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This is forked off of the script that I've been using for years. All of the settings it touches are very clear since each change it makes is configured right up front. I purposely disable SmartScreen because I don't need information about applications I'm running shipped off to Microsoft.
Setting the current network to private is handy after a first-time install since Windows often doesn't prompt and defaults to public.
I mean, sure, SmartScreen is an important security service that should not be disabled if you're OK with hashes of every executable you run being transmitted to Microsoft. Totally agree with this. This criticism is a bit unfair.
It's a gist on github, which you are supposed to read and understand as the author states in his opening disclaimer. The statement for enabling SmartScreen is also included.
And no, your machine gets not owned when you disable SmartScreen - there are other protective measures you can take. SmartScreen sends all your file hashes and unique computer info to Microsoft. If you're not stepping into weird links and running weird executables it's really not doing much for you. Could not disagree more, SmartScreen is a horrendous idea. You should only be installing verified trusted apps you can verify the sources or hash for, farming this out to a third party, even if its MS, is a great way to open yourself up to watering hole attacks.
Furthermore, you are encouraging poor user behaviour with "oh man this app said my app is good" and then ending up with all manner of poorly vetted bloatware, not to mention antitrust and legal issues. As for network, why aren't running from behind a properly secured connection? That's just bad practice. If you want to connect from a coffeeshop or whatever, set your firewall to block everything by default. Thanks for the info; I've been concerned enough about Windows 10 telemetry etc.
Do you have a rec or a resource? I haven't looked seriously at this so if it's just like "google it" mea culpa, but it seems like there's a lot of misinformation and what not out there. I think I would think about specific Windows Telemetry that you want to disable and more importantly, why i.
WorldMaker on June 1, root parent next [—]. As you say. Must be something only in America. The thing is this script is not only about telemetry, but also about disabling some annoyances that are especially annoying in server or workstation environment.
I don't think there's an up to date resource describing all these tweaks. If you don't understand what each feature does, google it. The tweaks are grouped. Rather than immediately enabling and blocking settings, ShutUp10 gives you recommendations and you can reasearch individual settings you aren't sure of.
I've been using these scripts on my boxes for years now with no issues. Maybe don't make assumptions about people's use cases? I agree. It's everything anyone wants from Windows without any of the cruft. I'm a Linux person but when I installed LTSC for my wife all her complaints about sudden reboots and other unwanted behavior evaporated.
Makes you wonder why they bother with any other Windows. Is there any use for SmartScreen when running a proper antivirus, as you should? Your comment is absolute nonsense. You can't say anything like that without context. SmartScreen and defender are the first things to go on my machine as they slow down computer at least by the factor of 2, if not more. People on HN generally don't need babysitting!. Know where you are.
DeliriumTrigger on June 1, root parent next [—]. You complain about nonsense and than go forward and spread some on your own. You saying that SmartScreen and Defender slows down a Windows machine by a factor of 2 just makes you a nonsense clown. Yes, I was wrong - its not by a factor of 2, more like a factor or 3 to 5.
The best way to make your computer age 10 years in a second is to enable ANY antivirus. So you decide to double down on your wrongness? Windows Defender has a marginal impact on performance, such that for most users and most tasks it's not even perceptible.
The burden of proof is on you. I can't count the number of times when server wasn't working correctly when it turns out it just has Defender on. Yes, PC desktops commonly run AV which can impact certain common subsystems in their routine operations.
You are hilarious. It's a good post, but it doesn't substantiate your hyperbole. Yeah, because I am not babysitter. You should do your homework : I am glad when people hint me good info. I have seen this literary hundreds of times. Not sure why people install AV on servers but its common in banks and similar. On home computers its even worst. AVs inject themselves on number of places and do all kind of "funky" stuff. All power users should disable that junk. You have other means to protect yourself.
If you are grandma, sure, go for it, but grandma will not run "Reclaim Windows10" from github gist, no? Context is everything. Its utter nonsense. We are here to talk about hacking things by definition.
Power users customize their OS, not the other way around. Its pity that MS doesn't provide minimal OS like Linux OS's usually do but the first thing I do is not run single script like Reclaim, but dozen of such scripts and my healthy nervous system thanks me all the time because benefits are huge and minuses are minor and fixable.
