The countdown has begun. On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. This will leave millions of users and organisations with a difficult choice: should they upgrade to Windows 11, or completely rethink their work environment?
The good news? You don’t have to follow Microsoft’s upgrade path. There is a better option that puts control back in the hands of users, institutions, and public bodies: Linux and LibreOffice. Together, these two programmes offer a powerful, privacy-friendly and future-proof alternative to the Windows + Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
The move to Windows 11 isn’t just about security updates. It increases dependence on Microsoft through aggressive cloud integration, forcing users to adopt Microsoft accounts and services. It also leads to higher costs due to subscription and licensing models, and reduces control over how your computer works and how your data is managed. Furthermore, new hardware requirements will render millions of perfectly good PCs obsolete.
This is a turning point. It is not just a milestone in a product’s life cycle. It is a crossroads.
Or just, you know, continue using 10 and not click on malware like a dipshit
I worry when this happens about being locked in to older versions of apps, especially ones like browsers that themselves aren’t getting updates. It will only need one dedicated soul to find a remote code execution exploit for one of these pieces of software and you may not even need to click malware to get infected. Visiting a website or just having it connected to a public network would be enough.
Big nope from me.
Switching to Linux is activism. Not only are you making an anti-capitalist, anti-consumption statement, but active participation creates growth and change that’s observable and satisfying in a way that most direct action cannot be.
Countdown? I didn’t even consider win 10.
I have one win 11 machine. That’s for work and to keep my hand in on the dumpster fire of an OS professionally.
MS must be having a heck of time upgrading to 11. I built two new AM5 PCs recently and one shows ZERO interest in win 11 while the other one took a few weeks in 10 before upgrading. I know they’re rolling it out based on tested configurations but not a peep. No hey, no get ready, no have you heard….
I tried out Bazzite and was pretty happy with the out of the box gaming. Think I’ll consider it for the wife’s laptop when 10 runs out. Kinda torn about giving her a dual boot with LTSC 10 and Linux or just going full in because it’ll be me on the support end.
I made the switch. Linux mint. Steam works great with all my games via proton. It was painless. Even a lazy person like me had mint setup with drivers, everything working in no time really.
Screenshots of your porn can now feed into your social life via AI that is continuously logging and analyzing.
I’m thinking about switching. A couple of weekends ago I had Mint on a flashdrive and tried out a bit.
I’m worried about compatibility with games as I’m a Steam user and whatever launcher that game requires sometimes.
Should I just do it? Just do a brand new install but on Linux? Which distro should I use that would be good for gaming?
Other than gaming, everything else I do is just everyday browsing on reddit/lemmy, YouTube, email, etc.
Grab a 1 TB nvme, take the Widows one out, install the new SSD boot the USB thumbdrive, install Bazzite (or Mint) and off you go, that’s all I did. I’m running LMDE but not a big gamer, so the little I do play all works on Mint Debian Edition.
If it all gives you the shits after a time, just put the old SSD back in and boot back into Windows.
Bazzite is great for gaming if you want an immutable distro, Garuda is great for gaming if you don’t.
If you have a game that only runs on windows right click on it go to manage and chose compatibility then pick the latest version of proton and relaunch the game. To do it globally First, log into Steam using your login credentials. Then, click on “Steam” in the top-left corner, and select “Settings”. Go to the “Compatibility” settings, then locate the “Steam Play” section. Toggle on the “Enable Steam Play for all other titles,” choose the latest Proton version from the dropdown menu, click “OK,” and restart Steam. My whole library works.
Do you have a spare SSD? Throw Linux on it and try it out for a while. You can always go back.
I do. I wanna say I did that a long time ago where I had two OSs on two drives? Would I have to disconnect the Windows drive to boot into the other? Or would it act like a dual boot and I can choose from a menu?
You can set up dual boot with your boot manager. This gives you all your installed OSs in the boot menu to select from.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows
EDIT: BTW arch isn’t hard to install anymore, just use the “archinstall” command at the prompt when it’s finished loading.
Depends on your gaming habits. Check ProtonDB for Steam games compatibility, check Lutris for others. Some anti-cheats (especially kernel level anti-cheats) don’t work on Linux, if devs decide to make it work on Linux, they can. For example they enabled Linux version of anti-cheat and Hell Let Loose works fine for some time now. If you mostly play single-player games, you’ll probably be fine.
If you want every possible gaming related programs to be pre-installed, you might wanna go Bazzite. If you want to explore on your own pace, Mint is a solid choice. If you want something like Bazzite but mostly empty, there is also Aurora.
My decision was to install Linux Mint first on my work laptop and not my main gaming rig, so I would have the ability to switch between both OS’s as needed, and have a fallback machine if either failed.
ProtonDB (Compatibility Database) should be your friend in checking what works and what doesn’t, and for the most part, Windows games “just work”, no need to even toggle a setting (unless you count forcing Proton instead of a native Linux port).
If you have software that is critical to your daily life on windows (Photoshop, Autodesk, VR software, anti-cheat heavy games), you dont need to jump ship on your main hardware. There are ways to get support after October 15th (Through IOT LTSC versions of windows 10, but you’ll have to find a way to get it).
