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Not for nothing thinking back in the day when I was a programmer, one of the earliest lessons I needed to learn was reading core dumps to get memory offsets of the failing code. Life has certainly changed in the world of programming, some for the good, some for the bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was a COBOL programmer in the 90's, I still get called upon to do COBOL now in 2020, probably again in 2021. Although it was much easier than what I need to know these days.
 
I was a COBOL programmer in the 90's, I still get called upon to do COBOL now in 2020, probably again in 2021. Although it was much easier than what I need to know these days.
I still remember dealing with S0C7 and S0C4's for IBM Cobol
 
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is there any thread about debloating macos around here?
Yep, perhaps you were trying to get cute and imply that macos doesn't need debloating, but low and behold there are ;) Just search up CleanmyMac There's an older one also called monolingual (not sure if I mangeled that name) that was used for a long time to remove unwanted stuff out of macOS.
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You had to read core dumps to get the memory offsets to find the instruction that caused the error and the cross reference that with a compiled copy of the source code. Those were the days :)
...and the source code was stored on a deck of punch cards. Ah... the good old days when the toughest decision was, "do I add sequence numbers or live dangerously and don't."
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...and the source code was stored on a deck of punch cards. Ah... the good old days when the toughest decision was, "do I add sequence numbers or live dangerously and don't." View attachment 1709629

Looking for smudges on Marksense cards. Ick...

EDIT: Nightmares over smudges. I had one deck that refused to load properly. It was a batched system so you went to the 'computer center' with your rubber banded together deck of cards as if you were a heretic going to church. (One never addresses the hardware directly, you only conversed with the acolytes) You submitted the culmination of your life's goals unceremoniously to the box marked 'JOBS' (as I remember). And the wait began. The next morning, you had to go to the same 'computer center', and look at the printout hanging on the wall. It was sorted by your 'student number', and you followed that number to the right to get the job number, and see if the job lived to finish it's life, or died. It listed time to execution, and how many pages were printed, and the final result of the job. I can't remember the many options, but some were really not good.

After praying to the list, you went to the system of shelves that held 'the output'. If any...

The stacks were arranged by the first x-number of the job numbers that were active that night, plus some that no one bothered to pickup. If you were lucky, there was some printer paper enclosing your deck of cards. If there wasn't any, it was a bad thing...

You took the shreds of your future back to where ever you worked on your incantations, and poured over the output, IF you had any. Then you started pulling the cards you needed to change and grabbed fresh ones, and carefully marked them, and inserted them IN ORDER, and rubber banded the stack and trudged back to the Computer Center to start it all over again.

If you had a 'bad deck', and had checked every card in it, and it still blew up, you could submit the deck to be 'read', and get a printout of what the deck said to the reader. It was to be avoided unless you had the time to blow a whole day waiting for the output list of what the all seeing eye makes out of that precious deck. The worst outcome being that the deck was exactly as you programmed it to do. Oops...

And today? It's so much more simplistic. We can run hundreds of programs in a minute, debugging programs at will. Proof that those 'good old days' weren't really so good in some regards. :cool:
 
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I just buy more or faster hardware.
It seems like you think that debloating a Windows system is only about eeking out more performance out of low-end hardware. While that is a reasonable assumption to make, it doesn't capture the wider reasons why some of us do it.

Yes, on the low-end, I've taken a $100 cyber-Monday Asus Vivobook E203MA with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage that was unusable out of the box with less than 4GB storage remaining after updates. After debloating, 12GB storage free with performance slightly better than base-level chromebooks.

On the high-end, A ThinkPad X1. The primary benefits weren't the increases to available storage or to performance, but in battery life and cellular data usage. Very helpful when using a smartphone as a hotspot.
 
It seems like you think that debloating a Windows system is only about eeking out more performance out of low-end hardware. While that is a reasonable assumption to make, it doesn't capture the wider reasons why some of us do it.

Yes, on the low-end, I've taken a $100 cyber-Monday Asus Vivobook E203MA with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage that was unusable out of the box with less than 4GB storage remaining after updates. After debloating, 12GB storage free with performance slightly better than base-level chromebooks.

On the high-end, A ThinkPad X1. The primary benefits weren't the increases to available storage or to performance, but in battery life and cellular data usage. Very helpful when using a smartphone as a hotspot.

I used to optimize financial and other software to run in 8K of RAM. Or write machine code to make software run faster.

I have a computer on my desk with 260 words of RAM. You work with what you have unless you can just buy faster hardware.
 
I don't debloat my Windows machines to save space. My primary reasons are to A.) get unnecessary things from phoning home and B.) get unnecessary things from using CPU cycles. If those require total removal of the offending software component, so be it.

Windows has a long and sad history of bloatware and spyware. Comet Cursors anyone?

I don't debloat to optimize my system to run in a constraint system.

Note that I also debloat my gaming PC which has an 8 core CPU and 32GB of RAM. I'm not running out of resources but I'd be silly to let unnecessary crap use up some of those resources.

My computer system administration decisions these days are much more driven by security and privacy than performance, the latter which was a greater concern many, many years ago. I assume this will continue for the foreseeable future.

Heck, I don't even worry about performance limits on my PHONE these days.
 
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I don't debloat my Windows machines to save space. My primary reasons are to A.) get unnecessary things from phoning home and B.) get unnecessary things from using CPU cycles. If those require total removal of the offending software component, so be it.

Windows has a long and sad history of bloatware and spyware. Comet Cursors anyone?

