-supported laptop that does Linux [1]. I'd guesstimate an hour of time if you've already done this before, and anything up to 10 hours if you run into unexpected difficulties or are totally new to this.

[1] http://chaos-reins.com/2016-11-14-arch-yoga-910/

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#192
post #21

If telemetry really bothers you, I think you'd be better off with a different OS

Which one? An essentially unsupported Linux distribution? Canonical does telemetry as well. Apple has been doing this for years an yet we still don't sweat wrathful spate of headlines over it. Oh and by the way, the logfiles from most package servers provide an accurate description of what you're doing with your machine and a weak concept of identity. So you'll need to avoid those. Browsers keep updating and the vast…

Oh and by the way, the logfiles from most package servers provide an accurate description of what you're doing with your machine and a weak concept of identity.

Those "package servers" are distributed mirror networks with no central entity being able to read all the logs.

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I didn't do is to block MS servers in System32\Drivers\etc\hosts file. This is useless in my opinion, MS can always change them or add new ones.

Didn't they 'hack' it so it ignores MS servers listed in hosts file?

not hacked, just hardcoded IPs as a fallback path when resolving telemetry domains fails.

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I didn't do is to block MS servers in System32\Drivers\etc\hosts file. This is useless in my opinion, MS can always change them or add new ones.

That didn't answer my question at all. You said above: > That's not true. Install and run wireshark then dial all you want, there will always be traffic every other minute or so to one of Redmond's servers from just idling. I literally did exactly what you said. Shutdown all third party applications on a Windows 10 Pro machine, loaded Wireshark 2.2.3, filtered out all LAN traffic/broadcast traffic/etc and watched. Di…

This is interesting, because I just did the same thing and there is plenty of garbage flying around to various akamai hosts every 20-60 minutes.

Is your system volume license or retail?

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must be doing very different things. Outside of gaming, everything I do is as fast or faster to get done on Linux.

No to condescend, but that just means that what you do most likely only has to do with programming. If you attempt to branch out into other fields of activities, Linux software is just not capable enough. Try to edit a photo beyond the basic capabilities of Gimp. Try to author a video project. Try to master audio. Try to design and edit documents beyond the most basic capabilities of LibreOffice. Attempt spreadsheet…

> No to condescend, but that just means that what you do most likely only has to do with programming.

Well, yeah, but I never claimed that Linux would be suitable for everyone's uses; just mine.

Image editing: I've never needed more than the Gimp. Why would I pay for something like Photoshop, full of features that I'll never use? It'd be like buying a power tool to assemble Ikea furniture.

Video project: I did a little in Windows XP with Windows Movie Maker, pasting together porn videos about 15 years ago, and conversions with stuff like Handbrake since then. I've never been inclined to do anything more advanced. It's not a need that I've had...but I've got Windows available if I did.

Try to master audio: Audacity covered all that I used to do, but honestly, I haven't used it in 5 years or so. Oh, plus some of my own waveform-generating and mixing software (simple stuff like generating audio for video game emulators).

LibreOffice: It, and previously OpenOffice, have covered every single need that I've had in the last 15 years. Granted, my needs have been simple, but I've never claimed differently.

It's as if I claimed that Windows is all I ever needed, and you came in asking how I intended to hack on the Linux kernel from Visual Studio...

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#196
post #162
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, bleeding-edge laptop support is still a toss-up, but it's getting better, IMHO! I think that's where this sentiment often comes from: people who cut their teeth on XF86Config tweaking and compiling NVidia kernel modules from source and shopping for just the right PCMCIA wireless adapter are now amazed when a fresh Ubuntu install has working 3D-accelerated graphics, 802.11n (with GUI for configuration), Bluetooth…

> Maybe the bar was just really low, and you've got a strong argument if you say it shouldn't be anymore, but we are making progress... I was one of those people for longer than I can remember. Last year I decided that it was time for me to make this argument. I don't regret the time I spent learning, tinkering, and sometimes wrestling Linux into working. However, while Linux has made a ton of progress, the gap betwe…

You and others make a good point about getting going faster on windows, but one thing that a lot of people don't factor in is the amount of time fiddling with windows as well. Getting it working or fixing problems and other configuration probs. And not all hardware works well under windows or the latest version of windows. There is some real time spent trying to configure windows as well.

The main problem that the article presents is that windows acts like malware which brings a new element to your desktop. I remember getting a popup notification from facebook, this after I thought I turned off all of that stuff. You don't face that in linux. You did with some earlier versions of Ubuntu, but not anymore.

No doubt, windows brings computing to people who aren't technical and makes it easy, but anything beyond the most simple configuration will take a lot of time as well.

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#197
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us don't want any telemetry, or any crap. An idle OS should be idle...

Then get Debian or Fedora. I'm serious, if the OS is doing things so bad you're willing to execute untrusted code with elevated privileges to modify the OS, you've already lost.

"untrusted" by who? You?

I have a bit of a pet peeve about the word "untrusted", because it leaves open who is doing the trusting.

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No to condescend, but that just means that what you do most likely only has to do with programming. If you attempt to branch out into other fields of activities, Linux software is just not capable enough. Try to edit a photo beyond the basic capabilities of Gimp. Try to author a video project. Try to master audio. Try to design and edit documents beyond the most basic capabilities of LibreOffice. Attempt spreadsheet…

The tiniest of examples: try to enable "advanced" typography features in a document, such as ligatures, small caps, proportional figures, mathematical equations – without having to convert your document into TeX.

> such as ligatures, small caps, proportional figures, mathematical equations

Out of those, I recognize "mathematical equations" as something I've ever tried, regardless of which software I've been using, and LibreOffice Math always fit my needs. The truth is, outside of programming, I don't use enough of the features of office software for it to make a difference which suite I use.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. That there are features in some Windows software that aren't in Linux software? Granted, but I don't see how that's relevant to my original comment.

Re: “Reclaim Windows 10” Powershell Script

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No to condescend, but that just means that what you do most likely only has to do with programming. If you attempt to branch out into other fields of activities, Linux software is just not capable enough. Try to edit a photo beyond the basic capabilities of Gimp. Try to author a video project. Try to master audio. Try to design and edit documents beyond the most basic capabilities of LibreOffice. Attempt spreadsheet…

The tiniest of examples: try to enable "advanced" typography features in a document, such as ligatures, small caps, proportional figures, mathematical equations – without having to convert your document into TeX.

Why "without having to convert your document into TeX"? Is there something wrong with TeX?

Anyway, LibreOffice has been able to do all these things for a long time with Graphite fonts, and, since version 5.3, it can also do them with OpenType fonts.

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