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Comment by Bender | Hacker News Reader

I agree with this article, but I think it can be summed up as, "People need the option to buy the LTSB release of Windows 10". Microsoft refuses to sell it to consumers. It is an enterprise only option (unless that has recently changed and I am not aware of it).

I have one windows 7 machine for playing WoW and it will stay on 7 until I can get the LTSB release of Windows 10 and the ability to turn off 100% of the telemetry, for real. If Blizzard would build an unsupported 64 bit ELF binary for WoW, then I would not even have windows. I'm not using wine.

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Anyone can buy LTSC for a few hundred dollars.

I cobbled together a post last year on acquiring it:

https://tinyapps.org/blog/201811300700_windows_10_ltsc.html

However, it does require a willingness to enter into a VL agreement with Microsoft.

Can I buy from someone who went to all the hassle already? Or are those organizations not allowed to distribute keys?

I recently found out that people are selling legitimate keys on eBay for a few bucks: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=windows+10+ltsc

According to people who have purchased from there, they're VL keys that can be used many times (e.g. 2500 times), so they just sell the same key over and over to multiple people:

> ...sellers on eBay are probably people that work for companies that get GVLK and MAK Product Keys from MSDN/Microsoft and then just sell 'em off because the companies they work for more than likely would never even notice? I mean, with MAK Product Keys having from 2500 to 5000 activations per key, at least if they still work the same way they did in Vista/7 days, most companies that pay for volume licensing never ever actually use anywhere near that many. [0]

> after about 3 hours I got a mail with a key and a link to download "LTSCX64.2019.ENU.JAN2019.iso" from googledrive. I did not download the ISO, so I cannot comment on that, but I typed the key into VAMT and its description is "Win 10 RTM EnterpriseS Volume:MAK" and the key had 50 activations left. I tried it on one of my LTSC 2019 installations and it worked fine. I assume that the remaining activation count will decrease over time, even when I do not use the key on my other installations, as I suspect that the seller sells the same key to more than one buyer.. [0]

> so, after about a week all 50 activations of the key I got are gone. since I only used 8 activations, one can be sure that the key was sold to multiple buyers. business as usual on ebay.. [0]

It's probably against some contract somewhere, but IANAL.

[0] https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/windows-10-enterpri...

They are pirating windows. They could be fined anywhere from hundreds of dollars to 150k per installation.

They are also participating in a commercial piracy endeavor that the company who was issued the key AND Microsoft have an interest in shutting down. Ms because such endeavors attract customers who could otherwise trivially be converted into buyers. Companies because they could get audited and fined.

This is as illegal and higher risk than torrent sites.

Depends on the country. I think the EU declared the resale of Windows licenses legal a few years ago. Microsoft trying to fight that doesn't make it illegal.

Source on this? I think that only applies to retail licenses.

Even if true, I rather doubt that extends to an employee selling access to their employer's volume licensing key (it seems clear that's what's happening here)

When you bought a physical item in a store you have a right to resell it be that a computer or a disk.

Even if you can resell a key as part of selling a copy of windows you paid for you can't sell your employers property, can't sell part of a contract, can't sell more than you actually paid for.

If the company purchased the right to have n machines at their company run windows and each key can be activated n * x times nobody sold you the right to sell n * x copies of windows to everyone on the internet.

Like it or not those agreements aren't sales and the keys aren't a physical item you have purchased they are just a technical measure to constrain users from sharing a single ISO file to their million closest friends.

> According to people who have purchased from there, they're VL keys that can be used many times (e.g. 2500 times), so they just sell the same key over and over to multiple people

Erm, no - that's not how Microsoft's volume licensing works. Volume keys are issued to enterprises that buy them, and only that organisation is licensed to use them.

Unscrupulous employees have been known to sell the keys.

Did I say otherwise? That is exactly my point. The keys - bought by the enterprises - can be used many times, on their machines. However, people find those keys and sell them on eBay.

