Plus they also warn on each step the consequences of choosing those options and remind the user that this should be run after every update just in case MS enables/resets some of the disabled telemetry. Very pleasant UI/UX.
All the tools and scripts I've seen essentially make the same changes to disable certain behaviours.
However
It appears Microsoft still forces certain critical (in their eyes) patches for zero days and can therefore do the sme for less critical things.
For 2+ years I've had a Windows 10 instance with updates (automatic and notifications) disabled .. and it has honoured that setting.
I manually update every few months after reading the details on the pendings and cross reading on Bleeping Computer | elsewhere for patch issues.
Two days ago - I woke to a rebooted computer with a forced "critical security update" applied.
I'm not happy - if microsoft can do that, then so can anyone that infiltrates their patch push ala Solar Winds etc.
I’ve noticed it’s better to install Windows without a connection to the internet. There will still be some packaged in software you might want to rid of, but at least not the advert apps like duolingo, candy crush and netflix. Then disable automatic installation of apps via Windows update and clean it up before allowing it to the internet.
Actually reminds me of how you absolutely should not install Windows XP with the ethernet cable plugged in back when more home computers were directly connected to the Internet. That thing would be chock full of worms within minutes, so you had to first install a software firewall while offline.
Installing without internet connection also has the major benefit that it allows you to use a local user account rather than forcing you to signup for an online Microsoft/hotmail/.. account
You can install it with local user, it just takes more time and they will nag you so you have to press ESC a couple of times. Most people don't know about this and are coerced into creating MS account, this isn't even some sort of dark pattern, it's a completely fraudulent practice.
I just installed from a freshly downloaded Win 10 ISO, and there was either no option for a local account, or I just haven't triggered the way to escape creating an online account. At that point, there simply was nowhere to click on the UI, I had the choice of either creating one on the spot, or using one that already exists, and that's it. Really hated the experience.
Rufus (the ISO to Flash Drive app) recently added a feature to create a local user right into the installation media, remove telemetry, and remove windows 11 hardware restrictions. It's worked like a charm so far.
This very exact specific occurrence happened to me a while back and made me so livid I cold powered off the entire machine, downloaded Linux onto a flash drive from a different laptop, and have been running happily since. The forced auto reboot install of updates really pissed me off and then this forced ms account on install was the last straw. Haven’t used a Microsoft product personally ever since.
It's a jarring experience. They always seem to know better, and as the years went on, they made harder and harder to properly use the system as a power user.
And even if you want to use an online account for e.g. OneDrive you do not want to login when installing windows because it names your user folder to an abbreviated version of your email.
In my experience Windows installs all the bloatware after first Internet connection anyway.
I usually set up my Windows the following way:
1. Offline install.
2. Turn on Internet and leave it alone for a hour or two. It'll install all drivers from Microsoft and also it'll install bloatware.
3. Install additional drivers if needed. I install Nvidia ones because Microsoft drivers are not up to date, but that's optional.
4. Go to Settings/Apps and remove all bloatware and other bundled software I don't need.
That's quite a procedure, but it allows me to have more or less stable and debloated system.
With some laptops it might be necessary to use manufacturer-provided drivers instead of Microsoft ones. I don't really know what's the rule of thumb here.
> Actually reminds me of how you absolutely should not install Windows XP with the ethernet cable plugged in back when more home computers were directly connected to the Internet. That thing would be chock full of worms within minutes, so you had to first install a software firewall while offline.
So same as windows 10 then, just a different vendor for the malware?
I'm in no way going to say win10 is a bastion of security but I don't know anyone who has had a virus with 10 compared to ENDLESS battles from back in the day helping fix friends/families infected PCs.
Not sure if people have just gotten smarter, or some of the default stuff is better, or both - but it is a markedly different time than before.
WinXP was vulnerable to a lot of remote exploits out-of-the-box. If you just connected WinXP to the internet after a new installation (and without SP2 and up-to-date patches) and walked away for 24 hours, you could expect it to be infected by the time you got back. This was, of course, a much bigger issue back when we were directly connecting our PC's to the internet with dial-up. WinXP behind a properly configured router isn't at risk in the same way.
Not quite. It needs to be an RCE vulnerability that can be used remotely against a system without user interaction. XP had a lot of those. There aren't a lot of those now. Afaik, most RCE's nowadays require a user to download a hostile file or view a hostile site.
> The worm spreads by exploiting a buffer overflow discovered by the Polish security research group Last Stage of Delirium[5] in the DCOM RPC service on the affected operating systems, for which a patch had been released one month earlier in MS03-026 and later in MS03-039. This allowed the worm to spread without users opening attachments simply by spamming itself to large numbers of random IP addresses. Four versions have been detected in the wild.[6] These are the most well-known exploits of the original flaw in RPC, but there were in fact another 12 different vulnerabilities that did not see as much media attention.[7]
Viruses nowadays are most commonly uses to establish botnets and steal credentials, so virus writers try to not disrupt the host and to remain as invisible as possible. The one exception being ransomware.
You have Microsoft Defender to thank for that. You now basically have an antivirus bundled in the OS, with the widest install base, that has become shockingly good.
I mean unless you’re physically connecting to your modem and using your WAN Ip as your computer IP, Who exactly is sending you the worms when you plug in the ethernet?
Microsoft. Stealing personal information, forcing ads into the OS, installing software without permission, hijacking private network and computing resources for profit or for state actors, uploading user files and deleting them from the system, and making the system unresponsive are all things we used to call malware.
> I’ve noticed it’s better to install Windows without a connection to the internet.
I have a Windows 7 PC installed like this... and never connected it to the internet. It runs two single players games and works like a charm. Very secure also :)
I think the "sexy" word is making it auto-dead by some software spam filter. I vouched for it, but it will take several vouches before the link is accepted.
It still showed dead until I vouched for it, but it was six hours old at 1 karma meaning no one is probably going to see it.
I resubmitted it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32440745 thinking it would bump the karma at least like other duplicate submissions, but it made a new submission, and it looks like it's probably dead as well.
Yeah I was already formulating my rant to complain about web pages that are not able to show what essentially is text and images, without supporting JavaScript...
But now that I saw the site, I can understand that the need is justified, given how the page is built (essentially not a web site, but an application that allows dynamically building a script, by injecting snippets that each do a specific function).
No doubt this could have been done with just text and hyperlinks, but the result would have been a completely different UX.
I tried this debloater, but it debloated my ability to play video games that I like. And debloated the luxury of not having to drop to the command line to fix many of my problems. Also debloated the ability to run some very convenient day to day software.
I was a proton user for about 5 years. Highly recommend it. But it's not perfect.
Proton is great, but getting non-steam games on it is about as fiddly as the rest of Wine/Lutris/Crossover/etc. Especially with older games, alternate launchers, etc.
If you're fine with having a slightly smaller selection of games (mostly AAA suffers), then it's great. If you're into mod-heavy games, Windows still fares better IMO.
I put Win11 on my new machine to get more bang for buck with gaming, but I despise the OS in its current state. Purely from a DE UX perspective it doesn't seem very productive with its more limited shortcuts.
For mods etc it's definitely still nascent, but is exactly the sort of area which has smart problem solvers working on it. I've already seen mod helper apps for minecraft and elder scrolls popping up. There will be more.
I could give it a try (not gp but periodically interested), but not sure if my GSync display will work correctly. Last time I tried desktop linux, it couldn’t decide which video driver sucks more after another update, and that was on a pretty dumb graphics card. Thinking of something deeply proprietary like GSync I don’t even know if it’s worth trying.
And I’m not a linux newbie, used it and freebsd since around 2000 on daily basis periodically. It is amazing, but just like Linus, “I still need desktop” that allows me to play my hardware. So when there is a >$100 graphics card I resort to windows + msys2 by default.
I have been playing Elden Ring just fine on Linux. At launch, I was worried about it and installed Windows just to play the game. After a while I tried it on Linux and the experience is almost 100% identical in terms of performance.
Part of your issue is having to wrangle with Nvidia drivers. I am just using the default open source driver for AMD that comes built into the kernel and the experience is seamless. I know the nightmare of getting graphics on Linux working right which is why I avoid Nvidia.
With my example above (Proton) it has had a transformative effect on how many games are playable on Linux and how easy it is to play them.
Prior to 2018, there were only a handful of native ports, skewed towards indie games. Now 4,582 are classified by Valve as being 'Verified or playable', with 73% of the top 100 games on steam having an out-of-the-box-flawless experience and a further 14% that will work with some tweaks.
Steam baked this new technology into their client, so the installation process for a Windows game on Linux is identical to Windows (click 'Install' then play. There is one additional popup to inform the user that a translation layer is being used).
In addition to this, Easy Anti-Cheat and Battleye have now (as of Nov 2021) announced anti-cheat support for Proton - both technologies require the developers to enable support either with tweaks (EAC) or by emailing for the supplier to enable support (battleye).
And that's only gaming. In the last 12 years (with the 20 year limit specified by OP) we have seen a transformation in web technologies which have moved from proprietary codecs and add-ons to open standards. Video, streaming and all other things that Windows users take for granted are now available on Linux. This also means that the trend in apps moving to electron also implies that by-and-large Linux is also functional (with notable exceptions e.g. Discord audio).
There's also been a large development of drivers included in the kernel, most peripherals including game controllers etc all now work out of the box. Bluetooth and Wifi - the traditional enemies of Linux users, now work flawlessly and don't come up at all in support requests anymore. AMD drivers have improved, even Nvidia have open-sourced the kernel-land components of their proprietary driver which will help the development of nouveau and other open source alternatives (plus make the Nvidia driver much easier to install and maintain in server set ups, which I think was their goal).
Vulkan was released in 2016 which has driven a whole new raft of graphics capability, providing a strong alternative to the clunky OpenGL. Wayland is making serious progress against X, with Gnome-wayland and KDE-wayland both becoming default on some distros. Valve also have a minimalist wayland compositor that is used in Game Mode on the steam deck.
And that isn't even to mention the plethora of usability improvements to Desktop environments or helper apps such as Heroic, Lutris, Protonup, Nobara which have improved the Linux desktop experience immeasurably.
So yes, in short a lot has changed. When I hear someone say 'I have heard the same for 20 years' they are either ignorant or ignoring the progress that has been made in bad faith.
All this progress is nice, no sarcasm. But I still get confused when my 2-3 year old experiences get written off as ignorance or bad faith, never mentioning the issues I had or how to deal with them as a user, and never explaining details I asked about.
If you know about gsync and/or fps tax on linux, I’d be glad to trust and try. Otherwise this comment looks like yet another marketing booklet that doesn’t address any of my doubts and creates no reason to find out, cause last few times I fell for, it was the waste of time.
Edit: I don’t want to downplay this tech, you or anything else. Currently I just want to play Witcher 3 with gsync and have no time for fixing the issues longer than 10 minutes under my expertise.
You asked about what I meant exactly, so I told you.
And for what it's worth, I'm not writing off your concerns as ignorant or bad faith, but aimed at OP's "That's what I'm hearing since 20 years". That comment is either ignorant or just trying to bash Linux from a point of prejudice.
I have no experience with the issues you raise so I'm unable to address them specifically.
It is still the case that if you have recent bad experience with Linux then Windows may still be the best option for you.
Yep, there's far more GUIs and desktop support for tasks than in days of yore.
