Uninstalling the store would be the biggest feature. A lot of telemetry is tied to it. I tried some of the “debloaters” out there, but the windows Installation breaks after a couple of months (I assume when ms pushes a new major update).
I will even uninstall Windows
So I could have a usable machine at work? Good. I am forced to upgrade from win7 to win11 in the lab, and current win11 crap did not appeal to me at all. And it has WSL, so at least it can actually be used for work.
how do i europe
How about no?
Imagine living somewhere where those in charge have even there smallest bit of spine.
mmm, that was nice. can i have another?
Oh look, with the threat of a big enough fine, you can uninstall those things.
Or at least hide the front ends for them.
Make it world wide!
For those curious, if you can get a European Windows product key, you can install the “N” version of Windows. Be warned, it only works with certain product keys…
The standard Windows installer should give the option of “Windows 10” or “Windows 10 N” (or similar). The N version is basically bloatware free out of the box…
The regular version has a bunch of promos pre-installed, like candy crush, and other things that most people couldn’t give a shit about…
Recently I’ve been playing a “fun” game with my work laptop where I’ll remove copilot, and a few days later it will appear again. Weeee. In that case, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a policy in place to enable copilot on my works systems… I’m sure someone who works here, probably higher up the food chain than me, wants it enabled, and the ham fisted policy maker can’t create a policy just for those who want it, so everyone gets it because the bosses son Shane decided that he wants to see how much of his work can get done by AI so he can do even less while on the clock.
N editions should exclude just certain media features. I remember it trying in Win 7 days and never touched it again, never saw a point. Some additional info. Important bit is to not use Home edition, use Pro, Education or Enterprise instead.
As for Copilot, is there anything under these registry keys?
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot
Neither of those keys exist.
Probably because I keep uninstalling the software.
Companies absolutely HATE copilot. I remember they didn’t even like Siri enabled on the Mac’s where I used to work. No way in hell copilot is getting a pass.
I work for a fairly large company, and we’re hearing about “AI” constantly. CoPilot is available and its use encouraged. Also, in the cybersecurity space, AI is fucking everywhere. Vendors won’t shut up about their “AI Enabled” products. And the new hotness is “Agentic AI”, which is basically automation, but we’re going to let AI hallucinations fire off the automated process which could bring production systems down.
Good times are surely coming. /sHeh, it’s a small business and bossman isn’t exactly anti-AI.
Huh, well ill continue living without all that shit on Linux Mint.
Mint… more than just a delicious herb!
Linux gives all global users more control: Uninstall Windows, say goodbye to Microsoft
I would love to, but we stiill use Windows specific software (and sometimes even Dos specific software!) but we already do that through a VM. The other issue is the extensions we have for Microsoft Office just won’t work on the Linux alternatives and even then Libreoffice isn’t good enough for half the staff in my accounting firm because it lacks certain features for now.
Most companies who work in browser based software + email can easily switch to Linux and they would barely notice it.
even then Libreoffice isn’t good enough for half the staff in my accounting firm because it lacks certain features for now.
The worst part is where some functionality breaks in a document bigger than a holiday card. I mean formulae vanishing.
I think OOO around year 2009 was very stable and without such annoying bugs. But I haven’t tested it there TBH.
Seriously, feature parity is a dead end. If there were a cross-platform office suite that would at least support the absolutely necessary things with a format not much more complex than org-mode, big documents (300 pages without degrading performance) and UTF-8, it would be fine. I think. That format can even be XML-based, just … why would you have vanishing objects in a document past their certain number? Do they have an unsigned byte counter somewhere?
I would love to, but we stiill use Windows specific software
If I had 1 cent every time I read that… and I pulled those cents together… and then paid software developers to build that missing software for other OSes like Linux… then we’d gradually see less of those comments.
It’s as if the isolation was the business model, proprietary software insuring that alternatives do not exist because users do not bother to get together and unstuck themselves from glowingly dangerous (security wise but probably even financially dependencies.
Hopefully initiatives like NLNet are precisely trying to alleviate such challenges. Until them compatibility layers like Proton are showing the way with arguably some of the most complex and demanding in terms of performance software, namely games.
If I had 1 cent every time I read that… and I pulled those cents together… and then paid software developers to build that missing software for other OSes like Linux… then we’d gradually see less of those comments.
There is a version of the software that works in the browser, but it’s not really that great. That’s what you get when you legally need to use specific software (even the Dutch tax office still use the same old version we use). There are other alternatives, but it’s a massive investment of time to test and switch to that. Something we are forced to do in the near future, but it’s gonna take a lot of time inclusing a lot of time of people with hourly rates of over the 200 EUR excluding VAT. I estimate it will cost us maybe 50% of our yearly revenue to fully switch an organisation to Linux and we will loose a lot of people working here where there are a lot of issues with finding new people for accounting firms.
I have been trying to install Microsoft Office in Linux mint on my personal PC cause I have more issues with LibreOffice when using MSOffice files (and the people receiving the files will be using MSOffice as well) than I have with games. I tried it using Bottles (Wine) with multiple different installers, but no luck so far.
Not sure what NLNet is going to do about software lol, I believe you mean something different. NLNet is an instance that is there for people living with lymphedema and/or lipedema and their loved ones.
Because laws were made by incompetent and malicious people.
