A copy can be a pain to get a hold of because Microsoft only want to licence it to corporate clients, so it’s usually not possible for individuals to buy a licence at any price. Microsoft really don’t want regular people to have access to it.

but if you look on your favourite piracy site you should see it. Then use a Windows keygen and presto it’s activated.

(they used to be public)

It's gonna be ironic if one day Wine becomes the best way to run those applications because Microsoft ruined their own platform with ads and surveillance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/he1pc0/went_overboa...

Instead, in Microsoft's minds, this is a use-case exclusively of interest to embedded-device system integrators (i.e. the people building the world's ATMs, billboards, gas pumps, slot machines, ticket kiosks, etc.) So that's how they market it: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/

Make no mistake, though, you can just download and install Windows IoT Core onto any random PC; and (mostly) arbitrary Windows apps can be installed and run on top of Windows IoT Core.

The only proviso being, that IoT Core is maybe a bit too minimal for your use-case: IoT Core assumes you don't need a desktop (because you're likely remotely managing the device, and deploying a full-screen kiosk-style app that isn't meant to be broken out of.) It still has a graphical "control plane" shell sort of thing, but it's entirely built on the Metro/UWP UX, with no ability to launch programs in windowed mode. (Essentially, there's no window manager running.) I believe this means that Win32 apps that try to spawn multiple windows (e.g. old versions of Photoshop that make the palettes their own windows), won't work on IoT Core. Most modern stuff avoids that, though.

I would note that this "remote-deploy and boot apps in fullscreen, with access to Win32 but not GDI, graphics only though UWP" paradigm, closely mirrors the experience of using an Xbox One in developer mode. I bet the "distro" of Windows used between IoT Core and the modern Xbox are near-identical.

But the assumption in those use-cases is that you as the system-integrator are either also the developer of the app being embedded, or at least have access to the engineers of the ISV who developed the app; and so you can get the app recompiled [and potentially slightly rewritten in the process] for the target profile (UWP) that IoT Core supports. IoT Core doesn't support just taking arbitrary Win32 GDI apps and kiosk-ifying them.

...but Windows IoT Enterprise does! IoT Enterprise is just Windows Pro LTSC but with IoT Core's virtual-appliance versioned-image deployment and management process. You can totally kiosk a "legacy" Win32 GDI app using IoT Enterprise. That's what a lot of modern billboard manufacturers and the like are still doing (until they finish redeveloping their signage apps for IoT Core), which is why you'll still sometimes see e.g. an airport terminal sign sitting around on the Windows desktop when its kiosk app failed to boot. That's an IoT Enterprise deployment.

But IoT Enterprise isn't any more minimal than Pro LTSC, it's just different, so it wasn't really the point of the discussion here. If you're a home user putting Windows on your own PC, you'd want to use Pro LTSC, not IoT Enterprise. (Unless "your own PC" is your RaspPi that you're trying to set up as a smart-fridge weather widget or something. Then maybe you do want IoT Enterprise.)

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...

Someone told me this when I made a similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27671028

Microsoft is giving away Windows. Remember that not that long ago you had to pay €$200+ for an OS.

Official MS pricing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/windows?activetab=pi...

I'm guessing they're not going to drop those fees, so whatever ad or product-placement revenue comes in is probably on top of that?

I'd love to see numbers on how much long term projected revenue their captive audience telemetry and ad delivery platform are valued at. I wouldn't be surprised if it renders the actual OS license sales look like a drop in the bucket.

Maybe they could set it up so that Windows is free with ads, but subscribers can turn everything off and get full control.