But that's precisely the problem. This article even calls it "Windows 10 without the cruft", and there's this misinformed view everywhere that you can "strip down" and accordingly "make faster" Windows by using the LTSB. And before you know it, everyone wants to.
There are forum threads with people buying home desktops and being upset that they didn't get LTSB because "Cortana uses RAM I want for gaming".
LTSB is a victim of poor marketing. It should be called "kiosk edition" or something to make some of these things really clear to people.
Ok, I want a machine to do nothing but run office. I have given up on the portion of my Steam library that doesn't run on Linux, but running Steam would be a bonus.
I have no interest in the app store, or any of Microsoft's cloud services, and sending my data to Microsoft (or leaving open a remote diagnostics backdoor) is a complete deal breaker for me. Since my Win 8 box downloaded backports of the Win 10 spyware without my authorization, I have physically unplugged it.
Is there some reason LTSB will not meet my requirements? I can afford $7/month.
It seems like the best choice at the moment, but I'd rather not waste time if it can't run office (or has hardware issues, etc).
Just run Windows in a VM and cut off internet access. Use the windows offline updater periodically (not nearly as important since you don't have internet; still useful if you are going to import foreign files into the vm). http://www.wsusoffline.net/. You'll need a different windows scapegoat machine to use wsusoffline though. I don't think there is a linux version. Also, office 2010 on wine/crossover is perfectly usable for light work. Office 2013 is also somewhat supported these days.
Regarding Steam, I imagine changes to DirectX (even small one)s, and games that update with requirements to use the new version (because why not try to make your users be less likely to complain to you about that bug?), will lead to some small but growing percentage of Steam titles over time not working, or trying to force a DirectX upgrade.
As someone who has in the past run CentOS for my main work desktop, there are benefits and detriments to a stable platform like that for a desktop. Right after it comes out it's fairly heavily weighted on the benefits side. A couple years down the line? Not so much (and CentOS 6 took a long time to release).
Are Wine and LibreOffice missing the mark by so much that you'd have an entire operating system for an office suite?
I know those who heavily use Excel have good reason to use it over alternatives, but I would thick for home users, that'd be rare and that Wine could suffice.
As the article notes, "there’s no legitimate way for the average Windows user to get it." These are people who are going out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot. Marketing has nothing to do with it, whatever misinformation they're getting is coming from third parties.
They're not shooting themselves in the foot, they're being shot at by Microsoft and are desperate for that to stop, they make mistakes and trip in the process.
I have two PCs: My main workstation is Arch Linux, my gaming PC is Windows 10. The difference is radical, W10 is absolute garbage for gaming. Every time I turn it on, it takes a solid 10+ minutes (sometimes way longer) updating itself. When I launch a game, sometimes out of nowhere it's going to start using all my bandwidth to download updates and I have no way to stop it other than kill the process using the task manager (it does come back a few minutes later though).
It's nonsense. I have no control over what it's doing.
This windows behavior is bullshit, yes, but you actually do have control over it. The controls you need to customize Windows update are in Windows group policy.
And yeah, if you're like me you'll find that first few links describing how to apply group policy changes don't work very well. If your reaction to that is to skip it and instead install some version of Windows that Microsoft won't even let you purchase because somebody's blog is positioning it as the cure to all that ails the world...
I've been using computer for 20 years, programming for the better part of that, and I feel completely powerless. I googled, I spent more time than I cared to, and I know that I could probably prevent this behaviour if I spend more time and do more research and so on but the point is, what on earth is a random guy who doesn't carry the experience of the average HN user going to do?
Put yourself in these peoples' skins. You're paying a pretty penny for devices that don't obey you.
Of course people have control over it. Wading through a little blogspam to get to a page explaining how to configure Windows Update is fairly simple compared to the struggles one used to face to make either a Windows or Mac system function well. (when was the last time you had to use regedit?)
We have a Windows today where blue screens are extremely rare, PCs can be made secure, name brand stuff generally just works when you plug it in, and basic setup doesn't require much thought (Windows update notwithstanding). People are looking at the past with rose colored glasses and would get just as mad today if they had to install a NIC or internal modem or something in Windows 95 as they did back then. That doesn't excuse all the blatant stupidity of Windows 10's design, but still.
I feel like you're mistaking my dislike of the lack of control in the current system for an "it was better before!".
We had more control before, but I'm not dismissing that the same "before" carried less features, less security etc. I don't disagree with you there. But you're making it sound like disabling problematic behaviour is as easy as "wading through a little blogspam"; it's not. I've waded through a lot of blogspam and still haven't been able to fully disable unattended upgrades on my W10 box. I have a "Compatibility telemetry" program which is supposedly disabled systemwide yet regularly caps out my bandwidth.
This PC is just a gaming PC and it's barely usable as one. I certainly wouldn't be able to make it my workstation. I'm not complaining because, hey, I got a good alternative in Linux but I think you shouldn't be dismissing what is causing people to seek out things like this Kiosk edition.
I was trying to make sense of your comment "I've been using computer for 20 years, programming for the better part of that, and I feel completely powerless." I regret that I don't have the pages I used to figure out the group policy settings for this at hand, of course I'd be happy to share them.
> you shouldn't be dismissing what is causing people to seek out things like this Kiosk edition.
That's fair, seeking out various solutions to the problem makes sense.
I'm not sure what point this supports: that the process was easy because all this stuff was in one place (with a nice index); or that all OSs suck and Windows 10 (while an improvement) isn't an exception.
Well, it's also a matter of poor OS design decisions. People wouldn't be so desperate for a "streamlined" version of Windows if the default version wasn't so Godawful crufty.
Put another way, LTSB is like free marketing research handed to MS on a platter. It tells them that there is a demand for an LTS OS, which is how all LTS linux distros are. i.e., No bullshit, stable, and user has all the control. I don't know what the differences between Home, Pro and Enterprise editions are, but one of them ought to be what the users expect LTSB to be, which currently isn't the case.
In previous versions (XP-8.1?) there was Windows Embedded which is designed to be used in kiosks, POS systems, ATMs, etc. However that has now been renamed Windows IoT Enterprise which is apparently based on LTSB.
There are forum threads with people buying home desktops and being upset that they didn't get LTSB because "Cortana uses RAM I want for gaming".
LTSB is a victim of poor marketing. It should be called "kiosk edition" or something to make some of these things really clear to people.