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Some of us have solved the problem by performing a "clean Linux install" instead.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For a certain kind of computer buyer, the first thing you always did with a new laptop or desktop from a company like Dell, HP, Acer, or Asus wasn't to open the box and start using it.

Computer manufacturers often distributed buggy, pointless, or redundant third-party software ("bloatware" or "crapware") to help subsidize the cost of the hardware.

This might pass some savings on to the user, but once they owned their computer, that software mainly existed to consume disk space and RAM, something that cheaper PCs could rarely afford to spare.

Computer manufacturers also installed all kinds of additional support software, registration screens, and other things that generally extended the setup process and junked up your Start menu and desktop.

The "out-of-box experience" (OOBE, in Microsoft parlance) for Windows 7 walked users through the process of creating a local user account, naming their computer, entering a product key, creating a "Homegroup" (a since-discontinued local file and media sharing mechanism), and determining how Windows Update worked.

Due to the Microsoft Store, you'll find several third-party apps taking up a ton of space in your Start menu by default, even if they aren't technically downloaded and installed until you run them for the first time.

The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I'm an old fart using Debian. My wife needed a new laptop, we bought an Acer Aspire 5. That thing was horribly loaded and invasive. Github found me BloateyNosy which, apart from making me think of Boaty McBoatface, actually did an excellent job of removing bloat. So much so, I haven't loaded Linux Mint for her. Will see how it goes.

https://github.com/builtbybel/BloatyNosy

I was in the "windows is bloated to hell and back" camp since my last experience with it.

But I recently did a clean install of Windows 11 home, and it turned out to be just fine. Instagram and WhatsApp were the only two apps in the start menu, and I uninstalled them without any issue.

I'm also liking the overall UI. After some minor tweaking in settings, it's really neat and minimalist. The screen real estate is used efficiently, unlike Linux DEs where ~30% is gone in odd paddings and margins.