End of 10 is a campaign to move people over to Linux with Windows 10 support ending

It is the last - that a lot of us here will ever use willingly

Yeah, if the MS store and UWP apps worked out for Microsoft (they didn't lol).

Now win11 is "okay, now this really will be last version of windows, because you can't refuse installing our crap."

Have you seen what microsoft is pushing on 11??

I actually wouldn't mind upgrading to Windows 11, but I ran Microsoft's compatibility tool and it told me I couldn't. I only built my computer in late 2018, and have upgraded storage space since then. But it's nowhere near old enough to need replacing the motherboard or processor.

Microsoft is just requiring an arbitrary hardware specification as an olive branch to their hardware manufacturer partners.

• Microsoft recall.
• Ads in software you paid for.
• Inability to use local accounts ( they're closing the workarounds ) or dark patterns to switch you to one if you do have a local one
• bit locker forking you over

Edit: shoving AI down your throat

And this all besides all the other already present points to shit on Microsoft like the data collection

Lots more data harvesting. Lots more AI. Lots more malware.

My partner isn't tech savvy. I asked them to type "CPU-Z" into the task bar and instead of it opening the installed CPU-Z on their computer, the first suggested result was a download link for CPU-Z. They clicked it to download CPU-Z and got full-on AI-suggested malware that forced us to nuke their PC

The big one is W11 now requires a TPM chip, so tons of computers will stop getting updates soon, with no way to upgrade.

And they keep getting worse with a bunch of annoyances, like more ads, trying to force ai, making it harder to avoid a microsoft account, and getting rid of ways to customize the desktop layout.

With the steam deck proving that Linux gaming was not only possible but easy, I could remove gaming as a reason to keep windows, which meant the only thing I actually wanted windows for was an Adobe subscription that I hadn't used in over a year. With windows fighting me the whole time, Linux got out of my way and let me use my own device how I wanted to. Which by the way sounds like I'm using it for something complicated or specialized but I'm not, I need it for web browsing, gaming, and light photo editing, that's about it.

So that's the positive case to move away from windows. The other side is that Windows is actively hostile to me as a user. I don't want or need copilot. For starters I don't have the hardware to really take advantage of it, and I don't want it using power unnecessarily. I don't want office 365, I don't want OneDrive, I don't want another UI on top of the 5 other UI frameworks that exist in windows which only serve to make it harder to change things to what I want. I don't want to sign in using a Hotmail account I made when I was 12 and haven't touched in years. I don't want windows telling Microsoft how I use my own device. There's some cool stuff in windows 11 like WSL which is awesome for me as a dev in my day job, but it's not enough to keep me in a system that, by design and direction, is trying to lock me into it.

Xbox app is another example, where my game controllers sometimes work and most of the time don't. Sometimes there's cross play with steam, sometimes not. Sometimes even installing the game doesn't work and I have to re-download the entire game again. Just bafflingly bad and costs me more than steam ever has. Ridiculous.

As far as I can tell it's mostly the TPM requirement and pushing more ads / AI nonsense.

You can easily avoid the latter by using the LTSC IoT version. I just bought a new (second hand) computer for TPM (my old one was very due for an upgrade).

With the IoT version it's absolutely fine. Definitely an improvement over Windows 10. The only issue I've noticed is it doesn't come with Windows Game bar or some nonsense so after you run games you'll get a random dialog about there not being an app available to handle ms-gamelink URLs or something. You can just ignore it. I might fix it one day.

Many can't upgrade to 11 and don't want to buy a new device. They'll believe it's their only option unless told otherwise. It's not necessarily a "Win11 is bad" or "Linux/BSD is better" scenario, just a "to keep using your current device which you paid for less than a decade ago, do the following".

Times are hard and people shouldn't be forced to buy new hardware because of the current monopolistic software companies's latest money making scheme, especially when their old one works perfectly fine and the environment is going to suffer.

Anti-privacy by default, pushing AI slop that takes all your data, more than one improperly checked update rolled out that bricked many computers, shoving Ads everywhere...

Of course you could say these to not be strictly new, but it is a new level of enshittification way beyond what we used to know.

I have a couple of reasons. The first and foremost is that I use windows for two things. Gaming (I dual boot windows and Bazzite for that to cover the few games I haven't gotten to work), and work. My work laptop has windows 10 because the IT department can't get some of the legacy software we rely on to do our jobs to work in 11. The compatibility layer originally wasn't there and now it only works some of the time and every time there's an update it breaks something. As a result we will likely be paying to continue to receive important security updates after 10 sunsets in October.

