de-bloated windows isos are a wild concept to me, like, instead of just using linux you decided its a good idea to live without defender and uac?? do you realise how dumb that is???
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Windows debloater: Linux is too complicated and you're a nerd for suggesting it.
Also Windows debloater: I spent 16 hours in regedit and had to buy a $3k security router to isolate my system so that I can use Chrome without crypto mining.
it gives a visual stopgap in case something does end up being weird. i don't really see it as much different from having to type sudo when doing something on the command line
only time i used a debloated windows iso was in a vm and was surprised the amount they remove, i would rather debloat it manually knowing i still have the basic functions needed, without removing necessary requirements such as uac etc.
unfortunately, since they're Microsoft apps, there's no native Linux builds I dont think they work well in wine
There are the web versions (but I hear those are missing features) and alternatives like libreoffice, but those might not be enough to fully replace ms office for some people
Personally hoping the talk I've heard about Microsoft making changes to kill kernel-level acces from third party software actually comes about so I can stop having/hearing the gaming excuse to need Windows
That said, since I see it in that thumbnail, EAC is pretty alright compared to other solutions, imo. At least it doesn't absolutely require secure boot/windows-only to work (looking at you, Valorant)
You can use scripts that will debloat them without removing defender and Windows update. Disabling UAC is more of a tweak than something debloating tools do.
If I'm debloating windows, it's not gonna be to remove defender. That does its job as long as you're not stupid. I would want to remove all that random ai crap they keep throwing at us like cortana and recall or whatever it's called.
as a linux user i find debloated windows most useful for VMs (without network access) to run windows-only software that i can’t get working through wine
For my case, i need windows for some uni stuffs, so i just went with the IoT version of windows 10, better to deal with it than to find alternatives for the programs i need
setting your language to English (World) to get rid of pre-installed apps like tiktok from installing automatically is probably as much debloating as you should probably do before considering a switch to linux
A small part of me thought we were on the path to it when they rolled out WSL. That said, they'll never give up on their favorite pile of ad revenue they call an operating system.
Linux has problems if you're someone like me that actively uses shit that just outright doesn't work. I dual-boot Fedora and a de-bloated windows ISO for games that don't wanna co-operate as well as my daw
I tried to install kali for that exact reason, took me like 7 attempts and an entire day of work and ended up not using it because I learnt that kali doesn't play well with nvidia
they're for people who think they're power users and know more than microsoft but will immediately complain to the app developer when something crashes because webview2 is missing
While we're at it, let's expand this to people who complain about the term "app" as if it's a new invention of the smartphone era and not an extremely common abbreviation that people have been using as long the concept of "application software" has even existed.
Yeah nothing against Windows users as a whole but I feel like so many of them would rather do literally the most complicated shit in the world than just install Mint or PopOS because they saw two memes about Arch and think every Linux OS is that
literally this, its so annoying seeing people do stupid shit for the sake of privacy and performance on windows instead of just using basic linux distros
Yeah but but "sudo apt install steam" is literally only doable if you know Python and Java and C++ at the same time and have a degree in compsci!!! Wait what do you mean .debs are basically just .exe installers and the software manager is just an app store??? /s
most easier distros have dual boot options in their installers, and if youre still afraid, backing up your important data to an external drive doesnt hurt
I’m just convinced the people installing “debloated” isos just either aren’t educated about computers or have potato computers that wouldn’t even be able to get much of a performance advantage
some people buy brand new computers with modern hardware and jump through hoops to install windows 7 on them, then jump through more hoops to get software running on it. i don't know if that's better or worse than a debloated 10 iso
i'm not ready for october next year when microsoft drops support for windows 10 and we get another generation of users just barely hanging on and forcing app developers to target older windows SDKs
probably better because it’s at least a normal OS, i dont envy the drivers situation tho and it also doesn’t even remove the telemetry they added you have to go back to vista to avoid it
also windows update! i get it, it's annoying, but you really should get the once a month security rollup that contains fixes for all the lovely 0days they found in windows
I grew up with red hat dual boot, but isn't Ubuntu basically Windows-lite at this point, like I'm pretty sure you could never use the command line after day 1 setup and be fine.
Ubuntu debian linux mint et all of the debian reskins are genuinely easier to set up than windows because they dont nag you about 50 things, dont require internet (most of the time) and dont check for shit like TPM or your CPU.
Pretty much every Debian-based system is nowadays. They've made it as easy as possible to get by without ever touching a terminal in your life. Hell, even Pop_OS is recommended as an easy entry into Linux gaming when normally Arch-based distros are king.
If we're going to argue this logic, then technically we should all be building our own Distros since none of them are fully GPL compliant.
I bring up Arch-based distros not necessarily to advocate for them, but as an catch-all. My intention was to include Arch itself, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
Sorry to jump into the conversation out of nowhere, but imo you're not going against that philosophy as long as you keep giving easy access to change/uninstall what you don't need (no meta packets and all that)
But yeah, installing arch manually at least once is very important.
I don't trust any custom Windows installation that disables defender and doesn't let you reenable it. I am stuck on Windows rn but I am thinking about dual booting with Linux so I can main Linux and go to Windows in case I need something that only works there
if you can tinker around a bit you might be able to get a windows VM running on linux with GPU pass through, which allows you to run a windows VM with virtually no performance impact. it's kinda hard to set up though.
I was thinking about that too but as far as I'm aware I'd need a 2nd GPU to pass thru and I don't know how ideal it would be for VR, I know there are solutions for VR on Linux but from experience they have been a complete pain to set up
I have a Quest 2 and I had to use ALVR which had me sideload the app to the headset, add a launch argument to steam VR and it still wasn't exactly ideal, hopefully VR on Linux will be a bit easier soon
i mean if it means anything, valve has been spotted working on Arm64 proton support, and they also published their new VR patents recently which features some interesting stuff. it looks like they intend to have the device run on linux.
