Do it all again when msft undoes your work on the next update
Not even next update. I ran a debloater script that removed OneDrive and within two hours it had been reinstalled with no intervention from me.
Is there no solution to this?
My first thought is an IP ban list outside of the computer itself. Put it on your home router maybe.
I guess it could be getting installed from a binary that exists on the OS already.
I haven’t used windows in a long time. But it’s wild how much work people have to do to decide which programs are or are not installed on their PC.
Is there no solution to this?
Linux…
That’s been my solution. The nerd in me just wants to know. I feel like windows and “windows debloat scripts” or the like have gotten worse together. It’s like all the people that use to write cool programs or apps for Windows left for Linux and never looked back. (Except the game cracks I guess? Maybe that’s even dead now though idk)
I mean, it’s a good thing. But, it surprises me how awful the nerd support is for Windows now. I guess it’s so annoying to work with that no one even bothers anymore.
It just feels like something that should have a universal solution by now.
Group policy settings will let you kill it off permanently. But windows likes to reinstall things every time there is a minor update to the OS, and if you don’t have a group policy setup it’ll do it too.
It’s like all the people that use to write cool programs or apps for Windows left for Linux and never looked back.
I have no idea if it is true, but it would make a lot of sense. Why spend your time fixing MS’s for-profit shit, for free, when there is a viable open source alternative?
I wonder if there will come a tipping point? MS is making Windows really hard to love, so who in the altruistic group will stay on Windows when the mythical Year Of The Linux Desktop truly comes?
The solution for a lot of these random issues with reinstalling stuff is to not use weird scripts to do things you can just handle normally.
Just uninstall it like a regular app and it doesn’t come back on its own from my experience. I’ve literally never had it come back on any of my systems, my family’s, or customers, by doing it that way.
I don’t have that issue with script either, my guess is that’s a regional thing, do you live in the EU too?
AFAIK the BypassNRO method doesn’t work anymore, instead:
“When it asks for one’s Microsoft account, press
Shift + F10, and typestart ms-cxh:localonly. This prompts the window to create a local account instead. 🖕” ―Bypass Windows 11 Microsoft account promptWorked for me yesterday, but this was on a laptop just booted, no connection to internet so there’s no telling what version it was on.
If the install media is old enough it will still work.
If you’re installing pro, you can just say it’s for work and click “join a domain instead” and then just never join a domain
I had to use bypass to get around the network part. Because for some reason it wouldn’t let me go past that step, and it also doesn’t offer static ip settings. We don’t have dhcp for our main network.
It’s even worse for notebooks. I had several new machines where Windows Setup didn’t even have the required network drivers.
Ran into this shit yesterday trying to set up a laptop for someone where I had no internet access.
Imagine having everything ready to go on a USB drive and you can’t get past the second screen unless you find WiFi.
At least this command still works, but damn.
Video games have gone this way too. Pop in disc or cartridge, go to play, forced to download updates that fix what was shipped in a broken state.
And then they have the gall to point to sales of physical media being down.
Like, if you make your physical media shit on purpose, you can’t use that to support your argument for digital-only distrubition. It’s actually infuriating.
For the record, the majority of games ship on disc. If you had auto updates off or no internet, the game will play after installing.
If you use Rufus you can create the USB that automatically bypasses the Internet requirements. Still annoying af though.
windows didn’t have the drivers for my mobo, so i could use neither ethernet nor wifi.
imagine having to have a usb to ethernet dongle ready to set up windows.
what a fucking shitshow…
Yup. I have a whole bunch of devices to bypass random shit to setup client devices on site.
I work in IT and half the time spent deploying a new device is getting around Windows’ bullshit.
You can’t be serious, or you must not support Windows much.
I don’t think much of my workplace’s Windows desktop “engineer” but even they’ve put together (and keep updated) an image that can get from blank drive to fully installed, updated, baseline programs for our company installed, all settings tweaked to get rid of 90% of the dumb Windows bloat (have to leave the shit the execs like in place) in 30 minutes unattended.
