> Why doesn't the README file explain what this repository is doing?
It explains exactly what it's doing.
"Microsoft Store package for Windows LTSC."
It provides a Microsoft Store package for LTSC builds, and an install script that allows it to actually work. Windows LTSC builds don't have Microsoft Store preinstalled, and Microsoft offers no official way to re-enable it.
> Windows LTSC builds don't have Microsoft Store preinstalled
No, it's not that it isn't "preinstalled", the Microsoft Store is literally not supported on LTSC, by design. LTSC was never intended to run the Store. The original use case for LTSC was for ATMs, industrial control equipment, hospitals, and the like, where IoT wasn't appropriate, where you needed the ability to run full desktop applications.
> Microsoft offers no official way to re-enable it.
Yeah that's because the Store was never supposed to run on LTSC. It's not supported. Why would they offer an official way to re-enable it? The whole point of LTSC is that it doesn't include the store.
If someone cobbled together an ugly hack to shoehorn it in, by definition it could break at any time.
If by "customer" you mean "way of making money", I agree, since I didn’t pay for it. OTOH, I have been running LTSC on my desktop for years because it's the best edition of Windows, and I haven't had any issues with the Store, which I had to install manually, thus far.
To be fair, the headline could have been better worded. The convention for something like this is
“Show HN: Title of Repo”
I could understand how one might not understand what the aim of this post was. Maybe the ensuing conversation could have been handled better, but I would certainly include the parent comment in that indictment.
The store is also an app on windows and is sometimes an hard dependency to install apps that only exist on the windows store without having to jump through many hoops. It's usually part of windows itself in the regular retail builds of windows, but LTSC which is meant for enterprise and embedded system does not include it. Installing it is not straightforward which is what this repo provides.
There's no source code, it's a just a bunch of binaries and an install/uninstall script.
Edit: I should clarify that the link provided in the repo is not the microsoft store that the apps refer to. This would be a better link https://apps.microsoft.com
I don't think there's anything nefarious going on here but to someone just quickly looking over the page it has the impression of being an official Microsoft project, given the gratuitous use of their trademark and zero mention of it being a "community" effort.
> The lack of support on LTSC is the least baffling thing going on here but I'm open to the possibility that I'm misunderstanding something....
And yea, you're right, but Indeed, many people need to use the store on LTSC, especially after Microsoft migrated many ecosystem attempts to the store, for example Microsoft Photos and some extensions like HEIC, and now not only UWP applications can enter the store; regular applications can also do so. It actually poses a very big problem that we cannot use the store anymore, at least that's what I think.
Furthermore, it is not just LTSC 2019 that cannot be used; this means that older versions of Windows (at least 1809 or older) are also no longer able to use it. In other words, we can no longer use the store on older versions of Windows. You might say that Microsoft itself didn't intend to provide support for older versions, and yea, I agree, that's true. However, the fact is that many people use Windows largely because of its compatibility advantages. I believe everyone should at least be aware that Microsoft is not as compatible with older programs, especially its own, which is what I want to express.
As for the license, I would like to clarify that it is only to prevent the packaging scripts from being used for commercial purposes and promotion. As you can see, this repository is not specifically intended for hosting store programs, so it does NOT apply to the store programs themselves, but only to the deployment scripts :)
Microsoft has jumped the shark with the way they're pushing their apps through this. It recently took me ~15 minutes of figuring out how to install the Windows Terminal on a newish version of Windows Server. Visiting Microsoft's website to download it was fruitless; the Github releases page was where I needed to be.
This is a build of windows targeting long term deployments and embedded system, so it's essentially a pared down version of windows to reduce memory requirements. One of those things is the microsoft store which is often needed to install certain apps without having to mess around with the command line, etc.
The Microsoft Store is not included as a component in Windows 10 LTSC 2019. This is because the LTSC branch is designed for specialized use cases rather than general-purpose computing. While LTSC 2019 maintains support until 2029, the Microsoft Store remains external to this ecosystem and is fundamentally unrelated to the LTSC version.
Using LTSC to avoid bloat is like removing the chairs and radio from your car to reduce weight. My experience with Win 10 LTSC was not terribly faster than Windows 10 Home, and night-and-day slower compared to a GNOME or KDE setup.
