I know I have said this many times, but if you need Windows just use Windows 11 LTSC. It lacks almost all of the bulk and crap that Microsoft is trying to shove into Windows. And the things that are missing if you really need them are easy to install.
Don't believe Microsoft's "marketing" about LTSC that it won't work for a general purpose OS. I use this for my gaming PC and it is fantastic.
No need for any sort of debloat script that is doing untested things, LTSC is a working version of Windows.
LTSC won't work for all new games or games that receive and require updates; I recently spoke to a game & graphics dev with a lot of low level DirectX and Windows API experience about using LTSC for a flight simulator (not just the software - a simulator you physically sit in). He said that he had to deny support for LTSC for his products in that space because MSFT doesn't update it with the same DirectX updates and Windows APIs available on consumer Windows versions, which in turn impacts graphics driver support, which in turn prevented features of his software from working at all on common hardware (in his case, VR/AR displays). The same issues will likely impact many games that require newer graphics APIs and drivers. He advised against LTSC for most gamers - it's only appropriate for running software that was built for the SDK and API versions available in LTSC, and which won't receive any major update for a decade.
I know that there have been compatibility issues before, but it is worth mentioning that the current version of 11 LTSC was from november-ish last year so it is fairly up to date.
I am running it on 3 different gaming devices and have had zero issues with it, and I have it installed on my partner's gaming PC and he also has not had any issues with it.
also a "decade" I am not sure is true, the current version is 11 2024. Before that was 2021, 2019, 2016, 2015.
That being said, I would be very curious what games actually break.
i game and run flight sims and VR full time on old win10 ltsc and have never ran into any issues running any modern game on a 4090. ive yet to see any material impact from this
> If you fail to activate this evaluation after installation, or if your evaluation period expires, the desktop background will turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut down every hour.
I was ready to grab a ISO, but this sounds pretty user hostile to me.
The last I looked into this these were the conclusions I reached (depending on individual situation):
- If you're looking to do this 100% to the letter, then you'll need to enter some form of VL agreement with an authorized reseller. This will come with a minimum purchase of 5 licenses.
- If you're looking to do this with a "real" key, but not by the book, then one of the gray market sites.
- If you're looking to do this morally (by paying Microsoft), but don't care if the actual activation is completed with the license you purchase, then purchase a Windows 11 Pro license but use https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts/ to activate your Windows 11 LTSC. The ISO itself can still be sourced from Microsoft.
- If you don't care about any of this, then the same as the above except don't buy the Windows 11 Pro License
- If you absolutely want to buy a single license "by the book"... there is no official offering available.
Microsoft makes it hard (impossible) because they don't want normal users using LTSC. They try very hard in their marketing to make it seem like LTSC is not good for general purpose computing since it removes many of the features they are trying to push and their ability to show ads.
That being said, check out the WindowsLTSC subreddit. All the information on how to get it is there.
You don't need any sort of crack make it work and don't need to go anywhere shady to get the ISO. And if you are concerned from an ethical standpoint, buy a normal Windows license and just install LTSC instead.
I mentioned it in the other comment, but check out WindowsLTSC subreddit.
While it is not "legitimate", it is also not hard at all to do if you already know how to take an ISO and install Windows in the first place. It doesnt require any cracks or torrents.
[sigh] I remember when modal windows were the only imaginable disruption to your work. The irony is, at least they had a clear purpose — and a close button.
Does Linux have a stable and reliable remote desktop server yet? Using Wayland.
I love being able to remote into my home PC and experience near lag-free use via RDP. I've tried the Gnome and KDE implementations but they aren't that great as a user who just wants to connect and use the PC.
I found the gnome one confusing, as it had two options. One had to be logged into locally and unlocked first. The other didn't I believe but there was some other gotcha. Maybe having signed in once but then locked the session. I do remember not being able to RDP from a fresh reboot which made me think the machine failed to boot. KDE's implementation I think also suffered from having to log in locally first.
I've made use of Sunshine and Moonlight for now. It works, but it's meant more for gaming. No copy and paste, more bandwidth or more cpu/gpu cycles, etc.
