Anyone who still needs to run Windows 10 for whatever reason should switch over to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 (version 21H2) which will continue to receive security updates up through 2032.
This is bad advice that is being repeated over and over by the so called tech influencers. You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10. And for the foreseeable future you gain nothing at all.
If one day the normal version acctually stops reviving security updates, it almost certainly will be possible to switch the update channel to LTSC and get the LTSC updates that way but for now this is not needed and the switch is unnecessary
Also without some trickery, switching to LTSC requires a complete reinstallation, which for most people likely wasting sever hours.
There are no update, windows 10 is EOL since months and even before that it did not receive any real updates in a long time. The current version is stable and gets only security updates just like LTSC. There is no point to switch, at best its a waste of time and worst you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
> you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
That's a laughably ignorant statement for how windows app development works. Raymond Chen weeps on reading your comment. Enterprise edition is a strict superset in functionality over Home/Pro, and LTSC just adds longer support.
Enterprise IoT just comes with Windows Store components sitting dormantly, which you can promptly activate with `wsreset -i` and it's then identical with consumer editions (other than TikTok and Candy Crush not being forcibly reinstalled after every "feature update") where you can install apps from the Windows Store as needed or just use winget instead.
Enterprise IoT LTSC is just Enterprise IoT with longer support.
There is literally and strictly no downside with using IoT LTSC, especially with the combination of official Rufus + MAS to install from official ISOs.
If you would acctually read the comment(s) then you'd understand that SWITCHING has no upside, all your arguments are irrelevant there is no point in wasting time to switch the OS version especially not if you need a full reinstallation.
And whether you like it or not there are bad coded software out in the real world that do not work on LTSC they will just error out saying this is not a supported version of windows. To fix this you have to regedit your LTSC installation to pretend to be a normal installation. A hassle no sane person would recommend for absolutely zero benefit.
If you would actually read the comment then you'd see the mention of in-place upgrades instead of complete reinstall. There is no drawback of hassle with in-place upgrades as everything on you system is kept as-is, and it takes about the same time as a typical windows cumulative update if not less due to pre-downloading the files.
And instead of unbased hypotheticals perhaps you can point to even a single example of normie software that check for editions of windows as a result of bad coding rather than user-hostile intent? To do so you'd need to go out of your way to hack together undocumented corners instead of the path of least resistance of calling GetVersion() as would be characteristic of lazy coding.
For example, if you have an OLED or mini-LED monitor, you really don’t want to be on Windows 10 and miss out on HDR.
And sure, you can say “well nobody has an OLED monitor,” but I’d remind everyone that OLED displays have been pretty much standard on every gaming laptop mid-range and higher for a decent amount of time now.
A lot of the focus for Windows 11 development has been gaming performance and feature improvements. Game developers are also less and less likely over time to bother testing with Windows 10.
There are over 900 million PC gamers in the world.
PCs have 43% marketshare in the total game console market. Yes, that includes marketshare against the Nintendo Switch.
There’s a bit of a bubble of non-gaming in this forum, but gaming is definitely a top use case for PCs.
Just walk into your local Best Buy in the laptop section and count up how many of the laptops are marketed as gaming systems. That should give you a rough idea of how many systems are purchased with gaming as the primary intent.
Sure, HDR is a niche at this point in time, but technologies like OLED and mini LED are increasingly common. If you buy a gaming laptop in 2026 at most reasonable price points it’s very likely to have an OLED monitor.
Example: Legion 5a Gen 11 AMD, price on Lenovo’s site is $1500, has an OLED monitor. You can buy OLED gaming monitors below $500 nowadays, so a lot of people upgrading have that as their next upgrade path…if not today, then tomorrow.
On that subject, most people just use the copy of Windows that comes with the computer, so the whole debate about Windows 10 is perhaps not worth having in the first place. Microsoft most likely just misjudged the pace of hardware replacement especially in the AI era where computer sales have slowed.
I can plug an OLED display to a fricking Windows XP system with a Maxwell GPU and it'll work perfectly fine as long as it has a goddamn HDMI port. Has nothing to do with OS support.
No I didn't. I intentionally only wrote just OLED because it doesn't have anything to do with HDR not it requires any special support and it doesn't make any fucking sense why they included it along with HDR.
Probably because HDR on the vast majority of non-OLED monitors is useless. You really need a monitor with great contrast and a good HDR implementation for it to be of any benefit.
Yes and how many of those people have the cash for cutting edge tech?
And how much does that cutting edge tech truly matter for the core game experience.
I think the steam hardware survey might have some answers there and can tell us for which level of hardware currently developed games are being optimized for.
And that's just the currently developed ones. Not the massive backlog that existed before OLED or microLED HDR screens.
Tiny group. Tiny.
___
Btw, super lame to try to improve your argument after the fact with edits, but, well. Anyway.
Certainly, I agree that most gamers do not have cutting edge tech.
The cutting edge tech does improve the core experience. Quite a lot. You do have to have the money for it, though, and like anything else, diminishing returns on investment.
Steam hardware survey shows Windows 11 gained 2% this month over Windows 10. That’s a significant rate of change.
I recognize that you don’t like my use of edits, however, they are part of this platform and I’m not using them to diss anyone or engage in any kind of negative conversation. Just trying to make my point and support it.
Half the world's population is easily too young or too old or too poor or too rich to be gamers. So that 3 billion stat alone shows me people love just counting any moments spent in a video game at all for who knows what reason on any super bad quality 'game' as gamers.
I think you would agree that playing games and being a researcher are very different levels of depth. If you have decent public transit in your area, you'll definitely see at least one person on your commute playing some kind of candy crush-like phone game every single day. Yes, that's a "gamer."
Humans by their very nature use games to pass time and stimulate their mind and body, it's one of the most universal things about us.
That game of Wordle my mom plays once per day is probably what keeps her paying a subscription to NYT. That's real money. She'd probably drop the subscription otherwise.
NYT sells a games-only subscription for $50/year, $80/year per family. I think NYT executives would be happy to consider someone who plays games for 5 minutes per day or even 5 minutes per week a gamer.
I am a gamer who uses Linux! Gaming on Linux is lovely.
I actually left Windows to fix driver stability, which worked and did the trick. I couldn’t play Indiana Jones without crashing.
I should have maybe been more clear (grandparent to your comment) that I didn’t mean to be out defending Windows or anything like that. I migrated away from Windows this year.
I just find that the arguments for sticking to Windows 10 are super weak and overstated. Windows 11 is a decent OS and a clear improvement over 10, in my opinion. It’s just that for me, Linux is now better.
Not sure why you’re being so bitter toward me in particular.
I don’t personally own a monitor capable of HDR but if I had one I would prioritize it a little more, and in my case, I migrated to Linux to resolve specific graphics driver problems. Getting my games to work at all was more important than HDR.
I also recognize that laptops are generally more popular than desktops and OLED is far more common in that form factor. So when I talked about what gamers in general should prioritize regarding running windows 10 versus 11, I figure that many of them have laptops that therefore have OLED monitors capable of HDR.
Also, I was only using HDR as a single example of the gaming enhancements that Windows 11 has, we don’t have to dwell on that one in particular. We could talk about support for enhanced polling rate mice, or better windowed fullscreen, or better VRR.
I'm just greatly annoyed that a conversation that could've been about understanding and learning was (at least attempted to be) hijacked/derailed by some ego/identity stuff.
Letting people get away with that has led to the unpleasant state of the internet we have now and mild correction simply doesn't work.
Hence I've pointed at the exact holes/fault lines. Nothing personal.
I wish you a lot of fun gaming on linux.
At the risk of me sounding obtuse, I don’t see where ego or identity came into this conversation. I’m merely pointing out reasons why someone would choose Windows 11 over 10 and that I think the number of people who do that and play games on Windows is significant.
It seems like you’ve been mostly focused on proving me wrong and that’s why the conversation didn’t go the way you wanted it to go. I actually even agreed with you about some stuff, like the fact that most gamers don’t have cutting edge hardware.
I suggest that there are ways in which you contributed to the negative aspects of this interaction. Conversations are a two way street!
FWIW HDR works fine in Linux. Steam Deck (which runs it) has HDR support, both for its interface and for games. Bit confused by your comment, honestly.
It has per-app HDR profiles, auto-HDR, content-only HDR (e.g. you want to watch an HDR video but don’t want your desktop to be HDR), and, on a related topic, better handling of VRR and windowed full screen.
Not that Windows 10 is wildly deficient in these areas, but it has a lot of improvements with display settings and capabilities in general. In my experience with the Windows 11 display settings, it’s an overall big improvement, and I do kind of miss it now that I’m on Linux (e.g., setting up virtual displays with Apollo streaming so that client game stream devices have their own separate display settings per-device was a breeze thanks to the excellent way Windows handles and configures unique sets of attached displays.)
Unlike high refresh rates, 1440p resolution, and variable refresh rates that all were so clearly steps above my previous, 60hz basic HD display that I regretted not being an early adopter, HDR has been an immense letdown.
I can't even tell if it's on or not, even while my monitor and GPU assure me it is. As far as I can tell, the most obvious feature was shabbier looking colors, because they are de-saturated for some reason.
I played with the settings tab shared here[0], but the stupid "Brightness" slider is not obvious at all. Is bright good? Is bright bad? WTF?
That post has some other things to look into though, maybe I need a calibrated color profile? Will that get me colors that actually look better than an SDR display? Who knows.... It doesn't make any sense to me that improved brightness space should somehow result in less saturated colors...
Try read maybe? There is no benefit to switch to LTSC because normal windows 10 is EOL there are no updates/no features updates and thus all the benefits LTSC HAD are moot. Its a total waste of time to switch to LTSC. A clean switch needs a full reinstallation.
I wouldn't suggest an old LTSC version, but in a relatively recent update MS stopped allowing non-LTSC versions to not populate the start menu with ms store ads when your search locally. For me, that was the final straw - I switched to the latest Win11 LTSC after that, and it's a decidedly better user experience without the cruft I didn't need or want.
> You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10.
That's some very confident sounding bullshit.
Latest LTSC is 21H2, which exactly the same build as the (non-LTSC) 22H2. The only difference is the feature enablement package. Which means you aren't lacking any optimizations.
I'm not even sure if it's missing any "features", but even if it does, I'm 101% sure it some BS "feature".
So you suggest switch over to LTSC for having the exact same OS because it's better? Make it make sense pls.
I'm confident became I have tired it all and LTSC has zero benefit and only possible downsides.
All the benefits it once had are irrelevant nowadays because windows 10 is EOL and there are no more annoying updates regardless of which version you use.
