Windows 10 support ending 2025

[rdl]

I've always used Linux to download Windows iso files from Microsoft, mainly to avoid all the butt sniffing they like to do. Does that not work for Windows 11?

I guess it still might not install though.

[coromonadalix]

search for uup download website...  it will work with aria2 to download the win 11 files and compile an iso or an multi iso ... and a special script was supposed to be available to help install w11 on older non tpm machines .... they hack / mod boot.win and the machine detection file(s)

Done that on an old i5-7400,  b250 chipset   work pretty well,  havent tried to update it to the latest builds

[GlennSprigg]

I always wonder why people 'worry' about supposed "Support Endings" !!
There's still numerous people still using Win-7, and are perfectly happy with it, considering their individual 'needs'   
No more support??... great!!... No more forced nagging downloads/upgrades for an older system to constantly churn over!!

Ok, you need certain security updates, etc., but in the end Win-10 can be updated as far as you wish to go, and we delete
and dis-able all the CRAP that was in it, (as we all now know how to!!), and it will function fine for MANY years to come !   
For crying out loud, probably 80% or more 'computers' (laptops) are only used by gaming youngsters, and most of the rest
at home are only surfing the Net, sending Emails, and watching Youtube... (& Porn?).  There is only a relatively small portion
of us that are into complex spreadsheets, coding, graphics & countless other real tech usage. We are not talking about the
likes of National Security, or the Space Administration here...  It will all be ok!!!   

[GlennSprigg]

but.. make no mistake about it...

Corporate IT is a sick whorehouse NAZI  Mafia...

Expect very soon to "PAY" for "free source" open source whatever
in the same means all cloud fevers are up to..

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/ubuntu-pro-available-on-google-cloud

Shell corporations and front end corps will soon take over and
offer you a subscription of each and every piece of it..

Azure is obvious no different and WSL path the way of this shit..

Paul

I say this with "Tongue In Cheek", but every time I ever see comments by you, you seem to be a very angry man!!!   
I don't know what it's like in Brazil, but maybe tomorrow, when you wake up.... you see the sun shining, and hear the birds
singing, and think "This is going to be a lovely day!"...  Only stirring mate...   

[DrG]

One of the disadvantages of using a Win OS that is "out of support" is that software developers will not make versions of software that work on the old OS (why should they?).

e.g., Have a Windows XP machine? Newer Firefox versions stopped supporting it a while ago...you are stuck with older versions. Web sites are more interested in developing for phones rather than making things still working with old Win versions.  Same with other "common" software - even antivirus software becomes difficult. Now, I have to deal with different software on different machines - it is a waste of time for me to learn (or remember) different way to do the same thing on multiple machines. With those old USB ports and slots, you get hardware limitations as well. For dedicated purposes, they are still fine, but if it is a desktop, you have a lot of space taken up for decreasing gain.

It has not become that bad with 7 yet, but it is not far off. Yeah, it's a racket. I have two XP machines within eye reach at the moment. I have no idea what I will do with them - that's what I get for keeping a machine for more than 10 years. True, 25 years ago, I would have dyed my nut hairs orange to have that much computing power  .

I have no reason NOT to accept WIN 11 other than I'm lazy, I know it will peak suck for the first year, I have to buy more crap and find more space.  Did I say "no reason"? Maybe "no choice" is a better phrase.

That is the way I feel right now and I know that there are comebacks to each of those issues, but they have their disadvantages as well...I just try to remember that I have these machines to help me do stuff easily...that was the idea anyways.

I had a Linux 'box' when the version of it used to called Kernel 1. I installed and used FreeBSD on a 486 machine. Hell, I still have all 3 volumes of those Stevens books to learn TCP/IP



The Win stacks for that stuff were seriously crippled. But, as things evolved, I relented - I always thought WordPerfect was better than Word (at the time), but with Office and everybody in the workplace going there - it became a matter of how much time do I want to spend "learning" and how much time do I want to spend "doing"?

Now what am I supposed to do - become a Linux fanboy to run software that has the look and feel of Win crap?

Yeah, I know...rantings of a curmudgeon, but I say ...here are your gold coins Caesar, now go eff yourself.

[SilverSolder]

The issue is, if you have older hardware as well (printers, musical instruments, whatever) that are no longer supported on the new version of Windows...   then it becomes expensive to upgrade.

The "solution" that Big Tech is pushing us all into is to subscribe to everything...  so you end up paying a hefty monthly bill (if you have multiple computers and applications).

The alternative is, perhaps, to own just one PC that is bang up to date for secure, "official" work...   -  and be OK with owning several older ones as well,  that work fine for various hobby purposes?

