Classic 7 is Windows 10 LTSC cosplaying as Windows 7

For those who miss what Windows looked like in 2009, Classic 7 is a heavily modified version of Windows 10 IoT LTSC, reworked to make it look as much as possible like Windows 7, while still being in support and receiving updates. This has been accomplished thanks to a large compilation of skins, themes, add-ons, tweaks, and so …

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

On the same Hardware... I bet it is...

[Blazde]

Re: Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

Windows 11's Explorer ssue it that it seems to assume everyone is now using SSDs, so there's very liberal use of real-time disk access (including all the telemetry bs, even when report-to-base is turned off) and this causes Explorer freezes. Windows 7 *could* be as bad with the right (I mean wrong) context menu extensions, but it was easier to diagnose and fix.

Windows 11 does have a much better scheduler though, so it's not easy to call it a worse OS. It's more solid in it's core design yet more stuff that should be core is pushed into cack-land. Explorer is slow-ass, Task Manager has been relegated to the same importance as Paint, Taskbar will be with you when it wants to be and no earlier. But it's sort of not as terrible as it could be because these things don't affect the stability of the underlying OS any more. I can watch everything go to shit and not panic about rebooting asap now. In Windows 7 once Explorer had self-restarted once or twice you were taking risks if you didn't restart, and you were usually missing random icons all over the place too.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

> Windows 11 does have a much better scheduler though, so it's not easy to call it a worse OS.

I am surprised you didn't get a down vote for that :D. But the Shell guys messed up, really bad... Mouse stuttering is back, for example. On a far-from-slow machine. Last time I had it this bad was Win9x.

[Blackjack]

Re: Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

The AI crap has been proven to slow explorer down way more that anything else, even the ads and spyware. So if you can (and are allowed to) disable the AI crap.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

Nope, that is not the case. I switched to Server 2025 last October, which has no Ai crap, no ads, and none of what you would call spyware. it doesn't even care about TPM 2.0, for example. Heck, even notepad, calc and paint are "Windows 7 style", not even Windows 8 style.

So I can rightfully say: The explorer is exactly as slow as the "loaded with Ai crap" one. No difference. It is just bad code.

[Blazde]

Re: Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

Luxury of EU Windows 11 I think but I've disabled Copilot precisely once, not been bothered by any AI since, and I've never seen an ad. Explorer still has moments. Sometimes it's context menu loading which was always a problem in past Windows, sometimes it's "woah there, I've got a dozen telemetry tasks to complete before accessing a simple folder you, the real-time human user cares about (but despite the massive inconvenience I swear I won't send the data to Microsoft because you turned telemetry collection off!)". If you haven't already disabled indexing or that weird background document scanning process that's probably looking for stuff the NSA doesn't like then it can also be that. Sometimes it's just mystery "gotta reload, brb"

Task Manager is the real pain in the ass though, because it's the thing that's supposed to load quickly when everything else is spazzing out, and it doesn't even pretend to do that any more

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Is Explorer7 faster than the Windows 11 Variant?

> Task Manager is the real pain in the ass though

Download Server 2003 x64 Service Pack 2. Extract taskmgr.exe. Still works, and adds the little "*32" to the 32 bit processes. I miss the "show full command line" though, which came with Vista. But there is tasklist /v or powershell Get-CimInstance win32_process | select-object name,processid,path.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

lol

I do like the URL.

I think I know the answer already but does it support Windows 7's classic UI mode? It isn't clear from the project website.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: lol

So why don't you install it in a VM and check it yourself?

The answer is that "Windows Classic" appears in the themes list but doesn't work, instead it applies a dark version of the Windows 7 Aero theme when selected. Likewise for the high contrast themes. Maybe they're on the to do list but this is an interesting project regardless.

[blu3b3rry]

Looks great, but....

Where's the Windows Vista version?

edit - just realised in their downloads section is something called "Revistalized" which is presumably just that! Currently links to a page that just says "Coming Soon"....

I see there is also "Projek01" which is a Win XP SP2 skinned version of Win 10 IoT LTSC 2021.

[Yorick Hunt]

Re: Looks great, but....

"... Win XP SP2 skinned version of Win 10 IoT LTSC 2021“

Now you're talkin'!

Hopefully with the proper task manager!

[ChoHag]

Re: Looks great, but....

Windows 7 is the production release of Vista's beta.

