cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15988326
Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing LTSC releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles.
Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro
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It will be interesting to see how this impacts the market share lol.
Probably not much, sadly.
Yeah, IMO the majority of people that can switch to Linux already have. The rest are locked in by software they need for their livelihood that only works on Windows. Ofc you can tell them about WINE, but that doesn’t always work very well and is outside of the comfort zone for most people (including me, who’s been using Ubuntu since 2016).
At this point, I can use Linux for most things except older fangames, reliable printing (seriously, cups is pain), and some mmorpgs.
Once I get a month without the university shitting its pants and changing policy overnight, I’ll eat the learning curve and switch (actually learn to troubleshoot wine rather than relying on searches).
When I move, thinking mint with cinnamon because I love that desktop.
cups is pain
It’s hilarious because it was FAR easier for me to get printing going on my Linux machine than with W10. It’s an old printer, 1320n from HP, maybe 15 years old, but the damn thing is amazing for document printing, and I had to hunt for drivers and do a lot of compatibility shit to get my computer to recognize it. Arch (EndeavourOS) seemed to just natively recognize the printer and gave me zero fuss. When I was using Ubuntu, I used CUPS and it wasn’t terrible. I liked it better than driver fishing, for sure.
I switched to Arch a month ago because of Microsoft forceful integration of their shit AI tools into 11. Easy switch.
So that is what it means, people wont support w10 anymore after oct 2025?
I built a new PC last year and installed Windows 11. I honestly have no issues with jt and it runs fine. However the shitty practices of current Microsoft have started appearing and ground my gears. So much so that I got a second drive and installed Mint. It’s not been easy adjusting and I often find myself booting into Windows for one reason or another but I spend the majority of my time now in Linux. I got a bit bored of Mint. I’m a sucker for new things so I moved to Arch. After installing a few packages I’m actually pretty happy with it. Proton has been the key for my move. Without it I simply wouldn’t be able to use Linux.
Outside of Windows, moving away from Chrome, GMail and Google search it’s a breath of fresh air. I don’t feel like I’m constantly being tracked now and having products thrown in my face. I miss the old internet where harvesting everyone’s data wasn’t a thing.
I have been running Linux for some time now, still had a Windows partition for gaming. Then I switched the motherboard and windows decided I no longer had a key for it… I stopped playing most of the windows exclusive games. Since last week I can’t even boot anymore, something about missing drivers. Spent a day trying to fix it. Today I decided fuck it and I’m just leaving it behind! It makes no sense wasting so much energy on a vastly inferior OS that actively tries to fight me.
Then I switched the motherboard and windows decided I no longer had a key for it
The reason for this is that Windows builds an identifier based on the hardware of the machine on which it is installed. When that identifier doesn’t match, it throws a flag that says “Hey now …” I think that you still get a couple of “honor system passes” before the installed OS enforces anything.
Once that gets enforced, you can call Microsoft Clearinghouse, “I upgraded my hardware,” and they’ll give you a new key to enter.
Whereas on Linux I recently upgraded the motherboard on my machine from a B350 to a B550, stripping it down to it’s parts and rebuilding. Different network chip, audio chip, WiFi and Bluetooth, etc, etc. 6 SSDs plugged back in in a shuffled order.
Linux booted and worked first time, adjusting which drivers it used automatically, mounting all the drives in their original locations. Similar thing when I upgraded my GPU. Admittedly the old one was AMD, same as the new one, but there was about 4 or 5 generations between them. CPU upgrades too.
I’ve got a real machine of Theseus here. I think my case and my heatsink is all that’s left from the original.
…oh…and the OS.
Windows will do the exact same thing. It’ll even boot and run just fine, only telling you that Windows isn’t activated. And you can get vendor support if you need it. I had a Windows system that started as XP and got upgraded and passed around among newer and newer hardware up to Windows 11 with nary a problem.
Apparently there is 2 types of Windows licences. The ones that are bound to the hardware and ones that aren’t. If you bought a PC with preinstalled Windows, it’s probably the first and you wont get any new keys.
I have been running Linux for some time now,
Same. Windows 95 was the last MS install on my personal machine.
I installed Linux Mint for the first time the other day and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.
Thanks M$ for getting me to enjoy my pc again, as a Linux.
