Well, that was tiresome.
Not only did I have to compromise my principles to never install Windows 10, but it also took two days out of my free time.
In the end, it made little sense to install Windows 7 alongside Manjaro as a failsafe. What if Manjaro breaks only in several years and I have to suddenly use it? Running Windows 7 becomes riskier by the day.
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The ideal version of Windows 10 is Enterprise LTSC. The "LTSC" stands for Long Term Servicing Channel and as I mentioned in an earlier status, it's intended for industry devices. It comes without any bloat (no Modern UI, no Cortana, etc.) and is supported for 10 years, with the last available version being supported until September 2029.
It gets only security updates, no feature updates at all.
By all accounts and purposes: Microsoft doesn't want this version to exist. It is a continuation of the old concept of Windows as a product, unlike their new internally called WaaS line (Windows as a Service). So it was only logical that they announced that the next release of LTSC will have its support reduced to 5 years.
And I have to say, Enterprise LTSC certainly feels like something that shouldn't exist, considering how hard Microsoft pushes the consumer versions of Windows 10. The Start Menu alone makes this apparent.
It's possible to "harden" Windows 10 quite well with additional tools, mainly Blackbird, but I also used W10Privacy and O&O ShutUp10 in conjunction. While they overlap in some aspects, I feel like each offers enough unique tuning options.
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Blackbird is the essential one. It might need a few tries (don't be lazy, read the readme when something comes up, it doesn't take long), but in the end, it managed to deactivate all but three things for me that were related to Windows Defender which I disabled anyways. It offers creating a backup of the settings before modifying the OS.
W10Privacy offers its own privacy-related options, but of interest are mainly the Privacy, Telemetry and Firewall sections. It offers saving the modification settings, to be able to apply them easily on another machine.
O&O ShutUp10 has similar tweaks, although seemingly less, but the explanations are better than in W10Privacy. Just as with W10Privacy, you can save the modification settings.
#Windows #Windows10