Your Windows 10 PC will soon be ‘junk’ - users told to resist Microsoft deadline::If you’re still using Windows 10 and don’t want to upgrade to Windows 11 any time soon you might want to sign a new online petition
Fun fact: Linux is so customizable that you can run a modern GUI and software on 46mb of ram and a CPU from 1989. Don’t let Microshit tell you to throw out your old PC, it’s truly surprising what’s possible.
I’ve switch my home computers to Linux. Unfortunately, at work, I have to maintain a Windows environment…
Did your job give you a work Laptop? If you personally own it then you could just run Windows in a VM.
But can I be fucked waiting 5 minutes for a VM to boot every time I need to use a Windows-only tool?
Don’t shutdown the VM. Instead, use shutdown -> save button in the virt-manager. Now your VM will launch in seconds next time you want to use it because it’ll be resumed from the saved state.
now your VM will start in seconds
Cries in HDD
Sounds like a great excuse for a bit of a hardware upgrade, SSDs have gotten pretty cheap. You can change your whole computing life for $30-50.
You could just use the earliest version of Windows that the software works (Windows 7 usually) and then keep the VM air gapped (aka no Internet connection)
Let me introduce you to Adobe. Single-handedly keeping Linux adoption in check.
I do IT support at my company. We are a small business, but we work on many government contracts. I’m personally not experienced enough on Linux to support it at a businesses level. Part of working on government contracts is that we have to be CMMC certified in the relatively near future, probably first or second quarter next year. I’d love to get off of Windows, but like I mentioned I don’t have the knowledge to get us there, and we’re pretty entrenched in Windows until at least after the audit. Maybe someday, but the Microsoft m365 business GCC High is built with that specific certification in mind. It would require changing everything about our business to switch, and I don’t care enough about the company to go through that.
So customizable that it can’t even be run on many devices.
Linux runs on way more devices than Windows, what are you talking about?
Well not the ones I tried. Maybe I had bad luck.
Now this has me curious, what devices are those? Since transitioning to Linux I’ve installed it on a Mac, a surface pro 4, an old Lenovo laptop, an Asus laptop from 2014, my dedicated LAN desktop PC and my main desktop gaming PC, and none of those have had any issues.
It’s been like 15 years so I don’t remember but I remember one wouldn’t work due to a proprietary driver. The other I just couldn’t figure out so it may be user error but it certainly wasn’t easy to set up.
That’s understandable then, a lot has happened and the installation process in most distros is extremely user friendly and automated these days.
I have been meaning to give it another go. You think it’s easier these days?
Probably something in the BIOS, like secure boot or something. Normally such issues are easy to troubleshoot.
Once was a proprietary driver. Obviously not the fault of Linux but still an obstacle for me. The other I forgot the issue. It may have been solvable but it was not easy for me.
Got you. Yes, drivers are still a mess sometimes.
Yeah but can it run signed drm in a way that the owner of the computer can’t read the keys? Checkmate atheists.
Wait I have a Windows 8 computer which stills works fine?
I mean, it won’t let me. Windows Update inists my PC doesn’t meet the minimum spec, and I’m not inclined to argue with it.
Just follow this guide and all of your problems will be gone
But refusing to upgrade me to 11 is an anti-problem…
Is it the UEFI security thing?
TPM. Probably switched off in the BIOS or something.
Don’t care, don’t like what I’ve seen of 11, happy to wait until I’m forced to change.
#GleefulCompliance
Mine doesn’t, either. Go go gadget 12 year old processor! Who knew being a cheapskate could be so beneficial?
You can use Rufus to install windows 11 and bypass the requirements. It does everything for you – downloads the latest win 11 service pack, removes the blocking requirements, and you can even tell it to automatically disable all of the telemetry and phoning home. You’ll still need a license key when you install, or run it on a machine that was running a valid win 10 install previously. But I’m running win 11 on an 8 year old PC with zero issues.
Here is a good guide that explains in detail.