All of your other use cases would be perfectly served by any Linux distro, the Interstellar Lemmy client even has a convenient flatpack for a 1-click install.
Check ProtonDB first (you can even log in to view all your library at once). If everything you would want to play works, go for it! If not everything works currently, I’d recommend getting your hands on IOT LTSC win10, and use a spare device to get familiar with Linux distros.
There’s no one “gaming” Linux distro that will work, but I personally just use Linux Mint because it is ol’ reliable for me - intuitive enough GUI, but just as configurable as anything else. You do miss out on some of the more bleeding edge stuff that distros such as Arch and Bazzite get, but unless you are using very new hardware, I’m not sure if it would be necessary.
Tried it. Hated it. It’s like replacing an old, worn out blanket with a scratchy burlap new blanket. Sure, it works, but bleh.
The big area to push should be on Office.
The new versions of Office with that ribbon are terribly user unfriendly (or maybe just non-basic user unfriendly) so hitting that and pushing Libre Office could net some good adoption.
But I guess that’s competing against GoogleDocs and the like these days… But we don’t wanna give the Big G that data.
The ribbon that was introduced around… 2007, I think? Or is there a substantially different one now?
Hope someone goes over the libreoffice ui to simplify its workflows and fix multi monitor support by then. That youtuber who designed musescore’s new version comes to mind
🤣 have to completely rethink their work environment 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Good Lord y’all love to ham it up.
Its always time to consider Linux. No one has to wait until Windows support ends. :-)
True but like Reddit shitting the bed every 8 months leads to waves of folks on Lemny, or Twaxter doing the same thing leading to Mastodon waves. This wikl be another wave but how many ? Maybe a few 1000 only I guess ? I left for Mint about 3 years ago (dual boot defaulting to Mint) then to LMDE 12 months ago.
Is there an easy-to-digest user’s guide for switching? I’ve had my toes in the water for years on switching but now with Mircosoft being facsists, I’m all in on wanting to switch. Used windows my whole life but I don’t mind switching one bit.
No, but a bad MS/Windows decision is often a catalyst. I came over to Linux from Windows ME. :)
I’m not that old linux user so it’s a bit interesting for me, when Windows 7 was closing, linux community was also so excited and offered everyone to switch to linux?
Not really the same scenario. PCs that could run Windows 7 could usually upgrade to 10, people were just reluctant to do so, partly also because 8 and 8.1 were such disasters. Eventually, everyone just moved on.
Today, a lot of 10 users would upgrade to 11 if they could, but their older-but-still-fine hardware is simply being cut off from Windows support.
Today, a lot of 10 users would upgrade to 11 if they could, but their older-but-still-fine hardware is simply being cut off from Windows support.
Technically, a lot of people was also “cut off” for Windows support with Windows 10, however, Windows 10 did not block you from upgrading anyway. Looking at the CPU requirements of Windows 10 1511, the Intel i3/5/7 types all required at least 5000 series or better from around 2015. Newer Windows 10 version cut out some of the 1511 supported CPUs, raising the minimum requirements. I think it was some of the CPUs from Microsoft’s own Surface computers, that was kept in the supported list.
Microsoft should just let Windows 11 install with a big fat warning that you are running unsupported hardware, however this could have a negative experience when people run into features that does not work. But most of the way, people would be fine.
Every time for a long time. Regular users would have more reliability with Linux but they are apathetic. Also they only need LibreOffice and Firefox but don’t want to accept that fact ant dont believe it exists on Linux.
My engineer father (who was secretly a dumbass for 60 years) asked me if Linux can even run programs. He has a Windows machine full of viruses…
I’ve said it before, but MAN am I excited to get to Windows 10 end of support so the old people and professionals stuck with highly specific hardware can just keep using their Windows 10 and the Linux community finally moves on from this stuff.
I am exhausted of these threads. Maybe we do a two week nostalgia revival when their paid commercial support ends again, but for now, can we make a deal right here to absolutely stop this crap by the end of the year when the needle moves exactly zero percent? Pretty please?
You may be getting bored of the posts but this is a rare opportunity to mass drive Linux adoption and break many people’s dependence on Microsoft.
Even if it’s 0.1%, there’s 1.4 billion Windows 10 machines out there. A million+ new Linux users would be great progress.
If you’re exhausted, just scroll on by. But if you’re a fan and user of FOSS, you should be giving these posts a quick upvote and move on with your day rather than be negative and dissuading the popularisation on Linux.
It is fricking not, though, that’s my point.
I have heard exactly zero normies talk about this. Nobody cares. Just like nobody cared when Windows 7 ended support. People just… kept using it. Today Windows 7 is as high up the Steam hardware survey as Linux Mint.
Windows 10 doesn’t shut down in October, it just… stops receiving security patches for free. Anybody clueless enough to not have migrated or stuck there for hardware reasons either already mitigated the issue or does not care. This is Linux’s Y2K moment. Everybody is expecting this big shift to be a moment and it’s really not going to be.
