This post started out as a question, but throughout two days of googling it became this compilation of links. I will tell you everything worth mention that I found, share my plan with you, and expect some critics (for the infos of course, please not for the silly hyperactivity of my ADHD brain over such a trivial matter 🥲). Tell me what do you think, is windows 10 enterprise LTSC IoT actually the best OS for piracy? Is it Windows 7 for best fps with games despite DirectX11 being outdated? Or maybe everything could be done through Linux + Lutris&WINE for example? I’m moving out from ubuntu mainly cuz I still don’t know where to get Nvidia&Intel Drivers from 😂
So the windows community would infinitely shame you for using Windows 7 because it has no more security updates. Also I heard you neither have support for DirectX12 nor optimization for SSD, So windows 7 isn’t optimized for ex: gaming even though most repacks were released for it. I don’t know anything about Win8.1 and my experience with Win8 isn’t good, so I disregard them here.
So it is Windows 10 or Windows 11, but both are bloated with ads, telemetry, useless apps, processes and services (why do I have Cortana!?) and forces you to update. Win10&11 presented what is called “windows as a service” instead of “as a product”, a policy which sucks for us users.
But I heard about Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, which has minimized telemetry and non of the annoying apps, I don’t know about auto-updates though, but I heard it doesn’t receive them often. I also learned that I better choose IoT version of the later for longer support (2032 vs 2027 for non-IoT LTSC). Now I have multiple choice of guides:
Downloading Microsoft’s official copies, debloating and activating them:
1- the r/piracy guide which suggests these two files, which are both 2019 versions. But I’m happy to see the size is 3.78 GB, so I can burn the 64x on a DVD!
2- the r/WindowsLTSC Megathread which sites to this guide, which again suggests this friendly thread, and seems to be extensive and up-to-date. The friendly thread suggests tb.rg-adguard for downloading the iso. If you choose the options on this picture then according to the files.rg-adguard.net database you’re downloading en-us_windows_10_consumer_editions_version_22h2_x64_dvd_8da72ab3.iso . Not Enterprise Edition, so I think we just disregard this particular part of the friendly thread and download from the pastebin in the Megathread.
—>cons: This is a bit extremely hard, especially since I’m on Linux rn.
3- Microsoft Activation Scripts developers also provide direct links to download , without the heavy guides. But will I be able to uninstall Microsoft Edge for example later? This one might be the easiest yet balanced route for now.
honorable mention: This Russian site, called nmclub, claims it offers 22H2 version of Windows 10 Enterprise IoT, but it is not LTSC I guess?
Modified Windows copies
1- Ghost Spectre Superlite which apparently doesn’t have an official site, rather an official Youtube channel (which I linked) but it is constantly updated on the tech-latest.com website. the videos prove that the system supports android emulation well (I think, tbh I’m not considering this one, just included it cuz people who tried it speak positively about it)
2-Revi Os I heard it has an active Discord community and has a GUI tool that allow you to enable whatever you want,
3-Atlas OS (this one is open source and has a Github page and is said to give the best gaming performance and least resources usage, I’m really considering it!).
—>PS: as far as I understood, both Revi OS and Atlas OS are applicable on your installed win10/win11 using this open source project called ameliorated which itself had its’ fixed Win10 1903 version.
4- Slimdown10: from the mydigitallife forum. The creator states:
The tool eradicates all cloud stuff, telemetry stuff, spying, tracking stuff, UWP bloatware, suggestions, ads, etc by removing them directly from DVD media (before installation, not after it). It also integrates latest updates and turns Windows Update into manual mode (no more forced updates). It is fully open source with no hidden stuff or blackbox features.
using Scripts
1- Win-Debloat-Tools Looks like the most maintained open source one out of them. Along with Sophia…
2- In this reddit comment, a user recommended to:
install Windows Enterprise or Pro, and use Sophia Script to remove the Bloatware that comes installed and use O&O ShutUp10 to disable the telemetry and spyware that is possible.