There's definitely still a mindset that the command line is much easier from a documentation/support point of view which means that forum responses and tutorials will still refer to the command line a lot.
However, compared to when I started in 2011 there isn't a need to use the terminal like there was back then. The terminal is only really needed if you're doing something new or niche
Something about this cookie-cutter smug response makes me nostalgic for a decade ago where you'd see posts like this on every forum every time Linux was mentioned.
Since Ubuntu tries to force snap onto (new) users, I do not recommend it for any new user. Sure, you can disable any of that and use flatpak instead, but it seems Canonical doesn't really want that.
Ditched Windows when it was still Windows 8.1 for Linux Mint. I am still on Linux Mint and I have it installed on all my machines. Works out of the box. Not resources hungry. Helpful community on IRC. Good looking if you ask me. It also acts as a good filter against Ubuntu's experiments while benefiting from its widespread adoption. Never looked back.
Did flatpack improved? Can you say get CLI apps in flatpack because it was not possible and I my quick search found no examples. Personally snap helped me in setting up some stuff on a server (pdftk) I am not a big fan though, could be done better IMO, flatpack seems to be same RedHat/GNOME crap, pushed by force and not be it's quality.
For new users the CLI stuff is usually less important. I don't categorically hate snap, but for new users it's bad long-term, too, since it is only controlled by Canonical and therefore a bad reliance. Nobody can add repositories for snap beside Canonical.
If you are an avid CLI user I recommend using containers instead of snap. This way you can even keep the sandbox with dotnet for example.
> flatpack seems to be same RedHat/GNOME crap, pushed by force and not be it's quality.
However it is not controlled by RedHat (and also not solely developed by them). At least everyone can add repositories to flatpak. Which is probably my biggest gripe with snap.
About containers- I would prefer say when I go to a CLI project webpage to download 1 file, now it is a snap and it just works so I can test/evaluate the application. I am not intrested in a repository like flatpack just in going directly to the source and getting the file I need.
Anyway IMO flatpack and snap are different things, you can't just tell people to replace one with the other. AppImage could have been better but is ahrd to improve if there is no big money behind to force push things.
I know, I was trying to express that I don't care that snap does not offer support third party repositories.
Btw if you or anyone knows, does any of thios tech solves the issue where your system has an old glibc and you want to try some new app/game that needs a new glibc? For a video game performance is important access to GPU driver is needed. I had a bad experience with a game that updated and stopped working and from my reading there is no way to have 2 glibc on your system(complex shit about how executables and libraries loading works).
All container systems are self-contained; they can have glibc (or musl, or any other libc) they want.
In flatpak, the glibc is part of the runtimes; i.e. org.(freedesktop|gnome|kde).Platform. This allows you to run apps on old CentOS/RHEL that you could not natively. Or you can have runtime-less package or use your own runtime, where you put libraries you want. Similarly with snap, you have core18 or core20 runtimes (that correspodents to ubuntu 18.04 or ubuntu 20.04).
Drivers are more interesting. GPU driver has two parts - kernel mode, that shuffles prepared command buffers between userspace and hardware, does mode switching, etc. -- and user mode, which is shared library that implements user APIs like OpenGL or Vulkan, and based on commands from these APIs builds commands buffers, that are then sent to kernel part. The user-mode part may or may not be compatible with multiple versions of the kernel part; the AMD and Intel drivers usually are, as the kernel driver is part of the kernel tree and the user mode driver has to work with any kernel it is run under. Nvidia on the other hand assumes that both user mode and kernel mode are in sync, so packaging specific user mode driver version into container might be problematic.
Flatpak usually ships latest (n or n-1) Mesa and keeps Nvidia driver in sync with the installed kernel mode driver. They are shipped as addons to runtimes.
CLI is important for everyone. Because when you ask for help to anyone, they will have no clue on how to do it on gnome and will just do it on the CLI.
Getting rid of snap is already a good first step. I know, I know, snap is great, after all who doesn't want to fill up their primary disk with several full copies of chrome?
I understand you're being sarcastic, but there are plenty of intermediate options between "use Ubuntu" and "chisel transistors from a rock". In particular, if you want to dab into comping your OS, Gentoo is a good start. Or, if you want to go a bit deeper right away, Linux From Scratch (LFS) project has you covered.
Hmm. I actually had the opposite experience. I've been using Gentoo for decades now and haven't found it to be problematic at all. What did you find annoying about it long-term?
I tried Arch and found the divide between distribution packages and AUR to be strange. I assume distribution packages are trustworthy, but a lot of things aren't available there, so you have to use AUR. But my understanding is that AUR is all user contributed and unvetted, so it's essentially like the olden days of downloading an exe and hoping for the best. Unless you go to the effort of scrutinizing every script, I guess.
Updates seem to be hit or miss too. I had some AUR packages that suddenly failed with circular dependency issues and later a full system update made the machine unbootable, which wasn't tons of fun. That's when I went back to Gentoo. :P
To be fair, though, I stopped using Arch after about a couple of months. I could be remembering things wildly incorrectly when it comes to the package management stuff. Unbootable update, though, I remember vividly!
I used Gentoo around 2002 or earlier and it was everytime an adventure to emerge anything, mostly due to the time it was taking. A kernel rebuild was taking hours.
I was not interested in fine-tuning the binaries so I was emerging with the default configuration, which makes it more or less equivalent to installing something from a repo.
The immense advantage of Gentoo is that you had to install it from the very scratch and it gave you finally an understanding of what was going on, instead of just next next next on install screens. I had everyone from my team go though an installation just for that.
> and found the divide between distribution packages and AUR to be strange
Wasn't this the same thing with Gentoo, where there would be "official" sources, and then the others. With colliding names? (it may have been another distro, sorry if this is the case - my memory is not that good 20 years back). I know that it took me a while to understand that philosophy (but again, maybe it was not Gentoo)
> To be fair, though, I stopped using Arch after about a couple of months.
After having had used Debian/Ubuntu for years on my server, I got fed up with the upgrade cycle and moved to Arch a year or so ago. I did not have any problems and the documentation is top notch. I use my server in a very basic way: an Arch installation, then docker and borg and this is pretty much it. Everything I run is in docker containers (except for borg (backup) for more or less sane reasons - probably less than more)
Alpine is not a general use OS. It is intended for containers and while it might be possible to use it on a laptop you will probably have plenty of problems with its use of libraries.
I'm a heavy Linux user, but please keep comments like this one on reddit. This is a waste of time and energy. No, you can't just convince your employer to suddenly use Ubuntu. That's not how the real world works.
The most popular Linux distribution, aka Android, is full of bloatware that is very hard to uninstall. And, unlike with Windows, you can't install a debloater, debloaters are forbidden.
I use excel heavily, librecalc is as good or better than excel. It has near 1:1 function compatibility. The exception are macros but MS seem to be slowly phasing them out.
It is not just VBA. LO Calc is still missing Excel Tables functionality, which is a biggie. It was added to Excel 15 years ago! It also doesn't have equivalent of PowerQuery/PowerPivot/PowerMap equivalent, which appeared in Excel in 2010-2013 timeframe.
So LO Calc is OK for basic spreadsheets, but any power user will gravitate to Excel due to functionalities.
I was talking PowerPivot, not pivot tables. LO Calc pivot tables are at Excel 2003 level. Well, there's a reason why it was redone in 2007.
If by extension that provides similar support for PowerQuery you mean QueryConnector, then no. QueryConnector is similar to the MS Query, not to the PowerQuery. And MS Query was Excel built-in, not extension...
Tables do not exist in LO calc. Dataranges do (and imported excel files with tables are converted to dataranges). Dataranges do not have functionality like Tables do. You cannot even create above mentioned pivot table from a datarange, only from named range or selection.
I even had to google how to create them (the build-in help didn't... help), after I've seen that the import did create something, and not just convert to named ranges as it used to. So much for discoverability.
---
This is not to put down LibreOffice Calc or anything. It is about being honest where the weaknesses are, and how to address them. Sweeping problems under the carpet won't address them, and Calc won't become better.
Also, Excel is the crown jewel of MS Office. Not Word, not Powerpoint, but Excel. Of course it is best of the best that money can buy and competing with it is not easy. But 15 years? Come on.
I often think people suggesting things like Libreoffice just open csv files and scroll through then tell everyone else they can do everything in libreoffice.
When you’re a heavy user of excel, almost nothing else compares. Tho Google sheets does give excel a run for its money, because it has scripts (javascript) to do everything else.
LO Calc has python scripting. I think you mean power user, I can accept that LO calc is not up to speed for powerusers of Excel.
I'm a heavy user of LO calc, but my usage is of course different from yours. For true data wrangling I use R so this statement. I can't imagine the data wrangling and transformations that I perform in R being done in Excel. Its a nightmare waiting to happen!
Three out of those 4 things aren't functions. I do agree newer functions are missing (such as XLOOKUP) but for most people calc/excel is a high powered calculator and they use it as such. So Calc is perfect replacement. It's not the dark ages, that's an exaggeration.
the reverse exists as well, a lot of jobs can't be done on windows.
Which is why windows ships WSL, to keep people who can't work on windows using it. Better yet, to allow their managers to force them to use windows even though they need linux.
Yes, I have Office (excel heavily), adobe (rush, photoshop, premiere, audition), QuickBooks and Sage 50, some automation software for manufacturing. There are many more that wouldn't work on anything but windows. I am sure many people are the same as me because I see other computer users with their software stack very often.
Mac is not enough although I have a MacBook Pro on my desk sitting and collecting dust. I only use it to test sites with Safari because emulators never give the same result.
I install ubuntu on old laptops to utilize them and as VM on my current windows machine.
Macbook is sluggish (mouse moves) and very limited customizations/options. None of the communication software I use work all at the same time on either on ubuntu nor macos. For example, I use Skype, RingCentral, WhatsApp, Teams, Discord open in one 32" monitor. I must communicate with multiple people everyday for business purposes. I can't fanboy and go for Mac or Ubuntu and ruin my businesses. (I have 4 x 32")
Another monitor has KeePass, putty, and winscp running. If a client sends me an excel file for a reason and it has macros in it, office is the only way to open it. OpenOffice or Libre sucks. I also occasionally update company blogs and must edit photos and videos. Adobe works flawlessly on Windows and has many advantages using it on Windows compared to MacOs edition.
For my security cameras, I use the camera system's only supported windows software. There is no other platform supported. SonicWall VPN sucks on mac and unsupported. I won't spend 2 hours each time VPN fails on Ubuntu. Windows works flawlessly and I tried on Ubuntu. Can't connect to client servers remotely with Ubuntu or crappy mac vpn software called MobileConnect.
I use FreeCad but tried AutoCad in the past, only works on Windows properly. FreeCad sucks on Ubuntu, AutoCad is not supported. This is for my another business unrelated to the other software.
I have more computers than I can count but I am always ending up using Windows for work. To make everything work on one computer, I must use windows. If something new comes up, I won't spend hours and days to try to make it work on Ubuntu or feel sad for not even having it for MacOs.
Office on my M1 macbook air is noticeably more stable and responsive than the dell xps13 bought in January, and the mackbook was like half the price. That XPS is probably the last windows machine we buy ever.
Also most of our employees have fully migrated to libreoffice now.
