That is what I use and that it what I set up for my less technically competent friends and family who are not good at navigating the ever-shifting sands of the Windows UI, the situation changing on them, a game they had not remembered installing appearing in their Programs. Working on the simple rhythm of muscle memory and repetition, they draw the Worm.
In the context of a discussion about Microsoft’s intentions, it is very clearly asshole behavior by Microsoft to have a perfectly good product that people want, but then put up artificial barriers like having a friend who knows how to get it and install it.
I would not downvote you for mentioning it, but it makes Microsoft look even worse than if they did not have LTSC at all since it removes their plausible deniability.
What, why?!
Means it's TECHNICALLY possible, and Microsoft actively takes away the option after 10 days?
Do people not hate this?
On macos the only way to revert is through full machine backups. That at least lets me think the upgrade is irreversible without backups, and then I am fine with it. :)
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
The last time I paid for MSDN was 2011 or 2012 but I was able to download and use everything ...
The usage constraints are mostly social/legal rather than technical, of course.
I think at least personally I've finally reached the tipping point where dealing with the annoyance of running windows apps on linux is going to be worth not having the huge host of annoyances microsoft is intentionally pushing onto me.
Because it's incredibly hard to outright impossible to get a legal version of this. AFAIK it's only available for MSDN subscribers, OEMs/ODMs/embedded device manufacturers and large-volume customers and illegal to resell; on top of that unlike regular Windows ISOs there are no public download links that you can then either activate with a key you happened to find somewhere or run one of the usual activation cracks.
No matter what, unless you are in a highly privileged position you do not have a way of obtaining LTSB without exposing yourself to legal or security risks.
ETA: Just had a look on a well-known torrent site - "LTSB" yielded no usable results (> 10 seeds), and "LTSC" only one that matches the seed count, and it doesn't even ship supposedly virgin ISOs but modified ones, so no way to know if at least the install media is free of malware (by comparing it to known MS hashes). Jesus, I didn't know the situation was that bad.
The latter part is the problem. LTSB/C keys are illegal to resell and MS regularly bans keys they suspect of having been sold.
Compared to MS Office, Windows is nothing.
There is no such plan.
Its almost comical.
I can't speak for others but I'm more than willing to pay good money for a version of Windows that isn't actively user hostile and full of garbage. Like, give me a Windows 2000 UI on top of modern Windows underpinnings and I'll give you $500/year. They can even keep putting out the shitty version of Windows and just make it explicitly ad/creepy-data-harvesting supported. That might still not be enough to actually make them money, I can't say.
What I can say is that I feel like Window's current strategy is less about making money and more about actively trying to kill off personal computing for the sake of pushing everyone to subscription services.