Because security updates are extremely ultra important when you are connected to internet.(?)
3- privatezilla: This one seems lightweight and easier to use, but not up-to-date, idk.
honorable mentions:
- This redditor from 2021 seems confident that the three tools he mentions, combined, fully remove telemetry?
- winutil: an open source supposedly “One Tool for Everything” as the title of the youtube guide by the developer says.
my plan:
- I will just download the r/piracy 64x ISO file,
- burn it on a 4.7GB DVD that I have (probably using ubuntu MATE’s Disk Image Mounter) cuz I don’t have a USB rn,
- Activate using MAS Tool,
- Download Drivers Manually,
- Maybe use either Win-Debloat-Tools or winutil if I feel deranged. ngl, they got me sold just by having gui and being open source
Windows users will go far to not have to use Linux
For good reason.
And what is that reason?
Is being a noob a good reason?
Everyone is a noob when starting out with something (so no)
No, not really. Distros like Ubuntu work pretty much out of the box. Dead simple to install, and easy enough to use that anyone should be able to handle it.
It’s only tricky and confusing if you try to do more advanced things.
nope
endeavouros and mint are very easy to use
I think the critical mass for contributions to useabilify is soon, but not quite yet. I was using mint for over a year, but recently changed to popOS. I was surprised that my sister actually wanted me to get rid of windows off her new Asus vivobook… if I had known how many hairs I will have pulled trying to get WiFi working… I probably wouldnt have, and I can only he thankful she didn’t get too bad an impression, she’s seeming to like it now. If I had let being a noob get in my way of trying however, I wouldnt be nearly as satisfied with my workflow and desktop, and its let me dive further into selfhosting than I feel I wouldve on windows. I cant stand to be a Linux evangelist, but also I would love for adoption to increase, as users and contributors make for a fuller experience, Valve getting on the deck and proton is what let me really switch, but it will have holes until developers also change
Had this Bluetooth / wifi problem with manjaro, and killed it twice by trying to get it Working After that I installed openSuse, and everything just worked out of box ☺️ i love openSuse now
Ill take a look sometime, hows the customization as far as the window manager and being able to get nice tiling go? Thats what got me onto pop, I was expecting a learning curve to the keybinds but I havent had to switch them
If you choose GNOME, you can use the gnome extension to customize the behavior of the window manger quite easy with an intuitive designed web based extension manager ( e.g. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1286/tilingnome/ ) Without extensions, you can tile windows, like you do on windows. And use multiple desktops like you do in macOS.
On KDE (a more windows style UI environment) you can install extensions as well, but it seems like those have to be installed through your distro‘s package manager. I use gnome, so I don’t really know this.
Video Games.
No matter how good Proton gets, native will still be better. Also, trying to find support on running pirated games on Linux will get you kicked out of most forums.
Also, Nvidia hardware sucks on Linux
No matter how good Proton gets, native will still be better.
If Proton sucks for a game, try a different Proton version (maybe even Proton GE), if it still sucks, try a KVM with PCI passthrough. If you don’t wanna do that shit, dual boot.
Also, trying to find support on running pirated games on Linux will get you kicked out of most forums.
Also, Nvidia hardware sucks on Linux
Not really under X11 with the proprietary driver. Also Team Red has good hardware to offer too.
I dont have any problems with gaming
The reason that an average pirate, let alone an average user does not have enough time to keep investigating shit that breaks down frequently.
At some point everyone feels that the time you spend on setting up and getting things to work is better utilised in using a more standardized solution that doesn’t need investigating.
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The person you are replying to is 1000% right. Not so long ago your wanted to play flash files i.e. entirety of YouTube on Linux , you had do this and that and what not… I stopped using Linux even the noob friendliest ones after that one. The ones that are used in “running” internet are specifically made for that purpose only and they are not general purpose ones. So they are more robust than your “working out of the box” Linux versions.