The server builds my team oversees are 10 minutes setups, if that.
Like, I’ve been desktop support, and installing and configuring the department specific programs could be such annoying shit that you’d end up saving more time reimaging when something fucked up than to try and fix it, but the initial OS install was rarely the issue. Maybe for the first few days with entirely new hardware while we figured out the right drivers, but that was it.
Linux is leagues better than Windows, but some of this shit I keep seeing in these Linux communities is batshit. You personally not being familiar with Windows isn’t a reason it sucks, any more than people saying Linux is complicated is a reason for them to hate Linux.
I am not unfamiliar with Windows in any sense thank you. Windows is objectively bad, there is no good reason that one must maintain their own custom image to install an operating system to a usable capacity because the vendor image is so disgustingly bloated that getting any real-world use is a chore.
And it’s not even recent Windows enshittification that is the problem, it is the foundational architecture of the NT system. With a Linux operating system, you install, and you’re done, on Windows, you install, then you need to go out and do 15+ updates that for some reason aren’t done during install, then you need to go out and get all your drivers for your hardware. It’s poorly designed, slow, clunky, and, especially considering that Windows doesn’t have a package manager and a curated software repository (Winget + MS Store does NOT count), unbelievably insecure.
My organization has pretty much decided that Windows is on the way out, it’s just going to be a very long time for us to transfer to Linux-based operating systems. Even after getting Windows to a just-about acceptable standard, it’s still far heavier than any Linux-based OS would be, which for our thin clients is genuinely proving a problem as many of our staff have high memory usage workflows and are frequently seeing programs crash due to memory limitations.
Unless you are severely, clinically deluded, there is no way you can genuinely state that what you hear in Linux communities is “batshit”; everyone knows Windows is dying, even Microsoft…
He’s talking about corporate environments that have the resources to have done the work to make Windows work, they’re not starting from zero - they’ve either got an SCCM environment with a PE that has all their configs and drivers preloaded or they’ve worked hard to make intune autopilot work (which still requires either the OEM or a curated image for the hardware configs).
He’s not talking about setups that are doing installs 1:1
It could also be a pre-prepared disk image.
I use this when I have to install windows.
https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/Fully automated the install
If someone asked me to install Windows for them I’d very politely tell them to get bent.
Next time during setup do this: 1.don’t connect to a network
- Either shift+f10 or Ctrl+shift+f10 to bring up a command prompt.
3.Type: start ms-cxh:localonly
-
Hit enter and the create user box will pop up.
-
You can now create a local user account.
Network installers
NixOs is in shambles
Every time i see a comment about NixOS it makes me even more wary about trying it.
Everyone jokes about Arch being the ‘from the ground up’ OS, but Nix feels like it embodies those memes.
Yeah nixos is a lot of learning and a lot of writing and tweaking .nix files.
That being said, once you have a setup you like that works it means installing on a new machine is mostly just running a couple of install commands and all your apps/settings/environment secrets/anything you’ve declared in your nix config (like dotfiles for apps unsupported by home-manager) come with you and are version controlled on the system and in code.
But it doesn’t work like a normal Linux system, there is no /bin/bash among thousands of other things, so it’s for a niche audience where it’s either a server with infra as code or a desktop that requires a lot of work to maintain but has some incredible advantages (like generations)
Yeah it was my pipeline. But be wary, this is a hard path to take. The os is great. The package manager is great. The nix config language? Hahaha welcome to hell! It takes at least 6 months to get comfortable with it. And still, sometimes you can still come across a config file that will be totally alien to you. And when you need something not in the repos… time to learn how to package stuff!
It’s not to discourage you, but be warned. It takes time. I had 5 attempts at it before it became my daily driver.
