- You can only run Windows safely on a machine disconnected from the internet and your internal network.
- If you have nothing of value, like if all you have is just some games, you could run Windows on bare metal, but make sure to shield your internal network from it.
- Running anti-virus on what is essentially a really nasty virus makes no sense, as are the various tweak tools that give you a false sense of security.
100% this. For me Windows has become an unfortunate necessity just due to gaming (Please don't try to tell me I can just game on Linux, I want my games to work every time and I don't want to deal with Proton).
Even going so far as installing Windows 10 LTSC on my steam deck and it has been amazing. Better performance, battery life, no annoying features, etc.
I am looking forward to Windows 11 LTSC to come out to get some improvements, but I have not had any issues with gaming on Windows 10 LTSC.
Proton is a dream nowadays. It seems to get 10x better every year. The problem is that there are some popular games that use a kernel-level anti-cheat that will never work in Proton. Honestly, I think the best option is just to not buy those games in order to disincentivize their bad behavior. Yes, I'm fine with never playing Fortnite if it means never having to deal with Windows again.
It isn't just kernel level anti-chat, while yes that is an easy thing to point the finger at and valid.
It is also just the chance of a game making some random change that has nothing to do with Anti cheat and that breaking the proton compatibility, this happened with Halo Infinite and others.
The ease of proton also goes out the window once you leave Steam and SteamOS. There are various things out there but if you own games on other platforms it does take more work which is a barrier for non technical people.
Don't get me wrong, Proton is a great piece of technology. But it is still a compatibility layer that will never be perfect. A layer that I don't have to even think about on Windows, everything just works.
Yeah I’ll pass on games that essentially want to install spyware only to be forced always online anyways. Never have to deal with that issue on indie games.
If you want avoid using activation scripts, build an enterprise ISO with UUPDump and then use vlmcsd to activate it. All I can say is that way has worked for about 5 years so far with no issues...
Basically you can get normal Windows already without paying from Microsoft itself. But on this site they also publish Windows LTSC ISOs which you can not get directly from Microsoft unless you are an Enterprise.
Plus, the scripts allow you to activate all of these Windows version and I think also Microsoft Office.
The script is abusing bugs that are long known but not fixed. And Microsoft does not seem to care, as the script is hosted on GitHub (which is owned by Microsoft) since a long time.
The repository also has ~60k stars, so it isn't "secret" that this exists.
LTSC was the best version, but now apps are starting to require specific release versions of windows. The current Windows 10 LTSC is based on Windows 10 21H2, and will not be updated beyond that. Ableton 12 for example requires Windows 10 22H2.
So until Windows 11 LTSC is released, I have been using Windows 11 Pro Education. It seems to be almost as good as LTSC (ships without most of the bloatware), but allows you to run a current version of Windows.
Windows 11 still feels much slower than Windows 10, even on a modern system clicking on the wifi icon takes 1-2 seconds for the window to open and then you can see elements of the window load. Opening file explorer is the same. This a fresh install on a Ryzen 6800H laptop with a fast NVME SSD. Then there are all the popups asking me to use OneDrive, Edge, Etc. Truly a terrible OS.
I'm curious if Ableton 12 actually requires 22H2 or just is only supported.
I was struggling with what to do with this recently on my wife's PC. I don't care for 11, she isn't interest in linux and 10 drops support in 2025 for regular editions. I went with enterprise LTSC iot because I figured that the support problems probably won't amount to much until after 2025 anyway. That version goes to 2032 of security updates but I suspect the install won't last that long regardless.
My computer was last upgraded 11 years ago (I had to do some trickery to be able to install Win 11) It obviously has specs dwarfed by yours. The wifi icon appears the instant I click. Freshly installed whenever Win 11 was available.
The problem is that it also doesn't the fix for what is broken, for instance the start menu was unusable for half of the life of win10 (was hanging every time you opened it).
Windows server is a similar alternative but has the same problem than LTSC.
I fairly strongly disagree, gaming on Linux has come a long way but you are still at a mercy of a compatibility tool like Proton.
So if a game updates breaks something or the dev just happens to add something that isn't compatible (which has happened enough to make it here) than you may not be able to play the game you want until it is fixed.
Also add in that if you are not on SteamOS and you want to play games outside of Steam it is more difficult for non technical people (or just people who are not as up to speed on that part of Linux).
