If you’re too lazy to switch to Linux like me, Windows 10 Enterprise IoT LTSC is supported until 2032 and free to download and permanently license.
As someone who is lazy, I find running Linux to be less work than fighting with Windows.
There’s no struggle free OS, every OS has operations and processes that will need more detailed investigation, and hence read as “fighting with the operating system”.
No design is intuitive to everyone, all the time, and in all situations. I’m sure Linux is fine, but let’s be real, you know what I mean.
I’m glad that Linux is more intuitive to you than Windows. Good job finding it, and setting it all up 👍
Honestly, a lot of desktop environments are designed to feel very similar to Windows. I tried Mint on a laptop and started liking it right away. The setup was put it on a flash drive, and run the installer. It took 20 minutes to nuke Windows.
My OS struggles come from trying to get windows-specific DAWs and CAD Software to work, which will hopefully come around as more people switch to Linux. I have some alternatives that I’m playing with right now.
Yeah exactly. I set up Zorin OS for my family who are not tech savvy at all. It was a bit different at first but they said they felt much “calmer” using Linux. Modern Windows feels like trying to read an article online or watch a YouTube video without an ad blocker.
I switched to Kubuntu on my laptop. There’s definitely a learning curve but it’s been a lot easier than in 09 when I last tried Linux.
that’s not really true there’s no struggles normally with an OS like Linux Mint.
Selecting a username and password is within most peoples grasp. Click an icon on the dock and you’re away
The struggle is the apps for most people, where’s Chrome? (when FF is right there on the dock), where’s Photoshop etc etc
Linux you fight a bit when setting it up and then its like clockwork. With windows it’s easy to setup, but then it starts doing weird shit you never asked for and and undoes your changes making more work forever.
This is part of why I like Mint … it’s like 5 clicks to install
Mint is wonderful though I am considering switching back to a system with GNOME instead of Cinnamon because the screen reader works better under GNOME.
I am thinking about giving NixOS another shot or at least going with an immutable system, but Mint is a great place to start your Linux journey, and hell, it’s a great place to end your Linux journey if you don’t give a shit about computers and just want the damn thing to work reliably.
Yeah, that’s the thing - I remember installing Slackware 1.0 from floppies back in the day.
These days, I’ve had my enthusiasm for technology crushed out if me, and I just want to get stuff done with as little “computer” in the way as possible
That hasn’t happened for me, but it has shifted from desktop to mobile for me, because, for me, desktop Linux is just about fucking perfect, and I see no need to change it. But, I do very much enjoy playing around with different things like lineage OS, and possibly post-market OS on phones.
I’d say my phone is my primary computing device so it’s what I like to mess with and the laptop is just a system that I need to work whenever I pick it up and therefore it gets Linux installed on it and doesn’t get many changes.
I would say my laptop is more like an appliance similar to my toaster. When I turn on my toaster, I expect it to work. And it’s the same thing with my laptop for the little bit that I need it. And my phone is the device that I mess with, primarily.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t mess with my phone because I need it for stupid things like banking :-/
Last year I did give Haiku a crack, so I’m not completely out of enthusiasm for OS fiddling … but it’s the exception not the rule
I like Mint. Got two boxes. 1 bazzite, one Debian and one Arch for shitz and giggles.
Mint comes in debian, arch and bazzite?
It comes in Debian … not the others
Uh. No. I have 2 mint boxes. 1 bazzite one debian and one arch… heh.
and then its like clockwork
My brother in Christ, what are you talking about? Do you not install any software whatsoever? Do you not have a need to update it? Or maybe all your hardware works out of the box 100% of time? My setup full amd, pretty fresh (am5 + rdna3), but it still a gamble each time I’m launching new game on steam. Will it work out of the box? Will proton-cachyos just bork itself (happened week ago, still not sure what caused it, maybe mangohud)? Will my whole desktop just crash cause of bug in driver that specific to one extension in vulkan? Or maybe I simply won’t be able to see my desktop at all cause amd with LG tv is a bad combination? It’s a shitshow.
