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Lots of PCs Are Poised To Fall Off the Windows 10 Update Cliff One Year From Today (arstechnica.com) 177

One year from today, on October 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for PCs that are still running Windows 10. From a report: Organizations and individuals will still be able to pay for three more years of updates, with prices that go up steadily each year (Microsoft still hasn't provided pricing for end users, only saying that it will release pricing info "closer to the October 2025 date.") But for most PCs running Windows 10, the end of the line is in sight.
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Lots of PCs Are Poised To Fall Off the Windows 10 Update Cliff One Year From Today

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  • I'm going the (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:42PM (#64864085)

    I'm going to upgrade my old windows 10 PC to Linux i would never pay more to microsoft

    • Myself as well. Itâ(TM)s good to have a far off end date, as Iâ(TM)m taking to slow deliberate route, testing and learning on an older system.

      • Re: I'm going the (Score:4, Informative)

        by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @06:24PM (#64864535)

        If you really need access to Windows while in Linux, it's extremely easy to spin up a Win11 install on a vm. I do it with Virtual Box. I haven't needed it yet but it's nice to know if I run into a must need Windows, I have it.

          Only draw back with Virtual Box is the free version doesn't allow you to take advantage of your video card, so you can't play games in it. No idea if this is true with the paid version.

        I say, take the plunge! Immersion yourself in the Linux environment and you'll quickly find you don't need Windows unless you have a Windows only app you can't do without.

        • Good (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Good, no more forced reboots. I dont do internet on it anyway.
    • Me too. I have been hoping Microsoft would force me to switch to Linux, as it has always seemed a bit too much trouble as long as Windows (kinda) worked.

    • by Morromist ( 1207276 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @05:19PM (#64864393)

      I'm not planning on upgrading from Windows 7.

      • by bobby ( 109046 )

        It's a riot that you're getting modded "Funny". I'm still on 7. It's stable, no annoying updates, no interruptions, no problems. I do have a couple of machines still running XP, and of course some with Linux. One has Win 10, but I haven't booted it in over a year. No point.

        • Re:I'm going the (Score:4, Interesting)

          by SoonerPet ( 893902 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @07:28PM (#64864645)
          I too have a couple systems on Win 7, they are VMs I have running at home, they run 24/7 for years and have never had an issue with them, it’s still my favorite windows OS, a nice clean interface. I moved to Mac and Linux for my main systems around 20 years ago, at this point I have 1 Win10 system and it’s only for gaming. I fully intend on keeping it on Win10 LTSC for as long as it will run. The day it stops, I’ll move to SteamOS for gaming. I really can’t stand what they have done to the Windows interface and all the nagging and hand holding in 11.
        • Re: I'm going the (Score:5, Informative)

          by kenh ( 9056 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @11:31PM (#64865011) Homepage Journal

          No security updates...

          • Re: I'm going the (Score:4, Insightful)

            by bobby ( 109046 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2024 @12:03AM (#64865067)

            Yes, thanks, that's well known. My first frustration: why should I need them? It irritates me, maybe even angers me, that a company like Microsoft gets away with selling such horribly broken products. Even with years and years of sometimes hundreds of patches, it's still broken. Which brings me to my second frustration: there should be some mechanism in place- markets, laws, something, to force Microsoft to completely finish a product before being allowed to introduce a new one. Every new version of Windows brings many many unwanted "features", and hundreds of security holes and errors. How about refining and finishing a product? I like to think Win7 is fairly well patched. I'm in no danger. I use some good protection software; my systems are NEVER open to the 'net- always firewalled, and I make sure there are no open ports anyway. There are several malwares that can hide from a scanner anyway. I regularly pull the hard drive (SSD in this machine) and scan it as a slave drive in a known good machine so that no malware can infect and hide during boot. Happily, no malware.

            BTW, Windows Defender does still update.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )

              There is no such thing as "finished" software.

              There's a reason every single OS, including Linux, continues to be updated.

              For that matter, no *physical* product is ever "finished." Newer versions of everything, are always being produced, and always will be.

              This is partly because the environment around us is always changing, and partly because different people want and prioritize different things, and partly because of competition. Whatever the reason, no product can be or ever will be "finished."

