SORTED :) Windows After XP Sux big time.

[StainlessS]

Originally Posted by kalehrl

There seems to a stripped down version of Windows 10 called AtlasOS:
https://atlasos.net/

Interesting,

By downloading, modifying, or utilizing any of these images, you agree to Microsoft's Terms. None of these images are pre-activated, you must use a genuine key.

Anybody actually tried this, I believe M$ owns GitHub, so is likely to be kosher.

EDIT: From on their forum:- https://forum.atlasos.net/d/71-activation-of-windows

Activate using your key

Make sure your key is pro

My main i7 machine is Home

EDIT: On GitHub:- https://github.com/Atlas-OS/Atlas

EDIT: Seems to be some kind of NtLite project, take official ISO image and strip bits out of it.
NtLite:- https://www.ntlite.com/

I have sometimes used NtLite (and older NLite for XP), can take lots of testing to do it right, these guys must have spent a long time and a lot of testing on it.

MSMG_ToolKit is a similar-ish thing to NTLite [The GUI aint as pretty as NTLite, text console based]:- https://msmgtoolkit.in/

[StainlessS]

Just a little hint here:

One of my pet hates about W10 (and W7) Windows Explorer [renamed/rewritten as File Explorer in Vista+] requires clicking upon folder to reveal contents
and so requires a click even when traversing folders with keyboard.
I've only just discovered that Open Shell Menu (fork of Classic Shell) has separate settings for the file explorer,
is the torquoise shell icon in uppen RHS corner.
Can change "Basic Settings", "Auto Navigate to the selected folder" and set to Always, and no longer has the brain dead W7/W10 behaviour.
[EDIT: Might also want to enable "Disable Breadcrumbs" and enable "Show Status Bar" if not set as such]

Anyways, I guess many already know this, but if I totally missed those settings, I presume that it is always possible that others have too.
Above one of the main reasons I always disliked Vista/W7/W10 file explorer,
I've used Classic Shell/Open Shell Menu since 1st installing Vista, and cannot believe that I've totally missed this bunch of settings until now.

EDIT: Not this link [latest is Beta], see link at bottom of post.
https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/

Enjoy, I will.

Shell icon @ top RHS

It went a bit weird for me after change and until after reboot.

EDIT: Latest STABLE is OpenShellSetup_4_4_170.exe (I was using a recent beta by mistake)

Latest STABLE:- https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-S...s/tag/v4.4.170

EDIT: To see that Shell icon, you have to tick Menu/View/Options/Classic Explorer Bar.
[Thats why I've never noticed it before, musta switched it on by accident - I guess there is something to be said for reading the docs]

[Katie Boundary]

I'd be much more interested in Atlas if it came with OpenShell and other programs to restore the Windows Classic theme.

[StainlessS]

Oh no!, its started again.
Microsoft reportedly shows full-screen Windows 11 upgrade ads with two 'yes' buttons:- https://www.neowin.net/news/microsof...o-yes-buttons/

[hello_hello]

There's a few different stripped down versions of Windows 10 and 11 floating around, similar to Atlas. Tiny11 and and Windows X-Lite are a couple that come to mind.

The hard drive in my old Win7 laptop died a few days ago, so after I replaced it I installed Atlas to give it a try and it's been okay so far. I might replace it with one of the stripped down Windows 11 versions at some stage though.

And yesterday I finally pulled my finger out and built a new PC. I've put the full version of Windows 11 on it for the moment at least, but through Atlas I discovered Rufus. It's great for creating a bootable USB flash drive for installing an OS, and for Windows 11 it removes a couple of annoyances such as the Secure Boot requirement and the need to create a Microsoft account.

I'll confess I'm not overly hating Windows 11 so far, although I've only started playing with it today. I expected to hate it, probably even wanted to hate it, so I'm somewhat surprised I'm not hating too much. At least not yet.

[hello_hello]

I've played with it some more and I'm still not hating Windows 11 as much as I expected to, although the logic behind removing an optional "show desktop" icon for the taskbar eludes me.

I'm pretty sure I've disabled all the security annoyances I need to, except for the firewall nag that pops up after each boot. Anyone know how to disable that notification after disabling the firewall?

There's also an Edge security annoyance I haven't found a fix for... being questioned about the trustworthiness of downloaded files such as exe's.... although that's probably no big deal because I won't be using Edge for browsing anyway.

The Windows 11 taskbar and start menu were close to being deal-breakers. I'm not sure if it's been mentioned here, but ExplorerPatcher can return the traditional taskbar buttons along with some other tweaks. I removed most of the crap from the start menu so it just opens up with an alphabetical programs list and none of the "recommended" crap.

I guess the days of opening menu items with a mouse click are behind us (referring to a program's menu bar items) and we'll spend the rest of our days navigating through iphone/android style menus no matter how dumb it is if you're using a mouse and monitor. Now if only there was a home-screen button like the one on my phone.....
Many/most sub-menus seem to ignore mouse clicks now and simply open when the cursor is hovered over them, so one of my favourite tweaks for fixing the menu hovering lunacy now breaks them instead (using a long value for HKEY_USERS\......\Control Panel\Desktop\MenuShowDelay).
Menu lists that expand/collapse by clicking on an arrow still respond to a mouse click, obviously, but so many more of them feels wrong to my brain for a desktop OS, although I'm not quite sure why that is yet.

Switching to Linux for my day-to day OS has been fairly painless so far. I've not used Linux before so I had no idea what the degree of difficulty would be. Obviously there's some learning involved but that's what search engines are for. I went with MX Linux rather than Mint because Mint doesn't include drivers for my MB and CPU/graphics yet, whereas MX Linux does, so that was the easiest way to jump that hurdle. The one program I didn't want to replace is working fine under WINE (aside from MPC-HC which I'll miss), so now I'm ready to tackle the frame serving obstacle.... Avisynth (and/or VapourSynth, which I haven't used before anyway).

The internet seems to be generally of the opinion that Avisynth running on WINE works quite well, but what about the native Linux version? I know nothing about installing or using it, or even if it uses the same plugins as the Windows version, so any advice would be very welcome.

[Emulgator]

And may i mention WinSetView for useful Explorer settings which are hard to tweak via registry in Win10
Finally getting rid globally of "File Type" column, making room for my preferenced columns: file name, file size, change date.

[VoodooFX]

Originally Posted by hello_hello

The internet seems to be generally of the opinion that Avisynth running on WINE works quite well, but what about the native Linux version? I know nothing about installing or using it, or even if it uses the same plugins as the Windows version, so any advice would be very welcome.

For Linux you would need Linux plugins.

[Katie Boundary]

Originally Posted by StainlessS

Oh no!, its started again.
Microsoft reportedly shows full-screen Windows 11 upgrade ads with two 'yes' buttons:- https://www.neowin.net/news/microsof...o-yes-buttons/

Windows isn't the product anymore... we are.

[flossy_cake]

Originally Posted by StainlessS

Windows 11 upgrade ads with two 'yes' buttons:- https://www.neowin.net/news/microsof...o-yes-buttons/

It's not just that there are 2 yes buttons

It's that the word yes has been replaced with got it