Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC vs Vanilla Windows 11

[Necrosaro]

With both cleaned out with my present...is there really much of a difference from these besides the slower updating on the ltsc. Been looking at getting it just for a easier clean-out after a fresh format since I love to do things live.

What's the thoughts overall to ones who use ltsc. It is going to be able to do whatever vanilla will do. I have been a windows user since 3.1 but never looked this up and want a human idea on thoughts.

Thanks

 

[scaramonga]

Night & day. Security updates only, aka, no nonsense bloatware 'features', if you allow it to do so Normal WinBloat 11 will just grab whatever MS thinks you need, but in all reality, you don't

LTSC ain't what it used to be (LTSB), but it is still far better than the 'FULL' festering rot alternative.

A lot can still be removed from LTSC, 280 components in my case + tweaks, but each user case is different.

Each, and every version of Windows 11, is riddled with stinking bullshit, just choose your poison It will never be perfect, but finding something you can live with, will be the best you can do.

MS no longer allows for a 'base OS' to be installed, on which the 'user' can build on, as 'they' decide, not you! Long gone are they years

Windows 12/13/14+ will be no better either, as MS will push 'AI' down one's throat as far as it can go, so nothing is going to get better.

In answer to your question, lol, I run IoT LTSC (latest - 9455) on my new Lenovo laptop. All good, but I hate using the thing. Gaming is great though.

 

[chrcol]

No bloatware modern apps preinstalled, not even the store is preinstalled, no onedrive preinstalled.
IoT has reduced hardware requirements (not the normal LTSC).
Much longer support before being forced to do a feature update (assuming you want to be eligible for maintenance updates).
It has no gamebar out of the box which in my opinion hinders as a gamer, I learnt some time ago gamebar is required for windows to detect games, without it gaming optimisations dont trigger on game launches. But this can be installed post install if needed (winget is enough, no need for store). (most people assume this is just overlay bloatware). AMD also relies on gamebar for game detection.
Also applocker support (this isnt LTSC specific but rather enterprise vs consumer).

However whilst its in mainstream support it will be subject to all the broken feature CU's. LTSC doesnt get an exclusion for that. If you install the store, without disabling things, then you will be also subject to things like the Outlook app getting silently installed, but ntlite can prevent that.

I put 11 on my laptop 3 days ago, and was pleasantly surprised, its way faster than the VM I have been testing on, feels almost as fast as 10, and there is a lot of improvements for laptops, like all the synaptics stuff is now built in to the settings, bear in mind though from a performance perspective its a tweaked ISO, and I used a rollback command Garlin provided to undo some regressive changes from new CU's.

 

[16309]

Luckily with my need to not have the latest hardware i might be able to skip w11 altogether and use w12(?) when it appears.
In the meantime im gonna keep using w8.1 w10 LTSC 21h2 and Debian.
I aint touching w11 with a bargepole.