Back to Windows?

Today I was thinking of switching back to Windows after 1year of Linux (currently using Arch) Don't get me wrong, i love Linux, the way i can customize everything and that i install opensource things. I might be a little privacy paranoid but anyways, i wanted to switch back to windows 'cause i cant play any of my games on Linux. I ofc could dual boot but Windows doesnt like that (at least in my experience from the past) So its a silly question: Should i switch back to windows? Is there a way to make it less of a spyware?

I am not advocating for you to go back to Windows. The only thing I want to add is my thoughts about dual booting. Back some many years ago, before we had Proton and a non-hellish way to configure Wine for games, I tried the way of the dual booting. "I will do my gaming on Windows and use Linux for everything else." But the reality is that a lot of times you want or need to do some serious stuff while you are gaming and you have to reboot into Linux, then back to Windows, after you are finished. And very quickly you start making exceptions and doing the "serious stuff" on Windows anyway, instead of having to go through a full reboot, and the exceptions are increasingly more numerous and frequent. You end up staying on Windows most of the time. Dual boot is only a solution for something you really do very infrequently. Otherwise, rebooting all the time will get old quickly and you will stay on the OS that you can do all the things you need or want to do, and that is very likely Windows.

>>54272 >I ofc could dual boot but Windows doesnt like that You just need to make sure to install windows first and then linux will work around it.

If you cant get a free computer, ones can be had for extremely cheap. 10-15year old dual/quad core 4gb+ ram computers are abundant in recycling centers and can handle 99.9% of websites youd want to visit and tasks youd want to complete. Just install linux on whatever and use your windows pc for gaming only, limiting your exposure to its spyware while also keeping the windows pc subjectively more secure because you wont be surfing the net with it.

>>54276 I had an older pc where i had Linux installed, but one day it stopped working and i couldnt do anything about it...

>>54276 I've heard some people use another machine as a "gaming box" and they play on that machine remotely. Not ideal for competitive if you're into that, but it sounds like a neat lil idea. I'd rather use a virtual machine with Looking Glass or video passthrough though. Dual boot for when the game or anti cheat don't like virtual machines. (which is not often for my case.)

>>54288 (thinking about it... Could you use your dual boot windows under a virtual machine?)

(Triple posting, I know, my bad.) >>54272 >Is there a way to make it less of a spyware? Yes there is. There are options out there in the web to "Decrapify" windows and remove things like their telemetry. removes spyware-like processes and bloat from your windows. If i wasn't so deep in love with my linux I would choose that option, honestly. I can't recommend a "decrapifier" because I haven't tried one before.

>>54272 If you can't function with Linux and it really doesnt have all of the games you need - then yes go back to Windows. It's not bad, It just is how it is. Linux is getting better and better every year but it might now be there yet for your needs. Switch to Linux when you actually can. >Is there a way to make it less of a spyware? Besides unchecking the "please spy on me" boxes - no Windows by default is designed to collect data. That is just one of the OS's wonderful features.

>>54272 >Is there a way to make it less of a spyware? short answer: no long answer: you can, but it will cost you as much time or more as setting up a series of defenses (network whitelists, constant packet sniffing, constantly updating the whitelist) as gaming on linux would have taken you, with just as many errors. get 2 separate machines, one for gaming, one for everything else and give up on any idea of mixing the two, games have tons of spyware (anti-cheats often sample your files on your system and send it to the anti-cheat provider). you literally cant have privacy + games at the same time on a single machine (even with VMs, anti-cheat detects VMs very often), i and many people have tried only to conclude the same thing

>>54286 >stopped working and i couldnt do anything about it PCs do break, but it should be easy enough to identify the problem and replace it. >>54288 >rather use a virtual machine with Looking Glass or video passthrough This is a great answer. One could also use Open-Stream with Moonlight and make the beefy computer a server and basically use a laptop as the terminal. I have an r720 with a GPU setup this way. What games on windows are you trying to play OP?

