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Windows 10 Debloat Script

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61–70 of 188 posts

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#61

If you’re going go to all this trouble to “debloat” Windows, why not just install Fedora/Ubuntu/PopOS/Debian/Manjaro or something? I just don’t see the point with fiddling around with little hacks trying to disable telemetry and stuff when you can just install a Linux distro and be done with it. I mean sure depending on your use case that may not be possible, but if you don’t have a certain software or hardware limit…

The main things holding me to Windows is SQL Server and some other bits and pieces around that where there is simply no cross platform equivalent that will work with it.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#62

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 haven't used Windows as a daily driver in nearly a decade. I have to use it occasionally for work reasons and I'm always shocked by the Stockholm syndrome Windows users must have. Even just booting an OEM Windows machine for the first time raises my blood pressure. I hear that Cortana monologue in my nightmares.

I used to not really understand the point of Cortana. Typing on a phone sucks, so I only used my phone's voice assistant when I wanted to search a moderately-long series of words or something.

But then I realized typing on a computer also sucks. And then I realized that there's no voice-to-text software available for Linux.

And then I realized that it's not readily-available for computers in general. You can go out of your way to get it, but it's on our phones by default. How weird. Apparently, Cortana can't easily be used for voice-to-text dictation though, and it'd be limited to Edge. So I still don't really understand the point of Cortana.

But it'd be nice if there was some generic, voice-to-text functionality in regular OSes. It'd be super nice if it was locally-processed too. Is the hardware power not there yet?

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#63

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 dual boot when you can debloat?

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#64

This still leaves a lot of undesirable stuff on your system. Here, I prefer something like this. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-2.3.0/... Darik's Boot and Nuke — A hard drive disk wipe and data clearing utility And then download and install KDE Neon User Edition from https://neon.kde.org/download KDE Neon is a Linux distro based on Ubuntu. Yes I am being a bit facetious, sorry. But I am actuall…

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 by others about how to do it with your provider of choice.

Google Drive you are right about. If acceptable to you you might consider switching to Dropbox instead. Dropbox worked great on Linux last time I used Dropbox.

Keep in mind that it is a good idea to pick hardware that has good Linux support. The problem for a lot of people is that they buy some random laptop without taking this into consideration, and then try to run Linux on it and might be unlucky.

Personally I run Linux on my desktop with hardware that I chose specifically based on finding out that it would work.

And my laptop now is a MacBook Air running macOS.

Linux desktop. macOS laptop. Great combo IMO.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#65
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…

Is there any way to tell it to use up less or more RAM? It would be very dumb if this weren't configurable

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#66

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…

Right... Run this script to de-bloat your computer, but also here's a list of features which will stop working afterward and we don't know why!

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#67

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…

I question why Windows continues to need increasingly demanding and intrusive anti-malware when Mac and Linux get along just fine without it. The architecture of Windows must be aging terribly if the only way one can keep it safe is by humongous and intrusive real time scanning. My experiences with Windows Defender's realtime protection has not been pleasant. Almost one core being used exclusively to check every network and filesystem operation. I recommend if users have any security common sense whatsoever they can safely disable Defender and manually run it once a month.

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#68
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…

Is there any way to tell it to use up less or more RAM? It would be very dumb if this weren't configurable

If you can't answer this question for yourself, why do you think you'd be capable of modifying the factory default? Memory management is one of the most complex pieces of a modern OS

Re: Windows 10 Debloat Script

#70
post #67

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…

I question why Windows continues to need increasingly demanding and intrusive anti-malware when Mac and Linux get along just fine without it. The architecture of Windows must be aging terribly if the only way one can keep it safe is by humongous and intrusive real time scanning. My experiences with Windows Defender's realtime protection has not been pleasant. Almost one core being used exclusively to check every netw…

Mac has intrusive anti-malware that is almost a carbon copy of Windows Defender, or used to be anyways (perhaps one or the other have changed in the past few years!). See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233

Linux is a wasteland of terrible security practices that sysadmins excuse as "acceptable" for their own workstations and servers because they think that locking down SSH is sufficient defense against e.g. malicious infections or "curl | bash".

I'm sorry that Defender has harmed you, but that's no excuse to recommend others disable automated Defender scans on some sort of schedule.

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