Hi, I have read through the documents on MSDN about the support life-cycle of the 2015 LTSB branch, but it is not made clear in the documents whether the life-cycle refers specifically to the released build 10240 or whether there will be mandatory updates to future builds which potentially break compatibility. I had assumed that build 10240 itself would be supported, but the recent leaks mention an "Enterprise S" build which claims to be an LTSB branch, and this is making me doubt the ABI stability of the Windows 10 LTSB platform. Does someone here know what specifically the extended support dead-line of 10/14/2025 relates to? Will there be forced ABI breaking updates to the branch before 2025? Thanks in advance
Each LTSB is supported for 10 years with no forced upgrades. So, build 10240 (2015 LTSB) will be supported until 2025. However, once in a few years, a new LTSB will come out. This build will have its own 10 year lifecycle. You are not required to upgrade to this build.
Thanks for the quick response. That's very reassuring. Do you know if there is anything special required to prevent upgrades to future builds other than the "Defer upgrades" option - which I have already forced by group policy?
Afaik you won't need to do anything special. LTSB will never upgrade on its own: it requires a manual upgrade (ISO file).