technology

The window of options is narrowing, pay a subscription in the form of new hardware every couple of years (till they get you to do it every 6 months) just to have a basically functional machine. Or switch to Linux.

shit, running Windoze software puts your PC at risk.

the IT dept at my work forced us all to update to windows 11 last quarter. it more or less went as smooth as it could for me, but man it fucking sucks in the UX. they took away quick launch, which has been my chosen way to launch applications and open critical documents/folders for probably 15 years or some shit: my neat 3x6 rows of little custom icons that is always there, visible and ready to do what i want. i fucking loathe the taskbar pinned bullshit. it's total duplo designed for people who pay $2,000 for a facebook/email/youtube machine and will choke on anything small enough to fit in their mouth.

somebody has made some custom workaround to modify the shell, but they got us locked out on our work computers with no local admin access so i'm forced to play with the native windows environment. it SUCKS!

i have been steadily moving important things over to a nice little framework with ubuntu i got up and running in early 2024, but i still game and goof around on a jaunty desktop. i'm gonna hold out as long as possible and probably end up going to 11 with a bunch of weird 3rd party shit to make it more 10-ish, but i am definitely formulating the long term strategy to get away from the M$ environment completely. they seem to be pulling out all the stops to make me hate their products by removing all the little features i like.

so on that date does Windows 10 become more or less annoying?

As someone who supports their parents' computers, there are two phases:

1. Early phase: In the immediate end of support, there's honestly not a whole lot of difference from the perspective of the user (and it's honestly better if we're talking about Windows 10 since Windows 11 is still a dumpster fire and overall worse than Windows 10). Yes, your device will be more vulnerable, but there will be unofficial patches floating around, and you'll mostly be fine if you keep up with development of those unofficial patches. The real dividing line is when your browsers no longer upgrade because they detect an older version of Windows and that's when you hit the later phase.

2. Later phase: Once your browsers can no longer upgrade and you're stuck running out-of-date versions of Firefox/Chrome/Edge, that's when there's a massive degradation in user experience. Gradually, you're going to run into more websites that look off or have formatting issues or straight up can't even display their content. The straw that broke my parent's back was when their Windows 8 machine can no longer go to some bank website, and they couldn't go to the website because Edge couldn't/wouldn't upgrade past a certain version on Windows 8.

Take a Windows 7 diehard who hates Windows 8 onwards, doesn't want to blow their money on Apple products, and thinks Linux is only for nerds. The timeline is as follows:

• Up to January 2020, Windows 7 still had support from Microsoft. The three main browsers still work normally on Windows 7.
• By the end of 2023, Chromium-based browsers no longer supported Windows 7, meaning they would have to either use unsupported browsers or use Firefox.
• By March 2025, Firefox will also cease to support Windows 7. At this point, the Windows 7 diehard has to use some obscure Chrome fork called Supermium that's specifically developed for people running out-of-date versions of Windows. Them recoloring the OG Chrome icon before it got flat is chef's kiss. At this point, most software will no longer officially support Windows 7, and it will be an incredibly janky experience.

tl;dr: Install Linux Mint.

Switch to Linux

10 will continue to run fine but you'll miss out on all the exciting AI enhancements brought to you by Microsoft Copilot.

You'll likely be able to continue using Windows 10 even after the security updates stop (I really don't imagine a soft bricking situation). Also, this could just be a bluff on Microsoft's part since Windows 11 "sales" are very low and Windows 10 still leads by a wide margin. Microsoft will likely extend this date once it nears as a gambit to increase Windows 11 sales and hardware sales. In short, I'm like 90% sure this is a scare tactic to get people to upgrade.

There are still many, many Windows 7 machines out in the wild and I'd imagine for Windows 10 it'll be no different Microsoft be damned or whatnot.

In other news, my GNU/Linux system is missing this feature and I don't think they'll add it anytime soon.

Could change your license to the LTSC license to continue getting security updates or switch to Linux.

Lack of security updates would make your pc very susceptible to malware, but iirc there's regular fanmade updates or something for windows 7 that will probably also be a thing for 10 soon

Still, dualboot Linux in the meantime and see how you like it. I switched back when they released windows 11 and I figured they'd keep trying to force me to "upgrade"

I run 11 with all the spyware removed.

meanwhile I literally couldn't upgrade to win11 if I wanted to because my CPU is more than 5 years old

I had to upgrade to Windows 11, but it wouldn't run, so I found like a crack or something that bypasses the thing that prevents it from running on older CPUs. It seems to work well so far!