Windows 10 LTSC for gaming

[The Desert Eagles Soar]

Gotcha, fair enough and thank you all.

So basically no LTSC for me if I want to play Baldur's Gate 3, fair enough. I honestly just want the bloat gone. I hate cortana and how I can't even search for a file on my PC without it searching the internet instead of my actual PC like older versions used to.

If you're not worried about third-party people potentially spying on you, ReviOS might be your speed. It's a version of Windows 10 packaged with install scripts that get rid of things like Cortana. I have have a dual boot setup and whatever games I can't get to work on linux I switch to ReviOS for.

I made the plunge and switched from Win 7 to linux a couple years ago and I only have to switch to Win 10 for edge cases like modded Battletech. With Steam every game has worked straight out of the box.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I honestly just want the bloat gone. I hate cortana and how I can't even search for a file on my PC without it searching the internet instead of my actual PC like older versions used to.

Using ShutUp10 and Winaero Tweaker can do all that and more on a stock non-LTSC Win10/Win11 installation. You can get quite close to the LTSC experience between that and manually uninstalling all the bloatware (which doesn't grow back after every Windows update anymore).

 

[The Ugly One]

You should also be fine with Windows 10, since it's about 3 years after end of support for Windows that you see major vendors dropping a Windows version. For example, Win 7 support on Steam ends tomorrow, and EOL was 2020. Win 10 end of support is 2025, so I wouldn't expect Steam to stop running on it until 2028.

been running ltsc 2019 vers 1809 since it fucking came out on many different systems and vms. not once have i had steam or discord crash.

Fuck off with your "works on my machine" bullshit, you're giving a newbie a false impression of utility. Wish I had a dollar for every bespoke system niggerfaggot who insists his system is absolutely perfect before listing all the hoops he has to jump through (regular wipes and reinstalls in your case) to keep things working.

 

[TheDataHorder]

Fuck off with your "works on my machine" bullshit, you're giving a newbie a false impression of utility. Wish I had a dollar for every bespoke system niggerfaggot who insists his system is absolutely perfect before listing all the hoops he has to jump through (regular wipes and reinstalls in your case) to keep things working.

didnt say shit about having a perfect setup, if i had a dollar for every fuckwit like you who thinks tinkering with shit leads no where then I'd be richer then elon musk.
i gave him the pros, cons and potential issues of running ltsc, if he decides he's ok with the problems he may encounter down the line then that's his decision.

 

[Snorky]

You can do it and for the most part it will work fine, but don't expect future AAA games to support LTSC. If you really want to go for it, use LTSC 2021 since that uses a version of Windows 10 from 2-3 years ago as its foundation instead of something massively ancient like LTSB 2016.

 

[Post Reply]

I game on LTSC 2021 with zero issues. Personally I will never run any other flavor of Windows. The only serious caveat mentioned above is that it doesn't have the new scheduler for Intel's hybrid architectures, so performance on 12th gen and newer Intel CPUs will not be optimal. I use AMD, so this is not an obstacle.

 

[Sam Losco]

I Steam game on LTSC 2021. I've never had a problem with Steam crashing. I most recently played the latest version of Satisfactory and occasionally have had it lock up and crash but it's also still an early release game so it could just be that. I barely game though so don't have the best experience with it.

 

[Pee Cola]

You might like Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility, I've never used it but I've heard it's great.

CTT's Windows Debloater is great, and he's done his best to make it idiot-resistant. Add O&O ShutUp10++ for just a little bit of privacy and you can make non-LTSC Windows 10 tolerable. I suspect CTT and O&O would reverse at least a little bit of Windows 11's enshittification, too.

 

[toe_schnitzel6969]

I have been using LTSC 2021 on my 4 year old 'gamer' laptop for nearly a year. It runs like a regular Windows 10 install but with some fat trimmed, tho my system sometimes struggles to update, it gets there eventually (this is probably because I used some dodgy activation script recommended by R*ddit, don't be like me). Keep in mind that: 1. 99% of my games are on Steam and the 1% is emulating older stuff + Minecraft, so that's mainly why they work fine 2. This hardware is made before 2021 so I haven't ran into any compatibility problems, if you have very recent hardware then it could be tricky

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

Been using Win10 LTSC ever since I (unwantingly) moved off Win7 back in 2018 because I wanted to play some VR games. Never had any problems, and even if I did they weren't significant enough for me to considering them anything more than typical Windows fuckery.