[mark l 2]

I mean it would be trivial for MS to actually offer their own users to be able to change to a 'Windows classic' theme if they actually gave a toss about them. The used to have that option on XP where you change the theme to look like the 2000/ME interface. But now its you get what we give you and like it or you have to rely on 3rd party tools which could break the next time MS pushes out a feature update.

[has been]

I must admit that I've used Classic Shell/Open Shell ever since Win10 came out. Gives a consistent (Win7 alike) UI for the Win10+11 and server 2022+2025 machines in the domestic windows estate.

I can't be having with the constant changes of UI without any reliability or productivity gains to warrant them.

[simonlb]

Agreed. I've always found the Win7 UI perfectly acceptable, and liked that on XP you could switch to 'Classic' Win2000 theme which was so clean and functional compared the default 'Tellytubby mode'. I do not see how it can be that hard to have these different themes available as built-in options for the OS today, unless the underlying design is so fundamentally broken that it prohibits it. But again, this is almost certainly MS giving users what MS think they need instead of what they actually want. Mind you, it's far, far too late now and I could never go back to using Windows 10/11 for any of my personal machines as GWX10 broke my camels back and any remaining trust for MS as a company.

By contrast, the only thing that Linux Mint has done in that time period that frustrated me was the deprecation then removal of the Sound Recorder app which now requires you to do some initial faffing about in Audacity to get the same functionality that was already there. Certainly not a biggie, but still annoying.

[Liam Proven]

> I do not see how it can be that hard to have these different themes available as built-in options for the OS today

They are not just "themes." Calling them "themes" implies they are a bundle of bitmaps and colour palettes you can just tell some program to apply.

The Windows GUI has gone through several steps of evolution over the just over 40 years Windows has existed (and we're coming up to OS/2's 40th now as well).

Very loosely...

# Stage 1

16-bit: Windows 1/2. it's all one memory space, and there's one module whose job is to draw windows and things.

What windows look like is an implementation detail: this is coded in.

It's called the GDI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Device_Interface

# Stage 1.5

Windows 3 imports proportional fonts and 3D _looking_ shaded controls from OS/2 1.2 Presentation Manager.

# Stage 2

32-bit Windows: NT 3.1/3.5/3.51 A new 32-bit OS derived from some of OS/2 and some of DEC VMS. Now components are in isolated memory spaces. One of them is the GDI running inside the Win32 subsystem. (Win32 is just one personality running on the NT kernel; it is _not_ the native API.)

# Stage 3 (overlapping NT)

The Windows Chicago look. All grey, 3D shading everywhere.

I don't know this for sure but I think this is when stuff started moving into defined textures and things.

Things like control buttons are characters in a special font, called Marlett.ttf

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/marlett

TTF = TrueType Font. Because TrueType can scale things smoothly.

# Stage 4

Win95 Explorer transplanted to NT. Result is called Windows NT 4.0.

It's slow. So MS in one of the greatest mistakes in computing history moves GDI into the kernel. From now on GDI and windowing functions move around and the kernel calls GUI stuff and GUI stuff calls the kernel and now they can't remove it again.

# Stage 4.5 (overlapping)

Win98 introduces window themes: tints, gradients, shading, etc. instead of just colours. This is done using HTML in places and Explorer is rewritten to use HTML rendering, so that MS can claim IE is an integral part of Windows, and so counter the US Dept of Justice allegation of anticompetitive trading designed to -- in Microsoft's own words -- "stab Netscape in the back".

It is called IE4 "Active Desktop".

# Stage 5 (overlapping)

IE4 with AD comes to NT as well.

# Stage 6

New look brought in for Windows ME and Windows 2000.

# Stage 7

WinXP integrates windows themes via a new service: it draws over the top of existing windows (you can watch this happen on very slow machines) changing sizes, shapes, textures, colours, etc.

You can turn this off and disable the THEMES.SVC and the result is now called "Windows Classic" look.

# Stage 8: offstage!

Apple invents "compositing" with Quartz Extreme: a way to speed up a 2D windowing GUI using 3D accelarators aimed at games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor

This is so clever everyone copies it. The result is AIGLX on Linux... and in Windows...

# Stage 9:

Windows Vista with Aero. Display is drawn as textures send to a 3D card which composits multiple textures into a 3D space, and shows you a view of that space.

This is drawn by a new compositor, DWM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Window_Manager

Main visible effect: transparency.

Snag: you can't flip a Command Prompt into full screen mode any more. It's going through a 3D card which doesn't do that. Early 3D cards needed a 2D VGA card _as well_ to do that stuff. Now it's only used for the BIOS and bootup screens.

Now "Classic" is just another theme. GDI is just an API and developers are meant to use Direct2D instead.

You can disable DWM and go back to the old GDI display.

# Stage 9.1

In Windows 7, DWM uses DirectX. You can still disable it.

# Stage 9.2

Windows 8, touchscreen UI front and centre, devs are meant to use Metro, sorry that's a German supermarket, _Modern_ and the Windows Store. EXEs and installers deprecated. DWM mandatory.

# Stage 9.3

Windows 10, oops the users are nasty, sorry, revolting, OK you can have a start menu back but it's using our Tiles from Windows Phone.

# Stage 9.4

Windows Phone? What's that? They're all web apps and cloud storage now you know. Would you like to buy more storage? Would ya? Would ya? Here, buy more storage. Here, buy this game. Use Teams. You will use Teams. Here, selected partners need to know what you're looking at for targeted ads. No, you must be online. No you can't disable Modern apps. Would you like more cloud storage? BTW we're screenshotting your desktop and indexing it for your boss. And selected partners. Want more storage?

[Bebu sa Ware]

"MS in one of the greatest mistakes in computing history "

Arguably attempting since then to tick the boxes of all the also·rans while simultaneously dreaming up new contenders.

[ChrisC]

"this is almost certainly MS giving users what MS think they need instead of what they actually want."

I'd suggest it's more like MS giving users what *MS* want to give the users - the likelihood of them actually taking any sort of time to stop and think about their users here, when they've got an entire graphic design team just champing at the bit to prove to the world just how awesome their ideas as to what a UI should look and behave like, feels rather slender.

I've not had any dealings with MS in this context, but I have ended up banging my head against a brick wall trying to get through to the designers of another UI I make heavy use of, just how user-hostile their proposed new design was going to be for users like me with colour vision deficiencies. I started off all nice and friendly, trying to be genuinely helpful in the feedback I was providing as part of the open beta test program they were running to - supposedly - elicit feedback like this, providing links to reference materials which could go into far more detail as to why certain colour choices were bad, etc. Only after those initial friendly efforts fell on completely deaf ears did my level of frustration/ire/anger start to rise, as it became increasingly clear with every subsequent interaction that they had no intention whatsoever of changing their design.

That's when I first realised that, in the battle between scientific facts, and the egos of designers who can't accept their vision for what a UI should look like might in any way be even slightly flawed, the latter is far more likely to come out the victor, and those of us negatively affected by the resultant shitshow of a UI which might be genuinely unuseable without the assistance of whatever vision-based adjustment are available within the host environment, and perhaps not even then, are just expected to put up and shut up, how dare we question the work of the graphic designer, for they are all-knowledgeable about such things whilst we are mere users who simply don't understand all the subtle nuances required to make a UI good and proper...

TL:DR: my opinion of modern UI designers now rarely lifts itself above "meh" level, and on those rare occasions when I stumble across a recently designed UI which actually *does* perform as a user interface, rather than merely looking nice in the static screengrabs used in the marketing blurb, it's now a genuine and pleasing surprise.

[Kepler]

“champing at the bit“

Even if I didn’t like the rest of your comment as well, Chris (and I do), I would have up-voted it just for your use of “champing at the bit“. I learned just over 40 years ago that that is the correct expression, when I used the erroneous “chomping” and a sadly-now-late friend corrected me.

(A friend who had gone to college at Bob Jones University and then Harvard Law School. American readers, at least, should realize what an odd, unusual, and humorously inapposite combination that is.)

I did not believe him at first, but I immediately checked a dictionary and saw that he was right and I was wrong. And both the episode and a heightened fondness of the expression have stuck with me ever since.

[PhilipN]

Except MS has not been in the OS business for some time. They are in the Cloud business.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't trust it

Windows 10 is infected with forced telemetry.

I don't have much confidence in claims that can be stopped. All it takes is one update for PII to be leaked to Microsoft.

Shouldn't have to play a constant game of whack-a-mole with our own devices.

[ComicalEngineer]

I do still run a W7 machine which isn't connected to the internet.