I don't debloat to optimize my system to run in a constraint system.

Note that I also debloat my gaming PC which has an 8 core CPU and 32GB of RAM. I'm not running out of resources but I'd be silly to let unnecessary crap use up some of those resources.

My computer system administration decisions these days are much more driven by security and privacy than performance, the latter which was a greater concern many, many years ago. I assume this will continue for the foreseeable future.

Heck, I don't even worry about performance limits on my PHONE these days.

I used to do this stuff. It's just more efficient now to leave it there.
 
I cut and paste one line into PowerShell, click the debloat button and come back two minutes later when it's done. Compared to pretty much any other Windows system administration task, this is a no-brainer.

Again, it is not about efficiency. IT'S ABOUT SECURITY AND PRIVACY.

Whenever I sign up for a new online service, I always go into the user preferences section and turn pretty much everything off (notifications, diagnostic data uploads, whatever).

The debloat script is less effort than managing my browser bookmarks or disabling a newly-installed iOS app from junking up my screen with notifications, chewing up my battery/cellular data with excessive background app refreshing.

If you feel like leaving your PC with all of its lovely bloatware, that's fine by me. It's your computer. I just happen to care about security and privacy -- perhaps a little more than the average consumer.
 
I cut and paste one line into PowerShell, click the debloat button and come back two minutes later. Compared to pretty much any other Windows system administration task, this is a no-brainer.

Again, it is not about efficiency. IT'S ABOUT SECURITY AND PRIVACY.

Whenever I sign up for a new online service, I always go into the user preferences section and turn pretty much everything off (notifications, diagnostic data uploads, whatever).

The debloat script is less effort than managing my browser bookmarks or disabling a newly-installed iOS app from junking up my screen with notifications, chewing up my battery/cellular data with excessive background app refreshing.

If you feel like leaving your PC with all of its lovely bloatware, that's fine by me. It's your computer.

Great. I'm happy you feel that way.
 
Here's a couple of examples of bloatware - the first example is an extreme example that isn't a real world example, but it does illustrate some of the bloatware, mostly with RGB controlling software


Here's Chris Titus Tech's video of tweaking the system for gaming

This seems a bit extreme, in that he's recommending a custom ISO, which is not something I'm wanting to do.
GNs' take on icue software was interesting.

Since I have a corsair aio, I installed the icue software. Through the icue software, as it's the only way to get custom profiles for the pump and fans. I am generally not a fan of "extra" software and keep my installation as lean as possible, but sometimes, one has got to do what is needed.:(
 
Interesting video where the author mentions that MS has made it harder to disabled Defender. My opinion on debloating has been evolving and basically I find that I have little to zero issues running windows in a stock and it seems to me that you are more likely to incur head scratching issues, when you modify the system - just my uneducated $.02

As for this video and defender, I can see why MS was doing this as it seems too many people were disabling it and risking infection. I've had no issues with Defender, and I find it probably more light weight now then 3rd party antivirus products.

 
Interesting video where the author mentions that MS has made it harder to disabled Defender. My opinion on debloating has been evolving and basically I find that I have little to zero issues running windows in a stock and it seems to me that you are more likely to incur head scratching issues, when you modify the system - just my uneducated $.02

As for this video and defender, I can see why MS was doing this as it seems too many people were disabling it and risking infection. I've had no issues with Defender, and I find it probably more light weight now then 3rd party antivirus products.


Doesn't installing 3rd party Anti-Virus like McAfee, Norton, etc disable Defender? Or is parts of it still running in background?
 
Doesn't installing 3rd party Anti-Virus like McAfee, Norton, etc disable Defender? Or is parts of it still running in background?
Yes and in the video, the author shows an app to basically "fool" windows into believing there's antivirus protection.

This particular Yter is one that does a lot of videos that turn off various components of windows, and provides debloat scripts in the name of streamlining windows. Installing an actual antivirus app kind of defeats his philosophy since that would consume cpu cycles and slow down his system
 
Yeah i sub to his ytube channel. Lots of insightful info. I watched the one he talked about that script. I feel like it makes more sense in a business environment. And that's where his perspective seems to focus. Some feels like overkill for avg user.
 
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Yes and in the video, the author shows an app to basically "fool" windows into believing there's antivirus protection.

This particular Yter is one that does a lot of videos that turn off various components of windows, and provides debloat scripts in the name of streamlining windows. Installing an actual antivirus app kind of defeats his philosophy since that would consume cpu cycles and slow down his system
In the latest britech09 video, he shows how to turn off defender using gpedit. I did it and I'll take my chances. At least it's a non-destructive operation, and defender can easily be turned on again.

I've come to figure out when there is random, frenetic unknown system activity, one of the culprits is a defender quick scan.
 
when there is random, frenetic unknown system activity, one of the culprits is a defender quick scan.
At that point its too late. You'll be infected or worse, your data is will be encrypted.

How much of a speed improvement will you get? I suspect not that much. I'm pretty happy with my performance, so much so, I'd prefer to keep it protected
 
At that point its too late. You'll be infected or worse, your data is will be encrypted.

How much of a speed improvement will you get? I suspect not that much. I'm pretty happy with my performance, so much so, I'd prefer to keep it protected
On my desktop overall, these random periods didn't last very long and it was obvious something was going on as the disc light on the case was solid for a period of time....however, after some experimentation I decided to turn it back on. My laptop is next for this tweak. I'm sure this will make a bigger impact on my laptop.
 
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