I would like to point out that this is exactly the same difficulty of just installing linux, without freeing you from microserfdom.
Comparing the level of effort to run windows vs Linux is a whole other thing I’m definitely not getting into. I use Linux for work and run it on two machines at home, but I also use my Windows box for games. You can use and enjoy both, it doesn’t have to be a religious war.
I highly recommend you attempt to run your games on a Linux box, as the experience has improved vastly. I also keep a Windows install around for the odd game that doesn’t work in Linux (basically just a couple competitive shooters that I enjoy), but the number of times I need to boot into my Windows partition are diminishing day by day. Definitely did not mean to be a zealot about it, but going through the effort outlined above just so you can get Windows updates from a company that clearly doesn’t care if they trash your machine forcing your upgrade seems foolish to me.
The problem for me is that I basically only use my PC for gaming and YouTube.
I know SOME games work, but I don’t want to add to the list of games I can’t play because they’re console/windows only. :/
I have the exact same use case for my PC and have no issues gaming on Linux for the vast majority of games. The caveat, however, is that anti-cheat can be problematic, so if you exclusively play games with anti-cheat that could be a problem for you. The only titles I have issues with are competitive shooters.
We’ve long since transitioned into the “most” games work territory. Basically apart from anything with rootkit-like anti cheat, you shouldn’t have any trouble playing games at all.
True, or I could just not.
Lmao. This article is junk. Yew I’m sure millions of people are going to suddenly dump their PC’s because they don’t get security updates. Most people don’t follow this at all and don’t care.
And no, they’re not going to magically jump to Linux as much as the Lemmy circlejerk loves to believe. If they know enough about security they probably already have looked into Linux and decided against it.
Or just try linux. It’s pretty great
I love Linux. I have it installed on 3 machines, have been using it for over 3 years, and would install it right away if I ever got a new computer.
A couple weeks ago, I was feeling pretty exhausted and just wanted to play a game thru Proton on my laptop. I got it running, but it was unplayable because it was using my integrated GPU instead of my discrete one. I spent the night switching compositors, cables, and drivers, but none of it fixed the issue.
The next day, feeling exhausted from fruitless debugging, I tried to launch another game via Proton that I knew had worked in the past, but it crashed on launch. I spent the whole day going thru the same steps I did the day before, but also consulting ProtonDB and trying software that would force usage of the dgpu.
The next day, I installed Windows 10 to an external hard drive and spent the day debloating it. Drivers got installed automatically, I downloaded both games on Steam, and they just worked. So I guess I now dual-boot Windows just for the games that don’t work thru Proton. Loading game worlds and booting up take ~75% longer, but that’s to be expected because it’s running on a 4 year old HDD connected over a USB cable.
As mentioned earlier, I love Linux a lot, and if all games had native binaries or Proton worked 100% I’d format that god-forsaken hard drive. But when real life has got me down, I don’t need Linux to get me down further. I don’t like Windows, and I feel incredibly dirty whenever I press F7 on boot to get to Windows. But when my choices are “spend 8 hours on fruitless quest to get >2fps” and “press play button”, I’m going to take the path of least resistance.
What game was it?
The first game mentioned was Bille Bust Up. I liked the demo that was off of Steam (and it ran fine using the proton-call command), so I subscribed to the developer’s Patreon (which gives a Steam key) and it wouldn’t use my dgpu.
The second game was A Hat in Time.
Nvidia laptop by the sounds of it?
Anything with an AMD GPU is going to have a better time (or even just a dedicated Nvidia GPU in a desktop).
Thanks for sharing. I’m sorry to hear you had trouble. Both games are rated as gold on ProtonDB. So, I am surprised you had trouble with them.
My experience has been the opposite. Everything has worked surprisingly well. Do you by chance use an Nvidia gpu?
