Next year Windows 10 goes End of Life. Microsoft will undoubtedly push windows 11 hard, but a lot of machines won’t support it leading to a few economic points of interest:
The demand for new machines will be high, driving up cost.
The supply of unsupported machines will be high, driving down the used market.
Are you all ready?
Got a well specced 4th Gen i7 that does everything I need so unless it blows up, I won’t be upgrading. Started working on the plan this week. Been using Mint on my secondary (non essential laptop) but never had the stones to take the plunge on my main rig.
Watching MS stepping into the enshittification trend and AI with Win11 means this is the last straw, particularly now I don’t need to rely on keeping up with windows for work. Currently bashing on Linux Mint DE in a VM to test what I need and have working to be happy:
Outlook/Office - Thunderbird is good but it’s been a while since I’ve used Libre Office but didn’t have much luck with it in the past - trashing the formatting when bouncing between LO & MSO. Hoping the more recent versions are better else office web will have to do for those documents that don’t play nice.
Steam - make sure I can get it going, several key games. This is the least of my worries after seeing what others have said. NVIDIA graphics may be a bit more painful.
RDP - I still have another headless win10 media box. VNC as backup. This box will be the next on the chopping block if all goes well.
Backup - this is the big one. Currently use Backblaze for unlimited backup and love the set & forget nature. No native Linux client so would require moving to their B2 platform with a third party interface - do-able, just need to get off my butt to work it out :p
File structure - always struggled with this in my playing with Linux, need to become more comfortable with where files live and general directory structure.
Will slowly pick those off over the next couple of weeks and then I should be good to go.
Mine’s been “dead” for near 5 years now and its still chuggin along as an arcade/jukebox/dvdplayer
Yep, got my frenly window-smashing ball and a mug of pale eol ready.
Lmao, I’ve been ready since 7 reached the theoretical end of life.
Air gap 7, use Linux on everything else.
Windows 7 will maybe work for a while.
There’s going to be a point where new Windows software won’t run on Windows 7, though.
Freezing the OS is one thing, but freezing the application library is another.
Heh, I only keep it for a limited use case. I have backups of the software, so I’m good until win7 won’t run on new hardware.
No need for any updates when what I use works perfectly for me.
music producer?
I’ve heard of some buying bulk macbooks and cloning their drives because knowing your workflow is the most important thing.
Atari Teenage Riot’s music is still produced on an Atari ST.
I already use Windows Update Blocker to disable automatic updates of Windows. So Windows 10 going EOL won’t change much for me.
Why would you be blocking updates? Win10 is basically getting security fixes only at this point.
It is also getting increasingly annoying nagging screens for Windows 11
iirc, Microsoft had some significant investment in Intel.
this is perfectly rational monopolist-cartel-protecting-monopolist-cartel behavior.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=microsoft's+investment+in+intel&t=fpas&ia=web
I used to take pride in that I could fully set up, configure, secure, minimally provision (with software) and neuter the more egregious aspects of Vista/7/8/8.1 within a 16hr time frame.
With Windows 10 this increased to 20 hours, and with my own Windows 11 install I am currently clocking in at 24hrs - three whole work days. The last day of which is spent in the Registry and doing multiple reboots to ensure the new UI fuckery has been appropriately castrated.
I have a handful of programs, both current and vintage, that are either inadequately or completely unable to be serviced by Wine. With that said, I am now down to only two rigs on Windows, the remainder being various flavours of Linux or BSD.
Not really, but I have 18 months to migrate all my shit away from there. I’ve already moved a lot of my critical stuff to FOSS software running under win10 and I’m more than passing familiar with Linux. Shouldn’t be a massive deal.
Corporations (the only people who actually care about their OS being in support) upgrade their machines every few years so they’ve already done that. Home users don’t know what that means and won’t care. The remaining 2% have already installed linux.
This.
Official OS support is a security concern. The machine I have in use at home that is running Win10 is doing so on deliberately old hardware for preservation and it will continue to do so indefinitely, just like my XP machine. I’m even a bit surprised myself by how few Win10 computers I have, considering I haven’t once upgraded one to Win11 on purpose. I thik I may have an older laptop that is still on Win10 and can happily stay there, since it doesn’t see much use.
But hey, corporate office PCs ARE likely to hit the used market in higher numbers at that point, and those are often a good deal for cheap DIY builds. It’s still a good date to track if you’re into that sort of thing.
IMHO people just won’t give a flying fuck about it. Most people won’t even be aware of it.
They’ll upgrade when they’ll buy a new PC, just as usual.
Already got my NEW 12-core machine before prices go up, running Debian 100%. With my 25 year history of using Linux and pirating Windows, MS never saw a damn penny from me, and I’m proud of that fact.
To be fair, I’ve been using windows since 3.1. I haven’t paid for windows since xp I think. I got an oem key second hand right around w7 for my desktop. That key has just lasted me all the way to w11. So I haven’t paid ms anything either in decades (except for my personal data I guess?)
I’ve never paid for a Windows license, ever. I sure as fuck didn’t for Win 95 when it came out, since us script kiddies figured out pretty fast you can install it with a CD key of all 1’s. And then I used Windows 2000 for a long time. So long that I still remember the (stolen, MSDN) license key I used from having installed it umpteen times.
DDTPV-TXMX7-BBGJ9-WGY8K-B9GHM
There, you can have that one gratis and for nothin’. For all the good it’ll do you now.
And I still have one of those grey and blue plastic MSDN tackle boxes full of CD’s of all the Microsoft stuff. You want a copy of Visual Studio 2003 or something? I got you.
I’ve extracted about 40 keys from my school, all W10, Education edition (equal to Enterprise), but work with any newer edition. Unlimited number of uses, no expiration. I’ve been sharing them left and right, and if one goes bad, I just let them switch to a new one.
MAK isn’t unlimited number of uses.
Cheap good win10 systems, yum. I m ready
Sounds like there are going to be a lot of machines running a fresh install of Linux next year. Microsoft really does ♥️ Linux.
Tbf they genuinely do.
They’ve invested heavily in Linux and are one of its major contributors. I think they were in the top 5 of contributors.
They realised years ago the Linux desktop isn’t going to take off with the average user. So there’s no need to compete directly.
Azure actually runs on their own custom distribution of Linux.
Yeah, people are just going to keep using it, they just won’t get updates. That means they will be vulnerable to any exploits that come along afterward but most people don’t care. M$ shot everyone in the foot when they decided to limit windows 11 compatibility.
When windows 7 came out I knew people who stuck with windows xp until they bought a new computer with 10 or 11 on it. The market will get a slight bump from EoL but it isn’t going to force everyone with windows 10 to run out and buy a new computer immediately.
A few months back we just upgraded some school computers from Windows XP to Windows 7, so that checks out. They can barely run that anyway and get almost no use.
Your machine needs to be around a decade old to be incompatible I think.
MS shot itself by being so backwards compatible.
The primary requirements are TPM, a security feature.
It’s mostly just to force the hands of businesses that will now have to upgrade to stay compliant with security standards
Which is probably the play. I’d doubt Microsoft really gives a flying fuck about home users buying licenses anymore, since their revenue model for consumer Windows is just ads and data harvesting now anyway.
There are people out there still using Windows XP. Not everyone will jump because Microsoft is trying to force their hand
If by people you mean botnets, then yes.
