10mo ago

I installed Windows 10 in a virtual machine...man, this is straight up dystopian.

The tips, ads, and recommendations you see will be more generic and may be less relevant to you.

And this is treated as a bad thing?!

The number of ads you see won't change, but they may be less relevant to you.

Send only info about your device, its settings and capabilities, and whether it is performing properly.

In other words, even after turning off all the settings, your data still gets collected.

The rest of the installation process wasn't fun either. It was worded in this weird, condescending tone, like "Let's get everything set up for you", and "Let Cortana help you get things done!".

Thank goodness for FLOSS and GNU/Linux.

118 comments

Yea, it's really shitty.
Enterprise folks don't have this problem because they use the WAIK (or whatever it's called now) to customize the installer.
Anyone can use it, and from what I've read, the Win10 generation of the kit is much easier to use than previous versions (which were pretty bad).
But yea, this stuff is awful.
Checkout things like WinDebloat, Privatezilla, Winaero Tweaker, and LoveWindowsAgain. There's some overlap between them (as they were built for different purposes), but they all pretty much kill telemetry at the service or installed level (as in remove the components providing telemetry).
Yea, it's BS you have to do this. And screw MS for this crap.
- I think the pro version doesn't have most of this too. I've never seen an ad in w10 and 11
  
  They don't show explicit banner ads or anything, but every now and then there will be links to "recommended software" in your start menu's app drawer or the notification thing in the bottom right (not the taskbar, that foldable drawer thing).
  You can disable those as well, but not by default.
- LTSB or LTSR I forget which. Toss some classic shell in there, boom, Win 10 like you remember Win 7 was like. Too bad they fucked up 11 so bad I switched to Ubuntu.
  
  It's LTSC (Long Term Service Channel) nowadays - It's the LTS version of Windows 10. Fewer updates, more stability of your OS in general. It's neat!
  No Windows Store by default, but it's possible to install that separate, should you really need it.

One of the many reasons I always run privacy.sexy every time I need to install windows (on both bare metal and inside a VM).
- I shall yoink that, thank you very much.
  
  Yoink it so effing hard!
- I use O&O ShutUp10++ (oosu10) to do the same thing. Makes Windows feel like Windows, instead of an ad machine.
  Whenever people complain about ads I have NO idea what they're talking about.
  Edge will say it's "maintained by your organization", which seemed spooky, but that's just a side-effect from having some privacy.
  
  And the link to OOSU10, in case anyone wants it: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
  
  Edge will say it's "maintained by your organization", which seemed spooky, but that's just a side-effect from having some privacy.
  Ooooooh, so that's why I started seeing that shit. I thought I had a virus, lmao. Cheers.
- What the fuck. How have I never seen this before?
- privacy.sexy
  I second this, I use it all the time.

If linux had all these settings on installation everyone would be saying that it's to hard for normies to install

Wait until you get to the screen that asks you if you want to share your data with their 300 friends.
- (we will share your data regardless of your choice :/ )
  
  Its nice to be asked tho lol

First time?

if you care about privacy linux is the best honestly
- Maybe also not Ubuntu or RHEL? I heard they also collect telemetries and hard to trun off. Unsure.
  
  Ubuntu will ask you if usage data can be collected and sent to canonical when you first log in after installation. You get to look at the exact data that would be sent before making a decision and if you say no, then they'll comply with that and never ask you again.
  
  The telemetry is opt in so feel free to use them. (Correct me if i am wrong)
  
  i actually uninstalled the telemetry package and it stopped even being able to enable telemetry

I love the "Let's finish setting up your device" popup that prevents me from using my VMs regularly.

Like some condescending peddler trying to slam-dunk your agreement as a foregone conclusion.
Come on, buddy, let's do those remaining tasks, let's have Microsoft scan your face, tell Microsoft about your phone, let's go and install those Microsoft apps missing from your phone, and your laptop, too, and then we go buy that Office subscription and have you store your important files on Microsoft's servers and we really need to get around to switching to Microsoft's web browser now.
And the only option you get is "Yes" or "Remind me later."
If you turn it off (and it needs to be turned off in two places), it'll be back on as soon as Microsoft publishes the tiniest update to any of its unwanted services. Harrghrrr! (artery popping noises)
- Turn off "Offer Tips and Tricks to finish setting up this device" ( At least for me that was permanent. Otherwise you might use something like O&O shut up 10, also the setting is per user )
  
  Yes, I do that on all my VMs about every 3-5 weeks when it turns itself on again.
  