Keep a working distro on the side. And when you start your computer, think about what you want to do. If you think you can do everything you want today in NixOs, boot it. If you have a lot missing/do not feel like configuring it, boot the other distro. Just start small. Do some little challenges like turning your config into a flake, create a nix os module, split your configuration in smaller more maintainable files, create a systemd service, wrangle with that damn home manager that keeps making everything so confusing.
And arch is actually the one from scratch. NixOs is intimately linked to systemd. Nix also requires some base dependencies like git and curl, so it’s not from scratch. However you could argue that NixOs is a “make a distro from the kitchen utensils and a recipe”.
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Sometimes when seeing Linux Memes like this, I think whether this one user with their 1-man-linux-hating-community simply blocked all these communities or reads them as some sort of rage-fuel.
He’s actually somewhat knowledgeable about Linux and he’s putting a lot of effort into finding hairs in the soup. I think the guy just enjoys being an asshole and if it wasn’t Linux he’d pick something else.
I’m convinced he’s a fed running a propaganda campaign because there’s no way someone’s expending that much time and effort and not getting paid for it.
I assume that he has a severe mental health problem. I had a neighbor who’s kid had schizophrenia and would spend all day writing about how we were hacking his dreams and other nonsense. The sheer volume of letters he wrote to us about it was staggering. A ream of paper or more landed in our mailbox every week. It’s amazing how much someone can do when they only can focus on a single thing and have way too much energy.
I felt sorry for the kid, when he was on his meds he was perfectly nice, if kinda odd.
there’s no way someone’s expending that much time and effort and not getting paid for it
…you say on Lemmy, of all places. 😜
Are they? I have not checked their posts in depth. The ones I have seen in my feed were along the lines of “lol, Linux users do not shower / don’t get women” or “if Linux good, why not used in Business” (what is a wild thing to say, considering… Well Servers), so that’s the baseline I’ve had in my mind
Nah he often jumps into my post comments to make some remark
Shift + f10 for cmd. Then do “start ms-cxh:localonly” and hit enter. Enjoy local user profile without internet.
Until people can buy a computer CHEAPLY and easily at Walmart with a distro preinstalled, Linux isn’t going to make a lot of headway very fast. They are too lazy to be bothered to download a distro, make a bootable iso, wipe and do a fresh install.
And yes, they are that lazy unless really pushed to do it.
For most of them it’s not “laziness” but ignorance. They don’t know it’s an option, they don’t know why you’d want to do it, and the don’t know how to do it.
Oh, they are at least dimly aware they could do something else. But they choose not to because they resist learning.
We call this “monopolistic behavior”
Whatever comes with the thing is going to be most popular by default. Windows knows this. Apple knows this. Linux simply doesnt have the funds to buy out manufacturers
That’s the link you need to break. Until then, Linux is stuck as an also ran.
I guarantee if I sold a normie a KDE laptop theyd have no idea until they needed to run an exe, then theyd review bomb me for selling them a scam laptop
That’s the refusal to learn. People really hate learning anything new these days. And that includes many here.
Still, there is hope. With the common idea of “App Stores” really taking hold with users, thanks to the ubiquity of cell phone ownership and Chromebooks, users are comfortable with a software manager that gets referred to as App Store. And distros are starting to act upon that by simply rename their software management software and adding a colorful friendly UI to it. It’s marketing.
There are 1000’s of programs available that can meet almost every “regular user’s” daily needs. What is lacking is a universal packaging format that is easy to use. Ubuntu has their “we dropped the ball” Snaps and Fedora pushes Flatpaks. AppImages also exist, but not to the extent as Flatpaks and are a bit more of a hassle to use than a Flatpak. And it appears that Flatpaks are currently leading as the universal software management race. If all distros were to agree to one package format, that would remove one of the biggest hurdles and kills the .exe argument. And that seems unlikely at this point in time. Even die hard Linux users will argue against it. But until at least the most common distros hop on that bus, Windows users will resist your KDE laptop.
they used to sell them, but it was all shit-tier hardware and didn’t sell.
