While it's not a great defence of Windows 10 to say that other companies/products also track you, there are a couple of other points that should be made.
Firstly, as someone's already mentioned, all of the tracking stuff got backported to Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. IIRC, though, the toggle switch to reduce the amount of tracking and telemetry didn't get backported, so while you can change to 'basic telemetry only' in Windows 10, in the earlier ones you're stuck on 'full'. If you don't want to be tracked, you're stuck with Linux (as I'm pretty sure OSX will have a similar amount of tracking built in).
Additionally, the really bad stuff was only for the pre-release testing version, and it did say quite clearly in one of the agreements you had to sign to get hold of it that there were things like a keylogger included and therefore you shouldn't put any data you weren't okay with Microsoft seeing into the testing build. The reason why they'd want a keylogger is not necessarily to spy on anyone, as it would make reproducing bugs a buttload easier. Similarly, the testing version disabled CPU overclocking and people panicked that that would make it to the release version. It didn't, but it probably helped MS eliminate bad overclocks as potential reasons for a gazillion bugs.
Oh my, I have opened a can of worms, haven't I? Sorry OP, guess I might as well respond...
1. Shadorino as I understand it programs like ShutUp10 might stop working for a while after a windows update untill they get updated themselves, during which time you are still vulnerable.
2. AnyOldName3 even if " the really bad stuff" is gone(and some reports say that it's still there under the hood so I wouldn't be 100% sure) that doesn't make all the crap that's left acceptable.
3. JonnyH and AnyOldName3 while it's true microshit tried to port some of that stuff over to windows 7, in win7 it's easy(if you're carefull) to just skip installing those updates, disable the "Diagnostics Tracking" service and you're done. Things aren't baked into the system like in win 10.
Conclusion(at least for me), no matter where/what the truth might be exactly or what it will be in the future this whole fiasco was enough to make me lose trust in microshit and all it's future products forever! So I'm gonna stick with win7 until the day I die or until the day that it becomes 100% unusable anymore in those modern times.
And if the latter comes to pass then............ hopefully by that time someone will have had the balls to create a linux os with full windows compatability and had the strenght to go live in a cave for the rest of his life since microshit will obviously wanna hunt him down and sue the crap out of him for using their kernel. If not, I don't know what the f*** I'm gonna do......
My main point was that if you care about the stuff that's still there, you shouldn't be using a proprietary OS at all unless it's been audited by an organisation you trust, and they've said it doesn't phone home. From what I've read, there are a bunch of security updates for Windows 7 which (probably for no good reason) have the telemetry updates as a dependency, so even if you've skipped them in the past, they get installed once those security patches get installed and there's no way around that except also skipping the security patches. You're stuck with either Microsoft knowing what you're doing (but if they can be trusted, it's all anonymised and used solely for Good™) or a bunch of people who write malware knowing what you're doing (and as evidenced by them creating malware, they don't care about the law or ethics). I'm unconvinced that it can be disabled and then stay disabled and do what you'd expect a disabled service to do (i.e. nothing ever).
If you do feel like making the switch to something open-source, but want to keep your Windows applications, WINE, ReactOS and Mono are all open-source and probably have tasks that you might be able to help with. You don't need to be a programming wizard who's willing to spend the rest of his life in a cave hiding from Microsoft's assassins to help make Windows applications work flawlessly without running proprietary code.
Sure, if you want only 1 to 2% of windows apps/games to work then linux and wine is a perfect option, sadly that won't do it for me.
And yeah I actually knew about ReactOS and have been checking in on them every now and again for a couple of years now. Looks promising but sadly it's still just alpha, so until it becomes a full windows replacement.... I'll keep my fingers crossed but I'm not sure I have enough years left in me to see that day, I'm already 30 years old after all, looool.
When you say mono you mean that open source net framework thing or are you talking about something else that I don't about?
Yeah, I'm meaning the .NET thing. There are a bunch of .NET-only .exe files that 'just work' under Mono on other OSes. There are also other components, such as a whole development toolset which ideally will be able to do everything Visual Studio can, which is one more thing that then becomes not-Windows-only any more.
The point I was making about WINE and ReactOS, though, is that if you care about how well they work, there is genuinely stuff you can do to make them better. They got to the point they're at now by people who care trying to make them better. They'll continue getting better if people who care continue making them better. The only way that they'll become feature-complete is for people who care to make them better until they get there, but if all the people who care who expect the work to magically happen because someone else also cares, they won't be finished.
True, and if I was a gifted coder I would totaly devote my time to some of these projects(or more likely steal microshits kernel and do the whole cave thing myself), and if I was rich I would donate 1 million $ to the ReactOS project, and if I was a popular person online with a large following I would harass my peeps and beg them to go help any way they can!
Sadly I am none of those things.... So apart from waiting and wishing someone else does it there's not much I can do...
There's always issue reporting and testing for which you basically just need a computer, some Windows software, and the ability to write things. I'm pretty sure you have all that.
Hey you have a point, I could do that! I wonder if just running it in a virtual machine would be helpful to them, or does it actually have to be installed on the hdd... Nevermind, that's a question best saved for their forums I guess...