The GP meant features. Office Mac is missing a great deal of them, like all the Power*/DAX functionality. And even if it has them, they might be half-baked; just to connect to pgsql, you need a paid odbc driver that costs about the half the price of the Office, you cannot use the open source one.
Any software developer business founder/entrepreneur uses more than Vim or notepad++. To support a bootstrapped business, the owners end up doing everything, this involves blogging, video editing, even photography if the product is physical. Just-one-software-using developers usually work for a company rather than being independent.
There are open source options that work fine on Linux for most of those though and things like Proton do a pretty amazing job now too. But people have set/complex workflows or existing familiarity that is not so easy to just flick over and that's reasonable.
It's not a "Linux can't do it" problem though.
Business founders/entrepreneurs are not exactly a large part of the userbase either...
It takes an unnecessary amount of time for to run things on linux that are working comfortably on windows without weird modifications to the operating system. That's the reason why people choose windows.
The only problem I have with ubuntu server desnapped is let’s encrypt is such a pain now. They force the use of snaps and it’s a manual process to do it without snaps :(
I don't get Microsoft. Come on, the game is up. Everybody knows that the bloatware is because Microsoft derives money from it. That annoying screen at installation time asking you to sign your soul and those of your loved ones? 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...gasp...money? 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.
Windows officially already costs money (though Microsoft doesn’t seem to enforce it). And you can buy the Enterprise version for $MONEY which cuts down at least some of the crap.
I could be wrong, but this seems like a surefire way to make your system develop weird quirks. Just looking at the issues someone seems to have restart/shutdown take 15 minutes: is this because of debloater or just regular windows things? Who knows?
O&O's similar thingy even tells you this for some options: that you should only use them if you're really sure that you want the effect. 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.
It also does a lot more than „debloat“ which is a loaded term on itself because tastes are different. Someone might like having certain things included in their installation, some don’t.
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.
The kids have had far less trouble with Debian/Gnome than Windows 10.
With Win10, they'd keep accidentally moving/hiding the taskbar around, toggling fullscreen, toggling the screen reader, changing it to weird resolutions, etc... Then when my wife tries to bring one of their school websites up for them, she gets frustrated by the whole mess, & calls me to straighten it out--since she's a mac person and has no patience with any of this windows nonsense.
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. Memories!
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.
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.
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. Full of Gnome or KDE programs I will never use. Most come with libreoffice installed which I will never use.
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.
Right? 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.
For example, I might want to disable telemetry or certain app permissions, also disable the OneDrive integration with Explorer (because I use NextCloud or something else), but leave automatic driver updates on and allow Windows Defender to work.
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 11. 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.
Honestly, the only things keeping me on Windows at this point are gaming (around 25% of my Steam games can run on Linux) and software like MobaXTerm, for which I haven't found capable alternatives (e.g. GUI SSH/RDP/VNC/... client with integrated FTP/SFTP and the ability to split terminals, whilst being able to do simultaneous input in all of them, or disable either with a checkbox, e.g. send input to 7/9 open sessions).
I always have to laugh when I see the O&O site and there's the big "Gold Microsoft Partner" plaque next to "ShutUp, free antispy tool" proudly at the top
> (they just keep enabling telemetry with each update)
I don't know, but this feels really illegal. 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 10. Unless you could get your hands on what they called LTSB but they have done all they can to make that a difficult endeavor.
I for one also personally only use Windows for gaming at this point and even then I’m astounded with how well SteamOS works on a steamdeck to play games.
> Honestly, the only things keeping me on Windows at this point are ... client with integrated FTP/SFTP and the ability to split terminals, whilst being able to do simultaneous input in all of them
You can split windows and broadcast to all terminal windows with several terminal emulators available for Linux.
Examples include wezterm, Kitty, Terminator, Alacritty
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.
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 11. 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). Are there any patches/replacements for the windows 11 lock screen yet? (eg: one with only slideshow, no pop-ups)?
Zorin OS, is exactly what you describe, it's free but you can pay for support and some extra bells and whistles.
Zorin OS is basically Ubuntu with sugar coating but in my view it does address all the usability/UX criticism coming from people transioning away from Windows/Mac.
I am a long time Debian user but I transioned both my parents away from Windows using Zorin OS.
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(!) updates in order to start configuring your drivers, installing packages and "debloating".
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.
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.
My apologies, the links have not been updated since 2018, though the principle/method still stands. A cursory search turned up this current link (the price has gone down to $237.99):
I only keep windows around to run the oddball app. that doesn't run either on the web or native on Linux.
These are increasingly rarer, typically of the gaming persuasion (e.g. MS Flight Simulator).
For these, I run a windows instance inside a VM, one distinct VM for each app.
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. and anything privacy related, I run on a bare-bone, heavily trimmed Debian with a Cinnamon desktop.
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.
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.
Just tonight I was mucking around with Remote Play from my Linux desktop to an Android phone.
* Lock screen got in the way. Attempts to unlock remotely froze the client.
* Game launched in windowed mode, ended up shifted and cropped. 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.
* Sound didn't work on the client, only the host. Checking "play sound on host" fixed it?!
At least I eventually got it all to work.
SteamVR in Linux sort of works too.
* Async reprojection doesn't work and leads to horrible artifacts. The option to disable it globally is missing, and you have to go deep into the per-app settings.
* Sound has a 50% chance of being borked. Unplugging the headset sometimes fixes it.
* If you have an AMD GPU, its automatic power profile causes latency spikes several times per second. You either need to write to sysfs entries, or install third party daemons, and you need to add a kernel option in grub. Fun!
* Bluetooth power management for base stations doesn't exist, except for some third party scripts.
* If I have multiple monitors enabled, the headset fails to go into direct mode.
* The virtual controllers shown in the base environment are rendered as if the z-buffer is inverted, or maybe the normals are backwards. I'm pretty sure it's a bug in AMD's openGL implementation.
Google Earth works great. Attempts to launch Star Wars: Squadrons so far have failed.
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. Personally, I don't care enough about them to find out if there are any fixes or workarounds, I generally just add the game to my "broken" list and play something else until the game developers fix their problems.
If you stick to Steam, though, there's a good chance your favourite games library will just work out of the box. Epic is actively anti-Linux so don't expect games on the Epic store to work and god forbid you try to use the crapware EA and Ubisoft force you to install. N=1, but I've been doing all of my gaming on Linux and almost everything on Steam just works for me. I've only had trouble running Halo but I found out that that was because of some kind of DRM sabotage by Microsoft, so I just ignored the game and moved on.
That's fantastic, but (like related problems, like "blocking advertising", "making your social media platform act the way you want", "setting up your desktop/IDE just right", and "debloating Android"), you have to consider the amount of time and effort you are dedicating to fighting the enormous amount of resource devoted to making those software tools the way they are.
For one, you will ultimately not win. For another, past a certain point, it should become clear that the tool you are using is not made for your use case.
I figure the script started as a Windows 8 debloater, and when updating it they went "well, surely nobody would want those installed" without worrying if they ever were installed.
Unfortunately this is a pretty common tech support query. A lot of these "bloat" scripts are designed by people knowing exactly what they are doing, and meant for such people. Some of them do things like Disable Defender and even Windows Updates. Which is fine if you know why you want those things, but people trying to get dad's computer some extra performance have dug a lot of holes for themselves with debloat scripts.
In particular the Windows Store is not always possible to reinstall once removed.
This seems like the right place to ask, does anyone know a lightweight Explorer alternative? I basically just want Windows XP explorer on Windows 10. I don't need tabs or dual panes, I just want it to be as fast as it used to be.
Whenever I run XP in a VM, I'm amazed that explorer windows not only open instantly, but fully drawn! In W10 it takes half a second to even respond, and then another half second while it draws the UI elements one by one.
If I move a folder, Sublime Text detects it instantly, but the same explorer window I used to move it takes several seconds to register the change it itself made...
Alas! This one has an infinite number of features I don't need, and it doesn't do the one thing I'm after: open new windows.
You can technically get a new window by launching a new instance of the app, but it takes as long to open as Windows 10's Explorer. Plus you get a nagging shareware screen ;)
I want to say "close but no cigar", but this thing isn't even on the right planet...
Total Commander is so great i am even using on Linux via Wine after switched to it as my main OS (though i also use Double Commander, which is a Total Commander clone, but somehow it feels a bit off compared to TC, so i mainly use DC only when i care about the unix-specific details working).
You just sent me on a nostalgia trip, used to use this back in the days. Also anyone else remember the kind of equivalent Norton/Volkov commander from the DOS days?
that's how I ended up with Total commander - the line of 2-pane file managers go all the way back to 1993 for me to DOS 6.22 and those tools. Once getting used to this concept, doing anything non-trivial on filesystem is very effective compared to simple file browsing windows others use. All work can be done only via keyboard which is much faster compared to adding mouse.
You could say its a matter of getting used to given tool - but consistently when I watch colleagues doing similar tasks, I am so much faster, easily 2-10x depending on task. And thats folks with 20+ years of experience. Yet whenever I try to show my ways to others, nobody picks it up. Its like some mental blind spot, people generally are happy to learn more effective ways for their work, but not this one.
That's not my experience with Windows. Explorer works pretty much instantly for me. Did you try to reinstall Windows? Sounds like issue with some shell extensions or something like that.
I've not known, Explorer to open instantly, or what I would call instantly, even on a fresh install, for some time IIRC. Heck, the amount of times I hit win+R to kick something off and that takes so long to open that the first couple of characters are missed and go to whatever window I had in focus at the time, is irritating. It certainly gets a lot worse when Explorer has been running a while (presumably this is why it has its own special case in Task Manager – pick Explorer and “end task” becomes “restart”) and its memory use has grown significantly (this is likely at least in part due to shell extension though the only one with any complexity I have installed here is MS's own TFS integration, and I have nothing like that running at home ATM).
Other things similarly take a while, like registering an update made elsewhere. These can be quite arbitrary, sometimes pretty instant, sometimes taking many seconds, and sometimes not updating at all until I explicitly refresh. I've even copied a small file to the same directory and waited several seconds before it showed up.
> Did you try to reinstall Windows?
For no sane desktop/similar operating system should “completely reinstall” be an off-hand answer for any but a massively significant error…
Usually when the problem gets really bad, memory use has jumped into a few hundred MB. That seems to happen when I've switched between local login and acceding the machine via RDC.
I keep a bad memory of how slow XP, 2000 and even NT4 were on late 90s machines.
Windows 9x was a strange beast, being a VM running on top of a DOS hypervisor, but it was mostly C and inline assembly and felt fast, even with 8MB of memory and a 75MHz processor. Windows 2000 was quite less efficient and would have taken eight times the memory and twice the processor speed to achieve the same responsiveness. Even more with XP.
Nowadays Windows, the mere operating system, feels slow even on computers as powerful as datacenters of the 90s. Twenty five years of abstraction layers, subsystems, processes and libraries adding up, and it's getting worse (W11 vs W10).
Find some hardware from the time and compare. Certainly common hardware from around the time of the initial release. It might not run as fast as you remember.
It definitely won't run as fast as a VM on a modern host with a much more powerful CPU, significantly faster IO (especially if the VM is hosted on an SSD).
Also, once you hit the point where the guest OS can't cache as much as it wants (as you've allocated a realistic amount of RAM from time) the host layer may be caching reads at least in the extra memory it has.
