Microsoft announces Windows 11 LTSC
Microsoft made two important announcements today regarding the future of its Windows operating system. In the first, Microsoft revealed that it would not release any feature updates for its Windows 10 operating system anymore.
The last feature update for Windows 10, Windows 10 version 22H2, was released at the end of 2022. Going forward, Microsoft will only release security updates for the Windows 10 operating system. In other words, Windows 10 won't receive any new features anymore.
Windows 10 Home and Pro editions continue to be supported until October 2025, the month support ends officially. Microsoft made no mention of the possibility to extend the lifetime of Windows 10 through ESU, Extended Security Updates.
The company introduced the program for Windows 7, so that Enterprise and business customers could extend the lifetime of the operating system by up to three years.
Windows 11 LTSC
Microsoft confirmed in the second announcement that it is going to launch Windows 11 LTSC, Long Term Servicing Channel, editions in 2024.
When Microsoft launched Windows 11 at the end of 2022, it did not launch LTSC editions. While there were Enterprise, Education and IoT editions, none of these were LTSC editions.
Customers who relied on LTSC editions of Windows had to use Windows 10 LTSC editions, which Microsoft released regularly over the years.
Microsoft announced that the following two Windows 11 LTSC editions will be released in 2024:
- Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC
- Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC
Both Windows 11 editions will be released in the second half of 2024. Microsoft has not revealed additional information about the two LTSC editions. The company did reduce the lifecycle to 5 years for the Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC releases of 2021.
The Windows 11 LTSC releases of 2024 will therefore likely be supported until 2029. Whether Windows 11 will have reached its end of life by that time remains to be seen, as rumors hint at a Windows 12 release in 2024.
Microsoft recommends that Enterprise customers start their testing on regular non-LTSC Windows 11 releases in preparation of the 2024 release of the LTSC version.
Without Ai and ad garbage,w11 would have been at least acceptable,but it isn’t. Anyway
I’m happy with the retire of w10 feature updates (no MS bothers me),and I’m sticking on my PC as long as it can
Long live w10 their era along with 8,7 would not be forgotten.
If Windows 11 LTSC 2024 is the same as Windows 11 as we know it and is only supported until 2029, better stick with Windows 10 LTSC 2019 which will also be supported until 2029. It may not have all the latest features but it also is not missing essential features.
Since Windows 12 (or whatever it will be called) is most likely to be released by then, they should just use Windows 7 as a base then backport all security and features from newer versions and release it as a successor to Windows 7.
This is the way.
Windows 11 seems to have artificially high system requirements. What makes an Intel 8th gen core the dividing line? Are early Ryzens really that much inferior to 8th gen Intels?
Why do we have to send millions of perfectly good computers to the landfill just because MS CEO Satya Nadella deems it so? What happened to going green? Why can modern Linux distros run on hardware as old as an Pentium 3/Athlon?
It’s because the 8th gen Intel processor is the first one to be patched for all the hardware issues that were discovered in the previous versions so it’s thus a more secure processor and allows them to do more virtualization security features in the kernel, a sixth gen works just fine I’ll be it slower. But I wouldn’t try it with anything earlier than a 6th gen.
Sounds like BS – I’ve seen W11 on a core 2 quad desktop and it wasn’t great but it wasn’t unusable. The only unusable aspect was the OS itself (yuck).
Is it possible that the taskbar, start menu, and right-click menus will all be operational by then? GPO to eliminate all the useless garbage, including MSN, Bing, AI, and cloud. In the event that those are still unavailable, Windows 10 LTSC will be reinstalled on our systems until 2029. Perhaps by that point AI had taken the place of Microsoft’s stupid decision-makers.
“GPO to eliminate all the useless garbage, including MSN, Bing, AI, and cloud.”
They will never get rid of those, and very likely it will be even more obnoxious in Win 12. They will be pushing their cloud/AI stuff like crazy.
So that means that they have more or less a year to get Windows 11 out of alpha/beta… yeah I don’t see it happening. At that point they will likely just say move to 12 which may fix some (not all) of the problems in 11 but also introduce problems of its own.
Nice work Microsoft!
I know the enterprise market will not tolerate a lot of this windows 11 nonsense. I don’t even think society at large is happy about Windows 11 as it is so I don’t see it happening. I wonder where the taskbar will be in windows 12 maybe diagonally.
Windows 12 will bring with it a brand new set of issues to contend with. It could even bring back some issues from previous versions of Windows.
@Mystique, I completely agree. No more words needed.
“The company did reduce the lifecycle to 5 years for the Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC releases of 2021.”
Please cite source for this claim.
AFAIK no LTSC lifecycle reductions have been made.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2021
“Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 has a 5 year lifecycle (IoT Enterprise LTSC continues to have a 10 year lifecycle). Thus, the LTSC 2021 release is not a direct replacement for LTSC 2019, which has a 10 year lifecycle.”
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/whats-new-windows-10-2021