Yep, Nvidia gpu. At the time I bought it I wasn’t aware of their reputation for Linux support, and I bought my laptop from System76 (with Pop!_OS, because Nvidia drivers are more “just works” on it). I’ve had a fairly good experience with all of it, but the next computer I buy will definitely have an AMD GPU.
I think this is the first time I’ve been fully unable to get the dgpu working. Every other time it’s just worked or worked with tweaking
That’s the thing. I love to use Linux for work, but when I don’t want to tinker it sometimes sucks for gaming.
Yep. And then there’s gamepass. I vastly vastly prefer working and using Linux day to day, but games, man. Man’s gotta be able to game after a long day at work and I wasted literally a week of after work hours trying and failing to get Starfield to run on Proton.
iGPU+dGPU, esp with Nvidia is pretty bad on Linux. It’s pretty flawless these days if you’re using only one vendor and it isn’t Nvidia.
Don’t know what you are talking about. I use an Nvidia GPU with a Wayland compositor/Window manager (Hyprland to be exact) and I’ve never experienced any issues whatsoever.
I have an external monitor that runs at 144Hz, but a while ago I realized because it was connected over HDMI, it was limited to 60Hz (for some weird reason). So I bought a DisplayPort cable, and after plugging it in the screen was flickering/artifacting in some weird way that I haven’t seen it do on X11 or Windows with the same cable. So as a result I’ve had to reluctantly switched back to i3 for daily use
Sure, use whatever works for you
I would probably rather get a gaming console for the TV to game.
Tbf that really depends on the kind of games you like playing.
Why not a steam deck?
I love my steam deck but there’s enough games from my library that won’t run at all or only run after some manual trickery in desktop mode.
Sure. As soon as Linux doesn’t require memorizing hundreds of commands for basic use, and actually runs the software you need to use, I’m sure it will become very popular.
If you haven’t checked out linux in 5+ years, I recommend that you check out something user-friendly like Mint. No commands needed!
Been using it for the last 2 years. That’s how I know.
Sure ok, can you give us some examples from the hundreds of commands you need to memorise for basic use?
Hundreds of commands is just not true with many distros. Everything is gui based these days. The command line is worth getting familiar with, but it’s not necessary.
Hasn’t been my experience. Usually needed at the bare minimum just to install and uninstall the few programs that do run in Linux.
The time is now then!
So… today?
I’m a Linux user. Been one for a long time.
When I’m doing dev-work, shelling into remote VMs and stuff yeah I have to get nitty-gritty with the command-line.
But on my regular daily-driver OS? I only use the terminal because I want to; or sometimes I think it’s more efficient. But I haven’t absolutely needed to for a long time now.
Linux GUI has really come a long way. It’s not at MacOS level (yet), but it’s very functional and aesthetic. Give it a try.
I’ve been “trying” it for years. Moreso because Windows became truly unbearable than Linux got more useable.
Yeah, I hear you. I still run an old MacbookPro with MacOS for personal computing stuff. I just don’t always want to tinker. It’s been a living meme: “the year of the Linux desktop” for years on years now and yet we still comprise like 0.3% of the desktop market.
But I really do see a tide shift now. Microsoft is doubling down on the enshittification of Windows. Apple’s hardware is still—as always—prohibitively priced. Steam OS on the Steam deck. The Indian government officially adopting it—and its FOSS office application offerings. Companies like Pop!_OS and Framework are making real headway for popular adoption. HP, Dell, Lenovo all offer Linux-default laptops now, that aren’t just “Pro-Dev” offerings.
Linux is not as polished as the for-profit offerings. Perhaps it never will be. Perhaps that’s also its appeal.
I don’t think not being polished is an appeal for anyone. For me it’s just being able to control it. Like Apple wants to control your hardware (and also your software on mobile) and Windows wants to cram whatever bullshit on your computer that they can and load it down with all sorts of bloatware and spyware. What’s my other option? I’d rather deal with an unpolished system than that bullshit any day.
