The Linux and Windows Operating Systems
Every laptop I've ever owned came preinstalled with one version of Windows or another. Only three of my many desktop computers came with Windows preinstalled.
I've gone through many Windows versions, skipping "Vista" and "7". Every version I used for any lengthy period of time eventually crashed, displaying the "blue screen of death" The version I used for the longest was "XP", but I can't really tell you how long that was.
After 2006, when Windows would eventually crash, I would replace it with one "Linux" distribution or another, allowing me to use that computer until it stopped working or I gave it away to one of my many young relatives.
I don't remember which Linux distribution I used first, but I remember using Ubuntu at one time. For the last several years, it's been the Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint. That's what I'm using today on my mini PC, which originally came with Windows 11 Professional.
The Mini PC
I bought my mini PC in May of 2024. After about a week of trying to get used to Windows, I replaced it with Linux Mint and relegated Windows to a virtual machine. After not even looking at the virtual machine for more than six months, I deleted it. That version of Windows 11 didn't include Copilot, Recall, or any other AI nonsense.
Anticipating my trip to Arizona later this month, I downloaded and installed Windows 11 in a virtual machine. It was way more bloated than I remember, and it had all kinds of AI nonsense on it. I searched for ways to clean it up, and I found a few.
The one I already knew about was "Winutil" because I had already watched videos on the Chris Titus Tech YouTube channel. I found more, including AtlasOS, Win11Debloat, and Winhance. I chose to use Winhance.
It worked as advertised. It took about an hour to install Windows and about another hour to let Winhance do its thing. When everything was done, there couldn't have been more than 10 applications remaining on that system. When I was satisfied, I removed the virtual machine.
The New Laptop
The new laptop comes with Windows 11 Home preinstalled. Before I even boot up the operating system, I'm going to boot up Rescuezilla from a USB stick and save an image of the system to a portable solid-state drive. I'm going to be replacing Windows 11 with Linux Mint, but I need a backup plan if I have hardware issues.
If I have to restore the Windows 11 backup image, I'm going to try to set things up the right way. The first thing I'll have to do is use a workaround to create a local account. Windows 11 Home doesn't support local accounts anymore. Once I'm presented with the option to log in to a Microsoft account or create one, I'll need to open the terminal (PowerShell) with Shift-Fn-F10 and run:
start ms-cxh:localonly
Once I press enter, I'll be presented with prompts to create a local account. I tested this on the virtual machine before I removed it. The next step is to allow Windows to update. Once that's done, I'll run Winhance to get rid of all the nonsense (as well as Microsoft Edge) and install what I want on the system.
I hope it won't come to that. There aren't any Windows specific applications I need to use, and I dislike babysitting an operating system that breaks with random Microsoft updates.