I can agree anti-consumer behaviour is still ingrained in parts of Microsoft, as a dormant beast waiting to be Ballmer-ized for a new round.

But again, why the baseless argument based on hate?

You can (for example) de-bloat Windows 11 out from the telemetry and annoying widgets nobody uses, including the invasive Copilot.

After de-bloating, it's a decent OS on its own.

I should have the right to have a clean Windows out-of-the-box, but de-bloating is still a viable path.

The thought that I would have to go through the trouble of reading some git repo to run a script that will debloat my OS, no matter how easy or straightforward might be, makes me feel tired. I don't want to fight my OS, I want it to work with me. Between searching and learning stuff for my job and searching and learning stuff for my personal development or hobbies, investing time in tinkering windows of all things doesn't exactly feel me with excitement. I would rather switch to Mac or invest time tinkering a linux distribution that actually respects me.

You really don't. It just requires messing with some group policy and settings. I did this 5-10 years ago and haven't had to really mess with it much since. I've never used an OS that did not require some effort to get in a state I like.

Your last statement is correct.

Spending time to configure your OS to your liking is one thing. Having to actively fight all the crap that the OS vendor has jammed into it is quite a bit different.

I don't think the two are equivalent, since one has a much more adversarial flavor to it.

Having run Linux for many years in my experience there is a lot of configuration that is not because it's "to my liking" but rather because X broke and now I need to figure out why. I don't mind it, because it's definitely worth it in the end.

> You can (for example) de-bloat Windows 11 out from the telemetry and annoying widgets nobody uses, including the invasive Copilot. > After de-bloating, it's a decent OS on its own.

Sure you can. I, as a tech savvy person, can debloat Windows 11. If I dare to do it. If I know I can do it. If I search for information on the internet on how to do it. If I know how to search and follow those instructions. If I follow all the steps (and hope my tutorial covers everything). If Microsoft doesn’t push an update to bloat it again.

And with that, well I still don’t know how to install it without a Microsoft account. It’s so incredibly user hostile that even the insufferable Apple Walled Garden don’t force you into all of this shit.

You can create an unattended answer file to skip the MSFT account.

https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/

Of course I can. And when this method will not be available anymore, I will still be able to reverse engineer the Windows ISO to hack it.

(Sorry for the ça sarcasm, I know you wanted to be helpful, I already knew that but maybe someone will read your comment and discover it so thank you)

Didn't know you knew, cool. I doubt this is a method that will become unavailable as enterprises still use it. Never say never, of course, but as long as Active Directory is still around there will need to be some way to suppress the MSFT Account option.

> insufferable Apple Walled Garden don’t force you into all of this shit

No, but they will lock you out of your account if you have a long gone debit card on there that you don't remember the numbers for or access to that school email your uni yanked back.

I wonder how many college kids got locked out of their iTunes account permanently after they graduated.

Not really. You can't fully remove large parts of the bloat without breaking Windows Update, and true removal of some features is invasive enough that it has to be done offline.

When you actually look at those de-bloating scripts or techniques in detail, it's clear that they only barely address the issues with Windows, and they're always chasing a moving target of anti-user bullshit.

Honestly less time consuming to just install some GNU/Linux distro.

Install, maybe. Configure? Maybe not.

Linux tends to tempt people to spend time configuring it, but most of that is customisation to taste that Windows users very rarely do.

You can just skip it and use everything with the distro defaults. it many even be less work than Windows as a lot more software is installed by default on installation.

I used to configure Windows, now I don't bother. But with Linux, I do because I must. Many OOTB defaults just aren't great, or some part of it requires configuration.

LoD is _fine_ but not great.

(Slackware 4.0 was great)

How do you debloat Windows 11 of the built in copy of the whole browser?