    • Been doing that with quite a few workstations at work. Most are connecting to Windows Server RDP servers, so Remmina is a perfectly good substitute. The workstations work just fine, and we can run them until they die. Testing out the Debian images right now.

    • I wonder if upgrading a PC to Linux, running KVM, then running a VM under the hypervisor would allow for easy Windows 11 usage. Of course, you have an OS layer, but virtualization is easy, and there is swtpm to take care of that requirement. You mainly need a decent amount of RAM (I'd say 16 gigs), a recent SSD, even SATA, and 2-4 CPUs so you can have one CPU for the host OS and hand the VM the rest. Downside is game playing may suck, but upside is that updating to Windows 11 is doable, and as an added b

      • 16 gigs barely holds a modern day video card state
      • You're still getting the same CPU (unless you want to fully emulate it, which makes running modern Windows comfortably out of the question).

        If you're looking only to run W11 you can bypass the CPU (and TPM for that matter) restrictions with a simple officially documented tweak.

  • Canâ(TM)t upgrade (Score:5, Informative)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:43PM (#64864093)

    Canâ(TM)t upgrade even if i wanted to.

    They put arbitrary cpu generation requirements in windows 11. 7th Intel is too old, but apparently the almost identical 8th gen is fine

  • by mcfatboy93 ( 1363705 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:48PM (#64864119) Homepage

    Anyway.

  • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:49PM (#64864121) Journal

    I have a vague memory from the time Windows 10 was going through its marketing hype phase before release that it was billed as the last version of Windows (on the grounds that it would basically rolling update forever).

    Well that never happened (or I misremembered).

  • Smug penguins (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ahoffer0 ( 1372847 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:55PM (#64864143)

    This is my cue to feel smug because I've been using Linux on the desktop for the last 5 years.

  • Upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:55PM (#64864145)

    https://www.linuxmint.com/ [linuxmint.com]

    Yeah yeah, you can't because your important software is not available. In that case pay up. What's so difficult?

    • by Calydor ( 739835 )

      It's not that it's difficult. It's that in this age of trying to do good by the climate and reduce waste, literally millions of pretty large electronic devices are deemed 'unfit for use' and sent to the landfill because of an arbitrary date in a calendar.

      • So install the upgrade I linked and keep using them. They're not getting free Windows updates anymore. If that means "unfit for use" to you, that's on you.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:56PM (#64864151)

    Since Win10 basically runs everything Win11 runs and essentially is the same system, many people will not downgrade to Win11. Hence it is quite possible that Microsoft will this time fail with their asshole-strategy to force people on new hardware.

  • Important Software. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kellin ( 28417 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:01PM (#64864173)

    Yes, unfortunately I'm running 20+ year old software that won't ever get another update, so I'm stuck with running Windows 7/10 on two computers. Not that I want to upgrade to 11, the laptop I got my wife six months ago runs Win 11, and I bloody hate it. Who the heck thought turning Windows into MacOS was a good idea?

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:01PM (#64864175)
    By the back door. By having to buy a new computer on a regular schedule, causes ewaste and also means that everything has to be migrated and retested. Unfortunately Linux has done the same thing with most mainstream distros requiring "x86-64-v2" and ripping out tried and tested code with Wayland, Btrfs and whatever's been rolled into Systemd by now. It's not just computers either, the shut down of 2G and 3G networks have made those old reliable Nokias literal bricks now, and even reports of electric cars being bricked.
    • If we kept the 2G and 3G networks around forever, and presumably the 4G and 5G as they get superseded, how is radion spectrum going to be freed up for future technology? Who's going to be a customer of these decades old networks to pay for their upkeep? 3G is over 20 years old now. 2G is over 30.

      Who's going to make new 2G towers, with their massive 64k peak bandwidth available to .... well you might be the only customer?

      • One could have made a small hotspot that would convert between standards and could act as a Faraday cage for the older device.
        Or come up with a replacement modem that looks old to the host, but actually talks via modern protocols. (Many of these laptops have the WAN modem as an expansion card.)

        No one said anything about forcibly maintaining the towers.
        • You're suggesting to keep an old Nokia phone running, create a completely new device to emulate an old cellphone network? One that won't radiate any of the licensed spectrum it will need to use. How do you use a phone sealed in a metal box?

          You could need to replace the entire modem and RF components, including the antennas, which for the classic Nokia 3310, are internal. Half of the PCB is dedicated to the cellular chip and RF amplifier.

