Now you should have a usable, fast Windows 11 device with the minimum Microsoft bullshit hanging around.

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Step 15: Restore your documents/pictures/music/miscellaneous backed-up data. Now's a good time to make sure you have a comprehensive and tested backup scheme for your data too.

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Step 14: Everything else. I've used Ninite for decades to bootstrap a bare computer into usability. Check the boxes, get an executable that will download and install the apps with the best defaults. Only criticism is the free version dumps a bunch of icons on your desktop.

My personal absolute minimum app list is this:
Vivaldi
Firefox
WinDirStat
7-Zip
VLC
Notepad++

For utility, I'll add these:
Paint.NET
IrfanView
LibreOffice
FileZilla

You can keep the Ninite executable around and rerun it later to update existing installs. The EXE isn't locked to a specific machine, so if you're doing several machines you can just dump it on the install flash drive and run it directly.

Manufacturer utilities like Dell's SupportAssist can be okay, but you've got to keep a close eye on them to make sure they don't do something dumb like install McAfee for "free".

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Step 13: Verify Windows activation. Settings -> System -> About -> Product Key and Activation. The system has probably already activated itself in the background. If not, do it now. Or not. I'm not the software police. You can also use the MassGrave Activation Scripts, at your own risk.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK: Massgrave.dev has published the "Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS)" on MassGravel GitHub: https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts These can be used to activate Windows and Office through a couple different methods.

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Step 12: Install/run Privacy.Sexy and WinAeroTweaker.

Privacy.Sexy can break things, so I normally just use the "Standard" setting. I've had good luck with its revert options when it DID break things, but your mileage will vary.

WinAeroTweaker will restore some older Windows defaults to their better options. Once you find settings you like you can save and load those settings to a simple file.

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Step 11: Install Vivaldi, set as default browser, configure as desired. For me that's a dark mode theme, crank the built-in ad-blocker to max, make Settings a tab instead of its own window, setting the search engines to DuckDuckGo, and install the extensions for 1Password, PrivacyBadger, and uBlock Origin.

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Step 10: Run the RemoveWindowsAI script again, because "no" isn't a term Microsoft understands.

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Step 9: Update Windows. Settings -> Windows Updates -> Check for Updates and Advanced Options -> Optional Updates. Just grab everything, get to the latest version. Check "Receive updates for other Microsoft products" too. This covers MS Office and PowerShell. This will take a while, and make sure the bullshit in step 6 didn't get re-enabled.

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Step 8: Install PowerShell7/Terminal/PowerToys, configure to taste. You can install MS Office here too, if you need it. If you don't, we'll install LibreOffice later.

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