I’ve used this Powershell script on every Windows 11 machine in the last four years (5+ devices) and have never needed to re-run it after an update.
It’s the first thing I do on a fresh install, and with my selections I see fewer ads (0, more or less) than I do on my MacBook for iCloud products so I’d hardly say it’s “futile” in actual use and only takes like 5 minutes to run once.
I always hear people say nothing sticks after an update but have literally only encountered that with Microsoft Edge and the default search engine. Not any of the Windows features disabled or configured by the script.
Not sure if it’s just outdated or a meme being repeated by non-Windows users but in any case it is not at all what I’ve experienced exclusively running debloated Windows 11 installs for years.
> I always hear people say nothing sticks after an update but have literally only encountered that with Microsoft Edge and the default search engine. Not any of the Windows features disabled or configured by the script.
Not sure if it’s just outdated or a meme being repeated by non-Windows users but in any case it is not at all what I’ve experienced exclusively running debloated Windows 11 installs for years.
Yup. From what I’ve gathered, there was once a legitimate bug that did renable features that users previously disabled, and from then on that just became canon behavior for windows, even though they fixed that issue fairly quickly and I did not see it reappear. I have a similar experience, stuff that was disabled magically becoming re-enabled is not something that’s ever happened to me either over the years with windows.
I had Windows on a Lenovo laptop, and Windows update installed and/or re-enabled Lenovo system services almost every time (those included things like popups helpfully telling you that you pressed CapsLock and crap like this). I ran debloating scripts, tried fiddling with policies, etc, but Windows Update would inevitably bring those services back.
Another thing is Intel drivers. There's official Intel driver assistant software which installs latest drivers for Intel things (graphics, network, and so on). Only for Windows to re-install their "stable" outdated graphics driver next time it sees it. Again, I couldn't stop it. How hard is it for Windows to see that the driver already installed is newer already? Why even Intel cannot talk to Microsoft and decide between themselves a solution for this?
The Onn TV sticks (Google TV based) are an incredible value (the middle of the line-up $25 version is the best deal currently) for a bloat/ad-free experience if you just install the free Projectivy launcher from the Play Store and uninstall any unused TV apps.
I just have Stremio, Jellyfin and VLC installed and remapped the free TV button on the remote to Stremio.
Yes! Per-monitor fractional scaling on Fedora/Wayland finally allowed me to switch my default OS on my laptop from Windows 11 to Linux.
I had to give up on my previous attempt a couple years ago with Linux Mint/X11 because it was an exercise in futility trying to make my various apps look acceptable on my mixed DPI monitor setup.
Linux Mint with Wayland clearly was not getting a lot of attention at the time, and the general attitude when I looked up bugs seemed to be "just don't use Wayland", but maybe the situation has improved by now. It was also kinda off-putting reading Reddit/forum comments whose attitude towards per-monitor DPI scaling on Linux in general was basically "why would anyone need that" when it's been a basic Windows feature for a decade+.
Fedora on the other hand was literally just plug-and-play and has been very enjoyable to use as my daily driver.
What a pox that such an old slow moving distro as Mint somehow is people's first port of call. I don't know how this happened, how Mint rooted itself so well (in 2006 it was fresh!), but this perception that you should use the slowest moving oldest possible dustiest Linux is the best possible thing Microsoft and Apple could spread to convince the world to believe.
If you are going to jump into Linux, dont sell yourself the weird delusion that using ancient ass systems is somehow going to be better for you.
In my experience Mint still has the smoothest process for Nvidia drivers, making it the first suggestion for gamers.
And Snap causes some embarrassing bugs in Firefox in the Ubuntu family, so people thinking "I want an Ubuntu-like OS but without Canonical's mistakes" still gravitate to Mint.
I've always been stuck on the deb/apt system because it seems to have the best support but I probably need to move on at this point. It just doesn't work that well.
They were one of the few distros at the time which had a sane out-of-the-box desktop experience for non-tech people, back when Ubuntu was pushing (the original) Unity and GNOME was still the the early days of 3.x. Drivers and codecs were easy to install as well, generally speaking, without having to hit the forums or ask your tech family member for help.
Sorry if I sold myself a delusion about the Linux distro I casually tried but I've been jumping on and off Linux for 20 years at this point and didn't get the memo it was outdated until later on. The significant change here was being able to daily drive it on my laptop instead of living in a VM or secondary dual boot.
In the past Ubuntu was always my go-to but the snap thing was irritating, and I'd always used some kind of Debian variant, so after cycling through all the X-buntus said hey, why not this Linux Mint I keep hearing about? Plus, Cinnamon looked decent in screenshots but turned out Gnome with a few tweaks ended up being much closer to my ideal than even heavily customized Cinnamon.
