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.

I used to buy the “pro” version of windows to avoid shit like this. Windows 10 was the last version I bought and paid for. I was able to setup a strictly local account but had to disable all of the telemetry manually. Out of the box, that shit was enabled by default. Occasionally, updates would re-enable those settings.

I just really hate windows. I only use the shit for gaming. Other than that I stick with *nix

18 years of running linux on my computers because windows is insufferable in some way or form. Windows 11 Pro was actually fairly decent at first I even liked the UI despite its issues. Then updates broke and even digging into the cmd prompt tools couldn't fix it. Which is just insane to me as a company that is hoovering up my data cant figure out updates. I dont even care all that much about the privacy aspect if it just worked. Hell its why I use google services. But every version of windows I have used since XP has had some sort of fatal error that could only be fixed with a clean install. When that happens its my sign to go on a distro hop.

Dark patterns have also just become the norm in Windows and Mac OS. Honestly kind of sad because both OS's at one point in time had there high points where they felt like they were built for the user. Now they are glorified billboards that run apps.

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.

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I read that if you select “English (World)” during setup, a lot of this bloat is never installed. Have yet to try.