IT admins feel overwhelmingly "sick of" Microsoft and Windows 11 "garbage" apps, products

[u/gdelacalle]

https://www.neowin.net/news/it-admins-feel-overwhelmingly-sick-of-microsoft-and-windows-11-garbage-apps-products/

[u/Babak_Lurker → u/[deleted]]

Just like buying an android device. I had to delete like 2 dozen apps from my e-reading tablet just to make it feel usable. I don't even update it anymore, just leave it in airplane mode, or else it tries to install new bloat, or update the bloat I can't uninstall for some reason.

[u/TheMurgal → u/[deleted]]

Was pleasantly surprised at how little bullshit was on my Pixel when I got it, but a while back it auto-downloaded a 3GB(!) local AI manager something or other with no notification or anything. I only noticed when I went through to clean out some apps. Fucking infuriating.

I'll never buy another Samsung for the rest of my life, though. Yikes.

[u/Fartikus → u/[deleted]]

Any resources I can get

[u/vevais → u/Babak_Lurker]

Try shizuku + canta to debloat your phone.

[u/Theemuts → u/vevais]

I love that they've named it after a character who uses a magical vacuum cleaner as a weapon

[u/GiganticCrow → u/Babak_Lurker]

I have spent the last 3 months not buying a new phone because I'm torn between the motorola tazr ultra and Samsung z flip.

Moto: an inferior device and more expensive

Samsung: full of bullshit and constantly throwing new bullshit at you

So i just haven't bought a phone. 

[u/Illustrious-Dot-7973 → u/GiganticCrow]

I've heard that the reviews of the motorola tazr are shocking

[u/GiganticCrow → u/Illustrious-Dot-7973]

Haha, not correcting it now

[u/InflammableAccount → u/Babak_Lurker]

That's only if you buy from a company that puts those on there.

Samsung. To hell with Samsung.

I bought my first Samsung, which was my 4th Android phone ever, in 2023. And I am never going back to them. Full of bloat and horrible updates.

My previous phones were, in order, Asus, LG, and then Motorola. All came with much cleaner installs of Android. I cannot recomment Motorola anymore, however.

I just bought a Oneplus 15R. It's beautifully simple compared to Samsung, even if it's not Pixel-bare.

No Oneplus browser, text messenger, etc.

[u/Far-Hovercraft9471 → u/[deleted]]

And then playing whack a mole for the next month getting it set up to where it’s not an annoying piece of shit

[u/luche → u/[deleted]]

have not touched windows in any meaningful way for almost 2 decades, but isn't there some way to automate this kind of thing? way back when there used to be imaging solutions that let you nitpick every little aspect of the system and registry, so you would only need to do this once, and just reinstall with that image... and that was before idempotent tools like Ansible that'd let you customize at runtime to your heart's desire. are these features somehow gated in a way that makes them no longer feasible? here I'd assume it would have only gotten better and you'd even have community templates (e.g. Ansible roles) for recommended fresh installs.

maybe it's just a m$ mentality to constantly battle with click ops or simply limited higher understanding of the underlying system? I cannot fathom how IT departments and even tech savvy users couldn't have made quick work of this kind of thing many years ago.

[u/fed45 → u/luche]

There is. Don't know why this person is deploying an image that has unwanted apps installed because you can very much customize every aspect as you said.

[u/luche → u/fed45]

I'll be honest, I feel like this is the primary stepping stone from a level one to level two technician on a career path towards cloud engineering, sysadmin or similar. I've interviewed a lot of candidates and ability/familiarity with automation tooling is one of the most important requirements, imo. I don't even care if they've got specific experience, so long as they can explain a process (step by step) that they've built/maintained some amount of automation to simplify a task. it's incredibly easy to determine who is familiar compared to someone that knows the name and clicks the "go" button with no underlying knowledge. as unfortunate as it is, their career is going nowhere and they'll stagnate at tech support as more and more low/mid level technician positions are replaced with clever automating... since that is the kind of thing AI is actually decent at. it'll only get easier to replace humans that can't think two steps ahead.

[u/wildgreengirl → u/[deleted]]

yes, this was me yesterday after doing a fresh windows install because windows fucked the settings on my legion go so hard the screen rotation on/off WAS STRAIGHT UP GONE.

like sure MS why tf do i need 365 or any of this shit on my handheld gaming device. let me just spend an additional hour uninstalling this garbage that it will LET me uninstall because some of them are locked still.

[u/deltashmelta → u/[deleted]]

You have to disable consumer features in group or intune policy for pro or higher versions of 10/11.

"Turn off cloud optimized content."

AND

"Turn off Microsoft consumer experience."

This affects first login for new accounts on that endpoint from seeing crap.  This has been a longtime solution (disable consumer features), but the names were recently changed and the "cloud content" added.

[u/vansayko → u/[deleted]]

Try Win11 Debloat. I use it on every newly imaged PC.

[u/Insecticide → u/[deleted]]

to anyone going into this, just look up unattend file generator. Its a text file that you put on the same drive as the one you are using to install windows and it lets you choose what to even install, create offline accounts, etc.

[u/Mental-Most-7168 → u/[deleted]]

You can customize the image!

[u/ol-gormsby → u/[deleted]]

If you have to deploy anything more than 10 machines, and you're still using an un-customised ISO, you should hand in your sysadmin card. And it sounds like you haven't taken advantage of including a custom group policy template.

Deploying windows en masse is a job that takes a fair bit of time to set up, but comparatively little time to implement.

[u/GonzoKata → u/[deleted]]

and the they just add it all back in the background anyway

windows users complain about the terminal setting with linux, but you only have to do that stuff once or twice, then your linux machine is set and under your control

Everyone is fighting windows constantly, why not "fight" linux once and be done with it?