The GNOME Remote Desktop offering seems fine but yeah, the specific use case you have of wanting to be able to login does require an additional system wide login step which is a little unusual. LightDM and others work similarly; it's basically a vnc password to keep rabble off the actual login screen. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop
Personally I think sunshine & moonlight is 100% the way to go. There is one way client->host copy paste. Agreed that more would be better, but there are good independent tools for shuffling data around, lots of ways to fill in the gap. The bandwidth is very tuneable but yes 0.5mbit/s is going to be pretty rough. But sunshine will gladly use hardware encoding, that's very low latency, and that is basically free: there's dedicated encoders on any vaguely modern hardware. Being able to get av1 or HEVC for basically free feels about as good as it gets to me. Moonlight client of course will also decode in hardware too. Remote desktop-ing has never been so low impact to CPU or GPU, and the ability to do absolutely anything (watch videos even) with such high smoothness and low latency is stunning. 100% recommend sunshine+moonlight. Afaik, no way to remote login over it though?
The Gnome one is excellent. I think the issue you mentioned got solved in a recent version - upgrading to the latest version of the OS (non-LTS, if you have to) will let you pick up the latest version with that fix in place.
VNC works really well for Linux based workstations. Both RealVNC and TightVNC are good although RealVNC has started pushing their cloud offering recently. Install on both machines, one running as server, the other as a client.
I'm curious why you need a graphical remote experience? Note, I'm specifically not trying to dissuade you. My guess is that what is driving your need will likely lead you to specific solutions.
Though, I do have to hazard a guess that Wayland will be a bit of a hiccup. Remove graphical desktops were niche enough that a lot of the good solutions for them in the past have not been high on people's radars.
Depends on what you need... I get a long way with Wireguard + SSH to my desktop for remote use. Usually using VS Code against a project directory with remoting extensions.
Messing around with an old laptop and my nephew's machine recently gave me a stark reminder of how bad Windows has gotten.
Horrendous install process, just clicking no to hundreds of "features" I don't want, interspersed by patronising, uninformative messages like "chillax, we're just setting things up for you". And when you're done, you're bombarded by notifications, visual clutter. My poor eight-year-old nephew had a stock-ticker on the task bar! A totally overwhelming, ugly and hostile interface.
On the old laptop, I installed Windows to do the firmware update (a thousand curses on manufacturers that don't provide the option to flash from Linux), and moved straight to install EndeavorOS.
The experience was night and day. Simple, clear and informative install with clear, well-explained choices. Fast. On completion, I've got a clean, empty DE, ready to be tweaked to my liking. Oh, and it's free, as is all the software I'm using on it.
This is Arch, there are memes about Arch being hard. Unbelievable how much easier and more pleasant getting Arch up and running is than Windows these days. Microsoft have crippled their UX with horrendous junk.
The only reason anyone really needs Windows is if they're running one of about four pieces of software for professional reasons.
Win11 is peak enshitification, such a big opening for Linux at the moment. Non-technical parent needs a computer, give them Linux; child, ditto. All most users need is a browser these days. No reason most people need that Microsoft shit in their lives.
I use Linux on my desktop in my basement as that is the "fun" computer meant for entertainment and some coding. I have a Macbook for a lot of "serious" work because if I am out meeting people I need the software to work the first time I open it and not waste time troubleshooting.
Side note on the comment about reliable sleep/wake...Linux is very good at this, just look at the Steam Deck.
On the freshest hardware? Sure, maybe. On anything more than 3-5 years old (which these days you'll struggle to tell apart from new machines, based on everyday performance) when they had time to iron out driver compatibility issues, Ubuntu LTS has been rock solid.
Audio is finally solved since PipeWire. Wifi and sleep/wake work work well enough that some of us haven't encountered issues in years, but indeed not quite on all hardware.
You're not wrong that a cheap mac is an easier solution, but with its own downsides.
For home users I'd say the biggest thing that keeps them on Windows is gaming, but Valve have made excellent progress at getting games to run on Linux now.
For business users I'd say the biggest thing is Active Directory - being able to manage and micro-manage a fleet of hundreds or thousands of PCs by a small team is highly desirable.
It's all about applications. The % of business apps out there with Linux support is negligible. The majority of mid-large sized companies worldwide would fail without the Office suite, or really just Excel.
