Bit of a tangent/slightly off topic:

how do HNers make Windows not evil/terrible? Like, it tries to force you into creating a Microsoft account to install Windows, I hear it has ads in the OS, forces reboots when you don't want them, and appears to generally treat its users with contempt and as a resource to exploit.

Do you need an MSDN subscription to get LTSC? Any third-party tools that try to fix the horror show?

Such a shame to have a solid platform run for evil motives.

For things that are relatively useful to keep like Windows Explorer, I try the numerous registry tweaks that remove features I don't like (for example, OneDrive integration). Couple this with Tron and similar scripts.

Installing an LTSC edition would obviously be nice, but it's hard and expensive to get to get (see [1] - the general consensus seems to be that you need to go through a VAR, and then buy an LTSC license alongside some cheap shopping basket fillers to get above the minimum number of licenses limit). When it's available, it makes the above "paving over" process much easier than a retail/pro edition.

[0]: https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar

[1]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-do...