Microsoft, doing it’s part to make the world a better place.
Microsoft doing its* part
Hello, it’s me, a landfill
Those systems are going to be dirt cheap Linux boxes in the very near future
Or at least a couple will be for me
Ah, the WIntel cartel is at it again. Planned obsolescence.
The incompatible hardware is more than seven years old at this point.
The problem is that that hardware, and older, is still perfectly capable of preforming modern desktop tasks. I have a 12 year old Athlon FX 8320 with 32GB RAM that works great, not the most efficient processor in terms of energy but runs everything well, yet it’s not supported. Honestly I don’t give a shit about Winblows, I work with Linux (system administrator) and I only use Win10 for some gaming. That said, I have a newer Ryzen 9 5950X with 128GB RAM to work with virtualization, and it will stay on Win10 till no longer being sustainable.
I see a lot of people deny articles about “e-waste” calling them clickbait headlines and such. While I do agree there is a clickbait problem, I have to take it into consideration when I’m witnessing the company I work for right now tossing all the office computers in a pile to smash the hard drive. They just got all new computers a year and a half ago, and these are pretty good for an office workhorse. I thought it might be because of some weird HP contract or something, so I asked. But no, turns out some of them can’t upgrade to 11, and they must all go in the dumpster. “HP won’t take them back and it’s easier to just get all new ones.” I’ve heard similar reports from other companies in the area.
Again I do agree there is a clickbait problem, but I think we need to realize that Microsoft and companies like HP know exactly what they are doing to keep the money flowing in.
The great LINUX uprising of 2025!!!
The only people that will really suffer from this is businesses. They will have to buy W11, and they will need to get supported hardware. However, businesses usually have rolling upgrades in place in the IT and have probably rolled out many already.
As for home users, with each newer generation, they become more tech savy. I can tell you now, this won’t affect as many people as you imagine.
- 1: W11 is free to download from M$. You can choose whether or not to buy a licence. W11 cracks already exist, M$ is still using key management services, so something like KMSpico still work. There are also tons of activator scripts on github (lol, since M$ owns this!).
- 2: Grab a copy of RUFUS. Use it to take the W11 image and remove all restrictions, and dump it to USB.
- 3: ???
- 4: Profit.
The system requirements are like any system from the last 6 years. Are people really using computers this old? I hear a bunch of people commenting about businesses but at least at the companies I worked at we never had machines older than 4 years old. Seems kind of overblown.
Oh yea and bring on the down votes. I understand this is Lemmy and anything that challenges the hatred of Windows is met with extreme disagreement.
Let’s not mention the extended update service that people can buy for three years and that will make the oldest incompatible CPU 10 years old at that point…
Or the fact that people don’t even realize it care that they don’t get updates anymore…
Let’s not mention the extended update service that people can buy for three years and that will make the oldest incompatible CPU 10 years old at that point…
What a weird way to say that the OS they bought will stop being supported on their 7 year old CPU unless they pay a subscription.
On a bit more serious way, it’s a bit of a slap in the face that, you could buy W10, in theory as a single payment, with no announced EOL, and now they say that even though they are going to keep working on security updates, you have to pay extra for it.
I would have respected more of there was no extended period. This way they are encouraged to have higher W11 requirements, so that they can earn more with OEM licenses and subscriptions. And given the nature of the OS and telemetry, they are extremely informed about the install base, so it is a very calculated decision.
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Name a single version of Windows that hasn’t stopped being supported at some point.
The difference is that Microsoft literally marketed Win10 as the last version of Windows.
I’m not even gonna bother to click on that. Microsoft said Windows 10 is the last version of Windows. I don’t care for revisionist arguments trying to undo their words.
“Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.”
- Microsoft at their Ignite conference
Microsoft stuck by that line. They didn’t correct it, they instead leaned into it.
Microsoft said Win10 was the last. It isn’t. They lied.
“I won’t bother looking at that because I prefer to stay ignorant, here’s the quote they talk about in your link that I don’t want to read because they actually debunk the fact that it came from Microsoft and that they never corrected it.”
