If you have to use windows, 10 LTSC IOT version has support until 2032, and you can remove most of the bloat.

Iirc only businesses can buy that and you cannot upgrade hardware.

Form an LLC and present yourself as a small business interested in IoT.

or just buy a cd key from a wholesaler for $20 :)

probably won't be disconnected... been using such a cd key for months w/o issue and my win11 experience isn't that painful

If you're gonna pay 20 bucks to someone who isn't even allowed to sell you a key, why not just activate it with massgrave?

Indeed, but for all the cases where I’d want to use IoT Windows, such as small scale NVRs, I have opted for Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL.