Turn Windows 11 into a Lean, Mean Tiling Machine with GlazeWM + MicroWin

[@LokiScarletWasHere]

Linux users: "Look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power"

[@nathanlaundry]

it certainly was a hassle, but as a long term linux user, linux isn't without its own hassles. I like to tinker with a few linux boxes, a mac, and a windows PC, in the network. I tried using FreeBSD for my workstation for a while but I couldn't keep it up. I'll do want something FreeBSD in the homelab though.

[@LokiScarletWasHere]

@ Yeah, despite the success of FreeBSD's cousin macOS, FreeBSD still isn't great for a workstation. A lot easier to use as a desktop than OpenBSD, though.

[@la1sh]

I can't play windows exclusive games properly on Linux.

[@LokiScarletWasHere]

@@la1sh Sounds like either you have a skill issue or bad taste in games. Avoid live service slop and rootkit-based drm/anticheat, you'll be fine.

[@la1sh]

@LokiScarletWasHere probably skill issue, I know steam games are fairly easy to run, but the reason I have a gaming capable PC is for games from "alternative" sources which where annoying to figure out how to work with wine.

[@SenorHamburgler]

As a Linux enthusiast that daily drives Windows, I really hope this channel grows. Great content. Get some ambient lighting and clean your "studio" and you should be at 500k subs in no time.

[@SenorHamburgler]

For some context, my main rig has a 2 drive dual boot with Win10 and Arch, my good laptop has a single drive dual boot with the same, my garage laptop is running Zorin, and the 2009 MacBook my coworker gave me is running alpine with sway (this has been my favorite recently). Couldn't do my day to day without Windows though.

[@nathanlaundry]

Thank you! I've made some upgrades since the last video. The room is cleaner, got a ring light, and improved the audio a bit. I'll keep iterating though :D

[@nathanlaundry]

That makes sense. For me, I "need" windows to game. But more generally, I'm just a geek. I had an "everything sucks but linux" phase when I was younger and before that I had an "everything Apple is useless garbage" phase. Now, I love that my homelab has primarily Linux boxes, but also has windows, mac, and soon some BSD again. Tech is the most fun when you appreciate everything it has to offer. Also as a professional you need to know at least a bit of everything.

[@ThatGuySnagz]

Yeah, just realized he had 301 subscribers, I stopped for a second to look and realized he didn't have over 100K. The production of this video was amazing. He definitely deserves more.

[@nathanlaundry]

@@ThatGuySnagz thanks man! I'm working on more videos soon! Stay tuned :D

[@Landon783]

This video was so interesting and helpful! I was really hesitant to try win11 but I've followed CTT for some years now. So naturally, I used MicroWin as the debloater this time instead of NTLite or another post installation debloat tool. I knew it would be better than the default installation, but I had no idea how invaluable it was until your side-by-side comparison. Thanks so much for showing it and giving me a new appreciation for CTT Toolbox and MicroWin, as well as the other tools in the video you introduced.

[@nathanlaundry]

I'm so glad you found it useful! CTT is amazing and microwin really does make windows 11 SO much better. I mean we're talking about borderline unusable to enjoyable as a linux enthusiast. I've been using Linux as my primary work station for almost 10 years now, and the fact that I can use windows productively at all now is so huge. I hope I can make more videos that are useful to you in the future!

[@itztlacoliuhqui]

I cant believe how good this channel is

[@thealch3mic1]

GlazeWM can launch programs with hotkeys utilizing the "shell exec" command in your config.

[@nathanlaundry]

Thanks for the heads up! I found that out from another commenter a while back and have since switched. It's so much nicer than AHK lol.

[@zaiquiriw]

This intro sold me

[@nathanlaundry]

LOL. I swear that little tongue twister came to me in a dream. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was just sitting there in my brain. I wrote it down and went back to sleep. Ideas come to us in the weirdest ways haha

[@aar6604]

This video is underrated af man, keep up the good work!

[@nathanlaundry]

Thank you!

