lots of folks around these parts bitch about windows cause they don't know how to use it
microsoft literally gives you the policy templates to manage practically every setting in windows, including copilot
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/manage-windows-copilot
b e a r d
@skylar @mona @SuperSnekFriend and if you don't know how to do this stuff manually, you have wonderful tools like chris titus' winutil: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
i'd also recommend explorerpatcher for those on windows 11 who want to bring back windows 10 features: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher
if you want to go even further, you can use the answer file method when installing windows, customizing it exactly how you want it to start as: https://github.com/memstechtips/UnattendedWinstall
a good windows install using these simple tools is a much better experience than linux is in my personal opinion. that isn't to say that linux is a bad experience if you know what you're doing and really like tinkering around with things, but at the end of the day i just like the way windows works more. it makes it easier for me to do everything that i need to do instead of fiddling with things as much. and as much as it sucks, most software either works better on windows or the commercial software is leagues better than the foss stuff. i still have yet to find a colorblind filter better than windows' for instance, and the one that someone made for me for linux just didn't work and neither of us could figure out why... which seems to be a trend when it comes to me and linux lol.
right now i'm running win11 and i don't even have notifications, the action center, copilot, cortana, bing search, any telemetry garbage, stripped out services, and more and it only took a little bit of work to setup. explorerpatcher was a godsend too, because i'm much more familiar with win10. win11 gets a little toooo modern with things, i think win10 is a really good sweet spot between looking nice and being functional.
that being said, i had to upgrade to windows 11 because my win10 install decided to shit itself. i had that happen with a mint installation though recently too so it's not like linux is free from random issues popping up like that either. don't know what happened to the windows one, but the mint one i think it's because something updated without another thing updating first and it destroyed it to the point i had to just do a fresh install.
@beardalaxy@gameliberty.club @skylar@misskey.yandere.love @SuperSnekFriend@poa.st also another QOL thing you can do for windows is startallback it is paid but its like 5 bucks there's a FOSS version i forget the name also https://github.com/files-community/Files for a new file manager makes it much more windows 11 like but cures so many issues with explorer
@mona @SuperSnekFriend @skylar startallback is the one I tried first with their free trial but it didn't quite do what I was looking for. Explorerpatcher did a much better job.
@beardalaxy@gameliberty.club @SuperSnekFriend@poa.st @skylar@misskey.yandere.love yeah if you're looking more for explorer changes this is just for the start menu really openshell also does the same thing works very well avoid the stardock one though that's just a bit too fat think it was still in beta when i last used it though
@mona @SuperSnekFriend @skylar I was trying to find something that would let me use the windows 10 start menu but it seems like it's either win11 or win7 and I'd rather go with the latter. I just liked having resizable tiles and it had been that way since windows 8 so I was super used to it. Explorerpatcher gives me the win10 Taskbar, right click menus, and a bunch of other nice stuff though so it's pretty good. I'll probs donate a bit to the guy who made it.
