The only reason I use Windows in 2023 is for video gaming. Every other non-gaming PC I own is running Linux.

Windows has become inferior to Linux in every other way. More upgrade headaches, worse resource utilization, worse desktop environment, more crashes, data collection, and now embedded ads.

These technology companies have really demonstrated over the past few decades that they are unable to maintain reliable products over the long term. Every piece of good software (and even hardware in many cases) degrades almost immediately into an inferior product due to laziness and greed.

These companies would rather destroy their flagship products chasing the smallest prospect of extra revenue, than leave what works alone and innovate on something new.

Games are my only reason too. Fortunately LTSC saves me most of the madness.

How do I get LTSC? I'm going crazy with Windows 11. It's one of the worst OSes I've ever used.

Works well without activation, if you don't mind the overlay. But what I did is that I pointed it at a KMS emulator, which is a piece of software that responds to every activation request as a positive. The internet is full of lists of servers like these, but I host it myself - basically just built and compiled this one: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd