so here's the situation you've been
concerned about
windows 10's privacy or lack thereof for
a while now
but while you've tried linux you
just can't make the jump maybe some
software you need won't run properly
or maybe you're just a fan of windows
other than the
privacy problems what can you do why not
ameliorate it yes my friends you
can completely fix the problems with
windows 10
and remove the unnecessary garbage that
weighs
it down all by yourself
so let's see how it's done and
what cost it comes at
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[Music]
what does ameliorate mean anyway well
according to the dictionary it's a verb
meaning to make something bad or
unsatisfactory
better and that certainly seems to be
the aim for windows 10
ameliorated edition a small project
that's actually been around since all
the way back in 2017.
now not a whole lot of information is
available surrounding who is actually
behind it
but some old links point to actrons a
90s kid who specifically calls out
technology social science philosophy
psychology neurology film and anime
analysis
and cringe as their topics of interest
ameliorated edition seems to be an
offshoot of their windows 10 install
script which originally
merely disabled things like windows
update and made adjustments to windows
explorer
as newer windows builds came out though
with more deeply integrated telemetry
a more direct approach was necessary to
stop windows from bloody phoning home
and giving them all my information
ameliorated edition straight up removes
windows update
cortana activation
microsoft edge windows media player and
all
apex uwp applications from the install
not disabled removed no longer present
what that means is there's a total size
reduction
of roughly two gigs now of course
removing such deeply
rooted components requires the
introduction of replacements in certain
cases
killing cortana for example cripples the
start menu and
especially windows search so classic
shell is used as a replacement
and there's more that you'll have to
give up too directx 12
may not be fully supported due to
windows update not being a thing and
of course you're stuck without automatic
updates
in fact the update process itself is a
bit of a bear that requires you to
disconnect from the internet reactivate
windows update temporarily and so on and
so forth
suffice to say while this version of
windows is focused on
privacy it's a little lighter on
security though as the website claims
most of the commonly exploitable
applications have been removed
anyway so that point may be less
important than you might
think but enough talk why don't we take
a look for ourselves and
see what else we're giving up in the
name of
improved privacy the first thing i
noticed is that
gone is windows mail who uses windows
mail
like how crazy do you have to be to not
just use a web browser for your mail
like okay boomer enjoy your outlook
so no windows mail no windows store
and no microsoft edge all we've got down
here is
file explorer that's it actually i'm
noticing some more changes now too
where's all the
where's all the drop downs for file
explorer this feels like it's gonna be
very very different also we've got the
classic windows vista and seven style
start menu and of course
because there's no edge anthony has
helpfully thrown a firefox uh shortcut
on the desktop
actually the default is duckduckgo
really yes is that the firefox default
or is that
windows 10 ameliorated edition no that's
an ameliorated edition thing
actually firefox as well as thunderbird
uh
only office and vlc media player were
all pre-installed by the operating
system
i've never heard of only office
apparently it's a fork of
libreoffice ha it's very microsoft
office looking
let's try and find some tech tips here
linus tech tips wow what's what's my
amazon page this is a secondhand
titan x okay we need to update this
colton
i'm here what's up oh wow you're there
that was so cool can i summon people
just by like
saying their names oh ltdstore.com
hey this is a sweet shirt by the way
guys okay what else can we try here okay
so
where are where's my file drop down this
is a modification to windows explorer
called
i think old explorer that kind of
restores the
windows 7 style of windows explorer so
it doesn't have the traditional ribbon
bar it doesn't have any of the other
stuff it's just all basically
rewritten and there's actually a config
file you can change to
customize it yourself i used it for a
little while just kind of out of
curiosity
it's just a preference thing i feel but
they used it here because
some of the changes that they made to
windows also affected explorer
so they had to use old explorer to kind
of patch it up
well i can tell you now there's only one
thing that i would care about them
fixing
and that's if i search for something and
i go to this folder
when i click up folder you
bastards that's not what i want i want
it to go
up a folder if i wanted to go back to
the previous page
i would press back up folder means up
one folder in the directory structure
so this looks like the horrible windows
10 type settings menu except
there's even less stuff in here like
what's up with that
well a lot of it is stuff that was tied
in with that telemetry stuff so windows
update
uh gaming like the xbox stuff that was
tied in with with the telemetry and the
phoning home
so pretty much anything that
qualifies with that would also
be cut can i even set a screen saver
i think so it's under display isn't it
i don't know is that wait here it is
here it is i got it i got it
so you can't search for it i guess that
would probably be
because they gutted the regular search
as well
yeah without cortana then windows search
kind of just
dies huh i actually didn't know that
this bubble screensaver was still built
into windows
this is a windows vista classic right
here this was
so cool at the time ooh 3d acceleration
on the desktop
now it looks kind of faked actually i
just want to watch these bubbles for
days
we've evolved past screen savers at this
point as a species
this is weird too windows tab doesn't
cycle through things for whatever reason
all tab does but why doesn't windows tab
okay well that's cool i guess that's
fine
i haven't really done any benchmarking
but it does seem to be a lot
snappier than uh like it should like a
standard windows 10 install would be
i mean the start menu sure opens right
away which is
pretty nice but i mean how bad is this
search so let's search for like
counter strike hole that's rough
not being able to find something that is
literally a shortcut on the desktop
is terrible no worse than the built-in
one in windows 10 mind you
i think it is possible to set the search
folders for uh
classic sheller i guess it's called open
shell now so if you right click on the
start menu
go to settings you can kind of configure
everything there but by default i think
it's not set up to do that it's just for
the
start menu itself got it okay search the
internet search programs and settings
search files it is set to search
everything sir oh
well i've got uh i've got no excuses for
it then
so what what else can we try here i mean
like
well a game will run fine right like
let's play doom
i mean doom should run there's a default
password why would that be
because the user account that you're
logged into right now
is straight up a user it's not an
administrator
why you know you're no longer getting
the security patches right
most security vulnerabilities happen
because users are administrators
right and there's really no compelling
reason to be an administrator outside of
just installing programs and if you know
the administrative password then you can
just put it in anytime you need to do
that kind of like you would on a mac
yeah i should just switch to mac between
spotlight and just
finder wasn't so bad i'd consider it
there's
uh alternatives you can get pathfinder
is one oh okay
it's uh it's paid software though but
it's actually pretty nice everything
paid on mac
yeah because you can afford it you
bought a mac
all right yeah we're running at like 90
fps or whatever
yeah it's totally fine ultra nightmare
take that monsters why don't you try a
directx 12 game
oh well i guess that's probably not
gonna work then hey um
okay what's uh good night i've got
shadow of the tomb raider on there oh
yeah that'll do it
oh weird there's no there's no system
tray pop up
that might just be an artifact of
classic shell i'm not entirely sure it's
been a hot minute but
it could also be that we don't have any
like hidden icons at all so
i can't find any way to hide them i'm in
the settings now and it's just nope
you just relocate them even the
relocation animations are slightly
different
so you might be right it might just be a
classic shell thing let's play some
shadow of the tomb raider directx 12.
