I’ll soon be assembling a new PC and I need to figure out which version of Win 11 to use. I’ve not been able to find a good discussion of using IoT or LTSC for a “daily driver” gaming and productivity PC.
I’ll want to make use of a lot of Windows features like virtualization, the ability to run Android apps, and the Linux subsystem. I don’t need all the new feature updates immediately, but I also don’t want to be running an antique OS… Just a debloated one.
If you’ve navigated these waters I would love to hear about your experience.
Just stick with regular windows 11. Windows updates don’t come out that often, and feature updates can be ignored for 6+ months.
There’s a lot of bloat in the commercial versions of Windows, both 10 and 11. It’s easy to install the MS store on LTSC and for those who don’t need/want the features, the bloat is entirely pointless.
And there’s a ton of tools to remove the bloat from regular windows. Honestly the biggest problem with those is they tend to go hog wild and remove too many things so you have to be careful with them and not just blindly click “remove everything possible”.
The major H2 updates do legitimately add a lot of features that people would actually want, that LTSC and IoT don’t get. If you’re mostly playing older games that’s not a problem. But if you’re trying to play games that just recently came out it can be. Windows 10 stopping at 22H2 has kinda put a pause on that, but I’m sure once it goes EOL Microsoft games will resume the “march of progress” and start requiring new features.
Facts. They are useful tools, but even though I thought I was being careful I wiped out some useful features like URL autocomplete when I experimented with the Titus tool.
We’ll see. Game development still generally has a lot of advancements it has yet to leverage so I’m comfortable with the choice I’ve made. I know about the tools to gut regular Windows but I assessed it would take me more effort to weed through than start with bare bones and add what little I wanted in. I’ve also tended to find every feature and minor update has inevitably messed with an object that is supposed to belong to me so I’m all aboard for not having to deal with that as often thanks to the long-term strategy of LTSC.