Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I am not interested in Linux.

Open BSD then?... Ahahha

The readme explains it well enough that my son did it when he was 16.

Download LTSC, install it, run the script to activate.

Alternatively, you could simply reinstall your owned copy and use Steve Gibson's tool to block upgrades.

To add to what everyone's saying since it hasn't been mentioned (as far as I've seen): You can probably disable TPM 2.0 in your BIOS once you re-install Windows 10 so Windows Update will think your PC is incompatible with Windows 11.

I dunno what the security implications are but it's been working really well for me so far.

You are on Lemmy, which shows that you weren't deterred from learning about all the instances and stuff. So you are open to learning. So I would slowly dip my toes into Linux if there's no Windows specific software you absolutely depend on.

I would suggest Linux Mint: https://www.linuxmint.com/

This is beginner friendly and for the most part can be operated pretty much like Windows. Slowly, you will get used to typing in commands into the terminal to maybe update and upgrade your system. Online instructions to install programs are widly available to find (install [program] on ubuntu/debian) can be easy since it's based off of ubuntu/debian

Now, if you really want to use windows for whatever reason, everything is already on the massgrave website for you to read and install.

https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media

Linux will show you how to troubleshoot and use your computer more efficiently and not spy on you.

Windows will simultaneously spy on you and still shit itself so you'll still have to learn to troubleshoot. Give it a few years, and Windows will enshitify further. You're just delaying the inevitable.

I am not interested in Linux.

I'm pretty sure your supposed to set up W10 first (press "I don't have a product key") and then run the script after it puts you in

You have to install Windows LTSC fresh then run massgrave. Product keys for the versions of Windows are different

You can't really downgrade Windows.

If you've downloaded Windows 10 LTSC from massgrave, then you need to burn it to a CD (lol) or put it on a USB drive and completely re-install Windows.

Then when you've setup windows, execute the massgrave script to activate windows permanently. Then, while you're at it, you can grab Privatezilla which allows you to completely disable forced windows updates so this won't happen to you again.

https://rentry.co/MR-EverythingWindowsExplained#installing-windows has further info, but tl;dr- install without a key, then use MASgrave after it's installed.

https://massgrave.dev/troubleshoot

You need to wipe your drive and reinstall windows in order to switch to the ltsc branch.

This said, are you aware that windows 10 dies in October and any security issues (~50 discovered every month, although not all very serious) won't get patched anymore?

Better get used now to w11 or Linux rather than next year after automatically getting a ransomware and losing all your data after visiting a dodgy site