Office and Excel are now both browser based though right? So they should run on Linux as well as they do on Windows. The last two companies I have worked for didn't even use Office or Excel they used Google Workspace.
I can't remember the last time I used or saw someone else use an "office app" outside of the browser. Which is not to say no one does, more so that the argument that you need Linux specific installed applications is not as strong as it was say, 10 years ago.
This is what has continually killed it in my experience. Orgs run microsoft software and have basically no business case to switch.
People have said this before, but how much frustration does it cause when microsoft moves a default ribbon around? Try moving those people to a program with different icons. Yikes. Now do it across a giant organization and try to justify the resulting performance hit to a board.
This isn't even getting into all of the arcane business logic that keeps processes moving built on excel sheets, fucking macros and who knows what else. Sure, most of it works fine but when it doesn't and people don't know how, why or where...
For me the biggest hurdle with Linux recently was the bad support for fractional scaling and multi-monitor setups with different scaling factors. It looks like this got better now, though on the Notebook I'm using Linux with I'm fighting a bit with the X Window System to Wayland transition. Fractional scaling is only sharp with Wayland, so I have to set some flags for applications like VSCode so that they don't render crappy.
I also had bad luck with drivers and bluetooth/audio issues the last time I tried to switch. That might have been just that particular Ubuntu release though.
I might try it sometime soon again, especially if Microsoft annoys me with Windows 11 again.
I’ve tried to switch to Linux and Mac several times over the past 30 years. And once I get it in front of me, I’m struck with a feeling of “now what?”. All that effort and no upside.
Aye, I must have tried it ten, fifteen times over the years before it stuck.
All I'd say is it's pretty easy and more or less "just works" these days. I remember fighting over basic stuff like second monitors, but for the most part, all the issues relating to Linux itself are solved. A DE like Gnome is simple, clean and easy to use. Gaming totally works thanks to Steam.
The only hurdle is if you absolutely need a full Office or Adobe install. For most of us, that comes with our work machines. For me, Linux is perfect for my personal rig.
Obviously your experience is your experience, but I just cannot understand this. Been using Linux comfortably for 5 years now. The only time I touch Windows for personal use anymore is inside a GPU-passthrough VM for gaming, though lately I've been considering switching to playing the games through Linux because it's gotten so good recently. Actually, many titles get better performance in Linux than Windows now, ironically.
The small/midsize banking ecosystem (jack henry, fiserv, FIS) runs on windows server as well. maybe the big guys with a self-developed platform have it better.
> but Valve have made excellent progress at getting games to run on Linux now.
Until the answer to "Will this new game run on Linux?" becomes "Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?", it's not good enough.
That said, I've heavily considered running a Linux VM in my Windows box and doing nearly all my day-to-day activities inside the VM and only switching out to Windows to play games. I've got 128 GB of RAM, so I could dedicate a healthy 32 GB to the Linux VM and still have far more than I need for gaming in the Windows host.
Valve has done a lot, but until you start getting the big "forever" games to support Linux, it'll never be an acceptable substitute for most home users. Doubly so for anyone with kids.
The main thing is anti cheats now. Any big forever single player game works, but online stuff is still dicey because the AC companies don't want to enable ports for various titles
most of the "forever" games have low requirements and are generally free from OS-level fuckery, unless Rockstar or Epic start making their launchers a requirement. Even then they generally work under Linux with Proton.
as someone else mentioned, anti-cheat is a big problem, and on a linux system that runs into both the practical challenges as well as the "it's a FOSS box and no one makes me install a kernel module unless I approve" angle.
LDAP is just one component of AD - which also integrates kerberos and ssl and the management gui, and years of windows-specific documentation/knowledge/etc.
The main thing is - if you are in the microsoft ecosystem enough to be seriously using AD - you use AD. Microsoft IT is its own world.
Keberos integration for SSO, Group Policy Objects (GPO) -- which is a big one in my opinion; you need to script or orchestrate things to replicate that -- built in DNS and DHCP, cert stuff, and a lot of domain-forest relationships
AAA games work essentially flawlessly on Linux. Can't predict if there will be any sort of fuckery for the next gen games like GTA 6, but Cyberpunk 2077, RDR2, etc. all worked flawlessly with Proton.