If anything, we need more projects like that, more polished, more documented, more maintained. Nobody uses antiviruses on Linux except if they host a mail or file server. As far as I know most people who use MacOS do not either. It is true that a lot most? Slowing down between times. This is utter nonsense. SmartScreen exists solely to warn you about executables you already trust and be annoying. Fortunately you can just disable it from the settings though. I've seen disk images of windows on piracy sites that have all this stuff preconfigured you can get slim builds with chrome ready to go already, builds with all these cleanup scripts configured, and more sadly, they also know people in a rush are looking for this or prefer it, and they install backdoors or ways to steal your crypto on them and stuff I wouldn't even trust the scripts itself at this point, so I'm another for just don't run this stuff.
Nothing scary. Thats… what I said as consensus has flipped multiple times since I posted it, it makes me wonder if other people misread my comment.
However, criticism towards the script and similar is equally valid and important. Specific criticism is very important and would lead to improvements in the script. However, all I'm seeing so far is general nay-saying. So far, most of the criticism I've seen has been specific, and examples been provided that explain why the specific settings are problematic. I've seen some opinions, but none could be objectively evaluated as really pointing out problematic settings.
They were more in the area of subjective preferences. Oh yes completely. But even if the house is made of poo, shooting holes in the wall is not the way to fix it. Which may be an insane self sacrificing position. Generally, I don't think Windows 10's telemetry features are privacy-violating. Most of the telemetry especially if you choose the "required only" option in setup is just for crashes and basic usage data they won't use it for advertising for example, like Google or Facebook ; that said, I use pi-hole as my DNS which blocks a lot of the Microsoft URLs used by telemetry.
However, my biggest issue is simply bloat. With every major update on Windows 10 we get more and more crap running on the OS. There are things like "YourPhone" which is an app that starts at boot and cannot be uninstalled which is supposed to help integrate your Android phone - I have an iPhone and couldn't use it even if I wanted to, but I still pay 4Mb of RAM for having it running.
I can probably disable half the services that are set to start automatically and still have a working OS. Joeri on June 1, parent next [—]. All of office, photoshop and visual basic multi tasking at the same time smoothly. MS gets X bucks per user per year in whatever twisted revenue they can derive from your and your loved ones personal data. Wouldn't be best to sell a version of Windows they offer tons of versions of Windows for I would gladly pay a hundred bucks every few years for the next iteration of Windows if it doesn't treat me like a twat.
I could be wrong, but this seems like a surefire way to make your system develop weird quirks. Who knows? This is what made me give up tinkering with Windows, it's just improbable to get it doing what you want, it will instead do what they want.
I agree. Or, you know, you could just run an OS that doesn't come with all the bloatware, such as Linux. I know, I know. Not an option for many for corporate reasons or because you need some Win-only apps that don't work with Wine.
But more people should consider it. Many years ago, a certain English professor told me about people who like to shove sticks up their urethras for fun. This article just reminded me of that. Individual action leads to nowhere after this point. As long as the public sector default to Windows, schools teach Windows and MS Office, and businesses mostly use Windows, Windows it is.
People sure as hell don't bother learning a new operating system just to use at home, and they wouldn't also if Linux was this default either. Valve is doing the good work, for one, by creating a new computing platform for Steam on Linux. Given the way Chromebooks are infecting education, I'm not sure the schools space is as safe for MS anymore.
My daughter is in the 10th grade and has never used Windows. For the past 4 years she has used a school provided Chromebook and outside of school work she uses Android or iOS devices. There are probably a lot of people who dislike the amount of bloat in windows, but aren't prepared to put in the work to convert to linux. It's perfectly reasonable to be somewhere in the middle. UberFly 34 days ago parent prev next [—]. No kidding, but then those Win-only apps It's been said infinite number of times after somebody says just run Linux.
Many of us have considered it, believe me. Most of the major Linux distros I have tried are bloated. Most come with libreoffice installed which I will never use.
You can start with minimal installation and add what you need. Might require quite a bit of research and effort though. Or just delete packages you don't need. Linux package managers are not that bad. Uninstalling Windows apps is also quick and easy. Linux package managers don't provide me any advantages here. Linux packages can be removed and not leave any junk behind, unlike Windows apps.
My experience is that the days of Windows applications leaving files and dll's spread willy-nilly across your system is mostly gone. It has been a long time since I removed a Windows app and the application wasn't completely removed.
Per user data files may remain but this is equally true on Linux. The main thing holding Linux back is Linux evangelists and their desperate need to read a Dale Carnegie book or two.
Also incredibly expensive and practically out of reach for vast majority of world population. You can't even uninstall the chess game in macOS without disabling system integrity protection. Even then if you do an update it will return. I just set up a new Macbook, and I was back to my usual setup within a day. There wasn't anything to disable.
