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?
You can run Windows 10 for free. All not having a key does is force watermark in the lower right corner that tells you to activate windows. You also can’t change desktop background or colors or any theming stuff.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone run under Windows 10 on a network connected machine because of vulnerabilities.
That said you can activate any version of Windows you’d like for free too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread/tools
Use the tool at top and find download links to untouched isos of Windows below.