[ahartmetz]

Install "Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC" if you don't mind buying grey market keys. Less crapware, more mature and less enshittified than 11, and security fixes until 2032.

I don't want to endorse Windows at all (use Linux if you can!). But maybe you need it to occasionally test something or whatever.

[LeifCarrotson]

You don't have to buy grey market keys, use the public ones installed through mass gravel. Open source, hosted on Microsoft's own GitHub - it's practically an endorsement!

> https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

[4ggr0]

Even though I professionally work with Linux I still don't trust it enough for gaming. I know that Steam does great things with Proton, my issue is that I'm not the type of gamer who constantly plays the same game - Play a game for how long the story or my interests lasts, then switch to the next game.

And after a whole day of debugging and hair pulling at work I just don't feel like then also debugging why a game is not running like it should.

But I heard I should give it a try again, last time I gave it a shot was 2-3 years ago. Big plus would be that I'd be completely free of Windows...

[johanvts]

Did you try bazzite OS, the only issue I have had was to select the proton build of CS, everything else works out of the box. Except for games that need anti-cheat… So I still ended up with a windows partition.

[BoredPositron]

I guess he wants to use his general computing device as a general computing device and not as a console.

[plipt]

Maybe you know this but Bazzite works perfectly well as a standard Linux desktop operating system. It comes with a non-gaming desktop environment and can be setup to boot directly into that desktop environment. It just defaults to the steam gaming interface.

[BoredPositron]

It's an immutable distribution...

[ThePowerOfFuet]

So? Kinoite is my main desktop and I love it. KDE is creating a new Arch-based distro which will also be immutable.

[pjerem]

FWIW : I own 262 games on my steam library, played most of them at least once. I had no issue with any single game.

I don't play multiplayer games so I'm not concerned by anti cheats though.

[4ggr0]

huh, good to know. i got a bit less games than you, but 200+ as well, and i also never really play MP, so sounds like i should give it a try :)

[bpye]

I’ve run games on Linux with success but these days do most gaming in a Windows VM with an assigned GPU - and it works very well.

Yeah aggressive anticheat won’t work - but I don’t care much about multiplayer these days, and have consoles to play on if I really want.

[winkelmann]

> if you don't mind buying grey market keys

Please don't buy "grey market" MS keys (i.e. super cheap keys or keys for products not sold to end users, like LTSC).

Either buy keys from legitimate vendors or use alternative activation methods (emulated KMS, etc.). I believe a lot of these grey market keys come either from MSDN subscriptions or leaked MAK keys, in either case, you aren't really paying for the product, you're just funneling money to sketchy people.

[johanvts]

Had to get windows to play anti-cheat games. The EU mandated N versions seem pretty bloat free to me.

[joecool1029]

Weirdly enough I had one of those 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC systems kill a SSD in the past month, bad blocks. Intel 520 180GB. Probably coincidence but I figured I'd mention since this was also a system with a large OST file in use.

[justsomehnguy]

> Intel 520 180GB

Sorry but this drive is almost 15 years old.