Same! It’s been great.
You can recommend what you like. As soon as Windows 10 can’t play the latest games I’m off to Linux.
Eat my whole ass, Microsoft.
It’s funny seeing this every couple of years. People get up in arms about something with Windows, some switch to Linux because they outgrew Windows and the time was right. By now I think you guys could be primary source of Linux users.
Yeah, I’m guilty of this tbh. It’s just the massive unknown of leaving something you’ve been so close to for literally the majority of my life.
It’s scary!
That was my choice too. I made the jump to Mint earlier this year and couldn’t be happier. It took a little effort to get updated GPU drivers, and my games sometimes need an extra CLI argument added, but those things have been pretty quickly and easily found on the Mint forums, Ubuntu forums, or ProtonDB comments.
Come on over, the water is fine. I switched to Pop_OS a few months back for the gaming rig and Proton+Steam works almost flawlessly. Older titles sometimes have hiccups, but so far ive only been blocked on one title.
I’ve seen a lot of people recommending Pop_OS lately. Out of curiosity, what’s the benefit over something like Mint?
I’ll try to offer an answer to both you and @natedog526.
Pop came heavily recommended for a while because it’s relatively light-weight for a modern desktop, had some fresh UI ideas with its COSMIC plugins for Gnome, and ships with some nice bonuses for gamers like built in Steam and Nvidia setup scripts.
Unfortunately, it’s become pretty stale lately. I still use it daily on my main desktop, but lately it’s becoming harder and harder to keep from hopping to something new. A few pain points include Pop shipping older version of some important software like the Kernel, Wine, and Mesa, persistsant audio bugs like the other user mentioned, and basically no support for Wayland at the moment.
A lot of these are because System76 has been heavily focused working on its COSMIC desktop, which should function a full standalone desktop environment instead of Gnome with duct tape. It’s looking forward to seeing it which has so far kept me from switching, but with no release date and other distros offering what Pop offers, it’s harder and harder to stay put.
Running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed right now and it’s great!
I did the same a few months back. No problems so far. Some older games require switching up the compatibility layer occasionally but no deal breakers so far.
I just switched from W10 to Pop_OS and have had lots of trouble. I’m trying to stick with it but from audio glitches to many games not running unless I find a random CLI arg that someone mentioned on Reddit, to my UI freezing, it’s not been an easy switch.
Any chance you have an nvidia card? Nvidia for a long time has been in a worse spot on Linux than AMD, which interestingly is the inverse of Windows. A lot of AMD users complain of driver issues on Windows and swap to Nvidia as a result, and the exact opposite happens on Linux.
Nvidia is getting much better on Linux though, and Wayland+explicit sync is coming down the pipeline. With NVK in a couple years it’s quite possible that nvidia/amd Linux experience will be very similar.
it’s not a drop in replacement and anyone looking for one will be disappointed by literally anything available.
You’re learning an entirely new operating system, don’t think of it as an upgrade, this is a time sink. You’ll be under the hood more than on the road for the foreseeable future, but what’s the alternative?
I get that, and I love Linux, it’s just annoying to see people say that they switched with 0 issues and trying to sell it off like people won’t have problems.
I don’t understand why people can’t simply believe that someone could actually have very little issues with performance or settings after switching.
What About™ people who have issues when installing windows, as if that never happens.
I put both kinds of operating systems on a myriad of computers and sometimes it’s smooth sailing and sometimes it’s like stepping on rake after rake.
Its not that I don’t believe it, rather they are “selling” Linux as if there won’t be any problems, but whoever is making the switch will have to learn about troubleshooting. That’s a good thing, but something that they should be aware of.
I don’t really have a problem with “selling” Linux. You gotta take all things with a dose of skepticism.
Has anyone ever recommended a product of any complexity as an OS and then also listed all of the common issues people might encounter? When people talk about a product they like, of course it will highlight the positive things, but anyone who has ever touched a computer, hobbyist or not, knows these things might sometimes shit the bed in unexpected ways. I think that’s common sense.
Windows is said to have less problems, but the cryptic errors and non descriptive “wait while we do something” message without any other output actually makes solving problems harder. It has more users, so luckily that means someone out there probably has the issue documented so solutions are easier to find.