I know that no one who uses it likes to reinstall it unless absolutely necessary. Its pointless in this case so what's your argument? That people should waste more time becase they already waste time? Genius /s
It is, and if you can switch, it’s highly recommended. I have some pretty bespoke old RS-232 Windows software that was an absolute disaster to get working under Debian with Wine a few years back, so I (and others) might still need to keep a copy of Windows around.
Unironically, I had the most success with old windows programs not when using wine directly but using proton with steam. I personally use umu[1] to use proton without directly needing to run steam. I wrote a small KDE script for .exe files so I can just double click them and they run lol. Or for setups I can right click them and just install them as a setup and it automatically creates a app shortcut I can open.
Yes! I do here [1]. But keep in mind I am using NixOS and so it looks a bit weird. You should be able to just copy paste the script part and it should work when you have umu at path.
> Might want to try again, Wine progressed a lot in the past couple years.
You could even go as far as suggesting SteamOS once they release the OS to more devices. Gaming themed sure but it's a flavor of Arch and you have full control over what gets installed.
Maybe get your governments and citizens to innovate and create their own instead of relying so heavily on other countries. I thought that's the direction other countries were trying to go.
Certainly not unattended, but no AI should ever be unattended.
But if you closely guide it, support it with tools like Ghidra and force force force force force a process with many sanity checks and quintuple-checks, it's possible.
What previously needed a whole team and months might be one guy, a lot of tokens and 1-3 weeks.
Doable, fun, and interesting.
__
Judging by the downvotes, I guess people mistook the initial comment for HN VC fueled AI delusions and I can't blame them for that.
That's not what it was tho.
How do you guide it when you have no idea yourself? You mean you must first reverse engineer it manually and then hint it to the solution? Why would you do that at that point?
I feel like you might still be perceiving the AI suggestion as some magic box that just does things.
It's not. It's a very fast very eager junior.
Why and how do people hand work to juniors?
You have a rough idea where you want to go, you have a rough idea what needs to be done, and then you iterate.
For example, you think "okay, I need some way of validating this" and then you tell it to run the software to generate test data.
While errors may creep in, you should be able to validate that step.
And then you use that test data to validate whatever next steps it should be doing.
It's essentially the same workflow as any mapping out of something new, but with the individual mapping steps being done by a drone.
You do still draw the actual map, do logistics and strategize.
It's not easy work, but it's also not difficult work. What it is is laborious, and that's where LLMs help.
__
To stick with your database format question:
If the software uses that data, it also needs code to parse and interact (with) it.
This code resides within it, and you can forcefully pull it out.
That step of "write me a spec for this data format based on this code. Build a parser in python and build test cases using this DB file" can be done agentically (when sliced into small logical blocks of work orders).
Out of interest, what value do you think that a comment like that has, in a forum such as this? You're not likely to be informing people with information they're not already abundantly aware of.
Whereas the person you're responding to is adding value, for me at least. I am in what might be an edge-case position where I need to run software specific to Windows and, much more importantly run hardware that uses drivers which seemingly don't work on Windows 11 (I only learnt recently, whilst planning to finally 'upgrade').
I couldn't even begin to do what I do, ably and competently at least, in a Linux environment.
And I've had at least one laptop for general use running some flavour of Linux for about 16 years now.
A lot of these no value, didn't ask, pro-linux comments are probably leftovers from linux software maintainer groups and it's passive aggressive culture. And we all know what kind of a role model that person used to be. They've been in that cesspool for too long to recognize how to interact with people.
Condolences on your hardware problem btw. Give the windows 10 iot version a shot - it's a fairly quick install anyway.
I'm not from any of the above, just someone who kept trying Linux, and it didn't feel as ready or good as implied by others, but for the last half decade maybe even full decade, the story for Linux gaming and daily use has been superior.
This. Linux is my primary OS for both work and home, but I have a Mac laptop for travel as the battery life of any Linux laptop I tried is very bad. And this includes a modern System 76, supposedly Linux-friendly with drivers, which drains the battery on fairly light workloads in about 2 hours. My 2c.
You can continue using normal Windows 10 if you have a Microsoft account attached to it. They give you the option to sign up for free extended updates (until 2027).
I did that for someone (after jumping through QUITE some hoops) and apparently the next days some popup made the person click the upgrade button anyway.
So yeah, probably just dark pattern + non-technical user but still.
Eh, I’m just going to keep using Windows 10 without the account. I’m sure as an ethical company Microsoft will at least distribute patches for any security issues that were present on the day I bought the OS, especially because they are still developing the patches.
...which is exactly what the featured article is about. But 2032 > 2027, so I have to assume the person you replied to already knew that and was providing additional advice.
My guess would be because too many users held out with Win10, are not really a potential income stream, and MS would rather keep them MS customers than Linux or Mac (their next machine might be a Neo rather than Win11 these days).
The cost to Microsoft is essentially zero if they ate already committed to these security updates (and they are, at least for the LTSC branch and some government contracts)
We had a PC that came properly-licensed with that edition of Windows (with the matching sticker and everything), and it didn't work out as a desktop machine for the intended user. It's been a year or two and some details are lost, but IIRC there were issues with some Intuit program or other.
It was probably something that could have been worked around, but workarounds tend to pile up and become difficult to track. I avoided the problem by putting a more-pedestrian version of Windows 10 on it instead.
Some "bad" coded programs have hard-coded version check and check for the OS name instead of build number, if they forgot LTSC (and server and education) the software will refuse to run on these version.
Some reg edits can fix this but its a pointless hassle, there is no need to use LTSC today there are no more annoying updates and unwanted features being added.
I have a windows 10 pro machine here running since 3 month 24/7.
Also MS go to great lengths to make the secret good version of Windows (It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Mint) very difficult to buy.
So just torrent it. It's bad enough running Windows let alone giving money to MS.
> It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Min
I am not necessarily a Microsoft hater per se, but to insinuate
that Linux is on the same level as the Microsoft operating system
is really strange to me. Whenever I, for instance, have to copy
files to windows, I am getting annoyed at how slow it is compared
to Linux. And that's just one issue I have. Another one is how slow
e. g. ruby is on windows, compared to linux. The windows operating
system is simply not good. Linux also has issues, in particular
the main GUIs (both qt and gtk suck).
And good god...windows 11 updates still take fucking hours and still require multiple reboots. How this is still so painful after 2 decades is beyond me
And even worse when the full-disk encryption requires you to unlock the computer after every reboot. It's just enough that the entire installation needs to be attended, and prevents you from doing anything else in the meantime.
Meanwhile, on Linux, my emacs session has a longer uptime than Windows.
The update system is such a mess that I now dread booting into Windows. I have been in multiple situations where an update has required a reboot - but my boot manager defaults to Linux - so whatever update process was supposed to happen on reboot doesn't happen, which means that the next time I boot into Windows I am either A) waiting for an update to complete (which is so fucking slow) AND/OR B)The update runs and fails because I have taken too long between booting into Windows and for whatever reason it has to roll back and then RUN THE UPDATE AGAIN. I understand the fundamental need to reboot because some updates effect the kernel in such a way that the entire thing has to be reloaded. But it seems like Windows is rebooting for MOST if not EVERY update. If you are patching kernel level bugs with this frequency this far into the lifecycle of the product you have some very serious issues or more likely I am guessing that they are indiscriminately pushing "features" that nobody asked for and then they are just forcing user reboots because their bloated apps/slop are now using so much RAM and are so inefficient that the only way to "fix" the inevitable performance loss is to reboot (I am only being half snarky here).
It does support "modern gaming" yes, but like the sibling comment mentions, at least Riot's anti-cheat demands Windows 10 22H2 (the last iteration of Win10) as a minimum. There are a few somewhat convoluted workarounds floating around that people use. Also Adobe CS seems to require Win10 22H2.
There used to be a website something like "windowsserver2008gaming.com" or something like that idr the specific domain, that was literally a guide to turn old windows server OS installs into gaming computers. The golden years.
My only caveat is that I’m not sure how it handles multiplayer games that require anti-cheat or DRM-style mechanisms, but it’s been flawless with every title I’ve thrown at it so far (BG3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk, Ori, etc)
Whilst true, the IoT naming is a bit misleading. It's not just designed for IoT devices/purposes. It can run pretty well as a normal operating system, not much is different. (Think Payment Systems, Library Computers, etc).
I think Microsoft just wanted to be in on the "Internet of Things" hype train. The Windows IoT Core is the cut back version of Windows designed explicitly for headless, IoT stuff.
It's actually a question relating to what some people want to do with their computer. Most people don't run an OS because of some moral objection to other OS's but because it lets them do what they want with their device.
I don’t feel particularly chained to proprietary software just by playing games. I play all of them on Linux using open source software.
Yes, the games themselves are proprietary, but that’s because they’re primarily art pieces, and proprietary licenses makes some logical sense in that case.
Terrible, almost consultant-level advice - particularly on a thread about how the actual Windows 10 release is getting extended support until 2027. The IoT release is missing a ton of installed things, such as Microsoft Store Login (needed for Microsoft apps). If you want security updates, stay on your existing OS instead of using one designed for a totally different purpose, and Microsoft will continue to push out the date...
Xbox/Microsoft Store Auth is used for a ton of logins, not just games. Similarly, you can be dismissive of Edge (another thing not included), but the Microsoft Webview Framework is Edge-based (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...) and will break a variety of useful applications if it's not available.
Be derisive as you want, but your advice is awful. The IoT enterprise release is for IoT use cases. The types of things people do on consumer OSes are not fully supported.
Using Windows Server 2025 (it has an evaluation version), I encountered a few problems (Xbox Controller needing to dig out de Windows 7-era drivers, Meta Quest audio not working, using pnputil to import missing drivers from a normal Win11 install) but otherwise it's been quite smooth sailing.
Not having Store login sounds bad, but it also means the system cannot trick you into linking your account to a Microsoft account, which is a plus (though accidental login is reversible IIRC). (I am not sure if Minecraft, which is the only game I know to require such login, actually worked or not).
Using not-for-purpose OS for gaming does lead to some hiccups, but to me those hiccups are preferable to the constant fight against your OS trying to shove things down your throat or disregarding your choices (of not wanting copilot, of wanting a local account, of not wanting ad-like stuff in the OS).
(Fedora would be easier to setup at that point, but anticheats...)
I also tried the IoT LTSC evaluation which generally worked better (basically, it has all the drivers the Server version is missing, plus QoL features like Win+V are enabled by default) but buying legitimate keys was not possible as a regular consumer.
What even is Microsoft's strategy? Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot and being all react wasn't great. Now we have a hardware shortage and ai in everything. I miss the time when it was "My computer" and not "This PC". I just hope they keep Windows 10 around till 2030 and longer...
>> Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot and being all react wasn't great.