That's basically what I heard ten years ago from individuals (and even universities) for why they switched to Mint.. but even now, if you ask Perplexity for a "debian-based distro thats not ubuntu" Mint is the second option.
I did a bunch of distro hopping in the 90's but locked onto Debian (mainly testing, now largely unstable) not long after. I'm still just not sure what compels people elsewhere. Especially now: the Debian installer was vicious if you were a newbie, but I hear it's pretty ok now.
This is largely a me problem! I don't understand what the value add is of other offerings. It's unclear what else would be good or why. Debian feels like it really has what's needed now. Things work. Hardware support is good. Especially in the systemd era, so much of what used to make distros unique is just no longer a factor; there's common means for most Linux 's operation. My gut tells me we are forking and flavoring for not much at all. Aside from learning some new commands, learning Arch has been such a recent non-event for me. It feels like we are having weird popularity contests over nothing. And that amplifies my sense of: why not just use Debian?
But I also have two and a half plus decades of Linux, and my inability to differentiate and assess from beginner's eyes is absolutely key to this all. I try to ask folks, but it's still all so unclear what real motivations, and more, what real differences there are.
The real differences are things that maintainers do. Like how... OBS I think? ...had a bunch of people come in with issues that only existed in the Debian version. Debian software has a bunch of patches, Arch software has far fewer and sticks closer to upstream, other distros will vary. Derivatives also made nonfree easier to set up, which was especially important when MP3 was still encumbered. Nowadays Debian still has the reputation of having old, outdated versions of software, which is going to be hard to shake, especially considering stability is meant to be their main draw.
This is highly location specific, in the last 3 years at my current apartment my orders are received roughly 40% same day, 40% next day, 20% 2+ days shipping. And I've never had a return rejected (and I do a lot of returns) so damage in shipping is a minor inconvenience.
My main gripes are related to search being borderline unusable as it becomes more ad-dominated by the day, and overall trend of other Prime benefits becoming worthless, but not shipping speed or returns.
> And I've never had a return rejected (and I do a lot of returns) so damage in shipping is a minor inconvenience.
What? Every item arrives damaged. You can file several returns in a row, sure, but since you can't receive an undamaged item, this is not a "minor inconvenience". How does it help you to return the third damaged item and receive a fourth one?
Home Assistant supports an absolutely massive number of both manufacturer and community maintained integrations that are necessary for a truly universal all-in-one home automation setup without vendor lock-in.
Plus, for the full HAOS experience (as a “server”) running add-ons that are convenient one-click installed Docker-based packages for popular 3rd party tools used for home automation (but not developed by Open Home Foundation themselves) like Zigbee2Mqtt, Frigate (DVR for IP cams), EspHome etc so you can manage everything in one central location.
You could definitely flip light switches and read sensors with a 20kb executable. But you’d sacrifice the core value-add of HA serving as the single lynchpin connecting every smart device you own today plus whatever you may add in the future.
I started with a 100% Philips Hue setup that forced me to use their app, and eventually wanted to add some unsupported Zigbee devices that Google Home didn’t do a good job exposing which pushed me to explore Home Assistant.
Since then I’ve added (and removed) countless different protocols, proprietary cloud integrations for robovacs or air purifiers, ESP32 boards I built myself, web cams, TVs, etc over the years with the only unchanging constant being Home Assistant at the center linking it all together.
> You could definitely flip light switches and read sensors with a 20kb executable. But you’d sacrifice the core value-add of HA serving as the single lynchpin connecting every smart device you own today plus whatever you may add in the future
Very unclear what is the rationale for this claim.
It's great that Home Assistant supports "n absolutely massive number of both manufacturer and community maintained integrations" but that is quite irrelevant. The point is that running what you need to (mostly) flick switches and measure temperatures should not pull huge infrastructure, software requirements, and hardware capabilities. If it does then it does mean massive bloat.
It's demonstrating the implications (principle of explosion) of a contradiction being allowed in a system of formal logic. You can change "suppose both are true" to "suppose the rules of a logical system permit stating both are true".
Focusing on the word "Office" feels like a bit of red herring considering it's frequently used in other Microsoft Office replacements like LibreOffice or OpenOffice.
Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."
But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?
In case you need it, this is the next model up with the 350 processor. If you care about graphics performance it has double the cores, and the bigger SSD as I mentioned:
It’s the first thing I do on a fresh install, and with my selections I see fewer ads (0, more or less) than I do on my MacBook for iCloud products so I’d hardly say it’s “futile” in actual use and only takes like 5 minutes to run once.
I always hear people say nothing sticks after an update but have literally only encountered that with Microsoft Edge and the default search engine. Not any of the Windows features disabled or configured by the script.
Not sure if it’s just outdated or a meme being repeated by non-Windows users but in any case it is not at all what I’ve experienced exclusively running debloated Windows 11 installs for years.
https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat
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