Not my experience.
“works on my machine”
I’m going to try Steam OS on one of my laptops. See what that’s like.
I suggest that you try Bazzite instead. As of now, SteamOS doesn’t support Nvidia.
Oh I’m poor my laptop has AMD.
I can chime in for Bazzite. It’s imperfect, but I’ve blown up my fair share of aliens and they make playing your games on Linux really easy compared to anything else I’ve used. I can even stream the game from my desktop to a laptop in my bedroom via sunshine/moonlight which Bazzite helps you install as SteamLink doesn’t play nice with Bazzite.
Upvote for Bazzite - the caveat being how much support the distro gets and how long it lives. That said it turned a truly piece of crap all in one hp to something that was fun in about 30 minutes. it’s a good gaming OS but I wouldn’t use it as my daily driver.
I don’t think steamos is a great choice for a general purpose OS…yet
Probably not but maybe I’ll be able to play a game. Old laptop. Old Games. New OS. See what happens.
Both bazzite and CachyOS are built for computers and will likely work better for a laptop than SteamOS. And they both have gaming focused builds. I haven’t tried Bazzite in a while, but CachyOS has easy to understand instructions on how to install their gaming package.
Appreciate the suggestions, probs check them out afterwards. I just wanna do it for the shits n gigs
Totally understand that. I have tried a bunch of different Linux builds to see what I like. So certainly won’t begrudge your explorations. And I haven’t tried SteamOS on any of my machines because it didn’t have a desktop build when I was last playing around with new builds. CachyOS has been great though. Everything works well on my machine, and its been easy to use as a daily driver.
Can confirm Bazzite is incredibly easy to install, and all my steam games work without any tweaking at all so far except Tropico 6. And I haven’t even tried to fix that.
(Windows was being a dick fuck, and life means I don’t have brainspace right now to fuck around with my laptop, so no-tweaking was the goal. Bazzite has delivered that.)
I’ve been using Linux since it was a diskette install (Slackware). I’ve used all main Linux flavors over the years, and for the last few years I’ve lived in Mint, because lazy. I’m now on CachyOS. It fucking rocks. Like wow level.
I started with Ubuntu version 10.10 and currently my computer runs Linux Mint Debian 7.
Though I am seriously considering giving NixOS another spin. I gave it a try once, and it didn’t quite work for me, but I think I might try it again. I am getting pretty convinced that immutability is the future because then the operating system developer can work on the operating system and the user space can focus on the user space. And user space applications can’t do things to the operating system that would screw it up and bork it. I’m primarily thinking of when an application gets uninstalled and then uninstalls some shared library that’s needed by another application and fucks it up.
I know immutable systems and self-contained applications require more disk space, but that’s a worthy sacrifice in my opinion. Disk space is pretty damn cheap.
AI says disk space is no longer to be considered cheap ;)
I’ve tried bazzite (Aurora, actually, same family more general use), and found the thing a bit constraining. The whole flatpak or distrobox thing is a bit cumbersome for me, but I can see the appeal.
11 iot is also available, and is void of nearly everything people hate about 11. it’s good to 2035.
I have no intentions of going back to Ravenholm anytime soon.
Regular Windows, with Chris Titus’ decrapifier after install will leave you with a pretty streamlined Windows without the bullshit.
You are the champ for pointing people this direction but eventually like Adobe they will close the holes.
Doing the Lord’s work!
i dunno, going linux feels pretty lazy. just watching you all sweat and panic with your workarounds and here i am like …not.
I wonder how many “users rejecting Windows 11” are people who refuse to replace perfectly good hardware just because it doesn’t meet Windows 11’s arbitrary requirements.
Especially now in the NANDpocalypse, like no way I’m upgrading my hardware.
Yeah my 8yr old comp was built to be top of the line at the time and it still rips on non-current AAA games. Any upgrade aside from gpu at this point would mean a new mobo and essentially a wholesale. Fuck that
It might also be people who want to log in to their computer with a local account, given the problems with letting a US company decide who can use your computer and who can access your files.
