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You think the US govt will let MS drop 2/3rds of US citizens laptops from support?
I think some senators will hold a hearing to grandstand about security and forced obsolescence and MS will be shamed into extending the support window a couple more years.
Windows 10 is over 10 years old at this point. Microsoft learned from XP It can’t live forever.
Businesses typically lease their machines for 2-3 years so they all support 11. And do you really think the government cares about regular citizens? lol.
Meanwhile the US govt:
says nothing because it has its mouth full of corporate cock
They only switched from XP what, less than 10 years ago?
I think the hospital my mother works at was using XP for all of their computers until like 2018-2019
What will the government do themselves? I think they are still running 10, and I haven't heard of any announcements from agencies switching.
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 has a 10 year support window, and subsequent LTSC versions, 5 years. If you can get your hands on one of these licences you would presumably continue to receive security patches. If the US government is somehow not running on this kind of licence, it would be pretty funny, but I'm sure Microsoft would be lenient and let them jump onto whatever compatible LTSC version given its an American company.
Most likely an unpopular opinion, but I took this opportunity to try something new and made the switch to macOS at home as my daily device. If I do end up gaming, I’ll probably just get myself a Steam Deck.
Which ironically also requires you do buy a new device
The irony isn’t lost on me!
You're already closer to using Linux by doing so. Lots of people are unaware that macOS continues to be Certified UNIX. Many of the command line tools function very similarly to their Linux counterparts.
This is actually why I use macOS at work - I wasn’t able to get a Linux box approved by IT but they happily support macOS and I get to use basically all the same software I do on Linux.
I'm waiting for Microsoft to inevitably be forced to keep supporting 10 for free[^1] longer than they planned, because 11 uptake just isn't fast enough.
What happened with 7 will happen with 10, and they'll end up supporting it for another year or two.
Microsoft is trying damn hard to not care about consumers, but the consumer market still matters, so I suspect angry customers will force their hand.
[^1]: They already plan on charging money to keep supporting 10 past it's end-of-life date, but I suspect this will have a lot of angry pushback that will result in at least a year or two of free updates.
Might be a dumb question but why don't we just continue using Win10 post end of it's support? Are security updates that necessary that the system wouldn't work at all? As a kid I have used old Win versions like XP and 7 for a very long time, never had an issue.
System will work, but it will gradually get less and less secure, which can get quite bad.
There is an insane amount of ways to break Windows XP and even Windows 7, it's basically script kiddie's level of knowledge.
And there are real exploits out in the wild that target such systems specifically - while the pool of potential victims is smaller, they're very easy to target unless they are competently firewalled.
"learn Linux"
there is nothing to learn, KDE and GNOME are easy to use GUIs and there are distros that require no configuration
"Learn" linux not even a requirement, a lot of distros work fine as a normal-person-os out of the box (Ubuntu & any of its spin-offs, Manjaro, Deepin, etc), with maybe some minimal youtube/forum troubleshooting, probably comparable with the amount you would do on windows.
Eh, I'd say the biggest learning curve is updates and how they're generally password protected.
It's actually not straightforward to a new Linux user how to bypass entering your password every time there are updates, and with how often Linux updates, this can create headaches and confusion for new users.
Especially with coming from Windows and being used to Microsoft arbitrarily forcing updates in the background. They are confused because Microsoft gave them zero control, while Linux actually gives them full control, and that can be confusing when you're used to updates being forced on you in the background.
Linux expects you to be an adult and handle this shit, and does a lot less hand-holding for the casual user, and this can be overwhelming for some new users, because it's a lot of extra personal responsibility they formerly didn't have to think about. Some people just don't have the extra mental energy to dedicate to it all.
I wish this was true, but that's not the reality. If things are not exactly the same, people lose any common sense they may have had.
Nowadays GNU/Linux is easier to install and maintain than Windows.
to keep Copilot off your desktop or learn Linux
For me it's one year to keep Windows Mixed Reality working. I'm still miffed that they pulled the plug with no alternative other than putting my headset in the bin and get a new one...
If you haven't looked into it Monando might be what you need to keep your headset running. May not work for your headset (doesn't for mine but mines not WMR and is because of my 8kx's driver)
I already did back when Microsoft announced they would drop WMR, but it was (and still is) pretty experimental, with no controller support and 6DoF requiring external tracking.
All I need is a native, feature complete, Nvidia GeForce Now Linux client. It is literally the only reason I keep a Windows installation around.
Meanwhile, I deleted my Windows partition (even though I paid for it, damn OEM tricks) and feel better for it https://lemmy.world/comment/12818969
Win10 gets Copilot as well. Pushed without consent. Likewise if you use a program like InControl to lock W11 to 22H2, you can keep copilot at bay. For a time.
Switching to any other platform is better though. Screw them.
