My question for those using Win 10 LTSC is how does a home user get a single, legitimate, fairly-priced license for that, without risking deactivation or who knows what else down the road?

Realistically you can't as LTSC is meant to buy bought in bulk only by corporations. Thing is though, it's also meant to operate offline completely offline if necessary (ie, MRI scanners, factory floor PC's, ATM's, etc, are supposed to be air-gapped with no access to Microsoft's online server's). So offline KMS activation is a thing. And there are two types of open-source "tools" that can activate Windows both on Github - KMS_VL_ALL = offline KMS server emulator needs running at least once every 180 days but will work 100% offline, MassGravel = permanent online digital license by presenting a valid W7 license that Microsoft's activation server will amusingly upgrade to an official W10 license as the old W7 to W10 license upgrade still actually works.

^ Before anyone thinks these are some "cowboy hacks", here's a reality check - even Microsoft have been caught using these tools themselves to activate consumer "proper paid for" Windows licenses during tech support calls when the official "Digital License" activation fails. ;-)

Depending on how much you want to stretch the word legitimate.

What I mean is that are several ways, I personally used a Windows 7 key to activate (still have a few left from repurposing old PC's). Keys can also be bought for cheap on sites like Ebay, I've bought a couple on the past and worked just fine (still do after ~5 years), although it might be harder to get the keys these days since the adds get removed pretty fast.

I also have a couple of friends who use theyr copy unactivated. Cannot change a few settings, like wallpaper and color and a watermark stating the copy is not valid (can be removed) but not that dificult to live with. I would prefer to have a unactivated copy of LTSC than Windows 10 home.

Activators, refered in the post above, might be or not be legitimate depending on your contract with MS...
LTSC is not free. The image you can download without a VL account (wich is paid) cannot be activated after 90 days, I'm not sure if will work just like any other non-activated version or there are more restrictions but MS state the image is there fot vendors to try and build the own image without costs, before buying the real thing.

That said, there are (legal) ways to deal with the issue, see my post above.

All other versions are downloadable from MS website without account.

Preferably not at all. And, like I said, definitely not in any way that might carry any risk of needing to find another method at some later point, if not even something worse.
Just have the one Win 7 key for the one I'm using on this computer, which I'll be keeping at least as a spare.

So no way to, say, upgrade/switch a newly purchased WIn 10 Pro license to LTSC from a legitimate/certified vendor or MS directly? Or at least, if single LTSC licenses can't be aquired, getting no more than 3 (I guess I could have use for three, eventually)? :/

I mean, I may not have any qualms about "piracy" in principle and definitely don't want to support MS in any way, but there are two pieces of software where I will not take any chances with anything being even somewhat shady, the first clearly being the security software, and the OS being the second.

Hmm, my mistake. I was thinking of the standard Home/Pro iso.

I would suggest using Windows offline only after MS cuts off support. But who knows. Maybe they will still have basic updates for anyone still using it?

From what I understand, the only "correct" way to get the IOT/LTSC versions from MS is with a VL subscription wich requires a contract by a company.

Note that I am not talking about piracy here, I used whatever tools MS let me use, including activating with a Windows 7 key. Except I didn't downloaded a iso from MS website. Worth noting that I used the Win7 embedded version from a old Thin Client, not sure if the Pro version works.
That said, it may not be piracy but may breach some small letter MS clause, I didn't read the TOS :)
That's what I mean by stretching the "legitimate".

LTSC means Long Term Support Channel and is basically made for embedded (payment machines, POS, medical, industrial) machines with supposed support and security updates until 2032 on Windows 10. Since it's made for very specific devices, it's made to be configurable without the artificial restrictions on say, the Home version.

Edit: since it's very configurable, as an exemple, Windows Update can be completely blocked, wich on my Tablet stock image (Surface Go) may be very hard or impossible, even with tools like ooo Shut up 10.


Note that what is now called IOT/LTSC on Windows 10 was called POS/Embedded on previous Windows versions, like 7 and 8.1 (maybe XP also?).

offline KMS activation is a thing Microsoft allow certain people to setup... a charity that recycles old computers would be the best best to have a legal copy

and no just making a Vpn or Vmware copy is not enough as it will stop working without activation

You know what'd be cheaper than a site licence? FreeDOS or Linux. Just, cut out the middle man?

Linux is sort of the plan, but the utterly frightening one, so now that chances are that I may actually get a new computer in the near future and it's not just random plans with no finality as it's been over the past several years, the frightening part is biting me more and more and would prefer to at least have the option of a Windows that'd run the current drivers and software on said computer, at least to use in parallel, and if so far that was a no-go scenario since any Windows past 7 was unusable as far as I was concerned, I said in this very thread that now that end of support for Win 10 is approaching, it may actually become an option, but for the regular version (well, at least for Pro, not Home of course) that will only happen after said end of support, once updates will no longer be an issue, since that's the biggest problem with it. But, on top of the question of how to get a legitimate Win 10 key after end of support (well, technically could buy it before and only use it after, but... weird, and the most need of it will definitely be right in the beginning, and hopefully less as time passes), a LTSC edition should be more configurable and therefore more usable right away and will continue to get security support for a long time to come without the risk of feature updates that may change or break things.
Otherwise, of course, the matter of support by third parties raised by the thread would remain the same, but I expect quite a few years to pass before most things will strictly require Win 11+.

Dunno what's so scary about Linux these days aside from the gatekeeping users, idiot-run orgs and obstinate developers, but things couldn't be simpler these days. And they were already pretty simple to begin with back when I started mainlining Fedora Linux for over a decade ago.

Picking a distribution comes down to three factors, in order of importance:
1) The packaging philosophy and range of the distro. Your mainlines typically have a seperate repository for proprietary software, but it's trivial to enable. Of course, this is useless if you don't have anything to pick from.

*2) The release schedule/upgrade philosophy. This one is key because it can be the difference between you receiving new software now, or five years from now. Long Term Service might seem appealing to the average user, but computers have plateaued, and I seriously doubt you're running a CPU obscure enough or hardware old enough to be considered for removal from the kernel. As such, I suggest if you are going to pick a distro with a long lifecycle, pick either mainline Debian or OpenSuse Leap.

2a) Yes, I know Mint and Ubuntu are typically suggested for new users, but I don't abide in their ungroovy "LTS of an LTS" approach, because it frankly keeps unsupported software running much longer than it frankly should.

3) The default desktop or window manager. This is actually unimportant, but while you figure out how to install another, you should at least, tolerate the one you land in. Me? I'm a madman, and don't use a graphical session manager; opting for the Terminal Based Session Manager, and I have upwards of 10 WMs installed at one time.

3a) I tend to think Gnome is a poor choice for anyone getting into Linux with absolutely no shoes, because it's a very different paradigm aimed at lofty goals they (the Gnome Devs) never achieved. My suggestion for a starting desktop is the eternal rock, XFCE.

*2) Some people might suggest this is less important due to innovations such as Flatpak or Appimage, but I think it's far better to be able to configure and tweak your packages personally without having to install 12+ GB of runtime files for a small Xlib program.

I hear good things about this Leenox. Does it work with Windows 11?

;)

Yes, also works on Win10

Because MS looooooves open source...

I remember when they had intentions of removing malware. MS Recall, literally is malware. Guess they have flexible perceptions of morality lol

Indeed.
Eh, let's not derail the thread. Listed my issues with it in others, and got told again that there are no solutions and I should just do without features I've been relying on for decades and consider indispensable.