They dabbled with no commitment. And at that time people were always looking for the next faster machine. We could actually afford to. So low spec machines were not a viable sales point.
You mean headway… on the desktop.
Even when I offered my father to do this for him, even picking Zorin OS (since it seems to be decently close to a Windows look and feel). He refused stating that he’s not techsavvy enough to use it.
My conspiracy theory/pattern recognition shows that anyone unironically using the words “Tech Savvy” in 2026 are either well meaning pirates or just straight up ignorant on purpose. Computers have been mainstream at the very least for 2 decades and you havent bothered to learn anything about them??
Us old people are often adverse to learning new things. It’s not a surprising thing. You are getting the same way yourself about some knowledge.
Do you know the Secretary Problem?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
Your father’s been using computers for some number of years. It’s possible he’s been using computers for longer than he will continue using computers. From his perspective, the current edition of Windows is better than anything that’s come before it, so it’s the rational choice to stick with it until the end.
To get around this, you would basically need to set up a second machine with Zorin so that he can get some context before making a decision. That way, in the very realistic scenario where he decides it’s not for him, he hasn’t lost anything.
mfs will learn powershell to debloat windows 11 and wade through regedit but the intuitive linux terminal is STILL too goddamn scary
intuitive linux terminal
Which one is that? Powershell is way more intuitive than bash and I like bash.
Powershell is just json with jq abilities
But it is intuitive. There’s no arguing that.
Is it? I find them both equally unintuitive tbh. You really just have to memorize the commands you frequently use, or keep looking them up.
Powershells commands are “Verb-Noun” and it makes it easy to search for the command you need. For example Get-Help Get-* will give you a list of all the “Get” commands and a brief description of what they do. Get-Verb will list the approved verbs so you know what verbs to search for. All within the shell. If there’s anything like that in bash I haven’t found it. I always have to search the web to figure out what I’m trying to do with it. Which can be annoying if I’m working directly on a headless system. Powershell also has aliases built in for bash and cmd commands so you can use those if you’re familiar with them. I hate Microsoft but it’s one thing I have to give hand to them.
That’s not to say bash is bad. It’s great. It’s just not nearly as intuitive.
In bash if you type the verb, then hit tab it will list the possible options, right? Is that not the same kind of thing?
Tab completion isn’t really what I’m talking about here. Powershell’s intuitiveness comes from the ease of finding the command you need. For instance if you type “copy” into bash and hit tab you’re not going to get anything. That’s because the command for copying a file in bash is “cp”. Now, how do you find that out using only the shell? You can use apropos, but who’s going to be able to figure that out without a web search? I had to try several variations of “find commands in bash” just now to get Google to mention it. Most things in bash are like this, there’s no real naming convention and most of the time the names are pretty meaningless by themselves. It’s a big barrier for people who are new to it or only use it sporadically.
Conversely, typing “copy” into powershell and hitting tab you will get a number of options which shouldn’t take much for a beginner to locate copy-item from there or you can find it via the previous methods I mentioned.
I genuinely think you may just be more familiar with PS. I use “Get-Printer” all the time, but it’s not like I was able to discover that command or syntax without web searches. Same with “cp” in bash. I had to learn it and use it, but I’m never going to forget it now. Something that seems inconsistent/unintuitive to me in PS, is some commands specify an object with:
-Name ="the name"Other times it’s like:
Name "the name"I keep a notebook handy for things that I use as frequently as several times a week.
Searching commands online is a perfectly valid way to find things, especially if you don’t know how to discover them within the shell. My point is that powershell is fantastic for that and bash is not. Years ago, I read maybe 1/3 of a powershell book and it was enough to set me off and figure most things out on my own from there. It’s rare I have to go online to find something. I’ve read/watched quite of bit of bash content over the years and I can’t say the same. I still struggle with it or have to go back and check my notes all the time. I am more familiar with powershell but I’ve been using bash quite a bit longer. For me that highlights what I’m talking about here in terms of intuitiveness.