I have a ten-year-old desktop that still works perfectly, and runs all the games I need. Why on earth would I put an arm and a leg into a new one? Not that I would voluntarily put Copilot 11 on anything I own, either way.
I’m just broke and not going to be upgrading anything anytime soon. Got an i5 and a 1080. Whenever windows 10 support actually ends, I’ll probably then finally go to Linux, but until then, I’m lazy.
that’s probably most the holdouts left. the absolute brutal persistence of ‘upgrade’ offers and win10 doomsday warnings on eligible hardware got most users to do it, even if they didn’t really want to.
*half of it
Will upgrade from windows 10 to Linux.
I did it last year after postponing it countless times. And I will recommend you do it. I know it feels like a huge step, but it is much easier than you fear and once you have done it it is such a big relief to be completely free of all of Microslops nonsense forever.
Install alongside. Dual boot. Happily play and try Linux without anxiety.
fuck it man, with the state of desktop linux these days, just put your files on a seperate hard drive and go full hog. Even vanilla ass debian is ok as long as you go for Gnome or KDE.
I haven’t figured out an efficient way to run widows programs on Linux. I know wine exists and the vm’s. Maybe it’s cause I didn’t stick with Linux for more than 2 months.
I was super into Ubuntu when it first came out but I got bored of it really quick. Tried it again a couple years ago and it was still hard to navigate.
i think in the past year they must have made ubuntu changes a lot cuz its now really easy like its almost like a smart phone. even upgrades and updates with an interface now. i could see a techphobe who only ever uses iphones use it with ease.
the only hesitation is there is no tech support for linux. like you cant just walk into best buy and expect the geek squad to fix your problems(they could still look into hardware problems)
that said once you learn linux things come pretty easy with a rollback feature(est month maybe 2 to get familiar with the linux tricks on how to fix stuff yourself)
i still work by a cheat sheet. and thankfully the comminity for linux user help is pretty vast for searches
For those of you who need a longer offramp to Linux like me and maybe haven’t seen this posted before:
https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol
You can activate any copy with support at least through 2028.
Came to say this, I’ll add that its is a completely safe and free option.
Benefits over official methods:
- zero cost (don’t pay MS $10)
- no need to format to install LTSC
- no need for a Microsoft account (keep your privacy if you have local only account)
Its FOSS so the entire script can be downloaded and read before you run it if you feel uncomfortable fetching some random script from the web and running it via terminal, as I did.
if you feel uncomfortable fetching some random script from the web and running it via terminal
If you can run some random script in a terminal, you already know everything you need to in order to use Linux.
My laptop is Linux. My desktop is staying win 10 a while longer because it’s compatible with a couple online games I still play every so often.
I love Linux and use it myself, but not everyone is ready to move.
For them, an extended Windows 10 EOL is a nice bridge to give them some more time to plan a main OS install (backup all their data, test replacement apps, etc) as OP said. It’s not about knowledge or capabilities it’s about options, time and many people waiting until they can afford a new PC build to move to linux.
and many people waiting until they can afford a new PC build to move to linux
???
Why would you need a new PC for that?
Did i say they needed it?
This may surprise you, but to your average person (or even your technical person who is time-poor for whatever reason), moving to a new OS is a frustrating or time consuming process, so they delay the move until they get (or build) a new PC.
Your average person stays on the same OS for the lifetime of the computer.
no need to format to install LTSC
you can modify a text file on an ent/iot installer to allow system and data preserving upgrades on pretty much anything, even ‘home’ or ‘home premium’ editions. i have one here that went 8 pro to 11iot–runs great, and have tested 7hp to 11iot as well. that was the test done before i did the one that ‘mattered’… still using it the test system, too. haven’t bothered to redo it or reload anything else on it yet.
