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
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.
Well, your best option is to switch to Linux
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.
That petition and a nickel is worth about 5 cents. Go get a better OS.
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Once ALVR becomes even remotly usable on Linux im wiping my windows partition and going full Linux (I’m already using it for everything exept VR)
The next Steam OS device is supposedly aimed at VR. I can’t imagine it launching without ALVR.
It sounds like they have beta support for Linux, so it seems like it’s getting there.
Dude what ad ridden hellscape is that site, ublock pinged 45 ads on that page just on load lol
Oh that’s just the start menu
🥇
Third-party scripts disabled and it loads instantly, no ads. Funny that.
yea it was overkill enough to make me look into if connect supports always opening links external so I can have my ad block lol
What about MiniOS or Linux?
I really wish I could just switch to Linux but certain programs I have for school don’t have a Linux version, as well as my art program that I laid for the license.
VM/WINE?
I wish wine would work and as for running a vm it would be a pain on my shitty laptop. My best sollution would just be to get more torage but I a broke bch
if vanilla wine doesn’t work, you might want to try adding it to steam as a non-steam game and running it with proton. it’s no guarantee, but i’ve found that proton sometimes works better for some programs that don’t work properly with wine.
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.
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
Wait windows 10 was not junk before? Since when?
I mean, when you compare it to Windows 11…
I think you’re probably in the minority on this one. It was generally accepted that Win10 was pretty good.
It shouldn’t be accepted that any version of Windows was good
It was regarded as good in the beginning, at least in comparison to Windows 8. In the beginning it ran leaner than Win7
Then update after update it got more and more bloated and unstable, more crammed with ads, etc. Windows 10 aged very poorly imo.
Windows 10 LTSC for the win
MS, over the course of the life of Windows 10, transitioned from a software company to a data brokerage, and Windows 10 has reflected that. But it’s nothing compared to W11 that is full-on spyware.
I know I’m the weird one but I liked 8 and Vista more than 7.
I still had plenty of frustrations with it. I ended up switching to Linux finally last year when it became clear Microsoft was going to force my pc to update to 11.
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Give me back my custom taskbar location and then we’ll talk.
Yeah there’s so much missing in Win11 that they straight up haven’t delivered yet, it’s infuriating. Feels like a beta version. It’s incomplete.
You can customize your taskbar as much as you want on Linux
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.
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.
As I Linux user I can’t wait for the flood of cheap perfectly good hardware from these idiots
Bonus points is that they’ll probably be the last gasp of hardware consistently supporting S3 sleep too
Hey, can you elaborate? I switched my couple year old Windows 11 laptop to Linux a few months back, and no matter what I can’t get sleep to work. After doing research, apparently this is a common issue with Linux on laptops.
I eventually got hibernate to work, so I have it do that instead, but regular sleep would be nice…
Yep! So I can’t say necessarily what your specific problem is but it’s probably related to the big push towards “S0 Low Power Idle”, or “Modern Standby/Sleep”.
In a nutshell, MS and related peeps wanted to go after the always-connected, updated info, instant-on nature of the iPads and other mobile devices. I would guess Apple’s “Power Nap” functionality on their Mac was on their mind too. The effort resulted in the Windows 8-era Connected Standby as it was known then.
They have been pushing hard on S0 as the next version of sleep since. Who “they” is I am not entirely sure - it could be upstream at MS, Intel, most likely but the end result regardless is that OEM’s have been switching to Modern Standby.
But fortunately, some machines have a choice. My ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 has a BIOS toggle to switch between S0 and ol reliable S3 sleep (labeled Linux sleep) - no Windows re-installation needed despite the warning on it. Other machines might not like the XPS 9510 and Latitude 7210 2-in-1 I had previously. (I got rid of the former due to warranty issues and suspect build quality, the latter because I needed more oomph and less portability)
I was losing 8% battery an hour in the 7210 and I wasted hours troubleshooting only to find out that the M.2 drive I installed was somehow “not compatible” with Modern Standby, after that was sorted it was the only Modern Standby experience I had that was mostly acceptable.
My new work laptop is a ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 and there is no option to enable S3 so I am on that Modern Standby train involuntarily for this one. Anyways, after the battery reliably drained several times in a few hours of sleep, with the power light pulsing indicating it was sleeping - I was able to get the company service desk to enable my hibernate setting and I use that exclusively so I don’t have to keep it plugged in while traveling to save my state.
Sometimes that toggle is removed in a BIOS update so you’ll have to research that too, and what version to install if it occurs.
So yea, S3 is going out of fashion and taking reliable sleep with it. Lot of complaining out there about battery drain, overheating in bags, OEM’s recommend just using hibernate, Linus Tech Tips had a video ranting about switching to Macs over it and supposedly heard from an MS engineer but I don’t think Microsoft will be able to truly fix it, it’s been years.
If my laptop dies, I’ll probably get another like it or maybe take the opportunity to jump to a Steam Deck and maybe an ARM Mac. Not sure yet. When the time to jump to Linux comes in a couple years, maybe I’ll just get a desktop.
Oh wow, thanks for the in depth reply. Am I incorrect in assuming that they want the “Modern Standby” to be standard, because that mode means the device is always “connected” despite being asleep?
