> So Microsoft decided to produce tons of e-waste for no obvious reason. There's a lot of capable hardware out there, and it would be of software company's interest to support as much hardware as possible.
The author then goes on to describe how he's just purchased 3 new Windows 11 licences... (indirectly via new computers)
frollogaston · 2h ago
I'm still not convinced that phone and laptop ewaste is a real problem. They're tiny. I've never actually thrown one away, they're just sitting around, taking less combined space than a nightstand drawer.
akimbostrawman · 2h ago
that might be the case for individuals but not corporations and organizations that also have the most hardware. i know from personal experience that windows 11 hardware requirements e-wasted tens of thousands of mostly perfectly fine computer and that is just a single medium sized organization. counting that up to even just one country is an enormous amount of waste. not to mention all the wasted money better spend elsewhere even your taxes will inevitable be wasted on this.
nine_k · 1h ago
This is another reason to run Linux instead of Windows. (Sadly, much easier said than done in large orgs.)
These perfectly good machines will likely be sold off eBay or similar, and / or go in bulk to poorer countries somewhere in Asia, where they are going to replace yet more ancient machines.
akimbostrawman · 1h ago
most of these will sadly go into the trash since donating them would cost more money than they are worth.
orev · 1h ago
Can an organization that has “tens of thousands” of computers running Windows really be considered “medium sized”?
Ekaros · 56m ago
No. I think around 250 employees is in many locations considered large company. And above 500 or 1000 would certainly be such. So anyone with thousands such devices outside refresh cycle is certainly not medium sized.
frollogaston · 2h ago
But that's for tens of thousands of employees, who presumably don't have other jobs. And how long ago were those PCs produced?
akimbostrawman · 2h ago
yes but all those people also have devices at home. most of it around 5 years but that is hardly how long the hardware actually is usable especially if you use anything other than the bloated behemoth that windows has become.
reminder that you can get a 10 year old pc with an SSD and any linux disto that will perform as good or even better for most basic office work than modern windows 11 on modern hardware....
frollogaston · 1h ago
Like I said, the devices at home are tiny. Sum up everything if you want, home + work + idk a second job, it's very little.
akimbostrawman · 1h ago
if you think a single medium sized organization killing 5 digit amount of perfectly usable hardware (these are average sized ~3kg desktop pcs) simply because of software is very little there is no argument that could convince you. try counting that up in your head only for your city (the whole world runs windows!) to decide if that is still "very little".
frollogaston · 1h ago
The numbers are only meaningful per person. If you want to multiply by 10K, you have to multiply their other waste too for comparison. Also I said laptop+phone originally, not desktop, in part because not very many people have desktops.
theoreticalmal · 2h ago
Why didn’t the companies do the workaround for the hardware requirements?
numpad0 · 1h ago
Because they don't make money working around arbitrary limitations. It might save a bit, but don't make a lot.
endemic · 2h ago
> I'm still not convinced that phone and laptop ewaste is a real problem.
I don't throw away phones or computers myself either, but a cursory Googling should be informative. From what I understand, it's a lot of "out of sight, out of mind" in wealthy countries.
frollogaston · 1h ago
Supposedly an average American throws away 1800lb per year, 46lb of which is ewaste, but that includes TVs and such. I can get upset about TV ewaste because those "smart" features are self-destructing otherwise good ones, and they're big. I had a new 70" Vizio TV get stuck in a permanent bootloop after 2.5 years.
tommica · 2h ago
It will be waste latest when you die
frollogaston · 2h ago
Yeah so when I die, there will be one small trash bag containing my entire life's phones and laptops. It could fit inside the coffin with me if it's such a problem. It's basically nothing compared to my general waste.
jamespo · 2h ago
including a high end workstation even though his old machine could upgrade to win 11 just fine
pathartl · 1h ago
Look at all of those 486s running Windows 10! Windows 11 is pure hell spawn. /s
Is the cutoff for 11 a bit arbitrary? Sure, but it's not unprecedented by any means. The machines that are supposedly turning to ewaste stopped receiving driver updates years ago. Why aren't we calling for the heads of hardware manufacturers?
Also let's ignore the obvious that the TPM check is still easily bypassable. It's not the most user friendly, your grandmother isn't going to be able to do it, but frankly your grandmother isn't going to update to 11 anyway. She's still stuck on 8.1.
Lammy · 2h ago
I've already been living this life for half a decade, since my PC's motherboard only supports up to Windows 10 v1909 for some reason. No idea why or what component could be the cause, but the later updates indeed fail to install and automatically roll back to v1909 when I try. They eventually updated the product page to mention it: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SAE (at the very bottom)
> Note: Win 10 OS can't support beyond 19H2 version
Verdict: It's been actually amazing, and I had forgotten how much I love having a computer that never decides that it's acceptable to interrupt my workspace because it knows better than me. Anyone who wants to tell me to BE AFRAID is welcome to come haxx0r my Gibson and make me believe, otherwise I'll happily keep using this garbage forever ;)
jml7c5 · 1h ago
I have a workstation board from around the same time. The issue is probably that Haswell/Broadwell-era processors are no longer supported. (For Intel CPUs, Windows 11 requires 8th generation (Coffee Lake) and higher.)
“Luckily” I already had a physical Windows 2019 Server on my LAN, had Windows 10 Enterprise on all my clients, and had my own Active Domain set up, because that was the only official way to configure it to spy on me less†, so it was easy enough to create an additional Group Policy pinning `ProductVersion` to `Windows 10` and `TargetReleaseVersion` to `1909`‡ and WMI-filtering it to my Haswell Xeon machine so it would stop nagging me: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...
† I'm still not optimistic enough to say “configure it to not spy on me” lol
I'm very interested in learning which motherboard component blocks the first party malware because I want this too. Any ideas?
hnuser123456 · 2h ago
The motherboard/C226 chipset is from 2013. You have memory integrity enabled and the old intel GPU drivers are not compatible with memory integrity in v2004+.