[@scidoodle]

Great video! One thing to note is that most modern games take the raw input of the mouse, completely negating the need to turn off acceleration in windows itself. I see a lot of people thinking this makes a difference but its likely just placebo - only a handful of games are affected (and are usually old, such as black ops 2)

[@nathanlaundry]

Thank you! Ahh thanks for sharing, that's helpful to know :D I have noticed "use hardware cursor" on a lot of games these days. I'm a bit of a boomer though and play some older games so I like to turn it off just in case. I actually played a ton of black ops 2 back in the day lol. I also just dislike the feeling of it even on my desktop tbh.

[@scidoodle]

@@nathanlaundry Haha no problem & yeah fair enough, I think its years of muscle memory that keep me turning it back on for desktop use because I do notice the odd game that doesn't bode well with it :) also bo2 was amazing, still one of the best to this day imo

[@lautaronube7541]

So I've been needlesly fighting the autosnaping windows my whole life, nice! Gonna try this setup when my new laptop arrives, ty very much for dicovering tiling for me :P

[@nathanlaundry]

Happy to help :D Yeah the autosnapping is helpful like 50% of the time at best, and the rest it's an insufferable nuisance.

[@SenorHamburgler]

Win+Arrow keys snaps to a grid since 10

[@TylerPugmire]

By the way you can set apps to launch with key binds from the config file. By default glaze-wm has cmd bound to alt+enter keybindings: - commands: ['shell-exec cmd'] bindings: ['alt+enter']

[@nathanlaundry]

Really? That is way better than looping in autohotkey. Thanks! That's gonna be a huge simplification to the setup :D

[@ps-ri2qk]

Great info, and kind of sad Microsoft couldn't do in 30 years what an open source project did in short order. Love CTT - his linux and windows stuff is phenomenal. I would suggest zoom in a bit on your text as it's like 1 point font on the screen from the users view. Thanks for the info! I'm so wrapped up in Linux my poor windows laptop sometimes needs a little upkeep to keep it nice.

[@nathanlaundry]

Totally agree! And thanks for the feedback, I've been zooming in a little more in my next couple videos and in general cleaning up some of the details.

[@Kemnekluglenbrigstert]

This is a great little example of the fewest steps required to get the best, most usable experience out of Windows. I’ll bookmark it to share. My main problem now is *not* that I can’t make Windows extremely efficient and usable, since I have a lot of experience going against the flow of Windows - monkeying with registry to get a less Fisher Price taskbar, and so on - but that some of the steps taken to do so (remove telemetry, ditch recall) have so compromised my goodwill that I just have this lowkey pessimism when using it. Like… it’s closed source, so foundationally a trust-based relationship between me and them, and they have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement so god knows what they are doing with my data, even post Titus debloat. I guess I intend to dual boot Linux for a while and eventually make the transition but … eh

[@Kemnekluglenbrigstert]

Incidentally, if I were to add a fourth tweak to Titus+Glaze+ahk it would be Windhawk

[@nathanlaundry]

Thanks for the kind words. Also, I totally agree. I don't trust Windows/Microsoft at all, but it's useful to have on something at home to run software. Dualbooting is also all fun and games until a Windows update pushes the windows boot manager onto your linux partition and forces you to fix it ... sigh. I'd love to go without windows, but I'm not yet willing to live without Windows only software.

[@nathanlaundry]

I'll take a look at windhawk. I hadn't heard of it but it seems pretty cool! For those interested: windhawk.net/

[@RenSaito-]

Honestly I did my 6th clean install of windows last week and I can confirm, its rage filled. I feel it has gotten worse because I don't remember struggling so much last time. I got stuck on the login screen screen and after forgetting and re entering password and network jumping. I got pass by just spamming try again I think and that's just one of the issues. ps I need to start updating my journal. it took me around an hour aswell

[@nathanlaundry]

I feel that! I grew up on Windows. My dad was a DOS and now primarily Windows IT professional. I learned from him and have done probably hundreds of Windows installs over the years. Whatever they're cooking up these days though is so much worse though.

