https://techcommunity.microsoft.com...ng-channel-upcoming-availability/ba-p/2139861 LTSC 2021 is now available! It comes in regular LTSC (5-year support), and IoT (10-year support); apparently both are binary-identical, but vary in licensing and support years. The launch version is 19044.1348 (21H2). This is particularly more interesting to me than Windows 11 as now I have a solid, up-to-date, no-frills Windows OS version to use, also with Ryzen scheduler fixes implemented and WDDM 2.7. All my applications and games run fine on it so far, including Halo Infinite even.
It's basically a stripped but fixed function OS. No unwanted beta updates but you do get critical and security patches. If you need "consumer" level functions like Windows Store then you are better off sticking to regular W10/W11. If you can get around not having all that bloat, LTSC is better as a lite OS.
its a version intended for kiosks and minimal interaction machines, its VLK licensed and any randoms you see on forums running it are either doing so illegally or taking advantage of their companies software policies.
Well now I'm using the new version with some increments too Edit: nah! LTSC 2021 Sad disillusionment with this new system after many years I could feel the anger with the damn blue screens of death; One thing that in 2019 version NEVER occurred
Running it, 21H2, have been using LTSC a few years now. There's a package on GitHub to add the MS store to it, needed to run some games. Fantastic version of Win10, have run 12+ week up times, only restarted because video drivers sometimes want a true reboot. -random
Read @Astyanax post. I could easily take advantage of my company licences over the POS they have (W10 LTSC +IoT), but since I am pro FOSS computer person, I'll pass.
Good news guys! There actually IS versions of Windows 10 that supports Alder Lake(s) CPU scheduling, We are not stuck to Win11 after all!! Turns out version 21H2 is the supported version for Alder Lake and the new CPU scheduler, There's a few versions of 21H2. Windows 11 and Windows 10 19044.x
If you can get your hands on a copy of W10 Enterprise it has all the benefits of LTSC (full user control over everything) but also has the consumer level functions like windows store etc. I'm running a stripped down version of Win10 Enterprise 21H1.
I tried LTSC several times, but never got the optimal results I wanted and some games ran way worse than any Pro version tweaked by yourself. The only version that I can say was superior, like superb performance and did work the best was 1607 LTSC; games that would stutter a bit in newer versions of Windows did not on 1607, at all, it is a beast of an O.S. But it has issues, some new games can crash on it, newer nvidia drivers may have compatibility problems, some color depth setting in the NVCP for the monitor are missing, Firefox seemed to hate it and some games still had the same bad behaviors they present in newer versions of Windows, so isn't a "silver bullet", but in general, it's incredible. I unistalled it and just kept 20H2. It is not as good as 1607 and seems no Windows version will ever be, but games are smooth enough in it and overall feels very good. If you have an older machine and your PC needs a serious boost, you mostly play dx11 games, find yourself a 1607 LTSC ISO, download it and activate it how you want, I promise you it flies, specially on SSD. It may not be as stable or modern as later Windows 10 versions, you won't get GamePass, Windows store, but for purely gaming, it's a great option. Doing a dual boot with it to do some tests is also a good idea, but if you wanna get rid of it, mind you that you most fully format the drive you install it on, so keep that in mind.
LTSC can be brought by consumers but it isnt cheap, circa £250 last I checked, you basically have to buy a few cheap things to qualify as the right type of customer then you can purchase the actual license. The license is only valid for a specific LTSC build so e.g. going from 1809 to 21H2 you have to buy another license. Getting an education license might be far more cost efficient, no LTSC, but still the bloat removed and extended support period between feature updates vs pro. I feel the optimal period between feature updates is probably 3 years, which education can get you now. LTSC if you keep it for 5 years and especially over that, its going to feel really dated. @Smough the reason 1607 is the fastest will be the lack of cpu security mitigations, those mitigations absolutely destroy certain types of workloads, especially i/o.
About 3 months later and I've had no problems with LTSC 2021! I wonder if 1607 would be worth the scheduler hit for Ryzen CPUs? I wish there was specific details as to what the scheduler improvements were back with 1903, but that was what held me off LTSC until 2021.
I think it's too old for it to support Ryzen and i don't think it would work as expected, try asking in Reddit or other places, but i doubt it will be stable, however, some people run Ryzen cpu's on Windows 7, so ye, you can test. But if you have a GPU from 16 series or 30 series, i think is very hard to make it work and even install drivers from nvidia in it.
only problem with LTSB 2016 (1607) is recent cumulative updates [CUs] in 2022 are damn huge (updates like KB5014702 & KB5015808 for x64 LTSB 1607 are 1.5Gb in size and take more than an hour to install, even on an SSD) btw, no problems activating any LTSC version (whether ltsb 2016/1607, ltsc 2019/1809 or ltsc 2021/21H2 with HWID (digital license)
I though the launch version should be 19044.1288, same as the regular win10 21H2 ? See here > https://technichero.com/download-windows-10-ltsc/