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Comment by vivzkestrel | Hacker News Reader

Imagine a new version of Windows being released called "Windows Optimal" In addition to Home, Professional and Pro you get to buy Optimal. The catch is that it is priced 4x the home version. You wonder why? Optimal is exactly what you think it is. A ground up 0 bloatware, 0 telemetry, 100% easily tweakable privacy and performance settings from a single screen with 0 AI features, 0 Edge and 0 games. Imagine getting your hands on this OS and then running your favorite programs on it. It is so minimal that you literally have to install notepad on it if you want to or you can always install notepad++. Dear employees and managers of Microsoft reading this comment, can you greenlight something of this caliber? like for once?

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You are describing Windows 11 LTSC which is a product that exists because Microsoft knows people want to turn this crap off.

It is of course only available in volume licensing to keep it away from normal users. Only businesses get to control their computers.

which shows that only businesses care about that stuff.

normal people don't give a fuck, they actually like the things HN bitches about - online account, data storage and services

Word on the ground is this is turning around

It shows nothing. Normal users dont even get the option. They probably dont give a fuck, based on a ton of other things, but there is no option to even choose the no bloat option.

Normal people don't want a Microsoft account (indeed, many don't have one), nor do they want ads in the Start menu.

I moved all my home LAN Windows machines to LTSC IoT in February; cost me about 90 euros for each license. You can buy individual licenses from online stores that will connect to MS and validate correctly. You'll have to install the MS app store from GitHub (!), and there are some other issues, but at least you're years away from what hit everyone else this October.

Does LTSC comes with respectable default settings or that's still a matter of setting up system?

I'm replying to you from Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC courtesy of massgravel (or massgrave... not sure wth it's actually called now!) and it's activated until 2038.

The only thing it didn't have out of the box that I wanted was Microsoft Store (so that I could install Winget and Terminal) but you install it from an elevated powershell command with "wsreset -i" and that's it done.

It also has the original version of Notepad, not that abomination with the tabs and Copilot!

Oh, no Copilot whatsoever in fact.

All the instructions for IoT (including where to get it... legitimately) are on the massgrave github page and website.

And before I am accused of sailing the high seas... I'm not! The activation script just activates complicated processes built-in to Windows: it doesn't "hack" it or anything!

I still use a similar version of Windows 7 — licensed offline through an old enterprise activation. It just works for its specific purposes.

You can find some licenses sold online; it costs about 3x the price of Home. But I am not sure if it's legal; I have already bought some and then realized it's just keygenerated.

Normal, reputable websites never sell single LTSC licenses. So go figure

You're just describing a Linux distribution[1]. With the added benefit of being 0x the price.

[1]: Assuming you're not married to some Windows only software that you can't get working using Proton/Wine, or don't want to run a Windows VM.

primary use case: gaming. needs to support everything from 90s to cutting edge modern games without hiccups

Well, guess you're married to Windows if those are your requirements. Proton runs most games these days[1] (but not all). Apparently older Windows app/games run better on Proton/Wine than Windows (better citation needed) [2].

[1]: https://www.protondb.com/explore

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1kjib0y/is_th...

It doesn't. Case in point is my spare late 00's laptop running mint and early 00's / late 90's games. Some (Age of Wonders 1) don't work at all under wine/proton. Others (Age of Wonders SM, dosbox games, Majesty) technically work but keep hitting snags like midi just flat out not working, display resolution being read and set incorrectly, visual artifacts. Everything tested worked perfectly fine under Win7 and Win10.

Age of Wonders 1 used to work. That patch that you need to get it running on Win10+ was originally made for Wine: https://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?actio...

Is that not sufficient these days? I might take another look; this is one of those games that I intend to keep running one way or another until I die.

It isn't I'm afraid. I'll see if I get any crash log or report that could help later in the evening.

Aight so when using Wine, AoW1 just instantly fails silently upon launch, no error message to see. When using proton it technically works - clicking randomly I launched the tutorial, judging by the sounds - but the screen is black all the time and shutting down alt-f4 it throws an error:

Exception EWin32Error in module VCL30.dpl at 00010E4F

Win32 Error. Code 1400. Invalid window handle.

They can just run a windows VM which shouldn't require too much memories for the kinds of games they want to play.

No VM solution I know of supports 3D-accelerated graphics. VMware Workstation used to, but they removed it years ago because it was a security risk (direct access to 3rd-party drivers on the host).

VMs are useless for most gaming.

