I helped my 77 year old mother purchase a new laptop, and I want to be sure to get all the bloatware off of it, and set her up with with some better privacy options. I am aMac guy at home so I haven’t done this kind of thing for many years. (I use Windows at work, so I’m quite familiar and capable, but obviously I have to rely on IT knowing what they are doing (they don’t)). I did make sure to get the pro version of Windows 11. I’m going to set her up with Proton mail I think. This is the computer that is coming:
(Forgive me if this is not the correct place to post)
Wipe the operating system entirely and reinstall it from scratch. That would do a lot of it. And if the only thing she’s really going to do is browse the internet, you might consider installing mint instead.
If you’re staying with windows and re-installing anyway (recommend this), make a ‘data’ partition, then link my documents, pictures etc. To identical folders on the data partition. Save user files on the data partition only.
That way, next time to reinstall it’s not a big deal at all, just relink the data folders. Your data is never touched and re installing is easy.
Or use Linux ;)
Edit: Something like this.
+1 pick Windows 10 / 11 Enterprise and/OR LTSB for a cleaner experience. Setting Windows as English (International) also seems to still get rid of a ton of garbage. https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/ is also a great tool to mass disable telemetry and bullshit Windows components. Then set Windows to only security updates. You may also want to read this about what connections Windows makes and how to disable what you don’t need further.
Linux Mint is good for beginners. If Windows is a necessity, use the Chris Titus WinUtil script to configure and remove bloat.
I tried to get her to go Mac and she is adamantly against learning any kind of new OS
No, it isn’t.
I say this as someone who had their first UNIX class 35 years ago, and having been in IT since 1994.
I’ve run it as a test - to see how viable it is for family and friends. It has a LOT of usability issues for newcomers.
Power management is non-existant out of the box-as in it will keep right on running until the battery is dead.
Too many things require command-line management, e.g. that stupid printer notification thing that’s on by default.
The default UI stuff is as bad as Windows is - the crap color choices mean one window is hard to distinguish from another. And to change it requires…editing text files. What is this, 1992?
Then the lack of software. No, Open/Libre office is not the same as MS Office. Just try to open an excel spreadsheet on Libre or Open and see what happens. Or anything more than the simplest Word doc.
Then there’s no Publisher, no OneNote.
Sure, some of this is use-case, but how do you know that use-case won’t show up in 6 months?
And really pity the power user who needs to remote into other machines. Now they gotta install VNC or RDP. Which one? OK, Remina seems like the VNC/RDP client of choice, again, which one? The descriptions in the repo say very little about what makes them different. OK, fine, I’ll use this one. Now setup an RDP connection, only to find it won’t connect, some kind of security error with TLS. OK, t-shoot a TLS error. Ah, they’ve deprecated TLS 1. Fine, reinstall TLS 1. Still no go. Wait, why is an RDP connection failing for TLS, it doesn’t use TLS. Oh, choosing RDP in Remina doesn’t change the security type to RDP. WTF?
OK, now that’s fixed, I need to connect to a user machine to support them. What do I use since there’s no remote control by default, unlike Windows, where at most you walk them through clicking
onetwo checkboxes to allow inbound RDP. Now I gotta walk a user through installing a VNC server, and all that entails. Great.Oh, your Logitech wireless mouse doesn’t work out of the gate? Let’s Google that. Oh, You gotta go install this software someone wrote so a wireless mouse can work. A mouse that has worked out of the box on Windows since ~2005.
On and on the merry-go-round goes. With Windows, that ride mostly stopped with Win2k in 1999, even more so with XP.
Sorry, as much as I’d like to see “The Year of the Linux Desktop”, it’s still a long way off. Distros like Mint are really impressive, but I won’t be installing it for any family, because the support effort is still way too high.
I don’t use Mint, I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, which is probably less polished and user friendly than Mint. I’ve done minimal configuration as well other than installing packages.
I’ve used Linux for ~15 years full time, but I also have little patience for fiddling (though as a ViM user, I’m not afraid of the command line). That said, my kids (oldest 10) use my computers all the time, and they get by just fine.
Power management
This just worked for me on every Linux distro I’ve used (OpenSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu). I’ve never heard of anyone with this issue, and the only time I’ve ever run into it was when I installed FreeBSD.
This is across 4 laptops: some crappy HP, Lenovo ThinkPad T series, another crappy HP, ThinkPad E series (current laptop).
The only issue I’ve had with suspend/resume on a default install was on my desktop with a gen 1 Ryzen chip. That was a hardware issue and was patched about a year or two after launch, and it would suspend just fine, it would just kernel panic when resuming half the time. I probably could’ve RMAd it, but I’m lazy and disabling suspend on that desktop wasn’t an issue.
that stupid printer notification thing that’s on by default.
