5 ms·

Instead of "Making Windows 2000 Usable in 2021" I'd like to see something more along the lines of "Making Windows 11 Usable in 2021". Past attempts at doing thi

Instead of "Making Windows 2000 Usable in 2021" I'd like to see something more along the lines of "Making Windows 11 Usable in 2021". Past attempts at doing this (oftentimes) produced shady utilities (or illegal ISOs) that would hack out "essential" Windows components. If done right, open-source, developed out in the open, I could see this being a hugely successful endeavor. Imagine being able to use a modern Windows system (officially) that had no bloatware or the things we hate about modern Windows. (yes, I know I'm almost describing Linux and MacOS here) To pull this off, I see a utility (kind of like Chocolatey) with modules that can be run to disable certain annoyances- and changes that can always be fully reverted if necessary. Create some global modules such as "gaming-only" that removes all the bloat needed except for gaming.

LocalH 5y ago
Do you really think MS would allow that to exist unhindered? Look at what they did recently when people started combating the forced Edge launches.
hackerhandle 5y ago
You might check out a tool called O&O Shut Up 10.
- p1peridine 5y ago
  Or Blackbird v6 https://www.getblackbird.net/ https://www.getblackbird.net/
  - novok 5y ago
    It looks like blackbird hasn't been updated since nov 2020, while O&O shut up was updated just last month. One thing I wish O&O had was a feature / taskbar version that watches if any setting has been changed once an hour / restart, alerts you, and asks you if you want to restore that setting, along with auto update.
    - p1peridine 5y ago
      Everything blackbird claims to disable will be disabled. Shutup has way less features. Try this out: download SysInternals ProcMon and run both tools and then compare. You'll see.
323 5y ago
> Imagine being able to use a modern Windows system (officially) that had no bloatware One's feature is another's bloatware. As Joel Spolsky used to say, 80% of the people use only 20% of the features, the problem is that each one of those 80% uses a different 20%.
- pjerem 5y ago
  Windows 10 ships with Candy Crush.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    And 95 shipped with solitare.
    - danachow 5y ago
      It goes back to 3.0 and quite notably did not convey advertising to spend money. It also wasn’t located blatantly in your face in a tiled menu. There’s a very different incentive.
    - LeoPanthera 5y ago
      Solitaire had a secret purpose, it taught people how to use a mouse in a way that they would enjoy, an important consideration when most people had never used a mouse before. Candy Crush teaches you what pay-to-win DLC is.
    - ndiddy 5y ago
      Windows 10 also ships with Solitaire, except it plays a video ad after every game and the only way to remove the ads is by paying for a $10/month "solitaire premium" subscription.
      - Brave-Steak 5y ago
  - cube00 5y ago
bloblaw 5y ago
When I was an active Windows user, I always used the server editions as my desktop OS. Eg, I ran Server 2003 (instead of XP), Server 2012 R2 (instead of 8.1), and finally, Server 2016 (instead of Win 10). Much less bloat. Not sustainable for an enterprise deployment, but for my home use it worked quite well.
- _nickwhite 5y ago
  Unfortunately, using Windows Server as a gaming computer is highly frustrating, and rarely works long-term. Biggest issue is driver compatibility (especially video drivers). Direct X used to be an issue, but I think it actually runs fine now in Server 2019. A much better solution in today's world would be to just run Linux. Steam now has >80% of the Top-100 Windows games running on Linux.
  - simlevesque 5y ago
    > Steam now has >80% of the Top-100 Windows games running on Linux. When it works. CSGO claims to work on Linux but has stopped working for many months now. There is a fix that includes changing a library but you risk getting banned by anticheat. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/2659 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/2659 It has been going on for almost a year. If you want to game, you should just to dual boot Windows or buy a console.
- cf100clunk 5y ago
  When I was an active Windows flight sim user, I always installed either 98lite, 2000lite, or XPlite on heavily slipstreamed installations: https://www.litepc.com/ https://www.litepc.com/ I was ruthless in tearing out cruft. To me this made the consumer versions seem quicker and more stable. I have absolutely no flight sim use case now for any of the Windows OSes, past or present.
accrual 5y ago
You might be interested in the LTSC versions of Windows 10. I know you said Windows 11, but IMO, Windows 11 currently is missing some usability that's still present in Windows 10 (like the taskbar). Of course you'll also be missing the scheduler updates, but I've witnessed some users disabling efficiency cores on Alder Lake anyway due to bugs or performance. > LTSC, Long-Term Servicing Channel (which was until 2017 branded as LTSB, Long-Term Servicing Branch), is a unique version of Windows 10 Enterprise. Unlike all the other versions of Windows 10, LTSC has zero bloatware and the least amount of telemetry (data being sent back to Microsoft). A friendly intro can be found on this Reddit wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/index
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Even buying LTSC requires enormous amounts of hoop-jumping: https://reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/acquisition https://reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/acquisition It's not practical for most people.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  The main problem with LTSC (assuming you're fine ignoring licensing requirements) is what you touched on - it's LTSC so rarely up to date from a feature perspective. Of course this is it's real purpose and 11 will eventually get an LTSC release as well (once it's fit for said main purpose) but these types of "well there are a few things it doesn't have" are rolling issues not one off things you can just accept up front. Also it's a pain to get Store stuff working. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal but Minecraft Bedrock is a common dealbreaker.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Hmm.. they're missing an acquisition method. I just checked my "MSDN" subscription and it's right there. I'm going to have to check this out.
cube00 5y ago
Windows serves whichever axe is deemed to need grinding and they're not going to give up that control. At the moment it's Edge getting shoved down our throats at any opportunity and in some cases it even ignores the "default apps" (looking at you links from the lock screen) I've also started getting prompts to "restore my web browser" settings as a way to get Edge reset back to the default along with a permanent "restore recommended" banner on the top of the Settings app. Use Microsoft recommended browser settings: Set the latest Microsoft Edge as your default browser and pin it to your desktop and taskbar. It's the best browser for Windows 10 with enhanced privacy protection. The "learn more" takes you to https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy and two of the promises are "control" and "respect". It's funny, I don't feel either in control or respected about my choice not to use Edge.
gjvc 5y ago
The whole point of this submission is that Windows 2000/XP were the last versions before Windows jumped the shark.
rectang 5y ago
Hacking a platform puts you at odds with the platform vendor, with the consequence that any hacks are likely to be incompatible with subsequent releases of the platform. Platform vendors want to shunt you down very specific paths. The interests of platform vendors and developers are not always aligned, and are often diametrically opposed — especially with regards to creating portable code that runs on multiple platforms.
userbinator 5y ago
The reason is that Win11 (and 10, and all the other "still in support" OSs) is still subject to constant change by MS --- including the automatic updates --- so it is quite a moving target to fight. In contrast, "EOL" OSs won't change any more and they start off not fighting you as much in the first place. They're also probably much simpler in many ways. I see many similarities between projects like this and the automotive tuning community; there's a lot of people interested in newer cars, but many of them prefer working on the old stuff (roughly 50s-70s). That said, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Core exists, so maybe someone could run the UI from older Windows versions on it.

