LTSC: What is it, and when should it be used?

These types of posts really upset me. You want consumers and IT Admins to stop resorting to an OS you say is intended for medical devices and kiosks? Then stop consistently putting out versions of Windows 10 that break NICs, lose data, reboot sans warning, and come pre-loaded with adware like candy Crush, xbox apps, start menu ads, lock screen ads, and 2 browsers. Can I ask why even Microsoft hasn't been able to untangle IE from their own "latest and greatest" rendition of Windows 10? "WaaS" is very new terminology and has yet to prove sustainable as a model. Lest we forget that a large portion of the Win10 market share came from Microsoft imaging entire organizations overnight with clandestine Windows 7 updates sometime around early 2017. People need usable images for VDI environments with video/network throughput limitations. People have older hardware that needs to be able to run mission critical, legacy software. Cortana and the App Store have no place on the majority of many workshop machines. Stop blaming your users for adopting something that actually works as a viable solution with STABLE updates. Stop using paying customers as beta testers. Can I ask what exactly happened to Patch Tuesday? Because for the last year, at least, updates have gone through no QA team and come down the channel seemingly at random. Occasional out of band patches are fine. Building the plane as it's taking off and then yelling at your passengers for deploying their parachutes when you hit turbulence is a good way to have an entire organization shift away from your airline.

I will point other readers to: https://www.howtogeek.com/395121/windows-isnt-a-service-its-an-operating-system/

John Wilcox The statistics provided in your earlier comment are extremely misleading in that they are based on Windows Store ads which would not include LTSB/LTSC releases at all. They would also not include organizations where the Windows Store is disabled via GPO. This is specifically mentioned in the article. All that is proved here is that Microsoft Update is extremely aggressive in Windows 10.

As for LTSC vs SAC: I would much rather spend the time to build a new image every year (or so) as new LTSC versions are released when the alternative is to have the user experience across the organization be turned upside down every six months as workflows change in Windows. That's before considering the major stability issues that seem to be plaguing the SAC branch on a regular basis.

In our organization, the most unstable machines by far are among the three that run SAC vs the many hundreds running LTSB at the time of writing.

You tell that preferred choice is changing in the industry? Any approximate numbers? Say a year ago 30% of enterprises preferred LTSC and today 25%?

I would love to stay on SAC, but with limited IT human resources, budget and time (like in most SMBs) it is too burdening to keep up. And what about "stability" flop of 1809? I doubt any serious org has started even testing and i feel 1903 will be released just after most update to the latest version. 2 updates per year is too often (i know i can skip, but what is the point then to use SAC anyway). We don't have money for Intune, SCCM, Enterprise versions. Dealing with feature updates via WSUS is PITA. Btw, is there x64 only feature update for 1809 in WSUS finally? A few weeks ago there was none. Why advertise new cool feature like 2 times smaller update size by splitting update into x86 and x64 and only providing packages for older versions?

I think LTSC believers won't disappear soon, as many may prefer stability (real stability) over theoretical improvements and possible problems. If anything, they numbers may grow after the 1809 blunder.

Hi John.

I give You another example.

In our industry ( kind of Software development) we are using hundreds of different "bot" machines. Automated testing, compiling, building, etc systems. Most of those are still running older versions of Windows. Because people responsible for those processes doesnt have  absolute certainity, that those routines  work fine after every SAC upgrade. For those systems most of end-user features and functionalities introduced with new W10 release are pointless. So, for IT is very hard to sell them idea-  to screw twice per year all their systems. They have much important jobs to perform than test compatibility with next W10 release.  We are trying to keep our user stations on more recent versions - it cost us lot (time resources) and end-users dont understand why it is needed. they dont see benefit, or it is tiny compared to introduced problems.  

