Windows 10 Mega thread

I think it more to try get people using Microsoft Accounts rather than local accounts.

 

Hold the line!

Hodoooorrrrrr!

They'll keep backtracking.

They'll announce 11 on anything after... Core2ish at some point.

Simple economic reality is half the world earn less than $500usd a month.

They're not going out and buying a new computer because Microsoft say so.

 

Data mining is worth far more than having some devs doing a little sidework on porting security updates from 11 to 10

 

that is the stick to the carrot that is more updates.

from MS's point of view, it's the carrot to the stick that is supporting win10 longer.

 

Seems a fair compromise to me, personally.

It's a 10year old OS this month, effectively retro.

 

And was originally marketed to be the last major OS release, with just patches from here on in.
Shame it didn't work out that way...

 

yeah should've just dropped it.

like they do with Server, throwing out extra long update patches, just gives people a crutch to keep clinging onto their outdated platform, having another year of patches won't make it any easier to upgrade it later you moron.

 

One guy making a technical talk about the internal modularity does not "marketing" make.

 

According to the latest Infopackets article (link below) Windows 11 is now marginally more popular than Windows 10. Microsoft is probably hoping there'll be a surge of people upgrading to Windows 11 before October 14th (the end of life date for Windows 10) despite it agreeing to continue issuing security updates for Windows 10 free of charge for another year as long as your Windows 10 has a Microsoft account.

https://www.infopackets.com/news/11581/windows-11-finally-overtakes-windows-10

I was going to try one of the methods on YouTube to upgrade to Windows 11 despite my computer failing the hardware requirements for Windows 11 but now I'm in two minds about it. Why bother when my Windows 10 will remain protected for another year? No new features for Windows 10 after October? That suits me fine.

By October 2026 Windows 11 should be by far the dominant operating system and Microsoft will then be able to more forcefully coerce people into upgrading.

I might try upgrading to Windows 11 on my main computer to see whether I like it and if I don’t I'll restore an Acronis image of Windows 10.

 

Nah, it was a real thing for a hot minute:
https://forums.overclockers.com.au/threads/windows-blue.1061399/

"Windows Blue" was the concept of a 12 monthly release cadence. Noted in that thread, Apple had already pretty much done that, and likewise mobile devices have kind of been there for years.

My biases are well known on this - static software installs for something as universally complex as general purpose operating systems and endpoint devices are a bad idea. The world moves too fast, and the OS needs to keep up with what's happening across hardware changes, information security changes and the threat landscape, etc, etc.

Gone are the days when you install some big hulking UNIX or mainframe OS, and run that thing without touching it for 20 years. Change is the only constant, and software needs to keep up with that today, right down to the OS.

Microsoft of course do themselves no favours by riding the enshittification wave. But, technically at least, that has nothing to do with the concept of a rolling OS. All it does is harm people's acceptance of the idea, because they now (somewhat correctly) conflate "updates" with "extra garbage I don't want".

Given that Microsoft are using Azure as a cash printing machine now, they could probably do a lot of good for end-user acceptance to actually move to a rolling release OS that's thin on features and bullshit. But of course, this isn't how modern tech vendors work any more, which is why I continue telling people to change to an OS that does exactly this:

https://kde.org/for/w10-exiles/

But hey, if folks are balls deep in their Stockholm Syndrome, what can you do?

 

I keep telling myself I'm not switching because of gaming, but do I really have time to play anyway?

I wouldn't mind switching to Mac but that brings a whole other set of annoyances.

 

My standard responses to this are:

1) If you're a multi-system person and have a lightweight laptop for certain tasks, and a heckin' chonker of a gaming rig for others, consider a non-Windows OS on the non-gaming machine (and if you do want to play light-weight/casual games on the lightweight machine, see point 3).

2) Dual boot. Not as painful as you think, and again if you're clearly splitting your day between "work mode" and "play mode", it's a nice split.

3) Steam Proton is really, really good. You don't need "SteamOS" to use it. Just regular old Steam on Linux uses it. No, support is not 100%. But "perfect is the enemy of done". Use it where it works, fall back to one of the other options above where it doesn't.

