Damn, imagine never having used a sane OS in your life ever
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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Yep. Over a decade ago when I just started using Linux, somebody posted something on a forum that I have remembered ever since: "suddenly I realized that the software is on my side!"
Yeah, I'm used to having my config in git. Buuuut I guess non-devs aren't really used to that workflow.
This is something I'd love to have for the past decade or so, but as I'm now transitioning to Linux I hope to not have much of this problem anymore.
Nice of you to create this though, and I share your tiredness of settings being changed behind our backs...
I’m on Linux and I was going to shit all over Windows but realized I could use this on a few servers that I fuck with and constantly break.
I enjoy using NixOS with Impermanence for servers.
settings can't be changed if you nuke them from orbit and create them fresh on every boot. To get the same behavior on windows, you'd probably need an image-based system and neutered updating
the way to do that on windows would be using a "group policy"
That's a cat & mouse game. A german investigation of Windows 10 data privacy back then was named project SiSyPHuS for a reason. It never ends.
I set a static IP for my Windows partition and block it from internet with my firewall. It’s hostile malware that must be quarantined. My Linux partition has a different IP that is not blocked.
On a related note, I jack up my Mint install a few times a year with nobody to blame but myself. I recently reinstalled it with btrfs, Timeshift with automatic snapshots, and btrfs-grub so I can boot from a snapshot instead of troubleshooting or reinstalling. I realize other distros like openSUSE are more or less setup like this out of the box or offer full immutability, but I like Mint.
I salute the effort, but it would really drive the point home if you also tracked changes to the settings available as well, as in settings disappearing and new settings appearing. The default values for those new settings is also crucial, and finding out about a setting no longer being available could also be useful.
What does “all known Windows privacy and telemetry settings” entail and mean?
Registry and group policy?
Is this sourced from a shared effort project of known stuff, or does this project track it's own, and would need notice and updates of new settings?
It's theoretically possible to extract all the GPO effected registry keys from the ADMX files Microsoft releases, but yeah, I have serious doubts that any tool like this will be able to just detect and track every distinct setting. Let alone accurately identify what each does. I'm sure there's at least one setting that's been carried over from the "stuff it in an .ini in a system folder" days.
But if there is some community sourced list for settings, where they're stored, and how they work that would be amazing!
Can this keep num lock engaged? I swear my biggest frustration with windows lately is it's habit of randomly and arbitrarily turning off numlock after I've turned it on. I never turn off numlock while working. I never use the number pad arrows. I prefer the number pad numbers and use them practically all day. And yet, several times a day I find my cursor moving around the screen instead of typing a number because windows decided that it got to control the numlock function instead of me and the dedicated light up key designed for that function that has worked fine for me for decades before.
I will only use windows in a VM without networking, it will get only shared folder that it can't write to but can read from.
And even then, if i absolutely 100% can't run it through bottles/proton and alternatives do not work either.