Better than Tiny11: Here's how to debloat Windows 11 using Microsoft's own tools

[indy]

By the way - disabling Defender at the level of the file integrity control subsystem is a bad idea. Antivirus is 100% crap, but integrity and access control to folders and files is extremely important. You will have to install something independent, but there are no good options on the market anymore.

Windows Firewall is also extremely inconvenient to configure in all versions and the default settings are a hole in the Internet.

In fact, today there is no successful free or commercial solution that meets 3 requirements:
1. Flexible and conveniently configurable at the UI level, a trainable firewall with an access password.
2. File integrity control system.
3. Access control system to folders and files (watch-dog reporting who requires access with a visual notification) independent of the Windows kernel for obvious reasons.

Run as user level, stay there unless you know what you're doing.

Definition based protection is going to either have false positives or not fast enough, not to mention updates to definitions/engine that break systems far more often.

Most OSs have decent firewall rules OOB, assuming you don't install services you have no idea what you're doing.

The minute you introduce what you are asking for in user land, the user has just as much a chance to break their systems as malware does.

[NikoB]

Complete nonsense, for any IT security specialist. The default rules allow ANY installed application and OS components to access the Internet, which is a priori unacceptable.

The statement that a stupid user will break the system with settings is true. A stupid one will break it. Nothing breaks for me, and without file system integrity control, you will quickly lose control over the data in the file system from malicious software, which will inevitably penetrate your system even from "trusted sources".

In approximately the same way, you need to know who and why is climbing into protected folders and files, if this software or OS components are not in your personal list of trusted applications for accessing these folders and files.

The presence of these 3 watchdog systems, including full control of OS components, is the concept of "being the real owner of your computer".

At the moment, 99.999% of smartphone and PC owners are NOT the owners of their gadgets. Their true owners are their manufacturers and software manufacturers. This directly contradicts the constitutional right to "private property". In any country in the world. These are irrefutable facts of criminal activity of large corporations with the connivance of the authorities, and their connivance is a consequence of the complete idiocy of the majority of the planet's population.

[dffdbdfb]

Defender unusable
Updates intrusive
Ads everywhere
OS requires more set up and debloat work than Linux - rinse and repeat after every effing update
Slower and slower with each ver
MS adds stuff no one asked for all the time
All the "tiny" builds are unusable in some or the other way, basically something is ALWAYS broken, unless your PC is a typewriter

You people just need to stop cuckolding on Windows and finally vote against it with your wallet, use other OS. I am using basically all of them and my personal top is
MacOS > Arch Linux > Debian/Ubuntu > Other Linux > Windows far far behind in everything, basically in 2024 it's just a gamer's OS, nothing else

"No office apps on Linux", try OnlyOffice, stop whining, also there's a web MS Office if you need that "MS" smell

[cschneegans]

Due to the way autounattend.xml files work, Windows UAC is disabled by default (...)

This is not true for autounattend.xml files in general. While custom commands in an autounattend.xml file can of course disable UAC, this does not happen by default, and there is no setting in schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ to disable UAC.

I believe this misconception is due to the fact that an autounattend.xml file can also be used to enable the built-in "Administrator" account, which is not subject to UAC. But again, enabling that built-in account is not the default behavior.

[Real NikoB (old name bl)]

Defender unusable
Updates intrusive
Ads everywhere
OS requires more set up and debloat work than Linux - rinse and repeat after every effing update
Slower and slower with each ver
MS adds stuff no one asked for all the time
All the "tiny" builds are unusable in some or the other way, basically something is ALWAYS broken, unless your PC is a typewriter

You people just need to stop cuckolding on Windows and finally vote against it with your wallet, use other OS. I am using basically all of them and my personal top is
MacOS > Arch Linux > Debian/Ubuntu > Other Linux > Windows far far behind in everything, basically in 2024 it's just a gamer's OS, nothing else

"No office apps on Linux", try OnlyOffice, stop whining, also there's a web MS Office if you need that "MS" smell

My requirements far exceed the requirements of an ordinary person and a standard "housewife". All software options for Linux are a priori unsuitable for me, as are the risks, given the real impossibility of a full audit of code made by God knows who and how, which completely equates complex open source with closed proprietary software. And given that I am in the small category of IT developers capable of a real audit of 95% of the code. I have already had problems with freeware software written by irresponsible nerds.

Once again - if Linux were really user-friendly, comfortable in terms of UI, management and fully supported the latest hardware at the time of its release - no one would have used Windows for many years. After all, red-eyed nerds with foam at the mouth have been assuring for many years that all alternative software is there. Well, maybe only for housewives...

But everything is exactly the opposite, considering the public more than 25 years of development, this is essentially a complete fiasco of the Linux community (as well as other OS) in terms of conquering the desktop OS market - they did not have and do not have any chances, until M$ itself kills its brainchild for internal reasons.

[fgnfgn]

My requirements far exceed the requirements of an ordinary person and a standard "housewife". All software options for Linux are a priori unsuitable for me

You can say guy is a total noob if he doesn't even know Linux basically has all the same software today.

[Gibi]

And given that I am in the small category of IT developers capable of a real audit of 95% of the code.

Hahahaha another unemployed lowlife pretending to be a developer online.

You can say guy is a total noob if he doesn't even know Linux basically has all the same software today.

