I rather suggest Win 11 LTSC. The Windows 11 IoT Enterprise 2024 LTSC supposedly:
- doesn't have the tpm requirement
- no copilot, recall, edge browser, ms store
- allows local setup
- no feature updates, only security
- built-in options to disable telemetry
Keys go for $300 in some stores, or, one can use an activation emulator, or massgrave.
Scripts can be good for one-time use, but it's swimming against the current. As soon as you stop swimming, the current wins. With the LTSC, you don't swim against the current, but rather choose a different current. In its case, it's MS themselves who provide the debloating.
Win 10 is already becoming past tense, despite it being updated for security until 2032. In the present, I don't think Windows 10 is a good recommendation anymore. When installing a new system, I'd just go with the 11.
Gonna hard to justify win10 if certain apps/games whatever is only supported in win10. the obvious answer is Linux, but we already know the story there.
Don't. Please. The fact that you got denied is a hint that you cannot get a properly licensed Enterprise copy. A key would activate your Windows but not license it. In other words, it's piracy. And you can get a pirated copy for free. Save your money.
No need if you use the IoT version and the massgrave activation script. It uses the built-in activation mechanisms in Windows to activate until 2038 or something.
I'm using the Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC with activation until 2038 right now.
The https://massgrave.dev activation scripts have support for various versions and also for enabling Extended Updates (ESU), but this is a bit off-topic and HN mods might come after us ;-)
I'm not sure it is off-topic. The parent to this one was talking about, presumably, dodgy Windows keys (that shouldn't be allowed) but from my understanding, the massgrave scripts just use internal Windows mechanisms to activate.
It's not actively usurping Windows security.
In fact, I've read more than once that Microsoft tech support have been known to use massgrave scripts to help with activation-related issues with clients: Although I should caveat that with saying that it may have been Reddit I found that info so pinch of salt and all that...
So, my take on this is if the massgrave scripts allow activation without breaking any laws then sobeit. I'm talking about doing stuff that, while it appears dodgy, actually just manipulates the ultra-complicated processes under the hood that Microsoft has already built into the OS.
It's like publicising the workarounds for the now-mandatory Microsoft account when installing Windows 11. These involve things like reg hacks and commands: they're already in Windows so publicise them all you want imo.
I think the regular Windows versions are not worth it. Sure you can debloat the current configuration of the system, but it's a continually updated product, so it won't stay the same. Configurations will be overwritten, components reinstalled, etc.
This depends a lot on the person, and their lifestyle, I personally had enough of it. I like to set it, and (mostly) forget it.
That does sounds like a dream but alas it is not all that “good”. I for one would be first in line though if Microsoft ever made a true bare bones dev focused shell or something or other; maybe a complete rethink on compute.
Of course, it's still a piece of shit Windows. But I have basically copied the list from multiple third party sources, so, what got listed are actual features of the LTSC. And I think it's better that what's achievable with debloating scripts, especially if one isn't running them over and over again.
The best way to debloat Windows is to switch to Linux. I think that GNOME3 is now more polished than either Windows or Mac, and 95% of Windows games just run out of the box through Proton.
Proton is getting there but even so, it doesn't make Linux+Proton a drop-in replacement for people who have used Windows all their lives.
For people with more technical background, who are enthusiasts about computers and software - sure. For a lot of casual users who need things to 'just work' the way they always have, asking them to swap to an entirely new OS is nonsense.
I'm considering it myself but even with years of experience on Linux I'm still cautious because of a lot of edge cases where something I use now wouldn't work or wouldn't work well in Linux.
While the 95% figure is possibly correct when considering all games since the beginning of Windows, the remaining 5% includes most modern multiplayer games.
This isn't remotely true, it only really includes AAA "competitive" games. My solution here is to do without them; I would have probably bought BF6 had it supported Linux, but now that there are thousands of other games that work perfectly on Linux, it's a very minor loss. With Linux quickly becoming too big to ignore, sooner or later game studios will simply no longer be able to ignore that market. For now, it's only a few %, but it's growing, and still represents millions of sales. When lost revenue will exceed the cost of developing a compatible anti-cheat, Linux will be suddenly supported.
I would've expected this kind of inane take on Reddit or X, not here. Or on SO where somebody asks "How do I do X?" and is told "X sucks, you want to use Y".
This is not about "X sucks", but the very first questions from an engineering perspective should be whY? What do you want to accomplish? Is X actually a good approach towards Y?
If it turns out that trying to shoehorn X into kinda accomplishing Y is very hard work, then suggesting to use X2 instead is a perfectly sensible suggestion.
If you have a hard constraint that you must use X, even if it does not fit well to Y, fair enough. Then you add that as a reply or state it in the beginning.
I can’t take this advice too seriously if you really think GNOME3 is more polished than Windows or macOS. Both of the latter have gotten worse over the years undoubtedly but GNOME3 is fundamentally flawed and bad.
