Don’t use a pre-installed OS, ever. You don’t know who’s had their hand in it between the manufacturer and you.

Wipe it and install from scratch; Windows, Linux, whatever.

BCUninstaller is pretty good

Yes. Linux.

The windows installer, just wipe the thing and reinstall

I’ve heard good things about privacy.sexy.

using a third-party utility to forcibly remove or delete programs is somewhat risky and may screw something up or otherwise cause more problems than you believe it to be ‘fixing’.

nearly all the ‘bundleware’ on mass market systems is well-behaved (as far as uninstalling goes), these days. just uninstall the crud you don’t want. leave stuff designed for the hardware, though, like hotkeys and osd and whatnot. if you’re unsure if something is needed, ask someone knowledgeable.

then go through windows settings and turn off the crap you don’t want or use tried-and-true shutup10 (which works with 11, too) and its ‘recommended’ settings. note that disabling settings in it may require you to use that utility again later to re-enable something (some settings can no longer be modified from windows itself unless switched-back by su10), so keep the shutup10 executable around in case it’s needed later.

https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/

😛

https://www.linuxmint.com/

windows generally collects all unnecessary data in a folder, including some system files that aren’t required, its called system 32 (I think originally it held 32 bit programs in 64 bit systems, which were obsolete and just “failsafe” options) but they don’t want you to know this so they hid it deep in the system and also removed your permission to delete this.

Yeah, Linux

If you’re running Windows, do a fresh install of stock Windows version, because manufacturers like HP often add keyloggers and shit into their own tools.

https://ubuntu.com/