[@diotitus]

Thanks for the video. Personally what I would use for debloating and customizing Windows would be NTLite in tandem with the Chris Titus Tech WinUtil tool that you highlighted. Both of those tools together would provide more granularity and control over slimming down Windows. However, I do admit that NTLite is not for the faint of heart and one definitely has to know what they are doing in order to use it. So I do really like how MicroWin is integrated into WinUtil and that is it very simple to use and automated.

[@nathanlaundry]

I hadn't heard of NTLite but I'll take a look now. Thanks for sharing! For anyone interested: www.ntlite.com/

[@diotitus]

NTLite is essentially a custom Windows ISO customization and creation tool that does a similar thing as MicroWin, but is a lot more powerful and has more features. You can customize Windows a lot more with more granularity with what you want to remove. You can also inject and integrate Windows updates into the ISO and a lot more. I hope you get around to checking it out and that you have a good experience with it if you do get to try it out.

[@stefanalecu9532]

I can gladly claim you don't even need AHK for your purposes. This is all you need: keybindings: - command: "exec browser_of_choice" bindings: ["Alt+E"] - command: "exec wt" bindings: ["Alt+T"] I forgot what the path to the powertoys runner is, but you'd add it here too (although not strictly necessary). Edit: shit, someone already mentioned that (although they use shell-exec, which is a bit wonky if you don't want that option, like just opening the executable). Alternatively, you can use shell-exec --hide-window and it should work (this can be useful if you have env vars set in your profile (on that note, please do a video on how to rice PowerShell and the terminal using Starship or OhMyPosh) and you want those to be applied before opening your program). It's been recently added (I think in the 3.6.0 release, we're at 3.7.0 at the time of me writing this).

[@nathanlaundry]

Yeah, in my most recent versions of this setup I've removed AHK. I'll put powershell ricing on the list of potential videos too! Maybe if I do some more windows stuff. I've always wanted to try windows server in a VM just to see how different it is from various linux servers. Thanks for the detailed and thought out comment :D

[@aperson1181]

What is AHK?

[@HashimAlshobaki-t8j]

Amazing video!

[@FilippoCarrux]

Amazing video. Well done man!

[@nathanlaundry]

Thanks so much! I'll be making more soon so keep an eye out :D

[@FalbereChan]

linux: the system that cant play LoL, thus making it better

[@nathanlaundry]

If only my friend group had picked a different game all those years ago ...

[@MatthewLadas]

Great video man!

[@nathanlaundry]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! :D

[@Parvez01358]

Yeah, Windows 11 ain't it. I'm on Debian 12 Stable, switched from Windows 11 a year ago. Did not regret it for 1 moment. Great Video, Good Job and I'm a Subscriber now 😃

[@Cadexy5ew]

This is where I am but just EDA software is the last wall the Unix systems need to break for mass adoption I.e. altium (but they’re gonna hold out for as long as possible)

[@nathanlaundry]

Thanks for subscribing! Yeah I hear you. I'm on Debian testing for my desktop and debian stable for my servers. But I've got this dual boot and figured I'd give it a shot. It is amazing how much better Windows gets with MicroWin though.

[@conceptrat]

Love your 'MS Intern' streaming background 😹🔥 Where did you download it from? Great vid BTW 👌 Great blurrs

[@hrshlgunjal-1627]

Amazing video, bro.

[@nathanlaundry]

Thank you! Glad ya liked it :D

[@Fatsorcist]

Autohotey running in background === bans in most online games with active anticheat.

[@nathanlaundry]

really? I haven't had that with league yet but I suppose that makes sense. I wonder if because I never invoke the script (who's launching their terminal mid game lol) nothing's been detected. Still, all the more reason to use the GlazeWM launcher stuff @TylerPugmire mentioned. Thanks for the heads up!

[@Landon783]

I haven't personally experienced it with more than one game because after the first time it happened I promptly stopped using AHK and haven't touched it since. It was a cool and interesting solution but I play too many MMOs to risk it lol

[@aperson1181]

I tried to download the Win 11 ISO file using your tool but it stated the the ISO cannot be downloaded.

