Oh cool! I haven't tried in some time. Thanks for adding your experience. That's great news. (I'll add a correction above, as well.)

Yeah. I could figure out how to make a PC do all that, but I would rather pay for a Steam console that does all of that for me out of the box.

Ooh. Nice.

Great write up. Thank you!

What kind of government job specifically?

Most of them. Certainly the ones that have unionized. If you know someone in the inside, they probably know if there's a union.

You'll see more unions in government work because while private organizations breaking up unions is ethically questionable; governments breaking up unions is just openly totalitarian.

If I can't negotiate with a private employer, I might be a wage slave, but I can ask the government for help.

If I can't negotiate with my government job, it's not actually a job, I'm just a slave.

So true.

And literally a line I use to recruit peers to try out learning to code.

"I'm afraid I'll be unhappy."

"You might be. Many of us are. But the extra money helps."

"Heeeey.... What!"

Yeah. I felt the same as a kid, and officially I've grown out of it.

Except, in my heart, I know that if they would sell that kind of thing and more for modern adult bikes...I would be out a lot of money.

I would gladly carry an extra 20 lbs of cheesy plastic on my bike if it looks cool enough.

Yeah. I get that. Gotta do what you gotta do!

I've made some progress at organizations like that by setting up a private workflow in Python "just to check my work".

Sure! Feel free to ask for clarification. I've been in your shoes. I've had debloat software help a ton (and I don't recall it causing issues.) I've also reinstalled Windows fresh (from a recovery disk) to buy time. And of course I've switched older computers to Linux, too.

Edit: I just saw:

including my Windows 11

No. Windows ships already well compressed. ~~There's no way it'll compress further by 50%.~~ Correction: Someone who has actually tried it says it can!

Also, as I mention below, backing up and restoring a full copy of Windows can set off anti-piracy tools that keep you from restoring your own copy of Windows. It can be done, either by waiting on the phone with Microsoft, or (presumably) by having an accomplished software pirate friend.

But look for the Windows tool "create a recovery disk". You'll need another separate drive than your 63GB one, but it probably doesn't need to be as big as a full Windows install.

Otherwise, yes.

Yes, if your drive has 133GB occupied, and you're running Windows, it is likely that Windows, itself, is over half of that.

I've not, personally, seen Windows, itself, occupy less than 70GB, in recent years. (Usually much more.)

So what's left, your files that you care about, is likely 133-70=63GB or less. (Probably much less. Windows is usually huge - usually around 120GB.)

Note that you can't just blindly backup the whole drive. You'll have to go find the files you care about and just back those up.

Backing up entire copies of the Windows operating system has gone very poorly for me, when I tried, anyway. Windows, itself, does not like to be relocated, because it tends to decide it has been stolen. I ended up on the phone with Microsoft waiting for permission, last time I moved a Windows install. So if I had a big enough drive to backup the whole Windows drive, I wouldn't bother.

There may be a utility for Windows that backs up just your files. Mac has had one for awhile. Something like the free tier of Crash plan would probably do a nice job guiding you to where the files you care about are.

Beware, file compression doesn't go far, today. The days when we stored our files in ludicrously inefficient formats are over.

I've only seen 10%-20% differences with compressed files, in 2024.

So, in your shoes, I would backup my files to the 63GB USB drive with something like CrashPlan. I wouldn't bother with compression since I don't think it will help much and I don't think you'll need it.

I would also accept that this is probably a one way trip. If the debloater works, fantastic.

If it corrupts your Windows install, you'll need to reinstall. You can use a recovery disk or download Windows 11 install media from Microsoft, which will take less space than a full install, but still takes space.

Personally, I wouldn't hassle with reinstalling Windows in 2024. Especially on a small hard drive. That's more work for a much worse outcome. I would switch to Debian. I'm fact, the first time I switched, was so being new life into an older computer.

Debian does most of the same things, takes dramatically less space, doesn't grow in size over time, is completely free, and is now much easier to install than a Windows reinstall. (Neither is pure sunshine and joy, but I would rather search for correct UEFI settings for 15 minutes than wait on hold with Microsoft for an hour.)

However you do it, resurrecting an old computer that Windows has mucked up is totally worth the effort. It's easy to forget how faster a Windows computer was when it was new.

If you had to hire 100 professional programmers in the past, but then AI makes programmers 10% more efficient than previously, then you can do the same work with 91 programmers.

You've nailed to root of the misunderstanding by non-programmers. We're already optimized past that target.

Some people think we type all day. We don't. We stare at our screen saying "what the fuck?!" for most of the day. Those is especially true for the best programmers doing really interesting work.

There's maybe three living humans who actually know how to correctly build a Windows installer. One of those three is paid to sell software to automate the task for everyone else. The other two retired already. (One is hiding out as a bar tender and claims to not speak any English if recognized from their MSI days.)

Pick an interesting topic in programming, and you'll find similarly ludicrous optimization.

There's a few hundred programmers building all banking automation, selling it to millions of bank employees.

It's possible that AI will force a dozen people to stop doing banking automation. It's a lot more likely that the backlog of unmet banking automation need will instead just get very slightly smaller.

Now, the reality of the economics won't stop CIOs from laying off staff and betting that AI will magically expand to fill the gap. We're seeing that now. That's called the "fuck around" phase.

But we've seen "this revolutionary technology will make us not need more programmers" before (several times). The outcomes, when the dust settles are:

1. The job is now genuinely easier to do, at least for beginners. (Senior professionals had access to equivalent solutions, before everyone else got excited.)
2. More people are now programmers. (We laid a bunch of them off, and we meant to not hire any back, but it turned out that our backlog of cool/revolutionary/necessary ideas was more important to leadership than pinching pennies.)
3. A lot of work that was previously ignored completely now gets done, but done very badly by brand new programmers. (We asked the senior developers to do it, but they said "Fuck you, that's not important, make the new kid do it." I think they're just still cranky that we spent three years laying off staff instead of training...)
4. The average quality of all software is now a bit worse, but there's a lot more variety of (worse) software now available.