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Anyone who still needs to run Windows 10 for whatever reason should switch over to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 (version 21H2) which will continue to rec

Anyone who still needs to run Windows 10 for whatever reason should switch over to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 (version 21H2) which will continue to receive security updates up through 2032. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/release-information https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/rel...

LeFantome 4mo ago
Current trends indicate that regular Windows 10 may as well.
everyone 4mo ago
Also MS go to great lengths to make the secret good version of Windows (It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Mint) very difficult to buy. So just torrent it. It's bad enough running Windows let alone giving money to MS.
- shevy-java 4mo ago
  > It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Min I am not necessarily a Microsoft hater per se, but to insinuate that Linux is on the same level as the Microsoft operating system is really strange to me. Whenever I, for instance, have to copy files to windows, I am getting annoyed at how slow it is compared to Linux. And that's just one issue I have. Another one is how slow e. g. ruby is on windows, compared to linux. The windows operating system is simply not good. Linux also has issues, in particular the main GUIs (both qt and gtk suck).
  - nly 4mo ago
    And good god...windows 11 updates still take fucking hours and still require multiple reboots. How this is still so painful after 2 decades is beyond me
    - destinator 4mo ago
      The update system is such a mess that I now dread booting into Windows. I have been in multiple situations where an update has required a reboot - but my boot manager defaults to Linux - so whatever update process was supposed to happen on reboot doesn't happen, which means that the next time I boot into Windows I am either A) waiting for an update to complete (which is so fucking slow) AND/OR B)The update runs and fails because I have taken too long between booting into Windows and for whatever reason it has to roll back and then RUN THE UPDATE AGAIN. I understand the fundamental need to reboot because some updates effect the kernel in such a way that the entire thing has to be reloaded. But it seems like Windows is rebooting for MOST if not EVERY update. If you are patching kernel level bugs with this frequency this far into the lifecycle of the product you have some very serious issues or more likely I am guessing that they are indiscriminately pushing "features" that nobody asked for and then they are just forcing user reboots because their bloated apps/slop are now using so much RAM and are so inefficient that the only way to "fix" the inevitable performance loss is to reboot (I am only being half snarky here).
    - MereInterest 4mo ago
      And even worse when the full-disk encryption requires you to unlock the computer after every reboot. It's just enough that the entire installation needs to be attended, and prevents you from doing anything else in the meantime. Meanwhile, on Linux, my emacs session has a longer uptime than Windows.
- xeonmc 4mo ago
  You can just use the official iso with Rufus and MAS, no need to torrent sketchy backdoored versions.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
osti 4mo ago
Does that support modern gaming?
- vunderba 4mo ago
  My only caveat is that I’m not sure how it handles multiplayer games that require anti-cheat or DRM-style mechanisms, but it’s been flawless with every title I’ve thrown at it so far (BG3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk, Ori, etc)
- eska 4mo ago
  Even Riot’s rootkit “Vanguard” has reduced requirements for Windows 10.
- badocr 4mo ago
  It does support "modern gaming" yes, but like the sibling comment mentions, at least Riot's anti-cheat demands Windows 10 22H2 (the last iteration of Win10) as a minimum. There are a few somewhat convoluted workarounds floating around that people use. Also Adobe CS seems to require Win10 22H2.
- kgwxd 4mo ago
  "modern gaming" being a euphemism for "more proprietary software that has chained us to even worse proprietary software for decades".
  - mhurron 4mo ago
    It's actually a question relating to what some people want to do with their computer. Most people don't run an OS because of some moral objection to other OS's but because it lets them do what they want with their device.
    - 1718627440 4mo ago
      The "moral objection" here being, that it doesn't let people do whatever they want with their device.
  - 4mo ago
giancarlostoro 4mo ago
Linux is free and less wasteful on resources on the other hand.
- vunderba 4mo ago
  It is, and if you can switch, it’s highly recommended. I have some pretty bespoke old RS-232 Windows software that was an absolute disaster to get working under Debian with Wine a few years back, so I (and others) might still need to keep a copy of Windows around.
  - f-az 4mo ago
    Can’t wait till Fable 6 can just decompile and reimplement old software like that.
    - Filligree 4mo ago
      Great for the americans. What are the rest of us going to do?
      - lukan 4mo ago
        Use the distilled chinese models.
      - SirMaster 4mo ago
        Maybe get your governments and citizens to innovate and create their own instead of relying so heavily on other countries. I thought that's the direction other countries were trying to go.
        nairboon 4mo ago
        Good thing that the US frontier labs only download data from the US internet created by US citizens /s
      - farnsworthfusor 4mo ago
ericpp 4mo ago
You can continue using normal Windows 10 if you have a Microsoft account attached to it. They give you the option to sign up for free extended updates (until 2027).
- jacobgkau 4mo ago
  ...which is exactly what the featured article is about. But 2032 > 2027, so I have to assume the person you replied to already knew that and was providing additional advice.
  - SirMaster 4mo ago
    But they might keep extending it...
    - antisthenes 4mo ago
      They have to update the IOT version anyway, so might as well get some money off of regular users anyway by "extending" it.
      - nok22kon 4mo ago
        except they are extending it now for free
        beagle3 4mo ago
        My guess would be because too many users held out with Win10, are not really a potential income stream, and MS would rather keep them MS customers than Linux or Mac (their next machine might be a Neo rather than Win11 these days). The cost to Microsoft is essentially zero if they ate already committed to these security updates (and they are, at least for the LTSC branch and some government contracts)