Ok, I guess I want to throw my 2 cents into LTSC piggy bank :-). So, we have big Enterprise organization. Yep, one of those big ones that everyone knows. EVERYONE! And of course just like everyone else on this planet scared of staying on W7 because soon will be not supported, and as result non-compliance, audit, regulators and big, big fines! Does not sound good! So started moving with SAC. 1709. Well, because it was 1 year ago. 1803 was skipped - thanks to MS for announcing new strategy of supporting fall releases for 30 months instead of originally planned 18 months! Now got 1809. Yes, it was mess! In fact it was disaster. You were saying 09 means September? Yeah right! How about November? October was bug-fixes time ha-ha-ha! Halloween of bugs. But as you know, November is the time when things slow down. Why? Well, many reasons. First it is new fiscal year. First month is always slow. Besides everybody is in the Christmas mood. Santa coming to town in case you did not know. Then it is January, best time to go Dominican, Mexico or Cuba - prices doing down! Who does not like cheap vacation all-inclusive? Then February things start picking-up slowly. But hey, now business got scary, they want to test their Applications, but they don't have time. And you know, all those 3rd party agents? Security agents? Have you heard about them? They also may not work in 1809. So if we push 1809 we may break all machines. Risk is real, and everybody scary. But things not getting any better. Soon it will be 1909 and it only will be worse. So this is a road to perdition. What you suggest? Stay on 1709 or jump to 1809? What if something happens? It will be the END. And nobody want the END. Everybody want to live. Everyone want to retire happy ha-ha-ha! Now let's see why SAC is better (as per you list): 1. Edge is missing. Sure. But Edge is disaster. There are problems with SSO via ADFS because MS did not allow any browser to access ADFS, each Agent string must be explicitly written into ADFS configuration. You saying add this to ADFS? Sure. But do you remember we were talking about large enterprise? 5-second command to execute in PROD environment takes easily 6 months. Why? Don't ask. Just believe! So for any changes we are looking months and months to implement. 2. Cortana. We disabled it in SAC anyway, so why bother? Nobody use Cortana, except MS people who present something on Ignite! 3. App Store. Most enterprise block it - otherwise this is a Pandora box! If users start installing what they want this will be the end! 4. Same thing for many other things. So what really business need? They need their Applications. And they want them to work stable today, tomorrow and in 5 years, day after day. And if changes occurs so often and could break things, this is not good. Did I almost convinced you why large enterprises should go with LTSC? Ha-ha-ha! Your turn!

We use the LTSC version. I originally went the route of 1803 Enterprise and had so many problems:

- Removal of the bloatware is not clean, on new sysprep'd computers there are always errors regarding apps that have been removed in the Application log.

- Inconsistent application performance

- Using GPO's to disable the Store, Hello, Cortana doesn't do this cleanly, Application errors are consistently reported. Why, if they are turned OFF.

- With patching and updates, some of the apps "return" which is unacceptable. (ie OneDrive)

- Our computers are for "work" not home, shopping apps are inappropriate.

- We don't want "Advertisements" on work computers

We want stability, clean and lean OS that is quick and for work. The adoption of new "Features" should always be an individual companies decision, not Microsofts. All non-required features are just applications that bloat the OS and increase management.

We don't have the staff to deal with, 6monthly Feature updates, which technically are "inplace-upgrades" and all their consistencies.

I think the 3yr rotation was good, 2yrs of stability. Then the 3rd year was dev/test/implementation/tidy up for the next version, if it was stable. We skipped all of Windows 8.

Hi Oleg,

Thanks for your discussion kickoff.  First to your question.

You over estimated LTSC usage.  Let me use a 3rd party source, so we remove any concern I'm trying to cook the books :)

https://meterpreter.org/data-shows-that-windows-10-april-update-market-share-soared-to-90/?cn-reloaded=1

According to InfoTech's reporting, LTSC is at MOST 2% of all devices.  Other then servers and special purpose devices, it really is the exception today, and for desktop productivity usage,  movement is from it, to SAC.  

What is the LTSC end user missing?

He is a small subset, organized by release, of the featurs and functionality added in subsequent SAC releases.

