Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron
arstechnica.com
Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatware—no longer.

Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron | Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatware—no longer.::Op-ed: PC makers used to need to bring their own add-on bloatware—no longer.

    • BURN@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Until I can play competitive shooters on Linux this isn’t an option.

      Unfortunately there’s still a lot of major blocks to using Linux when most of what you do requires windows only software. Between CoD, Destiny 2, Apex Legends (bans Linux players falsely), Lightroom and Photoshop I’m basically stuck on windows. There’s still too many important things that still don’t work on Linux for it to be viable.

      Don’t even get me started on hardware. My GoXLR mini has no support either, so I’d need to buy a new audio interface to use Linux, while losing a lot of functionality.

      Don’t mind me, still salty that I can’t make the switch. But if 85% of what I do on the daily can’t be done in Linux then it’s a non-starter.

    • ngons@feddit.nuEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      A clean windows install is when you clean windows off your hard drive and install Linux

    • zurohki@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been running Linux on my laptop for ages, because I really only use a web browser on it anyway.

      It was the bloat and bullshit in Windows that made me switch my desktop gaming machine to Linux back in 2018. I was regularly spending time fiddling with settings, removing things Microsoft wanted to push, using third party tools to disable telemetry, etc and it occurred to me if I was going to spend all that time fixing and changing things, I might as well be running Linux.

      In 2018 there was a bunch of games that didn’t work without a fair amount of work, but I was already spending time wrestling with my computer anyway and on Linux I didn’t also have the feeling that my OS was actively resisting me and trying to force me to do what it wanted.

      If something on Linux didn’t work, it was because it hadn’t been built or fixed yet. It wasn’t because Corporate decided to use their OS to force their app store or cloud services onto people.

  • Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Some motherboards will actually try to install software when you install Windows. Recent ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards are known for this, however with ASUS I know you can disable it (source: own an ASUS motherboard, there’s an option to disable the installation of Armory Crate)

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    For a certain kind of computer buyer, the first thing you always did with a new laptop or desktop from a company like Dell, HP, Acer, or Asus wasn’t to open the box and start using it.

    Computer manufacturers often distributed buggy, pointless, or redundant third-party software (“bloatware” or “crapware”) to help subsidize the cost of the hardware.

    This might pass some savings on to the user, but once they owned their computer, that software mainly existed to consume disk space and RAM, something that cheaper PCs could rarely afford to spare.

    Computer manufacturers also installed all kinds of additional support software, registration screens, and other things that generally extended the setup process and junked up your Start menu and desktop.

    The “out-of-box experience” (OOBE, in Microsoft parlance) for Windows 7 walked users through the process of creating a local user account, naming their computer, entering a product key, creating a “Homegroup” (a since-discontinued local file and media sharing mechanism), and determining how Windows Update worked.

    Due to the Microsoft Store, you’ll find several third-party apps taking up a ton of space in your Start menu by default, even if they aren’t technically downloaded and installed until you run them for the first time.

    The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!