You can still do a clean install of Windows, and it’s arguably easier than ever, with official Microsoft-sanctioned install media easily accessible and Windows Update capable of grabbing most of the drivers that most computers need for basic functionality. The problem is that a “clean install” doesn’t feel as clean as it used to, and unfortunately for us, it’s an inside job—it’s Microsoft, not third parties, that is primarily responsible for the pile of unwanted software and services you need to decline or clear away every time you do a new Windows install.
You mean you don’t want Candy Crush Saga and Instagram ads on your freshly installed PC?
Started playing with Linux when my obsession with video games gradually began to fade because “free beer”. … Staying on Linux because it does not treat me this way.
It’s actually remarkable, really. Having something that behaves like a calm, tranquil, professional workstation in 2023, the year of late-stage capitalism. It’s just me, my massive music selection (that can’t be disabled by someone on the other side of the world), and what I feel like working on today. I.e. The way a personal computer is supposed to operate.
The horrors of random programs wanting me to change my default web browser or set my home page are still very much imprinted in my mind from Windows 98 and XP. Only, back then it was shady freeware peddlers who were just struggling to survive; now it’s the big kahuna themselves doing this. You know, the one who has already acquired 70% of the video game market at this point. “We don’t do these things because we need more money, we do them because we simply hate our customers!”
Yep, I’m very glad I dumped Windows.
Because people asked, I resurrected my old HP Elitebook 2530p some days ago. Replaced the 1.8″ mSATA HDD with a 1.8:” SSD, installed Tumbleweed, it’s a very very usable platform. And most would consider it a hunk of junk (including some Linux users).
There is great freedom away from Windows.
There’s plenty of alternatives to Windows that aren’t Linux. MacOS is very much free of (external) ads, but you do have to drink the Apple koolaid. Then there’s Haiku, which is getting more and more usable by the day
As much as I love Haiku, I’m hesitant to recommend it as a daily driver until the elephant in the room is addressed: A working browser that doesn’t constantly crash. Epiphany and Falkon are both awesome, but they both are severely unstable on every Haiku instance I’ve spun up, both on real hardware and in VMs. WebPositive is more stable but isn’t able to render much of the modern web reliably. None of this is Haiku’s fault of course; Firefox is notoriously difficult to port so it’s a no-show right now, and the modern Web itself is an ever-changing nightmare for the smaller browsers to try to keep up with.
If we’re going to recommend obscure OSes that aren’t fruit flavored or penguin-supported, I’ll throw in my hat for OpenBSD. It’s by far the easiest installer in the BSD world, its hardware support is excellent these days, and with Xfce and Firefox or Chromium installed it’s ready for nearly anything most users can throw at it. On recent hardware it’s nearly as fast and fluid as any Linux distro, and the documentation is second to none.