I use Immunet (which contains a ClamAV-based engine) on pre-Win10 systems, as that's the only truly free AV alternative I know of (not the free, crippled versions of commercial AVs many already know). It works to some extent and can fill in the vacuum for security in Win7-Win8.1.
However, it seems some of its functionalities consume a huge amount of RAM that it can be a problem if your system has less than 8-16GB of RAM. Expect consistent above-50% RAM usage on a system with 4GB of RAM if you turn everything on.
Does anyone else know of a similar, more FLOSS antivirus solution?
Shponglefan wrote on 2023-01-07, 02:11:
Out of curiosity, what issues did you have with Windows 10?
In my case, the still ongoing issue would be that some soft synths no longer survive reboots. Coolsoft VirtualMidiSynth (and MUNT) have managed to work it around, but I don't know if there's an updated Windows OPL3 driver that could have addressed it.
Many years ago when Win10 initially released I had several major issues, that finally made me switch to use Linux as main OS. One notable example was that the network stack (ndis/tcpip) at that time had serious DPC latency issues that caused my system to freeze once in a while. Everything would stop moving for a brief second when it happened, during which any sound being played would screech like when the system was about to go BSOD.
As for the OP's issue, I suggest manually disable Microsoft Content (formerly Windows Spotlight) using an Applocker rule. This should hopefully prevent some apps from reinstalling back especially during updates. I'm not sure about the notifications, but it's been the default rule for me to turn everything off during the final stages of Win10 install in order to disable as much telemetry as possible.