Maybe this is a Mint-specific thing because I don’t know what you’re talking about. My experience with printers on Linux is using the GUI to install it, and maybe installing a driver (my Brother printer required a driver).
But I’ve never seen a notification. And that’s even with using Ubuntu some years back and adding my office’s printer (some HP MFC printer).
The default UI stuff
If you don’t like the UI, install a different one. I swap between GNOME and KDE every couple years when there’s a new release or something (currently on GNOME, will try KDE Plans 6 when it comes to my distro hopefully this weekend).
Changing the theme is usually a couple of clicks in the settings, or you can go crazy and install whatever theme you want. KDE is better for this, so maybe give that a shot if you tried something else.
lack of software
There’s a ton of software, just not the same selection as Windows. If you don’t like Libre Office, try Only Office, it supposedly has better compatibility with Microsoft Office, though it’s a little light on features (though probably good enough for most people).
If you really want Office, you can always use Office365 in the browser. It works okay (I use it sometimes at work).
I honestly almost never use any of that type of software, except a spreadsheet ever so often.
If you really need desktop Windows-specific software and it’s not too heavy, just install Windows in a VM or dual boot. I have a Windows partition, and I boot into it every other year or so.
remote into other machines. Now they gotta install VNC or RDP
What are you remoting in to do?
If you’re a power user, surely learning a few commands wouldn’t hurt. I use SSH for all of that, and it’s really convenient, especially since I can do most of it from my phone through an SSH app (remote desktop on a phone really sucks).
But most of those kinds of problems have pretty easy solutions that avoid using remote desktop, such as:
- accessing files - just mount it using NFS or Samba or something; or for a one-off, SFTP or rsync works well
- starting a program - SSH and run the script; I create systems services for everything I need, so I just need to remember "systemd start "
- running updates - again, SSH works well; you can even configure cron to download the updates overnight so it’s just a quick install and reboot
And so on. If all of the things you want to access is on Windows, VNC works fine.
I need to connect to a user machine to support them
Is this for work? I thought we were talking about home use.
If it’s for a friend or something, just start a video call and have them share their screen. Talk then through the process while watching what they do. It’s not as fast as just doing it yourself by taking control, but it also helps them learn better how to do it themselves.
your Logitech wireless mouse doesn’t work out of the gate?
Logitech works pretty much every time, and I honestly don’t recall the last time a peripheral didn’t just work out of the box on Linux. In fact, I’ve had much more probably on my wife’s Windows box because there’s always some driver you need to install before it’ll work. On Linux, if it doesn’t just work, it’s probably low quality Chinese crap, and the drivers probably won’t work well even on Windows.
I won’t be installing it for any family, because the support effort is still way too high.
I’ve had the opposite problem. I’m also the family tech support, and I’ve had to fix really weird problems on Windows that just don’t happen on Linux.
On Linux, either it just works (like 95% of the time) or it’s going to suck to get working and I just buy a different product. Buying name brand brings those odds up even higher. My brother installed Linux on his old laptop and he’s had no problems.
Since Windows stuff doesn’t work on Linux out of the box, users tend to use whatever is in the repositories or Flatpak, and that works pretty much every time. The main way to get into trouble on Linux is through the commandline, and new users tend to be scared of that, so things tend to be stable.
But that’s just my experience, YMMV depending on what you want to use your computer for. I don’t play competitive games with anti-cheat, I don’t use office software, I don’t edit images or video, and I don’t use funky hardware. If you do those things, you might struggle a bit on Linux, depending on what exactly you need to do. But for something like 95% of use cases, Linux works really well, often better than Windows because there’s much less bloat and nonsense.
This is a very accurate description of what I’ve experienced with Linux as well. Sometimes things just work out the box, but some things are not worth the hassle, which is why I’m back on Windows after having used Linux as a daily driver for years.
This is the answer. If she is more comfortable with windows there are stripped down versions of 7 and 10, maybe even 11 that will have even less of the crap that msft throws in.
Unfortunately that stripped down versions are very unsafe because of removed antivirus features and sometimes they even include malware. I don’t recommend that for a casual user who doesn’t know what safety on the internet is
They aren’t actually that dangerous. You can always reinstall any thing you need. Plus you can create your own assuming OP is savvy enough.
Well yea that’s true. But viruses are still really hard to avoid on Windows
Oh contrare mon frare. They are extremely easy to avoid if you have any common sense. Don’t download and run just any old exe, use script blockers on browsers, etc. I used to run avast and malware bytes, etc but for at least a few years now windows built in protection has been enough.
If OP is asking these questions it means they are probably capable of getting her setup with a system that is a bit cleaner and stays clean assuming she doesn’t start downloading random weird porn shit or something.