For me a bigger concern is that Windows 11 requires MS account, and making harder and harder to bypass it. This is a disrespect for my freedom and privacy. The hardware is not the biggest issue because it might catch up eventually. https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-...
Also the constant turning on despite my prior explicitly disabling of spyware (memory ‘live sampling’ to the cloud for ‘virus protection’, one drive ‘auto backup’), and features I’ve explicitly disabled like copilot.
It’s creepy as fuck, and for no real benefit to me that I can tell.
The privacy-destroying "telemetry" continues to transmute from a theoretical problem to a realistic concern too.
For example, many printers puts forensic marks onto pages identifying their serial number, while MS/Apple log all your device serial numbers, which in turn is subject to seizure/threats/theft.
The upshot is you can't print an "anonymous" flyer stating I Dislike The Regime without the risk that thugs of said regime will be outside your door later.
> memory ‘live sampling’
"Citizen, the signature of a Wrongthink picture was detected in your telescreen..."
The printer thing seems pretty unrelated, and I don’t think there’s much evidence that simply logging in to your system with your Microsoft account has anything to do with telemetry of the actual content of your computer.
You can obviously send a lot of personal data through Microsoft services that use that account, but merely logging in that way doesn’t seem to just upload your life to Microsoft, either.
It's a simple example of how the arcane telemetry they demand is actually far more dangerous to you than it first appears.
This is incredibly common when it comes to security and privacy issues, where it's not immediately obvious how things can be abused. (The truly obvious things tend to get fixed, after all.)
> I don’t think [...] your Microsoft account has anything to do with telemetry
My brother in tech, I think you're blinding yourself out of forlorn hope here.
Microsoft has spent over a decade increasing the mandatory "telemetry", which contains a complete profile all your computer hardware with serial numbers plus all the software you run and when you run it [0]. The same company has consistently made it harder and harder for anyone to not sign up for an account in order to even install the OS.
They already collect the data in a very deliberate and strategic way. What you ought to be seeking is evidence they don't keep it.
I appreciate the fact that you sent over a very good paper.
After reading it, I am still not sure I see how this is particularly alarming information. I can see how it would help a forensic investigator who has physical access to the device.
The most personal aspect seems to be the list of installed and removed programs, which I would agree is stepping across boundaries of privacy.
The paper notes that this whole studied telemetry package is part of the telemetry service you can opt out of.
The rest seems to be device identifiers and connected devices. They mention that the device identifiers could lead to having part of an encryption key but that part of the paper seemed really vague. My takeaway from that section was that maybe it could lead an investigator to knowing which specific piece of hardware to use in order to decrypt something, but they’d likely need physical access to that hardware.
I get the impression is that the intent here is for an IT department or Windows developers to be able to respond to cyberattacks and deal with malware and the like. The paper you linked made that aspect pretty clear.
The printer thing is a good example, but again, just too unrelated to this particular subject. At least, in my opinion.
The typical response if someone comes knocking is ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. And really, how would they prove it unless you left a stack of printouts next to the door?
Now they could prove it was your printer (and that has happened multiple times in prosecutions!), even if you printed it years ago.
I think there are a lot of things that are potentially problematic where we depend on having a functioning society with real legal protections and due process.
Nobody can come in my house without a judicial warrant. And, hopefully, someday there are better privacy laws in the US that mean that Microsoft must handle its collected data more responsibly.
If your society has succumbed to serious oppression, does evidence really matter anyway? If the cartel is knocking on your door, do they need evidence to do what they want to do?
Evidence itself is just evidence. It can condemn you and it can exonerate you. If it can be proved that something came from my printer, that means my lawyer can also prove something didn't come from my printer.
I am by no means saying that I would personally willingly sign up for telemetry, or that I think it's better to have than not. I'm just not in alarm over it because I think that response is disproportional.
I left 2 licenses of copilot in my car, someone broke into my car and left 4 copilot licenses there. The world is a dangerous place honestly, you cannot be protected enough..
The average consumer doesn't care about signing up for an account, so that's an easy win for getting them in the email system and thereby tie all the telemetry events to an easily recognizable account. Imagine how valuable this information is.
Now you have system level events tied to a user, that might also purchase an office product and pump out more events.
Well, they might still do it but less aggressively. For example, only when using MS Store or only some specific services. Apple uses a similar strategy with MacOS. Online accounts can also be convenient with with service integrations, provided they are optional. Also, I slightly disagree that average users don't care at all. Even setting aside ideological reasons, mandatory online accounts are terrible if there is no internet or the system must be preinstalled for another person (although the person who installs is not that average user). The system should be functional in offline mode.
To download apps on an iphone, you need an apple id. This is just something every apple user has accepted since its inception. I would also be surprised if the majority of macOS/OSX users didn't have an apple id/icloud account.
This is not a new concept. What's new is that microsoft is enforcing it. But making it less obvious on how to disable the requirement when you install the OS. Or in most cases require hacks to do so.
Yeah, TPM and secure boot aren’t a big deal at all. I use them on Linux as a security enhancement.
I really don’t know how a no-brainer security implement like that became such a lighting rod.
As far as React being used in the OS, well, if we are arguing about underlying technology there are plenty of flawed implementations to be found on a number of platforms. I don’t think the end user is concerned.
I say all this as someone who does not recommend Windows and no longer uses it, to be clear.
>What even is Microsoft's strategy? Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot
Their goal is to help their OEM buddies sell new computers despite the fact that PCs have been “good enough” for a decade or longer, because those new PCs will come with Windows and the cycle is what keeps each one relevant.
Otherwise they'd risk being usurped, which almost happened circa 2006 with the one-two-three-four punch of GNOME2 (great UI), Compiz (‘wow’ factor that gets people to jump in and try it), OpenOffice-dot-org 2.0 (when OpenDocument Format was getting a ton of press), and Windows Longhorn/Vista being famously late-and-then-hated. Luckily for Microsoft, the Desktop Linux community decided to throw all that out with Wayland (which is Fine but set us back two decades) and GNOME3 which is irredeemable — *James Rolfe voice* what were they thinking??
Microsoft doesn't care about end users like you or I. We don't impact their bottom line at all. 0%. They care about business customers using other products, and occasionally data collection.
Windows has to be just functional enough to keep businesses that use it from raising a stink about it.
I was a ubuntu user and work forced me to use a windows machine. Over the years I've accumulated so much software that I have no intention of leaving behind (photoshop cs2). In the past year though, I've been transitioning back to Ubuntu. So many software now offer Linux support, there's even less incentives to stay with Microsoft products. And of course is doing everything in it's power to alienate us.
Have you tried wineHQ? It works very well IMO. But I also understand your point of view here; I have a second computer system on my left running Win10.
You can get a completely minimalist Windows 11 by grabbing an ISO from Microsoft then reprocessing the ISO by feeding it into this utility: https://github.com/christitustech/winutil (Win11 Creator Tab) to get a NEW ISO which you then install. The end result is an extremely clean and stable Windows 11 installation.
The resulting image can remove telemetry, bypass hardware requirement checks, and enable local account setup out of the box.
Do be aware that an autounattend.xml can cause Windows setup to execute arbitrary code. Their provenance matters too. It's relatively easy to encode scripts (or even binaries) into the XML to run during or after Windows setup. You can eyeball them, for sure, but I bet most people don't.
Indeed. I mention this in light of the high-profile supply-chain attacks recently across diverse platforms (Arch AUR, Shai-Hulud, etc). Any online tool that purports to modify an entire install medium should be heavily and continually scrutinised. I'm not saying the developer can't be trusted, but the infrastructure and people in general can't.
Anything I need windows for is work related and runs on my locked down (and actually very cleanly stripped down) windows 11 laptop. Its amazing how much Microsoft hates the consumer but bends over backwards for volume license purchasers.
They do still force the volume licensors with their bullshit. However IT admins are used to dealing with Microsoft's bullshit and they can find ways to automate de-enshitification.
TBH many volume licensors do actually want to use Windows as a service and just pay a negotiated fee per license.
My last Windows machine is for games. Hopefully I'll be able to get a Steam machine for an easy exit. If a game doesn't run on it, I won't buy or play it.
New games run really well on Linux. At this point, I don't even check. If it's an online competitive game, I can't play it. Otherwise, it almost certainly will work on Arch Linux
Even aside from issues with W10 specifically, I'm so tired of having to download GBs of updates and then figure out which launch params to use to trick $GAME into launching when I find a few spare minutes to play games using Steam.
Contrast that with my Miyoo Mini+ handheld which lets me dip into games immediately whenever I have a few spare minutes (around the house, waiting for an appointment, waiting for kids, etc.). There are _thousands_ of games I've missed over the years and I've pretty much decided that I don't need to (i.e. can't) keep up with AAA releases or new consoles.
Too late. Had to switch to Fedora last year because my machine didn’t support TPM 2.0 and the CPU was one generation older. I know TPM 1.3 is less secure, but I didn’t care in the context of that specific machine. I wish I had the option. Fedora runs great on it though.
I wish there was a security-only-updates channel for Windows in general. I basically want no new features, I just want something that doesn't change and doesn't brick on random tuesdays.
Too late! Win10 Pro absolutely demanded and harassed me til I upgraded to the dreaded 11. I put up with it for gaming and did registry hack workarounds to stop the stupid web connectivity and TV-like content it was pushing. It wasn't enough. The system was rebooting with updates all the time, messing with my settings I'd googled, and then someone on HN said:
'Linux on the desktop runs Steam games better than ever. Join us, brother.' I installed Fedora Workstation 43, played my games (albeit with a few quirks), but then as a side effect started all these little Linux and Claude projects after I got home from work, which I hadn't done since my 20s.
I have Win10 on a computer on my left side as "backup" system.
I decided I won't change to Win11, so Win10 will be last
Windows version to use. It's no issue in that I am using
Linux since late ~2004 anyway, but I am also unwilling to
cater to Microsoft anylonger. I think it is time that governments
no longer force people to use Windows in general. For similar
reasons I reject the upcoming mandatory age sniffing that
lobbyists are pushing for (together with their attempt to
kill off VPNs).
Needs to be logged in, so not exactly user friendly. But made me happy, I was afraid I might have to do updates again now I can continue life not being bothered by windows update.
I think you can log in to activate without changing to a microsoft account for desktop login (or at least you can switch back, I have some machines on microsoft account and some not)
The updates themselves can be a driver of new Win 11 computer purchases. My dad got a bad update (I couldn't figure out which one) which froze his computer a few minutes after boot. I had to reset Windows, and it worked again after that, though now the pain is mine because I have to reinstall/reconfig all his stuff. But a normal person without a free tech-support guy like me around might have just bought a new PC at that point.
