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The list is huge but those are the main things I do not need to install anything to change. They are important to me because I hate slow navigation.
Work makes me use a Mac, and the main setting I always want to change is the power state to off.
Serious answer though, motion blur in games, ick. I also usually turn off audio normalisation and max out the quality settings for streaming audio apps
Disabling the absurdity of 12-hour clock with am/pm, which bizarrely often is the default for no rational reason whatsoever.
Many countries including the US use 12 hour time for everything, so it's easier for a lot of people to not have to constantly translate. So it makes sense to be the default in those countries. And yes, I think 24hr should be standard everywhere, but it's not. I also think it's insane not to use SI units, but oh well. (I think we should use decimal time as well, but that's never going to happen because we'd need to redefine so many units.)
Dark mode and switch language to English (unless the thing is originally German) not least because it's much easier to find support in English.
unless the thing is originally German
This is the key, if I can read the original, I want the original.
This is a bit niche but is the first thing that sprung to mind: I strongly dislike the Ubuntu font family. It's one of the first things I remove from Mint when I reinstall.
I don't use the default Cinnamon look either, and picked one that looks even more like Windows 7, which is what I was using before I switched. Now it 's just a case of old habits dying hard, I guess. The icon set I use is blue though. Way better than Windows' yellow or Mint's default of green, IMO.
Dark mode? Check? Custom shell prompt? Check. Old school Minecraft grass block icon because the creeper one is awful? Check. Shell aliases, ~/bin dir and custom keybinds? Check.
More generally, there are a few websites that store what ought to be user-attached session-spanning settings in short-lived cookies. That means that certain things go back to defaults when I restart the browser, even though my login persists. Grumble, grumble, etc.
Language. I can understand English with no problem, but I prefer Spanish if available.
Turning off motion blur and increasing field of view when a game has first person POV. Guaranteed motion sickness for me if I don't adjust each.
I turn off autocorrect on anything that offers it. Mostly my android phone, but also on LibreOffice or whatever.
I also turn off all auto-capitalize, auto-punctuation, etc. When coding, I also hate auto-indent. If I want something indented, I'll hit tab.
In short, when I put in text, I want my computing devices to get exactly what I explicitly input and nothing else.
I also took out the fuse that powers the Starlink connectivity in my Subaru because Subaru's privacy policy says they'll record any audio in the cabin they damned well please with no notice or consent (except insofar as existing in the cabin constitutes "consent" because their legal department says so) and send those recordings back to the mothership to use in any way they see fit.
Hide NSFW
I always change Sprint to Spacebar and Jump to Shift. Also I usually have to change the invert Y-Axis setting.
Lock down permissions to what is actually necessary to function, then expand permissions as i feel they need them.
GNOME interactive screenshot from default to Ctrl+shift+s
That's all "customization" that's needed to make GNOME work for me
Mute or disable all notifications except direct messages.
aesthetics and UI. e.g. this is what my GIMP looks like:
apt remove snapd
Turn on dark mode if it exists
On both Windows and Android I go in and remove all of the bloatware and disable all of the tracking. I also turn off all of the various communications 'features' that are to let devices talk other devices.
