I generally agree with your sentiment but I'm calling bullshit on a 300gb install. I work in a computer repair shop and load win11 more than 10x a week. Stock install with 23h2 and all updates, even with a GPU (big driver) is always under 50gb. A loaded down version of Pro with hyper V and a bunch of other shit including office is never even 60gb.
And unused RAM is wasted RAM. I have seen win11 run on 2gb ddr3. As you ask for more RAM, it will unload and make space for the new request.
And unused RAM is wasted RAM. I have seen win11 run on 2gb ddr3. As you ask for more RAM, it will unload and make space for the new request.
Personally I rather have the RAM left over for the applications to use up front, instead of the OS taking it all and then begrudgingly letting some of it go when asked.
The only thing you can't disable here are the vulns, technically MS is obligated to patch though so I'd be interested which ones apply, I'm assuming there's a lot of vulns in certain features. My Windows SSD is 60GB fully loaded with apps and drivers. Search and other stuff are just basic config items and plenty of UI replacements and tweaks to be had.
My Debian servers and laptop run way lighter as expected, unfortunately I need the custom hardware support of Windows for some software critical to my livelihood. All I do is deploy Windows in the same way I'd deploy and manage an enterprise workstation. No store, no live, no "apps," no overlay bs or news feeds, just pure Windows. Gotta say I prefer 11 so far to 10, the window snapping and some other changes have been good for productivity, which is really the only thing I care about since I'd switch that machine to Debian in a heartbeat if I didn't have a use case.
Pretty much the only thing Windows has going for it is hardware support, and that's purely down to manufacturers not supporting Linux so I can't even give MS kudos for that.
If my simracing hardware ever gets decent support I'm switching all my machines over.