Funny story, my parents also bought a new windows 11 laptop because of random trouble on their older windows 10 laptop. Used only for a media PC to HDMI out to the living room tv. They control it via wireless mouse and keyboard from the sofa.
The new windows 11 laptop was slower, weirder, and got stuck on some update. So back to Costco it went after 75 days of the 90 day return Policy.
I installed Linux Mint Mate on the old windows 10 laptop and they're happy.
I cannot see a single reason why Windows still being used within business:
1. Endless security issues
2. Companies have to spend millions of dollars to make it secure, and fail
3. Everything is SaaS nowadays, you just need a browser and fast internet
4. Linux distros can easily replace Windows, no licensing, no dramas, no subscriptions
My guesses is that companies still have Windows because of the support, they can burn money monthly for some other company to provide support when things go bad.
You do not need that for Linux distros, it just works, faster, no matter the hardware age, it just works.
If you are end user, you have even less excuses to use Windows period. Everything from gaming to banking, from coding to 3D editing, work just fine on Linux.
>There are plenty of popular games that don't work on Linux
Games that require kernel level spyware installed???
Good luck getting a Linux user to do make such stupid choice. Giving you a company kernel level aka full access to your operating system just to play a game. Yeah mate, normal people won't do that.
Fortnite?? Couldn't give half care about this game.
If you need Windows for whatever reason, abandon it and switch over to Linux with Wine, Steam or anything else that you really need it for. By now, Windows has gotten so bad, there is absolutely no reason to go to a newer version in order to make it work on existing hardware.
"Quietly," like in "has quietly become the biggest/best X" is silly and everywhere, but "quietly" in this sense of "they didn't announce it and people just happened to notice the change" is fine and descriptive I would say.
The old "Windows alternates good and bad releases" rule is dead and buried. Every major version since Windows 7 has been a downgrade on what came before. I'd rather be using Windows 8 than Windows 10 and you will have to drag me kicking and screaming into Windows 11.
Oh, I had no idea, probably because I use Open-Shell Menu (a start menu replacement). Thanks for clearing up this totally false assumption of mine, I thought one of the reasons they made Win11 was to update the fine print to enable crap like this. But if they can do that in Win10, too, I really don't get why they ever bothered with Win11 and not just kept updating Win10 to turn it into whatever they want.
Folks can’t afford to buy a new computer right now, so M$ needs to give them an alternative to installing Ubuntu and finding out it’s plenty fast on their windows 10 machine.
Forget about web development. All profession-specific software except web and app programming still runs best on Windows. Engineering, simulation, city planning, accounting, complex management, supply chain optimization, media production, statistics. If you're getting paid for some output where computers play an extra-boost tool role, simply being a means to the job, the software you'd use will be on Windows.
If a piece of software is specialized enough that people maintain it for decades, if it has nice detailed and complicated GUIs to handle complex tasks, it will be on Windows. It will rely on Windows' stable API. Those software goes back to 80s and 90s. They have organically grown. Linux kernel requires thousands of developers to keep alive. Linux kernel is much simpler than profession-specific software. Windows Stable ABI allows much fewer people (low 100s) to maintain much more complex software than the kernel.
Even without the stable ABI, Linux is hostile to the closed source software unless that software is served via a TCP socket.
Web can challenge this with Web Assembly and some combination of edge / datacenter computing now. Still quite the way out for demanding things like local simulation and CAD/CAM. There should also be strong economic reasons to throw actually trillions (unlike AI and other SV bullshit balloons) worth of software and entire systems out, not just to spite MS.
It's nothing inherent about Windows (not even one-click .exe files), it's existing programs and drivers that only run on Windows, which of course only run on Windows because it was already popular.
For me it's MS Office. Sorry, but OpenOffice.org and the Google apps still don't come close. (And of course Office file formats are their own lock in, very analogously to the programs that run on Windows.)
The lockin is that you buy a new computer, and when you turn it on Windows is there. Like 1% of people have any concept that they could change that or how they would go about it. It doesn't suck enough yet for them to try changing it.
If you want to talk about why not macOS or Chrome, there are different reasons, but of the people buying PCs, that's why they're on Windows.
Don't forget the Windows NT configuration consoles like MMC, and other 9x configuration dialogs not accessible from the control panel, like the one to show or hide desktop icons.
The reason for this is that there are still drivers for old hardware that hook into the old control panel elements to actually function.
If you get rid of the control panel applets, you break the drivers.
This is also an old and out-of-date complaint. Almost all of the settings are now inside the Settings application and only inside the Settings application, with the related control panel applets gone.
Anyone who still needs to run Windows 10 for whatever reason should switch over to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 (version 21H2) which will continue to receive security updates up through 2032.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/rel...
This is bad advice that is being repeated over and over by the so called tech influencers. You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10. And for the foreseeable future you gain nothing at all. If one day the normal version acctually stops reviving security updates, it almost certainly will be possible to switch the update channel to LTSC and get the LTSC updates that way but for now this is not needed and the switch is unnecessary Also without some trickery, switching to LTSC requires a complete reinstallation, which for most people likely wasting sever hours.
> so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10
Windows gets worse with each update, so this is actually a plus.
There are no update, windows 10 is EOL since months and even before that it did not receive any real updates in a long time. The current version is stable and gets only security updates just like LTSC. There is no point to switch, at best its a waste of time and worst you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
> you could run into issues with software that expects home/pro and not LTSC.
That's a laughably ignorant statement for how windows app development works. Raymond Chen weeps on reading your comment. Enterprise edition is a strict superset in functionality over Home/Pro, and LTSC just adds longer support.
Enterprise IoT just comes with Windows Store components sitting dormantly, which you can promptly activate with `wsreset -i` and it's then identical with consumer editions (other than TikTok and Candy Crush not being forcibly reinstalled after every "feature update") where you can install apps from the Windows Store as needed or just use winget instead.
Enterprise IoT LTSC is just Enterprise IoT with longer support.
There is literally and strictly no downside with using IoT LTSC, especially with the combination of official Rufus + MAS to install from official ISOs.
Actually, with MAS, you can also just download the IoT LTSC iso to perform an in-place upgrade that keeps all your existing Windows Store apps and program installs etc., just follow https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol#upgrade-windows-10-home-...
If you would acctually read the comment(s) then you'd understand that SWITCHING has no upside, all your arguments are irrelevant there is no point in wasting time to switch the OS version especially not if you need a full reinstallation. And whether you like it or not there are bad coded software out in the real world that do not work on LTSC they will just error out saying this is not a supported version of windows. To fix this you have to regedit your LTSC installation to pretend to be a normal installation. A hassle no sane person would recommend for absolutely zero benefit.
If you would actually read the comment then you'd see the mention of in-place upgrades instead of complete reinstall. There is no drawback of hassle with in-place upgrades as everything on you system is kept as-is, and it takes about the same time as a typical windows cumulative update if not less due to pre-downloading the files.
And instead of unbased hypotheticals perhaps you can point to even a single example of normie software that check for editions of windows as a result of bad coding rather than user-hostile intent? To do so you'd need to go out of your way to hack together undocumented corners instead of the path of least resistance of calling GetVersion() as would be characteristic of lazy coding.
Very untrue for gaming in particular.
For example, if you have an OLED or mini-LED monitor, you really don’t want to be on Windows 10 and miss out on HDR.
And sure, you can say “well nobody has an OLED monitor,” but I’d remind everyone that OLED displays have been pretty much standard on every gaming laptop mid-range and higher for a decent amount of time now.
A lot of the focus for Windows 11 development has been gaming performance and feature improvements. Game developers are also less and less likely over time to bother testing with Windows 10.
Most people are in fact not gamers. Like.. at all. And even those that are probably don't own an OLED or mini-LED monitor.
Most people just want a computer that does the word, the chrome and that's about it.
There are over 900 million PC gamers in the world.
PCs have 43% marketshare in the total game console market. Yes, that includes marketshare against the Nintendo Switch.
There’s a bit of a bubble of non-gaming in this forum, but gaming is definitely a top use case for PCs.
Just walk into your local Best Buy in the laptop section and count up how many of the laptops are marketed as gaming systems. That should give you a rough idea of how many systems are purchased with gaming as the primary intent.
Sure, HDR is a niche at this point in time, but technologies like OLED and mini LED are increasingly common. If you buy a gaming laptop in 2026 at most reasonable price points it’s very likely to have an OLED monitor.
Example: Legion 5a Gen 11 AMD, price on Lenovo’s site is $1500, has an OLED monitor. You can buy OLED gaming monitors below $500 nowadays, so a lot of people upgrading have that as their next upgrade path…if not today, then tomorrow.
On that subject, most people just use the copy of Windows that comes with the computer, so the whole debate about Windows 10 is perhaps not worth having in the first place. Microsoft most likely just misjudged the pace of hardware replacement especially in the AI era where computer sales have slowed.
What is this 7-paragraph OLED talk about?
I can plug an OLED display to a fricking Windows XP system with a Maxwell GPU and it'll work perfectly fine as long as it has a goddamn HDMI port. Has nothing to do with OS support.
I guess you missed the part where they’re talking about HDR?
Yes, the monitor will work but if you want to take full advantage of the panels you enable HDR.
No I didn't. I intentionally only wrote just OLED because it doesn't have anything to do with HDR not it requires any special support and it doesn't make any fucking sense why they included it along with HDR.
Probably because HDR on the vast majority of non-OLED monitors is useless. You really need a monitor with great contrast and a good HDR implementation for it to be of any benefit.
Yes and how many of those people have the cash for cutting edge tech?
And how much does that cutting edge tech truly matter for the core game experience. I think the steam hardware survey might have some answers there and can tell us for which level of hardware currently developed games are being optimized for.
And that's just the currently developed ones. Not the massive backlog that existed before OLED or microLED HDR screens.
Tiny group. Tiny.
___
Btw, super lame to try to improve your argument after the fact with edits, but, well. Anyway.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Certainly, I agree that most gamers do not have cutting edge tech.
The cutting edge tech does improve the core experience. Quite a lot. You do have to have the money for it, though, and like anything else, diminishing returns on investment.
Steam hardware survey shows Windows 11 gained 2% this month over Windows 10. That’s a significant rate of change.
I recognize that you don’t like my use of edits, however, they are part of this platform and I’m not using them to diss anyone or engage in any kind of negative conversation. Just trying to make my point and support it.
Calling 1 in 7 people on Earth a gamer is a stretch, unless we're calling preloaded trivial game players, gamers.. and even then I'm not sure.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/420621/number-of-pc-game...
https://www.demandsage.com/most-played-games-right-now/
Some of it is unclear about multi-platform splits and mobile gaming but I don’t think I’m incredibly far off.