That’s great to hear. I’ve had mixed results with migrating Windows editions in the past, and I believe it’s still an officially unrecommended process due to hiccups that can occur during, and difficulties in diagnosing issues afterwards (can be a bit of a frankenstein as far as libraries WinSXS content, system logs, etc).
normally i’d be against ‘upgrades’, too, especially that different.
but this was a special case and i did have three decades of wading through this shit to pay the rent to work from. a fair bit of reading and a lot of prep ahead of time made the actual upgrade process itself almost completely uneventful. i did find one odd thing after it ran awhile, but it hasn’t resurfaced since.
Obligatory, here’s your sign to switch to Linux. For people who do nearly everything or everything online it’s a pretty easy switch.
I have absolutely no experience in coding, programming, or anything to do with how Linux works and operates - I was easily able to install CachyOS onto my laptop removing windows completely. Reading comprehension is difficult if one isn’t used to reading wikis, however it’s pretty self explanatory; if a monkey like me can do it, anyone can.
Good shit. Hopefully you backed up anything important before the switch. Generally good to have backups anyway and use the 321 rule to never lose anything. That’s three copies, two different media (hdd & DVD / cloud), and one copy off sight. Although that may be a little excessive for everyone but it will ensure you never lose anything important.
I usually suggest people shop around / distro hop a little. Get a USB, install ventoy, download a few iso’s and try a few different distros on their live boot. There are a lot of different paradigms for a distro, different user interfaces, different kernel compilations, proprietary driver options, audio driver options, package management options and so on.
That said for someone new it is literally just easier to use a more widely used or common distro, usually there’s better wikis and active forums and it’s more likely someone has already had whatever issue you’re having when trying to fix something. I usually suggest Fedora or Linux mint (lmde). Although with flatpaks and immutable OS’s things are getting easier, more copy paste if you will.
Still using Windows 10, but after testing out Linux on the side last year I’ve come to the conclusion it’s ready. Other than anti-cheat being in the shitter once Win 10 is officially dropped for good by games I’m moving over to Arch.
and with steam one can play even non-steam games that are “windows only” by adding non-steam game. Proton works for those too.
not for the ones with the stupider anti cheats
i gave up on R 6 long ago. but basically all other games are playable on linux. i become comfortable living by the moral code of ‘if the game doesnt play on linux it doesnt exist’
yea, though those games are not worth playing anyway. who knows what they do in the background, with root access they can hide it too.
I’ve been playing The Sims 2 that way lol
Some anti-cheat software can be run through Steam e.g. Easy anti-cheat.
I’m aware. Just not the majority of them. Either way doesn’t personally matter to me as I mostly play single player games, to which Proton is incredible with that.
Windows decided to delete all my documents and files 2 weeks ago. Even though I removed them from one drive, windows put them all back in. So when their one drive failed. I lost everything. Like every icon on my desktop too. Thank god i had just backed up a couple weeks before so I didn’t lose much.
I was so pissed though that I immediately installed Linux Mint. Haven’t looked back.
It’s all fun and games until you find that one specific thing you can’t live without that requires Windows lol. Hence why I typically have a low profile Windows 10 LTSC virtual machine set up on my Linux machines.
Same but Windows 7.
It seems fastest, most stable windows was 2000 but lacked good 64bit support. Much defaulted to 32bit :(
I’m sure I’ll find something lol. Currently its still on that hard drive. But I pulled it out for now. I was angry and didn’t wanna look at windows anymore but knew I’d probably need it again lol.
Linux only needs to hit a “small but not insignificant size market” for the large publishers to start supporting it. They won’t support it if they lose money doing so, but if it continues to grow eventually they will lose money by not supporting it.
Steam machine should provide another bump, just like steam deck.
I hope that steamOS causes this, I really hate booting into windows to play battlefield but it’s my only option if i want to play it
By 2027 I have transitioned to fedora or another variant of Linux. I am on Linux mint now.
Good way to go! And if you’re really technically ept and have no friends, don’t use arch but rather the average systemd-free glibc-free and ofc bloatless distro. That’ll get you occupied for a while.
if you’re on LMDE you’re set forever.