There are a few distributions out there that are genuinely trying to abstract the nitty-gritty away and bring a polished Linux to the masses. ElementaryOS, for one. Yet, it is still Linux at its core and all the poweruser functionality isn’t far away.
But to face a bit of harsh reality, the average computer user doesn’t want that. They resist change and learning something new, they want it to “just work” and “work for me the way [company] says it should” even if that means gross (often implicit) violations of privacy, control, agency. They just don’t care. Or maybe they don’t know. It’s amazing how hard it is to “degoogle” oneself, let alone “demicrosoft” or “deapple”. As I type this on an iPhone…
There will always be bleeding edge computation environments. I just hope that we users can force Big Tech’s hands to respect data privacy and agency. We had a big win with Google conceding web-DRM, but it won’t be the first nor last attempt and their patience is immense.
Tron: “I fight for the users.
I work in a linux shop.
You couldn’t pay me to use Windows for development, sysadmin, backend services, etc.
But on the desktop? Hell no. We maintain a modern debian desktop environment for our users, and it’s a pain in the ass. Mediocre UX, mediocre integration of mixed-bag third-party apps, and too many workarounds and gotchas you need to Just Know About. I just don’t have the energy.
I use windows at home, and for my underlying work environment - and I just SSH into linux boxes for the actual tappy-tappy stuff.
If only there was an OS with an excellent graphical user interface and a direct UNIX pedigree, where you can drop into a full zsh and POSIX user land directly after install at the touch of a button.
If there’s one thing that both windows and Linux users agree on, it’s how weird and annoying macs are.
I’d wager that’s because “we know better what you want” in mac is even stronger than in windows. It’s all good while you are an average Joe, but other than that you either pay, or get a lot of issues setting things up.
“we know better what you want” in mac is even stronger than in windows
At least macOS let’s you change your default browser without showing you 5 million popups that look like fucking malware saying “Please switch back to Microsoft Edge, we know that it sucks ass but please use it”
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As a Linux user, I’d use a Mac over some garbage Windows PC any fucking time of the day. Nearly every operating system under the sun uses some kind of Unix implementation under the hood, well, except for Windows. Running anything in a command line environment under Windows is a huge pain in the ass… Not even having GNU coreutils, BusyBox or the BSD equivalent is just horrible. Just like PowerShell. And don’t even get me started on this antiquated piece of shit called
cmd. Every time I see a CLI under Windows I just want to take the computer that it’s running on and throw it in the trash. At least macOS offers some standard CLI utilities and is basically out-of-the-box compatible with most Linux CLI tools. The filesystem structure is also kinda similar to what you would find on a Linux or BSD operating system. Oh, and recent Mac hardware is pretty awesome whereas Windows on ARM is unusable. And macOS at least looks visually consistent because unlike Microsoft, Apple can actually decide to use one single UI framework for all of their stuff. You can block all of the Apple spyware with a good firewall like Little Snitch and Homebrew fills the gap of the missing package manager. And unlike Winget, Homebrew actually works and is worth using. I can also set up macOS declaratively through Nix, something that won’t ever be possible on Windows either.As a linux user, I SSH to a Linux box when I want to do things that aren’t file/print/email/media/games - though honestly, Powershell is pretty fucking awesome as a scripting language.
Imagine if every command used JSON when piping to/from another command, so you aren’t fucking around with cut and awk and sed all the time just to pull values out. It’s nice. I don’t have much application for it personally, but it honestly is pretty grown-up.
People will disagree with me on this one and it’s totally fine, but I don’t like JSON. Over the many years of using nothing other than Linux or other Unix-like operating systems I just got used to using stuff like awk to filter out data. PowerShell might be nice for scripting, but it’s terrible for interactive usage. I spend a lot of time in the Terminal and fish shell is my favorite because it’s awesome for interactive usage. You don’t have to use your shell for scripting though. You can also just use something like Python, Ruby, heck even JavaScript. There’s also Nushell which has an interesting way of handling data, I think it’s kinda similar to what PowerShell does. Check that out if you are interested.
