Is there a version of Windows that lets you pay your way out of this bullshit? I may need a Windows machine for work next year and this shit is terrifying. I haven't touched Windows since around 2006 so I'm not familiar with their offerings. They used to have a consumer and a professional edition of Windows in the olden days with the latter being far less annoying.
Don't bother with cleaning script, they can fuck things up, and the benefit is questionable, as it's a whack-a-mole basically. Windows 11 is not a hard requirement, and I don't think it will be in the coming few years, so I went with Windows 10 LTSC. Lots of useless crap is cut from it, so no Cortana, no Store, no Edge even, and no feature updates. There are security updates however! So it's a nice, stable, useful edition, with no downsides for gaming.
I don't think businesses care too much. LTSC is for when you need the system to not change over time, but still get some security updates, not simply business use - for that, there's the Enterprise edition of course.
Exactly, businesses need this thing to get out of the way and just remain consistent. Turns out there's a lot of people that want exactly the same thing and we are not getting it any more.
Annoyingly LTSC costs around $300ish for the typical end user and has an inordinate amount of hoops just to buy it... makes it difficult to recommend to family so I curse them with Arch instead.
I personally run my own activation server (https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd), and just point the Windows installation there. Or you can use one of the many servers that are floating around the internet. Either way, it's a bit annoying unfortunately.
Also, my country's second hand electronics market has LTSC keys for sale for like $25. That might be worth looking into.
I've seen that stuff floating around and it brings me back to my warez days. I've put that behind me though and I just want an honest relationship now and I'm consistently finding that in the open source community, it's like a breath of fresh air.
>I just want an honest relationship now and I'm consistently finding that in the open source community, it's like a breath of fresh air.
I share these feelings deeply. Furthermore, what Microsoft (and other large tech companies) put people through via their systems, feels like an abusive relationship to me. FOSS, for the most part, aligns much closer to my idea of computation. A kernel of deep contempt remained in me however, from my old days of using, and hacking, my Windows system which just never worked long in the way I wanted it to. And I remember reading news on Microsoft proposals such as "Trusted Computing", where the idea was that Windows would scan your files when they are being opened, to determine if it's a legitimate copy and refuse to work with it if it's not approved[0]. That was such an outrageous idea to me back in mid 2000s that it cemented in me that I won't give Microsoft any money. Which of course softened, over the years, I bought second hand Windows licenses for computers I set up for others, for example, but still... the one installation I have to keep around for gaming, will never be a legitimate copy as long as I can manage.
For added fun, the KMS emulator I'm using is open source, and runs on Linux :)
Windows 10 'LTSC' sounds like what you want, I used it for some client projects.
The LTS release was meant for Kiosk and pseudo embedded applications but was pretty much a non hostil UX version of Windows 10. In comparison even Windows 10 Professional editions are very bloated.
I am not sure if they intend to have an analogue Windows 11 LTS but I suppose the need will probably be there for customers who are more Windows-centric.
If it is a Windows machine provided from a workplace with IT then it should be a Windows Enterprise image where this stuff is disabled with Group policy or Intune.
No, they still have these features on Pro and even HPC SKUs of Client. Server and LTSB don't, but are missing other features you might actually want (like DirectX).
