I should have mentioned that, yeah Licensing is the key problem here but there is a github script that fixes this if you don't have any ethical issues with that.
But personally if I already have a legal copy of Win11 I have no moral problems with reinstalling LTSC and using a script to activate it.
There is no github script that fixes this, there are scripts that redirect the activation mechanism to pirate activation servers that validate every incoming request. Not knowing this mechanism beforehand, I was very surprised by this, because this is what even many activator software do as well.
I consider it a major breach of trust from the authors. Maybe there can be an exploit that uses the activation mechanism as a vector, and then, many of such machines will be compromised. This is a risk, and it's something that a user needs to evaluate before going into it.
I personally solve this for myself by running the activation server emulator myself. It's open source software and really easy to set up as well.
This is untrue. The script being referred to by the original comment activates your IoT LTSC as perfectly genuine at Microsoft's own server, no third party comes into play.
The more I think of it, the more licensing looks like the best representation of Microsoft's strategy for Windows.
Stable, lean and long term focused versions are locked under the most hidden of the enterprise licenses. Decent versions without the garbage ads and spyware features only ship to enterprise. "Pro" users are only blessed with virtualization and a few candies, and share the worse edition with "Home" users.
It makes a lot more sense why the enterprise machines are near 30% more expensive than their customer counterpart.
It is interesting because a lot of people criticize Apple as basically you are paying for privacy.
And that is very true, they have turned it into a marketing feature.
But Microsoft is very brazen about it when it comes to Windows. The more you pay the less privacy invasive crap there is. I don't know for sure what the difference between home and pro is for analytics sent back to Microsoft, but LTSC is a drastic difference. (annoyingly still not zero though)
But personally if I already have a legal copy of Win11 I have no moral problems with reinstalling LTSC and using a script to activate it.