Seriously consider moving to Linux

[manly]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'll answer your last question: MS is offering 3 years of extended support on Win10 at a rate of $60 for the first year, $120 for the second year and $240 for the third year. I doubt that LTSC or any other edition will work around that because MS wants the $$$.

The official workaround for Win11 is really easy: Download a Win11 ISO, use Rufus to burn it to USB and tick the options that you want (including the system requirements workaround). Install Windows with said USB stick. End of story. For the upgrade install 2 years later, rinse and repeat but do an upgrade install with it instead.

Using this technique I even upgrade-installed a Win10 install. The only complication I've encountered is that one should try to consistently use the same language edition of Windows when downloading the ISOs, otherwise the upgrade-install option won't be a straight upgrade install, more of a reset install but keeping personal files (it warns you beforehand).

I thought I'd mention it because while I took the Linux route in 2018, I wouldn't say it was the easy route, and I started migrating when I saw the writing on the wall with Win10 and jumped ship from Win7 with two years' support left so I had plenty of time to even go back to Win7 if I chose. I have a lot more experience with Windows than Linux (though I have played around with test Linux installs several times over the last ~20 years), and if I had to summarise my experience with Linux, I'd word it like this: Stuff I expected to be complicated turned out to be easy, and stuff I expected to be easy turned out to be more complicated.

That's the announced business rate for extended support; perhaps the consumer pricing will be lower. We don't know yet. (IIRC non-profits can pay $1/year.) Based on the pricing model, I actually don't think MS is serious about getting the money. They seem more serious about forcing upgrades to Win11, based on how they've structured the costs to escalate.

I'm not saying MS will be agnostic to consumers getting extended updates for free, but it was trivially easy to get the WinXP POSReady updates. LTSC/IoT editions aren't a workaround if they are already supported "long term." Any workaround would be if you used a regular edition of Win10 to get such LTSC/IoT updates for free until EOL; I guess time will reveal if that's an option.

The Win11 install hacks are not hard, but are too much to expect of a typical consumer. (The installation is easy, but it's the backing up and restoring of the existing environment that isn't.) Consumers will either use Win10 without latest security patches, or buy a new PC. And I wouldn't expect Joe User to switch to Linux either.

 

[mikeymikec]

That's the announced business rate for extended support; perhaps the consumer pricing will be lower. We don't know yet. (IIRC non-profits can pay $1/year.) Based on the pricing model, I actually don't think MS is serious about getting the money. They seem more serious about forcing upgrades to Win11, based on how they've structured the costs to escalate.

I'm not saying MS will be agnostic to consumers getting extended updates for free, but it was trivially easy to get the WinXP POSReady updates. LTSC/IoT editions aren't a workaround if they are already supported "long term." Any workaround would be if you used a regular edition of Win10 to get such LTSC/IoT updates for free until EOL; I guess time will reveal if that's an option.

The Win11 install hacks are not hard, but are too much to expect of a typical consumer. (The installation is easy, but it's the backing up and restoring of the existing environment that isn't.) Consumers will either use Win10 without latest security patches, or buy a new PC. And I wouldn't expect Joe User to switch to Linux either.

I was just making a suggestion to a fellow forum user, not remarking on the morality of Microsoft's strategy. If I were going there, my primary argument would be about the filling of landfills with perfectly good hardware at a time when humanity should be making the most of what we've got.

 

[Triloby]

My difficulty is I love debian based distro's that are stable - Linux Mint.. however games love updates and patches.. so I'm going to have to force myself to either like Fedora once it has a Cinnamon distro or just put SteamOS as an OS.

I think Fedora has an official distro that uses Cinnamon. Even Ubuntu now has an official distro that uses Cinnamon:
https://fedoraproject.org/spins/cinnamon/ - Fedora Cinnamon Spin
https://ubuntucinnamon.org/ - Ubuntu Cinnamon

Whether or not their Cinnamon versions are any good compared to Linux Mint is up for debate.

 

[Indus]

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is out.

Mint should be out in about 2 months or so.

I'm still not on the wayland bandwagon so I'm hoping mint sticks with x11 till they fix wayland's lack of features.

 

[Indus]

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is out.

Mint should be out in about 2 months or so.

I'm still not on the wayland bandwagon so I'm hoping mint sticks with x11 till they fix wayland's lack of features.

Disregard my last..

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is not polished like Mint..

 

[Red Squirrel]

Sometimes I try Ubuntu but always find myself going back to Mint. They've really done a good job polishing it.

 

[Indus]

Sometimes I try Ubuntu but always find myself going back to Mint. They've really done a good job polishing it.

Yeah I too am a Linux Mint user but I'm really leaning on just going with LMDE and bypassing the whole Ubuntu mess.

 

[pmv]

I may have to have to buy a whole new, bare-bones, PC, with a new Motherboard and a Win-11 acceptable CPU, plus Win 11, and then transfer what I can from the old machine (RAM, GPU, HDs). Damn, though, that's gonna be such a lot of work just to stand still.

