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Microsoft opens a free tier for Windows 10 extended updates
- BitwiseFool 1y agoAs unsafe as it may be, I plan to just keep using Windows 10 past the EOL date this October. I practice reasonable discipline in regards to online security and I will just handle all of my sensitive accounts and login activity on my Mac. I just really don't want to use the mess that is Windows 11 unless absolutely necessary. The way I see it, that's probably a few years away. Edit: I am also comfortable using Linux, and I may end up spending a lot of time searching for the best distro that will work for me as a daily driver. I'm certainly open to that, but for now I plan to just keep chugging along with what I've got until I build a new PC.
- throwaway48476 1y agoI'm just going to run LTSC in a VM.
- haiku2077 1y agoI've been looking into this. Any app that currently works should keep working, but new versions (especially new games, or new patches for games) may not. New versions of GPU drivers, DirectX and so on were a particular area of issue. Good choice for a machine built for a particular purpose that doesn't need to run any new software.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago>> I'm just going to run LTSC in a VM. > Any app that currently works should keep working, but new versions (especially new games, or new patches for games) may not. New versions of GPU drivers, DirectX and so on were a particular area of issue. To be clear, you're looking to game on a VM? ftr: Posting this from my Firefox remote app. Host VM is not LTSC however.
- haiku2077 1y agoI was looking at it for a racing simulator rig specifically. I basically wanted to install some simulators on it and never have to do any maintenance. From my research it seemed like it would work for any legacy offline sims but not online stuff like iRacing. I might end up dual booting LTSC for offline simming and Win11 for iRacing.
- throwaway48476 1y agoGPU pass-through is easy enough for a gaming VM. Whether you can still use LTSC is up to the game developer.
- xeonmc 1y agoYou can in-place upgrade to the IoT LTSC edition using MAS, which is supported through 2031
- mhb 1y agoWindows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC Value - license - 1 license $110 https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-iot-enterprise-2021-ltsc-value-license-1-license/7712444?pfm=srh https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-iot-enterprise-2021-l...
- greenavocado 1y agoI met a guy using Word on Windows 95 in 2008. Only found out because he put in a support ticket.
- coldpie 1y agoArch Linux if you're comfortable using a terminal and doing your own admin work; Linux Mint if you'd rather not.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI'm a long time Linux user. I think the first version I installed was 0.11 back in the early-mid 90s. I worked in IT for most of my career until I retired a few years ago. After all that, I still don't have the patience to migrate to Linux. Between the games I enjoy and the music production software I'm used to using, is not worth the amount of time it requires fiddling with stuff. I wish it were different.
- Lammy 1y agoFor me it's all the good piracy software, especially the ones like DVDfab Passkey which operate as a Windows driver. My Windows box is a machine that turns DVDs and BDs into an ISO (for my own backup) and an x265 MKV (to share).
- Wojtkie 1y agoGaming in Linux is massively easier nowadays due to Proton. I haven't ran into an issue yet playing any of my games. One caveat to that is most of the large online competitive multiplayer games (CoD, Fortnite, etc.) won't work due to how they implemented their anti-cheat softwares.
- justinrubek 1y agoThis is what drove me to Linux. Managing and fiddling with a windows machine is too time consuming, error prone, and not fun. It's the last thing I want to spend my time doing.
- sho_hn 1y agoAs a non-Windows user, can someone neatly summarize what the problem is? I recently used Windows 11 a bit to port an app, and while it's a horrible OS to dev on, the UX just seemed like any other Windows.
- dayvid 1y agoThey moved the windows icon to the center
- Lammy 1y agoAnd you can't drag the taskbar to the left or right side of the screen any more which is a deal-breaker for me. Leftsyde krew
- doubled112 1y agoI'm not a fan of advertisements from my OS. I paid for it. If I'm running Windows 11 Professional, I don't need the Windows Store to tell me I should check out Avowed Premium Edition in a meeting. Or is somebody going to tell me it's my fault for leaving notifications on?
- crtasm 1y ago>check out Avowed Premium Edition I'm getting this on Windows 10 now :(
- Macha 1y agoThe TPM requirements rule out a lot of computers older than 5 years old. With the pace of modern hardware development, a lot of these computers are still perfectly serviceable. People are unhappy at being told to buy new hardware when they have working hardware. (Other things that have concerned people: Further attempts to force people to microsoft accounts, more invasive copilot promotion, recall, A/B tested ads in explorer, etc.)
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
- neepi 1y agoWindows 11 LTSC looks and works almost exactly the same as windows 10 did. I can’t complain and I’m an expert at complaining.