          You can easily replace an m2 WAN card, but by the sounds of it, xack wo

    • Debian 12 32bit version https://cdimage.debian.org/deb... [debian.org]

  • by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:06PM (#64864187) Journal

    It'll be nice to pick out a cheap unnecessary obsoleted second-hand laptop by that time to migrate my current Devuan installation to.

    Not that I really need more performance than the current 2008 or 2009 Dell, but it's just nice and fun to gain a better toy sometimes.

  • My last Windows is my Gaming PC. Wanted to try Gaming on Linux anyway, so this is the necessary motivation.

  • by Hey_Jude_Jesus ( 3442653 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:15PM (#64864221)
    Upgrade to Linux Mint 22 with Long Term Support. You can install WINE 9.0 (or Crossover) to use Windows programs. Ive been using it for the last Six months when Windows 10 wouldn't boot after applying an update. You get used to the differences very quickly.
    • Upgrade to Linux Mint 22 with Long Term Support.

      My Windows 10 PC is a Dell XPS 420 and too "old" to officially support Windows 11, which I don't think I'd like anyway, though it runs Win10 very well.

      Just bumped my, new and more capable, but still too "old" (i7 w/o TPM) for Win11, Linux PC from Mint 21.3 to 22 last weekend and migrated over my Thunderbird profile now that the versions match at 128.3.1esr (w/o using a PPA). Already migrated my Word/Excel and WordPro/123 (yes) files to LibreOffice and the only thing holding me up at the moment, other tha

  • by Teun ( 17872 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:21PM (#64864239)
    Once a month I log in on Windows and do the available updates.
    For the last year this has worked without a hitch.
    The rest of the month I return to trusted Kubuntu.
  • For a family member, I bought them a 8C-16T Xeon with 64GB ECC workstation. BUT, the CPU is "too old" to run Windows 11 officially.

    Microsoft is artificially creating e-waste. Luckily the hacker scene has various methods of bypassing Microsoft's artificial hardware restrictions.

    (yes, I know Linux/BSDs/etc exist, but this machine is specifically built to run the Adobe suite for multimedia production, of which the F/OSS alternatives are ass in comparison for actual real-world workloads)

  • by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:39PM (#64864271)

    I have a server right now that's well over 10 years old with no TPM support whatsoever, 1.0 or 2.0. It's running AlmaLinux 9. I used kvm and libvirt to install a Windows 11 vm a while back and kvm provides a full emulated tpm 2.0 that Windows 11 is completely happy with. The VM runs fine and I access it primarily over rdesktop (rdpwrap to make it multi-user for the win).

    Leads me to wonder if a lightweight vm or hypervisor could be devised that provides a virtual TPM and boots up windows 11 and passes all the hardware straight through to it, so it appears and feels like it's bare metal. Would save a lot of good hardware from the scrap heap for casual folks who aren't likely to switch to Linux or buy a mac.

    • by HBI ( 10338492 )

      Anything that patched out the TPM would be considered malware. That said, it's a good idea. I'd go one deeper and say just patch the kernel, probably easier and more efficient than a virtualization layer. Unfortunately, you'd be highly dependent on Windows patch level, but there might be ways around that.

      MSFT would eventually try to hose up either strategy, along the lines of "The software's not done until Lotus/Novell won't run".

      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        Not talking about patching out tpm. We're talking a vm layer that emulates the tpm. Like it said this already works on kvm and libvirt out of the box on Alma Linux 9.

      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        Like I said it just works. I created the vm with virt manager and installed Windows 11.

        • Point is the answer to your question is yes. You only need enough Linux to get qemu/kvm running with GPU passthrough. Not sure how to prevent Linux from attaching the GPU in a single GPU scenario though.

          • by caseih ( 160668 )

            Right. It would be interesting if there was a little custom distro that was essentially invisible. Boot off a USB stick which would install the custom distro and then set up the windows image and then on boot you'd only see Windows.

    • by kriston ( 7886 )

      How did you overcome the Windows 11 CPU requirements? I have a ten-year-old VMware cluster and Windows 11 refuses to honor its CPU.

      • by caseih ( 160668 )

        With AlmaLinux 9, kvm is able to emulate the TPM 2.0 out of the box. In the qemu xml file it is using the "tpm-crb" emulator module apparently.