And here I am, having a separate GNU/Linux distro for gaming instead of Windows. Change your mentality, would you buy a videogame console just because there's some games exclusive to it? If not, then you shouldn't change to Windows just because it has some extra videogames, instead, look at what videogames are available for GNU/Linux and play those. https://itch.io/games/platform-linux https://www.gog.com/games?page=1&sort=popularity&system=lin_ubuntu%2Clin_mint%2Clin_ubuntu_18

To be honest I dual boot and have no problems, but I'm also guilty of not updating my operating systems too often... I've had a windows update mess up the dual boot a few years ago but I fixed it quite easily by booting a distro from usb and reinstalling grub. Anyway if you feel that Windows might be better for your needs then switch, it might feel a bit awkward at first but you'll surely adapt in a week or so. I don't know much about privacy etc so I can't help you there >>54273 That's funny, I had a different result with your same experiment, basically I ended up playing a lot less videogames since I would have to reboot to start one

I haven't personally tried this but I'd check this out if you want to play windows games in a VM through GPU passthrough https://youtu.be/_JTEsQufSx4

>>54275 >make sure to install windows This is extremely important thing to consider. Recently I wanted to dual boot on my laptop with Debian, but as I didnt have Windows first was a pain in the ass to do it. So make sure to first install Windows and then your distro

>>54272 https://sharkwouter.github.io/minigalaxy/

>>54272 I used to daul boot arch and win10 but also ran into issues when Windows updated. It would sometimes overwrite my grub bootloader sequence. Annoying, but happend infrequently enough and was easy enough to fix that I just went with it. Eventually I have found myself just using windows. Win10, powershelll, and everything have come a long way in usability and extendability since Microsoft changed their business model to focus on cloud services rather than software licening and have now embraced open-source (wether you believe there approach is truely FSF style FOSS or not is a separate debate, I say it's not, but I've stopped caring so much these days). With Win coming with a full linux kernal subsystem now I never use linux on my desktop. As for privacy concerns: a security focused linux distro will always be better, but windows provides many settings to reduce telemetry. Look into configuring windows for business/client privacy and security compliance. Microsoft has to include these so sensitive businesses and governments can be permitted to use windows.

>>54272 get a second computer and set up a kvm, use linux for your perosnal stuff and windows machine for games and proprietary software

>>54272 >Is there a way to make it less of a spyware? Prolly goes without saying but don't get a pirated version. You can get an official one from m$ themselves or an older version from archive.org. Look up what KMS-VL-ALL is if you don't know, might be useful to you. Don't get home edition. Get pro, edu or enterprise because you can't disable telemetry in home edition. Don't make a microsoft account. Say no to all funny offers when installing. After installing type REGEDIT in the search bar and open Regedit. Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection Right click anywhere in the large white space and select New - Dword (32bit) Value Right click on the new Dword and rename it to "AllowTelemetry" Now left click on it and make sure its value is set to zero (negative) and just close Regedit. Type SERVICES in the search bar and open the Services app. Scroll down to "Connected User Experiences and Telemetry" Click on it, then in the tab click on Stop and set startup type to Disabled then click on Apply and Ok. That disables telemetry but it won't work in home edition. And of course you'll still need an anti-virus which will track every website you visit and every file you open... But if you just want to stick it to m$ this is how you do it without some shady third party software. Lastly look at the privacy settings in windows and change what you want. You can disable camera and microphone if you are that paranoid but you definitely want to disable "typing personalization" as its an obvious keylogger.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!

>>54272 > i wanted to switch back to windows 'cause i cant play any of my games on Linux. I'm not here to try and change your mind, but a good 80%+ games work perfectly fine on Linux. Have you considered that you may just never be satisfied with the number of games you have access to? it sounds like you're trying to cover a void you'll never truly fill on any OS.

>>54360 He probably wants to play modern games that are being mentioned either on/v/ or by some youtuber he likes. If you enjoy old games(my case), Linux is already enough because wine+emulators.

>>54272 No. If you really want to play your games just build a gaming pc that will only have games and nothing else.

>>54360 I mean technically the games that i like work, but they work really slow or just crash time to time...

>>54272 I've looked into methods of wrangling Windows and I haven't found any feasible solution to the many inherent problems it has, the way it updates itself and the way Microsoft likes to rerelease a new version every so often makes it a sisyphean task at best. That being said, it's probably the best solution unless you have 2 GPUs of some kind and can virtualize it, which among other things is the method I'll be using.

>>54446 I've heard there are some cheesy ways for gpu passthrough with only one GPU.

>>54447 Yes, but it leads to similar problems to what others here have described with dual booting.

Passthrough was not too difficult to set up for me and everything works in it, albeit with a noticeable performance drop (my CPU is almost 10 years old though) of probably around 20%. If you don't have an integrated GPU, buy a cheap second card (Linux doesn't need much, even if you want compositing). You can apparently do it even with a single card but I can't vouch for that as I haven't tried. Just follow the Arch Wiki's guide, it has pretty much everything.