  ShutUp10 is the GOAT.

Not to mention being forced to create a MS account if you're online.
- With win10 you should be able to click the small text to get a local account but yeah I think with newer win11 installers you have to be off the internet for a local account. And then when you do log in with your MS account to save your license (important when using a Win7 OEM key to license win10) it would convert your profile to online, and then you had to "do steps" to put it back to local. Annoying af
  
  When installing Windows 11, say you want to log in with your Microsoft account, then when it asks for email address and password enter a@a.com and any random password. It will say the account has been deactivated and let you create a local account. No need to be offline.
- Not on Win10 and you can get around it on Win11

This is most people's reaction to using Windows for any reason.

It's like a mini game to get the choices right
- Can not recommend. The levels were very difficult but short and the final reward was shit

Absolutely disgusting! Literally the only reason why I still use Windows is the fact many games I play have anti-cheat spyware that doesn't work on Linux.
- Yet another reason I stay away from any game that has online multiplayer PVP teams based setting. I trust anti-cheat as much as I trust that random file you find on [Insert Sketchy Website Link].
  
  While I agree, I almost exclusively play MP games. (I'm just not very much into SP ones, idk)
- For me it’s this and very specific audio production stuff. Linux audio production has come leaps and bounds over the years, but I need specific vst plugins that I don’t think I could get running in Linux. Also because what I’m doing has very quick turnaround times, I’m worried that if I did get that stuff working it could basically break at any time and I’d be boned.
  
  I am in a very similar situation with audio production. I have a lot of plugins and tried to see what I could get working with yabridge on my Linux laptop in my free time. Some stuff worked flawlessly, while a lot of other important plugins did not work at all. I hope that some day more stuff works and the tool gets more streamlined for less technical users, but for now it is not quite where it needs to be for my use case. In the mean time I switched to a DAW that has a Linux version (Bitwig) and I am slowly working towards switching to only using plugins that have a Linux version. I am far from a point where I can comfortably switch though, so for now Windows is an occupational hazard.
- I got lucky that almost all the multiplayer games I play run under Linux. There's only one or two that I would need Windows for to play again.

You can use Win10Privacy to bodily castrate nearly all built-in spyware and telemetry.
Downside is that it’s a damn powerful program, with few guardrails, so if you don’t have good knowledge of Windows internals you run a non-trivial risk of accidentally lobotomizing an important feature of your install by enabling the wrong setting. I mean, all settings can be easily reversed, but you gotta know which specific one did the nerfing in order to undo the oopsie.
For example, even the midrange firewall settings are mostly safe, except… a single one of them completely kills Microsoft Office Click-To-Run. It won’t install, and it won’t launch even if you installed it before you applied Win10Privacy. So if Microsoft Office is an essential (Access or Excel absolutely needed, for example), be careful.
- There is also privacy.sexy. they have a bunch of scripts to do just about everything you want to increase windows privacy. They have a GUI that will help you customize the scripts and you can roll back if you want.
  https://github.com/undergroundwires/privacy.sexy
- Link to the program?
  
  Link to the program?
  https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=win10privacy

I still don't get why people keep defending it. Win+e doesn't even open to a panel that lets me open the c drive without clicking other shit and waiting for it to appear first. An update also just put the search bar back on the task bar when I explicitly disabled it as soon as I got through the bad default options for days during the install. It also added copilot. Auto update is also supposed to be disabled.
While I'm at it fuck every dev that uses libraries/framework/etc that is known to not work in wine. There are thousands of better ways to be a shitty dev.
- I still don’t get why people keep defending it.
  With microsoft being the most valuated company in the world rest assured that many of the people defending their products are getting paid to do it.
  
  PR team hard at work.
- Win+e doesn't even open to a panel that lets me open the c drive without clicking other shit and waiting for it to appear first.
  I have been seriously considering creating a “graphical registry editor” that would be feature-focused and could be both portable (for one-off application) and installable (for constant on-login resetting of any changed preferences). Just open it up, browse the offerings, select the feature mods you want, apply and restart.
  There is a lot of File Explorer shit that you can do to mod it back to WinXP days. Had to do this to a Win11 install for my Octogenarian father who has become very intolerant of unexpected changes, and while it needs regular maintenance to “keep”, it has worked out well for him.
  
