597
Lots of PCs are poised to fall off the Windows 10 update cliff one year from today
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Windows 10 will have been around for 10 years at that point. That’s a pretty good run. You know another OS that is stopping support after 10 years? Ubuntu 14 LTS, but no one complains about that. People freaked out when Windows 7 went EOL, and XP before that.
XP was kind of a F up for MS, they gave us a really decent OS that raised our expectations. People ran that for almost 2 decades because no one wanted the new OS's MS was putting out like ME and Vista. Win 8 was out when XP support fully ended and many people chose to go with the older Win 7 because it was less intrusive and more like a PC OS instead of trying to become like a Apple/phone/tablet interface. XP>Win 7>Win 10>Win 11 imo and all the unmentioned weren't worth upgrading for, but I don't use my phone for the internet and I've been using a PC for over 40 years. We like what's familiar and we can use without having to think too much about the tool used to achieve what we're doing. I have Win 11 on a laptop and I have to jump through a lot more hoops to control my desktop, who can pull my info, what can install, what can run in the background. And every update I have to do it again because they add shit back in again along with new stuff I don't want or need. Win 10 professional at least minimized how often they'd add new stuff or change my existing settings. Win 11 Pro doesn't seem nearly as friendly.
Ubuntu isn't as paid as Windows. Also, newer Ubuntu versions don't need the user to throw their machine away because TPM 2.0 or NPUs are missing. Maybe these are two of the main reasons why nobody is complaining about its EOL.
I just find it fucking hilarious that people expect software to be supported in excess of 10 years, paid or not, when that’s never really been the case over the past 40 years of software. Sure someone will probably come up with an edge case somewhere, but if you developed software, and continually released versions and updates, would you want to maintain a version you released that long ago?
I just used Emacs a little while ago. A piece of software that's been supported since fucking 1985. There is no technical reason for Windows 11 not to work on a machine that's only a few years old and ran 10 just fine. It's literally still the same NT kernel. In the past, you could still upgrade, and your computer might slow down and struggle a bit to run the newer OS, but it did run. This time, for the first time, they are forcibly cutting off older PCs for no good reason other than the TPM bullshit.
Spit out that corporate Kool aid.
Linux booted on a machine from 1971.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/hacker-boots-linux-on-intels-first-ever-cpu/
Well, MS did at one point say Windows 10 would be the last windows and they’d just keep updating it.
Linux works fine on older machines and can give them new life.
I recently had to use a smart phone that is over 10 years old (Samsung Galaxy S5 mini) and believe it or not, YouTube and Facebook Messenger still worked. It was slow a hell but it still worked fine.
Problem is that newer systems aren't compatible with "old" hardware. So to you know, these computers being disregarded are still functional machines, if it weren't for Microsoft and other big techs bringing new requirements. What to do with lots of machines that doesn't have TPM 2.0? Ditch em all, contributing to more e-waste? This thought almost rendered an paralyzed man unable to walk again, as an "old" $100k exoskeleton was deemed "out-of-warranty".
It’s not an expectation of 10 years of software but hardware support. I’m sure people would have upgraded to W11 if they could but unimaginable amount of hardware is going to be stranded for the dubious benefits of TPM 2.0.