I just had to remove a few icons from the dock. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but neither is Linux. I don't have the patience to find and maintain a Linux laptop, personally. KronisLV 34 days ago prev next [—]. It doesn't really remove software on its own, but it's a nice tool to have, and even illustrates how certain settings have changed across Windows updates they just keep enabling telemetry with each update.
Addendum: on a slightly less related note, it feels like Windows 10 is the new Windows 7, a decent OS that people will stick with for a while in lieu of migrating over to Windows In my case, it's because the redesign feels wholly unnecessary but also breaks things like my vertical taskbar about which the developers said that they don't care because people like me are niche users[1] and then there was the whole TPM fiasco.
Barrin92 34 days ago parent next [—]. It probably isn't, but this alone made me really nervous about using Windows. It feels like using Spyware.
Windows has been spyware since windows Unless you could get your hands on what they called LTSB but they have done all they can to make that a difficult endeavor. Now let's see if I can buy a copy Broadly, you can't buy "a" copy, availability is mainly through volume licensing. I bought a key off eBay. Examples include wezterm, Kitty, Terminator, Alacritty. Disabling Windows Update, and billing it as improving security?! I suppose the rationale is to give the user control over when and what they want to update.
You can manually download and install individual updates from MS without being forced to use Windows Update. Those who disable Windows Update are very unlikely to bother to research which updates they need IMO. These are great images for running in throwaway VMs, but how trustworthy is the project and how safe are the changes for using on bare metal as a primary OS? I haven't audited the scripts they use, but I'm always concerned about running any custom Windows version cooked up by a random person.
We should have something for Windows Starting from the bizarre right click option menu fixes, task bar height, taskbar clock issues, freezing start menu, everything rounded back to squared edges, etc Interesting and a little scary, lol. HeckFeck 34 days ago root parent prev next [—]. It's entirely written in C. Well, thanks for this. These are all pretty trivial registry changes. A PowerShell script should do it. I love Linux but I'm convinced we need an actual for-profit alternative in that space that is not coupled with Apple hardware.
DoingIsLearning 34 days ago parent next [—]. Zorin OS, is exactly what you describe, it's free but you can pay for support and some extra bells and whistles. Really happy with the experience overall. I am not sure they really grasp it but they love it, for them it's just a "free Windows my son installed". These links have already been shared in this thread, but I'd still like to share what I did recently. For the vast majority of debloating I use Sophia[1] and just use the defaults so it's basically fire-and-forget, which I very much like.
For any additional de-bloating, like removing OneDrive integration, I use individual scripts from [2]. I've recently switched my development laptop to a Macbook Pro and it's hilarious to note the difference in installation process between the two.
The MacOS experience is embracing the "it just works"-concept, no configuration required and everything is taken care off. Whereas the Windows experience is basically you get a thin shell and you need to install these 20! In the end I've accepted that Windows and MacOS both have a place in this world and neither have the perfect approach to an operating system.
OS's are such a personal experience. So sad that this is necessary. Same for Smartphones apps you cant uninstall and all these unwanted settings you have to opt out instead of opting in. CamperBob2 34 days ago parent next [—]. Elinvynia 34 days ago root parent next [—]. None of the links in that post to purchase the license work anymore - 2 out of the 3 sites outright say "product not found" while the last one says it was discontinued at the start of this year. As the post explains, it's a good idea to confirm the details with a rep before buying.
I always buy Windows licenses on ebay, they're pretty cheap there. Do what you want cause a pirate is free. How much you agree these are problems is subjective, but there's a list of issues with LTSC here [1]. Honestly I wish Microsoft would just take my money and avoid advertising in paid products. DanAtC 34 days ago root parent next [—]. I see no downsides here. Group policy is your friend. I always disable automatic updates and Defender.
I only keep windows around to run the oddball app. These are increasingly rarer, typically of the gaming persuasion e. MS Flight Simulator. The spyware crap and all the other useless shit windows comes bundled with only gets to see me use a single app, through a different IP each time VPN , usually once every couple of months.
Only downside is it uses up a bit of disk space, but that's dirt cheap these days. OTOH, it's very easy to manage, every app gets installed on its own clean windows environment, and uninstalling is as easy as dumping the VM. For my main work env. Windows is the only OS that needs a debloater. Sometimes Windows seems like it's a Chinese OS. What is Chinese supposed to mean in this context?
DAVer98 34 days ago root parent next [—]. I think he meant Windows feels like a cheap counterfeit knock off of itself. If he meant that, a "knock off OS" would have sufficed. It looked like to me he was referencing the mass surveillance in China. In either case, unnecessary racist in my opinion. Steam runs on Linux.