Windows11 sucks so bad. I was so excited to learn that Explorer and Notepad were getting tabs & Paint was getting layers. Only to find out that these core features weren’t being updated for users, but in the process of adding slop to the OS. Explorer was the worst, my address bar became an ad. And everything was buggy and broken.
And I know this isn’t just the Linux fanboy line because Microslop themselves had to apologize and walk-back some of the Copilot obnoxiousness.
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
It’s like XP all over again.
God’s Perfect OS
Gotta use a MS account on your computer though, so this is not a viable option for a lot of people
I recently upgraded to Windows 11. I’ve been putting it off, but there are a few apps I need that simply do not work under 10 anymore. Bleah.
I’ve been using it on a work machine for several years, but I am still surprised at just how much it sucked to switch from 10. My personal setup has been heavily customized over many years to suit my particular needs and wants. More than half of that customization is no possible under 11. There are workarounds for a few pieces of it, but even those are unlikely to remain stable and functional for very long. Microsoft is constantly changing things that cause unsupported features to break.
So I now have a slower, less reliable, less versatile, and less configurable software environment. It also conducts far more surveillance and sends even more information about me to Microsoft. There is not one single way in which this could be considered an upgrade, except by Microsoft’s shareholders.
I’m going to set up dual boot with Zorin. That will allow me to boot into Windows 11 for the few things I need that will only run in that environment. The remaining 99.9% of the time I will just run Linux. (I already know Linux pretty well, I just haven’t run it as my primary desktop.)
I suspect my next project will be replacing my Android phone’s OS with something less invasive.
I don’t know if it’s possible, but have you considered trying to install Windows in a virtual machine and just use Linux as your primary system? I started out this way too, where I had a dual-boot Linux and Windows system, and eventually I realized that I was booting into Windows so little that I just installed Windows in a virtual machine for the, like, very few times I ever needed it. And then, eventually I found out I didn’t need it at all anymore, and just killed the VM, and I haven’t used Windows for years.
I’ve tried that in the past, but I don’t think it will currently work. I’ll look into it, though.
You can set up a VM that accesses the raw disk partition of windows, instead of an image, so you can either dualboot or boot normally, in order to have windows alongside Linux.
Used to work this way about 10 years ago.
Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know you could have Windows and Linux on the same disk in separate partitions, and then boot Linux and have the virtual machine access the raw disk image of Windows.
https://github.com/ravendevteam/talon
This is how I tolerate w11
Thank you! I will check that out.
Sorry, but this sounds like its half bs.
It probably has less to do with “rejecting” or anything to do with RAM, and more likely to do with all the embedded systems running it, or lazy people who don’t upgrade simply because they don’t need to
I know lots of people running old versions of Mac OS, and it is because their hardware doesn’t support newer, and it works fine for their usecase. They’re not thinking about the hardware in any way.
In fact, in contrast to MacOS, Microsoft actually offers this extended support option, whereas Apple tells its users to get f’ed fairly quickly (yet another reason NOT to use MacOS / Apple. You pay a premium for hardware they often don’t support for long). Also, Ubuntu offers 15 years now support for LTS (which is crazy).
I use Fedora btw.
They’re not thinking about the hardware in any way.
Yeah, but that’s also because Apple doesn’t even inform the user that their version of macOS is EOL. So unless you’re an active follower of Apple news, most people won’t care – at the least simply because they wouldn’t even know. Same thing with Android, etc… whereas Microsoft makes it annoyingly obvious that you’re running an unsupported version.
That’s true… And its not a good thing either,
I also like fedora. It’s one of the few distro which has software update all centralised in one app.
I am trying cachyos in a VM and I couldn’t find a way to upgrade in GUI.
ohh thank fucking god. I hate windows, but not having a huge portion of the population ready to be infected is a good thing for everyone
Too late, already jumped to Linux. My machine is noticeably faster doing everything now