As for the inconsistency issue, I’m sure there are inconsistencies in either shell but I’d need more information to explain this one, the only time I can recall something like what you’re referring to would be commands where -Name is a parameter, vs something like a -Filter parameter where you entering name as what you’re filtering for but that would need more than -Filter Name “name” to work(I think). For the most part I find powershell to be very consistent once you understand what’s going on. Bash as well, but it’s harder to get to the “understand what’s going on” stage.
bash is more intuive than pwsh imo.
See my other response on this thread for my reasoning. If you still disagree I’d love some guidance on how to use bash more intuitively.
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start ms-cxh:localonly or one of those rufus unattended things are the only ways i could ever set up Windows anymore, their stock config is some bullshit
My main gripe is the clicking.
Clicking clicking clicking.
I’ve got keybord navigation down to an art-
But sometimes you have to click.
You have to move your hand from your… Keyboard, let’s say, and switching to mouse, and that split second matters because it throws everything out of rhythm, causing friction where none is needed.
Clicking, clicking, clicking.
That’s my main gripe.
The clicking.
I am Anna, and this is my testimony.
Commit your testimony to an archive.
You could even name it… Anna’s archive.I’m not a comic book villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke to you if there were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome? I registered that domain 35 minutes ago.
then quit using it. take off your leash.
True, but from my distro-hopping I learned there are quite a few Linux distros that throw tantrums when you try to install w/o wifi, and some ISOs that flat out don’t allow it. I’m not technically sharp enough to find the link, but this and most of my other problems with Linux went away when I stopped using distros built with systemd.
CachyOS is fast, sure. But have you tried Void? MX? Artix? PCLinuxOS? All very fast, and way fewer tantrums/stability issues. Systemd acts like a bureaucrat that checked out long ago, but keeps the job because of the benefits and does it as spitefully as possible. It’s about what I’d expect from a corp like Red Hat, and one day it’ll ask for your government ID to install.
The Linux community should get serious about systemd and how it talks to newcomers about it. It’s annoying now, and it’ll be a liability later.
You can install them all without WiFi easily by plugging in an ethernet cable. Easy.
I meant to say internet. Tysm for correcting me. I’m truly grateful and humbly request that you take an unchaperoned bath with my teenage daughters.
Just today and yesterday, one of my friends asked me to upgrade their windows server for their small business.
Installing a fucking windows took me 6 hours. This whole shit would be done in 40min I if I could install and setup Debian on their server.
I made the mistake of creating a Windows VM and believing their minimum required disk space figure of 64GB. It won’t upgrade. Asks to attach an external USB drive because it lacks enough space. It hasn’t anything added to it, only some bloatware removed. Attempting to upgrade takes hours, fails (despite attaching the extra storage), then restarts the entire download and install process over again. I can only assume it’s incapable of caching and verifying downloaded content. There’s no offline installer option, like we used to have with service packs. The whole thing is slow as molasses yet it doesn’t max out the 8(!) CPUs allocated to it. The host has plenty of spare capacity. It’s a steaming pile of shit.
Linux guests run fine.
I had to install Windows on my sister’s computer. I also thought that since every OS is fine with my 8GB USB and minimal requirements also require a 8GB USB that it would be fine. It wasn’t. I had to re-flash it on a USB meant for photos and move everything temporarily to my HDD because of that.
I think I’ve installed a Fedora server in 5 minutes. It’s now literally 3 clicks if you’re doing it manually.
Yep. Totally possible.
I’m also counting the setup and restore stuff.
It could be done in 15 minutes with Windows as well, if you actually knew what you were doing. Hell, I’ll give you 40 minutes if you know what you’re doing and don’t have proper tools already setup.
Windows is a shitshow, but your personal lack of familiarity isn’t evidence of that, lol.