Or do I try and jump to Linux and hope I can get games (Steam, especially) working on that?

Got about 18 months to decide which way to go.

What CPU would be acceptable for Win11? And, as that would certainly mean a new motherboard, will I also need all-new RAM? (Think I have DDR3 at the moment)

 

[mikeymikec]

Sometimes I try Ubuntu but always find myself going back to Mint. They've really done a good job polishing it.

I was surprised at Linux Mint too (after trying out a few Ubuntu versions) - I fully expected that given that Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu that it would suffer from Ubuntu's lack of polish plus a few more oddities, but I found it to perform better than *ubuntu and debian.

For example the simple-scanner app that I think comes from Gnome's neck of the woods "just works" in Mint, whereas in debian and *ubuntu its behaviour is weird/inconsistent/unreliable.

The only niggles I have with Mint are:

1 - It would be nice if XnViewMP matched with my theme better (some slight inconsistencies)
2 - Bluetooth throughput seems quite poor in comparison to Windows (tried multiple adapters)
3 - Handbrake DVD rips result in unsync'd audio or subs, can't remember which

@pmv

Any CPU 2018 or later basically, but there are official Win11 CPU support lists for Intel and AMD.

I think trying to get gaming working on Linux while still being a Linux newbie is just going to frustrate you. It's why I dual-boot on my new setup with Win11 as the secondary OS.

 

[WilliamM2]

I may have to have to buy a whole new, bare-bones, PC, with a new Motherboard and a Win-11 acceptable CPU, plus Win 11, and then transfer what I can from the old machine (RAM, GPU, HDs). Damn, though, that's gonna be such a lot of work just to stand still.

Or do I try and jump to Linux and hope I can get games (Steam, especially) working on that?

Got about 18 months to decide which way to go.

What CPU would be acceptable for Win11? And, as that would certainly mean a new motherboard, will I also need all-new RAM? (Think I have DDR3 at the moment)

8th-generation and newer Intel Core processors as well as AMD Ryzen 2000-series processors and newer are supported.

Pretty much anything from Early 2018 or newer.

 

[manly]

I may have to have to buy a whole new, bare-bones, PC, with a new Motherboard and a Win-11 acceptable CPU, plus Win 11, and then transfer what I can from the old machine (RAM, GPU, HDs). Damn, though, that's gonna be such a lot of work just to stand still.

Or do I try and jump to Linux and hope I can get games (Steam, especially) working on that?

Got about 18 months to decide which way to go.

What CPU would be acceptable for Win11? And, as that would certainly mean a new motherboard, will I also need all-new RAM? (Think I have DDR3 at the moment)

DDR3 is ancient so at a minimum, you're looking at a new platform (motherboard/CPU/RAM). What you should do depends on what your budget is. If your budget is tight, then I'd target something used from about 2021ish (AMD Zen 3). Just to give you some ideas, you could scrounge together a cheap gaming rig if necessary:

https://youtu.be/LfpXMuMvcWQ

If you don't already have a SATA SSD on hand, I'd just approach this as a fresh build.

Unless you're a big nerd or have some specific motivation, I'd just skip the gaming on Linux experiment.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Honestly I feel trying to get games to work in Linux is just not worth it. Sure it can be done but everything will feel like a work around or limitation. For every game you want to play you need to figure out what to do to make it work. I have two PCs, a Win7 machine for games and then my daily driver for Linux. I just use a KVM to switch between the two. The gaming machine also has a high end GPU so uses lot of power, so only turn it on as needed.

 

[jamesdsimone]

Would you like to sign in with an MS account?
Would you like to use OneDrive?
Office 365? We've got a good offer going!
Back up your personal folders using OneDrive?
Use Edge as your primary browser?
Did you know that OneDrive helps protect you against ransomware?
Let's finish setting up your computer... <cue a few of the above questions yet again>
Are you sure you want to download Chrome? Here's fifteen reasons why Edge is so great!
Are you sure you want to make ... your default browser? Here's fifteen reasons why Edge is so great!

I was helping configure a customer's Win11 laptop that they bought themselves recently. In the space of two hours it had badgered me at least twice to download Office 365. "I'm entitled to it" apparently... a free trial version for six months. grrrreat.

@igor_kavinski may have a point, I mostly see Home editions of Windows. I'd be surprised if it mattered that much though, because MS still wants to peddle their wares and I doubt that simply giving them another ~£30 is going to make them shut up.

It took me forever and a couple dozen tutorials to shut a lot of that crap down. I am so sick of nagware. You only have to ask yourself one question. If all of Microcraps "features" are so great why do they have to nag you? Same thing with Windows 11, if it's so great why does MS have to jam it down people's throats? Linux upgrade, you check when you want and install or not your choice. I would go 100% Linux if I could. Anyone have experience with Lutris? Unfortunately gaming is still so much easier with Windows. Fortunately 90% of what I play was written for Windows 7.