[Opinion] Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron
Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatware—no longer.
I actually use M365 and OneDrive. I still get periodic pushes to use these services on Windows 11. The upsell pressure from my OS is getting really bad.
The only thing holding me back from diving headlong into Linux is gaming support. I've been a windows user since W98. XP was the shit, 7 was rock solid, ten was pretty good, but it seems like Microsoft is dead set on speedrunning enshittification with 11.
Gaming support on Linux is the best it has ever been. Other than select games, nearly everything works now. It's mostly competitive multiplayer games that don't work because it's the kernel anticheat that is the issue. Notably, Call of Duty and Destiny 2 don't work. Halo does 100% work now, which is awesome. But if you mostly play single player games, you are probably totally fine.
True. Gaming is extremely awesome on Linux compared to a few years ago right now, though. Anti-cheat holding you back?
The only games that don't work with a Linux solution are games that the developers have purposely done something that makes it not work.
Check out https://www.protondb.com/ Some games might require a little tinkering. The Vulkan api will win the graphics war because Microsoft hasn't done much with DirectX and DX12 is not doing very well supporting the features it claims it can while being difficult to program. It's only a matter of time before Windows loses it's hold on the desktop. And Microsoft doesn't seem to really care. They make their API for Azure work with Linux.
DX12 won't die since it's the only supported API for XBox. Any game that supports XBox and PC will be DX12 because the XBox is just runs a virtualized Windows 10 (maybe they're on 11 now, I'm not sure) instance that requires DX12.
VR gaming is also shit on Linux. Mostly because it (similarly to Linux gaming in general) adds a layer of complexity and oddness you sometimes need to fix or debug... When you layer these kind of things the issues and complexity tend to multiply.
linux gaming is growing stronger as well
I highly recommend you try Linux gaming, it's still not perfect, but has massively improved in the last few years.
For me, lack of HDR support is a big issue. Also, Nvidia's Linux drivers are trash. I have a Linux install for work (much more powerful than the work laptop), but for gaming I'm sticking with W11 for now. Hopefully Nvidia can improve their drivers (or the community can make better userspace drivers based on Nvidia's new open source kernel driver) and HDR support can get added to Wayland soon.
You should try it. Keep in mind that Valve has never sold a Steam Deck running Windows, and it's a hit. A lot of folks never even realize that they're gaming on Linux. It's that transparent.
They need to make sure users will have a good reason to upgrade to Windows 12.
They don't need any reasons at all anymore. Microsoft won the PC wars a long time ago and has been able to coast ever since. People will upgrade because Windows is the only thing supporting whatever apps they use in the workplace, because Macs are too expensive, and because Microsoft (for all its flaws) still cares about backwards compatibility.
I looked into it a bit, found a version of Fedora called Nobara. I bought a second m.2 drive and installed it. I almost never boot Win 10 anymore. The only gaming issue I have is anti-cheat not supporting it, come on Marauders, you look cool and I want to play. Also, some modding in things like TESV is a journey. Honestly though, simply using my rig feels better, faster, leaner. Gaming is great, Nobara has a setup wizard for my nVidia card as well as my XBox controller. It really isn't hard to switch, I just thought it would be before I tried.
There's bugs and glitches I've had to troubleshoot, but whenever I find myself annoyed, I just think about how many glitches and issues I had with Windows. Nothing is perfect, but Linux gaming is pretty good.
The only clean install is with Enterprise edition and after using dism to remove everything and then sysprep and never actually attach your Microsoft account to the os.
haha pre-installed vendor garbage go brrrrr
Windows 10 pretty much did that already.
Computer manufacturers often distributed buggy, pointless, or redundant third-party software ("bloatware" or "crapware") to help subsidize the cost of the hardware.
To make more profit for the manufacturer, I think you mean. Until the cryptocurrency scammers came along and started stripping store shelves bare, you could build a computer from parts, it'd be cheaper than buying a pre-built computer, and it would be free of crapware.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For a certain kind of computer buyer, the first thing you always did with a new laptop or desktop from a company like Dell, HP, Acer, or Asus wasn't to open the box and start using it.
Computer manufacturers often distributed buggy, pointless, or redundant third-party software ("bloatware" or "crapware") to help subsidize the cost of the hardware.
This might pass some savings on to the user, but once they owned their computer, that software mainly existed to consume disk space and RAM, something that cheaper PCs could rarely afford to spare.
Computer manufacturers also installed all kinds of additional support software, registration screens, and other things that generally extended the setup process and junked up your Start menu and desktop.
The "out-of-box experience" (OOBE, in Microsoft parlance) for Windows 7 walked users through the process of creating a local user account, naming their computer, entering a product key, creating a "Homegroup" (a since-discontinued local file and media sharing mechanism), and determining how Windows Update worked.
Due to the Microsoft Store, you'll find several third-party apps taking up a ton of space in your Start menu by default, even if they aren't technically downloaded and installed until you run them for the first time.
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The only pc i have with that shit on is the work laptop. Thanks to proton i ditched microsoft for good.
The closest thing to clean install is Ameliorated AME or Atlas OS. Check that out if you really need windows.
I'm still using Win10 / Debian, but supposedly setting the language to English (Global) provides a cleaner install of Win11:
![[HN] Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron](https://lemmy.uhhoh.com/pictrs/image/e8eaf4cd-7746-4034-ba2e-196a9930f505.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)