Hey people!
I love Linux and would really prefer not needing Windows, but… Software.
I made a Qemu Image with Win11 and all the tweaks available pretty much
- local account with the offline trick
- ran Bulk Crap uninstaller and removed pretty much everything
- ran WinUtil by Chris Titus
- only security updates
- disabled unnecessary features
- removed Edge
- installed Firefox with some basic setup
- installed Simplewall, enabled Simplewall (MS Store currently does not work, no idea)
- installed all the virtIO drivers, even drag&drop and internet work
Apart from that the image is a s minimal as possible.
Its a 6GB compressed Qemu image with 60GB uncompressed afaik. The image runs using virt-managers default settings, using TianoCoer UEFI and TPM passthrough
Its in German, and no idea if Windows even allows changing the language. Its Windows 11 Professional, but doesnt include a license.
Followup
Of course I cant guarantee anything as this stuff is proprietary and hashes would probably never be the same on any install due to proprietary magic soup.
Hit me up on SimpleX if you want a link, I shouldn’t share it here
I mean… just check the code? Oh, anyways…
Windows sucks.
You could do some automated/scripted installation VM-image builder thingy and release that. Would probably also save some manual work for you. (bash script fetching install image & run qemu, autounattend.xml, etc. all nicely released on github.) And it’d be auditable.