I work as a sysadmin (luckily I work mostly with Linux). We have lots of tools for windows server setup on our company, and for most deployments, we have templates and checklists to deploy as quickly as possible.
It still takes at least 2 hours to deploy windows server from a checkpoint, and that’s skipping all the initial installation. Most of that time is spent updating, debloating, and setting the most basic stuff up.
It takes me less time to set up a Linux server from scratch, without any checkpoints, than it takes my coworkers to set up a windows server for the 9999th time, with a decade worth of tools.
I manage multiple windows servers with AD and all the shit.
I have set them up tens of times.
When you have a shit piece of software, it is unpredictable. So you encounter a new issue every time.
Or dont connect to a network during setup and do this.
OOBE mode.
- Ctrl+shift+f10 or shift+f10
- Type: start ms-cxh:localonly
- Create local account
Finish initial windows boot, then follow up with O & O shut up 10 at minimum before connecting to a network.
Then there is the fun of going through the task scheduler to remove telemetry.
And they still tell me that Linux is scary because terminal
I mean you don’t even have to install, just boot the iso and click try now
Don’t get me wrong but installing Linux is easy but when new people try it, they run into hardware issue, and I know its no one’s fault but new users spend a lot more time to troubleshoot those issue.
But also since people are switching to Linux, I think hardware manufacturers will support Linux so most of the things will be just plug and play.
This feels like a 10 year old comment almost. Hardware issues with Linux must be super rare now except for Nvidia, which is because Nvidia has closed drivers and doesn’t care about Linux.
super rare now except for Nvidia
Which for PC gamers holds the majority of the market…
Yeah but when you buy a gaming laptop like I didn’t know anything about that, and when I moved away from I learned a lot of things. Now I have a laptop with only one gpu and which is RTX 3050 and no igpu and guess what sleep doesn’t work. I haven’t tried nvidia-open but I’ll give it a try because a comment reminded me of that.
Yeah I understand. It really is Nvidia holding Linux back and still the usage is growing every year, so not bad. It would be nice if the most popular graphics card maker could make drivers that work well with Linux but even people who worked on the drivers are admitting they are hell to work with.
Ok so turns out for my issue there is a fix and I tried it and it worked and I can’t believe it.
All I have to do is create this
/etc/modprobe.d/99-nvidia-power.conf, add this to itoptions nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1options nvidia NVreg_TemporaryFilePath=/var/tmpoptions nvidia NVreg_EnableS0ixPowerManagement=1options nvidia-drm modeset=1 fbdev=1and run
sudo dracut --rebuildandreboot.Ah I actually remember that fix!
I used the same one a couple of years ago when I was on Nvidia. Cool to see it still does it’s job, but sad that it’s still needed.
Ok so it works 8/10 times 🥀
Except even this is no longer an issue. There’s nvidia-open driver, and, at least to my knowledge, it works without any problems.
Tell that to every one of my installs.
Literally every time I try a distro, I have to hope the NVIDIA drivers download and actually work. Then I have to hope the distro actually switches between it and the integrated GPU.
uhm… you don’t have to hope…? You can literally check which driver is installed. You can even install preferable driver version via your package manager and delete mesa drivers if you don’t want your system to ever use the integrated gpu.
Meanwhile on my Windows PC the correct Nvidia drivers always download and work right out of the box.
For Linux that varies distro from distro.
well duh, of course it varies. Do you expect Windows Server to automatically install gpu drivers too? On CachyOS, EndeavorOS and Bazzite everything also works out of the box. And you don’t even need to disable one hundred and one microsoft-mandated bloatware when you install them.
So:
One out of ~12 windows versions not installing a driver = bad
Only 3 Linux distros out of hundreds installing a driver = good
Got it.
Also damn near every Linux distro has some sort of bloatware. There’s always apps I don’t want because I won’t use them or because I prefer something else. I didn’t install them, they came with the distro. They are bloatware.
Ubuntu comes to mind as the biggest offender.