One of the biggest reasons I see people avoid switching is their perception of convenience. I get that everyone is busy, and we all have things we'd rather do than fight OSes. But at what point does the see-saw flip between "Windows 11 is actively removing the 'Personal' from 'Personal Computer'" and "Linux is frustrating because I'm not yet familiar with it"?

I've made a career out of Linux in general, but also specifically putting Linux on the workplace desktop for loads of places. For every nay-sayer I've heard, I've got a functioning Linux desktop out there in the world making someone real income on real workloads. Switching systems is always initially inconvenient. But at some point what's the long term inconvenience of the current Windows trajectory? That's a question for each person as an individual, but boy golly do I wonder at some of the insane efforts I see people doing trying to hack in "debloat" scripts to Windows that just break shit and cause more headaches and security risks than they fix, when they could put far less effort in for a better return by just learning a new OS.

 

I was one of those who persuaded a Steamdeck ISO install onto PC hardware in the pre-official days (it was a long weekend and boring). Damn there was just a whole lot of "sheiiiit this JUST WORKS" going on, even at that stage.

Yet, here I sit this morning working on a new custom Win11 deployment ISO <hangs head in shame>

 

Enabled PTT on my 8700k, updated to win11, ezpz, bye bye ancient OS.

 

Recently installed Mint on both Surface Laptops and SteamOS on a mini PC in the loungeroom. Incredibly happy with the results.

Both lappies used for family productivity and the SteamBox for couch gaming.

Tinkered seriously with Linux years ago, but just wanted Mint to work out of the box as a Windows replacement, which it does perfectly.

 

considering the vast majority of home users activities are web based, all you need is something that runs a web browser. and that's pretty much any OS, the major ones all run on any OS look and feel mostly the same.

as covered for gaming proton works bloody awesome, there's some edge cases - like competitive esports type games with intrusive anti-cheat/piracy rootkits that only work on Windows (no wonder windows is such a virus target when that kind of stuff is not only possible but allowed). but if you're not playing those games, then your good.

 

They have broadly achieved this from a technical perspective.
Monthly security fixes, half-yearly feature updates.

You kinda have to draw the line and call it a different name at some point though. Arguably, when they dropped agp/isa/32bit support, that would have made sense to be a new name.
They didn't, and perhaps they learned that major feature support changes require a new major version to reduce confusion.

I wonder how many posts/support calls has to explain that 10 17h1 (probably not correct #) dropped support for agp, and is you want agp, you have to use 10 16h2?

11 is 10, but with a cutoff for security features support (whether you agree with, or work around it or not).

The support calls would have likely been far more numerous if it was called 10 22h2 (or whatever year it was).

"hi I'm just trying to reinstall win10 but it says it's not compatible! It was fine yesterday!"

So... Yes, internally it is a rolling release, but due to customer confusion and support hours arguing the finger points of minor version numbers, they drew a line for major release names.

I don't think that's unreasonable.
Just imagine all the support calls if 11 was a point release and half the world woke up with the new start menu.
The complaints were bad enough with the major version number. Just imagine how much of a nightmare it would have been with thousands of people screaming that it was fine yesterday and they weren't told such a major change wasn't reversible.

It makes sense that new "major version" releases must exist and one way or another that "last os" was a technical explanation - even if it was retroactively decided like ide suddenly became pata when sata existed.

 

I use Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel every day. I also have a speech recognition program Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred which works with Microsoft Word. That automatically makes Windows 10 or 11 my preferred operating system.

 

Yeah I'm moving the missus's (much older) 3 series intel gaming PC to whatever is the defacto gaming linux distribution now, no need to waste money with windows. I only am hanging with it for some games that proton doesn't support - and I don't care enough to dual boot. WSL does my Linux needs well enough and I've got a little proxmox host I can run up a linux host on if I need it.

 

Strictly, none. Windows 10 requires CPU instructions that AGP supporting CPU's simply don't have.

That said, I remember well Zeffy's wufuc tool that became required when Microsoft wanted to "encourage" users off 7/8/8.1 and onto 10: https://github.com/chipsi007/wufuc