>>54272 Hi OP, Switched a while back when it turned out that non thinkpad laptop can be a world of pain in linux world. I would HIGHLY recommend learning ahk. It made such a difference for me that I don't think I would stick with Windows if not for it. Do the switch. Check ahk.

>>54272 I also thinking about switching back to Windows after 10+ years on Linux. Technically I don't need to do that but I'm tired of the most of the GNU/Linux desktop narratives and I don't see clear future for it. I don't need "free" license, but my bigger concerns with proprietary closed-source OSes are surveillance and lack of privacy. So I'll probably still using Linux in the near future.

I duel boot atm mainly used the arch install for like 3 months then ended up slowly going back to windows just due to everything working with the only annoying thing being lack of customization. I have just gotten so used to workflow on a windows machine that even after months of having fun with a floating window manager (berrywm) I somehow just went right back to windows while I run debloat scrips and soykaf windows is bloated by itself and just pisses me off in so many ways I just keep coming back windows 11 might be the last straw for me so I will see how I am gonna go in the next year or two if I should change back to my arch install either way it was annoying when that one single game I wanna play is on windows dream would be a "minimal" windows with file explorer being stripped back ui wise, ui being actually consistent, search bar being a simple launcher, and basic customization of shiz I already have a decent set of base software I use on linux and windows so I am decently happy with that side of things at least windows 7 has a weirdly passionate ricing community

>>54272 It doesnt matter, as first post said dual booting is just gigs of ext4 that youre gonna format to ntfs pretty soon Go to windows and have fun with games

are people really that lazy where you start using windows just because you play video games on it some times? I've dual booted windows for years, never used it for more than a couple hours at a time.

>>54483 It's probably not laziness but impulsivity and focus troubles regularly switching between what they want to do.

>>54272 if you have the hardware capabilities you might as well install vista which is a lot more faster than windows 7 but if you're planning on using windows 7, then using windows 8 is probably a much better idea as it has a better graphics implementation. If you just want to use legacy software and disable all kinds of updates and never have to worry about being a botnet, vista is a viable option if you're developing and tinkering a lot, writing malware codes, you can even turn on UAC at max settings to avoid accidentally running malicious binaries (which helped me quite a lot when tinkering with worms/viruses bundles). >games If that's the entire reason you might as well just buy another device for games exclusively. I don't see the point for that though since most of the modern games aren't even that fun, and the good ones usually don't even require that much cpu or are something you can probably emulate. If you're not even crunching data but is still obsessed with games then what's the point of using linux? You probably can achieve much better privacy with calyx android anyways as linux desktop doesn't even protect you from programs (let's say steam or some stupid binary) that are spying on you, as far as I know they can ID your desktop, access your folders, and even the microphone is always on for some reason even on linux so if you can't give up games and discord then you're fuarrrked unless you've set up a "dummy persona" throughout the entire course of your internet indulgence, game purchases, and accounts creation but I heavily doubt you to be that careful enough, even your home ip is probably already linked into your personal name because someone you know of used youtube over their smartphone linked to their real name and your isp is partnered with gogle or cf (as more ISPs around the world get partnered with or swallowed by the few internet companies that exist today that can afford them for a few cents).

It might be just because I've gotten so used to Linux, but it feels like it's so hard to get anything done on Windows. I have a spare drive with it to play games on, and when the Linux one died the other day, I had to spend a while in Windows and couldn't bear how clunky everything was. Text (both fonts and rendering) looked ugly, VirtualBox wouldn't accept links to physical drives even after hours of debugging, and opening the start menu took up to a few seconds. To then be greeted by an ad for Candy Crush, and a OneDrive popup. Granted, a lot of that could be decrapified. And that is an entirely fair solution, if you really want to use Windows. I don't like the idea of it though, to have to make a conscious effort of decrapifying something that you've, to some extent, already paid a whole lot of money for. Just so it doesn't spy on you and constantly try to sell you stuff.

>>54273 I've had the opposite problem. I have a Windows install for audio production and a Linux install for everything else. I spend all my time in my Linux install and it's made audio production a chore because I don't want to deal with booting into Windows. When I do boot into windows, I find myself anxious to finish audio work so I can boot back into Linux.