Hell, I’m still running windows 7 on a machine. 10 is my newest and I just installed that a couplemonths ago.
My music box is win7. Only reason it doesn’t run on a Linux distro is the shitty lack of good audio under the hood of linux, and the annoyances of getting musicbee working right.
It’s the only thing keeping anything of mine on windows. Wellllll, I did set up my laptop dual boot, and it came with 10 pro, but I haven’t actually booted into that in ages.
And yes, for whoever is thinking “I hope that win 7 box is air gapped”, it is. Transfers are from an external hdd.
I’m not an audiophile pro, but Jack and PipeWire were supposed to bring high-quality low-latency audio infrastructure to the Linux desktop, maybe check that out?
Yeah, it’s acceptable, but it still suffers in comparison to either the usual options on windows, or even the standard android audio. Can’t touch a solid dedicated DAC, though not much can, in truth.
For the love of god I hope that isn’t connected to any network
It is. It’s fine. Security isn’t a single layer.
No it’s not fine lmao
I recently learned there are unpatched vulnerabilities in Paint 3D in versions of Windows 10. Christ knows what they’ve neglected to patch on Windows 7.
Have you tried a Linux desktop distribution on that windows 7 box? I can’t imagine you’re gaming on it.
Nope. Got too much it’s used for to spend the days and days it would take me to rebuild it, then fight through the headache of setting up Linux, and finding replacements for everying it does.
This is the barrier Linux acolytes just can’t understand. I have decades of experience, was working in IT before Linux existed. Had my Unix classes in college. And I can’t be bothered, I’ve got other stuff to do. And I know the risks I’m dealing with.
Now let’s ask a regular user. They see no advantage and lots of headache to switch.
Just in case you don’t want to go to the tabloid hell that is the Express Petition Link pirg.org
It’s such an awful site, and always surprises me when I see it being used/shared. Surely when it comes to tech there are better resources than a tabloid for it.
My machine running Win10 LTSC is getting updates until 2029. I also have machines running Debian. There is no way I am installing the regular version of Win11. Its trash made to pander to greedy shareholders. If they take the garbage out for LTSC, I might run it.
As an individual, how do you get the LTSC version legally, and how much does it cost?
Imagine trying to get Windows legally lol. This provides a much better solution.
Can you ping me if they tell you? I would also like to know
I guess there is no legal option for individuals because Microsoft only provides LTSC option for orgs. Most guides I saw in the internet just tell you to download some iso from google drive link. You might be able to download it from Microsoft here but I haven’t actually tested it because it asks you to register your info before proceeding. Then you’ll activate it using activator scripts such as MAS or buy some grey market keys on some keys site.
You can’t unless you form a small group like a non profit organization or a business. You can cheat the system legally going the NPO route as long as you find a way to fulfill legal requirements, but you need friends (it helps to know someone in law school too) and you have to do the legal paperwork and share all the cost. You could make a gamer NPO for example. The price to do this will vary depending on where you live. The price for the volume license can vary a lot depending on where you get it from. Where your group is located effects this. In my local it is about $200-400 USD per person.
Your other alternative is the grey market. Its grey because it is legally ambiguous.
Well, your best option is to switch to Linux
Nah, fuck it, I’m switching to Linux.
Yep. Gaming is starting to work on Linux, so I will move to Linux once Microsoft cancels 10.
11 has nothing more than more telemetry and tracking going for it. Gaming is slower, so why would I upgrade for a worse experience.
I play old games still anyways. Linux is more secure than Windows 11 anyways. I won’t upgrade to 11, and turned off TPM in BIOS so 11 won’t automatically install.
Gaming is starting to work on Linux
Are you living under a rock ? Gaming is working in linux now.
