Windows has a lot of bloatware dependencies

You can uninstall it with winget uninstall cortana, never gave me any issues, works like a charm. Removing edge will break some stuff though, you need some edge render thingie for certain programs like Weather.
- Then remove weather
  
  But we need weather! For crops and days on the beach and shit!
- No one is going to use weather on a PC, that's what a phone is for
  
  Why would I pick up my phone to check the weather when I'm on my PC already?
  
  i have it in ny kde bar on my Endeavoros machine, i use arch (kinda) btw
  
  It's enabled on my work terminal. It's actually kinda useful to be able to check if I'm dismissing class into a snowstorm or something when we're in a room without windows.
  
  When you live in a place like Boston, you really need that app
- I remember, back in the windows 10 days if you uninstall Cortana, Windows search (start menu search) just breaks
  But I guess it makes sense now that this works because Microsoft itself is ditching Cortana for Bing AI
  
  Oh shiny new thing!
- Edge WebView, which can be installed separately. A few third-party apps depend on it.
  
  It's basically the new Electron, without most of the bloat of the old Electron. Pretty sweet deal for app developers who need to write an app for both desktops and phones.
- You are the real mvp here. Just ran it in cmdprompt and it worked like a charm. Love you, random person.
- I removed edge from my system , works fine for me !

Linux is an option.
- Didn't work. I switched to Linux and still no option to uninstall Cortana
  
  sudo apt autopurge cortana
  
  Cortana was uninstalled as part of the Linux install process. It's a two-in-one deal.
- Linux ~~is an option~~ is the answer.
  
  What you're referring to as the answer, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux.
  
  only if the question is "What can make me so angry as to throw my computer out the window".
  lol
- Me: Hey linux, uninstall GCC
  Linux: are you sure?
  ME: sudo do it
  Linux: ok
  Me: hey linux, update packages
  Linux: error
  Me: linux reinstall GCC
  Linux: error
  A short adventure with a valuable lesson learned by myself.
  
  What distro requires gcc!? Arch!!?
- Hell yeah. I changed my main OS to Linux mint. First time on Linux, and I love it so far.
  I only use Windows for stuff that Linux cant run yet.
  
  I keep wanting to switch, but the fact you just said you still use windows for some things is enough for me to just stick with windows, until Linux can do everything windows can then I feel like constantly switching is more hassle than whatever improvements Linux provides
  
  What specifically do you still need Windows for? It's possible that you can get it all running under Proton.
  
  I only use Windows for stuff that Linux cant run yet
  Can you share some examples? I'm genuinely curious.
- Me: Linux, can you uninstall the bootloader and kernel?
  Linux: sure thing
- A lot of linux desktop environments will break as well if you remove some seemingly useless package
  $sudo apt remove kwrite
  The following packages with also be REMOVED: kde-plasma-desktop, [all the other KDE desktop packages]
- Shut the fuck up man literally every single post about any other operating system is "SWITCH TO LINUX, YOU WON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH LINUX!!! LOOK HOW MUCH BETTER LINUX IS!!!!! LINUXXXXXXXX!!!"
  All it does is give all the circle jerkers a reason to spam comments and not listen to anybody else's opinions besides their own and it does absolutely nothing helpful for the post
  
  maybe bc linux is better?
  
  No
  
  I guessing this is a just a bad copy pasta

User: "Hey Linux, I want to remove the / directory."
Linux: "Go ahead, just remember to use sudo."
- I read that this might remove efivars from your motherboard and brick your hardware. There was a workaround but not sure if it's safe hardware wise now. I would like to do this to my laptop before reinstalling with btrfs but I'm kinda scared.
- Need -no-preserve-root :(. They made Linux way too child friendly imo. It messes with my workflow. Now my old scripts don't work anymore T_T
  
  just do sudo rm -rf /* and it works without
  
  I think that's okay as long they allow you to remove the safe guards.

Doesn't uninstalling edge end with a broken taskbar? Or am I remembering wrongly
- Sounds about right, the start bar is tied in to Bing search. Uninstalling IE would cause all sorts of issues back in the day.
  
  IE is still there. You can't use it anymore but Windows can. I also don't think they can ever get rid of IE Options - they changed the name to Internet Options but it's exactly the same and will break so many networks if they ever get rid of it
- You're remembering wrongly.

- Edgecore sounds like a really exciting but actually bland genre of music.
  
  Sounds like it would be all build-up and never a drop
- Edge is completely safe to remove in my testing, at least if removed through the Chris Titus Utility.
- Didn't they lose a lawsuit about tying the browser into the OS?
- So his Meme is correct the system will break if you force it to uninstall something?
  
