Posted on 10/08/2025 7:03:38 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
After your tip on this months ago I converted all of our Windows 10 machines to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC. I did it for friends and family as well 20 computers in all. $22 and a couple of hours of messing around to do it properly to keep your current system exactly the way that it has been for years, except that it will still be getting Security Updates until 2032.
The funny thing is that since it is based on Windows 10 21H2 instead of 22H2... the problematic updates that were likely designed to help convince people migrate to Windows 11, were either not sent to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC or they did not have the same negative consequences.
I admit to being a hardware hoarder, so I already have several Windows 11 machines. I have set up a small home lab with computers setup for various purposes. Windows 11 Pro has some irritating “features” but for the most part it provides a stable platform for virtual machines and running docker desktop especially in Windows Subsystem for Linux along with all the other reasons that Windows is the most popular OS in the world.
My new AI enhanced mini-PC arrived today. It came with an Oculink port to add a powerful GPU. It also came with Windows 11 Pro but and is capable of running Flight Simulator 2024 suprisingly well, but I will likely be using it mostly as a local AI server to run LLMs (Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models) This likely is the next big type of category of “killer apps”
I have already spent a considerable amount of money on AI server time to create music, images, and videos. These are also incredibly useful AI services for restoring old photos and working on many other tedious tasks. Such as helping to set up other servers or stitching together dozens of photos taken by a drone running a mapping mission.
Hopefully this latest machine will help me to save a little money on these services in the future. My guess is that by the time Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC reaches its End of Life event in 2032 they will mostly be so much less capable than the current machines at that time that it probably will not be worth it to keep coaxing them along other than for nostalgic purposes. I imaged and verifying what was on the NVME that came with it and then I put it back together and got Windows 11 Pro up and running so I could save the license before moving on to making this little tiger into a dual boot machine. I also installed and tested Microsoft 2024 with it and was very suprised with how well it actually worked with no discreet GPU. I will probably install Ubuntu Server so that I can get Ollama running on it and serving other computers AI LLM models to other computers in the network. This is a hobby for me and not as complicated as it may sound.
After spending hours on it I finally got that disabled, but it still won't boot to an SFS image. My goal is installing GNUguitarINUX from a cd from 2011. I know the cd works because I can boot to it from windows 7.
According to what I've heard from Puppy Linux folks I need to run a windows program called LICK on installation of the image in win10. If anyone is interested, I'll update as it goes.
I think video pass through is still a thing needing to be fixed though you might also need to own proper hardware capable of SR-IOV for that unless you want two or more video cards.
Honestly, I went the difficult path and trained myself off of reliance upon any applications that required Windows so I don’t have a need for this Winboat solution.
I know others are looking for this kind of thing though and I do think it’s really innovative.
Bfl
There seem to be some limitations that make gaming suboptimal though this particular game reportedly works quite well on a base Linux/Steam install.
https://www.protondb.com/app/203140
Linux/Steam would by far be the easiest point and click solution besides Windows itself based on what I see.
(Haven’t tried it myself)
Kernel level anti cheat is very likely never going to be resolved other than the company provider directly porting over their anti-cheat software.
I suspect this Winboat solution will be much more useful for application users: CAD, photoshop, quickbooks, other corporate software commercial or proprietary.
That likely gets us to 95% of what is needed to get off of Windows.
I have several games i play on linux through steam, some are quite old like the first few dues ex games and laura croft tomb raider games, some are more modern lik3 newer versions of to b raider and dues ex and batman games, they all run fine 9n linux as far as i can tell. But th3n again im not a frames per second junkie, so maybe they do take a bit of a hit, but ive not run i to any slowdowns that i can perceive.
“Honestly, I went the difficult path and trained myself off of reliance upon any applications that required Windows so I don’t have a need for this Winboat solution.”
I did the same thing. I just made the personal sacrifices and learned to live without anything MS. Contrary to popular belief you can live absolutely fine without MS. I have been all Linux for almost ten years now and I’m not on life support yet. lol
But I agree, I am a Linux freak so just having the knowledge about this utility would be good for my own knowledge bank and to help others. But there is that one game I played back when I will test it on. It was the coolest and maybe you are familiar? It was one of the first 3D real time combat mission games set in WWII called Hidden & Dangerous.
Be fun to go back through those missions again just for posterity. It was actually quite good and challenging. But I won’t die if I can’t... :)
It just never ceases to amaze me though how much abuse folks will take from MS just for that one game or app they just cannot live without. So... Just have some personal resolve, change your lifestyle, and just beat the addiction to it... We are to a point to where you will have to do this or go without local privately owned computing altogether.
Finally, there is hope...
Nice. But I am trying to find someone to manage the linux switchover and backup. You would think I am asking them to change.... sex!
Do you mean (personal) data backups?
Thank you.
this software is in beta, so i will test it on my current PClLinux PC
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