Yup, my Linux adventure once again ended in tragedy. I won't go into details 'cause it'll turn into a rant. It's too soon after the disaster. The TL;DR of it is that my WINE setup had been showing signs of slow corruption for weeks and then yesterday after a normal operation (deleting an unneeded profile in the Vortex mod manager), the window flashed and next thing I knew everything was reset as if it was a new install of Vortex. Moreover, replacing the "Bottles" WINE bottle (self-contained ecosystem that's supposed to be isolated and safe) from my Pika backup (poor man's Time Machine) didn't restore things to how they were earlier in the day when the incremental backup was made. What the heck?!

There's more but that's the gist. And sure, I could have set it up again... But why would I want to when it'll almost certainly happen again? Maybe not the exact scenario, but I've gone through this dozens of times before. I just thought that this one would work. I did make it almost three months!

So, here I am with a fresh Windows 11 install on my Lenovo Legion Slim 5 gaming laptop. A little different this time: I did the stripped-down method of installation. Mostly following this guide and script:

No bloat, no Edge, no Copilot, etc. And it seems to be fine. So far so good. I might be able to live with an ad- and nag-free Windows. Just need to finish by disabling auto Updates in the Registry like I did last time I had Windows. If it all blows up in my face down the road then, well, nothing new. Linux got me used to it. 😅