I haven’t had anything to do with windows in like 5+ years. I need to set up a laptop with it for someone tomorrow, I’m guessing W11 is nowadays recommended? what’s currently the best option for a hassle free experience (no ads, no random game installs, no migrations to onedrive, etc)?

last time I did it, I used the W10 ISO from Microsoft, applied the hwidsomething and ran some debloater from github. back then there were some ESR LTSC ISOs available on torrent sites, is that still a thing?

the install is going to use firefox, chrome, skype, libreoffice, etc., they all autoupdate themselves, so it’s going to be reasonably secure. what’s my best bet for a set & forget situation? thanks.

  • @MangoPenguinEnglish
    7•7 months ago

    Download windows here

    Then run this tool and check off anything you want, like disabling onedrive, cortana, web results in search, etc…

    You can use this tool to easily bulk remove any pre-installed apps that you don’t want.

    I don’t recommend running big debloater scripts, they often remove useful things and can break things.

    For installing software you can use winget which is built into windows. For example:

    winget install TheDocumentFoundation.LibreOffice

    and

    winget update --all