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.
Shows gun “Can I please borrow your money?”
“H…how much?”
“Not a lot, just 5 billion”
Same vibe.
“You can also opt out, and only have to give me 1 billion.”
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.
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.
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].
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.
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
@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.
@TheImpressiveX I have W11 cracked in VBox
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 )
ShutUp10 is the GOAT.
Yes, I do that on all my VMs about every 3-5 weeks when it turns itself on again.
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.
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
All of this exists on Macs too, doesn’t it?
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.
Link to the program?
Link to the program?
I remember installing Windows XP. sigh.
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.
I had one of the 23 machines in the world that ran Windows ME flawlessly. :(
This is most people’s reaction to using Windows for any reason.
Removed by mod
Let’s narrow it down to normal ppl :) 'Cause those having nothing to hide are enabling enshitification.
Yeah, those granpas asking me to fix their machines are like, “and, what do we do with my OneDrive which I don’t understand what it is?”
if you care about privacy linux is the best honestly
If he is using Windows in a VM, he probably already runs Linux as his base OS and is using the VM for a windows only app
Maybe also not Ubuntu or RHEL? I heard they also collect telemetries and hard to trun off. Unsure.
i actually uninstalled the telemetry package and it stopped even being able to enable telemetry
The telemetry is opt in so feel free to use them. (Correct me if i am wrong)
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.
Great to know
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…
Piholing the windows telemetry domains helps some. But yeah, you aren’t wrong.
Personally I’m using: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/d43m0nhLInt3r/socialblocklists/master/Windows/windowstelemetryblocklist.txt
But that update date gives me some pause, so someone correct me please.
thanks for the link!
I currently use the nextdns list (as well as all of their other native tracking lists):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nextdns/native-tracking-domains/main/domains/windows
You don’t strictly need a PiHole. You can also import a giant
hostsfile.PiHole if you want it network-wide (also covers mobile devices and TVs) -
hostsfile if you only need to modify one machine.It’s a great piece of software.
Shoutout to the PiHole team!
