You stopped a bit short on your delete spree I guess.

No, that was just the first two steps. Just on the “rip shit out” category, I typically churn through at least three separate tools, usually in this order:

• Win10Privacy
• Win11Debloat
• Winslop

I mean, sure, Windows can take as little as a half hour to “install”. But on a personal rig (which also includes my own workflow software and personal data shoehorned back into place), I take another 24-48 hours to gleefully beat it into submission and install secondary programs that bypass the warts it has acquired over the years.

And as a benchmark, XP needed only about 6-8hrs of extra work to reach the same threshold of data migration, workflow software, and improved usability (I was an NT fanboy, IMO the primary improvement of XP over 2000 was the start menu).

If we add up the AI push, the spyware/telemetry explosion, the recent attempts to force the use of a Microsoft Account as the default login, and the massive bloating and instability of Windows in general, it’s slowly becoming time for even non-technical, everyday users to move to Linux.