I use both, at home primarily Linux, at work primarily Windows. I had troubles in both that caused serious headaches, but generally they both work without too much problems.
This might have been a bit rambling 😅
Try bazzite? It’s been cool with my setup. Intel processor with GTX 1660 ti.
Mint has been cool too! on a laptop with a 1650 on it
I haven’t touched my Windows PC since the steam deck came out. If you only care about games you don’t need Windows.
Why not start today, man? It’s good to practice.
Uncertainty, really.
What distro works with my setup: 3700x and rtx 4090?
Folks will say arch.
But honestly any modern Linux system with 3rd party drivers will work. Mint pop_os arch Manjaro Debian Ubuntu etc
I’m running a 1660 and an i5 64xx on kubuntu 24.04 Granted that stuff is older but you’ll have the same experience.
Unless you’re running the absolute bleeding edge… You’ll not have a lot of problems.
*Ymmv of course but majority of folks won’t have issues.
The the Arch software repos are incredible and the Arch Wiki is, quite frankly, a work of art that should be celebrated with the same reverence as the Mona Lisa or David’s uncircumcised cock.
But anyone recommending Arch to a Linux newbie needs a psych evaluation.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read stories to the effect of, “yeah, a regular package update bricked my desktop, but I just rolled my face across the keyboard and recompiled the offending software and got back to work, no big deal.”
Cool. I’m so glad you can do that my guy, I really am. But how the hell do you expect average computer user to figure that out? The first time a software update leaves them at a command prompt with some cryptic GDM error message or a Nvidia kernel panic or something, they’re going running back to Billy Gates’ warm walled garden embrace. Shit, I like to think I’m half competent with Linux and I’d shit myself if that happened to me.
EDIT: Sorry, @7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com, I didn’t nessicarily mean to direct any of that to you specifically, it’s sort of just my standard copy pasta whenever I see Arch reccomded.
Haha I agree arch is the meme recommendation. It has its benefits like you’ve detailed out… but it’s not for a windows convert. I’ve ran it, it can require more fiddling than some of the other distros. Tinkering that newbies can’t do.
Me I’m an apt man. So I tend to suggest distros that center around that package manager… it just so happens that they are some of the newbie ones.
I once installed mint on my ex father in laws machine and it ran perfectly for ages for him (with auto updates) They were spending $$$s a quarter on windowa system cleanup due to viruses. As he was an online slot machine / junk flash game player. So of course he would get all the viruses. Once he went mint, he had 0 issues (with the os) the issues he had was more user error with online behavior.
Anyway. No problem for the gruffness of your reply, as I agree with what you’ve said. :)
If you had any real intention of making the shift, you’d have done so already. Protip: You know I’m right!
Genuine question, what’s the point of this comment?
The ‘as soon as Windows 10 can’t x I’m off to Linux!’ refrain is so routine in our circles it’s practically a meme. All someone says when they pontificate like this is that their true priority is can kicking rather than action.
Switched to arch linux last november, didn’t had to launch my backup VM Win10 at all. I even managed to play at StarCitizen with better performance than under Win 10…
Just wow the progress of Linux, Wine & co since my last linux try (Ubuntu, around 2010).
I just need now to find a linux way for my music stack and all the VST (my steinberg usb card is recognized and play properly oO) and Windows will be history at home…
If they really wanted people to upgrade to Windows 11, they’d take out the TPM and SecureBoot requirements.
Truly the Kinect of Windows 11.
upgrades don’t give them license fees, they want you to buy a new pc.
They really want us to use Copilot AI, so that they can pushed more paying subscribers such as corpos and govts to use the service.
More money for microsucks, less jobs available to us
My employer will likely pay extra to remove copilot AI. It has zero use for us, and we already pay extra for security enhanced Win 11 which is just the software without the tracking and screenshots.
I still miss the Kinect. Shouting at people in Skyrim was awesome. They should have doubled down and added finger recognition for the Series K.
Same honestly. Like it was a hunk of junk that didn’t work half the time, but I think people kinda forget that the scope was pretty ambitious. Being able to scan people’s bodies and get each limb’s position in 3D, and to do so in many different lighting conditions and room setups, is stuff we still barely have working today even with AI.
Like don’t get me wrong, the tech was jank as fuck, but as a kid it was genuinely really cool.