I don’t think she understands how to define official/fake websites and that kind of stuff. That’s the thing. Linux will be a better choice here
Your making an assumption and your infantilizing someone you’ve never met. It’s entirely possible that she is old enough that even if she did have the ability to discern this stuff that she’s more likely to fall for shit, but it’s also possible that she can learn how to spot stuff and avoid it. It’s been awhile since I have played with Linux, is it really ready for prime time? Especially if someone had spent decades using windows?
Hahahaha
LTSC comes direct from Microsoft, and does NOT have defender removed.
Edit: just tested again, and an old version had Defender, but my newest download from MS doesn’t. Go figure.
LTSC is usually in a grey legal area on personal desktop PCs
I highly recommend Chris Titus’ tool to debloat and switch off/remove unnecessary components.
You can also switch off Windows Updates and only allow security updates.
It is multiple tools in one place. Super useful and reliable.
Used this last week. Great asset for making windows a little more bearable
Thanks!!
SO MANY OPTIONS. Anyone have any recommendations?
There are recommended selections in there, and they are good from what i remember
Definitely wipe everything and reinstall, although if the install media is supplied by the PC manufacturer you’ll want to delve into the install options to ensure minimal bloat is getting reinstalled.
Also this post is two hours old and no Linux evangelists have told you to uninstall windows yet. This is progress folks! I’m ready for your downvotes once you’ve finished with your waifu pillows.
Install linux mint of mx linux for her. Been doing that to a lot of grandma’s with great results.
Get a 16gb thumb drive and download windows media creation tool
Laptop usually have proprietary drivers for wifi/ethernet/Bluetooth so visit manufacturers site for those drivers
Delete all partitions on the drive and create a single large partition (windows will make 3 that’s fine)
Keeping new versions of Windows secure is a fool’s errand. Sure you can uninstall the bloatware, disable the telemetry, etc., but there’s nothing to keep Windows from using an update to put it right back on.
If you want your Ma’ to not have to worry about any of that, then it’s time to switch to Linux. Mint is a good variety for people coming from Windows.
I am totally on board with this, but I cannot convince her to learn something new at this stage of the game. I have tried.
Mint looks quite similar, and if she asks “Microsoft applied an update and now the start menu looks different.”
If all she does is browse the internet and read emails, she’ll never know the difference. You could even set up the splash screen to display the Windows logo or just disable it all together.
She Blogs on WordPress also
Automatic updates can also destroy her work in case she happens to fill an online form or edit a document without autosave. The active usage time thing is there but ehh you can’t set all 24 hours as no-reboot time unfortunately
Windows asks you a few times to update now or later, gives you a timer of three hours and offers you to open the closed documents again without having to use autosave.
I don’t like the forced updates either, but if you lose anything to them it can be classified as "on purpose ".
With the right settings on Pro, you can get it to give you a week’s warning before an update is forced, with multiple subsequent warnings if you don’t restart in the meantime.
Never heard of a timer or opening documents. Maybe it’s a new feature idk
Checkout things like WinDebloat, Privatezilla, Winaero Tweaker, Bulk Crap Uninstaller, and LoveWindowsAgain. There’s some overlap between them (as they were built for different purposes), but they all pretty much kill telemetry at the service or installed level (as in remove the components providing telemetry).
Yea, it’s BS you have to do this. And screw MS for this crap.
You could also download Win10/11 LTSC, which natively doesn’t have some of this crap, but also doesn’t get feature updates automatically - just system/security updates 2x/year - so you won’t deal with problems caused by updates.
And you can still run the apps above to reduce what’s left.
Also, go grab MAS on github. It’ll help if you have any problems with activating. It’s a script Microsoft tech support uses.
To begin with you would need to configure the machine to the desktop disabling all what can be disabled.
Then I’d check something from here and remove only what can be deemed safe.
Having somewhat answered the main query if mom does not do anything that makes windows a necessity I’d highly suggest installing something like this and set yourself up for unattended remote control so you can assist if seen necessary.
I like the remote control idea! She does do WordPress, not sure which interface.
Could put rustdesk on it.
Linux is an awful answer. See my other comment as to why.
I will agree with you it’s not the one stop solution but I recommend it due to having triaged it on my own.
Yes they gave me the mandatory eye roll and sighs as to why I installed Linux but aren’t bothered with updates, ads, malware, tracking and whatnot. They want to watch a movie or do some work it just works and doesn’t bog them.
Also I emphasise that I can’t recommend it for CAD/Graphic/Professional workflows that are tailored for windows sadly.
I doubt whether “debloating” could reduce stability or not. I’ve never done that and have no intention to do it for my 88 year old grandfather’s windows. I’d have strict applocker rules on, though