I'll second AD -- ain't no way we're moving away from that or Azure AD (EntraID). I've done OpenIPA deployments before and AD is a fairly mature product all things considered. Like, if you think AD is shit, wait until you start messing with OpenLDAP implementations...
Windows is an onramp for their online services and a data harvesting tool. The entire industry is going this way and we have enabled it through overly complicated abstractions and an obsession with "web-scale".
Start by building on-premise systems and you'll develop a different mindset.
> The ideal, therefore, is an automated Windows detoxifier with a solid chain of trust; one that's rapidly updated to track new outbreaks of unwholesomeness; one that's constructed to be usable by anyone, and to be configurable so that the user can dial in what they want to go.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I was certain something like this already exists?
>Doing things manually by recipe is also less than optimal.
>The ideal, therefore, is an automated Windows detoxifier
I've already seen it baked in for a few years now for specialized uses.
There are scientific instruments which require very specialized software from the manufacturer, Windows-only naturally, and to use the latest software you need a post-2022 OS version now.
The most recently-purchased are on Windows 10, set up by the "experts", and run like dogs compared to the 20-year-old instruments still using Windows XP.
The same app version on W11 is very noticeably worse and I've been working on it in preparation for migration.
For XP Pro there was a couple documentation pages of manual settings to Windows that you were expected to follow which increased Windows performance, before installing the major lab app.
Now there are quite a few pages to the manual checklist beforehand, and then during install a factory autoscript tweaks away and stuffs in some dependencies for about a half hour before the package finally begins to install. Afterward alerting you if any recognized beneficial manual changes are still recommended. Not only Pro, but Enterprise and LTSC are supported now but they are not so great either.
Arf arf, it still wants to make you howl :(
There are dozens more settings that need to be identified and experimented with, fortunately it's a 24/7 lab and this started as soon as W11 was released.
Anyway, Windows has gotten to the point where I can make plenty as a consultant just visiting labs and recovering untapped workflow from the electronics. Which never would have paid off even a few years ago. I don't even need to automate. Manual is just fine. As things progress it's likely to pay better than being a referee witness or calibrating the instruments against NIST-traceable materials too.
Decades ago I wrote thousands of LOC before they had very advanced software like this, now I still write pages of text but it's all "scripts". And not mainly the code kind, more like a screenplay where I'm the actor following the script my own self with a number of one-liners :\
Reproducible results require a reproducible environment so it's worth it.
Today the instrument manufacturer's offerings are very advanced, you need their current app version to support the newest instruments, but the app also does still support a number of 20-year old models. Basically new software has shipped with updated factory device drivers for the old (expensive) lab hardware to keep it running with later Windows versions.
I have one of those on the bench that is highly reliable for years on XP, that way it uses up less than 1 GB of memory and only 1.2 GB of drive space for Windows, plus another 1.4 GB of 2006 instrument software and it runs like a top.
The new software on W11 can get the same instrument to analyze the chemical in the same amount of bench time and get the same result from the same calibration. This is impressive but anything less would always be complete failure. The instrument factory engineers have gone the extra mile with their built-in auto-tweaking script too. Too bad nothing less would do. But all interactions with the combined system are still like you've got a Chihuahua in a Greyhound race compared to XP. And Windows 11 does it with Enterprise "only" taking up about 10 GB, and then the lab app takes another 15 GB on the drive, plus you've got to have at least 8 GB of memory.
Or approximately 10x the PC resources to do a noticeably poorer job of accomplishing a comparable thing using the exact same instrument. Or if you are not prepared to give the workflow a complete workover, a much worse performance when it comes to what you can get done on the same analyzer in one day.
Although everybody should have a chance to get their hands on XP when it's mainlining SSDeroids on the bare metal :)
Over the last week, I helped 4 people get a piece of software working on Windows.
Something I found mind boggling is that the windows/search button doesnt load every time.
From my nvidia 3060 gpu laptop, to my tiny i5, to cheap refurbished laptops, all computers seem to have an issue displaying the search/windows button's data.
I believe if you wait long enough, it shows up, but sometimes you click off and re-click.
Anyway, its utterly mind boggling that the OS that has 90% of users has this issue.