Just saying You can certainly play plenty of games on it. The user experience is materially worse, though. While these are complaints, I appreciate that Valve is making an effort to support Linux.
Attempts to unlock remotely froze the client. At least it launched! Putting it into borderless mode got it to fill the client screen properly, but rendered at a higher than optimal resolution. Checking "play sound on host" fixed it?!
At least I eventually got it all to work. SteamVR in Linux sort of works too. The option to disable it globally is missing, and you have to go deep into the per-app settings. Unplugging the headset sometimes fixes it. You either need to write to sysfs entries, or install third party daemons, and you need to add a kernel option in grub.
Google Earth works great. Attempts to launch Star Wars: Squadrons so far have failed. Not enough. Many games don't run yet. Quite a few, actually. The Steam Deck made swathes of Steam games previously incompatible work with Linux. EasyAntiCheat notably works on any game that bothered to update its libraries, for example.
There are still plenty of titles that don't work, though. The UI garbage seems more like an opportunity to try new things, they'll figure out that people don't like these new things. I prefer the square windows of 10 to the knock-off MacOS theme that is Knockoff macOS theme? I'm in. Namely being able to drag to the taskbar. That's baked into a lot of my workflows, and I can't believe they removed such a useful feature. IMO it all went down the toilet with 10 and I don't see the next "good" release ever happening again.
Not only didn't they reverse it with Windows 11, they doubled down on it when they had a perfect chance to rebrand with a "back to the classics" comeback to Windows 7-like UI without backlash. Their trajectory is locked in. Barring a miracle and re-prioritising on their users, "good" Windows releases are dead forever. Causality1 9 months ago root parent prev next [—].
I'm convinced there's an alternate universe where Windows 9 brought all the improvements of Windows 10 without treating the user like a contemptible moron. I'm struggling to think of any improvements since Win7. The only thing that might qualify is WSL, but that's still experimental and buggy yes, I know some people have had success with it, anyway.
IIRC Win7 was the one that started installing most drivers without any user effort, which was really nice. It also bloated minimum disk size to many times that of XP or a very full-fat Linux install, so the drivers can't be the reason, since that also includes tons of drivers but if you had the space, it was worth the trade-off. I'm pretty sure 7 is the last Windows ill ever feel happy about installing. I think that it's really sad that I will mostly agree with you.
Yeah, I think actually 11 is just a testing ground for ZetaZero 9 months ago root parent next [—]. Like Vista was laying the table for 7.
It just occurred to me that I avoided Vista entirely by buying a Mac in before moving back to Windows for Win7 , and in I bought another Mac, which will allow me to avoid Windows Talk about timing Outside of requiring a newer PC I don't think Win11 is a trainwreck at all, I was auto-upgraded to it a few weeks ago and it's been fine.
Who wants a system that auto upgrades itself without the user permission? That, and most of the rest of the parent comment, made me believe the post was a joke.
Grazester 9 months ago root parent prev next [—]. This has certainly NOT been my experience. ChrisLTD 9 months ago root parent prev next [—]. I want auto updates for security patches, please. AnIdiotOnTheNet 9 months ago root parent next [—]. Good for you, there should be a checkbox so I don't have to suffer for your preferences. I agree with parent, most non-technical people don't want to be system admin for their OS, so MS taking over is not really a bad deal.
All my computers are IT managed and I have never had any update issues, so maybe there is some special sauce there via group policy. I have instructed them to section off my work PCs so they never update unless I tell them to, and it works.
I get months and months of uptime till I take the reboot hit and do the updates. The special sauce is probably WSUS, which allows them to control the update process for everyone and determine which updates they get and which they don't. Additionally, the WSUS channel for updates is behind Microsoft's normal updates, which allows for them to prevent problematic updates from reaching WSUS servers in the first place.
Of course, home users get none of this. I personally believe it is arrogance to say that non-technical users shouldn't be allowed to control their own PCs. And besides, a lot of users of PCs at home are technical. So I strenuously disagree with you. Your arguing against something I didn't say.
You can disagree with me, but you can't put words in my mouth. I didn't say or imply "shouldn't be allowed" or anything similar. Since my comment was along the lines of "people should get a choice", if you did not intend to argue against that then one wonders what the point of your post was.
I mean, look at your language: "MS taking over is really not a big deal". How am I supposed to have interpreted that? There is, just turn off Windows Updates. Even then it'll get reset after updating and you'll have to fix it again. There is no "don't ever update unless I tell you to" checkbox, there is only the option to pause them for a limited time. Windows is actively user hostile when it comes to updates.