Apologies, it seems I misread the tone of your words.

Would Window 10 for Workstations be an alternative? I believe it is ad-free, although if someone could confirm that it would be helpful.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/windows-10-pro-for-worksta...

That link implies RDMA SMBd is not available on regular Windows 10 Pro. I wonder if that’s really true.

"People need the option to buy the LTSB release of Windows 10"

That's just fixing the symptoms rather than the cause.

The real solution is for Microsoft to treat its customers with a bit more respect.

> The real solution is for Microsoft to treat its customers with a bit more respect.

This company (like most other companies) operates out of greed, and that doesn't go well with respect. They're just trying to milk as much as they can from you.

You can make a profit and treat your customers well.

I'd argue that's only valid if you're a small company.

Once you're a huge corporation with tons of stakeholders, it seems inevitable that you will compromise customers in favor of profits sooner or later.

I feel like this attitude lets big companies off the hook in a way. Yes, as the company grows it becomes more likely that they'll make these compromises, but that doesn't mean it's inevitable.

Shareholders will vote in someone who will compromise.

While I agree it seems like it lets them off the hook, that's not on them, it's on the society that shrugs that off as "normal".

But if you follow the logical path from capitalism, it is most definitely inevitable. There is no way to maximize profits without hurting the users.

If one company does the right thing, another will take it's place because it will generate more profit.

Can you imagine a CEO constantly telling it's shareholders that they will not increase profits because they want to "treat customers more fairly"? He'd be sacked in the first opportunity.

I didn't read that as letting big companies off the hook. Just the opposite, I read that as a strong condemnation of big companies.

Why would they when people keep buying it regardless? Why would a company ever change when they're making more money than ever and the consumers don't care?

> The real solution is for Microsoft to treat its customers with a bit more respect.

Microsoft has embraced the modern development model and its culture as well. In other words, customers are cattle.

You should check out Valve's Proton. It's wine, but not wine... It's another abstraction layer built on top and it is pretty amazing. For the most part it just works. Doing some quick searching it looks like people have WoW running on it.

It is Wine, but with patches, that one day could be clean enough to go upstream. Some eventually are merged upstream.

WoW runs fine on regular Wine Staging, too (though DXVK in particular gives some rather ridiculous framerate improvements).

I keep hearing this, but I have so far not been able to get a single game (even ones marked with excellent support) to work on proton. I really, really, really want it to work, though!

You can buy it for a couple of hundred bucks or thereabouts. You also need to buy some filler Microsoft stuff equivalent to paper clips to make up for the minimum requirement of 25 products. You will then be an Enterprise.

WoW works perfectly on linux with Proton, and installing it is as easy as getting Lutris and double clicking on WoW's icon.

WoW classic also works perfectly, if that's your thing.

You can do it half legally with an MSDN subscription. Big one off cost but if you regularly toy with windows VMs or re-installing OS on hardware it might be a good option. The license restricts you to testing only.

I run Windows 10 "Pro" (not LTSB). It's fine. Really. The fact that there are a couple of bundled games is no big deal.

> It's fine. Really.

I can tolerate some bloatware (like games), but what about the telemetry? Are you OK with that or did you find a way to disable all telemetry?

Windows firewall will actually block the telemetry requests if you add all the telemetry hosts to it. Hosts file hacking doesn’t work because it bypasses that somehow.

Ugh, you know that the list of telemetry hosts is a moving target? How often do you update that list? How do you know your list is complete? How do you know that Windows firewall blocks all connections?

Then pirate it. What do you care? This is like pirating a show they refuse to put on Netflix. They don't give you the option to conveniently buy what you want, so pirate it.

Instructions on how to activate your installation of LTSC here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19420337

Pirate KMS servers will go offline eventually right? Even if the legality isn’t a concern, the reliability and maintenance overhead is a problem. There are trust/malware concerns with client-side cracks as well.