Linux is hard and ABSOLUTE SHIT for a n person who wants things to just work., I mean can you search on Firefox a software like Irfan view or sony Vegas and install it and be fine in 10 minutes max? Nope … You find a relative similar software then you install it via package manager, and you think you are fine but as you run it it throws some error, do you go search for it . Turns out you need xyz dependency for it , then you search how to install dependency , all the forums tells you via terminal it’s just one command. So you try to do that but you forget/a or-s somewhere and …
Linux doesn’t work for general purpose easily. It’s good one for specific purpose. That’s what my personal experience been…
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Just today in piracy forums, there is person asking for how to play Minecraft on SO EASY LINUX. Just read the comments to know HOW EASY LINUX is to a beloved game available everywhere.
What “most of the internet”? Unless you’re counting android, not even 10% of devices run Linux.
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Almost every web server in existance runs linux
This is an overstatement. I’m by no means a windows fan boy but 20% of the internet is hosted on windows server. Maybe this will change with aspnet core being multiplatform and all but MSSQL is still going strong as well. Not any time soon is my guesstimate.
The internet, as in the servers that run the internet.
they’re talking about servers
If your linux setups are breaking this often you have a fundamental misunderstanding of something within your operating system. They really don’t break frequently.
Yeah sure, and I don’t want to spend valuable time and resources into understanding a new operating system when I can easily get my work done in windows.
Then why comment at all? You’re obviously biased towards Windows and refuse to learn Linux. Strange you would blame an OS for your refusal to learn how to properly use it.
Bruh all I said was that there is a good reason why people stick to windows. If you want to use Linux, good for you but there is a genuinely good reason for not to switch.
I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve broken either of my Ubuntu desktops. And I’d say 80% of the time, it was my fault. For everything else, there is BTRFS and TimeShift .
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I left that part for the comment section as an exercise, since it took me 2 days just to figure out which version of Windows 10 to download. Those who think windows 7, windows 11, ubuntu, manjaro, linux mint, Pop!_OS, Arch or fedora are all invited to share their stance, with mention to problems like: drivers, lightweight, internet connectivity, privacy …ect.
The best OS for piracy is any security focused Linux distro like Qubes and Tails.
The second best pirate os is any general Linux distro.
Pop os is a distro with nvidia drivers pre installed.
So they are installable on- say ubuntu for example ?
You telling me you couldn’t install nvidia drivers on Ubuntu? It’s one of the friendlies distros for new users out there.
Official instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaDriversInstallation
TLDR: “sudo ubuntu-drivers install” if that fails read the instructions.
Yup. Nvidia are installable on any linux distro, some just have tools to make it easy.
I don’t recommend ubuntu but it has an easy to use device manager that makes installing nvidia straight forward.
I would suggest you look instead at Mint which has all the good stuff from ubuntu with all the cruft removed
sounds like a lot of work when you could just install arch or nobara and be done with it
I heard Arch uses something called Wayland, which doesn’t go well with Nvidia
Any linux can use whatever you want.
Arch comes by default with nothing but a terminal and then you can install X.org or Wayland, whatever you want.
It depends on what you install. You can do an arch install without Wayland. I’m currently running x11 on Arch with Wayland also installed so I can switch back and forth at any time.
However, unless you like to spend time learning how Linux works, I’d just go with another distro like Nobara. It will have everything you want pre configured.
I’ve heard many of the Nvidia/Wayland issues have been resolved. I personally can’t use it because I’m running an LTS distro with too many old packages. e.g. mpv does support Wayland now, but my distro is stuck on 0.34 and you need 0.35+ if you run Wayland.
I’m planning to hop distros again because of this.
Or easier even: Linux.
