Hacker News Reader

>an alternative version of windows 10...without "telemetry"...windows 7 will be the last microsoft OS I ever install on bare metal

You know all the telemetry was backported to 7 and 8 right? You can remove it but that would fall under "3rd party add-ons to disable this behavior" and thus would not satisfy your needs.

Is it installed from a patch/update (which can be avoided) or by some other means?

Yes, updates. If you memorize all the KB123456 numbers associated with telemetry you can block them or uninstall them; however again you can mitigate them in 10 as well.

>3rd party add-ons to disable this behavior are just temporary hacks.

And I understand that disabling these amazing features in control panel (or that new nonsense) also tend to be temporary - until some update randomly turns those features back on.

Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Support Branch) should be that.