Thank you for the info. Yes, I don't think you can manage updates at this level, in Home at least.
The only option Windows gives is that "postpone updates to...' with a max of 1 or 2 months, I think.
Imo it's safer to just disconnect Windows from the internet completely and maintain it just for some games, like people still do with XP and 7. Especially now with Windows 11 being politely recommended for Win10 users. :p

Not really. Don't use it at all. All my games that I've tried playing run fine with Linux. Varying degrees of tinkering required, but I like tinkering.

I don't see the problem with DRM-free gamers using a DRM'ed OS. Sure, they could use Linux, but that's not for everybody. Not everyone is capable of overcoming some obstacles.

But we shouldn't point fingers and laugh at these imagined 'hypocrites' of the DRM-free world. It's the same thing as actively trying to fight climate change - you don't have to be vegan, use a bike, go electric and renewable. You don't have to do it *all* to be considered being truly one of 'them'. You just do what you can, and be content.

Not really. Everything nowadays has something wrong with it. Do I have the time or energy to sift through the thousands of Linux things, or learn a new operating system, nope. By the time I had done so, steam would be so heavily embedded in it you would tell the difference anyways. And no, macOS is not a viable platform.
Add a couple of extra items to your win install, classic shell, shutup, and make sure you have pro, and it’s not a problem anyways. Win 10 is nice enough and perfectly compatible, far above win 8.x.

To my understanding, at this point (at least in Windows 10) that DRM's only effect is that if you don't validate your copy of Windows, you can't change your desktop wallpaper, so there will be always that watermark that your copy of Windows is not validated.

Otherwise it is still supposed to work fully, as far as I know. Not sure if it can stop functioning altogether sometime in the future.

Anyway I don't fret THAT much even if it did that at some point because Linux + WINE is a pretty viable place to go to run your older Windows (and MS-DOS) games, if it came to that. I do that already with many of my Windows games, I am bi-OS, using both Windows and Linux for gaming on various PCs.

Would one of those faulty games be Death End re;Quest 1? If it is, from what I read, it has long going optimization issues, even on Windows, apparently because the devs misconfigured the internal resolution of the game so it's always on 4k, no matter the resolution settings you use.

Yes, it is one of those that is slower than it should be. Given that I've put over 70 hours into it now, it obviously isn't something I consider critical (especially if I remember to enable dash, which gets disabled every time I restart). And you do bring up a good point: I have no idea if my problems are due to wine/Linux or are present in Windows as well, because I never run the games in Windows.

To me the real issue with DRM is whether it's under your control or someone else's. Eg, serial keys and CSS on DVD's are DRM but are also a non-issue as the offline DVD game / movie can't be remotely revoked if the store you bought it from closes and you can "back up" serial keys into notepad and saving that a few times. You can't be remotely prevented from playing / watching, soundtracks won't ever be deleted due to rights expiry, etc. If Windows can be made to behave the same offline, it's less of an issue vs online game activation, and to give MS rare credit, non-activated restrictions for Windows have actually eased up over time.

What happens if you never activate Windows:-

XP - Will work for 30 days then refuses to boot. The whole OS permanently stops working until you type in an activation key.

Vista - Will work for 30 days then enters Reduced Functionality Mode (you are blocked from playing built-in games, Aero & Bitlocker are disabled, and you are forcibly logged out after every hour). Also blocks System Updates.

W7 - An "Activate Windows" watermark appears on the desktop. Will work for 30 days after which you will get hourly "Activate Now" nag screens (that revert Personalizations) along with a notice that your Windows version is not genuine whenever you launch the Control Panel. Also blocks System Updates.

W8 - An "Activate Windows" watermark appears on the desktop, and you'll lose access to Personalizations. "Activate Now" screen popup nags every 6 hours.

W10 - An "Activate Windows" watermark appears on the desktop, and you'll lose access to Personalizations but otherwise continues to work with mostly full function.

Likewise, local KMS activations (over a LAN by a company server) can be done "offline" for Pro, Education & Enterprise, and W10 Enterprise LTSC in particular is literally built for specialist use cases (including air-gapped / specialist factory floor / MRI scanner, etc, stuff with no direct net connection and unchanging stable environments). It's possible for them to activate offline and work continuously +10 years without ever seeing the Internet even once. So the "DRM" there is like the offline DRM on DVD's, serial keys, etc (a lot less of a problem than online DRM in games). In theory, Enterprise versions are not available to consumers. In practise, well there are 'ways around that' and a lot of gamers seem to like LTSC anyway due to less bloat.

As for Linux, I do dual-boot with Linux Mint 20.2 (XFCE). Some stuff is still fiddly / flaky but it's come a long way from where it was and if it ever came to completely ditching Windows altogether, most of my favourites & classics run fine on it, many natively. Likewise, emulators, ScummVM and DOSBox stuff tends to work exactly the same for DOS / Win31 games under Linux as it does Windows and people build all sorts of matchbox sized retro rigs out of Raspberry Pi's.

One version you forgot to mention: Windows 10 for virtual machines that Microsoft shares.

While they do say it's a trial, you can use virtually forever, but with a caveat:
Once the trial license expires, the watermark from later Windows versions will appear, and the guest OS will shutdown in every session after 1 hour using it no matter what you are doing.

WIndows 10 would have been more palatable had they made the effort to make games run better on it than it does on windows 7, which is really good if you know how to get rid of the bloatware and startup programs.

No, Windows is an OS, the only one i use, games however are many, with various different restrictions, from stores to denuvo, i want to be able to play the games i enjoyed without having to rebuy it numerous times on various platforms, or be forced to stream it to be able to play it..

I like to control my library and play it wherever i want, whenever i want, however there is one niggle in that.. reliance upon the OS... OS gets updated but the games don't.. i don't know the legalities of it, but with hardware only supporting newer OS'es i do kinda see the day where the games i want to play won't run unless someone does some sort of Emulator.


In that regard i already use VirtualBox to load up XP so i can play Celtic Kings in all it's glory.




I have no care to preserve the OS, that i already have to remove the junk from just to make it satisfactory to use. I have no love for any specific OS, there is nothing making me want to use an older one outside of just being nicer to use, that said i've modified my Win10 so it's just as good to me.

You can get rid of this by simply disabling the sppsvc service. No nagging whatsoever anymore, apart when running some standard programs (editor, wordpad etc), that no sane person would use anyway. Control panel can be viewed as submenu in start menu (at least with classicshell).

Same goes for win10. Apart from an oem installation on a laptop, I've never seen the watermark with disabled sppsvc service.

Thank you AB2012 for the useful info.

Did you had any experience with other Linux Distros before Mint 20.2 XFCE? I'm currently using same distro as you. It's my first Linux distro. Happy that this isn't as hard as it looked before.

You should look up Oh, Shut Up Win 10 and Policy Plus.
remember to reboot yourself, before win 10 does it and resets your settings.