 

[S3y88]

i use it as dual boot for steam games, EA and Lol works for me no issues

 

[Fcret]

If you have older hardware, Win 10 LTSC is fine. If you have anything made after 2021, you should probably just get Windows 11. People mentioned big.LITTLE Intel CPUs but there are also a lot of optimizations for newer hardware generally that are being done in Windows 11 but not being backported to Win 10 LTSC. One that I know off the top of my head is DirectStorage which works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 but is more optimized for Windows 11.

Unfortunately, no matter which version of Windows you run, you're going to be at the whims of MS and there's not really a lot you can do. Modern Windows is designed as a sealed system that can be integrity checked and restored at the press of a button from Redmond, and eventually you will probably not even be able to modify the system files in Windows directly. If you care about this stuff, you should start preparing to exit the Windows ecosystem sooner rather than later because it's only going to get worse from here.

 

[Crypto Six Gorillionaire]

Honestly just jump to Linux Mint (Cinnamon); it looks more or less like Win 7 and I've had no issue running any game via Steam so far. Saves you all this hassle of not trying to get buttfondled by Microsoft by using out of date software. If the command line is what puts you off, you never have to use it in Mint at least (it's still a useful tool to learn).

Unless you really love SS13 of course, you wont be able to get BYOND running on Linux.

 

[The Ugly One]

I've had no issue running any game via Steam so far.

Quite a few of the top multiplayer games don't work on Linux due to the anticheat software. Valorant, Destiny, Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Dead by Daylight are the biggest ones I know off the top of my head.

Anyone thinking about ditching Windows and going with Linux needs to understand that it means your first commitment is using Linux, and you need to accept there's a pretty wide array of top-selling software both now and in the future you won't have access to.

 

[WelperHelper99]

EDIT: and if you're building a new PC, be careful that your CPU is fully supported by whatever Windows kernel you choose. In particular, Intel chips with the "big.LITTLE" architecture (12th generation and onward) won't work at full efficiency on anything but Win10 22H2 or Win11. That would rule out any LTSC build that currently exists.

Well considering I'm building a Intel rig, then win 11 sounds good really. I just wanna play my games and read email, no weird bullshit from a windows version frozen in time

 

[Crypto Six Gorillionaire]

Quite a few of the top multiplayer games don't work on Linux due to the anticheat software. Valorant, Destiny, Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Dead by Daylight are the biggest ones I know off the top of my head.

Anyone thinking about ditching Windows and going with Linux needs to understand that it means your first commitment is using Linux, and you need to accept there's a pretty wide array of top-selling software both now and in the future you won't have access to.

I could be a cheeky cunt here and say that Linux is protecting your PC from malware in this case.

 

[jeff7989]

goyslop

And nothing of value was lost.

 

[seri0us]

And nothing of value was lost.

What's wrong with Dead by Daylight?

 

[The Ugly One]

And nothing of value was lost.

Switch to Linux, it runs every game and is super easy to use
Okay, there's a learning curve
Well, not every game, but only marginal edge cases
Okay, quite a few mainstream games don't work, but that's normie shit you're better off without
===== YOU ARE HERE =====
Writing custom config files to get game launchers to work is part of the fun of owning a computer
Of course system updates break games sometimes
GIMP is just as good as Photoshop
OpenShot is just as good as Premiere
If LibreOffice isn't good enough for you, try being less of a normie
Right, so your NVIDIA GPU, you probably want to get rid of it
They're not workarounds for bugs, they're "manual interventions"
Of course a game platform installer might delete your desktop. This is normal. Why wouldn't it be?
Why were you expecting your hardware to just work?
Of course you would have that problem, you're using a normie distro.
Listen, this wasn't a problem before systemd
Of course it doesn't work, but that's because NVIDIA is evil
You know what your problem is? You want everything spoon-fed to you. You look at a computer as a mere appliance, not as a way of life. People like you have ruined computers.
REEEEEEEE NORMIES GET OUT REEEEEEEEE

 

[Cedric_Eff]

Windows Superlite