Gamers across all platform estimated at over 3 billion: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers
Half the world's population is easily too young or too old or too poor or too rich to be gamers. So that 3 billion stat alone shows me people love just counting any moments spent in a video game at all for who knows what reason on any super bad quality 'game' as gamers.
Anyone with a smartphone can be a gamer.
I think my mom playing Wordle on her smartphone does indeed make her a gamer.
Yes and the world has 6 billion researchers too because we Google things.
It's a lot more useful though when words have meaning and we take them seriously, otherwise nothing really makes sense.
I think you would agree that playing games and being a researcher are very different levels of depth. If you have decent public transit in your area, you'll definitely see at least one person on your commute playing some kind of candy crush-like phone game every single day. Yes, that's a "gamer."
Humans by their very nature use games to pass time and stimulate their mind and body, it's one of the most universal things about us.
That game of Wordle my mom plays once per day is probably what keeps her paying a subscription to NYT. That's real money. She'd probably drop the subscription otherwise.
NYT sells a games-only subscription for $50/year, $80/year per family. I think NYT executives would be happy to consider someone who plays games for 5 minutes per day or even 5 minutes per week a gamer.
I gotta be honest, I personally don't think someone playing wordle is a gamer by the common usage of the word.
Non gamers who need a PC (most people are mobile only now) can probably use Linux at this point.
I am a gamer who uses Linux! Gaming on Linux is lovely.
I actually left Windows to fix driver stability, which worked and did the trick. I couldn’t play Indiana Jones without crashing.
I should have maybe been more clear (grandparent to your comment) that I didn’t mean to be out defending Windows or anything like that. I migrated away from Windows this year.
I just find that the arguments for sticking to Windows 10 are super weak and overstated. Windows 11 is a decent OS and a clear improvement over 10, in my opinion. It’s just that for me, Linux is now better.
So you're saying the cutting edge HDR features(?) in windows 11 are not all that important to you personally and thus do not warrant windows 11 usage?
Makes sense, yeah. Nice talking to you.
Not sure why you’re being so bitter toward me in particular.
I don’t personally own a monitor capable of HDR but if I had one I would prioritize it a little more, and in my case, I migrated to Linux to resolve specific graphics driver problems. Getting my games to work at all was more important than HDR.
I also recognize that laptops are generally more popular than desktops and OLED is far more common in that form factor. So when I talked about what gamers in general should prioritize regarding running windows 10 versus 11, I figure that many of them have laptops that therefore have OLED monitors capable of HDR.
Also, I was only using HDR as a single example of the gaming enhancements that Windows 11 has, we don’t have to dwell on that one in particular. We could talk about support for enhanced polling rate mice, or better windowed fullscreen, or better VRR.
I'm just greatly annoyed that a conversation that could've been about understanding and learning was (at least attempted to be) hijacked/derailed by some ego/identity stuff.
Letting people get away with that has led to the unpleasant state of the internet we have now and mild correction simply doesn't work.
Hence I've pointed at the exact holes/fault lines. Nothing personal. I wish you a lot of fun gaming on linux.
At the risk of me sounding obtuse, I don’t see where ego or identity came into this conversation. I’m merely pointing out reasons why someone would choose Windows 11 over 10 and that I think the number of people who do that and play games on Windows is significant.
It seems like you’ve been mostly focused on proving me wrong and that’s why the conversation didn’t go the way you wanted it to go. I actually even agreed with you about some stuff, like the fact that most gamers don’t have cutting edge hardware.
I suggest that there are ways in which you contributed to the negative aspects of this interaction. Conversations are a two way street!
FWIW HDR works fine in Linux. Steam Deck (which runs it) has HDR support, both for its interface and for games. Bit confused by your comment, honestly.
>you really don’t want to be on Windows 10 and miss out on HDR
My HDR monitor is connected to my Windows 10 machine and the HDR switch in settings is on and my monitor reports it is getting HDR
What am I supposedly missing?
Lemme guess...
A shinier notepad with builtin AI.
Ads, more ads.
A BSOD that's got 99% more black.
The "recall" spyware.
Mandatory Microslop account.
I could go on, but I use Linux
It has per-app HDR profiles, auto-HDR, content-only HDR (e.g. you want to watch an HDR video but don’t want your desktop to be HDR), and, on a related topic, better handling of VRR and windowed full screen.
Not that Windows 10 is wildly deficient in these areas, but it has a lot of improvements with display settings and capabilities in general. In my experience with the Windows 11 display settings, it’s an overall big improvement, and I do kind of miss it now that I’m on Linux (e.g., setting up virtual displays with Apollo streaming so that client game stream devices have their own separate display settings per-device was a breeze thanks to the excellent way Windows handles and configures unique sets of attached displays.)
Interesting.
Unlike high refresh rates, 1440p resolution, and variable refresh rates that all were so clearly steps above my previous, 60hz basic HD display that I regretted not being an early adopter, HDR has been an immense letdown.
I can't even tell if it's on or not, even while my monitor and GPU assure me it is. As far as I can tell, the most obvious feature was shabbier looking colors, because they are de-saturated for some reason.
I played with the settings tab shared here[0], but the stupid "Brightness" slider is not obvious at all. Is bright good? Is bright bad? WTF?
That post has some other things to look into though, maybe I need a calibrated color profile? Will that get me colors that actually look better than an SDR display? Who knows.... It doesn't make any sense to me that improved brightness space should somehow result in less saturated colors...
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/1h30brf/finall...
I honest don’t even have HDR myself, I was really just picking out an example I know of for “why windows 11 better.”
I’d have upgraded to it just for the screenshot tool to be honest.
> You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10.
Good.
This is exactly why people recommend it.
Try read maybe? There is no benefit to switch to LTSC because normal windows 10 is EOL there are no updates/no features updates and thus all the benefits LTSC HAD are moot. Its a total waste of time to switch to LTSC. A clean switch needs a full reinstallation.
I wouldn't suggest an old LTSC version, but in a relatively recent update MS stopped allowing non-LTSC versions to not populate the start menu with ms store ads when your search locally. For me, that was the final straw - I switched to the latest Win11 LTSC after that, and it's a decidedly better user experience without the cruft I didn't need or want.
> You go to an older version that only got security updates so you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10.
That's some very confident sounding bullshit.
Latest LTSC is 21H2, which exactly the same build as the (non-LTSC) 22H2. The only difference is the feature enablement package. Which means you aren't lacking any optimizations.
I'm not even sure if it's missing any "features", but even if it does, I'm 101% sure it some BS "feature".
So you suggest switch over to LTSC for having the exact same OS because it's better? Make it make sense pls. I'm confident became I have tired it all and LTSC has zero benefit and only possible downsides. All the benefits it once had are irrelevant nowadays because windows 10 is EOL and there are no more annoying updates regardless of which version you use.
> you will lack optimizations and features already in the current stable windows 10
Like improved animations, more wasted space and rounded windows corners ?
No, its 99% binary equal and there are no rounded corners in window 10 anyway.
> which for most people likely wasting sever hours
Yea I don't think you understand who uses windows and for what..
I know that no one who uses it likes to reinstall it unless absolutely necessary. Its pointless in this case so what's your argument? That people should waste more time becase they already waste time? Genius /s
Linux is free and less wasteful on resources on the other hand.
It is, and if you can switch, it’s highly recommended. I have some pretty bespoke old RS-232 Windows software that was an absolute disaster to get working under Debian with Wine a few years back, so I (and others) might still need to keep a copy of Windows around.
Unironically, I had the most success with old windows programs not when using wine directly but using proton with steam. I personally use umu[1] to use proton without directly needing to run steam. I wrote a small KDE script for .exe files so I can just double click them and they run lol. Or for setups I can right click them and just install them as a setup and it automatically creates a app shortcut I can open.
[1]https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/umu-launcher
Got a link to the script?
Yes! I do here [1]. But keep in mind I am using NixOS and so it looks a bit weird. You should be able to just copy paste the script part and it should work when you have umu at path.
[1] https://pastebin.com/JRaK4uRV
Might want to try again, Wine progressed a lot in the past couple years.
It works well, though its messages could use some TLC:
wine whatever.exe 2>/dev/null
> Might want to try again, Wine progressed a lot in the past couple years.
You could even go as far as suggesting SteamOS once they release the OS to more devices. Gaming themed sure but it's a flavor of Arch and you have full control over what gets installed.
VMs were not an option?
Can’t wait till Fable 6 can just decompile and reimplement old software like that.
Great for the americans. What are the rest of us going to do?
Use the distilled chinese models.
Try Opus 4.8? It's just a language translation task. LLMs should be good at it.
Maybe get your governments and citizens to innovate and create their own instead of relying so heavily on other countries. I thought that's the direction other countries were trying to go.
Good thing that the US frontier labs only download data from the US internet created by US citizens /s
At this point, you might want to consider throwing an LLM at it and just letting it reimplement the thing so that it runs on linux.
They can actually do that. They may not like it, but they can.
Reverse engineer a binary proprietary database format? I have some doubts.
Why?
Certainly not unattended, but no AI should ever be unattended.
But if you closely guide it, support it with tools like Ghidra and force force force force force a process with many sanity checks and quintuple-checks, it's possible.
What previously needed a whole team and months might be one guy, a lot of tokens and 1-3 weeks. Doable, fun, and interesting.
__
Judging by the downvotes, I guess people mistook the initial comment for HN VC fueled AI delusions and I can't blame them for that. That's not what it was tho.
How do you guide it when you have no idea yourself? You mean you must first reverse engineer it manually and then hint it to the solution? Why would you do that at that point?
I feel like you might still be perceiving the AI suggestion as some magic box that just does things. It's not. It's a very fast very eager junior.
Why and how do people hand work to juniors?
You have a rough idea where you want to go, you have a rough idea what needs to be done, and then you iterate.
For example, you think "okay, I need some way of validating this" and then you tell it to run the software to generate test data.
While errors may creep in, you should be able to validate that step.
And then you use that test data to validate whatever next steps it should be doing.
It's essentially the same workflow as any mapping out of something new, but with the individual mapping steps being done by a drone. You do still draw the actual map, do logistics and strategize.
It's not easy work, but it's also not difficult work. What it is is laborious, and that's where LLMs help.
__
To stick with your database format question:
If the software uses that data, it also needs code to parse and interact (with) it.
This code resides within it, and you can forcefully pull it out.
That step of "write me a spec for this data format based on this code. Build a parser in python and build test cases using this DB file" can be done agentically (when sliced into small logical blocks of work orders).
You see how you went from "it's easier to use ai instead of using wine on linux" to "to use ai you must do all this work"
Well then using wine was the correct solution to begin with?
> This code resides within it, and you can forcefully pull it out.
What code? If you had the code you could port it.