So, not a windows fan at all, but Chris Titus has a great windows utility tool on his github. Does a really good job of getting rid of a lot of the junk but keeping a maintainable system as well. He's also been working on a linix utility that's looking not bad lol
Someday people like you will have to realise that not everything works on Linux, and nothing is ever guaranteed to work on Linux, no matter how many compatibility layers you use. Sometimes you just have to use Windows.
I was trying a debloated iso but it wanted me to update it after installing. I don't really know how MS does it, but would this install all the stuff removed from a debloat?
Malwarebytes is better than defender but not perfect. But honestly everytime I debloat windowa I debloat it for the pre-installed junk I don't want or need. Even then I'd rather duel boot into Linux
nah defender is updated more frequently, gets less false positives, and can update from local caches. i'm an appsec analyst and no one i work with uses mwb
Don't get me wrong, the fact Xbox services runs on Windows Server annoys the shit out of me. But I do not know what that ties into in the back end well enough to screw around with it.
Thinking you're smarter than the developers who actually have the documentation and notes for what those random services you disabled is quite the flex attempt. It's why they took away the ability to turn off updates.
Also i forgot to mention it keeps Windows update intact. Before that i used Tiny11.
I just want a system that doesn't enforce Secure Boot, TPM and BitLocker.
Thankfully Rufus helped me with that.
Guess i have to install that special OBS Studio Flatpak in Cachy, that i already use on Bazzite
You can do that with Tiny 11 maker, there are 2 scripts. One will remove defender and WU, but there's also one that just removes the unneeded bundled crap and keeps WU and defender.
LTSC versions are better than fully "debloating" Windows because they're officially stripped down, Linux is a toss up for hardware compatibility so some people may still prefer Windows.
debloated windows is dumb, literally just grab a copy of windows 10/11 from https://massgrave.dev then use mas to activate it. minimal bloat, feature rich. i wouldn't recommend linux as a full replacement though, as even though i use it, windows has some features that i need that linux does not.
correction: i meant windows 10/11 ltsc, the enterprise version. using massgrave is the only way to really activate it since it's harder to get enterprise keys
Always amazing when people with optimized isos come into the OBS support discord with disabled essential services like the Capture Service which breaks WGC Window/Display Capture.
I'm stuck with Linux for as long as game developers insist on kernel-level anti-cheat, unfortunately. That's why I use debloaters - but I'm not fool enough to disable Defender, of course, that'd be like asking hackers to pwn me in real time
I once had to use a Windows 10 installation that was so "debloated" that it couldn't even run the Windows calculaor, because all of the stuff needed to run UWP apps had been stripped out
Imagine having to pull out a TI-83 to do some basic arithmetic while sitting in front of an 8-core i7
you can find a lot of people in the steam forums for forza motorsport complain that they can't sign into xbox live because they deleted the ability to run UWP apps from their own computer
The one use case I ever had for this was for my OG GPD Win. The original one was so low powered that removing every possible avenue of bloat genuinely gave a noticeable improvement... and this device was offline 95% of the time anyway.
defender is windows' pre-installed antivirus and uac is short for "user account control", its basically the "do you want this app to make changes to your device" pop up that comes up when you run certain apps, without it, its like clicking yes to that popup every time it comes up
Oh, thank you! That's all computer stuff make me dizzy. I kinda want to move on from Windows but not now.
I'm not that care about mah OS, so, I'm fine with Windows fo' now
"De-bloated" can mean different things. I dual boot. I play games with kernel anti-cheat and use CAD that don't run well/at all on Linux. My de-bloated install has Defender and UAC enabled. All the bundled apps and system reporting are disabled.
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Haha just a little joke there. I’m like if the woker told jokes. Some sort of… “joker” if you will 🤡
I’m the joker…
Like…
Like the meme…
Also Windows debloater: I spent 16 hours in regedit and had to buy a $3k security router to isolate my system so that I can use Chrome without crypto mining.
There are the web versions (but I hear those are missing features) and alternatives like libreoffice, but those might not be enough to fully replace ms office for some people
I dualboot. Brought second NVME and change whenever I need (installing on one win 11 broke linux install in a month).
And wine is not my friend (never worked for me).
Man, microsoft knowns how to exploit tech illiterate customers
A reasonable response
You must be an absolute hero.
On the other hand I use it fully debloated Windows for my CNC computer which never sees the internet because it has no NIC.
No login passwords, no user accounts, every program being given full read/write access to literally everything, consequences be damned...
You should install Arch manually at least once before you use archinstall or Arch derivatives. It's basically a tutorial.
I bring up Arch-based distros not necessarily to advocate for them, but as an catch-all. My intention was to include Arch itself, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
But yeah, installing arch manually at least once is very important.
idk when i learned about Win 11 i switched to an m-series macbookpro and never looked back🤷♀️
I actually triple boot. I have on a SanDisk SSD CachyOS (Arch) and on a Samsung SSD Bazzite (Fedora Atomic) I use rEFInd as my Boot Loader
I just want a system that doesn't enforce Secure Boot, TPM and BitLocker.
Thankfully Rufus helped me with that.
Guess i have to install that special OBS Studio Flatpak in Cachy, that i already use on Bazzite
linux is *easier* to deal with than that
Imagine having to pull out a TI-83 to do some basic arithmetic while sitting in front of an 8-core i7
use windows
im too puppybrained to understand linux or debloating anything i just wanna play my vibeo games
Its just windows have way more app support so far sadly...+ Games
what is uac tho?
I'm not that care about mah OS, so, I'm fine with Windows fo' now