There must be a reason that a corporation would push for a seemingly inferior technology, and it’s basically 100% of the time about money.
I’m just speculating but I would say that’s “not wrong”.
The network connected part of Modern Standby can actually be disabled reasonably easily in command prompt and it does come up as a possible band-aid to battery drain issues. (In my applications it didn’t help a noticeable amount but at least it’s there.)
When Modern Standby works, it works… okay. I mentioned getting it working on my 7210 2-in-1 after swapping for a proper SSD (eyeroll) and while it still used more power than S3, I could live with 1-2% of battery loss in an hour a lot more easily than 7-10% and I leaned on hibernate more as well since so many of us have been burned by Modern Standby when it doesn’t work.
I’m sure that while having the user computer being connected more is a net positive for telemetry and data collection but I think the drive towards it is more of a semi-misguided effort to compete with the sheer instant-on, always-updated nature of smartphones, iPads, Android tablets, etc. much in the vein of how Windows has been pivoting left-and-right to fit onto tablets the past decade but not completely recognizing that people often use desktops and laptops differently.
So on paper it’s not inferior at all. Instant on, instant off, minimal power use increase, the computer can ring when calls are received, it can keep email up-to-date, sound alerts for reminders all while sleeping whereas it’s completely dead in S3 save for RAM being powered.
Sounds cool, it’s high-tech, I thought it was neat when I first heard about it especially since Apple’s Power Nap feature was around for years already and did nice housekeeping functions while the machine was sleeping - albeit within power use and thermal limits.
Microsoft and OEM’s just can’t seem to make it reliable enough to be the slam-dunk it theoretically can be nor do it’s benefits really shine in my use case since I sit down to use my Windows machines and nothing I use really can take advantage of Modern Standby. And since S3 is increasingly being pulled out, Linux has to deal with their shenanigans too.
Edit: Also I would expect ARM Windows machines to sleep better or at least be efficient enough to not worry, but I can’t say for sure.
I’ve been to the swap meet prices are already falling for older PCs.
People will just keep trucking on Windows 10.
The day i had ads on my start page i immidiately uninstalled windows. I installed some linux distro its been like three years and ive finally settled on arch. it was hard but fuck ads on the start page and i feel smarter for it
I was already using Linux a lot of the time when Windows 7 was out, and seeing Microsoft push ads in the start menu, as well as all the other trash and pointless changes that they included with Windows 8+ just confirmed my decision to leave the Windows ecosystem.
ive finally settled on arch.
What are you, some kind of Linux prodigy?
arch is basic. It’s just minimalise by default.
It has an amazing wiki, extremely active and helpful user forums, and an installer (i think now) or at least a massively helpfully customised shell for initial setup.
you can install arch and make it look like mint or whatever easily, then the only difference is pacman and the amazing AUR
Lol i hear this alot about arch users and as a newbie i dont get it. It has been the easiest for me to understand, maybe its the documentation idk i started with endavourOS as well which is a great beginner OS for arch IMO
EndeavorOS has been a great experience for me as well. Also KDE Plasma and now Wayland.
EndeavourOS isn’t pure arch. (I don’t mean this in an elitist way. Use whatever is best for you.) Pure arch doesn’t come with a desktop, so it sucks for new users.
I would agree but most people dont even know that a DE is different then an OS. I do plain arch now i was just saying it was a good starting point
I started with an Arch-based distro and haven’t looked back (EndeavorOS. Though I guess it’s kind of like Arch easy mode). I have a family member that has been daily driving Linux for over a decade, so that was very helpful during the transition. But after a week or two, I haven’t needed his help at all.
My laptop that previously ran Windows 11 is faster than ever.
When you swap distros, how do you manage all your files and settings? Do you just save your files externally and start from scratch every time you change a distro?
Typically your personal files and app settings are stored somewhere in your user home folder, eg under
/home/bob/. Ideally you’ve set up your system in a way so that the entire/home/folder is stored on its own disk or partition at least. That let’s you boot up a different distro while using the same home directory. But even if you haven’t set it up separately from the rest of the system, you can still manually copy all those files.Not every single application setting is transferable between distros as they sometimes use different versions but generally it works well. Many apps also let you manually export profiles or settings and reimport them elsewhere later. Or they have online synchronization baked in.
So in my previous experience I never get prompted to create separate partition, but I have seen others use this method in the past, however this should probably be a step in any Linux install wizard.
It should be offered as an option really.
One caveat is that you need to think ahead about how much space you want to assign to each partition. You could end up with your
/home/partition being full while the system partition still has plenty. Or vice versa. You can manually readjust the boundaries but it requires some understanding and can’t be done on the fly by a non-technical user. By contrast if everything’s stored on the same partition you never have to worry about this.You can, by the way, manually recreate this set up even after the initial set up although it will require lots of free space to shuffle around files (or some external storage to temporarily hold them). Basically what you do is create a new empty partition, copy all your
/home/stuff there and then configure your system to always mount that partition as the/home/directory when it boots. Files are just files after all and the operating system doesn’t really care where they come from as long as the content is correct. Once you got it working you can delete the originals and free up the space to be used otherwise.
Hell, I’m still running windows 7 on a machine. 10 is my newest and I just installed that a couplemonths ago.
For the love of god I hope that isn’t connected to any network
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.
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.