        tosti 4mo ago
ptx 4mo ago
Well, not just anyone can buy a license for it. You need some sort of enterprise volume license agreement, as far as I can tell.
- causality0 4mo ago
  If you're considering switching to Win 10 IoT you're probably not in the "people who pay for Windows" category.
- thunfischbrot 4mo ago
  Within EU, you could buy licenses from one of the legal license resell markets. For everyone outside of reach of the law, there‘s massgravel.
noxer 4mo ago
This is bad advice that is being repeated over and over by the so called tech influencers. You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10. And for the foreseeable future you gain nothing at all. If one day the normal version acctually stops reviving security updates, it almost certainly will be possible to switch the update channel to LTSC and get the LTSC updates that way but for now this is not needed and the switch is unnecessary Also without some trickery, switching to LTSC requires a complete reinstallation, which for most people likely wasting sever hours.
- jamesnorden 4mo ago
  > so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10 Windows gets worse with each update, so this is actually a plus.
  - noxer 4mo ago
    There are no update, windows 10 is EOL since months and even before that it did not receive any real updates in a long time. The current version is stable and gets only security updates just like LTSC. There is no point to switch, at best its a waste of time and worst you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
    - xeonmc 4mo ago
      > you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC. That's a laughably ignorant statement for how windows app development works. Raymond Chen weeps on reading your comment. Enterprise edition is a strict superset in functionality over Home/Pro, and LTSC just adds longer support. Enterprise IoT just comes with Windows Store components sitting dormantly, which you can promptly activate with `wsreset -i` and it's then identical with consumer editions (other than TikTok and Candy Crush not being forcibly reinstalled after every "feature update") where you can install apps from the Windows Store as needed or just use winget instead. Enterprise IoT LTSC is just Enterprise IoT with longer support. There is literally and strictly no downside with using IoT LTSC, especially with the combination of official Rufus + MAS to install from official ISOs. Actually, with MAS, you can also just download the IoT LTSC iso to perform an in-place upgrade that keeps all your existing Windows Store apps and program installs etc., just follow https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol#upgrade-windows-10-home-pro-etc-to-windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021-keep-files--apps https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol#upgrade-windows-10-home-...
ssl-3 4mo ago
We had a PC that came properly-licensed with that edition of Windows (with the matching sticker and everything), and it didn't work out as a desktop machine for the intended user. It's been a year or two and some details are lost, but IIRC there were issues with some Intuit program or other. It was probably something that could have been worked around, but workarounds tend to pile up and become difficult to track. I avoided the problem by putting a more-pedestrian version of Windows 10 on it instead.
- noxer 4mo ago
  Some "bad" coded programs have hard-coded version check and check for the OS name instead of build number, if they forgot LTSC (and server and education) the software will refuse to run on these version. Some reg edits can fix this but its a pointless hassle, there is no need to use LTSC today there are no more annoying updates and unwanted features being added. I have a windows 10 pro machine here running since 3 month 24/7.
avree 4mo ago
Terrible, almost consultant-level advice - particularly on a thread about how the actual Windows 10 release is getting extended support until 2027. The IoT release is missing a ton of installed things, such as Microsoft Store Login (needed for Microsoft apps). If you want security updates, stay on your existing OS instead of using one designed for a totally different purpose, and Microsoft will continue to push out the date...
- vunderba 4mo ago
  Not the Microsoft Store! It doesn't come bundled with Candy Crush or Cortana either. Oh the humanity!
  - avree 4mo ago
    Xbox/Microsoft Store Auth is used for a ton of logins, not just games. Similarly, you can be dismissive of Edge (another thing not included), but the Microsoft Webview Framework is Edge-based (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/?form=MA13LH https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...) and will break a variety of useful applications if it's not available. Be derisive as you want, but your advice is awful. The IoT enterprise release is for IoT use cases. The types of things people do on consumer OSes are not fully supported.
    - ptx 4mo ago
      WebView2 installs its own copy of Edge, as far as I can tell. Multiple copies even.
    - Krssst 4mo ago
      Using Windows Server 2025 (it has an evaluation version), I encountered a few problems (Xbox Controller needing to dig out de Windows 7-era drivers, Meta Quest audio not working, using pnputil to import missing drivers from a normal Win11 install) but otherwise it's been quite smooth sailing. Not having Store login sounds bad, but it also means the system cannot trick you into linking your account to a Microsoft account, which is a plus (though accidental login is reversible IIRC). (I am not sure if Minecraft, which is the only game I know to require such login, actually worked or not). Using not-for-purpose OS for gaming does lead to some hiccups, but to me those hiccups are preferable to the constant fight against your OS trying to shove things down your throat or disregarding your choices (of not wanting copilot, of wanting a local account, of not wanting ad-like stuff in the OS). (Fedora would be easier to setup at that point, but anticheats...) I also tried the IoT LTSC evaluation which generally worked better (basically, it has all the drivers the Server version is missing, plus QoL features like Win+V are enabled by default) but buying legitimate keys was not possible as a regular consumer.
QuantumGood 4mo ago
About $300, and a lot of total install time for this non-upgrade path version.