Maybe just having the physical VGA port is enough to run afoul of it even though it's inoperable? Either way I'm fine with it v(._. )v
neepi · 2h ago
Probably officially TPM related. However it'll probably work fine on Windows LTSC.
vondur · 2h ago
This is a huge e-waste issue. I work as a Sysadmin in a large public university, and I've been spending the last year or so removing and replacing large amounts of computers that can no longer run a supported version of Windows. I just recently sent around 50 computers to a company that supposedly donates/resales them, but I'm going to guess most will end up as E-waste prematurely. Yes, we can purchase an extended support contract to continue using Windows 10, but unless it's for specific equipment that has a PC connected to it we've been told to get rid of them.
dale_huevo · 2h ago
Why is this e-waste when compared to old Mac laptops - many of which are in perfect working order, save Apple arbitrarily stopping OS updates because they were too lazy to maintain or update device drivers. Somehow MS requiring TPM2 for Windows 11 was the end of humanity as we know it, but a Mac with a T2 chip is heralded as progress.
If anything many of these PCs will enjoy a second life off eBay in someone's home-lab running Linux. One of the most popular "servers" in the home-lab community are those little Lenovo Thinkstations you see in hospitals.
Edit: if you're a sysadmin at a university, aren't you replacing machines every 3-5 years anyway?
Lammy · 2h ago
> Why is this e-waste when compared to old Mac laptops
I feel like a used Mac laptop has a higher chance of being resold than anything else, provided it's at least new enough to get security updates. The oldest macOS that got a recent patch was Monterey, which supports MBPs as old as 2015 (which happens to be what I have).
I've been buying them off ebay, $80 for a pretty good PC. It's better in many ways than a Raspberry Pi.
thijson · 2h ago
My Dad got an old Mac in an auction. As a non-apple person, I just assumed I'd be able to upgrade the OS, however discovered it's unsupported. I ended up installing Debian on it.
numpad0 · 1h ago
I guess the market share, especially for use cases that extends beyond displays, is significantly smaller for Macs than for PCs. So Macs can demand whatever and it will be materially less significant.
wmf · 2h ago
TPM is not really the problem BTW. You can enable fTPM or install a $20 TPM. The problem is that Windows 11 doesn't (officially) support older CPUs because of VBS.
pipeline_peak · 2h ago
Who is denying that Apple is responsible for e-waste?
dale_huevo · 2h ago
It's just not a criticism I see put forth as often or as loudly. In this case, those old Windows PCs have a much better chance at a second life than a purpose-built Mac, so the criticism is largely unjustified.
riobard · 2h ago
If you compare the sheer volume of the devices in question you will see it's very justified.
jamespo · 2h ago
Probably because macs are a small part of the market
TiredOfLife · 2h ago
It used to be that you could install Windows on those macs and get a fully supported and updated OS. Not anymore
blooalien · 2h ago
Where I live, the main university has a "University Surplus" store where things like that go to be sold dirt cheap to tech-savvy folks who already know it's not garbage yet. $50 and a Linux install disc and you've generally got a fully working still fairly modern(ish) machine (modern enough to easily support some basic upgrades [GPU, RAM, HD, etc] if necessary for your intended purpose) all ready to rock-and-roll. Win/win for everyone involved. The University gets a bit of money out of it, anyone who wants or needs a cheap machine gets one, and the landfill gets to avoid some unnecessary e-waste.
pkulak · 2h ago
I buy old laptops and corporate desktops off eBay (and FreeGeek) constantly. I really hope people sell them instead of recycling them. They're not worthless, especially to people like me with zero interest in Windows.
throw_m239339 · 2h ago
I only buy old refurbished DELL/ LENOVO/... computers because of the numerous ports and they are better build than the recent one at the same price (I'm often using them outdoors in rain, cold, or sandy places, something that would wear off any cheap new laptop way too fast). Hopefully sellers online won't stop selling them if they can't get new W10 OEM licenses, but most people want windows, not Linux.
The only reason most of these computers cannot run W11 is the graphic card, nothing more, they can have 16+ gigs of RAM, can be upgraded with internal 5G wifi cards for cheap, and yes, I still use ExpressCard PCMCIA extensions as well (to add USB ports for instance), or even docking stations!
edit: they are easier to repair as well or find parts for because the design goal wasn't to be ultra-thin or ultra-light.
kwanbix · 2h ago
Windows 10 IoT LTSC is supported till 2032.
bongodongobob · 2h ago
You should be retiring your oldest 20% every year anyway to keep things on a 5 year cycle. You're absolutely killing your helpdesk team if you keep computers until they die.
neepi · 3h ago
Windows 10 LTSC + massgrave. Fuck 'em. I'm not ready to throw my Z440 in the trash yet.
And I don't want anything to do with windows 11, even LTSC at the moment.
CursedSilicon · 3h ago
>Instead, they made some arbitrary reason to deprecate "old" hardware
The criteria was based on hardware mitigation support for Meltdown and Spectre patches. Because at the time those vulnerabilities could be exploited by executing malicious javascript in a browser to steal passwords
silotis · 2h ago
> Because at the time those vulnerabilities could be exploited by executing malicious javascript in a browser to steal passwords
"could be" is doing a lot of work here. AFAIK there has never been a PoC or active exploit which actually exfiltrates sensitive data from a browser using these vulnerabilities. Anyways, browsers have long since implemented software mitigations.
IIRC the real criteria for W11 support has to do with TPMs. Microsoft really wants to have secure boot on all Windows systems.
nine_k · 2h ago
Spook.js was demonstrated to steal passwords from another tab by running innocent-looking JS via the Spectre vulnerability.