Laws should mandate protocols and formats, not implementations. Protocols and formats mandated by the law should be simple. The whole humanity was just fine transmitting telegrams by Morse code consisting of letter groups. Then it was just fine with fax. If what we absolutely require to stay productive needs to be so astronomically complex that one programmer, given ready libraries for XML, encodings, compression etc, can’t write a fully functional and usable by everyone editor for that in 1 month - then such a protocol or format is not good enough to be mandated by law.
Now switch package managers and run all your drives on different obscure file systems! Make every login cycle through plasma gnome an unhinged custom DE and raw terminal where a camera with sign language recognition is the only valid input!
Create a script to revert to systemd every third startup!
Edit: I read further down…Arch is a bit of a motherfucker. Sorry.
Sorry for what? This was consensual.
Which distro hurt you?
Arch, obviously, but it was all arranged before hand. After care was lacking. Forgot to load that though, so it’s kind of my fault.
Sounds like half of the process your average Windows debloater goes through every time they update?
On like 8, maybe, sure.
You’re doing something wrong, maybe ask someone knowledgeable for help with your system. It doesn’t happen to other people.
doesn’t happen to other people
Because they’re fucking cowards.
Yeah, you need to be really brave to setup your system incorrectly.
‘incorrectly’
That word absolutely reeks of being no fun.
What, may i ask, is the correct way to configure and use my computer?
The one where you aren’t frustrated by the usage of it.
Oh, so there’s only one of those?
Am i missing something? If i had edge, store and bing forced down my throat my win11 install wouldve been long gone, but imo thst stuff was already removable before?
From what I’ve gathered here and elsewhere they never really went full throttle on all that stuff for most of us here in the EU.
Now don’t get me wrong, W11 is utter shite, and I had to essentially build a new computer from scratch to even get it running properly, but I still haven’t seen any ads or any other bullshit like that.
This is exactly why my old computer is merrily running Mint, and it likes it.
I think GDPR and related laws, really tempered what Microsoft did to the whole of the European region. They didn’t want to deal with it, so they made as much as they could, opt-in. As opposed to the north american policies of either opt-out, or forced-on.
IDK. I don’t work at Microsoft, I’m just guessing. 🙃
The best control: uninstall Windows.
Europeans have the Freedom to Uninstall SPYWARE? LoL COMMIES here in America we have TRUE FREEDOM of being FORCE FED SPYWARE with NO Other options!
the other option is a faster, more privacy focused, free, open source operating system.
I made the switch a little over a year ago, I know not everybody can/wants to - but major distros are honestly polished enough these days that I haven’t looked back, I should have switched to Linux years ago.
Not everyone will agree, but I think Ubuntu + installing apps through Flatpak is a winning option.
Perhaps sometime in the future, more people will try Linux and see how good it is. My recommendation based on my own experience:
Want stable, just working. Robust workhorse: Try Debian
Want newest, nicest, good for gaming (need a tiny bit of tinkering if you run Nvidia): Try Fedora
Want easy to install, but a bit older and slower, but requires no tinkering: Try PopOS
Don’t like settings, tweaks and fuzz: choose Gnome desktop 😊
I know its not everybody’s cup of tea, but plain standard Ubuntu these days has a lot of polish and interoperability. The addition of gnome tweaks, extensions, and flatpak have left me not wanting much extra customisation.
This is after being on a dozen other distros and finding ironically they can be less customisable unless I want to spend an entire in terminal.
My whole system is AMD so switching to Linux was a breeze. A few days ago I installed Fedora KDE Plasma because I genuinely enjoyed the look and feel of Windows, but I wanted it without the Microsoft part. And I have to say, no regrets. I’m getting everything done without the BS, and all my games work just fine. It did need some very weird tinkering to set it up properly, and I made ChatGPT work overtime to feed me answers. Nobody would have to put in the amount of effort I did though, and if it wasn’t for my niche problems, everything would have been handled without a hitch. The terminal still scares me but I’ve learned several tricks.
I’m sad to say I had to drop Linux for a while because I run Nvidia. I heard that AMD is fine, and that Nvidia is baaaadically fine with a few issues still so I gave it a shot. But games just genuinely run noticeably worse with an Nvidia card. Games would lose 20-30 frames. Maybe not a big deal with my setup if I was using a 60hz monitor since most were still above 60, but I’m using 144hz.
It sucks too because it’s not fedora or Linux as a whole’s fault. It’s Nvidia’s.
Thought about keeping it but already had a few things I needed to dual boot windows for. If I still need windows for gaming, basically that leaves idly browsing the web as fedora’s main use. And I think that’s a bit overkill.
Looking forward to eventually getting an AMD card (Legit if you’re reading this and thinking about upgrading or building a new PC and think there even a small chance you’d go with Linux in the future, go AMD) or even just a whole new build. That way I can just delegate my current machine for those few tasks I need windows for, and have a main machine for general use.
Same for me, sorta. I have to dualboot Windows and Linux because I just can’t seem to fix the jankiness of my gaming experience on the latter. I wanna make a full AMD build but I not really a good idea to splurge in this economy.
My gaming rig was the first thing to go full Linux because I was sick of dealing with windows for a HTPC and wanted bazzite for the steam gaming mode. Not had any issues yet.
I did wait till I got a an AMD card though. But my GF uses a 3050 for bazzite desktop and she’s had no issues yet either. She had lots of issues with the 1050Ti she had before then though.
The relatively bad linux experience, plus all the news about nvidia being the scum of the earth, is what made me go with a solid AMD card instead.
Xubuntu is stable, lightweight, easy to install, and requires no tinkering. No idea about gaming, but I’d choose it over Debian and PopOS at any given time.
