AtlasOS is designed for stability and performance, offering a consistent user experience.
AtlasOS is designed for stability and performance, offering a consistent user experience.
I took a quick glance at AtlasOS and it seems secure overall. You install a regular Windows version and then follow their Playbook to tweak the system. Once inside, you see several changes: some AppX packages are removed or stopped from auto-reinstalling, though you might want to keep Spotify, MSPaint, Skype, etc. Certain components vanish mainly for telemetry, but Edge and One Drive remain. Several services are turned off—filesharing, Bluetooth, printing—and a few new ones are added, like disabling advanced notifications, banners, and spell check. Shortcuts are placed on the desktop for quick access to scripts that automate tasks such as toggling features or installing software. Overall, it looks well thought out and appears safe, with no obvious malicious activity detected.
It might seem innocent, but these actions can be achieved using PowerShell, as demonstrated by Chris Titus Tech with WinUtil. Since it's open-source, you understand exactly what you're working with. PowerShell is the most robust application available on Windows.
Thanks for the thorough breakdown. I’m considering alternative methods to improve performance. If another option exists, it would be more dependable, so I’ll explore it.
The Atlas OS is Open Source as well. You can extract it and look at what the playbook is doing. It's just a collection of powershell, batch and registry files for making the changes. It also provides you a collection of scripts if you want to re-enable or disable things that are done or available in the core playbook; and further tools. As well as WinUtil; theres also WinAeroTweak which would be my recommendation as well. But my point was mostly to check that it wasnt doing anything untowards.
They do define at least a lot of what their Playbook does. I wouldn't run it without being educated first though, so the idea that there's no risk is not correct, but for people saying it's automatically unreliable I think is not an informed opinion. People will always have issues with something, and many times it's the ones who are not educated beforehand, either because the developers aren't clear about something, or the user didn't properly inform themselves. @Raniqka I would, if possible for you, install Windows within a VM and use Atlas OS there to see how it works. This totally avoids the risk factor as long as you create an environment similar to what you're using now to see how things are directly affected.
Discovered a clip from Linus exploring a topic similar to what he was investigating.