So true

[A]

My requirements far exceed the requirements of an ordinary person and a standard "housewife". All software options for Linux are a priori unsuitable for me, as are the risks, given the real impossibility of a full audit of code made by God knows who and how, which completely equates complex open source with closed proprietary software. And given that I am in the small category of IT developers capable of a real audit of 95% of the code. I have already had problems with freeware software written by irresponsible nerds.

Linux is far superior for IT work than windows

Once again - if Linux were really user-friendly, comfortable in terms of UI, management and fully supported the latest hardware at the time of its release - no one would have used Windows for many years. After all, red-eyed nerds with foam at the mouth have been assuring for many years that all alternative software is there. Well, maybe only for housewives...

Linux does support the latest hardware when it is released. I know it is difficult for tech illiterate people like you to understand, but most hardware support is baked into the kernel. If you choose Ubuntu which is an LTS distro, it will not come with the latest kernel. Now if your device came with ubuntu, usually the developer would backport whatever hardware from latest kernel to make it work.

If you want the latest hardware, use the latest kernel, simple as that. Because the kernel predates the hardware.

To explain it to a noob like you who uses windows, it is like when you install fresh windows without the oem bloat and your laptop hardware doesn't work out of box.

[GeorgeS]

With a few installs of a few different distro's on some different hardware:

- MS 'Surface Book Pro', after a 2 different Linix distros which did not have drivers for everything, I just gave up and dropped WIN11 on it.

- Old dual core Atom 'netbook', runs Linux Mint fine - everything works.

- Fairly new 'elcheapo' with Cellron, came with WIN but booted right into a thumb drive with Linux. First distro did not have the WiFi drivers but another distro did. Everything works.

Moral of the story is that unless your willing & able to find drivers & tweak the system to your needs/desires if you have 'newer' hardware it might be 'hit and miss' on if a distro will work for you or not.

[Goberman]

GeorgeS, you've expected all drivers for everything in the world to be included? Windows also doesn't do that.

[A]

With a few installs of a few different distro's on some different hardware:

- MS 'Surface Book Pro', after a 2 different Linix distros which did not have drivers for everything, I just gave up and dropped WIN11 on it.

- Old dual core Atom 'netbook', runs Linux Mint fine - everything works.

- Fairly new 'elcheapo' with Cellron, came with WIN but booted right into a thumb drive with Linux. First distro did not have the WiFi drivers but another distro did. Everything works.

Moral of the story is that unless your willing & able to find drivers & tweak the system to your needs/desires if you have 'newer' hardware it might be 'hit and miss' on if a distro will work for you or not.

As mentioned, windows has the same issue if you do a fresh install and not use an oem disk with drivers preinstalled.

Generally the idea is this. If you have an old device, you can use a standard LTS distro with no changes. But if you have a new device, you are going to need a newer kernel than what LTS offers. Because the LTS distro is before that hardware was created.

Distros like Mint lets you upgrade your kernel to a newer one easily. But if you don't have Ethernet adapter to install it, Mint offers an Edge version that comes with a newer kernel built in

So all you need to do if you have new hardware is make sure you are on latest kernel, that is what matters. This solves 99% of hardware issues with exception of Nvidia. For Nvidia some distros preinstall it for you while others require you to do a bit more work. Hopefully the new changes that Nvidia made will make it more streamlined. But either way, with Ubuntu now bundling Nvidia drivers, all distros based on it will likely have it out of box as well

Of course I am not sure about things like Surface Book Pro because expecting Linux on a Microsoft device is weird in itself.

[GeorgeS]

GeorgeS, you've expected all drivers for everything in the world to be included? Windows also doesn't do that.

Well no and yes.

Most major OEM's submit their drivers to MS and HWQL and upon installing a MS OS the system will reach out to the MS driver Archive for any driver that might be missing in the install media.

So, no not all drivers/hardware might get drivers right at first but that is usually quickly rectified.

The other MAJOR problem with 'Linux' is whatever distro your using might not have a COMPLETE dependency tree for all the applications listed in the package & software managers but were not included in the distro.

So while attempting to load Linux on 3 different machines recently:

- one was limited to 32bit distro's and not all listed additional applications (even the 'package manager' claimed IT had a update that it could never resolve)

- 2nd box I tried 3 different distro's and finally settled on one that CAME WITH the featured applications I needed/wanted as the 1st 2 distro's had broken dependency trees for them

- 3rd box (taking notes from experience I had with the 1st two) I found one distro that advertised BOTH the applications AND GPU driver package I needed for it before installing

Last but not least the Linux distro that I'm going to play games on, while Steam lists MOST of my games library (>50 individual games) as "tested and validated on Steam Deck" only a SMALL FRACTION of them were "installable" (IE: Green Install icon on the Steam client).

Sadly while testing "Cyberpunk 2077" on 2 WINBOX's and 1 newly loaded Linux box I got:

- Best WIN10 GTX1070
- Can be good enough WIN10 GTX1650
- Barely playable Linux GTX1060

To conclude: Linux is not exactly 'plug & play' with hardware or software however one might be able to get a higher percentage of things working if your willing to tinker/tweak the OS/drivers & applications.

[wondows]

Without distro and software names it's just a fiction story.

only a SMALL FRACTION of them were "installable"

Sadly while testing "Cyberpunk 2077"

The fact you installed Linux for Steam games tells a lot.
Bad OS, can't game. Poor mac is crying somewhere in the corner too.