Pretty much all CPUs from Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge onwards got microcode mitigations through 2018 and 2019. Just about everything older is definitely obsolete from an efficiency standpoint.
CamperBob2 · 3h ago
Yeah, and I could be hit by a meteor the next time I step outside, or something that fell off a passing Boeing. The odds are about the same.
ocdtrekkie · 2h ago
The theoretical security people have gone off the deep end. The idiots in charge of browsers have decided the entire internet should break every 47 days in case someone might get a private key to a certificate, even though that's basically never been the source of a security compromise ever.
Meanwhile, advertising on the Edge start page and the top of Chrome search is the number one source of practical, working malware attacks. But those things make the browser companies money.
I no longer think big tech security people are serious.
observationist · 2h ago
It's justification for surveillance and adtech on the software side, and planned obsolescence on the hardware side. There's no disincentive that prioritizes sustainability, (actual) security, or function on the user side. The user is just a net input of data. The money comes from brokers (marketing firms and advertisers indirectly) and advertising buys. The product is the user data. The customers are companies and occasionally individuals acting as middlemen. Devices are increasingly tools to acquire data, with features being driven to the bare minimum a user will accept and still use.
Nobody in tech seems to be serious except for the people driving the adtech and surveillance models. Nothing else makes as much profit, and it financially justifies enshittifying every other aspect of every other piece of hardware or software.
Legislate protections of user data, and start nuking brokers and data collectors from orbit, and everything gets better. Until then, the only space that isn't continually and totally enshittified is open source, and/or markets and products new enough that quality still matters.
Our choices are end adtech, or suffer.
brians · 2h ago
Well, yes, but it’s much brighter over here beneath the streetlight.
immibis · 2h ago
The world wide web is one particular network. If you decide to copy stuff from the world wide web and use it for your own purposes, and the world wide web changes and your stuff breaks, that's on you.
Does the world wide web still work? If so, the change was fine.
See also the removal of the client certificate bit from Let's Encrypt certificates. Let's Encrypt issues certificates for web servers. What are you doing using one on a client? You should either do your own thing, or have an actual contract with Let's Encrypt for them to support whatever you're doing. Otherwise you have no right to complain about that.
TiredOfLife · 2h ago
BS. Microsoft provides a fully supported version of Windows 11 that doesn't have tpm requirement and works on all intel cpus starting from core i.
v9v · 3h ago
Why do people keep bringing up this e-waste argument and act like they have to throw their Windows 10 computers into the garbage? It's not like the operating system stops working the second official support ends.
estebank · 2h ago
I also agree that the machine doesn't go off on a puff of smoke the second the OS is no longer supported, but having an Internet connected device with an unsupported OS is not tenable. There are options, like of course running Linux instead for as long as distros support your hardware, but even then you're only buying time. At some point the avalanche of "progress" will cause software to rely on things your hardware can't do. That is a shame, because I don't really need anything from post-2000 hardware beyond pure speed increases. I have a fully functional and up to date T460 that I enjoy using, as long as you're not compiling anything big on it, running more than a handful of applications or doing anything while YouTube is playing.
aflag · 1h ago
Also, software stops working. Steam dropped support for windows 7 now.
smarx007 · 2h ago
Sure, there is nothing wrong with that if you either:
1. Disconnect that computer from the internet.
2. Are happy to have your computer infected and join a botnet.
1231231231e · 1h ago
Can someone who has knowledge about this explain how a PC with "unsupported OS" will actually get attacked just by web browsing and being connected to the internet? Your PC will always be behind NAT, it'll never have a public IP, therefore someone port scanning it can be ruled out unless it's maybe some infected device on the local network? It's normal in modern web browsers that you can just break out of the javascript sandbox and get OS level access by running an OS that hasn't been updated for a few years? If you're running an exe that exploits some known userspace security issue of older OS versions how likely is it that this exe doesn't have any other malicious code that'd cause issues even on an up to date OS?
jeroenhd · 1h ago
If you open a browser, you expose yourself to other servers. Same with opening files you download. Plus, with exploits like NAT slipstreaming, your computer can be exposed to arbitrary packets from anywhere on the internet as soon as any device you own loads and ad.
Microsoft at some point had a bug where a single packet could take over the entire kernel. I think it was a bug somewhere in the IP stack (something related to fragmentation in IPv6 I think?). Linux had similar issues.
If the built-in JPEG viewer or h.264 decoder or whatever component you use contains a bug, your computer can get infected. That also goes for things like preview generators and file indexers that run even if you don't open the file.
As much as the web seems to have consumed everything, there are still plenty of files people open.
In practice, you'll probably be fine as long as you keep your browser up to date and use up-to-date third-party software to open most files. At some point Chrome and Firefox stop supporting your system, though, and that's when infection suddenly becomes real easy.
frollogaston · 1h ago
A lot of these are non-exe files, like images/video, crafted to execute arbitrary code through some bug in outdated software that opens them. Could be a web browser or something else. It does take a while for an OS to be so old that browsers don't support it anymore, but sufficiently old ones are vulnerable to known spectre exploits breaking out of the JS sandbox for example. Or random other browser features can be exploited.
Also, Wannacry is a good example of a LAN attack reaching further than you might expect. Or there are various conditional ways to breach the NAT, one of them simply being NATless ipv6 with a misconfigured firewall.
Microsoft might bluff a bit and actually backport fixes for very serious issues, like how Wannacry was patched all the way back to XP. Maybe Win10 is fine for several years, but the real problem is that you don't know how vulnerable you are with each passing year.
1231231231e · 1h ago
With outdated browsers it does make senese. A bit more surprising is the image or video decoding exploit, considering that I'd assume those would usually be done in hardware rather than by some userspace or OS level code.
frollogaston · 1h ago
Hardware transcoding still involves software, plus the hardware itself can be vulnerable. It's not meant to act as security. But anyway, it's also very hit-or-miss. The drivers need to support it, and even then the software might not use it.
