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?
I wouldn’t trust any version of Windows not to have backdoors, but it depends on what you want to do. If you’re installing it on their computers and they’ll be using it at home, Windows 7 is probably not the best choice. Actually, Windows 7 might not be a good idea if they’re going to be using Windows 10/11 at work since the UI changed quite a bit
I just remembered that you can use Windows 10 without a license (with some options disabled) and still download updates. You could also try something like Windows 10 AME, which disables Windows Update (I think) but fixes a lot of issues (apparently you can use it after installing Windows 10/11, although I haven’t tried it yet); it seems like there’s also a new variant called ReviOS which is intended for older systems