I actually bought an Xbox 360 Kinect for a grand total of £6 the other month.
Turns out you can use software called Amethyst for cheap full body tracking in PC VR games.
Amethyst
That reminded me of AMD’s old Windows driver (accompanying software).
How do you connect that weird cable?
You have to buy an adapter to usb
The ones from CEX came with it, it’s an odd adapter that needs power as well.
The adapter is worth more than the camera…
Micro$quash makes 80 BEELYUN dollars a year in pure unadulterated profit, but it can’t keep security updates coming.
Well. I mean, they can, hahaha . . .ahh but they’re not going to.
I really want to see the EU force Microsoft to release a stripped down version that continues to support older hardware.
Shouldn’t they just support Linux more? Maybe fund some driver development but otherwise - win?
One would think.
Linux costs next to nothing compared to Windows. So if companies want to cry about having to save on budget, go with the better option for it.
Who the fuck needs Office 365? Nothing has really changed on that software for years, it’s still the same shit. I don’t see anything different on Microsoft Word 2007 from it’s 365 counterpart. People are getting scammed.
The UI keeps changing…
My gf recently took one of those dumb ability tests on Indeed for an office job, shows you two screenshots of document editing and you answer which buttons achieve the desired effect. I opened Word on my laptop and all of the buttons were in different places compared to screenshots.
MS, just go sit down somewhere and stop fiddling with shit
I’m not too familiar with that side of things but I do believe they do. My understanding is that some organizations are set up as nonprofits and they contribute to the development of Linux.
Some European governments also use foss software for things like email and office.
But it’s easier to throw darts at a big company than lots of small things that add up to something big.
Can they do that?
It’s not out of the realm of possibility. They have been known to force Microsoft to make changes in the past. As well as Apple and other major software companies.
Edit: Grammar
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the EU require M$ to remove the artificial requirements and let 10 users on older hardware update.
This sounds like a problem for October 2025 me
Governments, schools, and companies just finished (for the most part) to move to Windows 10. So it really sounds more like a problem for 2030 to me.
That’s my feeling. I’ve been through this before.
I’d love to comply, but unfortunately the last time I tried Windows 11, my Ethernet and WiFi quit working and I had to roll back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ how do you screw up something as basic and necessary as the internet connection?
I think you have too uhhhh… Download the drivers from the internet
Jokes on them, over the last year or so I’ve installed Nobara, Mint & Xubuntu on every PC in my house.
So done with Windows.
The only thing holding me back from Linux (Nobara) is that my AxeFX’s USB drivers don’t seem to work. Losing the UI and USB recording capability is a huge deterrent.
I’ve decided I’m gonna have one crapbox prebuilt just for the windows things and nothing important or personal, but my work laptop and pc will most certainly not be windows going forward. I have a lot to learn but I’m over it with the ads and the privacy stuff is a genuine concern for work related items.
I’m gonna have one crapbox prebuilt just for the windows things
I did that too. For older games.
Then I went ahead and installed Linux on that one too.unfortunately the games I like to play require bare-metal windows and a beefy gpu.
Which ones?
Are you sure? You checked them on ProtonDB or you checked them on your hardware?
I have just bought a modern AMD gpu (rx 7700xt) and now I am very surprised how almost every game works on Linux (I miss you rainbow six siedge, but I know it’s the developer’s fault who just chose not to enable anticheat support on Linux 🥲). Before I had Radeon R9 380 so it was quite old at this point but performance wise it wasn’t really as bad but I noticed that performance on Linux compared to Windows was trash or games even didn’t work at all. Now I guess it was due to how old and unsupported my old gpu was. Now everything just works and I’m shocked. Hardware is unfortunately important on Linux 😭. It doesn’t need to be beefy but it needs to be somehow modern.
I have an ancient PC with a nice video card, and it plays games from about five years ago quite well I haven’t felt a need to upgrade. Unfortunately, I play a couple games with kernel level anti-cheat stuff and I don’t think they will work with linux.
They will not but that is not a linux’ fault, developer/owner/publisher made that choice.
What’s wild is that one of the people who write anti-cheat software was saying they needed to get their shit working on Linux like yesterday.
So I mean, it crazy that Windows is literally having some folks scramble on how to get their shit working on Steam/Linux.