Additionally, some windows computers lose certain functionality when you install Linux (touchscreen compatibility, pen input compatibility etc. Can I update my personal surface pro to Linux? Yes. Will I? Unlikely. It's way more likely that I'll jailbreak it to force free security updates for the duration. I've run into way too much stuff I've had to have to IT department just straight up turn off in both 11 and 10. 11 is much worse for this though and subsequent updates have a habit of turning that stuff back on because MS wants that data.

So much new telemetry. So many new ads. So much random tracking. Swapping browsers to Edge. Copilot. Etc.

My fedora rig has secure-boot/tpm enabled. But getting that to work isn't something the average windows user is going to do. The average windows user doesn't ever open the command line in windows. And that's the thing I think people in the Linux community need to understand. I grew up with DOS. I spent 30+ years using the command line. I have used windows since 3.0. I have a general understanding of how to get what I want out of windows. I'm learning to do that with Linux but I have been on Linux for like a year and a half. The learning curve when you are already very familiar with something else and have muscle memory for something else is staggering. And I can fully understand why it might be exceptionally confusing and unintuitive for someone who's never had to use a terminal ever.

The fact is, most computer devices are phones. They use apps. There is some overlap in that with windows, but the plug and play nature of how these people are used to doing things is just as important to this conversation as just about ever other point.

Windows even pops up "helpful" tips and tricks because they know that people aren't windows savvy. I personally hate them but I'm not the average windows user.

I'd also like to point out that windows had the audacity to change the design language and somehow make a usable tablet environment worse in windows 11 in a bit to be more macOS-like and I personally really really hate that as well. I have my desktop and start menu set up in a way I like it and windows 11 completely ruins that and in my case makes things harder for me because I am fighting muscle memory. It's egregious to have to pay for the privilege of changing my start menu or task bar. I shouldn't have to go in and doctor what apps are allow during start up. I shouldn't have to turn off OneDrive or office 365. I shouldn't have to turn off telemetry or ads. This is a device I purchased and the OS is not supposed to spy on me.

Noice LMDE

I considered it, but I think the overwhelming, unexpected workload would be migrating data, training users, and working with them through migration to FOSS applications from Office and the like.

It’s definitely not just going to be “installed Linux on your computer, have a great day!”

Doing it free means they won't take care of it or care. Don't dump that on yourself.

Also, my $250 elgato capture card doesn't support Linux.

Which one? We use a few Elgato capture cards with OBS on Linux at work and all of them are bog-standard UVC video devices.

I played minecraft with my spouse

Check out Prism Launcher if you play Java Minecraft. It allows you to easily manage multiple Minecraft versions. Modded, unmodded, different versions, etc..

Moved my mother a few days ago (LMDE). Printer too. Took about an hour.

Most of it was getting apps setup, moving pictures over, and making sure she was already logged into things like Facebook so she did not have to remember the passwords after I left.

Her biggest complaint has been that her friends email addresses do mot automatically pop-up in Thunderbird. They will once she has sent or received email from them. So this will pass.

I moved mine over about 2 years ago.

Only issue was getting the printer to work.... Took a few hours.

I mean, it is very "broad strokes" but correct. Ultimately though I don't think their goal is to get people to just do it themselves. It seems like their bigger goal is connecting people in the community to people that want to make the switch to help smooth out the transition.

Proton / wine is modern day magic

Most Windows only steam games work out of the box (you do have to enable it in the right click menu > Compatibility options, per game)

Games that use Anti-cheat aren't likely to work (it depends on the Anti-cheat used and how it's configured)

ProtonDB is a good resource for checking if/which games work, or fixes and workarounds

You can use proton or wine on non steam games, but that requires additional setup that I'm not familiar with

There's also Lutris, https://lutris.net/, which uses wine and other software underneath, but with a nice GUI and a lot of scripts to further make playing your games on Linux easier.

Similar with me, but Kubuntu. Installed Steam and started downloading some games, and the whole system became almost unusable until it had finished. Also I put some music on (YouTube), and the audio was slightly slowing down and speeding up.

I have used Linux for decades for servers, and I really want to move to Desktop Linux, but at least once a year I try and there is some major issue that stops me.

I'm actively trying to do that, and it's not working. All my normie friends are either ignoring the problem or planning on buying new pcs with win11

10 is perfectly great, 7 was not bad at all.