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I wouldn't suggest an old LTSC version, but in a relatively recent update MS stopped allowing non-LTSC versions to not populate the start menu with ms store ads when your search locally. For me, that was the final straw - I switched to the latest Win11 LTSC after that, and it's a decidedly better user experience without the cruft I didn't need or want.
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> so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10

Windows gets worse with each update, so this is actually a plus.

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There are no update, windows 10 is EOL since months and even before that it did not receive any real updates in a long time. The current version is stable and gets only security updates just like LTSC. There is no point to switch, at best its a waste of time and worst you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
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Very untrue for gaming in particular.

For example, if you have an OLED or mini-LED monitor, you really don’t want to be on Windows 10 and miss out on HDR.

And sure, you can say “well nobody has an OLED monitor,” but I’d remind everyone that OLED displays have been pretty much standard on every gaming laptop mid-range and higher for a decent amount of time now.

A lot of the focus for Windows 11 development has been gaming performance and feature improvements. Game developers are also less and less likely over time to bother testing with Windows 10.

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Most people are in fact not gamers. Like.. at all. And even those that are probably don't own an OLED or mini-LED monitor.

Most people just want a computer that does the word, the chrome and that's about it.

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There are over 900 million PC gamers in the world.

PCs have 43% marketshare in the total game console market. Yes, that includes marketshare against the Nintendo Switch.

There’s a bit of a bubble of non-gaming in this forum, but gaming is definitely a top use case for PCs.

Just walk into your local Best Buy in the laptop section and count up how many of the laptops are marketed as gaming systems. That should give you a rough idea of how many systems are purchased with gaming as the primary intent.

Sure, HDR is niche, but technologies like OLED and mini LED are increasingly common. If you buy a gaming laptop in 2026 at most reasonable price points it’s very likely to have an OLED monitor.

Example: Legion 5a Gen 11 AMD, price on Lenovo’s site is $1500, has an OLED monitor.

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Yes and how many of those people have the cash for cutting edge tech?

And how much does that cutting edge tech truly matter for the core game experience. I think the steam hardware survey might have some answers there and can tell us for which level of hardware currently developed games are being optimized for.

And that's just the currently developed ones. Not the massive backlog that existed before OLED or microLED HDR screens.

Tiny group. Tiny.

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