So here’s a situation. You’ve been concerned about Windows 10s 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?
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What does ameliorate mean any way?
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 and 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 nearly disabled things like Windows Update and made adjustments to WindowsExplorer. 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 getting them all my information.
Ameliorated edition straight up removes Windows Update, Cortana, Activation, Microsoft Edge, Windows Media Player, and all .appx 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. The last 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 were giving up in the name of improved privacy? The first thing I noticed is that gone is Windows Mail. Who uses Windows Mail?
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 dropdowns for File Explorer? This feels like it’s gonna be very, very different. Also we’ve got the classic Windows Vista and 7-style Start menu. And of course because there’s no Edge, Anthony has helpfully thrown a Firefox shortcut on the desktop.
Hey, this is a sweet shirt by the way, guys.
Okay, what else can we try here?
Okay, so where’s my File
dropdown?
- 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 want it 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.
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 prebuilt 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 wanna update or run something that needs administrative 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. Speaking of no hassle in your privacy areas,
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