LocalH 5y ago

Do you really think MS would allow that to exist unhindered? Look at what they did recently when people started combating the forced Edge launches.

hackerhandle 5y ago

You might check out a tool called O&O Shut Up 10.

p1peridine 5y ago
Or Blackbird v6 https://www.getblackbird.net/ https://www.getblackbird.net/
- novok 5y ago
  It looks like blackbird hasn't been updated since nov 2020, while O&O shut up was updated just last month. One thing I wish O&O had was a feature / taskbar version that watches if any setting has been changed once an hour / restart, alerts you, and asks you if you want to restore that setting, along with auto update.
  - p1peridine 5y ago
    Everything blackbird claims to disable will be disabled. Shutup has way less features. Try this out: download SysInternals ProcMon and run both tools and then compare. You'll see.

323 5y ago

> Imagine being able to use a modern Windows system (officially) that had no bloatware One's feature is another's bloatware. As Joel Spolsky used to say, 80% of the people use only 20% of the features, the problem is that each one of those 80% uses a different 20%.

pjerem 5y ago
Windows 10 ships with Candy Crush.
- xxpor 5y ago
  And 95 shipped with solitare.
  - danachow 5y ago
    It goes back to 3.0 and quite notably did not convey advertising to spend money. It also wasn’t located blatantly in your face in a tiled menu. There’s a very different incentive.
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    Solitaire had a secret purpose, it taught people how to use a mouse in a way that they would enjoy, an important consideration when most people had never used a mouse before. Candy Crush teaches you what pay-to-win DLC is.
  - ndiddy 5y ago
    Windows 10 also ships with Solitaire, except it plays a video ad after every game and the only way to remove the ads is by paying for a $10/month "solitaire premium" subscription.
    - Brave-Steak 5y ago
- cube00 5y ago

bloblaw 5y ago

When I was an active Windows user, I always used the server editions as my desktop OS. Eg, I ran Server 2003 (instead of XP), Server 2012 R2 (instead of 8.1), and finally, Server 2016 (instead of Win 10). Much less bloat. Not sustainable for an enterprise deployment, but for my home use it worked quite well.

