Redpill me on Windows

I use Windows 10 education with telemetry disabled. Can Microsoft still spy on me? Should I just open all telemetry settings to help them? People say telemetry isn't spying. I don't know what to do. Should I switch to Linux or stay at windows? Do I really care about my digital privacy?

Removing all spyware from Windows is practically impossible, so yeah Microsoft is still spying on you. It really depends on how much you care about your privacy and if you use Windows-only software that does not work on Linux. I reccomend you to give Linux a try anyways, you might like it.

>>65705 Telemetry can be useful for developers BUT 1. Large companies such as MS probably have enough testing staff and bug reporters that whatever you give them is pretty useless 2. Most telemetry isn't anonymous (even if it claims to hide it you can't 100% trust it) Also a big issue is that "disabling" stuff doesn't really disable it in most cases. Discord has huge issues with that, it just changes a single variable which doesn't do anything. >Should I switch to Linux or stay at windows? There are ways to make windows more private with custom ISOs and such but it will break a ton, there are debloat scripts that get rid of cortana and such that are pretty good (also the more microsoft stuff you remove the more private it is and the more secure it is because of less attack surface) You can take a look at GNU/Linux if you want but don't go in expecting it to be 100% like windows, you do have to learn at least some stuff but it isn't much harder then learning any new OS or interface. You can just search up "installing linux in a VM" and do that (it basically is installing linux in a virtual computer inside of your computer so its isolated and you can try it out before jumping in). I would recommend Linux mint as a starter (overall it doesn't really matter what you pick but Mint is pretty solid and removes a ton of stuff that Ubuntu does badly)

>>65707 >>65708 I installed Pop os I liked it so far it has no issues and it looks very modern. I'm able to play games through steam without any problem. I dualboot with Windows right now might compelety switch to linux someday.

Should I stick with Pop OS or should I switch to another distro?

>>65713 No harm in trying others. Everyone on the internet will have their own opinions about which distros are best, but at the end of the day you should just use what you prefer.

>>65713 Well it depends on your needs..... it's kinda like the question of "what GPU should I get?" it really depends on the things you wanna do. If you wanna game and have a modern looking OS than Pop_OS is perfectly fine. If you wanna tinker more around or experience lag or such then you can try other distros.

>>65705 >People say telemetry isn't spying. I don't know what to do. Should I switch to Linux or stay at windows? Do I really care about my digital privacy? I think it depends on what you consider spying, and how much do you care about microsoft knowing some silly facts like that you prefer to change folder view setting through the right click menu, and not through the new ribbon UI in Explorer. The company I work for has remote telemetry in our product, and we have no setting to disable it. At the same time, we are very strict about what we collect, everything is anonymized, and adding new fields to the telemetry requires a review from the compliance team. We only collect what functions you use, and the most offending thing on the list is probably your GPU model. I don't think that things are much different in microsoft, and I prefer not to bother about it. If anything, my usage data will steer their product development in the direction I prefer. Maybe the modern software is so bad because all the smart people disable analytics, and all data we get comes from the less sophisticated side of the bell curve?

>>65715 >If you wanna game and have a modern looking OS than Pop_OS is perfectly fine Then I'll continue to use Pop_OS. Thanks.

>>65717 >I don't think that things are much different in microsoft Ah yes, presuming that the very first participant in the NSA's PRISM program is interested only in the most mundane, inoffensive user behaviors. Your naivete is adorable.

If you use google, discord, facebook, etc et you are still being spied on and these companies are now required to tell people and give people the option to turn off data indexing but of course these companies have been caught just ignoring it and doing it anyways regardless of what people want or choose.

>>65713 >should I switch to another distro? Yes. Try Arch Linux or Void Linux. Both are rolling release distros, and Arch is very up to date. I think Arch is the best distro, unless you want to go full Gentoo and build everything from the source. Void Linux is also really good. I would probably use Void, if Arch didn't exist.

A privacy parable in three acts: Once upon a time, Microsoft decided to include Bing search results into the Windows start menu search feature. That's good news for some executive whose key performance indicators are Bing search volume and ad impressions. It's bad news for people who don't want second rate search results or their keystrokes uploaded to the mothership when they're just looking for a file on their hard drive. It's very easy to strike a balance here, just make the feature opt-in. Did I say opt-in? I meant opt-out. And so there was a convenient setting a few clicks away right where you would expect it to turn this soykaf off. A few years later, without telling anyone, they removed this option from the search settings right where you would expect it and opted everyone back in. Now the way to opt-out was A LOT harder and weirder. The option was buried somewhere in this thing called the group policy editor. It's an admin tool and it feels like you're configuring the system firewall or something. I would bet real money that most people who tried to change that setting saw that window and gave up. And I think this was deliberate. A few years later, people started saying the group policy setting stopped working. You have to edit the system registry directly, they say. Is it a bug or did they pull the same bullshit again? I don't know, what do you think? At around this time it was announced that Windows 11 will require a Microsoft account during setup for no clear reason. That's good news for some upper executive whose key performance indicators are Microsoft account creation and daily active users. It's bad news for users who aren't keen on whatever is at the other end of that rainbow and wish Microsoft would just fuarrrk off already. Not to worry though, there's a workaround.

Assuming you are using WIndows for gaming cause why the fuarrrk would you use WIndows for anything else this custom ISO might help. I only tested it in a VM for a little bit and I liked how clean it was. https://atlasos.net/