Strap Linux Mint, Pop_OS!, or your favourite Linux distro on your PC (I personally tend to recommend Linux Mint, it automatically installs the nuveau open source Nvidia drivers but will prompt you to choose which Nvidia drivers you want in the post-installation menu). For media piracy you’re good to go, for gaming, honestly I’d rather recommend just using steam whenever you can but if you have to pirate a game see if you can find it for linux first, otherwise go for Lutris/Wine or a virtual machine, worst case scenario you can do a dual boot with a windows copy but honestly if you don’t want any hassle just stick with Linux and games running on it.
Spoiler: Everything except MacOS or Windows
TempleOS?
The most private and secure OS indeed. You won’t find malware for this thing.
OSRS?
I would recommend Fedora or Pop!_os
For whatever reason, on my Pop!_os the app store didn’t really work. Maybe I just used the command line to install things improperly, but I switched to mint a while back and everything’s been going great so far.
Try Mint
If you care so much about avoiding analytics and advertising why on earth are you “googling” your questions on the world’s largest advertising and analytics website?
google is manageable for me, especially because of firefox extensions, but windows is unmanageable, ads on desktop and using my data plan (limited GBs) secretly. My problem is not with privacy, it stems from the performance of my pc and internet. Much like the problem with Denuevo. Also, I don’t sacrifice performance for the sake of privacy, for instance I’d uninstall google apps from phone cuz they use resources, even little, but I won’t use a VPN cuz it will make net usage slow.
I’m just gonna store this 4chan discussion here so I don’t have to bookmark it. Ignore me please.
No mention of Tronscript?
just googled this Tronscript, and after consulting the Github page, I can say with confidence that I’m too normie for this
Fair enough. It’s not for the fainthearted. 🤣
Slipstreamed windows wim or these super stripped down variants will cause you pain in the arse. The only way is a non-mac and windoze.
Have to disagree as I’ve tried pretty much all of them. The most popular “tiny10” and “tiny11” by NetDev (not mentioned above) is actually a bit of an arse with stuff broken. Same with the others. You shouldn’t need to skim through a Telegram group to figure out how you create a new user account… (Amolierated, I’m looking at you).
However, the one where it all just works is Ghost Spectre Superlite (Windows 11 version, though I’m sure the 10 version is similar). It is proper clever with its app that allows you to add the features you need and install the updates you want, or not if you prefer. They released a tweak to get CoPilot working too which just worked. And all in a tiny image with neat tweaks plus all the bloat gone. And the only one where my laptop instantly resumes and works perfectly with Modern Sleep.
Even has an extended WinPE boot environment with extra apps for hard drive partitioning, data recovery, etc. Worth a look.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
the youtube guide by the developer
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I would recommend Manjaro. Very beginner friendly, has access to the AUR and a great community forum where you can find the answer to any question or problem. I took the leap years back from Windows to Linux and it was one of the best things i ever did.
https://github.com/arindas/manjarno
Use EndeavourOS
EOS all the way. I parked my ass there several months after they first released, been happy ever since.
Please no. First of all Arch-based distros (or rolling releases in general) shouldn’t be recommended to newbies at all, secondly if you really have to use Arch (you almost certainly don’t but suit yourself) go for a good distro like Endeavour OS or Garuda Linux, or just install arch itself (there’s archinstall if you are afraid of using Arch the way it’s supposed to be used).
I say this as someone who uses Arch (btw) or rather Endeavour OS. It is a nice and mostly smooth experience granted but you will eventually run into issues or packages that are not in the official repos and you will need to put up with it. Arch distros should be viewed as tinkerer distros not newbie distros (unless the newbie wants to tinker and put up with it, of course).
I don’t get the downvotes. Manjaro was my first distro and although it didn’t take long to move on to Endeavor and finally vanilla Arch it was a nice launch pad for me. The distro absolutely has its foibles but that said it has introduced many folks to the Linux way.
To my mind any distro is fantastic if it helps get a user past the top soil.It’s gone the Ubuntu way and enshittified itself to a grand mess. Stick to pure Arch, it’s not as hard as before now.
