I hosted an endof10.org event at my local public library. Advertised like crazy, posting flyers around town, posting online, etc. I had over 30 USB installers ready to go with Debian 13. I was worried that I was advertising too much and wouldn’t have room for everyone.

Only 2 people showed up, and neither were prepared to go through with an install. In a town with well over 70k people and a major university, I expected more.

Now I’m thinking an event like this would only be viable in a major metropolitan area.

In my circle of friends and family, I only knew of one person who was faced with the Windows 10 dilemma, and he chose to purchase new hardware (granted he’s nearly 80 years old).

I had already dabbled in Linux on and off years back. I already wanted to switch, but I’m a moron at computer stuff, so Linux was always a bit out of reach. Too much to learn and memorize for the basic things I needed it for. (addendum: We’re talking about 25 years ago)

But Win 10 annoyed the piss out of me. Like, to the point of breaking my laptop in a fit of explosive anger. I’m not usually a “throw-the-controller” kind of guy. But that shit got to me.

So around the time Win 11 was first announced, I decided to give Linux yet another shot. And lo and behold, I found Mint. Everything was setup and streamlined exactly for a moron like myself. It was literally easier and more straight forward than Windows.

And with a little bit of reading and copy/pasting commands smarter people than myself have written around the internet, pretty much any problem I’ve encountered have been solved within a few minutes.

So I recommend Mint to anyone looking for alternatives to Win 11.

It has been good to me.

And a big Thank You to all the glorious nerds that take the time to not on only make this, but also take the time to help us hapless dummies fix the small problems we encounter in the process of switching.

I switched to Linux about a year ago. I was a windows power user and now I’m a Linux noob, but couldn’t be happier.

I hate to say it, but there’s still reasoning to have Windows. I use a VM with ameliorated windows running for the few things I can’t get away from.

For others, I tell them my story. Most people I talk to won’t or can’t make the switch, which I’m respectful of. To those that would benefit, I recommend at the minimum O&O Shutup but highly recommend ameliorated. This has been more welcomed.

People won’t care until they have a reason to care. I’ll still be around when they do.

installed fedora cinnamon on my grandparent’s laptop a few days ago and got a friend turned from 10 to mint. been using mint on my gaming rig, server and media PCs for over two years. also wife requested mint on her laptop, so no windblows devices left in the house then

The EoL doesn’t affect me. I use Linux and Mac. My work pc is windows 10 but that’s their problem.

My roommate refuses to move on. I flat out gave him an old surface pro X with win11 and a spacious new SSD. I offered to migrate him to fedora and teach him how to use it. I offered to help him pick out a new pc if he wants. No, he’ll just keep waiting 20 minutes for his old crusty Dell to boot up, then another 10 to load chrome. For updates, he said he’ll just download hacks as people post them online.

All his shit is on its own VLAN now.

Or are you just observing and enjoy your peace of mind because you switched already to Linux before?

Yes, that. As far as my circle of friends and acquaintances who are running Win10 are concerned, I’ve made the effort to advise them to switch to something newer for security reasons. They will probably switch to Windows 11, but that is their concern.

Moved family mostly to Zorin. I stay with Tumbleweed.

Keeping Windows on dual boot for some edge cases. For the app or two that doesn’t run with Linux I keep Windows in a virtual machine (which sadly I need once or twice a day).

95% of my daily business runs on Linux.

Now I wish my phone would do that too.

I got my new laptop back in April, had a Windows 11 preinstalled (I wish it wasn’t the case, it would’ve been cheaper but it’s very rare to find OS-less PCs in my country)

Anyway, I prepared a Fedora installation before the laptop got home, booted Windows once to make sure everything (regarding hardware) works, and the rest is history.

I went through the effort to guide some people (mostly my family n≈10) through distrochooser, but in the end most of them chose Linux Mint and two wanted to go with endeavour for gaming, but I installed base arch on it and we designed their basic workflows together. For now everyone is happy.

I’ve finally swapped over my main personal (gaming) PC 6+ months ago. Should’ve probably done that a lot sooner, but lazy. I knew I wouldn’t upgrade my Win 10 to 11, and didn’t wanna wait until the last minute, but have fallback options and time to distro hop if needed.

I’m not new to Linux at all, as most servers I’m running (personally or in my job) are Linux based. Debian, usually, cause servers. But I haven’t used a Linux desktop in well over 20 years.

