> You can turn off advertisement during installation,

What? Where? How do you tell it not to advertise the new Edge or Candy Crush in the Start Menu during installation?

> and set up privacy measures like don't give up hardware id for advertising.

some privacy measures. For others, you still need to manually turn them off via gpedit or using a 3rd-party-tool like OO Shutup.

On initial setup aren't asked all these thing?

No you aren't. And if you need to install MS Office stand by for constant Teams advertisements. I never did figure out how to turn those off.

It's possible, but you're not supposed to notice.

So, how? Where?

You have to decline quick setup, and then go flip a bunch of toggles.

Source: Have installed win10 more times than is healthy.

Don't forget to scroll down on that toggle flipping screen -- when you start toggling the top ones, their description text gets longer and (on my screen anyway) pushes some of the toggles below the visible viewport.

Good point. I forgot to mention that, usually I just tab my way through them.

I never use quick setup, I flip every single available ad and privacy toggle and yet Candy Crush comes as an uninstalled game in the start menu anyway. I have installed Windows 10 a lot of times as well.

Hmm. Usually I'm installing Pro at work actually now that I think about it. I think Pro has most of those disabled by default.

ShutUp10 is probably your best bet, or something like this: https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1

Edit: If you don't mind a little up front prep time, you could probably create install media for windows that would run one of the above programs immediately after finishing the install. If you have to do it multiple times quickly that may save some time.

The fact that these are required at all is ridiculous, and (part of) why I run Linux/BSD these days.

> You can turn off advertisment during instalation

On something you paid $200 for? WHAT? What is this world coming to?

Of course. You should've paid [contact us for a quote] dollars to get the LTSC version.

It is unnecessarily annoying to get the LTSC or other Enterprise versions of Windows but it's not out of reach for an individual.

Use https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/solution-providers/ and pick one of the companies in your area. It largely doesn't matter.

Shoot them an email explaining what you want and they'll have you meet the 5 license minimum for volume licensing by buying a Windows Pro License a Windows Enterprise Upgrade license, and 3 user cals which are cheap. They'll put your name down as the business and then you're done.

You can also get it with MSDN if you have that!

Why would you want a long term support contract for Linux? How is that comparable? Do you contact Microsoft for support often? And if so, how many of those things could you resolve yourself on Linux in 10 minutes via StackOverflow?

LTSC is the long-term support enterprise version of Windows. Last I checked, it's stripped down without the Windows Store/Cortana/Candy Crush nonsense that a typical install includes.

I interpreted the OP as suggesting that the proper analog for a $200 (plus ads) Windows Pro license was a Linux long term support contract, suggesting that $200 (plus ads) for Windows Pro is a bargain compared to a Linux support contract (e.g., from redhat or similar). In this case, I'm not sure why a Linux support contract is an appropriate comparison operand.

If the OP indeed meant "Windows LTSC", then I'm not following along with their point.

I was making fun of how difficult they make it to legally get a decent version of Windows.

To be honest I got my license for free, but yes... its actually a fucked up thing

>You can turn off advertisement during installation, and set up privacy measures like don't give up hardware id for advertising.

You can't. It asks you if you want to not share data, but warns you that this will result in less personal ads.

So you can opt for non-personalized ads, but you can't turn off ads altogether during the install.

here's the thing about disabling/turning off settings in Windows 10 (at least from my experience).

- half of the things are for stuff you shouldn't have to opt out of in the first place in any reasonable OS

- that's if you can even opt out of them

- the settings/ways to do so are often obscure/ obscured

- come next update, your settings are never safe, and you can't have faith they didn't add more bullshit that you have to research and find ways of turning off

I was unsuccessful turning off advertisements personally. I also find wsl2 onerous, as I have run into a bunch of strange edge conditions trying to use the same directory with linux programs and windows programs.

WSL2 is great if you treat like a linux system i.e. don't do goofy things like check out code on NTFS and work on it from Linux.

I gave up and went back to linux, I had crazy issues with simple things- like not being able to _rename files_ if the wsl for linux git had cloned the file (but it would work if windows git had cloned it). Death by hundreds of little cuts like this for me. Visual studio code worked just as well if not better on a mac or linux.

I really like WSL2, and the vscode integration between 10 and WSL is simply astounding.

There is also steam, for a certain subset of programs.