_nickwhite 5y ago
Unfortunately, using Windows Server as a gaming computer is highly frustrating, and rarely works long-term. Biggest issue is driver compatibility (especially video drivers). Direct X used to be an issue, but I think it actually runs fine now in Server 2019. A much better solution in today's world would be to just run Linux. Steam now has >80% of the Top-100 Windows games running on Linux.
- simlevesque 5y ago
  > Steam now has >80% of the Top-100 Windows games running on Linux. When it works. CSGO claims to work on Linux but has stopped working for many months now. There is a fix that includes changing a library but you risk getting banned by anticheat. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/2659 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/2659 It has been going on for almost a year. If you want to game, you should just to dual boot Windows or buy a console.
cf100clunk 5y ago
When I was an active Windows flight sim user, I always installed either 98lite, 2000lite, or XPlite on heavily slipstreamed installations: https://www.litepc.com/ https://www.litepc.com/ I was ruthless in tearing out cruft. To me this made the consumer versions seem quicker and more stable. I have absolutely no flight sim use case now for any of the Windows OSes, past or present.

accrual 5y ago

You might be interested in the LTSC versions of Windows 10. I know you said Windows 11, but IMO, Windows 11 currently is missing some usability that's still present in Windows 10 (like the taskbar). Of course you'll also be missing the scheduler updates, but I've witnessed some users disabling efficiency cores on Alder Lake anyway due to bugs or performance. > LTSC, Long-Term Servicing Channel (which was until 2017 branded as LTSB, Long-Term Servicing Branch), is a unique version of Windows 10 Enterprise. Unlike all the other versions of Windows 10, LTSC has zero bloatware and the least amount of telemetry (data being sent back to Microsoft). A friendly intro can be found on this Reddit wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/index

LeoPanthera 5y ago
Even buying LTSC requires enormous amounts of hoop-jumping: https://reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/acquisition https://reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/wiki/acquisition It's not practical for most people.
zamadatix 5y ago
The main problem with LTSC (assuming you're fine ignoring licensing requirements) is what you touched on - it's LTSC so rarely up to date from a feature perspective. Of course this is it's real purpose and 11 will eventually get an LTSC release as well (once it's fit for said main purpose) but these types of "well there are a few things it doesn't have" are rolling issues not one off things you can just accept up front. Also it's a pain to get Store stuff working. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal but Minecraft Bedrock is a common dealbreaker.
kingcharles 5y ago
Hmm.. they're missing an acquisition method. I just checked my "MSDN" subscription and it's right there. I'm going to have to check this out.

cube00 5y ago

Windows serves whichever axe is deemed to need grinding and they're not going to give up that control. At the moment it's Edge getting shoved down our throats at any opportunity and in some cases it even ignores the "default apps" (looking at you links from the lock screen) I've also started getting prompts to "restore my web browser" settings as a way to get Edge reset back to the default along with a permanent "restore recommended" banner on the top of the Settings app. Use Microsoft recommended browser settings: Set the latest Microsoft Edge as your default browser and pin it to your desktop and taskbar. It's the best browser for Windows 10 with enhanced privacy protection. The "learn more" takes you to https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy and two of the promises are "control" and "respect". It's funny, I don't feel either in control or respected about my choice not to use Edge.

gjvc 5y ago

The whole point of this submission is that Windows 2000/XP were the last versions before Windows jumped the shark.

rectang 5y ago

Hacking a platform puts you at odds with the platform vendor, with the consequence that any hacks are likely to be incompatible with subsequent releases of the platform. Platform vendors want to shunt you down very specific paths. The interests of platform vendors and developers are not always aligned, and are often diametrically opposed — especially with regards to creating portable code that runs on multiple platforms.

userbinator 5y ago

The reason is that Win11 (and 10, and all the other "still in support" OSs) is still subject to constant change by MS --- including the automatic updates --- so it is quite a moving target to fight. In contrast, "EOL" OSs won't change any more and they start off not fighting you as much in the first place. They're also probably much simpler in many ways. I see many similarities between projects like this and the automotive tuning community; there's a lot of people interested in newer cars, but many of them prefer working on the old stuff (roughly 50s-70s). That said, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Core exists, so maybe someone could run the UI from older Windows versions on it.