What does HackerNews think of Sophia-Script-for-Windows?
:zap: The most powerful PowerShell module on GitHub for fine-tuning Windows 10 & Windows 11
I highly recommend this script. It's a really decent base without breaking stuff. Most of the time I change 3 or 4 settings in the script.
i used to do an enormous amount of Windows XP regedit tweaking and customization, using sysprep, rolling service packs into new ISOs, making use of https://ryanvm.net/forum/ scripts.
all of that has become practically impossible now. every update resets everything, regedits no longer work, and each update brings back the bloatware you've debloated using things like https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows.
the only recourse now is to disable TPM 2.0, which is a Win11+ requirement. or pirate that fabled LTSC windows edition because, you know, you can't actually buy it.
in 2020 after an unpreventable Win10 update fucked up my dual boot setup i finally called it quits and switched to EndevourOS (Arch) KDE/Plasma and haven't looked back; fuck Windows and its aggressive rent-seeking.
i do miss Foobar2000 and HeidiSQL (DeaDBeeF and DBeaver aren't quite as polished), and Affinity products are hard to get running without glitches in Wine/Proton, but otherwise it's been fantastic. though i've had to fiddle quite a bit with Chromium and MPV settings to enable GPU hardware acceleration for video decoding.
first straw was slow filesystem access due to Windows Defender, last straw was unstoppable Windows updates full of ad garbage and apps i previously removed with various debloating scripts. i ran Windows 10 with these addons to get back a more Windows XP experience:
disable TPM v2.0 (keep it at v1.2) to forever prevent Windows 11 upgrades: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enable-tpm-2-0-o...
debloat: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows. there's also LTSC, but it's basically impossible to purchase an actual license, so you have to pirate it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/l...
start menu: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
taskbar: https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker
search: https://goffconcepts.com/products/filesearchex/index.html
archives: https://www.7-zip.org/
task manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pro...
Notepad replacement: https://github.com/rizonesoft/Notepad3
For the vast majority of debloating I use Sophia[1] and just use the defaults so it's basically fire-and-forget, which I very much like. For any additional de-bloating, like removing OneDrive integration, I use individual scripts from [2].
I've recently switched my development laptop to a Macbook Pro and it's hilarious to note the difference in installation process between the two. The MacOS experience is embracing the "it just works"-concept, no configuration required and everything is taken care off. Whereas the Windows experience is basically you get a thin shell and you need to install these 20(!) updates in order to start configuring your drivers, installing packages and "debloating".
In the end I've accepted that Windows and MacOS both have a place in this world and neither have the perfect approach to an operating system. OS's are such a personal experience.
It also does a lot more than „debloat“ which is a loaded term on itself because tastes are different. Someone might like having certain things included in their installation, some don’t.
https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows
IMO the best and most holistic solution for debloating and de-botnetting Windows.