Yeah but, at that point, why not just install Windows?

I will say buying older consoles that can be modded or don’t connect to official services anymore (7th generation and below) is a lot easier to justify and to enjoy, but do keep in mind a lot of those can be replaced with emulation unless you have a particular reason in mind.

You get the best of both worlds - you can keep all of your other programs, data, and activity off of Microsoft’s ecosystem and Windows, while still having access to crucial programs required for certain jobs or activities. The only downside is performance, because running a GPU passthrough for a virtual machine is a bit of a pain in the nuts, but that’s why I mentioned only using that solution for specialist programs that intentionally try to trip you over - use Wine or Proton for everything else.

Plus, it’s a bit defeatist to go “Fine Microsoft/Autodesk/Adobe, here’s my data” because they’re being a dick to you. Just flip them the bird and run a virtual machine or even a cracked version on the virtual machine.

Software emulation is where I lean, in terms of emulating games on my computer! That is a road that I will travel with older games, at least. Other games can be played via Steam’s Proton Compatibility Layer, my GOG games run fairly well using Heroic Launcher (barring exceptions like Daggerfall). I don’t have a real interest in deeper modding of consoles, it’s not all that appealing in my opinion.

There are some tough eggs out there (PS3, PS4, and XBOX360 come to mind) to emulate, so there are reasons to mod hardware even if you prefer PC. I helped contribute to the RPCS3 emulator back in the day by using my childhood PS3 to provide data dumps and testing my own game rips to give compatibility feedback

you can keep all of your other programs, data, and activity off of Microsoft’s ecosystem and Windows

How do you figure that? You’re just running Windows inside of Linux, along with all it’s cancer.

Any other suggestions for Windows 11 users that haven’t had to use it since 8? I want to kill as much of their garbage as possible, but I feel like I missed so much of their dastardly crap I could be missing something.

It solves almost everything?

I guess you don’t understand the benefit of putting all the shady Microsoft shit in its own dirty polluted sandbox (or individual sandboxes) where it can’t spy on anything besides the other stuff in its sandbox that is already tainted and at most it may find a way to spy on the stuff you give it implicit permission to while you do whatever work you need to do with it. Meanwhile your main OS which hopefully does at least 90% of what you actually need to do on a daily basis, and does all the stuff that is actually important to you and happens to be none of Microsoft’s business, is safely running the actual show and remains completely under your control and authority, private and spyware-free. If you can’t completely get rid of Windows from your life (and some people still feel like they can’t for whatever reason), you can at least limit your exposure massively and turn it into practically a non-issue. Compartmentalization is a very effective way of dealing with nasty untrusted software.

When you get that shit locked down tight enough you can run straight-up viruses and rootkits with no concerns at all. You can see what they do, or try to do, and when they’re finished doing it, just casually delete them. Some people do. For research. In fact it’s so common that a lot of viruses or rootkits go out of their way to try to detect that they’re on a VM and refuse to activate if they think they are, there’s a whole arms race of researchers trying to make the VM look more realistic so the virus will still trigger. Even the viruses know your VM is probably just fucking with them. Windows, thankfully, isn’t quite that bad, and programs written for it will run quite happily in a VM or other virtual environment and let you do whatever you want to do with them, quite safely and subject to your complete authority over them that a VM or other simulated environment can provide.

You can restrict network access to the VM and still do normal network stuff on the host machine, for one thing.

Still happy I switched to Linux. Been playing divinity original sin 2 without any problems. (It’s one of those games I’ve started a hundred times but only finished once.)

• Using Windows Virtual Machine for explicitly few programs (less than 2 ideally)
• Able to be shut off at any time (or wiped/remade completely)
• Ran in a VM for complete network security
• If cracked, software can be ran in the VM completely offline

Lol.

Lmao, even.

Whoever believes a single word that company says?

Like why are we as a society normalizing lying about everything? “Marketing”, “Public relations”, even “Politics”. All of which are ultimately pointless, as we don’t need to keep buying shit, think better of corporations, and argue about same three questions over and over again.

Which is to say, fuck Microsoft. And everything they do. Yes, EVERYTHING. Including the open-source stuff. We need to break down big companies into much smaller ones.

You can restrict access to your entire network.

Using Windows Virtual Machine for explicitly few programs (less than 2 ideally)

That goes for normal Windows.

Able to be shut off at any time (or wiped/remade completely)

Normal Windows

Ran in a VM for complete network security

How does running it in a VM improve network security?

If cracked, software can be ran in the VM completely offline

Normal Windows 1 more time.

All the things you can do in a VM you can do running Windows normally.

I just said fuckit and ran an exe called CrapFIxer. Not going to link it because I have no idea if it’s actually safe but I ran it on August 19th and my gaming PC doesn’t seem to be part of a bot network… yet.

Man, you must be fun at parties.

• No dual boot needed, can use Linux exclusive programs and have data stored outside of the VM for easy access
• Able to take advantage of the performance improvements of using Linux as your daily driver compared to Windows (most notably lower memory usage)
• Not barred by Windows 11’s requirements (largely irrelevant for the software you want to use this with, but it’s a factor)

Also two things, since I’m confused on if you’re playing coy or are just in a contrarian mood:

• Yes, all of the functions inside the VM can be achieved with a standard Windows install. However, we are looking at this situation through the lens of a user who wants to use Linux with access to their Windows programs that throw roadblocks (AKA the original commenter of this comment train)

• Regarding network security, the advantage of not using Windows as your main operating system is that you have a stable, secure baseline, without any fears of unwanted telemetry or addons included in the package (such as copilot). You can debloat windows, but you can never be truly sure that those issues won’t return in the next update or are fully disabled. With a VM that’s not running… well, it’s not running. Not connected to the internet.

Man you must recycle jokes at parties.

No dual boot needed, can use Linux exclusive programs and have data stored outside of the VM for easy access

Yes but if you dual boot there’s no VM needed LOL

I just can’t possibly comprehend why you would prefer that when dual booting is so much simpler…

Able to take advantage of the performance improvements of using Linux as your daily driver compared to Windows (most notably lower memory usage)

So you mean to tell me running Windows inside of Linux uses less RAM than just Windows? How does that work?

Not barred by Windows 11’s requirements

I mean you can get around that using Rufus easy enough (I’m told).

we are looking at this situation through the lens of a user who wants to use Linux with access to their Windows programs

But why?

the advantage of not using Windows as your main operating system is that you have a stable, secure baseline, without any fears of unwanted telemetry or addons

I’m not sure you understand how a VM works. There’s nothing about a VM that removes telemetry or add-ons from Windows…

And who said anything about a “main operating system”? Linux can still be your “main”.

MicroShaft is the epitome of terrible, evil companies.

If you have the ability to set up and run a powershell script and flash an iso, check out tiny11

It’s very easy to uninstall.

Step 1: Download Bazzite
Step 2: Install Bazzite
Step 3: Erase Windows

That’s all there is to it.