I suppose it's a fair play if you're contractually obligated to play Riot-published games or something, but... man. I've had better performance playing games on DXVK since 2016. Windows is a heavy hog.
> Using LTSC to avoid bloat is like removing the chairs and radio from your car to reduce weight.
LOL, I don't think that's how you meant it, but 100% agreed those are some of the first things to go when you wanna have fun in a car.
Windows LTSC is an amazing experience compared to vanilla windows, it's actually a decent OS that you can more or less control and you don't have to spend a weekend debloating and figuing out how to rip out cortana and ads and all the other garbage.
If you don't have personal experience with LTSC, it's probably a good time to stop opining on it. Having full access to group policy and total control over application and update choices on your own PC is not just a "cosmetic solution."
If your computer has weak spindle I/O and low RAM, then using LTSC is a useful shortcut to disabling background services that consume those resources. If resources are plentiful then it’ll have no gains. Also:
I don't follow what's going on here. I'm running current Windows 11 Pro, licenses purchased from one of the markets for under AUD$50, and turned off all the standard annoyances via setting toggles and never see an ad or weather report etc.
Or get an edition that doesn't have all of that to begin with, and is supported for 10 years so you don't have to worry about updates mysteriously resetting the annoyance settings that you've disabled, or randomly breaking stuff.
> I'm running current Windows 11 Pro, licenses purchased from one of the markets for under AUD$50
You've probably wasted the 50 bucks. A valid product key a license does not make. Those cheap keys are usually ones for OEM licensing. If that is the case, you do not have a license.
I have a dedicated Windows 11 gaming laptop and I'm about at my breaking point of putting another drive in it to test out the games that I care about on Linux. Windows was tolerable to use just for gaming, but the hoops that you have to go through to do some things in Windows are ridiculous. Removing the Game Bar (and stopping Windows from bugging you about it afterwards) is way more difficult than it should be. Also the driver update ping-pong that happens with my Intel video card is maddening. I'll have the driver fully updated and functional, then Windows Update periodically decides to downgrade it to one that's ~2 years old (which breaks stuff.)
If you're using steam, the ProtonDB website [1] has a feature where you can easily hook it up to your Steam account and get a full accounting of your entire collection on one screen.
I don't want to overpromise anything, but ProtonDB is if anything conservative; I find things working better than expected more often than I am disappointed by a listing now. Games with heavy anti-cheat for online multiplayer are often not a good bet, and really old stuff is sometimes not very well supported (although even so, surprisingly well), but Linux gaming quietly snuck up when nobody was looking and one step at a time has become something where I fairly casually just expect games to work in Linux now, without me having to do much more than poke Steam to use Proton manually sometimes.
Single GPU passthrough my solution to any game that requires kernel level anticheat (lmao, no, you're not getting it on my Linux box, silly malware game devs) or does not run under Proton.
Run Linux on the host system all the time, run Windows in a VM only when necessary, and give Windows a GPU only when necessary.
I actually do have two GPUs in my machine, but that wasn't my initial plan when I built this machine. I use the iGPU in my CPU to display my desktop and use my dGPU for Steam under Linux. When I want to run Windows I can unhook the dGPU from Linux, pass it through to Windows, and then both my Linux graphical session and Windows run at the same time. If you have a single GPU then the act of unbinding from Linux it to pass it through to a VM terminates your Linux graphical session (everything not under that graphical session keeps running) until you exit the VM and rebind the GPU to Linux.
As for the second part - yes. Typically you want to export the environment variable DRI_PRIME and set it to the index of the card you want to use to render and it will be displayed on the currently active display card.
The steps might be slightly different if you're using an nVidia card - both of my GPUs are AMD.
From a quick search, Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for 5 years as a baseline, and Ubuntu Pro goes up to 12 years. RHEL releases are supported for 10 years.
I'm guessing it's similar with SUSE and other "business" distros.
Ubuntu Pro and RHEL are both 10 years for their standard lifecycle, with optional add-ons to go longer. Ubuntu's is called "Legacy Support" to get an extra 2 years, RHEL's is called "Extended Life-cycle Support" to get an extra 3-4 years.
Why doesn't the README file explain what this repository is doing?
OP, what did you hope to accomplish with this submission?
The lack of support on LTSC is the least baffling thing going on here but I'm open to the possibility that I'm misunderstanding something....