- Ao7bei3s 1y agoWindows 11 recently pushed an update to discontinue Windows Mixed Reality (WMR), bricking my <5 years old, $500 Reverb G2 VR headset, which I bought after Meta bought out Oculus and started requiring a Meta account, essentially bricking my Rift S. No thanks.
- throwaway48476 1y ago11 LTSC still has the awful new electron based start menu.
- neepi 1y agoThere hasn’t been a good start menu since windows XP.
- nipperkinfeet 1y agoThere is nothing wrong with that, as long as you are aware of the risks and know what you are doing. I still use Windows 7 with R2 patches, and Firefox ESR. I don't plan on changing anytime soon.
- throwaway48476 1y agoThey're starting to get desperate because a billion machines can't/won't 'upgrade' to 11. The ewaste from excluding a billion machines is just incredible. This from a company that claims to be green.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>The ewaste from excluding a billion machines is just incredible. Genuine question: In which country do you live where working Windows 10 PCs are sent to the landfill? I look on my country's used market online every day for my hobby, and every functioning PC/laptop all the way from the MS-DOS, Windows 95 era, XP, Vista, and 10, finds a buyer for the right price. Pentium 4s, Pentium 3s, Pentium 2s, Pentium MMXs, 486s, you name it. Nobody's throwing them away in the landfill when there's always a buyer/taker for them if you have patience. I feel like people are making up imaginary ewaste on the Windows 10 topic just to cause a hubbub, but where I live there's literally no such thing going on, nor have I seen any proof of it happening anywhere else. Even PCs older than Windows 10 always find a buyer! Let that sink in. If people in your country throw working windows 10 PCs in landfills, I feel like the issue is with the people in that country being needlessly wasteful and uncaring to sell/give away to those in need, not with Microsoft. Edit1: would the downvoters care to explain themselves with some arguments? Or do people love overreacting to ideas they don't like via a button instead of formulating a though? Edit2: @kstrauser below: 1) why would you throw away a working PC instead of giving it away for free? Who have you met who throws away working PCs in the trash when they no longer get the latest OS? There's old people still using Windows 7 PCs just because it works for them and it didn't break down. What makes you think they'll throw away working Windows 10 PCs in dumpsters now? 2) Why would you ship the PC in another country using fuel, when someone locally will pick it up for free to use it? Like I said, there's always a taker. I see no arguments so far against my points just imaginary scenarios of super wasteful people who throw away good stuff randomly, but then not Microsoft nor anyone can stop them throwing Bugattis off cliffs if that's their jam. Edit 3: @SECProto below: I asked how many people you know who throw in dumpsters working Windows 10 PCs, and you went on a tangent answered something completely different, in bad faith I would say. Of course all computing tech eventually gets landfilled due to obsolescence, that's inevitable, but if you post an ad for a Windows 10 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it, if you post an ad for a Pentium 3 PC now, someone will take it from you to use it. There's no excuse to just throw working PCs in a landfill other than malice. If your society mass landfills PCs the moment $LATEST_SW doesn't run on them, instead of finding new owners, then your society is at fault.
- asdefghyk 1y agoWhen will they get the message , lots do not want Windows 11?
- supertrope 1y ago"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair
- vkou 1y agoNothing plugs a man's ears like money.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago11, 8, Vista, Me It's a 25 year long pattern. We're the ones that didn't get the message!
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago> 11, 8, Vista, Me ... It's a 25 year long pattern Win2K might break that, it and XP were back to back. That said, Neptune was an unfinished Win2k home version. Getting it booted = buggy funtime.
- literalAardvark 1y agoYeah but XP was just Win2k with faster boot and a coat of varnish. In Windows 10 terms that would have been a feature update 6 months in.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoYeah, I'll give it you.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoWindows 11 is fine. Microsoft intentionally added arbitrary hardware requirements (them being arbitrary is proven by the existence of Windows 11 iot that doesn't have them) (99.9% sure on behalf of hardware manufacturers)
- goosedragons 1y agoI like how if you go by the fact a $5 Xbox giftcard is about 3500 points, they are valuing the Windows 10 updates at about $1.40 but charge $30 for them. Takes very little time to get 1000 Microsoft rewards too.
- pipes 1y agoI've alternated between Linux and windows use at home for years. A few things made me ditch windows entirely this year. 1. Windows 11, adverts everywhere, purposely difficult to turn off. 2. Windows 11 in work, it's slow, the menus are more annoying than in 10. 3. As a dotnet developer , pretty much everything I do is deployed on Linux. Also the developing tooling is now good enough on Linux. 4. Windows 11 won't stop badgering me for an online account. 5. My steam deck showed me that if I really want to play games on Linux it is really 100x easier than 15 years ago. 6. Windows front end is a mess of various different versions of the same menus. After relying on windows for years due to amazing backwards compatibile hardware support, I've given up. It's a shit show.
