Find an ISO of the Long-Term Servicing Branch distribution - LTSB. It has all of the crap stripped out, and is quite fantastic. All the goodness, nothing that people complain about constantly with Win 10. No Edge, no Store, no Cortana, no ads or telemetry.

I accidentally downloaded it from MSDN after my laptop's hard drive failed and I couldn't find any of my previously-burned DVDs or USB sticks.

“No Edge, no Store, no Cortana, no ads or telemetry.”

Unfortunately, telemetry still can’t be turned off even in Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB. The lowest level you can pick is Security¹².

(Also, more info on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB here³).

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¹ — https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/con...

² — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959097

³ — http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft...

LTSB seems better Windows for my needs. Curious though, can't we just wire trace the telemetry connects and drop their name resolution some how? (Don't know the equivalent of /etc/hosts in Windows)

Windows does use a HOSTS file as well (located in %SYSTEM32%\drivers\etc\hosts), however, (since around Windows XP) Windows hardcodes certain IP addresses and hostnames related to updating and other Microsoft services into dnsapi.dll (located in %SYSTEM32%). This is checked before the hosts file is checked, so any entries in this DLL will override the corresponding hosts file entry if it exists.

The safest way to block suspect IP addresses and hostnames is to simply not trust the OS and use separate hardware to block the traffic.