[james_s]

The older hardware thing is a serious issue, it's easy for people to say "just buy new hardware" and that might be reasonable for mice, joysticks, webcams and stuff like that but there is a lot of stuff where that is not reasonable at all. There is test equipment that costs thousands of dollars to replace. My partner has a fancy Bernina sewing and embroidery machine that cost around $5k, about $5k worth of assorted accessories and add-ons for it and another $5k or so worth of software, all of it originally purchased by my grandmother around 16 years ago. For a long time we couldn't even use the software because the hardware lock had gone missing in the process of going through my grandma's estate. Finally just recently I found an old parallel port dongle in a box of random stuff my dad had and discovered that it works with one of the versions of the software we have. Fortunately there was also a 2005 era laptop running Windows XP with a real parallel port on it so now that machine is dedicated to the embroidery stuff. Replacing everything with modern hardware that works with a modern OS would be at least a $10k investment, that's a steep price to pay for hobby toys to replace existing hardware that still works just because progress marches on.

That would still be cheaper than subscribing in the long run though.

[SiliconWizard]

Yeah.

I have a nice Focusrite audio interface (on Firewire). Support is broken starting with some build of Windows 10 (I use it on 7 for now...) Let alone Windows 11. Trashing the interface would make absolutely no sense. Especially just for switching to an OS that, apart from being "up to date", would have almost everything to annoy the hell out of me. Hello?

But... I didn't try so far, but it should be supported by ALSA on Linux. So... that will be yet another reason to switch to Linux when Windows stops being usable for me.

[TimFox]

I always wonder why people 'worry' about supposed "Support Endings" !!
There's still numerous people still using Win-7, and are perfectly happy with it, considering their individual 'needs'   
No more support??... great!!... No more forced nagging downloads/upgrades for an older system to constantly churn over!!

I have been using TurboTax software for years, renewing it every year.
(There is an old accountants' axiom that tax law changes will always obsolete last year's tax software.)
In 2020, my old Windows 7 laptop was dying (the famous Toshiba overheating problem), so I upgraded to a Windows 10 machine.  This was fortunate, since the TurboTax software for tax year 2020 no longer runs on W7, but ran on my new W10 machine.  This is a real problem for "support endings", even with non-MS software.

[rsjsouza]

I always wonder why people 'worry' about supposed "Support Endings" !!
There's still numerous people still using Win-7, and are perfectly happy with it, considering their individual 'needs'   
No more support??... great!!... No more forced nagging downloads/upgrades for an older system to constantly churn over!!

I have been using TurboTax software for years, renewing it every year.
(There is an old accountants' axiom that tax law changes will always obsolete last year's tax software.)
In 2020, my old Windows 7 laptop was dying (the famous Toshiba overheating problem), so I upgraded to a Windows 10 machine.  This was fortunate, since the TurboTax software for tax year 2020 no longer runs on W7, but ran on my new W10 machine.  This is a real problem for "support endings", even with non-MS software.

Just move to H&R Block.    (I didn't have this problem with H&R Block 2020 on my Windows 7)

Jokes apart, this is indeed frustrating but somehow inevitable with the software-based world we live.

I would probably create a VM with the tax software and perhaps other less machine-dependent application software. For hardware constrained apps, I still have quite a few old spares around.

[james_s]

I've always used the web based Turbotax. Normally I loathe web based software but tax preparation is one of the few cases where this model really makes sense. It always seemed pointless to buy a boxed software package and install it on my PC when it is only useful that one time and then I'm going to throw it away. The web based one worked just fine on my Win7 machine.

[GlennSprigg]

I've always used the web based Turbotax. Normally I loathe web based software but tax preparation is one of the few cases where this model really makes sense. It always seemed pointless to buy a boxed software package and install it on my PC when it is only useful that one time and then I'm going to throw it away. The web based one worked just fine on my Win7 machine.

Good point, but I generally loath/distrust online/cloud/web-based stuff, for reasons of data security... 

[rsjsouza]

I've always used the web based Turbotax. Normally I loathe web based software but tax preparation is one of the few cases where this model really makes sense. It always seemed pointless to buy a boxed software package and install it on my PC when it is only useful that one time and then I'm going to throw it away. The web based one worked just fine on my Win7 machine.

Good point, but I generally loath/distrust online/cloud/web-based stuff, for reasons of data security... 

I am with you on this front as well.
 
I just remembered that, back in 2016 at around the tax season, I downgraded my PC from Windows 10 to 7 due to the furious dissemination of MS spyware/tracking stuff in the new OS. I was really afraid that keyboard trackers were surreptitiously placed in my PC.