  • by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:44PM (#64864285)

    My company, right now, does not have a single PC currently running Windows 11. I'm guessing we are not that unique.

    The fact is for most office workers, a PC from 2015 is probably still working just fine. The only way MS can get people to buy new PCs today is to scare everyone with shortening service life cycles.

  • MS can stick it up there where the sun don't shine.
  • I'm prepared. Only habit keeps me on Windows really -- all the software I run also has tolerable to good Linux equivalents. Windows 11 feels like Windows 8: an unnecessary bloated turd, but with (even) more telemetry, bloat and dysfunctionality. I guess I'll keep using that at work PCs, but that's about it.
  • For the vast majority of users, that is not going to happen.
    They will just continue to use Windows 10 until they get a new computer which will have Windows 11, or possibly macOS,.preinstalled.
  • I have a computer I have been unsuccessfully trying to not be updated for years because every time it does it causes grief. I was always quite annoyed that they force the updates. Good riddance to updates.

  • Next year is 2032?? (Score:5, Informative)

    by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @05:52PM (#64864463)
    The only tolerable edition of Windows 10 is IoT Enterprise LTSC, and it gets security updates through 2032. Hopefully some miracle occurs and they fire the entire Windows team and make 12 ok, but considering 11 is still getting worse and worse... and 11 LTSC offers only a fraction of the un-fucking 10 LTSC does... really don't know what I'm going to do. But that's at least 8 years away.
  • Don't care (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @06:00PM (#64864473)

    With Microsoft borking shit up so frequently with their updates, I simply turned them off.
    Their updates are risky as the problems they portend to solve imo. :|

    I'll continue to use Windows 10 as long as the software I utilize supports it.
    ( No, before you ask, the software in question is not available on Linux )

    If necessary, I'll simply firewall the Win 10 box and use my other box ( Linux Mint ) to do
    all things internet.

    I will not be upgrading to Windows 11 ( or anything else Windows beyond today ).

  • Unfortunately, the only reason people I know have to keep using Windows is Office 365. And no, Libreoffice does not cut it - Writer is good enough, but Calc is way to incompatible with Excel to be a quick change and Impress is simply horrible compared to Powerpoint.

    When these people drop off Windows, they are going to buy Macs. Because the Mac minis and Macbook Airs are decently priced, more than sufficient performance for their needs, AND run Office 365.

  • Microsoft is repeating this scam for the past 30 years now.
    Dumped my PC 15 years ago.
    Still using my 2019 iMac.
    Hopefully it will last a few more years.

  • by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2024 @04:15AM (#64865303) Homepage

    Yeah, yeah, Microsoft.

    When my home computer next dies, then I'll look at the choices available, not before.

    At the moment, 11 just annoys in the usual "Microsoft always know better" ways, and you're not willing to change those. No local users. Nonsense start menus. Everything reliant on pathetically slow search. Can't even bring the taskbar start menu icon to the left any more. Nonsense Edge/Copilot etc. integrations (though some backtracking there, eh?).

    No reason for any of the above. You just don't like users. We get it. So unless you're going to do something about it, I won't make the decision until I have to, and then I'll make the decision based on what's available at that point.

    Just like before. 95 (no) OSR2 (okay), 98 (no) 98SE (maybe), XP (no), XP SP1 (no), XP SP2 (kinda), Vista (no), 7 (okay), 8 (no), 8.1 (kinda), 10 (if I have to), 11 (no).

    I honestly don't mind skipping an OS or two. Not at all. Always have. Keep making me do so because it may not go your way for very long any more. And now I've lost my VMWare Workstation (thanks Broadcom!), I have to consider more importantly what my base OS will be.

    Increasingly it's unlikely to be Windows nowadays. P.S. I spent 10 years entirely on Slackware. Please don't assume I wouldn't switch again. And most of my servers at home and my remote servers are Linux.

    Hell, I haven't bought Office personally since I owned a CD with just Word 2000 on it (that's all I needed, and they used to sell it separately) and I ran that through Crossover for 10 years.

    Nowadays, almost every app I touch is open-source, cross-platform and non-Microsoft. Please don't test me.

    Of course, if you made Windows 11 just a LITTLE bit friendlier and rational, you know, like it used to be, I might consider it more highly.

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