The slop engine can drive IDA just fine. Does hitch a bit on obfuscated code, but with some poking it does fine there too.
Out of interest, what value do you think that a comment like that has, in a forum such as this? You're not likely to be informing people with information they're not already abundantly aware of.
Whereas the person you're responding to is adding value, for me at least. I am in what might be an edge-case position where I need to run software specific to Windows and, much more importantly run hardware that uses drivers which seemingly don't work on Windows 11 (I only learnt recently, whilst planning to finally 'upgrade').
I couldn't even begin to do what I do, ably and competently at least, in a Linux environment.
And I've had at least one laptop for general use running some flavour of Linux for about 16 years now.
Maybe not you, but many times I am asked what my setup looks like, because I game on Linux which is not as problematic as it used to be in the 2000s.
A lot of these no value, didn't ask, pro-linux comments are probably leftovers from linux software maintainer groups and it's passive aggressive culture. And we all know what kind of a role model that person used to be. They've been in that cesspool for too long to recognize how to interact with people.
Condolences on your hardware problem btw. Give the windows 10 iot version a shot - it's a fairly quick install anyway.
I'm not from any of the above, just someone who kept trying Linux, and it didn't feel as ready or good as implied by others, but for the last half decade maybe even full decade, the story for Linux gaming and daily use has been superior.
[flagged]
Indeed, I'm fairly confident that I very specifically stated as much, as the fundamental underpinning of my comment.
You might be interested in https://www.reddit.com/ .
[flagged]
I don't know... laptop-mode and all, my battery runs out pretty quickly.
This. Linux is my primary OS for both work and home, but I have a Mac laptop for travel as the battery life of any Linux laptop I tried is very bad. And this includes a modern System 76, supposedly Linux-friendly with drivers, which drains the battery on fairly light workloads in about 2 hours. My 2c.
Unless it's some Microsoft version of Linux, of course, in which every keystroke you type performs a docker run ... or whatever.
Current trends indicate that regular Windows 10 may as well.
You can continue using normal Windows 10 if you have a Microsoft account attached to it. They give you the option to sign up for free extended updates (until 2027).
In theory.
I did that for someone (after jumping through QUITE some hoops) and apparently the next days some popup made the person click the upgrade button anyway.
So yeah, probably just dark pattern + non-technical user but still.
Eh, I’m just going to keep using Windows 10 without the account. I’m sure as an ethical company Microsoft will at least distribute patches for any security issues that were present on the day I bought the OS, especially because they are still developing the patches.
...which is exactly what the featured article is about. But 2032 > 2027, so I have to assume the person you replied to already knew that and was providing additional advice.
But they might keep extending it...
They have to update the IOT version anyway, so might as well get some money off of regular users anyway by "extending" it.
except they are extending it now for free
My guess would be because too many users held out with Win10, are not really a potential income stream, and MS would rather keep them MS customers than Linux or Mac (their next machine might be a Neo rather than Win11 these days).
The cost to Microsoft is essentially zero if they ate already committed to these security updates (and they are, at least for the LTSC branch and some government contracts)
They could actually profit from hoovering up your data. Hence the microslop account requirement.
Well, not just anyone can buy a license for it. You need some sort of enterprise volume license agreement, as far as I can tell.
Within EU, you could buy licenses from one of the legal license resell markets. For everyone outside of reach of the law, there‘s massgravel.
If you're considering switching to Win 10 IoT you're probably not in the "people who pay for Windows" category.
We had a PC that came properly-licensed with that edition of Windows (with the matching sticker and everything), and it didn't work out as a desktop machine for the intended user. It's been a year or two and some details are lost, but IIRC there were issues with some Intuit program or other.
It was probably something that could have been worked around, but workarounds tend to pile up and become difficult to track. I avoided the problem by putting a more-pedestrian version of Windows 10 on it instead.
Some "bad" coded programs have hard-coded version check and check for the OS name instead of build number, if they forgot LTSC (and server and education) the software will refuse to run on these version. Some reg edits can fix this but its a pointless hassle, there is no need to use LTSC today there are no more annoying updates and unwanted features being added. I have a windows 10 pro machine here running since 3 month 24/7.
Also MS go to great lengths to make the secret good version of Windows (It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Mint) very difficult to buy. So just torrent it. It's bad enough running Windows let alone giving money to MS.
You can just use the official iso with Rufus and MAS, no need to torrent sketchy backdoored versions.
> It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Min
I am not necessarily a Microsoft hater per se, but to insinuate that Linux is on the same level as the Microsoft operating system is really strange to me. Whenever I, for instance, have to copy files to windows, I am getting annoyed at how slow it is compared to Linux. And that's just one issue I have. Another one is how slow e. g. ruby is on windows, compared to linux. The windows operating system is simply not good. Linux also has issues, in particular the main GUIs (both qt and gtk suck).
And good god...windows 11 updates still take fucking hours and still require multiple reboots. How this is still so painful after 2 decades is beyond me
And even worse when the full-disk encryption requires you to unlock the computer after every reboot. It's just enough that the entire installation needs to be attended, and prevents you from doing anything else in the meantime.
Meanwhile, on Linux, my emacs session has a longer uptime than Windows.
The update system is such a mess that I now dread booting into Windows. I have been in multiple situations where an update has required a reboot - but my boot manager defaults to Linux - so whatever update process was supposed to happen on reboot doesn't happen, which means that the next time I boot into Windows I am either A) waiting for an update to complete (which is so fucking slow) AND/OR B)The update runs and fails because I have taken too long between booting into Windows and for whatever reason it has to roll back and then RUN THE UPDATE AGAIN. I understand the fundamental need to reboot because some updates effect the kernel in such a way that the entire thing has to be reloaded. But it seems like Windows is rebooting for MOST if not EVERY update. If you are patching kernel level bugs with this frequency this far into the lifecycle of the product you have some very serious issues or more likely I am guessing that they are indiscriminately pushing "features" that nobody asked for and then they are just forcing user reboots because their bloated apps/slop are now using so much RAM and are so inefficient that the only way to "fix" the inevitable performance loss is to reboot (I am only being half snarky here).
About $300, and a lot of total install time for this non-upgrade path version.
Does that support modern gaming?
It does support "modern gaming" yes, but like the sibling comment mentions, at least Riot's anti-cheat demands Windows 10 22H2 (the last iteration of Win10) as a minimum. There are a few somewhat convoluted workarounds floating around that people use. Also Adobe CS seems to require Win10 22H2.
There used to be a website something like "windowsserver2008gaming.com" or something like that idr the specific domain, that was literally a guide to turn old windows server OS installs into gaming computers. The golden years.
My only caveat is that I’m not sure how it handles multiplayer games that require anti-cheat or DRM-style mechanisms, but it’s been flawless with every title I’ve thrown at it so far (BG3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk, Ori, etc)
No, it's for IoT. Don't install an IoT Operating System if you are planning to do normal Operating System things.
Wrong. I've been gaming on it with no problems.
Whilst true, the IoT naming is a bit misleading. It's not just designed for IoT devices/purposes. It can run pretty well as a normal operating system, not much is different. (Think Payment Systems, Library Computers, etc).
I think Microsoft just wanted to be in on the "Internet of Things" hype train. The Windows IoT Core is the cut back version of Windows designed explicitly for headless, IoT stuff.
Most DRM-laden software requires 22H2 minimum. So no Xbox game pass at least.
Even Riot’s rootkit “Vanguard” has reduced requirements for Windows 10.
If you mean “modern” as in technologies like HDR, no.
"modern gaming" being a euphemism for "more proprietary software that has chained us to even worse proprietary software for decades".
It's actually a question relating to what some people want to do with their computer. Most people don't run an OS because of some moral objection to other OS's but because it lets them do what they want with their device.
I don’t feel particularly chained to proprietary software just by playing games. I play all of them on Linux using open source software.
Yes, the games themselves are proprietary, but that’s because they’re primarily art pieces, and proprietary licenses makes some logical sense in that case.
Terrible, almost consultant-level advice - particularly on a thread about how the actual Windows 10 release is getting extended support until 2027. The IoT release is missing a ton of installed things, such as Microsoft Store Login (needed for Microsoft apps). If you want security updates, stay on your existing OS instead of using one designed for a totally different purpose, and Microsoft will continue to push out the date...
Not the Microsoft Store! It doesn't come bundled with Candy Crush or Cortana either. Oh the humanity!
Xbox/Microsoft Store Auth is used for a ton of logins, not just games. Similarly, you can be dismissive of Edge (another thing not included), but the Microsoft Webview Framework is Edge-based (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...) and will break a variety of useful applications if it's not available.
Be derisive as you want, but your advice is awful. The IoT enterprise release is for IoT use cases. The types of things people do on consumer OSes are not fully supported.
WebView2 installs its own copy of Edge, as far as I can tell. Multiple copies even.
Using Windows Server 2025 (it has an evaluation version), I encountered a few problems (Xbox Controller needing to dig out de Windows 7-era drivers, Meta Quest audio not working, using pnputil to import missing drivers from a normal Win11 install) but otherwise it's been quite smooth sailing.
Not having Store login sounds bad, but it also means the system cannot trick you into linking your account to a Microsoft account, which is a plus (though accidental login is reversible IIRC). (I am not sure if Minecraft, which is the only game I know to require such login, actually worked or not).
Using not-for-purpose OS for gaming does lead to some hiccups, but to me those hiccups are preferable to the constant fight against your OS trying to shove things down your throat or disregarding your choices (of not wanting copilot, of wanting a local account, of not wanting ad-like stuff in the OS).
(Fedora would be easier to setup at that point, but anticheats...)
I also tried the IoT LTSC evaluation which generally worked better (basically, it has all the drivers the Server version is missing, plus QoL features like Win+V are enabled by default) but buying legitimate keys was not possible as a regular consumer.
You can install MS store (not sure about the login though) on ltsc with one command: wsreset -i
What even is Microsoft's strategy? Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot and being all react wasn't great. Now we have a hardware shortage and ai in everything. I miss the time when it was "My computer" and not "This PC". I just hope they keep Windows 10 around till 2030 and longer...
>> Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot and being all react wasn't great.
For me a bigger concern is that Windows 11 requires MS account, and making harder and harder to bypass it. This is a disrespect for my freedom and privacy. The hardware is not the biggest issue because it might catch up eventually. https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-...
Also the constant turning on despite my prior explicitly disabling of spyware (memory ‘live sampling’ to the cloud for ‘virus protection’, one drive ‘auto backup’), and features I’ve explicitly disabled like copilot.
It’s creepy as fuck, and for no real benefit to me that I can tell.
> spyware
The privacy-destroying "telemetry" continues to transmute from a theoretical problem to a realistic concern too.
