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Windows 10 end of life could prompt torrent of e-waste as 240 million devices set for scrapheap::As Windows 10 end of life approaches, analysts are concerned that millions of devices will be scrapped due to incompatibility
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Embrace Linux and open source software
Hyperbolic bullshit. Incompatibility, my ass.
I just helped a friend who is still on Windows 7. I showed him my Linux boxes. Even offered him one for free. “but I can’t live without this minesweeper”. Seriously. I showed him minesweeper on one of the Linux boxes. “it’s not the same one, I have a high score”. Thankfully, this isn’t a laptop, because he would not be permitted to connect to my wifi. Those that scrap their old devices for Win11 will either be businesses/corporations that have no other choice or slightly more advanced users that understand the benefits of active support. The general populace will likely keep their Win10 (or 7) computers until they have to upgrade the hardware, and they’ll likely be super happy that they don’t have to deal with the “annoying windows update that restarts [their] computer”. To be fair, forced reboots is an annoying feature.
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True. But he’s stuck in his ways. This was about a year or so ago. He’s still on the same Win7. I’m sure it has a virus or 12.
WINE will run minesweeper. He can even bring over his highscores file.
Yes, that should work nicely. It’ll even look the same for the most part.
Given how long it took the general populace to let go of Windows XP, I predict a pretty similar turn of events (or rather lack thereof) with Win10. By and large everyone’s grandma and parents and auntie will just keep on using their same old computer as it is, possibly eventually turning into a petri dish for every exploit and piece of malware in the known universe in the process.
The majority of casual home users will throw away their computer and buy a new one only if it stops working or possibly if some new piece of software or more likely some future web site won’t work with it. Otherwise, to most non-nerd users it’s just an appliance.
Office and corporate deployments are another thing, but OS end-of-life situations are not new to any of those guys.
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I know the feeling.
I slapped an SSD in my dad’s machine (Microcenter has their Inland house brand ones on sale for $18 right now for a 265 gig, FYI) and it took his boot time from five minutes to about seven seconds. I think it was a Jackson well spent.
I’ve kept a Windows 10 install on a separate SSD for the programs that stubbornly refuse to run on Linux (games, in my case). However, I won’t be upgrading that to Windows 11. I’ll just reclaim that SSD for other purposes and use Linux exclusively.
I’m one of those maniacs who went to the trouble of setting up a GPU passthrough VM instead of dual booting, and I have no intention of switching it from Win10 to Win11. If it gets infected, it can’t do jack or shit to the important parts of my system, and I can either roll back to a snapshot or nuke it.
I swear, I can read the first part of your first sentence just fine, but I don’t understand what it means, lol!
I tried to look it up, and as far as I understood it, it’s a technique that allows a virtual machine to access a physical GPU directly. I guess that means that even if your VM is elsewhere (a server or wherever) it can still use the GPU you have. But the more relevant part is that since your Win10 install is on a VM, it can’t do shit on the rest of your system, and the GPU access is just there so that it won’t run as slow as shit when gaming, right?
But the more relevant part is that since your Win10 install is on a VM, it can’t do shit on the rest of your system, and the GPU access is just there so that it won’t run as slow as shit when gaming, right?
Pretty much
I tried to look it up, and as far as I understood it, it’s a technique that allows a virtual machine to access a physical GPU directly. I guess that means that even if your VM is elsewhere (a server or wherever) it can still use the GPU you have.
So, to get more technical, there’s a motherboard technology called IOMMU, which was developed for containing malware that has infected device firmware. What Linux has is a kernel module that allows an IOMMU group to be isolated from the host operating system, and connected up to a virtual machine as if it were real hardware. On an expensive motherboard, you get a different IOMMU group for each PCIe lane, each M.2 socket, each cluster of USB ports, etc. On a cheap one, you get one that for each type of device, maybe the PCIe lanes are divided into two groups.
So the fun part, and why we do this, is that when you have two GPUs, in different IOMMU groups, one can remain on host and allow graphics drivers, desktop environment, etc. to remain loaded, while the other can be connected to the VM and used entirely for gaming (theoretically, if you wanted to you could game on both systems at once). Thankfully, cheap, shit secondary GPUs aren’t expensive (was once on a 710, ditched that and its many driver issues for a 1050, and my main remains a 980ti), but setting up the main GPU to switch between proper drivers and “vfio-pci”, the drivers that have to be loaded before the passthrough can occur, can be a pain.