That one hasn't gone offline in years, so I've never thought of this. Perhaps you are right, but I assume that it should be easy enough to find new ones if you need them. I wouldn't consider this approach to be "high maintenance".

Throwaway account because I'm sensitive about admitting I do this kind of thing (perhaps moreso than I should be):

In a word: no. KMSpico is kind of perfect. The process happens entirely locally, and is quite technically "clean".

Here's a KMS server emulator, all open source: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd

If you want to skip straight to the piracy, here's an open source package for you, complete with keys, hosted ironically on Microsoft servers, that uses vlmcsd: https://github.com/ekistece/vlmcsd-autokms

It's a pretty clever hack. It runs the KMS emulator locally and fakes the network connection with a TAP device from OpenVPN. Works perfectly.

Why not just run Linux

Likely games - which are probably also pirated.

Ironically, the last time I needed Windows to run a game was because of Denuvo. I wouldn't have needed it if I'd pirated it.

It does not have Win32 or DirectX, for starters

Sure it does: wine. Whether or not it works (and works performantly enough) for what any given person needs it for is another matter, of course.

Honestly I think it's sad how much the community still underestimates gaming.

I tried using wine or even using Steam directly on Linux, but playing any game with 30-40% less performance is ridiculous.

If you really like games, Linux is unusable for anything big.

I've had to dual boot Windows for the last 10 years just to play a game without stuttering, lag, huge FPS drops, etc.

Nothing would make me happier than being able to only use Linux, but until the community takes gaming seriously, people are forced to use Windows.

what setup do you have ? Because I play on Linux and I don't appreciate any performance drop. For example, Stellaris and Doom fly's on my machine.

NVIDIA GTX960 with an i7 and 16 GB of memory. That's not the issue.

I'd argue if it was the issue, even Windows wouldn't let me play any of these games with reasonable performance.

Here is the 64 dollar question. What GPU driver?

I have an NVIDIA GTX960.

When playing CS:GO (a relatively old game) I have stuttering, drastic FPS drops and more :(

Do you use the nvidia driver or nouveau which is known to be crap.

NVIDIA ones. I tried with proprietary, MESA and Nouveau. Never managed to get the same experience as on Windows.

It's a shame, because it literally can't be anything but the software. It's the same hardware with different OSes. Might even be windows specific optimizations on the games part, but in the end it doesn't matter.

The bottom line unfortunately is: it's significantly worse.

I wonder if you are actually using the nvidia driver or just installed it. You could trivially have installed the nvidia driver but actually be using nouveau. Running glxinfo in a terminal would probably be informative.

The complexity of setting this up would be a good point to address. Linux Mint for example has a tool to do this for you. This is logically a workaround for nvidia actually contributing an open source driver that doesn't suck.

There is a supposedly much better supported open source driver for new AMD hardware as well. Another thing the community is doing.

If the problem is with the closed source driver there isn't much the community can do. It's very hard to reverse engineer a complex device like a gpu. If the problem isn't games in general but that particular game there again isn't much the community can do.

Sure, if you want to run a recent game, or one that's graphics-intensive, yeah, it might not run well enough for you on wine, and you'll need to dual-boot.

Personally, I don't have that kind of problem, and I suspect I'm not alone. Of the games I play that don't have Linux ports, they run well enough under wine, even on my (recent) laptop with Intel graphics. But I'm a pretty casual gamer, and honestly find it rare that I just must play the type of games that require a high-end Windows rig.

How would you feel if I gave detailed instructions on how to rob _you_?

If I had billions in the bank and you gave detailed instructions on how to pick up the breadcrumbs I leave on the table of a restaurant, I wouldn't give a shit. But if they care so much they are welcome to break into my house and take my computer

Is this supposed to sound as nonsensical as those 90s "You wouldn't DOWNLOAD a CAR!" anti-piracy posters, or is this just a pleasant side effect of your poor analogy?

If I refuse to sell you my handmade wallet, so you put up instructions on how to make an exact copy, that would be an equivalent action.

Nobody would call that theft.

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