My kids ask why it still looks like WinXP (I haven't the heart to tell them that it actually looks like W2000) :D

[theDeathOfRats]

I've commented before that 'I' only have one Windows machine at home (10, as neutered, declawed and defanged as I would risk without killing it already). The rest, of which are several, run on a variety of 'Nixie OSes.

But my partner has her own box. And that runs Windows 7. And I've been trying to make her change her OS since times immemorial (OK, about 10 years). She seems allergic to Linux, which is stupid (which I wouldn't tell her to her face cos I tend to like breathing when I wake up in the morning), because she mostly uses it for web browsing and a few old games that most probably would run with WINE (I know some of them do, I've tested them).

I've offered her a Win10 install such as mine, I even have an actually unused 500GB SSD for it, and she has always declined (in quite NSFW terms).

But now comes this. AND SHE HAS ACCEPTED TO GIVE IT A TRY!

I feel a bit like crying. I know any stupid thing that doesn't work or is not how she likes it will be MY fault. And yet, it will be better than telling her one or two times a week when she comes asking for tech support that the problem is the OS and she should change it.

I don't know how it will go. But I feel hopeful.

Wish me luck, if you will.

[PhilipN]

Here's hoping. But never come between a girl and her nesting instinct (there's a joke there somewhere).

[Liam Proven]

> declawed and defanged as I would risk without killing it

LTSC does a lot of this for you. You can also remove *all* Modern apps with a single command.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-remove-all-bundled-apps-windows-10-nicholas-gerasimatos/

O&O ShutUp and O&O AppBuster also help.

[theDeathOfRats]

Oh yesss! O&OShutUp and OpenShell have been godssends.

Add a bit of PowerShell and another bit of Registry tinkering and the thing works (for a domestic machine).

There are more "debloating" tools now, and I seem to remember some article wrote by you(?). Quite useful when preparing my nephews' new W11 laptops.

[SCP]

https://www.linkedin.com/...

The link quite possibly leads to some very handy information - unfortunately it requires registering and signing in to LinkedIn to see [no thanks!].

Is this the same Nicholas Gerasimatos as the github: https://github.com/nicholasg-dev?tab=repositories

(At first glance that site seems to have some interesting content but not an immediately obvious equivalent to what the LinkedIn might be - though there is more exploring to do when time permits)

[Bebu sa Ware]

You have been conceded an inch, take a mile…

so you have a fallback position.

For your mile: a Linux plus WINE solution that might cosmetically pass for a newer version of Windows. (Ok, just about any shit is plausible on that criterion.)

If that doesn't fly, a Win10 ltsc version possibly with OpenShell/ClassicShell (her indoors here now uses exactly that up from Win7) is a good fallback.

In my case I could have installed a Linux distro as the only apps she really used on the Win7 box were the image viewer, firefox and libreoffice which had betterbird added in the move to Win10 so that instead of reading email in the web client, a proper mua is used.

I didn't go with Linux because the odd chipset of the wifi that came with the refurbished mini PC wasn't supported by my selected Linux distro's kernel and I was too lazy to build the kernel module from the kernel sources.

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic look

This looks like a great project bringing back a favorite GUI.

Now if someone could create the classic look of our ElReg site the way it used to be.

With larger fonts for mobile devices and the ability to read and post comments without having to enable JavaScript.

The enshitification continues

[Martin an gof]

Re: Classic look

larger fonts for mobile devices

I use my phone mostly in landscape mode. With the new design articles, this seems to stretch text formatted for portrait right across the screen, leading to enormous, non-zoomable text and a lot of scrolling.

The comments section isn't so afflicted; while I do find the text a bit small it is, at least, zoomable.

M.

[Paratiritis]

Re: Classic look

Also unreadable on a tablet in portrait mode, since each line has a maximum of 4 words due to the relatively large minimum widths left and right of the article content.

[frankyunderwood123]

Re: Classic look

don’t you just love the fact using browser text size adjustment tools has no impact on the text size on the home page?

That is such a massive fail.

It works on article pages though.

I struggle to use the site on my phone, my eyes aren’t what they once were.

They just need to do a few hours work so that there’s only one column below 640 and bump the text size by twenty percent.

problem fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume that M$ know exactly how popular LTSC would be

Which is why it's a ****g enterprise license

[david 12]

FF-115: The internet doesn't work

There are already chunks of the internet that don't work with FF 115 or Chrome / Edge 109. If I'm stuck using those browsers, I might just as well use a real copy of Win7.

