Windows 11 LTSC Released on the Internet
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Microsoft will be releasing the full version of of this, this year but a preview or early build has been released on the internet.
These cut down versions of Windows have faster speed, greater stability and less bloatware and don't sell as much of your personal data i.e. they track what you are doing less. The earlier Windows 10 LTSC allowed you to not install Microsoft Edge at all but not sure if the same will be true here.
They get security updates for a very long time but may not get driver updates for hardware released in later years although with windows 10 LTSC I never found that a problem, just seemed to use the same drivers as regular Windows 10 although perhaps Windows 11 LTSC will be different.
It can make an older PC seem faster and more up to date. It can make cheaper PCs run as fast as dearer PCs. It can mean more memory is available so apps that ran out of memory before or wouldn't even start may start now. Also because there is less being processed it can extend battery life on laptops.
Started running it on the laptop I bought a few days ago.
The audio driver wasn't picked up correctly so had to find that on the internet but did pick up the touch screen driver without problem. Speed wise seems to be very good, quite low resource but as feared no option to remove Edge. Using a cheap 256GB micro SD I picked up on amazon warehouse for £8 a while back when the 30% off offer was on as additional storage. Looking good so far.
BonzoBanana Still good, no crashes or anything unexpected. Windows did set up the desktop a slightly weird way which I think was because it knew I had a touchscreen. I changed it back to a normal desktop which doesn't effect touchscreen use anyway.
BonzoBanana I've been using it now for a couple weeks on the low power Celeron N4020 laptop and seems very fast and stable, no issues at all so far. I guess its just regular Windows 11 cutdown anyway so most of the software is well tested. Makes this little laptop perform punch well above its weight. So for normal day to day use browsing etc its fine and just starting to test a few games now.
I can definitely recommend Windows 11 LTSC as a good Windows version if you have an older laptop or PC that is struggling a bit.
Does this mean no M$ Store, no Edge browser, and no AI Copilot?
I've started using Linux Mint and I'm happy with it. Doubt 11 LTSC will be as good as 10 LTSC is.
PhilipMarc I've got two low power laptops one with a Celeron N4120 and Windows 10 LTSC and one with a Celeron N4020 with Windows 11 LTSC. Both run great with both versions. To be honest I'm struggling to choose a favourite. Prefer the layout of Windows 11 LTSC but it is a minor thing. Both are great choices I think. I was never happy with Linux compared to Windows but do use it occasionally. I wouldn't consider Windows 11 LTSC a downgrade on Windows 10 LTSC more of a minor upgrade. I had a few issues if I remember rightly getting Windows 10 LTSC to work well with my laptop as there were a few driver issues that took a little while to sort but I've only had a audio driver issue with Windows 11 LTSC. This of course may vary with which hardware you have. I was quite impressed with the way that Windows 11 LTSC picked up the touch screen on the laptop and configured Windows to use the touchscreen.
They don't feel much different in speed despite the Celeron N4120 (Windows 10 LTSC) being about 60-80% faster than the Celeron N4020 (Windows 11 LTSC). If anything the Celeron N4020 feels more snappy but that could be despite being only dual core compared to quad core the 2 cores are marginally faster for their turbo speeds. Of course they are two different laptops and one system utility picks up the N4020 as having dual channel memory 2x2GB where as another only picks it up as 4GB single channel. The Celeron N4120 is definitely single channel memory. I love these little laptops as they are so portable and can last an easy 10 hours on battery. However with normal bloated Windows they are less enjoyable to say the least not only does it slow them down considerably, they become more laggy and even battery life is reduced.
Looks like it has less crap, but it still does. What a surprise.
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2029 and solidly built so no reason to downgrade.
PhilipMarc That video doesn't have a lot of info but other reviews have been a lot more positive, some have commented about the core assets between Windows 10 LTSC and Windows 11 LTSC being the same in many areas in fact they have commented about a lot of the libraries being the same as mainstream editions of Windows just cut down. One criticism of all LTSC versions is they may not adapt to new hardware very well i.e. if you have a desktop and change CPUs, motherboards, graphics cards etc there might be issues but I have never found this an issue and suspect this more about motherboards rather than CPUs and graphic cards. As changing motherboards typically is a big no to licensing. I purposely bought another laptop (a cheap one at less than £45) just so I could try out Windows 11 LTSC on it plus I like the idea of the laptop having a touchscreen which I haven't had before. I didn't want to mess up my existing Windows 10 LTSC laptop which is my daily use portable computer.
BonzoBanana I'll try 11 LTSC when possible, but I've been disappointed too many times with 11 so going with low expectations.
PhilipMarc I'm no fan of Windows it is just a necessary evil to get other applications I want to work and nowadays Microsoft work so hard to monetise people's data forcing Edge on you when you don't want it. My favourite operating system is RISC OS but it is just not competitive anymore. I was playing about with a i7 laptop in Currys a while back and it was slow to use, it was full of bloated software and don't think it had been configured that well. I think it was a £800 laptop with one of the slower low power i7 chipsets and no dedicated graphics but still I was expecting more from it. There was some lag to opening new tabs on the browser. I wonder if it was a double virus killer effect where the McAffee or whatever it was called was operating at the same time as Defender so everything was being checked twice. I suspect every windows feature was enabled by default choking the speed of the laptop. The battery life was stated as 4 hours so realistically 2 hours for gaming and probably 1 hour for gaming after a couple years when the battery pack is ageing.
I still use debloating software even with Windows LTSC.
archive.org/details/windows-11-enterprise-ltsc-24h2
I'll give this a try with an SSD rather than my main laptop HDD (can't be too bothered to move it all around).
PhilipMarc Yeah that is where I downloaded my copy from and standard activators work with it.
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