[though I do get the point: if it can be as fast as it was on old kit, why can't Win10/Win11 be faster on modern kit]
Had this and several other persistent issues across reinstalls, across devices... in 2015 I remember when Windows 10 came out and it was full of absolutely ridiculous UI bugs, at the time people made fun of Microsoft for using the customers as beta testers. So I avoided it for several years, only to discover that they hadn't fixed hardly any of them...
I'm a fan of Directory Opus. It's -far- more feature filled than Explorer, yet it's much faster at opening (assuming the service is turned on at startup).
I just don't like the design of this, or any other explorer alternative for that matter. It always has some very outdated feel to it... combined with an extremely cluttered view. Like texts and icons and buttons and options that I would never need all over the place.
Would be nice if each feature you don't need could be removed from the purchase price. I think the version I want would end up having a negative price tag ;)
That's also another point. I don't want to have to customize a software before it's reasonably usable. I probably don't even know myself how I would like it to be. It's the UX designer's job to make it pretty, not the user's.
After 10+ years of DOpus, I can't imagine ever going back to Explorer, except for the odd outlier use case. I'm sorry to see people saying that it's 'cluttered'. That's exactly the way I like it, and you can make it as basic as you like.
I suspect that for Windows 10 the window appearing but not fully drawn is a function of the introduction of a display compositor (Desktop Window Manager) in Windows Vista - this is also what solved the famous issue of Windows "leaving trails" of application Windows when they were unresponsive, and also permitted all the "aero" effects that Vista and 7 used as selling points. Windows XP and earlier used a Stacking Window Manager.
Although I am not having these problems with Explorer, I am going to answer this out of interest.
Obviously running Windows in a VM will be slower, but besides, Explorer is more than just the file manager.
It used to be very easy to replace the shell (Explorer.exe) with your own binary, but while this is now harder in later Windows versions it is still doable. I loved to play around with that when I was younger, and before I got seriously into Linux.
Now, there is actually a few options:
- Aston Shell used to be my favorite, but it does not seem like it is actively developed anymore. It is also closed source, which is potentially a security concern.
- Classic Shell (Works for Windows 10)
- ExplorerPatcher (taskbar enhancements for Windows 11)
- StartIsAllBack (taskbar enhancements for Windows 11)
I do not recommend replacing the default file manager, because Explorer is already extremely good. If this is slow for you, most likely something else is causing it to be slow. E.g. Waiting for a external/internal storage device to respond perhaps?
Now, talk about Finder on Mac – while not slow, its UI is truly horrendous compared to Explorer on Windows or file managers in Linux.
If your system is slow, then keep in mind that a lot of things are going on with later versions of Windows that can make the system slow. I hate the "blackbox" nature of it, but fact is, you probably have a bottleneck somewhere, possibly you are still using a mechanical hard disk and/or do not have enough RAM for things to load properly. Windows prefetch should help speed things up, given enough RAM, but if you have too little, then it actually might make it worse.
I remember fiddling a lot with Windows services, like prefetch, search indexing. Etc. Basically turning these off will make a slow system feel more responsive. And, of course, Windows update and Windows defender should also be turned off entirely on older systems, because they will constantly pest you with updates and slow the system down. With bloatware added from the computer's manufacturer this only gets worse. Everything unnecessary running in the background should be purged from the system.
That's extremely strange, because I do not have problems with speed. Perhaps it is something else interfering, a bad driver, or poor support for your paticular system?
Typically things open near instantly for me. But, keep in mind in a VM, things is just horrible slow. Probably even more so if you run Windows 10 from a Linux host OS – I have had a lot of problems with that, and eventually I just gave up, because it was not fast enough for me.
For Windows, it is much, much better to setup dual boot.
Yeah, I tried that, and also the one from ReactOS. ReactOS's one at least launches (including the taskbar!) but crashes almost instantly. The XP one seems to heavily depend on various DLL files which no longer work the same way. I tried copying a bunch of them over, solving the error popups one by one but gave up after hitting a brick wall after the 10th DLL or so.
Interesting idea, I hadn't thought about ReactOS as a possible source of FOSS programs for windows - but why not? We run Gnu user land various places after all.
Curious about why it crashes. Did you build from source?
No, I just copy pasted it from a ReactOS install. Binary compatibility is their goal (WinDbg thinks it's debugging Windows Server 2003, so they did a good job!), but last I heard they have to do some funky stuff in some places to be able to make use of WINE.
Or it could be because of the compatibility: XP's explorer doesn't run on 10, so we shouldn't expect its clone to run either! But I had to try :)
Still, considering it's open source and the closest thing what I do want, starting with this and stripping out the taskbar might get me a good result.
Same with MSPaint: just spent several days trying to get the leaked XP MSPaint to compile, to no avail. Looks like I'd have better luck starting with ReactOS's paint clone and modifying it so it's feature complete and has the original icons :)
Make sure your folders are configured for “general” files and not “photos” or other metadata consuming options. I had a similar issue and this resolved it.
> does anyone know a lightweight Explorer alternative?
PowerShell. It's builtin, uses little resources, is fast, has pattern globbing, autocompletion, and can be as efficient as using the coreutils on *nix.
Unfortunately nnn and Ranger don't work on Windows, and the WSL uses more resources than explorer so this workaround isn't resource efficient. Cygwin is very efficient and could be a better solution to run them, I haven't tried it.
Just a tip - i use tinywall firewall to prevent windows from doing anything in the background. i used the built-in firewall as well but windows has multipel services that can act as proxy for other services to avoid blocking. tinywall is simpler. i only disable it for updates, WHEN I WANT TO UPDATE. it has been working for me flawlessly. also, install windows without internet connection.
O&O Software GmbH, Berlin do a nice suite of 'free' tools to remove apps and limit telemetry in Windows 10 and 11; see:
O&O AppBuster | ShutUp 10
[1] https://www.oo-software.com/en/ooappbuster
[2] https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
* Free of charge for private users, companies and educational institutions
Plus they also warn on each step the consequences of choosing those options and remind the user that this should be run after every update just in case MS enables/resets some of the disabled telemetry. Very pleasant UI/UX.
I disabled Windows (11) Updates with this tool, nevertheless it updated itself this week… sigh.
(and yes, i ran it frequently, after the previous/last update too.)
All the tools and scripts I've seen essentially make the same changes to disable certain behaviours.
However It appears Microsoft still forces certain critical (in their eyes) patches for zero days and can therefore do the sme for less critical things.
For 2+ years I've had a Windows 10 instance with updates (automatic and notifications) disabled .. and it has honoured that setting.
I manually update every few months after reading the details on the pendings and cross reading on Bleeping Computer | elsewhere for patch issues.
Two days ago - I woke to a rebooted computer with a forced "critical security update" applied.
I'm not happy - if microsoft can do that, then so can anyone that infiltrates their patch push ala Solar Winds etc.
I’ve noticed it’s better to install Windows without a connection to the internet. There will still be some packaged in software you might want to rid of, but at least not the advert apps like duolingo, candy crush and netflix. Then disable automatic installation of apps via Windows update and clean it up before allowing it to the internet.
Actually reminds me of how you absolutely should not install Windows XP with the ethernet cable plugged in back when more home computers were directly connected to the Internet. That thing would be chock full of worms within minutes, so you had to first install a software firewall while offline.
Installing without internet connection also has the major benefit that it allows you to use a local user account rather than forcing you to signup for an online Microsoft/hotmail/.. account
You can install it with local user, it just takes more time and they will nag you so you have to press ESC a couple of times. Most people don't know about this and are coerced into creating MS account, this isn't even some sort of dark pattern, it's a completely fraudulent practice.
I just installed from a freshly downloaded Win 10 ISO, and there was either no option for a local account, or I just haven't triggered the way to escape creating an online account. At that point, there simply was nowhere to click on the UI, I had the choice of either creating one on the spot, or using one that already exists, and that's it. Really hated the experience.
Rufus (the ISO to Flash Drive app) recently added a feature to create a local user right into the installation media, remove telemetry, and remove windows 11 hardware restrictions. It's worked like a charm so far.
Holy shit, that’s awesome. Already loved Rufus but this is a whole other level.
This very exact specific occurrence happened to me a while back and made me so livid I cold powered off the entire machine, downloaded Linux onto a flash drive from a different laptop, and have been running happily since. The forced auto reboot install of updates really pissed me off and then this forced ms account on install was the last straw. Haven’t used a Microsoft product personally ever since.
It's a jarring experience. They always seem to know better, and as the years went on, they made harder and harder to properly use the system as a power user.
And even if you want to use an online account for e.g. OneDrive you do not want to login when installing windows because it names your user folder to an abbreviated version of your email.
Didn't they remove the option to use a local account? https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-11-requiire-microsoft...
I did not want to connect the laptop to the WiFi at all to risk an online account. When googling it, there was a video that stated I needed to:
Shift+F10 to open CMD.exe => taskmgr => terminate "Network Connection Flow"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3NPilpkC8M
Did it work? Curious cats want to know.
Nope.
Simply unplug the internet cable, works in the latest windows 11.
This was also my experience doing my last install, it caused me to:
- make it a priority to avoid Windows and run Linux instead whenever possible.
- strongly criticize Microsoft and Windows on my personal blog
- systematically list the bad stuff Microsoft is doing to ruin Windows, including but not limited to their dismantling of the taskbar with Windows 11.
The mandatory registration of a Microsoft account and included ad-ware is an extremely nasty thing about Windows.
In my experience Windows installs all the bloatware after first Internet connection anyway.
I usually set up my Windows the following way:
1. Offline install. 2. Turn on Internet and leave it alone for a hour or two. It'll install all drivers from Microsoft and also it'll install bloatware. 3. Install additional drivers if needed. I install Nvidia ones because Microsoft drivers are not up to date, but that's optional. 4. Go to Settings/Apps and remove all bloatware and other bundled software I don't need.
That's quite a procedure, but it allows me to have more or less stable and debloated system.
With some laptops it might be necessary to use manufacturer-provided drivers instead of Microsoft ones. I don't really know what's the rule of thumb here.
> Actually reminds me of how you absolutely should not install Windows XP with the ethernet cable plugged in back when more home computers were directly connected to the Internet. That thing would be chock full of worms within minutes, so you had to first install a software firewall while offline.
So same as windows 10 then, just a different vendor for the malware?
I'm in no way going to say win10 is a bastion of security but I don't know anyone who has had a virus with 10 compared to ENDLESS battles from back in the day helping fix friends/families infected PCs.
Not sure if people have just gotten smarter, or some of the default stuff is better, or both - but it is a markedly different time than before.
WinXP was vulnerable to a lot of remote exploits out-of-the-box. If you just connected WinXP to the internet after a new installation (and without SP2 and up-to-date patches) and walked away for 24 hours, you could expect it to be infected by the time you got back. This was, of course, a much bigger issue back when we were directly connecting our PC's to the internet with dial-up. WinXP behind a properly configured router isn't at risk in the same way.
Yes DMZs are unsecure. Not really specific to windows as any software with an unpatched CVE in a DMZ can be attacked
Not quite. It needs to be an RCE vulnerability that can be used remotely against a system without user interaction. XP had a lot of those. There aren't a lot of those now. Afaik, most RCE's nowadays require a user to download a hostile file or view a hostile site.