>>54567 Sorry, not the opposite problem. The same problem but with the opposite outcome

>>54568 I have a mix of both, I can't stand windows spiking my CPU at 100% randomly when I don't know what it is doing, so I moved to Linux. But I just wish I could run proprietary soykaf for work like ms office so I started to look back to moving to Windows. If I could have windows to do what I tell it do do only with no telemetry bullshit it would be perfect. For now I just virtualize it and turn off the vm when not using.

>>54578 I feel you. I just jumped back on Win10 after years on Linux. Disabled the telemetry, installed a firewall, so far it's not too bad. It's not the best thing in the world but at least I can use it for work. I'm exhausted to try to protect my privacy no matter the cost and keeping everything unproprietary. I don't care anymore I'm just gonna use the Internet for meaningless soykaf and games =) fxck it

What about using one of those ISO remastering tools like nLite and vLite to create slimmed down Windows distributions, but publish the end resulting script in Open Source manner so anyone could pop a legit MS ISO they saved 10 years ago from MS downloads site, apply this script, and get a legit slimmed down WIndows distribution without much Microsoft interference or shady repacks by xXx_Russian_Bear_xXx off torrent sites? As far as I know, Windows 10 Ameliorated project somewhat attends to do this, right? But it's for Win 10, and for most people, using WIndows 7 or XP on virtual machine or old PC as dedicated abandonware appliance might be an option too.

if the main use of your computer is gaming you shouldn't have switched to linux in the first place, but it's good you did it anyway I think you should try to debotnet it with AME, privacyzilla and top it off with chris titus' debloating script and see if you can stand using slightly broken, but much more private (not secure mind you, windows defender is a must today) operating system. I don't recommend it because your mileage may vary. Drop gaming, don't play games that don't run under wine or make a KVM guest with GPU passthrough if you are able to. And remember, once you go with penguin you never go back.

>>54308 Yeah, usually you want the first SATA to be the windows drive too

i think its good to get familiar with linux because i dont see a bright future with windows. The whole tpm thing with 11 goes into the direction of we control what you can install&use.

I've just accepted that Linux currently simply isn't as good a gaming platform as windows due mostly to low uptake, I still do almost everything in linux though and find the experience better than on Windows. I think I've booted into windows twice in the past 3 months because CEMU is windows only, but apart from that almost everything else I want is doable through linux I think taking an all or nothing approach to OS choice isn't really healthy or practical yet, windows is definitely getting worse though and linux is definitely getting better and I think it won't be long before linux is almost comparable to windows for nearly everything. Its really jarring how much worse the base experience in windows is compared to a good linux environment once you get used to one, windows is a corpse of a product, if it wasn't for its near monopoly position it would have been btfod years ago

I've been planning on buying some older PC parts and making a 7th gen tier gaming PC with Windows XP on it and never connecting it to the internet. Not because I need to or it solves anything but if you don't mind borrowing a couple games off the internet and transferring them over to that PC there are some really good 10 - 15 year old games you could play and not worry about telemetry. But I am sure that's not what you're looking for.

>Should i switch back to windows? no >Is there a way to make it less of a spyware? no

>>54301 Even steam has many Linux gaymes now

>>54272 there will literally always be someone or something spying on you in some shape or form just don't worry about it and remember the nsa and homeland security is full of a bunch of creepy voyeurs

>>56210 What if you play single player games and just don't connect your gaming PC to the internet? What exactly is multiplayer gaming offering these days for PC gaming that I would want to install kernel level anticheat software?

Recently got a chance to try out windows 11. Never again. It's the soykaftiest piece of spyware I've ever had the misfortune of using. Don't bother with Windows anymore, it's linux all the way for me now, retarded arguments over DEs, corporate infiltration and all.

>>56392 Windows 11 is weird. Besides rounded edges I'm not sure what it is supposed to offer that's new or different than Windows 10.

>>54272 >Should i switch back to windows? No, you should dual-boot GNU/Linux and Windows (or use a VM) Also, Proton and Wine support a lot of games nowadays. >Is there a way to make it less of a spyware? No. But you can make it less bloated by using PowersHell: Get-AppxPackage * | Remove-AppxPackage There is also snake oil like https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater that *may* help (but only a little!)

