I went through the same thing last year. I spent two months trying to plug all the holes in the enterprise version, for a medium sized healthcare client, and eventually gave up.
The LTSB edition looks promising but I haven't put it under the microscope yet.
I'm not sure if it's comedic or tragic that the version so very many users would want most, is not only the version with the worst name, but also the version Microsoft discourages people from adopting.
Critical patch support, infrequent updates, and excludes crufty bloatware. What's not to like?
but also the version Microsoft discourages people from adopting.
Not surprising, because MS wants to push all the features (and ads, telemetry, etc.) to users regardless of whether they actually want them.
Indeed I wish MS would just keep supporting XP as the "Windows LTSB" with nothing but critical security patches, and keep doing it until the OS becomes nearly invulnerable to remote attacks.
> Indeed I wish MS would just keep supporting XP as the "Windows LTSB" with nothing but critical security patches, and keep doing it until the OS becomes nearly invulnerable to remote attacks.
I lol'd. You'd probably be pretty safe with Windows 3.11, Trumpet Winsock, and Netscape Navigator.
edit:
so long as nobody got your public IP and used Winnuke on you.
I think this is what the ReactOS project will eventually become (which to me would be a great thing). They just released v0.45, if you haven't seen it yet.
Yes. Every software which runs on Windows 10 Home or Pro, will also run on Windows 10 LTSB, as long as they don't depend on Windows Store, Cortana, or Edge browser.
Microsoft offers 90-days evaluation ISOs of Windows 10 Enterprise and LTSB [1]. Just be sure to select "Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB" instead of "Windows 10 Enterprise" when downloading [2].
I am person who runs LTSB used for coding/rce/gaming. Everything runs without a glitch after initial setup. At start we indeed have to do some stupid things as restoring windows photo viewer because images open with paint, but its way better than what "full" version offers.
The LTSB edition looks promising but I haven't put it under the microscope yet.