One random thing that ticks me off, Google Meet insists on using VP8/VP9 because they invented it, which has way less overall support for hardware transcoding. That's why it uses so much more CPU on many devices than Zoom etc which use the more common H.264.
indrora · 45m ago
Defender won't stop getting updates for devices running 10 from everything I've seen.
vinyl7 · 1h ago
This was a thing back in the windows 95 days...but is no longer an issue.
jm4 · 2h ago
Many companies have a policy that requires active support for all software and for good reason. Failing to install security updates or using software which no longer receives security updates might be the easiest way to shoot yourself in the foot. If you have ever worked in information security you know that the vast majority of attacks companies face day to day are malware exploiting patched vulnerabilities and social engineering attacks. If you don't have good patch management or end user training, you don't have good security regardless of anything else you do.
candiddevmike · 3h ago
Maybe they're throwing them in the garbage and getting Macs? When the choice is leave the ecosystem or embrace 1984: the desktop, it seems like a worthwhile complaint. Microsoft burned everyone's trust by thinking they can charge money for an OS AND sell your data.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
Apple also arbitrarily drops OS support on devices. On mobile devices they used to be the leading edge, but on desktop they end support faster than Microsoft does. Microsoft guaranteed 10 years of support when Windows 10 launched, but Apple is dropping support for their 2020 Intel Macs after this year. Plus, in terms of "1984", Apple's notarization system is as bad as it gets, and it's even harder to turn off than Windows Smartscreen.
Apple does have better speakers, though. So that's a nice plus.
immibis · 2h ago
Whoa there - the Apple ecosystem is also 1984: the desktop.
mock-possum · 2h ago
I have an old MacBook that even after a factory reset or a wipe and reinstall from scratch is unusably slow and can’t update to the latest OS, and so isn’t compatible with updates to software I use or new stuff I might be interested in -
Like come on. Let’s not pretend this is a M$ problem. Apple is just as greedy in terms of what is effectively planned obsolescence.
1231231231e · 1h ago
The problem doesn't seem to apply to other Apple devices. The iPhone 11 I've been using every day for the last 6 years is still working exactly the same as when it was new, all while still getting the newest OS updates.
IshKebab · 2h ago
Yeah and in this case the author even admits that he could have upgraded his PC to Windows 11 but he bought a new one anyway! I suspect he doesn't really care that much about e-waste.
I guess I'm going to have to put in effort to tame W11 into submission the way I did 10, but I'm not looking forward it - I honestly rarely have a need for it these days.
officeplant · 2h ago
Most things can be registry edited back into reasonable form including the new right click menus.
The task/start bar is unfortunately not size adjustable anymore and requires third party replacement if you want that back.
It can be molded back into a reasonable Windows experience, but I imagine future updates will break every change I make at least once.
JCattheATM · 2h ago
I was using OpenShell with W10 so needing a thirdparty taskbar isn't horrible. I see people complaining they can't truly disable updates on 10, which I did without too much of an issue. Truly removing and shrinking down everything was a project, but it's been solid and fast since doing so.
I kept a lot of notes and a lot should still apply to 11, but it's still a chore. I'm actually looking at recreating Tiny11 as a base and figuring out what to manually add back on a case by case basis to have all the functionality I need.
I will need something to run GTA6 when it comes, if nothing else.
dspillett · 2h ago
I've found https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher to be useful, though test it out before relying on it as some have reported stability issues with some options (I've not noticed any problems myself, other than things a little confused by my ZenBook's 1.5 screens when positioning some UI parts).
There are a few other similar tools to try as well, I'll leave others to talk about them as I never got around to trying more than this one so can't talk with any authority at all.
bee_rider · 1h ago
Once a machine has been rooted by an attacker, IMO the least-bad option is to just nuke it and start from scratch. For all I know, the tools I want to use to ferret out the infection are also infected.
When the attacker is Microsoft, the situation seems pretty hopeless.
mock-possum · 2h ago
You can get close, in my experience, but there are some things that windows 11 simply will not allow you to do.
The two that piss me off the most are - web results in start menu - and there being no option to always show all icons in the system tray.
vossbutton · 2h ago
Both of these annoyances can be disabled (looks like the tray icon workaround creates a scheduled task that sets the tray icons visible):
I'd love it if manufacturers would unlock the BIOS of business-grade laptops when Windows 10 ends, but I don't have any hope. Two of my laptops will just.. die, as I can't install Linux on them.
UncleSlacky · 1h ago
If you look around on the net, you'll probably find cracks for your laptop BIOSes - I did for an old Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook, for example.
aflag · 1h ago
You can already bypass microsoft's checks and install windows on unsupported hardware.
p0w3n3d · 2h ago
Which ones may I ask?
wmf · 2h ago
What exactly is locked?
caycep · 2h ago
someone needs to push Debian desktop or one of the derivatives...maybe a publicity blitz by PopOS or something
we replaced most of the machines in our office. There are 2 our finance person didn't want to replace, so we used the install check bypass for Win11, those employees don't really do much on those computers anyway...
I've been on PopOS for a couple years now with no complaints as my only OS on my desktop. Been great honestly.
Dwedit · 1h ago
Linux has no viable solution for developing Windows Forms applications in C# with debugging and Edit-and-continue support. There's Visual Studio running in a VM, and that's it.
pathartl · 1h ago
Why are you still writing stuff with win forms?
indrora · 44m ago
Some people have jobs that make money.
EvanAnderson · 2h ago
I'm having a lot of luck "upgrading" Windows 10 Pro to 11 24H2 on "unsupported" PCs with the setup command line arguments: setup.exe /Product Server /Compat IgnoreWarning
I'm sure an update will break the machines, down the road, but for now it's letting me eek a little more life out of some machines.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
Why buy three new PCs when you think they can still run fine? Just buy the updates if you want to keep your old computer running securely.