It's part of why we don't get worm attacks all that often like we used to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_(computer_worm)
> The worm spreads by exploiting a buffer overflow discovered by the Polish security research group Last Stage of Delirium[5] in the DCOM RPC service on the affected operating systems, for which a patch had been released one month earlier in MS03-026 and later in MS03-039. This allowed the worm to spread without users opening attachments simply by spamming itself to large numbers of random IP addresses. Four versions have been detected in the wild.[6] These are the most well-known exploits of the original flaw in RPC, but there were in fact another 12 different vulnerabilities that did not see as much media attention.[7]
Fair, although SMB has had a few noteworthy ones recently. And lets not forget log4j
I think the point is that MS install adware and spying viruses on your computer with Windows 10 instead if hackers.
Viruses nowadays are most commonly uses to establish botnets and steal credentials, so virus writers try to not disrupt the host and to remain as invisible as possible. The one exception being ransomware.
You have Microsoft Defender to thank for that. You now basically have an antivirus bundled in the OS, with the widest install base, that has become shockingly good.
I mean unless you’re physically connecting to your modem and using your WAN Ip as your computer IP, Who exactly is sending you the worms when you plug in the ethernet?
Microsoft. Stealing personal information, forcing ads into the OS, installing software without permission, hijacking private network and computing resources for profit or for state actors, uploading user files and deleting them from the system, and making the system unresponsive are all things we used to call malware.
> I’ve noticed it’s better to install Windows without a connection to the internet.
I have a Windows 7 PC installed like this... and never connected it to the internet. It runs two single players games and works like a charm. Very secure also :)
This tool does not seem to be about windows preloaded software, but programs from various vendors that may be installed by users
The adware mentioned in the bloatware section are installed by Windows on Windows installation. May wary between locales.
https://privacy.sexy/
That is amazing, thanks. It actually deserves its spot on the frontpage of HN.
Sure, submitted.
I think the "sexy" word is making it auto-dead by some software spam filter. I vouched for it, but it will take several vouches before the link is accepted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32436211
It still showed dead until I vouched for it, but it was six hours old at 1 karma meaning no one is probably going to see it.
I resubmitted it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32440745 thinking it would bump the karma at least like other duplicate submissions, but it made a new submission, and it looks like it's probably dead as well.
I tried submitting just the github repo:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32436949
Thanks for linking to the submission - I vouched too - but it's still dead.
Anyone looked at tried both of these - and know how they differ (especially for windows 11)?
https://github.com/undergroundwires/privacy.sexy
https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows
I vouched too.
This is unbelievably cool. Bookmarked.
Problem loading page
The page does not work without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to use privacy.sexy. There's no shady stuff as 100% of the website is open source.
-
Still kind of ironic.
Yeah I was already formulating my rant to complain about web pages that are not able to show what essentially is text and images, without supporting JavaScript...
But now that I saw the site, I can understand that the need is justified, given how the page is built (essentially not a web site, but an application that allows dynamically building a script, by injecting snippets that each do a specific function).
No doubt this could have been done with just text and hyperlinks, but the result would have been a completely different UX.
It’s not just text and images. It build a script tailored to your desire.
Isn't that essentially what all web apps do? Dynamically add and remove content from a single page?
Better Windows 10 debloater: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop#1-overvi...
I tried this debloater, but it debloated my ability to play video games that I like. And debloated the luxury of not having to drop to the command line to fix many of my problems. Also debloated the ability to run some very convenient day to day software.
When did you do this? Linux has gotten better over the last few years on almost all of those counts.
https://ProtonDB.com
https://areweanticheatyet.com
I was a proton user for about 5 years. Highly recommend it. But it's not perfect.
Proton is great, but getting non-steam games on it is about as fiddly as the rest of Wine/Lutris/Crossover/etc. Especially with older games, alternate launchers, etc.
If you're fine with having a slightly smaller selection of games (mostly AAA suffers), then it's great. If you're into mod-heavy games, Windows still fares better IMO.
I put Win11 on my new machine to get more bang for buck with gaming, but I despise the OS in its current state. Purely from a DE UX perspective it doesn't seem very productive with its more limited shortcuts.
For mods etc it's definitely still nascent, but is exactly the sort of area which has smart problem solvers working on it. I've already seen mod helper apps for minecraft and elder scrolls popping up. There will be more.
That's what I'm hearing since 20 years.
Since the release of Proton in 2018 and the subsequent release of the Steam Deck, the difference is night and day.
If your last experience was 20 years ago I would sincerely recommend looking into it again.
Difference in what exactly?
I could give it a try (not gp but periodically interested), but not sure if my GSync display will work correctly. Last time I tried desktop linux, it couldn’t decide which video driver sucks more after another update, and that was on a pretty dumb graphics card. Thinking of something deeply proprietary like GSync I don’t even know if it’s worth trying.
And I’m not a linux newbie, used it and freebsd since around 2000 on daily basis periodically. It is amazing, but just like Linus, “I still need desktop” that allows me to play my hardware. So when there is a >$100 graphics card I resort to windows + msys2 by default.
I have been playing Elden Ring just fine on Linux. At launch, I was worried about it and installed Windows just to play the game. After a while I tried it on Linux and the experience is almost 100% identical in terms of performance.
Part of your issue is having to wrangle with Nvidia drivers. I am just using the default open source driver for AMD that comes built into the kernel and the experience is seamless. I know the nightmare of getting graphics on Linux working right which is why I avoid Nvidia.
With my example above (Proton) it has had a transformative effect on how many games are playable on Linux and how easy it is to play them.
Prior to 2018, there were only a handful of native ports, skewed towards indie games. Now 4,582 are classified by Valve as being 'Verified or playable', with 73% of the top 100 games on steam having an out-of-the-box-flawless experience and a further 14% that will work with some tweaks.
Steam baked this new technology into their client, so the installation process for a Windows game on Linux is identical to Windows (click 'Install' then play. There is one additional popup to inform the user that a translation layer is being used).
In addition to this, Easy Anti-Cheat and Battleye have now (as of Nov 2021) announced anti-cheat support for Proton - both technologies require the developers to enable support either with tweaks (EAC) or by emailing for the supplier to enable support (battleye).
And that's only gaming. In the last 12 years (with the 20 year limit specified by OP) we have seen a transformation in web technologies which have moved from proprietary codecs and add-ons to open standards. Video, streaming and all other things that Windows users take for granted are now available on Linux. This also means that the trend in apps moving to electron also implies that by-and-large Linux is also functional (with notable exceptions e.g. Discord audio).
There's also been a large development of drivers included in the kernel, most peripherals including game controllers etc all now work out of the box. Bluetooth and Wifi - the traditional enemies of Linux users, now work flawlessly and don't come up at all in support requests anymore. AMD drivers have improved, even Nvidia have open-sourced the kernel-land components of their proprietary driver which will help the development of nouveau and other open source alternatives (plus make the Nvidia driver much easier to install and maintain in server set ups, which I think was their goal).
Vulkan was released in 2016 which has driven a whole new raft of graphics capability, providing a strong alternative to the clunky OpenGL. Wayland is making serious progress against X, with Gnome-wayland and KDE-wayland both becoming default on some distros. Valve also have a minimalist wayland compositor that is used in Game Mode on the steam deck.
And that isn't even to mention the plethora of usability improvements to Desktop environments or helper apps such as Heroic, Lutris, Protonup, Nobara which have improved the Linux desktop experience immeasurably.
So yes, in short a lot has changed. When I hear someone say 'I have heard the same for 20 years' they are either ignorant or ignoring the progress that has been made in bad faith.
All this progress is nice, no sarcasm. But I still get confused when my 2-3 year old experiences get written off as ignorance or bad faith, never mentioning the issues I had or how to deal with them as a user, and never explaining details I asked about.
If you know about gsync and/or fps tax on linux, I’d be glad to trust and try. Otherwise this comment looks like yet another marketing booklet that doesn’t address any of my doubts and creates no reason to find out, cause last few times I fell for, it was the waste of time.
Edit: I don’t want to downplay this tech, you or anything else. Currently I just want to play Witcher 3 with gsync and have no time for fixing the issues longer than 10 minutes under my expertise.
You asked about what I meant exactly, so I told you.
And for what it's worth, I'm not writing off your concerns as ignorant or bad faith, but aimed at OP's "That's what I'm hearing since 20 years". That comment is either ignorant or just trying to bash Linux from a point of prejudice.
I have no experience with the issues you raise so I'm unable to address them specifically.
It is still the case that if you have recent bad experience with Linux then Windows may still be the best option for you.
Ah, I lost the thread and misread that part of your comment, sorry!
> And debloated the luxury of not having to drop to the command line to fix many of my problems.
are you sure this is covered?
Yep, there's far more GUIs and desktop support for tasks than in days of yore.
There's definitely still a mindset that the command line is much easier from a documentation/support point of view which means that forum responses and tutorials will still refer to the command line a lot.
However, compared to when I started in 2011 there isn't a need to use the terminal like there was back then. The terminal is only really needed if you're doing something new or niche
Something about this cookie-cutter smug response makes me nostalgic for a decade ago where you'd see posts like this on every forum every time Linux was mentioned.
Since Ubuntu tries to force snap onto (new) users, I do not recommend it for any new user. Sure, you can disable any of that and use flatpak instead, but it seems Canonical doesn't really want that.
Is Linux Mint a desnapped Ubuntu? Or was that a one-off for Firefox?
Debian is a nice snapless alternative bc it'll generally run anything meant for Ubuntu. The only major downside is no PPAs
> Is Linux Mint a desnapped Ubuntu?
It is.
https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.h...
Seems to be about the precious release. Hope it still holds to their latest release as well
Ditched Windows when it was still Windows 8.1 for Linux Mint. I am still on Linux Mint and I have it installed on all my machines. Works out of the box. Not resources hungry. Helpful community on IRC. Good looking if you ask me. It also acts as a good filter against Ubuntu's experiments while benefiting from its widespread adoption. Never looked back.
I used to enjoy mint as well, however I heard some bad things about the security or lack of. But the usability and general polish was excellent.
Does anyone have up to date knowledge on mint's security situation?
Did flatpack improved? Can you say get CLI apps in flatpack because it was not possible and I my quick search found no examples. Personally snap helped me in setting up some stuff on a server (pdftk) I am not a big fan though, could be done better IMO, flatpack seems to be same RedHat/GNOME crap, pushed by force and not be it's quality.
> Can you say get CLI apps in flatpack
For new users the CLI stuff is usually less important. I don't categorically hate snap, but for new users it's bad long-term, too, since it is only controlled by Canonical and therefore a bad reliance. Nobody can add repositories for snap beside Canonical.
If you are an avid CLI user I recommend using containers instead of snap. This way you can even keep the sandbox with dotnet for example.
> flatpack seems to be same RedHat/GNOME crap, pushed by force and not be it's quality.
However it is not controlled by RedHat (and also not solely developed by them). At least everyone can add repositories to flatpak. Which is probably my biggest gripe with snap.
About containers- I would prefer say when I go to a CLI project webpage to download 1 file, now it is a snap and it just works so I can test/evaluate the application. I am not intrested in a repository like flatpack just in going directly to the source and getting the file I need.
Anyway IMO flatpack and snap are different things, you can't just tell people to replace one with the other. AppImage could have been better but is ahrd to improve if there is no big money behind to force push things.
Flatpak does not require repositories; you can install flatpak app from an archive, exactly like deb/apt or rpm/dnf. Repositories are a convenience.
