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Comment by drexlspivey | Hacker News Reader

I recently bought a Windows laptop for gaming (the only reason to still get one imo). The first thing I installed was a network inspection tool and proceeded to spend the next 3 hours trying to get back some control of my computer by:

* Uninstalling tons of crap (Xbox Live, Edge, McAfee, Cortana etc)

* Blocking network access for many processes (Windows Defender Smart Screen, GamingServices, Search etc). The latter sends all your search queries to bing

* Fiddling with telemetry & privacy settings

After uninstalling Edge I still find places where functionality is broken because the OS doesn't respect the default browser setting.

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> I still find places where functionality is broken

Windows uses Edge for webviews, you shouldn't uninstall Edge if you want these webview.

While yes, using webviews to render things is awful, you shouldn't uninstall edge, it's like uninstalling librairies then complain about how things stop working.

I haven't taken the chance to dig into Win11 to know, but before Edge? Internet Explorer was bundled with Windows' Widget Kit. Uninstalling IE would break how applications would present to the user.

Microsoft makes very weird, deeply hurtful decisions, at a depth very few people understand.

> Uninstalling IE would break how applications would present to the user.

It makes sense for developers to use the native html renderer when they don’t want to have to include a big binary blob (Electron/CEF) to do so in their application.

The WebView API and the browser app are not the same thing.

Uninstalling the latter shouldn't touch the former, nor should it break the OS.

Yup. At worst, the bundled browser may use the built in web renderer if applicable for whatever reason perhaps.

But it definitely shouldn't be the other way around.

Android does it the right way: the web view is a separate Chromium instance that doesn't depend on your default browser.

Yup, I think that's what should be. Installed apps and their versions shouldn't affect system components.

Their decisions are easy to understand if you understand the motivations of the company. Which is not to please end user consumers buying retail consumer computers

There is a tool called ‚Shut up, Windows 10‘ that let‘s you deactivate all telemetry and other annoying features with one click.

Thanks I’ve been looking for something like this!

A pity that it's proprietary, I'd far rather that a tool like that be Free and Open Source.

A reddit thread [0] suggests using a PowerShell-based alternative.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/3i766c/shut_up_wi...

Bit surprised no one mentioned using the LTSC releases of Windows. They're absolutely barebones (no clock/news/weather, media codecs need manual install) but apparently significantly faster and less bloated, and they boot faster too. The only catch is I'm not sure how you can get one unless you're fond of the deep seas.

I'm pretty sure you can use LTSC editions if you have the Microsoft Action Pack. You can definitely get the Enterprise edition (I use it, and there are no ads).

I forget how much it costs, something like $350/year from memory, but it's a no-brainer if you are developing for Windows, as you get access to loads of software, including Visual Studio, Office, something like 10x Windows desktop licenses and 5x server licenses, $100/m Azure credits etc.

I tried out the latest one and it was actually pretty crap. The telemetry settings were the same as regular windows (no off setting), the same crapware was installed like the Windows store, microsoft accounts, news applets etc...

I think the only thing it still has going for it is that it doesn't really change all the time. Oh and you can probably still install updates whenever you actually want to, because it's meant for production systems.

The old LTSB of Windows 7 was indeed a really nice, light and no-frills windows release but LTSC has become almost the same turd that Windows 10 has :(

They used to be barebones. Now they aren't really.

21H2 version is bloated compared to early win10 LTSC builds.

There's so much telemetry and so much Windows Defender bullshit, which is extremely hard to get rid off, but slows your system down tremendously.

I can only imagine how bad full non-LTSC version of windows is like.

It takes hours to finish, but tron script [1] automates at least some of what you did. It does however use kasperky for some tasks, so up to you whether you want to turn those bits off.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/

How do you stop the network access for processes?

I am using an app called Glasswire, similar to Little Snitch for MacOS.

Windows Firewall -> Advanced Settings -> change default Outbound to "block" on public/domain/private profile.

Thanks, I will try this out.

Microsoft doesn’t install McAfee.

Yes that one and a bunch of others are coming from ASUS

Pedantic. Every Windows OEM is doing this and M$ seems to encourage it to make their windows devices cheaper.

Microsoft Surface machines don’t have this. Microsoft doesn’t like it at all.

Microsoft has every fresh windows 10/11 install automatically download garbage like candy crush. They don’t like it at all?

Microsoft hates McAfee and the other malware packages, because they know full well how badly they screw up all sorts of internal workings of Windows. Much of Microsoft's own tech support workload is caused by shitty antiviruses. The reason Microsoft made Security Essentials / Defender was to deal with that, to displace the others and reduce Microsoft's own support workload.

Candy Crush isn't anything like that, it doesn't screw up OS functionality. (Well, subjectively, you might consider ads and upsells in the UI broken.)

If Microsoft doesn’t like it, they could prevent OEM from doing it through licensing.

They don’t. It’s been like that for decades.

>they could prevent OEM from doing it through licensing

Preventing installation of third-party software. This will certainly go well in Europe.

Unlikely, seems like it would be a huge antitrust issue. Google can't dictate what OEMs install either.

They could've had e.g. "Windows Fresh" campaign/symbol for vendors to use if it was an unmodified Windows. But there's likely no incentive. It cuts into OEM profit, and maybe it would reduce support calls?

Ultimately though, most people don't care. And the ones that do simply reinstall Windows on a new PC, because it's quicker that way.

That's not what pedantic means

GP didn't say they did.

They said they bought a computer with windows not a Microsoft PC like a surface.

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