  That would be pretty handy especially if it could reapply each update. The lock screen merely existing is another. I want my first keypress to be the first letter of my password, not sliding up a screen that serves no purpose and is a pain even on phones. Really there are so many small things they did over the years to make a genuinely worse experience that I can't even list them all. This week's unapproved update after a few without windows running even once made edge the default browser again. First boot after windows hiatus initiating update reboot loop immediately without even logging in is also concerning.
- The only reason I don't completely despise Windows is because it, along with Mac OS, has made computing available for the masses. The average person doesn't have the time to learn how to use a computer. They just want to use it. That in my subjective opinion is a good thing. A very strong, and valid argument could be made that it's a faustian bargain, probably because it is.
  
  Yeah. I've been wanting to adopt Linux as a daily driver, but unfortunately there are programs that simply aren't made for anything other than Windows/Mac. I seriously do hope programmers start investing more in software for Linux so that I can make the switch permanently.

Yeah, Windows sucks. I recommend the LTSC version for minimized tracking. But even then, I had to use third-party software and hacks to minimize it further. I don't ever plan to go back after switching to Linux.
- LTSC sounds great or else there must be something like MicroXP for windows 10/11 where someone has debloated it down to the bare bones.
  
  @BananaOnionJuice @NeonShadow Tiny11 is a project where windows 11 has been stripped down to the absolute barebones, there may still be some telemetry that needs to be disabled (O&O shutup is good for that). It's designed to work on older machines with as little as 4gb ram, so it would be perfect for running in a VM, in fact that's what I'm planning to do.
- What's that
  
  LTSC is the enterprise/business version that have extended period for patches with less bloat. It's similar to LTS with Ubuntu.

Oh and that seems to be ltsc or an older win 10 build too! If you want the creeps get a normal win 11 home iso and try it out with a burner account... You might be surprised what they got in charge for you. (A lot of ads and tracking with up selling, tho I don't know how much Home edition costs, pro costs like 130€ or so and has the same crap built in but the ability to make an offline account(they still ask you to "upgrade" to online))
- No the offline account trick still works.
  
  You have to use CLI to get around it, I don’t consider that functional for the average user

Chris Titus debloat script is the only thing that makes Windows even remotely usable these days.
- Thata true, but you if used in a vm you should be careful as preset selections could end up removing functions on your guest vm.

This is why if I ever have to get win10 on a VM on my laptop, I am absolutely not updating, ever. Not even gonna give that VM Internet access. Anything I'd need it for, I can passthrough a thumb drive with the files I need. I would hope to God they don't have a way to hoover up data without internet connection and with no macrohard account connected.

I remember installing Windows XP. sigh.
- I had one of the 23 machines in the world that ran Windows ME flawlessly. :(
  
  Hey now, mine ran it flawlessly after three days of tinkering and then rebooting twice a day afterwards.
- I was lucky if everything worked. Usually it had troubles with peripherals, network, or even the USB drive it was on. But none (?) of this crap.
  
  fair. i used Windows 2000 a crapton, and I think 2000 was the king of true Plug N Play. that removed would take ANYTHING. hell, even these days I'll stick modern Kingston USB 3.0 drives into it, just to see if it works, and it won't even bat an eye 🤣

As soon as you start running a pihole on your home network it makes really stop and think and want to eradicate all unnecessary data tracking. Windows was so chatty. Science only knows how much of a consumer profile they create and sell on you for just wanting to use a computer.
Additionally... Smart TV's are the absolute worst too.
- Amazon Kindle, too. If there's a pihole, it freaks out and starts retrying the mothership in a loop until it drains the damned battery. Airplane Mode quiets this, but I hate how aggressive these devices have become.
  
  What happens if you redirect all traffic to a sinkhole, rather than to 127.0.0.1? Do the devices still freak out when they talk to a web server which returns a 404? Just morbidly curious…

Yeah sadly as a gamer I HAVE to put up with Windows. But Next time I build a machine I'm definitely dedicating a whole drive to a linux OS because fuck Windows and their petty marketing shit.
- Personally I treat my windows pc as a gaming console. I play games on it and nothing else. Then it becomes a non issue: so what if they track my gaming activity?
- I made the jump back last fall. I've ran into one game so far I couldn't play and that was just because of it's anticheat software (the game was "hell let loose"). Check out Pop!_os. The GPU drivers are preinstalled in the kernel and just work. For both Nvidia and AMD. Steams proton and lutris/wine have made everything easy to play. Never going back to windows now.
- Have to? Been playing on Linux for years, haven't had many issues so far.
  
