I might start a project to teach a couple of non-tech people how to work with computers at some point. I’d love to hook them up with Linux and libre/open office but the pragmatical reality is that they’re gonna need the Windows know-how for employment reasons at least at first.
Problem with that is that Windows is expensive (only in hardware. who buys Microsoft software?). They’re bloated and require progressively more advanced hardware to do the same thing they’ve done in the 90s. I’m trying to come up with ways to reduce costs to work with minimal hardware but my experience on that is only on the Linux front.
Does anybody have any experience with something like that, for example running some cracked Windows 7/XP, that could help?
if it’s a relatively short project, you can renew a Windows 7 “trial license” for at least four months (indefinitely if you reinstall, or possibly by some registry edits)
That sounds doable but wouldn’t I run into security issues due to lack of updates? I have no issue with cracking a Windows install for educational purposes, but I wouldn’t want to accidentally brick the hardware due to yet another leaked NSA backdoor becoming a worm.
It doesn’t get security fixes if updates are disabled. Quite frankly it is irresponsible to give non-tech-literate people patched OS’s like that which are inevitably in only a matter of time going to be exposed to zero-day exploits.
Frankly if you can’t give them Linux. Give them something that will continue to receive patches and support for years to come. Install Windows 11 pro with MAS and forget about it. If you can’t do that without fiddling with privacy settings then install and run something like O&O shutup10 (or maybe it’s 11 now) or W10privacy and run the green privacy setting baselines to disable as much data collection as you can (avoid yellow or red so you don’t risk breaking things they can’t fix years down the line).
Worrying about NSA backdoors for random people and compromising their security to random hackers and botnets (and guess what, the NSA because if you’re not patched for the little fishes they’ll happily use that if they’re targeting you but you have bigger issues then) is the height of ridiculousness. Like get that fucking idea out of your head right now. Unless these people are elderly members of a revolutionary communist party (in which case teach them Linux) there is no reason to worry about this stuff. Yes they might have their data collected by Microsoft but you know what Microsoft won’t do? Steal their login credentials for their bank or credit cards and leave them lacking enough money to make rent or get groceries which is what could happen very easily if they’re running unpatched systems in 6 months, 12 months, 3 years.