There isn't a checkbox there but a radio box that allows you to configure update behaviour in detail. Never had an issue with it during all upgrades.
And if Windows Home users should be able to disable automatic updates is debatable. I don't think it is debatable. Users should have control over their own computers. From there you can see what is being update and what the update does. You can even choose not to install one update or another or even not update a system component or another. So, if you're afraid a new LO version may break compatibility with documents you work on but GNOME updates will improve usability, you can disable one specific update.
Very simple and user friendly. For users who don't know, understand or don't care, they will simply click update. Canonical is also planning to use snaps for some desktop or core components so they can have security updates automatically installed in the background. This is a somewhat polemic topic, but I understand their rationale: some people simply choose never to update because they have been burned by bad past experiences. Of course, the more advanced user can still disable it.
Security patches! It did offer user permission, it was an icon in my taskbar that prompted for it. I didn't go out of my way to do it though. Technically that's a flaw of Windows 10, maybe they fixed it in 11 :. Older Windows versions required a particular amount of RAM to install, which was a check that could be disabled from the install media. That said, I do agree that Windows 11 is on a new level when it comes to this.
There are pretty easy to use workarounds -such as rufus, though that may change. I used the rufus work-around to install it, and I'm nervous that it'll die after an update for that reason. Aside from that, and a couple of UI annoyances the placement of the start button and the re-arrangement of the start menu I'm happy enough with Windows 11 that it will be a bummer for me if I have to go back. For me it's little things like the way the context menu is cleaned up -but the old one is still available, and the file manager is similarly cleaned up.
I also like that WSL is better than it was on Windows 10 running gui apps are now an option without grafting a separate and half-assed X implementation. So yeah, I'd say "trainwreck" is a hyperbole -especially for anyone who had to use Windows 8! Win11 is a wreck just because they effectively made it non-installable on 5 out of 6 PCs. Prime majority of users don't upgrade BIOS, or don't even know what it is. A supposedly sucks less Win A completely new release is coming.
Duralias 9 months ago root parent prev next [—]. While my laptop definitely got more unstable after being upgraded might be better with a clean install , I could never put it on my actual gaming machine, because I play VR and right now it is a coin flip if VR just won't work for you at all.
It's crippled compared to Win Every windows since 7 has been a train wreck by my standards. The amount of times I've had a system update just clear my windows profile is objectively abysmal and yet every HN thread someone will go and defend them. No one cares about HDR. How about some decent data retention? I get better frame rates in Linux running wine than I do in windows 10 since the updates. NikolaeVarius 9 months ago root parent next [—].
What the hell are you doing with your Windows profiles. I've admin'd many Windows machines and have a Windows install AND a VM windows install and have literally never had a problem with windows profile. Have you at least attempted to debug the issue, or can you point to a issue report you have filed? This is someone who uses linux for They might mean things like having all their file type associations wiped out because feature updates insist on doing that, rather than literally having their profile destroyed.
Then again, I've seen Windows do weirder things. Provide issue links. Why does it happen? I have no idea, and probably Microsoft doesn't either. Nevertheless, it means the update process is broken. After such a case you may feel like you have the alternative of either running unsecure system or losing your data, so you may even consider the first option.
Except you can't unless you pay for the Enterprise version. Current bugs: - every MS app store app has the windows image preview program icon, despite following every guide I could find to fix this. I've had this one 3 machines now and I've no clue why. LegitShady 9 months ago root parent next [—].
Were you using an Nvidia graphics card and did you right click on the left box of explorer where the quick access toolbar is? This is a common issue with Nvidias context menu in that situation. Nvidia card Filing an issue report?
Against Windows? Are you joking? Unfortunately true. Microsoft support these days, even the paid support, is a complete trainwreck. We had cause to open 2 separate tickets for two separate issues lately.
One of them was clearly a bug, has a community forum issue about it with oodles of data provided, and nearly a month in to the ticket I'm still getting 'try this configuration' style bullshit from some low-level tech.
I would expect that for free, but for paid support? The other issue is being handled by the DBA but it sounds like he's getting a similar treatment. In my previous job, I have seen windows support cases escalated to somebody who know how to do kernel debugging. I have no idea how much did that cost, but this level of support does exist. Feedback Hub exists and has been useful to me on several occasions.