  There are unfortunately still too many games that my friends and I play that won't work on Linux. In my own situation, I'd be alienating myself from my friends from switching over even though I really want to. Not to mention I built my PC with a Nvida card which all I hear is that it either works perfectly for you, or you better buy an AMD card so there are still some valid reasons for people not to switch. Once windows 11 is forced upon me is when I'll cut my losses though. Glad to hear that it's a good enough experience for you though!
- You should get a Steam Deck, I want one as it seems pretty awesome. It runs Linux and you can sail the seven seas like crazy on there, yk?
  Honestly, I haven't played games in a while but in the future, when I feel like gaming again, the Steam Deck will likely be my thing.

Yes I was doing similar a few weeks ago. I was investigating how to get netflix app running on linux, tried a Windows VM, basically stopped at roughly this screen due to bile reaching my mouth.
Ended up installing Zen kernel, switching to KDE(Wayland) and using Waydroid. Far easier than having to read those words or figure out what you actually have to do. I'd assume you have to regularly regedit often to keep this shit under control.
On the wierd condescending tone I also noticed a few years ago at work (compulsory MS) the MS programs started being very rude and overstepping the boundaries of informality: "Want to save this file?" "Fuck you excel, you can't talk to me like that. You think I'd ever be friendly with someone who so wantonly fucks up my data types?"
They must think stockholm syndrome has spread to most of the user base.
- I'm confused. What is rude about "Want to save this file"? What would be the non rude way of asking it?(English is not my first language)
  
  A complete sentence like that would nornally have a "subject" - in this case it should refer to me in the "second person" by using "you". Failing to refer to me as the subject makes the sentence incomplete and seem informal. The sentence literally does not respect me.
  Such informality would usually only be used in conversation with a friend or acquaintance. It's jarring to me to see that in written English, especialy coming from a computer.
  A more formal and complete sentence would be: "Do you want to save this file?" That's formal and not rude, but if you want to be more polite you'd say : "Would you like to save this file?"
  I can't really explain why "Would you like . . .?" is more polite than "Do you want . . . ?", it just is in my experience. Perhaps that's not globally true though many might disagree.
  FYI since you're asking about English, "no rude" would normally be written as "non-rude" or you can just use the opposite word "polite".

The year is 2050
Booting up Windows84
Hello, your NSA overseer is Mr. X
It appears that you have committed 147 thought crimes this week....your accounts shall be ghosted for the time being.

I had a need for one piece of corporate windows program once. Installed Windows AME , only way to really get rid of all crap. All the debloating software and scripts get easily reversed by windows otherwise.

Oh, the people who don't use enterprise editions of Windows...
- I'd buy it IF THEY WOULD SELL IT TO ME!
  The best legal version of Windows I have figured out that you can actually buy as a regular consumer is Windows Server Essentials 2022. (maybe they're up to 2024 now?)
  Server Essentials is regular Windows 10 GUI with absolutely no spyware, OneDrive, or pre installed ads hiding as shortcuts. It doesn't even require a TPM. The only nonsense that comes pre installed is Edge.
  Updates are for 10 years minimum and they only install when you tell them to.
  
  500$ for a Windows license just to have it not have bloat preinstalled? Hmm pass XD
  
  Buying Windows? What kind of lunacy is that?

@TheImpressiveX i found looking glass recently and will definetly try it out, but as I understand this kvm method needs a second GPU for passthrough to Linux.

Every time I have to install Windows, even in VMs I install Atlas with it, getting rid of all bloat and unnecessary shit. But even with that it's a horrible experience compared to what KDE and Gnome deliver.

If you have any basic computer skills it's really not an issue. You can turn off pretty much anything. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad within Windows tbh.
This is just fearmongering at its worst. It's like me saying Linux is only for IT companies running servers because it's unusable for a normal person as the UI is janky and it's all code based.

All of this exists on Macs too, doesn't it?
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