It really isn't there for most people when you can run Windows (like the LTSC version that I do) and have no compatibility issues.
But not every game runs on Linux. And there are games I like to play with friends that aren't on Linux, so for better or worse I'm stuck with Windows for gaming.
And that's not to speak of VRR issues, essentially no HDR support, etc.
Agreed, there's no reason to go through crazy hoops to use an OS made by a vendor that repeatedly and openly works against the user at every step of the way.
I say this as someone that doesn’t care in the slightest about gaming OR Windows. I just fail to see what this “pretend that a vendor that you don’t like isn’t offering anything of value” attitude ever does for anyone. It certainly doesn’t add to the conversation in any meaningful way.
That’s quite some euphemism for describing a vendor that steals sensitive user data, bombards users with ads, and pulls all sorts of tricks to force users into submission. They’re even stealing IMAP credentials [1], and I’m just stunned that they can pull that off without fear of criminal prosecution. Windows is hostile, unreliable, and unfit for any purpose.
But people are supposed to turn a blind eye because of some diminishing advantage the OS has in gaming? At what point can one be allowed to say no?
For one, I missed the game bar, for its convenient background recording capability. So what I did is I re-enabled the Store, and then download the game bar with it.
Better support for scheduling on Intel’s heterogeneous cores (≥12th gen CPUs) and AMD’s aggressive dynamic frequency scaling (Ryzen 7040) isn’t coming to Windows 10 ever, from what I understand.
I had driver issues, the nvidia drivers refused to install on LTSC due to "system too old" error. True, at the time it was very new laptop, and it would probably work fine if I tried it now.
I did this for a while. I ran into something that was unfixable. It was quite a few years ago and my memory is hazy. But it was games related and I couldn't run something due to missinf DLLs and not being able to install a fix (or just paste in the required DLLs). I eventually gave up. I tried for days to find a work around. Shame, because it is a much better experience.
There are several ISO dumps available on the internet that you can download untouched LTSC images from. You can check the hashes from the official Microsoft support site if you need to be sure.
I can understand that it sounds extreme, but I am sincere about it. These are not merely missteps. There is an extremely long trail (just search MS news) where it has become crystal clear that MS knows not any boundary in principle. MS acts like the computer and its data as its own, the user is just a hostage. (Even in a dual boot setup MS keeps setting Windows as default boot option). The amount of telemetry, browsing history and what not that MS pumps out of your devices is mind boggling.
The tech savy user has limited control about that. And they need to stay vigilant because each update can introduce new attacks on their privacy or security.
You should not trust such an actor. I did the math and moved over to Linux completely.
Every modern CPU can do this, but they don't, unless explicitly configured to do so. We know this because it would have been news already if they do. Network activity is suspicious. And Intel ME has been with us for 16 years now!
When Intel proposed the CPUID in the Pentium III, everyone panicked. I felt confident that, if there were nefarious things happening at that level, people would have figured it out. After many months of hand-wringing in the tech spaces of the time (/., et. al.), people started waking up to the fact that Intel had, in fact, already buried the CPUID in the Pentium II all along, and "we" had already been "had." Moral of the story: do not ever trust that "it would have been news already," for anything.
I don't trust the media fully either, but I think that if a proper remote execution vulnerability would have been found, and also exploited en masse, that would surely make the news. And if there wasn't, for 16 years, then I think we can assume that the thing is not more rickety than the rest of human constructed reality.
Also, please note that the discussion is not about possibility. It was explicitly stated that "Every modern CPU does this", and here, "this" refers to "calls home with full access to your everything". Now, that is patently false.
This has never been seen to work.
At the very least, it only has direct access to the built in ethernet adapter.
Communicating with say wifi would be quite difficult, it would need to steal the wifi credentials from any variety of currently running OS, future proof for whatever tricks says Linux does with wifi drivers.
So does this mean we should completely surrender and forget about any privacy and security? By the way, my Librem 15 has a disabled and neutralized Intel ME.
- If you have nothing of value, like if all you have is just some games, you could run Windows on bare metal, but make sure to shield your internal network from it.
- Running anti-virus on what is essentially a really nasty virus makes no sense, as are the various tweak tools that give you a false sense of security.