Will Windows 10 get better on 14th October?

[voltsandjolts]

Microsoft's support for Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025, meaning you'll no longer receive security updates, free software updates, or technical assistance after that date.

..or pushy software 'upgrades' for one drive, copilot, edge, 365 cloud, cortana, yada yada yada?

Will I actually be left in peace to use my computer without needless multi-GB updates, that do little more than serve as advertisements?
Win11 doesn't appeal to me, again because of update nausea.

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

Do I just need some decent antivirus and keep my FF browser up to date?

[TimFox]

My only concern about Windows 10 "expiring":  When Windows 7 expired, I found that some of my commercial software (specifically for US income tax) would no longer work on 7 and required an update to 10.

[Analog Kid]

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

I've fared just fine, thank you very much.
Fortunately I don't use any apps such as Tim Fox uses that are Windows 10+ dependent.

[edpalmer42]

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

I've fared just fine, thank you very much.
Fortunately I don't use any apps such as Tim Fox uses that are Windows 10+ dependent.

However, it's fair to say that once an OS falls out of support, app developers also tend to abandon the OS.  So even with an old app, an attempt to upgrade the app may cause problems.  Windows has acknowledged this for years by including the ability to lie to an app about what version of Windows it is.  It's surprising how often that works!

[mwb1100]

Windows 10 and 11 cores are very similar under the hood  - that is indicated by the major.minor part of the version number remaining 10.0.  The build and rev parts differ though (he version quad is "major.minor.build.rev").

But there are definitely new APIs in Win11 that aren't available on Win10, so there's definitely a possibility for disruption.  And developers might decide not to support apps on Win 10 after MS drops support even though the applications still work.  So you might find it more difficult to get help even for for minor issues.

I'd probably still be on Win7 except MS made some major improvements to virtualization support in Win10 and 11.  And I moved Win10 to Win11 only because some of those virtualization changes in Win 11 weren't back-ported to Win10.

[Halcyon]

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

I switched to a Mac and never looked back.

[garrettm]

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

I switched to a Mac and never looked back.

Same, but with Linux. And if I need to use Windows I just make a VM. Lots of amazing work is being done with VMs these days, to the point that running Windows on baremetal is pointless.

Gnif's Looking Glass has new IDD that makes use of DX12 software render and outperforms basically anything aside from real HW.
And on Linux with KVM, the new vDRM graphics stack looks promising and PCI passthrough works well for everything I've thrown at it.
In the off chance you have HW that actually support SR-IOV, then it's even simpler to get a high performance Windows VM up and running.

With PCI passthrough I can even update firmware for devices that only allow updates using Windows (e.g., Western Digital SSDs and select thunderbolt devices). Just pass over the PCIe device/controller, update FW and shutdown the VM and its good to go. I don't even need to reboot the host.

[Smokey]

The first thing I always do when I install windows is find a root kit and add my computer to a chinese/russian/north-korean bot net.  So I shouldn't see any difference with my Windows10 machines after October 14th

[mwb1100]

Same, but with Linux. And if I need to use Windows I just make a VM. Lots of amazing work is being done with VMs these days, to the point that running Windows on baremetal is pointless.

I've been meaning to do this for years...  But I'm a world-class procrastinator - one of the best!   Now all I have to do is figure how to get paid for it.

[Berni]

As someone who stuck with Win 7 for way too long, software support doesn't just disappear overnight.

There are even occasional updates if some severe enough vulnerability is discovered. Drivers are not a problem since you don't normally install an out of date OS like that on new hardware. Software keeps running fine while on most auto updating software the developers give a warning to users of old OSes that at a certain date they will discontinue support for it. Once that happens to something like a web browser that is a problem since you don't want to be running those outdated.

What killed usability of Win 7 the most is when certain new APIs and libraries got into popular use by software. This is mainly things like DirectX 12, Python, Chromium..etc and some new Windows APIs, since software that uses them under the hood simply wont work, no compatibility mode will save you there. You can get around it a bit by installing special patched versions of new Python that run on the old OS and things like that. But at some point you will be constantly fighting things like this whenever installing any modern piece of software. So you are just torturing yourself by still using it.

However things like this happened to Win 7 many years after being discontinued and Win 10 being on the market for a while. As of today Win 10 is still the most widely used OS in the world. So i am confident Win 10 will still be reasonably usable for ~5 years after being discontinued.

After those years i am hoping that Linux gets enough 'normie adoption' for things to "just work" and i can hop over to there. My last attempt at IOMMU passtrough for VMs didn't go well (I was likely on unlucky hardware) but the kinks should be ironed out by then so i can move to a Linux host that runs Windows in a VM when needed.

[Haenk]

The first thing I always do when I install windows is find a root kit and add my computer to a chinese/russian/north-korean bot net.  So I shouldn't see any difference with my Windows10 machines after October 14th

I certainly would not do that. However, there is still some truth in it. The hacking groups used to fully patch up conquered machines, to prevent other groups of hacking it. So I could imagine, some future serious flaws might even receive some hacker-made patches, to prevent your already-hacked machine to be re-hacked by another group.