>>56451 dolby surround sound dosent work on linux host dunno if there are any opensource alternatives i miss the vantage gaming control panel evrything looks so confy but on linux i have to open things manually not a microsoft fanboy but i prefer the win10 taskbar over kde i like blocky movable tiles over round app icons

>>56220 The ones that offer good gameplay don't even have invasive anti-cheat, smh

>>56449 Nothing at all. But it's still soykaf, like all windows. It's the only thing that's convinced me that there really IS no going back, that the days of Window 7 are truly gone forever now. Even if I still wanted to, there IS no 'good' windows OS anymore, Win7 will be depreciated and die, Win10 will follow suit. And all of its successors will be as rotten as all hell

ok assuming i were to successfuly do gpu passthrough with kvm should i choose win10 home or pro workstation or LTSC on the guest VM since spying and bloat isnt really a problem since all i care about is convenience and aesthethics

>>56534 LTSC is equally convenient and aesthetic, there is no reason to not use LTSC.

>>56535 ltsc is waay too minimal and light i want the original blocky start menu also why does 4chan /g/ obsess about LTSC 2021 iot edition?

>>54308 >>54275 I just used a live gparted iso and shrinked my linux ext4 root partition, then installed windows normally using that empty space I haven't used! You dont have to install windows first, you can keep using linux and install windows after, just make sure you shrink your biggest partition to remove a reasonable amount for your windows partition using gpated's live iso (use ventoy to boot into both linux and windows from the same USB drive)

>>56566 its honestly weird how you dont see how LTSC is the best version of W10

>>54301 >GOG >this website is protected by ReCaptcha and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply oh fuarrrk no

>>57348 Yes. LTSC is the best edition of Windows 10. I think it's the only alternative of Windows 7.

Windows 10 only has 4 years to go before becoming obsolete. Windows 11 is absolute dogshit. It's fuarrrking over. Even if you want to go back to windwos there's only so long you'll be able to before it finally goes full botnet mode.

>>57352 people who are against it better get it together and get proficient with arch or debian i currently dual boot and am ready to fully switch when the time comes, will mae a vm with gpu passthrough and use win10 for those pesky games

I've been running 2019 LTSC on my gaming PC and it's been overall a great experience. Not once could I not install a program because LTSC was too minimal. You can also re-enable the microsoft store if you need it for anything. I compared the number of background processes on LTSC as compared to Home edition and LTSC only has 60% as many, so I imagine performance is better substantially if that's a concern for you.

>>54272 I'm back to Windows (10, LTSC IoT) recently. I used KDE neon as my daily driver before. The reason I back to Windows isn't for gaming. Actually, I'd quit from playing games 3 years ago. Plus, I don't use my PC really much. I only boot it when I check email, imageboards (rarely), and using internet banking. So, I don't need to care about my privacy when comparing with others who using their computer more often. Also, my country's banks and gov is such soykaf. They always require Windows for using their services. Few places are supported Linux. But that's kinda broken and buggy. I used Librewolf when I stayed in Linux, but now -- Windows -- I'm just using Edge 'cuz it's pre-installed. Maybe I'm gonna install librewolf again if Edge was easy to remove or not pre-installed. Thus, I don't really difference between Windows and Linux in my usage except soykafty gov/banks services. I'm pretty sure M$' privacy is such bad, and most websites which dependent with heavily bloated javascripts. But I use ma PC less then before. So I don't really care about it. And I'll get rid out PC and Smartphones.

>>57498 Why don't you dual-boot? Use gparted to shrink the windows partition and install Debian stable https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/current/amd64/iso-cd/ >Also, my country's banks and gov is such soykaf. They always require Windows for using their services. Highly doubt that. If it runs in the browser, it doesn't care which OS you use.

>>57506 It runs under browser. But it requires some programs to keep my """DATA""" be safe and secure. My country's most banks like the certificates which were issued by """trusted agency""". And it needs some programs to issue and certify; actually using. 1st as firewall which maintained by them. 2nd as network checker for checking malicious connection 3rd as keyboard security programs to prevent keylogger. blah blah blah. There're more programs to install. And as you already know, all of them can be treaten as backdoor or spywares. I fuarrrking sacrifice my privacy for soykafty banks and gov services (thankfully gov services can be used with smartphone apps which can be downloaded through google play store or apple app store, but you know, I don't have fuarrrking phone.) >Highly doubt that. If it runs in the browser, it doesn't care which OS you use. Yes. But the softwares for it care which OS am I using. >Why don't you dual-boot? Use gparted to shrink the windows partition and install I know that can be a solution of this situation. But I don't really like it. I'm just using my pi3 for simple tasks like checking email etc.

>>57498 could you share that background? looks nice