Ok I'll give it a go in good faith the next time I have a problem. Run two upgrades in a row.. I ran insider edition for years and that's a pretty common scenario when doing updates. And that's not even the legit bugs that have occured as well. I've done this for dozens of computers. I have not seen this issue. Oy vey. You're objectively incorrect.
It's definitely a Microsoft issue. They use the old OS upgrade procedure to do quarterly updates now which means if it finds a Users directory it will rename it to Users.
However if it does two upgrades in a row in the background without telling you the old Users. Now all it would take them is a second to check the sizes of both and not remove the one with actual data but ya know that would be a actual useful feature. And before you complain about to me about my "setup" The scenario I described above is entirely common in IT departments the world over.
Now please stop blaming victims and start blaming the people that have the power to change things. AshleyGrant 9 months ago root parent next [—]. This is on Windows 10 Pro using my personal Microsoft account, but the PC is managed through Intune so I can access corporate resources. What I'm saying is, to use your own words, "you're objectively incorrect. Not every windows update generates them but it is still possible to hit two in a row that do when you update old installs of 10 from that have precached an incremental update.
I'm not writing a research paper here. If you want citations you can put on your research hat and find them yourself. CJefferson 9 months ago root parent prev next [—]. I've never heard of this -- I've just tried googling and I can't find anything about automatically deleted, or even created, "Users. Sometimes individual user directories get moved if they are corrupted, but they still aren't in my experience deleted.
For large proportions of people a misbehaving operating system is just "how computers work" and it would be like complaining that water is wet. People would very much notice the latter as being a problem.
People defend Windows because they don't have the same experience as you. I don't either. Windows is a rock solid OS that I use at work and it just works. For instance, the machine I'm typing this on has a day uptime, my second W10 box next to it has a day uptime.
I use them every day to get stuff done. I don't ever fiddle with the OS, registry or whatever and I usually can find a PortableApps option for stuff that I need to use. You use vastly fewer things than I do on my daily driver. I'm not complaining about stability.
I still maintain windows boxes for work and yes I get uptimes measured in years. In fact I used to be a windows fanboy. The issue is really that the front end experience has gone to shit and that windows boxes are inherently zero day hackable at random. With gaming there's memory leaks out the ass. When doing updates windows regularly ignores and resets settings. Not everyone wants to use defaults and not everyone has time to edit group policy settings every time there's a changes. I'm over here coding, running vms, setting up ssh tunnels, streaming, recording video, playing music, doing teleconferencing and all manner of other nonsense.
So yes my standards are a little out there. And trust me that's my job. The workers at my job that use Chromebooks are by far the most secure in our entire IT stack. My one guilty pleasure as a Linux user, was using my work laptop that was managed by the IT team. It was the only way I could ever use Windows 10 and describe the experience as "pleasant". I still used a Start Menu replacer.
That was one thing I wouldn't want to give up. Also, I dropped Chrome and Firefox in favor of Brave. Microsoft and Google both are evil. You might want to look deeper into Brave, I'm not convinced they're not evil in their own way.
Personally, I'm looking into Vivaldi; though I haven't switched over yet. Edge almost got me to switch to using Windows with WSL. No joke. Windows was looking good with the new WSL2 on the way and a browser that wasn't sucking. Edge was enticing as Firefox has been going downhill for years still is, and I still can't find a replacement. Vivaldi was close, but is closed source and has some serious UI lag issues on Android. I, an avid opensource user and believer, was considering a switch back I like gaming too, so that would have been a nice boost to ease of game play.
I let time slip before I made the change and well, I'm glad I did. I would have run Windows for about 6 months just to move back after some "updates. JamesBarney 9 months ago parent prev next [—]. Almost every single person that I can think of in my life does not give a shit about an edge reminder. The one that does doesn't use Windows anyway. Hackernew is a unique audience. Have you tried using google products without a google browser?
Much much more annoying. Edge isn't a bad browser now, but that's a testament to the underlying Chromium. It still crashes way too much for me to use as my primary browser, and I only keep it because it is a better PDF reader than Chrome and I've not had time to find a replacement. Agreed, I don't plan to ever install it. How is this any different than what google does in google app? They are both bad. They're envious of Chrome OS. In my opinion, MS and Google would be better off sticking to being open, because if everyone is forced to chose between walled gardens, Apple is going to beat them both every single time.
I've been using Firefox as my browser on my Android phone for something like six or seven years now I guess I'm weird. I don't recall any hard pushes to switch to Chrome. Using a non-Blink browser there is probably rare enough that making people switch isn't worth it. The websites don't seem to want to support Firefox, so Google definitely isn't blameless, but we should probably at least blame them correctly.