So I’m getting exhausted for nothing, which just makes it more annoying. Not a single normie space is even thinking about this. This is 100% Linux users talking to other Linux users about this big game-changing moment that’s never gonna happen. The EoL day will come, a couple of tech outlets will run a piece saying “hey, MS ends Windows 10 official support” and maybe a listicle of things to do (“1. Move to Win11, 2. Pay Windows for patches 3. Move to another OS”)…
…and nothing will happen.
We’ll all be here and we’ll all quietly stop talking about it and all this friction generated by this delusional hype will just fizzle out.
At the start of the process I was mildly excited, not about the influx of Windows 10 users, which was obviously not going to be a thing, but about maybe the hype leading to Linux development spaces focusing on long overdue work to ease that transition in time for the deadline. That didn’t really happen, so now we’re all just advertising this weird narrative to each other multiple times a day.
The quiet acknowledgement that… well, yeah, it won’t happen, but don’t break kayfabe just in case there’s a Windows guy looking, just reinforces that point. I would much rather have spent all this energy addressing WHY it won’t happen, or how to address the work that is needed to make it happen. I’d argue THAT is what a “fan and user of FOSS” should be pushing the community to do. In that, you know, it may actually work.
I’ve been using Linux since 98 and never have I ever seen it in so many conversations. 18,000 windows games now run. Distros like Bazzite and the Steam OS are getting kids into Linux. My son… Windows die hard that he was just told me he is not only running Linux but has canceled all streaming services and is hosting his own server. There’s never been a better time to help people get into the fold.
The time I point people at is the early Ubuntu drops when Linux was getting easy to intall, computers were simple to build and magazines would sometimes just pop up in stores with a Linux install CD in the cover. That’s the time I remember more normies suddenly gaining awareness of Linux as an option.
But yeah, I don’t have a problem with any of the stuff you said.
It’s just all unrelated to Windows 10 end of support.
Steam OS and Bazzite are way more relevant than it. Because they fix problems for a subset of users who are mainly focused on gaming.
They don’t do it fully, and not for all users, but yeah, that stuff will move Linux from 1.5% of the Steam survey to 3-5% eventually. That WILL move the needle to some extent.
Now if you did that for Adobe users, video editors, graphic designers, people who HAVE to use Microsoft Office, people who only play Fortnite, people with zero capacity to troubleshoot, people who rely on commercial software with no Linux ports in general, people who have Nvidia cards and want to use Game Mode, people who use other specialized hardware that isn’t currently well supported…
…those things will move the needle.
“My ancient copy of Windows 10 I use as a Chromebook is no longer getting security patches” is, by itself, less of an event than any of those. That’s my entire point.
I’ve helped two “normies” movie this week because they reached out after they saw the chatter on social (Instagram of all places).
This topic seems to be causing you some stress for something that probably doesn’t have a big impact on you personally.
This isn’t going to be a tidal wave as change is slow. People are hyping it because hype drives attention and being hopeful and positive drives change better than negativity and pessimism.
Again, just scroll past the posts rather than engage if the content isn’t what you’re interested in.
It doesn’t have a big impact on anybody. Which is the point. The friction IS the impact.
The hype drives attention if you’re targeting the people that don’t already know. That’s not what’s happening, regardless of your impromptu Instagram IT advice anecdotal experience.
Hype driving attention also doesn’t work if the product you’re hyping doesn’t do the thing it needs to do the way the people you’re marketing it at need it to.
Acknowledging either of those things is not negativity or pessimism. If we’re talking about pushing for open source software as a community then denying or ignoring the practical issues is not helpful. OSS isn’t a religion where you proselitize, facts be damned, it’s meant to be a project for an alternative way of handling software development. That video I linked is not an attack, or a bummer, it’s a hopeful sign that contributors and developers often have more clarity on the situation and the work left to do than the user-level advocates and activist forum posters.
Let people be excited about this if they want, I don’t think it will matter that much tbh.
Let other people suggest Linux to their friends as an alternative, maybe some of them stick to using it, while others just conclude it’s crap and move on.
You should really wonder why you get so upset from this though, it seems to cause you real harm that people might be wrong on the internet.
I don’t need to wonder. I get “so upset” because I hang out here a bunch and it’s boring and repetitive to see the same posts every single day. Especially when they’re kinda weird, wrong and self-defeating.
I’m also not super inclined to letting the Linux/OSS community play the “you’re mad at people being wrong on the Internet” card. Holy crap, is this place not the place to do that with any self-righteousness or moral high ground. In a conversation about lack of self-awareness that may be the biggest instance yet.
You are excited for October 15th because less people will be trumpeting Linux migrations.
I am excited for October 15th for the avalanche of cheap liquidated hardware flooding eBay.
We are not the same
Me too. I am already enjoying the discounted Intel laptops. They will really come down when macOS 27 comes out and OpenCore Legacy Patcher stops working on them.
There should certainly be some good desktop deals this Christmas for sure.
Hah. I fear you and I are not the same, but you and the trumpeters may be equally disappointed.