  Most things are probably fine, though Windows updates might do something funky or just put it back from where you threw out that trash.
  But Edge is a different story. Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided to make Edge, their web browser, essential for Windows Explorer, their file manager and desktop among other things, to function properly.
  So if you get rid of Edge, things can get kinda fucky. I haven't looked into if someone has made a workaround, I know that there are modified "debloated" Windows installs that do some heavy duty mucking about in there, but I don't know if anyone's figure out how to give Edge the ax without making your desktop freak out.
  
  Yes, though I'm pretty sure I've uninstalled or atleast disabled cortana with no problems
  
  At some point this holds true for any and all environments.

My biggest issue with windows is it not telling you the exact reason for some weird behavior, and then making it intentionally difficult to go in and modify/fix it yourself.
Linux might break more often, but when it does I've ALWAYS been able to recover or restore it far far easier than I ever could on a windows machine, partially due to the actually helpful error messages.
- Linux might break more often, but when it does I’ve ALWAYS been able to recover or restore it
  Yep. On Windows the mantra is always "Just reinstall".
- Linux might break more often
  I convinced my work to allow me to use Linux on my work laptop. I have far less issues now.
  In my experience, Windows breaks way more often.
  
  I can't confirm this, since W7 until now on W10 I have not seen a BSOD again. This only happened to me in previous versions on a few occasions. It wasn't that serious either, restarting and issue resolved. In the past with Ubuntu, which at the time was a disaster, I have had many crashes or I have been left without a desktop due to incompatibilities with it's Compiz, changing to Kubuntu this no longer happened, resulting much more stable. In general, the current OS, be it Linux or Windows, are very stable OS.
- If you have an Windows account you also can recover it from any desaster with one click, restoring the system. But naturally you must spend an afternoon afterwards to restore your original settings, throw out all the garbage and reinstall all your applications and files.
  
  If you have an Windows account you also can recover it from any desaster with one click, restoring the system.
  Only if there's enough of the operating system left to successfully boot and restore itself. If not, good luck.
  I can resuscitate a broken Debian setup by booting a USB installer and reinstalling all of the packages on it, assuming the dpkg database /var/lib/dpkg/status is still intact. I can also back up the entire system, apps and all, and later restore everything; there are no hidden secret invisible file shenanigans like on Windows.
  
  You cab do that with Linux if you use backups/snapshots.
  I've done it many times using LVM way back when.
- “Bad elf magic” isn't a particularly helpful error message. (It means a shared library couldn't be loaded because it's corrupt, for a different kind of machine, built for a very different dynamic linker, or something along those lines.)

Windows is a good and stable OS with a reasonable privacy, BUT ONLY if the first thing you do in a new PC with Windows, to spend an afternoon disabling and throwing out a ton of junk, trials, unnecessary services and functions and most of the telemetry. So if you have a fast and compliant OS. Luckily Windows allows all this, but naturally it requires an advanced user (registry and servicelists can be a comanche territory if you don't exacly know what you do) and M$ does not offer much documentation and help on this topic either, of course. But in the new online subscription version they will naturally nip these possibilities in the bud.
- You can't disable the tracking properly at all so no clue where you get that reasonable privacy first...
  
  Yo can desactivate completly all telemetries, if you want. But it isn't very usefull. Privacy is often misunderstood, a privacy problem can be when personal data is leaked, your activities on- and offline, but not so much technical details of your PC in case an error report is sent for a driver or other issue, if they send a report about the version of Windows, searches for security updates and patches, things like that that do not compromise privacy at all, because it is data that is identical to millions of other users who use a similar system. Alll other you can block, desactivate or desinstall, apart simply avoiding to use EDGE or Bing por searches, using instead you prefered browser and search engine, which you surely do. I use the Portmaster app, with which I controll all the outgoing and incomming traffic, even blocking it if needed, because of this I know that there isn't any strange thing that compromises privacy.
- Windows is a good and stable OS with a reasonable privacy
  {Looks around confused}
  What the hell dimension did I walk into?!?
  
  I mean, hes not wrong if hes talking about Windows 7.
  if hes talking about 10 or 11, then the dudes clearly on LSD.
  
  Read also the rest what is necessary to make Windows private and stable. Nothing new that Windows by default is a privacy nightmare, but you can change it, but how to do this is not in the Windows Helpfile.
- Lol, I am viewed as an absolute Wizard by some of my friends in IT, because I am not at all afraid of RegEdit. Just don't touch anything at all without triple checking that that is in fact the key you want to be playing with.
  I'll have to remember "Comanche Territory"!
  