Android is better than others. I have Chrome disabled on my phone and there are some things that just won't open without it. It won't let me shut off the "Play Protect" nag every single time I install or update something from F-Droid.
The marketing strategy successfully worked for Microsoft and just within a week after the launch, Windows 10 started running on millions of PCs. Then the company went into planning other tricks in order to get on to the maximum number of PCs as possible. Also Read: Reminder! Less than two months ago, some Windows 7 and 8. Starting next year, Microsoft is planning to re-categorize Windows 10 as a " Recommended Update " in its Windows Update service.
This means that the Windows 10 upgrade process will start downloading and initiating automatically on thousands of devices.
So you finally upgraded your system to Windows 10 and became one those 70 Million users. No doubt, Windows 10 is the Windows best version released by Microsoft, but you need to know that it does not offer much privacy by default.
Windows 10 is making many headlines these days, even it made me to write two detailed articles about Windows 10's most controversial options, i. Windows Wi-Fi sense and Windows 10 stealing users' Bandwidth to deliver updates. I noticed over 35 more privacy issues that come enabled by default in Windows 10, which has permission to send your vast amount of data back to Microsoft. While Installation, a click through " Express Settings " allows Windows 10 operating system to gather up your contacts, text and touch input, calendar details, and a lot more, including: Location Data Biometrics and Handwriting data Advertisement and its Tracking Code Apps access to your personal information Windows Defender and Sample subm.
The only way to use Windows 10 truly securely is by running it in a QEMU virtual machine as a guest with local-only networking for QEMU native Samba file sharing between host and guest. Zero internet connectivity. This way any changes to the virtual drive after boot are trashed after shutdown. This solution is robust and reliable. Can you actually do an airgapped Windows install these days? I used to work in the defence sector in the days of Windows and that was easy but I have no idea how it works since.
Our corporate stuff is all remotely managed with InTune and all sorts of horrible shit that hammers the network all day. The Windows 10 installation ISO downloaded directly from microsoft. You also don't need to do anything special to get it working. However, I opted for the inclusion of a completely optional disk driver during install time to improve performance and sustainability. This is the main reason I use VirtIO.
Trust us rando guys on the internet! These types of "optimized" images are notorious for having viruses and other changes that compromise the entire system. Just disabling updates is a huge red flag. If this stuff bothers people, there are viable alternatives. Even if this effort means well, it's a terrible solution to a problem that's only fixable by eliminating any and all dependencies on Microsoft.
If you were running this version of Windows, you would not get the patch automatically delivered to your device. Bonus thought experiment: this same criticism applies to most Chromium and Firefox forks. Especially the ones that describe "no automatic updates" as a feature.
I wouldn't call it criticism. Software at this scale and complexity will have vulnerabilities. I'd be a lot more concerned about someone who claims that their code is fully secure and doesn't need any patching ever. The question is what provisions the software has made to mitigate those potential vulnerabilities by notifying users that a patch is available and allowing them to automatically apply that patch.
Deliberately removing these mitigations from a piece of software which is highly exposed to exploits, like a web browser or an operating system, is nothing short of irresponsible.
Windows Ameliorated ships with a non-administrator user, thereby requiring a password for temporary admin privilages. Most no-auth exploits take advantage of the user already being an administrator, and then bypassing UAC for example. The configuration mentioned above would likely mitigate this issue, although I'm not educated enough on this subject to say for sure.
I see, thank you for the information. What was the vulnerability? Was it in a component that is stripped in this project?
Doesn't Tron solve this the legal way? Tron is very different from Windows Ameliorated, and doesn't remove all the spyware on an executable level like Ameliorated does. Windows can be ameliorated completely legally by doing the amelioration process manually and entering the key before running the scripts.
Guide on the ameliorated. I keep a list of mostly open source tools, scripts, etc. It's not illegal if you enter a Windows key before a manual amelioration, and even if you use the pre-made ISO, it's extremely unlikely anyone is going to go after you for it, unless you're a business.
I disagree that it is "bonkers" to remove those. Both are a threat to privacy. As far as Windows Defender goes, I believe antivirus software in general does more harm than good. They are generally quite resource hungry, and won't prevent most zero-days or unknown malware. If you're a tech literate power user, I don't think an AV is useful to you.
The last one has really screwed me when setting up fiddly product demos on win environments the night before an early morning meeting. BTW, torrent is also here if you don't use telegram. Review comments are meh but we'll see. Let's get this off here, it's just a pirated copy of windows guised under some cutesy fluff. Not at all, please do research into projects before making unfounded claims. At this point I think we better accept that each operating system has its flaws.