Or don't if you're okay with taking the risk. It's not like Windows 10 stops working the day free support runs out.
mongol · 1h ago
What do you think about running Windows 10 in a VM after EOL? For example, I have special accounting software I run in a VM a few times per month, on my Linux desktop. Are there any special considerations I should be aware of?
jeroenhd · 1h ago
Hospitals run Windows XP for their MRI machines. As long as you don't open files from the internet and don't use the VM to browse the web, you can use your accounting software for decades to come without any risk.
qwertox · 1h ago
The greatest moment for my underpowered Windows Vista homeserver was when Vista went EOL and I never had to reboot it again to install the updates, which was always a very scary task.
Microsoft makes me laugh. When I clicked your link to the docs file it looks like M$ added an AI bot attached to the Microsoft Learn platform so I decided to register with my work account.
> does Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 have access to WSL2
Sorry, I can’t help with this. Please make a new request or share your feedback.
What is the point of adding an LLM to docs if it can't even produce anything correct?
Henchman21 · 2h ago
> What is the point of adding an LLM to docs if it can't even produce anything correct?
The point? Raises, acquisition of new headcount, resume food, etc. Huge amounts of change in software seem to be completely unrelated to user needs.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
Windows LTSC can cause problems with some software, though, as some components and services aren't installed or loaded by default. Plus, licenses are expensive as hell.
If you want to save a buck or are going to pirate the OS anyway, stick with the normal Windows 10 updates first and then downgrade to the stripped-down LTSC versions when that runs out in late 2027.
HELLO Linux Desktops, this is your chance to shine and glow. Stop the stupid infighting on unimportant issues and unite to offer something that is a no-brainer choice for Windows 10 refugees.
msgodel · 1h ago
Why is this a problem exactly? Pick the OS who's leadership/choices you like and run it. No one has to agree on most of the low level stuff as that's abstracted away or even part of the kernel where there's few changes between distros.
riobard · 1h ago
That mentality gets us fragmentation of Linux DE for the past few decades with none winning majority mindshare and no commitment from major commercial developers. Sure with a capable browser most use cases can be covered but then there will not be a Year of Linux DE. It would be a Year of Chromium-based Browsers where DE is mostly irrelevant.
Those abstracted away details matter a lot if you care about user experience. Just watch how painfully a task both Apple and Microsoft are enduring to try to improve their consumer OS.
msgodel · 1h ago
Who cares? Run the DE you like. I don't want to be forced to run the one you like since, quite frankly, being someone new to this you're going to have awful opinions about how it should work.
If you sat down in front of my computer you probably wouldn't even know how to move the windows around.
And that's fine. We don't need to be running the same software as long as everything actually works.
riobard · 33m ago
Well since you don’t care about Linux DE adoption, we’re not going to have any meaningful discussion.
Enjoy your DE however you like it :)
ReptileMan · 2h ago
Here is a fun quiz - what you think are the best features windows obtained after 7 (and 7 main feature was - is not Vista)? Windows store/apps are terrible, the online integration in the start menu is a torment. Cortana/copilot are useless at best. File search is absurdly slow - to the point where the almost abandonware Everything kicks MS ass. So we are left with only WSL.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
My quick list:
- Multiple virtual desktops (usably built into the UI)
- Screen recording
- HDR support
- Much better antivirus built in
- Hyper-V support
- Much faster search (faster, not necessarily fast)
- Much better codec/preview support for the built-in media player
- Much better touch screen support
- Real fingerprint support instead of the pluggable API that no vendor actually implemented right
- Windows Hello infrared facial recognition
- DirectX 12
- Docked windows, in multiple arrangements, without janky third party software
- Multitouch gesture support
- Native DNS over HTTPS
- WSL2, especially gWSL, the Wayland compositor used to display Linux GUI applications
- Forcing companies to move their shitty unstable drivers to userland instead of crashing the kernel every time you turn on a printer.
- WPA3, better hotspot support, etc.
- Native phone integration
- A notification system that isn't applications drawing boxes all over your screen
- winget
- Windows Terminal and the various advancements in PowerShell
I don't like the remnants of Windows 8's UI but there were definitely useful features in Windows 10+.
xeonmc · 2h ago
built-in multidesktop task view
throw_m239339 · 2h ago
Will professional hardware sellers still be allowed to sell valid W10 licenses with computers or not? Because in the "refurb" space, there are a whole lot of computers that cannot run W11 due to graphic card requirements.
dspillett · 2h ago
> Will professional hardware sellers still be allowed to sell valid W10 licenses with computers or not?
Anyone selling hardware with Win10 after the EOL date, heck anyone selling hardware with Windows 10 now, is hardly professional, at least if they don't warn their customers of the security implications they may have if they don't pay MS for extended support⁰.
Once past EOL, unless you pay for the extended support¹, a Win10 device is a potential security problem for the user and the wider Internet.
UNprofessional hardware sellers can and will keep selling devices with Windows 10 to unsuspecting end users who do not know what the issue could be with that, of course.
> Because in the "refurb" space, there are a whole lot of computers that cannot run W11 due to graphic card requirements.
The only good-ish option for that is Linux of some variety. I say “good-ish” as an average assessment, for some it'll be great, for others it'll be a learning curve at best or significant incompatibility² at worst.
My laptop came with Win11, the old laptop³ that could upgrade to 11 will get Linux instead. My home desktop will also go the Linux way⁴.
--------
[0] which someone buying an old refurb PC may not be able/willing to afford, and even if they can it'll only last one year
[1] $30 for one year, per device, after that year you are out of luck as they are currently only planning to offer it for that long
[2] with other devices they own, or because they need specific software that can't be beaten into running on Linux without expertise they don't have, etc.