  Yes, no much problem with the cleartext software part, but the other where you see only numbers are not so easy, just easy to turn your PC into a Paperweight. This really isn't very intuitive
  Easier the Services, although you can also screw up there
  
  Use Winternals sysmon to suss out problem registry keys and file permissions and their minds will be blown.
- Just the fact that windows has a hidden "true administrator" account that you have to use for some stuff, and is not easily accessible makes it way harder to take control of your own hardware.
  Linux has the same thing, with the root account, but you can access it from a single sudo su command in a terminal (which is mostly pointless since sudo itself executes commands with the highest priviledges).
  Also, Microsoft, not every damn thing needs a GUI. I'd rather have a good command line experience than having to trifle through the registry.
  
  I know all this, I already mentioned elsewhere that I laugh when some users say they don't use Linux, because it is an OS for advanced users. No, it is precisely Windows that requires a more advanced user than Linux, when you really need to modify something, which naturally cannot be done with the GUI and requires using the console (cmd). On Linux this is the rule for everything (although less and less), on Windows you can do most of it with GUI, but not all of it, if you don't want to use a third party app. In General Windows is only easier and more intuitive to use superficially, but in depth it is a minefield, much more complicated and less intuitive than Linux.
- What trials?
  Only thing I had to remove was Skype and there are tools that let you do whatever you want in a matter of minutes.
  
  Yes, there are some tools which can help, eg https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer, also Windows itself has the GodMode, but it need somewhat more than this and only remove Skype, MS Store and Cortana.
- Maybe I'm just really fast but it takes me about 10 minutes. About the same amount of time I spend installing and customing a fresh Linux install.

In one of the recent insider builds they enable the ability to uninstall it from the usual add/remove programs, as they’re ending support for it.

I did nothing and my (Linux) system broke! Beat that Windows! Thank god for Snapper.
- Just gotta run a quick apt update.... And everything broke.
  Mostly looking at Docker, though. The Compose Plugin has been broken since v2.19. Domain resolution is fucked and it refuses to restart services if they depend on another service.
  
  Sounds like pacman -Syyu
  
  Why do people like Docker so much, anyway? Seems to me like it's just static linking with extra steps and extra problems.

Once, 2ish years ago I think by now? I was trying to clean up all the shit I installed to compile something because it wasnt available on apt, had a repository, or had a .deb (I was on ubuntu at the time).
I mistyped something and ended up removing Python. Got no warning, no red text, no nothing. It just uninstalled it as if it was nothing.
I rebooted, and learned that a lot of fucking shit depends on python. because I no longer had a DE and could only boot into a terminal. after 2 hours of trying to unfuck it, I just used a live cd to save what files I could and reinstalled.
Oh, and I never got the program compiled and working. and never tried again on the fresh install. I dont even remember what it was now. Something for gaming, probably.
- The great advantage of Linux is the freedom to do as you please, but it also assumes that you know what you are doing. Windows also allows you to do everything, but only if you ignore the hysterical attacks of the System, but you must also know what you are doing.
  
  an OS should never assume the user knows what its doing, cause users are idiots, even the smart ones. especially the smart ones. lol
- The ability to shoot yourself in the foot is great, but you have to remember that Unix is a gleeful imp holding a monkey paw and makes book on the side with his friend the evil genie.
  Here's a shotgun, go bonkers. Foot is that way. Don't forget to sudo.
  
  Shoedo?
- That's why gentoo is the best
- This is why I use Aptitude and review all proposed changes (other than straight package upgrades) before proceeding. Blindly running stuff like apt full-upgrade is crazy to me.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer breaks windows 10

Same with ubuntu and snaps
- Ubuntu became horrible. Good for the people that enjoy it, tho. Not all users care about the same things. I left the Canonicalverse and landed on Debian. Happy as a clam.
  
  Same except arch and suse
  I still use ubuntu and oracle linux on my servers tbf

Android is Windows' twin sibling.

i can't open .webp files anymore because edge doesn't exist anymore, and i'm too lazy to change the "default opener program™".

Well, at least Windows doesn't have an annoying fanbase
- It does. Just not here.
- Well, at least Windows doesn't have an annoying fanbase
  Ha! That's a good one.
- Windows hasn't any fanbase. There are a lot of Windows user, main using Windows for convenience without wanting to complicate life, they bought the PC with Windows installed and use it as is. There are those who think that life is online, where they don't give a fuck about what OS they do it with. No community and less fanboys, it's always a love/hate relationship with Windows. Many using it out of necessity due to a certain software they use, some for this with dual boot with Linux. This is what it is.
- Were you not around when the hordes of MS fanboys kept on insisting the start menu wasn't necessary acktually for Windows 8?