here we go boys
why would windows update affect that
apparently there's extensions to directx
12 that come down from windows update
from time to time
so the idea is if you've got a game that
uses an extension
that you don't have then when the
directx 12 just won't work properly
well shadow of the tomb raider is a bit
of an older game
and it seems to be working properly at
least in the menu which
is rendered in engines so that would
lead me to believe that it's gonna run
okay so officially directx 12 is a no-go
but unofficially if you try it on a game
by game basis it might actually work
just fine then
yeah you're not supposed to stand in
here but i like it new task managers
here that's nice to see got your gpu
usage and all that good stuff although i
don't see
temps in here yet so this is like at
least one iteration back
it's actually based on windows 10 1903.
got it it should be possible to do it
with 1909
but the official images well official
images
are 1903. okay you might notice down in
the bottom right corner that you've got
an internet as disconnected icon
oh i do yes and that's because windows
can't know that i have an internet
connection
right because it's not phoning home it
can't
got it so it only knows that you have
local connectivity
interesting so even though all the
telemetry stuff
has supposedly been removed we still
actually need to fool windows
into thinking that
it has no reason to even use it because
i have no internet connection
yeah oh creative cloud probably won't
know i have an internet connection
either
yeah oh i bet there's going to be lots
of stuff
that kind of glitches out because it
thinks you have no internet connection
because they can't ping their server
they can't phone home so it turns off
telemetry for
other applications as well i think adobe
is one of those applications that hooks
into windows
api for that and the api itself has been
removed
i open up creative cloud desktop it goes
oh you got no internet connection
can't do stuff by the way we've got a
new version available go ahead and
update
we'll see if it gra gets it let's see if
you guys get a water bottle on
ltteststore.com
okay this is not gonna finish it's been
sitting here forever now
i take back everything i said about
quality adobe software okay
so with that closed out we've got svc
host like task manager
there's wow there's really not a lot in
here then
yeah and in keeping with the spirit of
the operating system i used envy clean
stall to install the nvidia driver as
well so we only have the bare minimum
for that as well
wow i guess that explains why it just
feels so snappy like you know how
sometimes even on a fast machine
you'll go to open local disk c and it'll
take like
10 or 15 seconds for no apparent reason
yeah because it's got to like update
some log in the background that's got to
go off to microsoft and all that kind of
crap
it makes you wonder how much stuff is
actually just kind of caked on in there
in the like vanilla version of windows
you know no kidding like even when it
does need a second to open up and
populate a directory list
it's a second not 10 seconds
yeah accessing uh the vault or any of
our other servers
usually takes like a
long time this is great though like i'm
in bench den right now and it's
responsive enough considering that it's
running on spinning rust and
running over a gigabit connection yeah
hey
ms paint's still here ms paint is not
spyware
i knew i knew you were good all along
this is pretty cool you get all the same
benefits that you would from an
officially available slimmed down
version of windows like an embedded
version which we've actually talked
about before when we did a video on
windows 9 plus more since all the
telemetry is
stripped out but legally speaking
this is all something of a gray area so
to speak
now according to the website the project
is perfectly legal based on eu directive
2009
24 which they say gives them a pass on
interoperability grounds by downloading
images with telemetry
including activation removed from the
website itself though
you are essentially committing piracy
however it is possible to do this
legally
if you modify a windows image for
yourself and they've got
full documentation on the process
available
along with a repository of open source
scripts that they use
so supposedly you with your windows
license
and a download of windows 10 1909
should be able to do it for yourself
although the pre-built images are all
based on
1903. legality aside the utility of a
windows image like this
is pretty great for someone who's
looking to run it in a vm
on a linux machine for example for
everyday use
i don't know if you don't need some of
the things that we found
didn't work quite right and if you don't
mind jumping through some hoops whenever
you want to
update or run something that needs
administrator permissions
then sure otherwise honestly
our better recommendations are to just
give in and run windows or
just run linux if you want privacy
without the hassle
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