This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Phrased differently: Microsoft announces the end of support for a product. If you want to pay for it, they will make an exception and continue to support it just for you.
I understand people dislike Windows 11, but complaining about life cycle management isn't going to help that.
Will this lead to pirated security patches? What a strange timeline.
This is absolutely nothing new, and the workaround is usually just a small registry tweak so Windows Update pulls from the extended support patches "channel". Same thing happened with Vista, 7, and 8.
Alternatively there are ways to download from the Windows Update servers using plenty of third party tools. It's a neccessity if you're going to streamline patches into your install media to save the post install mess of waiting for it to download and install all the updates that have come out since they first made the install .iso
Is this news? This is expected, it's what they did with 7 and XP after those reached full EOL, which happened on the day they said it would for 7 at the time 7 launched, and a few years after the date they said when XP launched.
The 2025 date has been known since 2015 when 10 launched and is the standard Microsoft ten year support cycle for operating systems.
And yet, in spite of this, every single time the tech media published these breathless and shocked articles about how horrible it is that Microsoft is suddenly dropping support for their ten year old systems.
These articles are like clockwork. I'd say we'll be getting them for Windows 11 in about seven or eight years, but they have a new "modern" lifestyle they've adopted for it that's more based on last major update release or something and it'll probably come sooner than that this time around.
Although I generally agree with the sentiment the problem here is that most computers can't be upgraded to windows 11 and that pretty much never happened before.
Generally I would agree with you, as the 10 year lifecycle you described is what's to be expected. With Windows 10 however, Microsoft said on release it would be the last Windows and they move to windows-as-a-service. So Windows 10 not being the last Windows and the upgrade path being closed by default for many older PCs is newsworthy.
I live in a 3rd world country and I can promise you that this is going to lead to a large percentage of the population using an insecure version of Windows 10 or just using mobile devices.
I doubt many people here will switch to Linux, but I can only hope. Maybe businesses will do that instead of buying new hardware. Recently, I saw a shop using Banana Pis as their checkout terminal.
Every time this has occurred before, there's been a very easy registry tweak to make Windows Update pull these "paid extended support" patches for free.
So, this has been a standard phase of the Windows product lifecycle for 20+ years now. It doesn't really answer the problem with Windows 10 retirement and unsupported hardware on 11+ but it shouldn't be a shock to anyone.
Well, not supporting certain high end cpu's for Windows 11 is a problem. They are forcing me to either switch cpu, AND mb or not get Windows 11. The last one is fine with me, but now they stop support for Windows 10... That kinda rubs me the wrong way.
That's great! Means it won't update randomly without my permission anymore.
Good. That'll be the day I finally update to ~~windows 11~~ Linux
The Microsoft Blogpost keeps mentioning customers and I've seen it mentioned a few times in this thread, but it almost seems like they're gearing this towards businesses and not 100% average consumers. Then again, they do mention 365 subscribers so maybe they are. Either way it's such a waste that an OS would shutter anti-virus support for anyone who doesn't pay a subscription.
Also, a ton of people here keep saying how this will drive users to Linux. No, no it wont. It isn't the first shitty thing that Microsoft has done to their OS, and it won't be the last. Older and average people won't take time out of their day to swap OS's and learn terminals.
It's aimed at the U.S. Government. There's been an absolutely massive shift to get to Windows 10, updating systems as old as Windows 2000 to get there. MS advertised Windows 10 as their final OS, eventually backtracking and releasing Windows 11 and will continue to make iterative releases in the future. But for a moment The Government believed it and thought it was a great time to bite the bullet and go all in. Now that most major systems are upgraded to W10, it's doubtful from my perspective that U.S.G. will be able to support or migrate to W11 or even W12, meaning they will most likely pay a lot of money over many many years to keep MS providing security updates for the W10 platform.
I'm going to flip that back on them, Microsoft will have to pay me to update my OS.
Gonna be a lot of unsecured PCs about then, thanks to that ridiculous TPM requirement.
I've been a computer geek and programmer for 35 years. I'm the one my entire extended family asks for IT help. I'm even consulted by the IT department at work.
And I have no idea how to get Windows 11 running on my home PC. It has a TPM but I have secure boot in BIOS set to "Other OS" because I dual boot with Linux. I'm not getting rid of Linux, that's my daily driver. I just use Windows to play games. What does MS expect me to do exactly, get a second PC for Windows?
Hasn't this been a standard practice for decades? An absolute nothingburger.
It's new for the consumer market, with past versions of Windows it's only been available to the biz side.
This shit contributes to electronic waste.
It would be a REALLY simple thing to implement for longer and get the PR boost/spin. considering there are still so many devices that are working that don't support newer software. BRand loyalty is waning and windows is competing with chrome books. That's the shit k-12 are getting and most basic people. Give yourself at least a bit of an edge ffs!
But nah public hasn't made a big fuss about that so of course they won't elect to make better choices for the environment
This was supposed to be the "last" windows operating system they'd ever release.
Microsoft never officially said this. It was a random engineer
Fuck off Microsoft.
I did not have that on my bingo card, but I realize I should have
yeah no crap they've been doing this for decades now lmao
Isn’t this what they did with Windows 7/8.1 through ESU?
And Windows XP although I think they were pushed to start it with XP.
I mean, that's not exactly news. Windows 10 came out in 2015. It will stop receiving updates after 10 years just like every Windows version has.
Arrrrrr?
🐧
They really want everyone on 11 don't they.
I use 11 for work, and so I tried it at home to really dive into the issues I might have. I generally prefer Linux but have always kept my daily drivers Windows....well until last Friday. I had the explorer shell crash on me causing data loss and really was the last straw. Wiped everything and went to Linux, I'm tired of the games Microsoft. I tolerated your bullshit for YEARS because the core of the OS usually "just worked"....except in recent years that's not true and I don't feel like my computer is "my computer" when windows 10+ is on it.
went to Linux, I’m tired of the games
Linux actually has really good support for games these days
/(not sure of appropriate tag for dumb "joke")
I've literally restarted explorer before to accomplish certain workarounds (like getting the old right click menu back) and had zero issues with data loss.
I don't see how you could have lost data because the shell crashed when I intentionally killed it and had zero interruptions to my workflow. I'm pretty sure it's just a way to interact with the file system.
Why would they want to support an OS that they're not even selling anymore?
Next personal GFX update I'm going AMD and installing Linux on my gaming PC no matter what
But I get it, you don't want to maintain old builds forever. And given that certain systems still run Windows XP you have to force people and money is the only thing that talks
German Government is still paying for XP and Win7 Updates, because some software just isn't available on newer OS's.
Oh no!
Anyway, think how great gaming on Linux will be in 2 years.
My only holdback is modding - it's tougher to do without dancing among wine configs. Really hoping for some innovation there.
You can extend your security on deez nuts
Good thing by then I'll hopefully have upgraded computer, again, and be on the Mint train (or whatever distro tickles my fancy). I definitely gotta get on trying out a few on my backlog of distros to try on a VM before then.
