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The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it's time to consider Linux and LibreOffice
(blog.documentfoundation.org)
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Technology
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I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?
We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.
What Microsoft probably expects you to do is get your management to buy new computers that support Windows 11 and/or whatever the hell their current server OS is, and in the process give them and their hardware vendor partners a lot of money.
What you can do instead is switch to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC which is what I did at my workplace recently. It's supported until 2032 with security updates. Not feature updates, but I suspect that business users probably don't care about those much. In fact, most people would probably treat that as a benefit. It also comes with basically no bloatware (except goddamned Edge), which is surprising. No Copilot, no Cortana, no Recall. None of that shit.
We have a fleet of machines that "can't" be upgraded to Win11 because of hardware shortcomings, at least without overriding the requirements with Rufus or similar. Unfortunately we also rely on a small but important spread of proprietary Windows-only applications which have no open source or Linux replacements, and at least two of them absolutely will not run in Wine. Believe me, I tried.
The only wrinkle with this is that you cannot upgrade or license swap in place. You have to do a full reinstall, which for us is not a problem because we have a modest number of computers and I have physical access to all of them. None are bricked up behind a wall or anything.
Your business critical system will no longer be supported with security updates which will leave it vulnerable to attack.
I guess, if it's not connected to any sort of outside network, and has no way of accepting data from media like discs or thumb drives then it's perfectly safe, but if that's the case, and it works in isolation, how "business critical" is it?
You would be amazed in the industrial world. There are tons of large and incredibly expensive special purpose machines that are operated by super antiquated PC architecture computers running geriatric operating systems, sometimes still even DOS or Windows 3.x.
Think industrial CNC mills and lathes, presses, pick-and-place machines, specialty lab testing equipment, electron microscopes, etc.
Process control, i.e. production line automation, is usually driven by dedicated PLCs. But the user interfaces connected to them are almost invariantly some old ruggedized panel mounted PC running Windows. An absurd number of them in my experience are still on 2000 or XP. NT4 is pretty easy to find, too.
Granted often these are not networked, and in cases where they are they're not connected to the internet, or may even talk to other workstations via RS-485 serial (!) or some other gimcrack method that is unlikely to be a vector for modern malware.