alt Hacker NewsAs someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS.
It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days.
But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole:
* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates
* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead
* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)
* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)
* Internet search results in the "Home" search
* Random popups and product recommendations
* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows update
Holy. Hell.
Edit: I recall now; Windows was installing a power automate extension into Chrome during Windows Update un-prompted last year. Caused a minor panic.
Replies
I've had good luck with the winutil tool, which is wrapper for a bunch of powershell commands and registry edits in a .ps1 to remove bloat. After using it on a fresh install I can't recall the last time I've had any of the mentioned issues.
If you're (understandably) concerned about the security implications most of the changes can be done manually going off the docs.
I also think Windows' native window tiling is one of its best features, but there's a fantastic program called Swish that implements tiling for MacOS in a very native-feeling way. It supports keyboard shortcuts, but it's built around really elegant touchpad gestures. Highly recommend if that's all that's keeping you on Windows.
The other native Windows feature I really like is the clipboard manager, and I don't have a great replacement for that yet. I'm kind of shocked Apple hasn't built one. If anyone has a recommendation that feels native instead of like a ported Linux widget, please share.
The only tolerable Windows 11 experience is a corporate PC with Active Directory login.
Use LTSC. It'll fix all the issues you are mentioning here.
Ditto. I've found it pretty tolerable once I've used "ShutUp10!" to disable the annoying stuff. I've used harder tools than it, but I've then found it breaks useful stuff (like the Xbox Gaming stuff, which some MSFT games use).
Get Windows LTSC instead and run Firefox ! Most problems solved.
Don't forget the search that doesn't work. You have app "X" installed? You type X and it doesn't find it, but gives you irrelevant results about X.
Recently I'm finding MSN home opened in Chrome over night. Aparently it's connected to some "active probing" feature, and I do have scheduled nightly restarts in the home router. But come on... No one could convince me it's not intended to inflate MSN numbers.
This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. This is the biggest generalized danger in computing today: That OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs. User doesn't want X, Y, or Z running on his computer? TOUGH. We are going to run it and make it really hard or impossible for user to turn it off. As a user, I no longer feel like I'm driving the car--I'm just a passenger. "Where do you want to go today?" has turned into "You're going here today, whether you want to or not!"