[madires]

Same, but with Linux. And if I need to use Windows I just make a VM. Lots of amazing work is being done with VMs these days, to the point that running Windows on baremetal is pointless.

The PC VM technology is already 25 years old. I remember installing the first vmware version around 2000. Back then my company laptop was running debian (to do my job) and on top of that vmware with the company's standard NT image (to be compliant). When vmware started to annoy me (price/update policy) I switched to VirtualBox. It's so easy to backup and restore windows VMs that I never looked back again. At the moment I'm using a Win 7 and a Win 10 VM for specific things, like updating a satnav or printing on a label printer.

Back to the OP's question: Yes, no update orgies any longer.

[BeBuLamar]

The biggest problem with old OS is the internet browser. They are the first to not work anymore.

[artag]

The biggest problem with old OS is the internet browser. They are the first to not work anymore.

Indeed, and web designers being what they are, they soon insist on a later web browser. And so the forced march continues.
Even Linux suffers this problem.

However, I don't understand this desire to keep running W10. Wasn't it widely hated (along with every other version since what, 98 ?).  I guess 11 must be even more strongly disliked. Why do people stick with a company after generations of  abuse ? It hasn't been the only game in town for a very long time, if ever.

I recall when, despite years of evidence to the contrary, there was enthusiasm about new versions and a belief that the latest version would fix problems. I feel validated now that updates are so widely avoided.
 
 

[madires]

It's fairly easy to install a current web browser in case you need one, despite the advice to keep old windows versions away from internet gateways.

I recall when, despite years of evidence to the contrary, there was enthusiasm about new versions and a belief that the latest version would fix problems. I feel validated now that updates are so widely avoided.

Following windows updates the last few years everyone knows about all the fun they cause. It's a mess. A long time ago Microsoft managed to provide updates with just a few issues. Today admins pray each month that it's not going to be a total disaster.

[voltsandjolts]

However, I don't understand this desire to keep running W10. Wasn't it widely hated (along with every other version since what, 98 ?).  I guess 11 must be even more strongly disliked. Why do people stick with a company after generations of  abuse ? It hasn't been the only game in town for a very long time, if ever.

Windows has a vast range of software, some of which has no equivalent on Linux or Mac.
For me, it's Altium and Office, plus a few small utilities. I need to work with teams who use these tools, alternatives like KiCAD / Libreoffice etc. are not an option.
If there was Altium and Office for Linux, I'd have switched long ago. But for now my best option is Win10 virt machine.

[Infraviolet]

As far as browsers go, judging from earlier experience with Windows and more recent experience with Linux... After the OS goes unsupported the browser will still work fine, and will get browser updates (on Linux you have to have the browser installed by deb file or as an extracted archive folder, not via the repositories as these would stop updating when the OS stops getting updates), but eventually (possibly several years) the browser will either have an update which makes it no longer workable on the old OS or the browser will complain that it's next update won;t be possible to apply because the OS is too old to support incoming new browser versions.

The other problem here ofcourse is website bloat, each webpage used far less RAM and other resources to load it than they do now. Infinite scroll pages are particularly bad in this regard. I've still got some fairly old computers, with a modern linux OS on them, but when opening many tabs of excessively fancy webpages the age of the machine becomes noticable.

Linux as host, and either Windows in a VM, or if you're really lucky running your necessary Windows programs under Wine (some programs will, other's won't, a matter of luck), is definitely the way to go, and has been ever since the pushing of Win10 via GWX.exe started.

[Berni]

However, I don't understand this desire to keep running W10. Wasn't it widely hated (along with every other version since what, 98 ?).  I guess 11 must be even more strongly disliked. Why do people stick with a company after generations of  abuse ? It hasn't been the only game in town for a very long time, if ever.

I recall when, despite years of evidence to the contrary, there was enthusiasm about new versions and a belief that the latest version would fix problems. I feel validated now that updates are so widely avoided.

Launch day Win 10 =/= Current day Win 10

I used Win 10 from fairly early days. This was thanks to getting a work computer that came with Win 8, so the easiest path to escape from that train wreck of a OS is to take Microsofts offer of a free upgrade to Win 10, so that's what i did on day 1 of setting up my new work machine.

Things broke a lot back then, updates would mess around with your OS in all sorts of ways, sometimes breaking your stuff too. This was like using an alpha version of a OS. When Win 7 Beta came out, it was way more polished than this turd. But as they worked on it over the years they sorted stuff out and gradually the updates became mostly just bug fixes so they wouldn't fuck up your stuff anymore. This allowed the actual improvements in 10 versus 7 actually shine trough (rather than obscured by bugs) and it became a fairly decent OS. Especially once Win 11 came out they stopped messing with 10 and just let it be a workhorse OS rather than a testing ground of new wacky features. Sure you still have to peel away the useless new Control Panel windows to get to those oldschool Windows NT/2000/XP setting windows that actually let you configure stuff properly, but once you know where you look it is not too bad, stuff works. So Win 10 is right now the most stable workhorse of a Windows OS (that you can count on to not self destruct spontaneously) while being compatible will all new software.

