Windows 10 quietly gets one more year of support and updates
88 points - today at 3:59 PM
SourceAnyone who still needs to run Windows 10 for whatever reason should switch over to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 (version 21H2) which will continue to receive security updates up through 2032.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/rel...
giancarlostoro
today at 5:42 PM
Linux is free and less wasteful on resources on the other hand.
kazinator
today at 6:12 PM
[delayed]
It is, and if you can switch, itās highly recommended. I have some pretty bespoke old RS-232 Windows software that was an absolute disaster to get working under Debian with Wine a few years back, so I (and others) might still need to keep a copy of Windows around.
Might want to try again, Wine progressed a lot in the past couple years.
Canāt wait till Fable 6 can just decompile and reimplement old software like that.
Filligree
today at 6:12 PM
Great for the americans. What are the rest of us going to do?
LeFantome
today at 4:45 PM
Current trends indicate that regular Windows 10 may as well.
Also MS go to great lengths to make the secret good version of Windows (It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Mint) very difficult to buy.
So just torrent it. It's bad enough running Windows let alone giving money to MS.
shevy-java
today at 5:11 PM
> It honestly is very good, I'd put it up there with Linux Min
I am not necessarily a Microsoft hater per se, but to insinuate
that Linux is on the same level as the Microsoft operating system
is really strange to me. Whenever I, for instance, have to copy
files to windows, I am getting annoyed at how slow it is compared
to Linux. And that's just one issue I have. Another one is how slow
e. g. ruby is on windows, compared to linux. The windows operating
system is simply not good. Linux also has issues, in particular
the main GUIs (both qt and gtk suck).
And good god...windows 11 updates still take fucking hours and still require multiple reboots. How this is still so painful after 2 decades is beyond me
Does that support modern gaming?
giancarlostoro
today at 5:43 PM
There used to be a website something like "windowsserver2008gaming.com" or something like that idr the specific domain, that was literally a guide to turn old windows server OS installs into gaming computers. The golden years.
It does support "modern gaming" yes, but like the sibling comment mentions, at least Riot's anti-cheat demands Windows 10 22H2 (the last iteration of Win10) as a minimum. There are a few somewhat convoluted workarounds floating around that people use. Also Adobe CS seems to require Win10 22H2.
My only caveat is that Iām not sure how it handles multiplayer games that require anti-cheat or DRM-style mechanisms, but itās been flawless with every title Iāve thrown at it so far (BG3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk, Ori, etc)
Even Riotās rootkit āVanguardā has reduced requirements for Windows 10.
"modern gaming" being a euphemism for "more proprietary software that has chained us to even worse proprietary software for decades".
What even is Microsoft's strategy? Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot and being all react wasn't great. Now we have a hardware shortage and ai in everything. I miss the time when it was "My computer" and not "This PC". I just hope they keep Windows 10 around till 2030 and longer...
>> Windows 11 requiring TPM, Secure Boot and being all react wasn't great.
For me a bigger concern is that Windows 11 requires MS account, and making harder and harder to bypass it. This is a disrespect for my freedom and privacy. The hardware is not the biggest issue because it might catch up eventually. https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-...
And in order to get the Windows 10 updates in the article, you need to sign up for an MS account, or pay them $30 a year not to spy on you.
Also the constant turning on despite my prior explicitly disabling of spyware (memory ālive samplingā to the cloud for āvirus protectionā, one drive āauto backupā), and features Iāve explicitly disabled like copilot.
Itās creepy as fuck, and for no real benefit to me that I can tell.
> spyware
The privacy-destroying "telemetry" is much less of a theoretical problem now too.
For example, your printer probably puts forensic marks into its output, then MS/Apple scrapes and logs your device serial numbers. This means anybody printing an "anonymous" flyer stating they re unhappy with the regime may still end up with thugs of said regime outside their door later.
Requiring a sodding Copilot advert on the keyboard too, in the case of laptops..
inquirerGeneral
today at 5:00 PM
[dead]
nosioptar
today at 5:31 PM
I assume they're secretly trying to get people over to Mageia.
The people I've switched from windows to Mageia since win11 all love it.
(As great as Mageia is, it does have small repos compared to Debian or fedora.)
I was a ubuntu user and work forced me to use a windows machine. Over the years I've accumulated so much software that I have no intention of leaving behind (photoshop cs2). In the past year though, I've been transitioning back to Ubuntu. So many software now offer Linux support, there's even less incentives to stay with Microsoft products. And of course is doing everything in it's power to alienate us.
shevy-java
today at 5:12 PM
Have you tried wineHQ? It works very well IMO. But I also understand your point of view here; I have a second computer system on my left running Win10.
abroadwin
today at 6:08 PM
"Quietly" seem to be the most popular headline word this year.
mattbettinson
today at 6:09 PM
Biggest LLM giveaway these days
Especially with hardware prices at the moment, this is a welcome announcement for many companies right now who need a refresh.