[Liam Proven]

Re: FF-115: The internet doesn't work

> There are already chunks of the internet that don't work with FF 115

It's a post-install option. You can choose F'fox 140 ESR or just install your own.

[G7mzh]

Re: FF-115: The internet doesn't work

> There are already chunks of the internet that don't work with FF 115

Use Redfox (r3dfox). It's a fork of Firefox that is adapted so as not to break the internet on Windows 7 or 8 (and aparrently XP, though I haven't tried it).

I've been using it for a while and so far haven't had any trouble at all.

[TReko]

Windows 10 fell off the ugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down

Windows 7 still looks really good.

The one subtle thing I really dislike about Windows 8/10/11 is how ugly it looks. Everything is flat, which is fashionable, but looks bad. It is also harder to use. As someone who helps old folks with computers in the old days, you could see what is a button, what is a scrollbar.

The clickable parts of the interface looked like controls - they have since X11. Now everything is flat, making it flat and more confusing.

[williamyf]

Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

All those executables from Win7 and WinXP that are grafted into this Win10 IoT have NOT received security patches for ages now. Which means that any vuln discovered from the last patch until now will be fully documented (or not), yet never patched.

From TFA:

«Explorer7: "explorer7 is a wrapper library that allows Windows 7's explorer.exe to run properly on modern Windows versions, aiming to resurrect the original Windows 7 shell experience." So this is not merely a theme for Windows 10 Explorer: as far as we can tell, it's the real Windows 7 Explorer, but running on top of 10. The same appears to apply to Control Panel as well, thanks to the Control Panel Restoration Pack. Thanks to the Windows Media Center (Modern Hardware) effort, this is the real XP version, which an on-screen message says replaced the Windows 8 version used in an older build.»

Ditto for the Win10 Binaries that are part of vanilla Win10, but not part of Win10 IoT. Come Oct 2028, all those re-inserted Binaries WILL NOT be patched, so any holes discovered after that date will remain open. You will think your IoT OS will receive patches until 2033, but not ALL of the OS will.

That's the reason why I steer clear of these FrankenWindows as daily drivers, they induce a false sense of security. Meaning that people keep seeing windows update downloading patches every patch Tuesday, yet big chunks of the OS as woefully insecure.

¿Do you want Win10 fully supported until 2031? Get Windows Server 2019 with desktop Experience. 100% Legal to own, no gray areas, no nothing, and everything that was in the box will be patched.

¿Do you want the underpinings of Win11 with a Win10 UX supported until 2033? Get Windows Server 2022 with desktop experience. No risk that Microsoft changes a compiler flag, and suddenly, your Rufus install of Win11 on a machine with no TPM2.0, no MBEC and no HVCI will fail, as WinServer 22 DE does not mandate any of that.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

> Get Windows Server 2019 with desktop Experience.

> Get Windows Server 2022 with desktop experience.

Upvote for this, exactly my words. Similar for Server 2025, since some things are broken with Server 2022 which work in S2019 and S2025, like S2022 and "MS-Store" programs to manually install, or some Bluetooth audio things. S2025 does not insist on TPM too.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

Please don't give incorrect advice online.

If you want any security, it's a hard requirement to steer clear of Microsoft software entirely.

After all, Microsoft has never released software that has ever been the slightest bit secure by design (they've also never released free software - every time I've look at Microsoft software that purports to be "open source", I've always found either that a component is proprietary software, or that it depends on proprietary libraries for its actual functionality).

If you want security, step 0 is removing each and ever proprietary program (GNU/Linux-libre and GNUboot gets most of the way there) - as only from a solid foundation can you start thinking about security - trying to build on a sabotaged foundation is doomed to lead to failure.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

Whilst it's true that MS stuff is often woefully insecure and designed to suit their needs, not the customer's, don't make the mistake of thinking that an alternative is secure just because it isn't made by MS.

All software is prone to having flaws, because it is designed and written by humans* who don't have the ability to see the future; best practice changes, in all aspects of software design, including security, and the thing that is deemed to be the best and most secure way of doing something today may well have a critical flaw that is discovered tomorrow.