I know, I was trying to express that I don't care that snap does not offer support third party repositories.
Btw if you or anyone knows, does any of thios tech solves the issue where your system has an old glibc and you want to try some new app/game that needs a new glibc? For a video game performance is important access to GPU driver is needed. I had a bad experience with a game that updated and stopped working and from my reading there is no way to have 2 glibc on your system(complex shit about how executables and libraries loading works).
All container systems are self-contained; they can have glibc (or musl, or any other libc) they want.
In flatpak, the glibc is part of the runtimes; i.e. org.(freedesktop|gnome|kde).Platform. This allows you to run apps on old CentOS/RHEL that you could not natively. Or you can have runtime-less package or use your own runtime, where you put libraries you want. Similarly with snap, you have core18 or core20 runtimes (that correspodents to ubuntu 18.04 or ubuntu 20.04).
Drivers are more interesting. GPU driver has two parts - kernel mode, that shuffles prepared command buffers between userspace and hardware, does mode switching, etc. -- and user mode, which is shared library that implements user APIs like OpenGL or Vulkan, and based on commands from these APIs builds commands buffers, that are then sent to kernel part. The user-mode part may or may not be compatible with multiple versions of the kernel part; the AMD and Intel drivers usually are, as the kernel driver is part of the kernel tree and the user mode driver has to work with any kernel it is run under. Nvidia on the other hand assumes that both user mode and kernel mode are in sync, so packaging specific user mode driver version into container might be problematic.
Flatpak usually ships latest (n or n-1) Mesa and keeps Nvidia driver in sync with the installed kernel mode driver. They are shipped as addons to runtimes.
CLI is important for everyone. Because when you ask for help to anyone, they will have no clue on how to do it on gnome and will just do it on the CLI.
I mean if we are nitpicking ubuntu is pretty bloated you should compile your own os from scratch.
Getting rid of snap is already a good first step. I know, I know, snap is great, after all who doesn't want to fill up their primary disk with several full copies of chrome?
But only by shining sunlight onto your SSD!
I understand you're being sarcastic, but there are plenty of intermediate options between "use Ubuntu" and "chisel transistors from a rock". In particular, if you want to dab into comping your OS, Gentoo is a good start. Or, if you want to go a bit deeper right away, Linux From Scratch (LFS) project has you covered.
Having used Gentoo and LFS, it is good to install it once to understand how Linux works but long term it is annoying.
Arch is a better middle ground IMO.
Hmm. I actually had the opposite experience. I've been using Gentoo for decades now and haven't found it to be problematic at all. What did you find annoying about it long-term?
I tried Arch and found the divide between distribution packages and AUR to be strange. I assume distribution packages are trustworthy, but a lot of things aren't available there, so you have to use AUR. But my understanding is that AUR is all user contributed and unvetted, so it's essentially like the olden days of downloading an exe and hoping for the best. Unless you go to the effort of scrutinizing every script, I guess.
Updates seem to be hit or miss too. I had some AUR packages that suddenly failed with circular dependency issues and later a full system update made the machine unbootable, which wasn't tons of fun. That's when I went back to Gentoo. :P
To be fair, though, I stopped using Arch after about a couple of months. I could be remembering things wildly incorrectly when it comes to the package management stuff. Unbootable update, though, I remember vividly!
> What did you find annoying about it long-term?
I used Gentoo around 2002 or earlier and it was everytime an adventure to emerge anything, mostly due to the time it was taking. A kernel rebuild was taking hours.
I was not interested in fine-tuning the binaries so I was emerging with the default configuration, which makes it more or less equivalent to installing something from a repo.
The immense advantage of Gentoo is that you had to install it from the very scratch and it gave you finally an understanding of what was going on, instead of just next next next on install screens. I had everyone from my team go though an installation just for that.
> and found the divide between distribution packages and AUR to be strange
Wasn't this the same thing with Gentoo, where there would be "official" sources, and then the others. With colliding names? (it may have been another distro, sorry if this is the case - my memory is not that good 20 years back). I know that it took me a while to understand that philosophy (but again, maybe it was not Gentoo)
> To be fair, though, I stopped using Arch after about a couple of months.
After having had used Debian/Ubuntu for years on my server, I got fed up with the upgrade cycle and moved to Arch a year or so ago. I did not have any problems and the documentation is top notch. I use my server in a very basic way: an Arch installation, then docker and borg and this is pretty much it. Everything I run is in docker containers (except for borg (backup) for more or less sane reasons - probably less than more)
I've been considering Alpine for my laptop. Minimal=good.
Alpine is not a general use OS. It is intended for containers and while it might be possible to use it on a laptop you will probably have plenty of problems with its use of libraries.
Friggin MUSL
I think this references this XKCD, in case anyone is curious: https://xkcd.com/378/
Windows makes Ubuntu look like Puppy Linux
Uboot + yocto
Thanks, I was thinking U-Boot was for embedded only... but I see that it has even a UEFI version!
too bloated, multiboot2 header and buildroot
Serious question, is Ubuntu still including that Amazon spyware?
No. That was removed a long time ago https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/1.443
Edit: Ubuntu version 18.04.xx (point release) or 20.04.xx and above does not contain the Amazon web app.
I'm a heavy Linux user, but please keep comments like this one on reddit. This is a waste of time and energy. No, you can't just convince your employer to suddenly use Ubuntu. That's not how the real world works.
The most popular Linux distribution, aka Android, is full of bloatware that is very hard to uninstall. And, unlike with Windows, you can't install a debloater, debloaters are forbidden.
Good luck running any business software on it.
Newer business software all runs on the web. Old business software may not even run on current windows machines.
Office web is fine for day to day use, but not appropriate for anyone in finance/accounting/project management who will need to use Excel heavily
I use excel heavily, librecalc is as good or better than excel. It has near 1:1 function compatibility. The exception are macros but MS seem to be slowly phasing them out.
It is not just VBA. LO Calc is still missing Excel Tables functionality, which is a biggie. It was added to Excel 15 years ago! It also doesn't have equivalent of PowerQuery/PowerPivot/PowerMap equivalent, which appeared in Excel in 2010-2013 timeframe.
So LO Calc is OK for basic spreadsheets, but any power user will gravitate to Excel due to functionalities.
Good news, Pivot tables were added in v6.2. And there's an extension that provides similar support for PowerQuery. Tables do exist in LO calc.
I was talking PowerPivot, not pivot tables. LO Calc pivot tables are at Excel 2003 level. Well, there's a reason why it was redone in 2007.
If by extension that provides similar support for PowerQuery you mean QueryConnector, then no. QueryConnector is similar to the MS Query, not to the PowerQuery. And MS Query was Excel built-in, not extension...
Tables do not exist in LO calc. Dataranges do (and imported excel files with tables are converted to dataranges). Dataranges do not have functionality like Tables do. You cannot even create above mentioned pivot table from a datarange, only from named range or selection.
I even had to google how to create them (the build-in help didn't... help), after I've seen that the import did create something, and not just convert to named ranges as it used to. So much for discoverability.
---
This is not to put down LibreOffice Calc or anything. It is about being honest where the weaknesses are, and how to address them. Sweeping problems under the carpet won't address them, and Calc won't become better.
Also, Excel is the crown jewel of MS Office. Not Word, not Powerpoint, but Excel. Of course it is best of the best that money can buy and competing with it is not easy. But 15 years? Come on.
Yes I see now what you mean. The Power* family of tools is quiet powerful.
I'm now reconsidering if I'm a power user of spreadsheets! For these extra features I'll use R as it's more powerful and reproducible.
You can use Python macros with libreoffice, right?
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Macros/Python_Guide/Intr...
That’s nice, but not very helpful if you’re trying to use an existing sheet that has VBA macros.
>It has near 1:1 function compatibility.
You're kidding, right? LibreOffice Calc does not have:
- tables
- powerquery
- dynamic array formulae
- XLOOKUP, LET, FILTER, and the rest of the extremely useful new formulae
These four things completely dominate my Excel workflow. Opening Calc is like stepping back into the dark ages.
I often think people suggesting things like Libreoffice just open csv files and scroll through then tell everyone else they can do everything in libreoffice.
When you’re a heavy user of excel, almost nothing else compares. Tho Google sheets does give excel a run for its money, because it has scripts (javascript) to do everything else.
LO Calc has python scripting. I think you mean power user, I can accept that LO calc is not up to speed for powerusers of Excel.
I'm a heavy user of LO calc, but my usage is of course different from yours. For true data wrangling I use R so this statement. I can't imagine the data wrangling and transformations that I perform in R being done in Excel. Its a nightmare waiting to happen!
Three out of those 4 things aren't functions. I do agree newer functions are missing (such as XLOOKUP) but for most people calc/excel is a high powered calculator and they use it as such. So Calc is perfect replacement. It's not the dark ages, that's an exaggeration.
No it's not. It doesn't even support tables and named columns.
It definitely supports named columns and I am pretty sure 'tables' as well.
the reverse exists as well, a lot of jobs can't be done on windows.
Which is why windows ships WSL, to keep people who can't work on windows using it. Better yet, to allow their managers to force them to use windows even though they need linux.
Do you mean Google luck or Microsoft Azure luck?
Nothing cloud. Regular software like Office, Adobe stuff, accounting software, industrial related software, and many more.
You use all of these?
Yes, I have Office (excel heavily), adobe (rush, photoshop, premiere, audition), QuickBooks and Sage 50, some automation software for manufacturing. There are many more that wouldn't work on anything but windows. I am sure many people are the same as me because I see other computer users with their software stack very often.
In that case you probably want a Mac. Its basically the same as ubuntu, but Apple paid the Microsoft taxes.
Mac is not enough although I have a MacBook Pro on my desk sitting and collecting dust. I only use it to test sites with Safari because emulators never give the same result.
I install ubuntu on old laptops to utilize them and as VM on my current windows machine.
Macbook is sluggish (mouse moves) and very limited customizations/options. None of the communication software I use work all at the same time on either on ubuntu nor macos. For example, I use Skype, RingCentral, WhatsApp, Teams, Discord open in one 32" monitor. I must communicate with multiple people everyday for business purposes. I can't fanboy and go for Mac or Ubuntu and ruin my businesses. (I have 4 x 32")
Another monitor has KeePass, putty, and winscp running. If a client sends me an excel file for a reason and it has macros in it, office is the only way to open it. OpenOffice or Libre sucks. I also occasionally update company blogs and must edit photos and videos. Adobe works flawlessly on Windows and has many advantages using it on Windows compared to MacOs edition.
For my security cameras, I use the camera system's only supported windows software. There is no other platform supported. SonicWall VPN sucks on mac and unsupported. I won't spend 2 hours each time VPN fails on Ubuntu. Windows works flawlessly and I tried on Ubuntu. Can't connect to client servers remotely with Ubuntu or crappy mac vpn software called MobileConnect.
I use FreeCad but tried AutoCad in the past, only works on Windows properly. FreeCad sucks on Ubuntu, AutoCad is not supported. This is for my another business unrelated to the other software.
I have more computers than I can count but I am always ending up using Windows for work. To make everything work on one computer, I must use windows. If something new comes up, I won't spend hours and days to try to make it work on Ubuntu or feel sad for not even having it for MacOs.
