As a Linux user forced into a temporary truce with Windows for gaming handheld compatibility, I refuse to run the OS in its “out of the box” state. I’ve put together a manual optimisation guide that skips the “one-click” de-bloat scripts and focuses on permanent Group Policy (gpedit) and system-level tweaks to make the OS semi-tolerable.
The Guide Covers:
Killing AI Spyware: Disabling the “Recall” background service, snapshot recording, and “Click to Do” screen scraping.
Telemetry Lockdown: Redirecting “Allow Diagnostic Data” to the Security level (0).
Start Menu Surgery: Decoupling search from Bing to keep local file searches actually local.
Performance recovery: Disabling Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) and background hypervisors for bare-metal gaming speed.
Edge/Widget Removal: Stopping background “loitering” and accidental UI stutters.
This is a reproducible, manual workflow for those who want a clean(er) environment without relying on third-party scripts.
Of course linux folks (me included) would say the normal shtick, but got damn messing with some of those OrangePi boards feels quite the same. Their debian fork is hosted on google drive… I did find a commit tree, but lets be real, nobody is truely auditing their sources and that’s half the problem to begin with. One board in particular I couldn’t for the life of me get arbian compiled, so I ended up rebasing their image to armbian sources. I still feel dirty.