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.
But most hospital computers won't be exposed to internet right? And they probably run a bunch of propriety software that only supports xp so makes sense it took them a long time.
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.
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.
After switching to Mac OS I have 0 interest in using Linux on my actual conputer. I still have windows machine for work, and my servers are all Linux. But any machine I want to use is gonna run Mac.
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.
I reckon we'll get another year out of it, and I also think within a year, there will be plenty of workarounds to make W11 usable for moderately tech savvy people like us
The loudest voices shouting about how bad W11 is are always Linux users, especially on Lemmy
"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.
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.
The web app that runs on browsers, Linux, etc., only supports 1080p/60fps. The native client for Windows and Mac can run at high resolution and max settings and fps.
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.
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.
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.
Steam has a native Linux client that uses a custom version of Wine called Proton. It handles all the emulator settings for you. All the Steam games I bought in Windows run just fine under Linux. And amost all my older, non-Steam games (like Deus Ex or Giants: Citizen Kabuto) work great under Wine.
I’ll be downvoted to hell for saying this. But in this event I think it’s better for you to upgrade to Win 11 or maybe even move to MacOS (mac mini is pretty cheap), though I don’t know if you’ll find your replacement apps.
I use Win for work (no choice there) and Ubuntu at home (just browse the net, and only browser applications).
I use Mac for work and despise it. It also wouldn't cover the national tax authority and other apps that don't support mac (though some do support iOS,but those all also support android and not an issue there). They could have sneakily added Mac support whilst I wasn't looking do I will definitely check again before deciding anything finally.
Similar history including gentoo and distcc to speed up openoffice and x11 compiles with a pile of old computers.
Put linux on a PC laptop and it just so happens the NVMe controller in conjunction with the kernel driver has some glitch that causes the hard drive to fall off the bus forever. No big deal...
It's great seeing a bunch of nvme nvme0: I/O (number) (I/O Cmd) QID 10 timeout, aborting then reset controller then removing after probe annnd data loss. Didn't have the patience to figure out the bug in the driver right now. Maybe someday.
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.
Virtual environments are really not viable for music production. Latency and other inconsistensies makes it a no-go.
High level Music production requires very low audio and input latency in addition to consistent and 100% accurate sound reproduction.
A virtual environment is a wildcard here that I at least would not bother trying to make work. (Not saying it can't be done, just saying it would potentially be a big headache and extremely conditioned on spesific hardware, drivers and configuration settings.)
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 would add a small partition, but I'm always anxious about stuff like that because I seemingly always hear things about windows messing with Linux partitions and breaking dual boot. That, and I am running out of space on my 1TB drive it came with. Two or three years of me using it thinking that I'll never fill it up before I upgrade computers and suddenly I have to worry.
Alas my game PC is going to stick with Windows due to bad state of VR in Linux :/. And therefore one day it might need to update to Windows 11.
In particular if you have a headset that is not Valve Index, though apparently with Meta Quest one can use ALVR, as long as you get the actual games running.
The only Windows PC at my home is now fully offline 24/7. I just need it for Davinci Studio, Daz Studio and Marvelous Designer. If they only could get a Linux version to work I could live life De-Microsofted.