Lemmy truly is turning to shit all of the sudden…
It did come from Microsoft. Directly. They then never corrected it. They went along with it.
You can do mental gymnastics all you want, but the reality is that a senior Microsoft guy that Microsoft chose to speak at a Microsoft event gave a talk that was vetted by Microsoft in which he said Win10 is the last version of Windows.
Did Microsoft issue a correction? No. Not even after loads of articles came out about the subject.
Microsoft said Windows 10 would be the final version of Windows. End of discussion. Goodbye.
Read my comment again, or at least once.
with no announced EOLAlso, paid extended support for Windows has been a thing since 95.
I see, the problem is that you lack reading comprehension.
Sorry I overestimated you.
Nah, the problem is you sharing your opinion when you don’t take the time to analyse the facts.
Cool, a prime opportunity to scalp even more old machines by the end of the decade once they become valuable.
By looking at data from statcounter, both windows 7 and xp had dropped support when they were at around 3% and 0,5% of global usage, respectively. This time, Microsoft plans to drop support for windows 10 next year, but it’s still on 67% of usage. Either I’m missing something here, or they’re going a very weird route…
Good thing there a myriad of other Linux distros that run everything 90% of home users need.
This is such an old article at this point. PCs don’t get sent to the landfill because the OS isn’t supported anymore. That’s idiotic.
I installed linux. I only use browser and vlc and it works great. I am not buying a new machine when old one works just fine.
I’m seriously thinking of trying Linux when Windows 11 is forced. My computer has the specs to run it, but I’m just tired of Windows and Microsoft.
Pretty much all computers have the specs to run linux. Of some flavor.
I have switched a dell laptop that windows 10 didn’t support to pop os. (It was 7 years old) My whole family has used it for a few years to do everything without any issues. Ironically I have had problems with the Pop OS install on my newer more powerful machine.
Yeah I’m not as much of a fan of PopOS as I thought I’d be. I have it on my daily driver laptop, and every system update seems to introduce some wacky bug/glitch or another. Nothing major, just random small annoyances that usually get fixed in the next update.
It dual boots Pop and Debian, and Debian performs flawlessly. It’s a Thinkpad, so Linux support has always been fantastic. I’m thinking of just dropping the PopOS partition and going back to my original love, Debian.
Unless you run some really niche software or are a heavy gamer, you’ll likely have no problems and enjoy it. Most software that you need for daily use has a FOSS equivalent that’s equal or better. Usually those are also available straight from the package manager (if not there, then most likely Flatpak).
Just stick with a well supported distro like Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, or PopOS, and it’ll be super easy.
I’m actually looking forward to the perfectly good Linux boxes that are bound to be popping up at yard sales or on ebay once that happens.
Sadly I have niche software and I’m a heavy gamer. But now it’s becoming as much of a headache to deal with Windows threatening dumb upgrades that I might as well switch and fight with compatibility.
The more we do it, the more companies will be incentivised to make Linux work.
a heavy gamer
Why I am still hesitant to make the leap. Not just do I mostly use my PC for gaming but I have a tendency to jump into a new game for like 3 weeks and then off to the next like the horrid ADHD having fuck that I am. I don’t want to possibly have to work to make a game work each and every time. I know its gotten a lot better about that but still. Convivence has me trapped yo.
I was in the same boat. But Valve seriously made it easy to install and play games on Steam. If you have a spare drive, give it a shot.
Things I had to do were to turn on proton in the steam settings and installing vulkan drivers for my AMD card.
I was surprised by this.
Admittedly, I haven’t played many video games in the past few years but I was a little disappointed when the list of Steam games for Linux was quite short.
Then I read about Proton. The first Windows-only game I tried worked great so I’m happy.
I play older games on a 1060 so I don’t have a good sense of what the performance is compared to playing directly on Windows though.
I honestly might with my next build this summer.
In a desktop (which is what you want for gaming anyways) why not? Easy enough to slot in a new drive and dual boot from there, no need to much about with partitions like with a single-drive laptop.