My choice fell on CachyOS, as I wanted something pre-configured for performance/gaming/wine, but kinda dislike fedora (rules out Bazzite, Nobara, and actual fedora). Also in the running was PikaOS, but I tried CachyOS first and stuck with it. I had no experience with Arch, but what a brilliant base that turns out to be for me. Love the rolling up-to-date-ness and AUR accessibility. I’m used to having to contort myself to get a more current version of software, possibly compiling from source and screwing with dependencies, but everything is literally just there and up to date. Critically, all games basically just worked. Everything just worked. EXcept all mail programs suck to an unexpected degree, but that is literally my only complaint.

I do use the EoL of win 10 as an opportunity to get people to move over or at least try it out. Depending on their use case, I usually still recommend Mint for non-technical people, mostly because searching for help from a Windows convertee likely finds appropriate solutions. The more technical ones get personalized recommendations, depending on context. For example I do have a colleague who spends half his day complaining about anything Microsoft, but still uses Windows at home, but that is mostly because of a single piece of software (and so far I haven’t been able to get that to run, but haven’t tried very hard yet either).

I used windows 10 on my gaming PC for many years. I “upgraded” to 11, and it felt bad. The UI/ux was tolerable, but between the AI features and everything requiring a Microsoft account, it got on my nerves quickly.

I literally just wanted to upgrade the firmware on my Xbox one controller (so it’d work in Linux…) and that forced a login. At that point I logged in, upgraded my controller, formatted as ext4, and now I rarely look back.

Every once in a while a game will crash or not be playable on Linux, but I’d trade that for being in control of the hardware I’ve spent thousands on over the years.

Very happy with bazzite on my htpc and a kde based distro on my main computer. I pop over to my MacBook for casual computing, but for the real stuff I’ll never use windows again (barring being forced by future employers)

I’m still using Windows on dual-boot with Arch because of games, that’s the only reason. I’ve Windows 10 LTSC IoT, which is the most debloated version available, plus I ran a debloater script, so the OS is basically raw now, no Microsoft account linked.

Unfortunately Windows still gets more performance, at least on my experience, I’ve a Laptop 16GB RAM, Hybrid GPU (GeForce 1650 4VRAM + AMD).

I’m still not prepared to give up from this little extra performance just to switch to Linux, it really makes a difference, and I pass the whole day dealing with Linux so at the end of the day I just want to boot into something that just works without major tweaks.

I know it’s not Linux fault, but most games are made to run better on Windows. If and when W10 become unusable, I’ll switch to 100% Linux without any doubt, it’s my last Windows.

Unfortunately still have to use W11 for some anti-cheat games I play with friends :(

But being forced to update to 11 motivated me to come back to Linux on a PC. I already have a little homelab with all the flavors, but was wondering how it would game on my desktop.

Ultimately went with Debian + KDE on a second SSD, and it’s just awesome. Especially coming from WSL on my desktop, it’s just so seamless.

Had a little trouble getting Nvidia drivers for my relatively new card (Debian’s latest proprietary driver still didn’t support it lol), so I had to use the official Nvidia repo. And it was a little tricky signing it for Secure Boot, but other than that, awesome.

Need to run better side-by-side tests, but it at least feels like a 10% or so performance improvement.

Thank you Linux! And fuck Fortnite, release a Linux port already!

Linux on all of my main machines, so I’m grabbing the popcorn. Got LTSC for all the remaining Windows use cases: VMs, beater laptop for Windows-only stuff, and a couple of computers from family.

Most of my friends replace their computers quite frequently, so they’re living blissfully unaware on Windows 11 or MacOS. The ones who do have older laptops tend to be tech-savvy enough to have figured out LTSC or Linux themselves. On one occasion, a good friend of mine had an old iMac that wasn’t getting updates anymore, so I installed Debian and themed XFCE to look like MacOS, taught them the basics, and they were impressed with the result.

As for family, they’re usually very happy with the Linux Mint Debian Edition that I install for them, but some I know just won’t use the computer if it doesn’t have their familiar Windows-specific software, so I get them started with LTSC.

I frankly have an excess of unused hardware that’s piling up, which won’t be helped by my access to a good source of e-waste. Old computers have already been trickling in, but I’m excited to see what’s next now that the Oct 14 date has come.

I’ve been using Linux for about 25 years. I completely stopped using Windows at home more than a decade ago.

I do some volunteer work for an organisation that refurbishes old computers and gives them to people who can’t afford one. For the time being we’re using Rufus to bypass TPM and other hardware requirements so we can install Windows 11 on everything.

We’re willing to install Linux for people who want it, but unfortunately I haven’t seen that happen yet. Most of our customers have no idea what an OS is. A lot of people also need Windows for education or work. There’s a free course available that teaches how to use a computer and of course that is also Windows-only.

We helped one of our colleagues to install Mint on his old laptop, though.