[3] the one with the slightly dodgy screen that I take for personal travelling as it matters a lot less if it gets lost or further broken
[4] I've just been too busy recently to faf, which is why that hasn't already been done, if it gets too close to Win10 EOL before I've cared enough to bother I'll buy an inexpensive dock and use the laptop connected to the nice big screens instead
delusional · 2h ago
What was the point in inventing the universal Turing machine if we then just arbitrarily gate it again? Computers were supposed to be different.
npteljes · 4m ago
Why not gate it, if it means business?
Not to mention, Microsoft is rotten from the very beginning. But to be fair, it's not like the other tech giants are much more philanthropic.
For my hurt feelings, I found refuge in the open source community. Like you, I feel betrayed by technology - computers were really supposed to be different - and these guys are actually doing it. It just has a kind of warmth, and respect, that I don't get from Windows since like.... Win 95.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
There is no gate. There is only a lack of other people willing to maintain software for you for free.
Install ChromeOS Flex or NetBSD or whatever on your Turing machine if you're so inclined.
s1mplicissimus · 2h ago
My personal take is that we currently have way too little hardware/energy available to perform all possible computations, so we want to prioritize some computations over others.
npteljes · 1m ago
The reason is more directly economical. We have more than sufficient energy to not have these gates in question, as demonstrated by people who disable the checks in the win11 installer and have it succeed on "unsupported" hardware. But it might not be worth it, for a profit-oriented company.
sergiotapia · 2h ago
Very frustrated with Windows in general. I just discovered they are throttling my computer with Efficiency Mode on processes like Brave, Bruno, Cursor, etc.
I would be on Linux today if Steam OS came out properly for desktop. I'm ready to dip.
Xiol32 · 2h ago
You don't need SteamOS.
Just install Steam on any distribution (I use Fedora) and it all just works like SteamOS - Proton use is transparent.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
For me, for gaming, the full-screen console-like experience is part of the appeal. SteamOS has full-screen Steam, but it doesn't boot into it. Plus, Gamescope has some nice performance measuring/management tricks that regular Steam doesn't provide.
If you just want Steam on an OS then installing Steam will do fine, but it's no "real" SteamOS experience.
Another part of the appeal is how stable the updates are thanks to update mechanism (and locking users out of the system config by default so they can't break their Linux installs with outdated scripts from askubuntu.com).
s1mplicissimus · 2h ago
I run a similar setup for steam on linux. Overall I'm very happy with it in that it plays some old games I like to play from time to time (dota2, portal2, oxygen not included). Some games are still windows/macos only unfortunately, afaiu it's up to the game owners which platforms they serve.
Shout out to the wine and lutris projects which both help make gaming on linux better since a loong time.
blooalien · 2h ago
> Just install Steam on any distribution (I use Fedora) and it all just works like SteamOS - Proton use is transparent.
Absolutely! And if you really feel you need a truly SteamOS-like experience, there's entire distros (like Bazzite for example) devoted to replicating that as closely as possible for desktop PC users.
jeroenhd · 1h ago
> It's like that Auto Shutoff they added to cars. Helps no one, and nobody wanted it
I don't get the hatred. It's very useful in countries where keeping the engine running at a red light or at a railway crossing is illegal. It also saves a ton of gas and emissions.
SteamOS will probably work if you're on an all-AMD machine (maybe not the latest GPU revisions because of driver lag), but SteamOS-likes like Bazzite will work fine on a lot of commodity hardware. I'd recommend trying the KDE flavour to get the most SteamOS-like experience, unless you prefer Gnome over KDE (like I do personally but tastes differ).
crawsome · 2h ago
Not enough has been done to clamp-down on engineered obsolescence. Also, the customer's right to choose a product they already purchased. You get a mix of 3 years, 5 years, 10 years of support on any given OS now. Sometimes buying the hardware right before upgrade time, and having to deal with the crapware they load when they upgrade.
They use legalese now to say you are leasing the software, using with conditions, etc, but they love pulling the rug from under users now, and replacing it with an often-inferior product. This user-hostile mentality has been this way for consumer computers since they were created.
And managing Microsoft's hand of greed at the IT level sucks, too. Don't get me started on how "Microsoft Copilot" magically appeared on every windows machine in the world and starting using CPU cycles.
And the OP is right to install working software on old hardware as a reaction. It's a natural reaction. Ubuntu freed a lot of my old hardware. Gaming still sucks on Linux though.
If we mandated keeping things around a baseline OS a little longer, the need for foreign electronics could reduce in the short-term. Maybe it could offset those dumb tariff we're all paying for a little. Just mandate support for current OSes we have for the next four years at least while we wait for the economic tantrum to leave office.
The author then goes on to describe how he's just purchased 3 new Windows 11 licences... (indirectly via new computers)
These perfectly good machines will likely be sold off eBay or similar, and / or go in bulk to poorer countries somewhere in Asia, where they are going to replace yet more ancient machines.
reminder that you can get a 10 year old pc with an SSD and any linux disto that will perform as good or even better for most basic office work than modern windows 11 on modern hardware....
I don't throw away phones or computers myself either, but a cursory Googling should be informative. From what I understand, it's a lot of "out of sight, out of mind" in wealthy countries.
Is the cutoff for 11 a bit arbitrary? Sure, but it's not unprecedented by any means. The machines that are supposedly turning to ewaste stopped receiving driver updates years ago. Why aren't we calling for the heads of hardware manufacturers?
Also let's ignore the obvious that the TPM check is still easily bypassable. It's not the most user friendly, your grandmother isn't going to be able to do it, but frankly your grandmother isn't going to update to 11 anyway. She's still stuck on 8.1.