There are many many business customers that can't use copilot. They are not going to tell them to just lock into an old insecure version. You'll be able to disable it, at the very least, on a Pro license using Group Policy.
Like everything else Microsoft does that has legal implications regarding PII.
Completely bullshit, garbage clickbait title.
Windows 10 is near EoL, however that's for Home/Pro/Enterprise versions, you can move to one of those for more time:
To be fair I don't really believe that Microsoft will kill it when they say they will. And even if they do it, porting security updates from those LTSC versions into the regular ones might be doable.
Now on Windows 11:
You can just disable copilot and all the other garbage using group policy, now that hard and you'll end up with essentially Windows 10. https://www.xda-developers.com/how-disable-microsoft-copilot/
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
porting security updates from those LTSC versions into the regular ones might be doable.
The way will likely be to just adjust some registry keys to force Windows Update to pull from the LTSC update channel. That's been the solution for ages, no "porting" needed.
Group Policy
I've lost count of how many of these articles have been posted on Lemmy screaming that the sky was falling over something you can switch off with three clicks and a scroll (Start, Settings, Personalization, scroll to the bottom and click the final switch). Group policy may be beyond the general skill level, which makes the constant Linux suggestions even more laughable.
Like you, I regularly direct people to group policy (and even how to safely activate Windows with a fake Pro license so they can get Group Policy). Fighting an uphill battle.
As a former Windows user: this is true, you can disable most of the features you don't like. I was doing that for many Windows versions, from 98 to 10.
However it was indeed fighting an uphill battle: there was more and more BS with every update, I felt that I couldn't trust my computer, I had to check forums in order to know what's the newest thing to turn off.
I am happier now without Windows, even though I had to learn a few new apps.
Group policy may be beyond the general skill level, which makes the constant Linux suggestions even more laughable.
Ahaha yeah, I've said that SO MANY times. People have issues setting a few toggles on a point-and-click UI but then it is okay to suddenly move to a entirely different OS that most likely won't have the software they're used to and requires terminal skills to deal with most things. Laughable indeed.
It's not learning linux for me; I've worked with it professionally for over a decade at this point and started with old distros on floppy at home (with poor success; it got better once I got gentoo and broadband).
The pain of switching is non-zero, but it's also not high. By this I mean just the process of moving data around, settings, etc.
Finding replacement apps can be annoying.
There are some things that still bother me, though. Certain games still won't work or aren't stable. This impacts some people more than others depending upon the type of game. For me, it's still being gun shy because updates have caused me huge headaches including requiring a reinstall even in fairly recent times. I've had to fix one windows update problem in that same period of years and it did not require a full reinstall.
I have a full-time job, house/yard maintenance, and a small farming business. I require reliability with security (so not updating is not an option) and don't have time to spend diagnosing and solving issues. I also can't not fulfill orders, etc. because of an issue bother from a customer retention standpoint but also because when selling farm goods, those are mostly fresh produce with a limited TTL.
I have 12 months to reassess things, but I'm not liking my current position. It doesn't help that a lot of the software for the Japanese side of things (tax office, accounting, etc.) do not have cloud versions and require Windows to work. I'm not sure if any of those work under WINE or similar at this stage.
If co-pilot remains active even if you don't have an NPU, and it consumes GPU/CPU resources and can't be disabled, and that results in say a 10% gaming performance downgrade compared to Linux (these are a lot of ifs), then I imagine desktop Linux would finally get a big bump in adoption, once all the 'serious gamers' start using it purely for performance benefits. We'll see how this plays out.
Probably gonna keep my desktop running win10 by then because I'll hopefully have a new desktop by then that I can easily set up Linux on. Got too much on my desktop to move over and I certainly don't know any tools able to make the process any easier.
Probably gonna just use it as an experimental PC that I can test out server related things on.
I'm adding debian to the drive on a ten plus year old laptop as we speak. It's taking forever because I have to do part of it manually but usually it takes less than an hour and is mostly idiot proof (my current project is on its 3rd week so I am just a special kind of idiot) but a small lightweight distro alongside the windows partition is an easy way to give old hardware new life without migrating data.
I'd love to, but I am too dependent on my VST Plug-in library on Reaper. Running them through Wine/Carla doesn't cut it.
I played with the idea of getting a Mac for music production, and installing a Linux distro on my desktop for gaming and video editing. But I couldn't really justify dropping 1000-2000€ on a laptop with inferior performance to my desktop.
Looked into used specimen, but getting a 3-year old model only gets you a couple more years of software support.
So Windows 11 with a local account and many policy modifications it is.
Be wary of sunk cost fallacy. Sometimes you gotta bite the bullet & allow yourself to see it as some wasted money with the opportunity to start over with something with less lock-in or the boost in creativity of now having to work with new constraints.
Have you considered running the software you need from a virtual machine inside your Linux distro?