[jonatron]

I spent hours at the weekend making a windows 10 image with as much bloat disabled as possible. It looks like after just a few days, Microsoft have given me more stuff to remove. I only use it for gaming, so maybe my efforts would be better spent on getting games to work on Linux?

[inetknght]

Most games work! Notably, if the game you're playing doesn't have an anti-cheat that's deeply tied to the kernel then there's a good chance it will work with Wine (or Steam Play's version of it) out of the box. The anti-cheats that are deeply tied to the Windows kernel are usually dumpster fires of remote code execution so I don't think there's much of a loss there.

[krapht]

Things I never liked - spending hours debugging WINE issues or browsing the wine compatibility website trying to get things to work to play a video game, which I'm already using to get away from doing tedious work.

[andrewzah]

These days, most games run fine out of the box with proton. As the parent comment stated, it's mostly games that rely on invasive anti-cheats that don't work. For example, PUBG, Due Process, Valorant, etc... aka competitive multiplayer games.

If one really wants to they can dual-boot with windows, but I've found the better option is to just play games that do run well on linux, like tf2, etc.

[d1zzy]

Having to use something like Steam (Internet based DRM) to play games effortlessly on Linux seems to beat the purpose. At that point I'd rather just have a separate Windows 10 install where all I do is just gaming.

[inetknght]

You don't have to use Steam. I just use it as a one-stop shop for updates and launching. Some games work in native Linux and most of the rest work fine in plain Wine.

If you don't like Steam as a launcher then there's also Lutris and GOG.

[stinos]

By now there are plenty of tools out there which turn hours (I hope we don't have to take that literally? Unless you're not used to Windows and/or there's even more bloat than I know of) into a couple of minutes though. Check e.g. O&O ShutUp 10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10. Or else use an IOT or LTSC release or so.

[jonatron]

Installing, updating, running debloat scripts, running ShutUp10, manually uninstalling things, changing settings, disabling services from safe mode. Each step isn't too long, but it adds up.

[encryptluks2]

Not only that but that point people are just running things they don't even know what they are doing and not all or them are open source. I started working on a DSC to actually changed the LGPO instead of just changing a bunch of registry keys so people can at least see what was changed from gpedit.

[gruez]

>It looks like after just a few days, Microsoft have given me more stuff to remove.

use LTSC. it only has security updates so you're not forced to constantly decrapify your OS.

[fl0wenol]

It's a little tricky to buy, but anyone can do it. I also like that it gives you multiple activation keys out of the box. Unfortunately it's a little pricey compared to OEM; it's about $300.

[Beached]

what version are you running. I reinstall my os every year, and I only disable start menu bing suggestions. I have no adds or default bloatware in my win10 pro and I've been doing this for years.