This is why we don't rely on SSL3 and TLS1.0 as the encryption layer in HTTPS any more, for example, and why we have relatively recently published SHA-3 standards for hashing algorithms. It's not only Microsoft who have to patch their software to accommodate such security updates.

This isn't to say that a lot of stuff designed by Microsoft isn't seemingly deliberately awful, but have you ever seen iTunes, for instance? (Granted that is also proprietary and open source). Microsoft are hardly alone in the awful software stakes, and a lot of terrible stuff is FOSS, and that's terrible in terms of design, lack of support, and gaping security holes in exactly the same way as Microsoft's proprietary crap.

*Yes, okay, some is now written by "AI", but you can just go ahead and assume that this will be riddled with worse flaws.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

I did point out that proprietary alternatives are insecure too.

Yes, a lot of programs that are advertised as "FOSS" have terrible security, but that's typical for proprietary software (if you read "FOSS" or "open source", that is an indication that the project is about serving corporate interests and that the software accordingly contains, or relies on proprietary software, is slopware (although that a duplicate of the former), or is not licensed at all (dumping a license file into the root doesn't mean anything - it could be there just to look nice).

Every time I see a project that is advertised as "open source" or "FOSS" and I check the software, around 70% of the time I determined that it's proprietary - thus it turns out that those keywords are quite good at marking insecure software.

But if you find a project that is clearly marked as being free software, that serves the users freedom, typically the quality of the software is excellent.

One example of such occurring is software from the GNU project - it turns out that well developed GNU packages have has the lowest error rate of all known nontrivial software (although the remaining bugs are still being found and accordingly fixed - as there isn't the problem of not being able to fix a bug due to not having the source code and/or permission to modify for example).

[Zack Mollusc]

Re: Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

If you can spell security, you probably know better than to use windows.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Steer clear of these types of Remuxes if you value your security

Another option I discovered while perusing Massgrave is to perform an in-place upgrade from your existing Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC, which has support out to 2032.

[Eric 9001]

Of course microsoft gives their full approval to unathorized copies of windows

Microsoft wants suckers to use their *removed* disguised as an OS - if you don't use it, it's your win and their loss.

Why would they care if a sucker got a copy that they already paid for (have you ever bought a computer or computer hardware? A certain percentage of the price is the Microsoft tax) that costs them $0 to provide?

They would even be happy to get you handcuffed in, even if it cost them some money (it didn't, until the event of LLM's - as those have a fixed huge cost per used, unlike copies of software).

Bill Gates admitted this to an audience at the University of Washington in 1998; "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though, And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

When China started to computerize things things, most failed to make the correct decision to use GNU/Linux (Linux was free software 1992-early 1998) and instead were suckers that used windows - it came back to bite them hard when Microsoft later came to collect.

[The other white meat]

You missed a verdion

Win10 LTSC 1809 is supported until January 2029. Not sure how you missed that...

[Liam Proven]

Re: You missed a verdion

> Not sure how you missed that...

I didn't. I am suggesting the longest-lived versions here.

Since you don't get version-to-version upgrades in LTSC, I think it makes more sense to go direct to the latest available.

The original piece about different versions, channels, streams, etc. was this one:

https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/04/22/windows-10-ltsc-the-version-that-wont-expire-for-years/1250901

[Blackjack]

Definitely not for a machines were you keep valuable data on it, but if I had a spare computer I definitely would try this to play games, mostly offline of course,save to install updates.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boon for older folks

My mother has Alzheimers. We have a drawer full of button Nokia dumb phones, just in case hers breaks, because she's not in a position to learn a new interface.

Likewise, she likes to pass the time on her Windows 7 machine playing solitaire and watching my father sing at the local church via the Parish camera.

The laptop is ancient and INCREDIBLY slow. It's 32bit so not only is it not actively supported, workable browsers and media plugins are disappearing too.

The internet explorer logo, the media controls (audio etc) and Solitaire are really all she needs.

I have looked into getting _her_ version of Solitaire running on a Linux distro but any difference would bother her and the Windows 7 Solitaire isn't fully supported under Wine - something to do with how menu fonts are rendered.

I'm reasonably sure I could fit a more recent itx motherboard in there and hook up the USB ports with extensions. It never gets unplugged anyway so the battery space is up for grabs.

This looks like it might be an option!

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Boon for older folks

Get Windows XP SP3 download. Open it in 7-zip. Extract sol.exe. That should work in WINE.