[@aperson1181]

Found the culprit, Win says running scripts are disabled on my PC.

[@aperson1181]

Disable CoPilot can be checked, but it is not under the Standard tweaks

[@aperson1181]

I get an error from Chris' tool when pasting to shell. Gives me an error with a parameter at Line 68 char 5. Fixed it...Have to run in the Admin mode

[@wasiTheweeb]

Bro i just found ur yt, pls keep upload more stuff and for the record u are funny

[@nathanlaundry]

Thanks man! I really appreciate that. I'm definitely going to be keeping it up. I've got a list of videos about linux, homelabbing, bash, and more. Just resting up a little since the semester ended. I'm hoping to get an intro to bash video up on Monday, and an Ansible video up soon after :D

[@toby-xo6rb]

I really enjoyed this video. Your humour was actually relatable and funny bro (at least for me). I've been using Windows for the past million years but I genuinely am at a point in 2024 that I'm thinking Microsoft has lost the plot and Windows is going to end up as "the world's worst spyware". I don't have an issue moving to Linux ... except for gaming. I play the latest (as well as very old) games and I'm pretty sure Linux just can't run everything. So I have to persevere with Windows. But yeah, I might try your suggestions and run a decluttered version via Titus' utility. Any suggestions for utilities/projects that remove things like Recall/Copilot etc (assuming Titus' stuff doesn't do that)?

[@nathanlaundry]

Hey, thanks for the kind comment! I'm pretty sure Titus' winutil does remove recall/copilot. And I totally agree as much as linux gaming has gotten SO MUCH BETTER, it still can't do a lot of AAA games with anti-cheat. I might recommend dual booting though if you have a desktop PC that can take two hard drives/ SSDs. You could partition a single drive but Windows updates often mess up the bootloader and then it's a huge pain accessing your linux partition again. With two drives, you can just use the BIOS boot menu instead.

[@rc2276]

Very good.

[@lorribot64]

Note, Chris's software uses Chocolatey to install stuff and leaves some detritus so is not as "clean" he makes out. Also the best way to install windows debloated and clean is to use an Unattend file, these can be generated on a number of web sites. Install generally takes around 2 minutes, you can install on anything and no MS accounts if that is your thing.

[@nathanlaundry]

Interesting. I think in recent versions Chris switched from Chocolatey to winget for default, but you can use either. I'll take a look at unattended installs though. That could be interesting if for some reason I want a fleet of Windows VMs. If anyone else is interested here's some resources I'll be looking at (at some point) on unattended installs for win 11: github.com/memstechtips/UnattendedWinstall learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/update-windows-settings-and-scripts-create-your-own-answer-file-sxs?view=windows-11

[@muba_7306]

it uses winget

[@bodeneinheit]

Great Video, thanks!

[@nathanlaundry]

Glad you liked it :D

[@justinchai8713]

galzewm always tabs me out of a game if its running in fullscreen. any fix that you know of?

[@nathanlaundry]

Interesting. I haven't had that problem. Sorry, I wish I could help.

[@rindevn2715]

nice video, really interesting

[@nathanlaundry]

Thank you! Glad ya liked it :D

[@muba_7306]

I tried to use it, but it felt kinda junky

[@GalaxyTracker]

I tried GlazeWM around a month ago on a very decent PC. Intel 12th gen, RTX 3060 and all. It was a buggy mess. Every time I switched virtual desktops that contained open apps, I got a black desktop and had to use the hotkey for manual re-rendering of the windows. This was even worse than Hyprland on Nvidia 2 years ago.

[@nathanlaundry]

Interesting.If you haven't already, it might be worth going through the github issues to see if somebody has faced similar issues. I'm on a 3070 and ryzen 7 7700 so similar Nvidia setup but different CPU.

[@three36ixx]

you can use ctrl + windows + arrows to switch between your virtual desktops....

[@nathanlaundry]

Yeah somehow I forgot about that during the video. I'm still a much bigger fan of how Glaze handles it because I've come from an i3 environment. Thanks for the comment :D

[@three36ixx]

@@nathanlaundry the tiling is pretty cool, but what windows offers is enough for me for now. thanks for the research and info!