For example, many printers puts forensic marks onto pages identifying their serial number, while MS/Apple log all your device serial numbers, which in turn is subject to seizure/threats/theft.
The upshot is you can't print an "anonymous" flyer stating I Dislike The Regime without the risk that thugs of said regime will be outside your door later.
> memory ‘live sampling’
"Citizen, the signature of a Wrongthink picture was detected in your telescreen..."
I'm. Lt sure why this is down voted. ICE showed up at a woman's door trying to force her to take down a benign social media post.
What is stopping similar authoritarians from cracking down using these kind of features and registrations?
https://newrepublic.com/post/212340/ice-poll-worker-election...
The printer thing seems pretty unrelated, and I don’t think there’s much evidence that simply logging in to your system with your Microsoft account has anything to do with telemetry of the actual content of your computer.
You can obviously send a lot of personal data through Microsoft services that use that account, but merely logging in that way doesn’t seem to just upload your life to Microsoft, either.
> The printer thing seems pretty unrelated
It's a simple example of how the arcane telemetry they demand is actually far more dangerous to you than it first appears.
This is incredibly common when it comes to security and privacy issues, where it's not immediately obvious how things can be abused. (The truly obvious things tend to get fixed, after all.)
> I don’t think [...] your Microsoft account has anything to do with telemetry
My brother in tech, I think you're blinding yourself out of forlorn hope here.
Microsoft has spent over a decade increasing the mandatory "telemetry", which contains a complete profile all your computer hardware with serial numbers plus all the software you run and when you run it [0]. The same company has consistently made it harder and harder for anyone to not sign up for an account in order to even install the OS.
They already collect the data in a very deliberate and strategic way. What you ought to be seeking is evidence they don't keep it.
[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.12506
I appreciate the fact that you sent over a very good paper.
After reading it, I am still not sure I see how this is particularly alarming information. I can see how it would help a forensic investigator who has physical access to the device.
The most personal aspect seems to be the list of installed and removed programs, which I would agree is stepping across boundaries of privacy.
The paper notes that this whole studied telemetry package is part of the telemetry service you can opt out of.
The rest seems to be device identifiers and connected devices. They mention that the device identifiers could lead to having part of an encryption key but that part of the paper seemed really vague. My takeaway from that section was that maybe it could lead an investigator to knowing which specific piece of hardware to use in order to decrypt something, but they’d likely need physical access to that hardware.
I get the impression is that the intent here is for an IT department or Windows developers to be able to respond to cyberattacks and deal with malware and the like. The paper you linked made that aspect pretty clear.
The printer thing is a good example, but again, just too unrelated to this particular subject. At least, in my opinion.
The typical response if someone comes knocking is ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. And really, how would they prove it unless you left a stack of printouts next to the door?
Now they could prove it was your printer (and that has happened multiple times in prosecutions!), even if you printed it years ago.
You don’t see how that is a problem?
I think there are a lot of things that are potentially problematic where we depend on having a functioning society with real legal protections and due process.
Nobody can come in my house without a judicial warrant. And, hopefully, someday there are better privacy laws in the US that mean that Microsoft must handle its collected data more responsibly.
If your society has succumbed to serious oppression, does evidence really matter anyway? If the cartel is knocking on your door, do they need evidence to do what they want to do?
Evidence itself is just evidence. It can condemn you and it can exonerate you. If it can be proved that something came from my printer, that means my lawyer can also prove something didn't come from my printer.
I am by no means saying that I would personally willingly sign up for telemetry, or that I think it's better to have than not. I'm just not in alarm over it because I think that response is disproportional.
Clearly you haven’t been reading the news? This is just ignorant.
I left 2 licenses of copilot in my car, someone broke into my car and left 4 copilot licenses there. The world is a dangerous place honestly, you cannot be protected enough..
And in order to get the Windows 10 updates in the article, you need to sign up for an MS account, or pay them $30 a year not to spy on you.
You can bypass the account requirement using https://github.com/abbodi1406/ConsumerESU. Of course that isn’t endorsed by Microsoft.
Thank you for that link!
> And in order to get the Windows 10 updates in the article, you need to sign up for an MS account, or pay them $30 a year not to spy on you.
Can you elaborate on the "or pay them $30 a year not to spy on you" part?
Ctrl-F isn't finding any mention of that in either https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-quietly-gets-one-more... or https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-....
It's in the linked Neowin article on how to get the updates: https://www.neowin.net/guides/how-to-get-one-more-year-of-wi...
The average consumer doesn't care about signing up for an account, so that's an easy win for getting them in the email system and thereby tie all the telemetry events to an easily recognizable account. Imagine how valuable this information is.
Now you have system level events tied to a user, that might also purchase an office product and pump out more events.
Well, they might still do it but less aggressively. For example, only when using MS Store or only some specific services. Apple uses a similar strategy with MacOS. Online accounts can also be convenient with with service integrations, provided they are optional. Also, I slightly disagree that average users don't care at all. Even setting aside ideological reasons, mandatory online accounts are terrible if there is no internet or the system must be preinstalled for another person (although the person who installs is not that average user). The system should be functional in offline mode.
To download apps on an iphone, you need an apple id. This is just something every apple user has accepted since its inception. I would also be surprised if the majority of macOS/OSX users didn't have an apple id/icloud account.
This is not a new concept. What's new is that microsoft is enforcing it. But making it less obvious on how to disable the requirement when you install the OS. Or in most cases require hacks to do so.
>> To download apps on an iphone, you need an apple id.
iOS is worse than MacOS. I was only talking about MacOS.
Yeah, TPM and secure boot aren’t a big deal at all. I use them on Linux as a security enhancement.
I really don’t know how a no-brainer security implement like that became such a lighting rod.
As far as React being used in the OS, well, if we are arguing about underlying technology there are plenty of flawed implementations to be found on a number of platforms. I don’t think the end user is concerned.
I say all this as someone who does not recommend Windows and no longer uses it, to be clear.
>What even is Microsoft's strategy? Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot
Their goal is to help their OEM buddies sell new computers despite the fact that PCs have been “good enough” for a decade or longer, because those new PCs will come with Windows and the cycle is what keeps each one relevant.
Otherwise they'd risk being usurped, which almost happened circa 2006 with the one-two-three-four punch of GNOME2 (great UI), Compiz (‘wow’ factor that gets people to jump in and try it), OpenOffice-dot-org 2.0 (when OpenDocument Format was getting a ton of press), and Windows Longhorn/Vista being famously late-and-then-hated. Luckily for Microsoft, the Desktop Linux community decided to throw all that out with Wayland (which is Fine but set us back two decades) and GNOME3 which is irredeemable — *James Rolfe voice* what were they thinking??
Requiring a sodding Copilot advert on the keyboard too, in the case of laptops..
Microsoft doesn't care about end users like you or I. We don't impact their bottom line at all. 0%. They care about business customers using other products, and occasionally data collection.
Windows has to be just functional enough to keep businesses that use it from raising a stink about it.
Old versions of Windows always fell out of support.
Some old versions of windows also had newer hardware requirements (95 dropped support for 16 bit systems, Vista required a DirectX9 GPU).
There's nothing really new here.
I assume they're secretly trying to get people over to Mageia.
The people I've switched from windows to Mageia since win11 all love it.
(As great as Mageia is, it does have small repos compared to Debian or fedora.)
> I assume they're secretly trying to get people over to Mageia.
I doubt they've even heard of Mageia.
oh, it's the former mandriva, cool! but last released in 2023?! https://www.mageia.org/en/
I don't think requiring secure boot is a big deal given every computer since Sandy Bridge iirc ships with it.
I also don't think it requires secure boot. I don't have it on currently (Windows 11 Pro).
[dead]
I was a ubuntu user and work forced me to use a windows machine. Over the years I've accumulated so much software that I have no intention of leaving behind (photoshop cs2). In the past year though, I've been transitioning back to Ubuntu. So many software now offer Linux support, there's even less incentives to stay with Microsoft products. And of course is doing everything in it's power to alienate us.
Have you tried wineHQ? It works very well IMO. But I also understand your point of view here; I have a second computer system on my left running Win10.
You can get a completely minimalist Windows 11 by grabbing an ISO from Microsoft then reprocessing the ISO by feeding it into this utility: https://github.com/christitustech/winutil (Win11 Creator Tab) to get a NEW ISO which you then install. The end result is an extremely clean and stable Windows 11 installation.
Official docs:https://winutil.christitus.com/
https://winutil.christitus.com/userguide/win11creator/
To anyone reading this: please don't use ISOs downloaded from not-official sources.
Use an autounattend.xml, the mass graves, and a WinGet JSON to customise an online image.
[1]: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
[2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/package-manager/wi...
The tool linked by the parent doesn't download ISOs from non-official sources.
Do be aware that an autounattend.xml can cause Windows setup to execute arbitrary code. Their provenance matters too. It's relatively easy to encode scripts (or even binaries) into the XML to run during or after Windows setup. You can eyeball them, for sure, but I bet most people don't.
Indeed. I mention this in light of the high-profile supply-chain attacks recently across diverse platforms (Arch AUR, Shai-Hulud, etc). Any online tool that purports to modify an entire install medium should be heavily and continually scrutinised. I'm not saying the developer can't be trusted, but the infrastructure and people in general can't.
Fine, but this is Chris Titus we're talking about, not Red Star
I use uup dump myself, which downloads the components directly from MS and builds the ISO locally
Did you even read what I wrote?
I did. You said:
> to get a NEW ISO which you then install
This is not good.
You provide an official Windows 11 ISO and the tool modifies it to get the new ISO. The tool is open-source here: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
I don't see the issue.
LOL. The entire ISO transformer code is open source.
Not so good at reading comprehension, are we?
NTlite has also been around for more than a decade, although it has a freemium model.
That won't help you get to the minimum of Win10, though
Yes it will, please re-read carefully. winutil removes hardware checks.
I think he meant resource usage
Even cleaner when you don't install Windows at all :P
Why would people put themselves through the painful process of keeping themselves safe from their own computer?
Not everyone has the luxury of moving off of Windows. Solidworks, for example, has no Linux or Mac port.
Though I do agree, if your workflow is supported by any non-NT based OS, that's probably a better option
Anything I need windows for is work related and runs on my locked down (and actually very cleanly stripped down) windows 11 laptop. Its amazing how much Microsoft hates the consumer but bends over backwards for volume license purchasers.
They do still force the volume licensors with their bullshit. However IT admins are used to dealing with Microsoft's bullshit and they can find ways to automate de-enshitification.
TBH many volume licensors do actually want to use Windows as a service and just pay a negotiated fee per license.
Windows 10 for me until new games won't run on it
My last Windows machine is for games. Hopefully I'll be able to get a Steam machine for an easy exit. If a game doesn't run on it, I won't buy or play it.