Some people require Windows, or prefer to use it over Linux. And some of those don't want the included spyware that comes with it. Windows Ameliorated is for those people. It's not always as simple as "want privacy? Switch to Linux! Some people want Windows as well as privacy. Especially considering how trivially easy it is to run Windows programs in Wine these days. I see the last "echo '! IYasha 5 months ago prev next [—]. Pretty much what we've been doing to Windows since At least I did it to win7 last winblows I used , it was totaly legit, but I love the idea of a working totally offline machine.
Cool project, and a good middle ground. Keep in mind it's goals are different compared to Windows Ameliorated, and I highly doubt it truly gets rid of all the spyware. This is a neat idea, but the site is nothing but a scam. No matter how many times you go around all the links, you only get the same BS.
This feels like a "join Telegram" scam. If this were a real project, they wouldn't require getting an account to try it out. When you feel you have to do this to a product you have to ask yourself if you should be using it in the first place.
For some it is necessary to use Windows. Windows Ameliorated is for those who both need or desire Windows, but don't want the intrusive spyware that comes with it. It's funny, on a fresh W10 install there's a toggle for weather telemetry for "Location", which the description describes as being used for weather data.
Even if it's un-toggled the weather feature in the taskbar works fine. Give Windows Ameliorated a shot man, it truly does get rid of the BS.
Not just with some registry edits and cosmetic settings options, but it actually gets rid of the spyware on an executable level, meaning the functionality of the spyware is not just disabled, but completely removed. My whole family and I have been running AME as a daily driver for awhile now, and haven't run into any significant issues funnily enough, I've had less issues with Windows Ameliorated than I have with Windows.
AME is about as extreme as you can go. There's still spyware on LTSC. Windows Ameliorated removes said spyware on an executable level, not just by using policy or registry edits. What makes you think most people would be better off running LTSC? For privacy, Windows Ameliorated is by far the best option. I like AME especially as a statement, but after a few months of running it on my desktop I found it wasn't worth the trouble.
Weird things kept not working and most of the time I couldn't figure out why. Thanks for your input nonetheless. It's been quite a while so my memory's a bit hazy, but as I recall the biggest issue was the Start menu behaving oddly. On my typical computers I run OpenShell, but certain things don't show up in the search result list so I have to open the Windows Start and search from there.
AME's start menu is very stripped-down and very little shows up with it, though that could've changed since I used it. Now I'm certain there are two or three different ways to do all the things I wanted to do but breaking the habit of "push button, type, hit enter" was tough. If I were going to try it now my concern would be a lack of control over updating. I see, thank you for the detailed reply.
One solution could have been uninstalling open-shell, that way the start menu would be normal again. Some of open-shells search behavior can be changed, although it can be a pain. As far as WU goes, personally I think it is overrated.
The only real use for them is security, however I've found that even that is really not necessary at all. It is still a tradeoff, but I personally find the benefits and peace of mind more valuable than missing out on security updates. Microsoft will have to maintain Win10 perpetually, unless it gets the ability to ungroup the taskbar again. Keeping me and thousands of others from updating to Win But I don't see how this version is more secure? Yes, no telemetry and lots of services disabled.
But will lack updates, right? Arnavion 5 months ago parent next [—]. I preferred my windows to be ordered by context, not by which application they belonged to, eg VS-terminal-explorer-browser for project 1, then VS-terminal-explorer-browser for project 2, and so on.
Eventually 7 Taskbar Tweaker became a thing that allowed this, so I switched. What about license issues? If I download this, do I get to use Windows for free, because if so, wouldn't running this be illegal? Also since it disables updates, doesn't this mean I run a vulnerable system 'frozen in time', as it were, impervious to the latest patches?
Technically using AME from the pre-built ISO is illegal, however realistically no one will ever go after you for it, unless you're a business. You can however legally do it by self-ameliorating and entering a key before the amelioration process. It does lack Windows Update yes, as WU is a threat to privacy. Windows Ameliorated helps mitigate this by shipping a non-administrator user account by default. Personally I think security updates are a bit overrated, as in all practicality, there's extremely little chance of getting attacked unless you download FreeFortniteVbucks.
How to perform actual download?? Just click "preview channel" on the telegram page they link to and download the. Usually a pinned message with a torrent in the Telegram group or channel. Ah yes, because running a patched OS from a torrent someone posted on Telegram is clearly the epitome of security.
Review the changes or claim your spot in the peanut gallery. I'm too lazy to read the article
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