And sad for us. We may have to wait for nice cheap used hardware for use with Linux or *BSD.
But I wonder if components would have been stripped out due to AI. I heard even older RAM and SDD/HDD are getting expensive.
At least in a desktop context, you can get by with just a separate drive to boot-to.
techteach00
today at 5:03 PM
Windows 10 for me until new games won't run on it
And then?
pooploop64
today at 5:42 PM
Old games only
techteach00
today at 5:43 PM
Steam box probably
Needs to be logged in, so not exactly user friendly. But made me happy, I was afraid I might have to do updates again now I can continue life not being bothered by windows update.
I think you can log in to activate without changing to a microsoft account for desktop login (or at least you can switch back, I have some machines on microsoft account and some not)
computer23
today at 5:02 PM
They could actually help with the RAM and SSD shortage by extending support for Windows 10.
grouchomarx
today at 5:32 PM
this will probably go on for a long time, which is great because I won't install win11
AlexandrB
today at 6:04 PM
The old "Windows alternates good and bad releases" rule is dead and buried. Every major version since Windows 7 has been a downgrade on what came before. I'd rather be using Windows 8 than Windows 10 and you will have to drag me kicking and screaming into Windows 11.
freediddy
today at 5:41 PM
Why does Windows 11 still have "Control Panel" and "Settings", both of which are similar but entirely different?
I hate Microsoft, I was very happy with Windows 10 but Windows 11 is different for no reason except to be different.
McGlockenshire
today at 6:03 PM
The reason for this is that there are still drivers for old hardware that hook into the old control panel elements to actually function.
If you get rid of the control panel applets, you break the drivers.
This is also an old and out-of-date complaint. Almost all of the settings are now inside the Settings application and only inside the Settings application, with the related control panel applets gone.
I wonder if itās because hardware costs are going up
greenavocado
today at 4:35 PM
You can get a completely minimalist Windows 11 by grabbing an ISO from Microsoft then reprocessing the ISO by feeding it into this utility: https://github.com/christitustech/winutil (Win11 Creator Tab) to get a NEW ISO which you then install. The end result is an extremely clean and stable Windows 11 installation.
The resulting image can remove telemetry, bypass hardware requirement checks, and enable local account setup out of the box.
Official docs:
https://winutil.christitus.com/
https://winutil.christitus.com/userguide/win11creator/
delta_p_delta_x
today at 4:46 PM
To anyone reading this: please don't use ISOs downloaded from not-official sources.
Use an autounattend.xml, the mass graves, and a WinGet JSON to customise an online image.
[1]: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
[2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/package-manager/wi...
EvanAnderson
today at 5:48 PM
Do be aware that an autounattend.xml can cause Windows setup to execute arbitrary code. Their provenance matters too. It's relatively easy to encode scripts (or even binaries) into the XML to run during or after Windows setup. You can eyeball them, for sure, but I bet most people don't.
The tool linked by the parent doesn't download ISOs from non-official sources.
I use uup dump myself, which downloads the components directly from MS and builds the ISO locally
greenavocado
today at 5:43 PM
Did you even read what I wrote?
NTlite has also been around for more than a decade, although it has a freemium model.
That won't help you get to the minimum of Win10, though
greenavocado
today at 5:43 PM
Yes it will, please re-read carefully. winutil removes hardware checks.
Even cleaner when you don't install Windows at all :P
Why would people put themselves through the painful process of keeping themselves safe from their own computer?
StableAlkyne
today at 5:38 PM
Not everyone has the luxury of moving off of Windows. Solidworks, for example, has no Linux or Mac port.
Though I do agree, if your workflow is supported by any non-NT based OS, that's probably a better option
Anything I need windows for is work related and runs on my locked down (and actually very cleanly stripped down) windows 11 laptop. Its amazing how much Microsoft hates the consumer but bends over backwards for volume license purchasers.
shevy-java
today at 5:09 PM
I have Win10 on a computer on my left side as "backup" system.
I decided I won't change to Win11, so Win10 will be last
Windows version to use. It's no issue in that I am using
Linux since late ~2004 anyway, but I am also unwilling to
cater to Microsoft anylonger. I think it is time that governments
no longer force people to use Windows in general. For similar
reasons I reject the upcoming mandatory age sniffing that
lobbyists are pushing for (together with their attempt to
kill off VPNs).
animanoir
today at 4:35 PM
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