New games run really well on Linux. At this point, I don't even check. If it's an online competitive game, I can't play it. Otherwise, it almost certainly will work on Arch Linux
And then?
Old games only
This is pretty much where I've landed.
Even aside from issues with W10 specifically, I'm so tired of having to download GBs of updates and then figure out which launch params to use to trick $GAME into launching when I find a few spare minutes to play games using Steam.
Contrast that with my Miyoo Mini+ handheld which lets me dip into games immediately whenever I have a few spare minutes (around the house, waiting for an appointment, waiting for kids, etc.). There are _thousands_ of games I've missed over the years and I've pretty much decided that I don't need to (i.e. can't) keep up with AAA releases or new consoles.
I'll just play Aliens a Comic Book Adventure like a good DOS boy till I drop dead. Idc
Steam box probably
Too late. Had to switch to Fedora last year because my machine didn’t support TPM 2.0 and the CPU was one generation older. I know TPM 1.3 is less secure, but I didn’t care in the context of that specific machine. I wish I had the option. Fedora runs great on it though.
Already switched to CachyOS, haven’t booted to Windows 10 since then. Desktop gaming was my only use, everything else happens on an M1 Air.
It’s a delight, no pop ups, sell ups, Cortana and whatever else MS kept throwing at you.
I wish there was a security-only-updates channel for Windows in general. I basically want no new features, I just want something that doesn't change and doesn't brick on random tuesdays.
Too late! Win10 Pro absolutely demanded and harassed me til I upgraded to the dreaded 11. I put up with it for gaming and did registry hack workarounds to stop the stupid web connectivity and TV-like content it was pushing. It wasn't enough. The system was rebooting with updates all the time, messing with my settings I'd googled, and then someone on HN said:
'Linux on the desktop runs Steam games better than ever. Join us, brother.' I installed Fedora Workstation 43, played my games (albeit with a few quirks), but then as a side effect started all these little Linux and Claude projects after I got home from work, which I hadn't done since my 20s.
Thank you, brother!
They could actually help with the RAM and SSD shortage by extending support for Windows 10.
Especially with hardware prices at the moment, this is a welcome announcement for many companies right now who need a refresh.
And sad for us. We may have to wait for nice cheap used hardware for use with Linux or *BSD.
But I wonder if components would have been stripped out due to AI. I heard even older RAM and SDD/HDD are getting expensive.
At least in a desktop context, you can get by with just a separate drive to boot-to.
I have Win10 on a computer on my left side as "backup" system.
I decided I won't change to Win11, so Win10 will be last Windows version to use. It's no issue in that I am using Linux since late ~2004 anyway, but I am also unwilling to cater to Microsoft anylonger. I think it is time that governments no longer force people to use Windows in general. For similar reasons I reject the upcoming mandatory age sniffing that lobbyists are pushing for (together with their attempt to kill off VPNs).
Needs to be logged in, so not exactly user friendly. But made me happy, I was afraid I might have to do updates again now I can continue life not being bothered by windows update.
You can use https://github.com/abbodi1406/ConsumerESU to bypass the account requirement.
I think you can log in to activate without changing to a microsoft account for desktop login (or at least you can switch back, I have some machines on microsoft account and some not)
The updates themselves can be a driver of new Win 11 computer purchases. My dad got a bad update (I couldn't figure out which one) which froze his computer a few minutes after boot. I had to reset Windows, and it worked again after that, though now the pain is mine because I have to reinstall/reconfig all his stuff. But a normal person without a free tech-support guy like me around might have just bought a new PC at that point.
Funny story, my parents also bought a new windows 11 laptop because of random trouble on their older windows 10 laptop. Used only for a media PC to HDMI out to the living room tv. They control it via wireless mouse and keyboard from the sofa.
The new windows 11 laptop was slower, weirder, and got stuck on some update. So back to Costco it went after 75 days of the 90 day return Policy.
I installed Linux Mint Mate on the old windows 10 laptop and they're happy.
I cannot see a single reason why Windows still being used within business:
1. Endless security issues
2. Companies have to spend millions of dollars to make it secure, and fail
3. Everything is SaaS nowadays, you just need a browser and fast internet
4. Linux distros can easily replace Windows, no licensing, no dramas, no subscriptions
My guesses is that companies still have Windows because of the support, they can burn money monthly for some other company to provide support when things go bad.
You do not need that for Linux distros, it just works, faster, no matter the hardware age, it just works.
If you are end user, you have even less excuses to use Windows period. Everything from gaming to banking, from coding to 3D editing, work just fine on Linux.
There are plenty of popular games that don't work on Linux, a notable example being Fortnite. One of the most popular games of all time.
>There are plenty of popular games that don't work on Linux
Games that require kernel level spyware installed???
Good luck getting a Linux user to do make such stupid choice. Giving you a company kernel level aka full access to your operating system just to play a game. Yeah mate, normal people won't do that.
Fortnite?? Couldn't give half care about this game.
You don't need to like Fortnite. There are plenty of other games in the same boat.
The point is that "normal people won't do that" is objectively false. Fortnite is just a good example because it's so popular.
At any given moment there are tens or hundreds of thousands of normal people playing Fortnite, on windows, with anti cheat on.
> kernel level spyware
What does it spy on? I can only assume you’ve fully devirtualized and reversed Easy Anti-Cheat to be making such statements
> full access to your operating system
Man Epic Games must be cooking if they can poke at VTL1
Clueless people in the correct position for whom only Windows is THE secure OS.
If you need Windows for whatever reason, abandon it and switch over to Linux with Wine, Steam or anything else that you really need it for. By now, Windows has gotten so bad, there is absolutely no reason to go to a newer version in order to make it work on existing hardware.
"Quietly" seem to be the most popular headline word this year.
"Quietly," like in "has quietly become the biggest/best X" is silly and everywhere, but "quietly" in this sense of "they didn't announce it and people just happened to notice the change" is fine and descriptive I would say.
Win11 has come up short,
So 10 needs more support.
How do they offer it, according to AI?
Quietly,
quietly,
quiet... L-Y!
Biggest LLM giveaway these days
I predict it will be extended at least another year if not two on top of this.
The install base is just too high. Microsoft has to support it, or find a way to convince more people to upgrade.
I already enrolled in this extended update, so I am happy that I get some additional time.
The big issue is that my bios doesn't have a way to switch to what is needed to meet Windows 11 requirements, and I would have to wipe my machine.
I was looking for all these hacks, but I need to use my machine for work so I have to stay on Windows 10 for now.
The old "Windows alternates good and bad releases" rule is dead and buried. Every major version since Windows 7 has been a downgrade on what came before. I'd rather be using Windows 8 than Windows 10 and you will have to drag me kicking and screaming into Windows 11.
This rule was always wrong and stupid, people skipped versions and never started at the beginning to fit the narrative.
this will probably go on for a long time, which is great because I won't install win11
Do the start menu ads pay for this? It is conceivable that they could.
You mean do the ads in the Win11 start menu pay for Win10 updates? Or does Win10 have ads in the start menu, too?
Windows 10 has ads in the start menu. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/76s2fq/windo...
Oh, I had no idea, probably because I use Open-Shell Menu (a start menu replacement). Thanks for clearing up this totally false assumption of mine, I thought one of the reasons they made Win11 was to update the fine print to enable crap like this. But if they can do that in Win10, too, I really don't get why they ever bothered with Win11 and not just kept updating Win10 to turn it into whatever they want.
Folks can’t afford to buy a new computer right now, so M$ needs to give them an alternative to installing Ubuntu and finding out it’s plenty fast on their windows 10 machine.
Does windows have any other lockin then one click .exe running? Is there any other reason people choose to use it over linux?
Stability is basically same too..
Forget about web development. All profession-specific software except web and app programming still runs best on Windows. Engineering, simulation, city planning, accounting, complex management, supply chain optimization, media production, statistics. If you're getting paid for some output where computers play an extra-boost tool role, simply being a means to the job, the software you'd use will be on Windows.
If a piece of software is specialized enough that people maintain it for decades, if it has nice detailed and complicated GUIs to handle complex tasks, it will be on Windows. It will rely on Windows' stable API. Those software goes back to 80s and 90s. They have organically grown. Linux kernel requires thousands of developers to keep alive. Linux kernel is much simpler than profession-specific software. Windows Stable ABI allows much fewer people (low 100s) to maintain much more complex software than the kernel.
Even without the stable ABI, Linux is hostile to the closed source software unless that software is served via a TCP socket.
Web can challenge this with Web Assembly and some combination of edge / datacenter computing now. Still quite the way out for demanding things like local simulation and CAD/CAM. There should also be strong economic reasons to throw actually trillions (unlike AI and other SV bullshit balloons) worth of software and entire systems out, not just to spite MS.
It's nothing inherent about Windows (not even one-click .exe files), it's existing programs and drivers that only run on Windows, which of course only run on Windows because it was already popular.
For me it's MS Office. Sorry, but OpenOffice.org and the Google apps still don't come close. (And of course Office file formats are their own lock in, very analogously to the programs that run on Windows.)
The lockin is that you buy a new computer, and when you turn it on Windows is there. Like 1% of people have any concept that they could change that or how they would go about it. It doesn't suck enough yet for them to try changing it.
If you want to talk about why not macOS or Chrome, there are different reasons, but of the people buying PCs, that's why they're on Windows.
It's much less fiddly for games is the only reason for me.
Gaming support for Linux still isn’t 100% there like Windows. It’s still about a 50/50 chance a popular AAA or indie pc game supports Linux.
As an example: Claude Desktop (containing Claude CoWork) is not officially available on Linux, only Windows and macOS.
Adobe
when I need the Web I use Live Linux. I do not EVER let MS, or anybody else muck up my computer system(s).
"quietly" is a dead give away for claude. It is everywhere.
I wonder if it’s because hardware costs are going up
Why does Windows 11 still have "Control Panel" and "Settings", both of which are similar but entirely different?
I hate Microsoft, I was very happy with Windows 10 but Windows 11 is different for no reason except to be different.
Don't forget the Windows NT configuration consoles like MMC, and other 9x configuration dialogs not accessible from the control panel, like the one to show or hide desktop icons.
The reason for this is that there are still drivers for old hardware that hook into the old control panel elements to actually function.
If you get rid of the control panel applets, you break the drivers.
This is also an old and out-of-date complaint. Almost all of the settings are now inside the Settings application and only inside the Settings application, with the related control panel applets gone.
Nice, it gives me another year to think about what I want to do with my old gaming laptop
Thanks DoD! While you’re at it let’s keep SCCM around for another 50 years! Woooo!
[dead]
And all of the 3 people using it will rejoice.