I haven’t entirely switched in part due to Rainbow Six Siege not working on Linux. Something about Battleye supports it but Ubi hasn’t done the few simple steps to allow it. So it’s not entirely working yet
Edit: Apparently this is one of the best ways to let Ubisoft know that players want this fixed https://r6fix.ubi.com/projects/RAINBOW6-SIEGE-LIVE/issues/LIVE-49179
Oh yes, another “No, I refuse to check the box” devs/publishers. Literally the company that made BattleEye compatible with Proton won’t enable the damn thing on their most popular game. There just needs to be a big enough outcry. Which as 10 hits EOL and the SteamDeck continues to sell, the Linux userbase will grow.
What I meant was that it is starting to get simple to play games using Linux now.
I’m not a teenager anymore who enjoys getting games to work by editing settings outside of games like during the Win 3.11 and MS-DOS days.
After decades working IT jobs I don’t want to do work when I’m trying to relax. Linus will have a nearly seamless system when Win 10 reaches EOL.
Can’t wait for anti cheat to work with Linux ☹️
This is my biggest hold up. Pretty much any triple A game has anti cheat these days.
Most anticheat software actually runs on Linux! Even the previously stubborn EasyAntiCheat got its Linux-compatible version.
I know it can run on it but games like destiny and fortnite still have to allow it unfortunately
Most modern games can work. But this is a dev issue, not a “wait until it works on linux” issue
EAC, and BattleEye both work on Linux, all the dev has to do is tick a “Proton Compatible” checkbox. Which many publishers/devs, namely Epic, don’t do because they hate linux with a red hot passion for some unknown reason.
Next computer of mine will definitely be running Linux. Only thing I’d ever need windows for is some oddly specific software that won’t work on Linux because I’m too dumb to get working properly.
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Your PC will soon be be junk if you do not want to try out Linux.
Your PC is already junk if it runs Windows. But you can easily fix that by installing Linux.
That just means more cheap, used hardware available for us Linux users in a couple years.
…and then a complete absence of it a few years after that, once Microsoft finally finishes boiling the frog to cryptographically lock new hardware to run only Windows.
… until the EU and maybe even the US rolls around and slaps Microsoft with an antitrust lawsuit. Sounds like a best case scenario :D
I miss vista
I miss windows 2000 pro
With is default blank admin password, ahh these were the days.
But windows ME, that’s where it was at!! /s
I’m sure this will get a few people worked up, but the moment Mac OS X came out I switched everything to Mac. And no, Justin Long didn’t convince me ;) I was like, “*NIX like OS with a decent GUI?!” Count me in.
@tsonfeir @confusedwiseman I did something similar, when I gained the right to vote on what my computers would run. Then there came backward compatibility issues, purchased from AppStore programs stopped working, 3rd party programs like Safari (checks some notes…), make it in house programs, stopped working etc. I switched Mac Mini almost immediately to a Linux. Air unfortunately had HW incompatibilities like hinge and camera, so it stayed with Mac OS till it managed to bust charge controller.
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At this point I’m mainly still on Windows because it is the easiest thing to do - I know how to use it and it is already installed on all my PCs. At least 3 of my PCs are eligible to upgrade to Win11 (2 are not), but I have no plans to ever upgrade. So, when security updates stop, that will be my motivation to give Linux another try.
God damn it, my dads computer is very old actually and he is running windows 10. There is one program which is not available for Linux which he uses to access his CCTV cameras so moving him to Linux might be difficult because of that.
Have you tried running the CCTV software in Wine? It doesn’t sound like it’s likely to be a particularly complicated bit of software, so hopefully Wine will have it running with a couple of clicks.
(I’m EXTREMELY green with Linux)
Could it be run inside of a windows VM?
Yeah, you can basically run anything in a Windows VM. I even use a Windows VM with GPU and storage passthrough for gaming, works surprisingly well.
My dad lives in Germany and I do in Korea. The really good thing about Linux is that it’s easy to remotely administrate it. The bad part is that we live in very different time zones so if something doesn’t work it would take a lot of time before we both have time at the same time so I can show him how to do things.
What about MiniOS or Linux?