(My guess is that its doing some sort of online thing and it wont display results until it gets the ads/sends data)
Readit News
Don't believe Microsoft's "marketing" about LTSC that it won't work for a general purpose OS. I use this for my gaming PC and it is fantastic.
No need for any sort of debloat script that is doing untested things, LTSC is a working version of Windows.
I am running it on 3 different gaming devices and have had zero issues with it, and I have it installed on my partner's gaming PC and he also has not had any issues with it.
also a "decade" I am not sure is true, the current version is 11 2024. Before that was 2021, 2019, 2016, 2015.
That being said, I would be very curious what games actually break.
I had to upgrade to the newer LTSC once
in 10 years
Or even better, just use Windows 10 LTSC. It's the last sane version of Windows.
One popular tool: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
> If you fail to activate this evaluation after installation, or if your evaluation period expires, the desktop background will turn black, you will see a persistent desktop notification indicating that the system is not genuine, and the PC will shut down every hour.
I was ready to grab a ISO, but this sounds pretty user hostile to me.
It's infuriating, I would happily pay for a real licence for this, and MS makes it basically impossible to do so.
- If you're looking to do this 100% to the letter, then you'll need to enter some form of VL agreement with an authorized reseller. This will come with a minimum purchase of 5 licenses.
- If you're looking to do this with a "real" key, but not by the book, then one of the gray market sites.
- If you're looking to do this morally (by paying Microsoft), but don't care if the actual activation is completed with the license you purchase, then purchase a Windows 11 Pro license but use https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts/ to activate your Windows 11 LTSC. The ISO itself can still be sourced from Microsoft.
- If you don't care about any of this, then the same as the above except don't buy the Windows 11 Pro License
- If you absolutely want to buy a single license "by the book"... there is no official offering available.
That being said, check out the WindowsLTSC subreddit. All the information on how to get it is there.
You don't need any sort of crack make it work and don't need to go anywhere shady to get the ISO. And if you are concerned from an ethical standpoint, buy a normal Windows license and just install LTSC instead.
While it is not "legitimate", it is also not hard at all to do if you already know how to take an ISO and install Windows in the first place. It doesnt require any cracks or torrents.
Edit: oh no, the Microsoft employees found me.
Visit the mass graves.
Use Linux. Windows is over if you want it.
I love being able to remote into my home PC and experience near lag-free use via RDP. I've tried the Gnome and KDE implementations but they aren't that great as a user who just wants to connect and use the PC.
I found the gnome one confusing, as it had two options. One had to be logged into locally and unlocked first. The other didn't I believe but there was some other gotcha. Maybe having signed in once but then locked the session. I do remember not being able to RDP from a fresh reboot which made me think the machine failed to boot. KDE's implementation I think also suffered from having to log in locally first.
I've made use of Sunshine and Moonlight for now. It works, but it's meant more for gaming. No copy and paste, more bandwidth or more cpu/gpu cycles, etc.
The GNOME Remote Desktop offering seems fine but yeah, the specific use case you have of wanting to be able to login does require an additional system wide login step which is a little unusual. LightDM and others work similarly; it's basically a vnc password to keep rabble off the actual login screen. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop
For the many many wlroots Wayland's, wayvnc is quite good. Their first FAQ question is about running over ssh, on a headless backend. https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq
Personally I think sunshine & moonlight is 100% the way to go. There is one way client->host copy paste. Agreed that more would be better, but there are good independent tools for shuffling data around, lots of ways to fill in the gap. The bandwidth is very tuneable but yes 0.5mbit/s is going to be pretty rough. But sunshine will gladly use hardware encoding, that's very low latency, and that is basically free: there's dedicated encoders on any vaguely modern hardware. Being able to get av1 or HEVC for basically free feels about as good as it gets to me. Moonlight client of course will also decode in hardware too. Remote desktop-ing has never been so low impact to CPU or GPU, and the ability to do absolutely anything (watch videos even) with such high smoothness and low latency is stunning. 100% recommend sunshine+moonlight. Afaik, no way to remote login over it though?
Though, I do have to hazard a guess that Wayland will be a bit of a hiccup. Remove graphical desktops were niche enough that a lot of the good solutions for them in the past have not been high on people's radars.