Care to elaborate on what makes GNOME "fundamentally flawed and bad?" I used to dual boot, and every time I was running Windows I thought the UI was terrible compared to GNOME. Windows has a very inconsistent UI these days, partly because Microsoft keeps changing the most visible parts of it, but completely ignores system utilities that still use XP-era icons.
Yes and no. No, because sometimes Windows cannot be reasonably substituted, to no fault to the user. The usual suspects, multiplayer games, some software, when you need complete interoperability, etc.
By the way, that 95% is lower actually. If you count ProtonDB's Plat + Gold for the top 1000 played games on Steam, it's 81%. For plat+gold+silver, it's 89%.
- I am thinking of writing a very detailed post right here on HN on testing all the windows 11 debloat tools within a VM. My only question is how do I determine or say benchmark or measure which of these debloat tools works the best at the end?
I'd love to see data regarding maintenance. It's nice to debloat once, but does the debloat stick? How does it interplay with updates? Can I count on the script being updated for 1, 2, 5 years?
Keep a spreadsheet of all the optional features / bloat you’re looking to remove, rate each solution as a percentage of how many of those columns it ticks, and maybe also do a review on boot time and idle RAM usage?
is there a tool that i can use to say stress test the OS as a whole that ll give me a score like how we do apache bench http tests because what is bloat might be very subjective on my part. is there a more objective measure?
Personally I gave up a long time ago and just installed Debian Linux. But it’s wild to me that the average non-technical/casual windows user has to put up with so much bs… it’s an atrocious ux
I am convinced MS has code in Windows which looks for de-bloating and then purposely slows things down. Or the code base has gotten to the point where things are so entangled that de-bloating leads to the slow down as every app tries to connect to telemetry or hook into Copilot and stumbles when the bloat is not there.
this script messes up pen tablet settings and destroyed usability with my wacom pen. Good script just don't use default settings if you use wacom stuff
I rather suggest Win 11 LTSC. The Windows 11 IoT Enterprise 2024 LTSC supposedly:
- doesn't have the tpm requirement
- no copilot, recall, edge browser, ms store
- allows local setup
- no feature updates, only security
- built-in options to disable telemetry
Keys go for $300 in some stores, or, one can use an activation emulator, or massgrave.
Scripts can be good for one-time use, but it's swimming against the current. As soon as you stop swimming, the current wins. With the LTSC, you don't swim against the current, but rather choose a different current. In its case, it's MS themselves who provide the debloating.
Just use Rufus+MAS for Win10 IoT LTSC, no need to stoop down to win11
Win 10 is getting deprecated. I use my install still, but I personally don't recommend it as a new install.
https://tech.yahoo.com/gaming/articles/youre-still-gaming-wi...
Not with MAS. It's supported until 2032.
Take a look at the article I attached. Windows 10 itself is getting updates, that's not a problem, waning support from software vendors is.
why not windows 10 LTSC? higher performance
Win 10 is already becoming past tense, despite it being updated for security until 2032. In the present, I don't think Windows 10 is a good recommendation anymore. When installing a new system, I'd just go with the 11.
https://tech.yahoo.com/gaming/articles/youre-still-gaming-wi...
Gonna hard to justify win10 if certain apps/games whatever is only supported in win10. the obvious answer is Linux, but we already know the story there.
Where can one buy a key? I got denied when I tried buying one because I was not a company.
That's actually a very good point.
Anyone can be a company if you try hard enough!
I see them going for $150-300 on ebay, just don't ask where they came from.
No need if you use the IoT version and the massgrave activation script. It uses the built-in activation mechanisms in Windows to activate until 2038 or something.
I'm using the Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC with activation until 2038 right now.
The https://massgrave.dev activation scripts have support for various versions and also for enabling Extended Updates (ESU), but this is a bit off-topic and HN mods might come after us ;-)
I'm not sure it is off-topic. The parent to this one was talking about, presumably, dodgy Windows keys (that shouldn't be allowed) but from my understanding, the massgrave scripts just use internal Windows mechanisms to activate.
It's not actively usurping Windows security.
In fact, I've read more than once that Microsoft tech support have been known to use massgrave scripts to help with activation-related issues with clients: Although I should caveat that with saying that it may have been Reddit I found that info so pinch of salt and all that...
So, my take on this is if the massgrave scripts allow activation without breaking any laws then sobeit. I'm talking about doing stuff that, while it appears dodgy, actually just manipulates the ultra-complicated processes under the hood that Microsoft has already built into the OS.
It's like publicising the workarounds for the now-mandatory Microsoft account when installing Windows 11. These involve things like reg hacks and commands: they're already in Windows so publicise them all you want imo.
These keys are also piracy. You might as well save $300 and just download the system for free.
You can get a legit windows 11 key from a reseller for an order of magnitude less - isn’t it worth a couple hours of your time to save ~$250?
