Edge may be the last straw!

Greetings, I have had an ongoing like/dislike (fluffed to not offend🙄) relationship with MS Windows since XP was shelved by MS. I had a laptop with Vista on it for about 2 months. I recently had the need for a Windows PC so I bought a laptop with Win. 10 Home and quickly upgraded to 10 Pro and now have another laptop with 11 Pro. I missed anything between Vista and 7 if there was anything as well as 8 and from what I can gather, I didn't miss much.

The time between Vista and 10 for me was spent mostly on Android and getting to know Linux a bit. I didn't have a PC so I was mostly just doing research. Since I got the laptop with Win 10 on it, I have been learning how to use a virtual machine and have a side load of Zorin OS that I've been familiarizing myself with. I've used several distros in the past such as Ubuntu and Red Hat but only for brief periods, most of which I was side loading them from DVD roms. I did have a dual boot Win/Ubuntu desktop PC for a brief time also so I'm fairly confident that I will be able to make the transition.

I have multiple issues with Windows and MS as I'm aware that many others do also however apparently there aren't enough of us to put a large enough dent in the bank roll because the issues continue to pile up. I believe MS Edge is the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

I did some research online, some of which I even got from the MS help and support pages, on how to "completely remove" Edge from my PC. I followed the guides and it appeared that it was a successful removal. However, just a few minutes ago, I typed a few words into the Windows search bar and what shows up on my desktop other than... I'm sure you guessed it! Edge! Complete with Bing and Copilot and all the other news and garbage that is the reason I thought I had gotten rid of it! So obviously as some have stated, it really is impossible to get rid of Edge and all the other integrated parts of Windows that I can't stand such as Outlook (the "New" Outlook) and several other annoying and intrusive "features".

So I guess there is no other option for me than to stop beating a dead horse so to speak and wipe my laptop and perform a fresh installation of Zorin OS. I may even purchase a brand new NVMe SSD just to be as certain as possible that I won't turn the PC on one day to find that Windows has booted itself back up!

It's really a shame because I do like the basic Windows platform and am so used to it that it will feel sort of like I lost a good friend. However I will have to treat it like losing a good friend to something like substance abuse or some other form of behavior that I can't change nor stand to be around. Which I have actually had to do, more than once with actual people so it shouldn't be too hard... I hope. When someone close dies, or something we enjoy is gone for good that's it. It's gone and not coming back. Period. We absolutely must deal with the loss.

However when we have to make a choice to not have something or someone in our lives, it's not just like that. It can be very difficult to resist the temptation to at least "check in" or even be bad and spy on them. I don't think many people take this into consideration when they are being inconsiderate to what we need. And this is how I feel about making this transition. However it's evident to me that the things that I can't stand are not going to change and there's nothing I can do about it so I'm forced to say goodbye to a long time friend as I have been using Windows since the beginning. I learned MS-DOS, Windows 95, 98, 98SP2, 98ME, XP, XP-SP2, SP-3, XP Professional, and then Vista was the first time that I decided that I'd had enough. 98-ME was a close second but I held on through that storm.

In any case, this most recent experience is something that is totally unacceptable. There is so much wrong with it as far as feeling as though I have been violated that I won't even begin a conversation about that. When I feel that I have lost control of something and there's no way to regain control of it, with the exception of keeping a vehicle from crashing, I just give up! Such is the case here. If MS and Windows have that much control over what I can or cannot do with my PC, it's most definitely time to get as far distanced from it as possible because if this can happen, I am left to wonder how much else???