If it doesn’t work out, oh well, go back to Windows. But maybe Linux is finally there, and you’ll find you don’t need to go back
I just dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 11 on my laptop. W11 for gaming, Ubuntu for everything else.
You’re attacking this from the wrong angle. Tinkering every few weeks with something new on linux can keep your ADHD occupied ;-)
As someone with ADHD this is exactly what happened to me when I switched to Linux. Continues to keep me occupied 3 months later
People still have sound issues with gaming on Linux.
It’s tremendously better, but it’s not guaranteed.
Even in this very thread people are to make certain gaming features work in Linux.
That speaks volumes.
As an intermedia Linux user prior to making the jump 2 years ago, if you mainly game on Steam you’re fine. Wine and Proton are mature developed now that most games ‘just work’. Almost all the problems I’ve run into for gaming on Linux have come from trying to do something outside steam (although Blizzard and Activision games seem to be pretty low effort).
Once you get outside that, it’s hit or miss (sometimes good hits. Sometimes bad misses).
What you’ll have to say goodbye to is alphas, betas, and release weekends. They CAN function (I did all 3 Diablo 4 beta weekends last year with no issues at all), and there’s plenty of early access stuff on steam that works fine even though the developers didn’t care about Linux one bit. But usually if you’re reporting issues on opening weekend for a new game, they’re more concerned with making their game launch work for the 95%+ of users instead of the 5%. If you want stuff to ‘just work’ and don’t want to spend your weekend tinkering with waiting for hot fixes or patches, you’ll probably not want to make the switch. Or will want to change your mentality about which games you play and when.
That being said, the experience is constantly getting better. So in a year or two it may be a different story.
but I have a tendency to jump into a new game for like 3 weeks and then off to the next like the horrid ADHD having fuck that I am
That’s basically why I stopped gaming. Have saved so much money from not filling up my Steam library with games I’ll never finish. lol
Check ProtonDB. The overwhelming majority of games work just fine on Linux with Steam’s Proton. I encounter a game that genuinely will not work on Linux only like once or twice a year.
How is graphics card stuff with them, all okay in terms of drivers? I assume VR might be an issue?
Graphics drivers are fine. No idea about VR since I don’t use it personally.
I haven’t tried my VR on Linux because the general consensus of people who have say it’s bad. It’s impressive how far Linux has come in terms of gaming in such a short time. Proton is incredible.
That being said, niche things like VR, or running multiple monitors with different high refresh rates and freesync simultaneously are still rocky.
The biggest issue in see however is multiplayer competitive gaming. There’s no easy path to that in sight due to aggressive anti-cheat software.
As such Linux is currently relegated to mostly single player games that don’t do anything crazy. That’s honestly good enough for a lot of people, but misses the mark with a lot of gamers.
or running multiple monitors with different high refresh rates and freesync simultaneously are still rocky.
Not really an issue anymore with most Wayland compositors (KDE and wlroots, soon to be fixed with Gnome). That’s mainly an X11 specific problem.
I don’t want to possibly have to work to make a game work each and every time.
as long as it’s not a competitive multiplayer, it’s more likely than not that it’ll work out of the box.
If you have a spare drive, install Pop_OS! on it. Don’t let people let you think that everything is a piece of cake. It can be a little frustrating. A lot of guides jump to “the rest of the fucking owl” or are made on older versions of software. Steam does make it easy but most games are not a matter of simply hitting install because they do not have a native Linux version. You have to right-click on the game, go to Manage, and then set compatibility to Proton (generally although some games need other settings added which you can often find in protondb.com). Is it worth? I like it. There are some basic things that can be annoying like my fingerprint reader not working even though fprintd supports it but I’m too lazy to make a bug report.
Actually with ADHD it’s nice. Making something work under Wine (following the instructions from winehq.org) is a bit similar to a game itself
EDIT: Oh, there’s another such comment.
Try dual boot. Ideally install both OSs on separate drives and do windows first. Best of luck!
Try dual booting so you can test if it just works or if the friction involved is acceptable.
