Submitted 11 months ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://gizmodo.com/microsfot-windows-10-charging-2025-1851074975
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
Microsoft has been patching pirated copies of Windows for decades at this point.
Should have figured it was clickbait. They've done this with several previous versions after EOL security support ended AFAIK.
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.
Doubt that most cannot run W11. Unless you have a CPU before 2018 you should have TPM 2.0 and if you do not, you can bypass that requirement with 1 reg value.
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.
Microsoft never said that, though. One person said that and tech media ran with it like it was gospel (and Microsoft didn’t correct it, which is absolutely their fault, but still, that was never an official statement but apparently something that was just poorly phrased)
It’s different this time because of the tpm + other requirements of W11.
In the past it was never a big deal and people who didn’t upgrade from xp or 7 could be labeled as luddites because MS provided an easy and even free upgrade path.
But for the first time ever, anything older than 7 years isn’t supported.
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.
Good. That’ll be the day I finally update to windows 11 Linux
That’s one way to force people to update to the up to date secure windows 11 linux
They don’t, they just stay on W10
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 our 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.
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 shit.
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
so many devices that are working that don’t support newer software.
Most of these devices are artificially locked out of win11 with regex
Removing the regex makes them run win11 as fine as win10 used to run (at least in my machine case)
My laptop was somewhat high end around 11 years ago and is still working solidly. I love the Thinkpad series btw. The only thing I had to do was upgrade to SSD and larger memory many years ago. I was an early adopter of windows 11 and after forcing the installation, it ran even better than windows 10 on the same hardware. The lock out felt extremely artificial and arbitrary.
I’m going to flip that back on them, Microsoft will have to pay me to update my OS.
This was supposed to be the “last” windows operating system they’d ever release.
Microsoft never officially said this. It was a random engineer
Last good one
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.
So it’s even better than before?
There’s no reason for anyone but the non-tech savvy to care about this. Just like every time before it’ll be a simple registry tweak to make Windows Update pull from the extended support channel.
Now there’s an alternative if you want to do it officially or aren’t as tech savvy. Don’t see this as anything but a win, despite the way the article is framing it.
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 and for help. I’m even consulted but 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?
35 years? cmon man, use your brain then. Install win11 on USB with Rufus, check the box to bypass tpm requirements, install windows. You can force it on anything like any other os. I hate windows 11, but you’re being a little dense here.
If you currently have a Windows 10 machine, you can use NT Lite to edit the win11 iso. You can remove some of the bloatware, turn off some of the annoying features, and disable the tpm and secure boot requirements entirely.
Yeah, pretty sure that’s what stopped mine upgrading as well. I’m not messing with the boot settings, because I don’t want a machine that suddenly can’t boot.
Dunno which games you play, but Proton is incredible these days, and you can play just about anything with it (Protondb will give you an idea).
In fact, there have been several cases where the Windows version of a game with Proton plays better than the native Linux runtime for the same game.
Lmao, I’ll be on w10 till they release a not-shit OS again 😄
I did not have that on my bingo card, but I realize I should have
Still not updating until you let me keep my taskbar where it is.
Fuck off Microsoft.
prime enshittification.
“subscribe or die” is our future.
Seize the means of computation people!
Man I'm glad i shifted to linux. Not because I'm some open source zealot, but because I don't wanna deal with Microsoft's bullshit and the absolute awful look of windows 11. Given how well linux works these days, I'm very rarely having issues with it, and I only ever really use windows for vr so that i can have a desktop overlay.
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.
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.
It may have seemed like that, but killing explorer.exe doesn't cause data loss. None of the running applications are spawned by explorer, you just use it to launch them as separate processes.
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.
I do this shit for a living. Unless you were actively doing file moves then explorer crashing didn’t cause the data loss.
You really need to do a health check on your drive(s), and you can install Teracopy for faster file move operations that aren’t reliant on explorer staying up.
Windows 11 also drove me to Linux again...
Although to be fair, it came pre-installed on my new laptop and I was just too lazy to wipe it and switch over. My (now) backup laptop has been running ubuntu for years now, same with my desktop before it died.
But I got about 6 months of windows 11 after de-cluttering it. Still wasn't enough to convince me to keep it.
Why would they want to support an OS that they’re not even selling anymore?
That seems like a them problem though… shitty business model that’s already pushing users away
Continued money stream.
Better than single payments because more predictable.
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.
I disagree that it’s so simple, 10 is different because for a long time it was unclear 11 was ever going to happen, the biyearly releases were the new versions. For most of the other Windows versions they didn’t stop receiving security update until well after the next version or two were out. 11 will have only been out for 4 years when support for 10 theoretically stops.
German Government is still paying for XP and Win7 Updates, because some software just isn’t available on newer OS’s.
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.
While you certainly can run a Linux distro on a VM, why not just run a bootable flash drive with your distro of choice?
Personal preference. Plus, the only spare thumb drive I have is missing the protective case that shields the actual memory components.
Well, I’ve been putting off switching to Linux for a long time now. I guess Microsoft is going to force my hand.
Are there any 10-year-old Linux distributions that are still getting free support?
Literally most of them. All the big ones like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, etc. are 10+ years old and still get updates pretty much daily.
Debian had its 30th birthday back in September, actually.
There are free major upgrades though.
Actually, yes.
Debian has been supported since the early 90s, but admittedly that’s the only one I could name off the top of my head.
Or you can wait for the inevitable workaround to make Win 10 pull updates from the extended support channel for free.
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.
I mean, it is great now, it’ll just keep getting better.
This will drive people to macOS before it drives them to Linux. I’m calling it now.
I was dualboxing windows and endeavouros until I realized I was getting objectively superior performance for all games on linux. Deleted windows entirely and haven’t looked back since.
Next personal GFX update I’m going AMD and installing Linux on my gaming PC no matter what
Yarr harr fiddle di dee…
They can secure Deez nutz
Kinda bullshit, if they have made the patches anyway, just release them you bums. It's your own fault for repeatedly making shittier OS's that nobody wants to swap to.
So pirate Windows 11 or switch to Linux?
Jaysyn@kbin.social 11 months ago
Haven't they always done this for corporate customers with EoL products?
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yep
dojan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, this is nothing new.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
False; it’s now going to be offered to consumers, too.
That’s the entire article, you’re welcome.
red@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
The change this time around is not 3 more years having to code for IE9 😄
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In this case machines sold as recently as 2020 are not supported and for the for the last 8 years since 10 came out old computers were less obsolete than in prior eras as SSD were already common and other than gaming or specialized apps computer software hadn’t become notably heavier.
Basically many of those now forcibly obsolete machines bought as late as 2020 would have been expected to be in service for years yet either as primary machines or hand me downs. Basically much bitching will be heard.