> Note: Win 10 OS can't support beyond 19H2 version
Verdict: It's been actually amazing, and I had forgotten how much I love having a computer that never decides that it's acceptable to interrupt my workspace because it knows better than me. Anyone who wants to tell me to BE AFRAID is welcome to come haxx0r my Gibson and make me believe, otherwise I'll happily keep using this garbage forever ;)
“Luckily” I already had a physical Windows 2019 Server on my LAN, had Windows 10 Enterprise on all my clients, and had my own Active Domain set up, because that was the only official way to configure it to spy on me less†, so it was easy enough to create an additional Group Policy pinning `ProductVersion` to `Windows 10` and `TargetReleaseVersion` to `1909`‡ and WMI-filtering it to my Haswell Xeon machine so it would stop nagging me: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...
† I'm still not optimistic enough to say “configure it to not spy on me” lol
‡ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cznpPMomJXw
I'm using a Xeon E3-1270 v3 which doesn't have integrated graphics. I'm pretty sure I don't even have the Intel iGPU drivers installed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_processors_...
Maybe just having the physical VGA port is enough to run afoul of it even though it's inoperable? Either way I'm fine with it v(._. )v
If anything many of these PCs will enjoy a second life off eBay in someone's home-lab running Linux. One of the most popular "servers" in the home-lab community are those little Lenovo Thinkstations you see in hospitals.
Edit: if you're a sysadmin at a university, aren't you replacing machines every 3-5 years anyway?
It might surprise you to learn that 90% of computers sold are not-Macs: https://canalys.com/newsroom/worldwide-pc-shipments-q1-2025#...
The only reason most of these computers cannot run W11 is the graphic card, nothing more, they can have 16+ gigs of RAM, can be upgraded with internal 5G wifi cards for cheap, and yes, I still use ExpressCard PCMCIA extensions as well (to add USB ports for instance), or even docking stations!
edit: they are easier to repair as well or find parts for because the design goal wasn't to be ultra-thin or ultra-light.
And I don't want anything to do with windows 11, even LTSC at the moment.
The criteria was based on hardware mitigation support for Meltdown and Spectre patches. Because at the time those vulnerabilities could be exploited by executing malicious javascript in a browser to steal passwords
"could be" is doing a lot of work here. AFAIK there has never been a PoC or active exploit which actually exfiltrates sensitive data from a browser using these vulnerabilities. Anyways, browsers have long since implemented software mitigations.
IIRC the real criteria for W11 support has to do with TPMs. Microsoft really wants to have secure boot on all Windows systems.
https://www.spookjs.com/
Meanwhile, advertising on the Edge start page and the top of Chrome search is the number one source of practical, working malware attacks. But those things make the browser companies money.
I no longer think big tech security people are serious.
Nobody in tech seems to be serious except for the people driving the adtech and surveillance models. Nothing else makes as much profit, and it financially justifies enshittifying every other aspect of every other piece of hardware or software.
Legislate protections of user data, and start nuking brokers and data collectors from orbit, and everything gets better. Until then, the only space that isn't continually and totally enshittified is open source, and/or markets and products new enough that quality still matters.
Our choices are end adtech, or suffer.
Does the world wide web still work? If so, the change was fine.
See also the removal of the client certificate bit from Let's Encrypt certificates. Let's Encrypt issues certificates for web servers. What are you doing using one on a client? You should either do your own thing, or have an actual contract with Let's Encrypt for them to support whatever you're doing. Otherwise you have no right to complain about that.
1. Disconnect that computer from the internet.
2. Are happy to have your computer infected and join a botnet.
Microsoft at some point had a bug where a single packet could take over the entire kernel. I think it was a bug somewhere in the IP stack (something related to fragmentation in IPv6 I think?). Linux had similar issues.
If the built-in JPEG viewer or h.264 decoder or whatever component you use contains a bug, your computer can get infected. That also goes for things like preview generators and file indexers that run even if you don't open the file.
As much as the web seems to have consumed everything, there are still plenty of files people open.
In practice, you'll probably be fine as long as you keep your browser up to date and use up-to-date third-party software to open most files. At some point Chrome and Firefox stop supporting your system, though, and that's when infection suddenly becomes real easy.
Also, Wannacry is a good example of a LAN attack reaching further than you might expect. Or there are various conditional ways to breach the NAT, one of them simply being NATless ipv6 with a misconfigured firewall.
Microsoft might bluff a bit and actually backport fixes for very serious issues, like how Wannacry was patched all the way back to XP. Maybe Win10 is fine for several years, but the real problem is that you don't know how vulnerable you are with each passing year.
One random thing that ticks me off, Google Meet insists on using VP8/VP9 because they invented it, which has way less overall support for hardware transcoding. That's why it uses so much more CPU on many devices than Zoom etc which use the more common H.264.
Apple does have better speakers, though. So that's a nice plus.
Like come on. Let’s not pretend this is a M$ problem. Apple is just as greedy in terms of what is effectively planned obsolescence.
The task/start bar is unfortunately not size adjustable anymore and requires third party replacement if you want that back.
It can be molded back into a reasonable Windows experience, but I imagine future updates will break every change I make at least once.
I kept a lot of notes and a lot should still apply to 11, but it's still a chore. I'm actually looking at recreating Tiny11 as a base and figuring out what to manually add back on a case by case basis to have all the functionality I need.
I will need something to run GTA6 when it comes, if nothing else.
There are a few other similar tools to try as well, I'll leave others to talk about them as I never got around to trying more than this one so can't talk with any authority at all.
When the attacker is Microsoft, the situation seems pretty hopeless.
The two that piss me off the most are - web results in start menu - and there being no option to always show all icons in the system tray.
https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
we replaced most of the machines in our office. There are 2 our finance person didn't want to replace, so we used the install check bypass for Win11, those employees don't really do much on those computers anyway...
I'm sure an update will break the machines, down the road, but for now it's letting me eek a little more life out of some machines.
Or don't if you're okay with taking the risk. It's not like Windows 10 stops working the day free support runs out.
pretty basic stuff till now:
but hoping it will work out
https://github.com/ZeeeroOS/ZeeeroOS
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise...