- mrj 1y agoSteam is really the reason a lot of people are able to entertain a switch to Linux. It seems like mostly a lot of people are holding out on Windows 11 but planning a switch if they're finally forced. Microsoft can't use the same plan they've always used on gamers, there's another option now. God bless Steam for being so reasonable, too. I regularly play Helldivers2 from Steam run from flatpak with a non-privileged user account, on Debian Unstable, without any anti-cheat problems. The world has changed for computer gamers and it's giving leverage with Microsoft.
- kayodelycaon 1y agoSteam is great. It’s allowed me to use an M1 Max laptop for gaming instead of maintaining a separate Windows PC for gaming. I don’t game often and Windows ensured I didn’t want to by throwing roadblocks every time I booted the machine. At least every Mac and Linux machine I’ve owned has happily booted into a working OS no matter how long it sat. Windows tried to upgrade my machine to Windows 11 without my consent, when it already knew my machine didn’t support it. That was fun. My neighbor got permanently locked out of her laptop because Microsoft somehow attached her dead husband’s email account to her local account despite him having never logged in on that machine. I wasn’t able to figure out how to fix it.
- msgodel 1y agoSomeone needs to come up with a Steam for AD DCs.
- gnyman 1y agoIn case you want or need security fixes for older windows machines, there is a company/product called https://0patch.com/ https://0patch.com/ which provides "micropatches" all the way back to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. There is a free tier but it only includes some patches. They have prices listed on the website for the paid tiers. I have no experience with using them, but just sharing in case it's useful those who doesn't want to or can't throw away their old systems.
- rkagerer 1y agoI can confirm it's a great product, does it's job and stays out of your way.
- pickle-wizard 1y agoThat is an excellent price. Good option for folks that have old software and embedded hardware that can't be upgraded.
- sergiotapia 1y agoMoving to Linux Mint again has been the best decision for me. All devs tools work natively no more wsl2 shenanigans. Games just work now from Steam. No weirdness just like windows click install and play. I have no reason to ever return to windows.
- programmertote 1y agoI've been using Windows since 95, and I dislike the fact that Windows nowadays hide a lot of options in context menu. That means I almost always have to click on 'Show more options' to do what I need. Also, Windows Explorer is laggier and it feels like they just slapped a web-page like UI on top of an existing (legacy) code base. I feel like Microsoft hired a bunch of UX/UI designers who never properly learned the principles of UI and try to do the right (logical) thing for the users. With people talking about ads and such, I'm reluctant to get a new computer with Windows 11.
- msgodel 1y agoHasn't Windows Explorer been a web UI thing since Windows 98?
- saratogacx 1y agoExplorer around Win98, I think as part of IE4, got the capability of hosting a web page in an explorer window (or part of it anyway for things like showing details) but it wasn't the control used for actually navigating through files. They did try and simulate it by allowing files to be single click to open and giving them blue underlines. MS kept using good ol' list views up through today for most of it. It is in the newer experiences where they're thrashing about and adding galleries, suggestions, and whatever will get someone promoted.
- frollogaston 1y agoMy PC is gonna stay on Win10, and I'm not doing anything about it (including signing up for this). Like Vista and 8, 11 doesn't exist, and 12 will supersede 10. Idc what they say, if there's some serious vuln in the meantime, they'll patch Win10 too.
- mrkramer 1y agoHoly shit how shitty Microsoft is! We should start selling and buying en masse preinstalled Linux PCs and laptops.
- jpalawaga 1y agoI feel like I might be the only one who thinks Windows 11 is a good OS. The only tweak I needed to make was to turn of bing searches from the start menu. I wish user accounts were still local only and did not back up to OneDrive, but I can understand that this is actually probably a valuable feature for 99% of windows users.
- stronglikedan 1y agoThey removed the ability to drag objects onto the task bar to interact with programs, which is a big part of a lot of people's daily workflows. The worst, nay egregious, part is that they haven't offered any alternative, and they haven't added it back.
- CoolCold 1y ago+1 from me
- 47thpresident 1y agoWithholding security updates unless the user gives up their PC's data to Microsoft's cloud, use Bing search to accumulate 1000pts or pay $30 is comically petty, even by Microsoft standards.
- nokeya 1y agoNot only 5 year old PCs are still actual, but even 10 year old machines are still lot in use. Because there are already enough performance for everyday tasks for majority of tasks - videos, emails, messengers, etc. But this is a problem for Microsoft and computer manufacturers, they are overstocked and have to convince users somehow to upgrade even if there is no reason to do so.