Thanks for the explanation. Prior to our exchange, I didn’t even know such a thing is possible. It’s wonderful, though to be honest, being as technologically klutzy as I am, I might find it easier to just buy a different set of hardware for my win10 to use, if ever, and disable any networking capabilities (because if it’s no longer supported, it needs to be taken offline).
Again, thanks!
I bought a cheap PSIe card that physically cuts the power to ssds. I just shut down and hit the button then power back on for my windows install. I rarely use it, so this makes it easy when I do without having to have a whole PC or grub menu EVERY boot
Huh, that’s interesting. I’ve gotten used to using the Grub menu every time I had to reboot (which is quite often), but it defaults to the Linux installation (auto-selects the Linux install after a timeout), so if I want to go to Windows, I’ll just have to make sure I catch the Grub menu.
How many non-tech people actually know about this? And how many of that small percentage are actually going to toss their computer as a result of it?
Because for the average computer user, they will never wonder why there are no more updates. And as long as their computer still browses the internet they don’t care even if you notify them.
Microsoft tried for years to get people off of fucking internet explorer and barely succeeded.
I expect there to be a lot of nagging. MS doesn’t want to miss out on all the Windows 11 licences they can sell with new hardware.
Yeah, no one actually cares. Just look at phones, people don’t actually stop using them when they aren’t supported and don’t care as long as it keeps working.
Do you really think that Microsoft is going to let these people exist in ignorant bliss?
You underestimate people’s ability to dismiss pop ups and notifications without retaining any of the information in them.
I’m definitely not, I work in IT 🤣 That doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t try.
I don’t know how to install Windows 11 and I’m totally ok with it. I’ve been on linux for about 10 years.
Literally the same way, just takes 2000× longer.
10 has only been superseded quite recently, 2025 seems like a very short deadline.
My computer more than meets the minimum spec for 11, and it’s a free upgrade, so I’m not too worried, but it’s still a surprise.
10 years of support from release is Microsoft’s standard. The very first version of W10 was 1507.
True, but that 10 years is irrelevant when you consider the other factors at play here, such as the enforced minimum requirements for Windows 11 and the relatively short time for users to migrate, especially compared to previously with Microsoft. Windows 10 came out in 2015, and users had until 2023 (8 years) to migrate from Windows 8, and until 2019 (4 years) to migrate from Windows 7.
It’s like the old 32 bit to 64 bit jump - care will be needed or a competitor might sieze the market as people get disgruntled over the cost of upgrading.
There never was really a 32-bit to 64-bit jump, there wasn’t really one from 16 to 32 either. When does adoption from both happened fairly far after the CPUs were common and backwards compatibility with x86 was why it never was an issue unless you tried to run beta software or had NVIDIA chipset drivers early on.
There is a compatibility overlap (we’re currently in it!).
I tried win11 for about 2 hours and installed linux on the third hour and haven’t used a windows machine in over a year. Windows costs an obscene price AND they have so much tracking and spyware that it actively impacts gaming performance.
Complete trash OS. I won’t be going back and I now actively avoid any game that doesn’t function on linux.
Not to mention the price of all the resource hogging and handicapping your workflow by changing everything around everytime.
The enshittification of an OS that used to be pretty good. It’s a shame. I haven’t touched Windows for over a year as well.
We’re starting to roll out Win11 at work. I created a GPO that keeps certain individuals on Win10. I am not looking forward to the day when that policy has to be retired.
Im still on a t430 🤷♀️
2013 Dell XPS i7-4470 up in this jawn.
Toshiba L745 i5 2430M here, still roaring
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Actually, that’s a real problem. The issue isn’t that features stop working or some slowdown, it’s millions of devices going without security updates and getting swooped into gargantuan bot networks.
Where can i get this waste .my linux pengiun will love it🤩.but it saddens me that people relay on windows so much.
This is corporate talk, no ones work station is going to be running Linux anytime soon.
Oh yeah everyone, tell me where you work with Linux?
Nobody’s Steam Deck is gonna run Windows any time soon.
I am fully on Linux - daily usage, gaming and working.