Office Mac is pretty awful, I really wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who needs to use the full feature set
Ive had the complete opposite experience.
Office on my M1 macbook air is noticeably more stable and responsive than the dell xps13 bought in January, and the mackbook was like half the price. That XPS is probably the last windows machine we buy ever.
Also most of our employees have fully migrated to libreoffice now.
The GP meant features. Office Mac is missing a great deal of them, like all the Power*/DAX functionality. And even if it has them, they might be half-baked; just to connect to pgsql, you need a paid odbc driver that costs about the half the price of the Office, you cannot use the open source one.
Oh dear lord
Have you tried CrossOver or Wine?
Yes, that's the kinda software that most office workers use. Programmers are the exception.
Any software developer business founder/entrepreneur uses more than Vim or notepad++. To support a bootstrapped business, the owners end up doing everything, this involves blogging, video editing, even photography if the product is physical. Just-one-software-using developers usually work for a company rather than being independent.
There are open source options that work fine on Linux for most of those though and things like Proton do a pretty amazing job now too. But people have set/complex workflows or existing familiarity that is not so easy to just flick over and that's reasonable.
It's not a "Linux can't do it" problem though.
Business founders/entrepreneurs are not exactly a large part of the userbase either...
It takes an unnecessary amount of time for to run things on linux that are working comfortably on windows without weird modifications to the operating system. That's the reason why people choose windows.
Regular software while doing "Business" !
Runs perfectly fine.
Win10 VMs?
Pass. I would rather use windows than ubuntu. But I’ll stick to fedora. That’s the new beez kneez
Ubuntu has become quite terrible, especially the Snaps, but Linux Mint is really nice.
Ubuntu Server, once de-Snapped, is a really nice base to install a DE on. Just did that this week with awesome WM and I have zero complaints.
The only problem I have with ubuntu server desnapped is let’s encrypt is such a pain now. They force the use of snaps and it’s a manual process to do it without snaps :(
I don't get Microsoft. Come on, the game is up. Everybody knows that the bloatware is because Microsoft derives money from it. That annoying screen at installation time asking you to sign your soul and those of your loved ones? 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...gasp...money? 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.
Windows officially already costs money (though Microsoft doesn’t seem to enforce it). And you can buy the Enterprise version for $MONEY which cuts down at least some of the crap.
I could be wrong, but this seems like a surefire way to make your system develop weird quirks. Just looking at the issues someone seems to have restart/shutdown take 15 minutes: is this because of debloater or just regular windows things? Who knows?
O&O's similar thingy even tells you this for some options: that you should only use them if you're really sure that you want the effect. 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.
Those debloaters/registry cleaners always make more problems than they solve.
I personally like Sophia Script a lot to initially configure Windows to my liking: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows
It also does a lot more than „debloat“ which is a loaded term on itself because tastes are different. Someone might like having certain things included in their installation, some don’t.
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.
The kids have had far less trouble with Debian/Gnome than Windows 10.
With Win10, they'd keep accidentally moving/hiding the taskbar around, toggling fullscreen, toggling the screen reader, changing it to weird resolutions, etc... Then when my wife tries to bring one of their school websites up for them, she gets frustrated by the whole mess, & calls me to straighten it out--since she's a mac person and has no patience with any of this windows nonsense.
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. Memories!
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.
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. Full of Gnome or KDE programs I will never use. 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.
let me tell you about about dotfiles..
The main thing holding Linux back is Linux evangelists and their desperate need to read a Dale Carnegie book or two.
macOS is very enjoyable and not bloated IMHO.
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.
Right? 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.
There was also O&O ShutUp10++, which gives you pretty granular control over what you want to enable or disable: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
For example, I might want to disable telemetry or certain app permissions, also disable the OneDrive integration with Explorer (because I use NextCloud or something else), but leave automatic driver updates on and allow Windows Defender to work.
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 11. 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.
Honestly, the only things keeping me on Windows at this point are gaming (around 25% of my Steam games can run on Linux) and software like MobaXTerm, for which I haven't found capable alternatives (e.g. GUI SSH/RDP/VNC/... client with integrated FTP/SFTP and the ability to split terminals, whilst being able to do simultaneous input in all of them, or disable either with a checkbox, e.g. send input to 7/9 open sessions).
[1] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/vertic...
I always have to laugh when I see the O&O site and there's the big "Gold Microsoft Partner" plaque next to "ShutUp, free antispy tool" proudly at the top
> (they just keep enabling telemetry with each update)
I don't know, but this feels really illegal. 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 10. Unless you could get your hands on what they called LTSB but they have done all they can to make that a difficult endeavor.
I for one also personally only use Windows for gaming at this point and even then I’m astounded with how well SteamOS works on a steamdeck to play games.
Oh I'd never heard of LTSB, that looks exactly like what I want.
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.
visual studio subscription lets you download all windows versions pretty easily
> Honestly, the only things keeping me on Windows at this point are ... client with integrated FTP/SFTP and the ability to split terminals, whilst being able to do simultaneous input in all of them
You can split windows and broadcast to all terminal windows with several terminal emulators available for Linux. Examples include wezterm, Kitty, Terminator, Alacritty
There is also AME aka Ameliorated Windows 10 "Windows 10 minus the spyware plus added stability and security." - https://ameliorated.info/
”We have deleted all the Windows Update binaries. This makes the system more secure”
I…what. 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 11. 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...
https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher
Interesting (and a little scary, lol). Are there any patches/replacements for the windows 11 lock screen yet? (eg: one with only slideshow, no pop-ups)?
It's entirely written in C. Impressive.
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.
Zorin OS, is exactly what you describe, it's free but you can pay for support and some extra bells and whistles.
Zorin OS is basically Ubuntu with sugar coating but in my view it does address all the usability/UX criticism coming from people transioning away from Windows/Mac.
I am a long time Debian user but I transioned both my parents away from Windows using Zorin OS.
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".
> actual for-profit alternative
The profit incentives are what brought Windows to the state it is today.
How about https://puri.sm?
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(!) updates in order to start configuring your drivers, installing packages and "debloating".
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.
[1] https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows
[2] https://privacy.sexy/
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.
Okay, now tell me why I would use this instead of installing LTSC.
Okay, now tell me how I can purchase a single-user license for LTSC.
https://tinyapps.org/blog/201811300700_windows_10_ltsc.html
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.
My apologies, the links have not been updated since 2018, though the principle/method still stands. A cursory search turned up this current link (the price has gone down to $237.99):
https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-enterprise-ltsc-upgrade-...
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.
[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/core-infrastructure-a...
I see no downsides here
LTSC/LTSB is a life saver, if they ever stop doing it I don't think I'll be able to run a Windows VM again...
this is for people who are already on a non-ltsc model...
i have a problem with LTSC though, it constantly wants to install "security updates" which fucks up my rdpwrap....
is there a way to disable that?
windows update service and windows update medic service can be deleted, this'll solve the issue
Group policy is your friend. I always disable automatic updates and Defender.
> debloater
Not needed AFAIC.
I only keep windows around to run the oddball app. that doesn't run either on the web or native on Linux.
These are increasingly rarer, typically of the gaming persuasion (e.g. MS Flight Simulator).
For these, I run a windows instance inside a VM, one distinct VM for each app.
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. and anything privacy related, I run on a bare-bone, heavily trimmed Debian with a Cinnamon desktop.
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?
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.
Lately I’ve been calling it Microsoft BonziBuddy OS.
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.
Just tonight I was mucking around with Remote Play from my Linux desktop to an Android phone.
* Lock screen got in the way. Attempts to unlock remotely froze the client.
* Game launched in windowed mode, ended up shifted and cropped. 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.
* Sound didn't work on the client, only the host. Checking "play sound on host" fixed it?!
At least I eventually got it all to work.
SteamVR in Linux sort of works too.
* Async reprojection doesn't work and leads to horrible artifacts. The option to disable it globally is missing, and you have to go deep into the per-app settings.
* Sound has a 50% chance of being borked. Unplugging the headset sometimes fixes it.
* If you have an AMD GPU, its automatic power profile causes latency spikes several times per second. You either need to write to sysfs entries, or install third party daemons, and you need to add a kernel option in grub. Fun!
* Bluetooth power management for base stations doesn't exist, except for some third party scripts.
* If I have multiple monitors enabled, the headset fails to go into direct mode.
* The virtual controllers shown in the base environment are rendered as if the z-buffer is inverted, or maybe the normals are backwards. I'm pretty sure it's a bug in AMD's openGL implementation.
Google Earth works great. Attempts to launch Star Wars: Squadrons so far have failed.
> Steam runs on Linux. Just saying...
Not enough.
Many games don't run yet.
e.g MS FlightSim won't run
and how many anticheat games do?
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. Personally, I don't care enough about them to find out if there are any fixes or workarounds, I generally just add the game to my "broken" list and play something else until the game developers fix their problems.
If you stick to Steam, though, there's a good chance your favourite games library will just work out of the box. Epic is actively anti-Linux so don't expect games on the Epic store to work and god forbid you try to use the crapware EA and Ubisoft force you to install. N=1, but I've been doing all of my gaming on Linux and almost everything on Steam just works for me. I've only had trouble running Halo but I found out that that was because of some kind of DRM sabotage by Microsoft, so I just ignored the game and moved on.
That's fantastic, but (like related problems, like "blocking advertising", "making your social media platform act the way you want", "setting up your desktop/IDE just right", and "debloating Android"), you have to consider the amount of time and effort you are dedicating to fighting the enormous amount of resource devoted to making those software tools the way they are.
For one, you will ultimately not win. For another, past a certain point, it should become clear that the tool you are using is not made for your use case.
Does Windows 10 really come with various Zune software? I thought the Zune was discontinued around 5 years before 10's release.
The internal names of some apps are still keeping the "Zune" name in them...
I looked that up and they were replaced by 2012. So it'd still be strange to have then on Windows 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune_software
I figure the script started as a Windows 8 debloater, and when updating it they went "well, surely nobody would want those installed" without worrying if they ever were installed.
Install Linux or FreeBSD?
Why is Windows Camera considered bloatware and meant to be removed? Is there a better free app to replace it with?
Unfortunately this is a pretty common tech support query. A lot of these "bloat" scripts are designed by people knowing exactly what they are doing, and meant for such people. Some of them do things like Disable Defender and even Windows Updates. Which is fine if you know why you want those things, but people trying to get dad's computer some extra performance have dug a lot of holes for themselves with debloat scripts.
In particular the Windows Store is not always possible to reinstall once removed.
For normal home users? I don't know.
For us lot? VLC. Just be sure to turn down the ridiculous 300ms buffer when you open your device.
https://github.com/clong/MakeWindows10GreatAgain
I've used this one in the past. Works pretty well.
So this is a disk formatter?
j/k of course
any opinions on this one?
https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/
This seems like the right place to ask, does anyone know a lightweight Explorer alternative? I basically just want Windows XP explorer on Windows 10. I don't need tabs or dual panes, I just want it to be as fast as it used to be.
Whenever I run XP in a VM, I'm amazed that explorer windows not only open instantly, but fully drawn! In W10 it takes half a second to even respond, and then another half second while it draws the UI elements one by one.
If I move a folder, Sublime Text detects it instantly, but the same explorer window I used to move it takes several seconds to register the change it itself made...
