OCD, privacy and Windows 11

Questions
1

Hi.

I have (actual diagnosed OCD, this will be relevant later)

Privacy has always been something I have been conscious about, and it has always given me a fair bit of anxiety. As my privacy “journey” progressed, the anxiety aspect of privacy has slowly disappeared, as my threat level is pretty low and I have found solutions/alternatives etc to most of the most “predatory” services, however, my biggest issue I have now is WINDOWS.

I only use Windows on my gaming PC, and that gaming PC is used 99% only for gaming, but it really bothers me and gives me severe anxiety, because I have read a lot of people saying it is spying on you. I have tried Linux (specifically Bazzite), and while it was great, I REALLY missed Nvidia RTX HDR, which was like half the reason of buying a Nvidia GPU, especially now that I have a really nice OLED monitor. So I guess my question is, how much does Windows 11 really “spy” on you? For reference I am using Windows 11 Pro, and I use Chris Titus Winutil (the open source one that is the only one people should be using), and I block and monitor all DNS requests with NextDNS, I only allow the ones required for updates (which are quite a few, unfortunately) , but this is all honestly so exhausting and I feel it removes a degree of fun of using my computer. Should I just give up on using RTX HDR and install Bazzite? I have read about KDE Inverse Tonemapping and how it could be better than Windows, but there aren’t really any comparisons anywhere and to me it just looked like SDR on Windows without RTX HDR. I could also get Windows 11 Enterprise with some effort. I have been thinking about this for weeks and i’m not really getting anywhere, so I really appreciate any help :slight_smile:

2

I think its fine to use Windows for Gaming only, because most games have trackers included anyway and you also probably don’t do private stuff in games.

2 Likes
3

I dual boot on my PC: Windows for work, Linux for personal stuff. I can’t remember now if I use separate hard drives, but you could also just partition the drive. I use MX Linux and it wasn’t difficult to do.

4 Likes
4

It’s not quite “spying” but Windows collect quite some data by default.

If you have a Windows system set up in the EU and do not have a latest laptop with copilot feature just do not use a MS account, use only a local one to log on Windows, disable data collection in the settings and eventually use the group policy guide.

You will be fine for your threat model, don’t stress too much your OCD for this.

1 Like
5

Dual booting is the way to go.[1][2]

  1. I prefer CachyOS over Bazzite, but that’s me. ↩︎

  2. If you give CachyOS a chance, here’s everything you need for gaming. ↩︎

2 Likes
6

(I am OP, lost the credentials since I tried making an anonymous account because of personal info shared, if mods see this you can delete the original account if that helps you in any way with server costs or something :slight_smile: ) Thank you so much (and everyone else!), do you think it is worth getting Enterprise over Pro? It wouldn’t cost me anything but it’s a little inconvenient)

Also really appreciate it, thank you so much, it means more than you probably think :slight_smile:

2 Likes
7

I don’t think switching from Pro to Enterprise is worth the trouble for you.
Windows telemetry leftover are probably already blocked by NextDNS anyway.

1 Like
8

Thank you so much, genuinely really really appreciate it :heart:

1 Like