Hey everyone. In my gut, i feel like i know the answer and that even asking this question is borderline stupid, however i've seen this community do a lot of amazing thing over the years, and maybe someone figured this out. Like many of you, Win 10 doesn't interest me for various reasons (telemetry, ads, spying, lack of end user control, crappier version of a start menu, bypassing hosts/hardcoding DNS, intense amount of phone homes, no Aero, uglier interface, etc etc etc). There are also a lot of things i do like (Better file manager when it comes to merging, better command processor, faster start up) I'd REALLY like to be able to utilize the win 10 command processor on Win 7. I think i'd also like to be able to use the newer Explorer for it's better handling of file management. Anyone ever figure out how we might be able to utilize a newer version of the command processor on Win 7?
Every time I move up a version of Windows I wish I had my old File Explorer. Well, my favorite was winxp so that's the one I wish I still had. Problem is File Explorer (explorer.exe) actually provides the shell not just the file browser so it's deeply embedded in the Windows internals. I don't know as I'm not a programmer, but I think it would be a monumental task, not so much the programming, but the knowledge. Probably have to be an MS employed engineer to do it. The only way would be to actually write a look-alike of the older File Explorer and run it in normal user space. The File Explorer binary would have to remain untouched. Though it would be nice to be able to keep the old shell. There's quite a bit you can do with custom themes so that would probably be a more reasonable path to take.
The telemetry shipped with Win 10 got added to Win 7/8.1 via Updates so no much difference in general . Thing is; whereas in Win 10 (especially with LTSB/C) i just tame it once and can forget, at least in case of no Feature Updates, in Win 7/8.1 it always needs to avoid certain KBs when updating the system. I gladly take the former including all the nice new features you already mentioned.
That's only for one setting, telemetry level 0. Following the instructions in the document I posted above I'm pretty sure it can be zeroed, though I haven't sniffed the network or anything to be sure. Additionally on top of disabling things in the registry the DiagTrack service and dmwappushservice can be disabled just for good measure. None of that stuff is hard to do so my point stands telemetry can be shut off pretty easily, at least for corp and edu editions. If there's anything that still gets out after that, I give up, they can have it. For me to officially use LTSC I would have to be a corporate customer with a volume license key. That right there makes it not official for me, regardless of how much I paid for my Windows seat. Point is they do still get some money from me, though I probably owe them the difference, not that I'd ever actually try to square up with them. Another consideration, LTSC comes with less "stuff" than Pro so if anything it should be cheaper.