LeFantome 4mo ago

Current trends indicate that regular Windows 10 may as well.

everyone 4mo ago

Also MS go to great lengths to make the secret good version of Windows (It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Mint) very difficult to buy. So just torrent it. It's bad enough running Windows let alone giving money to MS.

shevy-java 4mo ago
> It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Min I am not necessarily a Microsoft hater per se, but to insinuate that Linux is on the same level as the Microsoft operating system is really strange to me. Whenever I, for instance, have to copy files to windows, I am getting annoyed at how slow it is compared to Linux. And that's just one issue I have. Another one is how slow e. g. ruby is on windows, compared to linux. The windows operating system is simply not good. Linux also has issues, in particular the main GUIs (both qt and gtk suck).
- nly 4mo ago
  And good god...windows 11 updates still take fucking hours and still require multiple reboots. How this is still so painful after 2 decades is beyond me
  - destinator 4mo ago
    The update system is such a mess that I now dread booting into Windows. I have been in multiple situations where an update has required a reboot - but my boot manager defaults to Linux - so whatever update process was supposed to happen on reboot doesn't happen, which means that the next time I boot into Windows I am either A) waiting for an update to complete (which is so fucking slow) AND/OR B)The update runs and fails because I have taken too long between booting into Windows and for whatever reason it has to roll back and then RUN THE UPDATE AGAIN. I understand the fundamental need to reboot because some updates effect the kernel in such a way that the entire thing has to be reloaded. But it seems like Windows is rebooting for MOST if not EVERY update. If you are patching kernel level bugs with this frequency this far into the lifecycle of the product you have some very serious issues or more likely I am guessing that they are indiscriminately pushing "features" that nobody asked for and then they are just forcing user reboots because their bloated apps/slop are now using so much RAM and are so inefficient that the only way to "fix" the inevitable performance loss is to reboot (I am only being half snarky here).
  - MereInterest 4mo ago
    And even worse when the full-disk encryption requires you to unlock the computer after every reboot. It's just enough that the entire installation needs to be attended, and prevents you from doing anything else in the meantime. Meanwhile, on Linux, my emacs session has a longer uptime than Windows.
xeonmc 4mo ago
You can just use the official iso with Rufus and MAS, no need to torrent sketchy backdoored versions.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

osti 4mo ago

Does that support modern gaming?