Only thing I’ve found to really not work is head tracking. That’s pretty niche though and I’m expecting someone to figure that out eventually. Almost every game ran no problem.
Like VR you mean? lol my next build is when I want to finally get into VR and try all the games I haven’t been able to play yet :(
Anecdotally; I am running Manjaro, with a valve index, and other than a few need-to-disconnect-and-reconnect my HMD, it’s been solid and painless.
No, not VR. Headtracking. The head is tracked with something like a webcam to move the camera.
oooh spiffy.
Wouldn’t you look away from the screen?
You calibrate it so that a small head movement translates to a large camera movement.
https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack Used this years ago in Elite without issues.
Yep open track works but not the freetrack protocol which communicates with various games through it.
Might not be called freetrack. Was a month since I used it, and honestly I don’t pay much attention to the names of stuff. But either way it isn’t supported on Linux.
I fucked around with OpenTrack for days but came to no solution other than reverting to windows.
I also have ADHD and concerns that my 40p game library would be an issue
I’ll report back on this comment when I find a game that doesn’t just work with Proton, cuz I haven’t tried one yet that didn’t (admittedly I haven’t tried a kernel level anti cheat game)
Even FFXIV, an MMO, works and installed reshade with no issue
Literally the only issue I had installing Linux Mint was my sound card refusing to output sound even though the OS could see it. Every other jack worked, just not my sound card. Fixed it by plugging my phones into a different DAC lol, and the other jacks were fine anyway so it was NBD to begin with
I think you should try it yourself, see if you like it. Who knows, perhaps it’s not actually as troublesome as you think. You can always reinstall windows again anytime you want.
There has been a LOT of progress since the SteamDeck launched. The only real barrier now is multiplayer games that run anticheat. And even some of those have been figured out.
I run Pop!_Os. Steam with Proton is a gamechanger. Yet to find a game that doesn’t just work with zero configuration.
I suggest Mint for new users (and lazy old users like me). All of the simplicity of Ubuntu, without Canonical’s shit
Ubuntu without snaps or nagging about Ubuntu Pro. I was annoyed with both so I switched over from Ubuntu Mate to Linux Mate and have been enjoying it.
What about Arch? I was told:
mint is garbage. The only thing easier about mint or any of those “noob friendly” distros is the initial install
any time you want to do anything outside of its strict little ecosystem it becomes a massive headache
arch’s wiki is unparalleled
Sounds like neckbeard bullshit honestly, Mint is just fine. Arch is “better” if you like tinkering
Mint is for people who generally don’t want to do weird shit, which is most new users. If you do, it’s not any harder than doing it on Ubuntu or Debian.
If you want in-depth tinkering, go with Arch. If you want newer packages than a Debian base but not necessarily much tinkering, go with Tumbleweed. You’re just going to have to learn a different package manager for each.
I personally am most comfortable in an environment that has
apt, and I don’t change much on my systems, so Mint is nice. My servers are straight Debian
I almost went back to Mint on my last rebuild, but ended up going with Debian + Cinnamon. So far so good.
Not a good choice for people who want to play games. Debian focuses on stability so their packages are typically outdated.
Ah, so them Arch is the way to go.
Any rolling distro that you enjoy is the way to go here I suppose. I’d also hitch my wagon to and arch variant personally but tumbleweed wasn’t terrible either. Just not my mojo.
There’s lots of distros, rolling & LTS based, that have up to date packages.
Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, or PopOS
What about Arch? I was told:
mint is garbage. The only thing easier about mint or any of those “noob friendly” distros is the initial install
any time you want to do anything outside of its strict little ecosystem it becomes a massive headache
arch’s wiki is unparalleled
Arch is cool until it isn’t. If an update breaks your system, then you better know how to fix that by yourself, because the wiki is definitely not the holy grail that some people make it out to be and the community can be toxic as hell. Also, Mint is based on Ubuntu so I would not call that a “little” ecosystem. In the end, each distro has its pros and cons and you have to weight & figure out what fits best for you and your personal needs.