I'm glad you are finding  LTSC great and stable for you,  I agree it is. I would submit for your consideration ( based on real data telemetry, and actual innovation we have added ) that I know the subsequent SAC builds are even more stable, better performant, and more secure. We will continue to work to address your servicing concerns and challenges, and hope that in the near future, we can make it work for you.

John 

Yes, most changes on paper sound cool for IT enthusiasts, but not so interesting for end users, who maybe just work with a few spreadsheets and docs and not so into technology. They don't care about timeline, or doing screenshots with new app or connecting their phones to PC, etc. Main reason for IT to install it is to keep up to date, to have monthly cumulative updates weight less and to get IT updates like better Autopilot support and new policies, etc.

Serpentbane, but that is the point. 

One of the main reasons why organizations chose LTSC in the first place is to NOT get the "new features" you were talking about. 
Microsoft made it very hard on Windows 10 to get rid of things the Organization does not want - things like setting file associations etc. needs a lot of workarounds to make it work because it is obvious Microsoft does not care about Admins anymore. 

This was much better on LTSB/C, as a lot of the stuff that people want gone (Store, UWP Apps, Edge, Cortana... and their file associations etc) were not there to begin with, so they didn't need to be disabled/hacked out/worked around, etc. 

Also, we deploy our devices for a four year cycle, and by using LTSC, we could just deploy these devices and keep them on one version for the entire Lifecycle - no changes, no stuff breaking. 

It is the little things that happen with the Windows 10 updates - defaults get changed, they add new icons to the task bar (I had a ton of support calls when the unwanted "Mail" App was auto-pinned to the taskbar with upgrades), the interface is changing constantly (looking at you, Windows Search) ... people do not want that. Neither do we want that as Admins. You might like the "new Features", I  just see "more crap I have to disable/remove". 

Also, people HATE when the upgrades arrive. They take a long time, happen when they want to shutdown/quickly reboot their machine and hinder then from going home (99% Laptops), and are a hassle. And I have trouble forcing my users to have a single reboot a month as it is (IT had to override Management on that one). 

Just remember that back on any other version of Windows, you only had to worry about deploying to a device once, have it auto-configured by whatever scripts you built, and only worry about the monthly updates.

Now, with every new Windows 10 version I have to verify that my scripts still work (PSA: often they get broken by changes from Microsoft), I have to verify my Drivers and Software all still work, figure out where Microsoft changed the presets set by users in the upgrade process, where they added unwanted "features" and GUI elements, update my GPOs ... Administering Windows 10 devices to a level that my Organization wants (not to a level that Microsoft deems "suitable") creates about five times as much work as Windows 7 or Windows XP did before. 

I know, a lot of people seem to like Edge, Cortana, etc.. but we don't. We don't want them, we don't need them. We do not need UWP, we do not need the Store, we do not need another Browser or Security Software. We just want Devices for our Lifecycle that behave consistently from one day to another, and GUI changes are not consistency. 

It was hard enough to figure out how to turn most of the annoyances on Windows 10 off, but to have to do it repeatedly every 6-12 months is just.. argh. 

Just as an anecdote, I had a script (why do I need a script for this) that unpinned Edge from the Task bar - as it was not a normal icon but some system functionality deeply hidden that put it there. In the end, it worked and the icon was gone - and it worked fine in 1809 or older. When we moved to 1903, it still worked that it unpinned the icon - but now users couldn't pin stuff to the taskbar anymore, as it was forgetting the pins after logout.  Why is simple stuff like that so hard... 

I am currently moving all our devices up to 1903, and when that is done, to 1909...and we expect to stay on that version as long as support runs out (30 Months)... and until then, hopefully Microsoft will have revised their update model, as they seem to begin to realize that 6 Months is way too often in corporate land. 

in an Ideal world, there would not be two, but three Tiers to Windows 10:

SAC, the same as before, 18-30 Months support.

LTSC: The same as before, 10 Years support.

LTS-Business: New Channel, no new feature updates, released every ~3-4 Years, with an equivalent support period of ~5 Years. Create one Year of overlap from one release to the next.