""Open-Source Low-Latency Accelerated Linux WebRTC HTML5 Remote Desktop Streaming Platform for Self-Hosting, Containers, Kubernetes, or Cloud/HPC""
You can also give RustDesk a shot for gui access.
Only for about 20 years for graphical desktop and 34 years for console.
Console options: Telnet, Rlogin, SSH.
Graphical options: X forwarding, VNC, X2Go.
> Using Wayland.
Why?
Horrendous install process, just clicking no to hundreds of "features" I don't want, interspersed by patronising, uninformative messages like "chillax, we're just setting things up for you". And when you're done, you're bombarded by notifications, visual clutter. My poor eight-year-old nephew had a stock-ticker on the task bar! A totally overwhelming, ugly and hostile interface.
On the old laptop, I installed Windows to do the firmware update (a thousand curses on manufacturers that don't provide the option to flash from Linux), and moved straight to install EndeavorOS.
The experience was night and day. Simple, clear and informative install with clear, well-explained choices. Fast. On completion, I've got a clean, empty DE, ready to be tweaked to my liking. Oh, and it's free, as is all the software I'm using on it.
This is Arch, there are memes about Arch being hard. Unbelievable how much easier and more pleasant getting Arch up and running is than Windows these days. Microsoft have crippled their UX with horrendous junk.
The only reason anyone really needs Windows is if they're running one of about four pieces of software for professional reasons.
Win11 is peak enshitification, such a big opening for Linux at the moment. Non-technical parent needs a computer, give them Linux; child, ditto. All most users need is a browser these days. No reason most people need that Microsoft shit in their lives.
Otherwise, get the whatever's the cheapest MacBook Air or Mac Mini and move on with your life.
I use Linux on my desktop in my basement as that is the "fun" computer meant for entertainment and some coding. I have a Macbook for a lot of "serious" work because if I am out meeting people I need the software to work the first time I open it and not waste time troubleshooting.
Side note on the comment about reliable sleep/wake...Linux is very good at this, just look at the Steam Deck.
You're not wrong that a cheap mac is an easier solution, but with its own downsides.
Dead Comment
For business users I'd say the biggest thing is Active Directory - being able to manage and micro-manage a fleet of hundreds or thousands of PCs by a small team is highly desirable.
People have said this before, but how much frustration does it cause when microsoft moves a default ribbon around? Try moving those people to a program with different icons. Yikes. Now do it across a giant organization and try to justify the resulting performance hit to a board.
This isn't even getting into all of the arcane business logic that keeps processes moving built on excel sheets, fucking macros and who knows what else. Sure, most of it works fine but when it doesn't and people don't know how, why or where...
I also had bad luck with drivers and bluetooth/audio issues the last time I tried to switch. That might have been just that particular Ubuntu release though.
I might try it sometime soon again, especially if Microsoft annoys me with Windows 11 again.
All I'd say is it's pretty easy and more or less "just works" these days. I remember fighting over basic stuff like second monitors, but for the most part, all the issues relating to Linux itself are solved. A DE like Gnome is simple, clean and easy to use. Gaming totally works thanks to Steam.
The only hurdle is if you absolutely need a full Office or Adobe install. For most of us, that comes with our work machines. For me, Linux is perfect for my personal rig.
Wouldn't dream of going back.
Also QuickBooks (online does not come close to replacing desktop enterprise) & CAD, in my experience.
The application is cumbersome enough as a native app I can't even imagine if the whole thing were ported to run on JS.
Until the answer to "Will this new game run on Linux?" becomes "Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?", it's not good enough.
That said, I've heavily considered running a Linux VM in my Windows box and doing nearly all my day-to-day activities inside the VM and only switching out to Windows to play games. I've got 128 GB of RAM, so I could dedicate a healthy 32 GB to the Linux VM and still have far more than I need for gaming in the Windows host.
Dual booting is a pain in the ass. I won't do it.
as someone else mentioned, anti-cheat is a big problem, and on a linux system that runs into both the practical challenges as well as the "it's a FOSS box and no one makes me install a kernel module unless I approve" angle.
The main thing is - if you are in the microsoft ecosystem enough to be seriously using AD - you use AD. Microsoft IT is its own world.
Legacy software for me.
Catia only works on Windows.
I'll second AD -- ain't no way we're moving away from that or Azure AD (EntraID). I've done OpenIPA deployments before and AD is a fairly mature product all things considered. Like, if you think AD is shit, wait until you start messing with OpenLDAP implementations...
2. Win11Debloat - https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
3. O&O Shutup - https://www.oo-software.com/
WindowBlinds 11 - https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/ - Reskin your GUI elements to make it look like Windows 7.
Start 11 - https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/ - Bring back a more classic Start Menu UX.
Start by building on-premise systems and you'll develop a different mindset.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I was certain something like this already exists?
https://christitus.com/windows-tool/
It has worked well for me on a gaming system that does not contain sensitive data, check it out.
>Doing things manually by recipe is also less than optimal.
>The ideal, therefore, is an automated Windows detoxifier
I've already seen it baked in for a few years now for specialized uses.
There are scientific instruments which require very specialized software from the manufacturer, Windows-only naturally, and to use the latest software you need a post-2022 OS version now.
The most recently-purchased are on Windows 10, set up by the "experts", and run like dogs compared to the 20-year-old instruments still using Windows XP.
The same app version on W11 is very noticeably worse and I've been working on it in preparation for migration.
For XP Pro there was a couple documentation pages of manual settings to Windows that you were expected to follow which increased Windows performance, before installing the major lab app.
Now there are quite a few pages to the manual checklist beforehand, and then during install a factory autoscript tweaks away and stuffs in some dependencies for about a half hour before the package finally begins to install. Afterward alerting you if any recognized beneficial manual changes are still recommended. Not only Pro, but Enterprise and LTSC are supported now but they are not so great either.
Arf arf, it still wants to make you howl :(
There are dozens more settings that need to be identified and experimented with, fortunately it's a 24/7 lab and this started as soon as W11 was released.
Anyway, Windows has gotten to the point where I can make plenty as a consultant just visiting labs and recovering untapped workflow from the electronics. Which never would have paid off even a few years ago. I don't even need to automate. Manual is just fine. As things progress it's likely to pay better than being a referee witness or calibrating the instruments against NIST-traceable materials too.
Decades ago I wrote thousands of LOC before they had very advanced software like this, now I still write pages of text but it's all "scripts". And not mainly the code kind, more like a screenplay where I'm the actor following the script my own self with a number of one-liners :\
Reproducible results require a reproducible environment so it's worth it.
Today the instrument manufacturer's offerings are very advanced, you need their current app version to support the newest instruments, but the app also does still support a number of 20-year old models. Basically new software has shipped with updated factory device drivers for the old (expensive) lab hardware to keep it running with later Windows versions.
I have one of those on the bench that is highly reliable for years on XP, that way it uses up less than 1 GB of memory and only 1.2 GB of drive space for Windows, plus another 1.4 GB of 2006 instrument software and it runs like a top.
The new software on W11 can get the same instrument to analyze the chemical in the same amount of bench time and get the same result from the same calibration. This is impressive but anything less would always be complete failure. The instrument factory engineers have gone the extra mile with their built-in auto-tweaking script too. Too bad nothing less would do. But all interactions with the combined system are still like you've got a Chihuahua in a Greyhound race compared to XP. And Windows 11 does it with Enterprise "only" taking up about 10 GB, and then the lab app takes another 15 GB on the drive, plus you've got to have at least 8 GB of memory.
Or approximately 10x the PC resources to do a noticeably poorer job of accomplishing a comparable thing using the exact same instrument. Or if you are not prepared to give the workflow a complete workover, a much worse performance when it comes to what you can get done on the same analyzer in one day.
Although everybody should have a chance to get their hands on XP when it's mainlining SSDeroids on the bare metal :)
Something I found mind boggling is that the windows/search button doesnt load every time.
From my nvidia 3060 gpu laptop, to my tiny i5, to cheap refurbished laptops, all computers seem to have an issue displaying the search/windows button's data.
I believe if you wait long enough, it shows up, but sometimes you click off and re-click.
Anyway, its utterly mind boggling that the OS that has 90% of users has this issue.
(My guess is that its doing some sort of online thing and it wont display results until it gets the ads/sends data)
My sense is this has been a problem for a long time and Microsoft presumably just doesn't care.