I also have a lot of windows only software so going Linux is more difficult. Especially at work where i need stuff to just work and i don't have time to dick around with getting linux to do what i want it to do.

Hence why i am waiting for IOMMU pass trough to be more mature in VMs so that i can have a Windows VM with full GPU acceleration and all that. Then i can justify going to Linux as i always have an option to spend all my time in the VM. If things don't work out, nuke the Linux boot partition and just boot the windows drive directly outside a VM.

[garrettm]

Hence why i am waiting for IOMMU pass trough to be more mature in VMs so that i can have a Windows VM with full GPU acceleration and all that. Then i can justify going to Linux as i always have an option to spend all my time in the VM. If things don't work out, nuke the Linux boot partition and just boot the windows drive directly outside a VM.

IOMMU is mature and works fine, but you have to use new HW that supports VT-x and, in particular, VT-d "directed IO" (or AMD equivalent features). You can't expect the kernel or user space software to fix something that requires a HW feature... It works fine on at least 11th gen Intel Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake systems (what I currently own). If you are running something older, I couldn't say for certain, but you can look up your CPU on Intel ARC and see what features it supports (If you have AMD, they might have an equivalent feature table but I haven't used it). If your CPU has VT-d, you are good to go. You can only pass over PCIe devices. Otherwise you will use paravirtualized devices for the guest HW. I pass over an entire NVMe drive and my second GPU and sometimes the Thunderbolt 4 controller and have also passed over the SATA controller at one point. USB passthrough, if I'm not mistaken, is paravirtualized. To get the best performance, I'd just pass the PCIe connected USB host controller (if you have more than one) and get native performance without all the indirection needed for host to guest USB operation. This is especially important if you plan on updating firmware on a USB device, as you need the controller to be present on the guest for it to succeed.

You also need to enable all the kernel features at boot time with "intel_iommu=on iommu=pt"

Linux is great, but is never going to be a turn-key option for a random laptop or collection of off-the-shelf parts for a custom PC. You will likely need to adjust your kernel boot time arguments to work around issues with your specific HW. And don't use Nvidia if you want to have a fully functioning system. Seriously. Until NOVA makes it into the kernel and the closed and open user space graphics stacks use it, using Nvidia is not going to be a good time. Even then, only Turing (16xx / 2xxx series and up) are going to be supported. If you have anything older its the out of kernel Nvidia module and closed source user space stack, which breaks if you update your kernel and doesn't like Wayland at all. So you'll be stuck on x11 and that is being depreciated by seemingly everyone at this point. Now, if you have two GPUs (e.g., Intel/Nvidia), passing over the Nvidia card is a great option.

And Looking Glass (which is a pain to setup correctly) is incredibly performant for local use of the VM when doing work with CAD, image editing (Adobe) or gaming.

[Berni]

I was trying IOMMU pass trough with a Ryzen 7000 series and a RTX3090, plan was to use AMD integrated graphics in Linux. Back then it was a fairly new platform and the motherboard was still getting quite frequent BIOS updates as things were not quite mature yet.

I got pretty close with it but ultimately i couldn't get the VM to successfully boot with a working GPU. Eventually i gave up and shelved that project for some future rainy day in hopes that next time it will just work. Another thing i considered is running Proxmox on bare metal and just make everything a VM but haven't got around to trying how that works.

Once Win 10 goes obsolete il likely give it another go and hopefully Linux adoption will also break out of the 1 or 2 % market share by then as people get fed up with all this Windows bullshit.

[voltsandjolts]

My Dell 7540 has an i9-9880H which supports VT-x and VT-d. I have two GPUs, an Intel UHD Graphics 630 and an Nvidia Quadro T1000, so both fairly low end graphics but perfectly fine for me.

When you have dual graphics cards, and a computer that supports VT-d, is it possible to use iommu to dedicate one card for linux and the other for a Win virt machine?

Edit to partially answer my own question:
Seems that iommu groups are decided by the hardware and bios, use

Code: [Select]

lspci -v to see what devices are in what groups.

[voltsandjolts]

Gnif's Looking Glass...

Level1Linux takes a look at the unexpectedly fast fps technique discovered by the Looking Glass folks...
https://youtu.be/frDvaw_xUQk?feature=shared

[JoeRoy]

Just use Linux, problem solved.

[Circlotron]

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

I switched to a Mac and never looked back.

"I'd rather fight than switch".

[SiliconWizard]

How have you folks on Win7 faired?

I switched to a Mac and never looked back.

"I'd rather fight than switch".

Uh huh.