Windows 11 is freely available through official channels and only disables some personalization GUIs if you don’t activate. But you can still customize things without the GUI. There may be other gotchas to force you to pay up, but piracy isn’t even necessary.
muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 2 days ago
By piracy I mean modifying some registry keys to trick the free version into thinking its activated
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’m not sure Microsoft would agree, but I feel that’s fair game since the registry is readily available and accessible to any user. It seems clear that Microsoft now treats Windows as a marketing tool to get people to subscribe to their other services, anyway. The way they cram marketing and adverts into every process and corner of the OS, it’s a wonder they are still trying to charge at all.
muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 2 days ago
U can half the size of windows if u use some of the debloater tools. U can also replace the start menu with the win7 version and that’s legitimately better.