For games up to around the late 90s, and if you have a real beast of a machine, full emulation such as with PCem is the best option.

I haven't used a VM for gaming recently so I didn't know they don't support graphics anymore. That's a bummer!

https://bazzite.gg/

Should work out of the box, no configuration needed.

The only caveat is games with kernel based anti-cheat, but I don't play many of those. Arc Raiders works just fine, for example.

I'm sorry but linux gaming absolutely does not support "support everything from 90s to cutting edge modern games without hiccups"

I'm sure for some users it's acceptable, solid even, but I know several people, including myself, that keep hitting edge cases and invisible walls when on Windows these games "just work". And no, it's not about kernel anti-cheats or any other DRM.

> I'm sorry but linux gaming absolutely does not support "support everything from 90s to cutting edge modern games without hiccups"

Neither does Windows. W11 (or was it W10) famously broke a bunch of old games. Running Windows games from the 90s is easier on linux than on Windows at this point.

That's really nice but that still doesn't make Linux the better option, or even "easier" when PCGW has everything covered for Win. And most Windows issues is just slapping dgVoodoo or nGlide in and it's done anyway when solving a linux problem might be anything from picking a specific (arcanely divined) proton version to elaborate hacks and batches.

I use crossover and/or Lutris on Linux in order to run most of my 90s Windows games as it's a complete pain in the ass to get them working under Windows 11.

Agreed and it's frustrating that people don't admit this.

I recently started dual booting Linux again and tried both Arch and CachyOS. Former with Hyprland, the latter with Gnome just to see how well the games run. I knew going in that tiling window managers don't behave well with games and that was indeed the case. With Gnome, even some native games made by Valve had terrible performance issues where I have none on Windows. There are also cases, and I wouldn't even describe them as edge cases, that you have to tinker to get things to work properly.

I have a very basic dual monitor setup, but yesterday I spent an hour trying to fix a problem where my cursor would escape the game's window into the second monitor. The obvious solutions (gamescope) didn't work for some reason. Did I end up fixing it? Yes. But that's only because I know my way around Linux. That's an hour I'm never getting back.

I'm not making an argument for Windows, I very much dislike using it but Linux folks need to accept reality. A reality which isn't fair, but reality nonetheless. That's when you start to make progress. (Which, to be fair, they have. Tremendously so. But there's still a long road ahead!)

I use i3wm and I have this issue with escaping mouse in CS2. I thought about using gamescope but never did. You mention you found a solution so would you be kind enough to share it?

That would definitely save me part of that hour you lost :) But honestly, I'd trade that hour on linux a thousand times to not have to close another notification from Windows about this amazing new game they have for me to install. And I don't even have Windows 11.

Linux has quirks, of course, but every OS has them. People like to dismiss quirks on Windows because they're used to it, but a lot of the time they're worse than Linux's quirks.

I've had a pretty opposite experience. I was able to get an old adventure game (Titanic: Adventure out of Time) working just fine on Wine and it refuses to run on modern Windows.

If Wine doesn't work I'll run it in 86box.

Neither does windows tbh. You're not getting most early 2000s let alone 90s games working on W11 without a lot of time and effort having gone into getting it to work. E.g. try run original (not gog) vampire masqurade bloodlines, or black and white without the community patches running. Running both in original form is feasible on linux, but straight up not possible on w11 without patches.

Should work without issues, except when an "anti-cheat" rootkit is needed by the game.

Source: Someone using Debian to play games from the 90's (Master of Orion 2, HoMM 2&3, etc) to recent games like Helldivers 2

So not modern Windows, right ? ;-)

This is a great idea. However, roughly 10 seconds after the first reports showing market penetration, a PM will suggest 'further monetisation'.

Well you can get closer with custom build tools and tools to gut features. Ms is acutely aware of these third party efforts and they are working diligently to stop them from working in each release. They are not interested in making a prosumer release, but harvesting the customer. One of you is the matrix and the other is the human battery. I leave it to the reader to determine where they fall in those categories.

You have just described Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC Edition. See the MAS website for more info.

You can try playing with WinPE.

It already exists (any Open Source OS).

Honestly, if it ran Affinity photo and SilverFast, I'd be happy to pay that. Same goes for Linux, whatever can run those!

I've been running Affinity Photo on Fedora for a while by running this installation script[1]. Works flawlessly and they recently upgraded the script to install Affinity 3.0. I haven't encountered/solved your second use-case, but I'm /sure/ someone has.

[1] https://github.com/ryzendew/AffinityOnLinux

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