I think the regular Windows versions are not worth it. Sure you can debloat the current configuration of the system, but it's a continually updated product, so it won't stay the same. Configurations will be overwritten, components reinstalled, etc.
This depends a lot on the person, and their lifestyle, I personally had enough of it. I like to set it, and (mostly) forget it.
That does sounds like a dream but alas it is not all that “good”. I for one would be first in line though if Microsoft ever made a true bare bones dev focused shell or something or other; maybe a complete rethink on compute.
Of course, it's still a piece of shit Windows. But I have basically copied the list from multiple third party sources, so, what got listed are actual features of the LTSC. And I think it's better that what's achievable with debloating scripts, especially if one isn't running them over and over again.
Fair point! I continually have to re-run those de-bloat scripts.
The best way to debloat Windows is to switch to Linux. I think that GNOME3 is now more polished than either Windows or Mac, and 95% of Windows games just run out of the box through Proton.
Proton is getting there but even so, it doesn't make Linux+Proton a drop-in replacement for people who have used Windows all their lives.
For people with more technical background, who are enthusiasts about computers and software - sure. For a lot of casual users who need things to 'just work' the way they always have, asking them to swap to an entirely new OS is nonsense.
I'm considering it myself but even with years of experience on Linux I'm still cautious because of a lot of edge cases where something I use now wouldn't work or wouldn't work well in Linux.
While the 95% figure is possibly correct when considering all games since the beginning of Windows, the remaining 5% includes most modern multiplayer games.
This isn't remotely true, it only really includes AAA "competitive" games. My solution here is to do without them; I would have probably bought BF6 had it supported Linux, but now that there are thousands of other games that work perfectly on Linux, it's a very minor loss. With Linux quickly becoming too big to ignore, sooner or later game studios will simply no longer be able to ignore that market. For now, it's only a few %, but it's growing, and still represents millions of sales. When lost revenue will exceed the cost of developing a compatible anti-cheat, Linux will be suddenly supported.
I would've expected this kind of inane take on Reddit or X, not here. Or on SO where somebody asks "How do I do X?" and is told "X sucks, you want to use Y".
Not inane at all, just your phrasing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
This is not about "X sucks", but the very first questions from an engineering perspective should be whY? What do you want to accomplish? Is X actually a good approach towards Y?
If it turns out that trying to shoehorn X into kinda accomplishing Y is very hard work, then suggesting to use X2 instead is a perfectly sensible suggestion.
If you have a hard constraint that you must use X, even if it does not fit well to Y, fair enough. Then you add that as a reply or state it in the beginning.
I can’t take this advice too seriously if you really think GNOME3 is more polished than Windows or macOS. Both of the latter have gotten worse over the years undoubtedly but GNOME3 is fundamentally flawed and bad.
Care to elaborate on what makes GNOME "fundamentally flawed and bad?" I used to dual boot, and every time I was running Windows I thought the UI was terrible compared to GNOME. Windows has a very inconsistent UI these days, partly because Microsoft keeps changing the most visible parts of it, but completely ignores system utilities that still use XP-era icons.
The author has done a great job at highlighting some of the more egregious parts here: https://woltman.com/gnome-bad/
Yes and no. No, because sometimes Windows cannot be reasonably substituted, to no fault to the user. The usual suspects, multiplayer games, some software, when you need complete interoperability, etc.
By the way, that 95% is lower actually. If you count ProtonDB's Plat + Gold for the top 1000 played games on Steam, it's 81%. For plat+gold+silver, it's 89%.
Source: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard
- I am thinking of writing a very detailed post right here on HN on testing all the windows 11 debloat tools within a VM. My only question is how do I determine or say benchmark or measure which of these debloat tools works the best at the end?
I'd love to see data regarding maintenance. It's nice to debloat once, but does the debloat stick? How does it interplay with updates? Can I count on the script being updated for 1, 2, 5 years?
Keep a spreadsheet of all the optional features / bloat you’re looking to remove, rate each solution as a percentage of how many of those columns it ticks, and maybe also do a review on boot time and idle RAM usage?
is there a tool that i can use to say stress test the OS as a whole that ll give me a score like how we do apache bench http tests because what is bloat might be very subjective on my part. is there a more objective measure?
I have had god experiences with tiny11: https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder
Personally I gave up a long time ago and just installed Debian Linux. But it’s wild to me that the average non-technical/casual windows user has to put up with so much bs… it’s an atrocious ux
I tried all of these debloating scripts a couple of years back but nowadays I just stick with LTSC
I am convinced MS has code in Windows which looks for de-bloating and then purposely slows things down. Or the code base has gotten to the point where things are so entangled that de-bloating leads to the slow down as every app tries to connect to telemetry or hook into Copilot and stumbles when the bloat is not there.
this script messes up pen tablet settings and destroyed usability with my wacom pen. Good script just don't use default settings if you use wacom stuff