> does Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 have access to WSL2 Sorry, I can’t help with this. Please make a new request or share your feedback.
What is the point of adding an LLM to docs if it can't even produce anything correct?
The point? Raises, acquisition of new headcount, resume food, etc. Huge amounts of change in software seem to be completely unrelated to user needs.
If you want to save a buck or are going to pirate the OS anyway, stick with the normal Windows 10 updates first and then downgrade to the stripped-down LTSC versions when that runs out in late 2027.
Those abstracted away details matter a lot if you care about user experience. Just watch how painfully a task both Apple and Microsoft are enduring to try to improve their consumer OS.
If you sat down in front of my computer you probably wouldn't even know how to move the windows around.
And that's fine. We don't need to be running the same software as long as everything actually works.
Enjoy your DE however you like it :)
- Multiple virtual desktops (usably built into the UI)
- Screen recording
- HDR support
- Much better antivirus built in
- Hyper-V support
- Much faster search (faster, not necessarily fast)
- Much better codec/preview support for the built-in media player
- Much better touch screen support
- Real fingerprint support instead of the pluggable API that no vendor actually implemented right
- Windows Hello infrared facial recognition
- DirectX 12
- Docked windows, in multiple arrangements, without janky third party software
- Multitouch gesture support
- Native DNS over HTTPS
- WSL2, especially gWSL, the Wayland compositor used to display Linux GUI applications
- Forcing companies to move their shitty unstable drivers to userland instead of crashing the kernel every time you turn on a printer.
- WPA3, better hotspot support, etc.
- Native phone integration
- A notification system that isn't applications drawing boxes all over your screen
- winget
- Windows Terminal and the various advancements in PowerShell
I don't like the remnants of Windows 8's UI but there were definitely useful features in Windows 10+.
Anyone selling hardware with Win10 after the EOL date, heck anyone selling hardware with Windows 10 now, is hardly professional, at least if they don't warn their customers of the security implications they may have if they don't pay MS for extended support⁰.
Once past EOL, unless you pay for the extended support¹, a Win10 device is a potential security problem for the user and the wider Internet.
UNprofessional hardware sellers can and will keep selling devices with Windows 10 to unsuspecting end users who do not know what the issue could be with that, of course.
> Because in the "refurb" space, there are a whole lot of computers that cannot run W11 due to graphic card requirements.
The only good-ish option for that is Linux of some variety. I say “good-ish” as an average assessment, for some it'll be great, for others it'll be a learning curve at best or significant incompatibility² at worst.
My laptop came with Win11, the old laptop³ that could upgrade to 11 will get Linux instead. My home desktop will also go the Linux way⁴.
--------
[0] which someone buying an old refurb PC may not be able/willing to afford, and even if they can it'll only last one year
[1] $30 for one year, per device, after that year you are out of luck as they are currently only planning to offer it for that long
[2] with other devices they own, or because they need specific software that can't be beaten into running on Linux without expertise they don't have, etc.
[3] the one with the slightly dodgy screen that I take for personal travelling as it matters a lot less if it gets lost or further broken
[4] I've just been too busy recently to faf, which is why that hasn't already been done, if it gets too close to Win10 EOL before I've cared enough to bother I'll buy an inexpensive dock and use the laptop connected to the nice big screens instead
Not to mention, Microsoft is rotten from the very beginning. But to be fair, it's not like the other tech giants are much more philanthropic.
For my hurt feelings, I found refuge in the open source community. Like you, I feel betrayed by technology - computers were really supposed to be different - and these guys are actually doing it. It just has a kind of warmth, and respect, that I don't get from Windows since like.... Win 95.
Install ChromeOS Flex or NetBSD or whatever on your Turing machine if you're so inclined.
It's like that Auto Shutoff they added to cars. Helps no one, and nobody wanted it. (Thanks Obama https://www.newsweek.com/automatic-start-stop-technology-new...)
I would be on Linux today if Steam OS came out properly for desktop. I'm ready to dip.
Just install Steam on any distribution (I use Fedora) and it all just works like SteamOS - Proton use is transparent.
If you just want Steam on an OS then installing Steam will do fine, but it's no "real" SteamOS experience.
Another part of the appeal is how stable the updates are thanks to update mechanism (and locking users out of the system config by default so they can't break their Linux installs with outdated scripts from askubuntu.com).
Absolutely! And if you really feel you need a truly SteamOS-like experience, there's entire distros (like Bazzite for example) devoted to replicating that as closely as possible for desktop PC users.
I don't get the hatred. It's very useful in countries where keeping the engine running at a red light or at a railway crossing is illegal. It also saves a ton of gas and emissions.
SteamOS will probably work if you're on an all-AMD machine (maybe not the latest GPU revisions because of driver lag), but SteamOS-likes like Bazzite will work fine on a lot of commodity hardware. I'd recommend trying the KDE flavour to get the most SteamOS-like experience, unless you prefer Gnome over KDE (like I do personally but tastes differ).
They use legalese now to say you are leasing the software, using with conditions, etc, but they love pulling the rug from under users now, and replacing it with an often-inferior product. This user-hostile mentality has been this way for consumer computers since they were created.
And managing Microsoft's hand of greed at the IT level sucks, too. Don't get me started on how "Microsoft Copilot" magically appeared on every windows machine in the world and starting using CPU cycles.
And the OP is right to install working software on old hardware as a reaction. It's a natural reaction. Ubuntu freed a lot of my old hardware. Gaming still sucks on Linux though.
If we mandated keeping things around a baseline OS a little longer, the need for foreign electronics could reduce in the short-term. Maybe it could offset those dumb tariff we're all paying for a little. Just mandate support for current OSes we have for the next four years at least while we wait for the economic tantrum to leave office.