Our company doesnt usually allow linux other than our products. If we run a linux machine they want us to run this funky command that opens a backdoor for them lol after all the yearly trainings about how we arent supposed to do sketchy things like that. We still use linux machines because our windows machines are so locked down we cant do much with them but dont tell IT
Corporate IT requires a backdoor on all systems, the only thing sticking out is how automated they can make that on windows and macOS. And they do need that backdoor, so that they can check on and force patches so that you don’t end up with anyone else’s backdoor. Pretty reasonable when you really think about it.
Pretty crazy that my company does similar with Macs. When I started, my manager assigned me a Windows laptop, but it is so locked down that you can’t do anything technical. I eventually insisted on the Mac and life is easier simply because they let you do more
Large ISP, in the global operations computing department. I am an exception to the rule though. I mostly touch network gear and *NIX servers so I’m not limited to Linux but I will say most of our *NIX stuff is RHEL now and doesn’t even boot past run level three so it’s all CLI.
So 240 million potential new Linux devices…? I see this as an absolute win!
Incompatibility with what? Things are only just starting to be incompatible with Windows 7. I’ve still got customers running variants of Windows XP.
And Windows 11 doesn’t really contain much that won’t work on 10.
I reckon the TPM and secure boot requirements will eventually be dropped. They’re the Kinect of Windows 11.
It’s just another scam for them to make money
I’m still not even sure why they decided to require TPM anyways. But yeah my computer is among the many that can’t upgrade until that’s gone. I guess it’s either that or I learn a lot more about Linux…
At least if you switch to Linux there’s no shortage of people on the fediverse willing to answer questions.
There should be a “Linux hotline” community where people can post whatever is stopping them from switching and get solutions
Elsewhere, Linux support areas seem more likely than not to have a large contingent of “WHY ARE YOU ASKING A DUMB QUESTION, you horror of a human being? Why didn’t you Search the site for words you don’t know using our broken search engine, instead of infecting us with your congenital idiocy?” folks.
I use Arch too!
rtfm
Going the linux way can be troublesome at first, but you will be free from ms bullshit in the long run and will have your hardware lasting much longer. Unless you need something specific to windows for work, I recommend trying linux.
You’re probably not correct about TPM and secure boot being dropped. Microsoft’s entire enterprise line of security products including Intune and Defender for Endpoint are integrated to it and Microsoft Azure AD/Entra ID uses it for their certificate based enrollment and authentication. This is their primary profit drivers, not consumers.
Disabling the tpm requirement is just a registry hack in win 10, or a selectable option when creating an install usb with rufus.
I think they will make a simple calculation; What is going to cost more: The bad PR of nolonger updating 240 million pc’s, or accepting that a small portion of your users does not have tpm?
They haven’t stopped advanced users from installing win11 on older hardware so far. So no loss there. I also doubt they lose enterprise money if they allow win10 to upgrade regardless, as tpm is now well entrenched as the default on new hardware.
Another way to say this is the master race are about to upgrade their hardware
Or upgrade to OS that gaben chosen
If only it ran the software and hardware I use…
Curious what you’re using. Ms office kinda sucked but LibreOffice works incredibly well, and Adobe products last I tried (years ago) sucked. But gimp and DaVinci resolve work great. Most of my games run absolutely fine. For everything else you just need a web browser and those have worked great always.
Yeah office products and vide editors have Linux alternatives, but to me the main offenders are Native Instruments Maschine (proprietary USB controller that doesn’t work in Linux + software that doesn’t work in Linux) and DTP software like Affinity Publisher or Adobe Indesign that have no Linux equivalent.
I’m lookin into running those things in a Windows KVM in Linux though but it’s quite the project.
Ya that’s a tough one :(
Wine or emulation? When I had to use Windows for work I used WSL to run my tooling and didn’t notice any performance degradation. Does it apply too vice versa?
Although I’m with you on the hardware side. Because I have an Nvidia card my Linux install has been relegated for personal projects only. I already have a workstation supplied by my employer for work.
Sadly the things I need don’t work in Wine, Proton etc. I’m looking into running a Windows KVM with hardware pass through, but it’s quite the project, and requires a second GPU that I don’t have.
Or simply use an easy workaround to disable the tpm check and set up an offline account. I literally have win11 running on an old T460.
Anything you need to do beyond Rufus or the like for installation? How did activation, auto updates, etc work?
No, you don’t need anything else. Activation works the same if you log into your ms account or you can simply use https://massgrave.dev/ . I’m pretty sure there’s a way to get your key and enter it manually but I haven’t tried that yet.