vunderba 4mo ago
My only caveat is that I’m not sure how it handles multiplayer games that require anti-cheat or DRM-style mechanisms, but it’s been flawless with every title I’ve thrown at it so far (BG3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk, Ori, etc)
eska 4mo ago
Even Riot’s rootkit “Vanguard” has reduced requirements for Windows 10.
badocr 4mo ago
It does support "modern gaming" yes, but like the sibling comment mentions, at least Riot's anti-cheat demands Windows 10 22H2 (the last iteration of Win10) as a minimum. There are a few somewhat convoluted workarounds floating around that people use. Also Adobe CS seems to require Win10 22H2.
kgwxd 4mo ago
"modern gaming" being a euphemism for "more proprietary software that has chained us to even worse proprietary software for decades".
- mhurron 4mo ago
  It's actually a question relating to what some people want to do with their computer. Most people don't run an OS because of some moral objection to other OS's but because it lets them do what they want with their device.
  - 1718627440 4mo ago
    The "moral objection" here being, that it doesn't let people do whatever they want with their device.
- 4mo ago

giancarlostoro 4mo ago

Linux is free and less wasteful on resources on the other hand.

vunderba 4mo ago
It is, and if you can switch, it’s highly recommended. I have some pretty bespoke old RS-232 Windows software that was an absolute disaster to get working under Debian with Wine a few years back, so I (and others) might still need to keep a copy of Windows around.
- f-az 4mo ago
  Can’t wait till Fable 6 can just decompile and reimplement old software like that.
  - Filligree 4mo ago
    Great for the americans. What are the rest of us going to do?
    - lukan 4mo ago
      Use the distilled chinese models.
    - SirMaster 4mo ago
      Maybe get your governments and citizens to innovate and create their own instead of relying so heavily on other countries. I thought that's the direction other countries were trying to go.
      - nairboon 4mo ago
        Good thing that the US frontier labs only download data from the US internet created by US citizens /s
    - farnsworthfusor 4mo ago

ericpp 4mo ago

You can continue using normal Windows 10 if you have a Microsoft account attached to it. They give you the option to sign up for free extended updates (until 2027).

jacobgkau 4mo ago
...which is exactly what the featured article is about. But 2032 > 2027, so I have to assume the person you replied to already knew that and was providing additional advice.
- SirMaster 4mo ago
  But they might keep extending it...
  - antisthenes 4mo ago
    They have to update the IOT version anyway, so might as well get some money off of regular users anyway by "extending" it.
    - nok22kon 4mo ago
      except they are extending it now for free
      - beagle3 4mo ago
        My guess would be because too many users held out with Win10, are not really a potential income stream, and MS would rather keep them MS customers than Linux or Mac (their next machine might be a Neo rather than Win11 these days). The cost to Microsoft is essentially zero if they ate already committed to these security updates (and they are, at least for the LTSC branch and some government contracts)
        tosti 4mo ago

ptx 4mo ago

Well, not just anyone can buy a license for it. You need some sort of enterprise volume license agreement, as far as I can tell.

causality0 4mo ago
If you're considering switching to Win 10 IoT you're probably not in the "people who pay for Windows" category.
thunfischbrot 4mo ago
Within EU, you could buy licenses from one of the legal license resell markets. For everyone outside of reach of the law, there‘s massgravel.

noxer 4mo ago

This is bad advice that is being repeated over and over by the so called tech influencers. You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10. And for the foreseeable future you gain nothing at all. If one day the normal version acctually stops reviving security updates, it almost certainly will be possible to switch the update channel to LTSC and get the LTSC updates that way but for now this is not needed and the switch is unnecessary Also without some trickery, switching to LTSC requires a complete reinstallation, which for most people likely wasting sever hours.

jamesnorden 4mo ago
> so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10 Windows gets worse with each update, so this is actually a plus.
- noxer 4mo ago
  There are no update, windows 10 is EOL since months and even before that it did not receive any real updates in a long time. The current version is stable and gets only security updates just like LTSC. There is no point to switch, at best its a waste of time and worst you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
  - xeonmc 4mo ago
    > you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC. That's a laughably ignorant statement for how windows app development works. Raymond Chen weeps on reading your comment. Enterprise edition is a strict superset in functionality over Home/Pro, and LTSC just adds longer support. Enterprise IoT just comes with Windows Store components sitting dormantly, which you can promptly activate with `wsreset -i` and it's then identical with consumer editions (other than TikTok and Candy Crush not being forcibly reinstalled after every "feature update") where you can install apps from the Windows Store as needed or just use winget instead. Enterprise IoT LTSC is just Enterprise IoT with longer support. There is literally and strictly no downside with using IoT LTSC, especially with the combination of official Rufus + MAS to install from official ISOs. Actually, with MAS, you can also just download the IoT LTSC iso to perform an in-place upgrade that keeps all your existing Windows Store apps and program installs etc., just follow https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol#upgrade-windows-10-home-pro-etc-to-windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021-keep-files--apps https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol#upgrade-windows-10-home-...

ssl-3 4mo ago

We had a PC that came properly-licensed with that edition of Windows (with the matching sticker and everything), and it didn't work out as a desktop machine for the intended user. It's been a year or two and some details are lost, but IIRC there were issues with some Intuit program or other. It was probably something that could have been worked around, but workarounds tend to pile up and become difficult to track. I avoided the problem by putting a more-pedestrian version of Windows 10 on it instead.

noxer 4mo ago
Some "bad" coded programs have hard-coded version check and check for the OS name instead of build number, if they forgot LTSC (and server and education) the software will refuse to run on these version. Some reg edits can fix this but its a pointless hassle, there is no need to use LTSC today there are no more annoying updates and unwanted features being added. I have a windows 10 pro machine here running since 3 month 24/7.

avree 4mo ago

Terrible, almost consultant-level advice - particularly on a thread about how the actual Windows 10 release is getting extended support until 2027. The IoT release is missing a ton of installed things, such as Microsoft Store Login (needed for Microsoft apps). If you want security updates, stay on your existing OS instead of using one designed for a totally different purpose, and Microsoft will continue to push out the date...

vunderba 4mo ago
Not the Microsoft Store! It doesn't come bundled with Candy Crush or Cortana either. Oh the humanity!
- avree 4mo ago
  Xbox/Microsoft Store Auth is used for a ton of logins, not just games. Similarly, you can be dismissive of Edge (another thing not included), but the Microsoft Webview Framework is Edge-based (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/?form=MA13LH https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...) and will break a variety of useful applications if it's not available. Be derisive as you want, but your advice is awful. The IoT enterprise release is for IoT use cases. The types of things people do on consumer OSes are not fully supported.
  - ptx 4mo ago
    WebView2 installs its own copy of Edge, as far as I can tell. Multiple copies even.
  - Krssst 4mo ago
    Using Windows Server 2025 (it has an evaluation version), I encountered a few problems (Xbox Controller needing to dig out de Windows 7-era drivers, Meta Quest audio not working, using pnputil to import missing drivers from a normal Win11 install) but otherwise it's been quite smooth sailing. Not having Store login sounds bad, but it also means the system cannot trick you into linking your account to a Microsoft account, which is a plus (though accidental login is reversible IIRC). (I am not sure if Minecraft, which is the only game I know to require such login, actually worked or not). Using not-for-purpose OS for gaming does lead to some hiccups, but to me those hiccups are preferable to the constant fight against your OS trying to shove things down your throat or disregarding your choices (of not wanting copilot, of wanting a local account, of not wanting ad-like stuff in the OS). (Fedora would be easier to setup at that point, but anticheats...) I also tried the IoT LTSC evaluation which generally worked better (basically, it has all the drivers the Server version is missing, plus QoL features like Win+V are enabled by default) but buying legitimate keys was not possible as a regular consumer.

QuantumGood 4mo ago

About $300, and a lot of total install time for this non-upgrade path version.