I like AME especially as a statement, but after a few months of running it on my desktop I found it wasn't worth the trouble. Weird things kept not working and most of the time I couldn't figure out why.
It's been quite a while so my memory's a bit hazy, but as I recall the biggest issue was the Start menu behaving oddly. On my typical computers I run OpenShell, but certain things don't show up in the search result list so I have to open the Windows Start and search from there. AME's start menu is very stripped-down and very little shows up with it, though that could've changed since I used it. Now I'm certain there are two or three different ways to do all the things I wanted to do but breaking the habit of "push button, type, hit enter" was tough. If I were going to try it now my concern would be a lack of control over updating. Sure, AME strips WU out so you have perfect negative control, but running LTSC with Windows Update Manager makes it very easy to install the updates I actually want.
I see, thank you for the detailed reply. One solution could have been uninstalling open-shell, that way the start menu would be normal again. Some of open-shells search behavior can be changed, although it can be a pain.
As far as WU goes, personally I think it is overrated. The only real use for them is security, however I've found that even that is really not necessary at all. Just from my own experience I've never seen anyone run into issues/get infected purely because they didn't update, and I think that if you're tech literate it really is unnecessary, to a certain point that is.
It is still a tradeoff, but I personally find the benefits and peace of mind more valuable than missing out on security updates.