Arch wiki is a useful resource, even for users of other distros. But seriously, do not use Arch Linux unless you’re an experienced Linux user. I have no idea why so many Arch users recommend their distro to new Linux users. Even the Arch wiki tells you it’s not a distro for beginners:
It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.
Hahaha, right, right.
Most users would get lost on a Linux box, even with the truly great user-friendly distros today. I use a few for testing and things like LXC, and it’s still frustrating at times - and I started with UNIX 35 years ago.
You’re seriously over estimating the capability of most users.
People can’t find controls in Windows when I guide them.
Even heavy gamers are getting a much better experience on Linux these days (yay Proton!). There are a couple of anti-cheat systems that are still trouble some, but honestly if the developers don’t want to to put in the much smaller amount of effort to make it work on Linux, I don’t want to give them my money.
My Win10 machine is an audio workstation (DAW) so I am curious how the migration to Linux will work out. Reaper has a Linux port so that should be OK. Hopefully all the VSTs will still work and I’ll have to check on my Focusrite Scarlett. I am not buying a new machine just to run this stuff as it’s just a hobby.
I haven’t powered it up in several years, but I keep an old Windows XP machine with my DAW software on it. I just always ran it offline and moved files with a thumb drive. That said, I never did try a native Linux solution.
Check out Bitwig Studio too if you haven’t already. It can even open Ableton and FL project files.
I’m kind of a power user.
Gaming. Multimedia (Video, Image, Audio). Application development. Web development. Getting into cybersecurity, so using a lot of VMs. Watching videos.
I’ve been making a Linux transition. So far, the stuff I still need to iron out:
-Adobe. Make it work somehow or replace. Can use it on a windows VM 🤷♂️. Happy to replace because fuck em. Working through options.
-VST managers for digital audio workstation. Most aren’t on Linux (spitfire audio, iZotope, IK multimedia, iLok). Haven’t begun trying to make them work. I e heard most can be configured in WINE.
-old MIDI program not working. No audio for MIDI. One program works, another doesn’t 🤔
That’s it. Everything else is working. Big challenges Ive had:
-bluetooth gaming controller took a lot of effort. Works great now.
-Epic games through heroic… Through steam on Linux… Through remote play on my phone… That was difficult. But it works!!
-remote desktop troubleshooting. Works fine now.
Oh and I can’t get windows subsystem for Linux to work in my windows VM on my Linux machine. 🤷♂️
windows subsystem for Linux to work in my windows VM on my Linux machine.
Ignoring the blasphemy of that, the fact it doesn’t work may prove that we are, indeed, living in a simulated universe. lol
- You can use Affinity Designer 1 just fine on linux using bottles, search for it.
- For VSTs you can use this: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge
Niche hardware meaning an asus laptop
Eh, my last Asus ran Linux fine. Though until Ubuntu 18.04 came out, I had to patch the i2c driver and recompile the kernel in order to make the touchpad work lol.
Then don’t hesitate! You could easily install both side by side, in case you need some Windows exclusive software.
I’m seriously thinking of trying Linux when Windows 11 is forced.
Sorry for the uncalled advice, but if you’re considering it, you might as well try it now. Specially in ways that don’t limit your access to Windows, such as live USB and dual boot (Windows and Linux in the same machine, at the same time). So if you do decide “I’m ditching Windows”, in the future, you’ll have an easier time doing so.
Yup. Don’t wait until the W11 upgrade is imminent. Start it now, so you have a year of experience under your belt and can help your friends switch too when they’re forced to upgrade.
Do yourself a favor and do it now. Maybe then you’ll be able to help others move to Linux who haven’t done so before.
Or you could try Tiny11, which is basically Windows 11 but much less Microsofty 😉
… Linux can run on a potato.
The only thing stopping me from switching over to Mint is procrastination.
The hardest thing about Linux Mint is installing all of your software. It’s daunting even for very established users.
I moved from Ubuntu to LM a few months ago and I’ve enjoyed it.
Again, Install Linux, get rid of Microsoft shit.
