this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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Privacy
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MS at least permits to desactivate all this crap (naturally not documented, but activated by default), it's all in the settings, services and registry (eg.desactivate SysMain, whith which MS ~~steal~~ share your Bandwidth). Apart there are also a ton of other services and "features" which remain active by default, despite not longer needed since 15 years, eg.Prefetch, IndexService, Hibernate and other (eg.AI), slowing down the system and wasting RAM. Most optimizer apps, like ShutUp10 and others can help, if you don't want to do it by yourself (!!!). To make easier the access, God Mode still works in Windows 11, or download Super God Mode. Windows always need work to turn it in a fast and usable OS with an reasonable privacy (remember that some telemetry make sense, eg.for update checks (Important security updates, also for drivers)
Mandatory to install Portmaster.
With all the effort it takes to figure that out on Windows (yes, even with a guide to follow), it literally would be easier to switch to Linux.
Inb4 needing to pick a distro. Here's a simple flowchart:
Or just install Fedora. I don't get the love for Mint. Its ubuntu derived, broken by default.
Mint just works out of the box, that's why people recommend it.
They all do. Mint has always seemed behind (having to follow Ubuntu) and their upgrade and package paths are strange.
With so many better options, why that one?
Go reread your last comment it makes no sense. But I'm personally not surprised you're proving to be a loon
How does it not make sense? And what leads you to believe I'm a loon?
And are you really voting on Lemmy? Lol.
Edit: all sorts of distro work well. It's just why this one? I don't think it's particularly friendly, or up to date, it inherits a lot of crap from Ubuntu.
Or, and this may be a difficult concept for the Windows-brained to grasp, use an operating system that you don't have to fight and beat into submission for it to do what you want and only what you want.
It's your computer, why would you give control over it to anyone else?
Linux I've had to fight and beat into submission just to try and install it without accidentally overwriting my windows installation, and have all my hardware working. I've tried and failed 6 times now
So which one is the trouble? Windows or Hardware? If its windows, well maybe get rid of the problem first. Microsoft is actively hostile to your plans.
If its hardware, that can be tricky, but it sure seems infrequent these days.
Refined is probably the best method of dealing with windows. Give windows and linux their own drives, let refined manage the booting and you choose which environment to launch. Windows will never know the other os or bootloader exists. Also turn off fastboot in windows, the cause of a lot of problems.
I need to keep a windows installation because I need MS Office. LibreOffice is fine 98% of the time, but I've got a handful of complex documents and spreadsheets that just don't render correctly in LO, and I'm not going to spend the weeks it takes to correct them.
I'll look into refined, but currently can't afford anything but essentials so it'll be a ways off before I can get a new HD
The office problem. I moved over a long time ago. Word at that time couldnt handle large documents, and excel was a pain in the ass for the csv data we were getting at the time.
Either deal with that pain over a few weeks, or deal with that pain forever! Maybe the fork of onlyoffice will do what you want.
If its only office you can just run windows inside of linux without issue and have it launch the office application when needed using winapps. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
Personally I just keep windows in a docker container for that ultra rare time I need windows.
You can install windows in a virtualbox vm. you can "pause" these so you dont have to go through the boot and shutdown process every time you need it.
That sounds like you had difficulty determining the correct instructions. Given the wrong instructions, computers will do the wrong thing, and that's OK. They're not supposed to think, but do what they're told.
I'll admit that Linux still occasionally suffers from UI/UX issues, in that its not always obvious what the correct choice is in a given circumstances. A bit like Micro$lop trained their users for decades to completely ignore any and all error messages and just try what they were doing again, by making their error messages needlessly cryptic and borderline useless.
I had difficulty understanding the error messages, mainly. "Warning: this xibstop is a fleng. Do you want to flargle you shmoigen at 0000HgvbXX44? This cannot be undone"
Of course, I couldn't actually google what it meant without running into a whole load of other terminology I didn't understand, least of all because my WiFi hadn't kicked in yet.
Basically, you need to put the work in to understand the context of what's going on. With Windows, this took me about a year when I first got a PC. I imagine it'll be the same with Linux.
Yea, a basic understanding of the machine's components and their function is usually expected.
Windows takes you firmly by the hand, expects you to be a good user and do as you're told, whereas Linux expects you to take control and be in charge, with all the decisions that entails.
That's kind of the most fundamental difference.
Yes, but due to the theme of this threat, I think it's godd to post the possibilities for the users which want or need to use Windows for several reasons. Linux isn't always the best option for all cases. It may be always a good option to use both, Win and Linux in dual boot.