[@Mr.clemclem]

Great video dude, but the sound is reeeally low...

[@nathanlaundry]

ahh I gotta work on that! Still learning how to edit. Thanks for the heads up :D

[@johngleeson7919]

Chris should create a WM called Tilus

[@nathanlaundry]

LOL that'd be awesome.

[@xpplayz1124]

I think i'll stick to spending 1000000hrs trying to configure hyprland on Arch w/Nvidia tbh (I use Arch btw).

[@nathanlaundry]

Wayland, arch, nvidia. You are a brave person. Honestly, every once in a while I get the itch to go with a proper tiling wm again but I haven't had the time. I'm trying to build up my devops skills (next video on Ansible) and do these videos so that eats up most of my time. At one point I had hyprland running on FreeBSD ... now that was a hassle.

[@Coansp]

some of the links dont work

[@nathanlaundry]

ahh thanks for letting me know! I'll fix those ASAP!

[@etterathe]

Great content! You gonna be so big (that's what she said). One little thing: afaik windows have hot keys for switching and adding new virtual deksktops, they are not customizable tho (as everything else on default windows)

[@nathanlaundry]

haha Thank you! Yeah I think it's windows key + left and right arrows. They're not bad but definitely not as good as glaze.

[@j_t_eklund]

There is no Linux OS.. only OS distributions using the Linux kernel..

[@nathanlaundry]

Sure, but Linux is used colloquially to refer to the families of Linux distros. You could say GNU + Linux if you wanna be that guy about it, but then what about busybox + Linux ... or what about using the BSD core utils on top of Linux? You could say *nix-like, but then that'd include MacOS. Linux communicates what I mean, so I use it.

[@stefanalecu9532]

At least be brave enough to use the copypasta cuz you're a 🤓 with that remark anyway

[@diotitus]

So you are one of those wierdos huh?

[@JustWatchingVideos-ky1ee]

I endorse this message

[@nathanlaundry]

And I appreciate your endorsement!

[@bilalazhar4495]

ur cool i subscribed please never mention League of Legends ever again

[@nathanlaundry]

LMAO, no promises. Thanks for the sub though :D

[@VajarJuranin]

Linux has tought me how to use Windows better.

[@nathanlaundry]

I feel that

[@aussois1027]

photoshop is the only thing that i need windows for and as soon as i can find a way to package it with wine/bottles i will never touch that fucking OS again

[@aussois1027]

addendum: if the gimp guys could just make it not a piece of shit, i wouldn't have this problem

[@nathanlaundry]

Yeah, the Adobe suite is a common blocker for the Linux transition. I know Chris Titus Tech runs a windows VM for some of those things and has it hooked up so his Windows VM acts like just another Virtual Desktop. It's a really cool setup but looks complicated. I've heard GPU passthrough is not easy to setup and generally speaking requires a second GPU for the VM which is expensive.

[@exotic42069]

a cubic millimeter to this guy's room size for every like on the video

[@Loanshark753]

No MacOS window management is even worse.

[@nathanlaundry]

You know what, you're probably right. I don't even remember because I'm using aerospace on my mac for tiling haha. Before that I was using amethyst, and before that yabai.

[@BarnabyFWNightingale]

This whole video is just an advertisement for Linux

[@sheepcommander_]

too long..

[@nathanlaundry]

lol I was worried it would be. I'm gonna target the 10 to 15 minute range moving forward for most of my stuff.

[@Landon783]

@@nathanlaundry Don't worry about them. They just need to watch faster lol. If you want to make a long video shorter, you can speed it up 1.10x speed in editing. Almost no one will be able to tell the difference and you'll save 2 mins on a 20 min video. Really enjoyed the tools you showcased here. Keep up the awesome work!

[@sulefur]

I just watch everything in 2x

[@sheepcommander_]

@@sulefur hehe

[@Martinn01]

windows terminal sucks and wsl too xd dualboot is the way, linux for work, w11 to play