A lot of people always go crazy when someone asks this question and instantly praise Total Commander. Link can be found here: https://www.ghisler.com/
Alas! This one has an infinite number of features I don't need, and it doesn't do the one thing I'm after: open new windows.
You can technically get a new window by launching a new instance of the app, but it takes as long to open as Windows 10's Explorer. Plus you get a nagging shareware screen ;)
I want to say "close but no cigar", but this thing isn't even on the right planet...
Total Commander is so great i am even using on Linux via Wine after switched to it as my main OS (though i also use Double Commander, which is a Total Commander clone, but somehow it feels a bit off compared to TC, so i mainly use DC only when i care about the unix-specific details working).
You just sent me on a nostalgia trip, used to use this back in the days. Also anyone else remember the kind of equivalent Norton/Volkov commander from the DOS days?
You can get the same look&feel with FAR Manager: https://www.farmanager.com/screenshots.php?l=en
I am sure many people remember Norton Commander (or nc). Also take a look at Midnight Commander if you still like this.
that's how I ended up with Total commander - the line of 2-pane file managers go all the way back to 1993 for me to DOS 6.22 and those tools. Once getting used to this concept, doing anything non-trivial on filesystem is very effective compared to simple file browsing windows others use. All work can be done only via keyboard which is much faster compared to adding mouse.
You could say its a matter of getting used to given tool - but consistently when I watch colleagues doing similar tasks, I am so much faster, easily 2-10x depending on task. And thats folks with 20+ years of experience. Yet whenever I try to show my ways to others, nobody picks it up. Its like some mental blind spot, people generally are happy to learn more effective ways for their work, but not this one.
XTree Gold
There's also the native Windows version of XTree: ZTreeWin (https://www.ztree.com/index.html)
i had to pause for a second, your comment sounds weirdly like a spam...maybe reward it
A lot of people always go crazy when someone asks these questions and instantly praise Total Commander! You won't believe the fifth one...
That's not my experience with Windows. Explorer works pretty much instantly for me. Did you try to reinstall Windows? Sounds like issue with some shell extensions or something like that.
I've not known, Explorer to open instantly, or what I would call instantly, even on a fresh install, for some time IIRC. Heck, the amount of times I hit win+R to kick something off and that takes so long to open that the first couple of characters are missed and go to whatever window I had in focus at the time, is irritating. It certainly gets a lot worse when Explorer has been running a while (presumably this is why it has its own special case in Task Manager – pick Explorer and “end task” becomes “restart”) and its memory use has grown significantly (this is likely at least in part due to shell extension though the only one with any complexity I have installed here is MS's own TFS integration, and I have nothing like that running at home ATM).
Other things similarly take a while, like registering an update made elsewhere. These can be quite arbitrary, sometimes pretty instant, sometimes taking many seconds, and sometimes not updating at all until I explicitly refresh. I've even copied a small file to the same directory and waited several seconds before it showed up.
> Did you try to reinstall Windows?
For no sane desktop/similar operating system should “completely reinstall” be an off-hand answer for any but a massively significant error…
Try dissociating the photos app from jpgs. It triggers some strange CPU hogging and other side effects
Usually when the problem gets really bad, memory use has jumped into a few hundred MB. That seems to happen when I've switched between local login and acceding the machine via RDC.
Believe me, you simply do not remember how fast XP was. Install it in a VM and see for yourself.
I keep a bad memory of how slow XP, 2000 and even NT4 were on late 90s machines.
Windows 9x was a strange beast, being a VM running on top of a DOS hypervisor, but it was mostly C and inline assembly and felt fast, even with 8MB of memory and a 75MHz processor. Windows 2000 was quite less efficient and would have taken eight times the memory and twice the processor speed to achieve the same responsiveness. Even more with XP.
Nowadays Windows, the mere operating system, feels slow even on computers as powerful as datacenters of the 90s. Twenty five years of abstraction layers, subsystems, processes and libraries adding up, and it's getting worse (W11 vs W10).
Find some hardware from the time and compare. Certainly common hardware from around the time of the initial release. It might not run as fast as you remember.
It definitely won't run as fast as a VM on a modern host with a much more powerful CPU, significantly faster IO (especially if the VM is hosted on an SSD).
Also, once you hit the point where the guest OS can't cache as much as it wants (as you've allocated a realistic amount of RAM from time) the host layer may be caching reads at least in the extra memory it has.
[though I do get the point: if it can be as fast as it was on old kit, why can't Win10/Win11 be faster on modern kit]
Had this and several other persistent issues across reinstalls, across devices... in 2015 I remember when Windows 10 came out and it was full of absolutely ridiculous UI bugs, at the time people made fun of Microsoft for using the customers as beta testers. So I avoided it for several years, only to discover that they hadn't fixed hardly any of them...
Microsoft open sourced the original:
https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile/
Edit: Also available on the microsoft store https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/9p7vbbbc49rb?ocid=badge
I'm a fan of Directory Opus. It's -far- more feature filled than Explorer, yet it's much faster at opening (assuming the service is turned on at startup).
I just don't like the design of this, or any other explorer alternative for that matter. It always has some very outdated feel to it... combined with an extremely cluttered view. Like texts and icons and buttons and options that I would never need all over the place.
"Like texts and icons and buttons and options"
Oh the horror... :)
All of those toolbars and lister layouts are extremely customizable.
Can you get rid of all of them?
My preferred UI:
Location bar Sidebar (file tree) | File List
Would be nice if each feature you don't need could be removed from the purchase price. I think the version I want would end up having a negative price tag ;)
That's also another point. I don't want to have to customize a software before it's reasonably usable. I probably don't even know myself how I would like it to be. It's the UX designer's job to make it pretty, not the user's.
IMHO DOpus is an OS in itself ! Way too bloated / complicated for my tastes. Of course YMMV.
After 10+ years of DOpus, I can't imagine ever going back to Explorer, except for the odd outlier use case. I'm sorry to see people saying that it's 'cluttered'. That's exactly the way I like it, and you can make it as basic as you like.
+1 for DOpus, though as much as I pester the devs they refuse to develop for the mac :-P
link to Directory Opus
https://www.gpsoft.com.au/
I suspect that for Windows 10 the window appearing but not fully drawn is a function of the introduction of a display compositor (Desktop Window Manager) in Windows Vista - this is also what solved the famous issue of Windows "leaving trails" of application Windows when they were unresponsive, and also permitted all the "aero" effects that Vista and 7 used as selling points. Windows XP and earlier used a Stacking Window Manager.
Although I am not having these problems with Explorer, I am going to answer this out of interest.
Obviously running Windows in a VM will be slower, but besides, Explorer is more than just the file manager.
It used to be very easy to replace the shell (Explorer.exe) with your own binary, but while this is now harder in later Windows versions it is still doable. I loved to play around with that when I was younger, and before I got seriously into Linux.
Now, there is actually a few options:
- Aston Shell used to be my favorite, but it does not seem like it is actively developed anymore. It is also closed source, which is potentially a security concern.
- Classic Shell (Works for Windows 10)
- ExplorerPatcher (taskbar enhancements for Windows 11)
- StartIsAllBack (taskbar enhancements for Windows 11)
I do not recommend replacing the default file manager, because Explorer is already extremely good. If this is slow for you, most likely something else is causing it to be slow. E.g. Waiting for a external/internal storage device to respond perhaps?
Now, talk about Finder on Mac – while not slow, its UI is truly horrendous compared to Explorer on Windows or file managers in Linux.
If your system is slow, then keep in mind that a lot of things are going on with later versions of Windows that can make the system slow. I hate the "blackbox" nature of it, but fact is, you probably have a bottleneck somewhere, possibly you are still using a mechanical hard disk and/or do not have enough RAM for things to load properly. Windows prefetch should help speed things up, given enough RAM, but if you have too little, then it actually might make it worse.
I remember fiddling a lot with Windows services, like prefetch, search indexing. Etc. Basically turning these off will make a slow system feel more responsive. And, of course, Windows update and Windows defender should also be turned off entirely on older systems, because they will constantly pest you with updates and slow the system down. With bloatware added from the computer's manufacturer this only gets worse. Everything unnecessary running in the background should be purged from the system.
Classic shell is unmaintained, so maybe use this fork: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
I have an SSD, 16 GB of RAM and the system was freshly installed a few weeks ago.
That's extremely strange, because I do not have problems with speed. Perhaps it is something else interfering, a bad driver, or poor support for your paticular system?
Typically things open near instantly for me. But, keep in mind in a VM, things is just horrible slow. Probably even more so if you run Windows 10 from a Linux host OS – I have had a lot of problems with that, and eventually I just gave up, because it was not fast enough for me.
For Windows, it is much, much better to setup dual boot.
Have you tried just running Windows XP explorer on Windows 10?
It might just run...
Yeah, I tried that, and also the one from ReactOS. ReactOS's one at least launches (including the taskbar!) but crashes almost instantly. The XP one seems to heavily depend on various DLL files which no longer work the same way. I tried copying a bunch of them over, solving the error popups one by one but gave up after hitting a brick wall after the 10th DLL or so.
> and also the one from ReactOS
Interesting idea, I hadn't thought about ReactOS as a possible source of FOSS programs for windows - but why not? We run Gnu user land various places after all.
Curious about why it crashes. Did you build from source?
No, I just copy pasted it from a ReactOS install. Binary compatibility is their goal (WinDbg thinks it's debugging Windows Server 2003, so they did a good job!), but last I heard they have to do some funky stuff in some places to be able to make use of WINE.
Or it could be because of the compatibility: XP's explorer doesn't run on 10, so we shouldn't expect its clone to run either! But I had to try :)
Still, considering it's open source and the closest thing what I do want, starting with this and stripping out the taskbar might get me a good result.
Same with MSPaint: just spent several days trying to get the leaked XP MSPaint to compile, to no avail. Looks like I'd have better luck starting with ReactOS's paint clone and modifying it so it's feature complete and has the original icons :)
Make sure your folders are configured for “general” files and not “photos” or other metadata consuming options. I had a similar issue and this resolved it.
https://github.com/files-community/Files
I can't attest for its speed, but this seems like the polar opposite of lightweight.
Just tested ReactOS explorer on Win11 and it worked good.
http://www.foxplanet.de/explorer/
Thanks, I will try this version, mine did launch but crashed, perhaps I forgot to copy some DLLs.
> does anyone know a lightweight Explorer alternative?
PowerShell. It's builtin, uses little resources, is fast, has pattern globbing, autocompletion, and can be as efficient as using the coreutils on *nix.
Unfortunately nnn and Ranger don't work on Windows, and the WSL uses more resources than explorer so this workaround isn't resource efficient. Cygwin is very efficient and could be a better solution to run them, I haven't tried it.
edit: Looks like lf works on Windows: https://github.com/gokcehan/lf
Perhaps load up sysinternals Autoruns and see if a particular plugin / DLL is being loaded which is causing the slow downs.
XYPlorer is fantastic
+1 for XYPlorer. It's powerful, still performant, and heavily configurable.
The free version (discontinued but the last version is available) itself works great.
Total Commander?
Just a tip - i use tinywall firewall to prevent windows from doing anything in the background. i used the built-in firewall as well but windows has multipel services that can act as proxy for other services to avoid blocking. tinywall is simpler. i only disable it for updates, WHEN I WANT TO UPDATE. it has been working for me flawlessly. also, install windows without internet connection.